<< STEYN BEATEN ~ MAIN ~ COMPUTER TEACHER FACT-CHECKED >>
SAID IT BEFORE HE DIDN'T SAY IT
No wonder Thomas Jefferson himself said: “Dissent is the greatest form of patriotism."
The Jefferson Library:
There are a number of quotes that we do not find in Thomas Jefferson’s correspondence or other writings; in such cases, Jefferson should not be cited as the source. Among the most common of these spurious Jefferson quotes [is]:
* "Dissent is the highest form of patriotism."
(Via Paul Zrimsek)
That reminds me of another quote, something like; if I have seen further than others, it is because I stood on the shoulders of giants. Seems to be attributed to another great American a fair bit, but from memory dates back as far as the 1200s.
But I go off topic… Thankfully, Kerry, for the Demi-crouts, Idiocy is also the highest form of patriotism.
Just think of the quotes that will be attributed to John Kerry:
I supported the invasion of Iraq.
I didn’t support the invasion of Iraq.
I am proud of my service in Vietnam.
Vietnam veterans are war criminals.
I support the President’s war on terror.
I have a better plan than the President for the war on terror.
etc.
By then, it was clear to me that hundreds of thousands of soldiers, sailors, Marines and airmen - disproportionately poor and minority Americans - were being sent into the valley of the shadow of death for an illusion privately abandoned by the very men in Washington who kept sending them there.
It’s not only the Vietnam quagmire, but the 23rd Psalm Quagmire!
And from the John Forbes Kerry Liebrary.
NPR.org, August 27, 2004 · Following is a transcript of John Kerry’s statement before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on April 22, 1971, in which he criticized the Vietnam War.
A snippet....
Mr. Kerry: I would like to talk, representing all those veterans, and say that several months ago in Detroit, we had an investigation at which over 150 honorably discharged and many very highly decorated veterans testified to war crimes committed in Southeast Asia, not isolated incidents but crimes committed on a day-to-day basis with the full awareness of officers at all levels of command.
It is impossible to describe to you exactly what did happen in Detroit, the emotions in the room, the feelings of the men who were reliving their experiences in Vietnam, but they did. They relived the absolute horror of what this country, in a sense, made them do.
They told the stories at times they had personally raped, cut off ears, cut off heads, tape wires from portable telephones to human genitals and turned up the power, cut off limbs, blown up bodies, randomly shot at civilians, razed villages in fashion reminiscent of Genghis Khan, shot cattle and dogs for fun, poisoned food stocks, and generally ravaged the country side of South Vietnam in addition to the normal ravage of war, and the normal and very particular ravaging which is done by the applied bombing power of this country.
For those unfamiliar with NPR.org, it is a U.S. Government funded ‘liberal’ (to read leftist) dot Org.
John Forbes Kerry has yet to release his military record, as promised over one year ago.
John Forbes Kerry has been running for President of the United States since before 1971.
John Forbes Kerry is or has made Osama bin Laden and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad sound like reasonably intelligent animals.
No wonder T.J. didn’t say that-- it’s idiotic.
It sounds like something one of these professional protester quarter-wits would say*: “The president is a Nazi, and I am the greatest of all patriots for saying so, because freedom of speech made our country great”.
*Oh, wait…
Posted by zeppenwolf on 2006 04 25 at 10:45 AM • permalinkHow about: Service to the country is the highest form of patriotism? Ever try that one, Longface?
No, you were too busy raping and pillaging and “blowing up bodies” (whatever that was supposed to be for) “in the manner of Ghengis Khan.”
In a sane world he’d be the lower-management type at the sound of whose voice everyone remembers an important engagement.
Posted by Monroe Doctrine on 2006 04 25 at 10:47 AM • permalinkJohn Forbes Kerry Timeline....
You could say I despise John Forbes Kerry and you would be correct in stating so.
Keep scrolling if you choose, you may even find FBI files released through the Freedom Of Information Act (FOIA)...
John Forbes Kerry is the 20th and 21st Century, Benedict Arnold.
I believe Arnold died a pauper in England, Kerry, ever the opportunist, married well...:).
To the leftist mindset, that sort of statement would normally be intended to denigrate dissent. Which, given the manner in which leftist governments handle dissent from their own dogmas, probably is the intended meaning.
