Category: Art!

Historical illiteracy: it’s a Thing

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Okay, I gotta admit, this made me laugh.

Dunno if they’re supposed to resemble Zeros or not, but what they look more like to me is FW 190s, excepting the prop spinner. The accompanying textplanation:

Yes, it’s Bluto’s (John Belushi) now iconic gaffe in “Animal House” come true: “Was it over when the Germans bombed Pearl Harbor?” Those are German planes on the cover of Michael J. Clark’s history book for young readers about the sneak attack that brought the U.S. into World War II.

Just think about all of the careless, irresponsible boobs, including the author and the cover artist, who had to breach the ethical values of competence, diligence and respect for that book to be published and put on the market. How many must it have been? Then you can add to that List of Shame our pathetic, ruinous education system, which has produced such a nation of dolts that not even a humble secretary or passing clerk had the knowledge to point out, when they saw the book as it made its way through production, “Uh, aren’t those German planes?” Anyone who did, thus preventing this epic embarrassment, might have received a promotion or a bonus. Or at least someone would have bought him or her a nice lunch.

A history book? SRSLY?!? Just hilarity heaped upon hilarity, really, as far as the eye can see. I do believe this Clark feller’s cover artist probably needs to seek other employment for which he is better suited, lest all the pointing and laughing leave him disillusioned and depressed.

(Via Ed Driscoll)

Day of days

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Our friend MWC reminds us of a YUGELY important day of remembrance.

Today is J.R.R. Tolkien day. If you feel like it, raise a glass to The Professor at 9:00 pm your local time.

My boxed set of The Hobbit and the Lord of the Rings is one of my treasured possessions. The daughter of a friend just told me she is re-reading the books and was halfway through The Return of the King.

Between Tolkien and C.S. Lewis (yes, two ends of the spectrum) I found new worlds and new ways of looking at the world. They led me into a lifetime of reading.

Ditto here, girlfriend. For years, I would re-read the LOTR trilogy every fall, because September was when both Bilbo and Frodo began their epic journeys.

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Der Bingle

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A Christmas story for the ages, one that exemplifies courage, character, and unswerving commitment to the non-negotiable demands of personal honor, patriotic duty, and obligation.


“Show more,” my saggy, baggy ass.

Late in Bing Crosby’s life, his nephew Howard asked him a casual question while they were out playing golf together.

“What was the single most difficult thing you ever had to do in your career?”
Howard expected Hollywood stories. Maybe gossip about a demanding director. Perhaps the pressure of a high-stakes film production or a struggle with studio executives.

Bing didn’t have to think about it at all.
December 1944. Northern France. The war in Europe was grinding toward its bloody conclusion.

Bing Crosby was on a USO tour, performing for American GIs and British soldiers far from home during the coldest, darkest days of winter.
That night, they set up an open-air stage in a field.

Fifteen thousand soldiers gathered to watch. Bing was joined by Dinah Shore and the Andrews Sisters.
They sang, they joked, they made the men laugh and holler—a brief moment of joy in the middle of a war zone.
Then came the closing number.
“White Christmas.”

The song had already become an anthem for homesick soldiers since its release in 1942. It played constantly on Armed Forces Radio. Men who hadn’t seen their families in years, who didn’t know if they ever would again, heard those opening notes and thought of snow-covered streets and Christmas trees and the homes they’d left behind.

As Bing began to sing, he looked out at the audience. Fifteen thousand men were crying. He had to finish the song. He had to maintain his composure and his vocal control while 15,000 soldiers wept in front of him. He told his nephew it was the toughest thing he ever had to do in his entire career.

What made Bing Crosby’s USO performances different from his Hollywood appearances were the small choices he made. He refused to wear his toupee. He hated the thing—called it a “scalp doily”-and wore it only when absolutely necessary for films.

But entertaining troops was different. “If I’m entertaining troops,” he said, “I’m not going to wear anything phony like a toupee. Forget it.”

He also insisted that officers and brass could not sit in the front rows. Those seats were reserved for enlisted men. The soldiers who would be on the front lines. The men who faced the greatest danger.

A few days after that performance in the field, those same soldiers were sent into combat. The Battle of the Bulge began on December 16, 1944. It was the largest and bloodiest battle fought by the United States in World War II.

The Germans launched a surprise offensive through the Ardennes Forest in a desperate attempt to split the Allied lines. Many of the men who had wept listening to “White Christmas” in that field in France never came home.

Bing Crosby tried to enlist when the war began. He was told he was too old. General George C. Marshall, the Army’s chief of staff, told him directly:

“Look, Bing, we don’t need you in the front lines. We need you raising money for the war effort.” He wasn’t just an entertainer to them. He was a piece of home. Bing never forgot it. 🙏♥️

Leftists who viscerally hate anything that reminds them of what America once was have smeared Bing Crosby as a nasty, hateful racist, bully, and two-bit tyrant who viciously ran roughshod over others and used his wife and children as punching bags—a distorted, unidimensional portrait which disgracefully omits the man’s finer qualities.

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Righteous rip

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Is there anything in all the world as clever, creative, and devilishly ingenious as an old-school biker? I think NOT!

Heh. Saw something along similar lines years ago at the Myrtle Beach Spring R&ally, on a Big Twin parked up in a metered space across the street from the Pavilion. Difference being, on this one the trailer-hitch ball was mounted atop the back fender of a gorgeous Panhead bobjob, right behind the solo seat where the bitch-pad would usually be. Around the hitch-ball, in traditional tattoo-script lettering, were the words, “Ride THIS, bitch!” Too, too funny, I thought.

Brings to mind the time some drunk hooer followed me out to the bar parkig lot hoping to cadge a ride with me on my bare-knuckle 71 FLH. After a lot of the usual sniveling horseshit, the bint wanted to know where the sissy-bar was, as if I’d somehow contrivde to hide the stupid thing. Now, I‘d never had a fucking sissy-bar on my old Shovel and never would if I had anything to say about it. I always built my bikes to be lean, clean, mean, and fast. No frills, no flash, no BS.

And no passenger seat or sissy-bar, neither. You wanna ride bitch behind me, babe, then go snag a cpl-three hand towels from the bartender, fold em up nice and tight, and tuck ‘em under your ass for a cushion. Alternatively, you could just ride the damn fender, latch onto something solid and secure, and hang on for dear life. Either way works for me, I already KNOW where I’ll be sitting.

So naturally, I turned to face the woozy, boozy broad and rasped, “Sorry, this bike ain’t for sissies.”

As the T-shirts used to have it: chrome don’t get ya home, loud pipes save lives, there’s no replacement for cubic-inch displacement, and horsepower is its own reward. Twist on the loud handle until that ornery old Milwaukee Mule cackles like a fat bitch, in Goose’s unforgettable words. Another thing he used to say after a bunch of us had been out TT (Tavern-to-Tavern, that is) racing and were ready to head on back to the shop: “These other mopes think they ride hard, but when me and you put a bike back in the barn after a good putt she’s breathing heavy,  drenched with sweat., and her tongue is hanging out two or three feet.” Coming from Goose, I knew that was praise indeed.

Notable anniversary

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Nobody seems to know exactly on which date Ludwig Van Beethoven’s birthday falls, but what is known is that today, Decembef 17th, is the anniversary of his baptism. Which is all the excuse I need to run this.

Assuming I did that right, which I freely admit I may not have, the above vid should begin with the opening of the 2nd movement of my personal favorite of the Beethoven symphonies (ie, the oft-overlooked number 7), and carry on from there.

Just the 2nd and 3rd movements are my faves, I should say; the first movement is alright, I have no real gripe with it, but the 4th just leaves me altogether cold; for whatever reason, I just can’t get with it AT. ALL. Probably on account of I’m an idjit, I suppose.

