Opinions on The American Republican (GOP) Race, 2011...

I believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies. -- Thomas Jefferson (How appropriate and up-to-date! -- dgb)

If the present Congress errs in too much talking, how can it be otherwise in a body to which the people send one hundred and fifty lawyers, whose trade it is to question everything, yield nothing, and talk by the hour? -- Thomas Jefferson (Gotta like that one...dgb)

It behooves every man who values liberty of conscience for himself, to resist invasions of it in the case of others: or their case may, by change of circumstances, become his own.
-- Thomas Jefferson

It does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are twenty gods or no God.
-- Thomas Jefferson (As long as my neighbor doesn't attack me for saying something different -- dgb).


It is in our lives and not our words that our religion must be read.
-- Thomas Jefferson

It is incumbent on every generation to pay its own debts as it goes. A principle which if acted on would save one-half the wars of the world.
-- Thomas Jefferson

It takes time to persuade men to do even what is for their own good.
-- Thomas Jefferson (Especially when what you know is good for you in the long run is going to hurt you a lot in the short term. -- dgb)


Leave no authority existing not responsible to the people.
-- Thomas Jefferson (That would leave about 95% of business owners and CEOs out of a job, as well as bankers, investors, advertisers, and a lot of politicians -- and I have probably just scratched the surface...dgb)


Merchants have no country. The mere spot they stand on does not constitute so strong an attachment as that from which they draw their gains.
-- Thomas Jefferson (Global Capitalism in a nutshell. -- dgb.)

In matters of style, swim with the current; in matters of principle, stand like a rock.
-- Thomas Jefferson

Never spend your money before you have earned it.
-- Thomas Jefferson

No government ought to be without censors; and where the press is free no one ever will.
-- Thomas Jefferson

No man will ever carry out of the Presidency the reputation which carried him into it.
-- Thomas Jefferson

Nothing can stop the man with the right mental attitude from achieving his goal; nothing on earth can help the man with the wrong mental attitude.
-- Thomas Jefferson

One man with courage is a majority.
-- Thomas Jefferson

Our country is now taking so steady a course as to show by what road it will pass to destruction, to wit: by consolidation of power first, and then corruption, its necessary consequence.
-- Thomas Jefferson

Our greatest happiness does not depend on the condition of life in which chance has placed us, but is always the result of a good conscience, good health, occupation, and freedom in all just pursuits.
-- Thomas Jefferson

Rightful liberty is unobstructed action according to our will within limits drawn around us by the equal rights of others. I do not add 'within the limits of the law' because law is often but the tyrant's will, and always so when it violates the rights of the individual.
-- Thomas Jefferson

That government is the strongest of which every man feels himself a part.
-- Thomas Jefferson

The boisterous sea of liberty is never without a wave.
-- Thomas Jefferson

The moment a person forms a theory, his imagination sees in every object only the traits which favor that theory.
-- Thomas Jefferson

The natural progress of things is for liberty to yield and government to gain ground.
-- Thomas Jefferson

The way to silence religious disputes is to take no notice of them.
-- Thomas Jefferson

The whole commerce between master and slave is a perpetual exercise of the most boisterous passions, the most unremitting despotism on the one part, and degrading submissions on the other. Our children see this, and learn to imitate it.
-- Thomas Jefferson

Timid men prefer the calm of despotism to the tempestuous sea of liberty.
-- Thomas Jefferson

To compel a man to furnish funds for the propagation of ideas he disbelieves and abhors is sinful and tyrannical.
-- Thomas Jefferson

We may consider each generation as a distinct nation, with a right, by the will of its majority, to bind themselves, but none to bind the succeeding generation, more than the inhabitants of another country.
-- Thomas Jefferson




Google Brainy Quotes, Thomas Jefferson for these and other Jefferson quotes...dgb

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And now, from the more general...to the more specific...as pertains to the present Republican candidate race in 2011...

In my opinion, the two best Conservative/Republican thinkers inside or outside this election race are Donald Trump and Ron Paul. Mitt Romney continues to try to patrol a very 'wide centrefield' that makes you ask whether he is dedicated more to his own political and economic ideology or to his 'electability status'.

Trump and Paul remain consistent to their Capitalist and Conservative ideals which is probably what America needs more than anything else right now -- as long as these 'ideals' include all of America, and not just the upper 5 percent...

Paul seems radical at first take, but he's not really. He's just 'a good, old fashioned, Conservative, Republican, Capitalist. No bullcrap. He tells you the way he believes it...Some of the Republican 'flip-floppers' and 'avoiders' and 'abstractionists' are falling by the wayside of public opinion...which is a good thing...

Paul calls it the way he sees it...America can't or won't get out of debt by printing more and more money, nor by going deeper and deeper into debt...
The spending has to stop...there is no other way that you are going to get yourself out of debt unless unless you tax the American people until they have no money left...or unless private and public income starts to soar again which will only happen when American manufacturing jobs that are now located in all the cheapest jobs markets in the world -- which unfortunuately, does not include America -- come back home. And for them to come back home again, all 'free -- and unfair -- trade agreements' -- have to be dismantled. All these free trade agreements have put America at a gross disadvantage in terms of 'labor issues'. Either labor prices have to crash to meet global competition in countries like China, Mexico, South Korea, India, South American countries...where labor practises are often oppressive, dehumanizing, and would set back American labor practices 100 years...Or, again, these 'allegedly free trade agreements' -- which are only 'free' to the global capitalists who can take advantage of them -- need to be dismantled, and 'protectionist tariffs' would have to be re-instated in their place.

