Pop quiz: Which Republican told reporters today that "taxes are necessary for the common good?" The times really ARE changing. And then, of course, there is Colin Powell's withering critique of John McCain's campaign. See below.
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Let's see...Oliver Wendell Holmes was a Republican (although he once called Abraham Lincoln a "damned fool" to his face during Jubal Early's raid on Washington DC in 1864). His observation that "Taxes are the price we pay for a civilized society" is now chiseled into the facade of the Internal Revenue Service building at 1111 Constitution Avenue in Washington.
Of course, Mr. Justice Holmes is noted also for his opinion in Buck v. Bell, 274 U.S. 200 (1927), in which he approved Virginia's policy of involuntary sterilization of mentally disabled citizens. In that case, he wrote, "It is better for all the world, if instead of waiting to execute degenerate offspring for crime, or to let them starve for their imbecility, society can prevent those who are manifestly unfit from continuing their kind...Three generations of imbeciles are enough."
On the other hand, he approved also of freedom of speech: "I think that we should be eternally vigilant against attempts to check the expression of opinions that we loathe and believe to be fraught with death, unless they so imminently threaten immediate interference with the lawful and pressing purposes of the law that an immediate check is required to save the country." Abrams v. United States, 250 U.S. 616 (1919) As we've already seen, this is something that the progressive/left movement seems to be able to do without.
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