Repayment Quotes
Johnson was Vice President at the time. What he did not realize at the time was that one of the plotters was supposed to have killed him at the same time as the others, but the assassin got cold feet at the last minute and never entered Johnson’s house.
City motto taken from the latin phrase “Pro tanto quid retribuamus” from Psalms 116:12 of the Latin Vulgate Bible.
This proverb only makes sense in the light of understanding the Arab concept of revenge—“blood.” In a rural desert environment where little can be expected of government, the Arabs have developed a law enforcement and peace keeping mechanism which while primitive from modern standards, nevertheless worked to some degree. It is that revenge—“blood” is a moral necessity and obligation of all people, and revenge is not limited by time or to the individuals involved in the first incidence. The immediate family are the first to extract revenge, but the extended family follows and often the entire clan. Sometimes revenge is tribal or even national. Anyone who fails to revenge a member in his group is not only a disgrace, but is a clear and present danger to the group because then they can be attacked with impunity. So revenge is a strong obligation of the group members and blood must be paid with blood no matter how many generations it may take. The only thing that keeps me and my family safe, is the surety what whosoever kills one of us will themselves be killed or if they die a natural death we will take revenge on one of the evildoers relatives. Crime must never pay!
Eli Whitney, the inventor of the cotton gin, tried his hand as a gun manufacturer early in the history of the new nation. He persuaded President Thomas Jefferson that he could manufacture muskets with interchangeable parts in an era where each gun was made uniquely and there were no “spare parts.” So Whitney was the first of the American Defense Contractors. He was also the first to fail to deliver on his contract. His guns were years late and when they were finally delivered, they were very expensive and worse, not very good. The reason that this quotation is cited is that while Irvine was trying to recover the taxpayer’s money, Whitney visited the Secretaries of State and War as well as President Madison and members of Congress. The result was to give Whitney another chance and another big order for 15,000 guns. Even Whitney later admitted that these were not very good. Some argue that this quotation shows that nothing has changed much in military procurement and defense spending.
Debts accumulated by the allies in World War I was still outstanding a decade later. When it was proposed that the United States help reduce this debt, President Coolidge remarked:
