E-Books Archives - Scott Bradford: Off on a Tangent

Owning Plexus

Posted May 1, 2018, 8:00 a.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

Who will guard the guards themselves?

A confederacy of republics must be the establishment in America, or we must cease altogether to retain the republican form of government.

There is no country in the world in which everything can be provided for by the laws, or in which political institutions can prove a substitute for common sense and public morality.

And it did for one wild moment cross my mind that, perhaps, those might not be the very best judges of the relation of religion to happiness who, by their own account, had neither one nor the other.

And the more I considered Christianity, the more I found that while it had established a rule and order, the chief aim of that order was to give room for good things to run wild.

Every culture agrees, in general terms, that good is to be done and evil avoided.

The best way to solve any problem is to remove the cause.

In this world nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes.

The fault of others is easily perceived, but that of one’s self is difficult to perceive; a man winnows his neighbor’s faults like chaff, but his own fault he hides, as a cheat hides the bad die from the player.

Free trade is not based on utility but on justice.

[The] confederated national government . . . should be one which would have a control over national and external matters only, and not interfere with the internal regulations and police of the different states in the union.

It is both foolish and wicked to teach the average man who is not well off that some wrong or injustice has been done him, and that he should hope for redress elsewhere than in his own industry, honesty and intelligence.

The element of truth behind all this, which people are so ready to disavow, is that men are not gentle creatures who want to be loved . . . ; they are, on the contrary, creatures among whose instinctual endowments is to be reckoned a powerful share of aggressiveness.

Whether you believe you can do a thing or not, you are right.

But if there is anything that compelled me to write this book, it is to show that success is more a function of consistent common sense than of genius.

An appeaser is one who feeds a crocodile, hoping it will eat him last.

The First Amendment provides the only kind of security system that can preserve a free government—one that leaves the way wide open for people to favor, discuss, advocate, or incite causes and doctrines however obnoxious and antagonistic such views may be to the rest of us.

No plan of operations extends with any certainty beyond the first encounter with the main enemy forces.

Democratic governments may become violent and even cruel at certain periods of extreme effervescence or of great danger: but these crises will be rare and brief.

If the burden of proof is always on the one who believes any idea, then that principle should also apply to the belief in the idea of skepticism.

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Owning Plexus