Julian Pistorius - Old Site

This from the man who wrote 1984:

"The majority of pacifists either belong to obscure religious sects or are simply humanitarians who object to taking life and prefer not to follow their thoughts beyond that point. But there is a minority of intellectual pacifists, whose real though unacknowledged motive appears to be hatred of western democracy and admiration for totalitarianism. Pacifist propaganda usually boils down to saying that one side is as bad as the other, but if one looks closely at the writing of the younger intellectual pacifists, one finds that they do not by any means express impartial disapproval but are directed almost entirely against Britain and the United States ..."

(From Orwell's Notes on Nationalism in May 1945)

Take that, pacifists.

Interesting to see that even back then anti-American and anti-western sentiment was rife.

I found the above quote in this old Slate article from 2004 by Christopher Hitchens: Unfairenheit 9/11, The lies of Michael Moore. Well worth a read if you think Michael Moore even knows that the word 'honest' means.

This one is for all my South African friends. :)

"What I want to fix your attention on is the vast overall movement towards the discrediting, and finally the elimination, of every kind of human excellence -- moral, cultural, social or intellectual. And is it not pretty to notice how 'democracy' (in the incantatory sense) is now doing for us the work that was once done by the most ancient dictatorships, and by the same methods? The basic proposal of the new education is to be that dunces and idlers must not be made to feel inferior to intelligent and industrious pupils. That would be 'undemocratic.' Children who are fit to proceed may be artifically kept back, because the others would get a trauma by being left behind. The bright pupil thus remains democratically fettered to his own age group throughout his school career, and a boy who would be capable of tackling Aeschylus or Dante sits listening to his coeval's attempts to spell out A CAT SAT ON A MAT. We may reasonably hope for the virtual abolition of education when 'I'm as good as you' has fully had its way. All incentives to learn and all penalties for not learning will vanish. The few who might want to learn will be prevented; who are they to overtop their fellows? And anyway, the teachers -- or should I say nurses? -- will be far too busy reassuring the dunces and patting them on the back to waste any time on real teaching. We shall no longer have to plan and toil to spread imperturbable conceit and incurable ignorance among men."
-- C. S. Lewis
(1898-1963), British novelist
http://quotes.liberty-tree.ca/quote_blog/C..S..Lewis.Quote.B211

Quoted from Foreign Dispatches:
...it's true enough that not everything requiring virtuosity is "great" art, but it's also true that art without skill is an oxymoron, and I dismiss out of hand the ridiculous and often-made assertion that artistic merit is an entirely subjective matter which can be divorced from facts about the human mind. Most of what is called "art" today is anything but, mere garbage palmed off on the gullible and easily intimidated by scam artists whose only gift is for baldly making outrageous claims on their own behalf, and the only reason they're able to get away with it on such a large scale is because so many people are afraid of being labelled "philistines" by snooty urban pseudo-intellectuals and art-school wankers who in the main can't draw well enough to save their very lives.

Quoted from post:
http://foreigndispatches.typepad.com/dispatches/2006/06/the_emperors_ne.html

(Hat-tip Commentary South Africa)

"One of the annoying things about believing in free will and individual responsibility is the difficulty of finding somebody to blame your problems on. And when you do find somebody, it's remarkable how often his picture turns up on your driver's license." - P.J. O'Rourke.

"Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom.
It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves."
-- William Pitt
(1759-1806) British Prime Minister (1783-1801, 1804-06) during the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic wars.
Source: Speech, House of Commons, 18 November 1783
http://quotes.liberty-tree.ca/quote_blog/William.Pitt.Quote.D262


"When we got organized as a country and we wrote a fairly radical Constitution with a radical Bill of Rights, giving a radical amount of individual freedom to Americans, it was assumed that the Americans who had that freedom would use it responsibly.... [However, now] there's a lot of irresponsibility. And so a lot of people say there's too much freedom. When personal freedom's being abused, you have to move to limit it."
-- Bill Clinton
[William Jefferson Blythe III] (1946- ), 42nd US President
Source: MTV's "Enough is Enough" 3-22-94
http://quotes.liberty-tree.ca/quote_blog/Bill.Clinton.Quote.7332


Can I just say, Bill Clinton is a craven toad.

"This nation was conceived in liberty and dedicated to the principle - among others - that honest men may honestly disagree; that if they all say what they think, a majority of the people will be able to distinguish truth from error; that in the competition of the marketplace of ideas, the sounder ideas will in the long run win out."
-- Elmer Davis
(1800-1858), American writer, commentator
Source: But We Were Born Free, 1954
http://quotes.liberty-tree.ca/quote_blog/Elmer.Davis.Quote.38F3

"Political tags - such as royalist, communist, democrat, populist, fascist, liberal, conservative, and so forth - are never basic criteria. The human race divides politically into those who want people to be controlled and those who have no such desire. The former are idealists acting from highest motives for the greatest good of the greatest number. The latter are surly curmudgeons, suspicious and lacking in altruism. But they are more comfortable neighbors than the other sort."

- Robert Heinlein

"The individual has always had to struggle
to keep from being overwhelmed by the tribe.
To be your own man is hard business.
If you try it, you will be lonely often, and sometimes frightened.
But no price is too high to pay for the privilege of owning yourself."
-- Rudyard Kipling
(1865-1936)
http://quotes.liberty-tree.ca/quote_blog/Rudyard.Kipling.Quote.A32B

"Conformity and obedience,
Bane of all genius, virtue, freedom, truth,
Makes slaves of men and of the human frame,
A mechanized automaton."
-- Percy Bysshe Shelley
(1792-1822) British poet
Source: Queen Mab, 1813
http://liberty-tree.ca/qb/Percy.Shelley.Quote.30C8