How Much Do You Have to Hate Someone Not to Proselytize?

Francis Schaeffer on the Origins of Relativism in the Church

Words to Remember

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.

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An Inspiring Song

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Tuesday, October 6, 2009

Edmund Burke Quote # 5

From "Speech Before the House of Commons in Support of Mr. Rose Fuller's Motion that the Commons Move to a Committee of the Whole in Order to Discuss the Threepence Tax on Tea":
...among vices, there is none which the House abhors in the same degree with obstinacy. Obstinacy, Sir, is certainly a great vice; and in the changeful state of political affairs it is frequently the cause of great mischief. It happens, however, very unfortunately, that almost the whole line of the great and masculine virtues, constancy, gravity, magnanimity, fortitude, fidelity, and firmness, are closely allied to this disagreeable quality, of which you have so just an abhorrence, and, in their excess, all these virtues very easily fall into it.
One of the most amazing, and yet utterly unsurprising, aspects of political discourse in this age is the degree to which people are loyal to ideas that have absolutely no track record of actually producing the benefits which they were supposed to produce.

I'm never one hundred percent sure whether it's idiocy, ignorance, willful blindness, lying in shameless pursuit of power, obstinacy--as Burke suggests here--or some hideous combination of all of them.

Probably it's the hideous-combination-thing. Yeah, that's it.
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