Frontier Justice Quotes

Here beyond men's judgments all covenants were brittle.

Right knows no boundaries and justice no frontiers; the brotherhood of man is not a domestic institution.

Dibs was dibs, we didn't have to call it. Ever since we were born, we'd lived according to the rough frontier justice of even Stephen, and even Stephen had a perfect memory.

It was a creed written into the founding documents that declared the destiny of a nation. Yes we can. It was whispered by slaves and abolitionists as they blazed a trail toward freedom through the darkest of nights. Yes we can. It was sung by immigrants as they struck out from distant shores and pioneers who pushed westward against an unforgiving wilderness. Yes we can. It was the call of workers who organized; women who reached for the ballot; a President who chose the moon as our new frontier; and a King who took us to the mountaintop and pointed the way to the Promised Land. Yes we can to justice and equality. Yes we can to opportunity and prosperity. Yes we can heal this nation. Yes we can repair this world. Yes we can

Tragedy happens - "tragic mistakes" happen - when men act according to their flawed natures, in fulfillment of their preordained destinies. The tragedy of the four killers of Amadou Diallo is that their deeds were made possible by their general preconceptions about black people and poor neighborhoods; by a theory of policing that encourages them to be rigid and punitive toward petty offenders; and by a social context in which the possession and use of firearms is so normative as to be almost beyond discussion. The tragedy of the street vendor Amadou Diallo is that he came as an innocent to the slaughter, made vulnerable by poverty and by the color of his skin. And the tragedy of America is that a nation which sees itself as leading the world toward a global future in which the American values of freedom and justice will be available for everyone fails so frequently and so badly to guarantee that freedom and that justice for so many people within its own frontiers.

We have strict rules—” “You’re murdering innocent people,” she said, suddenly short of breath. “Our government is killing its own citizens.” “We’re following orders,” he said flatly.

Missoula has a culture uniquely its own, however, thanks to the fusion of its gritty frontier heritage with the university’s myriad impacts. UM has nationally distinguished programs in biology and ecology and is perhaps even more renowned for its literary bona fides. The faculty of the university’s Creative Writing Program, founded in 1920, has included such influential authors as Richard Hugo, James Crumley, and William Kittredge.

One of the key principles of the Outer Space Treaty is that space is the common heritage of humanity and cannot be owned by anyone – government, nation, individual or corporation. Space is very colonial: we talk of the ‘conquest’ of space, the ‘high frontier’ or the ‘final frontier’, colonising other planets, and the innate urge of human beings to explore, often without thinking about it; it’s such a strong master narrative. Instead of considering the treaty to be outdated, we might equally think of it as a radical statement of equality and justice – and one we need more than ever.

The boundary between the natural and the social, and between the realm of fortune and that of justice, is not static. What we have taken to be moral progress has often consisted in pushing back the frontiers of the natural, in bringing within the sphere of social control, and thereby within the domain of justice, what was previously regarded as the natural, and as merely a matter of good or ill fortune.

Where history showed us only ramparts and frontiers, poetry discovered a mysterious predestination that makes two adversaries, whose meeting is inexorable, worthy of each other. And Homer asks no quarter, save from poetry, which repossesses beauty from death and wrests from it the secret of justice that history cannot fathom. To the darkened world poetry alone restores pride, eclipsed by the arrogance of the victors and the silence of the vanquished.

My ideal was contained within the word beauty, so difficult to define despite all the evidence of our senses. I felt responsible for sustaining and increasing the beauty of the world. I wanted the cities to be splendid, spacious and airy, their streets sprayed with clean water, their inhabitants all human beings whose bodies were neither degraded by marks of misery and servitude nor bloated by vulgar riches; I desired that the schoolboys should recite correctly some useful lessons; that the women presiding in their households should move with maternal dignity, expressing both vigor and calm; that the gymnasiums should be used by youths not unversed in arts and in sports; that the orchards should bear the finest fruits and the fields the richest harvests. I desired that the might and majesty of the Roman Peace should extend to all, insensibly present like the music of the revolving skies; that the most humble traveller might wander from one country, or one continent, to another without vexatious formalities, and without danger, assured everywhere of a minimum of legal protection and culture; that our soldiers should continue their eternal pyrrhic dance on the frontiers; that everything should go smoothly, whether workshops or temples; that the sea should be furrowed by brave ships, and the roads resounding to frequent carriages; that, in a world well ordered, the philosophers should have their place, and the dancers also. This ideal, modest on the whole, would be often enough approached if men would devote to it one part of the energy which they expend on stupid or cruel activities; great good fortune has allowed me a partial realization of my aims during the last quarter of a century. Arrian of Nicomedia, one of the best minds of our time, likes to recall to me the beautiful lines of ancient Terpander, defining in three words the Spartan ideal (that perfect mode of life to which Lacedaemon aspired without ever attaining it): Strength, Justice, the Muses. Strength was the basis, discipline without which there is no beauty, and firmness without which there is no justice. Justice was the balance of the parts, that whole so harmoniously composed which no excess should be permitted to endanger. Strength and justice together were but one instrument, well tuned, in the hands of the Muses. All forms of dire poverty and brutality were things to forbid as insults to the fair body of mankind, every injustice a false note to avoid in the harmony of the spheres.

