September 1, 1995
Curiously, President Clinton condemns the self-appointed militia, who only seem to want to run around in the woods with guns and who distrust the government (don't you?), on the grounds that they create a climate of violence and hate. Yet all the while, he nestles a viper like Gerry Adams of Sinn Fein close to his bosom.
"I don't think they's anny such thing as hypocrisy in th' wurruld. They can't be. If ye'd turn on th' gas in th' darkest heart ye'd find it has a good raison for th' worst things it done, a good, varchous raison, like needin' th' money, or punishin' th' wicked, or taychin' people a lesson to be more careful, or protectin' th' liberties of mankind, or needin' th' money."
... "Mr. Dooley" (Finley Peter Dunne)
Wise old Shaw, high-minded Barbusse, the venerable Webbs, Gide the pure and Picasso the impure, down to poor little teachers, crazed clergymen and millionaires, drivelling dons and very special correspondents like Duranty, all resolved, come what may, to believe anything, however preposterous, to overlook nothing, no matter how villainous, to approve anything, no matter how obscurantist and brutally authoritarian, in order to preserve intact the confident expectation that one of the most thorough-going, ruthless and bloody tyrannies ever to exist on earth could be relied on to champion human freedom, the brotherhood of man, and all the other liberal causes to which they had dedicated their lives.
... Malcolm Muggeridge
In 1992, 43% of the voting public bought the incredible hoakum passed out by Bill Clinton; 38% stayed with the baloney that George Bush propagated; and 19% swallowed the preposterous nonsense that Ross Perot shovelled out. I suppose that one had to vote for one of these three poltroons, simply on the grounds that failing to vote at all allowed the most despicable of them to benefit from the idiocy of the other two.
One cannot lower taxes without lowering spending. The tax rate, over which there is so much annual bickering, has little or nothing to do with the taxes we must ultimately pay, save to alter the amount of interest we must ultimately pay on the debt. In the end, the debt will be paid for entirely out of taxes, for there is nowhere else to get the money.
Since the matter of formal taxes (the tax rate) clouds the issue, the discussion cannot proceed to the more substantive matter of reducing actual taxes. Of course, the politicians do not want to discuss that, because a realistic discussion will swiftly reveal that even balancing the budget is not enough: we must generate a surplus in order to reduce the debt. Deficit reduction increases the debt. Even deficit eradication can only hold the debt at the current level.
The politicians of the last forty years have spent our patrimony and mortgaged our children. The U. S. Government should be forced to sell its assets and to abandon its authority to spend in excess of its receipts, on the grounds of past fiduciary irresponsibility.
Since Vincent Foster's widow recently indicated that his supposed suicide could have been on account of his role in the Waco disaster (whatever role that was), a thought has repeatedly occurred to me: what if Foster's suicide could be the beginning of a wave of suicides among White House and other Washington officials? Who knows? it could catch on. Such a fad could be the occasion for unbridled rejoicing among the body politic, to a degree we have never witnessed before. I place the idea before you, and pass on.
Some will dispute the following, but in my opinion, there is no more profound an utterance of music than Ein Deutsches Requiem by Johannes Brahms. The recording by John Eliot Gardiner and the Monteverdi Choir, assisted by the Orchestre Revolutionnaire et Romantique, though occasionally flawed by a vain attempt to reproduce Brahms' authentic orchestral sound, reveals more of this greatness than any other current recording to my knowledge. It is available on Phillips 432 140-2.
All contents © Copyright 1995, 1996 by Redmon Barbry ¶ 11:26 PM
