Larry P. Arnn > Quotes

“It is important for all of us to understand that free people are not governed by rules. Here at Hillsdale we are governed by goals, and then the rules are very broad.”
― Larry P. Arnn

“Socialism or overweening State life, whether in peace or war, is only sharing miseries and not blessings. Every self-respecting citizen in every country must be on his guard lest the rulers demand of him in time of peace sacrifices only tolerable in a period of war for national self-preservation.”
― Larry P Arnn, Churchill's Trial: Winston Churchill and the Salvation of Free Government

“In two decisive respects, the United States of America is unique. First, it has a definite birthday: July 4th, 1776. Second, it declares from the moment of its founding not merely the principles on which its new government will be based; it asserts those principles to be true and universal:”
― Larry P. Arnn, The 1776 Report

“Churchill admired the division of powers in the American government, but he thought they were copied from much older British practices. In 1950 he said: [T]he division of ruling power has always been for more than 500 years the aim of the British people. The division of power is the keynote of our parliamentary system and of the constitutions we have spread all over the world. The idea of checks and counter checks; the resistance to the theory that one man, or group of men, can by sweeping gestures and decisions reduce all the rest of us to subservience; these have always been the war cries of the British nation and the division of power has always been one of the war cries of the British people. And from here the principle was carried to America. The scheme of the American Constitution was framed to prevent any one man or any one lot, getting arbitrary control of the whole nation.”
― Larry P Arnn, Churchill's Trial: Winston Churchill and the Salvation of Free Government

“[The authors of the Declaration of Independence] did not mean to assert the obvious untruth, that all were then actually enjoying that equality, nor yet, that they were about to confer it immediately upon them. In fact they had no power to confer such a boon. They meant simply to declare the right, so that the enforcement of it might follow as fast as circumstances should permit. They meant to set up a standard maxim for free society, which should be familiar to all, and revered by all; constantly looked to, constantly labored for, and even though never perfectly attained, constantly approximated, and thereby constantly spreading and deepening its influence, and augmenting the happiness and value of life to all people of all colors everywhere”
― Larry P. Arnn, The Founders' Key: The Divine and Natural Connection Between the Declaration and the Constitution and What We Risk by Losing It

“Hitler never won a majority in a national election until he had the nation in his grip and elections meant nothing. He did win several pluralities and built the largest and most influential party in the German state. His supporters saw him as the solution to the weakness of that state: he would restore discipline and order; he would recover the greatness of the nation; he would wring justice from its conquerors and undo the bitter peace of Versailles.”
― Larry P Arnn, Churchill's Trial: Winston Churchill and the Salvation of Free Government

“Forget for a moment that we know Hitler to be a monster.4 Remember that he was for years one of the most exciting forces to arise in modern European history, and that he appeared to millions as a figure of hope. Following the First World War, his country was in the throes of steep decline, and he was returning it to order and health.”
― Larry P Arnn, Churchill's Trial: Winston Churchill and the Salvation of Free Government

“When the Labour government announced its plan in 1950 to nationalize the steel industry, Churchill remarked, “All this [the steel industry] is to be thrown into disorder not because the Government wants more steel but because they want more power”
― Larry P Arnn, Churchill's Trial: Winston Churchill and the Salvation of Free Government

“Government in Britain, the United States, and much of the West is more expansive, more expensive, and less trusted (at least in the United States) than it was in Churchill’s day.”
― Larry P Arnn, Churchill's Trial: Winston Churchill and the Salvation of Free Government

“James Madison wrote that government is necessary because men are not angels, and limits on government are necessary because angels do not govern men.”
― Larry P Arnn, Churchill's Trial: Winston Churchill and the Salvation of Free Government

“The safety of a republic depends essentially on the energy of a common national sentiment; on a uniformity of principles and habits; on the exemption of the citizens from foreign bias, and prejudice; and on that love of country which will almost invariably be found to be closely connected with birth, education and family.”
― Larry P. Arnn, The 1776 Report

“We may all speak, or pray, or assemble, or hold our own property, and all at the same time, and without depriving anyone else of the “like advantage.” The new economic rights, as suggested here by Churchill and later by Franklin Roosevelt, require that some must sacrifice property so that others may not lose theirs. In those cases the state arbitrates who keeps and who gains property, and to that extent it replaces the free market.”
― Larry P Arnn, Churchill's Trial: Winston Churchill and the Salvation of Free Government

“echoed the point of Edmund Burke that the British Constitution was a “partnership not only between those who are living, but between those who are living, those who are dead, and those who are to be born.”
― Larry P Arnn, Churchill's Trial: Winston Churchill and the Salvation of Free Government

“One of the greatest reasons for avoiding war,” he wrote, “is that it is destructive to liberty.”8 So, too, is the waging of war in peacetime upon domestic evils.”
― Larry P Arnn, Churchill's Trial: Winston Churchill and the Salvation of Free Government

“civil servants should be both civil and servants,”
― Larry P Arnn, Churchill's Trial: Winston Churchill and the Salvation of Free Government

“The American Constitution, Churchill wrote, is one of the finest achievements in history because it guarantees these freedoms.”
― Larry P Arnn, Churchill's Trial: Winston Churchill and the Salvation of Free Government

