People From Pennsylvania

"[T]he real issue of the Civil War was a terrible ideological derangement that had lifted an entire portion of the American Republic away from the ideological moorings of the founders..."

"[O]ligarchy, strictly speaking, is a regime "in which a rich minority rules for the advantage of the rich minority and in which the people composing that political society are ranked...because the ruling principle of that regime is the principle of natural inequality." Aristotle called it a deviant form of aristocracy (in the same way that tyranny is a deviant form of monarchy), and in practical terms, it exhibits its form through excessive concentrations of property in the hands of a few, the reservation of education to the elite, and the organization of government to serve the purposes of the oligarchs."

"Under the same circumstances — and the key words are "the same circumstances" — yes, I would do it again. We were in a war for five years. We were fighting an enemy that had a reputation for never surrendering, never accepting defeat. It's really hard to talk about morality and war in the same sentence. In a war, there are so many questionable things done. Where was the morality in the bombing of Coventry, or the bombing of Dresden, or the Bataan Death March, or the Rape of Nanking, or the bombing of Pearl Harbor? I believe that when you're in a war, a nation must have the courage to do what it must to win the war with a minimum loss of lives."

"Is it any surprise, then, that Jesus felt such intense compassion for the poor and marginalized? That he constantly asked his disciples to care for the poor, the sick, the forgotten, the stranger? He was one of these throwaway people, and he lived among them for 30 years before his public ministry began. Christians tend to see Jesus’ commands to care for the poor as divine. And they were — Jesus was fully divine. But they also came from his human experience. He was fully human as well. I’m always amazed by people who feel they can be Christian without caring for the poor. Not only did Jesus command us to do this, Jesus himself was from this class. When God chose to join us, he joined us in Nazareth, to make sure that we wouldn’t forget."

"[LGBTQ people] are fully members of the church. It’s just a question of getting people to understand that."

"Treating LGBT people with respect, compassion, and sensitivity is much more than just looking at same-sex marriage and same-sex relations, because they’re more than just their sexual lives, just as straight people are. We would never focus completely on chastity or something like that with straight people – or even, say, straight young people. But we tend to do that with LGBT people, unfortunately"

"(After the meeting with Pope Leo XIV) Amen. Grateful to be in the same Church with the Holy Father and His Eminence, all part of the Body of Christ, under his Vicar on earth."

"Church teaching on LGBT people is more than a few lines in the catechism. Church teaching is the Gospel and Jesus’ message of love, mercy and compassion, especially for those on the margins."

"God could have entered the world in any place or family that God chose. God could have become human in a great ruling family in Judea. God could have entered into humanity in a wealthy Galilean family, perhaps as the child of a well-traveled and well-read merchant or scholar. More to the point, God could have chosen to be born into the Roman dynasty, in line to become emperor, to exercise and demonstrate maximum power.Instead, God chose to enter a family headed by a man with a simple profession, married to a woman who, from outward appearances, was no different than the other poor women in their joke of a town."

"The sensus fidei fidelis is a sort of spiritual instinct that enables the believer to judge spontaneously whether a particular teaching or practice is or is not in conformity with the Gospel and with apostolic faith."

"The Republican Party is strong enough to dare to do right and cannot afford to shirk a duty. The colored men North and South were loyal to the Government in the days of its greatest peril. There was not a rebel or a traitor to be found among them. They ask the privilege of citizenship now that slavery has been forever banished from our country. Why should the great freedom-loving State of Iowa longer deny them this right? No one reason can be given that has not been used to bolster up slavery for the last hundred years. The war that has just closed has swept that relic of barbarism from our land; let the Republican Party have the courage to do justice...I have no fear of the result in a contest of this kind. We shall carry the election and have the satisfaction of wiping out the last vestige of the black code that has long been a disgrace to our State."

"I think you should learn, of course, and some days you must learn a great deal. But you should also have days when you allow what is already in you to swell up inside of you until it touches everything. And you can feel it inside you. If you never take time out to let that happen, then you just accumulate facts, and they begin to rattle around inside of you. You can make noise with them, but never really feel anything."

"I do not believe that just because you're opposed to abortion, that that makes you pro-life. In fact, I think in many cases, your morality is deeply lacking if all you want is a child born but not a child fed, not a child educated, not a child housed. And why would I think that you don't? Because you don't want any tax money to go there. That's not pro-life. That's pro-birth. We need a much broader conversation on what the morality of pro-life is."

"The secret of life is to let every segment of it produce its own yield at its own pace. Every period has something new to teach us. The harvest of youth is achievement; the harvest of middle-age is perspective, the harvest of age is wisdom; the harvest of life is serenity."

"Can one regard a fellow creature as a property item, an investment, a piece of meat, an ‘it,’ without degenerating into cruelty towards that creature?"

"Our natures are, indeed, elusively insubstantial — notoriously less stable and less inherent than the natures of other things. And insofar as this is the case, sincerity itself is bullshit."

"It is frequently insufficient to identify the motives that guide our conduct, or that shape our attitudes and our thinking, just by observing vaguely that there are various things we want. That often leaves out too much. In numerous contexts, it is both more precise and more fully explanatory to say that there is something we care about."

