Anyone reading this knows that we are conditioned by the environment around us, our experiences dictate how we think. Until one isolates himself from thinking as a group, using logic and reasoning, we can never separate right from wrong:

Pre-emptive strike:

When a gangster and his boys get in his car in the dark and do a driveby shooting and accidently kill the other guys little sister sitting at the dinner table.

War:

When the other gangster and his boys get in his car in the dark and do a driveby shooting and accidently kill the other guys little sister sitting at the dinner table.

A real, win, win situation.
Better get the gang into the situation room;  (More groupthink)
A good example of follow the leader: "close your hole, I don't want you on my radar screen".
 
 

As George Orwell demonstrates in his book 1984, newspeak is basically reverse talk and doublethink is saying exactly the opposite of the truth; the state dictates how one thinks:

On Thursday, U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said that leaders such as Chávez and Bolivian President Evo Morales who advocate the radical redistribution of wealth to the poor represented a “worrisome” trend in the hemisphere. “You’ve got Chávez in Venezuela with a lot of oil money,” Rumsfeld said at the National Press Club in Washington. “He’s a person who was elected legally -- just as Adolf Hitler was elected legally -- and then consolidated power, and now of course is working closely with Fidel Castro and Mr. Morales and others. It concerns me.

 "Three years ago during this very speech," your leading spokesperson can say from those steps, "Mr. Bush told us that Iraq was in possession of 26,000 liters of anthrax, 38,000 liters of botulinum toxin, 500 tons - which is one million pounds - of sarin, mustard and VX nerve agent, 30,000 missiles to deliver the stuff, mobile biological weapons labs, al Qaeda connections, and uranium from Niger for use in a robust nuclear weapons program. He said all this three years ago, during this all-important annual address, and all of it was a lie. The American people deserve an explanation."

War is a racket. It always has been. It is probably the oldest, easily the most profitable, certainly the most vicious. It is the only one international in scope. It is the only one where the profit is reckoned in dollars and the losses in lives.
--Smedley Butler, Major General, USMC, two times recipient of the Congressional Medal of Honor

"War against a foreign country only happens when the moneyed class think they are going to profit from it".--George Orwell, author of 1984

"There ought to be limits to freedom."
–George W Bush, May 21, 1999

"in the big lie there is always a certain force of credibility"
-Adolf Hitler

George "The Texascutioner" Bush
—What the residents of Texas called the governor for ordering the executions of 150 alleged murderers, some of whom appeared to be innocent

I'm the boss of you.
--GW

Reports that say that something hasn't happened are always interesting to me, because as we know, there are known knowns; there are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns - the ones we don't know we don't know.
--Donald Rumsfeld

“I am tired and sick of war. Its glory is all moonshine. It is only those who have neither fired a shot nor heard the shrieks and groans of the wounded who cry aloud for blood, for vengeance, for desolation. War is hell.” William T. Sherman Class of 1840

 "Of course the people don't want war. But after all, it's the leaders of the country who determine the policy, and it's always a simple matter to drag the people along whether it's a democracy, a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship. Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism, and exposing the country to greater danger."
 -- Herman Goering at the Nuremberg trials

 “What a cruel thing is war: to separate and destroy families and friends, and mar the purest joys and happiness God has granted us in this world; to fill our hearts with hatred instead of love for our neighbors, and to devastate the fair face of this beautiful world.-- Robert E Lee

The famous quotation, "When I hear the word culture, I reach for my Browning" is frequently attributed to Göring. Whether or not he actually used this phrase, it did not originate with him. The line comes from German playwright Hanns Johst's play Schlageter, "Wenn ich Kultur höre ... entsichere ich meinen Browning," "Whenever I hear of culture... I release the safety-catch of my Browning!" (Act 1, Scene 1). Nor was Göring the only Nazi official to use this phrase: Rudolf Hess used it as well.

Where the press is free, and every man able to read, all is safe.
--Thomas Jefferson

 “The powers in charge kept us in a perpetual state of fear –  kept us in a continuous stampede of patriotic fervor –  with the cry of grave national emergency. Always there has been some terrible evil to gobble us up if we did not blindly rally behind it by furnishing the exorbitant sums demanded. Yet, in retrospect, these disasters seem never to have happened, seem never to have been quite real.”

