Those seeking to limit the size of government surely continue to welcome this faith-based support, but they now have a new moral underpinning: Ayn Rand as their resident philosopher. . . . The title of one of her shorter essays says it all: “The Virtue of Selfishness.” In it she writes, “Altruism is incompatible with freedom, with capitalism, and with individual rights. One cannot combine the pursuit of happiness with the moral status of a sacrificial animal.” For her, the Great Commandment to love your neighbor is tantamount to “moral cannibalism.” — Alexander E. Sharp
Quotes
Charles Schultz
Why nations do the thing they do, writ small: Prophecy from Peanuts Charlie Brown comes in to find his sister Sally carrying her clothes into his room. “What’s going on here?” he asks. “Big Brother!” she responds. "I thought you went to camp.” “I only went over to the mall. I’m gone for thirty minutes, and you start moving your stuff into my room?!” “That’s my new philosophy,” Sally says. ‘If you see a room you like, move into it.’” — Charles Schultz
USA Today
Texas governor and former GOP presidential candidate Perry endorses socialism? Speaking to reporters in September 2011 after touring wildfire-ravaged area west of Austin, Gov. Rick Perry expressed frustration that expected federal assistance was being slowed by red tape. Specifically mentioning bulldozers and other equipment in nearby Ft. Hood, Perry said, “When you’ve got lives that are in danger . . . I really don’t care who the asset belongs to. If it’s sitting in some yard somewhere and not helping be part of the solution, that’s a problem.” — USA Today
Robert Scheer
While the median pay for top corporate executives has quadrupled since the 1970s, the pay of non-supervisory workers has declined [in 2011] by more than 10 percent. — Robert Scheer
Langston Hughes
America never was America to me. — Langston Hughes
Bill Moyers
During the prairie revolt that swept the Great Plains in 1890, populist orator Mary Elizabeth Lease exclaimed, “Wall Street owns the country…. Money rules…. Our laws are the output of a system which clothes rascals in robes and honesty in rags. The [political] parties lie to us and the political speakers mislead us." — Bill Moyers
Alan Patton
There is a hard law. . . . When an injury is done to us, we never recover until we forgive. — Alan Patton
Nelson Mandela
Resentment is like drinking poison and then hoping it will kill your enemies. — Nelson Mandela
Bill Moyers
Money is the liquor of politics. Our politicians are drunk from it. Without the shock of an intervention, you can’t expect them to recover. What form that intervention takes, I can’t predict. . . Maybe we’ll find out. Meanwhile, don’t give your heart to any candidate who won’t swear off the booze. — Bill Moyers
Lord Alfred Tennyson
How dull it is to pause, to make an end, To rust unburnished, not to shine in use! As though to breathe were life. — Lord Alfred Tennyson