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Quoths

On Socialism, Big Government, Multiculturalism, Politicians, Modern Liberalism, etc, etc

You can’t be for big government, big taxes, and big bureaucracy and still be for the little guy
—Ronald Reagan

Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. We didn’t pass it to our children in the bloodstream. It must be fought for, protected, and handed on for them to do the same, or one day we will spend our sunset years telling our children and our children’s children what it was once like in the United States where men were free.
-Ronald Reagan

The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed, and hence clamorous to be led to safety, by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.
-Baltimore's political satirist, the late H.L. Mencken

Just because the Clintons say something doesn't mean it's untrue.
-Jonah Goldberg

What I do know is my level of confidence in mainstream media of all stripes has been shaken to the core over the past 10 or 15 years. My level of trust in what I read, hear or see is somewhere close to zero and my suspicion continues to grow that television networks, newspaper groups and radio empires are advancing agendas that do not include honest, accurate and unbiased reports.
-Journalist Bill McIntyre on media bias

There are good reasons to begin with a presumption against government action. As coercive monopolies that spend other people's money taken by force, governments are uniquely unqualified to solve problems. They are riddled by ignorance, perverse incentives, incompetence and self-serving
-John Stossel

No man's life, liberty, or property are safe while the legislature is in session
- Nineteenth Century New York Judge Gideon Tucker

Liberals sell the welfare state one brick at a time, deflecting inquiries about the size and cost of the palace they’re building
-William Voegeli author of “The Trouble with Limited Government" “

I consider the foundation of the Constitution as laid on this ground that ‘all powers not delegated to the United States, by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states or to the people.’ To take a single step beyond the boundaries thus specially drawn around the powers of Congress, is to take possession of a boundless field of power, not longer susceptible of any definition.”
—Thomas Jefferson

Many on the political left are so entranced by the beauty of their vision that they cannot see the ugly reality they are creating in the real world.
-Thomas Sowell

Hayek concluded that the private-property rights that come with the rule of law, freedom of contract, and freedom of association is still the one mechanism design that mobilizes and utilizes the dispersed information in an economy
-Wall Street Journal Editorial, Oct 16, 2007.

In political life today, you are considered compassionate if you demand that government impose your preferences on others.
- John Stossel 2007

In their assessment of what is going on in the world, they seem to start off with a default assumption that we are in the wrong. The "we" can take different forms: the United States government, the vast mass of middle-class Americans, white people, affluent people, churchgoing people or the advanced English-speaking countries. Such people are seen as privileged and selfish, greedy and bigoted, rash and violent. If something bad happens, the default assumption is that it's their fault. They always blame America -- or the parts of America they don't like -- first.
-Michael Barone, U.S. News & World Report

Republicans have too eclectic a collection of beliefs to beat the Democrats on a purely ideological basis. Moreover, the liberal vision is a more attractive vision because it assumes away many of the painful and even brutal aspects of human life, especially the fatal dangers of relying on words when dealing with people who only respect force that is backed up by a willingness to use it..... Facts are the only real antidote to a seductive vision.
-Thomas Sowell after the 2006 mid-term elections

Wonderful theory. Wrong species.
- Edward O. Wilson, the world's foremost expert on ants, on Marxism

The republic was not established by cowards, and cowards will not preserve it.
—Elmer Davis

Government is not reason; it is not eloquent; it is force. Like fire, it is a dangerous servant and a fearful master.
-George Washington

They are going out of fashion where they are needed most and coming into fashion where they are needed least.
-Wall St Journal's Bret Stevens on Nukes

No government ever voluntarily reduces itself in size. Government programs, once launched, never disappear. Actually, a government bureau is the nearest thing to eternal life we'll ever see on this earth!
We are a nation that has a government -- not the other way around.
-Ronald Reagan

I did very little. All I did was to try to prevent some of the things that might undo it.
-John James Cowperthwaite - on his refusal to collect economic statistics about Hong Kong during his tenure as Financial Secretary, lest they produce an impulse toward central planning among the bureaucrats

Only people not being able to find comfort in their own mind seek to silence others.
- Per Bylund

"...the smaller the society, the smaller the number of individuals composing a majority, and the more easily will they concert and execute their plans of oppression"
-James Madison in the Federalist Papers warning that local government is especially prone to tyranny

"The country is behind you 50 percent."
-Bob Hope joking to the troops in Vietnam

"Liberty is the prevention of control by others. This requires self-control and, therefore, religious and spiritual influences; education, knowledge, well-being."
—Lord Acton

