Hawaii Liberty Chronicles

My grandchildren are growing up in a world where they have a 1 in 100,000 chance (give or take) of having the quality of their lives negatively affected by a terrorist act. They have a 1 in 1 chance of having their lives negatively affected by the spending cokeheads in the U.S. Congress. A note to conservative shepherds. If you want real conservative sheep to listen to you, then show some horse sense. Stop saving the flock from the flies, and think more about the wolves.

~ Douglass Wilson, from A New Perspective on (Ron) Paul

Douglas Wilson listening to Christopher Hitchens

I would rather be beaten and be a man than to be elected and be a little puppy dog. I have always supported measures and principles and not men. I have acted fearlessly and independent and I never will regret my course. I would rather be politically buried than to be hypocritically immortalized.

~Davy Crockett

Should auld acquaintance be forgot,
and never brought to mind ?
Should auld acquaintance be forgot,
and auld lang syne ?

CHORUS:

For auld lang syne, my jo,
for auld lang syne,
we’ll tak a cup o’ kindness yet,
for auld lang syne.

And surely ye’ll be your pint-stowp !
and surely I’ll be mine !
And we’ll tak a cup o’ kindness yet,
for auld lang syne.

CHORUS

We twa hae run about the braes,
and pu’d the gowans fine ;
But we’ve wander’d mony a weary foot,
sin auld lang syne.

CHORUS

We twa hae paidl’d i’ the burn,
frae morning sun till dine ;
But seas between us braid hae roar’d
sin auld lang syne.

CHORUS

And there’s a hand, my trusty fiere !
and gie’s a hand o’ thine !
And we’ll tak a right gude-willy waught,
for auld lang syne.

CHORUS

Burns’ original Scotts version

This revolution will be one of decentralization and some form of operational secession. I don’t think states are actually going to break away from the union. I believe that the governors and mayors are not going to bother to get Federal grants, because the money is either not available or won’t buy anything. When we get to that stage, we will be prepared for a new period of liberty. That day is coming. The government has shot his wad, and the Federal Reserve, in shooting whatever wad it has left, is going to debase the currency.

~ Gary North, from “Digits and Revolution”

The Constitution is not an instrument for the government to restrain the people, it is an instrument for the people to restrain the government — lest it come to dominate our lives and interests.

~ Patrick Henry

[Socialists] promise the blessings of the Garden of Eden, but they plan to transform the world into a gigantic post office.

~ Ludwig Von Mises

It is the common fate of the indolent to see their rights become a prey to the active. The condition upon which God hath given liberty to man is eternal vigilance; which condition if he break, servitude is at once the consequence of his crime and the punishment of his guilt.

~ John Philpot Curran, “Speech On the Right of Election” (1790)

Ua mau ke ea o ka ʻāina i ka pono. (The life of the land is perpetuated in righteousness.)

~ Kamehameha III, amid the uncertainty of surrendering the Hawaiian kingdom to the British crown (1843).

Indeed nations, in general, are not apt to think until they feel; and therefore nations in general have lost their liberty: For as violations of the rights of the governed, are commonly not only specious, but small at the beginning, they spread over the multitude in such a manner, as to touch individuals but slightly. Thus they are disregarded. The power or profit that arises from these violations centering in few persons, is to them considerable. For this reason the governors having in view their particular purposes, successively preserve an uniformity of conduct for attaining them. They regularly increase the first injuries, till at length the inattentive people are compelled to perceive the heaviness of their burthens — They begin to complain and inquire — but too late. They find their oppressors so strengthened by success, and themselves so entangled in examples of express authority on the part of their rulers, and of tacit recognition on their own part, that they are quite confounded : fro millions entertain no other idea of the legality of power, than it is founded on the exercise of power.

~ John Dickenson, in The Political Writings of John Dickinson, Esquire Vol. I (1801), Letter XI

Those who seek absolute power, even though they seek it to do what they regard as good, are simply demanding the right to enforce their own version of heaven on earth. And let me remind you, they are the very ones who always create the most hellish tyrannies. Absolute power does corrupt, and those who seek it must be suspect and must be opposed. Their mistaken course stems from false notions of equality, ladies and gentlemen. Equality, rightly understood, as our founding fathers understood it, leads to liberty and to the emancipation of creative differences. Wrongly understood, as it has been so tragically in our time, it leads first to conformity and then to despotism.

~ Barry Goldwater, Acceptance Speech as Republican Presidential candidate (1964)

Experience should teach us to be most on our guard to protect liberty when the Government’s purposes are beneficent. Men born to freedom are naturally alert to repel invasion of their liberty by evil minded rulers. The greatest dangers to liberty lurk in insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well meaning but without understanding.

~ Justice Louis Brandeis, in Olmstead v. United States (1928)

If you analyze it I believe the very heart and soul of conservatism is libertarianism. I think conservatism is really a misnomer just as liberalism is a misnomer for the liberals — if we were back in the days of the Revolution, so-called conservatives today would be the Liberals and the liberals would be the Tories.

The basis of conservatism is a desire for less government interference or less centralized authority or more individual freedom and this is a pretty general description also of what libertarianism is. Now, I can’t say that I will agree with all the things that the present group who call themselves Libertarians in the sense of a party say, because I think that like in any political movement there are shades, and there are libertarians who are almost over at the point of wanting no government at all or anarchy. I believe there are legitimate government functions. There is a legitimate need in an orderly society for some government to maintain freedom or we will have tyranny by individuals. The strongest man on the block will run the neighborhood. We have government to insure that we don’t each one of us have to carry a club to defend ourselves.