Really, when it comes to the finales of Beethoven symphonies it’s pretty dang tough to top the triumphant, rousing finale of the famous 5th, sometimes spuriously referred to as the “Fate” Symphony*.

Yeeee-OOOWWWW! Man, music just does not GET any better than that, if you disagree, please keep it under your hat or I cannot be your friend anymore.

* It has been claimed that Beethoven said of the stirring “ dit-dit-dit-DAAAH” riff which opens the Fifth, “Thus Fate knocks at the door.” Hence, the “Fate” Symphony. This tale is almost certainly apocryphal, however; the most credible explanation of it I ever read was that the “Fate” moniker was actually coined by his secretary/publicist, who put it about to generate some extra buzz for his boss’s latest masterwork.

A bargain at any price

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Reminds me of the dialogue between H.I. and Glen in Raising Arizona:

“It’s a crazy world.”

“Somebody oughta sell tickets.”

“I’d buy one.”

Merch commemorating drunk Virginia raccoon raises over $250,000 for animal shelter
Merchandise commemorating the raccoon that gained international fame by barging into a Virginia liquor store, smashing bottled spirits and passing out drunk in a bathroom on Black Friday has raised more than a quarter-million dollars for the local animal shelter where he slept off his bender.

The Hanover county animal protection shelter raised the charitable amount after caring for the inebriated raccoon in question and teaming up with custom apparel maker Bonfire to create and sell items seizing on the internet virality achieved by the creature.

Emblazoned with the words “Trashed Panda”, the shirts, sweatshirts, cups and stickers contain an image of a raccoon spread-eagle next to a spilled booze bottle – unmistakably evoking the compromising position the animal that burgled the Ashland ABC store on 29 November was found and photographed in.

Proceeds from the campaign anchored by those limited edition items “directly support shelter animal care and enrichment”, according to Bonfire’s website.

An ABC store employee found what Bonfire’s website referred to as “our unexpected raccoon celebrity” next to a toilet the day after Thanksgiving. Shattered whiskey bottles littered the path to the bathroom, and the raccoon was evidently inebriated when it was photographed for posterity’s sake.

The animal was uninjured beyond possibly grappling with hangover symptoms and regret over “poor life choices”, said officials at the shelter where the raccoon was brought to proverbially dry out.

A fine sense of humor, these animal-shelter employees have. I hope they make a gazillion dollars off this merchandise, they deserve it.

Laissez les bon temps roulez!

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Allons danser de zydeco, churrens.

CJ makes that beautiful Stradella-Musette squeezebox all but talk, don’t he? Good, good stuff. If this next selection doesn’t bring a tear to your eye, better check yourself for a pulse immediately—because you probably aint’ got one.

Time for a little backstory on CJ and the Red Hots, I believe: CJ Chenier is the rebel son of legendary zydeco musician Clifton Chenier, whose Red Hot Louisiana Band CJ kept alive upon the old man’s demise, after casting off his own deep uncertainty regarding whether he could, or even should, assume his father’s role. In fact, the above video is taken from a show commemorating Papa Clifton ’s 100th birthday, featuring several extraordinary accordionists in addition to Chenier fils.

As Fate would have it, I have a little history with CJ and the Red Hots my own self. Back in my glorious NYC days, the Red Hots were scheduled to play the long-gone Tramps concert hall one night. The venue’s owner (Terry Dunne), knowing what a big fan of CJ Chenier I was, telephoned to inform me that I needed to haul some serious ass down to his joint for sound check, so’s he could introduce me to dem Ragin’ Cajuns.

So of course I did that thing. The band’s lineup was more or less the same as in the Austin City Limits vid up top, excepting the drummer. Offsetting this somewhat disappointing absence, Red Hots rhythm guitar/triangle virtuoso Harry Hippolite was present and accounted for, which saved the day from being a near-wipeout pour moi.