"Most of the work of government does not need to be done. And, if you can remember that, if we could all remember that, this country would be better off."
—Lyn Nofziger

There is no such thing as life imprisonment without the possibility of a liberal president being elected and issuing a pardon or an amnesty.
- Thomas Sowell on the Zacarias Moussaoui trial

Civilizations die from suicide, not murder
-Arnold Toynbee

I have been asked to talk about what I consider the most important challenge facing mankind, and I have a fundamental answer. The greatest challenge facing mankind is the challenge of distinguishing reality from fantasy, truth from propaganda.
- Michael Crichton, 2003

... family dissolution in the modern world leads to “a welfare state to take care of the women and children and a police state to handle the teenaged boys
-George Gilder

The Senate voted yesterday to allow illegal aliens to collect Social Security benefits based on past illegal employment
- Washington Times, May 20, 2006

...this was in the Soviet Union. Soviet engineers couldn’t make Jell-O. They’d show up at the World’s Fair and stare at a flush toilet like it was a rocket ship.
-Ann Coulter

Some argue that we should encourage democratic change in right-wing dictatorships, but not in communist regimes. Well, to accept this preposterous notion -- as some well-meaning people have -- is to invite the argument that once countries achieve a nuclear capability, they should be allowed an undisturbed reign of terror over their own citizens. We reject this course.''
- Ronald Reagan - June 1982 speech to the British Parliament

"I urge you to beware the temptation of pride, the temptation of blithely declaring yourselves above it all and label both sides equally at fault, to ignore the facts of history and the aggressive impulses of an evil empire, to simply call the arms race a giant misunderstanding and thereby remove yourself from the struggle between right and wrong and good and evil. ...
- Ronald Reagan - Speech to the National Association of Evangelicals, March 1983.

"I believe that communism is another sad, bizarre chapter in human history whose last pages even now are being written.''
-- Ronald Reagan - Speech to the National Association of Evangelicals, March 1983.

The poor are the very lifeblood of the left, attracting activists, support among the intelligentsia, and -- perhaps most important -- allowing the left to indulge in self-congratulation as people who "care."
-Tom Sowell 2006

The beauty of being a liberal is that history always begins this morning.
-Ann Coulter 2004

I for one hope that the next time a nation experimenting with socialism or communism fails, which will happen the next time a nation experiments with socialism or communism, Ken Galbraith will feel the need to explain what happened. It's great fun to read. It helps, of course, to suppress wistful thought about those who endured, or died trying, the passage toward collective living to which Professor Galbraith has beckoned us for over 40 years.
- William F. Buckley in his review of liberal economist John Kenneth Galbraith's last book, "The Culture of Contentment."

"A republic -- if you can keep it."
- Benjamin Franklin's response at the close of the 1787 Constitutional Convention to the question "What the Founders had given us?"

"The left takes its vision seriously -- more seriously than it takes the rights of other people. They want to be our shepherds. But that requires us to be sheep." --Thomas Sowell

"No one can read our Constitution without concluding that the people who wrote it wanted their government severely limited; the words 'no' and 'not' employed in restraint of government power occur 24 times in the first seven articles of the Constitution and 22 more times in the Bill of Rights."
- Edmund A. Opitz

Finally, we might decide that civilization itself is worth preserving. In that case we have to work out what to save and which people would be needed in a drastically reduced population -- weighing the value of scientists and musicians against that of politicians, for example
- Dr. Sue Blackmore looking on the bright side in Britain's Guardian- 2006

"...The Iron Curtain that scarred a continent is gone, as is the Evil Empire responsible for it. The feeling of foreboding -- the sense of shrunken possibilities -- that afflicted Americans 20 years ago has been banished by a new birth of the American belief in perpetually expanding horizons.
Reagan was the last president for whom the Depression -- the years when America stopped working -- was a formative experience. Remarkably, the 1930s formed in him a talent for happiness. It was urgently needed in the 1980s, when the pessimism of the intelligentsia was infecting people with the idea that America had passed its apogee and was ungovernable.
- George Will in memory of Ronald Reagan - June 6, 2004

I've always wondered why Republicans insist on acting like Democrats in hopes of retaining political power, while Democrats act like us in order to win.
-Dick Armey, after the 2006 midterm elections

The broad masses of a population are more amenable to the appeal of rhetoric than to any other force.
- Adolf Hitler

It's like taking a bucket of water from the deep end of a pool and dumping it into the shallow end
-George Mason University economist Russell Roberts on the 2008 "Economic Stimulus"