Posted by Jim Geones on 2006 04 25 at 11:36 AM • permalinkThat reminds me of another quote, something like; if I have seen further than others, it is because I stood on the shoulders of giants. Seems to be attributed to another great American a fair bit, but from memory dates back as far as the 1200s.
Actually, that quote dates from 1675, and the source wasn’t American. It was Sir Isaac Newton. In a letter to Robert Hooke, Newton wrote: “If I have seen further it is by standing on ye shoulders of Giants.”
For #13 & #14 (and #2 earlier), you’re both right: Jonah Goldberg mentions in a piece that I can look for if you’d like, that Newton (who was quite a prick) wrote it, but that he was being sarcastic. The fellow scientist that he was referencing was really short and the “standing on shoulders of giants” was a crack at the guy’s height.
Posted by andycanuck on 2006 04 25 at 12:45 PM • permalinkSo not only is Kerry wrong in his source of the quote, he cannot even get the misattributed phrase correct. Sheesh.
Posted by Major John on 2006 04 25 at 01:16 PM • permalinkAnd I’m going home too after being half right and half wrong (but I’m not wronwright):
Here’s the orginial Goldberg writing:
On the Shoulders of Giants
Giving thanks, post-9/11.
By Jonah Goldberg; NRO; November 27, 2002, 8:50 a.m....In 1676 Isaac Newton wrote to a friend, “If I have seen further than others, it is by standing upon the shoulders of giants.”
I’ve always loved that phrase--"standing upon the shoulders of giants"--because it so neatly captures the conservative, and correct, understanding of progress and history. Scientists understand--far better than the intellectuals who play with words for a living--that knowledge is cumulative and that we don’t discard old ideas simply because they are old. (If scientists worked like sociologists, we’d hear a steady stream of pronouncements that the Pythagorean Theorem needs to be replaced by a less phallocentric approach which takes into account the feelings of people who feel oppressed by triangles). Progress comes from building on the old, not from carelessly discarding it; from not fixing what ain’t broke....
But this was added to the piece later:
AUTHOR’S NOTE: An interesting editorial note. In the year since I first wrote this column, I’ve probably not changed any of the typos. But, I’ve also learned that Newton’s “Standing on the shoulders of giants” line may not have been original to Newton; original credit might go to a monk, Bernard of Chartres. More interesting, Newton’s use of the phrase might actually have been sarcastic. Robert Hooke, the guy he wrote the letter containing the “giants” line, was actually extremely short and Newton hated him for criticizing his work. Newton scholars are divided on this issue, but it’s possible he meant it to mock the diminutive Mr. Hooke. More on this another time. Meanwhile I am still trying to determine whether “keep on your toes,” is actually an abbreviation of the original “keep on your toes--like Robert Hooke at a urinal.” Have a wonderful Thanksgiving. God bless.
Posted by andycanuck on 2006 04 25 at 01:16 PM • permalinkThe fissures created by Vietnam have long been stubbornly resistant to closure. But I am proud it was the dissenters - and it was our veterans’ movement - and people like Judy Droz Keyes - who battled not just to end the war but to combat government secrecy and the willful amnesia of a society that did not want to remember its obligations to the soldiers who fought. We fought the forgetting and pushed our nation to confront the war’s surplus of sad legacies - Agent Orange, Amer-Asian orphans, abandoned allies, exiled and imprisoned draft dodgers, doubts about whether all our POWs had come home, and honor at last for those who returned from Vietnam and those who did not. Because we spoke out, the truth was ultimately understood that the faults in Vietnam were those of the war, not the warriors.
And your “dissent” was based on a series of bald faced lies, Kerry. Your history revisioning is nauseating at best.
But did anyone see this little gem?
At that time it was apparently sounding German, not looking French, that got you in trouble.
Looks like someone is just a tad sensitive about something, hmmmm?
A small suggestion, Senator: cut back on the Botox, lose the hair style, and stop taking the American public as a collection of fools.
Slightly O/T:
I’m going home.
