Author,Political Orientation,Quotes
Yanis Varoufakis,Left,"Had history been democratic in its ways, there would have been no farming and no industrial revolution. Both leaps into the future were occasioned by unbearably painful crises that made most people wish they could recoil into the past."
Yanis Varoufakis,Left,"Most politicians cannot be theorists. First, because they are rarely thinkers; second, because the frenetic lifestyle they impose on themselves leaves no time for big ideas. But most of all because to be a theorist you have to admit the possibility of being wrong – the provisionality of knowledge – and you know you cannot spin your way out of a theoretical problem."
Yanis Varoufakis,Left,"Regular crises perpetuate the past by reinvigorating cycles which started long ago. In contrast, (capital-C) Crises are the past's death knell. They function like laboratories in which the future is incubated. They have given us agriculture and the industrial revolution, technology and the labour contract, killer germs and antibiotics. Once they strike, the past ceases to be a reliable predictor of the future and a brave new world is born."
Yanis Varoufakis,Left,"As Tony Benn, the British Labour politician, once suggested, we should constantly ask those who govern us five questions: What power have you got? Where did you get it from? In whose interests do you exercise it? To whom are you accountable? And how can we get rid of you?"
Yanis Varoufakis,Left,"... toxic derivatives were underpinned by toxic economics, which, in turn, were no more than motivated delusions in search of theoretical justification; fundamentalist tracts that acknowledged facts only when they could be accommodated to the demands of the lucrative faith. Despite their highly impressive labels and technical appearance, economic models were merely mathematized versions of the touching superstition that markets know best, both at times of tranquility and in periods of tumult."
Yanis Varoufakis,Left,"Leonard Schapiro, writing on Stalinism, warned us that the true object of propaganda is neither to convince nor even to persuade. But to produce a uniform pattern of public utterances in which the first trace of unorthodox thought reveals itself as a jarring dissonance."
Yanis Varoufakis,Left,"Beneath the specific events that I experienced, I recognised a universal story – the story of what happens when human beings find themselves at the mercy of cruel circumstances that have been generated by an inhuman, mostly unseen network of power relations. This is why there are no ‘goodies’ or ‘baddies’ in this book. Instead, it is populated by people doing their best, as they understand it, under conditions not of their choosing. Each of the persons I encountered and write about in these pages believed they were acting appropriately, but, taken together, their acts produced misfortune on a continental scale. Is this not the stuff of authentic tragedy? Is this not what makes the tragedies of Sophocles and Shakespeare resonate with us today, hundreds of years after the events they relate became old news?"
Yanis Varoufakis,Left,"To put it slightly differently, small sovereign nations, like Iceland, have choices to make within the broader constraints created for them by nature and by the rest of humanity. However limited these choices might be, Iceland’s body politic retains absolute authority to hold their elected officials accountable for the decisions they have reached within the nation’s exogenous constraints, and to strike down every piece of legislation that it has decided upon in the past. (...) In this sense, small, powerless Iceland continues to enjoy full sovereignty while the comparatively omnipotent European Union has been stripped of all forms of sovereignty."
Yanis Varoufakis,Left,"It is at this point in the book that the author famously laments that despite our ability to bring food from the earth, we are incapable of creating a system in which the hungry can be fed."
Yanis Varoufakis,Left,Corporatists like Robert Schuman and Jean Monnet were bent on constructing the Brussels-based bureaucracy as a democracy-free zone.
Yanis Varoufakis,Left,But this was not a bailout. Greece was never bailed out. Nor were the rest of Europe’s swine
Yanis Varoufakis,Left,"Few progressive Europeans would argue against a democratic United States of Europe, with a proper government elected on a pan-European ticket and answerable to a proper parliament vested with complete sovereignty over all decisions and matters. But this is pure wishful thinking. The sobering reality is that it is not in the European Union’s DNA naturally to evolve into a federation."
Yanis Varoufakis,Left,"And so it turns out that all talk of gradual moves toward a political union and toward more Europe are not first steps toward a European democratic federation but, rather, and ominously, a leap into an iron cage that prolongs the crisis and wrecks any prospect of a genuine federal European democracy in the future."
Yanis Varoufakis,Left,"In a move that will remain in Irish annals as a stigma comparable to the potato famine, the Dublin government succumbed to ECB blackmail: make the German creditors of Ireland’s commercial banks whole, even a bank that was closed down and thus no longer systemically important for Ireland’s financial sector, or else."
Yanis Varoufakis,Left,"In the case of the Irish banks, the private bonds that they had purchased were uninsured. In the case of Greek state bonds, their buyers also knew that these were Greek law contracts, meaning that they could be given a haircut (written down) by a future stressed Greek government. This is precisely why the interest rates were higher than in Germany. Higher risk, higher rewards. As long as the gamble was paying off, the German bankers reaped benefits that they shared with no one. But when the gambles turned bad, as Irish banks and the Greek state failed, they demanded that the taxpayers of Greece and Ireland pay up, as if they had bought insurance from them."
Yanis Varoufakis,Left,ALEXIS DE TOQUEVILLE once wrote that those who praise freedom only for the material benefits it offers have never kept it long.
Yanis Varoufakis,Left,"While it would have been straightforward, and perfectly legal, to allow Irish banks or the Greek state to default to their private creditors (so as to respect the no-bailout clause), the authorities’ guilty desire to bail out the German and French banks (without telling taxpayers that this was what they were doing) led to the need to violate the no-bailout rule by concocting another rule: the no-default rule, which was never part of Europe’s original set of rules. (...) Both the freshly minted no-default rule and the original no-bailout clause were political whims of the strong disguised as legal constraints upon the weak. In reality, the strong break their rules at will and concoct new rules whenever they think it suits them."
Yanis Varoufakis,Left,All dynamic societies founded their success on two production processes that unfolded in parallel: the manufacturing of a surplus and the manufacturing of consent (regarding its distribution).
Yanis Varoufakis,Left,"They are unanimous in their hate for me; and I welcome their hatred. (quoting FDR announcing the Second New Deal, 1936)"
Yanis Varoufakis,Left,"Rather, an authentic drama was afoot reminiscent of a play by Aeschylus or Shakespeare in which powerful schemers end up caught in a trap of their own making. In the real-life drama I was witnessing, Summers’s sacred rule of insiders kicked in the moment they recognized their powerlessness. The hatches were battened down, official denial prevailed, and the consequences of the tragic impasse they’d created were left to unfold on autopilot, imprisoning them yet further in a situation they detested for weakening their hold over events."
Yanis Varoufakis,Left,Count Coudenhove-Kalergi put it succinctly in one of his speeches when he declared his ambition that Europe supersedes democracy and that democracy be replaced by a social aristocracy of the spirit.52
Yanis Varoufakis,Left,"Most Europeans like to think that American bankruptocracy is worse than its European cousin, thanks to the power of Wall Street and the infamous revolving door between the US banks and the US government. They are very, very wrong. Europe’s banks were managed so atrociously in the years preceding 2008 that the inane bankers of Wall Street almost look good by comparison. When the crisis hit, the banks of France, Germany, the Netherlands and the UK had exposure in excess of $30 trillion, more than twice the United States national income, eight times the national income of Germany, and almost three times the national incomes of Britain, Germany, France and Holland put together.8 A Greek bankruptcy in 2010 would have immediately necessitated a bank bailout by the German, French, Dutch and British governments amounting to approximately $10,000 per child, woman and man living in those four countries. By comparison, a similar market turn against Wall Street would have required a relatively tiny bailout of no more than $258 per US citizen. If Wall Street deserved the wrath of the American public, Europe’s banks deserved 38.8 times that wrath. But"
Yanis Varoufakis,Left,"As I have frequently observed, there is a widespread belief in Europe’s north that the continent is populated by hard-working law-abiding ants on the one hand and lazy tax-avoiding grasshoppers on the other, and that all the ants live in the north while mysteriously the grasshoppers congregate in the south."
Yanis Varoufakis,Left,It is the mark of ancient societies that contemporary tribulations reinvent old fears.
Yanis Varoufakis,Left,"General Motors is alive and kicking today, it is because in 2009 President Obama’s administration wrote off 90 percent of its debt."
Yanis Varoufakis,Left,"Take, for example, Vlasic pickles, a well-known everyday brand. Walmart’s ‘innovation’ was to sell these pickles in one gallon (3.8 litre) jars for $2.97. Was this a shrewd retailer’s response to market demand? No it was not. Who would want to buy almost four litres of pickles? Few family fridges had the necessary room for such an item. So what was the selling point? It was the idea of a huge quantity at an ultra-low price. Walmart’s customers, in this sense, were not buying pickles as such. They were buying into the symbolic value of cheapness; into the notion of having appropriated so many pickles for so little money. Indeed, it made them feel as though they were Walmart’s accomplices – in association with an icon of American corporate might, they had forced"
Yanis Varoufakis,Left,"If you cannot imagine walking out of a negotiation, you should never enter it. If you cannot fathom the idea of an impasse you might as well confine yourself to the role of a supplicant who implores the despot to grant him several privileges"
Yanis Varoufakis,Left,"In reality, states never repay their debt. They roll it over, meaning they defer repayment endlessly, paying only the interest on the loans. As long as they can keep doing this, they remain solvent.10 It helps to think of public debt as a hole in the ground next to a mountain representing the nation’s total income. Day by day the hole gets steadily deeper as interest accrues on the debt, even if the state does not borrow more. But during the good times, as the economy grows, the income mountain is steadily getting taller. As long as the mountain rises faster than the debt hole deepens, the extra income added to the mountain’s summit can be shovelled into the adjacent hole, keeping its depth stable and the state solvent. Insolvency beckons when the economy stops growing or starts to contract: recession then eats into a country’s income mountain, doing nothing to slow the pace at which the debt hole continues to grow."
Yanis Varoufakis,Left,We were divided and ultimately we were ruled.
Yanis Varoufakis,Left,"Could the Crash of 2008, then, be nothing more than our periodic chance to realize how far we have allowed our will to be subjugated to capital? Was it a jolt that ought to awaken us to the reality that capital has become a ‘force we must submit to’, a power that developed ‘a cosmopolitan, universal energy which breaks through every limit and every bond and posits itself as the only policy, the only universality, the only limit and the only bond’?"
Yanis Varoufakis,Left,"And here lies a delicious paradox: consent grew more powerful the more economic life was financialized. And as finance grew in importance, the more prone our societies became to economic crises. Hence the interesting observation that modern societies tend to produce both more consent and more violent crises."
Yanis Varoufakis,Left,leverage – a fancy term for good old debt.
Yanis Varoufakis,Left,"Nothing prepares a people for authoritarianism better than defeat, followed closely by national humiliation and an economic implosion."
Yanis Varoufakis,Left,"Between them, the leaders of France and Germany had a stake of around €1 trillion in not allowing the Greek government to tell the truth; that is, to confess to its bankruptcy. Yet they still had to find a way to bail out their bankers a second time without telling their parliaments that this was what they were doing. As Jean-Claude Juncker, then prime minister of Luxembourg and later president of the European Commission, once said, ‘When it becomes serious, you have to lie."
Yanis Varoufakis,Left,"The 61.3 per cent who voted no had to be discredited as a people led astray by opportunists,"
Yanis Varoufakis,Left,"When a person believes one thing but chooses or is forced to advocate its opposite, the result is cognitive dissonance. Eventually, in order to endure the internal conflict, one is forced, like Orwell’s Winston Smith, to change one’s mind. But the emotional fallout from such stress must somehow be vented; someone else must take the blame. Since I had been chosen to perform the role of scapegoat by the victorious trinka, I was the obvious choice for my defeated comrades too."
Yanis Varoufakis,Left,Observing the European Union’s attempts to deal with the crisis is a bit like watching Othello – one wonders how our rulers can be so deluded
Yanis Varoufakis,Left,Bullies blame their victims. Clever bullies make their victims’ culpability seem self-evident.
Yanis Varoufakis,Left,"A cynical ploy that transferred hundreds of billions of losses from the books of the French and German banks to Europe’s taxpayers was presented to the world as the manifestation of European solidarity. What makes this transfer sinister, rather than just cynical, was that the Greek loan came not only from French and German taxpayers but also from the Portuguese, the Slovaks, the Irish taxpayers"
Yanis Varoufakis,Left,"If this sounds like a Ponzi scheme it is because it is the mother of all Ponzi schemes. A merry-go-round of Ponzi austerity which, interestingly, left both the insolvent banks and the insolvent Greek state a little more insolvent while, all along, the Greek population was sinking deeper and deeper into despair. And all so the European Union could pretend that its inane rules had been respected."
Yanis Varoufakis,Left,"In other words, the uninsured private bankers had to be bailed out illegally and utterly unethically. But the taxpayers who were forced to carry that can should not even be given better terms for repaying the odious, private debt they were forced to acquire in order to bail the bankers out."
Yanis Varoufakis,Left,"And so, the good people of Frankfurt pressured Ireland’s central bank to unload these bonds, to sell them to private bankers who would then, in the fullness of time, collect the interest from the Irish taxpayers. If anyone was to benefit, it ought to be the bankers and the hedge funds again. Never the citizens."
Yanis Varoufakis,Left,"Put differently, the state was not only allowing the bankers to remain in control of the banks they bankrupted, but it was also committing itself to passing on whatever benefit there was from an increase in bank share prices to the bankers. Heads the state lost, tails the bankers won. Simple!"
Yanis Varoufakis,Left,"By allowing for new shares to be issued at prices well below those that the Greek state had paid (during the injection of almost 40 billion euros into the banks), and at once banning the state from buying into these shares, the state’s shares lost value and its equity in the banks was diluted substantially. In short, the public was shortchanged, in ways not dissimilar to those that transpired in Ireland that very same week, when the Irish central bank was forced to unload the Irish government bonds it had received for its promissory notes. And what was the common thread between these fresh assaults on the Irish and the Greek people? Europe’s custodian of the euro, the defender of the monetary realm, the pursuer of Europe’s common interest: the European Central Bank."
Yanis Varoufakis,Left,"To cut a long story short, a great deal of believing must occur before QE delivers on its promise to boost the real economy. But given the state of self-confirming pessimism that prevails in the depths of a severe crisis, to expect that these beliefs will flood into the different agents’ minds at once is to believe in miracles. More likely, as we witnessed in Japan and in America, where QE was tried out with a vengeance, banks tend to lend the monies conjured up by the central bank not to other banks or to Jack and Jill but to companies. Except that these companies do not invest the borrowed money in machinery and workers, fearful that the demand will not be there for extra output produced. No, what they do is to buy back their own shares in the stock market in order to increase their shares’ price and collect a nice bonus for having added value to the company. While this process does boost, to some extent, high-end house prices and the demand for luxuries, the only genuine beneficiary is gross inequality."
Yanis Varoufakis,Left,"When in 2008 the vast pyramids of financial capital came crashing down, Europe’s social democrats did not have the mental tools, or the moral values, with which to counter the bankers or to subject the collapsing system to critical scrutiny."
Yanis Varoufakis,Left,"The combination of two impossibilities leaves a huge question mark hanging in midair regarding Europe’s future. On the one hand, there is the impossibility of the eurozone continuing with its present terrible architecture, constantly spewing different versions of Greece’s tragedy. On the other hand, there is the impossibility of forming a unitary, centralized state with Berlin and Frankfurt at the center and Paris taking its impotence on the chin, accepting vassal status once and for all."
Yanis Varoufakis,Left,But is there really no difference between a federation and an alliance of states or the Europe of nations? Of course there is. And it is the difference between democracy and despotism.
Yanis Varoufakis,Left,"Moreover, the Eurogroup, where all the important economic decisions are taken, is a body that does not even exist in European law, that operates on the basis that the strong do as they please while the weak suffer what they must, that keeps no minutes of its procedures and whose only rule is that its deliberations are confidential; that is, not to be shared with Europe’s citizenry. Put bluntly, it is a setup designed to preclude any sovereignty traceable back to the people of Europe."
Yanis Varoufakis,Left,"In the mid-1990s, European bankers and their political friends realized that something big was going on in the Anglosphere and Europe ought either to embrace it or to reject it. Except that European officialdom lacks the political courage to do either and is bereft of the analytical capacity to take a stand on anything controversial. Their natural tendency is to fudge; to try to do both at once; to have their cake and eat it. So Brussels did nothing. Instead of regulating Europe’s banks, to stop them from loading up on the toxic paper that they were buying in droves, they whistled in the wind."
Yanis Varoufakis,Left,"In brief, it is now clear that Europe’s religious dedication to rules is nothing but a veil under which the strong make up the rules as they go along to suit their own political agenda. Perhaps that would be fine if the said agenda was not quick-marching Europe and the global economy into an economic, political and moral morass."
Yanis Varoufakis,Left,"Europe has twice already in the past hundred years dragged the planet down into appalling quagmires. It can do so again. Europe (as the New Dealers understood in the 1940s) is too important to leave to us Europeans. The whole world has a stake in a victory for rationality, liberty, democracy and humanism in the birthplace of those ideas."
Yanis Varoufakis,Left,"When Gandhi was asked what he thought of Western civilization, he famously replied that it would be a very good idea."
Yanis Varoufakis,Left,Years of crisis have culminated in a Europe that has lost legitimacy with its own citizens and credibility with the rest of the world.
Yanis Varoufakis,Left,"But unlike Nevada, Ireland had to fend for itself when it came to propping up its banks and paying its unemployment benefits. Lacking a printing press, it had to go cap in hand to the money markets to borrow huge quantities of money that, in Nevada’s case, had been paid for at the federal level."
Yanis Varoufakis,Left,"Fixing exchange rates between disparate economic regions always brings benefits in the short term. But it resembles past invasions of Russia: a brisk beginning full of enthusiasm and hope, rapid progress that seems unstoppable, followed by a heart-wrenching slowdown as a Cruel Winter takes its toll, ending up with blood on the snow and ceaseless retributions thereafter."
Yanis Varoufakis,Left,"In effect, the eurozone’s central bank, whose Maastricht-era charter bans it from lending to member-state governments or to insolvent banks, was lending indirectly to the government of each deficit nation the money insolvent banks required to pretend they were not insolvent. The banks thus pretended to be solvent, the deficit states pretended they had the money to guarantee that the banks were solvent, and the ECB stood by pretending that these sad pairs of insolvent banks and insolvent states were perfectly solvent and, thus, eligible, under the ECB’s charter, for ECB liquidity."
Yanis Varoufakis,Left,"The reason Greece became the first eurozone country to go manifestly bankrupt was simple enough. From the moment it looked likely that the drachma was history and Greece’s place in the euro was safe, bankers like Franz went into a frenzy of lending for the reason he explained to me so eloquently as we were flying to New York."
Yanis Varoufakis,Left,A dark continent that once produced so much light now exports bleakness and recession to the rest of the world.
Yanis Varoufakis,Left,"This strategy, which was then used as the template for the rest of the European periphery, turning the majority of European states into what I jokingly refer to as Bailoutistan, was always going to backfire on the European economy. Tim Geithner and Jack Lew, his successor in the US Treasury Department, understood this well. They shared the concern that what started in Greece in 2010, with the combination of an absurd bailout and a hideous level of austerity, has put Europe into a position that undermines America’s recovery and threatens the prospects of China, Latin America, even India and Africa."
Yanis Varoufakis,Left,"There are few occasions in any argument where one side is completely right and the other comprehensively wrong. This is one of them. Jack Lew’s Treasury was spot on and the German response utterly ludicrous. The US Treasury Department’s underlying analysis was founded on basic macroeconomics that Berlin, and the Eurogroup (as I have personally witnessed), refuses to acknowledge."
Yanis Varoufakis,Left,"capital also instils illusions in our minds – above all, the illusion that, in serving it, we become worthy, exceptional, potent. We take pride in our relationship with it (either as financiers who ‘create’ millions in a single day, or as employers on whom a multitude of working families depend, or as labourers who enjoy privileged access to gleaming machinery or to puny services denied to illegal migrants), turning a blind eye to the tragic fact that it is capital which, in effect, owns us all, and that it is we who serve it."
Yanis Varoufakis,Left,"By year’s end, on 31 December, the New York stock exchange has lost more than 31 per cent of its total value since 1 January 2008."
Yanis Varoufakis,Left,"Loans and workers are necessary evils whose ‘services’ businesspeople hire only for what they can get out of them: profit. But then profit can only be envisaged if the level of overall (or aggregate) future demand is strong. Unfortunately, the future is unknowable. The only thing business folk know for sure is that demand is never strong for long at a time of falling wages and interest rates. The result is an interesting, albeit tragic, conundrum: at a time of recession, when there is a mounting glut of labour and uninvested savings, a reduction in wages and interest rates does not help. In fact, it deepens the recession."
Yanis Varoufakis,Left,"Question: Do the machines depicted in the economy of The Matrix produce value? The answer, of course, depends on what value means and how it differs from price. One definition of value is the price towards which the actual price tends under normal market conditions. Another derives from the idea that the value of things reflects the true costs of producing them. One thing is certain: just like love, poetry, porn and beauty, one knows value when one sees it, even if one finds it impossible to define it analytically."
Yanis Varoufakis,Left,"Very quickly, the Obama administration lost political momentum. The obscene sight of those who had played a major role in setting the scene for the Crash (men like Larry Summers, Tim Geithner, Ben Bernanke) effectively returning to the scene of the crime as ‘saviours’, wielding trillions of freshly minted or borrowed dollars to lavish upon their banker ‘mates’, was enough to turn off even the hardiest of Mr Obama’s supporters. The result was predictable: as often happens during a deflationary period (think of the 1930s, for example), those who gainpolitically do not come from the revolutionary Left; they come from the loony Right. In the United States it was the Tea Party that grew on the back of a disdain for bankers, 6 a denunciation of the Fed, a clarion call for ‘honest’, metal-backed money, 7 and a revulsion towards all government. Ironically, the rise of the Tea Party increased the interventions of the Fed that the movement denounced. The reason was simple: once the Obama administration had lost its way, and could not pass any meaningful bills through Congress that might have stimulated the economy, onlyone lever was left with which anyone could steer America’s macroeconomy – the Fed’s monetary policy. And since interest rates were dwelling in the nether world of the first liquidity trap to hit the United States since the 1930s8 (recall Chapter 2 here), the Fed decided that quantitative easing or QE – the strategy that Chapter 8 describes in the context of the 1990s’ ‘lost Japanese decade’ – was all that was left separating America from a repugnant depression."
Yanis Varoufakis,Left,"The first sin, which took the form of a mathematized rhetoric, lulled authorities and academics into a false belief that financial innovation had engineered risk out of the system; that the new instruments allowed a new form of debt with the properties of quicksilver. Once loans were originated, they were then sliced up into tiny pieces, blended together in packages that contained different degrees of risk,3 and sold all over the globe. By thus"
Yanis Varoufakis,Left,This book originally aimed at pressing a useful metaphor into the service of elucidating a troubled world; a world that could no longer be understood properly by means
Yanis Varoufakis,Left,"The Global Minotaur metaphor crept up on me in 2002, after endless conversations with friend, colleague and co-author Joseph Halevi."
Yanis Varoufakis,Left,I was beginning to gain a degree of notoriety in the Greek and international media as a doomsayer who believed that not only was Greece’s bankruptcy inevitable but that it was a precursor of the euro-zone’s unravelling as well. Only
Yanis Varoufakis,Left,"How can a radical scepticism about the state be squared with a religious dedication to the notion that market outcomes are, by definition, optimal?"
Yanis Varoufakis,Left,"Alas, this was an open invitation to print one’s own money! No wonder Warren Buffet took one look at the fabled CDOs and described"
Yanis Varoufakis,Left,"Debtors’ prisons were ultimately abandoned because, despite their cruelty, they neither deterred the accumulation of new bad debts nor helped creditors get their money back. For capitalism to advance in the nineteenth century, the absurd notion that all debts are sacred had to be ditched and replaced with the notion of limited liability. After all, if all debts are guaranteed, why should lenders lend responsibly? And why should some debts carry a higher interest rate than other debts, reflecting the higher risk of going bad? Bankruptcy and debt write-downs became for capitalism what hell had always been for Christian dogma – unpleasant yet essential – but curiously bankruptcy-denial was revived in the twenty-first century to deal with the Greek state’s insolvency."
Yanis Varoufakis,Left,"After the press conference I would return to an empty sixth floor to engage in battle with the world’s most powerful creditors without secretaries, staff or indeed a computer. Thankfully, I had my trusty laptop in my rucksack. But who would furnish me with the Wi-Fi password?"
Yanis Varoufakis,Left,"Whenever a politician in the know gives a journalist an exclusive in exchange for a particular spin that is in the politician’s interest, the journalist is appended, however unconsciously, to a network of insiders. Whenever a journalist refuses to slant their story in the politician’s favour, they risk losing a valuable source and being excluded from that network. This is how networks of power control the flow of information: through co-opting outsiders and excluding those who refuse to play ball."
Yanis Varoufakis,Left,"Once caught in this web of power it takes an heroic disposition to turn whistle-blower, especially when one cannot hear oneself think amid the cacophony of so much money-making. And those few who do break ranks end up like shooting stars, quickly forgotten by a distracted world."
Yanis Varoufakis,Left,"Fascinatingly, many insiders, especially those only loosely attached to the network, are oblivious to the web that they reinforce, courtesy of having relatively few contacts with it. Similarly, those embedded in the very heart of the network are usually too far inside to notice that there is an outside at all."
Yanis Varoufakis,Left,Larry Summers is one such rare insider. His question to me was in fact an invocation to reject the lure of the outside. Underpinning his belief system was the conviction that the world can only be made better from within the black box.
Yanis Varoufakis,Left,"worse was dealing with creditors who did not really want their money back. Negotiating with them, trying to reason with them, was like negotiating a peace treaty with generals hell-bent on continuing a war safe in the knowledge that they, their sons and their daughters are out of harm’s way."
Yanis Varoufakis,Left,"Unaware of the fact that they were actually paying for the mistakes of French and German bankers, the Slovaks and the Finns, like the Germans and the French, believed they were having to shoulder another country’s debts. Thus, in the name of solidarity with the insufferable Greeks, the Franco-German axis planted the seeds of loathing between proud peoples."
Yanis Varoufakis,Left,"Upton Sinclair once said, ‘It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it."
Yanis Varoufakis,Left,John Kenneth Galbraith: ‘There are times in politics when you must be on the right side and lose.
Yanis Varoufakis,Left,only when the weak have decent reasons to defend the system that reproduces their subservience does the empire of the powerful
Yanis Varoufakis,Left,"I was told once by a leftwing scholar that as a Marxist, you have to do two things: always be optimistic and always have a view about everything. That advice still sounds good to me."
Yanis Varoufakis,Left,"There are two kinds of politicians,’ he said: ‘insiders and outsiders. The outsiders prioritize their freedom to speak their version of the truth. The price of their freedom is that they are ignored by the insiders, who make the important decisions. The insiders, for their part, follow a sacrosanct rule: never turn against other insiders and never talk to outsiders about what insiders say or do. Their reward? Access to inside information and a chance, though no guarantee, of influencing powerful people and outcomes."
Yanis Varoufakis,Left,What power have you got? Where did you get it from? In whose interests do you exercise it? To whom are you accountable? And how can we get rid of you?32 Ever
Yanis Varoufakis,Left,"A speech on March 18, 1947, by Herbert Hoover, President Roosevelt’s predecessor, flagged America’s new policy on Europe. There is an illusion, Hoover said, that the New Germany . . . can be reduced to a pastoral state. It cannot be done unless we exterminate or remove 25 million people out of it.33"
Yanis Varoufakis,Left,"Taking her cue from the points I had made, Christine seconded my appeals for debt relief and lower tax rates as prerequisites for a Greek recovery. Then she addressed me with calm and gentle honesty: You are of course right, Yanis. These targets that they insist on can’t work. But, you must understand that we have put too much into this programme. We cannot go back on it. Your credibility depends on accepting and working within this programme.2 So, there I had it. The head of the IMF was telling the finance minister of a bankrupt government that the policies imposed upon his country couldn’t work. Not that it would be hard to make them work. Not that the probability of them working was low. No, she was acknowledging that, come hell or high water, they couldn’t work. With"
Yanis Varoufakis,Left,"German officials knew it in 1964, as they knew it in 1992: for the French elites, a common currency with Germany was an attempt to neuter Germany, indeed to conquer the Bundesbank without firing a single shot. German decision makers, especially Bundesbank officials, would never allow themselves to forget that. But"
Yanis Varoufakis,Left,"The triangle of sin was complete: the insolvent media were kept in a zombified condition by the zombie banks, which were maintained in their undead condition by a bankrupt government, itself preserved in a condition of permanent bankruptcy by the EU and the IMF’s bailout loans. Is it any wonder that the Bailoutistan media extolled the benefits of the bailout and portrayed its bankers as victims of an unreliable state, while demonizing anyone who dared reveal what was really going on?"
Yanis Varoufakis,Left,"Unlike those corporations that focused on building a particular brand (e.g. Coca-Cola or Marlboro), or companies that created a wholly new sector by means of some invention (e.g. Edison with the light bulb, Microsoft with its Windows software, Sony with the Walkman, or Apple with the iPod/iPhone/iTunes package), Walmart did something no one had ever thought of before: it packaged a new ideology of cheapness into a brand that was meant to appeal to the financially stressed American working and lower-middle classes."
Yanis Varoufakis,Left,"Once their gaze turned back toward Europe, the puzzle dissolved: West Germany was the obvious equivalent and, indeed, a splendid candidate for the role of the global plan’s European shock-absorbing pillar"
Yanis Varoufakis,Left,"In 1950 the European Union was officially born in the form of a German-dominated cartel of coal and steel, run of course by a cross-border French-dominated administration located in Brussels. Its name? The European Steel and Coal Community."
Yanis Varoufakis,Left,Germany’s reindustrialization happened only because the United States chose to make it happen.
Yanis Varoufakis,Left,"He knew that the eurozone’s economic policies were not just atrocious for Greece but terrible for Europe and, by extension, for the United States too. And he knew that Greece was merely the laboratory where these failed policies were being tested and developed before their implementation everywhere across Europe."
Yanis Varoufakis,Left,"The cynic would be almost right.8 Except it would not be the whole story. As I departed that day, I was not leaving behind me a Machiavellian dictator; I was leaving behind a sunken heart, a man ostensibly more powerful than almost anyone in Europe who nevertheless felt utterly powerless to do what he knew was right. As the great tragedians have taught us, nothing causes greater wretchedness than the combination of supreme authority and wholesale powerlessness."
Yanis Varoufakis,Left,Forcing new loans upon the bankrupt on condition that they shrink their income is nothing short of cruel and unusual punishment. Greece was never bailed out.
Yanis Varoufakis,Left,"When inordinate weight is loaded onto a flimsily constructed bridge, the weakest beam will break first."
Yanis Varoufakis,Left,"Thinking that it had successfully diffused risk, our financialized world created so much that it was consumed by it."
Yanis Varoufakis,Left,"Corporations are forced, by competition and by the fear of predators, to try to turn workers into machine-like production units; to make the hiring of a worker no different from the hiring of an electricity generator. And yet, however hard they try to turn humans into machines and to extract output from their ‘work’ (in the same way as they extract effort from a horse or electricity from a generator), it is an impossible task. The worker cannot discard her innate human quirks, rebelliousness, indeterminateness – not even if she honestly wants to. All the things that make her contribution to production inherently unpredictable are part of who she is. Independently of her will, one moment she is capable of sloth and the next of brilliant creativity (which no machine can ever understand)."
Yanis Varoufakis,Left,"John Maynard Keynes made the most audacious proposal that has ever reached the bargaining table of a major international conference: to create an International Currency Union (ICU), a single currency (which he even named – the bancor) for the whole capitalist world, with its own international central bank and matching institutions. Keynes’ proposal was not as impudent as it seemed. In fact, it has withstood the test of time quite well. In a recent BBC interview, Dominique Strauss-Kahn, the IMF’s then managing director, called for a return to Keynes’ original idea as the only solution to the troubles of the post-2008 world economy."
Yanis Varoufakis,Left,"The ancient Greek word for money, for currency, is 'nomisma.' It comes from the verb 'to imagine.'So money has value to the extent that we imagine that it has value, according to the ancient Greeks. They knew that more than 2,000 years ago, and we kind of forget that simple, important notion at times."
Yanis Varoufakis,Left,"I assured them that our government was not going to be ideological about this: if I was asked whether I was in favour of or against privatization, my answer would be, ‘It depends on the asset in question – a port, a railway, a beach, an electricity company?’ Beaches I would never sell, I told them, just as I would never sell the Parthenon. And the privatization of electricity grids reliably leads to environmentally and socially suboptimal outcomes. But when it came to ports and airports, I would form a view based on four criteria: how much the buyer was committing to invest in the asset; the buyer’s commitment to workers’ rights to union representation and decent wages and conditions; environmental standards; and the extent to which the buyer would be obliged to leave room for and encourage the benefit of small and medium local businesses."
Yanis Varoufakis,Left,"Fellow economists get very cross with me when I tell them that we face a choice: we can keep pretending we are scientists, like astrologists do, or admit that we are more like philosophers, who will never know the meaning of life for sure, no matter how wisely and rationally they argue. But were we to confess that we are at best worldly philosophers, it is unlikely we would continue to be so handsomely rewarded by the ruling class of a market society whose legitimacy we provide by pretending to be scientists."
Yanis Varoufakis,Left,"Try mentally to travel to a faraway place, if not necessarily in order to move your world – though how splendid that would be! – but to see it clearly for what it is. Doing so will grant you the opportunity to retain your freedom. And to remain a free spirit as you grow up and make your way in this world, it is essential that you cultivate a rare but crucial freedom: the liberty that comes from knowing how the economy works and from the capacity to answer the trillion-dollar question: ‘Who does what to whom around your neck of the woods and further afield?"
Yanis Varoufakis,Left,"the accusation was false, and although doubts still slithered through my mind like restless serpents"
Yanis Varoufakis,Left,"Nevertheless, the idea that the bankrupt Europeans, who had already put the world through the wringer of two world wars in less than three decades, and still yearned for the reconstitution of their repulsive empires, would now control America’s surplus was anathema to an anti-imperialist, patriotic New Dealer like White."
Yanis Varoufakis,Left,Hindsight blurs history and tortures the mind with sterile hypotheticals.
Yanis Varoufakis,Left,"In the meantime, it is useful to end this chapter by pondering a paradox. On the one hand, as already noted, economics is replete with eulogies to freedom (particularly of the market). However, on the other hand, the type of freedom that economics textbooks talk about is compatible with the science fiction image of rows and rows of persons attached to a pleasure machine which bombards them with utility (or, to be more respectful to ordinal utility, which keeps them at the very top of their preferences ordering). Less apocalyptically, it is consistent with a society in which individuals’ ideals have been reduced to purchasing commodities in gigantic shopping complexes guided totally by cravings manufactured in elaborate marketing clinics. Perhaps the most helpful conclusion to draw from all this is that the economic textbook’s model of rational choice is the culmination of the logic unleashed on the world by the emergence and domination of market societies (see Chapter 1 again). One question is worth keeping in mind when immersed in that logic: is a happy slave (a slave of feudal masters or, today, of the advertisers) capable of being free (whatever that person’s utility level)? So, if freedom is more than just desire-fulfilment what does it mean to be free? No one has the definitive answer but here is a suggestion: individual freedom may be the capacity to act freely, not only in order to satisfy the preferences that are there already (the utility machine can do this admirably), but in order to create new and better preferences"
Yanis Varoufakis,Left,"The notion that elections cannot be allowed to change economic policy, indeed any policy, is a gift to [founder and leader of Singapore] Lee Kuan Yew supporters or indeed the Chinese communist party, who also believe this to be true. There is of course a long tradition of doubting the efficacy of the democratic process. But I would like to think that his tradition has been expelled long ago from the heart of Europe. It now seems that the euro crisis has brought it back. I urge you all to band together in a collective bid to resist it. Democracy is not a luxury to be afforded to the creditors and denied to the debtors. Indeed, it is the lack of democratic process in the heart of our monetary union that is perpetuating the euro crisis. Then again, I might be wrong. Colleagues, if you think that I am wrong, if you agree with Wolfgang, then I invite you to say so explicitly by proposing that elections should be suspended in countries like Greece until the country's programme is completed. What is the point of spending money on elections and asking our people to get all fired up to elect governments that will have no capacity to change anything?"
Yanis Varoufakis,Left,"After hovering in the ethereal world of mathematics and geometry, economics was forced to crash-land and take its place in the real world of political debate. Do economists wish to pursue the Good Society in the spirit of the social contract tradition which started some time in ancient Greece, reasserted itself in Europe with J.-J.Rousseau and found its apotheosis in John Rawls? Or do they wish for a social contract which effectively rules the State out as anything other than a provider of order and security"
Yanis Varoufakis,Left,"Austerity is a morality play pressed into the service of legitimizing cynical wealth transfers from the have-nots to the haves during times of crisis, in which debtors are sinners who must be made to pay for their misdeeds. Not"
Yanis Varoufakis,Left,"Perhaps a better term for what is still called the economy would be ‘agoranomy’, as in the laws of the agora – the marketplace."
Yanis Varoufakis,Left,"Chasing tax cheats using normal procedures was not an option. It would take decades just to identify anything like the majority of them and centuries to prosecute them successfully; the more we caught, the more clogged up the judicial system would become. We needed a different approach. Once Danis was on board a couple of days later, together we thought of one: we would extract historical and real-time data from the banks on all transfers taking place within Greece as well as in and out of the country and commission software to compare the money flows associated with each tax file number with the tax returns of that same file number. The algorithm would be designed to flag up any instance where declared income seemed to be substantially lower than actual income. Having identified the most likely offenders in this way, we would make them an offer they could not refuse. The plan was to convene a press conference at which I would make it clear that anyone caught by the new system would be subject to 45 per cent tax, large penalties on 100 per cent of their undeclared income and criminal prosecution. But as our government sought to establish a new relationship of trust between state and citizenry, there would be an opportunity to make amends anonymously and at minimum cost. I would announce that for the next fortnight a new portal would be open on the ministry’s website on which anyone could register any previously undeclared income for the period 2000–14. Only 15 per cent of this sum would be required in tax arrears, payable via web banking or debit card. In return for payment, the taxpayer would receive an electronic receipt guaranteeing immunity from prosecution for previous non-disclosure.17 Alongside this I resolved to propose a simple deal to the finance minister of Switzerland, where so many of Greece’s tax cheats kept their untaxed money.18 In a rare example of the raw power of the European Union being used as a force for good, Switzerland had recently been forced to disclose all banking information pertaining to EU citizens by 2017. Naturally, the Swiss feared that large EU-domiciled depositors who did not want their bank balances to be reported to their country’s tax authorities might shift their money before the revelation deadline to some other jurisdiction, such as the Cayman Islands, Singapore or Panama. My proposals were thus very much in the Swiss finance minister’s interests: a 15 per cent tax rate was a relatively small price to pay for legalizing a stash and allowing it to remain in safe, conveniently located Switzerland. I would pass a law through Greece’s parliament that would allow for the taxation of money in Swiss bank accounts at this exceptionally low rate, and in return the Swiss finance minister would require all his country’s banks to send their Greek customers a friendly letter informing them that, unless they produced the electronic receipt and immunity certificate provided by my ministry’s web page, their bank account would be closed within weeks. To my great surprise and delight, my Swiss counterpart agreed to the proposal.19"
Yanis Varoufakis,Left,... economic ideas are playthings of history and ideology.
Yanis Varoufakis,Left,My reason for writing it was the conviction that the economy is too important to leave to the economists.
Yanis Varoufakis,Left,"Greece's bailout, then Ireland's, then Portgual's, then Spain's were primarily rescue packages for French and German banks."
Yanis Varoufakis,Left,"All babies are born naked, but soon after some are dressed in expensive clothes bought at the best boutiques, while the majority wear rags."
Jeremy Rifkin,Left,"Time goes forward because energy itself is always moving from an available to an unavailable state. Our consciousness is continually recording the entropy change in the world around us. We watch our friends get old and die. We sit next to a fire and watch it's red-hot embers turn slowly into cold white ashes. We experience the world always changing around us, and that experience is the unfolding of the second law. It is the irreversible process of dissipation of energy in the world. What does it mean to say, 'The world is running out of time'? Simply this: we experience the passage of time by the succession of one event after another. And every time an event occurs anywhere in this world energy is expended and the overall entropy is increased. To say the world is running out of time then, to say the world is running out of usable energy. In the words of Sir Arthur Eddington, 'Entropy is time's arrow'."
Jeremy Rifkin,Left,"It is not uncommon in the modern world for people to retreat into the world of books to escape from the realities of the outside world. The printed word evokes the modern notion of security, with the emphasis on detachment, privacy, autonomy, predictability, and enclosed artificiality."
Jeremy Rifkin,Left,"Today we are raised with the notion that to be secure is to be financially autonomous. Amassing wealth is viewed as the primary rite of passage to a secure, autonomous existence."
Jeremy Rifkin,Left,The most important question facing humanity is this: Can we reach global empathy in time to avoid the collapse of civilization and save the Earth?
Jeremy Rifkin,Left,"For the materialist, advertising becomes the powerful drug that feeds the addiction. Advertising prays on one’s sense of inadequacy and loneliness. It promises that products and services will enhance a person’s personality and identity and make him or her more appealing,"
Jeremy Rifkin,Left,We have come to discover what we suspect is a new political mindset emerging among a younger generation of political leaders socialized on Internet communications. Their politics are less about right versus left and more about centralized and authoritarian versus distributed and collaborative.
Jeremy Rifkin,Left,Generations of human beings were transformed into machines in the relentless pursuit of material wealth: We lived to work.
Jeremy Rifkin,Left,"The democratization of manufacturing means that anyone and eventually everyone can access the means of production, making the question of who should own and control the means of production irrelevant, and capitalism along with it."
Jeremy Rifkin,Left,"Studies conducted around the world have shown a close correlation between materialist values, depression, and substance abuse."
Jeremy Rifkin,Left,"The laws of thermodynamics tell us something quite different. Economic activity is merely borrowing low-entropy energy inputs from the environment and transforming them into temporary products and services of value. In the transformation process, often more energy is expended and lost to the environment than is embedded in the particular good or service being produced."
Jeremy Rifkin,Left,"Every religion holds forth the promise of either defeating time, escaping time, overcoming time, reissuing time, or denying time altogether. We use our religions as vehicles to enter the state of nirvana, the heavenly kingdom, or the promised land. We come to believe in reincarnation, rebirth, and resurrection as ways of avoiding the inevitability of biological death."
Jeremy Rifkin,Left,Earth provides enough to satisfy every man’s need but not enough for every man’s greed.56
Jeremy Rifkin,Left,"A half century from now, our grandchildren are likely to look back at the era of mass employment in the market with the same sense of utter disbelief as we look upon slavery and serfdom in former times. The very idea that a human being’s worth was measured almost exclusively by his or her productive output of goods and services and material wealth will seem primitive, even barbaric, and be regarded as a terrible loss of human value to our progeny living in a highly automated world where much of life is lived on the Collaborative Commons."
Jeremy Rifkin,Left,"This means that for the past thirty years, we have been wasting 86 percent of the energy we use in the production of goods and services."
Jeremy Rifkin,Left,"consider the fact that a journey from New York to Chicago by stagecoach would have taken three weeks or more in 1847. By 1857, that same trip by rail would have taken 72 hours.12"
Jeremy Rifkin,Left,"Automobiles consumed 20 percent of the steel, 12 percent of the aluminum, 10 percent of the copper, 51 percent of the lead, 95 percent of the nickel, 35 percent of the zinc, and 60 percent of the rubber used in the U.S. by 1933."
Jeremy Rifkin,Left,people who strongly value the pursuit of wealth and possessions report lower psychological well-being than those who are less concerned with such aims.
Jeremy Rifkin,Left,"globalization, a grossly misnamed metaphor that disingenuously cloaked government deregulation and the privatization of public goods and services in the wrap of a new global interconnectivity."
Jeremy Rifkin,Left,"The gross domestic product (GDP) was created in the 1930s to measure the value of the sum total of economic goods and services generated over a single year. The problem with the index is that it counts negative as well as positive economic activity. If a country invests large sums of money in armaments, builds prisons, expands police security, and has to clean up polluted environments and the like, it’s included in the GDP. Simon Kuznets, an American who invented the GDP measurement tool, pointed out early on that [t]he welfare of a nation can . . . scarcely be inferred from a measurement of national income.28 Later in life, Kuznets became even more emphatic about the drawbacks of relying on the GDP as a gauge of economic prosperity. He warned that [d]istinctions must be kept in mind between quantity and quality of growth . . . . Goals for ‘more’ growth should specify more growth of what and for what.29"
Jeremy Rifkin,Left,"Even though the transformation of energy, in all of its various forms, is the very basis of all economic activity, only a tiny fraction of economists have even studied thermodynamics. And only a handful of individuals inside the profession have attempted to redefine economic theory and practice based on the energy laws."
Jeremy Rifkin,Left,"The extension of the empathic bond is the social glue to establishing a global network of millions of human beings. It’s probably not surprising that in the most technologically advanced countries, where self-expression is high, the older theological consciousness, with its emphasis on strict external codes, the communal bond, and a hierarchically organized command and control, is losing its hold. Religious hierarchies make less and less sense in a fl at, networked world."
Jeremy Rifkin,Left,The global financial collapse exposed the longstanding myth that commercial exchange is a primary institution. There are no examples in history where people created commercial markets and exchange before creating a culture.
Jeremy Rifkin,Left,"We are beginning to learn that an empathic moment requires both intimate engagement and a measure of detachment. If our feelings completely spill over into another's feelings or their feelings overwhelm our psyche, we lose a sense of self and the ability to imagine the other as if they were us. Empathy is a difficult balancing act. One has to be open to experiencing another's plight as if it were one's own but not be engulfed by it, at the expense of drowning out the self's ability to be a unique and separate being. Empathy requires a porous boundary between I and thou that allows the identity of two beings to mingle in a shared mental space.- The Empathic Civilization: The Race to Global Consciousness in a World in Crisis"
Jeremy Rifkin,Left,"When you and I feel empathy toward another being-be it human or one of our fellow creatures-it's tinged with the whiff of their eventual death and the celebration of their existing life. In experiencing their joy, sorrow, hopes, and fears I am constantly reminded of the precarious nature of each of our lives. To empathize with another is to recognize their one and only life as I do my own-to understand that each of the moments, like my own, are irreversible and unrepeatable and that life is fragile and imperfect and challenging, whether it be a human being's journey in civilization or a deer's journey in the woods."
Jeremy Rifkin,Left,"three hundred trout are required to support one man for a year. The trout, in turn, must consume 90,000 frogs, which must consume 27 million grasshoppers, which live off of 1,000 tons of grass.10"
Jeremy Rifkin,Left,"We think of GDP as a measure of the wealth that a country generates each year. But from a thermodynamic point of view, it is more a measure of the temporary energy value embedded in the goods or services produced at the expense of the diminution of the available energy reserves and an accumulation of entropic waste. Since"
Jeremy Rifkin,Left,"new technologies are going to make the airwaves so abundant that there would be no justification for the government to ration access to spectrum or to give some services priority over others.46 In the near future, everyone will be able to share Earth’s abundant free air waves, communicating with each other for nearly free, just as we will share the abundant free energy of the sun, wind, and geothermal heat."
Jeremy Rifkin,Left,"The late Jonathan Rowe, one of the visionaries of the new networked Commons, best explained the idea of what a Commons is all about. He wrote: To say the commons is to evoke a puzzled pause. . . . Yet the commons is more basic than both government and market. It is the vast realm that is the shared heritage of all of us that we typically use without toll or price. The atmosphere and oceans, languages and cultures, the stores of human knowledge and wisdom, the informal support systems of community, the peace and quiet that we crave, the genetic building blocks of life"
Jeremy Rifkin,Left,"Africa, in particular, has barely begun to exploit its renewable energy potential. Energy analysts say that solar, wind, hydro, geothermal, and biomass sources could more than supply the energy needs of every continent. The key is providing a favorable playing field, and that means financial aid, technology transfer, and training programs to assist developing nations, like the ones being advanced by the EU/AU partnership."
Jeremy Rifkin,Left,"raises an interesting question about the new corporate giants that are colonizing large swaths of virtual space. He asks, how hard would it be to go a week without Google? Or, to up the ante, without Facebook, Amazon, Skype, Twitter, Apple, eBay, and Google?"
Jeremy Rifkin,Left,"But what if I were to say to you that 25 years from now, the bulk of the energy you use to heat your home and run your appliances, power your business, drive your vehicle, and operate every part of the global economy will likewise be nearly free? That’s already the case for several million early adopters"
Jeremy Rifkin,Left,An e-book can be produced and distributed at near zero marginal cost.
Jeremy Rifkin,Left,"If the steam engine freed human beings from feudal bondage to pursue material self-interest in the capitalist marketplace, the Internet of Things frees human beings from the market economy to pursue nonmaterial shared interests on the Collaborative Commons. Many"
Jeremy Rifkin,Left,if information goods are to be distributed at their marginal cost of production
Jeremy Rifkin,Left,"Keynes believed that a point may soon be reached, much sooner perhaps than we are all of us aware of, when these [economic] needs are satisfied in the sense that we prefer to devote our further energies to non-economic purposes.8 He looked expectantly to a future in which machines would produce an abundance of nearly free goods and services, liberating the human race from toil and hardships and freeing the human mind from a preoccupation with strictly pecuniary interests to focus more on the arts for life and the quest for transcendence."
Jeremy Rifkin,Left,"Cisco systems forecasts that by 2022, the Internet of Everything will generate $14.4 trillion in cost savings and revenue."
Jeremy Rifkin,Left,"In Germany, a gas- or coal-fired power plant that might cost $1 billion to build, but that will no longer run at full capacity because of the onslaught of renewable energies into the grid, can only pay for itself on days when there is no wind or heavy cloud cover."
Jeremy Rifkin,Left,"If the technology platforms of the First and Second Industrial Revolutions aided in the severing and enclosing of the Earth’s myriad ecological interdependencies for market exchange and personal gain, the IoT platform of the Third Industrial Revolution reverses the process. What makes the IoT a disruptive technology in the way we organize economic life is that it helps humanity reintegrate itself into the complex choreography of the biosphere, and by doing so, dramatically increases productivity without compromising the ecological relationships that govern the planet. Using less of the Earth’s resources more efficiently and productively in a circular economy and making the transition from carbon-based fuels to renewable energies are defining features of the emerging economic paradigm. In the new era, we each become a node in the nervous system of the biosphere."
Jeremy Rifkin,Left,stability of the capitalist system is shaken by the alternation of attempts to stop economic progress in order to protect old investments and tremendous collapses when those attempts fail.
Jeremy Rifkin,Left,"To bring our human population in line with the biocapacity of the planet and transform our society from scarcity to sustainable abundance, we will need to address the great disparity in ecological footprint between the rich and poor, while simultaneously lowering the overall human population on Earth."
Jeremy Rifkin,Left,"The coming together of the Communications Internet, the Energy Internet, and the Logistics Internet in an Internet of Things provides the cognitive nervous system and physical means to integrate all of humanity in an interconnected global Commons that extends across the entirety of society."
Jeremy Rifkin,Left,"Each rise in temperature of 1°C results in a 7 percent increase in the moisture-holding capacity of the atmosphere.36 This causes a radical change in the way water is distributed, with more intense precipitation but a reduction in duration and frequency."
Jeremy Rifkin,Left,"Stuart Williams, a scientist at the Cardiovascular Innovation Institute in Louisville, Kentucky, is experimenting with taking fat-derived cells extracted during liposuction and mixing them with glue to print a heart. Williams believes that a 3D-printed bioficial heart may be possible in ten years."
Jeremy Rifkin,Left,"Tie Society, a start-up in Washington, D.C., stocks more than 300 designer ties"
Jeremy Rifkin,Left,"In the summer of 2009, a heat wave across France led to a shortage in cooling waters, forcing one-third of the nuclear power plants in the country to shut down."
Jeremy Rifkin,Left,"suggest that the millennial generation, deeply affected by the Great Recession and a stagnant global economy, has begun to shift its psychic priorities from material success to living a meaningful existence."
Jeremy Rifkin,Left,"The British statesmen Ernest Bevin once quipped that the kingdom of heaven may run on righteousness, but the kingdom of earth runs on oil."
Jeremy Rifkin,Left,"a Cisco report uncovered the fact that only 35 percent of mobile data use was on the move, while 40 percent was from home, and 25 percent from work."
Jeremy Rifkin,Left,The well-being of the biosphere is measured over millennia of history and necessitates a human consciousness that can reflect and project along a similar time table.
Jeremy Rifkin,Left,"When the price of oil on the world market began to fall, the American business community and the public lost interest in the great energy crusade. Carter’s successor, Ronald Reagan, removed the solar panels from the White House roof and scrapped the wood-burning stove in the living quarters. America went back to business as usual, buying even larger gasguzzling vehicles, and using ever greater volumes of energy to support a wasteful, consumer-driven lifestyle."
Jeremy Rifkin,Left,"The new science takes us from a colonial vision of nature as an enemy to pillage and enslave, to a new vision of nature as a community to nurture. The right to exploit, harness, and own nature in the form of property is tempered by the obligation to steward nature and treat it with dignity and respect. The utility value of nature is slowly giving way to the intrinsic value of nature."
Jeremy Rifkin,Left,"There is a saying in the Middle East that goes something like this: My grandfather rode a camel, my father drove a car, I travel on a jet, and my grandchild will ride a camel. Not necessarily. The deserts of the Middle East and North Africa have more solar potential per square inch than any other region in the world"
Jeremy Rifkin,Left,"Bruffee begins with the teacher, whose responsibility is to transfer knowledge into the minds of the students. He does this by creating an authoritative relationship with each student. That is, he calls on individuals and asks each to recite or provide an answer to a directed question. Each student is expected to perform strictly for the teacher, by recitation or by written exam. The relationship is always top-down and one-to-one. Students are discouraged from interacting with each other, whether by posing questions to one another, or assisting each other. Such behavior would breach the authority of the teacher and create an alternative pattern of authority that would be lateral and interactive. Thinking together would be considered cheating. Each student, in turn, is individually evaluated and graded."
Jeremy Rifkin,Left,"Yochai Benkler says that while an inordinate amount of attention is being placed on free software, it is in fact only one example of a much broader social-economic phenomenon. I suggest that we are seeing the broad and deep emergence of a new, third mode of production in the digitally networked environment. I call this mode Commons-based peer-production, to distinguish it from the property- and contract-based modes of firms and markets. Its central characteristic is that groups of individuals successfully collaborate on large-scale projects following a diverse cluster of motivational drives and social signals, rather than either market prices or managerial commands.43"
Jeremy Rifkin,Left,"When I empathize, I feel the frailty and transitory nature of another's existence. To empathize is to root for the other to flourish and experience the full potential of their short abide."
Jeremy Rifkin,Left,"hold. That’s because each pillar can only function in relationship to the others. The five pillars of the Third Industrial Revolution are (1) shifting to renewable energy; (2) transforming the building stock of every continent into micro–power plants to collect renewable energies on site; (3) deploying hydrogen and other storage technologies in every building and throughout the infrastructure to store intermittent energies; (4) using Internet technology to transform the power grid of every continent into an energy-sharing intergrid that acts just like the Internet (when millions of buildings are generating a small amount of energy locally, on site, they can sell surplus back to the grid and share electricity with their continental neighbors); and (5) transitioning the transport fleet to electric plug-in and fuel cell vehicles that can buy and sell electricity on a smart, continental, interactive power grid."
Naomi Klein,Left,"Democracy is not just the right to vote, it is the right to live in dignity."
Naomi Klein,Left,"You actually cannot sell the idea of freedom, democracy, diversity, as if it were a brand attribute and not reality -- not at the same time as you're bombing people, you can't."
Naomi Klein,Left,Extreme violence has a way of preventing us from seeing the interests it serves.
Naomi Klein,Left,"A term like capitalism is incredibly slippery, because there's such a range of different kinds of market economies. Essentially, what we've been debating over"
Naomi Klein,Left,"When it comes to paying contractors, the sky is the limit; when it comes to financing the basic functions of the state, the coffers are empty."
Naomi Klein,Left,"Because, underneath all of this is the real truth we have been avoiding: climate change isn’t an issue to add to the list of things to worry about, next to health care and taxes. It is a civilizational wake-up call. A powerful message"
Naomi Klein,Left,People without memory are putty.
Naomi Klein,Left,"In Venezuela Chavez has made the co-ops a top political priority, giving them first refusal on government contracts and offering them economic incentives to trade with one another. By 2006, there were roughly 100,000 co-operatives in the country, employing more than 700,000 workers. Many are pieces of state infrastructure – toll booths, highway maintenance, health clinics – handed over to the communities to run. It’s a reverse of the logic of government outsourcing – rather than auctioning off pieces of the state to large corporations and losing democratic control, the people who use the resources are given the power to manage them, creating, at least in theory, both jobs and more responsive public services. Chavez’s many critics have derided these initiatives as handouts and unfair subsidies, of course. Yet in an era when Halliburton treats the U.S. government as its personal ATM for six years, withdraws upward of $20 billion in Iraq contracts alone, refuses to hire local workers either on the Gulf coast or in Iraq, then expresses its gratitude to U.S. taxpayers by moving its corporate headquarters to Dubai (with all the attendant tax and legal benefits), Chavez’s direct subsidies to regular people look significantly less radical."
Naomi Klein,Left,"What we have been living for three decades is frontier capitalism, with the frontier constantly shifting location from crisis to crisis, moving on as soon as the law catches up. "
Naomi Klein,Left,"This, without a doubt, is neoliberalism’s single most damaging legacy: the realization of its bleak vision has isolated us enough from one another that it became possible to convince us that we are not just incapable of self-preservation but fundamentally not worth saving."
Naomi Klein,Left,"The American Society of Civil Engineers said in 2007 that the U.S. had fallen so far behind in maintaining its public infrastructure -- roads, bridges, schools, dams -- that it would take more than a trillion and half dollars over five years to bring it back up to standard. Instead, these types of expenditures are being cut back. At the same time, public infrastructure around the world is facing unprecedented stress, with hurricanes, cyclones, floods and forest fires all increasing in frequency and intensity. It's easy to imagine a future in which growing numbers of cities have their frail and long-neglected infrastructures knocked out by disasters and then are left to rot, their core services never repaired or rehabilitated. The well-off, meanwhile, will withdraw into gated communities, their needs met by privatized providers. "
Naomi Klein,Left,"Either greed belongs in a war zone, or it doesn't. You can't unleash it in the name of sparking an economic boom and then be shocked when Halliburton overcharges for everything from towels to gas, when Parsons' sub, sub, sub-contractor builds a police academy where the pipes drip raw sewage on the heads of army cadets and where Blackwater investigates itself and finds it acted honorably. That's just corporations doing what they do and Iraq is a privatized war zone so that's what you get. Build a frontier, you get cowboys and robber barons."
Naomi Klein,Left,"What haunts me is not exactly the absence of literal space so much as a deep craving for metaphorical space: release, escape, some kind of open-ended freedom."
Naomi Klein,Left,"protected businesses never, never become competitive ... Halliburton, Bechtel, Parsons, KPMG, RTI, Blackwater and all other U.S. corporations that were in Iraq to take advantage of the reconstruction were part of a vast protectionist racket whereby the U.S. government had created their markets with war, barred their competitors from even entering the race, then paid them to do the work, while guaranteeing them a profit to boot - all at taxpayer expense."
Naomi Klein,Left,"Drilling without thinking has of course been Republican party policy since May 2008. With gas prices soaring to unprecedented heights, that's when the conservative leader Newt Gingrich unveiled the slogan 'Drill Here, Drill Now, Pay Less'"
Naomi Klein,Left,"Not only do fossil fuel companies receive $775 billion to $1 trillion in annual global subsidies, but they pay nothing for the privilege of treating our shared atmosphere as a free waste dump"
Naomi Klein,Left,"Authoritarian Communism is, and should be, forever tainted by those real-world laboratories. But what of the contemporary crusade to liberate world markets? The coups, wars and slaughters to instill and maintain pro-corporate regimes have never been treated as capitalist crimes but have instead been written off as the excess of overzealous dictators, as hot fronts in the Cold War, and now of the War on Terror. If the most committed opponents of the corporatist economic model are systematically eliminated, whether in Argentina in the seventies or in Iraq today, that suppression is explained as part of the dirty fight against Communism or terrorism - almost never as the fight for the advancement of pure capitalism."
Naomi Klein,Left,"It is eminently possible to have a market-based economy that requires no such brutality and demands no such ideological purity. A free market in consumer products can coexist with free public health care, with public schools, with a large segment of the economy -- like a national oil company -- held in state hands. It's equally possible to require corporations to pay decent wages, to respect the right of workers to form unions, and for governments to tax and redistribute wealth so that the sharp inequalities that mark the corporatist state are reduced. Markets need not be fundamentalist."
Naomi Klein,Left,"During the Cold War, widespread alcoholism was always seen in the West as evidence that life under Communism was so dismal that Russians needed large quantities of vodka to get through the day. Under capitalism, however, Russians drinks more than twice as much alcohol as they used to - and they are reaching for harder painkillers as well."
Naomi Klein,Left,"Despite different cultures, middle-class youth all over the world seem to live their lives as if in a parallel universe. They get up in the morning, put on their Levi's and Nikes, grab their caps and backpacks, and Sony personal CD players and head for school."
Naomi Klein,Left,"More fundamentally than any of this, though, is their deep fear that if the free market system really has set in motion physical and chemical processes that, if allowed to continue unchecked, threaten large parts of humanity at an existential level, then their entire crusade to morally redeem capitalism has been for naught. With stakes like these, clearly greed is not so very good after all. And that is what is behind the abrupt rise in climate change denial among hardcore conservatives: they have come to understand that as soon as they admit that climate change is real, they will lose the central ideological battle of our time"
Naomi Klein,Left,"When we marvel at that blue marble in all its delicacy and frailty, and resolve to save the planet, we cast ourselves in a very specific role. That role is of a parent, the parent of the earth. But the opposite is the case. It is we humans who are fragile and vulnerable and the earth that is hearty and powerful, and holds us in its hands. In pragmatic terms, our challenge is less to save the earth from ourselves and more to save ourselves from an earth that, if pushed too far, has ample power to rock, burn, and shake us off completely. That knowledge should inform all we do"
Naomi Klein,Left,The author and intellectual Cornel West has said that 'justice is what love looks like in public.' I often think that neoliberalism is what lovelessness looks like as policy.
Naomi Klein,Left,What if it's all a hoax and we've created a better world for nothing?
Naomi Klein,Left,"The theory of economic shock therapy relies in part on the roleof expectations on feeding an inflationary process. Reining in inflation requires not only changing monetary policy but also changing the behavior of consumers, employers and workers. The role of a sudden, jarring policy shift is that it quickly alters expectations, signaling to the public that the rules of the game have changed dramatically - prices will not keep rising, nor will wages. "
Naomi Klein,Left,"What industry calls innovation, in other words, looks more like the final suicidal throes of addiction. We are blasting the bedrock of our continents, pumping our water with toxins, lopping off mountaintops, scraping off boreal forests, endangering the deep ocean, and scrambling to exploit the melting Arctic"
Naomi Klein,Left,"it is always easier to deny reality than to allow our worldview to be shattered, a fact that was as true of die-hard Stalinists at the height of the purges as it is of libertarian climate change deniers today."
Naomi Klein,Left,"Reconciliation means that those who have been on the underside of history must see that there is a qualitative difference between repression and freedom. And for them, freedom translates into having a supply of clean water, having electricity on tap; being able to live in a decent home and have a good job; to be able to send your children to school and to have accessible health care. I mean, what's the point of having made this transition if the quality of life of these people is not enhanced and improved? If not, the vote is useless.'-archbishop Desmond Tutu, chair of South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation Committee, 2001"
Naomi Klein,Left,"Culture jamming is enjoying a resurgence, in part because of technological advancements but also more pertinently, because of the good old rules of supply and demand. Something not far from the surfaces of the public psyche is delighted to see the icons of corporate power subverted and mocked. There is, in short, a market for it. With commercialism able to overpower the traditional authority of religion, politics and schools, corporations have emerged a the natural targets for all sorts of free-floating rage and rebellion. The new ethos that culture jamming taps into is go-for-the-corporate-jugular."
Naomi Klein,Left,"A state of shock is produced when a story is ruptured… Trump is not a rupture at all, but rather the culmination – the logical end point – of a great many dangerous stories our culture has been telling for a very long time. That greed is good. That the market rules. That money is what matters in life. That white men are better than the rest. That the natural world is there for us to pillage. That the vulnerable deserve their face and the one percent deserve their golden towers. That anything public or commonly held is sinister and not worth protection. That we are surrounded by danger and should only look after our own. That there is no alternative to any of this."
Naomi Klein,Left,It (the Chinese move to embrace capitalism in 1989) is a mirror of the corporatist state first pioneered in Chile under Pinochet: a revolving door between corporate and political elites who combine their power to eliminate workers as an organized political force. The creation of today's market society was not the result of a sequence of spontaneous events but rather of state interference and violence.
Naomi Klein,Left,The bottom line is that we are all inclined to denial when the truth is too costly
Naomi Klein,Left,A great many of us engage in this kind of climate change denial. We look for a split second and then we look away. Or we look but then turn it into a joke (more signs of the Apocalypse!). Which is another way of looking away.
Naomi Klein,Left,"The three policy pillars of this new era are familiar to us all: privatization of the public sphere, deregulation of the corporate sector, and lower corporate taxation, paid for with cuts to public spending."
Naomi Klein,Left,Climate change detonates the ideological scaffolding on which contemporary conservatism rests. A belief system that vilifies collective action and declares war on all corporate regulation and all things public simply cannot be reconciled with a problem that demands collective action on an unprecedented scale and a dramatic reining in of the market forces that are largely responsible for creating and deepening the crisis.
Naomi Klein,Left,"Renewables are, in fact, much more reliable than power based on extraction, since those energy models require continuous new inputs to avoid a crash, whereas once the initial investment has been made in renewable energy infrastructure, nature provides the raw materials for free."
Naomi Klein,Left,"It’s not simply that these cool dudes deny climate science because it threatens to upend their dominance-based worldview. It is that their dominance-based worldview provides them with the intellectual tools to write off huge swaths of humanity, and indeed, to rationalize profiting from the meltdown."
Naomi Klein,Left,"As a private person, I have a passion for landscape, and I have never seen one improved by a billboard. Where every prospect pleases, man is at his vilest when he erects a billboard. When I retire from Madison Avenue, I am going to start a secret society of masked vigilantes who will travel around the world on silent motor bicycles, chopping down posters at the dark of the moon. How many juries will convict us when we are caught in these acts of beneficent citizenship?"
Naomi Klein,Left,"This points to a nagging and important question about free-market ideologues: Are they ‘true believers’, driven by ideology and faith that free markets will cure underdevelopment, as is often asserted, or do the ideas and theories frequently serve as an elaborate rationale to allow people to act on unfettered greed while still invoking an altruistic motive?"
Naomi Klein,Left,"By the time the think-tank lifers arrived in Baghdad, the crucial roles in the reconstruction had already been outsourced to Halliburton and KPMG. THeir job as the public servants was simply to administer the petty cash, which in Iraq took the form of handling shrink-wrapped bricks of hundred-dollar bills to contractors. It was a graphic glimpse into the acceptable role of government in a corporatist state - to act as a conveyor belt for getting public money into private hands, a job for which ideological commitment is far more relevant than elaborate field experience."
