Urban Sprawl: A Definition

Urban sprawl is what some people call new homes.

They commonly live in the urban sprawl created 20 - 50 years ago.

Liberty

In society there is no function more valuable than liberty - for with liberty people can earn their own happiness.

It is not the critic who counts...

It is not the critic who counts, not the man who points out how the strong man stumbled, or where the doer of deeds could have done better.

The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena; whose face is marred by the dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs and comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error or shortcoming; who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions and spends himself in a worthy cause;

who at the best, knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who, at worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly; so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who know neither victory or defeat.




Theodore Roosevelt
Citizenship in a Republic (a speech at the Sorbonne, Paris, France, 1910)

Everything you want...

A government big enough to give you everything you want is a government big enough to take from you everything you have.

Gerald Ford
Presidential address to a joint session of Congress 12 August 1974

Governments and the Economy

The government's view of the economy could be summed up in a few short phrases:

If it moves, tax it. If it keeps moving, regulate it. And if it stops moving, subsidize it.

Ronald Reagan
US President (1911 - 2004)

The backhand of Socialism

The invisible hand is actually more kind than socialism. At least with the free market and liberty the interaction is voluntary. With socialism, unions and lobby groups still seek thier own self-interests, and if they can make those interests into law, then force is also used to enforce it.

Money and Elections

No politician can buy votes unless the people are first ready to sell them.

Educate to Preserve Liberty

Educate and inform the whole mass of the people. Enable them to see that it is their interest to preserve peace and order, and they will preserve them. And it requires no very high degree of education to convince them of this. They are the only sure reliance for the preservation of our liberty

Thomas Jefferson

a Founding Father of the United States of America

1743-1826

Liberty and Safety

Those who would give up Essential Liberty to purchase a little Temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety

motto on the 1759 title page of
An Historical Review of the Constitution and Government of Pennsylvania

Many of us still think about the government the way five year olds think about their parents, the source of infallible wisdom and a bottomless purse.

adrienswords

The price good men pay for indifference to public affairs is to be ruled by evil men

Plato

Ancient Greek philosopher 428-348 BC

He who dares not offend cannot be honest


Thomas Paine
(Attributed)

not yet sufficiently fashionable

Perhaps the sentiments contained in the following pages, are not YET sufficiently fashionable to procure them general favour; a long habit of not thinking a thing WRONG, gives it a superficial appearance of being RIGHT, and raises at first a formidable outcry in defense of custom. But the tumult soon subsides. Time makes more converts than reason


Thomas Paine
British political writer and activist
Common Sense (1776)

A government's job is to protect citizens from others, not from themselves.

See, when the GOVERNMENT spends money, it creates jobs; whereas when the money is left in the hands of TAXPAYERS, [who] knows what they do with it. Bake it into pies, probably. Anything to avoid creating jobs.

attributed to Dave Barry (US Columnist)

Waking a half mat. Sleeping one mat.
Rule the nation, a fistful of rice.

No matter how many people you kill, countries you steal, fortunes you plunder, or titles you earn…
You only cover a half a straw mat when you sit, one when you sleep, and your stomach only holds a fistful of rice

Kazuo Koike + Goseki Kojima
Lone Wolf and Cub

There is no virtue in compulsory government charity, and there is no virtue in advocating it. A politician who portrays himself as caring and sensitive because he wants to expand the government's charitable programs is merely saying that he is willing to do good with other people's money. Well, who isn't? And a voter who takes pride in supporting such programs is telling us that he will do good with his own money— if a gun is held to his head.

attributed to P.J O'Rourke

Your federal government needs your money so that it can perform vital services for you that you would not think up yourself in a million years.

Dave Barry (US Columnist)

Some writers have so confounded society with government, as to leave little or no distinction between them; whereas they are not only different, but have different origins. Society is produced by our wants, and government by our wickedness; the former promotes our POSITIVELY by uniting our affections, the latter NEGATIVELY by restraining our vices. The one encourages intercourse, the other creates distinctions. The first a patron, the last a punisher.

Thomas Paine