Dear Tom and All,
    May I add two quotations to this present fray of political reality vs.
political theory to which Old Ez could add buckets full?
    First, from Nietzsche, that German/Polish thorn in the side of Leo
Strauss and his sheepishly grinning band of neo-Jacobin "intellectuals" now
riding the wake soon to reach their own I hope-

"The state is a clever institution for protecting individuals from one
another; if one goes too far in ennobling it, the individual is ultimately
weakened by it, even dissolved - and thus the original purpose of the state
is most thoroughly thwarted."

    I have thought of how this might look printed on a sign and held up in
one of those "free speech zones" located far from the selected route to the
community College or the presidentially graced kindergarten du jour but
decided that it would be "thoroughly thwarted". Come to think of it maybe
that's all it should say!
    My second selection is from our own homegrown boy, Tommy Paine, and it
is the best and most succinct summary of U.S. foreign policy, past, present,
and future, that I have read to date-

"It is with a pious fraud as with a bad action; it begets a calamitous
necessity of going on."

This policy of course adapts to both embedded parties, both pious and bad,
whose rhetoric has dumbdowned to such lows as to "stay and finish the job"
in which case I would willingly vote for an undertaker if one were running.

Charles (thoroughly thwarted) Moyer


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>From: Tom White <[log in to unmask]>
>To: [log in to unmask]
>Subject: Wrath aroused
>Date: Wed, Jan 21, 2004, 7:40 PM
>

> Dear All:
> I see I have triggered some unhappiness with my post that implied support
> for anti-govt. libertarian ideas. I had been staying off the list to save
> breath and energy, and have to return to my silent-mouse trip forthwith, but
> in all fairness to my critics let me quote Mencken to his critics (not that
> I would elevate myself to his status): 'Dear Sir (or Madam): You may be
> right." And one last word: If you like what we've got going now, by all
> means hang in there with the "supporters of the present system." It's a
> great deal healthier than any other posture. Tom (silent) White