"The very nature of our Constitution is evolutionary. We endorse a gradual and practical reform to aid that evolutionary process."
British Conservative Party, Statement of Principles
(June 25, 1998).
"We believe that the widest possible range of opportunities should be available to our citizens. Individuals should be free to make their own choices about how they live their lives, rather than being dictated to by the State, notwithstanding a certain level of security to ensure that one's right to live freely doesn't violate other people's right to do so too. However, it must be noticed that freedom of choice doesn't mean tolerating a state of anarchy or actions which would lead toward creating it."
British Conservative Party, Statement of Principles
(June 25, 1998).
"A prosperous and secure society can only be created through the encouragement of free enterprise, whereby people are able to acquire the wealth that gives them independence, security and a real stake in society. History itself has proven that our way is the only way. That is why socio-communist establishments all over Eastern Europe have been overthrown in the past decade, including the former socialist fortifications like Russia. ...socialism leads merely into misery and chaos of the community at large. There is not a single well-off nation existent in the world to-day which is living under a moderate or extreme left-wing rule."
British Conservative Party, Statement of Principles
(June 25, 1998).
"We hold that in these modern times planning, with all the resources of science at its disposal, should aim at giving the individual citizen as many choices as possible of what to do in all the ups and downs of daily life. The more a man's choice is free, the more likely it is to be wise and fruitful, not only to the chooser but to the community in which he dwells. This kind of planning differs fundamentally from the collectivist theme of grinding them all up in a vast State mill which must destroy in the process the freedom and independence which are the foundation of our way of life and the famous characteristics of our race [nation, or society]."
Sir Winston Leonard Spencer Churchill, Speech, Conservative
Party Annual Conference (1949).
"We Conservatives want the future planning to take place primarily in the individual home and family. If they do not plan for the future, no State organization can. It is only on their motive power that the larger progress can be made. ...it is the people who have to move forward from generation to generation, and it is their impulse and self-restraint which constitutes the life of our country. If the impulse of the people fails, no kind of planning of the road ahead will be any substitute. Socialism operating through bureaucracy destroys the individual impulse of millions of homes. The orthodox conclusion which many members of the Socialist Party draw from whatever happens is that they have only to vote Socialist and the State will look after the rest. But how little this has to do with the facts of the situation, when we have to struggle to earn our living at home and in the world.... Believe me, the mainspring of British life and power is the home and the family. ...in these you have had a free chance. Let the people use their good common sense, multiply the choices which are open to them at every difficult phase in their lives. Make freedom spring from its source in their hearts and then indeed you will have a country which with wise government may be made to play a great part in the world; but stifle the spring, hamper and restrict and fetter the necessary operations of thought and consultations that go on inside the home and all your fine Utopias will come crashing to the ground...."
Sir Winston Leonard Spencer Churchill, Speech, Conservative
Party Annual Conference (1950).
"... the Conservative, contrary to popular belief, is not an extreme individualist. ... he cannot agree to the full implications of individualism, which is based, so he thinks, on an incorrect appraisal of man, society, history, and government. In his own way, the full-blooded individualist is as much a perfectionist as the Socialist, and with perfectionism the Conservative can have no truck.
"In particular, the Conservative refuses to go all the way with economic individualism. His distrust of unfettered man, his devotion to groups, his sense of the complexity of the social process, his recognition of the real services that government can perform -- all these sentiments make it impossible for him to subscribe whole-heartedly to the dogmas and shibboleths of economic individualism: laissez-faire, the negative state, enlightened self-interest, the law of supply and demand, the profit motive. While the Conservative may occasionally have kind words for each of these notions, especially when he hears them derided by collectivists and bluepointers [government economic planners], he is careful to qualify his support by stating other, more important social truths. For example, while he does not, for a moment, deny the prominence of the profit motive, he insists that it be recognized for the selfish thing it is and be kept within reasonable, socially imposed limits.
"At the same time that he expresses doubts about unqualified laissez-faire, the Conservative expresses horror over unqualified Socialism. If pressed for a precise solution to the problem of government and the economy, if asked to draw a fine line between their respective spheres, he answers that precise solutions and fine lines are cruel and dangerous delusions. Between collectivism and laissez-faire, there are many possible points of temporary adjustment. The stable, just, and productive economy is a mixture of individual enterprise, group cooperation, and government regulation according to the traditions and needs of each people. Beyond this, the undoctrinaire Conservative refuses to pursue the issue except to preach ... from his favorite text: in regulating the economy in the public interest, government cannot, by right, treat men unjustly and cannot, by nature, solve all or even a majority of their problems."
