What Dryden said was this, “Great wits are oft to madness near allied”; and that is true. It is the pure promptitude of the intellect that is in peril of a breakdown. Also people might remember of what sort of man Dryden was talking. He was not talking of any unworldly visionary like Vaughan or...Read More

The whole modern world has divided itself into Conservatives and Progressives. The business of Progressives is to go on making mistakes. The business of Conservatives is to prevent mistakes from being corrected. Even when the revolutionist might himself repent of his revolution, the traditionalist is already defending it as part of his tradition. Thus we have...Read More

“It may seem to many readers that as I have elaborated my initial hypothesis I have step by step deprived myself of very nearly all possible argumentative allies. But is not just this required by the hypothesis itself? For if the hypothesis is true, it will necessarily appear implausible, since one way of stating part...Read More

It was this class which gradually detached the attention of Romans from principles of men, and no sooner had it converted Caesar and Pompey into objects of adoration and hatred, than the worshippers of the true were ready to destroy the worshippers of the false deity; a war was declared between God and Baal; and...Read More

“Whatever capital you divert to the support of a shiftless and good-for-nothing person is so much diverted from some other employment, and that means from somebody else. I would spend any conceivable amount of zeal and eloquence if I possessed it to try to make people grasp this idea. Capital is force. If it goes...Read More

It is a truth, however, no less melancholy than incontestable, that if this ever was the view of the people, it has ceased to be so. And it could not be otherwise. Whatever be the theory of our Constitution, its practice, of late years, has made it a consolidated government; the government of an irresponsible...Read More

“Having served my country from very early life, in all its highest trusts and most difficult emergencies, from the most important of which trusts 1 have lately retired, I cannot otherwise than feel with great sensibility, this proof of the high confidence of this very enlightened and respectable. Assembly. I regret my appointment from another...Read More

“Manners are of more importance than laws. Manners are what vex or soothe, corrupt or purify, exalt or debase, barbarize or refine us, by a constant, steady, uniform, insensible operation, like that of the air we breathe.” – Edmund Burke  Read More

“[T]he modern world, with its modern movements, is living on its Catholic capital.  It is using, and using up, the truths that remain to it out of the old treasury of Christendom.” G.K. Chesterson – “The Thing”Read More

Virginia, the two Carolinas and Georgia, may be said to defray three fourths of the annual expense of supporting the federal government; and of this great sum annually furnished by them, nothing, or next to nothing, is returned to them in the shape of government expenditure. – Senator Thomas Hart BentonRead More

Was Secession A Constitutional Right? 1868 Book Concluded It Was. “In order to show that the Constitution is not a compact between the States, the position is assumed, that it is not a compact at all. If it be a compact, say they, then the States had a right to secede. But it is not a compact;...Read More

[The powerful Executive branch]…converts representation into vassalage to the leaders of parties, disciplined, not by the comparatively honourable infliction of the lash, but by the base and wicked sophism, that it is honourable to stick to a party, and treacherous to adhere to conscience. The disciples of this infamous doctrine are forged into tools for ambition and tyranny...Read More

The Legitimate acts of government extend only to such acts which are injurious to others. But it does me no injury for my neighbour to say their are twenty Gods or no Gods. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg. Thomas Jefferson’s “Notes on the State of Virginia”Read More

I saw in State Rights the only availing check upon the absolutism of the sovereign will, and secession filled me with hope, not as the destruction but as the redemption of Democracy. Lord Acton Defending the states right to secede and form their own governmentsRead More

Great power often corrupts virtue; it invariably renders vice more malignant. In proportion as the powers of government increase, both its own character and that of the people becomes worse. John Taylor of Caroline Explaining why Federal control of medicine is a bad ideaRead More

Shall we gather strength by irresolution and inaction? Shall we acquire the means of effectual resistance by lying on our backs and hugging the delusive phantom of hope, until our enemies shall have bound us hand and foot? Patrick Henry 1765 Speech to VA House of Burgesses over that bodies refusal to confront the King’s...Read More

Changes in the constitution ought not be lightly made; but when corruption has long infected the legislative, and executive powers: when these pervert the liberties of the people; if THEY tamely submit to such misgovernment, we may fairly conclude, the bulk of that people to be ripe for slavery. Charles Carroll of CarrolltonRead More

The powers delegated by the proposed Constitution to the federal government, are few and defined. Those which are to remain in the state governments are numerous and indefinite. James Madison Explaining the new federal government’s very limited powers in Federalist 45Read More

The very objection evinces the folly of trusting the decision of this dispute to posterity, who, familiarized to oppression, will never resist it, and who, by long use, will be accustomed to look upon every badge of slavery with as little horror as we do upon the Navigation Acts. Thomson MasonRead More