- ON ONE SIDE ARE FOLKS WHO WANT TO RE-INFLATE THE WELFARE STATE.
- ON THE OTHER SIDE ARE PEOPLE WHO VALUE THEIR INDEPENDENCE AND SELF-RELIANCE.
WE CANNOT BE BOUGHT.
RTWT.
UPDATE: And now a few words from Ralph Waldo Emerson:
There is a time in every man's education when he arrives at the conviction that envy is ignorance; that imitation is suicide; that he must take himself for better for worse as his portion; that though the wide universe is full of good, no kernel of nourishing corn can come to him but through his toil bestowed on the plot of ground which is given him to till.
... Whoso would be a man, must be a non-conformist. He who would gather immortal palms must not be hindered by the name of goodness, but must explore if it be goodness. Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of your own mind.
... A man is to carry himself in the presence of all opposition as if every thing were titular and ephemeral but he.
... o not tell me, as a good man did today, of my obligation to put all poor men in good situations. Are they my poor? I tell thee thou foolish philanthropist that I grudge the dollar, the dime, the cent I give to such men as do not belong to me and to whom I do not belong. There is a class of persons to whom by all spiritual affinity I am bought and sold; for them I will go to prison if need be; but your miscellaneous popular charities; the education at the college of fools; the building of meeting-houses to the vain end to which many now stand; alms to sots, and the thousandfold Relief Societies; though I confess with shame I sometimes succumb and give the dollar, it is a wicked dollar, which by-and-by I shall have the manhood to withhold.
... Few and mean as my gifts may be, I actually am, and do not need for my own assurance or the assurance of my fellows any secondary testimony.
What I must do is all that concerns me, not what the people think. This rule, equally arduous in actual and in intellectual life, may serve for the whole distinction between greatness and meanness. It is the harder because you will always find those who think they know what is your duty better than you know it. It is easy in the world to live after the world's opinion; it is easy in solitude to live after our own; but the great man is he who in the midst of the crowd keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude.
The objection to conforming to usages that have become dead to you is that it scatters your force. It loses your time and blurs the impression of your character. If you maintain a dead church, contribute to a dead Bible-Society, vote with a great party either for the Government or against it, spread your table like base housekeepers, — under all these screens I have difficulty to detect the precise man you are. And of course so much force is withdrawn from your proper life. But do your thing, and I shall know you. Do your work, and you shall reinforce yourself.
... Why then do we prate of self-reliance? Inasmuch as the soul is present there will be power not confident but agent. To talk of reliance is a poor external way of speaking. Speak rather of that which relies because it works and is. Who has more soul than I masters me, though he should not raise his finger. Round him I must revolve by the gravitation of spirits.
... It is easy to see that a greater self-reliance — a new respect for the divinity in man — must work a revolution in all the offices and relations of men; in their religion; in their education; in their pursuits; their modes of living; their association; in their property; in their speculative views.
... nsist on yourself; never imitate. Your own gift you can present every moment with the cumulative force of a whole life's cultivation; but of the adopted talent of another you have only an extemporaneous half possession. That which each can do best, none but his Maker can teach him. No man yet knows what it is, nor can, till that person has exhibited it. Where is the master who could have taught Shakespeare? Where is the master who could have instructed Franklin, or Washington, or Bacon, or Newton? Every great man is an unique.
... Do that which is assigned thee and thou canst not hope too much or dare too much.
... And so the reliance on Property, including the reliance on governments which protect it, is the want of self-reliance.
... The political parties meet in numerous conventions; the greater the concourse and with each new uproar of announcement, The delegation from Essex! The Democrats from New Hampshire! The Whigs of Maine! the young patriot feels himself stronger than before by a new thousand of eyes and arms. In like manner the reformers summon conventions and vote and resolve in multitude. But not so, O friends! will the God deign to enter and inhabit you, but by a method presently the reverse. It is only as a man puts off from himself all external support and stands alone that I see him to be strong and to prevail. He is weaker by every recruit to his banner. Is not a man better than a town? Ask nothing of men, and, in the endless mutation, thou only firm column must presently appear the upholder of all that surrounds thee. He who knows that power is in the soul, that he is weak only because he has looked for good out of him and elsewhere, and, so perceiving, throws himself unhesitatingly on his thought, instantly rights himself, stands in the erect position, commands his limbs, works miracles; just as a man who stands on his feet is stronger than a man who stands on his head.
... Nothing can bring you peace but yourself. Nothing can bring you peace but the triumph of principles.
THE TEA PARTY IS NOT AN INCORPORATED FACTION MEANT TO PERSIST WITH CONVENTIONS AND PATRONAGE.
THE TEA PARTY IS AN EMERSONIAN ARMY; IT IS AN ARMY OF DAVIDS.
READY TO FIGHT AND WIN. AND THEN GO HOME TILL WE MUST FIGHT AGAIN ---
--- LIKE CINCINNATUS - AND LIKE THE AMERICAN CINCINNATUS, GENERAL GEORGE WASHINGTON.
Omnia relinquit servare republicam
("He relinquished everything to save the Republic")MORE HERE.
UPDATE: SCOOPED GLENN BY 4 HOURS.
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