r/Conservative • u/Yosoff First Principles • May 08 '14

Sidebar Tribute History

Every Friday one of the /r/Conservative mods will post a new picture and quote on the sidebar to honor conservative leaders or groups. Here's the list of our former honorees.

Sidebar Tribute History:

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  • C.S. Lewis

    "Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience."

    Mod: /u/CarolinaPunk

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  • Alexis de Tocqueville

    "The American Republic will endure until the day Congress discovers that it can bribe the public with the public's money."

    Mod: /u/TK-85

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  • Mark Levin

    "In the civil society, private property and liberty are inseparable. The individual's right to live freely and safely and pursue happiness includes the right to acquire and possess property, which represents the fruits of his own intellectual and/or physical labor. As the individual's time on earth is finite, so, too, is his labor. The illegitimate denial or diminution of his private property enslaves him to another and denies him his liberty."

    Mod: /u/Clatsop

    Discussion

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  • Margaret Thatcher

    "The problem with socialism is that you eventually run out of other peoples' money."

    Mod: Funeral Tribute

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  • Dick Cheney

    "It is easy to take liberty for granted, when you have never had it taken from you."

    Mod: /u/chabanais

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  • Haile Selassie

    "The preservation of peace and the guaranteeing of man's basic freedoms and rights require courage and eternal vigilance: courage to speak and act — and if necessary, to suffer and die — for truth and justice; eternal vigilance, that the least transgression of international morality shall not go undetected and unremedied."

    Mod: /u/CptQuestionMark

    Discussion

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  • Declaration of Independence

    "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"

    Mod: Independence Day

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  • Michael Farris

    "The Constitution gives the states real power when they act together. That is what Article V promises. When the states act together in a Convention of the States, they can unilaterally propose amendments that will be returned to the States for ratification. Neither Congress nor the Federal Courts can stop them. The Governor cannot stop them. The President cannot stop them. The state legislators hold all the levers of power."

    Mod: /u/Clatsop

    Discussion

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u/Yosoff First Principles May 20 '14

  • George Mason

    "The second clause of Article V - empowering the states - is necessary, because left to Congress, no amendments of the proper kind would ever be obtained by the people, if the Government should become oppressive."

    Mod: /u/Clatsop

    Discussion

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u/Yosoff First Principles Jun 27 '14

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  • Thomas Sowell

    "We seem to be moving steadily in the direction of a society where no one is responsible for what he himself did, but we are all responsible for what somebody else did, either in the present or in the past."

    Mod: /u/Jibrish

    Discussion

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  • Stephen Harper

    "When a government starts trying to cancel dissent or avoid dissent is frankly when it’s rapidly losing its moral authority to govern."

    "Canada appears content to become a second-tier socialistic country, boasting ever more loudly about its economy and social services to mask its second-rate status."

    "The world is now unipolar and contains only one superpower. Canada shares a continent with that superpower."

    Mod: /u/robert32907

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  • John Derbyshire

    "Wherever there is a jackboot stomping on a human face there will be a well-heeled Western liberal to explain that the face does, after all, enjoy free health care and 100 percent literacy."

    Mod: /u/freshbrewedcoffee

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  • Ann Coulter

    "With their infernal racial set-asides, racial quotas, and race norming, liberals share many of the Klan's premises. The Klan sees the world in terms of race and ethnicity. So do liberals! Indeed, liberals and white supremacists are the only people left in America who are neurotically obsessed with race. Conservatives champion a color-blind society."

    Mod: /u/chabanais

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  • William F. Buckley Jr.

    "Back in the thirties we were told we must collectivize the nation because the people were so poor. Now we are told we must collectivize the nation because the people are so rich."

    Mod: /u/Slippery_Slope_Guy

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  • Archbishop Fulton Sheen

    "America, it is said, is suffering from intolerance — it is not. It is suffering from tolerance. Tolerance of right and wrong, truth and error, virtue and evil, Christ and chaos. Our country is not nearly so overrun with the bigoted as it is overrun with the broadminded."

    Mod: /u/WhirledWorld

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  • James Madison

    "No man is allowed to be a judge in his own cause; because his interest would certainly bias his judgment, and, not improbably, corrupt his integrity. With equal, nay with greater reason, a body of men are unfit to be both judges and parties at the same time."

    Mod: /u/CarolinaPunk

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  • Denis Diderot

    "We swallow greedily any lie that flatters us, but we sip only little by little at a truth we find bitter."

    Mod: /u/chabanais

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  • Pat Buchanan

    "We have accepted today the existence in perpetuity of a permanent underclass of scores of millions who cannot cope and must be carried by society — fed, clothed, housed, tutored, medicated at taxpayer’s expense their entire lives. We have a dependent nation the size of Spain in our independent America. We have a new division in our country, those who pay a double or triple fare, and those who ride forever free."

