For oppressed peasants to be better off in the long run under Ottoman rule, taxes would have to be markedly lower than under the Europeans, since the latter created far more capital, some of which eventually enhanced the population at large. The great hatred of capitalism in the hearts of the oppressed, ancient and modern, I think, stems not merely from the ensuing vast inequality in wealth, and the often unfair and arbitrary nature of who profits and who suffers, but from the silent acknowledgment that under a free market economy the many victims of the greed of the few are still better off than those under the utopian socialism of the well-intended. It is a hard thing for the poor to acknowledge benefits from their rich moral inferiors who never so intended it.

Hanson, Victor Davis. Carnage and Culture, Landmark Battles in the Rise of Western Power New York, NY, Random House  pg 271-272

Just wondering where all the ‘atheist’ hospitals are? I know there are some ‘secular’ hospitals but if all ills are the result of religion (as atheists often claim) I have to wonder why most hospitals, orphanages, and poor houses are associated with Christian ethics and Jesus Christ’s sermon on the Mount?

We will always be proud.

We will always be prepared, so we may always be free.”

D-Day Commemoration in Normandy, France, June 6, 1984

-Excerpt from Ronald Reagan’s speech

Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction.

We didn’t pass it to our children in the bloodstream.

It must be fought for, protected, and handed on for them to do the same,

or one day we will spend our sunset years telling our children and our children’s children

what it was once like in the United States where men were free.

Annual meeting of the Phoenix Chamber of Commerce, March 30, 1961

-excerpt from Ronald Reagan’s speech