"There are benefits to be gained from the ambiguities of scientific discourse. Of the four previously identified functions served by ambiguity, two remain outside the boundaries of scientific work. The function of attaining enlightenment through the intuition of indeterminacy belongs to mysticism, or perhaps to philosophy and poetry, not to the disciplined activity of science. And the protection of one's meanings and intentions through ambiguously opaque utterance, while perhaps useful as a protective ploy in scientific competition, cannot be sanctioned as appropriate conduct for a scientific enquirer. Through its two other functions, however — the evocative representation of complex meanings and the bonding of a community through diffuse symbols — ambiguity has long served and will continue to serve the general objectives of scientific activity. It is useful for scientific formulations to express an abundance of meanings, for these can ignite a cluster of insights that in turn lead to novel explorations."

"For the early Greek writers Ethiopia was less a geographical location than a state of mind. For Greeks and Romans generally, Ethiopians meant dark-skinned peoples who lived south of Egypt. At times the reference was so vague as to include peoples from West Africa, Arabia, and India. At times it was more localized, referring to the Nubian kingdom of Kush, with its capital first at Napata and later at Meroe. What was constant was that the name Ethiopian denoted a person of dark color — literally, of burnt face — and that it connoted, above all else, remoteness."

"If Pompeo failed to report back to you on the conversation you instructed him to have with Binney, you might ask him about it now (even though the flimsy evidence of Russia hacking the DNC has now evaporated, with Binney vindicated). There were two note-takers present at the October 24, 2017 meeting at CIA headquarters. There is also a good chance the session was also recorded. You might ask Pompeo about that... Binney had the impression Pompeo was simply going through the motions — and disingenuously, at that. If he “really wanted to know about Russian hacking,” he would have acquainted himself with the conclusions that VIPS, with Binney in the lead, had reached in mid-2017, and which apparently caught your eye.... Had he pursued the matter seriously with Binney, we might not have had to wait until the Justice Department itself put nails in the coffin of Russiagate, CrowdStrike, and Comey. In sum, Pompeo could have prevented two additional years of “everyone knows that the Russians hacked into the DNC.” Why did he not?... Binney describes himself as a “country boy” from western Pennsylvania. He studied at Penn State and became a world renowned mathematician/cryptologist as well as a technical director at NSA. Binney’s accomplishments are featured in a documentary on YouTube, “A Good American.” You may wish to talk to him person-to-person... We are at your disposal, should you wish to discuss any of this with us."

"(referring to phone numbers stored in a database of phone and email records) Since '1' identifies anyone in the regional zone 1 of the world, that's the US, Canada and some of the islands - it's right there in the front of your white pages book ... all they have to do is use that as a base of knowledge to go in to their entire database and count all of the phone numbers there that had a one in them, right-and then the ones are in the United States and then they'd have a count of how many Americans are in the database and how often each one's there. And yet they claim they can't do that, which is false. You can do the same thing with email, with service providers, IPs and things like that."

"Incompetence at this scale, when they're doing things at this scale, is really dangerous, you could end up on a kill list without knowing what the criteria is to get on there or what the criteria is to get off."

"No online cipher is safe, simply because if they don't have the key they'll come across and get it from you. Assuming they didn't already implant it in the system"

"This is the research we did online for the 9/11 attacks ... we gave this briefing internally at the CIA, they said, 'how'd you know all this stuff?' because at the same time one of the emails had the date ... 9/11 as the attack date that was given"

"In our Memorandum to you of July 24, 2017 entitled “Was the ‘Russian Hack’ an Inside Job?,” we suggested: “You may wish to ask CIA Director Mike Pompeo what he knows about this..." Three months later, Director Pompeo invited William Binney, one of VIPS’ two former NSA technical directors...to CIA headquarters to discuss our findings. Pompeo began an hour-long meeting with Binney on October 24, 2017 by explaining the genesis of the unusual invitation: “You are here because the President told me that if I really wanted to know about Russian hacking I needed to talk to you.” But Did Pompeo ‘Really Want to Know’? Apparently not. Binney, a widely respected, plain-spoken scientist with more than three decades of experience at NSA, began by telling Pompeo that his (CIA) people were lying to him about Russian hacking and that he (Binney) could prove it. As we explained in our most recent Memorandum to you, Pompeo reacted with disbelief and — now get this — tried to put the burden on Binney to pursue the matter with the FBI and NSA. As for Pompeo himself, there is no sign he followed up by pursuing Binney’s stark observation with anyone..."

"In the early summer, the Russians started to train or exercise along the border with Czechoslovakia. I started looking at the communications they were using to move around and that's when I started to pick up some very small number of unique things that was different from a normal training programme. So I started to capture that, and I said: it's obvious that they're going to invade. It was only two days later that they actually invaded"

"This approach costs lives, and has cost lives in Britain because it inundates analysts with too much data. It is 99% useless. Who wants to know everyone who has ever [been] at Google or the BBC? We have known for decades that that swamps analysts,"

"Sixteen months before the attacks on America, our organisation [Signit Automation Research Center – Sarc] was running a new method of finding terrorist networks that worked on focusing on ‘smart collection’. Their plan was rejected in favour of a much more expensive plan to collect all communications from everyone."