Naomi Klein,Left,"in moments of crisis, people are willing to hand over a great deal of power to anyone who claims to have a magic cure"
Naomi Klein,Left,"And yet Branson (a notorious risk addict with a penchant for crash-landing hot air balloons) is far from the only one willing to stake our collective future on this kind of high-stakes gamble. Indeed the reason his various far-fetched schemes have been taken as seriously as they have over the years is that he, alongside Bill Gates with his near mystical quest for energy miracles, taps into what may be our culture’s most intoxicating narrative: the belief that technology is going to save us from the effects of our actions. Post–market crash and amidst ever more sinister levels of inequality, most of us have come to realize that the oligarchs who were minted by the era of deregulation and mass privatization are not, in fact, going to use their vast wealth to save the world on our behalf. Yet our faith in techno wizardry persists, embedded inside the superhero narrative that at the very last minute our best and brightest are going to save us from disaster."
Naomi Klein,Left,"The ability to discount darker people and darker nations in order to justify stealing their land and labor was foundational, and none of it would have been possible without those theories of racial supremacy that gave the whole morally bankrupt system a patina of legal respectability. In other words, economics was never separable from identity politics, certainly not in colonial nations like the United States"
Naomi Klein,Left,"To the extent people prioritize values and goals such as achievement, money, power, status and image, they tend to hold more negative attitudes towards the environment, are less likely to engage in positive environmental behaviors, and are more likely to use natural resources unsustainably,"
Naomi Klein,Left,The climate change denial movement
Naomi Klein,Left,"It requires heavy-duty interventions: sweeping bans on polluting activities, deep subsidies for green alternatives, pricey penalties for violations, new taxes, new public works programs, reversals of privatizations"
Naomi Klein,Left,"This is not the time to be looking for ways to dismiss a nascent movement against the power of capital, but to do the opposite: to find ways to embrace it, support it and help it grow into its enormous potential. With so much at stake, cynicism is a luxury we simply cannot afford."
Naomi Klein,Left,"I’m not looking to overthrow the American government, the corporate state already has."
Naomi Klein,Left,"So, if consumers are like roaches, then marketers must forever be dreaming up new concoctions for industrial-strength Raid."
Naomi Klein,Left,"Human identity is no longer defined by what one does, but by what one owns."
Naomi Klein,Left,"Fear of the other may be an animating force for many supporters of far-right parties, but inclusion of the other within an inherently unjust system will not be powerful enough to defeat those forces."
Naomi Klein,Left,"Like so much of cool hunting, Hilfiger's marketing journey feeds off the alienation at the heart of America's race relations: selling white youth on their fetishization of black style, and black youth on their fetishization of white wealth."
Naomi Klein,Left,"The dirty secret of the neoliberal era is that these ideas were never defeated in a great battle of ideas, nor were they voted down in elections. They were shocked out of the way at key political junctures."
Naomi Klein,Left,"The Marshall Plan was the ultimate weapon deployed on this economic front. After the war, the German economy was in crisis, threatening to bring down the rest of Western Europe. Meanwhile, so many Germans were drawn to socialism that the U.S. government opted to split Germany into two parts rather than risk losing it all, either to collapse or to the left. In West Germany, the U.S. government used the Marshall Plan to build a capitalist system that was not meant to create fast and easy new markets for Ford and Sears but, rather, to be so successful on its own terms that Europe’s market economy would thrive and socialism would be drained of its appeal."
Naomi Klein,Left,"It was in 1982 that Milton Friedman wrote the highly influential passage that best summarizes the shock doctrine.  Only a crisis-actual or percieved-produces real change. When the crisis occurs, the actions that are taken depend on the ideas that are lying around. That, I believe, is our basic function: to develop alternatives to existing policies, to keep them alive and available until the politically impossible becomes politically inevitable."
Naomi Klein,Left,"...while the IMF certainly failed the people of Asia, it did not fail Wall Street - far from it. The hot money may have been spooked by the IMF's drastic measures, but the large investment houses and multinational firms were emboldened...These fun-seeking firms understood that as a result of the IMF's adjustments, pretty much everything in Asia was now up for sale - and the more the market panicked, the more desperate Asian companies would be to sell, pushing their prices through the floor."
Naomi Klein,Left,"The day capitalism is forced to tolerate non-capitalist societies in its midst and to acknowledge limits in its quest for domination, the day it is forced to recognize that its supply of raw material will not be endless, is the day when change will come. If there is any hope for the world at all, it does not live in climate-change conference rooms or in cities with tall buildings. It lives low down on the ground, with its arms around the people who go to battle every day to protect their forests, their mountains and their rivers because they know that the forests, the mountains and the rivers protect them. The first step towards reimagining a world gone terribly wrong would be to stop the annihilation of those who have a different imagination"
Naomi Klein,Left,"Politics hates a vacuum. If it isn't filled with hope, someone will fill it with fear"
Naomi Klein,Left,"In the two years after No Logo came out, I went to dozens of teach-ins and conferences, some of them attended by thousands of people (tens of thousands in the case of the World Social Forum), that were exclusively devoted to popular education about the inner workings of global finance and trade. No topic was too arcane: the science of genetically modified foods, trade-related intellectual property rights, the fine print of bilateral trade deals, the patenting of seeds, the truth about certain carbon sinks. I sensed in these rooms a hunger for knowledge that I have never witnessed in any university class. It was as if people understood, all at once, that gathering this knowledge was crucial to the survival not just of democracy but of the planet. Yes, this was complicated, but we embraced that complexity because we were finally looking at systems, not just symbols."
Naomi Klein,Left,"McDonald's, meanwhile, continues busily to harass small shopkeepers and restaurateurs of Scottish descent for that nationality's uncompetitive predisposition toward the Mc prefix on its surnames. The company sued the McAl an's sausage stand in Denmark; the Scottish-themed sandwich shop McMunchies in Buckinghamshire; went after Elizabeth McCaughey's McCoffee shop in the San Francisco Bay Area; and waged a twenty-six-year battle against a man named Ronald McDonald whose McDonald's Family Restaurant in a tiny town in Il inois had been around since 1956."
Naomi Klein,Left,And yet the most jarring part of the grassroots anti-extraction uprising has been the rude realization that most communities do appear to lack this power; that outside forces
Naomi Klein,Left,"the stories that produced [Trump] were always contested. There were always other stories, ones that insisted that money is not what’s valuable, and that all of our fates are intertwined with one another and with the health of the natural world… while Trump is the logical culmination of the current neoliberal system, the current neoliberal system is not the only logical culmination of the human story"
Naomi Klein,Left,"Arable land in Africa will continue to be seized to provide food and fuel to wealthier nations, unleashing a new stage of neocolonial plunder layered on top of the most plundered places on earth (as journalist Christian Parenti documents so well in Tropic of Chaos). When heat stress and vicious storms wipe out small farms and fishing villages, the land will be handed over to large developers for mega-ports, luxury resorts, and industrial farms. Once self-sufficient rural residents will lose their lands and be urged to move into increasingly crowded urban slums"
Naomi Klein,Left,A 2007 Harris poll found that 71 percent of Americans believed that the continued burning of fossil fuels would alter the climate. By 2009 the figure had dropped to 51 percent. In June 2011 the number was down to 44 percent
Naomi Klein,Left,"As a means of extracting information during interrogations, torture is notoriously unreliable, but as a means of terrorizing and controlling populations, nothing is quite as effective."
Naomi Klein,Left,"We do not always respond to shocks with regression. Sometimes, in the face of crisis, we grow up"
Naomi Klein,Left,"When Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld conflate what is good for Lockheed, Halliburton, Carlyle and Gilead with what is good for the United States and indeed the world, it is a form of projection with uniquely dangerous consequences."
Naomi Klein,Left,The recent spate of disasters has translated into such spectacular profits that many people around the world have come to the same conclusion: the rich and powerful must be deliberately causing the catastrophes so that they can exploit them.
Naomi Klein,Left,Indeed the roots of the climate crisis date back to core civilizational myths on which post-Enlightenment Western culture is founded
Naomi Klein,Left,"To allow arcane trade law, which has been negotiated with scant public scrutiny, to have this kind of power over an issue so critical to humanity’s future is a special kind of madness. As Nobel Prize–winning economist Joseph Stiglitz puts it, Should you let a group of foolish lawyers, who put together something before they understood these issues, interfere with saving the planet?"
Naomi Klein,Left,Indeed the three policy pillars of the neoliberal age
Naomi Klein,Left,"All my parents wanted was the open road and a VW camper van. That was enough escape for them. The ocean, the night sky, some acoustic guitar.. what more could you ask? Well, actually, you could ask to go soaring off the side of a mountain on a snowboard, feeling as if, for one moment you are riding the clouds instead of the snow. You could scour Southeast Asia, like the world weary twenty somethings in Alex Garland’s novel The Beach, looking for the one corner of the globe uncharted by the Lonely Planet to start your own private utopia. You could, for the matter, join a new age cult and dream of alien abduction. From the occult to raves to riots it seems that the eternal urge for escape has never enjoyed such niche marketing."
Naomi Klein,Left,"With every alleged ethics violation, with every brazen lie, with every deranged tweet, this administration leaves the public sphere more broken and degraded. Even if corruption (or treason) ultimately costs Trump the White House, what will be left behind will be wreckage"
Naomi Klein,Left,"And there has been no more effective way to convince white voters to support the defunding of schools, bus systems, and welfare than by telling them (however wrongly) that most of the beneficiaries of those services are darker-skinned people, many of them illegal, out"
Naomi Klein,Left,"Trump didn’t just enter politics as a so-called outsider, somebody who doesn’t play by the rules. He entered politics playing by a completely different set of rules"
Naomi Klein,Left,"It is a painful irony that while the right is forever casting climate change as a left-wing plot, most leftists and liberals are still averting their eyes, having yet to grasp that climate science has handed them the most powerful argument against unfettered capitalism since William Blake’s dark Satanic Mills blackened England’s skies (which, incidentally, was the beginning of climate change)."
Naomi Klein,Left,"In early 2013, I came across a speech by Mississauga Nishnaabeg writer and educator Leanne Simpson, in which she describes her people’s teachings and governance structures like this: Our systems are designed to promote more life."
Naomi Klein,Left,"The twin signatures of this era have been the mass export of products across vast distances (relentlessly burning carbon all the way), and the import of a uniquely wasteful model of production, consumption, and agriculture to every corner of the world (also based on the profligate burning of fossil fuels). Put differently, the liberation of world markets, a process powered by the liberation of unprecedented amounts of fossil fuels from the earth, has dramatically sped up the same process that is liberating Arctic ice from existence."
Naomi Klein,Left,"And most of all, it means continually drawing connections among these seemingly disparate struggles"
Naomi Klein,Left,"Job creation as part of the corporate mission, particularly the creation of fll time, decently paid, stable jobs, appears to have taken a back seat in many major corporations, regardless of company profits"
Naomi Klein,Left,"Political solutions-accountable to the people and enforceable by their elected representatives- deserve another shot before we throw in the towel and settle for corporate codes, independent monitors and the privatisation of our collective rights as citizens."
Naomi Klein,Left,"Four years ago, when I started writing this book, my hypothesis was mostly based on a hunch. I had been doing some research on university campuses and had begun to notice that many students I was meeting were preoccupied with the inroads private corporations were making into their public schools. They were angry that ads were creeping into cafeterias, common rooms, even washrooms; that their schools were diving into exclusive distribution deals with soft-drink companies and computer manufacturers, and that academic studies were starting to look more and more like market research."
Naomi Klein,Left,"In 1991, Disney forced a group of New Zealand parents in a remote country town to remove their amateur renditions of Pluto and Donald Duck from a playground mural; and Barney has been breaking up children's birthday parties across the U.S., claiming that any parent caught dressed in a purple dinosaur suit is violating its trademark. The Lyons Group, which owns the Barney character, has sent 1,000 letters to shop owners renting or selling the offending costumes. They can have a dinosaur costume. It's when it's a purple dinosaur that it's illegal, and it doesn't matter what shade of purple, either, says Susan Elsner Furman, Lyons' spokesperson."
Naomi Klein,Left,"Because one of the greatest misconceptions in the climate debate is that our society is refusing to change, protecting a status quo called business-as-usual. The truth is that there is no business-as-usual. The energy sector is changing dramatically all the time"
Naomi Klein,Left,there is no humane way to rule people against their will.
Naomi Klein,Left,"What we cannot expect is that the people least responsible for this crisis will foot all, or even most, of the bill. Because that is a recipe for catastrophic amounts of carbon ending up in our common atmosphere. Like the call to honor our treaties and other land-sharing agreements with Indigenous peoples, climate change is once again forcing us to look at how injustices that many assumed were safely buried in the past are shaping our shared vulnerability to global climate collapse."
Naomi Klein,Left,"According to Stephen Pacala, director of the Princeton Environmental Institute and codirector of Princeton’s Carbon Mitigation Initiative, the roughly 500 million richest of us on the planet are responsible for about half of all global emissions. That would include the rich in every country in the world, notably in countries like China and India, as well significant parts of the middle classes in North America and Europe."
Naomi Klein,Left,"manufacturing false hierarchies based on race and gender in order to enforce a brutal class system is a very long story. Our modern capitalist economy was born thanks to two very large subsidies: stolen Indigenous land ​and stolen African people. Both required the creation of intellectual theories that ranked the relative value of human lives and labor, placing white men at the top. These church and state–sanctioned theories of white (and Christian) supremacy are what allowed Indigenous civilizations to be actively unseen by European explorers"
Naomi Klein,Left,"The goal is all-out war on the public sphere and the public interest, whether in the form of antipollution regulations or programs for the hungry. In their place will be unfettered power and freedom for corporations."
Naomi Klein,Left,"Clinton’s brand of identity politics does not challenge the system that produced and entrenched these inequalities, but seeks only to make that system more inclusive."
Naomi Klein,Left,"No country offered more lucrative conditions than China: low taxes and tariffs, corruptible officials and, most of all, a plentiful low-wage workforce that, for many years, would be unwilling to risk demanding decent salaries or the most basic workplace protections for fear of the most violent reprisals."
Naomi Klein,Left,Katrina was not unforeseeable. It was the result of a political structure that subcontracts its responsibility to private contractors and abdicates its responsibility altogether.
Naomi Klein,Left,"Pioneered in Iraq, for-profit relief and reconstruction has already become the new global paradigm, regardless of whether the original destruction occurred from a preemptive war, such as Israel’s 2006 attack on Lebanon, or a hurricane. With resource scarcity and climate change providing a steadily increasing flow of new disasters, responding to emergencies is simply too hot an emerging market to be left to the nonprofits"
Naomi Klein,Left,"If we are to curb emissions in the next decade, we need a massive mobilization larger than any in history. We need a Marshall Plan for the Earth. This plan must mobilize financing and technology transfer on scales never seen before. It must get technology onto the ground in every country to ensure we reduce"
Naomi Klein,Left,"Between 2008 and 2010, at least 261 patents were filed related to growing climate-ready crops"
Naomi Klein,Left,"people with strong egalitarian and communitarian worldviews (marked by an inclination toward collective action and social justice, concern about inequality, and suspicion of corporate power) overwhelmingly accept the scientific consensus on climate change. Conversely, those with strong hierarchical and individualistic worldviews (marked by opposition to government assistance for the poor and minorities, strong support for industry, and a belief that we all pretty much get what we deserve) overwhelmingly reject the scientific consensus."
Naomi Klein,Left,"what should we do with this fear that comes from living on a planet that is dying, made less alive every day? First, accept that it won’t go away. That it is a fully rational response to the unbearable reality that we are living in a dying world, a world that a great many of us are helping to kill, by doing things like making tea and driving to the grocery store and yes, okay, having kids.Next, use it. Fear is a survival response. Fear makes us run, it makes us leap, it can make us act superhuman. But we need somewhere to run to. Without that, the fear is only paralyzing"
Naomi Klein,Left,"Here is what needs to be understood in our bones: the spell of neoliberalism has been broken, crushed under the weight of lived experience and a mountain of evidence. What for decades was unsayable is now being said out loud by candidates who win millions of votes: free college tuition, double the minimum wage, 100 percent renewable energy as quickly as technology allows, demilitarize the police, prisons are no place for young people, refugees are welcome here, war makes us all less safe. The left-wing almost-wins of the past two years are not defeats. They are the first tremors of a profound idealogical realignment from which a progressive majority could well emergepg262"
Naomi Klein,Left,"The fact that our most heroic social justice movements won on the legal front but suffered big losses on the economic front is precisely why our world is as fundamentally unequal and unfair as it remains. Those losses have left a legacy of continued discrimination, double standards, and entrenched poverty"
Naomi Klein,Left,"it is not that we are broke or that we lack options. It is that our political class is utterly unwilling to go where the money is (unless it’s for a campaign contribution), and the corporate class is dead set against paying its fair share."
Naomi Klein,Left,Climate change is like that; it’s hard to keep it in your head for very long. We engage in this odd form of on-again-off-again ecological amnesia for perfectly rational reasons. We deny because we fear that letting in the full reality of this crisis will change everything. And we are right.5
Naomi Klein,Left,"A destabilized climate is the cost of deregulated, global capitalism, its unintended, yet unavoidable consequence.39"
Naomi Klein,Left,there’s a real risk today of repeating those mistakes
Naomi Klein,Left,"Trump created a brand that is entirely amoral. On the campaign trail, Trump was able to shrug off almost every conventional gotcha. Caught dodging federal taxes? That’s just being smart. Wouldn’t reveal his tax returns? Who’s going to make him? He was only half joking on the campaign trail when he said, I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody and I wouldn’t lose any voters. In Trump’s world, impunity, even more than lots of gold, is the ultimate signifier of success."
Naomi Klein,Left,"Trump’s political career would have been impossible without the degradation of the whole idea of the public sphere, which has been unfolding over decades. It could never have happened without the idea that government is not the solution, it is the problem, as Ronald Reagan famously put it. And it could never have happened had that message not been followed up with decades of deregulation that essentially legalized bribery, with outrageous sums of corporate money flowing into politics."
Naomi Klein,Left,"In fire-prone states such as California and Colorado, insurance companies provide a concierge service to their exclusive clients: when wildfires threaten their mansions, the companies dispatch teams of private firefighters to coat them in fire-retardant. The public sphere, meanwhile, is left to further decay. California provides a glimpse of where this is all headed. For its firefighting, the state relies on upwards of 4,500 prison inmates, who are paid a dollar an hour when they’re on the fire line, putting their lives at risk battling wildfires, and about two bucks a day when they’re back at camp. By some estimates, California saves about a billion dollars a year through this program"
Naomi Klein,Left,"In New Orleans after Katrina, some of the key players who now surround Trump showed to what lengths they will go to decimate the public sphere and advance the interests of real estate developers, private contractors, and oil companies."
Naomi Klein,Left,"Still, we’ve gone soft since those days of wartime sacrifice, haven’t we? Contemporary humans are too self-centered, too addicted to gratification to live without the full freedom to satisfy our every whim"
Naomi Klein,Left,"Too often, however, the expansive nature of the branding process ends up causing the event to be usurped, creating the quintessential lose-lose situation. Not only do fans begin to feel a sense of alienation from (if not outright resentment toward) once-cherished cultural events, but the sponsors lose what they need most: a feeling of authenticity with which to associate their brands."
Naomi Klein,Left,"By posing climate change as a battle between capitalism and the planet, I am not saying anything that we don't already know. the battle is already under way, but right now capitalism is winning hands down. it wins every time the need for economic growth is used as the excuse for putting off climate action yet again, of for breaking emission reduction commitments already made. it wins when Greeks are told that their only path out of economic crises is to open up their beautiful seas to high-risk oil and gas drilling. it wins when Canadians are told our only hope of not ending unlike Greece is to allow our boreal forests to be flayed so we can access the semisolid bitumen from the Alberta tar sands . it wins when a park in Istanbul is slotted for demolition to make way for yet another shopping mall. it wins when parents in Beijing are told that sending their wheezing kids to school in pollution masks decorated to look like cute cartoon characters is an acceptable price for economic progress. it wins every time we accept that we have only bad choices available to us: austerity or extraction, poisoning or poverty."
Naomi Klein,Left,there is a direct and compelling relationship between the dominance of the values that are intimately tied to triumphant capitalism and the presence of anti-environment views and behaviors.
Naomi Klein,Left,"their lands as a result of our actions (and inactions), our governments will build ever more high-tech fortresses and adopt even more draconian anti-immigration laws. And, in the name of"
Naomi Klein,Left,"(Then again, this is The Nature Conservancy, which has its very own gas well in the middle of a nature preserve in Texas).52"
Naomi Klein,Left,"As a brand, the Obama White House’s identity is probably closest to Starbucks: hip, progressive, approachable"
Naomi Klein,Left,"If we are ever to cope with climate change in any fundamental way, radical solutions on the social side are where we must focus, though. The relative efficiency of the next generation of solar cells is trivial by comparison."
Naomi Klein,Left,"When we lack the ability to talk back to entities that are culturally and politically powerful, the very foundations of free speech and democratic society are called into question."
Naomi Klein,Left,"Obama, in sharp contrast not just to social movements but to transformative presidents like FDR, follows the logic of marketing: create an appealing canvas on which all are invited to project their deepest desires but stay vague enough not to lose anyone but the committed wing nuts (which, granted, constitute a not inconsequential demographic in the United States)."
Naomi Klein,Left,"Another way of putting it is that Obama played the anti-war, anti-Wall Street party crasher to his grassroots base, which imagined itself leading an insurgency against the two-Party monopoly through dogged organization and donations gathered from lemonade stands and loose change found in the crevices of the couch. Meanwhile, he took more money from Wall Street than any other presidential candidate, swallowed the Democratic Party establishment in one gulp after defeating Hillary Clinton, then pursued bipartisanship with crazed Republicans once in the White House."
Naomi Klein,Left,"As Upton Sinclair famously observed: It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it!36"
Naomi Klein,Left,"Reagan filled his inner circle with pro-industry scientists who denied the reality of every environmental ill from acid rain to climate change. And seemingly overnight, banning and tightly regulating harmful industrial practices went from being bipartisan political practice to a symptom of command and control environmentalism."
Naomi Klein,Left,"Populations of songbirds like the pied flycatcher, meanwhile, are collapsing in some parts of Europe because the caterpillars that parents depend upon to feed their young are hatching too early."
Naomi Klein,Left,"I came across many more such examples of bottom-up threats, endangering the youngest members of species ranging from wolverine cubs (whose parents are having trouble storing food in ice) to peregrine falcon chicks (which are catching hypothermia and drowning in unusual downpours) to Arctic ring seal pups (whose snowy birthing dens, like those of polar bears, are threatened)."
Naomi Klein,Left,"Just as tobacco companies have been obliged to pay the costs of helping people to quit smoking, and BP has had to pay for much of the cleanup of its oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, it is high time for the industry to at least split the bill for the climate crisis."
Naomi Klein,Left,"Very little, however, has been written about how market fundamentalism has, from the very first moments, systematically sabotaged our collective response to climate change, a threat that came knocking just as this ideology was reaching its zenith."
Naomi Klein,Left,"It was always about using these sweeping deals, as well as a range of other tools, to lock in a global policy framework that provided maximum freedom to multinational corporations to produce their goods as cheaply as possible and sell them with as few regulations as possible"
Naomi Klein,Left,"The fences that protect the public interest seem to be fast disappearing, while the ones that restrict our liberties keep multiplying."
Naomi Klein,Left,"According to Yale’s Cultural Cognition Project, for example, one’s cultural worldview"
Naomi Klein,Left,"As recently as the early 1970s, a Republican president - Richard Nixon - was willing to impose wage and price controls to rescue the U.S. economy from crisis, popularizing the notion that We are all Keynesians now. But by the 1980s, the battle of ideas waged out of the same Washington think tanks that now deny climate change had successfully managed to equate the very idea of industrial planning with Stalin’s five-year plans. Real capitalists don’t plan, these ideological warriors insisted - they unleash the power of the profit motive and let the market, in its infinite wisdom, create the best possible society for all."
Naomi Klein,Left,"The crucial lesson of Brexit and of Trump's victory, is that leaders who are seen as representing the failed neoliberal status quo are no match for the demagogues and neo-fascists. Only a bold and genuinely redistributive progressive agenda can offer real answers to inequality and the crises in democracy...We need to remember this the next time we're asked to back a party or candidate in an election. In this destabilized era, status-quo politicians often cannot get the job done. On the other hand, the choice that may at first seem radical, maybe even a little risky, may well be the most pragmatic one in this volatile era...radical political and economic change is our only hope of avoiding radical change to our physical world."
Naomi Klein,Left,"A society with extreme inequality, unmasked neo-fascist tendencies, ​and an unraveling climate is sick, and neoliberalism, as one of the major drivers of all of these crises, is grossly inadequate medicine. It offers only a weak no to the forces responsible, and it lacks a yes worth seizing."
Naomi Klein,Left,"What has stood out in this wave of early resistance is how the barriers defining who is and who is not an 'activist' or an 'organizer' are completely breaking down. People are organizing mass events who have never organized anything political before. A great many are discovering that, whatever their field of expertise, whether they are lawyers or restaurant workers, they have crucial skills to share in this emerging network of resistance. And wherever they live or work, whether it's a laboratory or a bodega or a law firm or inside the home, they have the power, if they organize with others, to throw a wrench into a dangerous system."
Naomi Klein,Left,"Too seldom within the environmental movement are connections made between the guns that take Black lives on the streets of cities such as Ferguson and Ottawa and the rising seas and devastating droughts destroying the homelands of Black and brown people around the world. Rarely are the dots connected between the powerful men who think they have the right to use and abuse women's bodies and the widespread notion that humans have the right to do the same thing to the earth. So many crises we are facing are symptoms of the same underlying sickness: a dominance-based logic that treats so many people, and the earth itself, as disposable."
Naomi Klein,Left,"(According to The New York Times, the top 20 service contractors have spent nearly $300 million since 2000 on lobbying and have donated $23 million to political campaigns. The Bush administration, in turn, increased the amount spent on contractors by roughly $200 billion between 2000 and 2006.)"
Naomi Klein,Left,"According to one study, a quarter of the workers rebuilding the city were immigrants lacking papers, almost all of them Hispanic, making far less money than legal workers. In Mississippi, a class-action lawsuit forced several companies to pay hundreds of thousands of dollars in back wages to immigrant workers. Some were not paid at all. On one Halliburton/KBR job site, undocumented immigrant workers reported being wakened in the middle of the night by their employer (a subsubcontractor), who allegedly told them that immigration agents were on their way. Most workers fled to avoid arrest; after all, they could end up in one of the new immigration prisons that Halliburton/KBR had been contracted to build for the federal government."
Naomi Klein,Left,Good times make bad policy.
Naomi Klein,Left,"The tsunami that cleared the shoreline like a giant bulldozer has presented developers with an undreamed-of opportunity, and they have moved quickly to seize it."
Naomi Klein,Left,"According to these new rules, the U.S. government was free to use the methods it had developed in the 1950s under layers of secrecy and deniability"
Naomi Klein,Left,"From Chile to China to Iraq, torture has been a silent partner in the global free-market crusade."
Naomi Klein,Left,"According to a 2006 study, 90 percent of China’s billionaires (calculated in Chinese yuan) are the children of Communist Party officials. Roughly twenty-nine hundred of these party scions"
Naomi Klein,Left,"I recently traveled to Iraq, and I am trying to understand the role torture is playing there. We are told it’s about getting information, but I think it’s more than that"
Naomi Klein,Left,"Thomas Friedman, in his best-selling book The Lexus and the Olive Tree, declared that what happened in Asia wasn’t a crisis at all. I believe globalization did us all a favor by melting down the economies of Thailand, Korea, Malaysia, Indonesia, Mexico, Russia, and Brazil in the 1990s, because it laid bare a lot of rotten practices and institutions,"
Naomi Klein,Left,"As the political scientist Michael Wolfe puts it, Conservatives cannot govern well for the same reason that vegetarians cannot prepare a world-class boeuf bourguignon: If you believe that what you are called upon to do is wrong, you are unlikely to do it very well. He adds, As a way of governing, conservatism is another name for disaster.30"
Naomi Klein,Left,"In a post-Sept. 11 world, I thought the prudent use of violence could be therapeutic."
Naomi Klein,Left,"A network of right-wing think tanks seized on Friedman’s proposal and descended on the city after the storm. The administration of George W. Bush backed up their plans with tens of millions of dollars to convert New Orleans schools into charter schools, publicly funded institutions run by private entities according to their own rules. Charter schools are deeply polarizing in the United States, and nowhere more than in New Orleans, where they are seen by many African-American parents as a way of reversing the gains of the civil rights movement, which guaranteed all children the same standard of education. For Milton Friedman, however, the entire concept of a state-run school system reeked of socialism."
Naomi Klein,Left,"Iraq is the last great frontier in the Middle East … . In Iraq, 80 per cent of the oil wells ever drilled have been discoveries."
Naomi Klein,Left,"What Chile pioneered under Pinochet was an evolution of corporatism: a mutually supporting alliance between a police state and large corporations, joining forces to wage all-out war on the third power sector"
Naomi Klein,Left,"President Franklin D. Roosevelt spoke out strongly against war profiteers, saying, I don’t want to see a single war millionaire created in the United States as a result of this world disaster."
Naomi Klein,Left,"Those words went unheeded at the time, but when Europe was rebuilt after the Second World War, the Western powers embraced the principle that market economies needed to guarantee enough basic dignity that disillusioned citizens would not go looking once again for a more appealing ideology, whether fascism or Communism. It was this pragmatic imperative that led to the creation of almost everything that we associate today with the bygone days of decent capitalism"
Naomi Klein,Left,There is a phrase Argentines use to describe the paradox of wide-eyed knowing and eyes-closed terror that was the dominant state of mind in those years: We did not know what nobody could deny.
Naomi Klein,Left,The Red Cross has said that U.S. military officials have admitted that somewhere between 70 and 90 percent of the detentions in Iraq were mistakes.
Naomi Klein,Left,"the authors of the CIA manual, that effective torture was not sadism but science. The precise pain in the precise place, in the precise amount was his motto."
Naomi Klein,Left,"In July 2006, a national poll of U.S. residents found that more than a third of respondents believed that the government had a hand in the 9/11 attacks or took no action to stop them because they wanted the United States to go to war in the Middle East. Similar suspicions dog most of the catastrophes of recent years."
Naomi Klein,Left,"Creative destruction is our middle name, both within our own society and abroad. We tear down the old order every day, from business to science, literature, art, architecture, and cinema to politics and the law … . They must attack us in order to survive, just as we must destroy them to advance our historic mission."
Naomi Klein,Left,"When Jonas Salk, a scientist at the University of Pittsburgh, found it and developed the first polio vaccine in 1952, he did not patent the lifesaving treatment. There is no patent, Salk told the broadcaster Edward R. Murrow: Could you patent the sun?"
Naomi Klein,Left,"That is what makes the Bush regime different: after the attacks of September 11, it dared to demand the right to torture without shame. That left the administration subject to criminal prosecution"
Naomi Klein,Left,It’s impossible to say how much the decision to use the tsunami as an opportunity for disaster capitalism contributed to the return to civil war.
Naomi Klein,Left,The heart of the issue is not simply that a group that gets a large portion of its budget from the Walton family fortune is unlikely to be highly critical of Walmart. The 1990s was the key decade when the contours of the climate battle were being drawn
Naomi Klein,Left,"In its 2013 annual report on Global Risks, the World Economic Forum (host of the annual superelite gathering in Davos), stated plainly, Although the Alaskan village of Kivalina"
Naomi Klein,Left,"Latour’s entreaty to love your monsters has become a rallying cry in certain green circles, particularly among those most determined to find climate solutions that adhere to market logic. And the idea that our task is to become more responsible Dr. Frankensteins, ones who don’t flee our creations like deadbeat dads, is unquestionably appealing. But it’s a terribly poor metaphor for geoengineering. First, the monster we are being asked to love is not some mutant creature of the laboratory but the earth itself. We did not create it; it created"
Naomi Klein,Left,"All we have to do is not react as if this is a full-blown crisis. All we have to do is keep on denying how frightened we actually are. And then, bit by bit, we will have arrived at the place we most fear, the thing from which we have been averting our eyes. No additional effort required. There are ways of preventing this"
Naomi Klein,Left,"And yet these protests have also shown that saying no is not enough. If opposition movements are to do more than burn bright and then burn out, they will need a comprehensive vision for what should emerge in the place of our failing system, as well as serious political strategies for how to achieve those goals."
Naomi Klein,Left,This is another lesson from the transformative movements of the past: all of them understood that the process of shifting cultural values
Naomi Klein,Left,"We will need comprehensive policies and programs that make low-carbon choices easy and convenient for everyone. Most of all, these policies need to be fair, so that the people already struggling to cover the basics are not being asked to make additional sacrifice to offset the excess consumption of the rich. That means cheap public transit and clean light rail accessible to all; affordable, energy-efficient housing along those transit lines; cities planned for high-density living; bike lanes in which riders aren’t asked to risk their lives to get to work; land management that discourages sprawl and encourages local, low-energy forms of agriculture; urban design that clusters essential services like schools and health care along transit routes and in pedestrian-friendly areas; programs that require manufacturers to be responsible for the electronic waste they produce, and to radically reduce built-in redundancies and obsolescences."
Naomi Klein,Left,"As Heather Gass of the East Bay Tea Party put it in an open letter after one such gathering: One day (in 2035) you will wake up in subsidized government housing, eating government subsidized food, your kids will be whisked off by government buses to indoctrination training centers while you are working at your government assigned job on the bottom floor of your urban transit center village because you have no car and who knows where your aging parents will be but by then it will be too late! WAKE UP!!!!22 Clearly there is something about climate change that has some people feeling very threatened indeed."
Naomi Klein,Left,"In a 2007 cable about Nauru, made public by WikiLeaks, an unnamed U.S. official summed up his government’s analysis of what went wrong on the island: Nauru simply spent extravagantly, never worrying about tomorrow. Fair enough, but that diagnosis is hardly unique to Nauru; our entire culture is extravagantly drawing down finite resources, never worrying about tomorrow. For a couple of hundred years we have been telling ourselves that we can dig the midnight black remains of other life forms out of the bowels of the earth, burn them in massive quantities, and that the airborne particles and gases released into the atmosphere - because we can’t see them - will have no effect whatsoever. Or if they do, we humans, brilliant as we are, will just invent our way out of whatever mess we have made. And we tell ourselves all kinds of similarly implausible no-consequences stories all the time, about how we can ravage the world and suffer no adverse effects. Indeed we are always surprised when it works out otherwise. We extract and do not replenish and wonder why the fish have disappeared and the soil requires ever more inputs (like phosphate) to stay fertile. We occupy countries and arm their militias and then wonder why they hate us. We drive down wages, ship jobs overseas, destroy worker protections, hollow out local economies, then wonder why people can’t afford to shop as much as they used to. We offer those failed shoppers subprime mortgages instead of steady jobs and then wonder why no one foresaw that a system built on bad debts would collapse.At every stage our actions are marked by a lack of respect for the powers we are unleashing - a certainty, or at least a hope, that the nature we have turned to garbage, and the people we have treated like garbage, will not come back to haunt us."
Naomi Klein,Left,"A 2013 study by Riley Dunlap and political scientist Peter Jacques found that a striking 72 percent of climate denial books, mostly published since the 1990s, were linked to right-wing think tanks, a figure that rises to 87 percent if self-published books (increasingly common) are excluded.23"
Naomi Klein,Left,"Indeed the offset market has created a new class of green human rights abuses, wherein peasants and Indigenous people who venture into their traditional territories (reclassified as carbon sinks) in order to harvest plants, wood, or fish are harassed or worse...The added irony is that many people being sacrificed for the carbon market are living some of the most sustainable, low-carbon lifestyles on the planet."
Naomi Klein,Left,So if Obama’s energy policy is all of the above
Naomi Klein,Left,"The private sector is ill suited to taking on most of these large infrastructure investments: if the services are to be accessible, which they must be in order to be effective, the profit margins that attract private players simply aren’t there."
Naomi Klein,Left,"We know that if we continue on our current path of allowing emissions to rise year after year, climate change will change everything about our world. Major cities will very likely drown, ancient cultures will be swallowed by the seas, and there is a very high chance that our children will spend a great deal of their lives fleeing and recovering from vicious storms and extreme droughts. And we don’t have to do anything to bring about this future."
Naomi Klein,Left,"As many are coming to realize, the fetish for structurelessness, the rebellion against any kind of institutionalization, is not a luxury today’s transformative movements can afford."
Naomi Klein,Left,The main pillars of Trump’s political and economic project are: the deconstruction of the regulatory state; a full-bore attack on the welfare state and social services (rationalized in part through bellicose racial fearmongering and attacks on women for exercising their rights); the unleashing of a domestic fossil fuel frenzy (which requires the sweeping aside of climate science and the gagging of large parts of the government bureaucracy); and a civilizational war against immigrants and radical Islamic terrorism (with ever-expanding domestic and foreign theaters).
Naomi Klein,Left,The term shock doctrine describes the quite brutal tactic of systematically using the public’s disorientation following a collective shock
Naomi Klein,Left,"If this situation is going to change, then the call to Honour the Treaties needs to go a whole lot further than raising money for legal battles. Non-Natives will have to become the treaty and land-sharing partners that our ancestors failed to be, making good on the full panoply of promises they made, from providing health care and education to creating economic opportunities that do not jeopardize the right to engage in traditional ways of life."
Naomi Klein,Left,"Our economy takes endlessly from workers, asking more and more from them in ever-tighter time frames, even as employers offer less and less security and lower wages in return."
Naomi Klein,Left,"The earth is not our prisoner, our patient, our machine, or, indeed, our monster. It is our entire world. And the solution to global warming is not to fix the world, it is to fix ourselves."
Naomi Klein,Left,the only way negotiators can achieve a 2-degree goal is to shut down the whole global economy.48
Naomi Klein,Left,too many of us now tend to worship self-indulgence and consumption.
Naomi Klein,Left,significant cause of rising emissions is not the reproductive behavior of the poor but the consumer behaviors of the rich.
Naomi Klein,Left,Energy supply and environmental issues should not be left in the hands of private for-profit interests.14
Naomi Klein,Left,"In order to combat climate change, there’s a real need to start localizing our economies"
Naomi Klein,Left,Deep emission cuts in the wealthy nations have to start immediately.
Naomi Klein,Left,"ice sheets are melting faster than the models projected,"
Naomi Klein,Left,"It is our predicament that we live in a finite world, and yet we behave as if it were infinite."
Naomi Klein,Left,these economic demands
Naomi Klein,Left,"As the environmental writer and analyst David Roberts has observed, the ingredients of resilience are overlapping social and civic circles, filled with people who, by virtue of living in close proximity and sharing common spaces, know and take care of each other. The greatest danger in times of stress or threat is isolation. Finding ways of expanding public spaces and nurturing civic involvement is not just some woolly-headed liberal project"
Naomi Klein,Left,"Rather than allowing subway and bus fares to rise while service erodes, we need to be lowering prices and expanding services"
Naomi Klein,Left,"They deny reality because the implications of that reality are, quite simply, unthinkable."
Naomi Klein,Left,...there is a close correlation between low wages and high emissions...And why wouldn't there be? The same logic that is willing to work laborers to the bone for pennies a day will burn mountains of dirty coal while spending next to nothing on pollution controls because it's the cheapest way to produce.
Naomi Klein,Left,"The fossil fuel companies have known for decades that their core product was warming the planet, and yet they have not only failed to adapt to that reality, they have blocked progress at every turn. Meanwhile, oil and gas companies remain some of the most profitable corporations in history...These companies are rich, quite simply, because they have dumped the cost of cleaning up their mess onto regular people around the world."
Naomi Klein,Left,"In 2013 in the United States alone, the oil and gas industry spent just under $400,000 a day lobbying Congress and government officials, and the industry doled out a record $73 million in federal campaign and political donations during the 2012 election cycle, an 87 percent jump from the 2008 elections."
Naomi Klein,Left,Building a livable world isn't rocket science; it's far more complex than that. - Ed Ayres
Naomi Klein,Left,Step one for getting out of a hole: Stop digging. - KC Golden
Naomi Klein,Left,The collusion between corporations and the state has been so boorishly defiant that it's almost as if the communities standing in the way of these projects are viewed as little more than overburden - that ugliest of words used by the extractive industries to describe the waste earth that must be removed to access tar sands or mineral deposit.
Naomi Klein,Left,This is the one-two punch of an economy built on fossil fuels: lethal when extraction goes wrong and the interred carbon escapes at the source; lethal when extraction goes right and the carbon is successfully released into the atmosphere.
Naomi Klein,Left,"Angélica Navarro Llanos, Climate Debt: The Basis of a Fair and Effective Solution to Climate Change, presentation to Technical Briefing on Historical Responsibility, Ad Hoc Working Group on Long-term Cooperative Action, United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, Bonn, Germany, June 4, 2009."
Naomi Klein,Left,emissions while raising people’s quality of life. We have only a decade.
Naomi Klein,Left,"Ask him: History knocked on your door, did you answer?"
Naomi Klein,Left,"if fossil fuel companies are going to help pay for the shift to renewable energy, and for the broader costs of a climate destabilized by their pollution, it will be because they are forced to do so by law."
Naomi Klein,Left,This perception of fairness
Naomi Klein,Left,"And with policymakers still locked in the vise grip of austerity logic, these rising emergency expenditures are being offset with cuts to everyday public spending, which will make societies even more vulnerable during the next disaster"
Naomi Klein,Left,All this means that the usual free market assurances
Naomi Klein,Left,"I stopped avoiding the articles and the scientific studies and read everything I could find. I also stopped outsourcing the problem to the environmentalists, stopped telling myself this was somebody else’s issue, somebody else’s job."
Naomi Klein,Left,"Right now, the triumph of market logic, with its ethos of domination and fierce competition, is paralyzing almost all serious efforts to respond to climate change."
Naomi Klein,Left,"[O]urs is a culture of the perpetual present, one that deliberately severs itself from the past that created us as well as the future we are shaping with our actions."
Naomi Klein,Left,"Conservative white males have disproportionately occupied positions of power within our economic system. Given the expansive challenge that climate change poses to the industrial capitalist economic system, it should not be surprising that conservative white males’ strong system-justifying attitudes would be triggered to deny climate change.37"
Naomi Klein,Left,"And, in the name of national security, we will intervene in foreign conflicts over water, oil, and arable land, or start those conflicts ourselves. In short our culture will do what it is already doing, only with more brutality and barbarism, because that is what our system is built to do."
Naomi Klein,Left,"The International Energy Agency warns that if we do not get our emissions under control by a rather terrifying 2017, our fossil fuel economy will lock-in extremely dangerous warming."
Naomi Klein,Left,"In truth, the intergovernmental body entrusted to prevent dangerous levels of climate change has not only failed to make progress over its twenty-odd years of work (and more than ninety official negotiation meetings since the agreement was adopted), it has overseen a process of virtually uninterrupted backsliding."
Naomi Klein,Left,"The World Bank also warned when it released its report that we’re on track for a 4°C warmer world [by century’s end] marked by extreme heat waves, declining global food stocks, loss of ecosystems and biodiversity, and life-threatening sea level rise."
Naomi Klein,Left,Hunger isn’t about the amount of food around
Naomi Klein,Left,"The vast majority of the victims of the Southern Cone's terror apparatus were not members of armed groups but non-violent activists working in factories, farms, shantytowns and universities. They were economists, artists, psychologists and left-wing party loyalists. They were killed not because of their weapons (which most didn't have) but because of their beliefs. In the Southern Cone, where contemporary capitalism was born, the War on Terror was a war against all obstacles to the new order"
Naomi Klein,Left,"Well before Trump, we had wars fought as televised entertainment. The 1990 Gulf War was dubbed the first video-game war, complete with its own logo and theme music on CNN. But that was nothing compared with the show put on during the 2003 Iraq invasion, based on a military strategy called Shock and Awe. The attacks were designed as a spectacle for cable news consumers, but also for Iraqis, to maximize their sense of helplessness, to teach them a lesson. Now, that fearsome technology is in the hands of the first reality TV president."
Naomi Klein,Left,"commonly held, and imagines corporate CEOs"
Naomi Klein,Left,That he won at all is the result of an electoral college system originally designed to protect the power of slave owners.
Naomi Klein,Left,created a performance-based image that was impossible to shame
Naomi Klein,Left,"What’s extraordinary about Donald Trump’s presidency is that now we are all inside the Trump branded world, whether we want to be or not."
Naomi Klein,Left,Trump was clearly betting that being president would drive up the price. But what if he is proven wrong? What if he starts losing commercial renters because they are coming under pressure for their association with his brand (several boycott campaigns like this are already under way)?
Naomi Klein,Left,"The Apprentice delivered the central sales pitch of free-market theory, telling viewers that by unleashing your most selfish and ruthless side, you are actually a hero"
Naomi Klein,Left,"When Hillary Clinton called out identifiable groups at every rally, declaring that she would stand up for each of them, it was too tepid an offering to build the ground-swell of support she needed. So while white identity politics pumped up Trump’s base, trickle-down identity politics fell flat for his opponent."
Naomi Klein,Left,"In crucial states such as Iowa, Ohio, and Wisconsin, Clinton drew 15 to 20 percent fewer Democratic voters than Barack Obama had in 2012."
Naomi Klein,Left,"A decade ago, Australian philosopher and professor of sustainability Glenn Albrecht set out to coin a term to capture the particular form of psychological distress that set in when the homelands that we love and from which we take comfort are radically altered by extraction and industrialization, rendering them alienating and unfamiliar. He settled on ‘solastalgia,’ with it’s evocations of solace, destruction, and pain, and defined the new word to mean, 'the homesickness you have when you are still at home."
Naomi Klein,Left,"But it’s the Australian government that has gone the furthest in treating human desperation as a contagion. For five consecutive years since 2012 migrant boats headed for Australia’s coastline have been systematically intercepted at sea and their occupants flown to remote detention camps on the islands of Nauru and Manus. Numerous reports have described the conditions in the camps as tantamount to torture. But the government shrugs. After all, they don’t run the camps"
Naomi Klein,Left,Imagine that someone came up with a brilliant new campaign against smoking. It would show graphic images of people dying of lung cancer followed by the punch line: ‘It’s easy to be healthy
Naomi Klein,Left,"the poorest people in the United States subsidized the contractor bonanza twice: first, when Katrina relief morphed into unregulated corporate handouts, providing neither decent jobs nor functional public services; and second, when the few programs that directly assist the unemployed and working poor nationwide were gutted to pay those bloated bills."
Naomi Klein,Left,"The goal of Seasteading is for wealthy people to eventually secede into fully independent nation-states, floating in the open ocean"
Naomi Klein,Left,Trump has surrounded himself with masters of chaos
Naomi Klein,Left,"Fundamentally, the task is to articulate not just an alternative set of policy proposals but an alternative worldview to rival the one at the heart of the ecological crisis - embedded in interdependence rather than hyper-individualism, reciprocity rather than dominance, and cooperation rather than hierarchy. This is required not only to create a political context to dramatically lower emissions, but also to help us cope with the disasters we can no longer avoid. Because in the hot and stormy future we have already made inevitable through our past emissions, an unshakable belief in the equal rights of all people and a capacity for deep compassion will be the only things standing between civilization and barbarism."
Naomi Klein,Left,Yet the grinding logic of austerity
Naomi Klein,Left,"Global reinsurance companies are making billions in profits, in part by selling new kinds of protection schemes to developing countries that have done almost nothing to create the climate crisis, but whose infrastructure is intensely vulnerable to its impacts.8"
Naomi Klein,Left,Droughts and floods create all kinds of business opportunities besides a growing demand for men with guns.
Naomi Klein,Left,"Superstorm Sandy, meanwhile, has been a windfall for New Jersey real estate developers who have received millions for new construction in lightly damaged areas, while it continues to be a nightmare for those living in hard-hit public housing, much as the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina played out in New Orleans.10"
Naomi Klein,Left,"They mean, quite simply, that climate change has become an existential crisis for the human species."
Naomi Klein,Left,"between 1938 and 1944, use of public transit went up by 87 percent in the U.S. and by 95 percent in Canada."
Naomi Klein,Left,"It seems to me that if humans are capable of sacrificing this much collective benefit in the name of stabilizing an economic system that makes daily life so much more expensive and precarious, then surely humans should be capable of making some important lifestyle changes in the interest of stabilizing the physical systems upon which all of life depends. Especially because many of the changes that need to be made to dramatically cut emissions would also materially improve the quality of life for the majority of people on the planet"
Naomi Klein,Left,"In the face of an absolutely unprecedented emergency, society has no choice but to take dramatic action to avert a collapse of civilization. Either we will change our ways and build an entirely new kind of global society, or they will be changed for us.28"
Naomi Klein,Left,"We shall squeeze you empty, and then we shall fill you with ourselves."
Naomi Klein,Left,"Most promising of all is new work by a team of researchers at Stanford, led by Mark Jacobson (who coauthored the 2009 global plan). In March 2013, they published a study in Energy Policy showing that New York state could meet all of its power needs with renewables by 2030. Jacobson and his colleagues are developing similar plans for every U.S. state, and have already published numbers for the country as a whole. It’s absolutely not true that we need natural gas, coal or oil"
Naomi Klein,Left,Democracy isn't the work of the market's invisible hand; it is the work of real hands.
Naomi Klein,Left,"As a concept, free-trade zones are as old as commerce itself, and were all the more relevant in ancient times when the transportation of goods required multiple holdovers and rest stops. Pre-Roman Empire city-states, including Tyre, Carthage and Utica, encouraged trade by declaring themselves free cities, where goods in transit could be stored without tax, and merchants would be protected from harm. These tax-free areas developed further economic significance during colonial times, when entire cities- including Hong Kong, Singapore and Gibraltar - were designated as free ports from which the loot of colonialism could be safely shipped back to England, Europe or America with low import tariffs. Today, the globe is dotted with variations on these tax-free pockets, from duty-free shops in airports and free banking zones of the Cayman Islands to bonded warehouses and ports where goods in transit are held, sorted and packaged."
Naomi Klein,Left,"Regardless of where the EPZs are located, the workers' stories have a certain mesmerizing sameness: the workday is long- fourteen hours in Sri Lanka, twelve hours in Indonesia, sixteen in Southern China, twelve in the Philippines. The vast majority of the workers are women, always young, always working for contractors or subcontractors from Korea, Taiwan or Hong Kong. The contractors are usually filling orders for companies based in the U.S., Britain, Japan, Germany or Canada. The management is military-style, the supervisors often abusive, the wages below subsistence and the work low-skill and tedious."
Naomi Klein,Left,"The nature of the moment is familiar but bears repeating: whether or not industrialized countries begin deeply cutting our emissions this decade will determine whether we can expect the same from rapidly developing nations like China and India next decade. That, in turn, will determine whether or not humanity can stay within a collective carbon budget that will give us a decent chance of keeping warming below levels that our own governments have agreed are unacceptably dangerous. In other words, we don’t have another couple of decades to talk about the changes we want while being satisfied with the occasional incremental victory. This set of hard facts calls for strategy, clear deadlines, dogged focus"
Naomi Klein,Left,"All told, three huge economic engines"
Naomi Klein,Left,"we have an economic system that fetishizes GDP growth above all else, regardless of the human or ecological consequences, while failing to place value on those things that most of us cherish above all"
Naomi Klein,Left,"Climatologists, like other scientists, tend to be a stolid group. We are not given to theatrical rantings about falling skies. Most of us are far more comfortable in our laboratories or gathering data in the field than we are giving interviews to journalists or speaking before Congressional committees. Why then are climatologists speaking out about the dangers of global warming? The answer is that virtually all of us are now convinced that global warming poses a clear and present danger to civilization.21"
Naomi Klein,Left,"When historians look back on the past quarter century of international negotiations, two defining processes will stand out. There will be the climate process: struggling, sputtering, failing utterly to achieve its goals. And there will be the corporate globalization process, zooming from victory to victory: from that first free trade deal to the creation of the World Trade Organization to the mass privatization of the former Soviet economies to the transformation of large parts of Asia into sprawling free-trade zones to the structural adjusting of Africa."
Naomi Klein,Left,"Fortunately, it is eminently possible to transform our economy so that it is less resource-intensive, and to do it in ways that are equitable, with the most vulnerable protected and the most responsible bearing the bulk of the burden. Low-carbon sectors of our economies can be encouraged to expand and create jobs, while high-carbon sectors are encouraged to contract. The problem, however, is that this scale of economic planning and management is entirely outside the boundaries of our reigning ideology. The only kind of contraction our current system can manage is a brutal crash, in which the most vulnerable will suffer most of all."
Naomi Klein,Left,"So we are left with a stark choice: allow climate disruption to change everything about our world, or change pretty much everything about our economy to avoid that fate. But we need to be very clear: because of our decades of collective denial, no gradual, incremental options are now available to us. Gentle tweaks to the status quo stopped being a climate option when we supersized the American Dream in the 1990s, and then proceeded to take it global. And it’s no longer just radicals who see the need for radical change. In 2012, twenty-one past winners of the prestigious Blue Planet Prize"
Naomi Klein,Left,"Watching him pace around these homes, a twinkle in his eye, it struck me that this need to adapt to nature is what drives some people mad about renewables: even at a very large scale, they require a humility that is the antithesis of damming a river, blasting bedrock for gas, or harnessing the power of the atom. They demand that we adapt ourselves to the rhythms of natural systems, as opposed to bending those systems to our will with brute force engineering. Put another way, if extractive energy sources are NFL football players, bashing away at the earth, then renewables are surfers, riding the swells as they come, but doing some pretty fancy tricks along the way."
Naomi Klein,Left,"Indeed, the failure of our political leaders to even attempt to ensure a safe future for us represents a crisis of legitimacy of almost unfathomable proportions."
Naomi Klein,Left,"We are looking to brands for poetry and for spirituality, because we're not getting those things from our communities or from each other. When Nike says, just do it, that's a message of empowerment. Why aren't the rest of us speaking to young people in a voice of inspiration?"
Naomi Klein,Left,I love that smell of the emissions.
Naomi Klein,Left,"During these times of continual economic stress and exclusion, the communities on the front lines of saying no to dirty energy have discovered that they will never build the base they need unless they can simultaneously provide economic alternatives to the projects they are opposing. So after three years of just saying no to the Keystone XL pipeline, a group of farmers in Nebraska came up with just such a strategy: they built a barn, powered by wind and solar, in the pipeline’s path. And they pointed out that the power generated from just that one barn would bring more energy to the region than the oil in the pipeline that was headed for the export terminal in Texas.23 On one level, the Build Our Energy Barn was just PR: the farmers were daring President Obama to tear down a renewable energy installation to make way for dirty oil. But it also showed their neighbors that, if the right policies are in place, there is another way to earn some much needed extra income without putting their land at risk."
Naomi Klein,Left,"The Nature Conservancy, for its part, has received hundreds of thousands of dollars from JP Morgan to come up with voluntary rules for fracking."
Naomi Klein,Left,"In 2012, the conservancy managed to outrage many of its female staffers by partnering with the online luxury goods retailer Gilt to promote the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Edition (the magazine explained that whether you decide to buy a bikini, surfboards or tickets to celebrate at our parties, any money you spend … will help The Nature Conservancy ensure we have beaches to shoot Swimsuit on for another half-century). * Interestingly, before Nilsson got into the carbon"
Naomi Klein,Left,we will not win the battle for a stable climate by trying to beat the bean counters at their own game
Naomi Klein,Left,"But the most powerful lever for change in the Global South is the same as in the Global North: the emergence of positive, practical, and concrete alternatives to dirty development that do not ask people to choose between higher living standards and toxic extraction. Because if dirty coal is the only way to turn on the lights in India, then that is how those lights will be turned on. And if public transit is a disaster in Delhi, then more and more people will keep choosing to drive cars."
Naomi Klein,Left,"Stop calling me resilient. I’m not resilient. Because every time you say, ‘Oh, they’re resilient,’ you can do something else to me.–Tracie Washington, New Orleans-based civil rights attorney, 2010"
Naomi Klein,Left,"Anderson’s papers and slide shows have become more alarming. Under titles such as Climate Change: Going Beyond Dangerous . . . Brutal Numbers and Tenuous Hope, he points out that the chances of staying within anything like safe temperature levels are diminishing fast. With his colleague Alice Bows-Larkin, an atmospheric physicist and climate change mitigation expert at the Tyndall Centre, Anderson argues that we have lost so much time to political stalling and weak climate policies"
Naomi Klein,Left,"They argue that, if the governments of developed countries want a fifty-fifty chance of hitting the agreed-upon international target of keeping warming below 2 degrees Celsius, and if reductions are to respect any kind of equity principle between rich and poor nations, then wealthy countries need to start cutting their greenhouse gas emissions by something like 8 to 10 percent a year"
Naomi Klein,Left,"Now, I realize that this can all sound apocalyptic"
Naomi Klein,Left,"Rather than pretending that we can solve the climate crisis without rocking the economic boat, Anderson and Bows-Larkin argue, the time has come to tell the truth, to liberate the science from the economics, finance and astrology, stand by the conclusions however uncomfortable . . . we need to have the audacity to think differently and conceive of alternative futures.53"
Naomi Klein,Left,"From the perspective of a fossil fuel company, going after these high-risk carbon deposits is not a matter of choice"
Naomi Klein,Left,"We need to remember that the work of our time is bigger than climate change. We need to be setting our sights higher and deeper. What we’re really talking about, if we’re honest with ourselves, is transforming everything about the way we live on this planet."
Naomi Klein,Left,is the new stability.
Naomi Klein,Left,"In short, we have reached what some activists have started calling Decade Zero of the climate crisis: we either change now or we lose our chance.29"
Naomi Klein,Left,"so much carbon has been allowed to accumulate in the atmosphere over the past two decades that now our only hope of keeping warming below the internationally agreed-upon target of 2 degrees Celsius is for wealthy countries to cut their emissions by somewhere in the neighborhood of 8–10 percent a year.27 The free market simply cannot accomplish this task. Indeed, this level of emission reduction has happened only in the context of economic collapse or deep depressions. I’ll be delving deeper into those numbers in Chapter 2, but the bottom line is what matters here: our economic system and our planetary system are now at war. Or, more accurately, our economy is at war with many forms of life on earth, including human life. What the climate needs to avoid collapse is a contraction in humanity’s use of resources; what our economic model demands to avoid collapse is unfettered expansion. Only one of these sets of rules can be changed, and it’s not the laws of nature."
Naomi Klein,Left,"The floods that hit the U.K. in the winter of 2013–2014, for instance, would have been trying for any government: thousands of homes and workplaces were inundated, hundreds of thousands of houses and other buildings lost power, farmland was submerged, several rail lines were down for weeks, all combining to create what one top official called an almost unparalleled natural disaster. This as the country was still reeling from a previous devastating storm that had struck just two months before.33"
Naomi Klein,Left,But all the facts were not yet in when Watt was being memorialized in marble in 1825. Because it is the cumulative impact of the carbon emissions that began in those early mills and mines that has already engraved itself in the geologic record
Naomi Klein,Left,"Tens of millions of acres have been added to the federal wilderness system, environmental impact assessments are now required for all major developments, some lakes that were declared dead are living again. . . . Lead particulates have been impressively reduced in the atmosphere; DDT is no longer found in American body fat, which also contains considerably fewer polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) than it once did. Mercury has virtually disappeared from Great Lakes sediment; and Strontium 90 is no longer found in either cows’ milk or mothers’ milk. And Dowie stressed: What all these facts have in common is that they are the result of outright bans against the use or production of the substances in question.III, 27"
Naomi Klein,Left,It seems to me that our problem has a lot less to do with the mechanics of solar power than the politics of human power
Naomi Klein,Left,"there has been a dramatic decrease in birth and survival rates of caribou calves. It seems that rising temperatures have changed the growing patterns of plants that are the source of critical energy for caribou calves, as well as for their mothers during reproduction and lactation."
Naomi Klein,Left,Arctic tern chicks are starving to death for similar reasons: they rely on small fish that have fled for colder waters.
Naomi Klein,Left,"dens of polar bears are collapsing in the thawing permafrost, which leaves tiny cubs dangerously exposed.25"
Naomi Klein,Left,"At a time when unprecedented wildfires engulf suburban homes in Melbourne, when waters from the rising Thames flood homes in London commuter towns, and when Superstorm Sandy transforms the New York subway into a canal system, the barriers that even the most urban and privileged among us have erected to hold back the natural world are clearly starting to break down."
Naomi Klein,Left,"Poverty wasn't an issue that came up much back then; sure, every once in a while in our crusade against the trio of ’isms, somebody would bring up classism, and, being out-P.C.-ed, we would dutifully add classism to the hit list in question. But our criticism was focused on the representation of women and minorities within the structures of power, not on the economics behind those power structures. Discrimination against poverty (our understanding of injustice was generally construed as discrimination against something) couldn't be solved by changing perceptions or language or even, strictly speaking, individual behaviour. … For us, as students, to address the problems at the roots of classism we would have had to face up to core issues of wealth distribution"
Naomi Klein,Left,"After paying for the crisis of the bankers with cuts to education, health care, and social safety nets, is it any wonder that a beleaguered public is in no mood to bail out the fossil fuel companies from the crisis that they not only created but continue to actively worsen?"
Naomi Klein,Left,"research in Canada has found that an investment of $1.3 billion (the amount the Canadian government spends on subsidies to oil and gas companies) could create seventeen to twenty thousand jobs in renewable energy, public transit, or energy efficiency"
Naomi Klein,Left,"Bast, who has little of the swagger common to so many denialists, is equally honest about the fact he and his colleagues did not become engaged with climate issues because they found flaws in the scientific facts. Rather, they became alarmed about the economic and political implications of those facts and set out to disprove them."
Naomi Klein,Left,"Communal forests around the world are being turned into privatized tree farms and preserves so their owners can collect something called carbon credits, a lucrative scam I’ll explore later."
Naomi Klein,Left,"According to a 2012 study, modern fracking events (as they are called) use an average of five million gallons of water -  70 to 300 times the amount of fluid used in traditional fracking. Once used, much of this water is radioactive and toxic. In 2012, the industry created 280 billion gallons of such wastewater in the U.S. alone -  enough to flood all of Washington DC beneath a 22ft deep toxic lagoon, as The Guardian noted.In other words, extreme energy demands that we destroy a whole lot of the essential substance we need to survive - water - just to keep extracting more of the very substances threatening our survival and that we can power our lives without."
Naomi Klein,Left,"For instance, Conservation International, The Nature Conservancy, and the Conservation Fund have all received money from Shell and BP, while American Electric Power, a traditional dirty-coal utility, has donated to the Conservation Fund and The Nature Conservancy. WWF"
Naomi Klein,Left,"the fervent dismantlers of the state, whose ideology has eroded so many parts of the public sphere, including disaster preparedness. These are the voices that have been happy to pass on the federal budget crisis to the states and municipalities, which in turn are coping with it by not repairing bridges or replacing fire trucks. The freedom agenda that they are desperately trying to protect from scientific evidence is one of the reasons that societies will be distinctly less prepared for disasters when they come."
Naomi Klein,Left,"And up until quite recently, that has held up as the grand bargain of the carbon age: the people reaping the bulk of the benefits of extractivism pretend not to see the costs of that comfort so long as the sacrifice zones are kept safely out of view."
Naomi Klein,Left,"The main power of divestment is not that it financially harms Shell and Chevron in the short term but that it erodes the social license of fossil fuel companies and builds pressure on politicians to introduce across-the-board emission reductions. That pressure, in turn, increases suspicions in the investment community that fossil fuel stocks are overvalued. The benefit of an accompanying reinvestment strategy, or a visionary investment strategy from the start, is that it has the potential to turn the screws on the industry much tighter, strengthening the renewable energy sector so that it is better able to compete directly with fossil fuels, while bolstering the frontline land defenders who need to be able to offer real economic alternatives to their communities."
Naomi Klein,Left,"The Yasuní plan was based on the premise that Ecuador, like all developing countries, is owed a debt for the inherent injustice of climate change"
Naomi Klein,Left,"According to a 2009 Harvard Medical School study, as many as 45,000 people die annually in the United States because they lack health insurance. As one of the study’s coauthors pointed out, this works out to about one death every twelve minutes. It’s"
Naomi Klein,Left,Living nonextractively does not mean that extraction does not happen: all living things must take from nature in order to survive. But it does mean the end of the extractivist mindset
Naomi Klein,Left,"But the bottom line was clear enough: global capitalism has made the depletion of resources so rapid, convenient, and barrier-free that earth-human systems are becoming dangerously unstable in response. When a journalist pressed Werner for a clear answer on the Is Earth f**ked question, he set the jargon aside and replied, More or less.4 There was one dynamic in the model, however, that offered some hope. Werner described it as resistance"
Naomi Klein,Left,"Werner was right to point out that mass resistance movements have grabbed the wheel before and could very well do so again. At the same time, we must reckon with the fact that lowering global emissions in line with climate scientists’ urgent warnings demands changes of a truly daunting speed and scale. Meeting science-based targets will mean forcing some of the most profitable companies on the planet to forfeit trillions of dollars of future earnings by leaving the vast majority of proven fossil fuel reserves in the ground.7 It will also require coming up with trillions more to pay for zero-carbon, disaster-ready societal transformations. And let’s take for granted that we want to do these radical things democratically and without a bloodbath, so violent, vanguardist revolutions don’t have much to offer in the way of road maps."
Naomi Klein,Left,"Which brings us back to where we started: climate change and bad timing. It must always be remembered that the greatest barrier to humanity rising to meet the climate crisis is not that it is too late or that we don’t know what to do. There is just enough time, and we are swamped with green tech and green plans. And yet the reason so many of us are inclined to answer Brad Werner’s provocative question in the affirmative is that we are afraid"
Naomi Klein,Left,"Climate change has never received the crisis treatment from our leaders, despite the fact that it carries the risk of destroying lives on a vastly greater scale than collapsed banks or collapsed buildings. The cuts to our greenhouse gas emissions that scientists tell us are necessary in order to greatly reduce the risk of catastrophe are treated as nothing more than gentle suggestions, actions that can be put off pretty much indefinitely. Clearly, what gets declared a crisis is an expression of power and priorities as much as hard facts. But we need not be spectators in all this: politicians aren’t the only ones with the power to declare a crisis. Mass movements of regular people can declare one too. Slavery wasn’t a crisis for British and American elites until abolitionism turned it into one. Racial discrimination wasn’t a crisis until the civil rights movement turned it into one. Sex discrimination wasn’t a crisis until feminism turned it into one. Apartheid wasn’t a crisis until the anti-apartheid movement turned it into one."
Naomi Klein,Left,"Worldwide, companies pushing for vast new coal mines and coal export terminals are increasingly being forced to similarly reckon with the unique legal powers held by Indigenous peoples."
Naomi Klein,Left,"As Scott Parkin, a climate organizer with the Rainforest Action Network, puts it: People are hungry for climate action that does more than asks you to send emails to your climate-denying congressperson or update your Facebook status with some clever message about fossil fuels. Now, a new antiestablishment movement has broken with Washington’s embedded elites and has energized a new generation to stand in front of the bulldozers and coal trucks."
Naomi Klein,Left,It’s not yet clear which side will win many of the struggles outlined in these pages
Naomi Klein,Left,"No one has more legal power to halt the reckless expansion of the tar sands than the First Nations living downstream whose treaty-protected hunting, fishing, and trapping grounds have already been fouled, just as no one has more legal power to halt the rush to drill under the Arctic’s melting ice than Inuit, Sami, and other northern Indigenous tribes whose livelihoods would be jeopardized by an offshore oil spill. Whether they are able to exercise those rights is another matter."
Naomi Klein,Left,"The fossil fuel companies, in short, are no longer dealing with those Big Green groups that can be silenced with a generous donation or a conscience-clearing carbon offset program. The communities they are facing are, for the most part, not looking to negotiate a better deal"
Naomi Klein,Left,Corporations have to be responsive to price signals. We are not public service.
