Quote

Wartime always brings expansions of state power, together with erosions of moral and constitutional standards.

Joseph Sobran

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Joseph Sobran
Age: 64 †
Born: 1946
Born: February 23
Died: 2010
Died: September 30
Journalist
Writer
Ypsilanti
Michigan
Power
Wartime
Together
Erosion
States
Constitutional
Always
Expansion
Brings
Standards
Moral
State

More quotes by Joseph Sobran

Image
Freedom is coming to mean little more than the right to ask permission.
Joseph Sobran
Image
It's I politics that men are always aggravating the hopeless tangle of their laws, obscuring the simplest principles and making a mockery of liberty.
Joseph Sobran
Image
Why does corruption in government always surprise us? Why do we expect anything else from it? Government is organized force. It takes our wealth and makes war. And we think honest men would do that work?
Joseph Sobran
Image
Chesterton spoke of 'the modern and morbid habit of always sacrificing the normal to the abnormal.' It would be hard to sum up liberalism for succinctly.
Joseph Sobran
Image
Politicians never accuse you of 'greed' for wanting other people's money - only for wanting to keep your own money.
Joseph Sobran
Image
If we need women in our defense forces, we must not need much defense.
Joseph Sobran
Image
...[T]he Constitution conferred only a few specific powers on the federal government, all others being denied to it (as the Tenth Amendment would make plain). Unfortunately, only a tiny fraction of the U.S. population today - subtle logicians like you - can grasp such nuances. Too bad. The Constitution wasn't meant to be a brain-twister.
Joseph Sobran
Image
Loyalty to your country should never require you to lie about it.
Joseph Sobran
Image
Liberals see the Constitution itself as 'living' and 'evolving' that is, gradually turning into something that would have been unrecognizable to its authors.
Joseph Sobran
Image
There has never been a humane communist regime. Marxism is inherently totalitarian. It recognizes no moral limits on the state. It’s the most convenient ideology for aspiring tyrants it also retains its appeal for intellectuals, who have proved equally skillful at rationalizing abuses of power and at exculpating themselves.
Joseph Sobran
Image
Destroying white civilization is the inmost desire of the league of designated victims we call minorities.
Joseph Sobran
Image
The Constitution poses no threat to our current form of government.
Joseph Sobran
Image
Tyranny may creep in under the outward forms of traditional law.
Joseph Sobran
Image
Thus does a 'necessary evil' become an idol. Maybe we're stuck with it. But do we have to worship it?
Joseph Sobran
Image
Liberalism's fatal flaw,... is that it has no permanent norms, only a succession of enthusiasms espoused by minor prophets. Each of these seems like a hot new idea to liberals, but soon goes to irksome and destructive extremes.
Joseph Sobran
Image
I realize that the New York Times probably not written for the express purpose of driving me mad I think of it as liberalism's daily bulletin board.
Joseph Sobran
Image
The attempt to silence a man is the greatest honor you can bestow on him. It means that you recognize his superiority to yourself.
Joseph Sobran
Image
The Second Amendment, like the rest of the Bill of Rights, was meant to inhibit only the federal government, not the states. The framers, as The Federalist Papers attest (see No. 28), saw the state militias as forces that might be summoned into action against the federal government itself, if it became tyrannical.
Joseph Sobran
Image
The best argument for anarchism is the twentieth century.
Joseph Sobran
Image
The liberal understanding of 'the separation of church and state' means that as the area of politics expands, the area of private freedom - religious and otherwise - shrinks.
Joseph Sobran