QOTD: You Built It All Yourself, Huh?

“Personal property is the effect of society; and it is as impossible for an individual to acquire personal property without the aid of society, as it is for him to make land originally.

Separate an individual from society, and give him an island or a continent to possess, and he cannot acquire personal property. He cannot be rich. So inseparably are the means connected with the end, in all cases, that where the former do not exist, the latter cannot be obtained. All accumulation, therefore, of personal property, beyond what a man’s own hands produce, is derived to him by living in society; and he owes on every principle of justice, of gratitude, and of civilisation, a part of that accumulation back again to society from whence the whole came.”

Thomas Paine, Founding Father

h/t to commenter The Other Chuck at Balloon Juice

Quote of the Day: On the Use of the Term "Political Correctness"

Writer Steven Hart, on Facebook:  


  I'm old enough to remember that "PC" began as an ironic joke among leftie academics. The wingers took it up as a cudgel, and now the  term is useless except as a signal of low-to-zero IQ on the part of the user. When it crops up, like the phrase "I'm really a classical liberal" or  "I'm a student of history," it's a warning that a tandem-trailer load of bullshit is about to come up your driveway..


Amen, brother. I don't de-friend or ban  people for disagreeing with me. However, if you insist that people are disagreeing with you because of 'political correctness", you're on the short list to go in the Bozo Bin. It's condescending, dismissive and lazy. Any time someone starts a sentence with "I know it's not PC to say this," you can bet that what  follows will be some sort of ill-thought-out, racist, and/or bigoted garbage. Frankly, if the words "political correctness" or the letters "PC" crop up in your argument, I'm going to assume you're a non-sentient jagoff until proven otherwise.  

Quote of the Day

I'm not sure who Greg Knauss is, but he may just be my favorite person today, for this tweet:

"If crimes 'begin and end with the criminals who commit them,' I think Sarah Palin just endorsed a mosque near Ground Zero."

Quote of the Day

From the New Yorker profile of writer Neil Gaiman:

If he had not been a writer, he says, he would have wanted to design religions. “I’d have a little shop, and people would phone up or come into the shop and they’d say, ‘I’d like a religion,’ ” he said. “And I’d say, ‘Cool, O.K. Where do you stand on guilt, and how do you want to fund it? And would you like sort of a belief in the universe as a huge beneficent organ? Or would you like something more complex?’ And they’d say, ‘Oh, we’d like God to be really big on guilt.’ And I’d say, ‘O.K., how does Wednesday sound to you as a sacred day?’ ”

You gotta love this guy.

For The Flashman Fans

Flashman's Retreat provides a daily meditation from the pen of Brigadier General Harry Paget Flashman, VC, KCB, KCIE, (aka Flash Harry), George McDonald Fraser's beloved anti-hero. A typical selection:

I know these beauties, you see, and it don’t matter whether they’re queens or commoners, when they start to play the cool, mocking grande dame it’s a sure sign that they’re wondering what kind of mount you’ll make.

And:

I told him I had ambitions, too – to live as I please, love as I please and never grow old. He didn’t think much of that , I fancy; he told me I was frivolous, and would be disappointed. Only the strong, he said, could afford ambitions. So I told him I had a much better motto than that…“Courage – and shuffle the cards”.

Quote of the Day

Dana King, commenting at murderati.com:

I'm operating under King's Corollary to the Golden Rule:

I treat everyone as I would like to be treated myself, and grant all other the same privilege. Therefore, when I encounter someone who is an inconsiderate asshole, I can only assume that's how they would like to be treated in turn, and it would be impolite of me to treat them any other way.

Quote of the Day

From Paul Levine at The Naked Truth about Literature and Life:

People who carry guns to President Obama's town meetings are exercising their Second Amendment right to bear arms and their God-given right to act like total dipshits.

Quote of the Day

(Not necessarily political, but it does, of course, have application to politics):

"I divide my officers into four classes; the clever, the lazy, the industrious, and the stupid. Each officer possesses at least two of these qualities. Those who are clever and industrious are fitted for the highest staff appointments. Use can be made of those who are stupid and lazy. The man who is clever and lazy however is for the very highest command; he has the temperament and nerves to deal with all situations. But whoever is stupid and industrious is a menace and must be removed immediately!"

-General Kurt von Hammerstein-Equord

Quote of the Day

Katy Munger, writing at Breakfast in Bed:

Being a fiction writer is just like being a little kid who has lots and lots of invisible friends.

Quote of the Day

At some point—it might actually coincided with the election of George W. Bush—conservatism ceased to be a philosophy that traced its roots back to Edmund Burke and became nothing more than a "f*** you, liberal bastards" attitude.

-Lev, commenting at Balloon Juice


If anyone on the McCain campaign chose Palin because she would drive liberals crazy, my hat is off to him!

-Ann Coulter