"...As an aide to President Carter, I smelled trouble. We weren't running against a Republican: we were running against the republic.
"Can anyone look at the record of this administration and say, Well done?" he asked the Republican National Convention which had just nominated him for President. Or at the state of our economy when the Carter administration took office with where we are today and say, "Keep up the good work!"
- Chris Matthews in memory of Ronald Reagan - June 6, 2004

"Collectivism, as an intellectual power and a moral ideal, is dead. But freedom and individualism, and their political expression, capitalism, have not yet been discovered."
- Ayn Rand

Half the harm that is done in this world is due to people who want to feel important. They don't mean to do harm -- but the harm does not interest them. Or they do not see it, or they justify it because they are absorbed in the endless struggle to think well of themselves
-T.S. Eliot

Another current catch-phrase is the complaint that the nations of the world are divided into 'haves' and the 'have-nots.' Observe that the 'haves' are those who have freedom, and that it is freedom that the 'have-nots' have not."
-- Ayn Rand

I can hardly imagine any laws so bad, to which I would not rather be subject than to the caprice of a man
- John Stuart Mill

A pure democracy can admit no cure for the mischiefs of faction. A common passion or interest will be felt by a majority, and there is nothing to check the inducements to sacrifice the weaker party. Hence it is, that democracies have ever been found incompatible with personal security or the rights of property; and have, in general, been as short in their lives as they have been violent in thier deaths."
- James Madison.

Capitalism is founded on freedom, with the brakes applied to it only a little, so that it does not run out of control downhill. On the other hand, communism-turned-socialism in the US is founded on control and restriction, with a little of the brakes released, so that it does not do more than crawl downhill.
- Jim Arlandson 2005

Isn't it somewhat remarkable that we can go back a a few hundred years and find no shortage of quotations from our founding fathers warning us against the dangers of democracy, yet today teachers and politicians use thword as if it were an offering of gold."
"Our founding fathers detested the idea of a democracy and labored long to prevent America becoming one. Once again -- the word 'democracy' does not appear in the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution of the United States, or the constitution of any of the fifty states. Not once. Furthermore, take a look at State of the Union speeches. You won't find the 'D' word uttered once until the Wilson years."
"I can’t think of anything that would do more toward putting us back on the road to liberty and personal responsibility than for the average American, and for the news media, to come to the understanding that we are not a democracy, nor were we supposed to be."
- Neal Boortz

Liberals love to boast that they are not “religious,” which is what one would expect to hear from the state-sanctioned religion. Of course liberalism is a religion. It has its own cosmology, its own miracles, its own beliefs in the supernatural, its own churches, its own high priests, its own saints, its own total worldview, and its own explanation of the existence of the universe. In other words, liberalism contains all the attributes of what is generally known as “religion.”
-Ann Coulter 2006

"'Democracy' does not mean freedom."
- Mark Da Cunha

"Democracy is four wolves and a sheep voting on dinner."
-- Robert A. Heinlein

The case has been made that the Palestinian choice of government undermines the logic of the Bush Administration's democracy agenda. But democracy always involves the risk that the bad guys might come to power: Look at Germany in 1933. By contrast, failing to promote democracy only guarantees that the bad guys -- the Gadhafis, the Assads, the Husseins -- will stay in power.
- Wall Street Journal Editorial - 2006

Socialism is a wonderful idea. It is only as a reality that it has been disastrous
Attempts to redistribute wealth repeatedly led to the redistribution of poverty.
Nowhere have people been willing to work as well for the common good as they do for their own benefit.
Any system which allows some people to exercise unbridled power over other people is an open invitation to abuse.
- Thomas Sowell, 2002

"The liberalism of the liberal crack-up is what is "extremist." Even a sensible idea or a fine principle is exaggerated to the point that it becomes preposterous and untenable"
- Emmett Tyrrell

Those who want to take our money and gain power over us have discovered the magic formula: Get us envious or angry at others and we will surrender, in installments, not only our money but our freedom. The most successful dictators of the 20th century -- Hitler, Lenin, Stalin, Mao -- all used this formula and now class warfare politicians here are doing the same.
- Thomas Sowell, 2004

"People who are very aware that they have more knowledge than the average person are often very unaware that they do not have one-tenth of the knowledge of all of the average persons put together. In this situation, for the intelligentsia to impose their notions on ordinary people is essentially to impose ignorance on knowledge."
-Thomas Sowell

