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

The bearing of a child takes nine months, no matter how many women are assigned.

Modern liberty means that nobody is allowed to discuss [religion]. Good taste, the last and vilest of human superstitions, has succeeded in silencing us where all the rest have failed.

Some seem to believe that we should negotiate with the terrorists and radicals, as if some ingenious argument will persuade them they have been wrong all along. . . . We have an obligation to call this what it is: the false comfort of appeasement, which has been repeatedly discredited by history.

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. . . .

For the time is coming when people will not endure sound teaching, but having itching ears they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own likings, and will turn away from listening to the truth and wander into myths.

The central conservative truth is that it is culture, not politics, that determines the success of a society. The central liberal truth is that politics can change a culture and save it from itself.

The sculptor works on marble, the painter on canvas, the machinist on matter, but none of them can create. They bring existing things into new combinations, but nothing else. Creation belongs to God alone.

Science cannot solve the ultimate mystery of nature. And that is because, in the last analysis, we ourselves are part of nature and therefore part of the mystery that we are trying to solve.

But instinct is something which transcends knowledge. We have, undoubtedly, certain finer fibers that enable us to perceive truths when logical deduction, or any other willful effort of the brain, is futile.

Socialism is structured so that it will never achieve its stated goals. The reason is self-evident: Socialism is a self-perpetuating consumption of other people’s labors, and when those labors run out, the whole system collapses.

I’m convinced that about half of what separates successful entrepreneurs from the non-successful ones is pure perseverance.

Do you think that I have come to give peace on earth? No, I tell you, but rather division. . . .

In the prevailing culture, priority is given to the outward, the immediate, the visible, the quick, the superficial, and the provisional. What is real gives way to appearances.

Giving away our food we get more strength, giving away our clothes we get more beauty, founding religious rest-places we reap the perfect fruit of the best charity.

Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.

When you want to help people, you tell them the truth. When you want to help yourself, you tell them what they want to hear.

When a man has lived in a dark cave for years, his eyes cannot stand the light of the sun; so the man who refuses to repent turns against mercy.

Indiscreet speech may lead men into error and an imprudent silence may leave in error those who could have been taught.

Consensus is the business of politics. Science, on the contrary, requires only one investigator who happens to be right, which means that he or she has results that are verifiable by reference to the real world.

Few Christian doctrines are taught in the Bible as clearly and as explicitly as is the Real Presence of Jesus in the Eucharist.

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Category: Short Stories

Roanoke Rain

When Nobody’s Watching

The Ultimate Machine

The Thaxton Light

Parking Vulture (writing as Tamera Finn)

A Touch of Personality

Roberta Lystron