John Dean "Jeff" Cooper probably needs no introduction to most of you, but for the uninitiated, he was a Lt. Col. in the USMC, a WWII Pacific Theater veteran, founder of Gunsite Academy, small arms expert, prolific author, and an erudite philosopher with a laser-like mind. Sadly, he is no longer with us. I came across this quote today, and it seems more relevant now than when he penned it years ago. I offer it for you to ponder.

"The conclusions seem inescapable that in certain circles a tendency has arisen to fear people who fear government. Government, as the Father of Our Country put it so well, is a dangerous servant and a fearful master. People who understand history, especially the history of government, do well to fear it. For a people to express openly their fear of those of us who are afraid of tyranny is alarming. Fear of the state is in no sense subversive. It is, to the contrary, the healthiest political philosophy for a free people."

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- Cogito, ergo armatus sum -

Those surrounding the current president remind me greatly of those who surrounded Lenin. They thought that they would always be on top and that one of their own would never turn a wolfish eye toward THEM. There was no need for limits on state power because THEY would always control the state.

They didn't recognize the truth until it was too late and the
Kamenevs, Zinovievs, Radeks and Bukharins had taken their one way trips to the cellar of the Lubyanka.

Just like the Old Bolsheviks, the Cass Sunsteins and the rest are too smart by half. It'll come back to bite the rest of us, but if it does, it'll probably bite them just as hard, if not harder. It just takes one guy who's not as smart as they are, but a thousand times more cunning.

Exactly. But who studies history any more?

Thank God I flunked algebra and read history books instead.

If I'm not mistaken, the good colonel was also a qualified professor of history, so his views and insights were tempered with knowledge.

Among many other attributes I admired his command of the language and his insistence that "words mean things" and just because you may get away with it, assigning your own meaning to terms is not acceptable.

Those who have not read Cooper would do well to do so. Articulate and entertaining, you may not agree with his opinions but you cannot argue with his facts. The world is a shabbier place for his passing. Men like Cooper seem to be in short supply these days in places where it counts.

I suspect our transcripts would look very similar.

I'm currently reading Conquest's "The Great Terror, a Reassessment". I've probably read a dozen books on Stalin and the purges. He was the consummate sociopath of the sort who always knows how to get the cows to willingly walk down the chute to the killing floor.

You'd figure that leftists would know better than think they're immune to human nature... unless you know leftists. As an unusually perceptive leftist friend used to say to his fellow leftists, "Don't start believing your own propaganda."

I didn't always agree with Cooper, but unlike most "thought" on the left AND right, what he wrote usually seemed to reflect actual THOUGHT.

One of my favorite sayings is: the essence of freedom is the proper limitation of government.