 “Our country is now geared to an arms economy bred in an artificially induced psychosis of war hysteria and an incessant propaganda of fear.”
 “The powers in charge kept us in a perpetual state of fear –  kept us in a continuous stampede of patriotic fervor –  with the cry of grave national emergency. Always there has been some terrible evil to gobble us up if we did not blindly rally behind it by furnishing the exorbitant sums demanded. Yet, in retrospect, these disasters seem never to have happened, seem never to have been quite real.” --Douglas MacArthur Class of 1903

"Behind the ostensible government sits enthroned an invisible government owing no allegiance and acknowledging no responsibility to the people. To destroy this invisible government, to befoul the unholy alliance between corrupt business and corrupt politics is the first task of the statesmanship of today." --Theodore Roosevelt

Never trust a government that doesn't trust its own citizens with guns
--Thomas Jefferson

Abraham Lincoln once said, "If slavery is not evil, then nothing is evil." I say that if CIA dealing drugs to Americans is not wrong - then nothing is wrong.
--Micael C. Rupert

The whole art of government consists in the art of being honest.
--President Thomas Jefferson

“Ours is a world of nuclear giants and ethical infants. We know more about war that we know about peace, more about killing that we know about living.”
 “Wars can be prevented just as surely as they can be provoked, and we who fail to prevent them, must share the guilt for the dead.” --Omar N.Bradley, Class of 2915

“With the monstrous weapons man already has, humanity is in danger of being trapped in this world by its moral adolescents.
Do what you feel in your heart to be right, for you'll be criticized anyway
--Eleanor Roosevelt (1884-1962)

"When you see that trading is done, not by consent, but by compulsion - when you see that in order to produce, you need to obtain permission from men who produce nothing - when you see that money is flowing to those who deal, not in goods, but in favors - when you see that men get richer by graft and by pull than by work, and your laws don't protect you against them, but protect them against you - when you see corruption being rewarded and honesty becoming a self-sacrifice - you may know that your society is doomed: Ayn Rand - (1905-1982) Author - Source: Atlas Shrugged, Francisco's "Money Speech"

"Every evil, harm and suffering in this life comes from the love of riches.": Catherine of Siena - (1347-1380) Dominican Tertiary - c.1370

When you cease to make a contribution; you begin to die.
--Eleanor Roosevelt

"Why should we hear about body bags and deaths," Barbara Bush said on ABC's "Good Morning America" on March 18, 2003.
"Oh, I mean, it's not relevant. So why should I waste my beautiful mind on something like that?"

"A president of the United States has just assumed what amounts to dictatorial power."
—William Safire, New York Times, "Seizing dictatorial power", November 15, 2001

"Enlighten the people generally, and tyranny and oppressions of body and mind will vanish like evil spirits at the dawn of day."
–President Thomas Jefferson

"There's one born every minute."
—P.T. Barnum

I think, at a child's birth, if a mother could ask a fairy godmother to endow it with the most useful gift, that gift would be curiosity.
--Eleanor Roosevelt

I never give them hell. I just tell the truth and they think it's hell.
--Harry S. Truman

Our government has kept us in a perpetual state of fear - kept us in a continuous stampede of patriotic fervour - with the cry of grave national emergency. Always there has been some terrible evil at home or some monstrous foreign power that was going to gobble us up if we did not rally behind it."
-General Douglas MacArthur
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"Justice is as strictly due between neighbor nations as between neighbor citizens. A highwayman is as much a robber when he plunders in a gang as when single; and a nation that makes an unjust war is only a great gang": Benjamin Franklin to Benjamin Vaughan, 14 March 1785

If... the machine of government... is of such a nature that it requires you to be the agent of injustice to another, then, I say, break the law: Henry David Thoreau, On the Duty of Civil Disobediance, 1849

= Each man must for himself alone decide what is right and what is wrong, which course is patriotic and which isn't. You cannot shirk this and be a man. To decide against your conviction is to be an unqualified and excusable traitor, both to yourself and to your country, let men label you as they may: Mark Twain