In the end, Harry, CJ, lead guitarist Rodney Bartholomew—hell, the whole lot—turned oout to be some of the nicest, friendliest, most easygoing folks you could ever hope to meet, and I consider myself blessed indeed to have made their acquaintance on that frabjous day. No oversize egos; no pretention; no falsity; no attempt to deride, belittle, or antagonize; no throwing around of (nonexistent) weight—just genuine, regular down-home folks who are glad and grateful to be wherever they are, and likewise glad to have you are there with ’em.

After kicking back with the fellas and chit-chatting about the kind of things salty old road dogs tend to talk sbout when they get together—dive bars, loose women, incompetent sound men, the chronic diarrhea brought on by a succession of greasy, grab-it-n-gobble-it meals day after day after day—Harry sidled up quietly to ask a question of me: as a resident of NYC, perhaps I might know where a guy could score himself a little weed?

Now it just so happened that at that time I was co-bartending every Friday night with this babe-a-iicious half-Thai chick who just so happened to be slinging some of the most ass-kicking skunk EVAR. So I went upstairs, made a quick phone call, and a deal was made. I semi-speed-walked sixteen blocks downtown and a cpl-three east of Tramps’ West 21st Street location, picked up the goods, walked back to Tramps, and voila! Just that quick and easy, the deed was done.

Back inside the quiet, near-deserted main room of Tramps, I nabbed a complimentary Tanqueray and tonic and lingered at the bar for a pleasant interlude confabbing with the fresh-off-the-boat fair Colleen behind the stick, Katherine by name, with whom I’d gotten very chummy in the course of my own many Tramps gigs.

Katherine closed our too-brief tête à tête with a lively but demure kiss (a seeming impossibillity I’ve never before or since known any woman to do) and merrily shooed me off to someplace else, saying she had a whole lot of work to do and not a whole lot of time in which to do it, so I headed back down to the Green Room to deliver my precious cargo. Harry nabbed the bag from my hand, twisted a tight, slender pin-joint, and sparked up. Everyone huddled up in a shoulder-to-shoulder circle and passed Harry’s handiwork around.

I mean, we fumigated the space with a sweet-smelling cloud of ganja smoke in short order! As the happy-stick made its appointed rounds, CJ gratefully assured me that henceforth I would have a guar-on-teed spot on the guest list, including a plus-one of my choosing, for any Red Hots performance I cared to attend, anywhere. Also, the promised guest-list spot had no expirstion date, would be a forever kind of thing. Taken aback by such unexpected generosity, I clasped CJ’s big hand and shook it heartily, which heartfelt yet insufficient gesture he double-trumped when he threw an arm around my shoulders and pulled me into a powerful bear-hug.

Good music; good friends; a righteous buzz; an impromptu private bash thrown  in a large, well-kept dressing room; a comely young Irish lass who’d long since made it abundantly clear to me that she could be had mere steps away—I ask you, what more could a guy ask for?

Now if that ain’t a happy ending, I don’t know what would be.

PS: I felt it necessary to do this post because of BCE’s account of his recent N’Awliins adventure, for the edification (hopefully) of one of the commenters over there.

* No-Tell Motel, this would be; my smoking-hot fellow barkeep would on occasion bake a big batch of loco weed-spiked brownies to plate up and set out on the bar for Those Who Know to avail themselves of—which is how it came to pass that I got famed teetotaler Glenn Danzig stoned out of his gourd one fine Friday night, a hy-larious true-life tale I’m pretty sure I told here some years back

The greatest pop-rock song yet written

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That would be this one, of course.

Don’t insult my intelligence by trying to claim you never heard this one before, you liar. Part of what makes this a veritably flawless pop song is that 1) EVERYBODY has heard it before; 2) everybody likes it; and 3) everybody remembers it well.

There ya go, those three fulfill pretty much all the requirements.

The melody is so catchy and infectious it never really leaves your head, provided you aren’t a complete music-hater…which almost nobody actuallly is. The central guitar riff and fills are ditto, same-same with the vocal harmonizing and the call-and-response-style backing vocal in the turnaround. The rhythm is bouncy and eminently danceable, checking the last remaining box in confirmation of the song’s GOAT status.

