Original Quotes: Ronald A. Guillemette

Introduction. All of the following quotes originally appeared in my political blog posts. A couple of collections appeared as their own segments, but others are miscellaneous quotes that I simply copy-and-pasted to a separate text file. I am unaware of any similar quotes elsewhere.

I will edit this page on a periodic basis. (created 6/20/12, last modified  11/29/15*)

General

• "It is enough for any one man just to reflect on his own sins."
• "The reality of her beauty exceeded my imagination."
• "There's no need to further burden hearts already broken."
• "A parent's heart can never be made whole while a piece of it is lost in the world."
• "What a wonderful talent and gift: to cultivate, not crush, the spirit of a young boy or girl; to let them know that their contributions matter and they make a difference; to show them a measure of respect;  to stop, watch, listen, and acknowledge what they do or say."
• "Her friendship has been one of God's blessings in my life; when you love a woman you have no choice but to wish God's blessings each and every day of her life, even a life without you." 

Blog Signature Phrases and Quotes

• Barack Obama "the Pied Piper of Failed Liberalism", "Santa Obama"
• "If  there is one thing Obama knows, it's symbolism."
• "Government regulation is a poor substitute for a robust free market and market competition."

If I Were President  essay

"I believe in America,
as beautiful as her children,
as limitless as their dreams and ambitions,
as worthy as her founding ideals,
as good as the hearts of her people."

The Guillemette Political Principles: Part 1

• "Progressives will seek to expand the state's mandate so long as there is net political benefit."
• "Government employees are the first among equal citizens."
• "A politician necessarily promises the unachievable.
• "Those who enable another class are also barbarians."
• "Mature businesses vest in the government."
• "Progressives strip and refinish a veneer platform and sell it as new."
• "Politicians polish common stones and convince the public what they hold are diamonds."
• "Progressives start out with the idea of a glider and end up with a Spruce Goose."
• "A politician out of power will argue a passed bill was both too big and too small."
• "A progressive will write any amount on a voided check."
• "Any novice candidate will note that he's not an incumbent; any incumbent will note that he's not a novice."
• "The length of a politician's speech is inversely related to the sum of his accomplishments."

The Guillemette Political Principles: Part 2

• "A government bureaucrat's appetite always exceeds whatever is on his plate."
• "The greatest enemy of a government bureaucrat is never a reformer, but another bureaucrat."
• "Fiat currency is always backed by fool's gold."
• "A politician is necessarily obscure, so that he can always declare victory."
• "A politician who is truthful and candid will always be quoted by his opponent."
• "The one sure way to reduce the number of criminals is to repeal a law."
• "The successful government bureaucrat knows to ask for more than he wants."
• "The wise politician distrusts any popular bill."
• "The heroic politician always dies by friendly fire."

"Newton's Laws of Politics" 

(my repackaging of Newton's laws of motion in a political context)

• "A bureaucrat remains at rest (until you change the rules of his compensation)."
• "The larger the federal budget, the greater the political will needed to reform it."
• "Any act of public fiscal responsibility has an equal and opposite reaction from demagogues and interest groups."

On Virtue

• "Virtue is intrinsic to moral development. One does not help people by enabling dysfunctional behavior or by reinforcing undue dependence on others. The virtuous man does not compel virtue in others or otherwise subordinate them to himself."

On Democracy

• "TRUE democracy: People get to  freely purchase products and services with their own money."
•  "Any robust democracy necessarily depends on individual liberty. Without liberty, the marketplace is unduly limited in the provision of goods and services. The people's wants and needs are more comprehensively served by a more open, diverse, competitive system of voluntary exchanges."

On Taxes

• "Taxation is a Statist method to manipulate economic behavior."

On Politics, Politicians and Crony Capitalists

• "I view the proper role of government like a good waiter: it's there when needed without being asked, it doesn't interrupt the flow of the occasion,  it resolves any differences I may have with the chef over the dinner transaction, and it  keeps away bothersome diners whom would intrude on my dining experience. In exchange for those services, I'm willing to pay a reasonable fee."
• "Political success often depends on the effective use of deceptive rhetoric, exaggerating one's limited abilities, qualifications, contributions, and accomplishments,  raising unrealistic expectations of what government can or even should do,  deflecting criticism and responsibility, and knowingly mischaracterizing the opposition's position, often in derisive, personal terms. The politician learns early not to speak his mind, to pay tribute to the patriot and to rail against the straw man, to promise what is popular and not to speak of what is necessary, to defer the contentious, and to prefer formulaic, but not direct, responses to difficult questions."
• "The demagogue notes that this is not heaven and his opponents are not angels; but the long, hard trail to the summit is never crowded. "
• " Any thief, including the common politician, rationalizes his crime."
• " A congressman should only vote for spending knowing his grandkids may end up paying the bills out of their hard-earned money."
• "Government spending is basically an overrated, disingenuous shell game, that seizes funds from the private sector, today and the future. That noncompetitive government spending is more effectively spent than the private sector is pure hubris; all it does is attract special-interest parasites, not unlike insects hovering about a garbage dump."
• "A good politician is like a little Dutch boy trying to plug a hole in the dike with his finger...." 
• "Politicians are morally corrupt, vain creatures whom invent new ways to plunder the masses, spend the loot to sustain their tenure, and rule by arbitrary fiat."
• "Every corrupt politician sees himself as the reincarnation of Robin Hood and judges his victims thieves. A tyranny of politicians bribe the many with their plunder of the few."