Naomi Klein,Left,The best thing about the Earth is if you poke holes in it oil and gas comes out.
Naomi Klein,Left,"In Argentina, urban poverty plummeted from 54.7 percent in 2003 to 6.5 percent in 2011, according to government data collected by the U.N."
Naomi Klein,Left,the global food system now accounts for between 19 and 29 percent of world greenhouse gas emissions.
Naomi Klein,Left,"Scott Bedbury, Starbucks’ vice president of marketing, openly recognized that consumers don’t truly believe there’s a huge difference between products, which is why brands must establish emotional ties with their customers"
Naomi Klein,Left,"The climate justice fight here in the U.S. and around the world is not just a fight against the [biggest] ecological crisis of all time, Miya Yoshitani, executive director of the Oakland-based Asian Pacific Environmental Network (APEN), explains. It is the fight for a new economy, a new energy system, a new democracy, a new relationship to the planet and to each other, for land, water, and food sovereignty, for Indigenous rights, for human rights and dignity for all people. When climate justice wins we win the world that we want. We can’t sit this one out, not because we have too much to lose but because we have too much to gain. . . . We are bound together in this battle, not just for a reduction in the parts per million of CO2, but to transform our economies and rebuild a world that we want today."
Naomi Klein,Left,"Since many of today’s best-known manufacturers no longer produce products and advertise them, but rather buy products and brand them, these companies are forever on the prowl for creative new ways to build and strengthen their brand images."
Naomi Klein,Left,"Interestingly, [Kevin] Anderson says that when he presents his radical findings in climate circles, the core facts are rarely disputed. What he hears most often are confessions from colleagues that they have simply given up hope of meeting the 2 degree temperature target, precisely because reaching it would require such a profound challenge to economic growth. This position is shared by many senior scientists and economists advising government, Anderson reports.In other words, changing the earth’s climate in ways that will be chaotic and disastrous is easier to accept than the prospect of changing the fundamental, growth-based, profit-seeking logic of capitalism. We probably shouldn’t be surprised that some climate scientists are a little spooked by the radical implications of their own research. Most of them were quietly measuring ice cores, running global climate models, and studying ocean acidification, only to discover, as Australian climate expert and author Clive Hamilton puts it, that in breaking the news of the depth of our collective climate failure, they were unwittingly destabilizing the political and social order.Nonetheless, that order has now been destabilized, which means that the rest of us are going to have to quickly figure out how to turn managed degrowth into something that looks a lot less like the Great Depression and a lot more like what some innovative economic thinkers have taken to calling The Great Transition."
Naomi Klein,Left,"According to one recent study [...] the [climate change] denial-espousing think tanks and other advocacy groups making up what sociologist Robert Brulle calls the climate change counter-movement are collectively pulling in more than $ 900 million per year for their work on a variety of right-wing causes, most of it in the form of dark money"
Naomi Klein,Left,"During good times, it’s easy to deride big government and talk about the inevitability of cutbacks. But during disasters, most everyone loses their free market religion and wants to know that their government has their backs. And if there is one thing we can be sure of, it’s that extreme weather events like Superstorm Sandy, Typhoon Haiyan in the Philippines, and the British floods - disasters that, combined, pummeled coastlines beyond recognition, ravaged millions of homes, and killed many thousands - are going to keep coming."
Naomi Klein,Left,"Coal, in truth, stands not beside but entirely above all other commodities. It is the material energy of the country"
Naomi Klein,Left,The lady in the Rolls-Royce car is more damaging to morale than a fleet of Göring’s bombing-planes.
Naomi Klein,Left,Even climate action at home looks suspiciously like socialism to them; all the calls for high-density affordable housing and brand-new public transit are obviously just ways to give backdoor subsidies to the undeserving poor.
Naomi Klein,Left,"Finding new ways to privatize the commons and profit from disaster is what our current system is built to do; left to its own devices, it is capable of nothing else."
Naomi Klein,Left,"environmental movement sought to distance themselves from Leopold’s radical suggestion that nature had an inherent value beyond its utility to man. If watersheds and old-growth forests had a right to continued existence, as Leopold argued (a preview of the rights of nature debates that would emerge several decades later), then an owner’s right to do what he wished with his land could be called into question."
Naomi Klein,Left,"Carson’s writing inspired a new, much more radical generation of environmentalists to see themselves as part of a fragile planetary ecosystem rather than as its engineers or mechanics, giving birth to the field of Ecological Economics. It was in this context that the underlying logic of extractivism"
Naomi Klein,Left,Association of Petroleum Producers
Naomi Klein,Left,"That means laying out a vision of the world that competes directly with the one on harrowing display at the Heartland conference and in so many other parts of our culture, one that resonates with the majority of people on the planet because it is true: That we are not apart from nature but of it. That acting collectively for a greater good is not suspect, and that such common projects of mutual aid are responsible for our species’ greatest accomplishments. That greed must be disciplined and tempered by both rule and example. That poverty amidst plenty is unconscionable."
Naomi Klein,Left,"It’s been a harder book to write for personal reasons too. What gets me most are not the scary scientific studies about melting glaciers, the ones I used to avoid. It’s the books I read to my two-year-old. Looking For a Moose is one of his favorites. It’s about a bunch of kids that really, really, really want to see a moose. They search high and low"
Naomi Klein,Left,"Encouraging the frenetic and indiscriminate consumption of essentially disposable products can no longer be the system’s goal. Goods must once again be made to last, and the use of energy-intensive long-haul transport will need to be rationed"
Naomi Klein,Left,"Imagine, for a moment, if his administration had been willing to invoke its newly minted democratic mandate to build the new economy promised on the campaign trail"
Naomi Klein,Left,"Authoritarian socialism and capitalism share strong tendencies toward centralizing (one in the hands of the state, the other in the hands of corporations). They also both keep their respective systems going through ruthless expansion"
Naomi Klein,Left,"It is on-line that the purest brands are being built: liberated from the real world burdens of stores and product manufacturingg, these brands are free to soar, less as the disseminations of goods or services than as collective hallucinations."
Naomi Klein,Left,"You have been negotiating all my life. So said Canadian college student Anjali Appadurai, as she stared down the assembled government negotiators at the 2011 United Nations climate conference in Durban, South Africa. She was not exaggerating. The world’s governments have been talking about preventing climate change for more than two decades; they began negotiating the year that Anjali, then twenty-one years old, was born."
Naomi Klein,Left,"A frank explanation for this was provided in a US military report published by the Center for Naval Analyses a decade ago: The Middle East has always been associated with two natural resources, oil (because of its abundance) and water (because of its scarcity). When it comes to oil, water, and war in the Middle East, certain patterns have become clear over time. First, Western fighter jets follow that abundance of oil in the region, setting off spirals of violence and destabilization. Next come the Western drones, closely tracking water scarcity as drought and conflict mix together. And just as bombs follow oil, and drones follow drought"
Naomi Klein,Left,"A state of shock is produced when a story is ruptured, when we have no idea what’s going on. But in so many ways explored in these pages, Trump is not a rupture at all, but rather the culmination"
Naomi Klein,Left,"This blitzkrieg strategy is actually quite high-risk. The danger of starting fights on so many fronts is that if it doesn’t succeed in demoralizing your opponents, it could very well unite them."
Naomi Klein,Left,"And yet despite these shifts in employment patterns, most brand-name retail, service and restaurant chains have opted to put on economic blinders, insisting that they are still offering hobby jobs for kids. Never mind that the service sector is now filled with workers who have multiple university degrees, immigrants unable to find manufacturing jobs, laid-off nurses and teachers, and downsized middle managers. Never mind, too, that the students who do work in retail and fast food"
Naomi Klein,Left,(...) losing one's job is much less frightening when getting it seemed an accident in the first place.
Naomi Klein,Left,"Not an Issue, a FrameThe link between challenging corruption and lowering emissions is just one example of how the climate emergency could"
Naomi Klein,Left,"And though often forgotten, the more radical wing of the second-wave feminist movement also argued for fundamental challenges to the free market economic order. It wanted women not only to get equal pay for equal work in traditional jobs but to have their work in the home caring for children and the elderly recognized and compensated as a massive unacknowledged market subsidy"
Naomi Klein,Left,During extraordinary historical moments
Naomi Klein,Left,"Neoliberalism is an extreme form of capitalism that started to become dominant in the 1980s, under Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher, but since the 1990s has been the reigning ideology of the world’s elites, regardless of partisan affiliation. Still, its strictest and most dogmatic adherents remain where the movement started: on the US right."
Naomi Klein,Left,"Under the neoliberal worldview, governments exist in order to create the optimal conditions for private interests to maximize their profits and wealth, based on the theory that the profits and economic growth that follow will benefit everyone in the trickle-down from the top - eventually."
Naomi Klein,Left,"The Trump administration, far from being the story of one dangerous and outrageous figure, should be understood partly in this context"
Naomi Klein,Left,"anyone with a basic grasp of arithmetic can look at how much carbon the fossil fuel companies have in their reserves, subtract how much carbon scientists tell us we can emit and still keep global warming below 2 degrees Celsius, and conclude that the fossil fuel companies have every intention of pushing the planet beyond the boiling point. These simple facts have allowed the student-led divestment movement to put the fossil fuel companies’ core business model on trial, arguing that they have become rogue actors whose continued economic viability relies on radical climate destabilization"
Naomi Klein,Left,"Today, the energy most of us use is owned by a tiny number of corporations that generate it for the profit of their shareholders. Their primary goal, indeed their fiduciary duty, is to produce maximum profit"
Naomi Klein,Left,"A SOLAR OASIS Like everywhere else in Puerto Rico, the small mountain city of Adjuntas was plunged into total darkness by Hurricane Maria. When residents left their homes to take stock of the damage, they found themselves not only without power and water, but also totally cut off from the rest of the island. Every single road was blocked, either by mounds of mud washed down from the surrounding peaks, or by fallen trees and branches. Yet amid this devastation, there was one bright spot. Just off the main square, a large, pink colonial-style house had light shining through every window. It glowed like a beacon in the terrifying darkness. The pink house was Casa Pueblo, a community and ecology center with deep roots in this part of the island. Twenty years ago, its founders, a family of scientists and engineers, installed solar panels on the center’s roof, a move that seemed rather hippy-dippy at the time. Somehow, those panels (upgraded over the years) managed to survive Maria’s hurricane-force winds and falling debris. Which meant that in a sea of post-storm darkness, Casa Pueblo had the only sustained power for miles around. And like moths to a flame, people from all over the hills of Adjuntas made their way to the warm and welcoming light."
Naomi Klein,Left,"We all cope with fear and uncertainty differently. A great many conservatives are dealing with their fears about a changing and destabilizing world by attempting to force back the clock. But if the Right specializes in turning backward, the Left specializes in turning inward and firing on each other in a circular hail of blame."
Naomi Klein,Left,"Instead of helping people here, providing shelters here, bringing more generator power to the places that need them, getting the electric system up and running, they’re encouraging people to leave instead."
Naomi Klein,Left,I began to see all kinds of ways that climate change could become a catalyzing force for positive change
Naomi Klein,Left,"Public scarcity in times of unprecedented private wealth is a manufactured crisis, designed to extinguish our dreams before they have a chance to be born."
Naomi Klein,Left,"We must rapidly begin the shift from a thing-oriented society to a person-oriented society. When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, materialism, and militarism are incapable of being conquered."
Naomi Klein,Left,Climate change is indivisible from decolonization.
Naomi Klein,Left,"The shock doctrine is about overriding these deeply human impulses to help, seeking instead to capitalize on the vulnerability of others in order to maximize wealth and advantage for a select few. There are few things more sinister than that."
Naomi Klein,Left,"Antiabortion activists often make exceptions for rape and incest, which suggests that it is her desire for sex for which a woman must pay with her pain."
Naomi Klein,Left,"These two trends - the decline of communal institutions and the expansion of corporate brands in our culture - have an inverse, seesaw-like relationship to one another over the decades: as the influence of those institutions that provided us with that essential sense of belonging went down, the power of commercial brands went up. I've always taken solace in this dynamic. It means that while our branded world can exploit the unmet need to be part of something larger than ourselves, it can't fill it in any sustained way: you make a purchase to be part of a tribe, a big idea, a revolution, and it feels good for a moment, but the satisfaction wears off almost before you've thrown out the packaging for that new pair of sneakers, that latest model iPhone, or whatever the surrogate is. Then you have to find a way to fulfill the void again. It's the perfect formula for endless consumption and perpetual self-commodification through social media, and it's a disaster for the planet, which cannot sustain these levels of consumption.But it's always worth remembering: at the heart of this cycle is that very powerful force - the human longing for community and connection, which simply refuses to die., And that means there is still hope: if we rebuild communities and begin to derive more meaning and a sense of the good life from them, many of us are going to be less susceptible to the siren song of mindless consumerism."
Naomi Klein,Left,"Kader was the worst fire in industrial history, taking more lives than the Triangle Shirtwaist Company fire that killed 146 young workers in New York City in 1911. The parallels between Triangle and Kader"
Naomi Klein,Left,"50,000 workers at the Yue Yen Nike Factory in China would have to work for nineteen years to earn what Nike spends on advertising in one year. Wal-Mart's annual sales are worth 120 times more than Haiti's entire annual budget; Disney CEO Michael Eisner earns $9,783 an hour while a Haitian worker earns 28 cents an hour; it would take a Haitian worker 16.8 years to earn Eisner's hourly income; the $181 million in stock options Eisner exercised in 1996 is enough to take care of his 19,000 Haitian workers and their families for fourteen years."
Naomi Klein,Left,"The idea that capitalism and only capitalism can save the world from a crisis created by capitalism is no longer an abstract theory; it’s a hypothesis that has been tested and retested in the real world. We are now able to set theory aside conglomerates that were supposed to model chic green lifestyles who have long since moved on to the next fad; at the green products that were shunted to the back of the supermarket shelves at the first signs of recession; at the venture capitalists who were supposed to bankroll a parade of innovation but have come up far short; at the fraud-infested, boom-and-bust carbon market that has failed miserably to lower emissions; at the natural gas sector that was supposed to be our bridge to renewables but ended up devouring much of their market instead. And most of all, at the parade of billionaires who were going to invent a new form of enlightened capitalism but decided that, on second thought, the old one was just too profitable to surrender."
Naomi Klein,Left,"I imagine that one of the reasons people cling to their hates so stubbornly is because they sense, once hate is gone, that they will be forced to deal with pain."
Antonio Negri,Left,"Throughout the world what remains of the vast public spaces are now only the stuff of legends: Robin Hood’s forest, the Great Plains of the Amerindians, the steppes of the nomadic tribes, and so forth… Rousseau said that the first person who wanted a piece of nature as his or her own exclusive possession and transformed it into the transcendent form of private property was the one who invented evil. Good, on the contrary, is what is common."
Antonio Negri,Left,"The intellectual is and only can be a militant, engaged as a singularity among others, embarked on the project of co-research aimed at making the multitude. The intellectual is thus not 'out in front' to determine the movements of history or 'on the sidelines' to critique them but rather completely 'inside."
Antonio Negri,Left,"Revolution does have to be violent precisely because the Pharaoh won't let you go. If the Pharaoh would let you go, the revolution won't have to be violent."
Antonio Negri,Left,"Don't think that the lack of leaders and of a party ideological line means anarchy, if by anarchy you mean chaos, bedlam, and pandemonium. What a tragic lack of political imagination to think that leaders and centralized structures are the only way to organize effective political projects!"
Antonio Negri,Left,"Let's call this then, only half facetiously, a new patristic, in which the intellectual is charged with the task not only to denounce error and unmask illusions, and not only to incarnate the mechanisms of new practices of knowledge, but also, together with others in a process of co-research, to produce a new truth. -- Commonwealth, 118"
Antonio Negri,Left,Power cannot survive when its subjects free themselves from fear.
Antonio Negri,Left,"Real communication among singularities in networks thus requires an encampment. This is the kind of self-learning experience and knowledge production that takes place, for example, in student occupations. The moment feels magical and enlightening because in being together a collective intelligence and a new kind of communication are constructed. In the occupied squares of 2011, from Tahrir to Puerta del Sol to Zuccotti Park, new truths were produced through discussion, conflict, and consensus in assemblies. Working groups and commissions on topics from housing rights and mortgage foreclosures to gender relations and violence function as both self-learning experiences and means to spread knowledge production. Anyone who has lived through such an encampment recognizes how new knowledges and new political affects are created in the corporeal and intellectual intensity of the interactions."
Antonio Negri,Left,"Capital increasingly exploits the entire range of our productive capacities, our bodies and our minds, our capacities for communication, our intelligence and creativity, our affective relations with each other, and more. Life itself has been put to work."
Antonio Negri,Left,The hegemony of finance and the banks has produced the indebted. Control over information and communication networks has created the mediatized. The security regime and the generalized state of exception have constructed a figure prey to fear and yearning for protection
Antonio Negri,Left,"The problem is no longer getting people to express themselves, Gilles Deleuze explains, but providing little gaps of solitude and silence in which they might eventually find something to say. Repressive forces don’t stop people from expressing themselves, but rather, force them to express themselves. What a relief to have nothing to say, the right to say nothing, because only then is there a chance of framing the rare, and ever rarer, the thing that might be worth saying."
Antonio Negri,Left,It is a scandal
Antonio Negri,Left,"We know that some are reluctant to group together the orderly occupiers of Zuccotti Park and even the carnivalesque alterglobalization protesters with the poor and impoverished rioters’ savage jacqueries and violent expressions of rage. Don’t think, though, that some of these struggles are more advanced and others more backward. No, the old Bolshevik theory of a passage of political consciousness from spontaneity to organization no longer has a place here. And let’s have no moralizing about how the rebellions of the poor should be better organized, more constructive, and less violent. On US college campuses the police use pepper spray, whereas in the dark sections of the metropolis they shoot with live rounds. What is most important in each of these struggles, we think, is to understand how the powerful refusals, expressed in various ways, are accompanied by processes capable of forming new social bonds. They do not seek to restore an order and they do not ask for justice or reparations for the offended, but they want instead to construct another possible world."
Antonio Negri,Left,"You are only able really to refuse and flee, though, when you recognize your power. Those living under the weight of a security regime tend to think of themselves as powerless, dwarfed by against its overarching might. Those in a prison society think of themselves as living in the belly of a Leviathan, consumed by its power. How can we possibly match its firepower, how can we escape its all-seeing eyes and its all-knowing information systems? To find a way out all you have to do is remember the basic recognition of the nature of power explained by Foucault and, before him, Niccolò Machiavelli: power is not a thing but a relation. No matter how mighty and arrogant seems that power standing above you, know that it depends on you, feeds on your fear, and survives only because of your willingness to participate in the relationship. Look for an escape door. One is always there. Desertion and disobedience are reliable weapons against voluntary servitude."
Antonio Negri,Left,"Projects for the abolition of the prison and the military are just and have important positive effects, but one should recognize that these struggles are impossible to realize fully in our societies as they are currently structured. The prison and the military are poisons, but perversely, the sick body must keep ingesting them to survive, making itself constantly worse. Prison creates a society that needs prisons, and the military creates a society that needs militarism. Going cold turkey would be suicide. The body must be cured instead over an extended period to purge itself of the poison."
Antonio Negri,Left,"The question of transforming the public into the common thus raises at least three issues initially. The first is an abstract but fundamental principle of making law common, that is, creating a juridical process of the common, which is necessary for the community of citizens to control and administer a good. The second is to create a management system that incorporates the principles of the common uses of goods. And the third defines democratic participation as the political terrain regarding both ownership and management. To speak of common goods, then, means constructing a constitutional process regarding a set of goods managed through the direct participation of citizens."
Antonio Negri,Left,"Physical proximity, of course, facilitates the common education of the affects, but also essential are the intense experiences of cooperation, the creation of mutual security in a situation of extreme vulnerability, and the collective deliberation and decision-making processes. The encampments are a great factory for the production of social and democratic affects."
Antonio Negri,Left,"Discussing, learning and teaching, studying and communicating, participating in actions"
Antonio Negri,Left,The major religious fundamentalisms
Michael Hardt,Left,"In all the occupations throughout the United States and around the world, from Rio de Janeiro to Ljubljana, from Oakland to Amsterdam, even in cases when they lasted only a short time, the participants experienced the power of creating new political affects through being together."
Michael Hardt,Left,"This is not a manifesto. Manifestos provide a glimpse of a world to come and also call into being the subject, who although now only a specter must materialize to become the agent of change."
Michael Hardt,Left,"A new figure of the poor is emerging, which includes not only the unemployed and the precarious workers with irregular, part-time work, but also the stable waged workers and the impoverished strata of the so-called middle class. Their poverty is characterized primarily by the chains of debt. The increasing generality of indebtedness today marks a return to relations of servitude reminiscent of another time. And yet, much has changed."
Michael Hardt,Left,"Just as human productivity is masked in the figure of the indebted, in the figure of the mediatized resides mystified and depotentialized human intelligence."
Michael Hardt,Left,"Fear dominates. Thus come charismatic leaders to protect these classes and populist organizations to convince them they belong to an identity, which is merely a social grouping that is no longer coherent."
Michael Hardt,Left,"The emerging global institutions make little pretense to represent the will of populations. Policy accords are agreed on and business contracts are signed and guaranteed within the structures of global governance, outside of any representative capacity of the nation-states."
George Monbiot,Left,"If wealth was the inevitable result of hard work and enterprise, every woman in Africa would be a millionaire."
George Monbiot,Left,Progress is measured by the speed at which we destroy the conditions that sustain life.
George Monbiot,Left,Deregulation is a transfer of power from the trodden to the treading. It is unsurprising that all conservative parties claim to hate big government.
George Monbiot,Left,"We are often told we are materialistic. It seems to me, we are not materialistic enough. We have a disrespect for materials. We use it quickly and carelessly. If were genuinely materialistic people, we would understand where materials come from and where they go to. But, at the moment, the entire global economy seems to be built on the model of digging things up from one hole in the ground on one side of the earth, transporting them around the world, using them for a few days, and sticking them in a hole in the ground on the other side of the world."
George Monbiot,Left,"The angry men know that this golden age (of fossil fuels) has gone; but they cannot find the words for the constraints they hate. Clutching their copies of Atlas Shrugged, they flail around, accusing those who would impede them of communism, fascism, religiosity, misanthropy, but knowing at heart that these restrictions are driven by something far more repulsive to the unrestrained man: the decencies we owe to other human beings."
George Monbiot,Left,"Governments are deemed to succeed or fail by how well they make money go round, regardless of whether it serves any useful purpose. They regard it as a sacred duty to encourage the country’s most revolting spectacle: the annual feeding frenzy in which shoppers queue all night, then stampede into the shops, elbow, trample and sometimes fight to be the first to carry off some designer junk which will go into landfill before the sales next year. The madder the orgy, the greater the triumph of economic management."
George Monbiot,Left,"Thinking like ethical people, dressing like ethical people, decorating our homes like ethical people makes not a damn of difference unless we also behave like ethical people."
George Monbiot,Left,"The problem with gross domestic product is the gross bit. There are no deductions involved: all economic activity is accounted as if it were of positive value. Social harm is added to, not subtracted from, social good. A train crash which generates £1bn worth of track repairs, medical bills and funeral costs is deemed by this measure as beneficial as an uninterrupted service which generates £1bn in ticket sales."
George Monbiot,Left,"Confronted with the twin disasters of climate change and an impending oil peak, it is hard to see how anyone could justify the assertion that the need to drive a car which can accelerate from 0 to 60 miles an hour in 4.5 seconds (the Audi S4 for example) overrides the Ethiopians' need to avoid recurrent famines, or the whole world's need to avoid the economic catastrophe we'll suffer if petroleum peaks too soon."
George Monbiot,Left,"The schedules are crammed with shows urging us to travel further, drive faster, build bigger, buy more, yet none of them are deemed to offend the rules, which really means that they don't offend the interests of business or the pampered sensibilities of the Aga class. The media, driven by fear and advertising, are hopelessly biased towards the consumer economy and against the biosphere."
George Monbiot,Left,The wealth creators of neoliberal mythology are some of the most effective wealth destroyers the world has ever seen.
George Monbiot,Left,Beware of anyone who describes a human being as something other than human being.
George Monbiot,Left,"To seek enlightenment, intellectual or spiritual; to do good; to love and be loved; to create and to teach: these are the highest purposes of humankind. If there is meaning in life, it lies here."
George Monbiot,Left,"Environment' is a term that creates no pictures in the mind, which is why I have begun to use 'natural world' or 'living planet' instead."
George Monbiot,Left,"All nationhood is to some extent the artificial, the product of historical accident, the convenience of tyrants and the disengagement of colonists."
George Monbiot,Left,"I thought of walks in the English countryside, where people start shouting at you as soon as you stray from the footpath."
George Monbiot,Left,"Arrange these threats in ascending order of deadliness: wolves, vending machines, cows, domestic dogs and toothpicks. I will save you the trouble: they have been ordered already. The number of deaths known to have been caused by wolves in North America in the twenty-first century is one: if averaged out, that would be 0.08 per year. The average number of people killed in the US by vending machines is 2.2 (people sometimes rock them to try to extract their drinks, with predictable results). Cows kill some twenty people in the US, dogs thirty-one. Over the past century, swallowing toothpicks caused the deaths of around 170 Americans a year. Though there are sixty thousand wolves in North America, the risk of being killed by one is almost nonexistent."
George Monbiot,Left,"The problem is compounded by the fact that the connection between cause and effect seems so improbable. By turning on the lights, filling the kettle, taking the children to school, driving to the shops, we are condemning other people to death. We never chose to do this. We do not see ourselves as killers. We perform these acts without passion or intent."
George Monbiot,Left,Those who seek to drag heaven down to earth are destined only to engineer a hell.
George Monbiot,Left,"In managing our transport systems, our governments must constantly negotiate the paradox of mass movement. They must create a system which, for the sake of speed and efficiency, treats us like a herd, constantly prodded and coralled, divided, re-formed and forced into line. At the same time it must grant us the illusion of autonomy."
George Monbiot,Left,"Oh, so Mother Nature needs a favour? Well maybe She should have thought of that when She was besetting us with droughts and floods and poisonous snakes. Nature started the fight for survival and now She wants to quit because She's losing? Well I say 'Hard Chesse!"
George Monbiot,Left,"I could not continue just sitting and writing, looking after my daughter and my house, running merely to stay fit, pursuing only what could not be seen, watching the seasons cycling past without ever quite belonging to them."
George Monbiot,Left,"Rewilding is not about abandoning civilization but about enhancing it. It is to ‘love not man the less, but Nature more’."
George Monbiot,Left,"[John Clare's] father was a casual farm labourer, his family never more than a few days' wages from the poorhouse. Clare himself, from early childhood, scraped a living in the fields. He was schooled capriciously, and only until the age of 12, but from his first bare contact fell wildly in love with the written word. His early poems are remarkable not only for the way in which everything he sees flares into life, but also for his ability to pour his mingled thoughts and observations on to the page as they occur, allowing you, as perhaps no other poet has done, to watch the world from inside his head. Read The Nightingale's Nest, one of the finest poems in the English language, and you will see what I mean.(John Clare, poet of the environmental crisis 200 years ago in The Guardian.)"
George Monbiot,Left,"The trouble is that people hate coaches, and for good reason. Coach travel is a dismal and humiliating experience. When I take the bus, as I sometimes must, from Oxford to Cambridge, I arrive feeling almost suicidal."
George Monbiot,Left,"I thought of the places I would be leaving, of what they were and what they could become. I pictured trees returning to the bare slopes, fish and whales returning to the bay. I thought of what my children and grandchildren might find here, and of how those who worked the land and sea might prosper if this wild vision were to be realized."
George Monbiot,Left,"An attraction to large predators often seems to be associated with misanthropy, racism and the far right."
George Monbiot,Left,"Perhaps there is no remaining moral space for the exercise of physical courage. Wherever you might seek to swing your fist, someone's nose is in the way."
George Monbiot,Left,"As usual in such matters, there were as many opinions about why the mackerel had scarcely appeared this year as there were people to ask. A local fishmonger told me with great authority that a monstrous new ship was operating in the Irish Sea, fishing not with a net but with a vacuum tube that sucked up the mackerel and everything else that came its way, which it turned into fishmeal for use as fertilizer and animal feed. It had been licensed by the Environment Agency to catch 500 tonnes of mackerel a day, and had received a £13 million subsidy from the European Commission. I checked this story and soon discovered that the Environment Agency has no jurisdiction at sea, that vacuum tubes are used not for fishing but for sucking the catch out of the nets, that there is no such fishmeal operation in the Irish Sea and that no boat is licensed to take such a tonnage. Otherwise the explanation was impeccable."
George Monbiot,Left,"My friend, blood shaking my heart The awful daring of a moment’s surrender Which an age of prudence can never retract By this, and this only, we have existed T. S. Eliot‘The Waste Land"
George Monbiot,Left,"To know what comes next has been perhaps the dominant aim of materially complex societies. Yet, having achieved it, or almost achieved it, we have been rewarded with a new collection of unmet needs. We have privileged safety over experience; gained much in doing so, and lost much."
George Monbiot,Left,"I will arise and go now, for always night and day I hear lake water lapping with low sounds by the shore; While I stand on the roadway, or on the pavements grey, I hear it in the deep heart’s core William Butler YeatsThe Lake Isle of Innisfree"
George Monbiot,Left,"J. G. Ballard reminded us that ‘the suburbs dream of violence. Asleep in their drowsy villas, sheltered by benevolent shopping malls, they wait patiently for the nightmares that will wake them into a more passionate world."
George Monbiot,Left,"So if you don't fit in; if you feel at odds with the world; if your identity is troubled and frayed; if you feel lost and ashamed, it could be because you have retained the human values you were supposed to have discarded. You are a deviant. Be proud."
George Monbiot,Left,"For the Cambrian Mountains were once densely forested. The story of what happened to them and – at differing rates – to the uplands of much of Europe is told by a fine-grained pollen core taken from another range of Welsh hills, the Clwydians, some forty miles to the north.3 A pollen core is a tube of soil extracted from a place where sediments have been laid down steadily for a long period, ideally a lake or a bog in which layers of peat have accumulated. Each layer traps the pollen that rains unseen onto the earth, as well as the carbon particles which allow archaeologists to date it."
George Monbiot,Left,"Though I could see for many miles, apart from distant plantations of Sitka spruce and an occasional scrubby hawthorn or oak clinging to a steep valley, across that whole, huge view, there were no trees. The land had been flayed. The fur had been peeled off, and every contoured muscle and nub of bone was exposed. Some people claim to love this landscape. I find it dismal, dismaying. I spun round, trying to find a place that would draw me, feeling as a cat would feel here, exposed, sat upon by wind and sky, craving a sheltered spot. I began to walk towards the only features on the map that might punctuate the scene: a cluster of reservoirs and plantations."
George Monbiot,Left,The sheep has caused more extensive environmental damage in this country than all the building that has ever taken place here.
George Monbiot,Left,"Ritchie Tassell is the person to whom I have most often turned when trying to feel my way through this story. He has a voracious appetite for reading, and made some of the key discoveries in the literature that feature in this book. More importantly, he has an engagement with the natural world so intense that at times it seems almost supernatural. Walking through a wood he will suddenly stop and whisper ‘sparrowhawk’. You look for the bird in vain. He tells you to wait. A couple of minutes later a sparrowhawk flies across the path. He had not seen the bird, nor had he heard it; but he had heard what the other birds were saying: they have different alarm calls for different kinds of threat."
George Monbiot,Left,The beaver is one of several missing animals that have been described as keystone species. A keystone species is one that has a larger impact on its environment than its numbers alone would suggest. This impact creates the conditions which allow other species to live there.
George Monbiot,Left,"But rewilding, unlike conservation, has no fixed objective: it is driven not by human management but by natural processes. There is no point at which it can be said to have arrived. Rewilding of the kind that interests me does not seek to control the natural world, to re-create a particular ecosystem or landscape, but – having brought back some of the missing species – to allow it to find its own way."
George Monbiot,Left,"The fells contract, regroup in starker forms; Dusk tightens on them, as the wind gets up And stretches hungrily: tensed at the nape, The coarse heath bristles like a living pelt. William DunlopLandscape as Werewolf"
George Monbiot,Left,"This, as far as I can discover, was the first concrete step taken in Wales towards reintroducing an extinct mammal. Here, at Blaeneinion, at the source of the stream which runs through the stunning Cwm Einion into the Dyfi estuary, a group of volunteers had enclosed three acres of land around an old carp pond. People had been talking about returning the beaver to Wales for years. Now, at last, something was happening."
John Gray,Left,"When a man can listen to a woman's feelings without getting angry and frustrated, he gives her a wonderful gift.He makes it safe for her to express herself.The more she is able to express herself, the more she feels heard and understood, and the more she is able to give a man the loving trust, acceptance, appreciation, admiration, approval, and encouragement that he needs."
John Gray,Left,Men are motivated when they feel needed while women are motivated when they feel cherished.
John Gray,Left,‎ when men and women are able to respect and accept their differences then love has a chance to blossom 
John Gray,Left,"Sometimes a kind of glory lights up the mind of a man. It happens to nearly everyone. You can feel it growing or preparing like a fuse burning toward dynamite. It is a feeling in the stomach, a delight of the nerves, of the forearms. The skin tastes the air, and every deep-drawn breath is sweet. Its beginning has the pleasure of a great stretching yawn; it flashes in the brain and the whole world glows outside your eyes. A man may have lived all of his life in the gray, and the land and trees of him dark and somber. The events, even the important ones, may have trooped by faceless and pale. And then -the glory- so that a cricket song sweetens his ears, the smell of the earth rises chanting to his nose, and dappling light under a tree blesses his eyes. Then a man pours outward, a torrent of him, and yet he is not diminished. And I guess a man's importance in the world can be measured by the quality and number of his glories. It is a lonely thing but it relates us to the world. It is the mother of all creativeness, and it sets each man separate from all other men. "
John Gray,Left,"Because she is afraid of not being supported, she unknowingly pushes away the support she needs."
John Gray,Left,"Love brings up our unresolved feelings . One day we are feeling loved , and the next day we are suddenly afraid to trust love .The painful memories of being rejected begin to surface when we are faced with trusting and accepting our partner's love ."
John Gray,Left,"If we are to feel the positive feelings of love, happiness, trust, and gratitude, we periodically also have to feel anger, sadness, fear, and sorrow."
John Gray,Left,"Young men! he snorted to Erak. They think a pretty face can cure every ill.Some of us can remember back that far. Halt, Erak told him with a grin. I suppose that’s all far behind an old hack like you. Svengal told me you were settling down. Some plump, motherly widow seizing her last chance with a broken-down old gray bear, is she?Erak, of course, had been told by Svengal that Halt had recently married a great beauty. But he enjoyed getting a reaction from the smaller man. Halt’s one-eyed stare locked onto the Oberjarl.When we get back, I’d advise you not to refer to Pauline as a ‘plump, motherly widow’ in her hearing. She’s very good with that dagger she carries and you need your ears to keep that ridiculous helmet of yours in place."
John Gray,Left,"If I seek to fulfill my own needs at the expense of my partner, we are sure to experience unhappiness, resentment, and conflict. The secret of forming a successful relationship is for both partners to win."
John Gray,Left,To love someone is to acknowledge the goodness of who they are. Through loving a person we awaken their awareness of their own innate goodness. It is as though they cannot know how worthy they are until they look into the mirror of our love and see themselves.
John Gray,Left,Not to be needed is a slow death for a man.
John Gray,Left,Get the love you deserve and gave your partner the love and support he deserves
John Gray,Left,"Blessed be the mind that dreamed the day the blueprint of your life would begin to glow on earth, illuminating all the faces and voices that would arrive to invite your soul to growth. Praised be your father and mother, who loved you before you were, and trusted to call you here with no idea who you would be. Blessed be those who have loved you into becoming who you were meant to be, blessed be those who have crossed your life with dark gifts of hurt and loss that have helped to school your mind in the art of disappointment. When desolation surrounded you, blessed be those who looked for you and found you, their kind hands urgent to open a blue window in the gray wall formed around you. Blessed be the gifts you never notice, your health, eyes to behold the world, thoughts to countenance the unknown, memory to harvest vanished days, your heart to feel the world’s waves, your breath to breathe the nourishment of distance made intimate by earth. On this echoing-day of your birth, may you open the gift of solitude in order to receive your soul; enter the generosity of silence to hear your hidden heart; know the serenity of stillness to be enfolded anew by the miracle of your being."
John Gray,Left,"Me? he said in some surprise. I won't be dancing! It's the bridal dance. The bride and groom dance alone!For one circuit of the room, she told him. After which they are joined by the best man and first bridesmaid, then by the groomsman and the second bridesmaid.Will reacted as he had been stung. He leaned over to speak across Jenny on his left, to Gilan.Gil! Did you know we have to dance? he asked. Gilan nodded enthusiastically.Oh yes indeed. Jenny and I have been practicing for the past three days, haven't we, Jen?Jenny looked up at him adoringly and nodded. Jenny was in love. Gilan was tall, dashing, good-looking, charming and very ammusing. Plus he was cloaked in the mystery and romance tat came with being a Ranger. Jenny had only ever known one ranger and that had been grim-faced, gray-bearded Halt."
John Gray,Left,"Long after the traces of the human animal have disappeared, many of the species it is bent on destroying will still be around, along with others that have yet to spring up.The Earth will forget mankind. The play of life will go on."
John Gray,Left,"Those who struggle to change the world see themselves as noble, even tragic figures. Yet most of those who work for world betterment are not rebels against the scheme of things. They seek consolation for a truth they are too weak to bear. At bottom, their faith that the world can be transformed by human will is a denial of their own mortality."
John Gray,Left,"Remember, if a man needs to pull away like a rubber band, when he returns he will be back with a lot more love. Then he can listen. This is the best time to initiate conversation."
John Gray,Left,"That love motivates you to cooperate, respect, appreciate, cherish, and admire that person."
John Gray,Left,"Human knowledge is one thing, human wellbeing another. There is no predetermined harmony between the two. The examined life may not be worth living."
John Gray,Left,"In marching, in mobs, in football games, and in war, outlines become vague; real things become unreal and a fog creeps over the mind. Tension and excitement, weariness, movement--all merge in one great gray dream, so that when it is over, it is hard to remember how it was when you killed men or ordered them to be killed. Then other people who were not there tell you what it was like and you say vaguely, yes, I guess that's how it was."
John Gray,Left,"Robin Hood. To a Friend.No! those days are gone away,And their hours are old and gray,And their minutes buried allUnder the down-trodden pallOfthe leaves of many years:Many times have winter's shears,Frozen North, and chilling East,Sounded tempests to the feastOf the forest's whispering fleeces,Since men knew nor rent nor leases. No, the bugle sounds no more,And the twanging bow no more;Silent is the ivory shrillPast the heath and up the hill;There is no mid-forest laugh,Where lone Echo gives the halfTo some wight, amaz'd to hearJesting, deep in forest drear. On the fairest time of JuneYou may go, with sun or moon,Or the seven stars to light you,Or the polar ray to right you;But you never may beholdLittle John, or Robin bold;Never one, of all the clan,Thrumming on an empty canSome old hunting ditty, whileHe doth his green way beguileTo fair hostess Merriment,Down beside the pasture Trent;For he left the merry tale,Messenger for spicy ale. Gone, the merry morris din;Gone, the song of Gamelyn;Gone, the tough-belted outlawIdling in the grene shawe;All are gone away and past!And if Robin should be castSudden from his turfed grave,And if Marian should haveOnce again her forest days,She would weep, and he would craze:He would swear, for all his oaks,Fall'n beneath the dockyard strokes,Have rotted on the briny seas;She would weep that her wild beesSang not to her---strange! that honeyCan't be got without hard money! So it is; yet let us singHonour to the old bow-string!Honour to the bugle-horn!Honour to the woods unshorn!Honour to the Lincoln green!Honour to the archer keen!Honour to tight little John,And the horse he rode upon!Honour to bold Robin Hood,Sleeping in the underwood!Honour to maid Marian,And to all the Sherwood clan!Though their days have hurried byLet us two a burden try."
John Gray,Left,Our lives are more like fragmentary dreams than the enactments of conscious selves. We control very little of what we most care about; many of our most fateful decisions are made unbeknownst to ourselves. Yet we insist that mankind can achieve what we cannot: conscious mastery of its existence. This is the creed of those who have given up an irrational belief in God for an irrational faith in mankind.
John Gray,Left,"The beers all broke, he says again, and nods toward the split-open cooler, gallons of foaming liquid pouring out from inside it. We try to call Ben buy he can't hear us because he's to busy screaming, IT'S GONNA BLOW! as he races acrossthe field. His graduation robe flies up in the gray dawn, his bony bare ass esposed."
John Gray,Left,"... paint in blue and black...sometimes gray - the colors of night - occasionally I surprise you with a mustard yellow, but then, I am a poet ..."
John Gray,Left,Today we have made a fetish of choice; but a chosen death is forbidden. Perhaps what distinguishes humans from other animals is that humans have learnt to cling more abjectly to life.
John Gray,Left,"Clark had always been fond of beautiful objects, and in his present state of mind, all objects were beautiful. He stood by the case and found himself moved by every object he saw there, by the human enterprise each object had required. Consider the snow globe. Consider the mind that invented those miniature storms, the factory worker who turned sheets of plastic into white flakes of snow, the hand that drew the plan for the miniature Severn City with its church steeple and city hall, the as**sembly-line worker who watched the globe glide past on a conveyer belt somewhere in China. Consider the white gloves on the hands of the woman who inserted the snow globes into boxes, to be packed into larger boxes, crates, shipping containers. Consider the card games played belowdecks in the evenings on the ship carrying the containers across the ocean, a hand stubbing out a cigarette in an overflowing ashtray, a haze of blue smoke in dim light, the cadences of a half dozen languages united by common profanities, the sailors’ dreams of land and women, these men for whom the ocean was a gray-line horizon to be traversed in ships the size of overturned skyscrapers. Consider the signature on the shipping manifest when the ship reached port, a signature unlike any other on earth, the coffee cup in the hand of the driver delivering boxes to the distribution center, the secret hopes of the UPS man carrying boxes of snow globes from there to the Severn City Airport. Clark shook the globe and held it up to the light. When he looked through it, the planes were warped and caught in whirling snow."
John Gray,Left,"Life is filled with rhythms-day and night, hot and cold, summer and winter, spring and fall, cloudy and clear. Likewise in a relationship, men and women have their own rhythms and cycles."
John Gray,Left,Fortunately perfection is not a requirement for creating great relationships.
John Gray,Left,"I would love you all the day, every night we would kiss and play, if with me you'd fondly stray, over the hills and far away."
John Gray,Left,"always thought of myself as a loving person. But she was right. I had been a fair-weather friend. As long as she was happy and nice, I loved back. But if she was unhappy or upset, I would feel blamed and then argue or distance myself"
John Gray,Left,"I know you, he added, helping to arrange the blanket over my shoulders. You won’t drop the subject until I agree to check on your cousin, so I’ll do it. But only under one condition.John, I said, whirling around to clutch his arm again.Don’t get too excited, he warned. You haven’t heard the condition.Oh, I said, eagerly. Whatever it is, I’ll do it. Thank you. Alex has never had a very good life-his mother ran away when he was a baby, and his dad spent most of his life in jail…But, John, what is all this? I swept my free hand out to indicate the people remaining on the dock, waiting for the boat John had said was arriving soon. I’d noticed some of them had blankets like the one he’d wrapped around me. A new customer service initiative?John looked surprised at my change of topic…then uncomfortable. He stooped to reach for the driftwood Typhon had dashed up to drop at his feet. I don’t know what you mean, he said, stiffly.You’re giving blankets away to keep them warm while they wait. When did this start happening?You mentioned some things when you were here the last time…. He avoided meeting my gaze by tossing the stick for his dog. They stayed with me.My eyes widened. Things I said?About how I should treat the people who end up here. He paused at the approach of a wave-though it was yards off-and made quite a production of moving me, and my delicate slippers, out of its path. So I decided to make a few changes.It felt as if one of the kind of flowers I liked-a wild daisy, perhaps-had suddenly blossomed inside my heart.Oh, John, I said, and rose onto my toes to kiss his cheek.He looked more than a little surprised by the kiss. I thought I might actually have seen some color come into his cheeks.What was that for? he asked.Henry said nothing was the same after I left. I assumed he meant everything was much worse. I couldn’t imagine it was the opposite, that things were better.John’s discomfort at having been caught doing something kind-instead of reckless or violet-was sweet.Henry talks too much, he muttered. But I’m glad you like it. Not that it hasn’t been a lot of added work. I’ll admit it’s cut down on the complaints, though, and even the fighting amongst our rowdier passengers. So you were right. Your suggestions helped.I beamed up at him.Keeper of the dead. That’s how Mr. Smith, the cemetery sexton, had referred to John once, and that’s what he was. Although the title protector of the dead seemed more applicable.It was totally silly how much hope I was filled with by the fact that he’d remembered something I’d said so long ago-like maybe this whole consort thing might work out after all.I gasped a moment later when there was a sudden rush of white feathers, and the bird he’d given me emerged from the grizzly gray fog seeming to engulf the whole beach, plopping down onto the sand beside us with a disgruntled little humph.Oh, Hope, I said, dashing tears of laughter from my eyes. Apparently I had only to feel the emotion, and she showed up. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to leave you behind. It was his fault, you know. I pointed at John. The bird ignored us both, poking around in the flotsam washed ashore by the waves, looking, as always, for something to eat.Her name is Hope? John asked, the corners of his mouth beginning to tug upwards.No. I bristled, thinking he was making fun of me. Then I realized I’d been caught. Well, all right…so what if it is? I’m not going to name her after some depressing aspect of the Underworld like you do all your pets. I looked up the name Alastor. That was the name of one of the death horses that drew Hades’s chariot. And Typhon? I glanced at the dog, cavorting in and out of the waves, seemingly oblivious of the cold. I can only imagine, but I’m sure it means something equally unpleasant."
John Gray,Left,"Tragedy is born of myth, not morality. Prometheus and Icarus are tragic heroes. Yet none of the myths in which they appear has anything to do with moral dilemmas. Nor have the greatest Greek tragedies. If Euripides is the most tragic of the Greek playwrights, it is not because he deals with moral conflicts but because he understood that reason cannot be the guide of life."
John Gray,Left,"In Europe and Japan, bourgeois life lingers on. In Britain and America it has become the stuff of theme parks. The middle class is a luxury capitalism can no longer afford."
John Gray,Left,"Just as a man is fulfilled through working out the intricate details of solving a problem, a woman is fulfilled through talking about the details of her problems."
John Gray,Left,"A woman should not be judged for needing this reassurance, just as a man should not be judged for needing to withdraw."
John Gray,Left,"Humanism is not science, but religion - the post-Christian faith that humans can make a world better than any in which they have so far lived. In pre-Christian Europe is was taken for granted that the future would be like the past. Knowledge and invention might advance, but ethics would remain much the same. History was a series of cycles, with no overall meaning.	Against this pagan view, Christians understood history as a story of sin and redemption. Humanism is the transformation of this Christian doctrine of salvation into a project of universal human emancipation. The idea of progress is a secular version of the Christian belief in providence. That is why among the ancient pagans it was unknown."
John Gray,Left,"To think of humans as freedom-loving, you must be ready to view nearly all of history as a mistake."
John Gray,Left,when man and women are able to respect and accept there differences the love has a chance to blossom
John Gray,Left,"Alone among the animals, humans seek meaning in their lives by killing and dying for the sake of nonsensical dreams."
John Gray,Left,"A common error of western commentators who seek to interpret Islamism sympathetically is to view it as a form of localised resistance to globalisation. In fact, Islamism is also a universalist political project. Along with Neoliberals and Marxists, Islamists are participants in a dispute about how the world as whole is to be governed. None is ready to entertain the possibility that it should always contain a diversity of regimes. On this point, they differ from non-western traditions of thinking in India, China and Japan, which are much more restrained in making universal claims.In their unshakeable faith that one way of living is best for all humankind, the chief protagonists in the dispute about political Islam belong to a way of thinking that is quintessentially western. As in Cold War times, we are led to believe we are locked in a clash of civilisations: the West against the rest. In truth, the ideologues of political Islam are western voices, no less than Marx or Hayek. The struggle with radical Islam is yet another western family quarrel."
John Gray,Left,"Men need to remember that when women seem upset and talk about problems is not the time to offer solutions; instead she needs to be heard, and gradually she will feel better on her own."
John Gray,Left,"Men mistakenly expect women to think, communicate, and react the way men do; women mistakenly expect men to feel, communicate, and respond the way women do."
John Gray,Left,"They say a woman marries a man with the belief she can change him, and she can’t. A man marries a woman with the belief that she won’t change, and she does."
John Gray,Left,"When she says I feel like you are not even here, he says What do you mean I’m not here? Of course I am here. Don’t you see my body?"
John Gray,Left,When the student is ready the teacher appears. When the question is asked then the answer is heard. When we are truly ready to receive then what we need will become available.
John Gray,Left,Life was indeed cruel; but it was better to glorify the Will than deny it.
John Gray,Left,"But the idea that we can rid ourselves of animal illusion is the greatest illusion of all. Meditation may give us a fresher view of things, but it cannot uncover them as they are in themselves. The lesson of evolutionary psychology and cognitive science is that we are descendants of a long lineage, only a fraction of which is human. We are far more than the traces that other humans have left in us. Our brains and spinal cords are encrypted with traces of far older worlds."
John Gray,Left,"Too much intimacy, too quickly, can cause women to become needy and men to pull away. Just as men have a tendency to rush into physical intimacy, women make the mistake of rushing into complete emotional intimacy."
John Gray,Left,"An Additional PoemWhere then shall hope and fear their objects find?The harbor cold to the mating ships,And you have lost as you stand by the balconyWith the forest of the sea calm and gray beneath.A strong impression torn from the descending lightBut night is guilty. You knew the shadowIn the trunk was ravingBut as you keep growing hungry you forget.The distant box is open. A sound of grainPoured over the floor in some eagerness--weRise with the night let out of the box of wind."
John Gray,Left,"If a lion could talk, we could not understand him,' the philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein once said. 'It's clear that Wittgenstein hadn't spent much time with lions,' commented the gambler and conservationist John Aspinall."
John Gray,Left,It is not what we say that hurts but how we say it.
John Gray,Left,"The differences and disagreements don’t hurt as much as the ways in which we communicate them. Ideally an argument does not have to be hurtful; instead it can simply be an engaging conversation that expresses our differences and disagreements. (Inevitably all couples will have differences and disagree at times.) But practically speaking most couples start out arguing about one thing and, within five minutes, are arguing about the way they are arguing. Unknowingly they begin hurting each other; what could have been an innocent argument, easily resolved with mutual understanding and an acceptance of differences, escalates into a battle. They refuse to accept or understand the content of their partner’s point of view because of the way they are being approached. Resolving an argument requires extending or stretching our point of view to include and integrate another point of view. To make this stretch we need to feel appreciated and respected. If our partner’s attitude is unloving, our self-esteem can actually be wounded by taking on their point of view."
John Gray,Left,"As he worked on the room, and as it began slowly to take a shape, he realized that for many years, unknown to himself, he had had an image locked somewhere within him like a shamed secret, an image that was ostensibly of a place but which was actually of himself. So it was himself that he was attempting to define as he worked on his study. As he sanded the old boards for his bookcases, and saw the surface roughnesses disappear, the gray weathering flake away to the essential wood and finally to a rich purity of grain and texture"
John Gray,Left,"The human mind serves evolutionary success, not truth. To think otherwise is to resurrect the pre-Darwinian error that humans are different from all other animals."
John Gray,Left,The fate of the Right in the late modern age is to destroy what remains of the past in a vain attempt to recover it.
John Gray,Left,"I have spoken of the rich years when the rainfall was plentiful. But there were dry years too, and they put a terror on the valley. The water came in a thirty-year cycle. There would be five or six wet and wonderful years when there might be nineteen to twenty-five inches of rain, and the land would shout with grass. Then would come six or seven pretty good years of twelve to sixteen inches of rain. And then the dry years would come, and sometimes there would be only seven or eight inches of rain. The land dried up and the grasses headed out miserably a few inches high and great bare scabby places appeared in the valley. The live oaks got a crusty look and the sage-brush was gray. The land cracked and the springs dried up and the cattle listlessly nibbled dry twigs. Then the farmers and the ranchers would be filled with disgust for the Salinas Valley. The cows would grow thin and sometimes starve to death. People would have to haul water in barrels to their farms just for drinking. Some families would sell out for nearly nothing and move away. And it never failed that during the dry years the people forgot about the rich years, and during the wet years they lost all memory of the dry years. It was always that way."
John Gray,Left,"Few societies have been stable enough and resilient enough to renew themselves in recognizable forms over long stretches of time. History is littered with civilizations that have been utterly destroyed. Everywhere, the self-assured confidence of priests, scribes and intellectuals has been mocked by unexpected events, leaving all their prayers, records and treatises wholly forgotten unless they are retrieved from oblivion by future archaeologists and historians."
John Gray,Left,"Dickens enjoyed human beings as he found them, unregenerate, peculiar and incorrigibly themselves."
John Gray,Left,"Of course, I don’t remember any of this time. It is absolutely impossible to identify with the infant my parents photographed, indeed so impossible that it seems wrong to use the word me to describe what is lying on the changing table, for example, with unusually red skin, arms and legs spread, and a face distorted into a scream, the cause of which no one can remember, or on a sheepskin rug on the floor, wearing white pajamas, still red-faced, with large, dark eyes squinting slightly. Is this creature the same person as the one sitting here in Malmö writing? And will the forty-year-old creature who is sitting in Malmö writing this one overcast September day in a room filled with the drone of the traffic outside and the autumn wind howling through the old-fashioned ventilation system be the same as the gray, hunched geriatric who in forty years from now might be sitting dribbling and trembling in an old people’s home somewhere in the Swedish woods? Not to mention the corpse that at some point will be laid out on a bench in a morgue? Still known as Karl Ove. And isn’t it actually unbelievable that one simple name encompasses all of this? The fetus in the belly, the infant on the changing table, the forty-year-old in front of the computer, the old man in the chair, the corpse on the bench? Wouldn’t it be more natural to operate with several names since their identities and self-perceptions are so very different? Such that the fetus might be called Jens Ove, for example, and the infant Nils Ove, and the five- to ten-year-old Per Ove, the ten- to twelve-year-old Geir Ove, the twelve- to seventeen-year-old Kurt Ove, the seventeen- to twenty-three-year-old John Ove, the twenty-three- to thirty-two-year-old Tor Ove, the thirty-two- to forty-six-year-old Karl Ove"
John Gray,Left,"Appalachia was Appalachia, regardless of boundaries someone had set an eternity ago. A land of breathtaking beauty, of steep hills and rolling mountains"
John Gray,Left,"The Unknown TravelersLugged to the gray arbor,I have climbed this snow-stone on my face,My stick, but what, snapped the avalancheThe air filled with slowly falling rocksBreathed in deeply--arrived,The white room, a table coveredWith a towel, mug of ice--fearAmong the legs of a chair, the ashman,Purple and gray she starts upright in her chair."
John Gray,Left,"A man commonly feels attacked and blamed by a woman’s feelings, especially when she is upset and talks about problems. Because he doesn’t understand how we are different, he doesn’t readily relate to her need to talk about all of her feelings. He mistakenly assumes she is telling him about her feelings because she thinks he is somehow responsible or to be blamed. Because she is upset and she is talking to him, he assumes she is upset with him. When she complains he hears blame. Many men don’t understand the (Venusian) need to share upset feelings with the people they love."
John Gray,Left,Genocide is as human as art or prayer.
John Gray,Left,"As commonly practised, philosophy is the attempt to find good reasons for conventional beliefs''There is no mechanism of selection in the history of ideas akin to that of the natural selection of genetic mutations in evolution' 'Human knowledge is one thing, human well-being is another.There is no predetermined harmony between the two''In the struggle for life, the taste for truth is a luxury-or else a disability"
John Gray,Left,"When pastors come to know their Bible, and get imbued with its lore and anointed by the Spirit through whom it speaks, sermonizing will give place to the kind of preaching that God bids us to preach, the exposition of His Word, which is not only much easier to do, but correspondingly more fruitful in spiritual results. And, it is the kind of preaching that people want to hear, the converted and the unconverted, the rich and the poor. A wide experience convinces me of this. Here is the minister’s field, his specialty, his throne. He may not be a master in other things, but he must be a master of God’s Word."
John Gray,Left,"A woman should not behave with a man as if she is exclusive or intimate if he is still working through issues with other women. And she should not mistakenly believe that if she listens sympathetically to him, he will become convinced she is the one for him."
John Gray,Left,"Stoner was one of the pallbearers at the funeral. At the services he could not keep his mind on the words the minister said, but he knew that they were empty. He remembered Sloane as he had first seen him in the classroom; he remembered their first talks together; and he thought of the slow decline of this man who had been his distant friend. Later, after the services were over, when he lifted his handle of the gray casket and helped to carry it out to the hearse, what he carried seemed so light that he could not believe there was anything inside the narrow box."
John Gray,Left,"Among Christians, only Protestants have ever believed that work smacks of salvation; the work and prayer of medieval Christendom were interspersed with festivals. The ancient Greeks sought salvation in philosophy, the Indians in meditation, the Chinese in poetry and the love of nature. The pygmies of the African rainforests – now nearly extinct – work only to meet the needs of the day, and spend most of their lives idling."
John Gray,Left,Philosophy has been a masked ball in which a religious image of humankind is renewed in the guise humanist ideas of progress and enlightenment. Even philosophy’s greatest unmaskers have ended up as figures in the masquerade. Removing the masks from our animal faces is a task that has hardly begun.
John Gray,Left,The cult of choice reflects the fact that we must improvise our lives. That we cannot do otherwise is a mark of our unfreedom. Choice has become a fetish; but the mark of a fetish is that it is unchosen.
John Gray,Left,"The scientific revolution was, in many ways, a by-product of mysticism and magic. In fact, once the tangled origins of modern science are unravelled, it is doubtful whether a ‘scientific revolution’ occurred."
John Gray,Left,"This has not prevented liberals from attempting to install their values throughout the world in a succession of evangelical wars. Possessed by chimerical visions of universal human rights, western governments have toppled despotic regimes in Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya in order to promote a liberal way of life in societies that have never known it. In doing so they destroyed the states through which the despots ruled, and left nothing durable in their place. The result has been anarchy, followed by the rise of new and often worse kinds of tyranny."
John Gray,Left,"Equally, why should a superhuman species fashioned by humans bother about its creators?"
John Gray,Left,"Like cheap music, the myth of progress lifts the spirits as it numbs the brain."
John Gray,Left,"Such gratitude! It hurt me to see you lose your professional standing, McGee. Like you were going soft and sentimental. So, through my own account, I put us into Fletcher and rode it up nicely and took us out, and split the bonus right down the middle. It's short-term. It's a check. Pay your taxes. Live a little. It's a longer retirement this time. We can gather up a throng and go blundering around on this licentious craft and get the remorses for saying foolish things while in our cups. We had a salvage contract, idiot, and the fee is comparatively small but fair.And you are comparatively large but fair.I think of myself that way. Where did the check go? Into the pocket so fast? Good. he looked at his watch. I am taking a lady to lunch. Make a nice neat deck there, Captain. And away he went, humming."
John Gray,Left,"It's a tricky, complex, indifferent society, Puss. It's a loophole world. And there are a lot of clever animals who know how to reach through the loopholes and pick the pockets of the unsuspecting."
John Gray,Left,"Ma was heavy, but not fat; thick with childbearing and work. She wore a loose Mother Hubbard2 of gray cloth in which there had once been colored flowers, but the color was washed out now, so that the small flowered pattern was only a little lighter gray than the background. The dress came down to her ankles, and her strong, broad, bare feet moved quickly and deftly over the floor. Her thin, steel-gray hair was gathered in a sparse wispy knot at the back of her head. Strong, freckled arms were bare to the elbow, and her hands were chubby and delicate, like those of a plump little girl. She looked out into the sunshine. Her full face was not soft; it was controlled, kindly. Her hazel eyes seemed to have experienced all possible tragedy and to have mounted pain and suffering like steps into a high calm and a superhuman understanding. She seemed to know, to accept, to welcome her position, the citadel of the family, the strong place that could not be taken. And since old Tom and the children could not know hurt or fear unless she acknowledged hurt and fear, she had practiced denying them in herself. And since, when a joyful thing happened, they looked to see whether joy was on her, it was her habit to build up laughter out of inadequate materials. But better than joy was calm. Imperturbability could be depended upon. And from her great and humble position in the family she had taken dignity and a clean calm beauty. From her position as healer, her hands had grown sure and cool and quiet; from her position as arbiter she had become as remote and faultless in judgment as a goddess. She seemed to know that if she swayed the family shook, and if she ever really deeply wavered or despaired the family would fall, the family will to function would be gone."
John Gray,Left,It is not enough to merely be authentic in sharing yourself; to succeed in dating you need to consider how you will be interpreted as well.
John Gray,Left,"In a competition for mates, a well developed capacity for self-deception is an advantage, The same is true in politics and other contexts."
John Gray,Left,"There is nothing uniquely human in the flicker of sentience that is commonly called consciousness. Dolphins delight in watching themselves in mirrors when they are having sex, while chimps react to the death of those they care for in much the same ways that humans do. It will be objected that these animals have no clear understanding of the kind of creature they are or what it means to die. In this regard too, however, they are no different from humans."
John Gray,Left,When a man feels accepted it is much easier for him to listen and give her the understanding she needs and deserves.
John Gray,Left,Opening the heart results in greater forgiveness and increased motivation to give and receive love and support.
John Gray,Left,Most men are not only hungry to give love but are starving for it. Their biggest problem is that they do not know what they are missing.
John Gray,Left,When a man loves a woman she begins to shine with love and fulfillment. Most men naïvely expect that shine to last forever. But to expect her loving nature to be constant is like expecting the weather never to change and the sun to shine all the time. Life is filled with rhythms
John Gray,Left,"You probably know stories of couples who never fight or argue and then suddenly to everyone’s surprise they decide to get a divorce. In many of these cases, the woman has suppressed her negative feelings to avoid having fights. As a result she becomes numb and unable to feel her love. When negative feelings are suppressed positive feelings become suppressed as well, and love dies. Avoiding arguments and fights certainly is healthy but not by suppressing feelings."
John Gray,Left,"A woman has within herself the ability to spontaneously rise up after she has hit bottom. A man does not have to fix her. She is not broken but just needs his love, patience, and understanding."
John Gray,Left,"When men and women are on the verge of arguing, they are generally misunderstanding each other."
John Gray,Left,"Not only do men and women communicate differently but they think, feel, perceive, react, respond, love, need, and appreciate differently. They almost seem to be from different planets, speaking different languages and needing different nourishment."
John Gray,Left,Their (men) sense of self is defined through their ability to achieve results. They experience fulfillment primarily through success and accomplishment.
John Gray,Left,"John Noa moved slowly toward the window. Old age had not been kind to him, and though he could still sit a horse, his rigid joints grew more painful by the day. Looking down from his lofty vantage point, he could see the town below on the cusp of waking. A lone wolf stood in the square, his head tilted to one side. The old man smiled. He had always loved animals and none more than the gray wolf. Before the Melting, they had been almost eradicated, hunted to extinction. Extinction: the saddest word of all. Using science and with great care and attention, they had bred five pairs of wolves in captivity, producing fifteen new cubs, and then released them into the wild. Since then, the wolves had thrived. Amid all the destruction, it had seemed like a miracle to him. He loved the view from the high window at this time of day. The workers not yet awake and only the comforting sound of the water bubbling in the great tank. He sighed. Sadly, he couldn’t stay. He had work to do. Work! Always work. Problems to be solved, plans to be made. He had never expected it to be this difficult. On his bad days, he wondered if it had been worth it at all. Another glance at the wolf brought a smile to his lips. Yes. It was all worth it. He firmly believed that it was his passion for Ark that had kept him alive when so many had been lost. The images of death and destruction were always with him. Floods, earthquakes, famine, as livid in daylight as they were in his nightmares. Images of the past. But there were nightmares in the present too. Bandits. Desecrators. Tintown. People intent on destroying what he had built. People intent on going their own way regardless of the price. He felt the old rage stir in his heart. They would be dealt with. In the end, they would find"
John Gray,Left,The presidency had grayed his hair and drained the part of his soul which hadn’t been auctioned off during his rise to power.
John Gray,Left,Why should my future goals matter more than those I have now? It is not just that they are remote – even hypothetical. They may be less worth striving for: Why should a youth suppress his budding passions in favour of the sordid interests of his own withered old age? Why is that problematical old man who may bear his name fifty years hence nearer to him now than any other imaginary creature?
John Gray,Left,"The final belief is to believe in a fiction, which you know to be a fiction, there being nothing else. The exquisite truth is to know that it is a fiction and to believe in it willingly."
John Gray,Left,"At that moment, though, there were no options. These boys were enjoying their George Dickel straight, no ice. It burned her lips and scalded her tongue and set fire to her esophagus, but when Donovan asked, How is it? she managed a smile and said, Fine."
John Gray,Left,"Suppose an individual believes something with his whole heart; suppose further that he has a commitment to this belief, that he has taken irrevocable actions because of it; finally, suppose that he is presented with evidence, unequivocal and undeniable evidence, that his belief is wrong; what will happen? The individual will frequently emerge, not only unshaken, but even more convinced of the truth of his beliefs than ever before. Indeed, he may even show a new fervour about convincing and converting other people to his view."
John Gray,Left,"According to the theory, human beings do not deal with conflicting beliefs and perceptions by testing them against facts."
John Gray,Left,"Some couples fight all the time, and gradually their love dies. On the other extreme, some couples suppress their honest feelings in order to avoid conflict and not argue. As a result of suppressing their true feelings they lose touch with their loving feelings as well. One couple is having a war while the other is having a cold war."
John Gray,Left,"the idea of free will does not come from science. Its origins are in religion – not just any religion, but the Christian faith against which humanists rail so obsessively."
John Gray,Left,"particularly when his people’s welfare was at stake. Now, feeling his gray eyes boring into hers, feeling the bridled power of the fingers wrapped around hers, she knew why. No matter where you look for the man, he is certain to escape you. He knows these lands as well as you, John. And he"
John Gray,Left,"Let there be spaces in your togetherness: And let the winds of the heavens dance between you . . . stand together, yet not too near together: For the pillars of the temple stand apart, and the oak tree and the cypress grow not in each other’s shadow. In"
John Gray,Left,The process of learning requires not only hearing and applying but also forgetting and then remembering again.
John Gray,Left,"But Brinker came in. I think he made a point of visiting all the rooms near him the first day. Well, Gene, his beaming face appeared around the door. Brinker looked the standard preparatory school article in his gray gabardine suit with square, hand-sewn-looking jacket pockets, a conservative necktie, and dark brown cordovan shoes. His face was all straight lines"
John Gray,Left,"In science, progress is a fact, in ethics and politics it is a superstition."
John Gray,Left,Young Tom Joad and the preacher watched the turtle go
John Gray,Left,"With gunmetal-gray piercings in his ears, and an ahstrux nohtrum teardrop under his eye from when he had served as John Matthew’s protector, he caught stares wherever he went. Perhaps"
John Gray,Left,"Send him away again. It’s not that simple. You’re actually lucky he didn’t take you to his jail. His jail? Donovan was smiling and enjoying his narrative. Oh yes. About five years ago, Romey’s brother found a late-model sedan with Ohio tags parked behind a barn on their family’s farm. He looked around, heard a noise, and found this guy from Ohio locked in a horse stall. It turns out Romey had fixed up the stall with chicken wire and barbed wire, and the poor guy had been there for three days."