    Mod: /u/robert32907

    Discussion

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  • Jim DeMint

    "The new debate in the Republican Party needs to be between Conservatives and Libertarians."

    "If we become too scared to confront the chief problems of our time, there is no hope of ever solving them."

    Mod: /u/Yosoff

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  • Davy Crockett

    "Every member upon this floor knows it. We have the right, as individuals, to give away as much of our own money as we please in charity; but as members of Congress we have no right so to appropriate a dollar of the public money."

    Mod: /u/terrortot

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  • Ronald Reagan

    "Well, I've said it before and I'll say it again — America's best days are yet to come. Our proudest moments are yet to be. Our most glorious achievements are just ahead."

    Mod: /u/WhirledWorld

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  • Jonah Goldberg

    "Finally, since we must have a working definition of fascism, here is mine: Fascism is a religion of the state. It assumes the organic unity of the body politic and longs for a national leader attuned to the will of the people. It is totalitarian in that it views everything as political and holds that any action by the state is justified to achieve the common good. It takes responsibility for all aspects of life, including our health and well-being, and seeks to impose uniformity of thought and action, whether by force or through regulation and social pressure. Everything, including the economy and religion, must be aligned with its objectives. Any rival identity is part of the “problem” and therefore defined as the enemy. I will argue that contemporary American liberalism embodies all of these aspects of fascism."

    Mod: /u/Slippery_Slope_Guy

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  • Chris Christie

    "You know, I think what the American people want more than anything else right now is someone who's just going to look them in the eye and tell them the truth, even some truths that they don't like. And - but they have to believe the person's speaking from their heart and are authentic."

    Mod: /u/CarolinaPunk

    Discussion

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  • James L. Payne

    "Human beings have a disposition to believe in authority and to ascribe godlike wisdom and maturity to it. This orientation probably begins in childhood when parents are viewed as wise and capable. As children grow up, many transfer this faith in authority to government, producing the watchful eye illusion: the belief that government is wise and responsible. This illusion will lead people to forget about—or repress—all the evidence demonstrating that government officials are often unwise and irresponsible."

    Mod: Community Vote Winner: /u/liatris

    Discussion

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  • Demonax

    "Probably all laws are useless; for good men do not want laws at all, and bad men are made no better by them."

    Mod: /u/chabanais

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  • Louis C.K.

    "There's been a lot of simple vilification of right-wing people. It's really easy to say, 'Well, you're Christian, you're anti-this and that, and I hate you.' But to me, it's more interesting to say, 'What is this person like and how do they really think?'"

    Mod: /u/robert32907

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  • Phil Robertson

    "It seems like, to me, a vagina — as a man — would be more desirable than a man’s anus. That’s just me. I’m just thinking: There’s more there! She’s got more to offer. I mean, come on, dudes! You know what I’m saying? But hey, sin: It’s not logical, my man. It’s just not logical."

    Mod: /u/terrortot

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  • Christmas

    "And the angel said unto them, 'Fear not: for, behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people. For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Saviour, which is Christ the Lord.'" ~Luke 2:10-11

    Mod: Christmas

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  • Caroline Glick

    "You can talk until you’re blue in the face about the civilian victims of the Syrian civil war, or the gender apartheid in Saudi Arabia and the absence of religious freedom throughout the Muslim world. But they don't care. They aren’t trying to make the world a better place. Facts cannot compete with their faith. Reason has no place in their closed intellectual universe. To accept reason and facts would be an act of heresy." ~Caroline Glick on the American Left

    Mod: /u/Yosoff

    Discussion

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  • Michel Houellebecq

    "Actionists, beatniks, hippies, and serial killers were all pure libertarians who advanced the rights of the individual against social norms and against what they believed to be the hypocrisy of morality, sentiment, justice, and pity. Having exhausted the possibilities of sexual pleasure, it was reasonable that individuals should turn their attention to the wider pleasure of cruelty."

    Mod: /u/Mayonesa

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  • T.S. Eliot, 'Tradition and the Individual Talent' (1919)

    "Some one said: 'The dead writers are remote from us because we know so much more than they did.' Precisely, and they are that which we know."

    Mod: /u/WhirledWorld

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  • Megan McArdle

    "Once the government gets into the business of providing our health care, the government gets into the business of deciding whose life matters, and how much."

