" Fascism should more appropriately be called Corporatism because it is a merger of State and corporate power."
Benito Mussolini (1883-1945), Fascist Dictator of Italy
"To announce that there must be no criticism of the president, or that we are to stand by the president right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public."
Theodore Roosevelt
" The modern conservative is engaged in one of man's oldest exercises in moral philosophy: that is the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness."
John Kenneth Galbraith, economist and author
"War is not about flag-waving and patriotism. War is about killing and death."
Christopher Hedges, NY Times corrspondent
"There was no corner of the known world where some interest was not alleged to be in danger or under actual attack. If the interests were not Roman, they were those of Rome's allies; and if Rome had no allies, the allies would be invented.... The fight was always invested with an aura of legality. Rome was always being attacked by evil-minded neighbors."
Joseph Schumpteter in 1919, describing ancient Rome in a way that sounds eerily like the U.S. today*****
"To oppose the policies of a government does not mean you are against the country or the people that the government supposedly represents. Such opposition should be called what it really is: democracy, or democratic dissent, or having a critical perspective about what your leaders are doing. Either we have the right to democratic dissent and criticism of these policies or we all lie down and let the leader, the Fuhrer, do what is best, while we follow uncritically, and obey whatever he commands. That's just what the Germans did with Hitler, and look where it got them."
Michael Parenti, author
" The enormous gap between what US leaders do in the world and what Americans think their leaders are doing is one of the great propaganda accomplishments of the dominant political mythology. "
Michael Parenti
"Those in power are blind devotees to private enterprise. They accept that degree of socialism implicit in the vast subsidies to the military-industrial-complex, but not that type of socialism which maintains public projects for the disemployed and the unemployed alike."
William O. Douglas, former U.S. Supreme Court Justice, 1969
"Our upside down welfare state is "socialism for the rich, free enterprise for the poor." The great welfare scandal of the age concerns the dole we give rich people."
William O. Douglas, former U.S. Supreme Court Justice, 1969
" The problem in defense is how far you can go [in military spending] without destroying from within what you are trying to defend from without. "
President Dwight Eisenhower, 1953
"If democracy is ever to be threatened, it will not be by revolutionary groups burning government offices and occupying the broadcasting and newspaper offices of the world. It will come from disenchantment, cynicism and despair caused by the realization that the New World Order means we are all to be managed and not represented."
Tony Benn, British Labour Party Member of Parliament
The loud little handful will shout for war. The pulpit will warily and cautiously protest at first.... The great mass of the nation will rub its sleepy eyes, and will try to make out why there should be a war, and they will say earnestly and indignantly: "It is unjust and dishonorable and there is no need for war."Then the few will shout even louder.... Before long you will see a curious thing: anti-war speakers will be stoned from the platform, and free speech will be strangled by hordes of furious men who still agree with the speakers but dare not admit it...Next, the statesmen will invent cheap lies...and each man will be glad of these lies and will study them because they soothe his conscience; and thus he will bye and bye convince himself that the war is just and he will thank God for a better sleep he enjoys by his self-deception."
Mark Twain
Bold-type post headers seen today from member of what Twain would call, "The loud little handful" |