Clinton Rossiter, Conservatism in America (Cambridge: Harvard
University Press, 1982), pp.40-41.
"The Conservative is alert to the dangers, extravagance, and clumsiness of government. If men can accomplish common social ends without government intervention, so much the better for all concerned. He is not prepared, however, to rush from skepticism of collective effort and detestation of absolutism into the delusive swamps of anarchy. He hates unjust coercion of any sort, and he knows that government, for all its imperfections, is the instrument best fitted to reduce the coercions visited upon one another by imperfect men. 'Man against the state,' 'man the creature of the state' -- neither of these cheap formulas is acceptable to the Conservative. He likes to think of man and the state together in a relationship that honors the needs and rights of each. Between statism and individualism, lies the middle way of ordered liberty."
Clinton Rossiter, Conservatism in America (Cambridge: Harvatd
University Press, 1982), pp. 41-42.
"Conservatism ... is not simply the concern of the people who have a great deal of property and influence. It is a social concept important to everyone who desires equal justice and personal freedom.... Conservatism is not simply a defense of "capitalism," the abstraction of Marx. The true Conservative does defend private enterprise stoutly; and one of the reasons why he cherishes it is that private enterprise is the only practicable system, in the modern world, for satisfying our economic wants; but more even than this, he defends private enterprise as a means to an end. That end is a society just and free, in which every man has a right to what is his own, and to what he inherits from his father, and the rewards of his own ability and industry; a society which cherishes variety and individuality, and rises superior to the dreary plain of socialism. A Conservative society enables men to be truly human persons, not mere specks in a collective tapioca-pudding society; it respects their dignity as persons...."
Russell Kirk, Prospects for Conservatives, (Chicago: Henry
Regnery, 1956), p. 35.
"There is a vast amount of capitalist culture and infrastructure underpinning market economies that has evolved over generations: laws, conventions, behaviors, and a wide variety of business professions and practices that has no important function in a centrally planned economy.
"... much of what we took for granted in our free-market system and assumed to be human nature was not nature at all, but culture. The dismantling of the central planning function in an economy does not, as some have supposed, automatically establish a free-market entrepreneurial system."
Alan Greenspan, "The Virtues of Market Economies,"
Speech (1997).
"Claims that major industries throughout the American economy are dominated by a few monopolistic corporations are often based on statistics showing that four or five companies produce three quarters, fourth-fifths, or some other similar proportion of the industry's output--and that this condition has persisted for decades, suggesting tight control by this in-group. What is often overlooked is that the particular companies constituting this 'monopolistic' group are changing. In short, there is competition--and particular businesses are winning and losing in this competition at different times, creating turnover. ...the fact that there is turnover among these companies indicates that no such [monopolistic] control exists. Otherwise, monopolistic firms would no not allow themselves to be displaced by new competitors."
Thomas Sowell, The Vision of the Annointed (Basic Books, 1995).
"No duty is more imperative in government than the duty its owes the people of furnishing them a sound and uniform currency."
Abraham Lincoln.
"The power to tax involves the power to destroy."
John Marshall, Majority Opinion, McCulloch v. Maryland,
U.S. Supreme Court (1819).
"Government is like a big baby--an alimentary canal with a big appetite at one end and no responsibility at the other."
Ronald Wilson Reagan, California Gubernatorial Election
Campaign Speech (1966).
"Nothing is so galling to a people, not broken in from the birth, as a paternal, or, in other words, a meddling government, a government which tells them what to read, and say, and eat, and drink, and wear."
T.B. Macaulay, Southey's Colloquies (1830).
"The government is not an almoner of gifts among the people, but an instrument by which the people's affairs should be conducted upon business principles, regulated by the public needs.
"Though the people support the government, the government should not support the people."
Grover Cleveland, Message to Congress (1887).
"The social safety net should be a trampoline, not a hammock."
Bill Weld.
"No law, however stringent, can make the idle industrious, the thriftless provident, or the drunken sober."
Samuel Smiles, Self-Help (1859).
"There can be no fifty-fifty Americanism in the country. There is room here for only 100% Americanism, only for those who are Americans and nothing else."