    Mod: /u/CarolinaPunk

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  • Mike Lee

    "Inequality – real inequality - is trapping poor children in failing schools to benefit bureaucrats and union bosses. It’s penalizing low-income parents for getting married, or getting better jobs. It’s guaranteeing insurance companies taxpayer bailouts if Obamacare cuts into their profits. Inequality is blocking thousands of middle-class jobs in the energy industry as a favor to partisan donors and radical environmental activists. Inequality is denying viable, unborn children any protection under the law, while exempting unsanitary, late-term abortion clinics from basic safety standards. It’s denying citizens their right to define marriage in their states as traditionally or as broadly as their diverse values dictate. It’s the federal government hurting rural communities, especially in the west, by controlling and mismanaging public lands. It’s changing laws without congressional approval, and spying on American citizens without constitutional authority. And of course, Obamacare – all by itself – is an inequality Godzilla that has robbed working families of their insurance, their doctors, their wages and their jobs."

    Mod: /u/Clatsop

    Discussion

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  • Tea Party Patriots

    "Our mission is to restore America’s founding principles of Fiscal Responsibility, Constitutionally Limited Government and Free Markets."

    Mod: /u/Yosoff

    Discussion

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  • George Washington, from his 1796 farewell address

    "Of all the dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity, Religion and Morality are indispensable supports."

    Mod: /u/terrortot

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  • Samuel Adams

    "The liberties of our Country, the freedom of our civil constitution are worth defending at all hazards: And it is our duty to defend them against all attacks. We have receiv'd them as a fair Inheritance from our worthy Ancestors: They purchas'd them for us with toil and danger and expence of treasure and blood; and transmitted them to us with care and diligence. It will bring an everlasting mark of infamy on the present generation, enlightened as it is, if we should suffer them to be wrested from us by violence without a struggle; or be cheated out of them by the artifices of false and designing men."

    Mod: /u/Clatsop

    Discussion

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  • Frédéric Bastiat

    "Socialism, like the ancient ideas from which it springs, confuses the distinction between government and society. As a result of this, every time we object to a thing being done by government, the socialists conclude that we object to its being done at all. We disapprove of state education. Then the socialists say that we are opposed to any education. We object to a state religion. Then the socialists say that we want no religion at all. We object to a state-enforced equality. Then they say that we are against equality. And so on, and so on. It is as if the socialists were to accuse us of not wanting persons to eat because we do not want the state to raise grain."

    Mod: /u/CarolinaPunk

    Discussion

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  • William Godwin

    "Government was intended to suppress injustice, but its effect has been to embody and perpetuate it."

    Mod: /u/chabanais

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  • W.E.B. Du Bois

    "A little less complaint and whining, and a little more dogged work and manly striving, would do us more credit than a thousand civil rights bills."

    Mod: /u/Aplusplusplus

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u/Yosoff First Principles May 13 '14

  • Allan Bloom, 'The Closing of the American Mind'

    "When the liberal, or what came to be called the utilitarian, teaching became dominant, as is the case with most victorious causes, good arguments became less necessary; the original good arguments, which were difficult, were replaced by plausible simplifications—or by nothing."

    Mod: /u/CarolinaPunk

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u/Yosoff First Principles May 23 '14

  • Declaration of Independence

    "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."

    Mod: /u/chabanais

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u/Yosoff First Principles Jun 03 '14

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u/Yosoff First Principles Jun 06 '14

  • D Day

    D Day - June 6, 1944

    Mod: D Day Tribute

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u/Yosoff First Principles Jun 11 '14 edited Jun 13 '14

  • Clarence Thomas

    "The absolute worst I have ever been treated, the worst things that have been done to me, the worst things that have been said about me, [were] by northern liberal elites, not by the people of Savannah, Georgia."

    Mod: /u/Aplusplusplus

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u/Yosoff First Principles Jun 13 '14

  • Dave Brat

    "When addressing the issue of immigration, we must start by securing our border. An open border is both a national security threat and an economic threat that our country cannot ignore. I reject any proposal that grants amnesty and undermines the fundamental rule of law.''

    Mod: /u/terrortot

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  • Eric Hoffer

    "Not only does the intellectual's penchant for tutoring, directing, and regulating promote a regimented social pattern, but his craving for the momentous is bound to foster an austere seriousness inhospitable to the full play of freedom."

    Mod: /u/CarolinaPunk

    Discussion

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u/Yosoff First Principles Jul 17 '14 edited Jul 18 '14

  • Victor Davis Hanson

    "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 acknowledgement 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."

    Mod: /u/Jibrish

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u/Yosoff First Principles Jul 24 '14

  • Calvin Coolidge, 1924 Inaugural Address

    "I favor the policy of economy, not because I wish to save money, but because I wish to save people. The men and women of this country who toil are the ones who bear the cost of the Government. Every dollar that we carelessly waste means that their life will be so much the more meager. Every dollar that we prudently save means that their life will be so much the more abundant."