Don’t you mean “I’m going back to my bunk”, Texas Bob? ;-P
Posted by The_Real_JeffS on 2006 04 25 at 01:21 PM • permalink#17-Stevo--The first one, “That government is best which governs least” is from Henry David Thoreau, an excerpt whose meaning is taken out of context, as any plain reading of Thoreau’s complete statement will demonstrate:
I heartily accept the motto, “That government is best which governs least”; and I should like to see it acted up to more rapidly and systematically. Carried out, it finally amounts to this, which also I believe— “That government is best which governs not at all”; and when men are prepared for it, that will be the kind of government which they will have. [from “Civil Disobedience” (1849)]
As modern commentator Morris I. Liebman observed, “the day that men are so prepared will be the day that men are angels.”
The second, “Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty,” is attributed to Wendell Phillips, (1811-1884).
Did Thomas Jefferson really say this?
T.J. didn’t believe in meteorites? Hah, what a dunce. I bet he didn’t believe in black holes either.
Posted by Dave in Chicago on 2006 04 25 at 01:54 PM • permalinkT.J. didn’t believe that the Rocky Mountains were actually taller than the Alleghenies. “Principle of Symmetry” doncha know?
Posted by Stoop Davy Dave on 2006 04 25 at 02:21 PM • permalinkMy personal Pet Peeve(TM):
The way <a href="http://www.bartleby.com/73/1056.html>Ben Franklin’s</a> pefectly reasonable “Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.” is misquoted as “Those who would give up Liberty, to purchase Safety, deserve neither.”, losing the important qualifications of “essential” and “a little temporary”.
Giving up a non-essential liberty for a lasting and significant safety is more like what Mr. Frankling might, I think, call Wisdom. (In fact, someone like Nozick might suggest it’s the basis of a justified state, or another might suggest it’s the basis of civilization itself. For instance, giving up the liberty of murdering in exchange to safety from being so murdered.)
#26 Forbes:
My little book here called “They Never Said it” attributes Thoreau to the first, but strangely has the second unattributed. I should’ve clicked on Tim’s link, it has other Jefferson quotes and non quotes. I’m so lazy. Lincoln seems to have been frequently misquoted according to my book. Has Kerry been quoting Lincoln lately?Here are a few famous quotes that you might want to use:
Look at all those darn Indians ... General Custer
What the fuck was that ... Mayor of Hiroshima
What Kung Fu Dat? ... Bruce Lee when hit by a brickStupidity - John Kerry’s highest form of intelligence.
Posted by perfectsense on 2006 04 25 at 03:37 PM • permalink"That’s when I saw the flag. They unfurled it as if it was a picnic blanket. They knelt beside it, not to pay homage but to harm it as one of the guys was pulling out of his pocket somewhere a big can of lighter fluid. He began to douse it.
John Forbes Kerry, when he played Major Leauge Baseball...What a guy, huh?
#23 And I’m going home too after being half right and half wrong (but I’m not wronwright):
Hey, that’s a gratuitous slight. Worthy of John Kerry. I bet you voted for him behind that curtain. We probably didn’t have a Diebold voting machine in there. If we had, it wouldn’t have mattered who you would have voted for. The machine would have made sure it listed Bush.
Posted by wronwright on 2006 04 25 at 04:00 PM • permalinkOn the subject of statesmanlike quotes, and as the Badr Organization, the armed wing of Iraq’s largest Shiite political party moves on Kirkuk, these wise words echo in my ears:
”...but one of them would make war rather than let the nation survive, and the other would accept war rather than let it perish, and the war came.” [A.Lincoln]
Frankly, a few hundred Shiite militiamen would be no match for the tens of thousands of Kurdish fighters either serving in Iraqi army units in Kirkuk or stationed outside the city in Kurdish-controlled provinces.
The Kurds will send them packing, but you have to wonder at the “mastermind” behind this ridiculous strategy.
Posted by MentalFloss on 2006 04 25 at 05:08 PM • permalinkYeah, well, that wasn’t me. I set up the voting machines in Ohio. (Rebecca helped a teensy bit). I think paco had Texas. We gave him an easy state. You know, for good reasons.
We told him to program the software so it looks inconspicuous. But from I heard, when someone checked Kerry, the machine sang out: Yee haw! Slap my thigh. Vote for Bush and eat some pie. Yum Yum!
And it’s Ohio the lefties cite as holding the fraudulent vote? Go figure.
Posted by wronwright on 2006 04 25 at 05:15 PM • permalinkSpeaking of Newton, I seem to remember reading that in all his tenure as a member of parliament, he never stood to speak.
Except once, on a very hot and humid day.
As all fell silent to hear what the Great Man might say, he quietly asked if someone might open a window.
