Allen West Quotes

The Beat Generation, that was a vision that we had, John Clellon Holmes and I, and Allen Ginsberg in an even wilder way, in the late forties, of a generation of crazy, illuminated hipsters suddenly rising and roaming America, serious, bumming and hitchhiking everywhere, ragged, beatific, beautiful in an ugly graceful new way--a vision gleaned from the way we had heard the word 'beat' spoken on streetcorners on Times Square and in the Village, in other cities in the downtown city night of postwar America--beat, meaning down and out but full of intense conviction--We'd even heard old 1910 Daddy Hipsters of the streets speak the word that way, with a melancholy sneer--It never meant juvenile delinquents, it meant characters of a special spirituality who didn't gang up but were solitary Bartlebies staring out the dead wall window of our civilization--the subterraneans heroes who'd finally turned from the 'freedom' machine of the West and were taking drugs, digging bop, having flashes of insight, experiencing the 'derangement of the senses,' talking strange, being poor and glad, prophesying a new style for American culture, a new style (we thought), a new incantation--The same thing was almost going on in the postwar France of Sartre and Genet and what's more we knew about it--But as to the actual existence of a Beat Generation, chances are it was really just an idea in our minds--We'd stay up 24 hours drinking cup after cup of black coffee, playing record after record of Wardell Gray, Lester Young, Dexter Gordon, Willie Jackson, Lennie Tristano and all the rest, talking madly about that holy new feeling out there in the streets- -We'd write stories about some strange beatific Negro hepcat saint with goatee hitchhiking across Iowa with taped up horn bringing the secret message of blowing to other coasts, other cities, like a veritable Walter the Penniless leading an invisible First Crusade- -We had our mystic heroes and wrote, nay sung novels about them, erected long poems celebrating the new 'angels' of the American underground--In actuality there was only a handful of real hip swinging cats and what there was vanished mightily swiftly during the Korean War when (and after) a sinister new kind of efficiency appeared in America, maybe it was the result of the universalization of Television and nothing else (the Polite Total Police Control of Dragnet's 'peace' officers) but the beat characters after 1950 vanished into jails and madhouses, or were shamed into silent conformity, the generation itself was shortlived and small in number.

David: And you think it can just evaporate? Even if at one time they loved one another? Marx: That's one of the sad truths of existence. Nothing in this world is permanent. Even the characters created by the great Shakespeare will, in millions of years, cease to exist—when the universe runs its course and the lights go out.

Ray looked up and scanned Ilsa from North to South and then from East to West. It only took a moment. Ray was in love. Again. Probably. Conscious of his dashing Hispanic allure, Ray was always optimistic about his chances with the female sex. He had left a very long string of girlfriends in his wake, but there was something about this woman, who projected such shyness about her untapped feminine charms, that made his already active pulse race. Somehow he couldn’t help imagining her blundering into his bedroom at midnight wearing nothing but a towel. Those many affairs of the past, he told himself, were just steppingstones of his dead past on which he was rising to the discovery of his one, true love. And here she was. Probably.

Never mind that in 1982 five black candidates from majority-white districts won seats in the North Carolina State House of Representatives. Or that from 1983 to 1995 a majority-white district in Missouri was represented in Congress by Alan Wheat, a black Democrat. Or that between 1991 and 1997 Gary Franks, a black Republican from Connecticut, represented a congressional district that was 88 percent white. Or that in 1996 Sanford Bishop, a black Democrat from Georgia, easily won reelection to Congress in a district that was only 35 percent black. Or that in 2010 Tim Scott of South Carolina and Allen West of Florida, both black Republicans, were elected to Congress from districts that are overwhelmingly white. Or that Representatives Emanuel Cleaver of Missouri and Keith Ellison of Minnesota are black Democrats who represent districts that are more than 60 percent white.

