When I was at Notre Dame studying under Joe Evans, Frank O'Malley, and others, there was a very lively debate about the distinction between natural law and revealed truth. Most of the philosophers of church and state expected that what was going to be advocated as the law of the land would be related to natural law. If you attempted to draw lines about certain general moral truths that were derivative of logic and reason, they would prove to be widely shared, and therefore suitable to be enacted into law on both the civic and religious sides.

Bruce Babbitt

Categorized in : Religious Church Logic

We have to preserve it and use it sustainably. And the short-term use of resources at the destruction of the long-term heritage of this country is not a policy that we can pursue.

Bruce Babbitt

heritage long country

City parks serve, day in and day out, as the primary green spaces for the majority of Americans.

Bruce Babbitt

majority space cities

The notion that big business and big labor and big government can sit down around a table somewhere and work out the direction of the American economy is at complete variance with the reality of where the American economy is headed. I mean, it's like dinosaurs gathering to talk about the evolution of a new generation of mammals.

Bruce Babbitt

government mean reality

I would argue that practices that destroy ecosystems always destroy jobs.

Bruce Babbitt

ecosystems practice jobs

I am one of those people who deeply resents not having been born in the 19th century, when there were still open places to explore.

Bruce Babbitt

born century people

Well, what I tried to do is simply to get out on the land. And when I came to Washington, I think one of the mistakes we made early on was kind of having an ideological dispute up in the Congress.

Bruce Babbitt

land mistake thinking

If the bishops are saying that it is divine revelation that seven percent of unemployment is morally unacceptable and that that is a teaching which must as a matter of faith be accepted by all Catholics, I respectfully dissent.

Bruce Babbitt

seven catholic teaching

We've set aside tens of millions of acres of those northwestern forests for perpetuity. The unemployment rate has gone not up, but down. The economy has gone up.

Bruce Babbitt

acres unemployment gone

We have an obligation to live in harmony with creation, with our capital... with God's creation. And we need to administer and work that very carefully.

Bruce Babbitt

gods-creation harmony needs

Protecting all this land, working with the President to establish all these monuments, to, you know... I think the President has a land protection record that's second to no one in this century, maybe Teddy Roosevelt.

Bruce Babbitt

land president thinking

Taxes are the flip side of expenditures. The same issues apply on both sides. There are questions of fairness and justice as much in the way you take money away as in the way you disburse it.

Bruce Babbitt

taxes fairness justice

I think the people will - who advocate having a step back and read those public opinion polls on the front page of the newspapers all over this country saying public supports restoration in restoration of the Everglades, protection of the parks and the creation of monuments.

Bruce Babbitt

country people thinking

Well, I actually wrote her a letter a couple of days ago congratulating her. The tone I tried to convey in the letter is, look, you are a part of a great American historical process.

Bruce Babbitt

hypnosis couple historical

It is like living in a wilderness of mirrors. No fact goes unchallenged.

Bruce Babbitt

wilderness mirrors facts

I think the Ronald Reagan tax reform proposals are a step toward distributive justice. They redistribute the tax burden more equitably and more progressively among individuals and call upon business to carry a somewhat larger proportion of the total tax load. Both of these are steps toward equity and distributive justice.

Bruce Babbitt

proposal justice thinking

The Northwest is in better shape than it was eight years ago.

Bruce Babbitt

eight shapes years

We must identify our enemies and drive them into oblivion.

Bruce Babbitt

oblivion enemy

We had kind of a rocky start, but I spent a lot of time working with the President and handing him statistics and showing him what we were doing as we went along and kind of saying to him, you know, this is really important.

Bruce Babbitt

statistics important president

I have been very outspoken in my opposition to cuts in what I would call the means-tested entitlement programs: Medicaid, food stamps, and all of that. I feel very, very strongly that those cuts as proposed are unjust, but I am not prepared to label Ronald Reagan a "sinner."It seems to me that when you invoke the adjective "moral" you must be careful to distinguish what it is you mean by that.

Bruce Babbitt

moral cutting mean

Well, I think breathing life into the Endangered Species Act, taking those wolves back into Yellowstone, restoring the salmon in the rivers of the Pacific Northwest.

Bruce Babbitt

breathing rivers thinking