tagged with: excerpts

“The island upon which New York stands was bought from the Indians for the value of twenty-four dollars by Peter Minuits in 1626. Yet, if the purchaser had put his twenty-four dollars at interest, where he could have added it to the principal at the rate of seven per cent., the accumulation would now exceed the total value of the entire city and county of New York.”

What is Distributism? So many definitions have been given that the question ought to be a party game, and I myself have been guilty. But I’ve just found that Chesterton published a marvelously succinct definition himself in the pages of his own newspaper.

Boswell seems to have been somehow an adoring fan, drinking buddy, conversational contender, and needy friend all rolled into one. After taking his part in years and years and pages and pages of linguistic fireworks at Johnson’s side, we find a sudden attack of the teenage girl.

The similarity to Seuss floored me. I dimly realized there might be a whole heritage of epic comic verse lurking out there. Yet even this epiphany was eclipsed as the Glugs suddenly turned horribly familiar.

Curtis White: “What the environmental movement is not very good at is acknowledging that something in the very fabric of our daily life is deeply anti-nature as well as anti-human…Perhaps the most powerful way in which we conspire against ourselves is the simple fact that we have jobs.”

What? Don’t tell me you haven’t been celebrating this whole time? Must be one of our best-kept secrets: the Christmas *season.*

She orders the vanquished to tear down their city walls, imposes taxes–and claims to be a democracy.

Except I have to call it verse. The word poetry has somehow been permanently fused with whiny guys with 70s-style straight hair.

The passion behind all his work was joy, and the final touch of exaggeration is the absolute necessity of the great literature of joy.

So back when women were oppressed, we guys had to open the door for any one of them. Now, we only do it if she’s our boss or we’re selling her something.

Another means of silently lessening the inequality of property is to exempt all from taxation below a certain point, and to tax the higher portions of property in geometric progression as they rise. –Thomas Jefferson

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