To me, consensus seems to be the process of abandoning all beliefs, principles, values and policies. So it is something in which no one believes and to which no one objects
If you just set out to be liked, you would be prepared to compromise on anything at any time, and you would achieve nothing
- Margaret Thatcher

"Don't forget that pure democracy is a form of collectivism -- it readily sacrifices individual rights to majority wishes. Since it involves no constitutional bill of rights, or at least, no working and effective one, the majority-of-the-moment can and does vote away the rights of the minority-of-the-moment, even of a single individual. This has been called 'mob rule,' the 'tyranny of the majority' and many other pejorative names. It is one of the greatest threats to liberty, the reason why America's founding fathers wrote so much so disparagingly of pure democracy."
- Bert Rand

Rather than serving as a cleansing force, science has in some instances been seduced by the more ancient lures of politics and publicity.
-Michael Crichton

"Collectivism holds that the individual has no rights, that his life and work belong to the group (to "society," to the tribe, the state, the nation) and that the group may sacrifice him at its own whim to its own interests. The only way to implement a doctrine of that kind is by means of brute force -- and statism has always been the poltical corollary of collectivism."
-Ayn Rand

The typical liberal politician is soft on criminals, weak on defense, and ready to tax the daylights out of those who produce, in order to dispense largesse to parasites, rich and poor alike. The public isn't buying it. Indeed, liberal politicians aren't trying to sell it very much.
- Thomas Sowell, 2003

"I have wondered at times about what the Ten Commandment's would have looked like if Moses had run them through the U.S. Congress"
"I've laid down the law, though, to everyone from now on about anything that happens: no matter what time it is, wake me, even if it's in the middle of a Cabinet meeting"
-Ronald Reagan

"Intellectuals cannot operate at room temperature." Hype, moral melodrama, and sweeping visions are the way that intellectuals approached the problems of the world. "Nowhere at present is there such a measureless loathing of their country by educated people as in America."
- Eric Hoffer , Thomas Sowell, 2003

-When it becomes dominated by a collectivist creed, democracy will inevitably destroy itself.
-To be controlled in our economic pursuits means to be controlled in everything
- F. A. Hayek

A careful definition of words would destroy half the agenda of the political left and scrutinizing evidence would destroy the other half.
- Thomas Sowell, 2003

That’s the wonderful thing about multiculturalism: you can choose which side of the war you want to fight on. When the draft card arrives, just tick “home team” or “enemy,” according to taste.
-Mark Steyn 2006

"..Evolution has conditioned us to believe the worst." In Darwinian natural selection, pessimism, wariness, suspicion and discontent may be survival traits. Perhaps our relaxed and cheerful progenitors were eaten by saber-toothed tigers. Only the anxiety-prone gene pool prospered.
- George Will on Easterbrook's Book, "The Progress Paradox: How Life Gets Better While People Feel Worse," 2004

"You cannot bring about prosperity by discouraging thrift. You cannot strengthen the weak by weakening the strong. You cannot help the wage earner by pulling down the wage payer. You cannot further the brotherhood of man by encouraging class hatred. You cannot help the poor by destroying the rich. You cannot build character and courage by taking away man's initiative and incentive. And you cannot help men permanently by doing for them what they should do for themselves."
-Maryland Lt. Gov. Michael Steele - GOP Convention 2004

"Collectivism is the real-world manifestation of the subjective, emotion-based feral animal origins of humanity, like some recurring echo emanating from the primitive reptile brain that physically exists in all of us. It is the antithesis of rational objectivity, something that no amount of fancy verbiage from Marx or Chomsky or Himmler or Plato or Rousseau can disguise in their respective paeans to force and unity over intellect and evolution. Collectivism is a fancy word for tribalism. It is a hold over, an atavistic throw back ..."
- Perry de Havilland

How do you tell a communist? Well, it's someone who reads Marx and Lenin. And how do you tell an anti-Communist? It's someone who understands Marx and Lenin.
-Ronald Reagan - 1987

When America frees ordinary people from the domination of their betters, and prevents them for being used as guinea pigs for the vision of the anointed, the more America insults the very presumptions that enable the anointed to think of themselves as special, as one-up on the rest of us.
-Thomas Sowell; July 2, 2004

[Liberals] live in a different reality from that of the rest of us. Psychologically, they do not see what you see. They see the present and the past through a special lens. What is overwhelmingly clear to them is an imagined future collectivist utopia where antagonisms of class and race have been eliminated, the economic and social inequalities that have driven people to crime have been removed, poverty does not exist and social justice reigns, world brotherhood has replaced war and international strife, and an economy planned by people like them has produced economic abundance without pollution or waste. Coupled with this vision of the future is loathing of the real present which falls woefully short of these goals and hatred for anyone or anything that stands in the way of their illusion of the radiant future.
-John Earl Haynes, 2003

