Vacation Day 2: Mount St. Helens

Posted June 8, 2012, 1:51 a.m.

On the second day of our Pacific Northwest, Melissa and I—along with my parents, my sister, and my sister’s boyfriend—made the three hour drive from the house in Hood River, Oregon, to Mount St. Helens in Skamania County, Washington.

Mount St. Helens is a volcano that underwent a massive eruption in 1980. That eruption left the mountain scarred by a massive crater, caused huge landslides, and reduced hundreds of square miles to barren wasteland. Even more than thirty years later, the whole area bears the mark of the catastrophe.

Here are my photos from our excursion to Mount St. Helens:

Scott Bradford has been putting his opinions on his website since 1995—before most people knew what a website was. He has been a professional web developer in the public- and private-sector for over twenty years. He is an independent constitutional conservative who believes in human rights and limited government, and a Catholic Christian whose beliefs are summarized in the Nicene Creed. He holds a bachelor’s degree in Public Administration from George Mason University. He loves Pink Floyd and can play the bass guitar . . . sort-of. He’s a husband, pet lover, amateur radio operator, and classic AMC/Jeep enthusiast.

Quotes

The power of the will does not extend to making opposites exist at the same time.

All men by nature desire to know. An indication of this is the delight we take in our senses; for even apart from their usefulness they are loved for themselves. . . .

The transient passions and the interests of an hour, or the chance of circumstances, may have created the external forms of independence; but the despotic tendency which has been repelled will, sooner or later, inevitably reappear on the surface.

Some religions draw by force of arms; [Jesus Christ] would draw by force of love.

Whenever men are unanimous on great public questions, whenever there is but one party, freedom ceases and despotism commences.

How do we bring about conversion of those living in blindness? By love. By truth in charity. By offering forgiveness. By offering mercy. With prayer.

As an explanation of the world, materialism has a sort of insane simplicity. It has just the quality of the madman’s argument; we have at once the sense of it covering everything and the sense of it leaving everything out.

I know no method to secure the repeal of bad or obnoxious laws so effective as their stringent execution.

We work for praise, and dawdle once we have it.

A fool, for example, thinks Shakespeare a great poet . . . yet the fool has never read Shakespeare.

Let Republicans be mindful of their heritage. It was moral conviction—and the courage to act on moral conviction—that gave birth to the Republican Party and made it grand. Now it is old but need not be any less grand.

When my information changes, I alter my conclusions. What do you do, sir?

Even a liar can be scared into telling the truth, same as an honest man can be tortured into telling a lie.

Sometimes people fail to recognize and respect human rights because they have self-interested motives for doing so. In most cases of exploitation, for example, the fundamental failing is moral, not intellectual.

Should one point out that, from ancient times, decline in courage has been considered the beginning of the end?

The liberties of none are safe unless the liberties of all are protected.

If you do not know how great marriage is, you cannot know how terrible divorce is.

We have to call it ‘freedom.’ Who’d die for ‘a lesser tyranny?’

The ‘prudent’ have always called the works of God madness.

When a man sits with a pretty girl for an hour, it seems like a minute. But let him sit on a hot stove for a minute and it’s longer than any hour. That’s relativity.

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