The Siren Song of Socialism

The appeal of socialism is to human weakness--the desire to avoid responsibility and the craving for material gain. It offers security as a substitute for opportunity, and the price is freedom.--Anonymous (possibly Charles B. Shuman)

Honesty

He's honest, but you have to watch him... -- Chico Marx

Priority

I answer first to my Creator, then to my conscience. If that brought conflict or created some pressure, that was the price of doing business the way I thought was right. -- Jesse Helms, Here's Where I Stand

The Politician v. The Statesman

"We need to revive, if only for the purposes of evaluation, the traditional distinction between the politician and the statesman. The statesman differs from the ordinary politician, in that he is able to envisage and inspire support for policies that are in the ultimate, best interest of the most people, and, however rare he may be, we think of him rightly as the politician par excellence. To the extent that the ordinary politician's vision is limited to that which is immediately expedient, to the extent that he is motivated by narrow, sectional, group, or personal interests, we think of him as a failure; and the more narrow his vision and selfish his aim, the greater the failure. The statesman is concerned with inspiring right action, and the test of his statesmanship is his ability to lead public opinion rather than slavishly to follow it. To lead public opinion does not mean to coerce or to beguile the individuals who make up the public but to persuade them by means of argument." John Hallowell, The Moral Foundations of Democracy