Americanism is the Answer!
Fight the Progressive Scourge!
This is a resource center for patriotic conservatives looking for ammo to combat liberalism. Check out the links below for the best information on the web! These are not sensational news sites--they are think tanks and serious sources of political philosophy and first principles.
Scroll on down and start squeezing the trigger!
Think Tanks
- Heartland Institute -Free Market Conservatism
- Heritage Foundation -THE Conservative Resource
- American Enterprise Institute -Another excellent conservative site
- Council on Foreign Relations -Good foreign policy info
- Rutherford Institute - Civil Liberties and Human Rights
- The Cato Institute- Libertarian think tank
- Independent Institute - Critical Research on Social and Economic Issues
- National Center for Policy Analysis -
- Freeman Online - Foundation for Economic Education
- Claremont Institute - Statesmanship and Political Philosophy
- Independence Institute - Colorado's Own Free Market, Liberty Defending Policy Center
- Hudson Institute - Nonpartisan think tank promoting global security, prosperity, and freedom.
- Manhattan Institute - American political culture, economic choice, individual responsibility
- Russell Kirk Center - Conservative thought at its finest, especially "10 Conservative Principles"
Statistics, Charts and Data! The Federal Budget, Debt, GDP, etc.
These are the top-tier sources of authoritative, official data and statistics. If you're going to argue with people about government spending, debt, taxes, GDP, etc, this is where you go to get your ammo. The first one could be discredited because Christopher Chantrill is a Tea Partier, but I include his site because his customizable charts and data breakdowns are brilliant, and he always sources his data back to official US Government data.
- US Government Spending - Great customizable charts!
- US Bureau of Economic Statistics - Official Government data like GDP...
- OMB - Historical Tables of Government Budgets
- GPO US Budget - Official US Government Budgets and related stats
- The Tax Foundation - All about taxes. Useful stats and charts
- NCPA - Taxes and Growth - Analysis based upon official CBO data
- World Economic Forum - News and economic date on different countries
These sites are useful for helping you understand the federal budget and economic statistics, but are of limited in arguing with progressives, since the left will not consider these sources official or authoritative.
- Shadow Government Statistics - Stats behind the stats
- FederalBudget.com - Explanations of where the money goes and links to news stories
- Peter G. Peters Foundation -Dedicated to finding answers to solve our national debt
2nd Amendment
- Gun Policy.org - Gun-related statistics from around the world
- Gun Crime Stats -
- Would Banning Firearms Reduce Murders and Suicides?
- Thomas Sowell - Invincible Ignorance
- Wiki Gun Violence in the US
- Murder Victim Studies
- 2006 DOJ Violent Felon Study
- Gun Politics in the UK
- 2008 UK Gun Crime Figures - BBC
- Australian Institute of Criminology
- Good Australia Summary
- Making Economic Sense - An excellent on-line book by Murray Rothbard
- Ludwig Von Mises Institute - Outstanding free-market, small government resource from the Austrian School
- Library of Economics and Liberty - Economics for the layman
- History of Economic Thought - An economics encylopedia
- Greg Mankiw's Blog - Harvard Economics Professor
- QandO - Free Markets, Free People
- Foundation for Economic Education
Scholarly Articles
- Hoover Institution-Policy Review -Conservative thinkers share their thoughts
- City Journal -Smart people put a new spin on everyday life
- George Orwell.org - Search this great man's writings on-line!
- GigaQuotes -
- Liberty Tree - Founding Fathers Quotes
- Bible Gateway - Searchable Bible!
- MIT's Classics Archive - An Archive of classics, of course!
- Gutenberg Project - Free e-books, searchable softcopy and audio formats!
- Google Books - Searchable books on-line.
- The Book Drum - An on-line companion to the classics
Other Useful References
- The Free Dictionary -
- Open Congress - Keep track of what's happening in the District of Criminals
- Internet Sourcebooks History Project - Excellent on-line source for all kinds of world history. A little disjointed, but if you know what you're looking for you can probably find it here!
- Prager University - 5 minute lectures on conservative themes by Dennis Prager
- Reverso - On-line language translator
- Internet Archive - All kinds of archived stuff
Left Links
I firmly believe that you've got to understand your intellectual opponent's point of view. Here are some links to sites featuring the best of liberal thought
- Brooking Institution - Eminent Liberal think tank. Democratic policymakers get their info here
- Progressive Policy Institute -
- Commonweal Institute -
- Center for American Progress -
- Fabius Maximus - Just a blog, but the man is wicked smart. He is the rare liberal libertarian
Dr Thomas Sowell dismantles liberalism
Interview - Why Dr Sowell Thinks America is in Decline
Why Classical Liberalism is a good thing!