On Government Bureaucrats

• "Canning a bureaucrat a day keeps the taxman away."
• "The first survivors of any disaster are the bureaucrats."
• "The government sucks up dollars directly or indirectly (compliance or mandated costs) that would otherwise be saved, invested or spent in the real economy versus sustaining a parasitic bureaucracy."
• "Utopia is believing Statists will ever surrender their ill-gotten gains."

On the Law

• "A lawmaker is like a bear emerging from his lair, and the wise man avoids his attention. The cubs may look harmless, but the prudent man keeps his distance: he knows that the mother is watching, even if he does not see her. The vigilant man waits to rest until the bears hibernate."
• "A lawyer is like a toll keeper: his vested interest is the existence of law, not its nature. A law is effective insofar as it yields a client, the state or individual."
• "The law is like an iceberg: we only see the tip. What sinks the ship is the government, the bureaucrats and the judges, beneath the surface."
• "By the fruits of the law should you know it. Good law does not yield vice, and bad law does not yield virtue. If the law corrupts men, it should be repealed, condemned to the fire." (reflection on Matthew 7:16-23)
• "If laws were sufficient, man would not require liberty, conscience or judgment. Thus, if the law is necessary, the first law must protect man's liberty, conscience, and judgment."
• "What prohibits a law may restrain shame."
• "The best way to get a bad law repealed is to expose its practical relevance."
• "Ignorance of the law is the salvation of any incumbent politician."
• "The law is a balloon: when the target is squeezed, crime is displaced."
• "The law is a dam: it is as strong as the lawmaker's weakest assumption."
• "The law is Chinese whispers where justices have the final word."

On Reform

• "We need some common sense reforms, like eliminating reelections , implementing (like Switzerland) the public's right to veto legislation, requiring super-majority votes to run deficits or raise the debt limit, and enacting accounting reforms that specifically address unfunded liabilities and require cost/benefit analyses for any proposed regulation."

On Liberty and Government

• "Past failures are not indicative of future improvement, especially when we are discussing the government."
• "In the land of the free, we have morphed into a nation of busybodies consumed with controlling the behavior and property of other people."
• "The seeds of economic growth lie in giving up the ghost of obsolete costs."
• "Any government must be bound by  resources, and since the law is fixed, non-innovative, and since rights and responsibilities are diffuse, inefficient."
• "Ignorance of the free market, which every politician is supposed to know, does not constitute an excuse."
• "Laws are like cobwebs, which don't catch any spiders."
• "We need to make trades, not war."
• "Afghanistan is not worth one more brokenhearted mother's lifetime sentence of tears, each empty birthday and holiday to follow; she gave the greatest gift of all, her irreplaceable son--and in return, she gets a knock on the door, scripted words, a piece of cloth, filled-in documents, trinkets, and fleeting lip service on days that other families enjoy their holiday."
• "Whatever minimal government should exist must be efficiently run."
• "Liberty means never having to ask for permission." 
• "Leviathan is rotting internally with gangrene spreading; we need leaders whom have the courage to amputate excess government."
• "Obama needs to stop obsessing how big the slices of the pie are; all he's doing is ending up with shrinking pies. He needs to focus is growing the pie (so ALL the slices get bigger), and the way you do that is to get all the politicians out of the kitchen and let the chefs do their own thing." 
• "The State decides to teach men to fish; the consequence is a surplus of fishermen and fishless ponds."
• "If and when government fails in its primary objective, to secure the natural rights of citizens, it loses its legitimacy."*

On Regulation

• "Regulation basically becomes a vicious circle of government incompetence."
• "Only a Statist would see federal rule-making as a value-added service."

On Progressives, Social Liberals, High Liberals

• "The progressive always assumes no unintended consequences to his policies."
• "The failure of any progressive policy is never attributable to its concept or design."
• "A progressive politician is just another bourgeois king expanding the reach of his empire under the veneer of democracy and high-sounding rhetoric."
• "If a progressive has no enemy, he'll invent one."
• "Any progressive policy is axiomatically virtuous: it is, by definition, fair, balanced, and necessary. Hence, it follows that any opposition is arbitrary."
• "Redistributive policies inevitably result in the moral corruption of a large number of target recipients."
• "Any spending cut is translatable to a social program's worthiest recipients or public servants."
• "Redistributive policies inevitably result in the moral corruption of a large number of target recipients."
• "If you build it, the tax collector will come."
• "You cannot finesse the evil of bloated Progressive government with rasps or rifflers: you need a point chisel or a pitching tool."
• "In a world where women are CEO's of major corporations like IBM and HP or Obama proved the Americans would elect a black man President and there are self-made female millionaires and billionaires like Oprah Winfrey and Martha Stewart, isn't it time we take the federal training wheels off the bike?"
• "But I, for one, am sick and tired of megalomaniac progressive politicians seeking to expand their economy-sapping Statist empire building agenda, whoring science and crying crocodile tears." 
• "Fear-mongering is the State public safety monopolist's way of manipulating voters into feeding the beast."
• "If you build a government program, they will come." 
• "Do no harm. (And all 'progressive' legislation is harmful.)"
• "And "progressives" believe that if they build it, the taxes will come..." 
• " I have a new twist on the saw "those who can't do, teach": "those who won't give, preach""

On Libertarians

• "Libertarians would rather kill the heretic than the infidel."

On Party Politics

(I was a registered Democrat through graduate school, always pro-life and a fiscal hawk, eventually a full conservative. I left the party after the Bork hearings, but the party had left me first. I am not actively involved in politics.)

• "A Democrat will find a way to balance the budget--when it's in surplus."
• "Vote for Democrats. (You get what your children will pay for...)"
• ".Jefferson must be turning over in his grave over how his original party has morphed into a central-planning vortex, a black hole, if you will, sucking up all free market resources within its gravitational pull."