Ladies and Gentlemen...it's time for some quotes:

"While the State exists, there can be no freedom. When there is freedom there will be no State."
Lenin, "State and Revolution", 1919

"Be as radical as reality."
Lenin

"Only an armed people can be the real bulwark of popular liberty."
Lenin

"Lenin is said to have declared that the best way to destroy the capitalist system was to debauch the currency. By a continuing process of inflation, governments can confiscate, secretly and unobserved, an important part of the wealth of their citizens...Lenin was certainly right."
John Maynard Keynes

"Fascism is capitalism in decay."
Vladimir Ilyich Lenin

"It is impossible to predict the time and progress of revolution. It is governed by its own more or less mysterious laws."
Vladimir Ilyich Lenin

"Reading furnishes the mind only with materials of knowledge; it is thinking that makes what we read ours."
John Locke (1632 - 1704)

"Earthly minds, like mud walls, resist the strongest batteries; and though, perhaps, somethimes the force of a clear argument may make some impression, yet they nevertheless stand firm, keep out the enemy, truth, that would captivate or disturbe them."
John Locke (1632 - 1704)

"Good and evil, reward and punishment, are the only motives to a rational creature: these are the spur and reins whereby all mankind are set on work, and guided."
John Locke

"Law, in its proper Notion, is the Direction of a free and intelligent Agent to his proper Interest."
John Locke (Government, ii. vi. 57.)

"The Legislative cannot transfer the Power of making Laws to any other hands."
John Locke (Government, ii. 141 xi. (1694) 276.)

"New opinions are always suspected, and usually opposed, without any other reason but because they are not already common."
John Locke

"To understand political power aright, and derive it from its original, we must consider what estate all men are naturally in, and that is, a state of perfect freedom."
John Locke

"Whenever the legislators endeavor to take away and destroy the property of the people, or to reduce them to slavery under arbitrary power, they put themselves into a state of war with the people, who are thereupon absolved from any farther obedience, and are left to the common refuge which God hath provided for all men against force and violence."
John Locke

"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. --That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, --That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness."
The Declaration of Independence

Locke and Lenin make strange bedfellows, but they speak much the same regarding the nature of liberty and the necessity of the populace to take upon themselves responsibility for the preservation of true freedom. And just in case you didn't know who J.M. Keynes is...he's responsible for a great deal of the economic theory that our nation rests on. There's no doubt that with the state our nation is in these days, Locke is probably spinning fast enough in his grave to power an electric generator...wouldn't he be thrilled? There was your daily lesson in government, from my gurus Locke and Lenin. They sit on my shoulders and counsel me all the time. I wonder which one is the devil? ;)

As always, read read read until your head explodes:

Lenin

Even better Lenin

Locke is always the man...

Until next time...