Thursday, November 21, 2013

Quotes from American Presidents (1 of 16): William McKinley

Greetings to our blog-readers in Malaysia, Colombia and Egypt.

Today, we begin our series quoting American presidents from yesterday. On this blog, we are quoting presidents 25-40, and thus we begin with William McKinley. Most young people probably recognize the name William McKinley from the cult tv show "Freaks and Geeks," which took place at William McKinley High School in suburban Michigan.

There actually is a real William McKinley High School quite far away from Michigan in Honolulu, Hawaii.

McKinley was one of several presidents from Ohio, but many of them did not have much luck as two of the four assassinated presidents (James Garfield being the other besides McKinley was the second). McKinley was gunned down by a left-wing extremist in Buffalo, NY, in 1801, who was later executed. McKinley is actually considered by many historians to be the most right-wing president in American history, even ahead of Ronald Reagan.

McKinley has seen a bit of hoopla lately as right-wing scholars have written many articles and even books about him, and we imagine he is loved at the Libertarian think-tank the Cato Institute in Washington, DC, whose views we pretty much strongly differ with. But, we'll give their link any way.

Here is the quote from McKinley:

"In the time of darkest defeat, victory may be the nearest."

PS: We thought we'd throw in our favorite line from Sunday's "Roanoke Times" comics page. This quip is from "Dilbert": "Go sit at your desk or you're fired." (no exclamation point!)......


http://www.whitehouse.gov/about/presidents/williammckinley

http://www.cato.org/

http://www.dilbert.com

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