    Mod: /u/WhirledWorld

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u/Yosoff First Principles Jul 26 '14

  • Tom Tancredo

    "The federal government has been spinning out of control for many years, and we have learned that neither the Congress nor the federal courts are willing to put the brakes on the cancerous growth of federal power. It’s time the states acted to rein in federal arrogance. Instead of praying for another Ronald Reagan on a white horse, we should pick up and use the tools at hand. Let’s begin by using the constitutional amendment process allowed in Article V of the U.S. Constitution."

    Mod: /u/Clatsop

    Discussion

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u/Yosoff First Principles Aug 01 '14

  • Milton Friedman

    "Whether it is in the slums of New Delhi or in the affluence of Las Vegas, it simply isn't fair that there should be any losers. Life is unfair — there is nothing fair about one man being born blind and another man being born with sight. There is nothing fair about one man being born of a wealthy parent and one of an indigenous parent. There is nothing fair about Muhammad Ali having been born with a skill that enables him to make millions of dollars in one night. There is nothing fair about Marlene Dietrich having great legs that we all want to watch. There is nothing fair about any of that. But on the other hand, don't you think a lot of people who like to look at Marlene Dietrich's legs benefited from nature's unfairness in producing a Marlene Dietrich? What kind of a world would it be if everybody was an absolute identical duplicate of anybody else? You might as well destroy the whole world and just keep one specimen left for a museum. In the same way, it's unfair that Muhammad Ali should be a great fighter and should be able to earn millions. But would it not be even more unfair to the people who like to watch him if you said that in the pursuit of some abstract idea of equality we're not going to let Muhammad Ali get more for one nights fight than the lowest man on the totem pole can get for a days unskilled work on the docks? You can do that but the result of that would be to deny people the opportunity to watch Muhammad Ali. I doubt very much he would be willing to subject himself to the kind of fights he's gone through if he were to get the pay of an unskilled docker."

    Mod: /u/liatris

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u/Yosoff First Principles Aug 08 '14

  • Mark R. Levin

    “Conservatism is the antidote to tyranny. It's the only one. It's based on thousands of years of human experience. There is nothing narrow about the conservative philosophy. It's a liberating philosophy. It is a magnificent philosophy. It is a philosophy for the ages, for all times.”

    Mod: Community Vote Winner: /u/Reed97

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u/Yosoff First Principles Aug 22 '14

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  • Ted Cruz

    "If you look at the last 40 years, the clearest pattern that emerges is when Republicans nominate a strong conservative as a presidential candidate, Republicans win. When Republicans nominate a candidate who runs as a moderate, Republicans lose."

    "I am perfectly happy to compromise and work with anybody. Republicans, Democrats, Libertarians. I’ll work with Martians. If, and the if is critical, they're willing to cut spending and reduce the debt."

    Mod: /u/Yosoff

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u/Yosoff First Principles Aug 25 '14

  • Julius Evola

    "Being and stability are regarded by our contemporaries as akin to death; they cannot live unless they act, fret, or distract themselves with this or that. Their spirit (provided we can still talk about a spirit in their case) feeds only on sensations and on dynamism, thus becoming the vehicle for the incarnation of darker forces."

    Mod: /u/CptQuestionMark

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u/Yosoff First Principles Sep 17 '14

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u/Yosoff First Principles Sep 25 '14

  • Lt. Col. Allen West

    "The Left must destroy black conservatives because it cannot afford to have freethinking, independent-minded black Americans. If we begin to pull away from the dependency society and stand for the fundamental principles that once made us a proud community, the Left loses."

    Mod: /u/Clatsop

    Discussion

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u/Yosoff First Principles Oct 09 '14

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u/Yosoff First Principles Oct 17 '14

  • Niccolo Machiavelli

    "A return to first principles in a republic is sometimes caused by the simple virtues of one man. His good example has such an influence that the good men strive to imitate him, and the wicked are ashamed to lead a life so contrary to his example."

    Mod: /u/chabanais

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u/Yosoff First Principles Oct 17 '14

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u/Yosoff First Principles Oct 31 '14

  • Charlton Heston

    "I want to say those fighting words for everyone within the sound of my voice to hear and to heed... 'From my cold, dead hands!' "

    Mod: /u/Yosoff

    Discussion

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u/Yosoff First Principles Nov 01 '14

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u/Yosoff First Principles Sep 12 '14

  • Tony Snow

    "Well, we can't afford blindness anymore. There are tens of thousands of thugs who loathe liberty and love death, and want to annihilate Western civilization."

    Mod: /u/CarolinaPunk

    Discussion