Helping to advance the case still further is that all the performances are spot on, both instrumental and vocal, as are the mix, the editing, and the mastering. The lone questionable aspect here is the subject matter, which even so makes the whole enchilada stand out in the average person’s mind as unusual, even unique, thereby turning what might have been a minus into a plus. More proof, as if any were needed, is this YT commenter’s assessment:

@warpig4942
5 years ago (edited)

Almost 40 years…. still the most famous phone number on Earth.

Yep, no argument from me.

Lightning sure struck in a big way this time, not just for Tommy Heath and his band but for all of us.

The libertarian (small-L) creed

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Having gone deep down another YewToob rabbit hole tonight, this one Firefly/Serenity-related, I just gotta post (repost, actually) this immortal clip wherein Captain Mal Reynolds nails it all down clean and tight.

Never have been able to figure out how it is that Joss Whedon could’ve written such dead-on dialogue as is on proud display throughout Firefly and Serenity both—about as anti-collectivist as it’s possible to be—yet could still be a goddamned standard-issue liberal moron his own self.

As Jayne says of another character in another scene, Mal is seriously starting to damage my calm here. Simply because he’s right: no matter how badly they screw up, how utterly they fail, snd/or how many lives they destroy along the way, they willl most assuredly try again. They will never stop trying again, whatever the consequences—not just for them, but for all of us. This, after all, is just who they are, it’s what they do.

Musical notes

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Had a few most excellent old tunes that I’d jdamned near forgotten about altogether pop into my empty head the other day, and I been a-movin’ and a-groovin’ to ‘em ever since. First up, Jack Rabbit Slim’s slashing, energetic “Rock-A-Cha.”

Next up, Travis and Bob’s cool old chestnut, “Tell Him No,” which I used to play with Mook in the Parodis.

Then, we have the legendary Sister Rosetta Tharpe and her great, great rendition of “Didn’t It Rain.”

I dunno, seeing Tharpe wailing on that SG Custom always felt sorta incongruous to me, perhaps because I never could stand an SG myself. Doesn’t seem to bother her any, though.

Lastly but by no means leastly, my own personal favorite of the whole bunch: Larry Finnegan’s strange but haunting 1962 earwig, “Dear One.”

What, you didn’t think I WASN’T gonna delve a little further into this one, did ya? COME ON, MAN! I DID say it was one of my all-timers, ya know.

Finnegan’s wavery falsetto on the intro immediately gives way to a deeper, more chesty man-voice for the rest of the song. It’s just one of several odd, quirky little aspects of this quirky little tune. Others include the spoken lines from the girl who done him wrong, echoing the B-part lyrics sung by Finnegan.

The sudden 180-degree shift in narrative point of view from Finnegan in the victim role to the cheating hussy in this section is almost jarring, but not quite. As the song moves along through, then gets back to the regular chorus-verse-chorus choogle of most pop/rock music, the uninflected, zombie-like recitation of the lame explanation for her faithless betrayal begins to sound funny, really.

Especially the final part, to wit: “But I lost my head/And I lost my heart/And I lost your love to him.” Whuuu….? Lost HIS love, you mean, not YOURS. Right? i mean, how the fug you gonna lose HIS love to etc, ya silly bint?!? Like I said: weird.

Leaving all the departures from standard pop-song form aside, the thing you really want to pay close attention to here is the drummer’s shuffle-beat paradiddling around on the snare. The jangly, tinkly piano is nice, as is the bass line, the guitars, the basic melody, all of it. But it’s the snare drum that drives this thing, that propels the song from run-of-the-mill teenybopper fluff right up into the hightest heights of truly unforgettable music. Once you home in on that snare, that’s it: you’re gone.