"Most modern intellectuals congratulate themselves for having achieved the allegedly momentus insight that capitalism and altruism are ultimately incompatible. Yet they're still too damned ignorant to realize, or too damned stubborn to acknowledge, that altruism is definitely NOT the only moral code available to mankind; it is, in fact, the bloodiest and most regressive one of all. Such stunted thinking on the part of the intelligentsia has resulted in their committing the intellectual atrocity of rejecting the capitalism and freedom instead of the altruism and coercion."
- Rick Gaber

Those who are unable to produce their own wealth aim to confiscate the wealth of others
- Per Bylund

People in government--people in a huge, sprawling government--often get carried away. And they don't always even mean to. But they are little tiny parts of a large and overwhelming thing. If government is a steamroller, and that is in good part how I see it, the individuals who work in it are the atoms in the steel. The force of forward motion carries them along. There is inevitably an unaccountability, and in time often an indifference about what the steamroller rolls over. All the busy little atoms are watching each other, competing with each other, winning one for their little cluster. And no one is looking out and being protective of what the steamroller is rolling over--traditions, shared beliefs, individual rights, old assumptions, whatever is being rolled over today.
-Peggy Noonan - 2006

They have accepted an understanding of political life that is all about the competition for power, the deal making that divides up the public pie so that more voters slop up the goodies at your trough than at the other guy's. Though skilled at building coalitions, they have become utterly incompetent at the work of building, serving and preserving a community.
-Alan Keyes on today's politicians, 2006

Government's view of the economy could be summed up in a few short phrases: If it moves, tax it. If it keeps moving, regulate it. And if it stops moving, subsidize it
- Ronald Reagan

What is the difference between a taxidermist and a tax collector? The taxidermist takes only your skin
- Mark Twain

Knowledge is one of the few things that can be given to others without reducing the amount you have left.
- Thomas Sowell - 2005

We have now been through at least two generations of constant denigration of American society, two generations in which cheap glory could be gained by flouting rules and mocking values.
- Thomas Sowell, 2006

For half a century, liberals have corrupted the courts by turning them into an instrument of radical social change on questions -- school prayer, abortion, busing, death penalty -- that properly belong to the elected branches of government.
-Charles Krauthammer

Everyone wants to live at the expense of the state. They forget that the state lives at the expense of everyone
-Frederic Bastiat

[Democrats] have managed to pioneer an even more egregious abuse of the American political system: the manipulation of ignorance ... they have been reduced to a state of unshakable hysteria, beginning with the conviction that George W. Bush is the most vicious, evil, conniving president in American history.
-Tony Snow

It continues to defy explanation why liberals, who theoretically love liberty, equality, tolerance and moderation, should find so much to despise in their own country, which represents the fullest expression of those virtues anywhere on the globe."
--Mona Charen

The only way Congress can give one American something is to first, through the use of intimidation, threats and coercion, take it from another American. So-called rights to medical care, food and decent housing impose an obligation on some other American who, through the tax code, must be denied his right to his earnings.
- Walter Williams

"Some ideas seem so plausible that they can fail nine times in a row and still be believed the tenth time. Other ideas seem so implausible that they can succeed nine times in a row and still not be believed the tenth time. Government controls in the economy are among the first kinds of ideas and the operation of a free market is among the second kinds of ideas."
--Thomas Sowell 2005

When conservative judges strike down laws, it's because of what's in the Constitution. When liberal judges strike down laws (or impose new laws, such as tax increases), it's because of what's in The New York Times.
- Ann Coulter 2005

Modern liberalism: "made in much the same way as a sausage -- it's a blend of fascist, Communist, and socialist ideologies from twentieth century Europe, with a pinch of Nazism, all ground together, yet retaining the flavor of its various parts"
- Michael Savage, Liberalism Is a Mental Disorder

Democracy and capitalism seem to have triumphed. But, appearances can be deceiving. Instead of celebrating capitalism's virtues, we offer it grudging acceptance, contemptuous tolerance but only for its capacity to feed the insatiable maw of socialism. We do not conclude that socialism suffers from a fundamental and profound flaw. We conclude instead that its ends are worthy of any sacrifice — including our freedom. Revel notes that Marxism has been "shamed and ridiculed everywhere except American universities" but only after totalitarian systems "reached the limits of their wickedness."
- Janice Rogers Brown, Associate Justice, California Supreme Court, Apr 2000

