“The most powerful presentations were based on legal precedents, especially Calvin’s Case (1608), which, it was claimed, proved on the authority of Coke and Bacon that subjects of the King are by no means necessarily subjects of Parliament.”

The wielders of power did not speak for it, nor did they naturally serve it. Their interest was to use and develop power, no less natural and necessary than liberty but more dangerous.

Incorporating in their colorful, slashing, superbly readable pages, the major themes of the “left” opposition under Walpole, these libertarian tracts.

What Americans were really objecting to had nothing to do with constitutional principles. their objection was not to Parliament’s constitutional right to levy certain kinds of taxes as opposed to others, but to its effort to collect any.

In no obvious sense was the American Revolution undertaken as a social revolution.

At first the relevance of chattel slavery to libertarian ideals was noted only in individual passages of isolated pamphlets.

The idea of sovereignty current in the English speaking world of the 1760’s was scarcely more than a century old. It had first emerged during the English Civil War, in the early 1640’s, and had been established as a canon of Whig political thought in the Revolution of 1688.

Emerging first in the form of denunciations of standing armies in the reign of William III, left an indelible imprint on the “country” mind everywhere in the English-speaking world.

What were once felt to be defects-isolation, institutional simplicity, primitiveness of manners, multiplicity of religions, weaknesses in the authority of the state-could now be seen as virtues.

Not only by Americans themselves but by enlightened spokesmen of reform, renewal and hope wherever they may be-in London coffeehouses, in Parisian salons, in the courts of German princes.

The categories within which the colonists thought about the social foundations of politics were inheritances from classical antiquity, reshaped by seventeenth century English thought.

Never had Parliament or the crown, or both together, operated in actuality as theory indicated sovereign powers should.

The primary function of a constitution was to mark out the boundaries of governmental powers-hence in England, where there was no constitution , there were no limits (save for the effect of trail by jury) to what the legislature might do.

It was an elevating, transforming vision: a new, fresh, vigorous, and above all morally regenerate people rising from the obscurity to defend the battlements of liberty and then in triumph standing forth, heartening and sustaining the cause of freedom everywhere.

The classics of the ancient world are everywhere in the literature of the Revolution, but thet are everywhere illustrative, not determinative, of thought

What gave transcendent importance to the aggressiveness of power was the fact that its natural prey, its necessary victim, was liberty, or law, or right.

In England the practice of “virtual” representation provided reasonably well for the actual representation of the major interests of the society, and it raised no widespread objection.

A life of gratitude to God for being saved is far more pleasing than a life based on self-righteousness over being good.

I’ve based my entire career off of just trying to do that for them – but I always kind of forget that my real life friends can hear my music and they can watch my interviews if they want and that’s when I get kind of like- “oh…”

It should be known that Israel is based on treachery.

Too often, people think that solving the world’s problems is based on conquering the earth, rather than touching the earth, touching ground.

All intimacies are based on differences.

If I were sitting down with George Steinbrenner (to discuss a salary) and based on what Dave Winfield got for his statistics, I’d have to say, ‘George, you and I are about to become partners.’

My attitude to peace is rather based on the Burmese definition of peace – it really means removing all the negative factors that destroy peace in this world.

I go with the rhythm of it and the words start to come to my mind and those words could be based on things that’s been on my mind for the past year, the past month, the past week, whatever; I write it.