John Gray,Left,"Well, coal companies create a lot of problems, most of them anyway. There are a couple of decent ones, but most care nothing about the environment or their employees. Mining coal is dirty business, always has been. But it’s far worse now. Have you heard of mountaintop removal? No. Also known as strip-mining. They started mining coal in these parts back in the 1800s. Deep mining, where they bore tunnels into the mountains and extracted the coal. Mining has been a way of life here since then. My grandfather was a miner, so was his father. My dad was another story. Anyway, by 1920, there were 800,000 coal miners in the coalfields, from Pennsylvania down to Tennessee. Coal mining is dangerous work, and it has a rich history of labor troubles, union fights, violence, corruption, all manner of historical drama. All deep mining, which was the traditional way. Very labor-intensive. Around 1970, coal companies decided they could strip-mine and save millions on labor costs. Strip-mining is far cheaper than deep mining because it requires much fewer workers. Today there are only 80,000 coal miners left and half of them work above the ground, for the strip miners."
John Gray,Left,"Mountaintop removal is nothing but strip-mining on steroids. Appalachian coal is found in seams, sort of like layers of a cake. At the top of the mountain there is the forest, then a layer of topsoil, then a layer of rock, and finally a seam of coal. Could be four feet thick, could be twenty. When a coal company gets a permit to strip-mine, it literally attacks the mountain with all manner of heavy equipment. First it clear-cuts the trees, total deforestation with no effort at saving the hardwoods. They are bulldozed away as the earth is scalped. Same for the topsoil, which is not very thick. Next comes the layer of rock, which is blasted out of the ground. The trees, topsoil, and rock are often shoved into the valleys between the mountains, creating what’s known as valley fills. These wipe out vegetation, wildlife, and natural streams. Just another environmental disaster. If you’re downstream, you’re just screwed. As you’ll learn around here, we’re all downstream."
John Gray,Left,"Back to the cake. You were down to the seam of coal. Yeah, well, once they find the coal, they bring in more machines, extract it, haul it out, and continue blasting down to the next seam. It’s not unusual to demolish the top five hundred feet of a mountain. This takes relatively few workers. In fact, a small crew can thoroughly destroy a mountain in a matter of months. The waitress refilled their cups and Donovan watched in silence, totally ignoring her. When she disappeared, he leaned in a bit lower and said, Once the coal is hauled out by truck, it’s washed, which is another disaster. Coal washing creates a black sludge that contains toxic chemicals and heavy metals. The sludge is also known as slurry, a term you’ll hear often. Since it can’t be disposed of, the coal companies store it behind earthen dams in sludge ponds, or slurry ponds. The engineering is slipshod and half-assed and these things break all the time with catastrophic results."
John Gray,Left,"Where affluence is the rule, the true threat is the loss of desire,(...) What is new is not that prosperity depends on stimulating demand. It is that it cannot continue without inventing new vices"
John Gray,Left,"He said something that vaguely resembled Driver’s license please. She grabbed her bag and eventually found her license. Her hands were shaking as she gave him the card. He took it and pulled it almost to his nose, as if visually impaired. She finally looked at him; other impairments were obvious. His uniform was a mismatched ensemble of frayed and stained khaki pants, a faded brown shirt covered with all manner of insignia, unpolished black combat boots, and a Smokey the Bear trooper’s hat at least two sizes too big and resting on his oversized ears. Unruly black hair crept from under the hat. New York? he said. His diction was far from crisp but his belligerent tone was clear."
John Gray,Left,"An old pickup truck approached from ahead, slowed, and seemed ready to stop. The driver leaned out and yelled, Come on, Romey, not again. The cop turned around and yelled back, Get outta here! The truck stopped on the center line, and the driver yelled, You gotta stop that, man. The cop unsnapped his holster, whipped out his black pistol, and said, You heard me, get outta here. The truck lurched forward, spun its rear tires, and sped away. When it was twenty yards down the road, the cop aimed his pistol at the sky and fired a loud, thundering shot that cracked through the valley and echoed off the ridges. Samantha screamed and began crying. The cop watched the truck disappear, then said, It’s okay, it’s okay. He’s always butting in. Now, where were we? He stuck the pistol back into the holster"
John Gray,Left,"If women become too much like men, men lose purpose, meaning, and inspiration in life."
John Gray,Left,"The painter John David Borthwick said of it, People lived more there in a week than they would in a year in most other places."
John Gray,Left,"Men, if you’re traveling with your wife or girlfriend and she mentions that it’s time to start looking for a restaurant, you need to sit up and take notice. This means her blood sugar level has dropped and, for you, it ought to be a red alert with flashing lights and sirens. Get that woman fed!"
John Gray,Left,"Many years have passed since the exploration, and those who were boys with me in the enterprise are--ah, most of them are dead, and the living are gray with age. Their bronzed, hardy, brave faces come before me as they appeared in the vigor of life; their lithe but powerful forms seem to move around me; and the memory of the men and their heroic deeds, the men and their generous acts, overwhelms me with a joy that seems almost a grief, for it starts a fountain of tears. I was a maimed man; my right arm was gone; and these brave men, these good men, never forgot it. In every danger my safety was their first care, and in every waking hour some kind service was rendered me, and they transfigured my misfortune into a boon."
John Gray,Left,"I took the stairs two at a time, excited to have company today. When I opened the door I gasped and stood there in shock a moment before saying, Patti, it’s awesome!She had decorated with my school colors. Royal blue and gold streamers crisscrossed the ceiling, and balloons were everywhere. I heard her and the twins come up behind me, Patti giggling and Marna oohing. I was about to hug Patti, when a movement on the other side of the room caught my eye through the dangling balloon ribbons. I cursed my stupid body whose first reaction was to scream.Midshriek, I realized it was my dad, but my startled system couldn’t stop its initial reaction. A chain reaction started as Patti, then both the twins screamed, too.Dad parted the balloons and slunk forward, chuckling. We all shut up and caught our breaths.Do you give all your guests such a warm welcome?Patti’s hand was on her heart. Geez, John! A little warning next time?I bet you’re wishing you’d never given me that key, Dad said to Patti with his most charming, frightening grin. He stared at her long enough to make her face redden and her aura sputter.She rolled her eyes and went past him to the kitchen. We’re about to grill, she said without looking up from the food prep. You’re welcome to stay. Her aura was a strange blend of yellow and light gray annoyance.Can’t stay long. Just wanted to see my little girl on her graduation day. Dad nodded a greeting at the twins and they slunk back against the two barstools at the counter.My heart rate was still rapid when he came forward and embraced me.Thanks for coming, I whispered into his black T-shirt. I breathed in his clean, zesty scent and didn’t want to let him go.I came to give you a gift.I looked up at him with expectancy.But not yet, he said.I made a face.Patti came toward the door with a platter of chicken in her hands, a bottle of BBQ sauce and grilling utensils under her arm, and a pack of matches between her teeth.Dad and I both moved to take something from her at the same time. He held up a hand toward me and said, I got it. He took the platter and she removed the matches from her mouth.I can do it, she insisted.He grinned as I opened the door for them. Yeah, he said over his shoulder. I know you can. And together they left for the commons area to be domesticated. Weird."
John Gray,Left,"And, you are no doubt familiar with the 1983 Supreme Court decision, the name escapes me right now, in which the Court ruled that before a person can be thrown in jail for not paying a fine it must be proven that he or she was willfully not paying. In other words, he could pay but he refused. All this and more, right?"
John Gray,Left,Anything done to excess can become a means to numb the pain of our unresolved past.
John Gray,Left,The facility occupied the ground floor of a gray commercial building hemmed in by rusting fire escapes and choked with high-tension wires that clung to the structure’s façade like rotting vegetation.
John Gray,Left,"Any idea what the land is worth? Samantha asked. Mrs. Crump crunched her dentures and said, A lot more than anybody knows. You see, the coal company came out last year and tried to buy the land, been trying for some time, but I ran ’em off again. Ain’t selling to no coal company, no ma’am. They’re blasting away not far from my land, taking down Cat Mountain, and it’s a real shame. Ain’t got no use for no coal company. How much did they offer? A lot, and I ain’t told my kids either. Won’t tell them. I’m in bad health, you see, and I’ll be gone pretty soon. If my kids get the land, they’ll sell to the coal company before I’m cold in the ground. That’s exactly what they’ll do. I know ’em. She reached into her purse and pulled out some folded papers. Here’s a will I signed five years ago. My kids took me down to a lawyer’s office, just down the street, and they made me sign it. Samantha slowly unfolded the papers and read the last will and testament of Francine Cooper Crump. The third paragraph left everything to her five children in equal shares. Samantha scribbled some useless notes and said, Okay, Mrs. Crump, for estate tax purposes, I need to know the approximate value of this land. The what? How much did the coal company offer you? She looked as if she’d been insulted, then leaned in low and whispered. Two hundred thousand and change, but it’s worth double that. Maybe triple. You can’t trust a coal company. They low ball everybody, then figure out ways to steal from you at the end. Suddenly the simple will"
John Gray,Left,a sadness that turned the world to gray. He
John Gray,Left,"The I is a thing of the moment, and yet our lives are ruled by it. We cannot rid ourselves of this non-existent thing."
John Gray,Left,"I’ve known Florence long, sir, but I’ve never known her so lovely as to-night. It’s as if the ghosts of her past were abroad in the empty streets. The present is sleeping; the past hovers about us like a dream made visible. Fancy the old Florentines strolling up in couples to pass judgment on the last performance of Michael, of Benvenuto! We should come in for a precious lesson if we might overhear what they say. The plainest burgher of them in his cap and gown had a taste in the matter! That was the prime of art, sir. The sun stood high in heaven, and his broad and equal blaze made the darkest places bright and the dullest eyes clear. We live in the evening of time! We grope in the gray dusk, carrying each our poor little taper of selfish and painful wisdom, holding it up to the great models and to the dim idea, and seeing nothing but overwhelming greatness and dimness. The days of illumination are gone! But do you know I fancy"
John Gray,Left,"Perhaps Hitler’s genius was not demagogy, not lying, but the fundamentally irrational approach to the masses, the appeal to the pre-logical, totemistic mentality."
John Gray,Left,how are people to live when the future can no longer be imagined?
John Gray,Left,The shift from hunter-gathering to farming is conventionally viewed as a move from a nomadic to a settled life. In reality it was almost the opposite. Hunter-gatherers are highly mobile. But their life does not require continuous movement into new territory. Their survival depends on knowing a local milieu down to its last details. Farming multiplies human numbers. It thereby compels farmers to expand the land they work. Farming and the search for new lands go together.
John Gray,Left,"There was never a Golden Age of harmony with the Earth. Most hunter-gatherers were fully as rapacious as later humans. But they were few, and they lived better than most who came after them."
John Gray,Left,"But we are not embrained phantoms encased in mortal flesh. Being embodied is our nature as earth-born creatures. Our flesh is easily worn out; but in being so clearly subject to time and accident it reminds us of what we truly are. Our essence lies in what is most accidental about us – the time and place of our birth, our habits of speech and movement, the flaws and quirks of our bodies."
John Gray,Left,"Only tormented persons want truth. Man is like other animals, wants food and success and women, not truth. Only if the mind tortured by some interior tension has despaired of happiness: then it hates its life-cage and seeks further."
John Gray,Left,"To find our loving feelings, many times we need first to feel all our negative feelings."
John Gray,Left,"Self-knowledge can, and ought, to apply not only to the soul, but also to the body;the man without insight into the fabric of his body has no knowledge of himself."
John Gray,Left,"You see, Mr. Snowden, the Constitution says, quite clearly, that you cannot imprison a poor person for failing to pay his debts. I don’t expect you to know this because you work for a bunch of crooks. However, trust me on this, the federal judges understand it because they’ve read the Constitution, most of them anyway. Debtors’ prisons are illegal. Ever heard of the Equal Protection Clause?"
John Gray,Left,"The contrast was startling: the beauty of the ridges against the poverty of the people who lived between them. There were some pretty homes with neat lawns and white picket fences, but the neighbors were usually not as prosperous."
John Gray,Left,"Driving back to Brady, Mattie said, A license to practice law is a powerful tool, Samantha, when it’s used to help little people. Crooks like Snowden are accustomed to bullying folks who can’t afford representation. But you get a good lawyer involved and the bullying stops immediately. You’re a pretty good bully yourself. I’ve had practice. When did you prepare the lawsuit? We keep them in inventory. The file is actually called ‘Dummy Lawsuits.’ Just plug in a different name, splash the words ‘Federal Court’ all over it, and they scatter like squirrels. Dummy lawsuits. Scattering like squirrels. Samantha wondered how many of her classmates at Columbia had been exposed to such legal tactics."
John Gray,Left,They may even change outfits several times a day as their mood changes.
John Gray,Left,"She was a clean, mean old woman. She looked at the dust-gray rotting curtains, threw them out, and made new ones. She dug grease out of the stove that had been there since Charles’ mother died. And she leached the walls of a brown shiny nastiness deposited by cooking fat and kerosene lamps. She pickled the floors with lye, soaked the blankets in sal soda, complaining the whole time to herself, Men"
John Gray,Left,"Humanity' does not exist. There are only humans, driven by conflicting needs and illusions, and subject to every kind of infirmity of will and judgement"
John Gray,Left,"These views of the world support diverging conceptions of human salvation. For those who follow Plato, humans are exiles from eternity; freedom consists in ascending from the realm of shadows and leaving behind the illusion of being a separate, time-bound individual. In biblical accounts, salvation is not an escape from contingency but a miraculous event in the contingent world. It was some such event that Jesus expected when he announced the kingdom of God. Those who were saved would not be assimilated into an eternal spirit but would be brought back from the grave as corporeal human beings.These Jewish and Greek views of the world are not just divergent but irreconcilably opposed. Yet from its beginnings Christianity has been an attempt to join Athens with Jerusalem. Augustine’s Christian Platonism was only the first of many such attempts. Without knowing what they are doing, secular thinkers have continued this vain effort."
John Gray,Left,"In Beyond Good and Evil, Nietzsche described Christianity as ‘Platonism for the masses’ – an accusation that applies with equal or greater force to secular humanism. The faith that history has a built-in logic impelling humanity to a higher level is Platonism framed in historical terms. Marxists have thought of human development as being driven by new technologies and class conflict, whereas liberals have seen the growth of knowledge as the principal driver. No doubt these forces help shape the flow of events. But unless you posit a divinely ordained end-state there is no reason to think history has any overarching logic or goal.For Plato and Plotinus, history was a nightmare from which the individual mind struggled to awake. Following Paul and Augustine, the Christian Erigena made history the emerging embodiment of Logos. With their unending chatter about progress, secular humanists project this mystical dream into the chaos of the human world."
John Gray,Left,"The belief that humanity makes history in order to realize its full possibilities is a relic of mysticism. Unless you believe the species to be an instrument of some higher power, ‘humanity’ cannot do anything. What actually exists is a host of human beings with common needs and abilities but differing goals and values. If you set metaphysics aside, you are left with the human animal and its many contending ways of life.Marx’s view of history owes more to Platonic philosophy than Jewish messianic religion. In his once-celebrated History of Western Philosophy Bertrand Russell wrote:"
John Gray,Left,"Modern philosophies in which history is a process of human self-realization are therefore spin-offs from the mystical speculations of medieval theologians. When Hegel envisioned history as a rational process, he was able to do so because – like Plato and Plotinus – he believed the world was a manifestation of Logos."
John Gray,Left,"Men primarily need trust, acceptance, appreciation, admiration, approval, and encouragement. Women primarily need caring, understanding, respect, devotion, validation, and reassurance."
John Gray,Left,"Men rarely say I’m sorry because on Mars it means you have done something wrong and you are apologizing. Women, however, say I’m sorry as a way to say I care about what you are feeling."
John Gray,Left,"he’s now in hiding, in another state. I give him cash to live on. Is that legal? That’s not a fair question in coal country. Nothing is black-and-white in my world. The enemy breaks every rule in the book, so the fight is never fair. If you play by the rules, you lose, even when you’re on the right side."
John Gray,Left,"It seemed to him, the more he thought about it, a kind of marriage between stone and water, the oyster. Inside a stone, water thickens into an oyster, and then it pulses within its shell like the gray heart of a gray stone. He felt he was getting close to something he needed to understand, not about oysters, about something else...."
John Gray,Left,"A deeper understanding of single men and women can be immensely helpful in navigating through the five different stages of dating: attraction, uncertainty, commitment, intimacy, and engagement."
John Gray,Left,"There are basically four kinds of chemistry between dating partners; physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual. Physical chemistry generates desire. Emotional chemistry generates affection. Mental chemistry creates interest. Spiritual chemistry creates love. A soul mate includes all four."
John Gray,Left,"It is not so much that he is economical with the truth as that he lacks the normal understanding of it. For him truth is whatever serves the cause, and when he engages in what is commonly judged to be deception he is only anticipating the new world that he is helping to bring about ."
John Gray,Left,When Schmitt and Shulsky rejected empirical inquiry they confused a critique of scientism with a rejection of evidence
John Gray,Left,"A woman mistakenly thinks that to be worthy of receiving what she really wants, she must keep giving back what she is receiving."
John Gray,Left,Most of the time she just needs more understanding and affection and her heart will warm up again and her eyes will begin to sparkle.
John Gray,Left,To a certain extent a man loses himself through connecting with his partner.
John Gray,Left,"The final word was her daughter’s, in a frank and touching memoir, Knock Wood. Yes, there were disagreements; there were plenty of generation-gap misunderstandings. At the bottom of it was a girl who desperately needed the approval of a father who felt stripped when he had to speak as himself, with no dummy on his lap to make light of things. The book is a love story on both sides: in the end Candice Bergen has placed Charlie McCarthy in an open, healthy spotlight, as a vital piece of her personal history. Bergen did little in television. He was a radio man, even though his art was primarily visual. With Charlie and Mortimer, he emceed the 1956 CBS audience show Do You Trust Your Wife?, and he made numerous guest appearances on TV variety shows of the ’50s. He grew old and gray. Charlie, of course, was eternally young. In September 1978 Bergen announced his retirement: he would do a few more shows, then give his dummy to the Smithsonian. Charlie had been his companion for 56 years. A week later he appeared with Andy Williams at Caesar’s Palace in Las Vegas. He died in his sleep after this performance, Oct. 1, 1978."
John Gray,Left,Starting is Easy. Finishing Strong; is for the Tough.
John Gray,Left,"Face your fears as if your life depends on it, because living in fear keeps you from living."
John Gray,Left,"You don't have to do something, you are Blessed enough to do it."
John Gray,Left,"Coming from a place of humility instead of entitlement, and recognizing that you are blessed enough to get the chance to do something, can change everything."
John Gray,Left,"This sounds as though I bemoan an older time, which is the preoccupation of the old, or cultivate an opposition to change, which is the currency of the rich and stupid. It is not so. This Seattle was not something changed that I once knew. It was a new thing. Set down there not knowing it was Seattle, I could not have told where I was. Everywhere frantic growth, a carcinomatous growth. Bulldozers rolled up the green forests and heaped the resulting trash for burning. The torn white lumber from concrete forms was piled beside gray walls. I wonder why progress looks so much like destruction."
John Gray,Left,"It is a strange sort of naturalism that singles out religion to be purged from human life. Few things are more natural for humans than religion. To be sure, religion has brought much suffering. So has love and the pursuit of knowledge. Like them, religion is part of being human."
Terry Eagleton,Left,"After all, if you do not resist the apparently inevitable, you will never know how inevitable the inevitable was."
Terry Eagleton,Left,"A socialist is just someone who is unable to get over his or her astonishment that most people who have lived and died have spent lives of wretched, fruitless, unremitting toil."
Terry Eagleton,Left,"Genuine equality means not treating everyone the same, but attending equally to everyone’s different needs."
Terry Eagleton,Left,"What we have witnessed in our own time is the death of universities as centres of critique. Since Margaret Thatcher, the role of academia has been to service the status quo, not challenge it in the name of justice, tradition, imagination, human welfare, the free play of the mind or alternative visions of the future. We will not change this simply by increasing state funding of the humanities as opposed to slashing it to nothing. We will change it by insisting that a critical reflection on human values and principles should be central to everything that goes on in universities, not just to the study of Rembrandt or Rimbaud."
Terry Eagleton,Left,"Because subjects like literature and art history have no obvious material pay-off, they tend to attract those who look askance at capitalist notions of utility. The idea of doing something purely for the delight of it has always rattled the grey-bearded guardians of the state. Sheer pointlessness has always been a deeply subversive affair."
Terry Eagleton,Left,Historical determinism is a recipe for political quietism.
Terry Eagleton,Left,"If it is true that we need a degree of certainty to get by, it is also true that too much of the stuff can be lethal."
Terry Eagleton,Left,"Christian faith, as I understand it, is not primarily a matter of signing on for the proposition that there exists a Supreme Being, but the kind of commitment made manifest by a human being at the end of his tether, foundering in darkness, pain, and bewilderment, who nevertheless remains faithful to the promise of a transformative love."
Terry Eagleton,Left,Negativity is often looked upon [in the USA] as a kind of thought crime. Not since the advent of socialist realism has the world witnessed such pathological upbeatness.
Terry Eagleton,Left,"The New Testament is a brutal destroyer of human illusions. If you follow Jesus and don't end up dead, it appears you have some explaining to do. The stark signifier of the human condition is one who spoke up for love and justice and was done to death for his pains. The traumatic truth of human history is a mutilated body."
Terry Eagleton,Left,"In the deep night of metaphysics, all cats look black."
Terry Eagleton,Left,"What we consume now is not objects or events, but our experience of them. Just as we never need to leave our cars, so we never need to leave our own skulls. The experience is already out there, as ready-made as a pizza, as bluntly objective as a boulder, and all we need to do is receive it. It is as though there is an experience hanging in the air, waiting for a human subject to come alone and have it. Niagara Falls, Dublin Castle and the Great Wall of China do our experiencing for us. They come ready-interpreted, thus saving us a lot of inconvenient labour. What matters is not the place itself but the act of consuming it. We buy an experience like we pick up a T-shirt."
Terry Eagleton,Left,Successful revolutions are those which end up by erasing all traces of themselves.
Terry Eagleton,Left,"If we are inspired only by literature that reflects our own interests, all reading becomes a form of narcissism."
Terry Eagleton,Left,The Kantian imperative to have the courage to think for oneself has involved a contemptuous disregard for the resources of tradition and an infantile view of authority as inherently oppressive.
Terry Eagleton,Left,"Astonishingly, we are saved not by a special apparatus known as religion, but by the quality of our everyday relations with one another."
Terry Eagleton,Left,Being brought up in a culture is a matter of learning appropriate forms of feeling as much as particular ways of thinking.
Terry Eagleton,Left,"We like to think of individuals as unique. Yet if this is true of everyone, then we all share the same quality, namely our uniqueness. What we have in common is the fact that we are all uncommon. Everybody is special, which means that nobody is. The truth, however, is that human beings are uncommon only up to a point. There are no qualities that are peculiar to one person alone. Regrettably, there could not be a world in which only one individual was irascible, vindictive or lethally aggressive. This is because human beings are not fundamentally all that different from each other, a truth postmodernists are reluctant to concede. We share an enormous amount in common simply by virtue of being human, and this is revealed by the vocabularies we have for discussing human character. We even share the social processes by which we come to individuate ourselves."
Terry Eagleton,Left,"It is capitalism, not Marxism, that trades in futures."
Terry Eagleton,Left,"All communication involves faith; indeed, some linguisticians hold that the potential obstacles to acts of verbal understanding are so many and diverse that it is a minor miracle that they take place at all."
Terry Eagleton,Left,"We live in a world in which there is nothing that cannot be narrated, but nothing that needs to be either."
Terry Eagleton,Left,"The most common mistake students of literature make is to go straight for what the poem or novel says, setting aside the way that it says it. To read like this is to set aside the ‘literariness’ of the work – the fact that it is a poem or play or novel, rather than an account of the incidence of soil erosion in Nebraska."
Terry Eagleton,Left,[A] great deal of what we believe we do not know firsthand; instead we have faith in the knowledge of specialists.
Terry Eagleton,Left,"If this constant sliding and hiding of meaning were true of conscious life, then we would of course never be able to speak coherently at all. If the whole of language were present to me when I spoke, then I would not be able to articulate anything at all. The ego, or consciousness, can therefore only work by repressing this turbulent activity, provisionally nailing down words on to meanings. Every now and then a word from the unconscious which I do not want insinuates itself into my discourse, and this is the famous Freudian slip of the tongue or parapraxis. But for Lacan all our discourse is in a sense a slip of the tongue: if the process of language is as slippery and ambiguous as he suggests, we can never mean precisely what we say and never say precisely what we mean. Meaning is always in some sense an approximation, a near-miss, a part-failure, mixing non-sense and non-communication into sense and dialogue."
Terry Eagleton,Left,Scratch a schoolboy and you find a savage.
Terry Eagleton,Left,"[F]or the most part football these days is the opium of the people, not to speak of their crack cocaine. Its icon is the impeccably Tory, slavishly conformist Beckham. The Reds are no longer the Bolsheviks. Nobody serious about political change can shirk the fact that the game has to be abolished. And any political outfit that tried it on would have about as much chance of power as the chief executive of BP has in taking over from Oprah Winfrey."
Terry Eagleton,Left,"The imagination is also sometimes commended for offering us in vicarious form experiences which we are unable to enjoy at first hand. If you can't afford an air ticket to Kuala Lumpur, you can always read Conrad and imagine yourself in South-East Asia. If you have been monotonously married for forty years, you can always lay furtive hands on a copy of James Joyce's letters. Literature on this view is a kind of supplement to our unavoidably impoverished lives - a sort of spiritual prosthesis which extends our capabilities beyond their normal restricted range. It is true that everyone's experience is bound to be limited, and that art can valuably augment it. But why the lives of so many people should be imaginatively impoverished is then a question that can be easily passed over."
Terry Eagleton,Left,"In the pragmatist, streetwise climate of advanced postmodern capitalism, with its scepticism of big pictures and grand narratives, its hard-nosed disenchantment with the metaphysical, 'life' is one among a whole series of discredited totalities. We are invited to think small rather than big – ironically, at just the point when some of those out to destroy Western civilization are doing exactly the opposite. In the conflict between Western capitalism and radical Islam, a paucity of belief squares up to an excess of it. The West finds itself faced with a full-blooded metaphysical onslaught at just the historical point that it has, so to speak, philosophically disarmed. As far as belief goes, postmodernism prefers to travel light: it has beliefs, to be sure, but it does not have faith."
Terry Eagleton,Left,"Certain American uses of deconstruction, Derrida has observed, work to ensure ‘an institutional closure’ which serves the dominant political and economic interests of American society. Derrida is clearly out to do more than develop new techniques of reading: deconstruction is for him an ultimately political practice, an attempt to dismantle the logic by which a particular system of thought, and behind that a whole system of political structures and social institutions, maintains its force. He is not seeking, absurdly, to deny the existence of relatively determinate truths, meanings, identities, intentions, historical continuities; he is seeking rather to see such things as the effects of a wider and deeper history of language, of the unconscious, of social institutions and practices."
Terry Eagleton,Left,"Language, the unconscious, the parents, the symbolic order: these terms in Lacan are not exactly synonymous, but they are intimately allied. They are sometimes spoken of by him as the ‘Other’"
Terry Eagleton,Left,"The celebrated opening image of 'The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock' is another case in point:Let us go then, you and I,When the evening is spread out against the skyLike a patient etherised upon a table...How, the reader wonders, can the evening look like an anaesthetised body? Yet the point surely lies as much in the force of this bizarre image as in its meaning. We are in a modern world in which settled correspondences or traditional affinities between things have broken down. In the arbitrary flux of modern experience, the whole idea of representation - of on thing predictably standing for another - has been plunged into crisis; and this strikingly dislocated image, one which more or less ushers in 'modern' poetry with a rebellious flourish, is a symptom of this bleak condition."
Terry Eagleton,Left,It is always reassuring to discover that great writers are as fallible as oneself. W.B. Yeats once failed to obtain an academic post in Dublin because he misspelt the word ‘professor’ on his application.
Terry Eagleton,Left,"The theatre can teach us some truth, but it is the truth of the illusory nature of our existence. It can alert us to the dream-like quality of our lives, their brevity, mutability and lack of solid grounds. As such, by reminding us of our mortality, it can foster in us the virtue of humility."
Terry Eagleton,Left,"[B]y reinterpreting Freudianism in terms of language, a pre-eminently social activity, Lacan permits us to explore the relations between the unconscious and human society. One way of describing his work is to say that he makes us recognize that the unconscious is not some kind of seething, tumultuous, private region ‘inside’ us, but an effect of our relations with one another. The unconscious is, so to speak, ‘outside’ rather than ‘within’ us"
Terry Eagleton,Left,Evil may be 'unscientific' but so is a song or a smile.
Terry Eagleton,Left,"In any case, it is a mistake to equate concreteness with things. An individual object is the unique phenomenon it is because it is caught up in a mesh of relations with other objects. It is this web of relations and interactions, if you like, which is 'concrete', while the object considered in isolation is purely abstract. In his Grundrisse, Karl Marx sees the abstract not as a lofty, esoteric notion, but as a kind of rough sketch of a thing. The notion of money, for example, is abstract because it is no more than a bare, preliminary outline of the actual reality. It is only when we reinsert the idea of money into its complex social context, examining its relations to commodities, exchange, production and the like, that we can construct a 'concrete' concept of it, one which is adequate to its manifold substance. The Anglo-Saxon empiricist tradition, by contrast, makes the mistake of supposing that the concrete is simple and the abstract is complex. In a similar way, a poem for Yury Lotman is concrete precisely because it is the product of many interacting systems. Like Imagist poetry, you can suppress a number of these systems (grammar, syntax, metre and so on) to leave the imagery standing proudly alone; but this is actually an abstraction of the imagery from its context, not the concretion it appears to be. In modern poetics, the word 'concrete' has done far more harm than good."
Terry Eagleton,Left,"Enjoyment is more subjective than evaluation. Whether you prefer peaches to pears is a question of taste, which is not quite true of whether you think Dostoevsky a more accomplished novelist than John Grisham. Dostoevsky is better than Grisham in the sense that Tiger Woods is a better golfer than Lady Gaga."
Terry Eagleton,Left,"In conscious life, we achieve some sense of ourselves as reasonably unified, coherent selves, and without this action would be impossible. But all this is merely at the ‘imaginary’ level of the ego, which is no more than the tip of the iceberg of the human subject known to psychoanalysis. The ego is function or effect of a subject which is always dispersed, never identical with itself, strung out along the chains of the discourses which constitute it. There is a radical split between these two levels of being"
Terry Eagleton,Left,"An enlightened trust in the sovereignty of human reason can be every bit as magical as the exploits of Merlin, and a faith in our capacity for limitless self-improvement just as much a wide-eyed superstition as a faith in leprechauns."
Terry Eagleton,Left,"A revolution which can transform modes of production but not types of speech, social relations but not styles of architecture, remains radically incomplete."
Terry Eagleton,Left,"Critics do not have the satisfaction of working on things that actually exist, like sick dogs or dental cavities. So they are tempted to pluck a virtue out of necessity and claim that they toil in an altogether superior realm, that of the imagination. This implies, rather oddly, that things which do not exist are inevitably more precious than those that do, which is a fairly devastating comment on the latter. What kind of a world is it in which possibility is unquestionably preferable to actuality?"
Terry Eagleton,Left,"It is said that an eighteenth-century bishop who read Jonathan Swift’s novel Gulliver’s Travels threw the book into the fire, indignantly declaring that he didn’t believe a word of it. He obviously thought that the story was meant to be true, but suspected that it was invented. Which, of course, is just what it is. The bishop was dismissing the fiction because he thought it was fiction."
Terry Eagleton,Left,That one can understand The Waste Land without even trying is consoling news for all students of literature.
Terry Eagleton,Left,"The artistic is thus very close to the ethical. If only we could grasp the world from someone else’s standpoint, we would have a fuller sense of how and why they act as they do. We would thus be less inclined to reproach them from some loftily external point of view. To understand is to forgive."
Terry Eagleton,Left,"The impotence of liberal humanism is a symptom of its essentially contradictory relationship to modern capitalism. For although it forms part of the ‘official’ ideology of such society, and the ‘humanities’ exist to reproduce it, the social order within which it exists has in one sense very little time for it at all. Who is concerned with the uniqueness of the individual, the imperishable truths of the human condition or the sensuous textures of lived experience in the Foreign Office or the boardroom of Standard Oil? Capitalism’s reverential hat-tipping to the arts is obvious hypocrisy, except when it can hang them on its walls as a sound investment. Yet capitalist states have continued to direct funds into higher education humanities departments, and though such departments are usually the first in line for savage cutting when capitalism enters on one of its periodic crises, it is doubtful that it is only hypocrisy, a fear of appearing in its true philistine colours, which compels this grudging support. The truth is that liberal humanism is at once largely ineffectual, and the best ideology of the ‘human’ that present bourgeois society can muster. The ‘unique individual’ is indeed important when it comes to defending the business entrepreneur’s right to make profit while throwing men and women out of work; the individual must at all costs have the ‘right to choose’, provided this means the right to buy one’s child an expensive private education while other children are deprived of their school meals, rather than the rights of women to decide whether to have children in the first place."
Terry Eagleton,Left,"All I can claim in this respect, alas, is that I think I may know just about enough theology to be able to spot when someone like Richard Dawkins or Christopher Hitchens"
Terry Eagleton,Left,"A poem is a piece of semiotic sport, in which the signifier has been momentarily released from its grim communicative labours and can disport itself disgracefully. Freed from a loveless marriage to a single meaning, it can play the field, wax promiscous, gambol outrageously with similar unattached signifiers. If the guardians of conventional morality knew what scandalous stuff they were inscribing on their tombstones, they would cease to do so immediately."
Terry Eagleton,Left,"Lacan, as we have seen in our discussion of Freud, regards the unconscious as structured like a language. This is not only because it works by metaphor and metonymy: it is also because, like language itself for the post-structuralists, it is composed less of signs"
Terry Eagleton,Left,The fascinating is only a step away from the freakish.
Terry Eagleton,Left,"Might not too much investment in teaching Shelley mean falling behind our economic competitors? But there is no university without humane inquiry, which means that universities and advanced capitalism are fundamentally incompatible. And the political implications of that run far deeper than the question of student fees."
Terry Eagleton,Left,"It is characteristic of poetic language that it gives us not simply the denotation of a word, but a whole cluster of connotations or associated meanings...[but] if connotation is a kind of free associating, how can a poem ever come to mean anything definite? What if Shakespeare's line 'Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?' reminds me irresistibly of fried bananas? The brief answer to this is that meaning is not a matter of psychological associations. Indeed, there is a sense in which it is not a 'psychological' matter at all. Meaning is not an arbitrary process in our heads, but a rule-governed social practice; and unless that line 'Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?' could plausibly, in principle, suggest fried bananas to other readers as well, it cannot be part of its meaning."
Terry Eagleton,Left,"Literary' feelings are responses to poems, not just states of emotion which occur in their presence."
Terry Eagleton,Left,"The liberal state has no view on whether witchcraft is more valuable than all-in wrestling. Like a tactful publican, it has as few opinions as possible. Many liberals suspect passionate convictions are latently authoritarian. But liberalism should surely be a passionate conviction. Liberals are not necessarily lukewarm. Only the more macho leftist suspects that they have no balls. You can be ardently neutral, and fiercely indifferent."
Terry Eagleton,Left,"There is little opiate delusion in Jesus's grim warning to his comrades that if they were true to his Gospel of love and justice, they would meet the same sticky end as him. The measure of your love in his view is whether they kill you or not."
Terry Eagleton,Left,"The golden age of cultural theory is long past. The pioneering works of Jacques Lacan, Claude Lévi-Strauss, Louis Althusser, Roland Barthes and Michel Foucault are several decades behind us [ … ] Some of them have since been struck down. Fate pushed Roland Barthes under a Parisian laundry van, and afflicted Michel Foucault with Aids. It dispatched Lacan, Williams and Bourdieu, and banished Louis Althusser to a psychiatric hospital for the murder of his wife. It seemed that God was not a structuralist."
Terry Eagleton,Left,"Statements of fact are after all statements, which presumes a number of questionable judgements: that those statements are worth making, perhaps more worth making than certain others, that I am the sort of person entitled to make them and perhaps able to guarantee their truth, that you are the kind of person worth making them to, that something useful is accomplished by making them, and so on."
Terry Eagleton,Left,"All of our descriptive statements move within an often invisible network of value-categories, and indeed without such categories we would have nothing to say to each other at all. It is not just as though we have something called factual knowledge which may then be distorted by particular interests and judgements, although this is certainly possible; it is also that without particular interests we would have no knowledge at all, because we would not see the point of bothering to get to know anything. Interests are constitutive of our knowledge, not merely prejudices which imperil it. The claim that knowledge should be 'value-free' is itself a value-judgement."
Terry Eagleton,Left,Nature is a bottom-line concept.
Terry Eagleton,Left,"What Althusser does… is to rethink the concept of ideology in terms of Lacan’s ‘imaginary’. For the relation of an individual subject to society as a whole in Althusser’s theory is rather like the relation of the small child to his or her mirror-image in Lacan’s. In both cases, the human subject is supplied with a satisfyingly unified image of selfhood by identifying with an object which reflects this image back to it in a closed, narcissistic circle. In both cases, too, this image involves a misrecognition, since it idealizes the subject’s real situation. The child is not actually as integrated as its image in the mirror suggests; I am not actually the coherent, autonomous, self generating subject I know myself to be in the ideological sphere, but the ‘decentred’ function of several social determinants. Duly enthralled by the image of myself I receive, I subject myself to it; and it is through this ‘subjection’ that I become a subject."
Terry Eagleton,Left,"Derrida… labels as ‘metaphysical’ any such thought system which depends on an unassailable foundation, a first principle or unimpeachable ground upon which a whole hierarchy of meanings may be constructed. It is not that he believes that we can merely rid ourselves of the urge to forge such first principles, for such an impulse is deeply embedded in our history, and cannot"
Terry Eagleton,Left,"Woman is the opposite, the ‘other’ of man: she is non-man, defective man, assigned a chiefly negative value in relation to the male first principle. But equally man is what he is only by virtue of ceaselessly shutting out this other or opposite, defining himself in antithesis to it, and his whole identity is therefore caught up and put at risk in the very gesture by which he seeks to assert his unique, autonomous existence. Woman is not just an other in the sense of something beyond his ken, but an other intimately related to him as the image of what he is not, and therefore as an essential reminder of what he is. Man therefore needs this other even as he spurns it, is constrained to give a positive identity to what he regards as no-thing. Not only is his own being parasitically dependent upon the woman, and upon the act of excluding and subordinating her, but one reason why such exclusion is necessary is because she may not be quite so other after all. Perhaps she stands as a sign of something in man himself which he needs to repress, expel beyond his own being, relegate to a securely alien region beyond his own definitive limits. Perhaps what is outside is also somehow inside, what is alien also intimate"
Terry Eagleton,Left,One criticism of Freud still sometimes heard on the political Left is that his thinking is individualist
Terry Eagleton,Left,"Not all of Derrida's writing is to everyone's taste. He had an irritating habit of overusing the rhetorical question, which lends itself easily to parody: 'What is it, to speak? How can I even speak of this? Who is this I who speaks of speaking?"
Terry Eagleton,Left,Nationalism is like class. You have to have it in order to be rid of it.
Terry Eagleton,Left,"It is conceivable that not knowing the meaning of life is part of the meaning of life, rather as not counting how many words I am uttering when I give an after-dinner speech helps me to give an after-dinner speech. Perhaps life is kept going by our ignorance of its fundamental meaning, as capitalism for Karl Marx"
Terry Eagleton,Left,"Those who speak of harmony and consensus should beware of what one might call the industrial chaplain view of reality. The idea, roughly speaking, is that there are greedy bosses on one side and belligerent workers on the other, while in the middle, as the very incarnation of reason, equity and moderation, stands the decent, soft-spoken, liberal-minded chaplain who tries selflessly to bring the two warring parties together. But why should the middle always be the most sensible place to stand? Why do we tend to see ourselves as in the middle and other people as on the extremes? After all, one person’s moderation is another’s extremism. People don’t go around calling themselves a fanatic, any more than they go around calling themselves Pimply. Would one also seek to reconcile slaves and slave masters, or persuade native peoples to complain only moderately about those who are plotting their extermination? What is the middle ground between racism and anti-racism?"
Terry Eagleton,Left,"That Hitchens represents a grievous loss to the left is beyond doubt. He is a superb writer, superior in wit and elegance to his hero George Orwell, and an unstanchably eloquent speaker. He has an insatiable curiosity about the modern world and an encyclopaedic knowledge of it, as well as an unflagging fascination with himself. Through getting to know all the right people, an instinct as inbuilt as his pancreas, he could tell you without missing a beat whom best to consult in Rabat about education policy in the Atlas Mountains. The same instinct leads to chummy lunches with Bill Deedes and Peregrine Worsthorne. In his younger days, he was not averse to dining with repulsive fat cats while giving them a piece of his political mind. Nowadays, one imagines, he just dines with repulsive fat cats."
Terry Eagleton,Left,"If Marx had no time for the state, it was partly because he viewed it as a kind of alienated power. It was as though this august entity had confiscated the abilities of men and women to determine their own existence, and was now doing so on their behalf. It also had the impudence to call this process ‘‘democracy.’’ Marx himself began his career as a radical democrat and ended up as a revolutionary one, as he came to realize just how much transformation genuine democracy would entail; and it is as a democrat that he challenges the state’s sublime authority. He is too wholehearted a believer in popular sovereignty to rest content with the pale shadow of it known as parliamentary democracy. He is not in principle opposed to parliaments, any more than was Lenin. But he saw democracy as too precious to be entrusted to parliaments alone. It had to be local, popular and spread across all the institutions of civil society. It had to extend to economic as well as political life. It had to mean actual self-government, not government entrusted to a political elite. The state Marx approved of was the rule of citizens over themselves, not of a minority over a majority. The state, Marx considered, had come adrift from civil society. There was a blatant contradiction between the two. We were, for example, abstractly equal as citizens within the state, but dramatically unequal in everyday social existence. That social existence was riven with conflicts, but the state projected an image of it as seamlessly whole. The state saw itself as shaping society from above, but was in fact a product of it. Society did not stem from the state; instead, the state was a parasite on society. The whole setup was topsy-turvy. As one commentator puts it, ‘‘Democracy and capitalism have been turned upside down’’"
Terry Eagleton,Left,To be outside any situation whatsoever is known as being dead.
Terry Eagleton,Left,Culture was now largely a matter of how to keep people harmlessly distracted when they were not working.
Terry Eagleton,Left,"When they first emerged in their present shape around the turn of the 18th century, the so-called humane disciplines had a crucial social role. It was to foster and protect the kind of values for which a philistine social order had precious little time. The modern humanities and industrial capitalism were more or less twinned at birth. To preserve a set of values and ideas under siege, you needed among other things institutions known as universities set somewhat apart from everyday social life. This remoteness meant that humane study could be lamentably ineffectual. But it also allowed the humanities to launch a critique of conventional wisdom."
Terry Eagleton,Left,"The idea that literary theorists killed poetry dead because with their shrivelled hearts and swollen brains they are incapable of spotting a metaphor, let alone a tender feeling, is on of the more obtuse critical platitudes of our time."
Terry Eagleton,Left,"Just as it looks as though the sun moves round the earth, so ordinary language seems to invert the relations between signifiers and signifieds, or words and their meanings. In everyday speech, it seems as though the word is simply the obedient transmitter of the meaning. It is as though it evaporates into it. If language did not conceal its operations in this way, we might be so enraptured by its music that, like the Lotus Eaters, we would never get anything done - rather as for Nietzsche, if we were mindful of the appalling butchery which produced civilised humanity, we would never get out of bed. Ordinary language, like history for Nietzsche or the ego for Freud, operates by a kind of salutary amnesia or repression. Poetry is the kind of writing which stands this inversion of form and content, or signifier and signified, on its feet again. It makes it hard for us to brush aside the words to get at the meanings. It makes it clear that the signified is the result of a complex play of signifiers. And in doing so, it allows us to experience the very medium of our experience."
Terry Eagleton,Left,"A poem is a fictional, verbally inventive moral statement in which it is the author, rather than the printer or word processor, who decides where the lines should end. This dreary-sounding definition, unpoetic to a fault, may well turn out to be the best we can do."
Terry Eagleton,Left,"Modern poets like Frost still want to make 'deep' statements; but they are also more sceptical of such high-sounding generalities than many of their forebears. So, rather like T.S. Eliot's The Waste Land, they gesture enigmatically to such profundities while at the same time being nervous of committing themselves to them."
Terry Eagleton,Left,"Literary works quite often ‘know’ things that the reader does not know, or does not know yet, or perhaps will never know."
Terry Eagleton,Left,"The words I love you are always at some level a quotation. All language is generalising, including words like this, here, unique, right now, and my utterly special little sweetheart. The word individual originally mean indivisible, meaning that to be a person was to be a part of a greater whole. There could never be simply one person, any more than there could simply be one letter or one number."
Terry Eagleton,Left,"Interestingly, this speech by Prospero does not contrast the unreality of the stage with the solid, flesh-and-blood existence of real men and women. On the contrary, it seizes on the flimsiness of dramatic characters as a metaphor for the fleeting, fantasy-ridden quality of actual human lives. It is we who are made of dreams, not just such figments of Shakespeare’s imagination as Ariel and Caliban. The cloud-capped towers and gorgeous palaces of this earth are mere stage scenery after all."
Terry Eagleton,Left,Baa Baa Black Sheep’ makes Marx’s Capital look like Mary Poppins.
Terry Eagleton,Left,"Marx was troubled by the question of why ancient Greek art retained an ‘eternal charm’, even though the social conditions which produced it had long passed; but how do we know that it will remain ‘eternally’ charming, since history has not yet ended? Let us imagine that by dint of some deft archaeological research we discovered a great deal more about what ancient Greek tragedy actually meant to its original audiences, recognized that these concerns were utterly remote from our own, and began to read the plays again in the light of this deepened knowledge. One result might be that we stopped enjoying them. We might come to see that we had enjoyed them previously because we were unwittingly reading them in the light of our own preoccupations; once this became less possible, the drama might cease to speak at all significantly to us.The fact that we always interpret literary works to some extent in the light of our own concerns - indeed that in one sense of ‘our own concerns’ we are incapable of doing anything else - might be one reason why certain works of literature seem to retain their value across the centuries. It may be, of course, that we still share many preoccupations with the work itself; but it may also be that people have not actually been valuing the ‘same’ work at all, even though they may think they have. ‘Our’ Homer is not identical with the Homer of the Middle Ages, nor ‘our’ Shakespeare with that of his contemporaries; it is rather that different historical periods have constructed a ‘different’ Homer and Shakespeare for their own purposes, and found in these texts elements to value or devalue, though not necessarily the same ones. All literary works, in other words, are ‘rewritten’, if only unconsciously, by the societies which read them; indeed there is no reading of a work which is not also a ‘re-writing’. No work, and no current evaluation of it, can simply be extended to new groups of people without being changed, perhaps almost unrecognizably, in the process; and this is one reason why what counts as literature is a notably unstable affair."
Terry Eagleton,Left,"To call for close reading, in fact, is to do more than insist on due attentiveness to the text. It inescapably suggests an attention to this rather than to something else: to the ‘words on the page’ rather than to the contexts which produced and surround them. It implies a limiting as well as a focusing of concern - a limiting badly needed by literary talk which would ramble comfortably from the texture of Tennyson’s language to the length of his beard. But in dispelling such anecdotal irrelevancies, ‘close reading’ also held at bay a good deal else: it encouraged the illusion that any piece of language, ‘literary’ or not, can be adequately studied or even understood in isolation. It was the beginnings of a ‘reification’ of the literary work, the treatment of it as an object in itself, which was to be triumphantly consummated in the American New Criticism."
Terry Eagleton,Left,"...it is most certainly Christianity itself which is primarily responsible for the intellectual sloppiness of its critics. Apart from the single instance of Stalinism, it is hard to think of a historical movement that has more squalidly betrayed its own revolutionary origins...For the most part, it has become the creed of the suburban well-to-do, not the astonishing promise offered to the riffraff and undercover anti-colonial militants with whom Jesus himself hung out...This brand of piety is horrified by the sight of a female breast, but considerably less appalled by the obscene inequalities between rich and poor."
Terry Eagleton,Left,[God] is a kind of perpetual critique of instrumental reason.
Terry Eagleton,Left,"The ‘healthy’ sign, for Barthes, is one which draws attention to its own arbitrariness"
Terry Eagleton,Left,"Equally serious is the complaint that psychoanalysis as a medical practice is a form of oppressive social control, labelling individuals and forcing them to conform to arbitrary definitions of ‘normality’. This charge is in fact more usually aimed against psychiatric medicine as a whole: as far as Freud’s own views on ‘normality’ are concerned, the accusation is largely misdirected. Freud’s work showed, scandalously, just how ‘plastic’ and variable in its choice of objects libido really is, how so-called sexual perversions form part of what passes as normal sexuality, and how heterosexuality is by no means a natural or self-evident fact. It is true that Freudian psychoanalysis does usually work with some concept of a sexual ‘norm’; but this is in no sense given by Nature."
Terry Eagleton,Left,"Even in the act of fleeing modern ideologies, however, literary theory reveals its often unconscious complicity with them, betraying its elitism, sexism or individualism in the very ‘aesthetic’ or ‘unpolitical’ language it finds natural to use of the literary text. It assumes, in the main, that at the centre of the world is the contemplative individual self, bowed over its book, striving to gain touch with experience, truth, reality, history or tradition. Other things matter too, of course"
Terry Eagleton,Left,"What it means to be a ‘better person’, then, must be concrete and practical"
Terry Eagleton,Left,"There is, in fact, no need to drag politics into literary theory: as with South African sport, it has been there from the beginning. I mean by the political no more than the way we organize our social life together, and the power-relations which this involves; and what I have tried to show throughout this book is that the history of modern literary theory is part of the political and ideological history of our epoch. From Percy Bysshe Shelley to Norman N. Holland, literary theory has been indissociably bound up with political beliefs and ideological values. Indeed literary theory is less an object of intellectual enquiry in its own right than a particular perspective in which to view the history of our times. Nor should this be in the least cause for surprise. For any body of theory concerned with human meaning, value, language, feeling and experience will inevitably engage with broader, deeper beliefs about the nature of human individuals and societies, problems of power and sexuality, interpretations of past history, versions of the present and hopes for the future. It is not a matter of regretting that this is so"
Terry Eagleton,Left,"Literary works are pieces of rhetoric as well as reports. They demand a peculiarly vigilant kind of reading, one which is alert to tone, mood, pace, genre, syntax, grammar, texture, rhythm, narrative structure, punctuation, ambiguity – in fact to everything that comes under the heading of ‘form’."
Terry Eagleton,Left,"We are not optimists; we do not present a lovely vision of the world which everyone is expected to fall in love with. We simply have, wherever we are, some small local task to do, on the side of justice, for the poor."
Terry Eagleton,Left,Middle paths in tragedy are in notably short supply.
Terry Eagleton,Left,"When the Dublin-born Beckett was asked by a Parisian journalist whether he was English, he replied, ‘On the contrary."
Terry Eagleton,Left,Morality has precious little to do with feeling in any case. The fact that you feel a surge of nausea at the sight of someone with half their head shot away is neither here nor there as long as you try to help them.
Terry Eagleton,Left,"We do not know whether Melville's work is of universal interest because we have not reached the end of history yet, despite the best efforts of some of our political leaders."
Terry Eagleton,Left,"the artist can never quite get on terms with God, who as far as creation goes has got there first and pulled off a product hard to beat."
Terry Eagleton,Left,"Poetry is concerned not just with the meaning of experience, but with the experience of meaning."
Terry Eagleton,Left,"I hope to show in the process that critical analysis can be fun, and in doing so help to demolish the myth that analysis is the enemy of enjoyment."
Terry Eagleton,Left,"One of the most moving narratives of modern history is the story of how men and women languishing under various forms of oppression came to acquire, often at great personal cost, the sort of technical knowledge necessary for them to understand their own condition more deeply, and so acquire some of the theoretical armoury essential to change it. ... There is no reason why literary critics should not turn to autobiography or anecdotalism, or simply slice up their texts and deliver them to their publishers in a cardboard box, if they are not so politically placed as to need emancipatory knowledge."
Terry Eagleton,Left,"Characters may lend the action a certain colouring, but it is what happens that comes first. To overlook this while watching a tragedy would be like treating a football game simply as the acts of a set of solitary individuals, or as chance for each of them to display 'personality'. The fact that some players behave as though this is precisely what football games are about should not distract us from this point."
Terry Eagleton,Left,"Macbeth as a whole is awash with questions, sometimes questions responded to by another question, which helps to generate an atmosphere of uncertainty, anxiety and paranoid suspicion."
Terry Eagleton,Left,"One of the striking aspects of the lines is the way they make us see a tree, with its pattern of twigs, leaves and branches, as a visual image of the invisible roots of language."
Terry Eagleton,Left,"The resurrection for Christians is not just a metaphor. It is real enough, but not in the sense that you could have taken a photograph of it had you been lurking around Jesus's tomb armed with a Kodak. Meanings and values are also real, but you cannot photograph them either. They are real in the same sense that a poem is real."
Terry Eagleton,Left,"In a world in which everything bears the indelible impress of Man, it is refreshing to escape from time to time from this wall-to-wall humanisation. Hence the American enthusiasm for national parks and outdoor activities. It is seductive to see the world as though we were not there to see it. We can always dream of perceiving things as they are in themselves, without the buzz and distortion of human meaning. We can take a vacation now and then from the intolerable burden of sense-making, rather as we do when we treat human flesh as something to be mindlessly indulged. We can shuck off language and confront reality in the raw, as we imagine an innocent child might do."
Terry Eagleton,Left,"The form of life Jesus offers his followers is not one of social integration but a scandal to the priestly and political establishment. It is a question of being homeless, propertyless, peripatetic, celibate, socially marginal, disdainful of kinsfolk, averse to material possessions, a friend of outcasts and pariahs, a thorn in the side of the Establishment and a scourge of the rich and powerful. Indeed, Pierre Bayle points to this fact as an argument against the political necessity of religious faith. Christianity, he remarks, is no basis for civil order, since Jesus proclaims that he has come to pitch society into turmoil.47"
Terry Eagleton,Left,"It is thus the adventure of poetry, not the closure of philosophy, that most truly reflects the human condition."
Terry Eagleton,Left,"But if we are not given his real name, then he does not have one."
Terry Eagleton,Left,"Another anti-theoretical stratagem is to claim that in order to launch some fundamental critique of our culture, we would need to be standing at some Archimedean point beyond it. What this fails to see is that reflecting critically on our situation is part of our situation. It is a feature of the peculiar way we belong to the world. It is not some impossible light-in-the-refrigerator attempt to scrutinize ourselves when we are not there. Curving back on ourselves is as natural to us as it is to cosmic space or a wave of the sea. It does not entail jumping out of our own skin. Without such self-monitoring we would not have survived as a species."
Terry Eagleton,Left,"It may well be that a liking for bananas is a merely private matter, though this is in fact questionable."
Terry Eagleton,Left,"You don't bring about major political change simply by changing people's minds. It's their interests that need to be assailed, not their opinions."
Terry Eagleton,Left,"That the death of God involves the death of Man, along with the birth of a new form of humanity, is orthodox Christian doctrine, a fact of which Nietzsche seems not to have been aware."
Terry Eagleton,Left,"Even a whole society, Marx comments, a nation, or even all simultaneously existing societies together, are not the owners of the globe. They are only its possessors, its usufructuaries, and like boni patres familias [good fathers of families] they must hand it down to succeeding generations in an improved condition."
Terry Eagleton,Left,"It is capitalism that sees production as potentially infinite, and socialism that sets it in the context of moral and aesthetic values. Or as Marx himself puts it in the first volume of Capital, under a form appropriate to the full development of the human race."
Terry Eagleton,Left,Marx’s once scandalous thesis that governments are simple business agents for international capital is today an obvious fact
Terry Eagleton,Left,"Imagine someone holding forth on biology whose only knowledge of the subject is 'The Book of British Birds,' and you have a rough idea of what it feels like to read Richard Dawkins on theology."
Terry Eagleton,Left,"Jesus hung out with whores and social outcasts, was remarkably casual about sex, disapproved of the family... urged us to be laid-back about property and possessions, warned his followers that they too would die violently, and insisted that the truth kills and divides as well as liberates. He also cursed self-righteous prigs and deeply alarmed the ruling class"
Terry Eagleton,Left,People who are both powerful and dissatisfied are peculiarly dangerous.
Terry Eagleton,Left,...revolutionary nationalism was by far the most successful radical tide of the the twentieth century.
Terry Eagleton,Left,"If theory means a reasonably systematic reflection of our guiding assumptions, it remains as indispensable as ever."
Terry Eagleton,Left,"I argue that three key doctrines of postmodernist thought have conspired to discredit the classical concept of ideology. The first of these doctrines turns on a rejection of the notion of representation--in fact, a rejection of an empiricist model of representation, in which the representational baby has been nonchalantly slung out with, the empiricist bathwater. The second revolves on an epistemological skepticism which would hold that the very act of identifying a form of consciousness as ideological entails some untenable notion of absolute truth. Since the latter idea attracts few devotees these days, the former is thought to crumble in its wake. We cannot brand Pol Pot a Stalinist bigot since this would imply some metaphysical certitude about what not being a Stalinist bigot would involve. The third doctrine concerns a reformulation of the relations between rationality, interests and power, along roughly neo-Nietzschean lines, which is thought to render the whole concept of ideology redundant."
Terry Eagleton,Left,"Ideology is essentially a matter of meaning; but the condition of advanced capitalism, some would suggest, is one of pervasive non-meaning. The sway of utility and technology bleach social life of significance, subordinating use-value to the empty formalism of exchange-value."
Terry Eagleton,Left,Literary figures have no pre-history. It is said that a theatre director who was staging one of Harold Pinter's plays asked the playwright for some hints as to what his characters were up to before they came on stage. Pinter's reply was ‘Mind your own fucking business.
Terry Eagleton,Left,Hostility to theory usually means an opposition to other people’s theories and an oblivion of one’s own. One purpose of this book is to lift that repression and allow us to remember.
Terry Eagleton,Left,"Indeed, post-colonial theory first emerged in the wake of the failure of the Third World nations to go it alone. It marked the end of the era of Third World revolutions and the first glimmerings of what we now know as globalization."
Terry Eagleton,Left,Those who can think up feminism or structuralism; those who can't apply such insights to Moby Dick or The Cat in the Hat.
Terry Eagleton,Left,"Men and women do not live by culture alone,the vast majority of them throughout history have been deprived of the chance of living by it at all, and those few who are fortunate enough to live by it now are able to do so because of the labour of those who do not."
Terry Eagleton,Left,"Marx himself was a formidably cultivated man in the great central European tradition, who longed to be finished with what he scathingly called the 'economic crap' of Capital in order to write his big book on Balzac."
Terry Eagleton,Left,"Theology, however implausible many of its truth claims, is one of the most ambitious theoretical arenas left in an increasingly specialized world"
Terry Eagleton,Left,"Nations sometimes flourish by denying the crimes that brought them into being. Only when the original invasion, occupation, extermination or usurpation has been safely thrust into the political unconscious can sovereignty feel secure."
Terry Eagleton,Left,"Modern capitalist nations are the fruit of a history of slavery, genocide, violence and exploitation every bit as abhorrent as Mao's China or Stalin's Soviet Union."
Terry Eagleton,Left,"Post-structuralism is among other things a kind of theoretical hangover from the failed uprising of ‘68, a way of keeping the revolution warm at the level of language, blending the euphoric libertarianism of that moment with the stoical melancholia of its aftermath."
Terry Eagleton,Left,"Discussing the character of Elizabeth Bennet in Pride and Prejudice is a matter of content (of 'what?'), whereas examining Jane Austen's techniques of characterisation is a question of form (or 'how?'). Some may find these fine distinctions scholastic, but then some find any fine distinctions scholastic."
Terry Eagleton,Left,"Nature has the upper hand. For the individual, his is known as death. The Faustian dream of progress without limits in a material world magically responsive to our touch overlooks the priority of external nature. Today, this is known not as the Faustian dream but the American one. It is a vision which secretly detests the material because it blocks our path to the infinite. This is why the material world has either to be vanquished by force or dissolved into culture. Postmodernism and the pioneer spirit are sides of the same coin. Neither can accept that it is our limits that make us what we are, quite as much as that perpetual transgression of them we know as human history."
Terry Eagleton,Left,What Wittgenstein calls a ‘grammar’ is a set of rules by which we are able to make sense of things; and such grammars are not correlated with reality. It is not as though some of them provide us with a more accurate representation
Terry Eagleton,Left,"If the oppressed must be alert enough to follow the rulers' instructions, they are therefore conscious enough to be able to challenge them."
Terry Eagleton,Left,"The fact that people are massed anonymously together may be in one sense an alienation, but in another sense it is a condition of their emancipation."
Terry Eagleton,Left,"You can tell that the capitalist system is in trouble when people start talking about capitalism. It indicates that the system has ceased to be as natural as the air we breathe, and can be seen instead as the historically rather recent phenomenon that it is."
Terry Eagleton,Left,"Marxists want nothing more than to stop being Marxists. In this respect, being a Marxist is nothing like being a Buddhist or a billionaire."
Terry Eagleton,Left,"Without the Ermen & Engels mill in Salford, owned by Friedrich Engels’s textile-manufacturing father, the chronically impoverished Marx might well have not survived to pen polemics against textile manufacturers. Something"
Terry Eagleton,Left,"We do not charge an author with unpardonable ignorance because his twelfth-century characters never stop arguing about The Smiths. It is possible that the writer, having only a feeble grasp of history, really does believe that The Smiths were around in the twelfth century, or that Morrissey is such a superlative genius as to be timeless. But the fact that this occurs in a work of fiction inclines us to the charitable view that the distortion is deliberate. This is highly convenient for poets and novelists. Literature, like an absolute monarch among his fawning courtiers, is where you can never be wrong."
Terry Eagleton,Left,"Intellectuals are not only different from academics, but almost the opposite of them. Academics usually plough a narrow disciplinary patch, whereas intellectuals of Said's kind roam ambitiously from one discipline to another. Academics are interested in ideas, whereas intellectuals seek to bring ideas to an entire culture. The word intellectual is not a euphemism for frightfully clever, but a kind of job description, like waiter or chartered accountant. Anger and academia do not usually go together, except perhaps when it comes to low pay, whereas anger and intellectuals do.Above all, academics are conscious of the difficult, untidy, nuanced nature of things, while intellectuals take sides. One reason why Raymond Williams seems to have been easily Edward Said's favourite British intellectual is that the work of both men combines these qualities with astonishing ease. Williams and Said are both angry and analytic while aware that, in all the most pressing political conflicts which confront us, someone is going to have to win and someone to lose. It is this, not a duff ear for nuance and subtlety, which marks them out from the liberal."
Terry Eagleton,Left,"All this bullshit like, Somalian children are starving.... No! Somalian children are not starving because you have a good time here. There are others who are much more guilty. Rather, use the opportunity. Society will need more and more intellectual work. It’s this topic of intellectuals being privileged"
Terry Eagleton,Left,"British flight attendants warn you not to tamper with the smoke detectors in the aircraft toilets, whereas American flight attendants warn you not to tamper with, disable or destroy them."
Terry Eagleton,Left,"It was possible to explore the 'great tradition' of the English novel and believe that in doing so you were addressing questions of fundamental value -- questions which were of vital relevance to the lives of men and women wasted in fruitless labour in the factories of industrial capitalism. But it was also conceivable that you were destructively cutting yourself off from such men and women, who might be a little slow to recognize how a poetic enjambement enacted a movement of physical balancing."
Terry Eagleton,Left,"On handing the book back to my friend, the woman inquired Is he gay? No, said my friend. The woman pondered for a moment. Is he English? she asked."
Terry Eagleton,Left,"Americans come out of the comparison rather better. They may overdo emotion, but they are not fearful of it. A surplus of feeling has rarely done as much damage as a deficiency of it."
Terry Eagleton,Left,"The trick is to keep cutting the present off from the past. In this way, you can try to deny the fact that the past is what we are made of, and that there would be no present without it. One of the several problems with this way of living is that it is not clear how what is reborn every moment can be said to be you. Personal identity involves a degree of continuity."
Terry Eagleton,Left,"In post-Nietzschean spirit, the West appears to be busily undermining its own erstwhile metaphysical foundations with an unholy mélange of practical materialism, political pragmatism, moral and cultural relativism, and philosophical skepticism."
Terry Eagleton,Left,"It is on our bodies that the law must go to work, not only on our minds. Reason must govern in collusion with the senses it subdues, rather as an astute sovereign rules in a way that allows each citizen to feel that he is doing no more than obeying the diktats of his own desires."
Terry Eagleton,Left,"High modernism is numinous through and through, as the work of art provides one of the last outposts of enchantment in a spiritually degenerate world. Postmodernism, with its notorious absence of affect, is post-numinous. It is also in a sense post-aesthetic, since the aestheticisation of everyday life extends to the point where it undermines the very idea of a special phenomenon known as art. Stretched far enough, the category of the aesthetic cancels itself out."
Terry Eagleton,Left,"What Nietzsche recognises is that you can get rid of God only if you also do away with innate meaning. The Almighty can survive tragedy, but not absurdity."
Terry Eagleton,Left,To relate a Beethoven sonata to the testicles is hardly in the style of traditional aesthetics.
Terry Eagleton,Left,"Once thought is pulled up short by a yearning that can only be known existentially, it is inevitable that conceptual discourse should give way to the birth of literature..."
Terry Eagleton,Left,"Instead of seeking fulfilment in an object, the subject must acknowledge that it can flourish only through another of its kind. It is when two free, equal individuals engage in an act of mutual recognition that desire can transcend itself into something rather more edifying."
Terry Eagleton,Left,"The privatisation of the symbolic sphere is a strictly relative affair, not least if one thinks of the various Victorian contentions over science and religion, the culture industry, the state regulation of sexuality and the like. Today, one of the most glaring refutations of the case that religion has vanished from public life is known as the United States. Late modernity (or postmodernity, if one prefers) takes some of these symbolic practices back into public ownership."
Terry Eagleton,Left,"If literature matters today, it is chiefly because it seems to many conventional critics one of the few remaining places where, in a divided, fragmented world, a sense of universal value may still be incarnate; and where, in a sordidly material world, a rare glimpse of transcendence can still be attained."
Terry Eagleton,Left,"So there is nothing inherently subversive about pleasure. On the contrary, as Karl Marx recognized, it is a thoroughly aristocratic creed. The traditional English gentleman was so averse to unpleasurable labour that he could not even be bothered to articulate properly. Hence the patrician slur and drawl, Aristotle believed that being human was something you had to get good at through constant practice, like learning Catalan or playing the bagpipes; whereas if the English gentleman was virtuous, as he occasionally deigned to be, his goodness was purely spontaneous. Moral effort was for merchants and clerks"
Terry Eagleton,Left,"At its finest, it has produced work of rare insight and originality. At its least creditable, it represents little more than the foreign affairs department of postmodernism."
Terry Eagleton,Left,"The liberal state is neutral between capitalism and its critics until the critics look like they’re winning. Then it moves in with its water hoses and paramilitary squads, and if these fail with its tanks."
Terry Eagleton,Left,"The institution of the state bound new fetters on the poor, and gave new powers to the rich … fixed forever the laws of property and inequality; converted clever usurpation into inalienable right; and for the sake of a few ambitious men, subjected all mankind to perpetual labour, servitude and misery. These are not Marx’s words, but (as we have seen already) those of Jean-Jacques Rousseau in his Discourse on Inequality."