Theodore Roosevelt, Speech, New York State Republican
Convention, Saratoga, New York (1918).
"The admitted right of government to prevent the influx of elements hostile to its internal peace and security may not be questioned, even where there is no treaty stipulation on the subject."
Grover Cleveland, Message to Congress (1885).
"Any ordered society has a right to protect its own existence; and, if the choice must be made, that right of society transcends the lesser right of individuals to follow their own humor or to tamper with existing institutions after some predilection of their own. A people have the right, in consequence, to expect that their officers shall obey the established laws of the land, and that their professors and teachers shall not preach subversion, and that liberty of expression shall not be allowed to degenerate into license. A nation so 'Liberal' that it cannot bring itself to repress the fanatic and the energumen, under any circumstances, soon will be reduced to a condition thoroughly illiberal. A nation unable to formulate any principle of loyalty, or unable to distinguish valuable criticism from irresponsible sedition, is thoroughly decadent. There is truly a reality in national loyalty; men long to be loyal to something greater than themselves; and, if we refuse to admit the very principle and necessity of loyalty, very soon we shall be confronted by anarchy or tyranny. The question before thinking men is not whether loyalty ought to be expected of the citizen, but, rather, of how loyalty may be defined, and of how a reasonable degree of loyal acquiescence may be distinguished from the corruption of servile conformity to democratic despotism [i.e., majoritarian dictatorship, tyranny of the majority, or absolute, unlimited majority rule of a democratically elected majority and its leadership]."
Russell Kirk, Prospects for Conservatives (Chicago: Henry
Regnery, 1956), p. 248.
"Education looms important in the literature of Conservatism, for it is the road that leads through virtue to freedom. Only through education -- in family, church, and school -- can children br shaped into civilized men. Only through education can man's vices, which are tough, be brought under control and his virtues, which are frail, be nourished into robust health. The instruments of education should teach a man to think, survive, ply a trade, and enjoy his leisure. Their great mission, however, is to act as a conserving, civilizing force: to convey to each man his share of the inherited wisdom of the race, to train him to lead a moral, self-disciplined life, and to foster a love of order and respect for authority.
The Conservative's understanding of the mission of education explains his profound mistrust of modern education theories, most of which, he feels, are grounded in a clear misreading of the nature and needs of children. The school has always been a conservative force in society, and the Conservative means to keep it that way. He admits that there is a stage in the education of some individuals -- those who are to go on to leadership -- when self-development and self-expression should get prime consideration. First things must come first, however, and before this stage is reached, the individual must be taught his community's values and be integrated into its structure.
Clinton Rossiter, Conservatism in America (Cambridge: Harvard
University Press, 1982), pp. 26-27.
"If a nation expects to be ignorant and free ... it expects what never was and never will be."
Thomas Jefferson.
"To educate a man in mind, and not in morals, is to educate a menace to society."
Theodore Roosevelt.
"Our civilization will break down if the school fails to teach the incoming generation that there are some things that are not done."
Gaetano Salvemini.
"Despite eloquent advocates of progressive education, the function of education is conservative: not to deify the child's 'glorious self-expression' but to limit his instincts and behavior by unbreakable ethical habits. In his natural instincts, every modern baby is still born a cave-man baby. What prevents today's baby from remaining a cave man is the conservative force of law and tradition, that slow accumulation of civilized habits separating us from the cave."
Peter Viereck, Conservatism Revisited (The Free Press,
1962).
"... the enlightened Conservative always has stood for community, the union of men, through love and common interest, for the common welfare. It was the Liberals and Radicals of the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries, not the Conservatives, who did everything in their power to abolish the traditional concept of community and substitute a doctrinaire individualism, which led inevitably to collectivism, as a natural reaction. Community and collectivism are at opposite poles. Community is the product of volition; collectivism, of compulsion. Community stands for variety and intricacy; collectivism, for uniformity and simplicity."
Russell Kirk, Prospects for Conservatives (Chicago: Henry
Regnery, 1956), p. 129.
"Whether the state be defined as the entire society or as that part of it known as government, no fundamental antithesis or conflict exists between it and man. Society is essential to his political and spiritual existence; government serves him as the chief agent of society. 'Man against the state' is either an outlaw, ingrate, or anarchist. There is, to be sure, a basic conflict of interest between the good man and the corrupt or authoritarian state. Such a man may very well find it necessary to assert an extreme individualism by rebelling against such a state. Yet, this is only the first step to political redemption: from there, he must go on to rebuild a state that will honor his rights and personality. Bad government is to be corrected, and, if totally bad, to be resisted, but bad government is no argument against the existence of government itself."
