Misquotes

As a reader of the columnists at Townhall, there is one I especially look forward to twice a week - mostly because he has such a great sense of humor - and, that is Bert Prelutsky. It is a joy to read and be able to smile!! But, he tackles the issues of the day. You can read his columns here.

In a recent column he set the record straight on a misquote that drives me to distraction. But liberals never seem to use it against a conservative who is smart enough to know the true quote. Allow me to share part of his column with you...

'One more thing that annoys me to no end is when people engage in misquoting others in order to promote their own agenda. It seems to me that somewhere along the way, Benjamin Franklin became the left-wingers’ favorite forefather. I lost count of the number of times, in the wake of the Patriot Act, I heard the line, “They who sacrifice liberty for security deserve neither liberty nor security.” What Franklin actually wrote in 1759 was, “They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.” It’s funny how those qualifying words, “essential” and “a little temporary,” disappeared in the translation from English to liberalese. Most normal people, I wager, wouldn’t regard keeping your library books secret to be an essential liberty or that preventing another 9/11 from taking place to be a matter of a little temporary safety.

One fellow who bears quoting, but don’t count on people like Murtha or Kerry or Dean to do it anytime soon, is John Stuart Mill, the English philosopher and economist, who observed:
“War is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things; the decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic feeling which thinks nothing worth a war, is worse.”
For good measure, he added:
“A man who has nothing which he cares about more than he does about his personal safety is a miserable creature who has no chance at being free, unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself.” '

Thank you, Bert Prelutsky!!! And, thank you to those better men!!!