History Archives - Scott Bradford: Off on a Tangent

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

Believers can have a lot to do with the rise of atheism. If we are careless about our instruction in the faith, or present its teaching falsely, or fail in our religious, moral, or social life, we often conceal and distort the faith rather than reveal [its] true nature. . . .

The more you do for others, the more you have. The more you give to others, the greater your abundance.

I have little interest in streamlining government or in making it more efficient, for I mean to reduce its size. I do not undertake to promote welfare, for I propose to extend freedom. My aim is not to pass laws, but to repeal them.

[Americans posess] the advantage of being armed . . . over the people of almost every other nation.

In three months I’ve gone from network television to Twitter to performing live in theaters, and now I’m headed to basic cable. My plan is working perfectly.

Our grand business undoubtedly is, not to see what lies dimly at a distance, but to do what lies clearly at hand.

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.

Left entirely to men, the church ought to have perished at many points in her long history.

Facts do not ‘speak for themselves.’ They speak for or against competing theories. Facts divorced from theory or visions are mere isolated curiosities.

If you want to be respected by others the great thing is to respect yourself.

It was Communism that was evil, and the more truly a man acted in its spirit and interest, the more certainly he perpetuated evil.

If you want to become invaluable in a workplace—in any community—just do the useful things no one else is doing.

What I do say is that no man is good enough to govern another man without that other’s consent. I say this is the leading principle, the sheet-anchor of American republicanism.

There is no such thing as a collective brain. There is no such thing as a collective thought. An agreement reached by a group of men is only a compromise or an average drawn upon many individual thoughts.

Totalitarians are fond of saying that Christianity is the enemy of the State—a euphemistic way of saying an enemy of themselves.

Dante once said that the hottest places in hell are reserved for those who in a period of moral crisis maintain their neutrality.

I am a gun. I have challenged the waves and crossed a vast, unforgiving sea. I have landed on these shores. I am held by the pilgrim, the pioneer, and the trail blazer. I have brought civilization to a barren wilderness.

God has created me to do him some definite service. . . . I have a part in this great work; I am a link in a chain, a bond of connection between persons. He has not created me for naught.

We don’t want to go back to tomorrow, we want to move forward.

It is a fact, too—although a curious one—that the sale of small arms to gun enthusiasts or sportsmen produces a greater sense of moral outrage in western society than is produced by the sale to psychotic despots of weaponry capable of killing thousands.

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Tag: History

The Right (and Wrong) Side of History

Time for a Centrist Third Party?

My 23andMe DNA Ancestry Results

The Congressional District Method

Political Candidates and the Bill of Rights

Hiroshima and the Laws of War

Grant, Lee, and Modern Political Discourse

The Gunpowder Plot and Planned Parenthood

When the World Will End

Loudoun Aviation: TWA Flight 514

The Thanksgiving Proclamation

The War on Terror Continues, Like It or Not

Questioning a Bit of the ‘Cosmos’

Licensing Update (Creative Commons BY-NC-ND 4.0)

Syria and Chemical Weapons

Goose Creek Stone Bridge

The Papacy and the Interregnum

President Obama Inaugurated to Second Term

Wilson, Obama, and the Fiscal Cliff

Reclaiming Liberalism

Relics: Body and Soul

It’s Not About Health Care

Chuck Colson: Crime and Redemption

Procuring Religious Freedom for Virginia

Onward to Revolution!