suppose I thought of people as dogs,’ he went on ruefully, ‘and that if you gave them enough affection then they would be docile, but they aren’t dogs, Gwydre, they’re wolves. A king must rule a thousand ambitions, and all of them belong to deceivers. You will be flattered, and behind your back, mocked. Men will swear undying loyalty with one breath and plot your death with the next. And if you survive their plots, then one day you will be grey-bearded like me and you’ll look back on your life and realize that you achieved nothing. Nothing. The babies you admired in their mothers’ arms will have grown to be killers, the justice you enforced will be for sale, the people you protected will still be hungry and the enemy you defeated will still threaten your frontiers.

One of our best dates was actually a weekend when we went to the wedding of a friend from the Teams. The couple married in Wimberley, Texas, a small town maybe forty miles south of Austin and a few hours’ drive from where we lived. We were having such a pleasant day, we didn’t want it to end. “It doesn’t have to end,” suggested Chris as we headed for the car. “The kids are at my parents’ for the weekend. Where do you want to go?” We googled for hotels and found a place in San Antonio, a little farther south. Located around the corner from the Alamo, the hotel seemed tailor-made for Chris. There was history in every floorboard. He loved the authentic Texan and Old West touches, from the lobby to the rooms. He read every framed article on the walls and admired each artifact. We walked through halls where famous lawmen-and maybe an outlaw or two-had trod a hundred years before. In the evening, we relaxed with coffee out on the balcony of our room-something we’d never managed to do when we actually owned one. It was one of those perfect days you dream of, completely unplanned. I have a great picture of Chris sitting out there in his cowboy boots, feet propped up, a big smile on his face. It’s still one of my favorites. People ask about Chris’s love of the Old West. It was something he was born with, really. It had to be in his genes. He grew up watching old westerns with his family, and for a time became a bronco-bustin’ cowboy and ranch hand. More than that, I think the clear sense of right and wrong, of frontier justice and strong values, appealed to him.

It is not the nobility of rebellion that illuminates the world today, but nihilism. And it is the consequences of nihilism that we must retrace, without losing sight of the truth innate in its origins. Even if God existed, Ivan would never surrender to Him in the face of the injustice done to man. But a longer contemplation of this injustice, a more bitter approach, transformed the "even if you exist" into "you do not deserve to exist," therefore "you do not exist." The victims have found in their own innocence the justification for the final crime. Convinced of their condemnation and without hope of immortality, they decided to murder God. If it is false to say that from that day began the tragedy of contemporary man, neither is it true to say that there was where it ended. On the contrary, this attempt indicates the highest point in a drama that began with the end of the ancient world and of which the final words have not yet been spoken. From this moment, man decides to exclude himself from grace and to live by his own means. Progress, from the time of Sade up to the present day, has consisted in gradually enlarging the stronghold where, according to his own rules, man without God brutally wields power. In defiance of the divinity, the frontiers of this stronghold have been gradually extended, to the point of making the entire universe into a fortress erected against the fallen and exiled deity. Man, at the culmination of his rebellion, incarcerated himself; from Sade's lurid castle to the concentration camps, man's greatest liberty consisted only in building the prison of his crimes. But the state of siege gradually spreads, the demand for freedom wants to embrace all mankind. Then the only kingdom that is opposed to the kingdom of grace must be founded —namely, the kingdom of justice—and the human community must be reunited among the debris of the fallen City of God. To kill God and to build a Church are the constant and contradictory purpose of rebellion. Absolute freedom finally becomes a prison of absolute duties, a collective asceticism, a story to be brought to an end. The nineteenth century, which is the century of rebellion, thus merges into the twentieth, the century of justice and ethics, in which everyone indulges in self-recrimination.

Back in the early days of his career as a frontier lawyer, Lincoln was engaged in an important trial. It was a really hot day. His opponent was arguing his case, and as he paced around he was starting to sweat, so the man removed his jacket and vest. The lawyer’s shirt buttoned in the back, not in the front, as was customary. Lincoln was quick to notice the discrepancy, and said to the jury – “Gentlemen of the jury, having justice on my side, I don’t think you will at all be influenced by the gentleman’s pretended knowledge of law, when you see he does not even know which side of his shirt should be in front.” Lincoln’s story drew a laugh from the jury and the audience, and won him the case.

