Patriotism is voluntary. It is a feeling of loyalty and allegiance that is the result of knowledge and belief. A patriot shows their their patriotism through their actions, by their choice.

In the last recession, 99 percent of us have lost wealth, but did you know that the top 1 percent increased their wealth five times? It tells you they create recessions so they get wealthier.

Personally as a rider, I find the helmet distracts me. I can't hear as well and I can't see as well. I also believe loud pipes save lives and my pipes straight through with no baffles in them.

I think that Minnesota is different because we are proving that tri-partisan government could work, that you do not need to necessarily be a Democrat or a Republican to be successful at governing.

The thing is, and Americans are starting to realize this now, that while street gangs are violent, the Democrats and Republicans are worse. They are worse because their decisions affect your life.

Barack Obama's large contributor was Goldman Sachs - same thing on the Republican side. If you go to both their conventions, you see the same lobbyists paying off both sides so they win either way.

I don't think I would want the responsibility for enforcing the death penalties. There's always the inevitable question of whether someone you gave the order to execute might truly have been innocent.

I'm not disparaging suicides when I call them weak, I'm pointing out that anybody who would consider doing a thing like that needs help. I don't think a normal, mentally healthy person commits suicide.

I don't want to live in a country that lies can prevail in court. Where you can walk into a courtroom and fabricate a story and then have appellate court judges uphold it after a jury has made a decision.

All of us should have free choice when it comes to patriotic displays... a government wisely acting within its bounds will earn loyalty and respect from its citizens. A government dare not demand the same.

I follow the teachings of Major General Smedley Darlington Butler, United States Marine Corps. He won two Congressional Medals of Honor, and he wrote the highly controversial antiwar book 'War is a Racket.'

When the Constitution gave us the right to bear arms, it also made us responsible for using them properly. It's not fair of us as citizens to lean more heavily on one side of that equation than on the other.

When I ran for governor, I told all the bikers, "You don't need to worry about me bringing in a helmet law. It's your option because you as a motorcycle rider that's your option. It doesn't come with the bike."

You need to hunt something that can shoot back at you to really classify yourself as a hunter. You need to understand the feeling of what it's like to go into the field and know your opposition can take you out.

The Mexican government understands that when you turn 65, your ability to earn money diminishes. They don't want you kicked out of your house that you've worked your whole life for, no matter what that house is.

I wish everyone in this country could magically leave the country for six months and view the United States from the outside for six months, and I think you'd see a new perspective to the people of this country.

I'm a Slovak. And when I was growing up, I believed that I was Czechoslovakian because of what Russia did. They came in and took two separate countries - Slovakia and the Czech Republic - put them together as one.

Eternal vigilance must be maintained to guard against those who seek to stifle ideas, establish a narrow orthodoxy, and divide our nation along arbitrary lines of race, ethnicity, and religious belief or non-belief.

I don't have to muzzle myself when I'm a civilian. When you're a governor, you kind of have to do it, because you represent the whole state. You have to leave your personal opinions to yourself a lot. I learned that.

If you start studying history closer, you'll find that most all wars are based on false flag operations to get people - to convince the people that they're under attack in some way so that they will support the wars.

I believe in the separation of church and state. We all have our own religious beliefs. There are people out there who are atheists, who don't believe at all. . . . They are citizens of Minnesota, and I have to respect that.

I'm the only person in the world that, when he holds down two jobs, gets criticized for it; everyone else gets a pat on the back and say, 'What an entrepreneuring, hardworking person,' but apparently that doesn't apply to me.

Government's role should be only to keep the playing field level, and to work hand in hand with business on issues such as employment. But beyond this, to as great an extent as possible, it should get the hell out of the way.

The people need to understand that marijuana is an unbelievable plant that has huge medical - it's a medical plant, is the best way to describe it. It has huge benefits for us as people in many, many - so many different ways.

Al Gore in 2000. He got a half a million more votes than George Bush and lost. How can that be? It's ridiculous. It's an elitist system. It's so they pick your President. You don't - the people - and it needs to be abolished.

When you drink fluoridated water, you're drinking liquid Prozac. You drink enough of it, even though it's a small amount, drink it for decades and decades and what does Prozac do to you? It dumbs you down; it makes you docile.

If you work for the federal government, the average salary is $7,000 higher than the private sector. Something's wrong with that, when you're making more money working for the government than you can working in the private sector.