Clinton Rossiter, Conservatism in America (Cambridge: Harvard
University Press, 1982), p. 40.
"In general, the Conservative tries to strike a workable compromise between the needs of the community and the rights of the individual, both of which he champions eloquently whenever they are ignored or despised.
"In the world as it is, the world in which men live, it is often necessary to make a hard choice between individual and community. In such instances, the Conservative says, the interests of the community come first. This does not mean that every instance of friction will be resolved in favor of society, nor does it mean disrespect for the dignity of man's person or the inviolability of his soul. It does mean that society, the individual's fellow men considered as a collective entity, must get first consideration in all difficult cases. If the community is visibly decayed or arbitrary, the margin of doubt swings to the individual. As a general principle, however, it must never be forgotten that man is no better than a lonely beast outside the educating, protecting, civilizing pale of society, and that he must therefore pay a stiff price for its blessings. ... man ... has natural needs, which can be filled only through communal association with other men. Society, the total community, which is a great deal more than government, is historically, ethically, and logically superior to the individual. Government, family, church, and countrymen past, present, and future -- how can it ever be asserted with candor that any one man is more valuable than these? ... the Conservative speaks ... of the primacy of society.
"Yet, he speaks, too, of the rights of man. If man has needs that force him to submit to the community, he also has rights that the community must honor. In every man, there is a sphere of personality and activity into which other men, whether private citizens or public officials, have no logical or moral claim to intrude. This area is labeled 'the rights of man.'"
Clinton Rossiter, Conservatism in America (Cambridge: Harvard
University Press, 1982), pp. 35-36.
"The part which Conservatives can play in the restoration of community is a small one; but it will require constancy and discernment. I throw out here ... some suggestions as to the general line which Conservatives who desire to re-establish community upon a durable foundation may take:
"(1) They will endeavor to make the family function as a device for love and education and economic advantage, not simply as an instrument of the feeding-and-housing and procreating process.
"(2) They will seek to make their church and parash the means of a communion between divine love and human love, and among the generations that are gone, and the generation that is living, and the generations that are yet to be; and they will express this communion in acts of charity and good fellowship. That is a great way from the Sunday-morning moralism of most clergymen and congregations.
"(3) They will try to make their profession, or trade, or craft an instrument not merely for private profit, but for satisfying their own desire to feel that somehow they matter. In professional associations, unions, clubs and charitable organizations, they will have as their aim a meeting of minds which no uniformity imposed from above could equal.
"(4) They will search for ways to turn the amorphous modern city into a series of neighborhoods, with common interests, amenities, and economic functions. They will hope to bring back political coherence and decency to the city by decentralization and the substitution of voluntary agencies for compulsory ones.
"(5) They will stand for variety and independence in our schools, colleges, and universities; unlike Dr. [James B.] Conant, they will detest the notion of a monotonously uniform system of public instruction, designed to propagate approved 'social attitudes.' They will understand that the more voluntary education we can have, and the less compulsory, the healthier our society will be.
(6) They will defend the institutions of local government against state consolidation of power, and the rights of states against the encroachments of the federal government. [They will take this stand, realizing that] ... freedom and democracy -- at least American democracy -- are products of local rights and true popular concurrence. They will not be deluded by the argument that local government is decayed, and ought therefore to be supplanted by a central bureaucracy; for a central bureaucracy, given the same powers, is sure to decay in its turn, and to decay irreparably. They will turn their talents, instead, to restoring and conserving those local and prescriptive methods which distinguish a free society from a serville society."
Russell Kirk, Prospects for Conservatives (Chicago: Henry
Regnery, 1956), pp. 148-149.
"We are not going to be able to operate our spaceship earth successfully, nor much longer, unless we see it as a whole spaceship and our fate as common. It has to be everybody or nobody.
Buckminster Fuller.
"Conservatism belongs to society as a whole, for its purpose is to conserve the values needed by society as a whole. Conservatism is betrayed when it becomes the exclusive property of a single social or economic minority."
Peter Viereck, Conservatism Revisited (The Free Press,
1962).