One day about a month ago, I really hit bottom. You know, I just felt that in a Godless universe, I didn't want to go on living. Now I happen to own this rifle, which I loaded, believe it or not, and pressed it to my forehead. And I remember thinking, at the time, I'm gonna kill myself. Then I thought, what if I'm wrong? What if there is a God? I mean, after all, nobody really knows that. But then I thought, no, you know, maybe is not good enough. I want certainty or nothing. And I remember very clearly, the clock was ticking, and I was sitting there frozen with the gun to my head, debating whether to shoot. [The gun fires accidentally, shattering a mirror] All of a sudden, the gun went off. I had been so tense my finger had squeezed the trigger inadvertently. But I was perspiring so much the gun had slid off my forehead and missed me. And suddenly neighbors were, were pounding on the door, and, and I don't know, the whole scene was just pandemonium. And, uh, you know, I-I-I ran to the door, I-I didn't know what to say. You know, I was-I was embarrassed and confused and my-my-my mind was r-r-racing a mile a minute. And I-I just knew one thing. I-I-I had to get out of that house, I had to just get out in the fresh air and-and clear my head. And I remember very clearly, I walked the streets. I walked and I walked. I-I didn't know what was going through my mind. It all seemed so violent and un-unreal to me. And I wandered for a long time on the Upper West Side, you know, and-and it must have been hours. You know, my-my feet hurt, my head was-was pounding, and-and I had to sit down. I went into a movie house. I-I didn't know what was playing or anything. I just, I just needed a moment to gather my thoughts and, and be logical and put the world back into rational perspective. And I went upstairs to the balcony, and I sat down, and, you know, the movie was a-a-a film that I'd seen many times in my life since I was a kid, and-and I always, uh, loved it. And, you know, I'm-I'm watching these people up on the screen and I started getting hooked on the film, you know. And I started to feel, how can you even think of killing yourself. I mean isn't it so stupid? I mean, l-look at all the people up there on the screen. You know, they're real funny, and-and what if the worst is true. What if there's no God, and you only go around once and that's it. Well, you know, don't you want to be part of the experience? You know, what the hell, it's-it's not all a drag. And I'm thinkin' to myself, geez, I should stop ruining my life - searching for answers I'm never gonna get, and just enjoy it while it lasts. And, you know, after, who knows? I mean, you know, maybe there is something. Nobody really knows. I know, I know maybe is a very slim reed to hang your whole life on, but that's the best we have. And then, I started to sit back, and I actually began to enjoy myself.

Socialism is a philosophy of failure, the creed of ignorance, and the gospel of envy, its inherent virtue is the equal sharing of misery. —SIR WINSTON CHURCHILL

Radical movements are never successful unless they attract big money and/or outside support. The great historian of the Twentieth Century, Oswald Spengler, was one of those who saw what American Liberals refuse to see- that the Left is controlled by its alleged enemy, the malefactors of great wealth. He wrote in his monumental Decline of the West (Modern Library, New York, 1945):   -> "There is no proletarian, not even a Communist, movement, that has not operated in the interests of money, in the direction indicated by money, and for

No revolution can be successful without organization and money. "The downtrodden masses" usually provide little of the former and none of the latter. But Insiders at the top can arrange for both.   What did these people possibly have to gain in financing the Russian Revolution? What did they have to gain by keeping it alive and afloat, or, during the 1920's by pouring millions of dollars into what Lenin called his New Economic Program, thus saving the Soviets from collapse?   Why would these "capitalists" do all this? If your goal is global conquest, you have to start somewhere. It may or may not have been coincidental, but Russia was the one major European country without a central bank. In Russia, for the first time, the Communist conspiracy gained a geographical homeland from which to launch assaults against the other nations of the world. The West now had an enemy.   In the Bolshevik Revolution

The chief quartermaster on the West Coast, Robert Allen, an old friend of Grant’s, learned he was holed up in a cheap miner’s hotel called “What Cheer House.” He found Grant in a spartan garret room furnished with a cot, a pine table, and a chair. “Why, Grant, what are you doing here?” Allen asked. “Nothing,” Grant replied. “I’ve resigned from the army. I’m out of money, and I have no means of getting home.

