Monthly Archives: April 2012

Historic Views on Government – Aron

Honest opinion about government from Raymond Claude Ferdinand Aron:

The intellectual who no longer feels attached to anything is not satisfied with opinions merely; he wants certainty, he wants a system. The Revolution provides him with his opium.

Communist faith justifies the means. Communist faith forbids the fact that there are many roads towards the Kingdom of God.

[F]ar from being the…philosophy of the Proletariat, Communism merely makes use of…pseudo-science in order to attain its own end, the seizure of power.
   The Opium of the Intellectuals, 1955

French sociologist, philosopher, and political scientist, Raymond Aron was a lecturer at the University of Cologne (1930-1931) and taught at various institutions, including the University of Toulouse, where he taught sociology. He received many honorary degrees and wrote many papers and books, but is especially well known for L'Opium des Intellectuels (1955) [The Opium of the Intellectuals]. He wrote also Main Currents in Sociological Thought (1961).

Quotation and short bio from The Quotable Conservative: The Giants of Conservatism on Liberty, Freedom, Individual Responsibility, and Traditional Values. Rod L. Evans and Irwin M. Berent, editors. Holbrook, Mass.: Adams Publishing, 1996.

Historic Views on Government – Cal Thomas

Honest opinion about government from Cal Thomas:

The country must not be stampeded into another round of spending on programs that don't work. We should regularly reassess race relations and reach out to minorities to help them with their special problems. But their biggest problem is not lack of money, it is lack of family. No federal program will have a greater impact on crime and other antisocial behavior than the return of the black man as husband to his wife and father to his children. Since 1965, the number of out-of-wedlock births has more than tripled. It is now a cliche that more young black men are in prison than in college.
   Lawrence Mead of New York University has observed, "What matters for success is less whether your father was rich or poor than whether you knew your father at all." Nothing will substitute for or have the same effect in the rearing of a child than a man who keeps his promises to his wife and loves his children.
   "Violence wasn't about civil rights," May 7, 1992

A columnist for the Los Angeles Times Syndicate, Cal Thomas was with NBC-TV News from 1973 to 1977. He has won the AMY Writing Award and AP and UPI Spot News Awards. A strong advocate of traditional values, he is the author of Public Persons and Private Lives: Intimate Interviews (1979), Uncommon Sense (1990), and Things That Matter Most (1994).

Quotation and short bio from The Quotable Conservative: The Giants of Conservatism on Liberty, Freedom, Individual Responsibility, and Traditional Values. Rod L. Evans and Irwin M. Berent, editors. Holbrook, Mass.: Adams Publishing, 1996.