As you will no doubt realize straightaway, as inventive and unusual as the entire tune is, it’s that rolling, rollicking snare drum that really makes the whole thing git up and snort. I gots no idea who that drummer is/was, but he’s a bona fide genius—even doing them paradiddles the whole entire song, pretty much, he still never plays ‘em the same way twice.

Reminds me of BP’s drummer Mark, who played similar-type rolls and shuffle-beats on the snare himself, except he pounded them skins so durn viciously you coud almost hear the heads scream in agony. If I’m lyin’, I’m flyin’.

Update! Y’all prolly knew I’d just HAVE to do some poking around on this drummer business, din’tcha?

When it came to music, Larry counted Johnny Cash and Don Gibson as his two favorite artists. While at the university he and his older brother Vincent, then a senior at Boston College, wrote Dear One. They started knocking on the doors of record companies all over New York, but had no takers until they met Hy Weiss, the owner of the small but successful Old Town Records. Weiss had already produced such hits as So Fine by the Fiestas from 1959, and Let The Little Girl Dance by Billy Bland the following year, as well as Life Is But A Dream by the Harptones. Hy Weiss recognized Larry’s talent and saw the potential in Dear One. He also changed Larry’s last name from Finneran to Finnegan, figuring that dee-jays stood a better chance of remembering a common name like Finnegan.

Dear One was recorded at Mira Sound Studios, West 54th St., New York. According to Vincent Finneran, “There was no demo version of ‘Dear One’, just one recording with two takes. And the thing that made the song successful was the engineer Bill McMeekan. He put five microphones in and around the piano and three microphones on the drums which gave the song a unique sound. Dick Pitassy played piano. Two different girls sang on ‘Dear One’; one did the opening female lines and another did the later ones.”

One of the girls, Bambi LaMorte (today Mignon Lawless), remembers, “Larry dated one of my roommates (Sandy Bryant). I attended St.Mary’s College which is directly across the street from Notre Dame. I met Larry through Sandy. We would sometimes all hang out together. I was a music major and since I lived in Pelham, New York (about 20 minutes from Manhattan), Larry asked me if I would sing a female part on his recording. I said ‘Sure.’ We went to a recording studio somewhere in Manhattan over Thanksgiving vacation 1961 and recorded ‘Dear One’. The only professional musician was Gary Chester, the drummer. Larry felt it was important to have an experienced drummer. I believe there were two guitar players, both from Notre Dame. The only things I remember about that night were that the guitar players were not taking the recording seriously enough and kept making mistakes. Larry finally yelled at them and they shaped up. I don’t remember how many tries it took to get the original, but they did a lot of starting and stopping. I do remember that I had to do my part cold turkey, without any practice. I only sang the introduction to ‘Dear One’. They didn’t like the way I spoke the part, and overdubbed it later. I have no idea who the other woman singer is. Larry’s agent hired someone to do it. Larry and I went back to the studio one night and recorded a song we wrote together. I played guitar, he sang, and then we dubbed different instruments onto the recording. It was fascinating to experience his creativity at work.”

Jeez: two takes, no isolation, baffles, or sound damping, just ambient mics and roll tape boys! Sometimes it seems as if there’s a really cool story behind every hit song, out-of-nowhere artist, or recording-studio session, don’t it?

Happy birthday

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Or birthday anniversary, at any rate, to one of the greatest pianists of the 20th century, Vladimir Samoylovich Horowitz.

The above vid is just random excerpts from a Teewee show I liked enough to tape on VHS years ago, called Horowitz Plays Mozart, wherein the recording studio session of the maestro playing Mozart’s wonderful Piano Concerto No 23 (K488) is captured—all three movements, plus a hilarious Q&A section with Horowitz as well.

The full version of the show is availabe for perusal on Da Toob also, and well worth chasing down.

Alan Rickman as….WHO?

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Don’t know how in God’s name this one got by me, but somehow it did.