Professor Napier and his colleague Victor Clube, formerly dean of the Astrophysics Department at Oxford University, go so far as to describe the 'unique complex of debris' within the Taurid stream as 'the greatest collision hazard facing the earth at the present time.' Coordination of their findings with those of Allen West, Jim Kennett, and Richard Firestone, as led both teams--the geophysicists and the astronomers--to conclude that it was very likely objects from the then much younger Taurid meteor stream that hit the earth around 12,800 years ago and caused the onset of the Younger Dryas. These objects, orders of magnitude larger than the one that exploded over Tunguska, contained extraterrestrial platinum, and what the evidence from the Greenland ice cores seems to indicate is an epoch of 21 years in which the earth was hit every year, with the bombardments increasing annually in intensity until the fourteenth year, when they peaked and then began to decline before ceasing in the twenty-first year.

A secularized capitalism devoid of Christian virtue and objective morality is rapacious, greed-centered, and an engine for the spread of all kinds of evil, including pornography, abortion, and prostitution. But the capitalism that continues to be influenced by the Reformation—and the authority of God, objective morality, and virtue—is an engine of godly stewardship, generosity, prosperity, and blessing. Both forms of capitalism are with us today. The same can be said about “freedom,” “law,” or “the American dream.” The West is now, essentially, two separate cultures at war with one another.

The essence of Roosevelt’s leadership, I soon became convinced, lay in his enterprising use of the “bully pulpit,” a phrase he himself coined to describe the national platform the presidency provides to shape public sentiment and mobilize action. Early in Roosevelt’s tenure, Lyman Abbott, editor of The Outlook, joined a small group of friends in the president’s library to offer advice and criticism on a draft of his upcoming message to Congress. “He had just finished a paragraph of a distinctly ethical character,” Abbott recalled, “when he suddenly stopped, swung round in his swivel chair, and said, ‘I suppose my critics will call that preaching, but I have got such a bully pulpit.’ ” From this bully pulpit, Roosevelt would focus the charge of a national movement to apply an ethical framework, through government action, to the untrammeled growth of modern America. Roosevelt understood from the outset that this task hinged upon the need to develop powerfully reciprocal relationships with members of the national press. He called them by their first names, invited them to meals, took questions during his midday shave, welcomed their company at day’s end while he signed correspondence, and designated, for the first time, a special room for them in the West Wing. He brought them aboard his private railroad car during his regular swings around the country. At every village station, he reached the hearts of the gathered crowds with homespun language, aphorisms, and direct moral appeals. Accompanying reporters then extended the reach of Roosevelt’s words in national publications. Such extraordinary rapport with the press did not stem from calculation alone. Long before and after he was president, Roosevelt was an author and historian. From an early age, he read as he breathed. He knew and revered writers, and his relationship with journalists was authentically collegial. In a sense, he was one of them. While exploring Roosevelt’s relationship with the press, I was especially drawn to the remarkably rich connections he developed with a team of journalists—including Ida Tarbell, Ray Stannard Baker, Lincoln Steffens, and William Allen White—all working at McClure’s magazine, the most influential contemporary progressive publication. The restless enthusiasm and manic energy of their publisher and editor, S. S. McClure, infused the magazine with “a spark of genius,” even as he suffered from periodic nervous breakdowns. “The story is the thing,” Sam McClure responded when asked to account for the methodology behind his publication. He wanted his writers to begin their research without preconceived notions, to carry their readers through their own process of discovery. As they educated themselves about the social and economic inequities rampant in the wake of teeming industrialization, so they educated the entire country. Together, these investigative journalists, who would later appropriate Roosevelt’s derogatory term “muckraker” as “a badge of honor,” produced a series of exposés that uncovered the invisible web of corruption linking politics to business. McClure’s formula—giving his writers the time and resources they needed to produce extended, intensively researched articles—was soon adopted by rival magazines, creating what many considered a golden age of journalism. Collectively, this generation of gifted writers ushered in a new mode of investigative reporting that provided the necessary conditions to make a genuine bully pulpit of the American presidency. “It is hardly an exaggeration to say that the progressive mind was characteristically a journalistic mind,” the historian Richard Hofstadter observed, “and that its characteristic contribution was that of the socially responsible reporter-reformer.

