#political

Both groups [of pundits] were critics, and that is the heart of the problem. If you are a pundit, you seem so smart when you are telling the President what he did wrong… This [is] mostly BS. ↗

— Jeffrey A. Miller

#democracy-fascism #democracy-freedom #democracy-voting #democrats #elections

One of the prerogatives of American citizenship is the right to criticize public men and measures, and that means not only informed and responsible criticism but the freedom to speak foolishly and without moderation. ↗

— Felix Frankfurter of the U.S. Supreme Court

#freedom

Now she understood a few things: that the American academy, which one might have thought the place to defend freedom of speech, had been the seat and soul of abrogating freedom of speech, if the first assault on its freedom can be said to be restricting, or handcuffing speech. The day she heard “redneck” on NPR, she turned NPR off, not because broadcasters were still using the term, but because she knew one day they would not be. In fact, she had a vision of the quiet moment backstage at a Boston studio when a good, surprised correspondent was let go for saying “redneck” the last time it would be said. ↗

— Padgett Powell

#political-correctness #truth #freedom

Boys forget what their country means by just reading 'The Land of the Free' in history books. Then they get to be men. They forget even more. Liberty’s too precious a thing to be buried in books. ↗

— Jefferson Smith

#political-science #united-states-of-america #freedom

The confounding Political Economy with the Sciences and Arts to which it is subservient, has been one of the principal obstacles to its improvement. ↗

— Nassau William Senior

#been #confounding #economy #improvement #obstacles

The United States are a political state, or organized society, whose end is government, for the security, welfare, and happiness of all who live under its protection. ↗

— William H. Seward

#government #happiness #live #organized #political

From the vantage of a mid-1970's consensus that regarded the United States as having entered a post-Protestant era, the rise of a Religious Right dominated not only by Protestants but by fundamentalists was not the way the story was supposed to go. People like Jerry Falwell looked like party crashers who, rather than slikinking from bar to buffet in hopes of going unnoticed, demanded that the vegetarian, alcohol-imbibing hosts serve meat and tell the bartender to go home. ↗

— D.G. Hart

#political #religious-right #home

Liberal, shmiberal. That should be a new word. Shmiberal: one who is assumed liberal, just because he's a professional whiner in the newspaper. If you'll read the subtext for many of those old strips, you'll find the heart of an old-fashioned Libertarian. And I'd be a Libertarian, if they weren't all a bunch of tax-dodging professional whiners. ↗

— Berkeley Breathed

#humor

The US is the most wretchedly villainous state of all times. Anyone aware of global issues can easily imagine how vast the hatred for the United States - a corrupted, swollen, paralysing and suffocating political entity - must be across the Third World - and among the thinking minority of the West too. ↗

— Pentti Linkola

#global #hatred #noremorse #political #third-world

What interests me, personally, is work which in some way, speaks the truth to power…I don’t think we speak the truth to power for power’s ear, but for the ear and the imagination of future generations, who would seek to live in a world free from the malign and self-serving influence of those who wield it. ↗

— Irvine Welsh

#political-commentary #politics #posterity #power #resistance