As Trump boldly stated, you don't see Japan buying American Chevrolets...Why is the rest of the world allowed to maintain their 'nationalstic protectionist policies' while America and Canada are not? It would be easy to blame Reagan and Mulroney for the beginning of the The Free Trade Agreement, but no President or Prime Minister since has tried to rescind it...Why? Because it benefits the Global Capitalists who have helped to finance and keep these Presidents and Prime Ministers in power...

Obama made waves about The Free Trade Agreement when he first came into power....but those waves were quickly squashed...and there has been no mention of The Free Trade Agreement since by most political and/or economic men in power...except a very vocal Trump in a CNN interview a few days ago...

Obama came into power at the worst possible time...a time when the American debt was skyrocketing...and he wanted or still wants to bring in his new medical policies....Socialized medicine -- i.e., medicine for the poor as well as the rich, and medicine that doesn't not bankrupt a certain proportion of Americans -- is a good thing, just not necessarily the right thing to bring in at the right time, when the country as a whole is 'drowning in debt'...

And the American people, I do not believe, will ever forgive Obama for doing what he said -- or at least implied -- he wouldn't do: bail out the robbers on Wall Street which is why Wall Street is being 'occupied' right now...

The American people were led to believe by Obama's strong and charismatic campaign speeches that Obama had the strength and courage to stand up against 'American political and economic corruption' -- the lobbyists in Washington, the collusions and crooked back room deals both in Washington and on Wall Street...And that hasn't happened... In fact, there was not only one but two Wall Street Bail Outs under Obama's watch...Payments to the robbers on Wall Street with 'public chastisements not to do it again'...No one went to jail...Some very guilty CEOs and top executives could have been held accountable for what happened, either arrested on fraudulent charges, and/or left to try to 'swim in their own self-created bankruptcy'....But instead, they were given 'billions of taxpayers dollars' to make their banks and mortgage companies 'solvent' again, while the rest of America that got 'ripped off' had to 'eat their own financial losses'

Where is the 'free market' -- and 'invisible hand' -- justice in that Wall Street fiasco? Adam Smith is turning over and 'vomitting' in his grave...He...and I think Jefferson...never did trust 'bankers', told us to 'watch them closely', not to let them have a 'free, unadulterated, narcissistic licence to do whatever they wanted to do'...and if anything, it was perhaps the American government, under an earlier President, who initiated these 'manipulative, back-end loaded, exploding mortgages'..

'Let's get more people into their own homes -- even if they have to evacuate them, or we have to evict them, when they can't meet their rising interest levels deeper in the contract.'

Wow -- that was certainly a brilliant idea, but certainly not for these new homeowners. American Capitalism at its narcissistic -- best or worst -- depending on your perspective. Great for the bankers and mortgage companies at first -- until they had a financial disaster bigger than Hurricane Katrina on their hands...

I like Trump, and I like Paul, because those two tell us what they believe, do not mince words, and do not squirm in their respective seats under pressure, and hard questions...

Question to Trump: How do you get Americans working again?

Answer by Trump as I can recall it, with my own extension: Well, the first thing you have to do is to stop American manufacturing companies from leaving America...Bring back American manufacturing companies to America by re-introducing tariffs (25%) on on imported goods (and services). Stop getting financially ripped off by countries all around the world. America used to be the most powerful financial company in the world. Now, it is practically the laughing-stock of the world. Why? Because other countries 'rip us off in business and economic negotiations' and we continue to let them do it to us, without so much as a wimper... 'International political correctness and niceness' has led to 'national business and economic disaster within America'. And America is being internationally manipulated all the way to national bankruptcy...

That is what practically every American politican is afraid to say...

And Trump wasn't afraid to say it...

I believe that Paul would probably echo much the same opinion...

Those are the only two opinions that I hear these days...

That I believe have the capability of actually pulling America out of debt...

Another four years of the same or worse type of 'internationally politically nice ideology'...and it will probably be too late to fix anything...at least in America...

I like Obama's 'Enlightenment Ideals'... I think that Obama 'turned soft' on a few things that he shouldn't have -- like 'The Free Trade Agreement' -- and overall, I just do not believe that Obama has the 'right type of stuff' to turn America's financial situation around and put it back on track again....You can't just keep spending and printing money...

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If I have been a little 'loose' on my generalizations, understand that I believe that there are still some very ethical businessmen out there conducting business who I have the greatest respect for -- especially when they are good to both their customers and their employees...The sad -- even tragic -- part is that I believe that such businessmen are becoming fewer and fewer between...It's like 'do what the greedy, the colluding, and manipulative are doing lest I be left behind...Which reminds me that I left out a couple of quotes that I need to go back and look for...' -- dgb

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And back from the more specific to the more general in terms of two more anecdotal quotes from another one of our most famous political-economic predecessors...

No society can surely be flourishing and happy, of which the far greater part of the members are poor and miserable. -- Adam Smith

To feel much for others and little for ourselves; to restrain our selfishness and exercise our benevolent affections, constitute the perfection of human nature. -- Adam Smith

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-- dgb, October 30th, 2011,

-- David Gordon Bain,

-- Dialectic-Gap-Bridging Negotiations...

-- Are Still in Process...