But again, I stand on my statement that I think that libertarianism and conservatism are traveling the same path.

~ Ronald Reagan, Interview published in Reason (July 1, 1975)

We must plan for freedom, and not only for security, if for no other reason than only freedom can make security more secure.

~  Karl Popper, The Open Society and Its Enemies, (1945)

Everything that is really great and inspiring is created by the individual who can labor in freedom.

~  Albert Einstein, in Out of My Later Years (1950)

The moment the idea is admitted into society that property is not as sacred as the laws of God, and that there is not a force of law and public justice to protect it, anarchy and tyranny commence. If ‘Thou shalt not covet’ and ‘Thou shalt not steal’ were not commandments of Heaven, they must be made inviolable precepts in every society before it can be civilized or made free.

~ John Adams (1787)

If a nation values anything more than freedom, it will lose its freedom; and the irony of it is that if it is comfort or money that it values more, it will lose that too.

~ W. Somerset Maugham, in Strictly Personal, ch. 31 (1941)

He that would make his own liberty secure must guard even his enemy from oppression; for if he violates this duty, he establishes a precedent that will reach to himself.

~ Thomas Paine

The saddest epitaph which can be carved in memory of a vanished liberty is that it was lost because its possessors failed to stretch forth a saving hand while yet there was time.

~ Justice George Sutherland,  in his dissenting opinion on Associated Press v. National Labor Relations Board, 301 US 141 (1938)

It would indeed be ironic if, in the name of national defense, we would sanction the subversion of one of those liberties which make the defense of our nation worthwhile.

~ Chief Justice Earl Warren, in United States v. Robel (1967)

No man’s life, liberty, or property are safe while the legislature is in session.

~ Gideon J. Tucker, Final Accounting in the Estate of A. B. (1866)

Liberty lies in the hearts of men and women; when it dies there, no constitution, no law, no court can save it; no constitution, no law, no court can even do much to help it… What is this liberty that must lie in the hearts of men and women? It is not the ruthless, the unbridled will; it is not the freedom to do as one likes. That is the denial of liberty and leads straight to its overthrow. A society in which men recognize no check on their freedom soon becomes a society where freedom is the possession of only a savage few — as we have learned to our sorrow.

What then is the spirit of liberty? I cannot define it; I can only tell you my own faith. The spirit of liberty is the spirit which is not too sure that it is right; the spirit of liberty is the spirit which seeks to understand the minds of other men and women; the spirit of liberty is the spirit which weighs their interests alongside its own without bias; the spirit of liberty remembers that not even a sparrow falls to earth unheeded; the spirit of liberty is the spirit of Him who, near two thousand years ago, taught mankind that lesson it has never learned, but has never quite forgotten; that there may be a kingdom where the least shall be heard and considered side by side with the greatest.

~ Judge Billings Learned Hand, “The Spirit of Liberty” - speech at “I Am an American Day” ceremony, Central Park, New York City (21 May 1944)

But rightful liberty is unobstructed action according to our will within limits drawn around us by the equal rights of others. I do not add ‘within the limits of the law’ because law is often but the tyrant’s will, and always so when it violates the rights of the individual.

~ Thomas Jefferson

To know what you prefer instead of humbly saying Amen to what the world tells you you ought to prefer, is to have kept your soul alive.

~ Robert Louis Stevenson

Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. We didn’t pass it to our children in the bloodstream. It must be fought for, protected, and handed on for them to do the same, or one day we will spend our sunset years telling our children and our children’s children what it was once like in the United States where men were free.

~ Ronald Reagan, address to the annual meeting of the Phoenix Chamber of Commerce (30 March 1961)

The whole history of the progress of human liberty shows that all concessions yet made to her august claims have been born of earnest struggle. If there is no struggle, there is no progress. Those who profess to favor freedom, and yet deprecate agitation, are men who want crops without plowing up the ground, they want rain without thunder and lightning. They want the ocean without the awful roar of its many waters.

~ Frederick Douglass, address on West India Emancipation (4 August 1857)

Liberty and good government do not exclude each other; and there are excellent reasons why they should go together. Liberty is not a means to a higher political end. It is itself the highest political end.

~ Lord Acton, The History of Freedom in Antiquity (1877)

This session we pledge to the people of Hawaii who look to all of us for leadership, to listen even more, work even harder, cooperate for the good of all our people, and to passionately continue to stand up against bad laws, poor economics and loss of freedom and choice.

~ Sam Slom, Senate Minority Speech (01/21/09)

A-tell you, one man a-walkin’; and a billion man a-sparkin’.

~ Bob Marley

It seems to me that the nature of the ultimate revolution with which we are now faced is precisely this: That we are in process of developing a whole series of techniques which will enable the controlling oligarchy who have always existed and presumably will always exist to get people to love their servitude.

~ Aldous Huxley (1962, Speech at Berkley)

Hawaii’s been good to me… the great thing about democracy in Hawaii is that now the maka’ainana (commoner) have a shot.  We all have a voice in the process.

~ Al Harrington