No revolution can be successful without organization and money. "The downtrodden masses" usually provide little of the former and none of the latter. But Insiders at the top can arrange for both.   What did these people possibly have to gain in financing the Russian Revolution? What did they have to gain by keeping it alive and afloat, or, during the 1920's by pouring millions of dollars into what Lenin called his New Economic Program, thus saving the Soviets from collapse?   Why would these "capitalists" do all this? If your goal is global conquest, you have to start somewhere. It may or may not have been coincidental, but Russia was the one major European country without a central bank. In Russia, for the first time, the Communist conspiracy gained a geographical homeland from which to launch assaults against the other nations of the world. The West now had an enemy.   In the Bolshevik Revolution we have some of the world's richest and most powerful men financing a movement which claims its very existence is based on the concept of stripping of their wealth men like the Rothschilds, Rockefellers, Schiffs, Warburgs, Morgans, Harrimans, and Milners. But obviously these men have no fear of international Communism. It is only logical to assume that if they financed it and do not fear it, it must be because they control it. Can there be any other explanation that makes sense? Remember that for over 150 years it has been standard operating procedure of the Rothschilds and their allies to control both sides of every conflict. You must have an "enemy" if you are going to collect from the King. The East-West balance-of-power politics is used as one of the main excuses for the socialization of America. Although it was not their main purpose, by nationalization of Russia the Insiders bought themselves an enormous piece of real estate, complete with mineral rights, for somewhere between $30 and $40 million.   ----  

My favourite part of my new book so far: Chapter 48: Creatures of The Night A figure stood in the stairwell beneath the Smoke's Poutinerie close to Simcoe Street and Adelaide Street West. He munched his pulled pork poutine and watched the strange object glide through the fog that engulfed the tall blue R.B.C. building. “Nice night for a stroll,” smiled The Rooster. Upon heading North, Fred had decided to take a detour and glide the exact opposite way: South. It was why he was now flying through the fog that suspended over the R.B.C. building. Through the billowing cloud he sailed and higher up into the air as he was heading towards the business district of Toronto where all the skyscrapers were. As Fred got closer, he understood why they were labeled as skyscrapers: they basically scraped the sky. But the view from up here was fantastic. It was a rainy and cold night, but Fred felt very warm in his upgraded suit. Soon, he was zooming past the green windowed T.D. building and back towards the North side of Yonge Street. However, as he sailed home, he began to worry about Allen. The Rooster had already cut up his ex-girlfriend so what would he do to Allen? Allen had been a friend to Fred when no one else had been there. Of course, he used to have many friends in preschool, elementary school, and high school but no one he clicked with. Allen McDougal was really the only family he had left and he didn't want The Rooster to kill his old friend in any way. I must radio him, thought Fred as he shot past Dundas Square. But when he pressed the button on the helmet that alerted his Butler's phone, there was no answer. Damn it. They've already got him.

Our country is now at risk of forgetting the value of limited government. We are told bigger government is necessary for the general welfare of our citizens. Instead of sticking to its primary constitutional tasks of promoting the general welfare and providing for the common defense, we have a government that is focused on providing welfare, and who cares about defense? As the temperature in the pot heats up, we have gradually moved from securing the endorsed inalienable rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness to demanding a “guarantee of happiness.” But to guarantee happiness, the government’s powers must be unlimited.

When you see that trading is done, not by consent, but by compulsion—when you see that in order to produce, you need to obtain permission from men who produce nothing—when you see that money is flowing to those who deal not in goods, but in favors—when you see that men get richer by graft and by pull than by work, and your laws don’t protect you against them, but protect them against you—when you see corruption being rewarded and honesty becoming a self-sacrifice—you may know that your society is doomed.

