My Motto is "It is even harder for the average ape to believe that he has descended from man.--H.L. Mencken"
"Don't!"--a parody trailer of 1970's horror flicks. Hilarious.
"An absolutely ingenious silent comedy starring the obscure Snub Pollard. Bear with the slow first minute or two, because it does get much better."
"While I've mixed feelings about the Ayn Rand cult, I do very much agree with the sentiments expressed by Howard Roark in his famous courtroom speech."
"Bedtime tales from good old Chris Walken."
"There are many such interventionists in America, but there are more people among us of a different type. [...] There is a policy open to this nation that will lead to success--a policy that leaves us free to follow our own way of life, and to develop our own civilization. It is not a new and untried idea. It was advocated by Washington. It was incorporated in the Monroe Doctrine. Under its guidance, the United States became the greatest nation in the world. It is based upon the belief that the security of a nation lies in the strength and character of its own people. It recommends the maintenance of armed forces sufficient to defend this hemisphere from attack by any combination of foreign powers. It demands faith in an independent American destiny. This is the policy of the America First Committee today. It is a policy not of isolation, but of independence; not of defeat, but of courage. It is a policy that led this nation to success during the most trying years of our history, and it is a policy that will lead us to success again."--Charles Lindbergh
CONSERVATIVE, n. A statesman who is enamored of existing evils, as distinguished from the Liberal, who wishes to replace them with others.
--Ambrose Bierce, THE DEVIL'S DICTIONARY (1911)
"Italy for thirty years under the Borgias had warfare, terror, murder, bloodshed, but produced Michelangelo, DaVinci, and the Renaissance. And Switzerland had brotherly love and five hundred years of democracy and peace. And what did they produce? The cuckoo clock."
--Orson Welles in "The Third Man" (film; 1949)
"The New Deal began, like the Salvation Army, by promising to save humanity. It ended, again like the Salvation Army, by running flop-houses and disturbing the peace."--H. L. Mencken, discussing Franklin D. Roosevelt and the New Deal Democrats of the 1930's
"Suppose two-thirds of the members of the national House of Representatives were dumped into the Washington garbage incinerator tomorrow, what would we lose to offset our gain of their salaries and the salaries of their parasites?"--H. L. Mencken
"The only social responsibility of a corporation is to deliver a profit to its shareholders."--Milton Friedman
"The socialists have a certain kind of logic on their side: if the collective sacrifice of all to all *is* the moral ideal, then they wanted to establish this idea in practice, here and on this earth. The arguments that socialism could not and would not work, did not stop them: neither has altruism ever worked, but this has not caused men to stop and question it. Only *reason* can ask such questions - and *reason*, they were told on all sides, has nothing to do with morality, morality lies outside the realm of reason, no rational morality can ever be defined."
-- Ayn Rand, "Faith And Force: The Destroyers of the Modern World"
"Every movement that seeks to enslave a country, every dictatorship or potential dictatorship, needs some minority group as a scapegoat which it can blame for the nation's troubles and use as a justification of its own demand for dictatorial powers. In Soviet Russia, the scapegoat was the bourgeoisie; in Nazi Germany, it was the Jewish people; in America, it is the businessmen."
--Ayn Rand, "America's Persecuted Minority: Big Business," CAPITALISM: THE UNKNOWN IDEAL
"Those are my principles. If you don't like them, I have others."--Groucho Marx
I have said (elsewhere here at B & W): "The Western Left aren't just obtuse; they appear to be suicidal." (discussing their apologetics for the theocratic regime in Iran)
"Spleen (Pluviôse, irrité...)"
Pluviôse, irrité contre la ville entière, De son urne à grands flots verse un froid ténébreux Aux pâles habitants du voisin cimetière Et la mortalité sur les faubourgs brumeux.
Mon chat sur le carreau cherchant une litière Agite sans repos son corps maigre et galeux; L'âme d'un vieux poète erre dans la gouttière Avec la triste voix d'un fantôme frileux.
Le bourdon se lamente, et la bûche enfumée Accompagne en fausset la pendule enrhumée Cependant qu'en un jeu plein de sales parfums,
Héritage fatal d'une vieille hydropique, Le beau valet de coeur et la dame de pique Causent sinistrement de leurs amours défunts.
One translation:
January, irritated with the whole city, Pours from his urn great waves of gloomy cold On the pale occupants of the nearby graveyard And death upon the foggy slums.
My cat seeking a bed on the tiled floor Shakes his thin, mangy body ceaselessly; The soul of an old poet wanders in the rain-pipe With the sad voice of a shivering ghost.
The great bell whines, the smoking log Accompanies in falsetto the snuffling clock, While in a deck of cards reeking of filthy scents,
My mortal heritage from some dropsical old woman, The handsome knave of hearts and the queen of spades Converse sinisterly of their dead love affair.
Credit: Charles Baudelaire, LES FLEURS du MAL (1857 edition)
Things I just love: American Southern literature & the culture & food of the region, 1920's & early 1930's cartoons, live-action films, and music--especially music that sounds like something from Max & Dave Fleischer's studios, nonfiction historical works--especially ancient history, old black-and-white horror, crime, detective and suspense "B" movies, the Libertarian Party, vintage radios and phonographs, old radio drama shows from the 1940's and 1950's, travel to Asia, Japanese food & movies, pulp novels, legal books and cases for reading, capitalism, &, most of all, my charming wife.
Things I hate: Rush Limbaugh and Al Franken (in equal measure) and all of the other radio talk show blowhards on the left and the right (except for those marvelously apolitical eccentrics, Art Bell and George Noory), reflexively anti-American European leftists, people who base their knowledge of the American South upon "Deliverance" and "The Beverly Hillbillies," rap alleged "music" & 120 decibel car stereos, large government budget deficits, the decline of civility in American politics, useless communist dinosaur ideologues on college campuses or this website, "reality" television shows, &, most of all, income taxes.