"The American ideal is not that we will all agree with each other, or even like each other, every minute of the day. It is rather that we will respect each other's rights, especially the right to be different, and that, at the end of the day, we will understand that we are one people, one country, and one community, and that our well-being is inextricably bound up with the well-being of each and every one of our fellow citizens."
Arthur J. Kropp.
"If federal leaders want to help fund education, they can reduce the size and burden of the federal government so that more money will be available to state and local governments for schools."
Editorial, Spartanburg [S.C.] Herald-Journal (December 17,
1999).
"The function of the civil authority in the state is to protect and to foster, but by no means to absorb, the family and the individual, or to substitute itself for them."
Pope Pius XI, Divini Illius Magistri (1929).
"In a free society the state does not administer the affairs of men. It administers justice among men who conduct their own affairs."
Walter Lippmann, The Good Society (1937).
"... [American] Conservatives, irrespective of whether their emphasis is upon tradition and order or upon liberty, unite in their veneration of the ordered liberty conceived and executed by the Framers of the [U.S.] Constitution.
Frank S. Meyer, "Consensus and Divergence," in Frank S.
Meyer (ed.), What Is Conservatism? (Henry Regnery,
1964).
"The Conservative's task is to insure that enough governmental authority exists to suppress criminal outcroppings of human weakness, but at the same time to insure that no man, or group of men, is vested with too much political power. This has proved down the centuries to be a troublesome undertaking. There is little difficulty in establishing either the authoritarian's ideal of a strong government, or the libertarian's contrary ideal of complete (if therefore temporary) freedom. The great problem is to set up a system of government providing both order and freedom...."
M. Stanton Evans, "A Conservative Case for Freedom," in
Frank S. Meyer (ed.), What Is Conservatism? (Henry
Regnery, 1964).
"... the moral law of society is made up from ideas which members of that society have in common about the right way to live. The association of men and women in wedlock has from time immemorial been of such importance in every society that its regulation has always been a matter of morals.
"Since the modern state concerns itself with promoting institutions that are beneficial to society, the legislator has to consider how the law can best be used to help marriage and to discourage alternatives."
Patrick Devlin, The Enforcement of Morals (Oxford
University Press, 1965).
"Without a moral vision and the enforcement of morals at some level, cultures and then nations soon unravel. This is one of history's lessons for those who do not wish to repeat it."
Cal Thomas, "Raw Judicial Power Rears Its Ugly Head in
Vermont," The Greenville [S.C.] News (December 26,
1999).
"Marriage is about sex, specifically sexual union. Why does the state [government] favor this particular type of sexual union, one in which a man and a women promise sexual fidelity, mutual support and common care of children?
"Because without this type of union, society cannot survive.
"Marriage exists in every culture because sex between men and women often makes babies. Babies need fathers, and women deserve the protection of husbands.
"A strong marriage culture makes it more likely that babies will get what they need, that male sexuality will not wreak havoc in children's and women's lives. The public benefits attached to marriage [e.g., federal and state tax advantages, spousal social security benefits, and the rights and benefits of marriage provided by state law] are designed to help men and women fulfill the purposes of marriage.
"Gender is not irrelevant to the public purpose of marriage; there is no compelling state [government, or public] interest in encouraging lesbians to love one another until death do they part. Indeed, making it more difficult for young people to leave homosexual relationships is probably contrary to any legitimate public interest in sexuality the state [government] can possibly have...."
Maggie Gallagher, "Courts Have Set a Stupid Notion in
Concrete," Spartanburg [S.C.] Herald-Journal
(December 27, 1999).
"Above all, what most conservatives are pining to hear from a presidential candidate right now is a clarion denunciation of the moral, spiritual and financial corruption of the Clinton years.
"But conservatives also would thrill to see a candidate who could take the battle right to the Democrats. Where is the outcry about the two Democratic presidential candidates [Al Gore and Bill Bradley] truckling to race hustler Al Sharpton? Where is the outrage at lib- eral Democrats who send their own children to private schools yet refuse to permit choice for those trapped in the failing inner-city schools? Where is the demand for a coherent foreign policy and the denunciation of the cultural polution coming from Hollywood?
"There is plenty more. The military needs to be re-masculinized. The government put on a diet. And the trend towards balkanization, aka the spoils system--whether racial, sexual, ethnic, or otherwise--must be reversed. That's what conservatives want to hear."