Terry Eagleton,Left,"When St Paul comments that we die every moment, part of what he has in mind is perhaps the fact that we can only live well by buckling the self to the needs of others, in a kind of little death, or petit mort. In doing so, we rehearse and prefigure that final self-abnegation which is death. In this way, death in the sense of a ceaseless dying to self is the source of the good life. If this sounds unpleasantly slavish and self-denying, it is only because we forget that if others do this as well, the result is a form of reciprocal service which provides the context for each self to flourish. The traditional name for this reciprocity is love."
Terry Eagleton,Left,Most of the reforms we now regard as precious features of liberal society
Terry Eagleton,Left,"It is worth noting in this respect that the original proletariat was not the blue-collar male working class. It was lower-class women in ancient society. The word proletariat comes to us from the Latin word for offspring, meaning those who were too poor to serve the state with anything but their wombs."
Terry Eagleton,Left,"Revolution cannot be handed down to you by a tight-knit vanguard of conspirators. Nor, as Lenin insisted, can it be carried abroad and imposed at the point of a bayonet, as Stalin did in eastern Europe. You have to be actively involved in the making of it yourself, unlike the kind of artist who instructs his assistants to go off and pickle a shark in his name."
Terry Eagleton,Left,"The most uninspired form of criticism simply tells the story of a work in different words. Some students imagine they are writing criticism when for the most part they are simply paraphrasing a text, occasionally throwing in the odd comment of their own."
Terry Eagleton,Left,"Some texts are born literary, some achieve literariness, and some have literariness thrust upon them. –"
David Harvey,Left,"Fierce, and what capitalists sometimes call 'ruinous' competition tends, therefore, to produce leap-frogging innovations that more often that not lead capitalists to fetishise technological and organisational innovations as the answer to all their prayers"
David Harvey,Left,"Capitalists too, as the novelist Charles Dickens noted, liked to think of their workers as 'hands' only, preferring to forget they had stomachs and brains. But, said the more perceptive nineteenth-century critics, if this is how people live their lives at work, then how on earth can they think differently when they come home at night? How might it be possible to build a sense of moral community or of social solidarity, of collective and meaningful ways of belonging and living that are untainted by the brutality, ignorance and stupidity that envelops labourers at work? How, above all, are workers supposed to develop any sense of their mastery over their own fates and fortunes when they depend so deeply upon a multitude of distant, unknown and in many respects unknowable people who put breakfast on their table every day?"
David Harvey,Left,"What separates Rand from Marx is that the latter saw the true flourishing of individual creativity as best accomplished through collaboration and association with others in a collective drive to abolish the barriers of scarcity and material necessity beyond which, Marx held, the true realm of individual freedom could begin."
David Harvey,Left,"Marx inverted Hegel’s dialectics and stood it right side up, on its feet."
David Harvey,Left,"We need to get behind the surface appearances if we are to act coherently in the world. Otherwise, acting in response to misleading surface signals typically produces disastrous outcomes."
David Harvey,Left,"Thus Marx begins his attack on the liberal concept of freedom. The freedom of the market is not freedom at all. It is a fetishistic illusion. Under capitalism, individuals surrender to the discipline of abstract forces (such as the hidden hand of the market made much of by Adam Smith) that effectively govern their relations and choices. I can make something beautiful and take it to market, but if I don’t manage to exchange it then it has no value. Furthermore, I won’t have enough money to buy commodities to live. Market forces, which none of us individually control, regulate us. And part of what Marx wants to do in Capital is talk about this regulatory power that occurs even in the midst of the accidental and ever-fluctuating exchange relations between the products. Supply and demand fluctuations generate price fluctuations around some norm but cannot explain why a pair of shoes on average trades for four shirts. Within all the confusions of the marketplace, the labour-time socially necessary to produce [commodities] asserts itself as a regulative law of nature. In the same way, the law of gravity asserts itself when a person’s house collapses on top of him (168). This parallel between gravity and value is interesting: both are relations and not things, and both have to be conceptualized as immaterial but objective."
David Harvey,Left,"I don’t give a rat’s ass what you think, David! I’m tired of you bullying me, putting me down, patronizing me, treating me like some sort of simpleton. I was supposed to be a partner in this relationship – that’s what I signed up for. Not this!"
David Harvey,Left,It is therefore only at the money moment
David Harvey,Left,"Capital is process, and that is that."
David Harvey,Left,"Neoliberalism is in the first instance a theory of political economic practices that proposes that human well-being can best be advanced by liberating individual entrepreneurial freedoms and skills within an institutional framework characterized by strong private property rights, free markets, and free trade."
David Harvey,Left,"State interventions in markets (once created) must be kept to a bare minimum because, according to the theory, the state cannot possibly possess enough information to second-guess market signals (prices) and because powerful interest groups will inevitably distort and bias state interventions (particularly in democracies) for their own benefit."
David Harvey,Left,"Thatcher forged consent through the cultivation of a middle class that relished the joys of home ownership, private property, individualism, and the liberation of entrepreneurial opportunities."
David Harvey,Left,"The UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights of 1948 is a foundational document for a bourgeois, market-based individualism and as such cannot provide a basis for a thoroughgoing critique of liberal or neoliberal capitalism. Whether it is politically useful to insist that the capitalist political order live up to its own foundational principles is one thing, but to imagine that this politics can lead to a radical displacement of a capitalist mode of production is, in Marx’s view, a serious error."
David Harvey,Left,"Urbanization, we may conclude, has played a crucial role in the absorption of capital surpluses, at ever increasing geographical scales, but at the price of burgeoning processes of creative destruction that have dispossessed the masses of any right to the city whatsoever. The planet as building site collides with the ‘planet of slums’. [16] Periodically this ends in revolt, as in Paris in 1871 or the US after the assassination of Martin Luther King in 1968. If, as seems likely, fiscal difficulties mount and the hitherto successful neoliberal, postmodernist and consumerist phase of capitalist surplus-absorption through urbanization is at an end and a broader crisis ensues, then the question arises: where is our 68 or, even more dramatically, our version of the Commune?"
David Harvey,Left,"The reduction of experience to 'a series of pure and unrelated presents' further implies that the 'experience of the present becomes powerfully, overwhelmingly vivid and material: the world comes before the schizophrenic with heightened intensity, bearing the mysterious and oppressive charge of affect, glowing with hallucinatory energy' (Jameson, 1984b, 120). The image, the appearance, the spectacle can all be experienced with an intensity (joy or terror) made possible only by their appreciation as pure and unrelated presents in time. So what does it matter 'if the world thereby momentarily loses its depth and threatens to become a glossy skin, a stereoscopic illusion, a rush of filmic images without destiny?' (Jameson, 1984b). The immediacy of events, the sensationalism of the spectacle (political, scientific, military, as well as those of entertainment), become the stuff of which consciousness is forged."
David Harvey,Left,"But the ability to hold the means of exchange (in defiance of Say’s law) also awakens a passion, a lust for gold. The hoarding drive, he says, is boundless in its nature. Witness Christopher Columbus: Gold is a wonderful thing! Its owner is master of all he desires. Gold can even enable souls to enter Paradise (229–30). Here Marx, quoting Columbus, returns to the idea that once you can hang a price tag on something, you can hang it on anything"
David Harvey,Left,"In urbanisation, the suburbs are just as monocultural (as agriculture), with a lifestyle that maximises the excessive consumption of material goods in an astonishingly wasteful manner and with isolating and individualising social effects. Capital dominates the practices whereby we collectively and even individually relate to nature. It disregards anything other than functionalist aesthetic values. In its ruinous approach to the sheer beauty and infinite diversity of a natural world (of which we are all a part) it exhibits its own utterly barren qualities. If nature is fecund, given over to the perpetual creation of novelty, then capital cuts that novelty into pieces and reassembles the bits into pure technology. Capital carries within itself a dessicating definition not only of the teeming diversity of the natural world but of the tremendous potentiality of human nature to evolve freely its own capacities and powers. Capital's relation to nature and human nature is alienating in the extreme."
David Harvey,Left,Any so-called 'radical' strategy that seeks to empower the disempowered in the realm of social reproduction by opening up that realm to monetisation and market forces is headed in exactly the wrong direction. Providing financial literacy classes for the populace at large will simply expose that population predatory practices as they seek to manage their own investment portfolios like minnows swimming in a sea of sharks. Providing microcredit and microfinance facilities encourages people to participate in the market economy but does so in such a way as to maximise the energy they have to expend while minimising their returns. Providing legal title for land property ownership in the hope that this will bring economic and social stability to the lives of the marginalised will almost certainly lead in the long run to their dispossession and eviction from that space and place they already hold through customary use rights.
David Harvey,Left,"This is an absolutely vital point that cannot be overemphasized: value is immaterial but objective. Given Marx’s supposed adherence to a rigorous materialism, this is, on the face of it, a surprising argument, and we have to wrestle a bit with what it means. Value is a social relation, and you cannot actually see, touch or feel social relations directly; yet they have an objective presence. We therefore have to carefully examine this social relation and its expression."
David Harvey,Left,The coup that overthrew President Chavez of Venezuela in April 2002 was greeted with euphoria in Washington. The new president
David Harvey,Left,"For Marx, capital is not a thing, but a process"
David Harvey,Left,"But now, in the circulation M-C-M, value suddenly presents itself as a self-moving substance which passes through a process of its own, and for which commodities and money are both mere forms. But there is more to come: instead of simply representing the relations of commodities, it now enters into a private relationship with itself, as it were. It differentiates itself as original value from itself as surplus-value, just as God the Father differentiates himself from himself as God the Son…Value therefore now becomes value in process, money in process, and, as such, capital. (256)"
David Harvey,Left,"As Marx amusingly put it elsewhere, in boom economies everybody acts like a Protestant"
David Harvey,Left,"the labour-time necessary for the production of labour-power is the same as that necessary for the production of those means of subsistence; in other words, the value of labour-power is the value of the means of subsistence necessary for the maintenance of its owner."
David Harvey,Left,"What the US evidently sought to impose by main force on Iraq was a state apparatus whose fundamental mission was to facilitate conditions for profitable capital accumulation on the part of both domestic and foreign capital. I call this kind of state apparatus a neoliberal state. The freedoms it embodies reflect the interests of private property owners, businesses, multinational corporations, and financial capital. Bremer invited the Iraqis, in short, to ride their horse of freedom straight into the neoliberal corral."
David Harvey,Left,"The assumption that individual freedoms are guaranteed by freedom of the market and of trade is a cardinal feature of neoliberal thinking, and it has long dominated the US stance towards the rest of the world."
David Harvey,Left,Early naturalists talked often about deep time
David Harvey,Left,"Under dictatorship, people are enslaved but they know it, he told de Mohrenschildt, recalling his days in the Soviet Union. Here, the politicians constantly lie to people and they become immune to these lies because they have the privilege of voting. But voting is rigged and democracy here is a gigantic profusion of lies and clever brainwashing. Oswald worried about the FBI’s police-state surveillance tactics. And he believed that America was turning more militaristic as it increasingly interfered in the internal affairs of other countries."
David Harvey,Left,"If everybody in the world suddenly decided not to use their credit cards for three days, the whole global economy would be in serious trouble. (Recall how we were all urged to get out our credit cards after 9/11 and get back to shopping.) Which is why so much effort is put toward getting money out of our pockets and keeping it circulating."
David Harvey,Left,The sale of indulgences is sometimes regarded as one of the first major waves of capitalist commodification. It certainly laid the basis for all that hoarded wealth in the Vatican. Talk about the commodification of conscience and honor!
David Harvey,Left,"There is a big difference between the circulation of money as a mediator of commodity exchange and money used as capital. Not all money is capital. A monetized society is not necessarily a capitalist society. If everything revolved around the C-M-C circulation process, then money would be merely a mediator, nothing more. Capital emerges when money is put into circulation in order to get more money."
David Harvey,Left,"This left, which strangely echoes a libertarian and even neoliberal ethic of ant-statism, is nurtured intellectually by thinkers such as Michel Foucault and all those who have reassembled postmodern fragmentations under the banner of a largely incomprehensible post-structuralism that favours identity politicsand eschews class analysis. Autonomist, anarchist, and localist perspectives and actions are everywhere in evidence. But to the degree that this left seeks to change the world without taking power, so an increasingly consolidated plutocratic capitalist class remains unchallenged in its ability to dominate the world without constraint. This new ruling class is aided by a security and surveillance state that is by no means loath to use its police powers to quell all forms of dissent in the name of anti-terrorism."
David Harvey,Left,"But the more time has been released from production, the more imperative it has become to absorb that time in consumption and consumerism, given that, as was earlier argued, capitalist 'economic rationality has no room for authentically free time which neither produces nor consumes commercial wealth'. The ever-present danger is that freely associating and self-creating individuals, liberated from the chores of production and blessed with a whole range of labour-saving and time-saving technologies to aid their consumption, might start to build an alternative non-capitalistic world. They might become inclined to reject the dominant capitalist economic rationality, for example, and start evading its overwhelming but often cruel rules of time discipline. To avoid such eventualities, capital must not only find ways to absorb more and more goods and services through realisation but also somehow occupy the free time that the new technologies release."
David Harvey,Left,"Empiricism assumes that objects can be understood independendy of observing subjects. Truth is therefore assumed to lie in a world external to the observer whose job is to record and faithfully reflect the attributes of objects. This logical empiricism is a pragmatic version of that scientific method which goes under the name of 'logical positivism', and is founded in a particular and very strict view of language and meaning."
David Harvey,Left,"If you want to understand who you are and where you stand in this maelstrom of churning values, you have first to understand how commodity values get created and produced and with what consequences"
David Harvey,Left,"It is only the expression of equivalence between different sorts of commodities which brings to view the specific character of value-creating labour, by actually reducing the different kinds of labour embedded in the different kinds of commodity to their common quality of being human labour in general. (142)"
David Harvey,Left,"This attribute of equality within the market system is terribly important; Marx understands it as being fundamental to how capitalism theoretically works. Aristotle, too, understood the need for commensurability and equality in exchange relations, but he couldn’t figure out what lay behind it. Why not? Marx’s answer is that Greek society was founded on the labour of slaves, hence had as its natural basis the inequality of men and of their labour-powers (152). In a slave-holding society there can be no value theory of the sort that we are going to find under capitalism. Again, note the historical specificity of the value theory to capitalism."
David Harvey,Left,"Use-values exist in the physical material world of things that can be described in Newtonian and Cartesian terms of absolute space and time. Exchange-values lie in the relative space-time of motion and exchange of commodities, while values can be understood only in terms of the relational space-time of the world market. (The immaterial relational value of socially necessary labor times comes into being within the evolving space-time of capitalist global development.) But as Marx has already convincingly shown, values cannot exist without exchange-values, and exchange cannot exist without use-values. The three concepts are dialectically integrated with one another."
David Harvey,Left,"If we were to consult the archaeological and historical records, many would now probably hold that the money-form didn’t arise the way that Marx proposes at all. I am inclined to accept that argument, but then on top of it say the following"
David Harvey,Left,"The rise of monetary exchange leads to socially necessary labor-time becoming the guiding force within a capitalistic mode of production. Therefore, value as socially necessary labor-time is historically specific to the capitalist mode of production. It arises only in a situation where market exchange is doing the requisite job."
David Harvey,Left,"Marx wrote his dissertation on Epicurus, and he was familiar with Greek thought. Aristotle, as you will see, provides a frequent anchor for his arguments."
David Harvey,Left,"This brings us back to Marx’s method. One of the most important things to glean from a careful study of Volume I is how Marx’s method works. I personally think this is just as important as the propositions he derives about how capitalism works, because once you have learned the method and become both practiced in its execution and confident in its power, then you can use it to understand almost anything."
David Harvey,Left,"Capitalism is nothing if it is not on the move. Marx is incredibly appreciative of that, and he sets out to evoke the transformative dynamism of capital. That’s why it is so very strange that he’s often depicted as a static thinker who reduces capitalism to a structural configuration. No, what Marx seeks out in Capital is a conceptual apparatus, a deep structure, that explains the way in which motion is actually instantiated within a capitalist mode of production. Consequently, many of his concepts are formulated around relations rather than stand-alone principles; they are about transformative activity."
David Harvey,Left,"It assumed that values were a self-evident and universal truth, failing to see that the value character of the products of labour becomes firmly established only when they act as magnitudes of value. These magnitudes vary continually, independently of the will, foreknowledge and actions of the exchangers. Their own movement within society has for them the form of a movement made by things, and these things, far from being under their control, in fact control them. (167–8)"
David Harvey,Left,"Reflection on the forms of human life, hence also scientific analysis of those forms, takes a course directly opposite to their real development…Consequently, it was solely the analysis of the prices of commodities which led to the determination of the magnitude of value, and solely the common expression of all commodities in money which led to the establishment of their character as values. It is however precisely this finished form of the world of commodities"
David Harvey,Left,"have long thought that the political economists selected the wrong Defoe story. Moll Flanders is a far better model for how commodity production and circulation work. Moll behaves like the quintessential commodity for sale. She is constantly speculating on the desires of others, and others are constantly speculating on her desires (the great moment occurs when, effectively broke, she spends every last penny on hiring a grand outfit including coach and horses and appropriate jewelry to go to a ball where she enamors a young nobleman and elopes with him that night, only to find out the next morning that he is broke too, at which point they both see the humor of it all and amicably part ways). She travels the world (even goes to colonial Virginia), spends time in debtors’ prison; her fortune fluctuates up and down. She circulates like a monetary object in a sea of commodity exchanges. Moll Flanders is a much better analogy for the way capitalism, particularly the speculative Wall Street variety, really works."
David Harvey,Left,"Planning and control are being attacked as a denial of freedom. Free enterprise and private ownership are declared to be essentials of freedom. No society built on other foundations is said to deserve to be called free. The freedom that regulation creates is denounced as unfreedom; the justice, liberty and welfare it offers are decried as a camouflage of slavery.35 The"
David Harvey,Left,"This led the British economist John Maynard Keynes, writing on ‘Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren’ in 1930, to hope that: When the accumulation of wealth is no longer of high social importance, there will be great changes in the code of morals. We shall be able to rid ourselves of many of the pseudo-moral principles which have hag-ridden us for two hundred years, by which we have exalted some of the most distasteful of human qualities into the position of the highest virtues. We shall be able to afford to dare to assess the money motive at its true value. The love of money as a possession – as distinguished from the love of money as a means to the enjoyments and realities of life – will be recognized for what it is, a somewhat disgusting morbidity, one of those semi-criminal, semi-pathological propensities which one hands over with a shudder to the specialists on mental disease. All kinds of social customs and economic practices, affecting the distribution of wealth and of economic rewards and penalties, which we now maintain at all costs, however distasteful and unjust they may be in themselves, because they are tremendously useful in promoting accumulation of capital, we shall then be free, at last, to discard.2"
David Harvey,Left,"The management of the New York fiscal crisis pioneered the way for neoliberal practices both domestically under Reagan and internationally through the IMF (international monetary fund) in the 1980s. It established the principle that in the event of a conflict between the integrity of financial institutions , on one hand , and the well-being of the citizens on the other, the former was to be privileged .it emphasized that the role of the government was to create a good business climate rather than look to the needs and well-being of the popualtion at large."
David Harvey,Left,"As was shown in the so-called capital controversy of the early 1970s, the whole of contemporary economic theory is dangerously close to being founded on a tautology: the monetary value of K in physical asset-form is determined by what it is supposed to explain, viz. the value of the commodities produced3 (208–9)."
David Harvey,Left,"This boundless drive for enrichment, this passionate chase after value, is common to the capitalist and the miser; but while the miser is merely a capitalist gone mad, the capitalist is a rational miser."
David Harvey,Left,"The British imperialist logic that led to the Opium Wars reflected this: there was a lot of silver in China, so the idea was to sell Indian opium to the Chinese, get all that silver out in that lucrative sale, and thereby pay for all the goods that were being produced in Manchester and sent to India. When the Chinese resisted opening their doors to the opium trade, the British response was to knock them down with military force."
David Harvey,Left,"These passages on effective demand are problematic in certain respects, and Rosa Luxemburg provides a compelling challenge to Marx on this point, arguing that imperialism directed against noncapitalist social formations provided a partial answer to the effective demand problem.4 There has been debate over these issues ever since."
David Harvey,Left,"Isaac Newton was being called on to defend to quality of moneys as master of the Royal Mint. He had to face the problem of the debasement of the currency through the practice of shaving some of the silver off silver coins to make more coins (an easy way to make money, when you think about it). Convicted coin-clippers were publicly hung at Tyburn"
David Harvey,Left,Seeing death as the end of life is like seeing the horizon as the end of the ocean. -David Searls
David Harvey,Left,"Yes, indeed, individual laborers will have rights over their own body and individual legal rights in the labor market. In principle they have the right to sell their labor-power to whomsoever they choose and the right to buy whatever they want in the marketplace with the wages they receive. Creating such a world is what the capitalist form of imperial politics has been about for the past two hundred years."
David Harvey,Left,"Here Marx simply assumes that proletarianization has already occurred and that a functioning labor market already exists. But he does, however, want to make one thing clear: Nature does not produce on the one hand owners of money or commodities, and on the other hand men possessing nothing but their own labour-power. This relation has no basis in natural history, nor does it have a social basis common to all periods of human history. It is clearly the result of a past historical development, the product of many economic revolutions, of the extinction of a whole series of older formations of social production."
David Harvey,Left,"The central values of civilization are in danger. Over large stretches of the earth’s surface the essential conditions of human dignity and freedom have already disappeared. In others they are under constant menace from the development of current tendencies of policy. The position of the individual and the voluntary group are progressively undermined by extensions of arbitrary power. Even that most precious possession of Western Man, freedom of thought and expression, is threatened by the spread of creeds which, claiming the privilege of tolerance when in the position of a minority, seek only to establish a position of power in which they can suppress and obliterate all views but their own. The group holds that these developments have been fostered by the growth of a view of history which denies all absolute moral standards and by the growth of theories which question the desirability of the rule of law. It holds further that they have been fostered by a decline of belief in private property and the competitive market; for without the diffused power and initiative associated with these institutions it is difficult to imagine a society in which freedom may be effectively preserved."
David Harvey,Left,The shift from government (state power on its own) to governance (a broader configuration of state and key elements in civil society) has therefore been marked under neoliberalism.11 In this respect the practices of the neoliberal and developmental state broadly converge.
David Harvey,Left,"What the neo-conservatives do is to change the ‘peculiar ways’ in which such questions enter into debate. Their aim is to counteract the dissolving effect of the chaos of individual interests that neoliberalism typically produces. They in no way depart from the neoliberal agenda of a construction or restoration of a dominant class power. But they seek legitimacy for that power, as well as social control through construction of a climate of consent around a coherent set of moral values."
David Harvey,Left,"Once you can hang a price tag on something, you can in principle put a price tag on anything, including conscience and honor, to say nothing of body parts and children."
David Harvey,Left,"For this reason I get impatient with people who depict Marx’s dialectic as a closed method of analysis. It is not finite; on the contrary, it is constantly expanding, and here he is explaining precisely how. We only have to review what we have already experienced in reading Capital; the movement of its argument is a perpetual reshaping, rephrasing and expansion of the field of contradictions."
David Harvey,Left,"The value-form of the product of labour is the most abstract, but also the most universal form of the bourgeois mode of production; by that fact it stamps the bourgeois mode of production as a particular kind of social production of a historical and transitory character. If then we make the mistake of treating it as the eternal natural form of social production, we necessarily overlook the specificity of the value-form, and consequently of the commodity-form together with its further developments, the money form, the capital form, etc. (174,"
David Harvey,Left,"This is what the bourgeois political economists have done: they have treated value as a fact of nature, not a social construction arising out of a particular mode of production. What Marx is interested in is a revolutionary transformation of society, and that means an overthrow of the capitalist value-form, the construction of an alternative value-structure, an alternative value-system that does not have the specific character of that achieved under capitalism."
David Harvey,Left,"The difficulty, he says, lies not in comprehending that money is a commodity, but in discovering how, why and by what means a commodity becomes money (186): What appears to happen is not that a particular commodity becomes money because all other commodities universally express their values in it, but, on the contrary, that all other commodities universally express their values in a particular commodity because it is money. (187, emphasis added)"
David Harvey,Left,"The riddle of the money fetish is therefore the riddle of the commodity fetish, now become visible and dazzling to our eyes (187). But there is one other vital point to this chapter. With the magic and fetish of money firmly in place, men are henceforth related to each other in their social process of production in a purely atomistic way. Their own relations of production therefore assume a material shape which is independent of their control and their conscious individual action."
David Harvey,Left,"Marx is engaged in a critique of classical liberal political economy. He therefore finds it necessary to accept the theses of liberalism (and, by extension to our own times, neoliberalism) in order to show that the classical political economists were profoundly wrong even in their own terms."
David Harvey,Left,"This translates into a hypothesis about actually existing capitalism: that the more it is structured and organized according to this utopian liberal or neoliberal vision, the greater the class inequalities. And there is, it goes without saying, plenty of evidence to support the view that the rhetoric of free markets and free trade and their supposed universal benefits to which we have been subjected these past thirty years have produced exactly the result that Marx would expect:"
David Harvey,Left,Marx’s critique of free markets and free trade can shed as much devastating light on our own actually existing capitalism as it did for the capitalism of Marx’s own time and place.
David Harvey,Left,"The electoral victories of Thatcher (1979) and Reagan (1980) are often viewed as a distinctive rupture in the politics of the postwar period. I understand them more as consolidations of what was already under way throughout much of the 1970s. The crisis of 1973-5 was in part born out of a confrontation with the accumulated rigidities of government policies and practices built up during the Fordist-Keynesian period. Keynesian policies had appeared inflationary as entitlements grew and fiscal capacities stagnated. Since it had always been part of the Fordist political consensus that redistributions should be funded out of growth, slackening growth inevitably meant trouble for the welfare state and the social wage."
David Harvey,Left,"Redistributive effects and increasing social inequality have in fact been such a persistent feature of neoliberalization as to be regarded as structural to the whole project. Gérard Duménil and Dominique Lévy, after careful reconstruction of the data, have concluded that neoliberalization was from the very beginning a project to achieve the restoration of class power."
David Harvey,Left,"Woodrow Wilson, that great liberal president of the United States who sought to found the League of Nations, put it this way in a lecture he delivered at Columbia University in 1907: Since trade ignores national boundaries and the manufacturer insists on having the world as a market, the flag of his nation must follow him, and the doors of the nations which are closed against him must be battered down. Concessions obtained by financiers must be safeguarded by ministers of state, even if the sovereignty of unwilling nations be outraged in the process. Colonies must be obtained or planted, in order that no useful corner of the world may be overlooked or left unused."
Fredric Jameson,Left,"This synecdoche, in which the skirmish stands in for the battle, as Balzac recommended, is a far more forthright and energetic assault on the impossible problem of collective representation than anything on the Left, which is reduced to demonstrations and marches, and whose dilemmas are vividly dramatized by the fact that more actors and extras took part in Eisenstein’s filming of October than the number of actual participants in the Bolshevik revolution itself."
Eric Hobsbawm,Left,"The test of a progressive policy is not private but public, not just rising income and consumption for individuals, but widening the opportunities and what Amartya Sen calls the 'capabilities' of all through collective action. But that means, it must mean, public non-profit initiative, even if only in redistributing private accumulation. Public decisions aimed at collective social improvement from which all human lives should gain. That is the basis of progressive policy"
Eric Hobsbawm,Left,"Memory is life. It is always carried by groups of living people, and therefore it is in permanent evolution."
Eric Hobsbawm,Left,"As one would expect of tourists, they tried to find poverty colourful,"
Eric Hobsbawm,Left,"Human mental identities are not like shoes, of which we can only wear one pair at a time. We are all multi-dimensional beings. Whether a Mr. Patel in London will think of himself primarily as an Indian, a British citizen, a Hindu, a Gujarati-speaker, an ex-colonist from Kenya, a member of a specific caste or kin-group, or in some other capacity depends on whether he faces an immigration officer, a Pakistani, a Sikh or Moslem, a Bengali-speaker, and so on. There is no single platonic essence of Patel. He is all these and more at the same time."
Eric Hobsbawm,Left,"Many years later, another Marxian rephrased this as the choice between socialism and barbarity. Which of these will prevail is a question which the twenty-first century must be left to answer."
Eric Hobsbawm,Left,"The Labour party on the whole has not been a very effective opposition since the election, partly because it spent months and months electing its new leader. I think the Labour party should, for one thing, stress much more that for most people in the past 13 years, the period was not one of collapse into chaos but actually one where the situation improved, and particularly in areas such as schools, hospitals and a variety of other cultural achievements"
Eric Hobsbawm,Left,"The greatest cruelties of our century have been the impersonal cruelties of remote decision, of system and routine, especially when they could be justified as regrettable operational necessity."
Eric Hobsbawm,Left,"Denied a Lenin and deprived of Napoleon, France retreated into the last and, we must hope, indestructible redoubt, the world of Astérix. The postwar vogue for Parisian thinkers barely concealed their collective retreat into Hexagonal introversion and into the ultimate fortress of French intellectuality, Cartesian theory and puns."
Eric Hobsbawm,Left,"Like Machiavelli himself, he [Edward Luttwak] enjoys truth not only because it is true but also because it shocks the naive"
Eric Hobsbawm,Left,"But a progressive policy needs more than just a bigger break with the economic and moral assumptions of the past 30 years. It needs a return to the conviction that economic growth and the affluence it brings is a means and not an end. The end is what it does to the lives, life-chances and hopes of people. Look at London. Of course it matters to all of us that London's economy flourishes. But the test of the enormous wealth generated in patches of the capital is not that it contributed 20%-30% to Britain's GDP but how it affects the lives of the millions who live and work there. What kind of lives are available to them? Can they afford to live there? If they can't, it is not compensation that London is also a paradise for the ultra-rich. Can they get decently paid jobs or jobs at all? If they can't, don't brag about all those Michelin-starred restaurants and their self-dramatising chefs. Or schooling for children? Inadequate schools are not offset by the fact that London universities could field a football team of Nobel prize winners."
Eric Hobsbawm,Left,The only result of a horse race which historians can tell us with absolute confidence is one that has already been run.
Eric Hobsbawm,Left,"Economists whosimply advised leaving the economy alone, governments whose firstinstincts, apart from protecting the gold standard by deflationary policies,was to stick to financial orthodoxy, balance budgets and cut costs, werevisibly not making the situation better. Indeed, as the depression continued,it was argued with considerable force not least by J.M. Keynes whoconsequently became the most influential economist of the next fortyyears - that they were making the depression worse. Those of us wholived through the years of the Great Slump still find it almost impossibleto understand how the orthodoxies of the pure free market, then soobviously discredited, once again came to preside over a global period ofdepression in the late 1980s and 1990s, which, once again, they wereequally unable to understand or to deal with. Still, this strange phenomenonshould remind us of the major characteristic of history which itexemplifies: the incredible shortness of memory of both the theorists andpractitioners of economics. It also provides a vivid illustration of society'sneed for historians, who are the professional remembrancers of what theirfellow-citizens wish to forget."
Eric Hobsbawm,Left,There is a patent conflict between the need to reverse or at least to control the impact of our economy on the biosphere and the imperatives of a capitalist market: maximum continuing growth in the search for profit.
Eric Hobsbawm,Left,"It is a melancholy illusion of those who write books and articles that the printed word survives. Alas, it rarely does. The vast majority of printed works enter a state of suspended animation within a few weeks or years of publication, from which they are occasionally awakened, for equally short periods, by research students."
Eric Hobsbawm,Left,"And yet, something has changed for the better. We have rediscovered that capitalism is not the answer, but the question."
Eric Hobsbawm,Left,"Indeed, it may be suggested that ‘traditions’ and pragmatic conventions or routines are inversely related."
Eric Hobsbawm,Left,"On the whole, however, it was accepted that money not only talked, but governed. All the industrialist had to get to be accepted among the governors of society was enough money."
Eric Hobsbawm,Left,"As a means of alleviating poverty, Christian charity was worse than useless, as could be seen in the Papal states, which abounded in it. But it was popular not only among the traditionalist rich, who cherished it as a safeguard against the evil of equal rights... but also among the traditionalist poor, who were profoundly convinced that they had a right to crumbs from the rich man's table."
Eric Hobsbawm,Left,"Seventy years after Marx’s death, one third of the human race lived under regimes ruled by communist parties which claimed to represent his ideas and realise his aspirations."
Eric Hobsbawm,Left,So far as I am aware no leader of a party of the European left in the past twenty-five years has declared capitalism as such to be unacceptable as a system. The only public figure to do so unhesitatingly was Pope John Paul II.
Eric Hobsbawm,Left,"On the other hand, the militant left, and many socialist intellectuals such as my old friend Ralph Miliband (whose sons were to become important figures in the offices of Prime Minister Tony Blair and Chancellor Gordon Brown), also wrote off the Labour Party until the moment when it had been captured and was ready to become ‘a real socialist party’, whatever that meant. I outraged some of my friends by pointing out that they were not seriously trying to defeat Mrs Thatcher. Whatever they thought, ‘they acted as though another Labour government like the ones we have had before from time to time since 1945 were not just unsatisfactory, but worse than no Labour government … (i.e.) worse than the only alternative government on offer, namely Mrs Thatcher’s"
Eric Hobsbawm,Left,"Still, let us not disarm, even in unsatisfactory times. Social injustice still needs to be denounced and fought. The world will not get better on its own."
Eric Hobsbawm,Left,The Communist Manifesto as political rhetoric has an almost biblical force.
Eric Hobsbawm,Left,"Our problem is not to trace the emergence of a world market, of a sufficiently active class of private entrepreneurs, or even (in England) of a state dedicated to the proposition that the maximization of private profit was the foundation of government policy...By the 1780s we can take the existence of all these for granted..."
Eric Hobsbawm,Left,"Finally, it was now widely recognised that Marx’s own theory, insofar as he formulated it in a systematic manner, lacked homogeneity in at least one important respect. Thus, it might be held that it consisted both of an analysis of capitalism and its tendencies, and simultaneously of a historic hope, expressed with enormous prophetic passion and in terms of a philosophy derived from Hegel, of the perennial human desire for a perfect society, which is to be achieved through the proletariat. In Marx’s own intellectual development, the second of these preceded the first, and cannot be intellectually derived from it. In other words there is a qualitative difference between e.g. the proposition that capitalism by its nature generates insuperable contradictions which must inevitably produce the conditions of its supersession as soon as ‘centralisation of the means of production and socialisation of labour at last reach a point where they become incompatible with capitalist development’, and the proposition that the post-capitalist society will lead to the end of human alienation and the full development of all individuals’ human faculties. They belong to different forms of discourse, though both may eventually prove to be true."
Eric Hobsbawm,Left,"Once again it is evident that even between major crises, ‘the market’ has no answer to the major problem confronting the twenty-first century: that unlimited and increasingly high-tech economic growth in the pursuit of unsustainable profit produces global wealth, but at the cost of an increasingly dispensable factor of production, human labour, and, one might add, of the globe’s natural resources. Economic and political liberalism, singly or in combination, cannot provide the solution to the problems of the twenty-first century. Once again the time has come to take Marx seriously."
Eric Hobsbawm,Left,"If physical mobility is an essential condition of freedom, the bicycle has probably been the greatest single device for achieving what Marx called the full realization of the possibilities of being human invented since Gutenberg, and the only one without obvious drawbacks."
Eric Hobsbawm,Left,"More history than ever is today being revised or invented by people who do not want the real past, but only a past that suits their purpose. Today is the great age of historical mythology. The defence of history by its professionals is today more urgent in politics than ever. We are needed."
Eric Hobsbawm,Left,"Most young men and women (...) grow up in a sort of permanent present lacking any organic relation to the public past of the times they live in. This makes historians, whose business it is to remember what others forgot, more essential (...) than ever before."
Eric Hobsbawm,Left,"The cotton industry was thus launched, like a glider, by the pull of the colonial trade to which it was attached; a trade which promised not only great, but rapid and above all unpredictable expansion, which encouraged the entrepreneur to adopt the revolutionary techniques required to meet it. Between 1750 and 1769 the export of British cottons increased more than ten times over."
Eric Hobsbawm,Left,"In June 1793 sixty of the eighty departments of France were in revolt against Paris; the armies of the German princes were invading France from the north and east; the British attacked from the south and west; the country was helpless and bankrupt. Fourteen months later all France was under firm control, the invaders had been expelled, the French armies in turn occupied Belgium and were about to enter on twenty years of almost unbroken and effortless military triumph."
Eric Hobsbawm,Left,"In their way the brigands, dressed in torn peasant costume with Bourbon rosettes, or in more gorgeous apparel, were avengers and champions of the people. If their way was a blind alley, let us not deny them the longing for liberty and justice which moved them."
Eric Hobsbawm,Left,"It rests on the attempt since the 1970s to translate a pathological degeneration of the principle of laissez-faire into economic reality by the systematic retreat of states from any regulation or control of the activities of profit-making enterprise. This attempt to hand over human society to the (allegedly) self-controlling and wealth- or even welfare-maximising market, populated (allegedly) by actors in rational pursuit of their interests, had no precedent in any earlier phase of capitalist development in any developed economy, not even the USA. It was a reductio ad absurdum of what its ideologists read into Adam Smith, as the correspondingly extremist 100% state-planned command economy of the USSR was of what the Bolsheviks read into Marx."
Eric Hobsbawm,Left,"It is an irony of history that the first and greatest success of scientists in persuading governments of the indispensability of modern scientific theory to society was in the war against fascism. It is an even greater and more tragic irony that it was anti-fascist scientists who convinced the American government of the feasibility and necessity of manufacturing nuclear arms, which were then constructed by an international team of largely anti-fascist scientists."
Eric Hobsbawm,Left,This emphasis calls into question some of the most ingrained insights into the history of the modern world
Eric Hobsbawm,Left,"Nevertheless, in some ways I had lost touch with many of the currents of French culture and theoretical discussion after the 1960s, and, although any admirer of Queneau and Perec cannot but be sympathetic to the French intellectual tradition of playing games with language, as French thinkers increasingly moved into the territory of ‘postmodernism’ I found them uninteresting, incomprehensible, and in any case of not much use to historians. Even their puns failed to grip."
Eric Hobsbawm,Left,"For, whatever was the case in de Tocqueville's day, not the passion for egalitarianism but an individualist, that is anti-authoritarian, antinomian though curiously legalistic anarchism, has become the core of the value system in the USA."
Eric Hobsbawm,Left,"We may thus conclude that the kilt is a purely modern costume, first designed, and first worn, by an English Quaker industrialist, and that it was bestowed by him on the Highlanders in order not to preserve their traditional way of life but to ease its transformation: to bring them out of the heather and into the factory."
Eric Hobsbawm,Left,"It is the contrast between the constant change and innovation of the modern world and the attempt to structure at least some parts of social life within it as unchanging and invariant, that makes the ‘invention of tradition’ so interesting for historians of the past two centuries."
Eric Hobsbawm,Left,"There may be a logical or historical reason why mid-Victorian English butchers should have been predominantly Conservative (a link with agriculture?) and grocers overwhelmingly Liberal (a link with overseas trade?), but none has been established, and perhaps what needs explaining is not this, but why these two omnipresent types of shopkeeper refused to share the same opinions, whatever they were."
Eric Hobsbawm,Left,"The periodic famines, the burden of labour which made men old at forty and women at thirty, were acts of God; they only became acts for which men were held responsible in times of abnormal hardship or revolution."
Eric Hobsbawm,Left,"What distinguishes the various members of the ideological family descended from humanism and the Enlightenment, liberal, socialist, communist, or anarchist, is not the gentle anarchy which is the utopia of all of them, but the methods of achieving it."
Eric Hobsbawm,Left,"If a single misleading sentence is to sum up the relations of artist and society in this era, we might say that the French Revolution inspired him by its example, the Industrial Revolution by its horror, and the bourgeois society, which emerged from both, transformed his very existence and modes of creation."
Eric Hobsbawm,Left,"This return to militant, literal, old-fashioned religion had three aspects. For the masses it was, in the main, a method of coping with the increasingly bleak and inhuman oppressive society of middle-class liberalism: in Marx's phrase (but he was not the only one to use such words) it was the heart of a heartless world, as it is the spirit of spiritless conditions...the opium of the people. More than this: it attempted to create social and sometimes educational and political institutions in an environment which provided none, and among politically undeveloped people it gave primitive expression to their discontents and aspirations. It's literalism, emotionalism, and superstition protested both against the entire society in which rational calculation dominated and against the upper classes who deformed religion in their own image. For the middle classes rising out of such masses, religion could be a powerful moral prop, a justification of their social existence against the united contempt and hatred of traditional society, and an engine of their expansion. It liberated them from the fetters of that society, if they were sectarians. It gave their profits a moral title great than that of mere rational self-interest; it legitimized their harshness toward the oppressed; it united with trade to bring civilization to the heathen and sales to the business."
Eric Hobsbawm,Left,Nation-watching would be simple if it could be like bird-watching.
Eric Hobsbawm,Left,"It is significant that none of the modern secular states have neglected to provide national holidays giving occasions for assemblage. American Journal of Sociology, 1896–733"
Tariq Ali,Left,It was civil disobedience that won them their civil rights.
Tariq Ali,Left,"If every single Jew born anywhere in the world has the right to become an Israeli citizen, then all the Palestinians who were chucked out of Palestine by the Zionist Government should have the same right, very simple."
Tariq Ali,Left,"How we live our lives does not,unfortunately depend on us alone.Circumstances,good or bad,constantly intervene.A person close to us die.A person not so close to us carries on living.All these things affect how we live."
Tariq Ali,Left,"This is the permanent tension that lies at the heart of a capitalist democracy and is exacerbated in times of crisis. In order to ensure the survival of the richest, it is democracy that has to be heavily regulated rather than capitalism."
Tariq Ali,Left,Proximity to power has an unsurprising ability to mutate a politician's spinal cord into bright yellow jelly.
Tariq Ali,Left,That natural disasters are required to provide Americans with a glimpse of reality in their own country is an indication of the deep rot infecting the official political culture.
Tariq Ali,Left,"Monotonous talk of the end of American hegemony, the universal cliché of the period, is mostly a way of avoiding mounting a serious opposition to it."
Tariq Ali,Left,"[Taken from a BBC documentary]Tariq was born in Lahore, now in Pakistan, then part of British-ruled India, in 1943. A Catholic school education did nothing to shake his life-long atheism, which he shared with his communist parents."
Tariq Ali,Left,"In every twenty-four hours there is always one which is full of anguish and self-pity and confusion and the desire to see other faces, but an hour passes quickly enough."
Tariq Ali,Left,"Oh my son, sighed Ama. I was talking to the shadows of the pomegranate trees. At least they will be here when we are all gone."
Tariq Ali,Left,"Al Qaeda's central political objective is the creation of an Islamic republic, not the progressive realignment of American foreign policy."
Tariq Ali,Left,"To fight tyranny and oppression by using tyrannical and oppressive means, to combat a single-minded and ruthless fanaticism by becoming equally fanatical and ruthless, will not further the cause of justice or bring about a meaningful democracy. It can only prolong the cycle of violence."
Tariq Ali,Left,The heathen could only be eliminated as a force if their culture was completely erased.
Tariq Ali,Left,"I understand you only too well, but Rachel’s needs are no less important than your desire to be part of history. Find a balance. Happiness is like good health. You only miss it when it disappears."
Tariq Ali,Left,"Youssef El-Ginghly, a Tower Hamlets GP, writing in the Observer in March 2013, described how the NHS is being dismantled and concluded: This is what saddens me: what were once the NHS’s strengths – resources, expertise and the united focus on the patient – are being replaced by a fragmented and atomized service, bound not by a duty of care but by a contract and driven, not by what is best for the patient, but by the cost of the encounter. It will be a slow, insidious creep but it’s coming. Be prepared. This is the way the NHS ends: not with a bang but a whimper."
Tariq Ali,Left,"THERE CAN BE FEW delights in the world as pleasant as a Siracusan spring. The fragrance of the lemon, orange, apricot, almond and peach blossoms pervade the city, enriched by the moist, salty sea breezes. On"
Tariq Ali,Left,Ben-Gurion and Moshe Dayan were self-proclaimed atheists.
Tariq Ali,Left,"The Executive Committee of the People's Will had scored it's biggest success on 1 March 1881 by assassinating Alexander II, but also its biggest failure. (...) The aim of terror was to rouse the people from their torpor and trigger a mass uprising based on previous models (Razin/Pugatchev), but this time under new conditions and in order to completely destroy the autocracy and its institutions. It never worked out and, in a grumpy mood, Lenin once characterised terrorists as liberals with bombs, suggesting that both held the opinion that propaganda alone, of deed or word, would be sufficient for the task that lay ahead. For the most part terrorist acts scared people and legitimised government repression."
Tariq Ali,Left,"The first three decisions made by New Labour were highly symbolic, designed to show the City of London that this was not an old-style Labour regime. They had made their peace with free-market values: the Bank of England would be detached from government control and given full authority to determine monetary policy. A second determining act on entering office was to cut eleven pounds a week in welfare benefits to single mothers. The savings for the state were minimal. The aim was ideological: a show of contempt for the ‘weaknesses’ of the old welfare state, and an assertion of ‘family values’. The third measure was to charge tuition fees to all university students. This was a proposal that had been rejected more than once by the preceding Conservative government, on the grounds that it was unfair and discriminated against students from poor families. New Labour apologists were quick to point out that students in real need would not be charged, but the overall effect has been to discourage working-class children from aspiring to higher education."
Howard Zinn,Left,"I'm worried that students will take their obedient place in society and look to become successful cogs in the wheel - let the wheel spin them around as it wants without taking a look at what they're doing. I'm concerned that students not become passive acceptors of the official doctrine that's handed down to them from the White House, the media, textbooks, teachers and preachers."
Howard Zinn,Left,"Historically, the most terrible things - war, genocide, and slavery - have resulted not from disobedience, but from obedience."
Howard Zinn,Left,Protest beyond the law is not a departure from democracy; it is absolutely essential to it.
Howard Zinn,Left,"History is important. If you don't know history it is as if you were born yesterday. And if you were born yesterday, anybody up there in a position of power can tell you anything, and you have no way of checking up on it."
Howard Zinn,Left,"We don't have to engage in grand, heroic actions to participate in the process of change. Small acts, when multiplied by millions of people, can transform the world."
Howard Zinn,Left,But I suppose the most revolutionary act one can engage in is... to tell the truth.
Howard Zinn,Left,"The challenge remains. On the other side are formidable forces: money, political power, the major media. On our side are the people of the world and a power greater than money or weapons: the truth.Truth has a power of its own. Art has a power of its own. That age-old lesson – that everything we do matters – is the meaning of the people’s struggle here in the United States and everywhere. A poem can inspire a movement. A pamphlet can spark a revolution. Civil disobedience can arouse people and provoke us to think, when we organize with one another, when we get involved, when we stand up and speak out together, we can create a power no government can suppress. We live in a beautiful country. But people who have no respect for human life, freedom, or justice have taken it over. It is now up to all of us to take it back."
Howard Zinn,Left,"The memory of oppressed people is one thing that cannot be taken away, and for such people, with such memories, revolt is always an inch below the surface."
Howard Zinn,Left,"What struck me as I began to study history was how nationalist fervor--inculcated from childhood on by pledges of allegiance, national anthems, flags waving and rhetoric blowing--permeated the educational systems of all countries, including our own. I wonder now how the foreign policies of the United States would look if we wiped out the national boundaries of the world, at least in our minds, and thought of all children everywhere as our own. Then we could never drop an atomic bomb on Hiroshima, or napalm on Vietnam, or wage war anywhere, because wars, especially in our time, are always wars against children, indeed our children."
Howard Zinn,Left,"The prisons in the United States had long been an extreme reflection of the American system itself: the stark life differences between rich and poor, the racism, the use of victims against one another, the lack of resources of the underclass to speak out, the endless reforms that changed little. Dostoevski once said: The degree of civilization in a society can be judged by entering its prisons.It had long been true, and prisoners knew this better than anyone, that the poorer you were the more likely you were to end up in jail. This was not just because the poor committed more crimes. In fact, they did. The rich did not have to commit crimes to get what they wanted; the laws were on their side. But when the rich did commit crimes, they often were not prosecuted, and if they were they could get out on bail, hire clever lawyers, get better treatment from judges. Somehow, the jails ended up full of poor black people."
Howard Zinn,Left,"I am convinced that imprisonment is a way of pretending to solve the problem of crime. It does nothing for the victims of crime, but perpetuates the idea of retribution, thus maintaining the endless cycle of violence in our culture. It is a cruel and useless substitute for the elimination of those conditions--poverty, unemployment, homelessness, desperation, racism, greed--which are at the root of most punished crime. The crimes of the rich and powerful go mostly unpunished.It must surely be a tribute to the resilience of the human spirit that even a small number of those men and women in the hell of the prison system survive it and hold on to their humanity."
Howard Zinn,Left,"What matters most is not who is sitting in the White House, but who is sitting in -- and who is marching outside the White House, pushing for change."
Howard Zinn,Left,"I think people are dazzled by Obama's rhetoric, and that people ought to begin to understand that Obama is going to be a mediocre president"
Howard Zinn,Left,"The power of a bold idea uttered publicly in defiance of dominant opinion cannot be easily measured. Those special people who speak out in such a way as to shake up not only the self-assurance of their enemies, but the complacency of their friends, are precious catalysts for change."
Howard Zinn,Left,"Why should we cherish objectivity, as if ideas were innocent, as if they don’t serve one interest or another? Surely, we want to be objective if that means telling the truth as we see it, not concealing information that may be embarrassing to our point of view. But we don’t want to be objective if it means pretending that ideas don’t play a part in the social struggles of our time, that we don’t take sides in those struggles.	Indeed, it is impossible to be neutral. In a world already moving in certain directions, where wealth and power are already distributed in certain ways, neutrality means accepting the way things are now. It is a world of clashing interests – war against peace, nationalism against internationalism, equality against greed, and democracy against elitism – and it seems to me both impossible and undesirable to be neutral in those conflicts."
Howard Zinn,Left,"Any humane and reasonable person must conclude that if the ends, however desireable, are uncertain and the means are horrible and certain, these means must not be employed."
Howard Zinn,Left,"Today everybody is talking about the fact that we live in one world; because of globalization, we are all part of the same planet. They talk that way, but do they mean it? We should remind them that the words of the Declaration [of Independence] apply not only to people in this country, but also to people all over the world. People everywhere have the same right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. When the government becomes destructive of that, then it is patriotic to dissent and to criticize - to do what we always praise and call heroic when we look upon the dissenters and critics in totalitarian countries who dare to speak out."
Howard Zinn,Left,"I will try not to overlook the cruelties that victims inflict on one another as they are jammed together in the boxcars of the system. I don’t want to romanticize them. But I do remember (in rough paraphrase) a statement I once read: The cry of the poor is not always just, but if you don’t listen to it, you will never know what justice is."
Howard Zinn,Left,"I was astonished, bewildered. This was America, a country where, whatever its faults, people could speak, write, assemble, demonstrate without fear. It was in the Constitution, the Bill of Rights. We were a democracy...But I knew it wasn't a dream; there was a painful lump on the side of my head...The state and its police were not neutral referees in a society of contending interests. They were on the side of the rich and powerful. Free speech? Try it and the police will be there with their horses, their clubs, their guns, to stop you.From that moment on, I was no longer a liberal, a believer in the self-correcting character of American democracy. I was a radical, believing that something fundamental was wrong in this country--not just the existence of poverty amidst great wealth, not just the horrible treatment of black people, but something rotten at the root. The situation required not just a new president or new laws, but an uprooting of the old order, the introduction of a new kind of society--cooperative, peaceful, egalitarian."
Howard Zinn,Left,"Civil disobedience, as I put it to the audience, was not the problem, despite the warnings of some that it threatened social stability, that it led to anarchy. The greatest danger, I argued, was civil obedience, the submission of individual conscience to governmental authority. Such obedience led to the horrors we saw in totalitarian states, and in liberal states it led to the public's acceptance of war whenever the so-called democratic government decided on it...In such a world, the rule of law maintains things as they are. Therefore, to begin the process of change, to stop a war, to establish justice, it may be necessary to break the law, to commit acts of civil disobedience, as Southern black did, as antiwar protesters did."
Howard Zinn,Left,"I've always resented the smug statements of politicians, media commentators, corporate executives who talked of how, in America, if you worked hard you would become rich. The meaning of that was if you were poor it was because you hadn't worked hard enough. I knew this was a lie, about my father and millions of others, men and women who worked harder than anyone, harder than financiers and politicians, harder than anybody if you accept that when you work at an unpleasant job that makes it very hard work indeed."
Howard Zinn,Left,"The Greatest Generation?They tell me I am a member of the greatest generation. That's because I saw combat duty as a bombardier in World War 11. But I refuse to celebrate the greatest generation because in so doing we are celebrating courage and sacrifice in the cause of war. And we are miseducating the young to believe that military heroism is the noblest form of heroism, when it should be remembered only as the tragic accompaniment of horrendous policies driven by power and profit. The current infatuation with World War 11 prepares us--innocently on the part of some, deliberately on the part of others--for more war, more military adventures, more attempts to emulate the military heroes of the past."
Howard Zinn,Left,"The American system is the most ingenious system of control in world history. With a country so rich in natural resources, talent, and labor power the system can afford to distribute just enough wealth to just enough people to limit discontent to a troublesome minority. It is a country so powerful, so big, so pleasing to so many of its citizens that it can afford to give freedom of dissent to the small number who are not pleased. There is no system of control with more openings, apertures, leeways, flexibilities, rewards for the chosen, winning tickets in lotteries. There is none that disperses its controls more complexly through the voting system, the work situation, the church, the family, the school, the mass media--none more successful in mollifying opposition with reforms, isolating people from one another, creating patriotic loyalty."
Howard Zinn,Left,"What most of us must be involved in--whether we teach or write, make films, write films, direct films, play music, act, whatever we do--has to not only make people feel good and inspired and at one with other people around them, but also has to educate a new generation to do this very modest thing: change the world."
Howard Zinn,Left,"If the gods had intended for people to vote, they would have given us candidates."
Howard Zinn,Left,"There has always been, and there is now, a profound conflict of interest between the people and the government of the United States."
Howard Zinn,Left,Pessimism becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy; it reproduces itself by crippling our willingness to act.
Howard Zinn,Left,"Some of the New York Radical Women shortly afterward formed WITCH (Women's International Terrorist Conspiracy from Hell) and its members, dressed as witches, appeared suddenly on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange. A leaflet put out by WITCH in New York said:WITCH lives and smiles in every woman. She is the free part of each of us, beneath the shy smiles, the acquiescence to absurd male domination, the make-up or flesh-suffocating clothes our sick society demands. There is no joining WITCH. If you are a woman and dare to look within yourself, you are a WITCH. You make your own rules."
Howard Zinn,Left,"The Constitution. . . illustrates the complexity of the American system: that it serves the interests of a wealthy elite, but also does enough for small property owners, for middle-income mechanics and farmers, to build a broad base of support. The slightly prosperous people who make up this base of support are buffers against the blacks, the Indians, the very poor whites. They enable the elite to keep control with a minimum of coercion, a maximum of law--all made palatable by the fanfare of patriotism and unity."
Howard Zinn,Left,"Human beings, whatever their backgrounds, are more open than we think, that their behavior cannot be confidently predicted from their past, that we are all creatures vulnerable to new thoughts, new attitudes.And while such vulnerability creates all sorts of possibilities, both good and bad, its very existence is exciting. It means that no human being should be written off, no change in thinking deemed impossible."
Howard Zinn,Left,"They have the guns, we have the poets. Therefore, we will win."
Howard Zinn,Left,The pretense in disputed elections is that the great conflict is between the two major parties. The reality is that there is a much bigger conflict that the two parties jointly wage against large numbers of Americans who are represented by neither party and against powerless millions around the world. (p. 65)
Howard Zinn,Left,"If history is to be creative, to anticipate a possible future without denying the past, it should, I believe, emphasize new possibilities by disclosing those hidden episodes of the past when, even if in brief flashes, people showed their ability to resist, to join together, occasionally to win. I am supposing, or perhaps only hoping, that our future may be found in the past's fugitive movements of compassion rather than in its solid centuries of warfare."
Howard Zinn,Left,"We were not born critical of existing society. There was a moment in our lives (or a month, or a year) when certain facts appeared before us, startled us, and then caused us to question beliefs that were strongly fixed in our consciousness-embedded there by years of family prejudices, orthodox schooling, imbibing of newspapers, radio, and television. This would seem to lead to a simple conclusion: that we all have an enormous responsibility to bring to the attention of others information they do not have, which has the potential of causing them to rethink long-held ideas."
Howard Zinn,Left,"When you fight a war against a tyrant, who do you kill? You kill the victims of the tyrant."
Howard Zinn,Left,"In the problem of women was the germ of a solution, not only for their oppression, but for everybody's. The control of women in society was ingeniously effective. It was not done directly by the state. Instead the family was used- men to control women, women to control children, all to be preoccupied with one another , to turn to one another for help, to blame one another for trouble, to do violence to one another when things weren't going right. Why could this not be turned around? Could women liberating themselves, children freeing themselves, men and women beginning to understand one another, find the source of their common oppression outside rather than in one another? Perhaps then they could create nuggets of strength in their own relationships, millions of pockets of insurrection. They could revolutionize thought and behavior in exactly that seclusion of family privacy which the system had counted on to do its work of control and indoctrination. And together, instead of at odds- male, female, parents, children- they could undertake the changing of society itself."
Howard Zinn,Left,"That chain of relationships made me think of how connections are made--you read a book, you meet a person, you have a single experience, and your life is changed in some way. No act, therefore, however small, should be dismissed or ignored."
Howard Zinn,Left,Politics is pointless if it does nothing to enhance the beauty of our lives.
Howard Zinn,Left,But by this time I was acutely conscious of the gap between law and justice. I knew that the letter of the law was not as important as who held the power in any real-life situation.
Howard Zinn,Left,"There is a power that can be created out of pent-up indignation, courage, and the inspiration of a common cause, and that if enough people put their minds and bodies into that cause, they can win. It is a phenomenon recorded again and against in the history of popular movements against injustice all over the world."
Howard Zinn,Left,"I knew that a historian (or a journalist, or anyone telling a story) was forced to choose, out of an infinite number of facts, what to present, what to omit. And that decision inevitably would reflect, whether consciously or not, the interests of the historian."
Howard Zinn,Left,"The democratic principle, enunciated in the words of the Declaration of Independence, declared that government was secondary, that the people who established it were primary. Thus, the future of democracy depended on the people, and their growing consciousness of what was the decent way to relate to their fellow human beings all over the world."
Howard Zinn,Left,"History can come in handy. If you were born yesterday, with no knowledge of the past, you might easily accept whatever the government tells you. But knowing a bit of history--while it would not absolutely prove the government was lying in a given instance--might make you skeptical, lead you to ask questions, make it more likely that you would find out the truth."
Howard Zinn,Left,"Surely, if it is the right of the people to alter or abolish, it is their right to criticize, even severely, policies they believe destructive of the ends for which government has been established. This principle, in the Declaration of Independence, suggests that true patriotism lies in supporting the values the country is supposed to cherish: equality, life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness. When our government compromises, undermines, or attacks those values, it is being unpatriotic."
Howard Zinn,Left,"The argument that there are just wars often rests on the social system of the nation engaging in war. It is supposed that if a ‘liberal’ state is at war with a ‘totalitarian’ state, then the war is justified. The beneficent nature of a government was assumed to give rightness to the wars it wages.	...Woodrow Wilson and Franklin Roosevelt were liberals, which gave credence to their words exalting the two world wars, just as the liberalism of Truman made going into Korea more acceptable and the idealism of Kennedy’s New Frontier and Johnson’s Great Society gave an early glow of righteousness to the war in Vietnam.	What the experience of Athens suggests is that a nation may be relatively liberal at home and yet totally ruthless abroad. Indeed, it may more easily enlist its population in cruelty to others by pointing to the advantages at home. An entire nation is made into mercenaries, being paid with a bit of democracy at home for participating in the destruction of life abroad."
Howard Zinn,Left,"I had always insisted that a good education was a synthesis of book learning and involvement in social action, that each enriched the other. I wanted my students to know that the accumulation of knowledge, while fascinating in itself, is not sufficient as long as so many people in the world have no opportunity to experience that fascination."
Howard Zinn,Left,"I see this as the central issue of our time: how to find a substitute for war in human ingenuity, imagination, courage, sacrifice, patience...War is not inevitable, however persistent it is, however long a history it has in human affairs. It does not come out of some instinctive human need. It is manufactured by political leaders, who then must make a tremendous effort--by enticement, by propaganda, by coercion--to mobilize a normally reluctant population to go to war."
Howard Zinn,Left,Crosses and gallows - that deadly historic juxtaposition.
Howard Zinn,Left,"Before God and high heaven, is there a law for one man which is not a law for every other man?"
Howard Zinn,Left,"The courtroom is one instance of the fact that while our society may be liberal and democratic in some large and vague sense, its moving parts, its smaller chambers--its classrooms, its workplaces, its corporate boardrooms, its jails, its military barracks--are flagrantly undemocratic, dominated by one commanding person or a tiny elite of power."
Howard Zinn,Left,"The willingness to undertake such action cannot be based on certainties, but on those possibilities glimpsed in a reading of history different from the customary painful recounting of human cruelties. In such a reading we can find not only war but resistance to war, not only injustice but rebellion against injustice, not only selfishness but self-sacrifice, not only silence in the fact of tyranny but defiance, not only callousness but compassion.Human beings show a broad spectrum of qualities, but it is the worst of these that are usually emphasized, and the result, too often, is to dishearten us, diminish our spirit. And yet, historically, that spirit refuses to surrender."
Howard Zinn,Left,"Being fired has some of the advantages of dying without its supreme disadvantages. People say extra-nice things about you, and you get to hear them."
Howard Zinn,Left,"But there is no such thing as a pure fact, innocent of interpretation. Behind every fact presented to the world - by a teacher, a writer, anyone - is a judgement. The judgement that has been made is that this fact is important, and that other facts, omitted, are not important."
Howard Zinn,Left,I didn't want to spent a lot of close time with someone who believed that fun is a bourgeois indulgence.
Howard Zinn,Left,"Look for some peace organization to join. It will look small at first, and pitiful and helpless, but that’s how movements start. That’s how the movement against the Vietnam War started. It started with handfuls of people who thought they were helpless, thought they were powerless. But remember, this power of the people on top depends on the obedience of the people below. When people stop obeying, they have no power. When workers go on strike, huge corporations lose their power. When consumers boycott, huge business establishments have to give in. When soldiers refuse to fight, as so many soldiers did in Vietnam, so many deserters, so many fraggings, acts of violence by enlisted men against officers in Vietnam, B-52 pilots refusing to fly bombing missions anymore, war can’t go on. When enough soldiers refuse, the government has to decide we can’t continue. So, yes, people have the power. If they begin to organize, if they protest, if they create a strong enough movement, they can change things."
Howard Zinn,Left,"The inferior position of blacks, the exclusion of Indians from the new society, the establishment of supremacy for the rich and powerful in the new nation--all this was already settled in the colonies by the time of the Revolution. With the English out of the way, it could now be put on paper, solidified, regularized, made legitimate by the Constitution of the United States."
Howard Zinn,Left,Let us in the name of the Holy Trinity go on sending all the slaves that can be sold.
Howard Zinn,Left,"Give people what they need: food, medicine, clean air, pure water, trees and grass, pleasant homes to live in, some hours of work, more hours of leisure. Don't ask who deserves it. Every human being deserves it."
Howard Zinn,Left,"Emma Willard told the legislature that the education of women has been too exclusively directed to fit them for displaying to advantage the charms of youth and beauty The problem, she said, was that the taste of men, whatever it might happen to be, has made into a standard for the formation of the female character. Reason and religion teach us, she said, that we too are primary existences...not the satellites of men."
Howard Zinn,Left,"When economic interest is seen behind the political clauses of the Constitution, then the document becomes not simply the work of wise men trying to establish a decent and orderly society, but the work of certain groups trying to maintain their privileges, while giving just enough rights and liberties to enough of the people to ensure popular support."
Howard Zinn,Left,"Very important thing to keep in mind, that when justice comes and when injustices are remedied, they’re not remedied by the initiative of the national government or the politicians. They only respond to the power of social movements."
Howard Zinn,Left,"... the atmosphere of war brutalizes everyone involved, begets a fanaticism in which the original moral factor is buried at the bottom of a heap of atrocities committed by all sides."
Howard Zinn,Left,"You call this progress, because you have motor cars and telephones and flying machines and a thousand potions to make you smell better? And people sleeping on the streets?"
Howard Zinn,Left,"To emphasize the heroism of Columbus and his successors as navigators and discoverers, and to deemphasize their genocide, is not a technical necessity but an ideological choice. It serves"
Howard Zinn,Left,"We don't have to wait for some grand utopian future. The future is an endless succession of presents, and to live now as we think humans should live, in defiance of all that is bad around us, is itself a marvelous victory."
Howard Zinn,Left,"A jury is always a more orthodox body than any defendant brought before it; for blacks it is usually a whiter group, for poor people, a more prosperous group...Another lesson about the justice system: the way the judge charges the jury inevitably pushes them one way or the other, limits their independent judgment."
Howard Zinn,Left,"You can’t be neutral on a moving train, I would tell them. Some were baffled by the metaphor, especially if they took it literally and tried to dissect its meaning. Others immediately saw what I meant: that events are already moving in certain deadly directions, and to be neutral means to accept that."
Howard Zinn,Left,"Our democracy is but a name. We vote? What does that mean? It means that we choose between two bodies of real, though not avowed, autocrats. We choose between Tweedledum and Tweedledee. . . ."
Howard Zinn,Left,"It is not that the historian can avoid emphasis of some facts and not of others. This is as natural to him as to the mapmaker, who, in order to produce a usable drawing for practical purposes, must first flatten and distort the shape of the earth, then choose out of the bewildering mass of geographic information those things needed for the purpose of this or that particular map.My argument cannot be against selection, simplification, emphasis, which are inevitable for both cartographers and historians. But the map-maker's distortion is a technical necessity for a common purpose shared by all people who need maps. The historian's distortion is more than technical, it is ideological; it is released into a world of contending interests, where any chosen emphasis supports (whether the historian means to or not) some kind of interest, whether economic or political or racial or national or sexual.Furthermore, this ideological interest is not openly expressed in the way a mapmaker's technical interest is obvious (This is a Mercator projection for long-range navigation-for short-range, you'd better use a different projection). No, it is presented as if all readers of history had a common interest which historians serve to the best of their ability. This is not intentional deception; the historian has been trained in a society in which education and knowledge are put forward as technical problems of excellence and not as tools for contending social classes, races, nations.To emphasize the heroism of Columbus and his successors as navigators and discoverers, and to de-emphasize their genocide, is not a technical necessity but an ideological choice. It serves- unwittingly-to justify what was done. My point is not that we must, in telling history, accuse, judge, condemn Columbus in absentia. It is too late for that; it would be a useless scholarly exercise in morality. But the easy acceptance of atrocities as a deplorable but necessary price to pay for progress (Hiroshima and Vietnam, to save Western civilization; Kronstadt and Hungary, to save socialism; nuclear proliferation, to save us all)-that is still with us. One reason these atrocities are still with us is that we have learned to bury them in a mass of other facts, as radioactive wastes are buried in containers in the earth. We have learned to give them exactly the same proportion of attention that teachers and writers often give them in the most respectable of classrooms and textbooks. This learned sense of moral proportion, coming from the apparent objectivity of the scholar, is accepted more easily than when it comes from politicians at press conferences. It is therefore more deadly.The treatment of heroes (Columbus) and their victims (the Arawaks)-the quiet acceptance of conquest and murder in the name of progress-is only one aspect of a certain approach to history, in which the past is told from the point of view of governments, conquerors, diplomats, leaders. It is as if they, like Columbus, deserve universal acceptance, as if they-the Founding Fathers, Jackson, Lincoln, Wilson, Roosevelt, Kennedy, the leading members of Congress, the famous Justices of the Supreme Court-represent the nation as a whole. The pretense is that there really is such a thing as the United States, subject to occasional conflicts and quarrels, but fundamentally a community of people with common interests. It is as if there really is a national interest represented in the Constitution, in territorial expansion, in the laws passed by Congress, the decisions of the courts, the development of capitalism, the culture of education and the mass media."
