Thursday

Random Passages

"[T]he poverty rate in the United States fell from 95 percent in 1900 to around 12-14 percent in the late 1960s ”“ a period in which government antipoverty measures were fairly trivial. By the late 1960s, when Lyndon Johnson's War on Poverty programs began receiving substantial funding, the poverty rate stagnated. By 1994 it was about the same as it had been in the late 1960s, even though the federal government was by that time spending four times as much per capita as it had under LBJ." Tom Woods, Real Dissent.

"The early Church claimed that the boy held so tenderly by Jesus was none other than Ignatius. Is there any truth to this legend? Who knows?" Benedict Groeschel.

"Economic historians have determined that on average, Northern farmers worked four hundred more hours per year than did slaves." Thaddeus Russell, A Renegade History of the United States.

"Third-rate men, of course, exist in all countries, but it is only here that they are in full control of the state, and with it of all the national standards." H.L. Mencken.

"Remember that the heart is a traitor. Keep it locked with seven bolts." Josemaria Escriva

"By the time Bing Crosby began imitating Jolson, the blackface was understood and no longer had to be painted on–on Bing, or later on Elvis." Wilfrid Sheed, The House that George Built.