A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves largesse from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates promising the most benefits from the public treasury with the result being that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy, always followed by a dictatorship.

know a thing or two about war, and I can tell you there are only two ways to get your enemies off the battlefield: you kill them or imprison them—and that doesn’t mean reading them Miranda rights and getting them all lawyered up. Terrorists do not deserve our constitutional rights, and to pretend that granting those rights gets us respect from our enemies is the most asinine concept I have ever heard.

I'm tired of liberals dividing this country up into little groups, setting them upon each other, breeding spite and envy, and then having the nerve to accuse conservatives of hatred.

This was 1849, a year when the frenzy to reach California gold was so intense that all wisdom had percolated from the American brain. Speed in reaching northern California was everything, and Turner and Allen were actually pikers in that department. The craziest westering scheme of all was devised by a head case New Yorker named Rufus Porter, an inventor and balloon enthusiast who was the founder of Scientific American magazine. Like many Americans, Porter was swept up by the visionary possibilities of a mass crossing to plunder the gold fields of the Pacific West. Porter became convinced that giant balloons, powered by twin steam engines borrowed from a paddle-wheeler, could loft as many as two hundred Gold Rush miners to California at once.

June 19: Sunday at 2:30 p.m., Reverend Benjamin Lingenfelder of the Christian Science church marries Norma Jeane and twenty-one-year-old James Dougherty at the home of Mr. and Mrs. Chester Howell. Chester is an attorney and friend of Grace, who chooses the Howell home at 432 South Bentley Avenue in West Los Angeles because it has a spiral staircase that Norma Jeane uses to make a dramatic entrance. Ana Lower makes Norma Jeane’s wedding gown and accompanies her to the altar. Norma Jeane has one bridesmaid, Lorraine Allen, a friend from University High School. No member of Norma Jeane’s family is present, but the Bolenders make an appearance. It is the last time they will see her. After a modest reception at the Florentine Gardens in Hollywood, Norma Jeane and Jim go to their home in Sherman Oaks. Jim Dougherty later recalled that his wife held on to him the entire afternoon. The young couple does not honeymoon but goes for a fishing weekend on Sherwood Lake. On Sundays they attend the Sherman Oaks Christian Science church.

Hamid Karzai was once the sartorially blessed favorite of the West, but no longer. He had proved to be whiny and conflicted, a combination of Woody Allen, Chicken Little, and Jimmy Carter.

There are so few other things we can look at with pride,' said Allen. 'We don't have a large university that has thirty or forty thousand students in it. We don't have the art museum that some communities have and are world-renowned. When somebody talks about West Texas, they talk about football. There is nothing to replace it. It's an integral part of what made the community strong. You take it away and it's almost like you strip the identity of the people.

Sweat saves blood.

The dominance of football in Texas high schools had become the focus of raging debate all over the state in 1983. The governor of Texas, Mark White, appointed Perot to head a committee on educational reform. In pointing to school systems he thought were skewed in favor of extracurricular activities, Perot took particular aim at Odessa. On ABC’s Nightline, he called Permian fans “football crazy,” and during the show it was pointed out that a $5.6 million high school football stadium had been built in Odessa in 1982. The stadium included a sunken artificial-surface field eighteen feet below ground level, a two-story press box with VIP seating for school board members and other dignitaries, poured concrete seating for 19,032, and a full-time caretaker who lived in a house on the premises. “He made it look like we were a bunch of West Texas hicks, fanatics,” said Allen of Perot. The stadium “was something the community took a lot of pride in and he went on television and said you’re a bunch of idiots for building it.” Most of the money for the stadium had come from a voter-approved bond issue.