Howard Zinn,Left,"Tecumseh, a Shawnee chief and noted orator, tried to unite the Indians against the white invasion: The way, and the only way, to check and to stop this evil, is for all the Redmen to unite in claiming a common and equal right in the land, as it was at first and should be yet; for it was never divided, but belongs to all for the use of each. That no part has a right to sell, even to each other, much less to strangers"
Howard Zinn,Left,"The country therefore was not born free but born slave and free, servant and master, tenant and landlord, poor and rich."
Howard Zinn,Left,"People should go where they are not supposed to go, say what they are not supposed to say, and stay when they are told to leave."
Howard Zinn,Left,"If you permit unprincipled and ambitious men to monopolize the soil, they will become masters of the country in the certain order of cause and effect. . . ."
Howard Zinn,Left,It was an old lesson learned by governments: that war solves problems of control.
Howard Zinn,Left,"The true task of education, Alfred North Whitehead cautioned, is to abjure stale knowledge. Knowledge does not keep any better than fish, he said. We need to keep it alive, vital, potent."
Howard Zinn,Left,"In 1992, teachers all over the country, by the thousands, were beginning to teach the Columbus story in new ways, to recognize that to Native Americans, Columbus and his men were not heroes, but marauders. The point being not just to revise our view of past events, but to be provoked to think about today."
Howard Zinn,Left,"Police, I learned over the years, are like soldiers, normally good-natured people, but part of a culture of obedience to orders and capable of brutal acts against anyone designated as the enemy"
Howard Zinn,Left,"in 1851, an aged black woman, who had been born a slave in New York, tall, thin, wearing a gray dress and white turban, listened to some male ministers who had been dominating the discussion. This was Sojourner Truth. She rose to her feet and joined the indignation of her race to the indignation of her sex: That man over there says that woman needs to be helped into carriages and lifted over ditches. . . . Nobody ever helps me into carriages, or over mud-puddles or gives me any best place. And a’nt I a woman? Look at my arm! I have ploughed, and planted, and gathered into barns, and no man could head me! And a’nt I a woman? I would work as much and eat as much as a man, when I could get it, and bear the lash as well. And a’nt I a woman? I have borne thirteen children and seen em most all sold off to slavery, and when I cried out with my mother’s grief, none but Jesus heard me! And a’nt I a woman? Thus were women beginning to resist, in the 1830s and 1840s and 1850s, the attempt to keep them in their woman’s sphere. They were taking part in all sorts of movements, for prisoners, for the insane, for black slaves, and also for all women."
Howard Zinn,Left,"Slavery existed in the African states, and it was sometimes used by Europeans to justify their own slave trade. But, as Davidson points out, the slaves of Africa were more like the serfs of Europe"
Howard Zinn,Left,"Why do we use the term greatest generation for participants in war? Why not for those who have opposed war, who have tried to make us understand that war has never solved fundamental problems?Should we not honor, instead of parachutists and bomber pilots, those conscientious objectors who refused to fight or the radicals and pacifists who opposed the idea that young people of one nation should kill young people of another nation to serve the purposes of politicians and financiers?"
Howard Zinn,Left,"Columbus, desperate to pay back dividends to those who had invested, had to make good his promise to fill the ships with gold. In the province of Cicao on Haiti, where he and his men imagined huge gold fields to exist, they ordered all persons fourteen years or older to collect a certain quantity of gold every three months. When they brought it, they were given copper tokens to hang around their necks. Indians found without a copper token had their hands cut off and bled to death. The Indians had been given an impossible task. The only gold around was bits of dust garnered from the streams. So they fled, were hunted down with dogs, and were killed."
Howard Zinn,Left,"Since the Indians were better woodsmen than the English and virtually impossible to track down, the method was to feign peaceful intentions, let them settle down and plant their corn wherever they chose, and then, just before harvest, fall upon them, killing as many as possible and burning the corn. . . . Within two or three years of the massacre the English had avenged the deaths of that day many times over."
Howard Zinn,Left,"Why will you take by force what you may have quietly by love? Why will you destroy us who supply you with food? What can you get by war? We can hide our provisions and run into the woods; then you will starve for wronging your friends. Why are you jealous of us? We are unarmed, and willing to give you what you ask, if you come in a friendly manner, and not so simple as not to know that it is much better to eat good meat, sleep comfortably, live quietly with my wives and children, laugh and be merry with the English, and trade for their copper and hatchets, than to run away from them, and to lie cold in the woods, feed on acorns, roots and such trash, and be so hunted that I can neither eat nor sleep. In these wars, my men must sit up watching, and if a twig break, they all cry out Here comes Captain Smith! So I must end my miserable life. Take away your guns and swords, the cause of all our jealousy, or you may all die in the same manner."
Howard Zinn,Left,"Thus, in that inevitable taking of sides which comes from selection and emphasis in history, I prefer to try to tell the story of the discovery of America from the viewpoint of the Arawaks, of the Constitution from the standpoint of the slaves, of Andrew Jackson as seen by the Cherokees, of the Civil War as seen by the New York Irish, of the Mexican war as seen by the deserting soldiers of Scott’s army, of the rise of industrialism as seen by the young women in the Lowell textile mills, of the Spanish-American war as seen by the Cubans, the conquest of the Philippines as seen by black soldiers on Luzon, the Gilded Age as seen by southern farmers, the First World War as seen by socialists, the Second World War as seen by pacifists, the New Deal as seen by blacks in Harlem, the postwar American empire as seen by peons in Latin America. And so on, to the limited extent that any one person, however he or she strains, can see history from the standpoint of others."
Howard Zinn,Left,Capital punishment could not be justified in any society calling itself civilized.
Howard Zinn,Left,"The colonies, it seems, were societies of contending classes"
Howard Zinn,Left,"The president, the secretary of state, and the secretary of defense were lying to the American public"
Howard Zinn,Left,"I lay back on my bunk and thought about people I love, and how lucky I was to be white and not poor and just passing briefly through a system which is a permanent hell for so many."
Howard Zinn,Left,"Three years before the terrible events of September 11, 2001, a former lieutenant colonel in the U.S. Air Force, Robert Bowman, who had flown 101 combat missions in Vietnam, and then had become a Catholic bishop, commented on the terrorist bombings of the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. In an article in the National Catholic Reporter he wrote about the roots of terrorism: We are not hated because we practice democracy, value freedom, or uphold human rights. We are hated because our government denies these things to people in Third World countries whose resources are coveted by our multinational corporations. That hatred we have sown has come back to haunt us in the form of terrorism. . . . Instead of sending our sons and daughters around the world to kill Arabs so we can have the oil under their sand, we should send them to rebuild their infrastructure, supply clean water, and feed starving children. . . . In short, we should do good instead of evil. Who would try to stop us? Who would hate us? Who would want to bomb us? That is the truth the American people need to hear."
Howard Zinn,Left,"Free white workers were better off than slaves or servants, but they still resented unfair treatment by the wealthier classes."
Howard Zinn,Left,"There was an idea in the air, becoming clearer and stronger, an idea not just in the theories of Karl Marx but in the dreams of writers and artists through the ages: that people might cooperatively use the treasures of the earth to make life better for everyone, not just a few."
Howard Zinn,Left,"Morgan then formed the U.S. Steel Corporation, combining Carnegie’s corporation with others. He sold stocks and bonds for $1,300,000,000 (about 400 million more than the combined worth of the companies) and took a fee of 150 million for arranging the consolidation. How could dividends be paid to all those stockholders and bondholders? By making sure Congress passed tariffs keeping out foreign steel; by closing off competition and maintaining the price at $28 a ton; and by working 200,000 men twelve hours a day for wages that barely kept their families alive. And so it went, in industry after industry"
Howard Zinn,Left,"IWW organizer Joseph Ettor said: If the workers of the world want to win, all they have to do is recognize their own solidarity. They have nothing to do but fold their arms and the world will stop. The workers are more powerful with their hands in their pockets than all the property of the capitalists. . . ."
Howard Zinn,Left,"Percy Bysshe Shelley’s Mask of Anarchy. . . . Rise like lions after slumber In unvanquishable number! Shake your chains to earth, like dew Which in sleep had fallen on you"
Howard Zinn,Left,"Roosevelt was as much concerned to end the oppression of Jews as Lincoln was to end slavery during the Civil War; their priority in policy (whatever their personal compassion for victims of persecution) was not minority rights, but national power."
Howard Zinn,Left,"I see policemen on horses galloping through the crowd, and hitting people. While I'm just taking this in, I am spun around and hit, on the side of the head, and knocked out. It had suddenly come home to me that, hey, I guess the police are not neutral. I guess the government is not neutral. . . . It was a turning point in my political consciousness."
Howard Zinn,Left,"If racism can’t be shown to be natural, then it is the result of certain conditions, and we are impelled to eliminate those conditions."
Howard Zinn,Left,We overestimate the power of people who become cogs in giant organizations. The fact that they become cogs actually limits what they can do. . . . There’s something very corrupting that happens to people who think they’re going to work from inside a corrupt system.
Howard Zinn,Left,"The owners of factories are more concerned than other classes and interests in the intelligence of their laborers. When the latter are well-educated and the former are disposed to deal justly, controversies and strikes can never occur, nor can the minds of the masses be prejudiced by demagogues and controlled by temporary and factious considerations."
Howard Zinn,Left,"Control in modern times requires more than force, more than law. It requires that a population dangerously concentrated in cities and factories, whose lives are filled with cause for rebellion, be taught that all is right as it is. And so, the schools, the churches, the popular literature taught that to be rich was a sign of superiority, to be poor a sign of personal failure, and that the only way upward for a poor person was to climb into the ranks of the rich by extraordinary effort and extraordinary luck."
Howard Zinn,Left,"The pretense continued over the generations, helped by all-embracing symbols, physical or verbal: the flag, patriotism, democracy, national interest, national defense, national security. The slogans were dug into the earth of American culture like a circle of covered wagons on the western plain, from inside of which the white, slightly privileged American could shoot to kill the enemy outside"
Howard Zinn,Left,"Jackson began raids into Florida, arguing it was a sanctuary for escaped slaves and for marauding Indians. Florida, he said, was essential to the defense of the United States. It was that classic modern preface to a war of conquest. Thus began the Seminole War of 1818, leading to the American acquisition of Florida. It appears on classroom maps politely as Florida Purchase, 1819"
Howard Zinn,Left,"The reward for participating in a movement for social justice is not the prospect of future victory. It is the exhilaration of standing together with other people, taking risks together, enjoying small triumphs and enduring disheartening setbacks"
Howard Zinn,Left,"the media, like the politicians, do not take note of rebellion until it is too large to be ignored."
Howard Zinn,Left,"True, fascism was not to be tolerated by decent people. But neither was racism or colonialism or slave labor camps"
Howard Zinn,Left,"We see then, in the first years of the Constitution, that some of its provisions"
Howard Zinn,Left,"As many as half the people were not even considered by the Founding Fathers as among Bailyn’s contending powers in society. They were not mentioned in the Declaration of Independence, they were absent in the Constitution, they were invisible in the new political democracy. They were the women of early America."
Howard Zinn,Left,"Against the claims of a violent human nature there is enormous historical evidence that people, when free of a manufactured nationalist or religious hysteria, are more inclined to be compassionate than cruel. When citizens have an opportunity to learn of vicious acts committed by their own governments, they react with indignation and protest.So long as atrocities remain remote, abstract, they will be tolerated, even by decent people."
Howard Zinn,Left,"When private bands of fanatics commit atrocities we call them terrorists, which they are, and have no trouble dismissing their reasons. But when governments do the same, and on a much larger scale, the word terrorism is not used, and we consider it a sign of our democracy that the acts become subject to debate. If the word terrorism has a useful meaning (and I believe it does, because it marks off an act as intolerable, since it involves the indiscriminate use of violence against human beings for some political purpose), then it applies exactly to the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki."
Howard Zinn,Left,"The most powerful reason given for the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki was that they saved the lives of those who would have died in an invasion of Japan. But the official report of the Strategic Bombing Survey, which interrogated seven hundred Japanese officials right after the war, concluded that the Japanese were on the verge of surrender and would certainly have ended the war by December of 1945 even if the bombs had not been dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and even without an invasion of Japan. Furthermore, the United States, having broken the Japanese code, knew the Japanese were on the verge of surrender."
Howard Zinn,Left,"Twenty-five years later, official segregation is finally gone. Unofficial segregation is being challenged on all fronts. But racism, poverty, and police brutality are still the intertwined realities of black life in the United States."
Howard Zinn,Left,"Revolutionary America may have been a middle-class society, happier and more prosperous than any other in its time, but it contained a large and growing number of fairly poor people, and many of them did much of the actual fighting and suffering between 1775 and 1783: A very old story."
Howard Zinn,Left,"Shortly after Bush took office, a government scientist prepared testimony for a Congressional committee on the dangerous effects of industrial uses of coal and other fossil fuels in contributing to global warming, a depletion of the earth’s protective ozone layer. The White House changed the testimony, over the scientist’s objections, to minimize the danger (Boston Globe, October 29, 1990). Again, business worries about regulation seemed to override the safety of the public. The ecological crisis in the world had become so obviously serious that Pope John Paul II felt the need to rebuke the wealthy classes of the industrialized nations for creating that crisis: Today, the dramatic threat of ecological breakdown is teaching us the extent to which greed and selfishness, both individual and collective, are contrary to the order of creation."
Howard Zinn,Left,"If we are arrested every day, if we are exploited every day, if we are trampled over every day, don’t ever let anyone pull you so low as to hate them. We must use the weapon of love. We must have compassion and understanding for those who hate us. We must realize so many people are taught to hate us that they are not totally responsible for their hate. But we stand in life at midnight, we are always on the threshold of a new dawn."
Howard Zinn,Left,Only one fear was greater than the fear of black rebellion in the new American colonies.
Howard Zinn,Left,"If there are necessary sacrifices to be made for human progress, is it not essential to hold to the principle that those to be sacrificed must make the decision themselves? We can all decide to give up something of ours, but do we have the right to throw into the pyre the children of others, or even our own children, for a progress which is not nearly as clear or present as sickness or health, life or death?"
Howard Zinn,Left,party politics and religion now substituting for class conflict.
Howard Zinn,Left,"There is an underside to every age about which history does not often speak, because history is written from records left by the privileged."
Howard Zinn,Left,...[T]hat combination of inferior status and derogatory thought [is what] we call racism.
Howard Zinn,Left,"Carl Degler says (Out of Our Past): No new social class came to power through the door of the American revolution. The men who engineered the revolt were largely members of the colonial ruling class. George Washington was the richest man in America. John Hancock was a prosperous Boston merchant. Benjamin Franklin was a wealthy printer. And so on. On the other hand, town mechanics, laborers, and seamen, as well as small farmers, were swept into the people by the rhetoric of the Revolution, by the camaraderie of military service, by the distribution of some land. Thus was created a substantial body of support, a national consensus, something that, even with the exclusion of ignored and oppressed people, could be called America."
Howard Zinn,Left,"Another view of the Constitution was put forward early in the twentieth century by the historian Charles Beard (arousing anger and indignation, including a denunciatory editorial in the New York Times). He wrote in his book An Economic Interpretation of the Constitution: Inasmuch as the primary object of a government, beyond the mere repression of physical violence, is the making of the rules which determine the property relations of members of society, the dominant classes whose rights are thus to be determined must perforce obtain from the government such rules as are consonant with the larger interests necessary to the continuance of their economic processes, or they must themselves control the organs of government. In short, Beard said, the rich must, in their own interest, either control the government directly or control the laws by which government operates. Beard applied this general idea to the Constitution, by studying the economic backgrounds and political ideas of the fifty-five men who gathered in Philadelphia in 1787 to draw up the Constitution. He found that a majority of them were lawyers by profession, that most of them were men of wealth, in land, slaves, manufacturing, or shipping, that half of them had money loaned out at interest, and that forty of the fifty-five held government bonds, according to the records of the Treasury Department. Thus, Beard found that most of the makers of the Constitution had some direct economic interest in establishing a strong federal government: the manufacturers needed protective tariffs; the moneylenders wanted to stop the use of paper money to pay off debts; the land speculators wanted protection as they invaded Indian lands; slaveowners needed federal security against slave revolts and runaways; bondholders wanted a government able to raise money by nationwide taxation, to pay off those bonds. Four groups, Beard noted, were not represented in the Constitutional Convention: slaves, indentured servants, women, men without property. And so the Constitution did not reflect the interests of those groups. He wanted to make it clear that he did not think the Constitution was written merely to benefit the Founding Fathers personally, although one could not ignore the $150,000 fortune of Benjamin Franklin, the connections of Alexander Hamilton to wealthy interests through his father-in-law and brother-in-law, the great slave plantations of James Madison, the enormous landholdings of George Washington. Rather, it was to benefit the groups the Founders represented, the economic interests they understood and felt in concrete, definite form through their own personal experience."
Howard Zinn,Left,"the term middle class concealed a fact long true about this country, that, as Richard Hofstadter said: It was . . . a middle-class society governed for the most part by its upper classes. Those upper classes, to rule, needed to make concessions to the middle class, without damage to their own wealth or power, at the expense of slaves, Indians, and poor whites. This bought loyalty. And to bind that loyalty with something more powerful even than material advantage, the ruling group found, in the 1760s and 1770s, a wonderfully useful device. That device was the language of liberty and equality, which could unite just enough whites to fight a Revolution against England, without ending either slavery or inequality."
Howard Zinn,Left,"During elections for the 1776 convention to frame a constitution for Pennsylvania, a Privates Committee urged voters to oppose great and overgrown rich men . . . they will be too apt to be framing distinctions in society. The Privates Committee drew up a bill of rights for the convention, including the statement that an enormous proportion of property vested in a few individuals is dangerous to the rights, and destructive of the common happiness, of mankind; and therefore every free state hath a right by its laws to discourage the possession of such property."
Howard Zinn,Left,"So the real problem, according to Madison, was a majority faction, and here the solution was offered by the Constitution, to have an extensive republic, that is, a large nation ranging over thirteen states, for then it will be more difficult for all who feel it to discover their own strength, and to act in unison with each other. . . . The influence of factious leaders may kindle a flame within their particular States, but will be unable to spread a general conflagration through the other States."
Howard Zinn,Left,Charles Beard warned us that governments
Howard Zinn,Left,"The principle is not that a human being cannot justly own another, but that he cannot own him unless he is loyal to the United States."
Howard Zinn,Left,Would the behavior of the United States during the war
Howard Zinn,Left,It was the new politics of ambiguity
Howard Zinn,Left,"If Chomsky says the educational system is an undemocratic system, you can say, well, you're there, you have a position at MIT. Well, it's perfectly attuned to the American system of control, a very sophisticated system of control that allows just enough dissidence so that those in power can point to the fact that the university is democratic but not enough dissidence to create a real danger to the system."
Howard Zinn,Left,"We need to expose the motives of our political leaders, point out their connections to corporate power, show how huge profits are being made out of death and suffering."
Howard Zinn,Left,"My point is not to grieve for the victims and denounce the executioners. Those tears, that anger, cast into the past, deplete our moral energy for the present. And the lines are not always clear. In the long run, the oppressor is also a victim. In the short run (and so far, human history has consisted only of short runs), the victims, themselves desperate and tainted with the culture that oppresses them, turn on other victims."
Howard Zinn,Left,"All those histories of this country centered on the Founding Fathers and the Presidents weigh oppressively on the capacity of the ordinary citizen to act. They suggest that in times of crisis we must look to someone to save us: in the Revolutionary crisis, the Founding Fathers; in the slavery crisis, Lincoln; in the Depression, Roosevelt; in the Vietnam-Watergate crisis, Carter. And that between occasional crises everything is all right, and it is sufficient for us to be restored to that normal state. They teach us that the supreme act of citizenship is to choose among saviors, by going into a voting booth every four years to choose between two white and well-off Anglo-Saxon males of inoffensive personality and orthodox opinions."
Howard Zinn,Left,. . . the farmer is the manThe Farmer is the manLives on credit till the fallWith the interest rates so highIt's a wonder he don't dieAnd the mortgage man's the one  that gets it all.The farmer is the man The farmer is the manLives on credit till the fallAnd his pants are wearing thinHis condition it's a sinHe's forgot that he's the man that feeds them all.
Howard Zinn,Left,"But the idea of a peace dividend could not be stifled so long as Americans were in need. Shortly after the war, historian Marilyn Young warned:The U.S. can destroy Iraq's highways, but not build its own; create the conditions for epidemic in Iraq, but not offer health care to millions of Americans. It can excoriate Iraqi treatment of the Kurdish minority, but not deal with domestic race relations; create homelessness abroad but not solve it here; keep a half million troops drug free as part of a war, but refuse to fund the treatment of millions of drug addicts at home. . . . . We shall lose the war after we have won it."
Howard Zinn,Left,"Mrs. Fannie Lou Hamer, a sharecropper in Ruleville, Mississippi, became legendary as organizer and speaker. She sang hymns; she walked picket lines with her familiar limp (as a child she contracted polio). She roused people to excitement at mass meetings: I'm sick an' tired o' bein' sick an' tired!"
Howard Zinn,Left,"So, Son, instead of crying, be strong, so as to be able to comfort your mother . . . take her for a long walk in the quiet country, gathering wild flowers here and there. . . . But remember always, Dante, in the play of happiness, don't you use all for yourself only. . . . help the persecuted and the victim because they are your better friends. . . . In this struggle of life you will find more and love and you will be loved."
Howard Zinn,Left,"In two years, through murder, mutilation, or suicide, half of the 250,000 Indians on Haiti were dead."
Howard Zinn,Left,An Ashinabe spring poem translated by Gerald Vizenor:as my eyes look across the prairiei feel the summerin the spring
Howard Zinn,Left,"When he was gassing the Kurds, he was gassing them using chemical weapons that were manufactured in Rochester, New York. And when he was fighting a long and protracted war with Iran, where one million people died, it was the CIA that was funding him. It was U.S. policy that built this dictator. When they didn’t need him, they started imposing sanctions on his people. Sanctions should be directed at people’s governments, not at the people."
Howard Zinn,Left,"The Constitution became even more acceptable to the public at large after the first Congress, responding to criticism, passed a series of amendments known as the Bill of Rights. These amendments seemed to make the new government a guardian of people’s liberties: to speak, to publish, to worship, to petition, to assemble, to be tried fairly, to be secure at home against official intrusion. It was, therefore, perfectly designed to build popular backing for the new government. What was not made clear"
Howard Zinn,Left,"Jackson was a land speculator, merchant, slave trader, and the most aggressive enemy of the Indians in early American history. He became a hero of the War of 1812, which was not (as usually depicted in American textbooks) just a war against England for survival, but a war for the expansion of the new nation, into Florida, into Canada, into Indian territory."
Howard Zinn,Left,"Jackson became a national hero when in 1814 he fought the Battle of Horseshoe Bend against a thousand Creeks and killed eight hundred of them, with few casualties on his side. His white troops had failed in a frontal attack on the Creeks, but the Cherokees with him, promised governmental friendship if they joined the war, swam the river, came up behind the Creeks, and won the battle for Jackson."
Howard Zinn,Left,"Jennings, putting the Indian into the center of the American Revolution"
Howard Zinn,Left,"The day after Congress declared war, the Socialist party met in emergency convention in St. Louis and called the declaration a crime against the people of the United States. In the summer of 1917, Socialist antiwar meetings in Minnesota drew large crowds"
Howard Zinn,Left,"But there is also (though much of this is kept from us, to keep us intimidated and without hope) the bubbling of change under the surface of obedience: the growing revulsion against the endless wars (I think of the Russian women in the nineties, demanding their country end its military intervention in Chechnya, as did Americans during the Vietnam war); the insistence of women all over the world that they will no longer tolerate abuse and subordination"
Howard Zinn,Left,"These groups have long been present in U.S. history. Above all, black and brown dissident groups"
Howard Zinn,Left,"One certain effect of war is to diminish freedom of expression. Patriotism becomes the order of the day, and those who question the war are seen as traitors, to be silenced and imprisoned."
Howard Zinn,Left,"What the [Clinton/Lewinsky scandal] showed was that a matter of personal behavior could crowd out of the public's attention far more serious matters, indeed matters of life and death. The House of Representatives would impeach the president on matters of sexual behavior, but it would not impeach him for endangering the lives of children by welfare reform, or for violating international law in bombing other countries (Iran, Afghanistan, Sudan), or for allowing hundreds of thousands of children to die as a result of economic sanctions (Iraq)."
Howard Zinn,Left,"Is it equitable that 99, rather 999, should suffer for the Extravagance or Grandeur of one, especially when it is considered that men frequently owe their Wealth to the impoverishment of their Neighbors?"
Howard Zinn,Left,"In mid-1965, in McComb, Mississippi, young blacks who had just learned that a classmate of theirs was killed in Vietnam distributed a leaflet: No Mississippi Negroes should be fighting in Viet Nam for the White man’s freedom, until all the Negro People are free in Mississippi. Negro boys should not honor the draft here in Mississippi. Mothers should encourage their sons not to go. . . . No one has a right to ask us to risk our lives and kill other Colored People in Santo Domingo and Viet Nam, so that the White American can get richer."
Howard Zinn,Left,"Once, however, engaged in the inquiry, I was not very long in finding out the true solution of the matter. It was not color, but crime, not God, but man, that afforded the true explanation of the existence of slavery; nor was I long in finding out another important truth, viz: what man can make, man can unmake. . . ."
Howard Zinn,Left,"In his book The African Slave Trade, Basil Davidson contrasts law and in the Congo in the early 16th century with law in Portugal and England. In those European countries, where the idea of private property was becoming powerful, theft was punishable brutally. In England, even as late as 1740, a child could be hanged for stealing a rag of cotton. But in the Congo, communal life persisted. The idea of private property was a strange one, and thefts were punished with fines or various degrees of servitude. A Congolese leader told of the Portuguese legal codes asked a Portuguese once, teasingly, 'What is the penalty in Portugal for anyone who puts his feet on the ground?"
Howard Zinn,Left,"Slavery was immensely profitable to some masters. James Madison told a British visitor shortly after the American Revolution that he could make 257 dollars on every (black slave) in a year, and spend only 12 or 13 dollars on his keep."
Howard Zinn,Left,"Some historians think those first blacks in Virginia were considered as servants, like the white indentured servants brought from Europe. But the strong probability is that, even if they were listed as servants (a more familiar category to the English), they were viewed as being different from white servants, were treated differently, and in fact were slaves. In any case, slavery developed quickly into a regular institution, into the normal labor relation of blacks to whites in the New World. With it developed that special racial feeling"
Howard Zinn,Left,They drew three lessons from the Pequot War: (1) that the Englishmen’s most solemn pledge would be broken whenever obligation conflicted with advantage; (2) that the English way of war had no limit of scruple or mercy; and (3) that weapons of Indian making were almost useless against weapons of European manufacture. These lessons the Indians took to heart.
Howard Zinn,Left,"Behind the English invasion of North America, behind their massacre of Indians, their deception, their brutality, was that special powerful drive born in civilizations based on private property. It was a morally ambiguous drive; the need for space, for land, was a real human need. But in conditions of scarcity, in a barbarous epoch of history ruled by competition, this human need was transformed into the murder of whole peoples. Roger"
Howard Zinn,Left,"Las Casas tells how the Spaniards grew more conceited every day and after a while refused to walk any distance. They rode the backs of Indians if they were in a hurry or were carried on hammocks by Indians running in relays. In this case they also had Indians carry large leaves to shade them from the sun and others to fan them with goose wings. Total control led to total cruelty. The Spaniards thought nothing of knifing Indians by tens and twenties and of cutting slices off them to test the sharpness of their blades. Las Casas tells how two of these so-called Christians met two Indian boys one day, each carrying a parrot; they took the parrots and for fun beheaded the boys."
Howard Zinn,Left,But how can the judgment be made if the benefits and losses cannot be balanced because the losses are either unmentioned or mentioned quickly?
Howard Zinn,Left,"That quick disposal might be acceptable (Unfortunate, yes, but it had to be done) to the middle and upper classes of the conquering and advanced countries. But is it acceptable to the poor of Asia, Africa, Latin America, or to the prisoners in Soviet labor camps, or the blacks in urban ghettos, or the Indians on reservations"
Howard Zinn,Left,"There is not a country in world history in which racism has been more important, for so long a time, as the United States. And"
Howard Zinn,Left,"It is roughly estimated that Africa lost 50 million human beings to death and slavery in those centuries we call the beginnings of modern Western civilization, at the hands of slave traders and plantation owners in Western Europe and America, the countries deemed the most advanced in the world."
Howard Zinn,Left,"We have here a forecast of the long history of American politics, the mobilization of lower-class energy by upper-class politicians, for their own purposes. This was not purely deception; it involved, in part, a genuine recognition of lower-class grievances, which helps to account for its effectiveness as a tactic over the centuries. As"
Howard Zinn,Left,"There is an extent of riches, as well as an extreme of poverty, which, by harrowing the circles of a man’s acquaintance, lessens his opportunities of general knowledge."
Howard Zinn,Left,"In New York you could see the poor lying in the streets with the garbage. There were no sewers in the slums, and filthy water drained into yards and alleys, into the cellars where the poorest of the poor lived, bringing with it a typhoid epidemic in 1837, typhus in 1842. In the cholera epidemic of 1832, the rich fled the city; the poor stayed and died."
Howard Zinn,Left,The evidence was powerful: the Allied powers
Howard Zinn,Left,"Missing from such histories are the countless small actions of unknown people that led up to those great moments. When we understand this, we can see that the tiniest acts of protest in which we engage may become the invisible roots of social change."
Howard Zinn,Left,"The hands of Hitler were filthy, but those of the United States were not clean. Our government had accepted, was still accepting, the subordination of black people in what we claimed was a democratic society. Our government threw Japanese families into concentration camps on the racist supposition that anyone Japanese"
Howard Zinn,Left,"So, we destroyed the German forces (twelve hundred Flying Fortresses bombing several thousand German soldiers!)"
Howard Zinn,Left,"there were 60,000 people living on this island, including the Indians; so that from 1494 to 1508, over three million people had perished from war, slavery, and the mines. Who in future generations will believe this? I myself writing it as a knowledgeable eyewitness can hardly believe it. . . ."
Howard Zinn,Left,"(Twenty five years later the sheriff was gone, but Sherrod was still in Albany, organizing farming cooperatives.)"
Howard Zinn,Left,"And Bernice Johnson, who organized the Albany Freedom Singers and was expelled from Albany State College for her determined involvement in the movement."
Howard Zinn,Left,"Indeed, in 1976, fifteen years after he arrived and was arrested, Charles Sherrod was elected to the Albany city commission."
Howard Zinn,Left,"But I was open to anything my students wanted to do, refusing to accept the idea that a teacher should confine his teaching to the classroom when so much was at stake outside it."
Howard Zinn,Left,The Tonkin incident
Howard Zinn,Left,"him. The government of the United States, he said, was willing to send armed forces halfway around the world for a cause which was incomprehensible, but it was unwilling to send marshals into Mississippi, though asked again and again, to protect civil rights workers from inevitable violence. And now three of them were dead."
Howard Zinn,Left,"A little study of history was instructive. To make the country ours, before and after the American Revolution, we had to displace or annihilate the indigenous people who had lived here for thousands of years. We had expanded by using deception and force, by military forays into Florida to persuade Spain to sell that to us (no money changed hands), by invading Mexico and taking almost half its land."
Howard Zinn,Left,"We used military force to establish American power in Cuba and Puerto Rico, in Haiti and the Dominican Republic, in Central America, in Hawaii and the Philippines."
Howard Zinn,Left,"In the Mexican War, a skirmish between Mexican and American troops on the Texas-Mexico border led President Polk to state that American blood has been shed on American soil, and to ask Congress for war. Actually, the encounter took place in disputed territory, and Polk’s diary shows that he wanted an excuse for war so the United States could take from Mexico what the United States coveted, California and the whole Southwest."
Howard Zinn,Left,"The expulsion of Spain from Cuba (a worthwhile venture) so that the U.S. could take control of Cuba (an unworthy venture) was preceded by a dubious story, never proven, that the Spaniards had exploded the U.S. battleship Maine in Havana harbor. Our seizure of the Philippines (from the Filipinos) was preceded by a manufactured incident between Filipino and U.S. troops. The German sinking of the passenger ship Lusitania in World War I was one of the instances of ruthless submarine warfare given as a reason to enter that war; years afterward, it was disclosed that the Lusitania was not an innocent vessel but a munitions ship whose papers had been doctored."
Howard Zinn,Left,"Black civil rights activists in the South were among the first to resist the draft. SNCC’s Bob Moses joined historian Staughton Lynd and veteran pacifist Dave Dellinger to march in Washington against the war, and Life Magazine had a dramatic photo of the three of them walking abreast, being splattered with red paint by angry super-patriots."
Howard Zinn,Left,"The FBI is supposed to investigate criminal activities, but, like the old Soviet secret police, it seems also to take note of gatherings and public statements where the government is criticized."
Howard Zinn,Left,"That day, throughout the nation, in towns and cities that had never seen an antiwar rally, several million people were protesting the war. It was the largest public demonstration in the nation’s history. On Moratorium Day I was racing from one antiwar rally to another, as so many others were, our voices hoarse by the end of the day."
Howard Zinn,Left,"I’ll never forget that day. It confirmed what I learned from my Spelman years, that education becomes most rich and alive when it confronts the reality of moral conflict in the world.)"
Howard Zinn,Left,"In late April of 1971, several thousand antiwar veterans converged on Washington, to camp out, to lobby. As one of them said, It’s the first time in this country’s history that the men who fought a war have come to Washington to demand its halt while the war is still going on. In the final event of the veterans’ Washington encampment, a thousand of them, many in wheelchairs or on crutches, tossed their medals over a fence that the police had built around the Capitol steps to keep them away. As they did so, one by one, they made personal statements. One of them said, I’m not proud of these medals. I’m not proud of what I did to receive them. I was in Vietnam for a year and … we never took one prisoner alive. An Air Force man said that what he had done was a disservice to his country. As far as I’m concerned, I’m now serving my country."
Howard Zinn,Left,"It was an example of a common phenomenon in American journalism (perhaps in social criticism in general), the shallow focusing on agents or on individuals, thus concealing what a deeper analysis would reveal"
Howard Zinn,Left,I think of Charles Sherrod. He was a SNCC field secretary and one of those young people who went into the toughest towns in the deep South to set up Freedom Houses and help local folk organize to change their lives.
Howard Zinn,Left,"What black men, women, children did in Albany at that time was heroic. They overcame a century of passivity, and they did it without the help of the national government. They learned that despite the Constitution, despite the promises, despite the political rhetoric of the government, whatever they accomplished in the future would have to come from them."
Howard Zinn,Left,"It appeared March 9, 1960, dramatically, on a full page of the Constitution under a huge headline, AN APPEAL FOR HUMAN RIGHTS, and it created a sensation: We … have joined our hearts, minds, and bodies in the cause of gaining those rights which are inherently ours as members of the human race and as citizens of the United States.… We do not intend to wait placidly for those rights which are already legally and morally ours to be meted out to us one at a time.… We want to state clearly and unequivocally that we cannot tolerate, in a nation professing democracy and among people professing Christianity, the discriminatory conditions under which the Negro is living today in Atlanta, Georgia."
Howard Zinn,Left,"Living in Atlanta those seven tumultuous years, I learned not to trust the Northern stereotype of white Southerners as incorrigible racists. Yankee self-righteousness ignored the depth of race hatred in places like Boston or New York."
Howard Zinn,Left,"There have always been Southern whites who, at great risk, pioneered in the movement for racial justice. I was lucky to know some of them: Myles Horton, founder of the Highlander Folk School in Tennessee; Carl and Anne Braden, editors of the Southern Courier in Louisville, Kentucky; Pat Watters and Margaret Long, journalists with the Atlanta Constitution; reporters Fred Powledge and Jack Nelson."
Howard Zinn,Left,"Frazier said that the Negro middle class had borrowed its bourgeois style and traditional religion from the white middle class, which was itself intellectually and culturally barren. Black people should look to their own heritage, he said, create their own culture."
Howard Zinn,Left,"It was the job of education, he said, to smash through this make-believe and give black people a realistic picture of themselves and of the world."
Howard Zinn,Left,"In the question period someone asked, Why did you write so harshly in Black Bourgeoisie? His response brought laughter and applause from the audience: My friend, white people have bamboozled us. Preachers have bamboozled us. Teachers have bamboozled us, and kept us all bamboozled. We need someone to debamboozle us!"
Howard Zinn,Left,"traveled in those days with a cheap tape recorder. (I had written to my alma mater, Columbia University, which had an oral history project, suggesting that they take time off from interviewing ex–generals and ex–secretaries of state and send someone south to record the history being made every day by obscure people. One of the nation’s richest universities wrote back saying something like, An excellent idea. We don’t really have the resources.) I recorded Gregory’s performance with my little machine. He spoke for two hours, lashing out at white Southern society with passion and with his extraordinary wit. Never in the history of this area had a black man stood like this on a public platform ridiculing and denouncing white officials to their faces. The crowd loved it and applauded"
Howard Zinn,Left,"Then Gregory lowered his voice, suddenly serious. But it looks like we got to do it the hard way, and stay down here, and educate them."
Howard Zinn,Left,"What the movement accomplished was historic, but soon it came up against obstacles far more formidable than the signs and badges of racial segregation. First, an economic system that, while lavishly rewarding some people and giving enough to others to gain their loyalty, consigns a substantial part of the population to misery, generation after generation. And along with this, a national ideology so historically soaked in racism that nonwhite people inevitably form the largest part of the permanent poor."
Howard Zinn,Left,"Your Honor, years ago I recognized my kinship with all living beings, and I made up my mind that I was not one bit better than the meanest on earth. I said then, and I say now, that while there is a lower class, I am in it, while there is a criminal element, I am of it, while there is a soul in prison, I am not free."
Howard Zinn,Left,"I told of Henry David Thoreau’s decision to break the law in protest against our invasion of Mexico in 1846, and began to give a brief history of civil disobedience in the United States."
Howard Zinn,Left,Here was the traditional device by which those in charge of any social order mobilize and discipline a recalcitrant population
Howard Zinn,Left,What if these different despised groups
Howard Zinn,Left,"In spite of such preconceptions about blackness, in spite of special subordination of blacks in the Americas in the seventeenth century, there is evidence that where whites and blacks found themselves with common problems, common work, common enemy in their master, they behaved toward one another as equals. As one scholar of slavery, Kenneth Stampp, has put it, Negro and white servants of the seventeenth century were remarkably unconcerned about the visible physical differences."
Howard Zinn,Left,"The essential ingredients of these struggles for justice are human beings who, if only for a moment, if only while beset with fears, step out of line and do something, however small. And even the smallest, most unheroic of acts adds to the store of kindling that may be ignited by some surprising circumstance into tumultuous change."
Howard Zinn,Left,"Starting with Bacon’s Rebellion in Virginia, by 1760, there had been eighteen uprisings aimed at overthrowing colonial governments. There had also been six black rebellions, from South Carolina to New York, and forty riots of various origins. By this time also, there emerged, according to Jack Greene, stable, coherent, effective and acknowledged local political and social elites. And by the 1760s, this local leadership saw the possibility of directing much of the rebellious energy against England and her local officials. It was not a conscious conspiracy, but an accumulation of tactical responses."
Howard Zinn,Left,"the Sac and Fox Indians of Illinois were removed, after the Black Hawk War (in which Abraham Lincoln was an officer, although he was not in combat). When Chief Black Hawk was defeated and captured in 1832, he made a surrender speech: I fought hard. But your guns were well aimed. The bullets flew like birds in the air, and whizzed by our ears like the wind through the trees in the winter. My warriors fell around me. . . . The sun rose dim on us in the morning, and at night it sunk in a dark cloud, and looked like a ball of fire. That was the last sun that shone on Black Hawk. . . . He is now a prisoner to the white men. . . . He has done nothing for which an Indian ought to be ashamed. He has fought for his countrymen, the squaws and papooses, against white men, who came year after year, to cheat them and take away their lands. You know the cause of our making war. It is known to all white men. They ought to be ashamed of it. Indians are not deceitful. The white men speak bad of the Indian and look at him spitefully. But the Indian does not tell lies. Indians do not steal. An Indian who is as bad as the white men could not live in our nation; he would be put to death, and eaten up by the wolves. The white men are bad schoolmasters; they carry false books, and deal in false actions; they smile in the face of the poor Indian to cheat him; they shake them by the hand to gain their confidence, to make them drunk, to deceive them, and ruin our wives. We told them to leave us alone, and keep away from us; they followed on, and beset our paths, and they coiled themselves among us, like the snake. They poisoned us by their touch. We were not safe. We lived in danger. We were becoming like them, hypocrites and liars, adulterous lazy drones, all talkers and no workers. . . . The white men do not scalp the head; but they do worse"
Howard Zinn,Left,"As for the Cherokees, they faced a set of laws passed by Georgia: their lands were taken, their government abolished, all meetings prohibited. Cherokees advising others not to migrate were to be imprisoned. Cherokees could not testify in court against any white. Cherokees could not dig for the gold recently discovered on their land. A delegation of them, protesting to the federal government, received this reply from Jackson’s new Secretary of War, Eaton: If you will go to the setting sun there you will be happy; there you can remain in peace and quietness; so long as the waters run and the oaks grow that country shall be guaranteed to you and no white man shall be permitted to settle near you."
Howard Zinn,Left,"The American Anti-Slavery Society, on the other hand, said the war was waged solely for the detestable and horrible purpose of extending and perpetuating American slavery throughout the vast territory of Mexico. A twenty-seven-year-old Boston poet and abolitionist, James Russell Lowell, began writing satirical poems in the Boston Courier (they were later collected as the Biglow Papers). In them, a New England farmer, Hosea Biglow, spoke, in his own dialect, on the war: Ez fer war, I call it murder,"
Howard Zinn,Left,"Frederick Douglass, former slave, extraordinary speaker and writer, wrote in his Rochester newspaper the North Star, January 21, 1848, of the present disgraceful, cruel, and iniquitous war with our sister republic. Mexico seems a doomed victim to Anglo Saxon cupidity and love of dominion. Douglass was scornful of the unwillingness of opponents of the war to take real action (even the abolitionists kept paying their taxes): The determination of our slaveholding President to prosecute the war, and the probability of his success in wringing from the people men and money to carry it on, is made evident, rather than doubtful, by the puny opposition arrayed against him. No politician of any considerable distinction or eminence seems willing to hazard his popularity with his party . . . by an open and unqualified disapprobation of the war. None seem willing to take their stand for peace at all risks; and all seem willing that the war should be carried on, in some form or other."
Howard Zinn,Left,"Posters appealed for volunteers in Massachusetts: Men of old Essex! Men of Newburyport! Rally around the bold, gallant and lionhearted Cushing. He will lead you to victory and to glory! They promised pay of $7 to $10 a month, and spoke of a federal bounty of $24 and 160 acres of land. But one young man wrote anonymously to the Cambridge Chronicle: Neither have I the least idea of joining you, or in any way assisting the unjust war waging against Mexico. I have no wish to participate in such glorious butcheries of women and children as were displayed in the capture of Monterey, etc. Neither have I any desire to place myself under the dictation of a petty military tyrant, to every caprice of whose will I must yield implicit obedience. No sir-ee! As long as I can work, beg, or go to the poor house, I won’t go to Mexico, to be lodged on the damp ground, half starved, half roasted, bitten by mosquitoes and centipedes, stung by scorpions and tarantulas"
Howard Zinn,Left,"Jackson himself described how the treaties were obtained: . . . we addressed ourselves feelingly to the predominant and governing passion of all Indian tribes, i.e., their avarice or fear. He encouraged white squatters to move into Indian lands, then told the Indians the government could not remove the whites and so they had better cede the lands or be wiped out. He also, Rogin says, practiced extensive bribery. These treaties, these land grabs, laid the basis for the cotton kingdom, the slave plantations. Every time a treaty was signed, pushing the Creeks from one area to the next, promising them security there, whites would move into the new area and the Creeks would feel compelled to sign another treaty, giving up more land in return for security elsewhere. Jackson’s work had brought the white settlements to the border of Florida, owned by Spain. Here were the villages of the Seminole Indians, joined by some Red Stick refugees, and encouraged by British agents in their resistance to the Americans. Settlers moved into Indian lands. Indians attacked. Atrocities took place on both sides. When certain villages refused to surrender people accused of murdering whites, Jackson ordered the villages destroyed."
Howard Zinn,Left,The following Rules for Female Teachers were posted by the school board of one town in Massachusetts: Do not get married. Do not leave town at any time without permission of the school board. Do not keep company with men. Be home between the hours of 8 P.M. and 6 A.M. Do not loiter downtown in ice cream stores. Do not smoke. Do not get into a carriage with any man except your father or brother. Do not dress in bright colors. Do not dye your hair. Do not wear any dress more than two inches above the ankle.
Howard Zinn,Left,The Church finally seeks to make complete idiots out of the mass and to make them forego the paradise on earth by promising a fictitious heaven.
Howard Zinn,Left,(Jefferson’s personal distaste for slavery must be put alongside the fact that he owned hundreds of slaves to the day he died).
Howard Zinn,Left,"No doubt the odds are against dissenters in any nation’s judicial system. But human beings are not machines, and however powerful the pressure to conform, they sometimes are so moved by what they see as injustice that they dare to declare their independence. In that historical possibility lies hope."
Howard Zinn,Left,"What was close at hand, visible, was that Communists were the leaders in organizing working people all over the country. They were the most daring, risking arrest and beatings to organize auto workers in Detroit, steel workers in Pittsburgh, textile workers in North Carolina, fur and leather workers in New York, longshoremen on the West Coast."
Howard Zinn,Left,"My image of a Communist was not a Soviet bureaucrat but my friend Leon’s father, a cabdriver who came home from work bruised and bloody one day, beaten up by his employer’s goons (yes, that word was soon part of my vocabulary) for trying to organize his fellow cabdrivers into a union."
Howard Zinn,Left,"Furthermore, some of the best people in the country were connected with the Communist movement in some way, heroes and heroines one could admire. There was Paul Robeson, the fabulous singer-actor-athlete whose magnificent voice could fill Madison Square Garden, crying out against racial injustice, against fascism. And literary figures (weren’t Theodore Dreiser and W. E. B. DuBois Communists?),"
Howard Zinn,Left,"But however imperfect, even repugnant, were particular policies, particular actions, there remained the purity of the ideal, represented in the theories of Karl Marx and the noble visions of many lesser thinkers and writers."
Howard Zinn,Left,"I remember my first reading of The Communist Manifesto, which Marx and Engels wrote when they too were young radicals; Marx was thirty, Engels twenty-eight. The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggle. That was undeniably true, verifiable in any reading of history. Certainly true for the United States, despite all the promises of the Constitution (We the people of the United States … and No state shall deny … the equal protection of the laws)."
Howard Zinn,Left,"Whenever I hear that the government must not get involved in helping people, that this must be left to private enterprise, I think of the G.I. Bill and its marvelous nonbureaucratic efficiency. There are certain necessities"
Howard Zinn,Left,"was allowed to merge with Hartford. It was all settled out of court,"
Howard Zinn,Left,"This money could have paid for health care for everyone and for programs to create jobs for all. Instead of giving out contracts for companies to build bombers and nuclear submarines, the government could have given contracts to nonprofit agencies to hire people to build homes, clean up rivers, and construct public transportation systems. Instead,"
Howard Zinn,Left,"By the end of the Clinton years, the United States had more than 2 million people in prison"
Howard Zinn,Left,"But opinion surveys in the 1980s and 1990s showed that Americans favored health care for everyone. They also were in favor of guaranteed jobs, government help for the poor and homeless, military budget cuts, and taxes on the rich. Neither the Republicans nor the Democrats were willing to take these bold steps. What"
Howard Zinn,Left,"What if citizens organized to demand what the Declaration of Independence promised: a government that protected the equal rights of all to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness? This would call for an economic system that distributed wealth in a thoughtful and humane way. It would mean a culture where young people were not taught to seek success as a mask for greed. Throughout"
Howard Zinn,Left,"The issues of free trade are complicated, but protestors asked a simple question: Should the health and freedom of ordinary people all over the world be sacrificed so that corporations can make a profit? Tens"
Howard Zinn,Left,"Oil shaped U.S. decisions about the Middle East during both Democratic and Republican presidencies. The administration of President Jimmy Carter, a liberal Democrat, had produced the Carter Doctrine. Under this doctrine, the United States claimed the right to defend its interest in Middle Eastern oil by any means necessary, including military force. In"
Howard Zinn,Left,"Imagine the American people united for the first time in a movement for fundamental change. Imagine society’s power taken away from the giant corporations, the military, and the politicians who answer to corporate and military interests. We"
Howard Zinn,Left,"For Indians there has never been a clear line between prose and poetry. When an Indian studying in New Mexico was praised for his poetry he said, In my tribe we have no poets. Everyone talks in poetry. There"
Howard Zinn,Left,"In Wisconsin in 1856, the LaCrosse and Milwaukee Railroad got a million acres free by distributing about $900,000 in stocks and bonds to fifty-nine assemblymen, thirteen senators, the governor. Two years later the railroad was bankrupt and the bonds were worthless."
Howard Zinn,Left,"By 1850, fifteen Boston families called the Associates controlled 20 percent of the cotton spindleage in the United States, 39 percent of insurance capital in Massachusetts, 40 percent of banking resources in Boston."
Howard Zinn,Left,"in the industrial towns children went to work with their fathers and mothers, schools and doctors were only promises, a bed of one’s own was a rare luxury."
Howard Zinn,Left,"On the other hand, a white shoemaker wrote in 1848 in the Awl, the newspaper of Lynn shoe factory workers: . . . we are nothing but a standing army that keeps three million of our brethren in bondage. . . . Living under the shade of Bunker Hill monument, demanding in the name of humanity, our right, and withholding those rights from others because their skin is black! Is"
Howard Zinn,Left,"(before the Bessemer process, iron was hardened into steel at the rate of 3 to 5 tons a day; now the same amount could be processed in 15 minutes). Machines"
Howard Zinn,Left,"The military conflict itself, by dominating everything in its time, diminished other issues, made people choose sides in the one contest that was publicly important, forced people onto the side of the Revolution whose interest in Independence was not at all obvious. Ruling elites seem to have learned through the generations"
Howard Zinn,Left,"In April 1914, two National Guard companies were stationed in the hills overlooking the largest tent colony of strikers, the one at Ludlow, housing a thousand men, women, children. On the morning of April 20, a machine gun attack began on the tents. The miners fired back. Their leader, a Greek named Lou Tikas, was lured up into the hills to discuss a truce, then shot to death by a company of National Guardsmen. The women and children dug pits beneath the tents to escape the gunfire. At dusk, the Guard moved down from the hills with torches, set fire to the tents, and the families fled into the hills; thirteen people were killed by gunfire. The following day, a telephone linesman going through the ruins of the Ludlow tent colony lifted an iron cot covering a pit in one of the tents and found the charred, twisted bodies of eleven children and two women. This became known as the Ludlow Massacre."
Howard Zinn,Left,"Unemployment, hard times, were growing in 1914. Could guns divert attention and create some national consensus against an external enemy? It surely was a coincidence"
Howard Zinn,Left,"While from 1922 to 1929 real wages in manufacturing went up per capita 1.4 percent a year, the holders of common stocks gained 16.4 percent a year. Six million families (42 percent of the total) made less than $1,000 a year. One-tenth of 1 percent of the families at the top received as much income as 42 percent of the families at the bottom, according to a report of the Brookings Institution. Every"
Howard Zinn,Left,"The Albany police chief, after one of the mass arrests, was taking the names of prisoners lined up before his desk. He looked up and saw a Negro boy about nine years old. What’s your name? The boy looked straight at him and said: Freedom, Freedom."
Howard Zinn,Left,"Even allowing for the imperfection of myths, it is enough to make us question, for that time and ours, the excuse of progress in the annihilation of races, and the telling of history from the standpoint of the conquerors and leaders of Western civilization."
Howard Zinn,Left,"Meanwhile, the government of the United States was behaving almost exactly as Karl Marx described a capitalist state: pretending neutrality to maintain order, but serving the interests of the rich. Not that the rich agreed among themselves; they had disputes over policies. But the purpose of the state was to settle upper-class disputes peacefully, control lower-class rebellion, and adopt policies that would further the long-range stability of the system. The arrangement between Democrats and Republicans to elect Rutherford Hayes in 1877 set the tone. Whether Democrats or Republicans won, national policy would not change in any important way."
Howard Zinn,Left,Certain black women faced the triple hurdle
Howard Zinn,Left,"it’s inevitable that we’ve got to bring out the question of the tragic mixup in priorities. We are spending all of this money for death and destruction, and not nearly enough money for life and constructive development . . . when the guns of war become a national obsession, social needs inevitably suffer."
Howard Zinn,Left,"That, being as blunt as I can, is my approach to the history of the United States."
Howard Zinn,Left,"We meet in the midst of a nation brought to the verge of moral, political and material ruin. Corruption dominates the ballot box, the legislatures, the Congress, and touches even the ermine of the bench. The people are demoralized. . . . The newspapers are subsidized or muzzled; public opinion silenced; business prostrate, our homes covered with mortgages, labor impoverished, and the land concentrating in the hands of capitalists. The urban workmen are denied the right of organization for self-protection; imported pauperized labor beats down their wages; a hireling standing army . . . established to shoot them down. . . . The fruits of the toil of millions are boldly stolen to build up colossal fortunes. . . . From the same prolific womb of governmental injustice we breed two classes"
Howard Zinn,Left,"There were moments of racial unity. Lawrence Goodwyn found in east Texas an unusual coalition of black and white public officials: it had begun during Reconstruction and continued into the Populist period. The state government was in the control of white Democrats, but in Grimes County, blacks won local offices and sent legislators to the state capital. The district clerk was a black man; there were black deputy sheriffs and a black school principal. A night-riding White Man’s Union used intimidation and murder to split the coalition, but Goodwyn points to the long years of interracial cooperation in Grimes County and wonders about missed opportunities."
Howard Zinn,Left,"There were eruptions against the convict labor system in the South, in which prisoners were leased in slave labor to corporations, used thus to depress the general level of wages and also to break strikes. In the year 1891, miners of the Tennessee Coal Mine Company were asked to sign an iron-clad contract: pledging no strikes, agreeing to get paid in scrip, and giving up the right to check the weight of the coal they mined (they were paid by the weight). They refused to sign and were evicted from their houses. Convicts were brought in to replace them."
Howard Zinn,Left,"after the Civil War both parties now were controlled by capitalists. They were divided along North-South lines, still hung over with the animosities of the Civil War. This made it very hard to create a party of reform cutting across both parties to unite working people South and North"
Howard Zinn,Left,"And as far as the United States in Vietnam, the United States did not lose prestige because it left Vietnam. It lost prestige when its as bombing Vietnam."
Howard Zinn,Left,"In the villages of the Iroquois, land was owned in common and worked in common. Hunting was done together, and the catch was divided among the members of the village. Houses were considered common property and were shared by several families. The concept of private ownership of land and homes was foreign to the Iroquois. A French Jesuit priest who encountered them in the 1650s wrote: 'No poorhouses are needed among them, because they are neither merchants nor paupers.... Their kindness, humanity and courtesy not only makes them liberal with what they have, but causes them to possess hardly anything except in common."
Howard Zinn,Left,"History is the memory of states,' wrote Henry Kissinger in his first book, A World Restored, in which he proceeded to tell the history of nineteenth-century Europe from the viewpoint of the leaders of Austria and England, ignoring the millions who suffered from those statesmen's policies. From his standpoint, the 'peace' that Europe had before the French Revolution was 'restored' by the diplomacy of a few national leaders. But for factory workers in England, farmers in France, colored people in Asia and Africa, women and children everywhere except in the upper classes, it was a world of conquest, violence, hunger, exploitation - a world not restored but disintegrated. My viewpoint, in telling the history of the United States, is different: that we must not accept the memory of states as our own. Nations are not communities and never have been. The history of any country, presented as the history of a family, conceals fierce conflicts of interest (sometimes exploding, most often repressed) between conquerors and conquered, masters and slaves, capitalists and workers, dominators and dominated in race and sex. And in such a world of conflict, a world of victims and executioners, it is the job of thinking people, as Albert Camus suggested, not to be on the side of the executioners."
Howard Zinn,Left,"That myth led ordinary people to believe that they had a voice in government and that government looked out for their interests. It was a way of speaking for the lower and middle classes to get their support when the government needed it. Giving people a choice between two political parties, and letting them choose the slightly more democratic one, was a good way to control them. The leaders of both parties understood that they could keep control of society by making reforms that gave people some of what they wanted"
Howard Zinn,Left,The very poor could not be counted on to support the government. They were like the slaves and Indians
Howard Zinn,Left,"Just as African Americans had learned that they did not have enough strength to make good the promises of emancipation, working people learned that they were not united or strong enough to defeat the combination of private wealth and government power. But their fight would continue."
Howard Zinn,Left,"It launched one worker, Eugene Debs, into a lifetime of activism for labor unions and socialism. Debs was arrested for supporting the strike. Two years later he wrote: The issue is Socialism versus Capitalism. I am for Socialism because I am for humanity. We have been cursed with the reign of gold long enough. Money constitutes no proper basis for civilization. The time has come to regenerate [renew] society"
Howard Zinn,Left,"Ten thousand people wrote letters to the governor of Utah, protesting the verdict, but Joe Hill was executed by a firing squad. Before he died he wrote to Bill Haywood, another IWW leader, Don’t waste any time in mourning. Organize. Socialism,"
Howard Zinn,Left,"Socialists like Helen Keller did not think suffrage was enough. Blind and deaf, Keller fought for change with her spirit and her pen. In 1911 she wrote, Our democracy is but a name. We vote? What does that mean? … We choose between Tweedledum and Tweedledee. Black"
Howard Zinn,Left,"A young woman: As a white middle class person I’ve never felt discriminated against at all. But I’ll say this: If anyone ever tried to make me sit in a different schoolroom, use a different bathroom, or anything like that, I would knock them right on their ass. . . . The people are the last ones that need their rights stated on paper, for if they’re abused or injusticed by government or authority, they can act on the injustice directly. . . . When you look at the . . . statements of rights and laws, it’s really government and authority and institutions and corporations that need laws and rights to insulate them from the physicality, the directness of the people."
Howard Zinn,Left,"The repeated elections of Republican candidates, Reagan in 1980 and 1984, George Bush in 1988, were treated by the press with words like landslide and overwhelming victory. They were ignoring four facts: that roughly half the population, though eligible to vote, did not; that those who did vote were limited severely in their choices to the two parties that monopolized the money and the media; that as a result many of their votes were cast without enthusiasm; and that there was little relationship between voting for a candidate and voting for specific policies."
Howard Zinn,Left,"A Harris/Harvard School of Public Health poll of 1989 showed that most Americans (61 percent) favored a Canadian-type health system, in which the government was the single payer to doctors and hospitals, bypassing the insurance companies, and offering universal medical coverage to everyone. Neither the Democratic nor the Republican party adopted that as its program, although both insisted they wanted to reform the health system."
Howard Zinn,Left,"How the public felt about government aid to the poor seemed to depend on how the question was put. Both parties, and the media, talked incessantly about the welfare system, that it was not working, and the word welfare became a signal for opposition. When people were asked (a New York Times/CBS News poll of 1992) if more money should be allocated to welfare, 23 percent said no. But when the same people were asked, should the government help the poor, 64 percent said yes."
Howard Zinn,Left,"Clearly, there was something amiss with a political system, supposed to be democratic, in which the desires of the voters were repeatedly ignored. They could be ignored with impunity so long as the political system was dominated by two parties, both tied to corporate wealth. An electorate forced to choose between Carter and Reagan, or Reagan and Mondale, or Bush and Dukakis could only despair (or decide not to vote) because neither candidate was capable of dealing with a fundamental economic illness whose roots were deeper than any single presidency."
Howard Zinn,Left,"Surveying a series of news events in the first week of January 1983, David Nyhan of the Boston Globe wrote: There is something brewing in the land that bodes ill for those in Washington who ignore it. People have moved from the frightened state to the angry stage and are acting out their frustrations in ways that will test the fabric of civil order. He"
Howard Zinn,Left,"The foreclosure of a 320-acre wheat farm in Springfield, Colorado, was interrupted by 200 angry farmers, who had to be dispersed by tear gas and Mace."
Howard Zinn,Left,"Washington guns killed American nuns!’ The last slogan was a reference to the execution in the fall of 1980 of four American nuns by Salvadoran soldiers. Thousands of people in El Salvador were being murdered each year by death squads sponsored by a government armed by the United States, and the American public was beginning to pay attention to events in this tiny Central American country."
Howard Zinn,Left,"There was much talk in the American press in the early eighties about the political cautiousness of a new generation of college students concerned mostly with their own careers. But when, at the Harvard commencement of June 1983, Mexican writer Carlos Fuentes criticized American intervention in Latin America, and said, Because we are your true friends, we will not permit you to conduct yourselves in Latin American affairs as the Soviet Union conducts itself in Central European and Central Asian affairs, he was interrupted twenty times by applause and received a standing ovation when finished."
Howard Zinn,Left,"He has compelled her to submit to laws, in the formation of which she had no voice."
Howard Zinn,Left,"He opposed slavery, but could not see blacks as equals, so a constant theme in his approach was to free the slaves and to send them back to Africa. In his 1858 campaign in Illinois for the Senate against Stephen Douglas, Lincoln spoke differently depending on the views of his listeners (and also perhaps depending on how close it was to the election). Speaking in northern Illinois in July (in Chicago), he said: Let us discard all this quibbling about this man and the other man, this race and that race and the other race being inferior, and therefore they must be placed in an inferior position. Let us discard all these things, and unite as one people throughout this land, until we shall once more stand up declaring that all men are created equal. Two months later in Charleston, in southern Illinois, Lincoln told his audience: And inasmuch as they cannot so live, while they do remain together there must be the position of superior and inferior, and I as much as any other man am in favor of having the superior position assigned to the white race."
Howard Zinn,Left,"Also in 1865, a South Carolina planter wrote to the New York Tribune that the conduct of the Negro in the late crisis of our affairs has convinced me that we were all laboring under a delusion. . . . I believed that these people were content, happy, and attached to their masters. But events and reflection have caused me to change these positions. . . . If they were content, happy and attached to their masters, why did they desert him in the moment of his need and flock to an enemy, whom they did not know; and thus left their perhaps really good masters whom they did know from infancy?"
Howard Zinn,Left,"The Fourteenth Amendment repudiated the prewar Dred Scott decision by declaring that all persons born or naturalized in the United States were citizens. It also seemed to make a powerful statement for racial equality, severely limiting states’ rights: No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws."
Howard Zinn,Left,"Bacon gave his reasons for the rebellion in a paper called Declaration of the People. It blended the frontiersmen’s hatred of the Indians with the common people’s anger toward the rich. Bacon accused the Berkeley government of wrongdoing, including unfair taxes and not protecting the western farmers from the Indians."
Howard Zinn,Left,"Benjamin Franklin wrote in 1753, When white persons of either sex have been taken prisoners young by the Indians, and lived awhile among them, tho’ ransomed by their Friends, and treated with all imaginable tenderness to prevail with them to stay among the English, yet in a Short time they become disgusted with our manner of life, and the care and pains that are necessary to support it, and take the first good Opportunity of escaping again into the woods, from whence there is no reclaiming them."
Howard Zinn,Left,"Was the war being fought to establish that Hitler was wrong in his ideas of white Nordic supremacy over inferior races? The United States’ armed forces were segregated by race. When troops were jammed onto the Queen Mary in early 1945 to go to combat duty in the European theater, the blacks were stowed down in the depths of the ship near the engine room, as far as possible from the fresh air of the deck, in a bizarre reminder of the slave voyages of old."
Howard Zinn,Left,"As the war went on, opposition grew. The American Peace Society printed a newspaper, the Advocate of Peace, which published poems, speeches, petitions, sermons against the war, and eyewitness accounts of the degradation of army life and the horrors of battle. The abolitionists, speaking through William Lloyd Garrison’s Liberator, denounced the war as one of aggression, of invasion, of conquest, and rapine"
Howard Zinn,Left,"That April, the Senate had adopted the Thirteenth Amendment, declaring an end to slavery, and in January 1865, the House of Representatives followed."
Howard Zinn,Left,But slave importation became illegal in 1808.
Howard Zinn,Left,"He estimates that perhaps 250,000 slaves were imported illegally before the Civil War."
Howard Zinn,Left,grievances of the lowest classes mingled with
Howard Zinn,Left,"in Andrew Jackson’s administration, collaborated with the South to keep abolitionist literature out of the mails in the southern states. It was the Supreme Court of the United States that declared in 1857 that the slave Dred Scott could not sue for his freedom because he was not a person, but property."
Howard Zinn,Left,"The first large-scale revolt in the North American colonies took place in New York in 1712. In New York, slaves were 10 percent of the population, the highest proportion in the northern states, where economic conditions usually did not require large numbers of field slaves."
Howard Zinn,Left,"From time to time, whites were involved in the slave resistance. As early as 1663, indentured white servants and black slaves in Gloucester County, Virginia, formed a conspiracy to rebel and gain their freedom."
Howard Zinn,Left,"The good things that have been done, the reforms . . . all of that was not done by government edict. . . . It was all done by citizens' movements. And then keep in mind that great movements in the past have arisen from small movements, from tiny clusters of people that have gotten together here and there. If you have a movement strong enough, it doesn't matter who's in the White House. What really matters is what are people doing, and what are people saying, what are people demanding."
Howard Zinn,Left,"A New York banker toasted the Supreme Court in 1895: I give you, gentlemen, the Supreme Court of the United States"
Howard Zinn,Left,"That contract law was intended to discriminate against working people and for business is shown by Horwitz in the following example of the early nineteenth century: the courts said that if a worker signed a contract to work for a year, and left before the year was up, he was not entitled to any wages, even for the time he had worked. But the courts at the same time said that if a building business broke a contract, it was entitled to be paid for whatever had been done up to that point."
Howard Zinn,Left,"And the New York Journal of Commerce, half-playfully, half-seriously, wrote: Let us go to war. The world has become stale and insipid, the ships ought all to be captured, and the cities battered down, and the world burned up, so that we can start again. There would be fun in that, Some interest,"
Howard Zinn,Left,"A writer in early 1930, boosting the beauty business, started off a magazine article with the sentence: The average American woman has sixteen square feet of skin."
Howard Zinn,Left,"Catholic Church, expelled all the Jews,"
Howard Zinn,Left,"A best-selling pocket book, published in London, was widely read in the American colonies in the 1700s. It was called Advice to a Daughter: You must first lay it down for a Foundation in general, That there is Inequality in Sexes, and that for the better Oeconomy of the World; the Men, who were to be the Law-givers, had the larger share of Reason bestow’d upon them; by which means your Sex is the better prepar’d for the Compliance that is necessary for the performance of those Duties which seem’d to be most properly assign’d to it. . . . Your Sex wanteth our Reason for your Conduct, and our Strength for your Protection: Ours wanteth your Gentleness to soften, and to entertain us. . . . Against this powerful education, it is remarkable that women nevertheless rebelled."