"The US large-scale surveillance plan failed. It had to be abandoned in 2005. Checks afterwards showed that communications from the terrorists had been collected, but not looked at in time."

"I found out later that, NSA had approached the telecommunications companies in February of 2001, this is 8 months before 9/11 asking for all the customer data, that is the billing data on phone calls made from US citizens to other US citizens. In fact, the entire customer set. So, and that's fundamentally what they did after 9/11, here they were asking 8 months before. And what that meant to me was that this was the design from the beginning that management had made the plans to spy on the United States and people in the United States even before 9/11. Ok, then, when 9/11 occurred, that was the pure excuse for them to go in and say, 'now, telecoms, we really need the data now, to be able to do this to be, to protect the United States from terrorism.' and that was simply false to begin with. We had no problem at all identifying these people from the beginning."

"He made me feel like someone actually loved me."

"He was my big brother, he was somebody that I looked up to. He was my protector."

"I failed Eric as a father."

"Set up shelter and cleaned up... to let them know I’m still alive. Got text saying I’m a suspect. Saw patrol. Not spotted. They stuck to the trails. Listened to radio. News media calling me a ‘survivalist.’ Ha! Catchy phrase I guess. Shelter-in-place (ordered) by spooked cops."

"Found two packages of crackers. Broke into a place. … Took rice, Ramen and oil. Lord have mercy. Christ have mercy."

"I love him with all of my heart. I don't want my son on death row. He was a sweet person."

"If I am still alive and free know that I will do my best to remain as such. And as time goes by, if circumstances change, if my spark hit good tinder, then I may be able to return one day..."

"I squandered so much opportunity and support and rarely tried my best at anything. God knows I do not deserve the things I had, maybe because he knew I would be sacrificing all of it in the end, or maybe this is just the final squander. Who knows."

"Had to run. Jeep stuck. Ditched the (rifle.) Went on foot, heading southwest to stream under (Interstate) 84."

"Also, light a candle for me at the Russian or Greek Orthodox Church in Stroudsburg from time to time. It doesn't need to be during a liturgy, just whenever they are open. I am sure you can figure it out..."

"Our nation is far from what it was and what it should be. I have seen so many depressing changes made in my time that I cannot imagine what it must be like for you. There is so much wrong and on so many levels only passing through the crucible of another revolution can get us back the liberties we once had... I do not pretend to know what that revolution will look like or even if it would be successful..."

"If I am dead I would like to be buried in a wood coffin (no lead lined casket!) So that my remains can return to where they came from. I understand that this might not be possible though, laws and what not, so don't sweat it."

"Slept all day in abandoned camper. Crossed 84. No (police) activity. Started campfire."

"I met Bartley through David Theroux, the President of the Pacific Research Institute. Bartley and I then discussed Bartley’s Hayek projects on several occasions at his house in the Oakland Hills and at Stanford. I was very impressed by his command of the philosophy of science, but he had little background in economics. On a table at his house he had a copy of James Gwartney and Richard Stroup’s (1982) Economics: Private and Public Choice – an introductory textbook (which he was reading because he had scant knowledge of the subject). Bartley expressed an interest in having me assist him in an unspecified capacity."

"If there are females in your group, they will have plenty of hard and necessary work to do. Everyone will have to pull their own weight, but the hunting and fighting is almost always going to be up to the men. When lives are on the line, people will drop the etiquette of equality and make that decision again and again because it makes the most sense."

"Without strength, masculinity becomes something else- a different concept. Strength is not an arbitrary value assigned by human cultures. Increased strength is one of the fundamental biological differences between males and females. Aside from basic reproductive plumbing, greater strength is one of the most prominent, historically consequential and consistently measurable physical differences between males and females."

"Boys and girls don't pair off at birth and scurry off to a dank cave together. Humans have always been social animals. We live in cooperative groups. Our bodies sort us out into groups of males or females. We interact socially as members of one group or the other. These groups aren't arbitrary or cultural- they're basic and biological. Males have to negotiate male and female groups as males. Males aren't simply reacting to female groups as males. We react to other males, as males. Who we are has a lot to do with how we see ourselves in relationship to other males, as members of the male group."

"Men who have more muscle tend to have and maintain higher testosterone levels, and men who have higher testosterone levels tend to have an easier time getting bigger and stronger. Men who increase their testosterone levels- either through training and diet or via artificial means- tend to look more masculine. Put differently, men with more muscle look less like most women, and more like the least androgynous men. This has absolutely nothing to do with culture. There is no human culture where men who are weak are considered manlier while women who are muscular are considered more womanly. The importance of strength varies from society to society (usually in some relationship to available technologies and the kind of work that is required of average people) but strength has been a masculinity quality always and everywhere."

"Masculinity is about being a man within a group of men. Above all things, masculinity is about what men want from each other."

"Courage is an animating spirit of masculinity, and it is crucial to any meaningful definition of masculinity. Courage and strength are synergetic virtues. An overabundance of one is worth less without and adequate amount of the other."