That’s it. I’m trying to find reference to this (doubtless) apocryphal tale..will update.
Posted by MentalFloss on 2006 04 25 at 05:41 PM • permalinkSigivald: Right on! Imprisoning people without trials and charges and torturing people in secret gulags and eavesdropping on people without warrants. Nothing essential there really is there? Nothing that goes right to the heart of the Constitution huh? Just a few non-essential liberties that can be sacrificed so the big bad wolf won’t get us.
My favourite misquote or quote out of context is where socialists invoke the words of Adam Smith in support of consumer regulation.
They enthusiastically quote Smith saying:
People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public, or in some contrivance to raise prices.
but fail to add the very next sentence:
It is impossible indeed to prevent such meetings, by any law which either could be executed, or would be consistent with liberty and justice. But though the law cannot hinder people of the same trade from sometimes assembling together, it ought to do nothing to facilitate such assemblies; much less render them necessary.
He then adds the types of laws that the socialists typically invoke:
A regulation which obliges all those of the same trade in a particular town to enter their names and places of abode in a public register, facilitates such assemblies…
A regulation which enables those of the same trade to tax themselves in order to provide for their poor, their sick, their widows, and orphans, by giving them common interest to manage, renders such assemblies necessary.
An incorporation not only renders them necessary, but makes the act of the majority binding on the whole.
By quoting Smith as they do, socialists make him look like he is supporting the very proposals that he explicitly rejects.
These people are either lazy or downright dishonest. I am more inclined to the latter view. I hear this misquote so often in debate that I now carry the full quote with me at all times.
38 Mental Floss
Frankly, a few hundred Shiite militiamen would be no match for the tens of thousands of Kurdish fighters either serving in Iraqi army units in Kirkuk or stationed outside the city in Kurdish-controlled provinces.
You are spot on with that. Hell the Kurds have just been waiting for the opportunity to take either Turkey, Iran OR both.
Oh this...The Kurds will send them packing, but you have to wonder at the “mastermind” behind this ridiculous strategy.
I read some damn where today that it was the El Gordo (the Fat One) monk Sadr...and I’ll be damned if I can find it again.
The U.S. should have killed that SOB long ago...but we will have to kill him before Iraq has peace. Sadr is a bad as Zarqawi.
Mr. Tim Blair, you’ve made the Wall Street Journal’s Opinion Page…
KERRY LIED!!!!
“No wonder Thomas Jefferson himself said: ‘Dissent is the greatest form of patriotism.’ “--John Kerry***, April 22
“There are a number of quotes that we do not find in Thomas Jefferson’s correspondence or other writings; in such cases, Jefferson should not be cited as the source. Among the most common of these spurious Jefferson quotes are: ‘Dissent is the highest form of patriotism.’ . . ."--Monticello Web site
Hat tip: Tim Blair.
*** According to still unconfirmed rumors, he served in Vietnam.
Ah yes. Bongoman a.k.a NumbNut returns,
Imprisoning people without trials and charges
The US is under no obligation to try them, let alone let them live. IMHO they should have done what they, and the other Allies, did to German “illegal combatants” in WW2 - torture them and blow their friggin’ heads off down a back alley way.
torturing people in secret gulags
Like the non-existent ones which Dana Priest and Mary McCarthy told you about?
eavesdropping on people without warrants
The executive is perfectly entitled to eavesdrop on conversations involving non-US citizens.
British GCHQ and other European intel services have been eavesdropping on their citizens since day dot. And whilst we’re on the subject: French terror suspects can be held indefinitely at the whim of Le Presidente.
Strange how it’s only when the Big Bad AmeriKKKans do it that dickheads like Bongoman get their tits in a twist.
Strange how it’s only when the Big Bad AmeriKKKans do it that dickheads like Bongoman get their tits in a twist.
Well, sure. If the FBI wants to take a peek at your library records to see if you checked out “The Anarchist’s Cookbook” recently, it’s totalitarianism. When Castro throws dissident librarians in jail, it’s promoting prison literacy.
Imprisoning people without trials and charges and torturing people in secret gulags and eavesdropping on people without warrants. Nothing essential there really is there? Nothing that goes right to the heart of the Constitution huh? Just a few non-essential liberties that can be sacrificed so the big bad wolf won’t get us.
