Here's a little Saturday food for thought from a Rod Schaffter email at Chaos Manor (just scroll down)
David Warren came across some excellent observations by Nicolás Gómez Dávila, a Catholic writer from Colombia:
-- Democratic parliaments are not places where debate occurs but where popular absolutism registers its edicts.
-- Love of the people is an aristocratic calling. The democrat only loves the people at election time.
-- The individual shrinks in proportion as the state grows.
-- The one who renounces seems weak to the one incapable of renunciation.
-- Violence is not necessary to destroy a civilization. Each civilization dies from indifference towards the unique values which created it.
-- To have opinions is the best way to escape the obligation of thinking.
-- Nothing multiplies the number of fools so much as the example of celebrities.
-- The importance of an event is inversely proportional to the space which the newspapers devote to it.
-- An individual declares himself a member of some group with the goal of demanding in its name what he is ashamed to claim in his own name.
-- The anger of imbeciles is less frightening than their benevolence.
-- "To be useful to society" is the ambition, or excuse, of a prostitute.
Chew on those observations for a while...
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