We should never forget that everything Adolf Hitler did in Germany was "legal" and everything the Hungarian freedom fighters did in Hungary was "illegal." ~Martin Luther King, Jr., "Letter from Birmingham Jail," Why We Can't Wait, 1963

If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor. If an elephant has its foot on the tail of a mouse and you say that you are neutral, the mouse will not appreciate your neutrality. ~Bishop Desmond Tutu

Write on my gravestone: "Infidel, Traitor." --infidel to every church that compromises with wrong; traitor to every government that oppresses the people.: Wendell Phillips

Once a government is committed to the principle of silencing the voice of opposition, it has only one way to go, and that is down the path of increasingly repressive measures, until it becomes a source of terror to all its citizens and creates a country where everyone lives in fear
--Harry S. Truman

Whatever is begun in anger ends in shame.
- Benjamin Franklin

Keep your eyes wide open before marriage, and half-shut afterwards.
-Benjamin Franklin

Don't join the book burners.
-Benjamin Franklin

"Knowledge will forever govern ignorance. And a people who mean to be their own governors, must arm themselves with the power knowledge gives. A popular government without popular information or the means of acquiring it, is but a prologue to a farce or a tragedy, or perhaps both."
—President James Madison, August 4, 1822

"Governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. That whenever any form of government becomes destructive to these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new government."
—US Declaration of Independence from dictator King George III of England, July 4, 1776

"A little rebellion now and then is a good thing, and as necessary in the political world as storms in the physical."
—President Thomas Jefferson

"How soon we forget history. Government is not reason. Government is not eloquence. It is force. And, like fire, it is a dangerous servant and a fearful master."
—President George Washington

"Does the government fear us? Or do we fear the government? When the people fear the government, tyranny has found victory. The federal government is our servant, not our master!"
—President Thomas Jefferson

"If ye love wealth greater than liberty, the tranquility of servitude greater than the animating contest for freedom, go home from us in peace. We seek not your counsel, nor your arms. Crouch down and lick the hand that feeds you; May your chains set lightly upon you, and may posterity forget that ye were our countrymen."
—Samuel Adams, signer of the US Constitution

"Guard with jealous attention the public liberty. Suspect everyone who approaches that jewel. Unfortunately, nothing will preserve it but downright force. Whenever you give up that force, you are ruined. The great object is that every man be armed. Everyone who is able might have a gun."
—Patrick Henry

"Before a standing army can rule, the people must be disarmed; as they are in almost every kingdom of Europe. the supreme power in America cannot enforce unjust laws by the sword; because the whole body of the people are armed, and constitute a force superior to any bands of regular troops that can be, on any pretense, raised in the United States."
—Noah Webster

"Americans have the right and advantage of being armed--unlike citizens of other countries whose governments are afraid to trust people with arms."
—President James Madison

"Laws that forbid the carrying of arms disarm only those who are neither inclined nor determined to commit crimes. Such laws make things worse for the assaulted and better for the assailants; they serve rather to encourage than to prevent homicides, for an unarmed man may be attacked with greater confidence than an armed man."
—President Thomas Jefferson

 Do not think you are going to conceal thoughts by concealing evidence that they ever existed.
Dwight D. Eisenhower

War settles nothing.
Dwight D. Eisenhower

 The scope and scale of our crimes, as manifested in Iraq and elsewhere, are mind-boggling. The indifference of the American people is mind numbing. And the wrath of history, which will judge all of us harshly, has yet to be felt.
 Scott Ritter served as chief U.N. weapons inspector in Iraq

A wise and frugal government, which shall leave men free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor and bread it has earned - this is the sum of good government.
Thomas Jefferson

All tyranny needs to gain a foothold is for people of good conscience to remain silent.
Thomas Jefferson

Commerce with all nations, alliance with none, should be our motto.
Thomas Jefferson

Educate and inform the whole mass of the people... They are the only sure reliance for the preservation of our liberty.
Thomas Jefferson