The place was an absolute shithole. It smelled like puke and wet garbage. You wouldn’t dare to use the bathroom for anything but to hit up. It was crowded, poorly ventilated, too hot in the summer and too putrid and cold when the heat was on, which wasn’t often. But, CBGB’s was the brain-child of Hilly Kristal, and in the 1970s and 1980s, if you wanted to see the next wave in music, this little hole in the wall in the Bowery in New York City was the place to see it. …

This little shithole gave us introduction to some pretty amazing – and some seriously jerkoff – bands, like The Ramones, Blondie, and Talking Heads.

“CBGB/omfug” stood for: “Country, BlueGrass, Blues/Other Music for Uplifting Gormandizers.”

Anything Alan Rickman is in is good. Juss’ sayin’…

He’s right, right down to the last detail. I’ve watched the trailer about six or seven times now, it ain’t ever gettin’ old.

I played CB’s myself several times, and met Hilly a couple of those times as well. Seemed like a nice enough guy, or he was to me at any rate.

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Eyrie note

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No, I didn’t forget about the Friday Eyrie column I owe y’all. Because of the holiday I figgered I’d put it off til tomorrow, and also maybe make it another meme post too, since people really seem to like those (meme posts reliably get more visits than anything else, both here and at the Eyrie, go figger). Plus, I’ve downloaded so many really good ones from my usual haunts the last cpl-three weeks, and I’m excited about getting ‘em out there to y’all.

The Monday Substack meme thang will go up as regularly scheduled, unless something wild and crazy happens between now and then.

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“When I was young I was depressed all the time. But suicide no longer seemed a possibility in my life. At my age there was very little left to kill.”
—Charles Bukowski

“A slave is one who waits for someone to come and free him.”
—Ezra Pound

“The illusion of freedom will continue as long as it’s profitable to continue the illusion. At the point where the illusion becomes too expensive to maintain, they will just take down the scenery, they will pull back the curtains, they will move the tables and chairs out of the way and you will see the brick wall at the back of the theater.”
—Frank Zappa

“The right of a nation to kill a tyrant in case of necessity can no more be doubted than to hang a robber, or kill a flea.”
—John Adams

"A society of sheep must in time beget a government of wolves."
—Bertrand de Jouvenel

"It is terrible to contemplate how few politicians are hanged."
—GK Chesterton

"I predict that the Bush administration will be seen by freedom-wishing Americans a generation or two hence as the hinge on the cell door locking up our freedom. When my children are my age, they will not be free in any recognizably traditional American meaning of the word. I’d tell them to emigrate, but there’s nowhere left to go. I am left with nauseating near-conviction that I am a member of the last generation in the history of the world that is minimally truly free."
—Donald Sensing

"The only way to live free is to live unobserved."
—Etienne de la Boiete

"History does not long entrust the care of freedom to the weak or the timid."
—Dwight D. Eisenhower

"To put it simply, the Left is the stupid and the insane, led by the evil. You can’t persuade the stupid or the insane and you had damn well better fight the evil."
—Skeptic

"There is no better way to stamp your power on people than through the dead hand of bureaucracy. You cannot reason with paperwork."
—David Black, from Turn Left For Gibraltar

"If the laws of God and men, are therefore of no effect, when the magistracy is left at liberty to break them; and if the lusts of those who are too strong for the tribunals of justice, cannot be otherwise restrained than by sedition, tumults and war, those seditions, tumults and wars, are justified by the laws of God and man."
—John Adams

"The limits of tyranny are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress."
—Frederick Douglass

"Give me the media and I will make of any nation a herd of swine."
—Joseph Goebbels

“I hope we once again have reminded people that man is not free unless government is limited. There’s a clear cause and effect here that is as neat and predictable as a law of physics: As government expands, liberty contracts.”
—Ronald Reagan

"Ain't no misunderstanding this war. They want to rule us and aim to do it. We aim not to allow it. All there is to it."
—NC Reed, from Parno's Peril

"I just want a government that fits in the box it originally came in."
—Bill Whittle

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