The war against Perot escalated quickly. The booster club geared up a letter-writing campaign to him, state legislators, and the governor. Nearly a thousand letters were sent in protest of Perot’s condemnation of Odessa. Some of the ones to him were addressed “Dear Idiot” or something worse than that, and they not so gently told him to mind his own damn business and not disturb a way of life that had worked and thrived for years and brought the town a joy it could never have experienced anywhere else. “It’s our money,” said Allen of the funds that were used to build the stadium. “If we choose to put it into a football program, and the graduates from our high schools are at or above the state level of standards, then screw you, leave us alone.” At one point Perot, believing his motives had been misinterpreted and hoping to convince people that improving education in Texas was not a mortal sin, contemplated coming to Odessa to speak. But he decided against it, to the relief of some who thought he might be physically harmed if he did. “There are so few other things we can look at with pride,” said Allen. “We don’t have a large university that has thirty or forty thousand students in it. We don’t have the art museum that some communities have and are world-renowned. When somebody talks about West Texas, they talk about football. “There is nothing to replace it. It’s an integral part of what made the community strong. You take it away and it’s almost like you strip the identity of the people.

The great divergence 1. Some questions arise from why we need to study economic history: 'why are some countries rich and others poor?'/ 'why did the Industrial Revolution happen in England rather than France' 2. time span of history 1500-1800: the mercantilist era. The leading European countries sought to increase their trade by acquring colonies and using tariffs and war to prevent other countries from trading with them. European manufacturing was promoted at the expense of the colonies, but economic development, as such, was not the objective 19th century: Western Europe and the USA made economic development a priority and tried to achieve it with a standard set of four policies: creation of a unified national market by eliminating internal tariffs and building transportation infrastructure; the erection of an external tariff to protect their industries from British competition; the chartering of banks to stablise the currency and finance industrial investment; the establishment of mass education to upgrade the labour force. --> the government play a critical role in promoting economic. and we can get to know that European countries had used the tarrif protection to thrive their economic before. also by boosting the transportation infrastructure and education section, along with the function of bank, economic can proliferate 20th century: the policies above proved less effective in countries that had not yet developed. most new technology is not cost-effective in low-wage countries, but it is what they need in order to catch up to the West. Most countries have adopted modern technology to some degree, but not rapidly enough to overtake the rich countries. the coutries that have closed the gap with West have done so with Big Push that has used planning and investment coordination to jump ahead. --> that can explain the Mattew Effect: as the rich will be richer, poor will get poorer.

I got to meet interesting people with diverse talents, like Rex Allen, a western actor and singer who invited me to his home when he was throwing a twenty-fifth wedding anniversary party for Slim Pickens and his wife, Margaret. There was a story making the rounds that night about the time when Rex was waiting for a plane in the Los Angeles airport, and a fan rushed up and cornered him. "Mr. Autry," the man said, "would you please give me your autograph?" Rex signed the autograph, "Gene Autry, who will never be half the cowboy Rex Allen is.

To ship their crops to distant markets they had to rely upon the railroads, many of which were scandalously managed for the profit of Eastern owners and manipulators and set their freight rates arbitrarily high. Hence there arose in the West a widespread and confused agitation against bankers, the gold basis of the currency, industrial monopolists, and above all the railroads: an agitation which in the eighteen-eighties had been chiefly responsible for the passage of such regulatory laws as the Interstate Commerce Act.

Yet many people fail to make this distinction, including many leading evangelical leaders. They are quick to criticize Western civilization, capitalism, or the American dream,25 or even America’s legacy of freedom,26 as if these were all one thing. They are not. As Christians, our problem isn’t with “Western civilization” but with the secularization of Western civilization. While “the West” is not synonymous with Christianity, the Judeo-Christian roots of the West (and of America) need to be recognized, celebrated, and preserved. Our task, as Christians, shouldn’t be to tear down the West, but to reform it to better reflect the truth of God’s kingdom.

