A Quote by Robert A. Heinlein
In past history popularly elected governments have been no better and sometimes far worse than overt tyrannies.
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If the Socialism is Authoritarian; if there are Governments armed with economic power as they are now with political power; if, in a word, we are to have Industrial Tyrannies, then the last state of man will be worse than the first.
What is overlooked is the astonishing amount of history Hollywood has got right... For better or worse, nothing has been more influential in shaping our visions of the past than the commercial cinema.
By far the most numerous and most flagrant violations of personal liberty and individual rights are performed by governments... The major crimes throughout history, the ones executed on the largest scale, have been committed not by individuals or bands of individuals but by governments, as a deliberate policy of those governments-that is, by the official representatives of governments, acting in their official capacity.
Racism is worse than ever. Violence is worse than ever. The economy's worse than ever. Unemployment's worse than ever. And it's Democrats that have been running the show, with the first African-American president at the top of the heap, and it didn't get any better?
Posterity will say as usual: "In the past things were better, the present is worse than the past.
I think as far as the adverse impact on the nation around the world, this administration has been the worst in history... The overt reversal of America's basic values as expressed by previous administrations, including those of George H.W. Bush and Ronald Reagan and Richard Nixon and others, has been the most disturbing to me.
Things will be far worse than they are now. And far better. I wait.
They don't call him 'No Drama Obama' for nothing. He's even worse than we thought because he has committed the ultimate American crime, worse than anything he has been accused of so far: He has no sense of humor.
The Enlightenment faith that things are getting a little bit better each decade becomes difficult to support. People recognized that there had just been a war that was worse than the war of 1812, and worse than the Revolution; things were clearly not getting better and better.
Throughout history governments have been chronically short of revenue. The reason should be clear: unlike you and me, governments do not produce useful goods and services that they can sell on the market; governments, rather than producing and selling services, live parasitically off the market and off society.
Far too many of our elected officials are chained to an ideology that is rooted in the past. They are keepers of normalcy who embrace things as they've always been.
Socially and politically, we seem to be living in dire times, worse times than in the past. But there were far worse horrors in our past. The writer's role is to be a truth sayer. I sincerely believe that each society, each country lives by a particular fantasy vision, a fantasy vision of itself. The truth of how they live is hardly ever faced.
The reason people find it so hard to be happy is that they always see the past better than it was, the present worse than it is, and the future less resolved than it will be.
We don't live in tyrannies, you know, the king doesn't decide what's legitimate, and there's much more freedom than there was in the past.
As to the question of elected or not elected, each member of the European Commission has been appointed jointly by the governments of the 15 member states, and undergone individual scrutiny and a vote of confidence from the European Parliament.
And I’m not confused about the lack of, or the need for, imagination in low or high places. We could do better we must do better. There are far worse things to drop on people than crayolas.
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