Sipsey Street Irregulars: Herschel Smith: "It’s about honor. People who demand to know sources don’t understand honor."

Wednesday, April 15, 2015

Herschel Smith: "It’s about honor. People who demand to know sources don’t understand honor."

You know, people who demand to know sources are idiots. What do they think – that journalists and bloggers are going to give up people who entrusted themselves to give needful reports? I always protected my sources. I expect David and Mike to do the same thing. I would lose respect for them if they didn’t. It’s about more than just expediency. It’s about honor. People who demand to know sources don’t understand honor.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...: Just do what the "freest, most democratic" Gov't in the world does - say it's a matter of national Security and tell anyone that still has questions to go fu&%-off.; April 15, 2015 at 4:48 AM
Anonymous said...: When a person writes using a anonymous source they themselves BECOME the source. I can understand folks who are tired of endless press quoting "an official close to the investigation said". The problem is that celebrity culture has turned on a dime - folks used to care about WHAT was said but now the supposed key is WHO said it. Why? Well because the politics of personal destruction only works when there is a person identified to destroy!!

Reject the temptation of identity politics. Reject attacking covert sources AND anonymous postings. Attack the SUBSTANCE itself. Addres the CONTENT directly. That's takes honor and courage. Identity politics is the opposite.; April 15, 2015 at 12:16 PM
Jimmy the Saint said...: It's always been a balancing act, though. One the one hand, protecting sources encourages disclosures from people who might well otherwise say nothing. However, allowing journalists to protect the identity of their sources allows for "Informed sources say so-and-so is a paedophile" and all other manner of slander/libel. It also makes it hard for the public to judge credibility. Does "a source close to the White House" mean the White House Chief of Staff, or a homeless guy standing outside the gate?; April 15, 2015 at 1:38 PM

"Progress made under the shadow of the policeman's club is false progress."

I believe that liberty is the only genuinely valuable thing that men have invented, at least in the field of government, in a thousand years. I believe that it is better to be free than to be not free, even when the former is dangerous and the latter safe. I believe that the finest qualities of man can flourish only in free air – that progress made under the shadow of the policeman's club is false progress, and of no permanent value. I believe that any man who takes the liberty of another into his keeping is bound to become a tyrant, and that any man who yields up his liberty, in however slight the measure, is bound to become a slave. -- H.L. Mencken

"The Fate of Unborn Millions. . ."

"The time is now near at hand which must probably determine, whether Americans are to be, Freemen, or Slaves; whether they are to have any property they can call their own; whether their Houses, and Farms, are to be pillaged and destroyed, and they consigned to a State of Wretchedness from which no human efforts will probably deliver them. The fate of unborn Millions will now depend, under God, on the Courage and Conduct of this army-Our cruel and unrelenting Enemy leaves us no choice but a brave resistance, or the most abject submission; that is all we can expect-We have therefore to resolve to conquer or die." -- George Washington to his troops before the Battle of Long Island.

"We will not go gently . . ."

This is no small thing, to restore a republic after it has fallen into corruption. I have studied history for years and I cannot recall it ever happening. It may be that our task is impossible. Yet, if we do not try then how will we know it can't be done? And if we do not try, it most certainly won't be done. The Founders' Republic, and the larger war for western civilization, will be lost.

But I tell you this: We will not go gently into that bloody collectivist good night. Indeed, we will make with our defiance such a sound as ALL history from that day forward will be forced to note, even if they despise us in the writing of it.

And when we are gone, the scattered, free survivors hiding in the ruins of our once-great republic will sing of our deeds in forbidden songs, tending the flickering flame of individual liberty until it bursts forth again, as it must, generations later. We will live forever, like the Spartans at Thermopylae, in sacred memory.

-- Mike Vanderboegh, The Lessons of Mumbai:Death Cults, the "Socialism of Imbeciles" and Refusing to Submit, 1 December 2008

"A common language of resistance . . ."

"Colonial rebellions throughout the modern world have been acts of shared political imagination. Unless unhappy people develop the capacity to trust other unhappy people, protest remains a local affair easily silenced by traditional authority. Usually, however, a moment arrives when large numbers of men and women realize for the first time that they enjoy the support of strangers, ordinary people much like themselves who happen to live in distant places and whom under normal circumstances they would never meet. It is an intoxicating discovery. A common language of resistance suddenly opens to those who are most vulnerable to painful retribution the possibility of creating a new community. As the conviction of solidarity grows, parochial issues and aspirations merge imperceptibly with a compelling national agenda which only a short time before may have been the dream of only a few. For many Americans colonists this moment occurred late in the spring of 1774." -- T.H. Breen, The Marketplace of Revolution: How Consumer Politics Shaped American Independence, Oxford University Press, 2004, p.1.

Sipsey Street Irregulars

Wednesday, April 15, 2015

Herschel Smith: "It’s about honor. People who demand to know sources don’t understand honor."

3 comments:

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