We explore real-life reformation here in this informed, online community.
“I do not say that democracy has been more pernicious on the whole, and in the long run, than monarchy or aristocracy. Democracy has never been and never can be so durable as aristocracy or monarchy; but while it lasts, it is more bloody than either. … Remember, democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts, and murders itself. There never was a democracy yet that did not commit suicide. It is in vain to say that democracy is less vain, less proud, less selfish, less ambitious, or less avaricious than aristocracy or monarchy. It is not true, in fact, and nowhere appears in history. Those passions are the same in all men, under all forms of simple government, and when unchecked, produce the same effects of fraud, violence, and cruelty. When clear prospects are opened before vanity, pride, avarice, or ambition, for their easy gratification, it is hard for the most considerate philosophers and the most conscientious moralists to resist the temptation. Individuals have conquered themselves. Nations and large bodies of men, never.”
― John Adams, The Letters of John and Abigail Adams
Writes Laurence Vance, "Here are the things that Pete Hegseth should have said about the military. Anything less is just death and destruction as usual with a little more masculinity and a little less wokeness:
The military will no longer fight wars that are not constitutionally declared.
The military will no longer serve as the president’s personal attack force.
The military will no longer police the world.
The military will no longer fight unjust wars.
The military will no longer make widows and orphans.
The military will no longer carry out reckless, belligerent, and meddling foreign policy.
The military will no longer station troops all over the world.
The military will stop helping to create terrorists, insurgents, and militants.
The military will stop going where they have no business going.
The military will no longer invade other countries.
The military will no longer fight unnecessary wars.
The military will no longer pretend to defend our freedoms.
The military will close all of its foreign...
"In the personal identification documents of subjects of the Russian Empire, there was not a column [for] nationality—there was none. In the Soviet passport there was, but in the Russian one—there was not. But what was there? “Religious faith.” There was a common value, a religious value, association with Eastern Christian religion, with Orthodoxy… There were other values, but this was the defining one: which values do you share?
"That’s why, even today, it doesn't matter to us whether a person is from the east, west, south, or north. If they share our values, they’re one of us."
-- Vladimir Putin