Prophets and Losses
The Trickle Down Lie
Reagan vs. Krugman (It's no contest)
Krugman's Twinkie Defense - Micky Kaus destroys the myth of "Let's go back to the 1950's!"
Lies of the Reagan Tax Increases
Reagan v. Obama
Peter Ferrera - Timeless Principles of American Prosperity
Free Markets v. Statism
Reagan: A Criticism and a Defense
Hell hath no fury like a Liberal scorned by Reaganomics
Paul Krugman is an Intellectually Dishonest Crapweasel
Krugman's Voodoo Statistics
Deconstructing Krugman - Francis Cianfrocca
Paul Whitfield - With Reagan Rowing, America Rod a Capital Wave
Krugman's Many Errors - Great breakdown of Keynesian Failures
The Progressive Age - My Humble Defense of Reagan, and a slam on Progressivism
Krugman's Cheating with Graphs - William M. Brigs Explains
Reaganomics vs Obamanomics - Fallacies Offered by the Left
Reaganomics vs Obamanomics - Facts and Figures
Mort Kondrake's Excellent Defense of Reaganomics
Other Articles Worth Saving Forever
Recovering the Case for Capitalism - Yuval Levin Explains Adam Smith
Ronald Reagan, Champion Budget Cutter
Other Useful Links
Military Keynesianism
Quotations & Truisms
Cultivate your garden. Do not depend upon teachers to educate you... follow your own bent, pursue your curiosity bravely, express yourself, make your own harmony.
-- Will Durant
“Socialism — defined as a centrally planned economy in which the government controls all means of production — was the tragic failure of the 20th century. Born of a commitment to remedy the economic and moral defects of capitalism, it has far surpassed capitalism in both economic malfunction and economic cruelty.” -- Robert Heilbroner
"It is good that new ideas should be heard, for the sake of the few that can be used; but it is also good that new ideas should be compelled to go through the mill of objection, opposition, and contumely; this is the trial heat which innovations must survive before being allowed to enter the human race."
-- Will Durant
Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end, for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.
-C.S. Lewis
The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.
-H.L. Mencken
The more corrupt the state, the more numerous the laws.
-Tacitus
When the same man, or set of men, holds the sword and the purse, there is an end of liberty.
-George Mason
The legitimate powers of government extend to such acts only as are injurious to others. But it does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are twenty gods, or no God. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg.
-Thomas Jefferson
The price of apathy towards public affairs is to be ruled by evil men.
-Plato
It is hard to imagine a more stupid or more dangerous way of making decisions than by putting those decisions in the hands of people who pay no price for being wrong.
-Thomas Sowell
Socialism is a philosophy of failure, the creed of ignorance, and the gospel of envy, its inherent virtue is the equal sharing of misery.
-- Winston Churchill
"Out of every hundred new ideas ninety-nine or more will probably be inferior to the traditional responses which they propose to replace. No one man, however brilliant or well-informed, can come in one lifetime to such fullness of understanding as to safely judge and dismiss the customs or institutions of his society, for those are the wisdom of generations after centuries of experiment in the laboratory of history."
-- Will Durant
Insincerity is the lubricant of social intercourse
-- Fausto Natal, Lt Col, US Army
There is no such thing as a free lunch
-- Milton Friedman
"The worst psychological state is a superiority complex coupled with an inferior status."
--Jagdish Bhagwati, economist
If you don't want to get into a war where things go wrong, where the wrong people sometimes get killed, where innocent people sometimes have to die, then stay the hell out of it in the first place.
-- Marcus Luttrell, Navy Seal, from Lone Survivor, p. 313
In social life, the more fundamental a truth is, the more likely is is to have been discovered long ago--and to have been repeated in a thousand ways to the point of utter boredom. In this context, to make excitement and novelty the touchstones of an idea is to run grave risks of abandoning the truth for ideological trinkets.
-- Thomas Sowell (Quest for Cosmic Justice, 1999. Almost 10 years before "Hope and Change!")
Could slavery have been ended by the civil war if television cameras had shown daily scenes of the horrors of Sherman's march through Georgia or the appalling sufferings of civilians in besieged Vicksburg?
-- Thomas Sowell
Merely having an open mind is nothing. The object of opening the mind, as of opening the mouth, is to shut it again on something solid
--G. K. Chesterton
The person who agrees with you 80 percent of the time is a friend and an ally — not a 20 percent traitor.”
-- Ronald Reagan
Society is a thin veneer
Man is the most dangerous of all animals
It is seems to good to be true, it probably is
Swim at your own risk
"The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace in a continual state of alarm (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing them with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary." -- H.L. Mencken's
7 comments:
Thank you for this concentrated list of great resources, and for showing the wisdom and humility to admit that at least one liberal could be "wicked smart."