Howard Zinn,Left,"The women tended the crops and took general charge of village affairs while the men were always hunting or fishing. And since they supplied the moccasins and food for warring expeditions, they had some control over military matters. As Gary B. Nash notes in his fascinating study of early America, Red, White, and Black: Thus power was shared between the sexes and the European idea of male dominancy and female subordination in all things was conspicuously absent in Iroquois society."
Howard Zinn,Left,"Columbus and his successors were not coming into an empty wilderness, but into a world which in some places was as densely populated as Europe itself, where the culture was complex, where human relations were more egalitarian than in Europe, and where the relations among men, women, children, and nature were more beautifully worked out than perhaps any place in the world. They were people without a written language, but with their own laws, their poetry, their history kept in memory and passed on, in an oral vocabulary more complex than Europe’s, accompanied by song, dance, and ceremonial drama. They paid careful attention to the development of personality, intensity of will, independence and flexibility, passion and potency, to their partnership with one another and with nature."
Howard Zinn,Left,"Senator H. V. Johnson said: I believe we should be recreant to our noble mission, if we refused acquiescence in the high purposes of a wise Providence. War has its evils. In all ages it has been the minister of wholesale death and appalling desolation; but however inscrutable to us, it has also been made, by the Allwise Dispenser of events, the instrumentality of accomplishing the great end of human elevation and human happiness. . . . It is in this view, that I subscribe to the doctrine of manifest destiny."
Howard Zinn,Left,"Mexico surrendered. There were calls among Americans to take all of Mexico. The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, signed February 1848, just took half. The Texas boundary was set at the Rio Grande; New Mexico and California were ceded. The United States paid Mexico $15 million, which led the Whig Intelligencer to conclude that we take nothing by conquest. . . . Thank God."
Howard Zinn,Left,"Grant Foreman, the leading authority on Indian removal, estimates that during confinement in the stockade or on the march westward four thousand Cherokees died. In December 1838, President Van Buren spoke to Congress: It affords sincere pleasure to apprise the Congress of the entire removal of the Cherokee Nation of Indians to their new homes west of the Mississippi. The measures authorized by Congress at its last session have had the happiest effects."
Howard Zinn,Left,"In the White House now was James Polk, a Democrat, an expansionist, who, on the night of his inauguration, confided to his Secretary of the Navy that one of his main objectives was the acquisition of California. His order to General Taylor to move troops to the Rio Grande was a challenge to the Mexicans. It was not at all clear that the Rio Grande was the southern boundary of Texas, although Texas had forced the defeated Mexican general Santa Anna to say so when he was a prisoner. The traditional border between Texas and Mexico had been the Nueces River, about 150 miles to the north, and both Mexico and the United States had recognized that as the border. However, Polk, encouraging the Texans to accept annexation, had assured them he would uphold their claims to the Rio Grande. Ordering troops to the Rio Grande, into territory inhabited by Mexicans, was clearly a provocation."
Howard Zinn,Left,"The resources of a university, of a college, should not be wasted in merely academic pursuits."
Howard Zinn,Left,God wept; but that mattered little to an unbelieving age; what mattered most was that the world wept and still is weeping and blind with tears and blood. For there began to rise in America in 1876 a new capitalism and a new enslavement of labor.
Howard Zinn,Left,"On October 1, 1838, the first detachment set out in what was to be known as the Trail of Tears. As they moved westward, they began to die"
Howard Zinn,Left,"Were the Founding Fathers wise and just men trying to achieve a good balance? In fact, they did not want a balance, except one which kept things as they were, a balance among the dominant forces at that time."
Howard Zinn,Left,"It would take either a full-scale slave rebellion or a full-scale war to end such a deeply entrenched system. If a rebellion, it might get out of hand, and turn its ferocity beyond slavery to the most successful system of capitalist enrichment in the world. If a war, those who made the war would organize its consequences. Hence, it was Abraham Lincoln who freed the slaves, not John Brown. In 1859, John Brown was hanged, with federal complicity, for attempting to do by small-scale violence what Lincoln would do by large-scale violence several years later"
Howard Zinn,Left,"frenzy in the early capitalist states of Europe for gold, for slaves, for products of the soil, to pay the bondholders and stockholders of the expeditions, to finance the monarchical bureaucracies rising in Western Europe, to spur the growth of the new money economy rising out of feudalism, to participate in what Karl Marx would later call the primitive accumulation of capital. These were the violent beginnings of an intricate system of technology, business, politics, and culture that would dominate the world for the next five centuries."
Howard Zinn,Left,"Carl Bridenbaugh’s study of colonial cities, Cities in the Wilderness, reveals a clear-cut class system. He finds: The leaders of early Boston were gentlemen of considerable wealth who, in association with the clergy, eagerly sought to preserve in America the social arrangements of the Mother Country. By means of their control of trade and commerce, by their political domination of the inhabitants through church and Town Meeting, and by careful marriage alliances among themselves, members of this little oligarchy laid the foundations for an aristocratic class in seventeenth century Boston."
Howard Zinn,Left,"An anonymous pamphleteer in Massachusetts, writing angrily after King George’s War, described the situation: Poverty and Discontent appear in every Face (except the Countenances of the Rich) and dwell upon every Tongue. He spoke of a few men, fed by Lust of Power, Lust of Fame, Lust of Money, who got rich during the war. No Wonder such Men can build Ships, Houses, buy Farms, set up their Coaches, Chariots, live very splendidly, purchase Fame, Posts of Honour. He called them Birds of prey . . . Enemies to all Communities"
Howard Zinn,Left,"George Washington had turned down the requests of blacks, seeking freedom, to fight in the Revolutionary army. So when the British military commander in Virginia, Lord Dunmore, promised freedom to Virginia slaves who joined his forces, this created consternation. A report from one Maryland county worried about poor whites encouraging slave runaways: The insolence of the Negroes in this county is come to such a height, that we are under a necessity of disarming them which we affected on Saturday last. We took about eighty guns, some bayonets, swords, etc. The malicious and imprudent speeches of some among the lower classes of whites have induced them to believe that their freedom depended on the success of the King’s troops. We cannot therefore be too vigilant nor too rigourous with those who promote and encourage this disposition in our slaves."
Howard Zinn,Left,"The American Revolution is sometimes said to have brought about the separation of church and state. The northern states made such declarations, but after 1776 they adopted taxes that forced everyone to support Christian teachings. William G. McLoughlin, quoting Supreme Court Justice David Brewer in 1892 that this is a Christian nation, says of the separation of church and state in the Revolution that it was neither conceived of nor carried out. . . . Far from being left to itself, religion was imbedded into every aspect and institution of American life."
Howard Zinn,Left,"What did the Revolution mean to the Native Americans, the Indians? They had been ignored by the fine words of the Declaration, had not been considered equal, certainly not in choosing those who would govern the American territories in which they lived, nor in being able to pursue happiness as they had pursued it for centuries before the white Europeans arrived. Now, with the British out of the way, the Americans could begin the inexorable process of pushing the Indians off their lands, killing them if they resisted. In short, as Francis Jennings puts it, the white Americans were fighting against British imperial control in the East, and for their own imperialism in the West."
Howard Zinn,Left,"a man named Plough Jogger spoke his mind: I have been greatly abused, have been obliged to do more than my part in the war; been loaded with class rates, town rates, province rates, Continental rates and all rates . . . been pulled and hauled by sheriffs, constables and collectors, and had my cattle sold for less than they were worth. . . . . . . The great men are going to get all we have and I think it is time for us to rise and put a stop to it, and have no more courts, nor sheriffs, nor collectors nor lawyers. . . . The chairman of that meeting"
Howard Zinn,Left,"A Creek man more than a hundred years old, named Speckled Snake, reacted to Andrew Jackson’s policy of removal: Brothers! I have listened to many talks from our great white father. When he first came over the wide waters, he was but a little man . . . very little. His legs were cramped by sitting long in his big boat, and he begged for a little land to light his fire on. . . . But when the white man had warmed himself before the Indians’ fire and filled himself with their hominy, he became very large. With a step he bestrode the mountains, and his feet covered the plains and the valleys. His hand grasped the eastern and the western sea, and his head rested on the moon. Then he became our Great Father. He loved his red children, and he said, Get a little further, lest I tread on thee. Brothers! I have listened to a great many talks from our great father. But they always began and ended in this"
Howard Zinn,Left,"Before this, the Cherokees had, like Indian tribes in general, done without formal government. As Van Every puts it: The foundation principle of Indian government had always been the rejection of government. The freedom of the individual was regarded by practically all Indians north of Mexico as a canon infinitely more precious than the individual’s duty to his community or nation. This anarchistic attitude ruled all behavior, beginning with the smallest social unit, the family. The Indian parent was constitutionally reluctant to discipline his children. Their every exhibition of self-will was accepted as a favorable indication of the development of maturing character. . . ."
Howard Zinn,Left,"It was a complex chain of oppression in Virginia. The Indians were plundered by white frontiersmen, who were taxed and controlled by the Jamestown elite. And the whole colony was being exploited by England, which bought the colonists’ tobacco at prices it dictated and made 100,000 pounds a year for the King. Berkeley himself, returning to England years earlier to protest the English Navigation Acts, which gave English merchants a monopoly of the colonial trade, had said: . . . we cannot but resent, that forty thousand people should be impoverish’d to enrich little more than forty Merchants, who being the only buyers of our Tobacco, give us what they please for it, and after it is here, sell it how they please; and indeed have forty thousand servants in us at cheaper rates, than any other men have slaves. . . ."
Howard Zinn,Left,"It was in his economic interest to keep women servants from marrying or from having sexual relations, because childbearing would interfere with work. Benjamin Franklin, writing as Poor Richard in 1736, gave advice to his readers: Let thy maidservant be faithful, strong and homely. Servants could not marry without permission, could be separated from their families, could be whipped for various offenses. Pennsylvania law in the seventeenth century said that marriage of servants without the consent of the Masters . . . shall be proceeded against as for Adultery, or fornication, and Children to be reputed as Bastards."
Howard Zinn,Left,"African slavery lacked two elements that made American slavery the most cruel form of slavery in history: the frenzy for limitless profit that comes from capitalistic agriculture; the reduction of the slave to less than human status by the use of racial hatred, with that relentless clarity based on color, where white was master, black was slave."
Howard Zinn,Left,"The system was psychological and physical at the same time. The slaves were taught discipline, were impressed again and again with the idea of their own inferiority to know their place, to see blackness as a sign of subordination, to be awed by the power of the master, to merge their interest with the master’s, destroying their own individual needs. To accomplish this there was the discipline of hard labor, the breakup of the slave family, the lulling effects of religion (which sometimes led to great mischief, as one slaveholder reported), the creation of disunity among slaves by separating them into field slaves and more privileged house slaves, and finally the power of law and the immediate power of the overseer to invoke whipping, burning, mutilation, and death. Dismemberment was provided for in the Virginia Code of 1705. Maryland passed a law in 1723 providing for cutting off the ears of blacks who struck whites, and that for certain serious crimes, slaves should be hanged and the body quartered and exposed."
Howard Zinn,Left,"Sexual purity was to be the special virtue of a woman. It was assumed that men, as a matter of biological nature, would sin, but woman must not surrender. As one male author said: If you do, you will be left in silent sadness to bewail your credulity, imbecility, duplicity, and premature prostitution. A woman wrote that females would get into trouble if they were high spirited not prudent."
Howard Zinn,Left,cult of domesticity for the woman was a way of pacifying her with a doctrine of separate but equal
Howard Zinn,Left,"In Pawtucket, Rhode Island, in 1824, came the first known strike of women factory workers; 202 women joined men in protesting a wage cut and longer hours, but they met separately. Four years later, women in Dover, New Hampshire, struck alone. And in Lowell, Massachusetts, in 1834, when a young woman was fired from her job, other girls left their looms, one of them then climbing the town pump and making, according to a newspaper report, a flaming Mary Wollstonecraft speech on the rights of women and the iniquities of the ‘moneyed aristocracy’ which produced a powerful effect on her auditors and they determined to have their own way, if they died for it."
Howard Zinn,Left,"At Lowell, a Female Labor Reform Association put out a series of Factory Tracts. The first was entitled Factory Life as It Is By an Operative and spoke of the textile mill women as nothing more nor less than slaves in every sense of the word! Slaves, to a system of labor which requires them to toil from five until seven o’clock, with one hour only to attend to the wants of nature"
Howard Zinn,Left,"Middle-class women, barred from higher education, began to monopolize the profession of primary-school teaching. As teachers, they read more, communicated more, and education itself became subversive of old ways of thinking. They began to write for magazines and newspapers, and started some ladies’ publications. Literacy among women doubled between 1780 and 1840. Women became health reformers. They formed movements against double standards in sexual behavior and the victimization of prostitutes. They joined in religious organizations. Some of the most powerful of them joined the antislavery movement. So, by the time a clear feminist movement emerged in the 1840s, women had become practiced organizers, agitators, speakers."
Howard Zinn,Left,"Women struggled to enter the all-male professional schools. Dr. Harriot Hunt, a woman physician who began to practice in 1835, was twice refused admission to Harvard Medical School. But she carried on her practice, mostly among women and children. She believed strongly in diet, exercise, hygiene, and mental health. She organized a Ladies Physiological Society in 1843 where she gave monthly talks. She remained single, defying convention here too."
Howard Zinn,Left,"Frances Wright was a writer, founder of a utopian community, immigrant from Scotland in 1824, a fighter for the emancipation of slaves, for birth control and sexual freedom. She wanted free public education for all children over two years of age in state-supported boarding schools. She expressed in America what the utopian socialist Charles Fourier had said in France, that the progress of civilization depended on the progress of women. In her words: I shall venture the assertion, that, until women assume the place in society which good sense and good feeling alike assign to them, human improvement must advance but feebly. . . . Men will ever rise or fall to the level of the other sex. . . . Let them not imagine that they know aught of the delights which intercourse with the other sex can give, until they have felt the sympathy of mind with mind, and heart with heart; until they bring into that intercourse every affection, every talent, every confidence, every refinement, every respect. Until power is annihilated on one side, fear and obedience on the other, and both restored to their birthright"
Howard Zinn,Left,"We see now a complex web of historical threads to ensnare blacks for slavery in America: the desperation of starving settlers, the special helplessness of the displaced African, the powerful incentive of profit for slave trader and planter, the temptation of superior status for poor whites, the elaborate controls against escape and rebellion, the legal and social punishment of black and white collaboration. The point is that the elements of this web are historical, not natural. This does not mean that they are easily disentangled, dismantled. It means only that there is a possibility for something else, under historical conditions not yet realized. And one of these conditions would be the elimination of that class exploitation which has made poor whites desperate for small gifts of status, and has prevented that unity of black and white necessary for joint rebellion and reconstruction."
Howard Zinn,Left,"The Constitution was a compromise between slaveholding interests of the South and moneyed interests of the North. For the purpose of uniting the thirteen states into one great market for commerce, the northern delegates wanted laws regulating interstate commerce, and urged that such laws require only a majority of Congress to pass. The South agreed to this, in return for allowing the trade in slaves to continue for twenty years before being outlawed."
Howard Zinn,Left,"What made Bacon’s Rebellion especially fearsome for the rulers of Virginia was that black slaves and white servants joined forces. The final surrender was by four hundred English and Negroes in Armes at one garrison, and three hundred freemen and African and English bondservants in another garrison. The naval commander who subdued the four hundred wrote: Most of them I persuaded to go to their Homes, which accordingly they did, except about eighty Negroes and twenty English which would not deliver their Armes. All through those early years, black and white slaves and servants ran away together, as shown both by the laws passed to stop this and the records of the courts. In 1698, South Carolina passed a deficiency law requiring plantation owners to have at least one white servant for every six male adult Negroes. A letter from the southern colonies in 1682 complained of no white men to superintend our negroes, or repress an insurrection of negroes. . . . In 1691, the House of Commons received a petition of divers merchants, masters of ships, planters and others, trading to foreign plantations . . . setting forth, that the plantations cannot be maintained without a considerable number of white servants, as well to keep the blacks in subjection, as to bear arms in case of invasion."
Howard Zinn,Left,"Middle-class Americans might be invited to join a new elite by attacks against the corruption of the established rich. The New Yorker Cadwallader Colden, in his Address to the Freeholders in 1747, attacked the wealthy as tax dodgers unconcerned with the welfare of others (although he himself was wealthy) and spoke for the honesty and dependability of the midling rank of mankind in whom citizens could best trust our liberty & Property. This was to become a critically important rhetorical device for the rule of the few, who would speak to the many of our liberty, our property, our country."
Howard Zinn,Left,"Chapter 4 Tyranny Is Tyranny Around 1776, certain important people in the English colonies made a discovery that would prove enormously useful for the next two hundred years. They found that by creating a nation, a symbol, a legal unity called the United States, they could take over land, profits, and political power from favorites of the British Empire. In the process, they could hold back a number of potential rebellions and create a consensus of popular support for the rule of a new, privileged leadership. When we look at the American Revolution this way, it was a work of genius, and the Founding Fathers deserve the awed tribute they have received over the centuries. They created the most effective system of national control devised in modern times, and showed future generations of leaders the advantages of combining paternalism with command."
Howard Zinn,Left,"to find language inspiring to all classes, specific enough in its listing of grievances to charge people with anger against the British, vague enough to avoid class conflict among the rebels, and stirring enough to build patriotic feeling for the resistance movement. Tom Paine’s Common Sense, which appeared in early 1776 and became the most popular pamphlet in the American colonies, did this. It made the first bold argument for independence, in words that any fairly literate person could understand: Society in every state is a blessing, but Government even in its best state is but a necessary evil. . . ."
Howard Zinn,Left,"Paine’s pamphlet appealed to a wide range of colonial opinion angered by England. But it caused some tremors in aristocrats like John Adams, who were with the patriot cause but wanted to make sure it didn’t go too far in the direction of democracy. Paine had denounced the so-called balanced government of Lords and Commons as a deception, and called for single-chamber representative bodies where the people could be represented. Adams denounced Paine’s plan as so democratical, without any restraint or even an attempt at any equilibrium or counter-poise, that it must produce confusion and every evil work. Popular assemblies needed to be checked, Adams thought, because they were productive of hasty results and absurd judgements."
Howard Zinn,Left,"In America, too, the reality behind the words of the Declaration of Independence (issued in the same year as Adam Smith’s capitalist manifesto, The Wealth of Nations) was that a rising class of important people needed to enlist on their side enough Americans to defeat England, without disturbing too much the relations of wealth and power that had developed over 150 years of colonial history. Indeed, 69 percent of the signers of the Declaration of Independence had held colonial office under England. When the Declaration of Independence was read, with all its flaming radical language, from the town hall balcony in Boston, it was read by Thomas Crafts, a member of the Loyal Nine group, conservatives who had opposed militant action against the British. Four days after the reading, the Boston Committee of Correspondence ordered the townsmen to show up on the Common for a military draft. The rich, it turned out, could avoid the draft by paying for substitutes; the poor had to serve. This led to rioting, and shouting: Tyranny is Tyranny let it come from whom it may."
Howard Zinn,Left,"When feminist impulses are recorded, they are, almost always, the writings of privileged women who had some status from which to speak freely, more opportunity to write and have their writings recorded. Abigail Adams, even before the Declaration of Independence, in March of 1776, wrote to her husband: . . . in the new code of laws which I suppose it will be necessary for you to make, I desire you would remember the ladies, and be more generous to them than your ancestors. Do not put such unlimited power in the hands of husbands. Remember, all men would be tyrants if they could. If particular care and attention are not paid to the ladies, we are determined to foment a rebellion, and will not hold ourselves bound to obey the laws in which we have no"
Howard Zinn,Left,"cult of true womanhood could not completely erase what was visible as evidence of woman’s subordinate status: she could not vote, could not own property; when she did work, her wages were one-fourth to one-half what men earned in the same job. Women were excluded from the professions of law and medicine, from colleges, from the ministry."
Howard Zinn,Left,"Nat Turner’s rebellion in Southampton County, Virginia, in the summer of 1831, threw the slaveholding South into a panic, and then into a determined effort to bolster the security of the slave system. Turner, claiming religious visions, gathered about seventy slaves, who went on a rampage from plantation to plantation, murdering at least fifty-five men, women, and children. They gathered supporters, but were captured as their ammunition ran out. Turner and perhaps eighteen others were hanged."
Howard Zinn,Left,"Our ethos is all that we currently hold to be true. It is what we act upon. It governs our manners, our business, and our politics."
Howard Zinn,Left,"In fact, it was because they came from a settled culture, of tribal customs and family ties, of communal life and traditional ritual, that African blacks found themselves especially helpless when removed from this. They were captured in the interior (frequently by blacks caught up in the slave trade themselves), sold on the coast, then shoved into pens with blacks of other tribes, often speaking different languages. The"
Howard Zinn,Left,patroonship
Howard Zinn,Left,"The U.S. government did not seem to recognize that its punitive foreign policies, its military installations in countries all over the globe, might arouse anger in foreign countries, and that anger might turn to violence."
Howard Zinn,Left,"Night blanketed weary men who fell asleep where they dropped on the trampled prairie grass, while around them other prostrate men from both armies screamed and groaned in agony from wounds. By the eerie light of torches ‘the surgeon’s saw was going the livelong night."
Howard Zinn,Left,The removal of the Indians was explained by Lewis Cass
Howard Zinn,Left,"Walk the good road, my daughter, and the buffalo herds wide and dark as cloud shadows moving over the prairie will follow you. . . . Be dutiful, respectful, gentle and modest, my daughter. And proud walking. If the pride and the virtue of the women are lost, the spring will come but the buffalo trails will turn to grass. Be strong, with the warm, strong heart of the earth. No people goes down until their women are weak and dishonored. . . ."
Howard Zinn,Left,"One way was Taylorism. Frederick W. Taylor had been a steel company foreman who closely analyzed every job in the mill, and worked out a system of finely detailed division of labor, increased mechanization, and piecework wage systems, to increase production and profits. In 1911, he published a book on scientific management that became powerfully influential in the business world. Now management could control every detail of the worker’s energy and time in the factory. As Harry Braverman said (Labor and Monopoly Capital), the purpose of Taylorism was to make workers interchangeable, able to do the simple tasks that the new division of labor required"
Howard Zinn,Left,The well-paid leaders of the AFL were protected from criticism by tightly controlled meetings and by goon squads
Howard Zinn,Left,"the prayers of those who hold religion in one hand, and"
Howard Zinn,Left,"It is pretended that, as in the Preamble to the Constitution, it is we the people who wrote that document, rather than fifty-five privileged white males whose class interest required a strong central government. That use of government for class purposes, to serve the needs of the wealthy and powerful, has continued throughout American history, down to the present day. It is disguised by language that suggests all of us"
Howard Zinn,Left,"Is there a national interest when a few people decide on war, and huge numbers of others"
Howard Zinn,Left,"The soul of man, the justice, the mercy that is the heart’s heart in all men, from Maine to Georgia, does abhor this business . . . a crime is projected that confounds our understandings by its magnitude, a crime that really deprives us as well as the Cherokees of a country for how could we call the conspiracy that should crush these poor Indians our government, or the land that was cursed by their parting and dying imprecations our country any more? You, sir, will bring down that renowned chair in which you sit into infamy if your seal is set to this instrument of perfidy; and the name of this nation, hitherto the sweet omen of religion and liberty, will stink to the world."
Howard Zinn,Left,"Home labor in cultured lands, appeased and misled by a ballot whose power the dictatorship of vast capital strictly curtailed, was bribed by high wage and political office to unite in an exploitation of white, yellow, brown and black labor, in lesser lands. . . ."
Howard Zinn,Left,"Because of Columbus’s exaggerated report and promises, his second expedition was given seventeen ships and more than twelve hundred men. The aim was clear: slaves and gold. They went from island to island in the Caribbean, taking Indians as captives. But as word spread of the Europeans’ intent they found more and more empty villages. On Haiti, they found that the sailors left behind at Fort Navidad had been killed in a battle with the Indians, after they had roamed the island in gangs looking for gold, taking women and children as slaves for sex and labor."
Howard Zinn,Left,"I believe is a common fallacy among intellectuals, that to say someone is bright, even brilliant, as was said of Silber, is equivalent to saying someone is good. Silber and I clashed almost immediately. What seemed to infuriate him was that I dared to criticize him publicly and unsparingly."
Howard Zinn,Left,The most stringent protection of free speech would not protect a man in falsely shouting fire in a theatre and causing a panic. . . . The question in every case is whether the words used are used in such circumstances and are of such a nature as to create a clear and present danger that they will bring about the substantive evils that Congress has a right to prevent.
Howard Zinn,Left,"Civil disobedience is not our problem. Our problem is civil obedience. Our problem is that people all over the world have obeyed the dictates of leaders and millions have been killed because of this obedience. Our problem is that people are obedient all over the world in the face of poverty, starvation, stupidity, war and cruelty. Our problem is that people are obedient while the jails are full of petty thieves and the grand thieves are running the country. That’s our problem."
Howard Zinn,Left,"strange big boat. When Columbus and his sailors came ashore, carrying swords, speaking oddly, the Arawaks ran to greet them, brought"
Howard Zinn,Left,Truman claimed was the figure given him
Howard Zinn,Left,"It is not desirable to cultivate a respect for the law, so much as for the right. . . . Law never made men a whit more just; and, by means of their respect for it, even the well-disposed are daily made the agents of injustice. A common and natural result of an undue respect for law is, that you may see a file of soldiers . . . marching in admirable order over hill and dale to the wars, against their wills, ay, against their common sense and consciences, which makes it very steep marching indeed, and produces a palpitation of the heart."
Howard Zinn,Left,"In Maryland, for instance, by the new constitution of 1776, to run for governor one had to own 5,000 pounds of property; to run for state senator, 1,000 pounds. Thus, 90 percent of the population were excluded from holding office."
Howard Zinn,Left,"This unequal treatment, this developing combination of contempt and oppression, feeling and action, which we call racism"
Howard Zinn,Left,"Congress, in the twenties, put an end to the dangerous, turbulent flood of immigrants (14 million between 1900 and 1920) by passing laws setting immigration quotas: the quotas favored Anglo-Saxons, kept out black and yellow people, limited severely the coming of Latins, Slavs, Jews. No African country could send more than 100 people; 100 was the limit for China, for Bulgaria, for Palestine; 34,007 could come from England or Northern Ireland, but only 3,845 from Italy; 51,227 from Germany, but only 124 from Lithuania; 28,567 from the Irish Free State, but only 2,248 from Russia."
Howard Zinn,Left,"Lying there, interrogated by the governor of Virginia, Brown said: You had better"
Howard Zinn,Left,"TEACHER:: Now children, you don’t think white people are any better than you because they have straight hair and white faces? STUDENTS:: No, sir. TEACHER:: No, they are no better, but they are different, they possess great power, they formed this great government, they control this vast country. . . . Now what makes them different from you? STUDENTS:: Money! TEACHER:: Yes, but what enabled them to obtain it? How did they get money? STUDENTS:: Got it off us, stole it off we all!"
Howard Zinn,Left,And even the privileged minority
Howard Zinn,Left,"Revenge! Workingmen, to Arms!!! . . . You have for years endured the most abject humiliations; . . . you have worked yourself to death . . . your Children you have sacrificed to the factory lord"
Howard Zinn,Left,"All communities divide themselves into the few and the many. The first are the rich and well-born, the other the mass of the people. The voice of the people has been said to be the voice of God; and however generally this maxim has been quoted and believed, it is not true in fact. The people are turbulent and changing; they seldom judge or determine right. Give therefore to the first class a distinct permanent share in the government. . . . Can a democratic assembly who annually revolve in the mass of the people be supposed steadily to pursue the public good? Nothing but a permanent body can check the imprudence of democracy. . . ."
Howard Zinn,Left,"a young black man who had notified his draft board he could not in conscience cooperate with the draft because he was repelled by the violence of the Vietnam war. He received a five-year sentence. Gaylin writes: Hank’s was the first five-year sentence I had encountered. He was also the first black man. There were additional factors: How was your hair then? I asked. Afro. And what were you wearing? A dashiki. Don’t you think that might have affected your sentence? Of course. Was it worth a year or two of your life? I asked. That’s all of my life, he said, looking at me with a combination of dismay and confusion. Man, don’t you know! That’s what it’s all about! Am I free to have my style, am I free to have my hair, am I free to have my skin? Of course, I said. You’re right."
Howard Zinn,Left,"Every now and then I am impressed with the thinking of the non-Indian. I was in Cleveland last year and got to talking with a non-Indian about American history. He said that he was really sorry about what had happened to Indians, but that there was a good reason for it. The continent had to be developed and he felt that Indians had stood in the way, and thus had had to be removed. After all, he remarked, what did you do with the land when you had it? I didn’t understand him until later when I discovered that the Cuyahoga River running through Cleveland is inflammable. So many combustible pollutants are dumped into the river that the inhabitants have to take special precautions during the summer to avoid setting it on fire. After reviewing the argument of my non-Indian friend I decided that he was probably correct. Whites had made better use of the land. How many Indians could have thought of creating an inflammable river?"
Howard Zinn,Left,"You ask me why the I.W.W. is not patriotic to the United States. If you were a bum without a blanket; if you had left your wife and kids when you went west for a job, and had never located them since; if your job had never kept you long enough in a place to qualify you to vote; if you slept in a lousy, sour bunkhouse, and ate food just as rotten as they could give you and get by with it; if deputy sheriffs shot your cooking cans full of holes and spilled your grub on the ground; if your wages were lowered on you when the bosses thought they had you down; if there was one law for Ford, Suhr, and Mooney, and another for Harry Thaw; if every person who represented law and order and the nation beat you up, railroaded you to jail, and the good Christian people cheered and told them to go to it, how in hell do you expect a man to be patriotic? This war is a business man’s war and we don’t see why we should go out and get shot in order to save the lovely state of affairs that we now enjoy."
Howard Zinn,Left,It was borrowed time anyway
Howard Zinn,Left,"In the thirty years leading up to the Civil War, the law was increasingly interpreted in the courts to suit the capitalist development of the country. Studying this, Morton Horwitz (The Transformation of American Law) points out that the English commonlaw was no longer holy when it stood in the way of business growth. Mill owners were given the legal right to destroy other people’s property by flood to carry on their business. The law of eminent domain was used to take farmers’ land and give it to canal companies or railroad companies as subsidies. Judgments for damages against businessmen were taken out of the hands of juries, which were unpredictable, and given to judges. Private settlement of disputes by arbitration was replaced by court settlements, creating more dependence on lawyers, and the legal profession gained in importance. The ancient idea of a fair price for goods gave way in the courts to the idea of caveat emptor (let the buyer beware), thus throwing generations of consumers from that time on to the mercy of businessmen."
Howard Zinn,Left,"It has spread among skilled workers, white-collar workers, professionals; for the first time in the nation’s history, perhaps, both the lower classes and the middle classes, the prisoners and the guards, were disillusioned with the system."
Howard Zinn,Left,"Women were important and respected in Iroquois society. Families were matrilineal. That is, the family line went down through the female members, whose husbands joined the family, while sons who married then joined their wives’ families. Each extended family lived in a long house. When a woman wanted a divorce, she set her husband’s things outside the door."
Howard Zinn,Left,"A New York Times/CBS News poll conducted in early 1992 showed that public opinion on welfare changed depending on how the question was worded. If the word welfare was used, 44 percent of those questioned said too much was being spent on welfare (while 50 percent said either that the right amount was being spent, or that too little was being spent. But when the question was about assistance to the poor, only 13 percent thought too much was being spent, and 64 percent thought too little was being spent."
Howard Zinn,Left,"It seems quite clear that much of this intense activity for Progressive reform was intended to head off socialism. Easley talked of the menace of Socialism as evidenced by its growth in the colleges, churches, newspapers. In 1910, Victor Berger became the first member of the Socialist party elected to Congress; in 1911, seventy-three Socialist mayors were elected, and twelve hundred lesser officials in 340 cities and towns. The press spoke of The Rising Tide of Socialism."
Howard Zinn,Left,"We need to dig under the rubble of war and point out that the Bush administration is using the war as a cover for worsening the income gap in this country, while paying no attention to the problems of most of the American people, while enriching corporations."
Howard Zinn,Left,Racism was becoming more and more practical.
Howard Zinn,Left,"And still, even from the cells of the condemned, the message was going out: the class war was still on in that supposedly classless society, the United States."
Howard Zinn,Left,New York blacks could not vote unless they owned $250 in property (a qualification not applied to whites).
Howard Zinn,Left,"the Trident submarine, which was capable of firing hundreds of nuclear warheads, cost $1.5 billion. It was totally useless except in a nuclear war, in which case it would only add several hundred warheads to the tens of thousands already available. That $1.5 billion was enough to finance a five-year program of child immunization around the world against deadly diseases, and prevent five million deaths"
Howard Zinn,Left,"Perhaps the most important thing I learned was about democracy, that democracy is not our government, our constitution, our legal structure. Too often they are enemies of democracy. Certainly this was the experience of African-Americans in this country for two hundred years. With the government failing to enforce the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments to the Constitution, black men, women, and children decided to do that on their own. They organized, demonstrated, protested, challenged the law, were beaten, went to prison, some killed"
Howard Zinn,Left,"Columbus was one of the great heroes of world history, to be admired for his daring feat of imagination and courage. In my account, I acknowledged that he was an intrepid sailor, but also pointed out (based on his own journal and the reports of many eyewitnesses) that he was vicious in his treatment of the gentle Arawak Indians who greeted his arrival in this hemisphere. He enslaved them, tortured them, murdered them"
Howard Zinn,Left,"The philosophy of the Declaration, that government is set up by the people to secure their life, liberty, and happiness, and is to be overthrown when it no longer does that, is often traced to the ideas of John Locke, in his Second Treatise on Government. That was published in England in 1689, when the English were rebelling against tyrannical kings and setting up parliamentary government. The Declaration, like Locke’s Second Treatise, talked about government and political rights, but ignored the existing inequalities in property. And how could people truly have equal rights, with stark differences in wealth?"
Howard Zinn,Left,"A black man, Benjamin Banneker, who taught himself mathematics and astronomy, predicted accurately a solar eclipse, and was appointed to plan the new city of Washington, wrote to Thomas Jefferson: I suppose it is a truth too well attested to you, to need a proof here, that we are a race of beings, who have long labored under the abuse and censure of the world; that we have long been looked upon with an eye of contempt; and that we have long been considered rather as brutish than human, and scarcely capable of mental endowments I apprehend you will embrace every opportunity to eradicate that train of absurd and false ideas and opinions, which so generally prevails with respect to us; and that your sentiments are concurrent with mine, which are, that one universal Father hath given being to us all; and that he hath not only made us all of one flesh, but that he hath also, without partiality, afforded us all the same sensations and endowed us all with the same facilities. . . . Banneker asked Jefferson to wean yourselves from those narrow prejudices which you have imbibed. Jefferson tried his best, as an enlightened, thoughtful individual might. But the structure of American society, the power of the cotton plantation, the slave trade, the politics of unity between northern and southern elites, and the long culture of race prejudice in the colonies, as well as his own weaknesses"
Howard Zinn,Left,More than half the colonists who came to the North American shores in the colonial period came as servants.
Howard Zinn,Left,"It turned out to be the most bizarre election in the nation’s history. Al Gore received hundreds of thousands of votes more than Bush, but the Constitution required that the victor be determined by the electors of each state. The electoral vote was so close that the outcome was going to be determined by the electors of the state of Florida. This difference between popular vote and electoral vote had happened twice before, in 1876 and 1888."
Howard Zinn,Left,will not hold ourselves bound to obey the laws in which we have no voice of representation.
Howard Zinn,Left,"Until Americans can overcome this idealization of law, until they begin to see that law is, like other institutions and actions, to be measured against moral principles, against human needs, we will remain a static society in a world of change, a society deaf to the rising cries for justice- and therefore,a society in serious trouble.Added a quotation: The realities of american politics, it turns out, are different than as described in old civic textbooks, which tell us how fortunate we are to have the ballot. The major nominees for president are not chosen by the ballot, but are picked for us by a quadrennial political convention which is half farce, half circus, most of whose delegates have not been instructed by popular vote. For months before the convention, the public has been conditioned by the mass media on who is who, so that it will not be temped to think beyond that list which the party regulars have approved.Added a quotation: I do not think civil disobedience is enough; it is a way of protest, but in itself it does not construct a new society. There are many other things that citizens should do to begin to build a new way of life in the midst of the old, to live the way human beings should live- enjoying the fruits of the earth, the warmth of nature and of one another-without hostility, without the artificial separation of religion, or race, or nationalism. Further, not all forms of civil disobedience are moral; not all are effective.Added a quotation: It is very hard, in the comfortable environment of middle-class America, to discard the notion that everything will be better if we don't have the disturbance of civil disobedience, if we confine ourselves to voting, writing letters to our congressmen, speaking our minds politely.....somehow we must transcend our own tight, air-conditioned chambers and begin to feel their plight, their needs. It may become evident that, despite out wealth, we can have no real peace until they do. We might then join them in battering at the complacency of those who guard a false order, with that healthy commotion that has always attended the growth of justice."
Howard Zinn,Left,"I could only think one troubling thought: the police, the state, did the bidding of the holders of great wealth. How much freedom of speech and freedom of assembly you had depended on what class you were in."
Howard Zinn,Left,We must recognize that we cannot depend on the governments of the world to abolish war because they and the economic interests they represent benefit from war.
Howard Zinn,Left,"The government is an artificial creation, established by the people to defend everyone's equal right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. And when the government does not fulfill that obligation, it is the right of the people, in the words of the Declaration of Independence, to 'alter or abolish' the government."
Howard Zinn,Left,"His friend and fellow writer, Ralph Waldo Emerson, agreed, but thought it futile to protest. When Emerson visited Thoreau in jail and asked, What are you doing in there? it was reported that Thoreau replied, What are you doing out there?"
Howard Zinn,Left,"And one woman wrote, in 1850, in the book Greenwood Leaves: True feminine genius is ever timid, doubtful, and clingingly dependent; a perpetual childhood. Another book, Recollections of a Southern Matron: If any habit of his annoyed me, I spoke of it once or twice, calmly, then bore it quietly. Giving women Rules for Conjugal and Domestic Happiness, one book ended with: Do not expect too much."
Howard Zinn,Left,"English law was summarized in a document of 1632 entitled The Lawes Resolutions of Womens Rights: In this consolidation which we call wedlock is a locking together. It is true, that man and wife are one person, but understand in what manner. When a small brooke or little river incorporateth with Rhodanus, Humber, or the Thames, the poor rivulet looseth her name. . . . A woman as soon as she is married, is called covert . . . that is, veiled; as it were, clouded and overshadowed; she hath lost her streame. I may more truly, farre away, say to a married woman, Her new self is her superior; her companion, her master. ."
Howard Zinn,Left,The elimination of Mr. Richard Nixon leaves intact all the mechanisms and all the false values which permitted the Watergate scandal.
Howard Zinn,Left,In 1777 there was a women’s counterpart to the Boston Tea Party
Howard Zinn,Left,"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal , that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness."
Howard Zinn,Left,"I was a Shoemaker, & got my living by my Labor. When this Rebellion come on, I saw some of my Neighbors got into Commission, who were no better than myself. I was very ambitious, & did not like to see those Men above me. I was asked to enlist as a private Soldier. . . I offered to enlist upon having a Lieutenants Commission; which was granted. I imagined my self now in a way of Promotion: if I was killed in Battle, there would be an end of me, but if my Captain was killed, I should rise in Rank, & should still have a Chance to rise higher. These Sir! were the only Motives of my entering into the Service; for as the Dispute between Great Britain & the colonies, I know nothing of it. . ."
Howard Zinn,Left,"Speaking of California, the Illinois State Register asked: Shall this garden of beauty be suffered to lie dormant in its wild and useless luxuriance? . . . myriads of enterprising Americans would flock to its rich and inviting prairies; the hum of Anglo-American industry would be heard in its valleys; cities would rise upon its plains and sea-coast, and the resources and wealth of the nation increased in an incalculable degree."
Howard Zinn,Left,"Some newspapers, at the very start of the war, protested. Horace Greeley wrote in the New York Tribune, May 12, 1846:We can easily defeat the armies of Mexico, slaughter them by thousands, and pursue them perhaps to their capital; we can conquer and annex their territory; but what then? Have the histories of the ruin of Greek and Roman liberty consequent on such extensions of empire by the sword no lesson for us? Who believes that a score of victories over Mexico, the annexation of half her provinces, will give us more Liberty, a purer Morality, a more prosperous Industry, than we now have? . . . Is not Life miserable enough, comes not Death soon enough, without resort to the hideous enginery of War?"
Howard Zinn,Left,"Harriet Tubman, born into slavery, her head injured by an overseer when she was fifteen, made her way to freedom alone as a young woman, then become the most famous conductor on the Underground Railroad. She made nineteen dangerous trips back and forth, often disguised, escorting more than three hundred slaves to freedom, always carrying a pistol, telling the fugitives, You'll be free or die. She expressed her philosophy: There was one of two things I had a right to, liberty or death; if I could not have one, I would have the other; for no man should take me alive. . ."
Howard Zinn,Left,"Slaves hung on determinedly to their selves, to their love of family, their wholeness. A shoemaker on the South Carolina Sea Islands expressed in his own way: I'se lost an arm, but it hasn't gone out of my brains."
Howard Zinn,Left,"In 1868, the Georgia legislature voted to expel all its Negro members-two senators, twenty-five representatives-and Turner spoke to the Georgia House of Representatives (a black woman graduate student at Atlanta University later brought his speech to light):Mr. Speaker. . . I wish the members of this House to understand the position that I take. I hold that I am a member of this body. Therefore, sir, I shall neither fawn or cringe before any party, nor stoop to beg them for my rights. . . I am here to demand my rights, and to hurl thunderbolts at the men who would dare to cross the threshold of my manhood."
Howard Zinn,Left,The laws that took the vote away from blacks
Howard Zinn,Left,"In the vision of the Mohawk chief Hiawatha, the legendary Dekaniwidah spoke to the Iroquois: We bind ourselves together by taking hold of each other’s hands so firmly and forming a circle so strong that if a tree should fall upon it, it could not shake nor break it, so that our people and grandchildren shall remain in the circle in security, peace and happiness."
Howard Zinn,Left,"Very soon after the Fourteenth Amendment became law, the Supreme Court began to demolish it as a protection for blacks, and to develop it as a protection for corporations."
Howard Zinn,Left,"The New York Times tells us change is necessary and protest desirable, but within limits. Poverty should be protested, but the laws should not be broken. Hence, the Poor People’s Campaign, occupying tents in Washington in the spring of 1968, is praiseworthy; but its leader, Ralph Abernathy, is deservedly jailed for violating an ordinance against demonstrating near the Capitol. The Vietnam war is wrong, but if Dr. Spock is found by a jury and judge to have violated the draft law, he must accept his punishment as right because that is the rule of the game. Thus, exactly at that moment when we have begun to suspect that law is congealed injustice, that the existing order hides an everyday violence against body and spirit, that our political structure is fossilized, and that the noise of change"
Howard Zinn,Left,"A historian who studied Boston tax lists in 1687 and 1771 found that in 1687 there were, out of a population of six thousand, about one thousand property owners, and that the top 5 percent"
Howard Zinn,Left,Thus it could moderate labor rebellion by channeling energy into elections
Howard Zinn,Left,"Right after women got the vote, the measure of their social progress can be seen in an advice column written by Dorthy Dix that appeared in newspapers all over the country. The woman should not merely be a domestic drudge, she said:. . . .a man's wife is the show window where he exhibits the measure of his achievement. . . . The biggest deals are put across over luncheon tables; . . . we meet at dinner the people who can push our fortunes. . . . The woman who cultivates a circle of worthwhile people, who belongs to clubs, who makes herself interesting and agreeable. . . . is a help to her husband."
Howard Zinn,Left,I ain't gonna kill; it's against my will. . . .
Howard Zinn,Left,"Dan Berrigan wrote a Meditation at the time of the Catonsville incident:Our apologies good friends for the fracture of good order, the burning of paper instead of children, the angering of the orderlies in the front parlor of the charnel house. We could not, so help us God, do otherwise. . . . We say: killing is disorder, life and gentleness and community and unselfishness is the only order we recognize. for the sake of that order, we risk our liberty, our good name. The time is past when good men can remain silent, when obedience can segregate men form public risk, when the poor can die without defense."
Howard Zinn,Left,"Scientists who had worked on the atom bomb added their voices to the growing movement. George Kistiakowsky, a Harvard University chemistry professor who had worked on the first atomic bomb, and later was science adviser to President Eisenhower, became a spokesman for the disarmament movement. HIs last public remarks, before his death from cancer at the age of eighty-two, were in an editorial for the Bulletin of Atomic Scientist in December 1982. I tell you as my parting words: Forget the channels. There simply is not enough time left before the world explodes. Concentrate instead on organizing, with so many others of like mind, a mass movement for peace such as there has not been before."
Howard Zinn,Left,"When President Jimmy Carter, responding to the Soviet Union's invasion of Afghanistan, called for the registration of young men for military draft, more than 800,000 (10 percent) failed to register. One mother wrote to the New York Times:To the Editor:Thirty-six years ago I stood in front of the crematorium. The ugliest force in the world had promised itself that I should be removed from the cycle of life - that I should never know the pleasure of giving life. With great guns and great hatred, this force thought itself the equal of the force of life. I survived the great guns, and with every smile of my son, they grow smaller. It is not for me, sir, to offer my son's blood as lubricant for the next generation of guns. I remove myself and my own from the cycle of death.Isabella Leitner"
Howard Zinn,Left,"A Hopi Indian named Sun Chief said:I had learned many English words and could recite part of the Ten Commandments. I knew how to sleep on a bad, pray to Jesus, comb my hair, eat with a knife and fork, and use a toilet. . . . I had also learned that a person thinks with his head instead of his heart."
Howard Zinn,Left,"The mystique that Friedan spoke of was the image of the woman as mother, wife, living through her husband, through her children, giving up her own dreams for that. She concluded: The only way for a woman as for a man, to find herself, to know herself as a person, is by creative work of her own."
Howard Zinn,Left,"When guns boom, the arts die."
Howard Zinn,Left,The rural Vietnamese was not regarded simply as a pawn in a power struggle but as the active element in the thrust. He was the thrust.
Howard Zinn,Left,"In September 1973, a former government official in Laos, Jerome Doolittle, wrote in the New York Times:The Pentagon's most recent lies about bombing Cambodia bring back a question that often occurred to me when I was press attache at the American Embassy in Vietnam, Laos.Why did we bother to lie?When I first arrived in Laos, I was instructed to answer all press questions about our massive and merciless bombing campaign in that tiny country with: At the request of the Royal Laotian Government, The United States is conducting unarmed reconnaissance flights accompanied by armed escorts who have the right to return if fired upon.This was a lie. Every reporter to whom I told knew it was a lie. Hanoi knew it was a lie. The International Control Commission knew it was a lie. . . . After all , the lies did serve to keep something from somebody, and the somebody was us."
Howard Zinn,Left,"When the first contingents of U.S. troops were being sent to Saudi Arabia, in August of 1990, Corporal Jeff Patterson, a twenty-two-year-old Marine stationed in Hawaii, sat down on the runway of the airfield and refused to board a plane bound to Saudi Arabia. He asked to be discharged from the Marine Corps:I have come to believe that there are no justified wars. . . . I began to question exactly what I was doing in the Marine Corps about the time I began to read about history. I began to read up on America's support for the murderous regimes of Guatemala, Iran, under the Shah, and El Salvador. . . . I object to the military use of force against any people, anywhere, any time."
Howard Zinn,Left,"Another black woman, Margaret Wright, said she was not fighting for equality with men if it meant equality in the world of killing, the world of competition. I don't want to compete on no damned exploitative level. I don't want to exploit nobody. . . . I want the right to be black and me. . . ."
Howard Zinn,Left,The President of the United States isn't going to solve our problems. The problems are too big.
Howard Zinn,Left,"A Yale professor of military history, Micheal Howard, writing in the New York Times )January 28, 1991) quoted the military strategist Clausewitz approvingly: The fact that a bloody slaughter is a horrifying act must make us take war more seriously, but not provide an excuse for gradually blunting our swords in the name of humanity."
Howard Zinn,Left,"Harriet Hanson was an eleven-year-old girl working in the mill. She later recalled:I worked in a lower room where I had heard the proposed strike fully, if not vehemently, discussed. I had been an ardent listener to what was said against this attempt at oppression on the part of the corporation, and naturally I took sides with the strikers. When the day came on which the girls were to turn out, those in the upper rooms started first, and so many of them left that our mill was at once shut down. Then, when the girls in my room stood irresolute, uncertain what to do. . . I, who began to think they would not go out, after all their talk, became impatient, and started on ahead, saying, with childish bravado,  I don't care what you do . . . I am going to turn out, whether anyone else does or not, and I marched out, and was following by the others. As I looked back at the long line that followed me, I was more proud than I have ever since. . ."
Howard Zinn,Left,"Whatever we poor men may not have, we have free speech, and no one can take it from us."
Howard Zinn,Left,"All you have to do, gentlemen, for you have the numbers, is to unite on one idea - that the workingmen shall rule the country. What man makes, belongs to him, and the workingman made this country."
Howard Zinn,Left,"I have a little boy at home,A pretty little son;I think sometimes the world is mineIn him, my only one. . . 'Ere dawn my labor drives me forth;Tis night when I am free;A stranger am I to my child;And stranger my child to me. . . ."
Howard Zinn,Left,"The literature that followed World War II, James Jones's From Here to Eternity, Joseph Heller's Catch-22, and Norman Mailer's The Naked and the Dead, captured this GI anger against the army brass. In The Naked and the Dead, the soldiers talk in battle, and one of them says: The only thing wrong with this Army is it never lost a war.Toglio was shocked. You think we ought to lose this one? Red found himself carried away. What have I against the goddam Japs? You think I care if they keep this fuggin jungle? What's it to me if Cummings gets another star? General Cummings, he's a good man, Martinez said. There ain't a good officer in the world, Red stated."
Howard Zinn,Left,"In January 1943, there appeared in a Negro newspaper this Draftee's Prayer:Dear Lord, todayI go to war:To fight, to die, Tell me what for?Dear Lord, I'll fight, I do not fear, Germans or Japs;My fears are here.America!"
Howard Zinn,Left,"New York Times military analyst Hanson Baldwin wrote, shortly after the war:The enemy, in a military sense, was in a hopeless strategic position by the time the Potsdam demand for unconditional surrender was made on July 26. Such then, was the situation when we wiped out Hiroshima and Nagasaki.  Need we have done it? No one can, of course, be positive, but the answer is almost certainly negative."
Howard Zinn,Left,"ATTENTIONANTI-RENTERS! AWAKE! AROUSE! . . . Strike till the last armed foe expires, Strike for your altars and your fires-Strike for the green graves of your sires, God and your happy homes!"
Howard Zinn,Left,"I never cared much for machinery. I could not see into their complications or feel interested in them. . . In sweet June weather I would lean far out of the window, and try not to hear the unceasing clash of sound inside."
Howard Zinn,Left,"I see a time when the farmer will not need to live in a cabin on a lonely farm. I see the farmers coming together in groups. I see them with the time to read, and time to visit with their fellows. I see them enjoying lectures in beautiful halls, erected in every village. I see them gather like Saxons of old upon the green at evening to sing and dance. I see cities rising near them with schools, and churches, and concert halls and theaters. I see a day when the farmer will no longer be a drudge and his wife a bond slave, but happy men and women who will go singing to their pleasant tasks upon their fruitful farms. When the boys and girls will not go west nor to the city; when life will be worth living. In that day the moon will be brighter and the stars more glad, and pleasure and poetry and love of life come back to the man who tills the soil."
Howard Zinn,Left,"We tried to educate ourselves. I would invite the girls to my rooms, and we took turns reading poetry in English to improve our understanding of the language. One of our favorites was Thomas Hood's Song of the Shirt, and another . . . Percy Bysshe Shelley's Mask of Anarchy. . . . Rise like lions after slumberIn unvanquishable number!Which in sleep had fallen on you-Ye are many, they are few!"
Howard Zinn,Left,"The poet Archibald MacLeish, then an Assistant Secretary of State, spoke critically of what he saw in the postwar world: As things are now going, the peace we will make, the peace we seem to be making, will be a peace of oil, a peace of gold, a peace of shipping, a peace, in brief . . . without moral purpose or human interest. . . ."
Howard Zinn,Left,"In the mid-thirties, a young black poet named Langston Hughes wrote a poem, Let America Be America Again:. . . I am the poor white, fooled and pushed apart, I am the Negro bearing slavery's scars. I am the red man driven from the land, I am the immigrant clutching the hope I seek-And finding only the same old stupid plan.Of dog eat dog, of mighty crush the weak. . . . O, let America be America again-The land that never has been yet-And yet must be-the land where every man is free.The land that's mine-the poor man's, Indian's, Negro's ME-Who made America, Whose sweat and blood, whose faith and pain, Whose hand at the foundry, whose plow in the rain, Must bring back our mighty dream again.Sure call me any ugly name you choose-The steel of freedom does not stain.From those who live like leeches on the people's lives,We must take back our land again,America! . . ."
Howard Zinn,Left,"King's stress on love and nonviolence was powerfully effective in building a sympathetic following throughout the nation, among whites as well as blacks."
Howard Zinn,Left,We are here plunged in politics funnier than words can express. Very great issues are involved…. But the amusing thing is that no one talks about real interests. By common consent they agree to let these alone. We are afraid to discuss them. Instead of this the press is engaged in a most amusing dispute whether Mr. Cleveland had an illegitimate child and did or did not live with more than one mistress.
Howard Zinn,Left,"From 1964 to 1972, the wealthiest and most powerful nation in the history of the world made a maximum military effort, with everything short of atomic bombs, to defeat a nationalist revolutionary movement in a tiny, peasant country-and failed. When the United States fought in Vietnam, it was organized modern technology versus organized human beings, and the human beings won."
Howard Zinn,Left,"Outright lying or quiet omission takes the risk of discovery which, when made, might arouse the reader to rebel against the writer. To state the facts, however, and then to bury them in a mass of other information is to say to the reader with a certain infectious calm: yes, mass murder took place, but it’s not that important"
Howard Zinn,Left,"more militant. Frederick Douglass spoke in 1857: Let me give you a word of the philosophy of reforms. The whole history of the progress of human liberty shows that all concessions yet made to her august claims have been born of struggle…. If there is no struggle there is no progress. Those who profess to favor freedom and yet deprecate agitation, are men who want crops without plowing up the ground. They want rain without thunder and lightning. They want the ocean without the awful roar of its many waters. The struggle may be a moral one; or it may be a physical one; or it may be both moral and physical, but it must be a struggle. Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will…."
Howard Zinn,Left,"The prosecuting attorney, in his plea to the jury, accused me of saying on a public platform at a public meeting, To hell with the courts, we know what justice is. He told a great truth when he lied, for if he had searched the innermost recesses of my mind he could have found that thought, never expressed by me before, but which I express now, To hell with your courts, I know what justice is,"
Howard Zinn,Left,"A student at a Negro college told his teacher: The Army jim-crows us. The Navy lets us serve only as messmen. The Red Cross refuses our blood. Employers and labor unions shut us out. Lynchings continue. We are disenfranchised, jim-crowed, spat upon. What more could Hitler do than that? NAACP leader Walter White repeated this to a black audience of several thousand people in the Midwest, thinking they would disapprove, but instead, as he recalled: To my surprise and dismay the audience burst into such applause that it took me some thirty or forty seconds to quiet it."
Howard Zinn,Left,"Aldous Huxley: Liberties are not given, they are taken."
Howard Zinn,Left,"In the summer of 1863, a Song of the Conscripts was circulated by the thousands in New York and other cities. One stanza: We’re coming, Father Abraham, three hundred thousand more We leave our homes and firesides with bleeding hearts and sore Since poverty has been our crime, we bow to thy decree; We are the poor and have no wealth to purchase liberty."
Howard Zinn,Left,Artists in Times of War The Bomb Disobedience and Democracy: Nine Fallacies on Law
Howard Zinn,Left,"The first man to sight land was supposed to get a yearly pension of 10,000 maravedis for life, but Rodrigo never got it. Columbus claimed he had seen a light the evening before. He got the reward."
Judith Butler,Left,"Let's face it. We're undone by each other. And if we're not, we're missing something. If this seems so clearly the case with grief, it is only because it was already the case with desire. One does not always stay intact. It may be that one wants to, or does, but it may also be that despite one's best efforts, one is undone, in the face of the other, by the touch, by the scent, by the feel, by the prospect of the touch, by the memory of the feel. And so when we speak about my sexuality or my gender, as we do (and as we must), we mean something complicated by it. Neither of these is precisely a possession, but both are to be understood as modes of being dispossessed, ways of being for another, or, indeed, by virtue of another."
Judith Butler,Left,"We lose ourselves in what we read, only to return to ourselves, transformed and part of a more expansive world."
Judith Butler,Left,"If Lacan presumes that female homosexuality issues from a disappointed heterosexuality, as observation is said to show, could it not be equally clear to the observer that heterosexuality issues from a disappointed homosexuality?"
Judith Butler,Left,"Love is not a state, a feeling, a disposition, but an exchange, uneven, fraught with history, with ghosts, with longings that are more or less legible to those who try to see one another with their own faulty vision."
Judith Butler,Left,Possibility is not a luxury; it is as crucial as bread.
Judith Butler,Left,"The misapprehension about gender performativity is this: that gender is a choice, or that gender is a role, or that gender is a construction that one puts on, as one puts on clothes in the morning, that there is a 'one' who is prior to this gender, a one who goes to the wardrobe of gender and decides with deliberation which gender it will be today."
Judith Butler,Left,"When we lose certain people, or when we are dispossessed from a place, or a community, we may simply feel that we are undergoing something temporary, that mourning will be over and some restoration of prior order will be achieved. But maybe when we undergo what we do, something about who we are is revealed, something that delineates the ties we have to others, that shows us that these ties constitute what we are, ties or bonds that compose us. It is not as if an I exists independently over here and then simply loses a you over there, especially if the attachment to you is part of what composes who I am. If I lose you, under these conditions, then I not only mourn the loss, but I become inscrutable to myself. Who am I, without you? When we lose some of these ties by which we are constituted, we do not know who we are or what to do. On one level, I think I have lost you only to discover that I have gone missing as well."
Judith Butler,Left,"...gender is a kind of imitation for which there is no original; in fact, it is a kind of imitation that produces the very notion of the original as an effect and consequence of the imitation itself...what they imitate is a phantasmic ideal of heterosexual identity...gay identities work neither to copy nor emulate heterosexuality, but rather, to expose heterosexuality as an incessant and panicked imitation of its own naturalized idealization. That heterosexuality is always in the act of elaborating itself is evidence that it is perpetually at risk, that it, that it 'knows' it's own possibility of becoming undone"
Judith Butler,Left,"As a result, gender is not to culture as sex is to nature; gender isalso the discursive/cultural means by which sexed nature or a naturalsex is produced and established as prediscursive, prior to culture,a politically neutral surface on which culture acts"
Judith Butler,Left,To operate within the matrix ofpower is not the same as to replicate uncritically relations of domination.
Judith Butler,Left,"When I was twelve, I was interviewed by a doctoral candidate in education and asked what I wanted to be when I grew up. I said that I either wanted to be a philosopher or a clown, and I understood then, I think, that much depended on whether or not I found the world worth philosophizing about, and what the price of seriousness might be."
Judith Butler,Left,"[W]e must recognize that ethics requires us to risk ourselves precisely at moments of unknowingness, when what forms us diverges from what lies before us, when our willingness to become undone in relation to others constitutes our chance of becoming human. To be undone by another is a primary necessity, an anguish, to be sure, but also a chance--to be addressed, claimed, bound to what is not me, but also to be moved, to be prompted to act, to address myself elsewhere, and so to vacate the self-sufficient I as a kind of possession. If we speak and try to give an account from this place, we will not be irresponsible, or, if we are, we will surely be forgiven."
Judith Butler,Left,"Whether or not we continue to enforce a universal conception of human rights at moments of outrage and incomprehension, precisely when we think that others have taken themselves out of the human community as we know it, is a test of our very humanity."
Judith Butler,Left,"What makes for a livable world is no idle question. It is not merely a question for philosophers. It is posed in various idioms all the time by people in various walks of life. If that makes them all philosophers, then that is a conclusion I am happy to embrace. It becomes a question for ethics, I think, not only when we ask the personal question, what makes my own life bearable, but when we ask, from a position of power, and from the point of view of distributive justice, what makes, or ought to make, the lives of others bearable? Somewhere in the answer we find ourselves not only committed to a certain view of what life is, and what it should be, but also of what constitutes the human, the distinctively human life, and what does not. There is always a risk of anthropocentrism here if one assumes that the distinctively human life is valuable--or most valuable--or is the only way to think the problem of value. But perhaps to counter that tendency it is necessary to ask both the question of life and the question of the human, and not to let them fully collapse into one another."
Judith Butler,Left,...laughter emerges in the realization that all along the original was derived.
Judith Butler,Left,"What is most important is to cease legislating for all lives what is liveable only for some, and similarly, to refrain from proscribing for all lives what is unlivable for some."
Judith Butler,Left,"You will need all of those skills to move forward, affirming this earth, our ethical obligations to live among those who are invariably different from ourselves, to demand recognition for our histories and our struggles at the same time that we lend that to others, to live our passions without causing harm to others, and to know the difference between raw prejudice and distortion, and sound critical judgment.The first step towards nonviolence, which is surely an absolute obligation we all bear, is to begin to think critically, and to ask others to do the same."
Judith Butler,Left,"Bound to seek recognition of its own existence in categories, terms, and names that are not of its own making, the subject seeks the sign of its own existence outside itself, in a discourse that is at once dominant and indifferent. Social categories signify subordination and existence at once. In other words, within subjection the price of existence is subordination."
Judith Butler,Left,"a phenomenon that gave rise to my first critical insight into the subtle ruse of power: the prevailing law threatened one with trouble, all to keep one out of trouble. Hence, I concluded that trouble is inevitable and the task, how best to make it, what best way to be in it."
Judith Butler,Left,"The violence of language consists in its effort to capture the ineffable and, hence, to destroy it, to seize hold of that which must remain elusive for language to operate as a living thing."
Judith Butler,Left,"If the immutable character of sex is contested, perhaps this construct called ‘sex’ is as culturally constructed as gender; indeed, perhaps it was always already gender, with the consequence that the distinction between sex and gender turns out to be no distinction at all."
Judith Butler,Left,Do we need recourse to a happier state before the law in order to maintain that contemporary gender relations and the punitive production of gender identities are oppressive?
Judith Butler,Left,"I'm no great fan of the phallus, and have made my own views known on this subject before, so I do not propose a return to a notion of the phallus as the third term in any and all relations of desire."
Judith Butler,Left,"Law itself is either suspended, or regarded as an instrument that the state may use in the service of constraining and monitoring a given population; the state is not subject to the rule of law, but law can be suspended or deployed tactically and partially to suit the requirements of a state that seeks more and more to allocate sovereign power to its executive and administrative powers. The law is suspended in the name of sovereignty of the nation, where sovereignty denotes the task of any state to preserve and protect its own territoriality."
Judith Butler,Left,"Relationality [is] not only [a] descriptive or historical fact of our formation, but also an ongoing normative dimension of our social and political lives, one in which we are compelled to take stock of our interdependence."
Judith Butler,Left,There is no reason to assume that gender also ought to remain as two. The presumption of a binary gender system implicitly retains the belief in a mimetic relation of gender to sex whereby gender mirrors sex or is otherwise restricted by it.
Judith Butler,Left,Lacanian theory must be understood as a kind of slave morality.
Judith Butler,Left,The effort to identify the enemy as singular in form is a reverse-discourse that uncritically mimics the strategy of the oppressor instead of offering a different set of terms.
Judith Butler,Left,"That the power regimes of heterosexism and phallogocentrism seek to augment themselves through a constant repetition of their logic, their metaphysic, and their naturalized ontologies does not imply that repetition itself ought to be stopped"
Judith Butler,Left,"Learning the rules that govern intelligible speech is an inculcation into normalized language, where the price of not conforming is the loss of intelligibility itself."
Judith Butler,Left,"The effect of gender is produced through the stylization of the body and, hence, must be understood as the mundane way in which bodily gestures, movements, and styles of various kinds constitute the illusion of an abiding gendered self. This formulation moves the conception of gender off the ground of a substantial model of identity to one that requires a conception of gender as a constituted social temporality."
Judith Butler,Left,"His coach drew up before the Duke of Stanhope’s town house, and Ian walked swiftly up the front steps, almost knocking poor Ormsley, who opened the door, off his feet in his haste to get to his grandfather upstairs. A few minutes later he strode back down and into the library, where he flung himself into a chair, his eyes riveted on the clock. Upstairs the household was in an uproar as the duke called for his valet, his butler, and his footmen. Unlike Ian, however, the duke was ecstatic. Ormsley, Ian needs me! the duke said happily, stripping off his jacket and pulling off his neckcloth. He walked right in here and said it.Ormsley beamed. He did indeed, your grace.I feel twenty years younger.Ormsley nodded. This is a very great day.What in hell is keeping Anderson? I need a shave. I want evening clothes-black, I think-a diamond stickpin and diamond studs. Stop thrusting that cane at me, man.You shouldn’t overly exert yourself, your grace.Ormsley, said the duke as he walked over to an armoire and flung the doors open, if you think I’m going to be leaning on that damned cane on the greatest night of my life, you’re out of your mind. I’ll walk in there beside my grandson unaided, thank you very much. Where the devil is Anderson?"
Judith Butler,Left,"There is no life without the conditions of life that variably sustain life, and those conditions are pervasively social, establishing not the discrete ontology of the person, but rather the interdependency of persons, involving reproducible and sustaining social relations, and relations to the environment and to non-human forms of life, broadly considered. This mode of social ontology (for which no absolute distinction between social and ecological exists) has concrete implications for how we re-approach the issues of reproductive freedom and anti-war politics. The question is not whether a given being is living or not, nor whether the being in question has the status of a person; it is, rather, whether the social conditions of persistence and flourishing are or are not possible. Only with this latter question can we avoid the anthropocentric and liberal individualist presumptions that have derailed such discussions."
Judith Butler,Left,We must be undone in order to do ourselves: we must be part of a larger social fabric of existence in order to create who we are.
Judith Butler,Left,"We need instead to ask, what possibilities of mobilization are produced on the basis of existing configurations of discourse and power? What are the possibilities of reworking that very matrix of power by which we are constituted, of reconstituting the legacy of that constitution, and of working against each other process of regulation that can destabilize existing power regimes? For if the subject is constituted by power, that power does not cease at the moment the subject is constituted, for that subject is never fully constituted, but is subjected and produced time and again. That subject is neither a ground nor a product, but the permanent possibility of a certain resignifying process, one which gets detoured and stalled through other mechanisms of power, but which is power's own possibility of being reworked. It is not enough to say that the subject is invariably engaged in a political field; that phenomenological phrasing misses the point that the subject is an accomplishment regulated and produced in advance. And is as such fully political; indeed, perhaps most political as the point in which it is claimed to be prior to politics itself. To perform this kind of Foucaultian critique of the subject is not to do away with the subject or to pronounce it's death, but merely to claim that certain versions of the subject are politically insidious."