If the Supreme Court is to be invariably and inescapably political you realize we have rendered the Constitution useless
- Justice Scalia 2005

Half the harm that is done in this world is due to people who want to feel important. They don't mean to do harm -- but the harm does not interest them. Or they do not see it, or they justify it because they are absorbed in the endless struggle to think well of themselves.
- T. S. Elliot

What is one to say about these media--Democratic spokesmen for contemporary American liberalism? That they have embarrassed and discredited themselves. That they cannot be taken seriously as critics. It would be good to have a responsible opposition party in the United States today. It would be good to have a serious mainstream media. Too bad we have neither.
-William Kristol 2006

"...most liberals experience their differences with the rest of society as a sign of their advanced intelligence and consciousness. At best, they are perplexed at how long it is taking everyone else to catch-up with their enlightened state of understanding.
-Thomas Lifson 2005

The Federalists drafted the greatest political philosophy ever written by man and created the first constitutional republic. The anti-Federalists -- or "pre-Democrats, as I call them -- were formed to oppose the Constitution, which, to a great extent, remains their position today.
-Ann Coulter

What is a moderate interpretation [of the Constitution]? Halfway between what it says and halfway between what you want it to say?
- Anthony Scalia noting that the left uses code words "mainstream" or "moderate" to describe their judges. [2006]

Environmental Movements

...as a practical matter, would be the aim of global warming policy? Our political system permits only one answer: to please the special interests that even now are gathering at the trough for subsidies in the name of climate change.
- Wall St. Journal's Holman W. Jenkins, Jr

I suppose, fundamentally, it's the fact that someone is speaking about a science that I have been very heavily involved with and have labored so hard in, and been humiliated by, in the sense that the climate is so difficult to understand, Mother Nature is so complex, and so the uncertainties are great, and then to hear someone speak with such certainty and such confidence about what the climate is going to do is -- well, I suppose I could be kind and say, it's annoying to me.
-John Christy of the U.N.'s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (co-recipient of the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize) - on Al Gore's movie, "An Inconvenient Truth"

My concern is that we may be moving away from an irrational lack of concern about climate change to an equally irrational panic about it.....Many of my colleagues ask, "What's the problem? Hasn't it been a good thing to raise public concern?" The problem is that in this panic we are going to spend our money unwisely, we will take actions that are counterproductive, and we will fail to do many of those things that will benefit the environment and ourselves.
-Daniel B. Botkin, president of the Center for the Study of the Environment

Many people would like to be kind to others so Leftists exploit that with their nonsense about equality. Most people want a clean, green environment so Greenies exploit that by inventing all sorts of far-fetched threats to the environment. But for both, the real motive is generally to promote themselves as wiser and better than everyone else, truth regardless.
Web site Greenie Watch - http://antigreen.blogspot.com/

When politicians and journalists declare that the science of global warming is settled, they show a regrettable ignorance about how science works.
-Nigel Calder, former editor of New Scientists

"Between the year A.D. 1 and the year 1850, volcanos and fluctuations in the heat from the sun were responsible for temperature changes, but these changes were much less pronounced than the warming caused by man-made pollution in the years since the mid-19th century. This gets to the point of the hysteria. Scientific Man in all his manufactured glory can't bear the thought that he might not, after all, be as powerful as a volcano or a solar flare. How many learned degrees does a volcano have, after all? The idea that forces of the universe greater even than Scientific Man may be responsible for the cyclical changes is unbearable. Hence 'global warming' has become the religion—the opiate, you might say—of Scientific Man, a doctrine supported by quackery, supposition and speculation, and as closely held and as ferociously defended as the Virgin Birth and the Resurrection at a gathering of devout Christians. You could ask the Rt. Rev. Al Gore, the presiding archbishop of the First Church of the Boiling Globe. The bishops and monsignors of the church treat dissent harshly, though not yet at the stake."
—Wesley Pruden

A fanatic is one who can't change his mind and won't change the subject - Winston Churchill

The truth is, no country is going to cut its growth or consumption substantially in the light of a long-term environmental problem
-British Prime Minister Tony Blair on Kyoto - 2005

There are ominous signs that the Earth's weather patterns have begun to change dramatically....The longer the planners delay, the more difficult will they find it to cope with climatic change once the results become grim reality
- Newsweek - April 28, 1975 - on the conviction that politicians would fail to prevent global COOLING and the coming Ice Age.