Cowboys of the Old West were workers, not gunslingers, and they did not go looking for trouble. But when trouble found them, the rules were unequivocal. If someone was killed in a fair fight, that was not murder, it was an incident. On the other hand, shooting an unarmed or fleeing man ~ even if he was a sworn enemy ~ was strictly forbidden, and transgressors were quickly brought to frontier justice.

Like a virus, man would continue to replicate himself and his associated destruction until the host would eventually die.

Heath’s letter leaves the impression of someone with an apocalyptic worldview, someone who sees himself as part of a persecuted minority deserving justice and retribution, someone whose group identity is so strong he feels lost on his own, and someone with deep anxieties about his place within that group and a desperate need to prove his loyalty to its leader. It’s the mind-set of a fanatic, a man who harbors “such indignation against the enemy” that he can justify almost any crime as legitimate self-defense of his own people, who have been chosen by God for a sacred purpose. Not all Beaver Islanders held such beliefs, of course, but for an unknown number of hardened zealots, criminal activity had become a kind of sacrament.

arguments against exploitation lose their power when aimed at the hundred-hour-per-week lawyer, whose industry and exhaustion inoculate her against charges of inherited and unearned advantage, and who also exploits herself. Humanitarian concern loses force when poverty is reduced and the main claims of economic justice are made on behalf of the middle class. And when progressives embraced meritocracy as a remedy for hereditary privilege, they fired the engine that now drives inequality’s increase. The familiar arguments that once defeated aristocratic inequality simply do not apply to an economic system based on rewarding effort and skill. Meritocracy’s rise over the past half century has opened a new frontier in human experience, with no historical precedent. At the same time, meritocracy has pulled the rug out from under economic equality’s champions. The past no longer provides a reliable guide to understanding the present, as received moral principles and new economic stocks simply do not align. Traditional diagnoses of economic injustice misfire at every turn, and meritocracy, which was supposed to cure inequality, has itself become the source of the disease. Indeed, it is almost as if meritocratic inequality were specifically designed to defeat the arguments and the policies that once humbled the leisure class and declared war on poverty. The meritocratic transformation entails, bluntly put, that equality’s champions must justify redistribution that takes from a more industrious elite in order to give to a less industrious middle class. This makes meritocratic inequality difficult to resist.

Of course it all rests on the unshakable belief that the men and women Forest bought and sold into enslavement were subhuman. But many in America have held and hold such beliefs. We know about Forest, specifically, because he was born poor on the frontier and availed himself of the opportunities to advance in the country and an economy built on the backs of others. You might say he pulled himself up by his bootstraps, but those bootstraps were other human beings.

The attitude of Oregon pioneers toward the Indians was recorded by Father John Beeson, one of the early settlers. Of his fellows, most of whom were from Missouri, he wrote: ‘Among them it was customary to speak of the Indian man as a buck, the woman as a squaw, until at length, in the general acceptance of the terms, they ceased to recognize the rights of humanity in those to whom they were so applied. By a natural and easy transition, from being spoken of as brutes, they came to be thought of as game to be shot or vermin to be destroyed.’ Any white man found dead was assumed to have been murdered by Indians, and often his death was made an excuse for raiding the nearest Indian village and killing all the men, women, and children found there. In one instance an elderly white miner who had refused to participate in such raids was called on by a score of men and forced to join them. Father Beeson related, ‘After resting on the mountains, they shot him, cut off his head, leaving it on the limb of a tree, and divided his property among themselves.

Imperial governance was programmatic in that it was guided by coherent ideals and goals. All kings and emperors – like modern governments – had to react to circumstances and improvise, but they were not simply at the mercy of events. The difference lies in what they were trying to achieve. ‘State’ and ‘nation’ were not yet clearly delineated concepts functioning as focused policy objectives. Kings and emperors were not state-or nation-builders, because no one felt either needed building. Medieval monarchs were expected to build churches and cathedrals. Otherwise, their role was primarily to uphold peace, justice and the honour of the Empire. Changing circumstances, like violence, rebellions, or invasions, were not seen as ‘problems’ to be ‘solved’ through new laws, better institutions, or more coherent frontiers. Most of the misunderstandings surrounding the Empire’s political history stem from attempts to impose anachronistic expectations on its rulers’ behaviour. For most of the Empire’s existence, imperial governance was guided by the prevailing ideals of good kingship. Imperial and royal powers were never explicitly delineated. It was accepted by the twelfth century that the emperor possessed exclusive prerogatives (jura caesarea reservata  ) largely relating to a clearer understanding of his position as feudal overlord. Subsidiary reserved powers (jura caesarea reservata limitata  ) could be exercised with the advice of great lords. These were identified more precisely from the mid-fourteenth century and included declarations of war and the imperial ban.