I hope you don't mind if I copy this, paste it into Word and keep it on my desktop to share in part with friends and foes alike when occasion demands?
If you guys have actually read all this stuff, you are way way way ahead of most of us. Apparently, what many of us simply "know" by instinct, insight and personal conviction is catalogued, supported and proven by many who took the trouble to study history in depth and do the heavy lifting on their own by consulting primary sources.
I have always found it compelling when many different individuals from different times, different backgrounds and different places reach similar conclusions. But then there are so many who have come down on the wrong side of history by embracing totalitarianism in any of its many forms, so consensus, even among a large number of disparate individuals, cannot be said to constitute proof of anything other than the infinite capacity human beings have to disagree.
Thanks again for taking the time to put all this together.
~ FreeThinke
I saw the CFR listed among your list of mostly conservative, libertarian or non-partisan think tanks as a source of "good information on foreign policy."
Perhaps so, but I have been persuaded to regard the CFR as an enemy of liberty, because it seeks to undermine US sovereignty to fulfill its ambition to establish One World Government.
WARNINGS AGAINST the COUNCIL on FOREIGN RELATIONS
Curtis Dall, FDR's Son-in-law, on the CFR:
"For a long time I felt that FDR had developed many thoughts and ideas that were his own to benefit this country, the United States. But, he didn't. Most of his thoughts, his political ammunition, as it were, were carefully manufactured for him in advanced by the Council on Foreign Relations-One World Money group. Brilliantly, with great gusto, like a fine piece of artillery, he exploded that prepared "ammunition" in the middle of an unsuspecting target, the American people, and thus paid off and returned his internationalist political support.
- Curtis Dall, FDR's son-in-law as quoted in his book, "My Exploited Father-in-Law"
Harpers Magazine on Council on Foreign Rrelations: "The most powerful clique in these (CFR) groups have one objective in common: they want to bring about the surrender of the sovereignty and the national independence of the U.S. They want to end national boundaries and racial and ethnic loyalties supposedly to increase business and ensure world peace. What they strive for would inevitably lead to dictatorship and loss of freedoms by the people. The CFR was founded for "the purpose of promoting disarmament and submergence of U.S. sovereignty and national independence into an all-powerful one-world government."
- Harpers, July l958
Does these quotations "prove" anything about the CFR? No, but a gathering cloud of such "smoke" as this proves there must be a fire in there somewhere.
~ FreeThinke
I agree with you on the CFR. I put this together years ago and haven't done any weed and see since.
The CFR seems to be into community organizing on a global scale.
You've done a wonderful job digging this stuff out, and putting it all together, SilverFiddle. I wasn't trying to be critical, just pointing out that the lessons we might learn from CFR based material are apt to be more negative than positive -- how NOT to act, and what NOT to do in other words.
Since so many very smart people -- including, apparently, your own close associate Finntann -- want to dismiss anything that indicates the CFR, the Bilderbergers, Skull & Bones, the "illuminati," et al. might have assumed too much control over world affairs and are working zealously to undermine national sovereignties and establish One World Government, as "crack-brained fantasy" I wish you'd do a series of articles featuring Progressives' involvement in the movement to form One World Government, and encourage us to debate it respectfully and without prejudice, if possible.
Also, I wanted to ask you why the one aspersion cast at the Tea Party? I'd love to understand your objections to the Tea Party. I haven't joined, but it seems like a good thing to me -- or it did until Sarah Palin decided to make a public show of leading the Tea Party. I liked Sarah at first, but she wears very thin after a while. Too shrill, frankly.
Regards,
~ FreeThinke
Mentioning that Christopher Chantrill is a tea partier is not an aspersion, but a caution to those who would use his excellent site to argue with liberal statists.
His site is straight up, but the loony left use little bits of info like that to discredit the information by claiming the source is biased.
GOTCHA! Thanks for the clarification, SilverFiddle.
Of course anyone and everyone who has a particular viewpoint could be said to be "biased." I know I certainly am biased against, Marxist, Statist, Progressive, Liberal tyranny, but I like to think I am biased in favor of Truth, Liberty, Decency, Kindness and good old-fashioned Common Sense.
It might be a worthwhile exercise to examine the roots of Marxist-Progressive thinking, and see if there ever was any real need or possible justification for this, and were there ever any good intentions or merit to their arguments?
The opposing factions can shout and rants and call each other names from here to eternity, but not much good could come from the battle without presenting cogent arguments based on evidence.
Thaks gain.
~ FreeThinke
Wow-what an excellent post. There is nothing for me to even add, which is unusual. I typically cover it all but you did such an awesome job here. Other than to just repeat what
you said or add that progressives are a cancer in this nation, PERIOD!
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