Short Stories Archives - Scott Bradford: Off on a Tangent

Parking Vulture (writing as Tamera Finn)

Posted February 24, 2004, 2:26 p.m.

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

If marriage is centrally an emotional union . . . it becomes much harder to show why the state should concern itself with marriage any more than with friendship. Why involve the state in what amounts to the legal regulation of tenderness?

Our help does not come from Washington, but from ourselves.

Now we are masters in respect of to act and not to act, to will and not to will.

How silly to suppose that any man by his own efforts can ever save himself.

You can miss the target by shooting too high as well as too low.

Churches . . . that are nothing more than a loosely bound assembly of individuals committed to finding their own ‘truth,’ are no longer the church in any meaningful sense, because there is no shared belief.

A liberal is a man too broadminded to take his own side in a quarrel.

I always go into the deal anticipating the worst. If you plan for the worst—if you can live with the worst—the good will always take care of itself.

Gandhi’s philosophy of nonviolence was effective with the British precisely because they were not inclined to use excessive force against unarmed civilians. Instead, they behaved in a civilized manner, and they left. Would Gandhi’s tactics have worked with the Nazis?

I prefer a Church which is bruised, hurting, and dirty because it has been out on the streets, rather than a Church which is unhealthy from being confined and from clinging to its own security.

No one man, therefore, or any class of men, have a right, by the law of nature, or of God, to assume or exercise authority over their fellows.

He is no fool that gives up what he cannot keep to gain what he cannot lose.

He who loves money will not be satisfied with money; nor he who loves wealth, with gain: this also is vanity.

And he who lives a hundred years, idle and weak, a life of one day is better if a man has attained firm strength.

You have made us for yourself, O Lord, and our hearts are restless until they rest in you.

If you are wise, mingle these two elements: do not hope without despair, or despair without hope.

Every man should have a college education in order to show him how little the thing is really worth.

They say we offer simple answers to complex problems. Well, perhaps there is a simple answer—not an easy answer—but simple.

There’s an old saying in Tennessee . . . I know it’s in Texas, probably in Tennessee . . . that says, fool me once, shame on . . . shame on you. Fool me . . . you can’t get fooled again.

The stories we can neither ignore nor forget are unforgettable [because] they speak to something we know, but do not know that we know.

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