The Notes (10 page)

I
pledge myself to rally the masses to defend the Soviet U., the land of victorious socialism. I pledge myself to remain at all times a vigilant & firm defender of the Leninist line of the party, the only line that insures the triumph of Soviet power in the U.S.

Nazi Party on What Should Be Party Platform

D
emand that the state shall make one of its chief duties to provide work & means of livelihood for citizens. The activities of the individual must not clash with the interest of the whole but must be pursued within the framework of Nat. activity & must be for the general good. Demand therefore abolition of incomes unearned by work & emancipation from interest charges. Confiscation of all war profits. Nationalization of all business trusts. Great industries shall be organization on a profit sharing basis. The extensive development of provision for old age. & ed. facilities for specially gifted children of poor parents at the expense of the state. Our Nat. can only achieve permanent well being from within on the principles of common interest before self interest.

Mussolini

W
e were the first to assert that the more complicated the forms assumed by civilization the more restricted the freedom of the individual must become.

Letter From a Young American Socialist to Friend Around 1968

I
t is my life, my business, my religion, my hobby, my bread & meat. I have already been in jail because of my ideas & if necessary I am ready to go before a firing squad. We have a cause to fight for—a def. purpose in life. We have a morale an esprit de corps such as no capitalist army ever had—a devotion to our cause that no religious order can touch.

Anonymous

W
hen govt. doesn’t know what it’s supposed to do, it ends up trying to do everything.

F
reedom rests and always will on individual responsibility, individ. integrity, individ. effort, individ. courage, & individual religious faith.

W
e must pay a price for freedom but whatever the price it’s only half the cost of doing without it.

John F. Kennedy

T
he scarlet thread running through the thoughts & actions of people all over the world is the delegation of great problems to the all-absorbing leviathan—the state . . . Every time that we try to lift a problem to the govt., to the same extent we are sacrificing the liberties of the people.

John Cotton, 18th Century

L
et all the world learn to give mortal man no greater power than they are content they shall use—for use it they will.

Lord Denning on Economy

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hat matters is that each man should be free to develop his own personality to the full; and the only duties which restrict this freedom are those which are necessary to enable everyone to do the same. Whenever these interests are nicely balanced the scale goes down on the side of freedom.

Lord Acton 70 Years After Adoption of U.S. Constitution

T
hey had solved with astonishing ease & unexampled success 2 probs. which had heretofore baffled the capacity of the most enlightened nations. They had contrived a system of Fed. govt. which prodigiously increased nat. power & yet respected local liberties & authorities & they had founded it on the prin. of equality without surrendering the securities of property & freedom.

Sen. Benjamin H. Hill, 1867