Surkov himself is the ultimate expression of this psychology. As I watch him give his speech to the students and journalists, he seems to change and transform like mercury, from cherubic smile to demonic stare, from a woolly liberal preaching "modernization" to a finger-wagging nationalist, spitting out willfully contradictory ideas: "managed democracy," "conservative modernization." Then he steps back, smiling, and says: "We need a new political party, and we should help it happen, no need to wait and make it form by itself." And when you look closely at the party men in the political reality show Surkov directs, the spitting nationalists and beetroot-faced communists, you notice how they all seem to perform their roles with a little ironic twinkle. Elsewhere Surkov likes to invoke the new postmodern texts just translated into Russian, the breakdown of grand narratives, the impossibility of truth, how everything is only "simulacrum" and "simulacra" . . . and then in the next moment he says how he despises relativism and loves conservatism, before quoting Allen Ginsberg's "Sunflower Sutra," in English and by heart. If the West once undermined and helped to ultimately defeat the USSR by uniting free market economics, cool culture, and democratic politics into one package (parliaments, investment banks, and abstract expressionism fused to defeat the Politburo, planned economics, and social realism), Surkov's genius has been to tear those associations apart, to marry authoritarianism and modern art, to use the language of rights and representations to validate tranny, to recut and paste democratic capitalism until it means the reverse of its original purpose.

The greatest danger Biden posed was his potential to strip away black Democrats in southern states and Latinos in the West from the strongholds Hillary was counting on.

This is the habitat of the strong silent men of the west. They ride around in new Fords, even though they live in slummy towns and their children have pellagra.

In contemplating who should command the Army’s multiplying regiments and divisions, Marshall and his training chief, Lesley J. McNair, kept a list in a safe of more than 400 colonels with perfect efficiency reports. Allen, neither a full colonel nor perfect, was not on it. Rather, he was facing court-martial for insubordination in 1940 when word arrived of his double promotion, from lieutenant colonel to brigadier general. He was the first man in his former West Point class to wear a general’s stars. No man better exemplified the American military leadership’s ability to identify, promote, and in some cases forgive those officers best capable of commanding men in battle. Among the encomiums that followed Allen’s promotion was a penciled note: “Us guys in the guardhouse want to congratulate you, too.

They live in a little place without electricity. He hauls water and cuts wood for the stove. They raise pigs, milk cows, and make their own butter and bacon. They have a big garden in the summer. Sherri makes horse saddles. Preferring to live like Jeremiah Johnson instead of Tim Allen, they shun the new Wal-Mart down in Silver City and weave their own clothes. They live off game, beef, and canned vegetables. Their grocery bill for an entire year, Laney says after warming up to me, is just over a thousand dollars.

President Wilson had made his unfortunate plea for Democratic support which antagonized the West but was not a sufficient handicap to defeat David I. Walsh, the Democratic leader, who overcame Senator Weeks.

Along a plateau the traveller passes the reservoir, the Wachusett Reservoir, its bank more or less covered with pines, to West Boylston, a village by the lakeside. “Mount” Wachusett looks over the wilderness from Clinton northward.

I realized I didn't have to be cast wherever the cosmic tides haphazardly sent me. If I concentrated, I could control my journey. In the speed force, time and place were one. I could go where and even when I wanted. My universe was dying and I knew exactly where I wanted to be. With Iris. At her side.

The events in Vietnam and the protests against the draft, led by college students, increased the growing influence of the youth culture, who made Vonnegut their literary hero in questioning the accepted wisdom of the status quo. Kurt was as surprised as anyone and had never wanted to be a “spokesman” of the young. He was very leery of the hippie phenomenon and wrote a searing account of one of their heroes, Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, guru to the Beatles and assorted movie stars (“Yes, We Have No Nirvanas,” published in Esquire and collected in his book Wampeters, Foma & Granfalloons). He satirized the stylish popularity of Eastern meditation, saying we had the same thing in the West—reading short stories, which also lowered your heart rate and freed your mind from other concerns. He said short stories were “Buddhist catnaps.” He thought the Maharishi was a phony but he loved the music of the Beatles, spoke up for Abbie Hoffman, and admired Allen Ginsberg. When

she also knew the best sturgeon came from the West Side at Barney Greengrass.

The year 1915 was rich in successes for the Germans. In the West, thanks to an energetic defensive,

When I think back on the histories of the Republican and Democratic parties and their stances on the black community, I find myself questioning how so many of my fellow black men and women still believe that the Democratic Party has their best interests at heart when history proves they were never on our side. I wonder if they remember that it was the Republican Party that ended slavery. I wonder if they remember that it was the Republican Party that finally recognized us as citizens of our great country. I wonder if they remember that it was the Republican Party that fought for us to finally become members of the American self, while Democrats wanted us to still be classified as the other.