Terrorism

Lowering the price to be paid by aggressors virtually guarantees more aggression.
- Thomas Sowell

---

And what changed policy was September the 11th. That changed policy. But actually, before September the 11th, this global movement with a global ideology was already in being. September the 11th was the culmination of what they wanted to do.

But actually, you know -- and this is probably where the policymakers such as myself were truly in error -- is that even before September the 11th this was happening in all sorts of different ways in different countries.

I mean, in Algeria for example, tens and tens of thousands of people lost their lives.

This movement has grown. It is there. It will latch onto any cause that it possibly can and give it a dimension of terrorism and hatred.

You can see this. You can see it in Kashmir, for example. You can see it in Chechnya, you know? You can see it in Palestine.

Now, what is its purpose?

Its purpose is to promote its ideology based on a perversion of Islam and to use any methods at all, but particularly terrorism, to do that. Because they know that the value of terrorism to them is -- as I was saying a moment or two ago -- it's not simply the act of terror, it's the chain reaction that terror brings with it.

Terrorism brings the reprisal; the reprisal brings the additional hatred; the additional hatred breeds the additional terrorism, and so on.

In a small way, we lived through that in Northern Ireland over many, many decades.

Now, what happened after September the 11th -- and this explains, I think, the president's policy but also the reason why I have taken the view and still take the view that Britain and America should remain strong allies, shoulder to shoulder, in fighting this battle, is that we are never going to succeed unless we understand they are going to fight hard.

The reason why they are doing what they are doing in Iraq at the moment -- and, yes, it's really tough as a result of it -- is because they know that if right in the center of the Middle East, in an Arab Muslim country, you've got a nonsectarian democracy -- in other words people weren't governed either by religious fanatics or secular dictators -- you've got a genuine democracy of the people: How does their ideology flourish in such circumstances?

So they have imported the terrorism into that country, preyed on whatever reactionary elements there are to boost it. And that's why we have the issue there.

That's why the Taliban are trying to come back in Afghanistan. That is why the moment it looked as if you could get progress in Israel and Palestine, it had to be stopped.

That's the moment when, as they say there was a problem in Gaza, so they realized: Well, there's a possibility now we can set Lebanon against Israel.

Now, it's a global movement. It's a global ideology.

And if there's any mistake that's ever made in these circumstances, it's if people are surprised that it's tough to fight, because you're up against an ideology that's prepared to us any means at all, including killing any number of wholly innocent people.

And I don't dispute part of the implication of your question at all in the sense that you look at what is happening in the Middle East, and what is happening in Iraq and Lebanon and Palestine, and of course there's a sense of shock and frustration and anger at what is happening, and grief at the loss of innocent lives.

But it is not a reason for walking away. It's a reason for staying the course and staying it no matter how tough it is: because the alternative is actually letting this ideology grip larger and larger numbers of people.

And it is going to be difficult. Look, we've got a problem even in our own Muslim communities in Europe who will half buy into some of the propaganda that's pushed at it -- the purpose of America is to suppress Islam; you know, Britain's joined with America in the suppression of Islam.

And one of the things we've got to stop doing is stop apologizing for our own positions. Muslims in America, as far as I'm aware of, are free to worship.

- Tony Blair - July 2006

Tell them I will do whatever they want.
Libya's Col Gadhafi message to the White House through Italian prime minister Silvio Berlusconi

His vote against the first Gulf War was, he says, a sign of his support for the first Gulf War. Whereas his vote in favor of the Iraq war was a sign of his opposition to the Iraq war. And his vote against funding America's troops in Iraq is a sign of his support for America's men and women in uniform. On the same principle, I think the best way voters this November can demonstrate their support for John Kerry is by voting against him.'
- Mark Steyn, 2004

There is a myth that though we love freedom, others don't; that our attachment to freedom is a product of our culture; that freedom, democracy, human rights, the rule of law are American values or Western values; that Afghan women were content under the lash of the Taliban; that Saddam was somehow beloved by his people; that Milosevic was Serbia's savior. Members of Congress, ours are not Western values. They are the universal values of the human spirit, and anywhere--anywhere, anytime ordinary people are given the chance to choose, the choice is the same: freedom, not tyranny; democracy, not dictatorship; the rule of law, not the rule of the secret police.
- Tony Blair 2003

Then September 11 happened. And bizarrely the reaction of just about every prominent western leader was to visit a mosque: President Bush did, the Prince of Wales did, the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom did, the Prime Minister of Canada did… . The Premier of Ontario didn’t, and so twenty Muslim community leaders had a big summit to denounce him for failing to visit a mosque
-Mark Steyn 2006