The reality of archaic civilization was centralization of political power, class stratification, the magnification of military power, the economic exploitation of the weak, and the universal introduction of some form of forced labor for both productive and military purposes. As against these undeniable realities we must also cite the major achievements of archaic society: the maintenance of peace within the realm, more productive agriculture, the opening of markets for long-range trade, and significant achievements in architecture, art, and literature. But equally important was, with the help of a literate elite, a new effort to give political power a moral meaning. The archaic king was almost always depicted as a warrior, as a defender of the realm against barbarians on the frontiers and rebels within; as such he embodied a powerful element of dominance. But he was also seen, and probably increasingly as archaic societies matured, as the defender of justice, in Mesopotamia and Egypt as the good shepherd, in Western Zhou as father and mother of his people. Gods as well as kings were increasingly thought of not only as dominant but also as nurturant. The very appeal to ethical standards of legitimacy for both gods and kings, however, opened new possibilities for political and theological reflection. In the axial age a new kind of upstart, the moral upstart who relies on speech, not force, would appear, foreshadowed as we have seen, by voices already raised in archaic societies.

They were men shaped and tempered to the harsh ways of a harsh land, strong in their sense of justice, ruthless in their demand for punishment, relentless in pursuit. From the desert they had carved their homes, and from the desert they drew their courage and their code, and the desert knows no mercy.

Jai Ho (Sonnet 1165) Jai Ho to all the beings, Who ain't hypnotized with hate! Jai Ho to all the beings, Who ain't living in cavemen days! Jai Ho to the luchadors, Who struggle por la igualdad! Jai Ho to the reformers, Who value rights over ritual! Space may be the final frontier, But heart is the first frontier. Unless we first conquer the heart, We'll turn the cosmos into dumpyard. So I salute, to all explorers of heart! Jai Ho to the janitors of our cosmic courtyard!

I realised that the moon was not a safe place. It knew a thousand ways to kill you if you were stupid, if you were careless, if you were lazy, but the real danger was the people around you. The moon was not a world, it was a submarine. Outside was death. I would be sealed in with these people. There was no law, no justice: there was only management. The moon was the frontier, but it was the frontier to nothing. There was nowhere to run.

the frontiers of our Empire to know that the British dominion all over the world could not endure for a year, perhaps not for a month, if it was founded upon a material basis. The strength and splendour of our authority is derived not from physical forces, but from moral ascendancy, liberty, justice, English tolerance, and English honesty.

I have seen enough in peace and war of the frontiers of our Empire to know that the British dominion all over the world could not endure for a year, perhaps not for a month, if it was founded upon a material basis. The strength and splendour of our authority is derived not from physical forces, but from moral ascendancy, liberty, justice, English tolerance, and English honesty.

the blue-white flash washed over the bridge,

cooperating with the Dusahn because they are making greater profit by doing so,” Dori added. “That’s how they do it,” Jessica explained. “Ensure the profits of the powerful, keeping the economy strong, and the people will put up with just about anything.” “The Dusahn offer the illusion of safety and prosperity,” General Telles explained. “You’d be surprised how cheaply liberty can be purchased.

He tried again. “There’s been a release of a viral

The questions about frontiers, about material affairs didn't interest us very much. Living ceaselessly face to face with death, we came to understand to an intense degree the importance of spiritual forces. The front held only because at the front there were souls, souls which believed, which burned with ardor, which radiated strength. Our victories were won not only with weapons, but with virtues. The problems of the post-war period would be identical. Economic victories would not be enough. Political reorganizations would not be enough. A great moral redemption would be necessary, which would cleanse away the blemishes of our time, which would restore our souls with the fresh air of passion and of unconditional service. National revolution, yes. Social revolution, yes. European revolution, yes. But above all else a spiritual revolution a thousand times more necessary than external order, than external justice, than fraternity in words alone. The world emerging from the killing and the hatred of the war would need, first, pure hearts, believing in their mission, dedicating themselves to it, pure hearts in whom the masses could believe and to whom they could devote themselves.

capitalism should not be eaten raw. Capitalism, like sausage, is meant to be cooked by a democratic society and its institutions because raw capitalism is antisocial. As Piketty warns, “A market economy . . . if left to itself . . . contains powerful forces of divergence, which are potentially threatening to democratic societies and to the values of social justice on which they are based.