Our People Quotes
Objectors to the Separation of Church and State Doctrine point to this quotation to justify giving preferences to Christians in majority Christian societies and presumably to prefer Muslims in Islamic nations. Most of the Founding Fathers and most of the general population were on the opposite side of this issue. Hence the First Amendment was one of the conditions for ratification. There has always been a large minority who believe that America was founded by people who were mostly Christian (Protestant) and there is nothing wrong with having America be a Christian nation and preferring Christians for key government positions.
Although the Nazis railed against the Communists & Socialists, the potential opposition they feared the most was the middle class. See also {582967}.
Even a cursory reading of the Koran and early Muslim history would show that there were vast inequalities in the economic order long before the ‘imperialists’ were involved in the Middle East. Throughout the Islamic world there has always been the oppressors and the oppressed and inequality has usually been much worse than in the ‘imperialist’ countries.
The Barbary Pirates had an incredible extortion racket going in the Mediterranean. If nations would pay them an annual sum each year, they would not attack and seize merchant ships of that country and sell the ships and goods while holding the sailors for ransom. See {640845} ,{640846} & {640848}
The governor reasoned that schools have to prepare students for the modern workforce and initiated a program to place computers in all Maine classrooms.
This is a very controversial Franklin quotation. In fact, Franklin never sent this letter to Strahan, but it is one of the most famous of the Franklin quotations. It was even famous in 1775. Franklin saw to it that copies of his “letter” reached most American newspaper editors, many of who reprinted it. It was not the first time that an American politician had made quotations for domestic consumption only, and it certainly was not the last. So Franklin never said this to his friend Strahan, but he did claim that he did to all who Americans who would listen. The result is that Franklin developed a reputation for really ‘telling off those Englishmen.’ This was important for him because since he had many friends and admirers in England, he was suspect to many anti-British Americans.
Urbanization has often alarmed the power structure. Given the harsher form of urban poverty compared with rural poverty, it was hard for politicians to understand the draw of the cities. They did not then understand the value and importance of greater opportunity, greater privacy and anonymity, more choice and more de facto freedom. Bannerman and many others would have been totally surprised that in the second decade of the 21st century, more than half the people in the entire world were living in cities and suburbs.
At the time, he was president of a de facto Puppet state of the soviet Union. However, many Afghans paid him no heed, and attacked Russians and their assets in Afghanistan with the object of driving the Russians out which they finally did.
Bush was a poor orator with a very limited command of the English language although he was quite bright and well educated. This is another of his classic gaffs.