Booker T. Washington said, “Those who think there is no opportunity for them to live grandly, yea, heroically, no matter how lowly their calling, no matter how humble their surroundings, make a common but very serious error.

Socialists ignore the side of man that is the spirit. They can provide you shelter, fill your belly with bacon and beans, treat you when you’re ill, all the things guaranteed to a prisoner or a slave. They don’t understand that we also dream. —PRESIDENT RONALD REAGAN The problem with socialism is that you eventually run out of other people’s money. —BARONESS MARGARET THATCHER

Matthew 16:26, “For what is a man profited if he gains the whole world and forfeits his soul?

Roper’s nemesis, Crooked-Eye Allen, and the latter’s partners in crime, had put in an appearance the night before on Bois’ land and had managed to stampede and rustle Roper's entire herd of longhorns. Not only were the cattle long vanished, a Cherokee cowhand who had been mistaken for Roper had been shot and was possibly on his deathbed.

The empty self therefore becomes a political problem. An empty politician has a great deal to make up for. How will he compensate for his emptiness? The empty politician is easily drawn into a grandiose self assignment. And this must prove disastrous for society, as the promises of an empty politician are themselves empty. In fact, he brings about the opposite of what he promises. This has long been true of the totalitarian dictators. Increasingly it is true of democratically elected leaders in the West. It seems, as well, that the conflict between the totalitarian East and the consumerist West may, in the last analysis, devolve into a conflict between two types of emptiness: in the first instance, the emptiness of the characters in a Woody Allen film; in the second, the emptiness of "a boot stamping on a human face - forever.

As the discoverer and principal excavator of Murray Springs, [...] Haynes deserves credit for drawing attention to a very curious aspect of the site--a distinct dark layer of soil draped 'like a shrink-wrap,' as Allen West puts it, over the top of the Clovis remains and of the extinct megafauna--including Eloise. Haynes has identified this 'black mat' (his term) not only at Murray Springs but at dozens of other sites across North America, and was the first to acknowledge its clear and obvious association with the Late Pleistocene Extinction Event. he speaks of the 'remarkable circumstances' surrounding the event, the abrupt die-off on a continental scale of all large mammals 'immediately before deposition of the ... black mat,' and the total absence thereafter of 'mammoth, mastodon, horse, camel, dire wold, American lion, tapir and other [megafauna], as well as Clovis people.' Haynes notes also that 'The basal black mat contact marks a major climate change from the warm dry climate of the terminal Allerod to the glacially cold Younger Dryas.' From roughly 18,000 years ago, and for several thousand years thereafter, global temperatures had been slowly but steadily rising and the ice sheets melting. Our ancestors would have had reason to hope that earth's long winter was at last coming to an end and that a new era of congenial climate beckoned. This process of warming became particularly pronounced after about 14,500 years ago. Then suddenly, around 12,800 years ago, the direction of climate change reversed and the world turned dramatically, instantly cold--as cold as it had been at the peak of the Ice Age many thousands of years earlier. This deep freeze--the mysterious epoch now known as the Younger Dryas--lasted for approximately 1,200 years until 11,600 years ago, at which point the climate flipped again, global temperatures shot up rapidly, the remnant ice sheets melted and collapsed into the oceans, and the world became as warm as it is today.

What good is freedom when not all men are free?

I was learning, discovering that marriage was just like seasons in a year.

Lewis’s dog, however, captured my heart. Wooly and beautiful, with inky black fur and a white star on its chest, his name was Seaman, and he had accompanied the Corps of Discovery clear to the Pacific.

Allen Dulles believed that the shadow war between the West and the Soviet bloc would have few if any rules, and he was contemptuous of any attempts in Washington to put limits on the conflict. He assumed that the United States faced an utterly ruthless enemy in Moscow, and he was prepared to match or go beyond whatever measures were employed by Russia’s KGB and the Eastern bloc’s other security services.