Mona Charen, "Candidates Show a Total Lack of Courage,"
Spartanburg [S.C.] Herald-Journal (March 4, 2000).
"We have heard a lot lately about 'racial profiling.' No doubt this has been abused ... and ought to be reined in. But none other than Jessie Jackson himself is a racial profiler. Famously, he admitted that if he heard multiple footsteps behind him on a dark street, he would feel relieved if he turned around and saw other than some young black men.
It is a tough experience for perfectly law-abiding blacks to fall under suspicion because of statistics and expectations. To the extent that blacks are treated differently by police, they should blame it on the violent and criminal black underclass."
Jeffery Hart, "Racial Prejudice Versus Racial Profiling,"
Spartanburg [S.C.] Herald-Journal (March 19, 2000).
"... minority students admitted with lower qualifications fail to graduate more often than students admitted under normal standards, whether these latter students are black or white. Those who do graduate tend to come in at the bottom of their class. Yet supposedly responsible adults seriously believe that this makes for better race relations.
"... the objection to a [racial] quota is that it is a quantitative rather than a qualitative criterion. It is body count rather than intellectual quality."
Thomas Sowell, Barbarians Inside the Gates and Other
Controversial Essays (Hoover Institution Press, 1999).
"Multiculturalism is one of those affectations that people can indulge in when they are enjoying all the fruits of modern technology and can grandly disdain the process that produced them. None of this would be anything more than another of the many foibles of the human race, except that the cult of multiculturism has become the new religion of our schools and colleges, contributing to the mushing of America. It has become part of the unexamined assumptions underlying public policy and even decisions in courts of law.
"Who would be surprised that people from different cultural backgrounds are 'represented' differently in different jobs, colleges, or income levels, except for the unspoken assumption that these different cultures are equally effective for all things?
"Any standard based on quality will have 'over-representation' and 'under-representation' of different groups, however much such 'disparate impact' may shock the editorial writers and provoke judges to rush in where angels fear to tread."
Thomas Sowell, Barbarians Inside the Gates and Other
Controversial Essays (Hoover Institution Press, 1999).
"The danger today is that educated, propertied Americans will limit their families while the ignorant, dependent elements will multiply. Bright young people in college are being persuaded that they shouldn't have more than two children because of a global 'population explosion.' The birth rate among this element in America already is beginning to decline. But the population growth in America's slums, where the welfare population resides, IS explosive. Those who have to pay the taxes--and in many cases provide quality private schooling for their children because public schools have been wrecked by political and sociological experiments--seem to be deciding that the middle class will have to limit the size of families in the future. Those who live out of the public trough, who subsist on food stamps and welfare checks, are continuing to have big families. They are confident that Uncle Sam will pick up the tab for food, housing, medical care, education and even recreation.
"This isn't the way population controls should work. The survival of our country and civilization depends on able, productive citizens reproducing their kind. At the same time, there is need for curbing the growth of the drone population that weakens our society. Educated, propertied Americans need a vigorous pro-natalist outlook, but the tax pressures on the middle class all but forbid this outlook."
Anthony Harrigan, American Perspectives (Southern States
Industrial Council, 1972).
"The one thing that no policy will ever change is the past."
Thomas Sowell, Barbarians Inside the Gates and Other
Controversial Essays (Hoover Institution Press,
1999).
"There are some murders so heinous that the death penalty is an appropriate punishment and, accordingly, I will veto this legislation."
Jeanne Shaheen, Governor of New Hampshire (May, 2000).
"We don't need to abolosh capital punishment in America. We need to abolish the notion that it should be abolished.
"Right-thinking Americans whose hearts bleed not for the killers have no interest whatsoever in doing away with the ultimate punishment for those who commit the ultimate crime.
"The purpose of the appeals process in the criminal justice system is to give persons found guilty of a crime the opportunity to prove their innocence--and the death row inmates all across America get plenty of chances to do exactly that.
"If criminal suspects are being unfairly convicted, then let's take a look at the process that leads to conviction, not at the punishment imposed on the guilty.
"There is no evidence that innocent people are being executed in this country. And there's no reason to pass laws dealing with a problem that does not exist."
Bill Thompson, "State's Move to Ban Death Penalty Is No
Bellwether," Spartanburg [S.C.] Herald-Journal
(May 25, 2000).