It's convenient how everyone who supports waterboarding and torture, or "enhanced interrogation techniques" as they like to call it, have never experienced it themselves. Yet everyone who has, myself included, are firmly against it.

The SuperPACs and the Citizens United ruling that gives corporations a voice in the political process are all bad news. They made it so you can now lie, and the politician being promoted on that lie will not be held responsible for it.

My attitude when I'm in Mexico is I wake up in the morning with nothing to do and I go to bed half done. I don't wear a watch. When I live down there, I do nothing according to time. I eat when I'm hungry and go to sleep when I'm tired.

If the price of the drug people want to use is through the roof, well then they're going to have to commit crimes to get the money to get the drug. You don't see any crimes committed over a pack of cigarettes or a bottle of beer, do you?

How come life in prison doesn't mean life? Until it does, we're not ready to do away with the death penalty. Stop thinking in terms of "punishment" for a minute and think in terms of safeguarding innocent people from incorrigible murderers.

Prostitution is criminal, and bad things happen because it's run illegally by dirt-bags who are criminals. If it's legal, then the girls could have health checks, unions, benefits, anything any other worker gets, and it would be far better.

People in this country need to understand when you go to any airport in the United States, you are not protected by the Constitution or the Bill of Rights. They can do anything they want to you, and there is no where you can go to seek redress.

Okay, fluoride in the water to help our teeth. Well, shouldn't that be the job of your mom and dad? To teach you how to brush your teeth and use mouth wash? What do we need the government to do it for? Clearly, what a scam. Fluoride in the water.

In February 2003, I signed a three-year contract with MSNBC to host a talk show. Having recently decided not to run again for governor of Minnesota, I was still a pretty hot commodity. The show was originally scheduled for an hour, four nights a week.

My father used to always say to me that, you know, if a guy goes out to steal a loaf of bread to feed his family, they'll give him 10 years, but a guy can do white-collar crime and steal the money of thousands and he'll get probation and a slap on the wrist.

I believe to go along to get along is unpatriotic. I believe that agreeing with your government on everything they do is unpatriotic. I believe a patriot stands up and holds your government's feet to the fire. Because if you do that, you will get good government.

I also believe that government has no business telling us how we should live our lives. I think our lifestyle choices should be left up to us. What we do in our private lives is none of the government's business. That position rules out the Republican Party for me.

I wish they would pass a law where all Democrats and Republicans had to wear NASCAR racing suits, because if you look at the NASCAR drivers, it tells who their sponsors are. And if they do that, we could then become informed voters, because we would know who owns them.

Disabled people need more invested in their education, housing, job training, transportation, assistive technology, and independent-living facilities. Governments earn back this investment - and more - by making people with disabilities economically productive citizens.

If we would end the war on drugs, you would see the end of the militarization of our police forces and you would see an end to a lot of the shooting violence that's going on when people are being pulled over for traffic stops and then suddenly executed right in the street.

I think that when Americans go to vote, states should not list what party the candidates are affiliated with. That would require voters to actually think and get to know a candidate instead of voting for their favorite gang. 'Oh, this guy is a Republican, so he must be good.'

Students often approached me about state-paid tuition while I was out campaigning. After I explained to them that if the state pays their tuition now, they will pay higher taxes to pay other people's tuition for the rest of their lives, most of them ended up agreeing with me.

I will criticize President Obama on this level: it's a good thing I'm not president because I would prosecute every person that was involved in that torture. I would prosecute the people that did it. I would prosecute the people that ordered it. Because torture is against the law.

I think a person who is disabled should be disabled by no act of their own. If you become disabled because of alcoholism, drugs, or things of that nature, I do not think those conditions qualify someone to be called disabled. I think those conditions result from personal decisions.

Post-traumatic stress, that's why the soldiers need marijuana, is for their mental health. It makes them feel better so that they don't have the horrors of war in their mind all the time. And the government won't allow them to have it, because it's illegal - federally. It's absurd.

How many elderly people you see have to leave the house they've had their whole life because their fixed income and their property taxes keep rising every year and they can't afford to stay there. And nobody gives a crap about it, and they're booted out, they have to leave their homes.

There are lots of people out there who think they know the truth about God and religion, but does anybody really know for sure? That's why the founding fathers built freedom of religious belief into the structure of this nation, so that everybody could make up their minds for themselves.

What do we have for veterans? Government-run health care. I understand that. Congressmen and senators... they get five choices of government-run health care. Why should a congressman and senator get anything more than a regular citizen does? Why are they privileged and the rest of us aren't?

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