43 quotes
Africa is a mess. It is a mess by any civilized measure of human progress. It is a mess by most uncivilized measures of human progress.
A Continent Bleeds (2000)
This is how we got here. It will get worse because there are no incentives to be better. It won’t end well either, but at least it will feel familiar.
If You Think Our Politics Can’t Get Uglier Than the Kavanaugh Fight, Think Again (2018)
[T]he U.N. is the best arena in the world for picking the right enemies.
Nikki Haley's Excellent Timing (2018)
Why is it fair game to question conservatives' love or loyalty to children or to their fellow man, but beyond the pale to question liberals' love of country?
Patriot Games (2004)
Everywhere, unthinking mobs of "independent thinkers" wield tired clichés like cudgels, pummeling those who dare question “enlightened” dogma. If “violence never solved anything,” cops wouldn’t have guns and slaves may never have been freed. If it’s better that 10 guilty men go free to spare one innocent, why not free 100 or 1,000,000? Clichés begin arguments, they don’t settle them.
If “violence never solved anything,” cops wouldn’t have guns and slaves may never have been freed. If it’s better that 10 guilty men go free to spare one innocent, why not free 100 or 1,000,000? Clichés begin arguments, they don’t settle them.
[W]herever socialism has teeth, it veers closer to gangsterism because it depends on the use of arbitrary power, either by the state or, in essence, the mob.
Our country, if you read the 'Federalist Papers,' is about disagreement. It's about pitting faction against faction, divided government, checks and balances. The hero in American political tradition is the man who stands up to the mob — not the mob itself.
I bet you anything I could destroy Milton Friedman in a debate about economics — so long as the audience was comprised of five year olds. He may have a Nobel Prize, but I can make offensive sounds with my armpit. Advantage: Goldberg!
After the rise of socialism and the retreat of monarchical and clerical rule, liberalism became, in effect, the new conservatism in that it took on the mantle of the status quo.
Liberalism, Conservatism, and the End of History (2018)
"Capitalism," says Irving Kristol, "is the least romantic conception of a public order that the human mind has ever conceived." The reason it's so unromantic is that it doesn't tell people what to do and that can be very frustrating for intellectuals who want to tell people what to do.
The way you sustain and improve upon a culture is by fostering a sense of gratitude for what is best about it. You celebrate the good in your story while putting the bad in the correct context. Conservatism is gratitude...
What's So Great About Western Civilization (2019)
The coalition instinct is the programming that helped us form strategic groups that advance our self-interest. We are a social species and cooperation is what helped us skyrocket to the top of the food chain.
When Evil Becomes Inconvenient (2018)
[S]ocialists are romantics in that they want to curate their lives entirely based on their own feelings.
A Free People Must Be Virtuous (2018)
[W]hat makes a libertarian in America a “right-winger” makes him a “liberal” in most of Europe.
Socialism is So Hot Right Now (2018)
[S]ocialism’s durability as a concept owes almost nothing to economics and almost everything to the desire for power...
Socialism is So Hot Right Now (2018)
[C]apitalism is as much to blame for the consolidation and homogenization of nations as champions of progressive central planning are, if not more so.
Socialism is So Hot Right Now (2018)
As America’s Founders well understood, a society enjoying a multiplicity of institutions, interests, and intact communities (i.e., factions) is much more difficult to subjugate by a single central power, be it a king, a dictator, or a bureaucracy.
Socialism is So Hot Right Now (2018)
Passionate nationalists, like passionate socialists, ultimately believe that the State can love you, and if the right people take it over, the divisions that are inevitable in a free society will be knitted together by some government initiative. But that is not love, it is lust. It is a lust for power and victory for your vision over all others.
Socialism as a thoroughgoing system had failed. But the central emotion behind it had not. And that emotion has only deepened...
Socialism is So Hot Right Now (2018)