Every generation needs a new revolution.
Thomas Jefferson

Every citizen should be a soldier. This was the case with the Greeks and Romans, and must be that of every free state.
Thomas Jefferson

Force is the vital principle and immediate parent of despotism.
Thomas Jefferson

I abhor war and view it as the greatest scourge of mankind.
Thomas Jefferson

I am mortified to be told that, in the United States of America, the sale of a book can become a subject of inquiry, and of criminal inquiry too.
Thomas Jefferson

Allow the president to invade a neighboring nation, whenever he shall deem it necessary to repel an invasion, and you allow him to do so whenever he may choose to say he deems it necessary for such a purpose - and you allow him to make war at pleasure.
Abraham Lincoln

America will never be destroyed from the outside. If we falter and lose our freedoms, it will be because we destroyed ourselves.
Abraham Lincoln

Any people anywhere, being inclined and having the power, have the right to rise up, and shake off the existing government, and form a new one that suits them better. This is a most valuable - a most sacred right - a right, which we hope and believe, is to liberate the world.
Abraham Lincoln

Don't interfere with anything in the Constitution. That must be maintained, for it is the only safeguard of our liberties.
Abraham Lincoln

Government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the Earth.
Abraham Lincoln

Corporations will be enthroned and an era of corruption in high places will follow and the money power and the money power of the country will endeavor to prolong its reign by working upon the predjudices of the people until all wealth is aggregated in a few hands and the Republic is destroyed.
Abraham Lincoln in an 1864 letter

"The majority, oppressing an individual, is guilty of a crime, abuses its strength, and by acting on the law of the strongest breaks up the foundations of society." -- Thomas Jefferson to P. Dupont, 1816 = "Bear in mind this sacred principle, that though the will of the majority is in all cases to prevail, that will, to be rightful, must be reasonable; that the minority possess their equal rights, which equal laws must protect, and to violate would be oppression." -- Thomas Jefferson: 1st Inaugural, 1801 = "...There is no nation on earth powerful enough to accomplish our overthrow. ... Our destruction, should it come at all, will be from another quarter. From the inattention of the people to the concerns of their government, from their carelessness and negligence, I must confess that I do apprehend some danger. I fear that they may place too implicit a confidence in their public servants, and fail properly to scrutinize their conduct; that in this way they may be made the dupes of designing men, and become the instruments of their own undoing." -- Daniel Webster, June 1, 1837

Fourscore and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.
Abraham Lincoln

I am a firm believer in the people. If given the truth, they can be depended upon to meet any national crisis. The great point is to bring them the real facts.
Abraham Lincoln

Marriage is neither heaven nor hell, it is simply purgatory.
Abraham Lincoln

"Any fool can make a rule and every fool will mind it."
- Henry David Thoreau

"If you survive your drug days, you have golf ahead of you. That is, if you have any brain left at all."
- Dennis Hopper

"Learning without thought is labour lost; thought without learning is perilous."
- Confucius

"Talent is formed in quiet retreat; character in the headlong rush of life."
- Goethe

"Those who refuse to learn from history are condemned to repeat it."
 - George Santayana

"The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, but wiser people so full of doubts."
- Bertrand Russell

Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man's character, give him power.
Abraham Lincoln

Our safety, our liberty, depends upon preserving the Constitution of the United States as our fathers made it inviolate. The people of the United States are the rightful masters of both Congress and the courts, not to overthrow the Constitution, but to overthrow the men who pervert the Constitution.
Abraham Lincoln

I was a bombadier in WW 2. When you are up 30,000 feet you do not hear the screams or smell the blood or see those without limbs or eyes. It was not til I read Hersey's Hiroshima that I realized what bomber pilots do: Howard Zinn

"If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of their money, first by inflation and then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around them (around the banks), will deprive the people of their property until their children will wake up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered." - Thomas Jefferson

"The majority, oppressing an individual, is guilty of a crime, abuses its strength, and by acting on the law of the strongest breaks up the foundations of society." -- Thomas Jefferson to P. Dupont, 1816

Most of you remember this, but I am going to repeat President Eisenhour's words:
"Beware the military industrial complex."