The Un-Planned Hiatus

Posted January 9, 2013, 5:32 p.m.

So Off on a Tangent had a bit of an un-planned hiatus there. Sorry about that.

It’s not any one thing that got in the way of my regular posting, but rather a whole slew of things. I had furniture to assemble, light fixtures to install, holidays to celebrate, people to visit, events to attend, and—just for good measure—an awful stomach flu in December and a bad cold in January. Between those things and my regular, ongoing commitments, the site sort-of fell by the wayside.

But now that my second-illness-in-a-month is winding down and things are settling back into a normal, manageable pattern, I’m ready to make my triumphant return . . . if you want to call it that. So stay tuned; my patented brand of commentary will be back in this space shortly.

Scott Bradford is a writer and technologist who has been putting his opinions online since 1995. He believes in three inviolable human rights: life, liberty, and property. He is a Catholic Christian who worships the trinitarian God described in the Nicene Creed. Scott is a husband, nerd, pet lover, and AMC/Jeep enthusiast with a B.S. degree in public administration from George Mason University.

Quotes

But if it should happen, as it often does, that the temporal power and authorities . . . should urge a subject to do contrary to the Commandments of God, or hinder him from doing them, there obedience ends, and that duty is annulled.

The hunger strike is a purely moral weapon. It presupposes that the jailer has not entirely lost his conscience. Or that the jailer is afraid of public opinion.

In a more careful use of the terms, not all ‘schooling’ is ‘education,’ and not all ‘education’ is ‘schooling.’

There are people in government who don’t want other people to know what they know. It’s just another example of elitism. And I spit on elitism. Show me an elitist, and I’ll show you a loser.

Once a government is committed to the principle of silencing the voice of opposition, it has only one way to go, and that is down the path of increasingly repressive measures, until it becomes a source of terror to all its citizens. . . .

For my own part, I doubt whether man can ever support at the same time complete religious independence and entire public freedom. And I am inclined to think, that if faith be wanting in him, he must serve; and if he be free, he must believe.

The God who gave us life, gave us liberty at the same time; the hand of force may destroy, but cannot disjoin them.

God grants to evil and to evildoers a large measure of freedom—too large, we might think. Even so, history does not slip through his fingers.

There is no instance of any government being reduced to a confirmed tyranny without military oppression.

The road to Auschwitz was built by hate, but paved with indifference.

Violence, after all, is no mystery. It’s peace that’s the mystery. Violence is the default. It’s easy. It’s peace that is difficult: learned, inculcated, earned.

For to answer objections made to a power given to a government, by saying it will never be exercised, is really admitting that the power ought not to be exercised, and therefore ought not to be granted.

I would rather belong to a poor nation that was free than to a rich nation that had ceased to be in love with liberty.

Hardly any amount of oppression from above takes the heart out of a boy like oppression from his fellows.

No Reformer believed in private interpretation of Scripture, but they had no clear way to discern whose interpretation was the correct one. [They] quickly discovered that casting off Rome’s authority solved one problem but created another.

Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind.

Success is simple. Do what’s right, the right way, at the right time.

The Constitution[‘s] . . . language is ‘we the people;’ not we the white people. Not even we the citizens, not we the privileged class, not we the high, not we the low, but we the people.

Once [President Eisenhower] makes up his mind, he’s full of indecision.

If America’s wealth were spread around the world it would soon be dissipated, but if her system of free government and free enterprise were spread around the world, nations would soon find them to be perpetual producers of wealth.

Go to Top	`tt`
Go to Bottom	`tb`
Search	`ts`
Main Content	`tc`
Open Gallery (if present)	`tg`
Open Flagpole	`tf`
Keyboard Shortcuts	`tk`
Site Information	`ti`

Main Menu

X

Site Information

Keyboard Shortcuts