Old Wisdom for Decaying America 4

When power feels bold enough to crush!
With, day by day, some birthright lost,
Some pride depress’d, some purpose cross’d,
Cursed with each thought that brings the past,
And utter slaves to knaves at last!

-William Gilmore Simms

The problem of truth is not necessarily a problem of fact. - John Lukacs

. . . liberalism runs the danger of taking civilization for granted . . . .The ongoing work of civilization is the lost term in the liberal syllogism. - Caryl Johnston

I am gratified that the two principles of compensation [of slave owners] and colonization [of black people] are both recognized and practically applied in the act. - Abraham Lincoln, 1861, signing a bill for compensated slave emancipation in the District of Columbia

How could we find a sense of history, or of tradition, or of legitimate authority in the programs of Big Government and Big Business. . . . The country had been hollowed out. All that was left was politics and commerce. - Caryl Johnston on the 60s

Yankees have developed a character so odious that death would be preferable to reunion with them. - Gov. John Milton of Florida

The same Yankees who blame the South for everything bad are anxious to move South, away from the mess they have made. Alas, by their very character they recreate what they ran away from. - Clyde Wilson

The decomposition of civilizations precedes their death. - Georges Bernanos

---rootless, lacking in solid historical identity of their own, and as a result grasping at the cant and ideological crusades of the day to supply them with an identity. What is the first impulse of such people? To destroy - whether statues and memorials, or college courses in Western art and philosophy, or lecture platforms for speakers they don’t like. Hardly what I have called a “moral deed.” - Caryl Johnston on “Social Justice Warriors”

God told me to fight Al Qaeda and I did, and then he instructed me to go after Saddam and I did. - Bush Minor (how did he know it was not Satan rather than a direct communication to him from God?)

Mass hypocrisy is a contagious disease. - M.E. Bradford on the race question

We could have pursued no other course without dishonour, and sad as the results have been, we should be compelled to act in precisely the same manner. - R.E. Lee

…in Western societies the state system and society itself are alienated from one another . . .  Order, peace, and citizens’ lives and property are low on the state’s list of priorities. - F.R. Ankersmit, Dutch scholar

Murder is not a threat to the corrupt political establishment, but Truth is. - Paul Craig Roberts

The world is governed by very different personages from what is imagined by those who are not behind the scenes. - Disraeli

I really look with commiseration over the great body of my fellow citizens who, reading newspapers, live and die in the belief that they have known something of what has been passing in the world of their times. - Thomas Jefferson

Against the insidious wiles of foreign influence, I conjure you to believe me, fellow-citizens, the jealousy of a free people ought to be constantly awake, since history and experience prove that foreign influence is one of the most baneful foes of republican government. - George Washington, Farewell Address

Either nations will be governed by God, or they will be ruled by tyrants. - William Penn

I believe most travellers from afar would concur that the civilized way of life in America is now chiefly to be found in the South, which is speciously presented to the outer world as the enemy of civilized ways. - Douglas Reed, world-traveled British journalist after a visit in the 1950s.

Confederate flag:

Yet love, like truth, can never die,
And ‘graved on Time’s historic page,
The memory of our soldiers’ deeds
Shall live undimmed from age to age.

- Mary Bayard Devereux Clarke

Four stormy years we saw it gleam,
A people’s hope ---and then refurled
Even while its glory was the theme
Of half the world.
- Henry Linden Flash