“Churchill made a point about the power of government: A National or Municipal Beef Trust, with the United States Treasury at its back, might indeed give more regular employment at higher wages to its servants, and might sell cleaner food to its customers—at a price. But if evil systems corrupt good men, it is no less true that base men will dishonor any system, and while no bond of duty more exacting than that of material recompense regulates the relations of man and man, while no motion more lofty than that of self-interest animates the exertions of every class, and no hope beyond the limits of this fleeting world lights the struggles of humanity, the most admirable systems will merely succeed in transferring, under different forms and pretexts, the burden of toil, misery, and injustice from one set of human shoulders to another.”
― Larry P Arnn, Churchill's Trial: Winston Churchill and the Salvation of Free Government

“No legislation at present in view interests the democracy. . . . All their minds are turning more and more to the social and economic issue. This revolution is irresistible. They will not tolerate the existing system by which wealth is acquired, shared & employed. They may not be able, they may be willing to recognize themselves unable, to devise a new system. I think them very ready & patient beyond conception. But they will set their faces like flint against the money power, the heir of all other powers & tyrannies overthrown.”
― Larry P Arnn, Churchill's Trial: Winston Churchill and the Salvation of Free Government

“The inherent vice of capitalism,” we have seen him say, “is the unequal sharing of blessings. The inherent virtue of Socialism is the equal sharing of miseries.”55 He regarded capitalism as a virtue with potential vices. He regarded the virtue of socialism as no virtue at all.”
― Larry P Arnn, Churchill's Trial: Winston Churchill and the Salvation of Free Government

“Churchill said that civilization begins with the institutions of limited government and the rule of law. In the immediate sense, civilization is a political term calling for a liberal kind of politics in which the military is not all and civilians control the government. In liberal society we do not think of nonpolitical things as political, yet in one way they are: the regime that depends upon a private institution such as property, family, or religion will not do well unless those private institutions do well. When the Socialist Party adopts a different attitude toward religion or toward family, it takes a different view of the constitution every bit as much as when it adopts a different attitude toward property.”
― Larry P Arnn, Churchill's Trial: Winston Churchill and the Salvation of Free Government

“It is at once the safeguard and the glory of mankind that they are easy to lead and hard to drive.”
― Larry P Arnn, Churchill's Trial: Winston Churchill and the Salvation of Free Government

“There is enough for all. The earth is a generous mother; she will provide in plentiful abundance food for all her children if they will but cultivate her soil in justice and peace.”
― Larry P Arnn, Churchill's Trial: Winston Churchill and the Salvation of Free Government

“whenever the vicious portion of [our] population shall be permitted to gather in bands of hundreds and thousands, and burn churches, ravage and rob provision stores, throw printing-presses into rivers, shoot editors, and hang and burn obnoxious persons at pleasure and with impunity, depend upon it, this government cannot last.”
― Larry P. Arnn, The 1776 Report

“He taught that we should be cautious in going to war and employ a strategy that envisions a victory worth the cost. He taught that this rule does not apply the same where life and freedom are at stake from aggression. In that case, and only that, it is better to die fighting.”
― Larry P Arnn, Churchill's Trial: Winston Churchill and the Salvation of Free Government

“The American people, voting in their states, ratified their Constitution by a process invented and used for that purpose only. No law passed under the Constitution can have the same authority as the Constitution itself because the Constitution is the direct product of the sovereign people. That is why the Constitution can restrain the ordinary actions of government. That is why the Supreme Court has the authority to void a law passed through both houses of the legislature and signed by the executive. None of the great documents that make up the British Constitution may claim this authority.”
― Larry P Arnn, Churchill's Trial: Winston Churchill and the Salvation of Free Government

“Civilization, like government, is an activity, a form of community. It begins with the rule of law under the control of civilians. It proceeds to its first goal, the safeguarding of people in their homes and with their families, living fully human lives in care of themselves and others, participating in the common rule of all. It culminates in the beautiful things to know and to see, in art, in science, in learning.”
― Larry P Arnn, Churchill's Trial: Winston Churchill and the Salvation of Free Government

“What we mean by liberal in the liberal regime is “free” and also independent. We mean people doing as they please to a large extent with their own property, their own spouses and children, their own consciences and duties to God. For a liberal statesman to support these things means in large part to protect them in their independence. At the same time, liberal regimes that have thrived in modern times are given to wars every bit as fierce, and much larger and more costly, than the wars of ancient times. If these private things are the source of their strength, they need them to thrive.”
― Larry P Arnn, Churchill's Trial: Winston Churchill and the Salvation of Free Government

“What is the degree of freedom possessed by the citizen or subject? Can he think, speak and act freely under well-established, well-known laws? Can he criticize the executive government? Can he sue the State if it has infringed his rights? Are there also great processes for changing the law to meet new conditions?”
― Larry P Arnn, Churchill's Trial: Winston Churchill and the Salvation of Free Government

“On May 26, 1940, Churchill sent an order to Brigadier Claude Nicholson, commanding at Calais. Churchill effectively told him to fight his position to the death, even though it was already untenable, because he was holding up the German advance toward Dunkirk and the British forces escaping from there. Later Churchill could hardly eat his dinner and reported that he felt “physically sick.”14 The force of 4,000 under Nicholson’s command was nearly wiped out. Nicholson was captured and died within two years in a German prisoner-of-war camp.”
― Larry P Arnn, Churchill's Trial: Winston Churchill and the Salvation of Free Government

“It is a republic; that is to say, its government was designed to be directed by the will of the people rather than the wishes of a single individual or a narrow class of elites.”
― Larry P. Arnn, The 1776 Report