Apparently due to the success of George Bush at keeping the United States secure, he, not Osama bin Laden, can now more often be the target of a relieved Left — deserving of assassination in an Alfred Knopf novel, an overseer of Nazi policies according to a U.S. senator, a buffoon, and rogue in the award-winning film of Michael Moore. Yes, because we did so well against the real enemies, we soon had the leisure to invent new imaginary ones in Bush/Cheney, Halliburton, the Patriot Act, John Ashcroft, and Scooter Libby.
-Victor Davis Hanson - 2006

Hillary

She hasn't run a corner store, she hasn't run a state, she hasn't run a city... and the idea that she could learn to be president...as an internship, just doesn't make any sense
-Mitt Romney

The only way to make a difference is to acquire power"
-Hillary Clinton to a friend before starting law school

We must stop thinking of the individual and start thinking about what is best for society
-Hillary as first lady.

We just can't trust the American people to make those types of choices.... Government has to make those choices for people
-Hillary to Rep. Dennis Hastert in 1993 discussing her health care plan.

...a power-hungry utopian socialist who believes that political elites (i.e., she) should decide how the rest of us live
- American Spectator's Steven M. Warshawsky on Hillary

Humor and such

Being with a woman all night never hurt no professional baseball player. It's staying up all night looking for a woman that does him in.
- NY Yankee Coach Casey Stengel

Standing next to somebody who says: 'What was that?'
Edward Teller when asked the best place to be if an H-bomb goes off

Freepers

Political web sites tend to attract those who have never accomplished much of anything. They suck up to a supervisor they hate. The do work they dislike doing and take orders from people they see as powerful. They see themselves as impotent pawns. But in the anonymous world of web sites they can lash out at those they fear.
-Common Tator (Free Republic) - 2005

Education

The chief object of education is not to learn things but to unlearn things.
—G. K. Chesterton

Fraudulent grades exacerbate other problems. When a black kid has all A's and B's and makes the dean's list, what will he and his parents blame for his failure to get a decent SAT score, get into college or get a job? They're going to blame it on racial discrimination. All they'll see is that white kids with A's and B's do well and their kids with the same grades do not.
- Walter Williams, 2004

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Recommended reading for the aspiring progressive:

Liberal Fascism, Jonah Goldberg [Can't happen here? It already did and the Democrats did it. - But they run the schools so you'll need to read about it here]

A Conflict of Visions: Ideological Origins of Political Struggles, Thomas Sowell [origins of Democrat's thought process - and the opposite & correct thought process]

Basic Economics: A Citizens Guide to the Economy, Thomas Sowell [excellent voter's guide]

Why Government Is the Problem, Milton Friedman

The Fatal Conceit: The Errors of Socialism and The Constitution of Liberty, Friedrich A. Hayek [primers for the socialists]

Heaven on Earth: The Rise and Fall of Socialism - Joshua Muravchik [Everywhere socialism has been tried has ended in disaster and millions murdered for what?]

Useful Idiots: How Liberals Got It Wrong in the Cold War and Still Blame America First - Mona Charen [great read - the title says it all]

In Denial: Historians, Communism, & Espionage - John Earl Haynes, Harvey Klehr [The liberal dream didn't work - but they don't want you to know]

The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature - Steven Pinker [Liberals always have a theory for why humans do bad things...here's why they're wrong]

The Road to Serfdom - Friedrich A. Hayek [Wonderful reading. Written a while back, but still true]

Free to Choose - Milton Friedman [Liberals always have a theory for why capitalism is bad...here's why they're wrong]

Blacklisted by History: The Untold Story of Senator Joe McCarthy and His Fight Against America's Enemies-M. Stanton Evans [Simply unbelievable what the left's propaganda machine can do]

The Skeptical Environmentalist: Measuring the Real State of the World -Bjorn Lomborg [the only voice on the other side of environmentalism]

Dependent on DC: The Rise of Federal Control over the Lives of Ordinary Americans - Charlotte Twight [How we got where we are....big government and incrementalism]

Men in Black - Mark Levin [The Great One is on target with the Supremes]

The New Thought Police - Tammy Bruce [ A little insight in how the libs operate the propaganda machine

The Best Recipe - Editors of Cook's Illustrated Magazine [The authors use trial and error to optimize favorite meals.....right down to the hamburgers and spaghetti sauce...absolutely wonderful results]