So this is the notorious bongoman. Flitting about in its pink tights, with a big purple B on its chest, with a chartreuse cape....BONGOMAN.
North Korea, China, Venezuela, Cuba, Sudan Zimbabwe, Libya, Iran, Russia and on and on and on, with sick fuck, two bit tin horn dictators....ALL have Constitutions THEY really DO have GULAGS AND Imprison people without trials and charges and torture people in secret and eavesdropping on people without warrants. ...a better super hero such as yourself, should have known that.....FOOL.
that Newton (who was quite a prick) wrote it, but that he was being sarcastic.
But did he smoke?
And how about this quote from Thomas Jefferson that most folks miss:
“We hold these truths to be fake but accurate...”
Posted by richard mcenroe on 2006 04 25 at 10:01 PM • permalinkOT I know, but an example of absolute lunacy on behalf of environmentalists.
Was in Henty the other day (southern NSW between Wagga and Albury) where they are trying to build an aged care facility.
Gone through all the planning stages but now the $15 million project is being scrapped because of a .. tree.
Apparently the tree is a nesting place for sugar gliders and birds despite the fact that there are thousands of these of trees adjacent to the site.
Absolute craziness. The Wagga paper had a story about some poor old widower who had sold the family farm for a deposit and now had no place to live.
She could always live with the gliders I suppose.
Posted by The (WHMECDM) President on 2006 04 25 at 10:21 PM • permalinkIt appears it was that patriotic American, Howard Zinn, who was the first one who used that exact phrase in 2002.
an editorial in the Nov/Dec 2001 issue of The New Crisis, the NAACP magazine, here contains this sentence: “Thoughtful dissent, particularly when the blood is running hot, is one of the highest orders of patriotism."
The discussion also gives a longer, vaguely similar quote by TJ:
The man who loves his country on its own account, and not merely for its trappings of interest or power, can never be divorced from it, can never refuse to come forward when he finds that she is engaged in dangers which he has the means of warding off. —
TITLE: To Elbridge Gerry.
EDITION: Washington ed. iv, 188.
EDITION: Ford ed., vii, 151.
PLACE: Philadelphia ,
DATE: June. 1797#39 Yeah, well, that wasn’t me. I set up the voting machines in Ohio. (Rebecca helped a teensy bit).
Um… wronwright… was I supposed to help set up the whole state? Not just Clark County? Coz I coulda set up the whole state, but you know, I have relatives in Texas…
#55 Mirabilie dictu !!
(also, in re Newton in Parliament—I found he asked to have the windows closed so the public wouldn’t hear his pronounced stutter)
Posted by MentalFloss on 2006 04 25 at 11:00 PM • permalinkHe’s actually quoting Jefferson from All In the Family. WEEZIE.
Posted by Pat Patterson on 2006 04 26 at 12:04 AM • permalinkLet’s see, bongoman—
Imprisoning people without trials and charges
Every POW in history has been imprisoned without trial or charges. If that violates the U.S. Constitution, the Framers themselves violated it in the War of 1812. Fighting is still ongoing in both Iraq and Afghanistan.
torturing people in secret gulags
Despite the claims made in the Washington Post, the EU team assigned to investigate whether this happened came to the conclusion that there was no evidence that any “secret gulags” were ever used for any purpose.
and eavesdropping on people without warrants.
Specifically stated to be Constitutional by the U.S. Supreme Court back in 1974, by the same court that found the right to an abortion in the Constiution.
If two things that have been explicitly constiutional for decades and one thing that never happened are the best examples you have, then I’d say it’s safe to say that we have given up no liberty, essential or not.
Would you like to try again, with examples of actual liberties curtailed in the name of security in the last, say, fifteen years?
Posted by Warmongering Lunatic on 2006 04 26 at 03:17 AM • permalink43
The Constitution only applies to US citizens, numbnuts.
Ah if only that were true. But, no, it also applies to persons who are lawfully within the borders of the U.S. I forget the rationale, but there’s tons of case law establishing that precedent. But it does NOT apply to random AK-47-toting cretins scooped up in Afghanistan or Yemen, no.
Posted by Stoop Davy Dave on 2006 04 26 at 12:07 PM • permalink
Page 1 of 1 pages
Members:
Login | Register
| Member List
O do be careful Tim -he also says that “dismissing dissent is dangerous”.