Judith Butler,Left,"If there is something right in Beauvoir's claim that one is born, but rather becomes a woman, it follows that woman itself is a term in process, a becoming, a constructing that cannot rightfully be said to originate or to end. As an ongoing discursive practice, it is open to intervention and resignification."
Judith Butler,Left,"Although some lesbians argue that butches have nothing to do with being a man, others insist that their butchness is or was only a route to a desired status as a man. These paradoxes have surely proliferated in recent years,offering evidence of a kind of gender trouble that the text itself did notanticipate."
Judith Butler,Left,"Elizabeth snapped awake in a terrified instant as the door to her bed chamber was flung open near dawn, and Ian stalked into the darkened room. Do you want to go first, or shall I? he said tightly, coming to stand at the side of her bed. What do you mean? she asked in a trembling voice.I mean, he said, that either you go first and tell me why in hell you suddenly find my company repugnant, or I’ll go first and tell you how I feel when I don’t know where you are or why you want to be there!I’ve sent word to you both nights.You sent a damned note that arrived long after nightfall both times, informing me that you intended to sleep somewhere else. I want to know why!He has men beaten like animals, she reminded herself.Stop shouting at me, Elizabeth said shakily, getting out of bed and dragging the covers with her to hide herself from him.His brows snapped together in an ominous frown. Elizabeth? he asked, reaching for her.Don’t touch me! she cried.Bentner’s voice came from the doorway. Is aught amiss, my lady? he asked, glaring bravely at Ian.Get out of here and close that damned door behind you! Ian snapped furiously.Leave it open, Elizabeth said nervously, and the brave butler did exactly as she said.In six long strides Ian was at the door, shoving it closed with a force that sent it crashing into its frame, and Elizabeth began to vibrate with terror. When he turned around and started toward her Elizabeth tried to back away, but she tripped on the coverlet and had to stay where she was.Ian saw the fear in her eyes and stopped short only inches in front of her. His hand lifted, and she winced, but it came to rest on her cheek. Darling, what is it? he asked. It was his voice that made her want to weep at his feet, that beautiful baritone voice; and his face-that harsh, handsome face she’d adored. She wanted to beg him to tell her what Robert and Wordsworth had said were lies-all lies. My life depends on this, Elizabeth. So does yours. Don’t fail us, Robert had pleaded. Yet, in that moment of weakness she actually considered telling Ian everything she knew and letting him kill her if he wanted to; she would have preferred death to the torment of living with the memory of the lie that had been their lives-to the torment of living without him.Are you ill? he asked, frowning and minutely studying her face.Snatching at the excuse he’d offered, she nodded hastily. Yes. I haven’t been feeling well.Is that why you went to London? To see a physician?She nodded a little wildly, and to her bewildered horror he started to smile-that lazy, tender smile that always made her senses leap. Are you with child, darling? Is that why you’re acting so strangely? Elizabeth was silent, trying to debate the wisdom of saying yes or no-she should say no, she realized. He’d hunt her to the ends of the earth if he believed she was carrying his babe.No! He-the doctor said it is just-just-nerves.You’ve been working and playing too hard, Ian said, looking like the picture of a worried, devoted husband. You need more rest.Elizabeth couldn’t bear any more of this-not his feigned tenderness or his concern or the memory of Robert’s battered back. I’m going to sleep now, she said in a strangled voice. Alone, she added, and his face whitened as if she had slapped him.During his entire adult life Ian had relied almost as much on his intuition as on his intellect, and at that moment he didn’t want to believe in the explanation they were both offering. His wife did not want him in her bed; she recoiled from his touch; she had been away for two consecutive nights; and-more alarming than any of that-guilt and fear were written all over her pale face.Do you know what a man thinks, he said in a calm voice that belied the pain streaking through him, when his wife stays away at night and doesn’t want him in her bed when she does return?"
Judith Butler,Left,"Without grievability, there is no life, or, rather, there is something living that is other than life. Instead, there is a life that will never have been lived, sustained by no regard, no testimony, and ungrieved when lost. The apprehension of grievability precedes and makes possible the apprehension of precarious life. Grievability precedes and makes possible the apprehension of the living being as living, exposed to non-life from the start."
Judith Butler,Left,"Are we not, ethically speaking, obligated to stop its (violence) further dissemination, to consider our role in instigating it, and to forment and cultivate another sense of a culturally and religiously diverse global political culture?"
Judith Butler,Left,Precariousness and precarity are intersecting concepts. Lives are by definition precarious: they can be expunged at will or by accident; their persistence is in no sense guaranteed
Judith Butler,Left,"Those who commit acts of violence are surely responsible for them; they are not dupes or mechanisms of an impersonal social force, but agents with responsibility. On the other hand, these individuals are formed, and we would be making a mistake if we reduced their actions to purely self-generated acts of will or symptoms of individual pathology of 'evil'."
Judith Butler,Left,"According to Melanie Klein, we develop moral responses in reaction to questions of survivability. My wager is that Klein is right about that, even as she thwarts her own insight by insisting that it is the ego's survivability that is finally at issue. Why the ego? After all, if my survivability depends on a relation to others, to a you or a set of yous without whom I cannot exist, then my existence is not mine alone, but is to be found outside myself, in this set of relations that precede and exceed the boundaries of who I am. If I have a boundary at all, or if a boundary can be said to belong to me, it is only because I have become separated from others, and it is only on condition of this separation that I can relate to them at all. So the boundary is a function of the relation, a brokering of difference, a negotiation in which I am bound to you in my separateness. If I seek to preserve your life, it is not only because I seek to preserve my own, but because who I am is nothing without your life, and life itself has to be rethought as this complex, passionate, antagonistic, and necessary set of relations to others. I may lose this you and any number of particular others, and I may well survive those losses. But that can happen only if I do not lose the possibility of any you at all. If I survive, it is only because my life is nothing without the life that exceeds me, that refers to some indexical you, without whom I cannot be."
Judith Butler,Left,"We can understand this conclusion to be the necessary result of a heterosexualized and masculine observational point of view that takes lesbian sexuality to be a refusal of sexuality per se only because sexuality is presumed to be heterosexual, and the observer, here constructed as the heterosexual male, is clearly being refused."
Judith Butler,Left,"Irigaray remarks in such a vein that the masquerade... is what women do... in order to participate in man's desire, but at the cost of giving up their own."
Judith Butler,Left,"Leaning back in his chair, Ian listened to Larimore’s irate summation of the wild and fruitless chase he’d been sent on for two days by Lady Thornton and her butler: And after all that, Larimore flung out in high dudgeon, I returned to the house on Promenade Street to demand the butler allow me past the stoop, only to have the man-Slam the door in your face? Ian suggested dispassionately.No, my lord, he invited me in, Larimore bit out. He invited me to search the house to my complete satisfaction. She’s left London, Larimore finished, avoiding his employer’s narrowed gaze.She’ll go to Havenhurst, Ian said decisively, and he gave Larimore directions to find the small estate.When Larimore left, Ian picked up a contract he needed to read and approve; but before he’d read two lines Jordan stalked into his study unannounced, carrying a newspaper and wearing an expression Ian hadn’t seen before. Have you seen the paper today?Ian ignored the paper and studied his friend’s angry face instead. No, why?Read it, Jordan said, slapping it down on the desk. Elizabeth allowed herself to be questioned by a reporter from the Times. Read that. He jabbed his finger at a few lines near the bottom of the article about Elizabeth by one Mr. Thomas Tyson. That was your wife’s response when Tyson asked her how she felt when she saw you on trial before your peers.Frowning at Jordan’s tone, Ian read Elizabeth’s reply:My husband was not tried before his peers. He was merely tried before the Lords of theBritish Realm. Ian Thornton has no peers.Ian tore his gaze from the article, refusing to react to the incredible sweetness of her response, but Jordan would not let it go. My compliments to you, Ian, he said angrily. You serve your wife with a divorce petition, and she responds by giving you what constitutes a public apology! He turned and stalked out of the room, leaving Ian behind to stare with clenched jaw at the article. One month later Elizabeth had still not been found. Ian continued trying to purge her from his mind and tear her from his heart, but with decreasing success. He knew he was losing ground in the battle, just as he had been slowly losing it from the moment he’d looked up and seen her walking into the House of Lords."
Judith Butler,Left,"My dear, dear ladies, Sir Francis effused as he hastened forward, what a long-awaited delight this is! Courtesy demanded that he acknowledge the older lady first, and so he turned to her. Picking up Berta’s limp hand from her side, he presed his lips to it and said, Permit me to introduce myself. I am Sir Francis Belhaven.Lady Berta curtsied, her fear-widened eyes fastened on his face, and continued to press her handkerchief to her lips. To his astonishment, she did not acknowledge him at all; she did not say she was charmed to meet him or inquire after his health. Instead, the woman curtsied again. And once again. There’s hardly a need for all that, he said, covering his puzzlement with forced jovially. I’m only a knight, you know. Not a duke or even an earl.Lady Berta curtsied again, and Elizabeth nudged her sharply with her elbow. How do! burst out the plump lady.My aunt is a trifle-er-shy with strangers, Elizabeth managed weakly.The sound of Elizabeth Cameron’s soft, musical voice made Sir Francis’s blood sing. He turned with unhidden eagerness to his future bride and realized that it was a bust of himself that Elizabeth was clutching so protectively, so very affectionately to her bosom. He could scarcely contain his delight. I knew it would be this way between us-no pretense, no maidenly shyness, he burst out, beaming at her blank, wary expression as he gently took the bust of himself from Elizabeth’s arms. But, my lovely, there’s no need for you to caress a hunk of clay when I am here in the flesh.Momentarily struck dumb, Elizabeth gaped at the bust she’d been holding as he first set it gently upon its stand, then turned expectantly to her, leaving her with the horrifying-and accurate-thought that he now expected her to reach out and draw his balding head to her bosom. She stared at him, her mind in paralyzed chaos. I-I would ask a favor of you, Sir Francis, she burst out finally.Anything, my dear, he said huskily.I would like to-to rest before supper.He stepped back, looking disappointed, but then he recalled his manners and reluctantly nodded. We don’t keep country hours. Supper is at eight-thirty. For the first time he took a moment to really look at her. His memories of her exquisite face and delicious body had been so strong, so clear, that until then he’d been seeing the Lady Elizabeth Cameron he’d met long ago. Now he belatedly registered the stark, unattractive gown she wore and the severe way her hair was dressed. His gaze dropped to the ugly iron cross that hung about her neck, and he recoiled in shock. Oh, and my dear, I’ve invited a few guests, he added pointedly, his eyes on her unattractive gown. I thought you would want to know, in order to attire yourself more appropriately.Elizabeth suffered that insult with the same numb paralysis she’d felt since she set eyes on him. Not until the door closed behind him did she feel able to move. Berta, she burst out, flopping disconsolately onto the chair beside her, how could you curtsy like that-he’ll know you for a lady’s maid before the night is out! We’ll never pull this off.Well! Berta exclaimed, hurt and indignant. Twasn’t I who was clutching his head to my bosom when he came in.We’ll do better after this, Elizabeth vowed with an apologetic glance over her shoulder, and the trepidation was gone from her voice, replaced by steely determination and urgency. We have to do better. I want us both out of here tomorrow. The day after at the very latest.The butler stared at my bosom, Berta complained. I saw him!Elizabeth sent her a wry, mirthless smile. The footman stared at mine. No woman is safe in this place. We only had a bit of-of stage fright just now. We’re new to playacting, but tonight I’ll carry it off. You’ll see. No matter what if takes, I’ll do it."
Judith Butler,Left,"Normally, Bentner would have beamed approvingly at the pretty portrait the girls made, but this morning, as he put out butter and jam, he had grim news to impart and a confession to make. As he swept the cover off the scones he gave his news and made his confession.We had a guest last night, he told Elizabeth. I slammed the door on him.Who was it?A Mr. Ian Thornton.Elizabeth stifled a horrified chuckle at the image that called to mind, but before she could comment Bentner said fiercely, I regretted my actions afterward! I should have invited him inside, offered him refreshment, and slipped some of that purgative powder into his drink. He’d have had a bellyache that lasted a month!Bentner, Alex sputtered, you are a treasure!Do not encourage him in these fantasies, Elizabeth warned wryly. Bentner is so addicted to mystery novels that he occasionally forgets that what one does in a novel cannot always be done in real life. He actually did a similar thing to my uncle last year.Yes, and he didn’t return for six months, Bentner told Alex proudly.And when he does come, Elizabeth reminded him with a frown to sound severe, he refuses to eat or drink anything.Which is why he never stays long, Bentner countered, undaunted. As was his habit whenever his mistress’s future was being discussed, as it was now, Bentner hung about to make suggestions as they occurred to him. Since Elizabeth had always seemed to appreciate his advice and assistance, he found nothing odd about a butler sitting down at the table and contributing to the conversation when the only guest was someone he’d known since she was a girl.It’s that odious Belhaven we have to rid you of first, Alexandra said, returning to their earlier conversation. He hung about last night, glowering at anyone who might have approached you. She shuddered. And the way he ogles you. It’s revolting. It’s worse than that; he’s almost frightening.Bentner heard that, and his elderly eyes grew thoughtful as he recalled something he’d read about in one of his novels. As a solution it is a trifle extreme, he said, but as a last resort it could work.Two pairs of eyes turned to him with interest, and he continued, I read it in The Nefarious Gentleman. We would have Aaron abduct this Belhaven in our carriage and bring him straightaway to the docks, where we’ll sell him to the press gangs.Shaking her head in amused affection, Elizabeth said, I daresay he wouldn’t just meekly go along with Aaron.And I don’t think, Alex added, her smiling gaze meeting Elizabeth’s, a press gang would take him. They’re not that desperate.There’s always black magic, Bentner continued. In Deathly Endeavors there was a perpetrator of ancient rites who cast an evil spell. We would require some rats’ tails, as I recall, and tongues of-No, Elizabeth said with finality.-lizards, Bentner finished determinedly.Absolutely not, his mistress returned.And fresh toad old, but procuring that might be tricky. The novel didn’t say how to tell fresh from-Bentner! Elizabeth exclaimed, laughing. You’ll cast us all into a swoon if you don’t desist at once.When Bentner had padded away to seek privacy for further contemplation of solutions, Elizabeth looked at Alex. Rats’ tails and lizards’ tongues, she said, chuckling. No wonder Bentner insists on having a lighted candle in his room all night.He must be afraid to close his eyes after reading such things, Alex agreed."
Judith Butler,Left,"Your butler informed me you were here. I thought-that is, I wondered how things were going.And since my butler didn’t know, Ian concluded with amused irritation, you decided to call on Elizabeth and see if you could discover for yourself?Something like that, the vicar said calmly. Elizabeth regards me as a friend, I think. And so I planned to call on her and, if you weren’t here, to put in a good word for you.Only one? Ian said mildly.The vicar did not back down; he rarely did, particularly in matters of morality or justice. Given your treatment of her, I was hard pressed to think of one. How did matters turn out with your grandfather?Well enough, Ina said, his mind on meeting with Elizabeth. He’s here in London.And?And, Ian said sardonically, you may now address me as ‘my lord.’I’ve come here, Duncan persisted implacably, to address you as ‘the bridegroom.’A flash of annoyance crossed Ian’s tanned features. You never stop pressing, do you? I’ve managed my own life for thirty years, Duncan. I think I can do it now.Duncan had the grace to look slightly abashed. You’re right, of course. Shall I leave?Ian considered the benefits of Duncan’s soothing presence and reluctantly shook his head. No. In fact, since you’re here, he continued as they neared the top step, you may as well be the one to announce us to the butler. I can’t get past him.Duncan lifted the knocker while bestowing a mocking glance on Ian. You can’t get past the butler, and you think you’re managing very well without me?Declining to rise to that bait, Ian remained silent. The door opened a moment later, and the butler looked politely from Duncan, who began to give his name, to Ian. To Duncan’s startled disbelief, the door came crashing forward in his face. An instant before it banged into its frame Ian twisted, slamming his shoulder into it and sending the butler flying backward into the hall and ricocheting off the wall. In a low, savage voice he said, Tell your mistress I’m here, or I’ll find her myself and tell her.With a glance of furious outrage the older man considered Ian’s superior size and powerful frame, then turned and started reluctantly for a room ahead and to the left, where muted voices could be heard.Duncan eyed Ian with one gray eyebrow lifted and said sardonically, Very clever of you to ingratiate yourself so well with Elizabeth’s servants.The group in the drawing room reacted with diverse emotions to Bentner’s announcement that Thornton is here and forced his way into the house. The dowager duchess looked fascinated, Julius looked both relived and dismayed, Alexandra looked wary, and Elizabeth, who was still preoccupied with her uncle’s unstated purpose for his visit, looked nonplussed. Only Lucinda showed no expression at all, but she laid her needlework aside and lifted her face attentively toward the doorway."
Judith Butler,Left,"Democracy does not speak in unison; its tunes are dissonant, and necessarily so. It is not a predictable process; it must be undergone, as a passion must be undergone. It may also be that life itself becomes foreclosed when the right way is decided in advance, or when we impose what is right for everyone, without finding a way to enter into community and discover the right in the midst of cultural translation. It may be that what is right and what is good consist in staying open to the tensions that beset the most fundamental categories we require, to know unknowingness at the core of what we know."
Judith Butler,Left,The exclusion of those who fail to conform to unspoken normative requirements of the subject.
Judith Butler,Left,"This utopian notion of a sexuality freed from heterosexual constructs, a sexuality beyond sex, failed to acknowledge the ways in which power relations continue to construct sexuality for women even within the terms of a liberated sexuality for women even within the terms of a liberated heterosexuality or lesbianism."
Judith Butler,Left,"In other words, they appeal to the state for protection, but the state is precisely that from which they require protection. To be protected from violence by the nation-state is to be exposed to the violence wielded by the nation-state, so to rely on the nation-state for protection from violence is precisely to exchange one potential violence for another. There may, indeed, be few other choices."
Judith Butler,Left,"We must not let her uncle send her into the gloom, which is what he always does.Is there a means to stop him? Alex asked, smiling.Bentner straightened, nodded, and said with dignified force, I, for one, am in favor of shoving him off London Bridge. Aaron favors poison.There was anger and frustration in his words, but no real menace, and Alex responded with a conspiratorial smile. I think I prefer your method, Bentner-it’s tidier. Alexandra’s remark had been teasing, and Bentner’s reply was a formal bow, but as they looked at each other for a moment they both acknowledged the unspoken communication they’d just exchanged. The butler had informed her that, should the staff’s help be needed in any way in future, the duchess could depend upon their complete, unquestioning loyalty. The duchess’s answer had assured him that, far from resenting his intrusion, she appreciated the information and would keep it in mind should such an occasion occur."
Judith Butler,Left,"This is from Elizabeth, it said. She has sold Havenhurst. A pang of guilt and shock sent Ian to his feet as he read the rest of the note: I am to tell you that this is payment in full, plus appropriate interest, for the emeralds she sold, which, she feels, rightfully belonged to you.Swallowing audibly, Ian picked up the bank draft and the small scrap of paper with it. On it Elizabeth herself had shown her calculation of the interest due him for the exact number of days since she’d sold the gems, until the date of her bank draft a week ago.His eyes ached with unshed tears while his shoulders began to rock with silent laughter-Elizabeth had paid him half a percent less than the usual interest rate.Thirty minutes later Ian presented himself to Jordan’s butler and asked to see Alexandra. She walked into the room with accusation and ire shooting from her blue eyes as she said scornfully, I wondered if that note would bring you here. Do you have any notion how much Havenhurst means-meant-to her?I’ll get it back for her, he promised with a somber smile. Where is she?Alexandra’s mouth fell open at the tenderness in his eyes and voice.Where is she? he repeated with calm determination.I cannot tell you, Alex said with a twinge of regret.You know I cannot. I gave my word.Would it have the slightest effect, Ian countered smoothly, if I were to ask Jordan to exert his husbandly influence to persuade you to tell me anyway?I’m afraid not, Alexandra assured him. She expected him to challenge that; instead a reluctant smile drifted across his handsome face. When he spoke, his voice was gentle. You’re very like Elizabeth. You remind me of her.Still slightly mistrustful of his apparent change of heart, Alex said primly, I deem that a great compliment, my lord.To her utter disbelief, Ian Thornton reached out and chucked her under the chin. I meant it as one, he informed her with a grin.Turning, Ian started for the door, then stopped at the sight of Jordan, who was lounging in the doorway, an amused, knowing smile on his face. If you’d keep track of your own wife, Ian, you would not have to search for similarities in mine. When their unexpected guest had left, Jordan asked Alex, Are you going to send Elizabeth a message to let her know he’s coming for her?Alex started to nod, then she hesitated. I-I don’t think so. I’ll tell her that he asked where she is, which is all he really did.He’ll go to her as soon as he figures it out.Perhaps.You still don’t trust him, do you? Jordan said with a surprised smile.I do after this last visit-to a certain extent-but not with Elizabeth’s heart. He’s hurt her terribly, and I won’t give her false hopes and, in doing so, help him hurt her again.Reaching out, Jordan chucked her under the chin as his cousin had done, then he pulled her into his arms. She’s hurt him, too, you know.Perhaps, Alex admitted reluctantly.Jordan smiled against her hair. You were more forgiving when I trampled your heart, my love, he teased.That’s because I loved you, she replied as she laid her cheek against his chest, her arms stealing around his waist.And will you love my cousin just a little if he makes amends to Elizabeth?I might find it in my heart, she admitted, if he gets Havenhurst back for her.It’ll cost him a fortune if he tries, Jordan chuckled. Do you know who bought it?No, do you?He nodded. Philip Demarcus.She giggled against his chest. Isn’t he that dreadful man who told the prince he’d have to pay to ride in his new yacht up the Thames?The very same.Do you suppose Mr. Demarcus cheated Elizabeth?Not our Elizabeth, Jordan laughed. But I wouldn’t like to be in Ian’s place if Demarcus realizes the place has sentimental value to Ian. The price will soar."
Judith Butler,Left,"In the ensuing two weeks Ian managed to buy back Elizabeth’s emeralds and Havenhurst, but he was unable to find a trace of his wife. The town house in London felt like a prison, not a home, and still he waited, sensing somehow that Elizabeth was putting him through this torment to teach him some kind of well-deserved lesson.He returned to Montmayne, where, for several more weeks, he prowled about its rooms, paced a track in the drawing room carpet, and stared into its marble-fronted fireplaces as if the answer would be there in the flames. Finally he could stand it no more. He couldn’t concentrate on his work, and when he tried, he made mistakes. Worse, he was beginning to be haunted with walking nightmares that she’d come to harm-or that she was falling in love with someone kinder than he-and the tormenting illusions followed him from room to room.On a clear, cold day in early December, after leaving instructions with his footmen, butler, and even his cook that he was to be notified immediately if any word at all was received from Elizabeth, he left for the cottage in Scotland. It was the one place where he might find peace from the throbbing emptiness that was gnawing away at him with a pain that increased unbearably from day to day, because he no longer really believed she would ever contact him."
Judith Butler,Left,"This is Winston, our footman and cook, she told Ian, guessing his thoughts. Straight-faced, she added, Winston taught me everything I knew about cooking. Ian’s emotions veered from horror to hilarity, and the footman saw it.Miss Elizabeth, the footman pointedly informed Ian, does not know how to cook. She has always been much too busy to learn.Ian endured that reprimand without retort because he was thoroughly enjoying Elizabeth’s relaxed mood, and because she had actually been teasing him. As the huffy footman departed, however, Ian glanced at Jordan and saw his narrowed gaze on the man’s back, then he looked at Elizabeth, who was obviously embarrassed.They think they’re acting out of loyalty to me, she explained. They-well, they recognize your name from before. I’ll speak to them.I’d appreciate that, Ian said with amused irritation. To Jordan he added, Elizabeth’s butler always tries to send me packing.Can he hear? Jordan asked unsympathetically.Hear? Ian repeated. Of course he can.Then count yourself lucky, Jordan replied irritably, and the girls dissolved into gales of laughter. The Townsende’s butler, Penrose, is quite deaf, you see, Elizabeth explained."
Judith Butler,Left,"Elizabeth automatically started forward three steps, then halted, mesmerized. An acre of thick Aubusson carpet stretched across the book-lined room, and at the far end of it, seated behind a massive baronial desk with his shirtsleeves folded up on tanned forearms, was the man who had lied in the little cottage in Scotland and shot at a tree limb with her. Oblivious to the other three men in the room who were politely coming to their feet, Elizabeth watched Ian arise with that same natural grace that seemed so much a part of him. With a growing sense of unreality she heard him excuse himself to his visitors, saw him move away from behind his desk, and watched him start toward her with long, purposeful strides. He grew larger as he neared, his broad shoulders blocking her view of the room, his amber eyes searching her face, his smile one of amusement and uncertainty. Elizabeth? he said.Her eyes wide with embarrassed admiration, Elizabeth allowed him to lift her hand to his lips before she said softly, I could kill you.He grinned at the contrast between her words and her voice. I know.You might have told me.I hoped to surprise you.More correctly, he had hoped she didn’t know, and now he had his proof: Just as he had thought, Elizabeth had agreed to marry him without knowing anything of his personal wealth. That expression of dazed disbelief on her face had been real. He’d needed to see it for himself, which was why he’d instructed his butler to bring her to him as soon as she arrived. Ian had his proof, and with it came the knowledge that no matter how much she refused to admit it to him or to herself, she loved him.She could insist for now and all time that all she wanted from marriage was independence, and now Ian could endure it with equanimity. Because she loved him.Elizabeth watched the expressions play across his face. Thinking he was waiting for her to say more about his splendid house, she gave him a jaunty smile and teasingly said, ’Twill be a sacrifice, to be sure, but I shall contrive to endure the hardship of living in such a place as this. How many rooms are there? she asked.His brows rose in mockery. One hundred and eighty-two.A small place of modest proportions, she countered lightly. I suppose we’ll just have to make do.Ian thought they were going to do very well."
Judith Butler,Left,"At eight-thirty that night Ian stood on the steps outside Elizabeth’s uncle’s town house suppressing an almost overwhelming desire to murder Elizabeth’s butler, who seemed to be inexplicably fighting down the impulse to do bodily injury to Ian. I will ask you again, in case you misunderstood me the last time, Ian enunciated in a silky, ominous tone that made ordinary men blanch. Where is your mistress?Bentner didn’t change color by so much as a shade. Out! he informed the man who’d ruined his young mistress’s life and had now appeared on her doorstep, unexpected and uninvited, no doubt to try to ruin it again, when she was at this very moment attending her first ball in years and trying bravely to live down the gossip he had caused.She is out, but you do not know where she is?I did not say so, did I?Then where is she?That is for me to know and you to ponder.In the last several days Ian had been forced to do a great many unpleasant things, including riding across half of England, dealing with Christina’s irate father, and finally dealing with Elizabeth’s repugnant uncle, who had driven a bargain that still infuriated him. Ian had magnanimously declined her dowry as soon as the discussion began. Her uncle, however, had the finely honed bargaining instincts of a camel trader, and he immediately sensed Ian’s determination to do whatever was necessary to get Julius’s name on a betrothal contract. As a result, Ian was the first man to his knowledge who had ever been put in the position of purchasing his future wife for a ransom of $150,000.Once he’d finished that repugnant ordeal he’d ridden off to Montmayne, where he’d sopped only long enough to switch his horse for a coach and get his valet out of bed. Then he’d charged off to London, stopped at his town house to bathe and change, and gone straight to the address Julius Cameron had given him. Now, after all that, Ian was not only confronted by Elizabeth’s absence, he was confronted by the most insolent servant he’d ever had the misfortune to encounter. In angry silence he turned and walked down the steps. Behind him the door slammed shut with a thundering crash, and Ian paused a moment to turn back and contemplate the pleasure he was going to have when he sacked the butler tomorrow."
Judith Butler,Left,"He finished his meeting a few minutes later and almost rudely ejected his business acquaintances from his library, then he went in search of Elizabeth.She is out in the gardens, my lord, his butler informed him. A short while later Ian strolled out the French doors and started down the balcony steps to join her. She was bending down and snapping a withered rosebud from its stem. It only hurts for a moment, she told the bush, and it’s for your own good. You’ll see. With an embarrassed little smile she looked up at him. It’s a habit, she explained.It obviously works, he said with a tender smile, looking at the way the flowers bloomed about her skirts. How can you tell?Because, he said quietly as she stood up, until you walked into it, this was an ordinary garden.Puzzled, Elizabeth tipped her head. What is it now?Heaven.Elizabeth’s breath caught in her chest at the husky timbre of his voice and the desire in his eyes. He held out his hand to her, and, without realizing what she was doing, she lifted her hand and gave it to him, then she walked straight into his arms. For one breathless moment his smoldering eyes studied her face feature by feature while the pressure of his arms slowly increased, and then he bent his head. His sensual mouth claimed hers in a kiss of violent tenderness and tormenting desire while his hands slid over the sides of her breasts, and Elizabeth felt all her resistance, all her will, begin to crumble and disintegrate, and she kissed him back with her whole heart."
Judith Butler,Left,"I think, Berta remarked with a proud little smile when she was seated alone in the drawing room beside Elizabeth, he’s having second thoughts about proposing, milday.I think he was silently contemplating the easiest way to murder me at dinner, Elizabeth said, chuckling. She was about to say more when the butler interrupted them to announce that Lord Marchman wished to have a private word with Lady Cameron in his study.Elizabeth prepared for another battle of wits-or witlessness, she thought with an inner smile-and dutifully followed the butler down a dark hall furnished in brown and into a very large study where the earl was seated in a maroon chair at a desk on her right.You wished to see- she began as she stepped into his study, but something on the wall beside her brushed against her hair. Elizabeth turned her head, expecting to see a portrait hanging there, and instead found herself eye-to-fang with an enormous bear’s head. The little scream that tore from her was very real this time, although it owed to shock, not to fear.It’s quite dead, the earl said in a voice of weary resignation, watching her back away from his most prized hunting trophy with her hand over her mouth.Elizabeth recovered instantly, her gaze sweeping over the wall of hunting trophies, then she turned around.You may take your hand away from your mouth, he stated. Elizabeth fixed him with another accusing glare, biting her lip to hide her smile. She would have dearly loved to hear how he had stalked that bear or where he had found that monstrous-big boar, but she knew better than to ask. Please, my lord, she said instead, tell me these poor creatures didn’t die at your hands.I’m afraid they did. Or more correctly, at the point of my gun."
Judith Butler,Left,"For the next twenty minutes Elizabeth asked for concessions, Ian conceded, Duncan wrote, and the dowager duchess and Lucinda listened with ill-concealed glee.. In the entire time Ian made but one stipulation, and only after he was finally driven to it out of sheer perversity over the way everyone was enjoying his discomfort: He stipulated that none of Elizabeth’s freedoms could give rise to any gossip that she was cuckolding him.The duchess and Miss Throckmorton-Jones scowled at such a word being mentioned in front of them, but Elizabeth acquiesced with a regal nod of her golden head and politely said to Duncan, I agree. You may write that down. Ian grinned at her, and Elizabeth shyly returned his smile. Cuckolding, to the best of Elizabeth’s knowledge, was some sort of disgraceful conduct that required a lady to be discovered in the bedroom with a man who was not her husband. She had obtained that incomplete piece of information from Lucinda Throckmorton-Jones, who, unfortunately, actually believed it.Is there anything more? Duncan finally asked, and when Elizabeth shook her head, the dowager spoke up. Indeed, though you may not need to write it down. Turning to Ian, she said severely, If you’ve any thought of announcing this betrothal tomorrow, you may put it out of your head.Ian was tempted to invite her to get out, in a slightly less wrathful tone than that in which he’d ordered Julius from the house, but he realized that what she was saying was lamentably true. Last night you went to a deal of trouble to make it seem there had been little but flirtation between the two of you two years ago. Unless you go through the appropriate courtship rituals, which Elizabeth has every right to expect, no one will ever believe it.What do you have in mind? Ian demanded shortly.One month, she said without hesitation. One month of calling on her properly, escorting her to the normal functions, and so on.Two weeks, he countered with strained patience.Very well, she conceded, giving Ian the irritating certainty that two weeks was all she’d hoped for anyway. Then you may announce your betrothal and be wed in-two months!Two weeks, Ian said implacably, reaching for the drink the butler had just put in front of him.As you wish, said the dowager. Then two things happened simultaneously: Lucinda Throckmorton-Jones let out a snort that Ian realized was a laugh, and Elizabeth swept Ian’s drink from beneath his fingertips. There’s-a speck of lint in it, she explained nervously, handing the drink to Bentner with a severe shake of her head.Ian reached for the sandwich on his plate.Elizabeth watched the satisfied look on Bentner’s face and snatched that away, too. A-a small insect seems to have gotten on it, she explained to Ian.I don’t see anything, Ian remarked, his puzzled glance on his betrothed. Having been deprived of tea and sustenance, he reached for the glass of wine the butler had set before him, then realized how much stress Elizabeth had been under and offered it to her instead.Thank you, she said with a sigh, looking a little harassed. Bentner’s arm swopped down, scooping the wineglass out of her hand. Another insect, he said.Bentner! Elizabeth cried in exasperation, but her voice was drowned out by a peal of laughter from Alexandra Townsende, who slumped down on the settee, her shoulders shaking with unexplainable mirth.Ian drew the only possible conclusion: They were all suffering from the strain of too much stress."
Judith Butler,Left,"They won’t do it, Ian, Jordan Townsende said the night after Ian was released on his own recognizance. Pacing back and forth across Ian’s drawing room, he said again, They will not do it.They’ll do it, Ian said dispassionately. The words were devoid of concern; not even his eyes showed interest. Days ago Ian had passed the point of caring about the investigation. Elizabeth was gone; there had been no ransom note, nothing whatever-no reason in the world to continue believing that she’d been taken against her will. Since Ian knew damned well he hadn’t killed her or had her abducted, the only remaining conclusion was that Elizabeth had left him for someone else.The authorities were still vacillating about the other man she’d allegedly met in the arbor because the gardener’s eyesight had been proven to be extremely poor, and even he admitted that it might have been tree limbs moving around her in the dim light, instead of a man’s arms. Ian, however, did not doubt it. The existence of a lover was the only thing that made sense; he had even suspected it the night before she disappeared. She hadn’t wanted him in her bed; if anything but a lover had been worrying her that night, she’d have sought the protection of his arms, even if she didn’t confide in him. But he had been the last thing she’d wanted.No, he hadn’t actually suspected it-that would have been more pain than he could have endured then. Now, however, he not only suspected it, he knew it, and the pain was beyond anything he’d ever imagined existed.I tell you they won’t bring you to trial, Jordan repeated. Do you honestly think they will? he demanded, looking first to Duncan and then to the Duke of Stanhope, who were seated in the drawing room. In answer, both men raised dazed, pain-filled eyes to Jordan’s, shook their heads in an effort to seem decisive, then looked back down at their hands.Under English law Ian was entitled to a trial before his peers; since he was a British lord, that meant he could only be tried in the House of Lords, and Jordan was clinging to that as if it were Ian’s lifeline.You aren’t the first man among us to have a spoiled wife turn missish on him and vanish for a while in hopes of bringing him to heel, Jordan continued, desperately trying to make it seem as if Elizabeth were merely sulking somewhere-no doubt unaware that her husband’s reputation had been demolished and that his very life was going to be in jeopardy. They aren’t going to convene the whole damn House of Lords just to try a beleaguered husband whose wife has taken a start, he continued fiercely. Hell, half the lords in the House can’t control their wives. Why should you be any different?Alexandra looked up at him, her eyes filled with misery and disbelief. Like Ian, she knew Elizabeth wasn’t indulging in a fit of the sullens. Unlike Ian, however, she could not and would not believe her friend had taken a lover and run away.Ian’s butler appeared in the doorway, a sealed message in his hand, which he handed to Jordan. Who knows? Jordan tried to joke as he opened it. Maybe this is from Elizabeth-a note asking me to intercede with you before she dares present herself to you.His smile faded abruptly.What is it? Alex cried, seeing his haggard expression.Jordan crumpled the summons in his hand and turned to Ian with angry regret. They’re convening the House of Lords.It’s good to know, Ian said with cold indifference as he pushed out of his chair and started for his study, that I’ll have one friend and one relative there."
Judith Butler,Left,"Precisely because a living being may die, it is necessary to care for that being so that it may live. Only under conditions in which the loss would matter does the value of the life appear. Thus, grievability is a presupposition for the life that matters."
Judith Butler,Left,"If performativity requires a power to effect or enact what one names, then who will be the one with such a power, and how will such a power be thought? How might we account for the injurious word within such a framework, the word that not only names a social subject, but constructs that subject in the naming, and constructs that subject through a violating interpellation? Is it the power of a one to effect such an injury through the wielding of the injurious name, or is that a power accrued through time which is concealed at the moment that a single subject utters its injurious terms? Does the one who speaks the term cite the term, thereby establishing him or herself as the author while at the same time establishing the derivative status of that authorship? Is a community and history of such speakers not magically invoked at the moment in which that utterance is spoken? And if and when that utterance brings injury, is it the utterance or the utterer who is the cause of the injury, or does that utterance perform its injury through a transitivity that cannot be reduced to a causal or intentional process originating in a singular subject?"
Judith Butler,Left,"I may feel that without some recognizability I cannot live. But I may also feel that the terms by which I am recognized make life unlivable. This is the juncture from which critique emerges, where critique is understood as an interrogation of the terms by which life is constrained in order to open up the possibility of different modes of living; in other words, not to celebrate difference as such but to establish more inclusive conditions for sheltering and maintaining life that resists models of assimilation."
Judith Butler,Left,"We do things with language, produce effects with language, and we do things to language, but language is also the thing that we do. Language is a name for our doing: both what we do (the name for the action that we characteristically perform) and that which we effect, the act and its consequences."
Judith Butler,Left,"If the subject is neither fully determined by power nor fully determining of power...the subject exceeds the logic of non contradiction, is an excrescence of logic, as it were."
Judith Butler,Left,"To be touched is, of course, to undergo something that comes from the outside, so I am, quite fundamentally, occasioned by that which is outside of me, which I undergo, and this undergoing designates a certain passivity, but not one that is understood as the opposite of 'activity.' To undergo this touch means that there must be a certain openness to the outside that postpones the plausibility of any claim to self-identity. The 'I' is occasioned by alterity, and that occasion persists as its necessary animating structure. Indeed, if there is to be self-representation, if I am to speak the 'I' in language, then this autobiographical reference has been enabled from elsewhere, has undergone what is not itself. Through this undergoing, an 'I' has emerged."
Judith Butler,Left,"If gender attributes and acts, the various ways in which a body shows or produces its cultural signification, are performative, then there is no preexisting identity by which an act or attribute might be measured; there would be no true or false, real or distorted acts of gender, and the postulation of a true gender identity would be revealed as a regulatory fiction.That gender reality is created through sustained social performances means that the very notions of an essential sex and a true or abiding masculinity or femininity are also constituted as part of the strategy that conceals gender’s performative character and the performative possibilities for proliferating gender configurations outside the restricting frames of masculinist domination and compulsory heterosexuality."
Judith Butler,Left,"The dogged effort to denaturalize gender in this text emerges, I think, from a strong desire both to counter the normative violence implied by ideal morphologies of sex and to uproot the pervasive assumptions about natural or presumptive heterosexuality that are informed by ordinary and academic discourses on sexuality. The writing of this denaturalization was not done simply out of a desire to play with language or prescribe theatrical antics in the place of real politics, as some critics have conjectured (as if theatre and politics are always distinct). It was done from a desire to live, to make life possible, and to rethink the possible as such."
Judith Butler,Left,It seems that every text has more sources than it can reconstruct within its own terms.
Judith Butler,Left,"An ethical query emerges in light of such an analysis: how might we encounter the difference that calls our grids of intelligibility into question without trying to foreclose the challenge that the difference delivers? What might it mean to learn to live in the anxiety of that challenge, to feel the surety of one’s epistemological and ontological anchor go, but to be willing, in the name of the human, to allow the human to become something other than what it is traditionally assumed to be? This means that we must learn to live and to embrace the destruction and rearticulation of the human in the name of a more capacious and, finally, less violent world, not knowing in advance what precise form our humanness does and will take. It means we must be open to its permutations, in the name of nonviolence. As Adriana Cavarero points out, paraphrasing Arendt, the question we pose to the Other is simple and unanswerable: who are you? The violent response is the one that does not ask, and does not seek to know. It wants to shore up what it knows, to expunge what threatens it with not-knowing, what forces it to reconsider the presuppositions of its world, their contingency, their malleability. The nonviolent response lives with its unknowingness about the Other in the face of the Other, since sustaining the bond that the question opens is finally more valuable than knowing in advance what holds us in common, as if we already have all the resources we need to know what defines the human, what its future life might be."
Judith Butler,Left,"Precarity designates that politically induced condition in which certain populations suffer from failing social and economic networks of support and become differentially exposed to injury, violence, and death."
Judith Butler,Left,Precarity also characterizes that politically induced condition of maximized precariousness for populations exposed to arbitrary state violence who often have no other option than to appeal to the very state from which they need protection.
Judith Butler,Left,"I argue that even as the war is framed in certain ways to control and heighten affect in relation to the differential grievability of lives, so war has come to frame ways of thinking multiculturalism and debates on sexual freedom, issues largely considered separate from foreign affairs."
Judith Butler,Left,"We might be tempted to understand the existence of injurious language as posing an ethical question on the order of: what kind of language ought we to use? How does the language we use affect others? If hate speech is citational, does that mean that the one who uses it is not responsible for that usage? Can one say that someone else made up this speech that one simply finds oneself using and thereby absolve oneself of all responsibility? I would argue that the citationality of discourse can work to enhance and intensify our sense of responsibility for it. The one who utters hate speech is responsible for the manner in which such speech is repeated, for reinvigorating such speech, for reestablishing contexts of hate and injury. The responsibility of the speaker does not consist of remaking language ex nihilo, but rather of negotiating the legacies of usage that constrain and enable that speaker’s speech. To understand this sense of responsibility, one afflicted with impurity from the start, requires that we understand the speaker as formed in the language that he or she also uses. This paradox intimates an ethical dilemma brewing at the inception of speech."
Judith Butler,Left,"But what kind of speech is attributed to the citizen in such a view, and how does such an account draw the line between the performativity that is hate speech and the performativity that is the linguistic condition of citizenship? If hate speech is a kind of speech that no citizen ought to exercise, then how might its power be specified, if it can be? And how are both the proper speech of citizens and the improper hate speech of citizens to be distinguished from yet a third level of performative power, that which belongs to the state? This last seems crucial to interrogate if only because hate speech is itself described through the sovereign trope derived from state discourse (and discourse on the state). Figuring hate speech as an exercise of sovereign power implicitly performs a catachresis by which the one who is charged with breaking the law (the one who utters hate speech) is nevertheless invested with the sovereign power of law. What the law says, it does, but so, too, the speaker of hate. The performative power of hate speech is figured as the performative power of state-sanctioned legal language, and the contest between hate speech and the law becomes staged, paradoxically, as a battle between two sovereign powers."
Judith Butler,Left,"PERHAPS IN SOME FORMAL SENSE every book begins by considering its own impossibility, but this book’s completion has depended on a way of working with that impossibility without a clear resolution. Even so, something of that impossibility has to be sustained within the writing, even if it continually threatens to bring the project to a halt."
Judith Butler,Left,It would surely be a mistake to gauge the success of feminism by its success as a colonial project. p41.
Judith Butler,Left,Thus the successful bid to gain access to marriage effectively strengthens marital status as a state-sanctioned condition for the exercise of certain kinds of rights and entitlements; it strengthens the hand of the state in the regulation of human sexual behavior; and it emboldens the distinction between legitimate and illegitimate forms of partnership and kinship.
Judith Butler,Left,"It is true that dispossession carries this double valence and that as a result it is difficult to understand until we see that we value it in one of its modalities and abhor and resist it in another. As you say, dispossession can be a term that marks the limits of self-sufficiency and that establishes us as relational and interdependent beings. Yet dispossession is precisely what happens when populations lose their land, their citizenship, their means of livelihood, and become subject to military and legal violence. We oppose this latter form of dispossession because it is both forcible and privative."
Judith Butler,Left,On occasion when I am getting to know someone
Judith Butler,Left,"But if there is no subject who decides on its gender, and if, on the contrary, gender is part of what decides the subject, how might one formulate a project that preserves gender practices as sites of critical agency? If gender is constructed through relations of power and, specifically, normative constraints that not only produce but also regulate various bodily beings, how might agency be derived from this notion of gender as the effect of productive constraint?"
Judith Butler,Left,"Why should our bodies end at the skin, or include at best other beings encapsulated by skin? –Donna Haraway, A Manifesto for Cyborgs"
Judith Butler,Left,"regulatory norms of sex work in a performative fashion to constitute the materiality of bodies and, more specifically, to materialize the body’s sex, to materialize sexual difference in the service of the consolidation of the heterosexual imperative. In this sense, what constitutes the fixity of the body, its contours, its movements, will be fully material, but materiality will be rethought"
Judith Butler,Left,That my agency is riven with paradox does not mean it is impossible. It means only that paradox is the condition of its possibility.
Michael Moore,Left,"I really didn't realize the librarians were, you know, such a dangerous group.They are subversive. You think they're just sitting there at the desk, all quiet and everything. They're like plotting the revolution, man. I wouldn't mess with them. You know, they've had their budgets cut. They're paid nothing. Books are falling apart. The libraries are just like the ass end of everything, right?"
Michael Moore,Left,"Capitalism means that a few people will do very well, and the rest will serve the few."
Michael Moore,Left,"How does paying people more money make you more money?It works like this. The more you pay your workers, the more they spend. Remember, they're not just your workers- they're your consumers, too. The more they spend their extra cash on your products, the more your profits go up. Also, when employees have enough money that they don't have to live in constant fear of bankruptcy, they're able to focus more on their work- and be more productive. With fewer personal problems and less stress hanging over them, they'll lose less time at work, meaning more profits for you. Pay them enough to afford a late model car (i.e. one that works), and they'll rarely be late for work. And knowing that they'll be able to provide a better life for their children will not only give them a more positive attitude, it'll give them hope- and an incentive to do well for the company because the better the company does, the better they'll do.Of course, if you're like most corporations these days- announcing mass layoffs right after posting record profits- then you're already hemorrhaging the trust and confidence of your remaining workforce, and your employees are doing their jobs in a state of fear. Productivity will drop. That will hurt sales. You will suffer. Ask the people at Firestone: Ford has alleged that the tire company fired its longtime union employees, then brought in untrained scab workers who ended up making thousands of defective tires- and 203 dead customers later, Firestone is in the toilet."
Michael Moore,Left,"It was the American middle class. No one's house cost more than two or three year's salary, and I doubt the spread in annual wages (except for the osteopath) exceeded more than five thousand dollars. And other than the doctor (who made house calls), the store managers, the minister, the salesman, and the banker, everyone belonged to a union. That meant they worked a forty-hour week, had the entire weekend off (plus two to four weeks' paid vacation in the summer), comprehensive medical benefits, and job security. In return for all that, the country became the most productive in the world and in our little neighborhood it meant your furnace was always working, your kids could be dropped off at the neighbors without notice, you could run next door anytime to borrow a half-dozen eggs, and the doors to all the homes were never locked -- because who would need to steal anything if they already had all that they needed?"
Michael Moore,Left,"To describe this film as dishonest and demagogic would almost be to promote those terms to the level of respectability. To describe this film as a piece of crap would be to run the risk of a discourse that would never again rise above the excremental. To describe it as an exercise in facile crowd-pleasing would be too obvious. Fahrenheit 9/11 is a sinister exercise in moral frivolity, crudely disguised as an exercise in seriousness. It is also a spectacle of abject political cowardice masking itself as a demonstration of 'dissenting' bravery."
Michael Moore,Left,[Bill] Clinton was a pretty good president for a Republican.
Michael Moore,Left,"They convinced our mothers that if a food item came in a bottle -- or a can or a box or a cellophane bag -- then it was somehow better for you than when it came to you free of charge via Mother Nature....An entire generation of us were introduced in our very first week to the concept that phony was better than real, that something manufactured was better than something that was right there in the room. (Later in life, this explained the popularity of the fast food breakfast burrito, neocons, Kardashians, and why we think reading this book on a tiny screen with only three minutes of battery life left is enjoyable."
Michael Moore,Left,I realized that this was the big secret of democracy -- that change can occur by starting off with just a few people doing something.
Michael Moore,Left,"I'm a citizen in a democracy. To call me an activist would be redundant. It's not a spectator sport. If we all become non-participants, it no longer works."
Michael Moore,Left,"A government run by billionaires for billionaires is an affront to freedom, morality, and humanity."
Michael Moore,Left,"One thing I learned as a journalist is that there is at least one disgruntled person in every workplace in America -- and at least double that number with a conscience. Hard as they try, they simply can't turn their heads away from an injustice when they see one taking place."
Michael Moore,Left,"Nothing seems crueler--or more ironic--than these upper crusters who never pay a dime for their high-priced shrinks or reflexology sessions to call those who just want that tumor removed from their uterus a bunch of commies. Well, the revolution is at hand and let's hope all those uninsured commies give the rich such a headache that a whole bottle of Advil won't be enough to take the pain way. "
Michael Moore,Left,"Those who had the remaining jobs would have to buy the cheapest stuff possible with their drastically reduced wages, and in order for the manufacturers to keep that stuff cheap, it would have to be made by fifteen-year-olds in China."
Michael Moore,Left,It is the responsiblity of every human to know their actions and the consequences of their actions and to ask questions and to question things when they are wrong.
Michael Moore,Left,"If you could read, you knew shit."
Michael Moore,Left,"Then I dried myself in my soft bathrobe, shaved very carefully, put on fresh underwear and a shirt, a perfectly pressed gray suit, shiny shoes, my nicest tie and in this way, drawing on all the best things I had available, I started to feel the courage to move forward. It was a way of fooling myself, of course, but it worked : you can judge a book by its cover."
Michael Moore,Left,"Tragic no matter what gets said, no matter who says it, no matter to whom, Born tragic."
Michael Moore,Left,"How long depends on many unknown factors, but it will happen"
Michael Moore,Left,"What you have to focus on here is perfection, pure and simple"
Michael Moore,Left,"indeed I know for a fact that you do know, what the fuck kind of questions are you asking me"
Michael Moore,Left,"People think of us infinitely less than we believe. To be honest, they almost never do"
Michael Moore,Left,"...I have a theory about why and how all this has happened to you.Instead of having to earn it, you have been handed the presidency, the same way you've come by everything else in your life. Money and name alone have opened every door for you. Without effort or hard work or intelligence, or ingenuity, you have been bequeathed a life of privilege...So it's no wonder you think you deserved to be named President. You didn't earn it or win it- therefore it must be yours!"
Michael Moore,Left,"The greatness of Intel is not that it is smarter than other companies (though it may well be) or that it is too clever and competent to make a false move (we’ve just seen a stunning example of the very opposite) but that it has consistently done better than any company, perhaps ever, at recovering from its mistakes."
Michael Moore,Left,"The start of your day should be filled with hope for new opportunities, positive energy for resolutions and the excitement of what lies ahead."
Michael Moore,Left,"Michael Caine once told me that John Wayne had advised him never to wear suede shoes. Apparently Wayne once did and was standing in a pissoir when someone next to him looked over and said, ‘My God! It’s John Wayne!’ and, as he turned to face the Duke, peed all over his suedes."
Michael Moore,Left,"According to the Bible, when we choose to trust in the Lord"
Michael Moore,Left,Evil is a slow-moving organism.
Yanis Varoufakis,Left,"(The Eurozone) resembles a fine riverboat that was launched on a still ocean in 2000. And then the first storm that hit it, in 2008, started creating serious structural problems for it. We started leaking water. And of course, the people in the third class, as in the Titanic, start feeling the drowning effects first."
Yanis Varoufakis,Left,Europe in its infinite wisdom decided to deal with this bankruptcy by loading the largest loan in human history on the weakest of shoulders … What we’ve been having ever since is a kind of fiscal waterboarding that has turned this nation into a debt colony.
Yanis Varoufakis,Left,Why did they force us to close the banks? To instil fear in people.And spreading fear is called terrorism.
Yanis Varoufakis,Left,The referendum of 5th July will stay in history as a unique moment when a small European nation rose up against debt-bondage...
Yanis Varoufakis,Left,"Minister-no-more at yanisvaroufakis.eu, 2015/07/06; cited in: I shall wear the creditors’ loathing with pride, in: theguardian.com, (6 July 2015)"
Yanis Varoufakis,Left,"Politics, I now understand, is at its best when it enlightens us via an opponent's insight."
Yanis Varoufakis,Left,"The world we live in is ruled by insiders... one of the first things said to me by a very high ranking American official.. when I was minister... you have a choice. You can be an insider or an outsider. If you are an outsider you'll retain your right to say anything you want, whatever you believe in but know that you're going to be persecuted, you're going to be villified and you'll be jettisoned."
Yanis Varoufakis,Left,"On the other hand, you can chose to be an insider, to play the game... if you chose to be an insider you'll be given information that outsiders don't have, you'll be given... an opportunity... to make some... small tiny changes within the inside, but the one rule that you must respect, is that insiders do not tell outsiders the truth, and they do not turn against other insiders..."""
Yanis Varoufakis,Left,"...Julian [Assange]... created the technology that allowed the outsiders to get a glimpse within...and this is why he's being persecuted this way and one of the worst aspects of this persecution from a feminist perspective is that he's been accused of a crime for which he's never been charged, that turns progressives against feminists and feminists against progressives. This attempt by the establishment to turn progressives against themselves in order to prosecute someone who has... revealed their crimes is a heinous crime in itself..."""
Yanis Varoufakis,Left,"...faced with a choice between an agreement that is to the advantage of the peoples of Europe and one that bolsters their own power within the EU institutions at the expense of Europe’s social economies, the Brussels establishment, and the powerful politicians behind them, will choose the latter every time."
Yanis Varoufakis,Left,"...negotiations will be an exercise in futility and frustration. Barnier’s two-phase negotiation announcement amounts to a rejection of the principle of … negotiation. He is, effectively, saying to you: First you give me everything I am asking for unconditionally (Phase 1) and only then will I hear what you want (Phase 2)."
Yanis Varoufakis,Left,"In the United States you have the ridiculous situation where the Democratic Party is going to the people who voted for Trump saying you were duped by Putin, Putin stole the election through Facebook. (...) Did Putin try to influence the election in the United States? I'm sure he did. But I did too. I did, I really did. I did my best to influence the election and failed spectacularly and Putin had about the same impact that I had. This is really very important: we do not sacrifice good people to the ultra-right by treating them like morons and by demonizing them. This is crucial: we have to win the battle of ideas by treating people with respect independently of whether they agree or even like us or not."
Jeremy Rifkin,Left,"The human journey is, at its core, about the extension of empathy to broader and more inclusive domains. At first, the empathy extended only to kin and tribe. Eventually it was extended to people of like-minded values – a common religion, nationality or ideology. In the 19th century, the first humane societies were established, extending the empathy to include our fellow creatures. Today, millions of people, under the banner of the animal rights movement, are continuing to deepen and to expand human concern for, and empathy toward, our fellow creatures."
Jeremy Rifkin,Left,"For years, governments, corporations, and researchers have argued that the testing of animals to assess the risk of chemicals to human health is essential to ensure the well-being of our own species. But now, new breakthroughs in the field of genomics, bioinformatics, epigenetics, and computational toxicology are providing new research tools for studying the impact of toxic chemicals on human health that are far more accurate in assessing the risk of these chemicals to human beings. Antivivisection societies and animal rights organizations have made this argument for many, many years—only to be scorned by scientific bodies, medical associations, and industry lobbies who accuse them of being “anti-progress” in caring more about animals than people. Now it is the scientific establishment, interestingly enough, that has come to the very same conclusions."
Jeremy Rifkin,Left,"The ever-increasing cattle population is wreaking havoc on the earth's ecosystems, destroying habitats on six continents. Cattle raising is a primary factor in the destruction of the world's remaining tropical rain forests. … Cattle are also a major cause of global warming. … The devastating environmental, economic, and human toll of maintaining a worldwide cattle complex is little discussed in public policy circles. … Yet, cattle production and beef consumption now rank among the gravest threats to the future well-being of the earth and its human population."
Jeremy Rifkin,Left,"The real story of how the west was won bears little resemblance to the storybook accounts handed down to generations of young Americans. Behind the facade of frontier heroism and cowboy bravado, of civilizing forces and homespun values, lies a quite different tale: a saga of ecocide and genocide, of forced enclosures of land and people, and the expropriation of an entire subcontinent for the exclusive benefit of a privileged few."
Jeremy Rifkin,Left,"It seems disingenuous for the intellectual elite of the first world to dwell on the subject of too many babies being born in the second- and third-world nations while virtually ignoring the overpopulation of cattle and the realities of a food chain that robs the poor of sustenance to feed the rich a steady diet of grain-fed meat. The transition of world agriculture from food grain to feed grains represents a new form of human evil, whose consequences may be far greater and longer-lasting than any past examples of violence inflicted by men against their fellow human beings."
Jeremy Rifkin,Left,"The societal decision to reduce beef will profoundly affect the economics of human survival in the coming century. In the new world that is coming, millions of human beings will voluntarily choose to eat lower on the food chain so that millions of others may obtain the minimum food calories they need to sustain their lives. This grand redistribution of the earth's bounty, the most far-reaching in history, will unite the human race in a new fraternal bond. A new species awareness will begin where the rich meet the poor on the descending rungs of the world's protein ladder. The decision to eat further down on the planet's food chain will force a wholesale reassessment of the entire grain-fed meat complex ranging from factory farm chickens to hogs. The collapse of the global cattle complex will likely precipitate a chain reaction, resulting in the elimination of other grain-fed meats from the human diet. The dissolution of the commercial cattle complex will spare the rich and might help save the poor. Eliminating grain-fed beef and eating lower on the food chain will dramatically reduce the incidence of heart disease, cancer, and diabetes."
Jeremy Rifkin,Left,"The capitalist era is passing . . . not quickly, but inevitably. A new economic paradigm—the Collaborative Commons—is rising in its wake that will transform our way of life. We are already witnessing the emergence of a hybrid economy, part capitalist market and part Collaborative Commons. The two economic systems often work in tandem and sometimes compete. They are finding synergies along each other’s perimeters, where they can add value to one another, while benefiting themselves. At other times, they are deeply adversarial, each attempting to absorb or replace the other."
Jeremy Rifkin,Left,"On a second front, a powerful new technology platform is developing out of the bowels of the Second Industrial Revolution, speeding the central contradiction of capitalist ideology to the end game mentioned above. The coming together of the Communications Internet with the fledgling Energy Internet and Logistics Internet in a seamless twenty-first-century intelligent infrastructure—the Internet of Things (IoT)—is giving rise to a Third Industrial Revolution. The Internet of Things is already boosting productivity to the point where the marginal cost of producing many goods and services is nearly zero, making them practically free. The result is corporate profits are beginning to dry up, property rights are weakening, and an economy based on scarcity is slowly giving way to an economy of abundance."
Jeremy Rifkin,Left,"The social Commons is where we generate the good will that allows a society to cohere as a cultural entity. Markets and governments are an extension of a people’s social identity. Without the continuous replenishment of social capital, there would be insufficient trust to enable markets and governments to function, yet we pejoratively categorize the social Commons as “the third sector” as if it were less important than markets or governments."
Jeremy Rifkin,Left,That’s why paradigm shifts are so disruptive and painful: they bring into question the operating assumptions that underlie the existing economic and social models as well as the belief system that accompanies them and the worldview that legitimizes them.
Jeremy Rifkin,Left,"Like it or not, giant, vertically integrated corporate enterprises were the most efficient means of organizing the production and distribution of mass produced goods and services. Bringing together supply chains, production processes, and distribution channels in vertically integrated companies under centralized management dramatically reduced transaction costs, increased efficiencies and productivity, lowered the marginal cost of production and distribution, and, for the most part, lowered the price of goods and services to consumers, allowing the economy to flourish. While those at the top of the corporate pyramid disproportionately benefited from the increasing returns on investment, it’s only fair to acknowledge that the lives of millions of consumers also improved appreciably in industrialized nations."
Jeremy Rifkin,Left,The Protestant theologian replaced the church’s feudal cosmology with a worldview centered on the personal relationship of each believer with Christ. The democratization of worship fit well with the new communication/energy matrix that was empowering the new burgher class.
Jeremy Rifkin,Left,"Getting to near zero marginal cost and nearly free goods and services is a function of advances in productivity. Productivity is “a measure of productive efficiency calculated as the ratio of what is produced to what is required to produce it.” If the cost of producing an additional good or service is nearly zero, that would be the optimum level of productivity."
Jeremy Rifkin,Left,"(...) Gandhi also distanced himself from classical economic theory. Adam Smith’s assertion that it is in the nature of each individual to pursue his or her own self-interest in the marketplace and that “it is his own advantage, indeed, and not that of the society, which he has in view,” was anathema to Gandhi.54 He believed in a virtuous economy in which the community’s interest superseded individual self-interest and argued that anything less depreciates the happiness of the human race."
Jeremy Rifkin,Left,WE ARE IN THE MIDST OF AN EPIC CHANGE in the nature of work. The First Industrial Revolution ended slave and serf labor. The Second Industrial Revolution dramatically shrank agricultural and craft labor. The Third Industrial Revolution is sunsetting mass wage labor in the manufacturing and service industries and salaried professional labor in large parts of the knowledge sector.
Jeremy Rifkin,Left,"For starters, the emerging zero marginal cost economy radically changes our notion of the economic process. The old paradigm of owners and workers, and of sellers and consumers, is beginning to break down. Consumers are becoming their own producers, eliminating the distinction. prosumers will increasingly be able to produce, consume, and share their own goods and services with one another on the Collaborative Commons at diminishing marginal costs approaching zero, bringing to the fore new ways of organizing economic life beyond the traditional capitalist market model."
Jeremy Rifkin,Left,"Should we worry about social media sites sharing everything they know about us with third-party commercial interests? Of course, no one wants to be pestered by targeted advertising. More sinister, however, is the prospect of health insurance companies learning whether you had been Googling research on specific illnesses or prospective employers prying into your personal social history by analyzing your data trail on the Web to spot potential quirks, idiosyncrasies, or even possible antisocial behavior."
Jeremy Rifkin,Left,"The proliferation of microgrids in the poorest regions of the developing world, powered by locally generated renewable energy, provides the essential electricity to run 3D printers, which can produce the tools and machinery needed to establish self-sufficient and sustainable twenty-first-century communities."
Naomi Klein,Left,"If the world’s largest economy looked poised to show that kind of visionary leadership, other major emitters — like the European Union, China, and India — would almost certainly find themselves under intense pressure from their own populations to follow suit."
Naomi Klein,Left,"Decades from now, if we are exquisitely lucky enough to tell a thrilling story about how humanity came together in the nick of time to intercept the metaphorical meteor, the pivotal chapter will not be the highly produced cinematic moment when Barack Obama won the Democratic primary and told an adoring throng of supporters that this would be “the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal.” No, it will be the far less scripted and markedly more scrappy moment when a group of fed-up young people from the Sunrise Movement occupied the offices of Pelosi after the midterm elections, calling on her to get behind the plan for a Green New Deal — with Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez dropping by the sit-in to cheer them on."
Naomi Klein,Left,"Those could be the famous last words of a one-term president, having wildly underestimated the public appetite for transformative action on the triple crises of our time: imminent ecological unraveling, gaping economic inequality (including the racial and gender wealth divide), and surging white supremacy."
Naomi Klein,Left,"There is a grand story to be told here about the duty to repair — to repair our relationship with the earth and with one another, to heal the deep wounds dating back to the founding of the country. Because while it is true that climate change is a crisis produced by an excess of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, it is also, in a more profound sense, a crisis produced by an extractive mindset — a way of viewing both the natural world and the majority of its inhabitants as resources to use up and then discard. I call it the “gig and dig” economy and firmly believe that we will not emerge from this crisis without a shift in worldview, a transformation from “gig and dig” to an ethos of care and repair...The Green New Deal will need to be subject to constant vigilance and pressure from experts who understand exactly what it will take to lower our emissions as rapidly as science demands, and from social movements that have decades of experience bearing the brunt of false climate solutions, whether nuclear power, the chimera of carbon capture and storage, or carbon offsets.  But in remaining vigilant, we also have to be careful not to bury the overarching message: that this is a potential lifeline that we all have a sacred and moral responsibly to reach for."
Naomi Klein,Left,"The title No Logo is not meant to be read as a literal slogan (as in No More Logos!), or a post-logo logo (there is already a No Logo clothing line, or so I'm told). Rather, it is an attempt to capture an Anticorporate attitude I see emerging among many young activists. This book is hinged on a simple hypothesis: that as more people discover the brand-name secrets of the global logo web, their outrage will fuel the next big political movement, a vast wave of opposition squarely targeting transnational corporations, particularly those with very high name-brand recognition."
Naomi Klein,Left,"With the tentacles of branding reaching into every crevice of youth culture, leaching brand-image content not only out of street styles like hip-hop but psychological attitudes like ironic detachment, the cool hunt has had to go further afield to find unpilfered space and that left only one frontier: the past."
Naomi Klein,Left,"In many ways, schools and universities remain our culture's most tangible embodiment of public space and collective responsibility. University campuses in particular —with their residences, libraries, green spaces and common standards for open and respectful discourse - play a crucial, if now largely symbolic, role: they are the one place left where young people can see a genuine public life being lived. And however imperfectly we may have protected these institutions in the past, at this point in our history the argument against transforming education into a brand-extension exercise is much the same as the one for national parks and nature reserves: these quasi-sacred spaces remind us that unbranded space is still possible."
Naomi Klein,Left,"While brands slowly transform the experience of campus life for undergraduates, another kind of takeover is under way at the institutional research level. All over the world, university campuses are offering their research facilities, and priceless academic credibility, for the brands to use as they please."
Naomi Klein,Left,"As we look back, it seems like willful blindness. The abandonment of the radical economic foundation of the women's and civil-rights movements by the conflation of causes that came to be called political correctness successfully retrained generation of activists in the politics of image, not action."
Naomi Klein,Left,"Rather than calling attention to the house of mirrors, that passes for empirical truth (as postmodern acadimics did), and rather than fighting for better mirrors (as the ID warriors did), today's media activists are concentrating on shattering the impenetrable shiny surfaces of branded culture, picking up the pieces and using them as sharp weapons in a war of actions, not ideas."
Naomi Klein,Left,Free speech is meaningless if the commercial cacophony has risen to the point where no one can hear you.
Naomi Klein,Left,"The widespread abuse of prisoners is a virtually foolproof indication that politicians are trying to impose a system--whether political, religious or economic--that is rejected by large numbers of the people they are ruling. Just as ecologists define ecosystems by the presence of certain ""indicator species"" of plants and birds, torture is an indicator species of a regime that is engaged in a deeply anti-democratic project, even if that regime happens to have come to power through elections."
Naomi Klein,Left,"“Like Russia's gangsterism and Bush's cronyism, contemporary Iraq is a creation of the fifty-year crusade to privatize the world. Rather than being disowned by its creators, it deserves to be seen as the purest incarnation yet of the ideology that gave it birth."
Naomi Klein,Left,"This is what Keynes had meant when he warned of the dangers of economic chaos—you never know what combination of rage, racism and revolution will be unleashed."
Naomi Klein,Left,"We have not done the things that are necessary to lower emissions because those things fundamentally conflict with deregulated capitalism. ... We are stuck because the actions that would give us the best chance of averting catastrophe—and would benefit the vast majority—are extremely threatening to an elite minority that has a stranglehold over our economy, our political process, and most of our major media outlets. ... It is our great collective misfortune that the scientific community made its decisive diagnosis of the climate threat at the precise moment when those elites were enjoying more unfettered political, cultural, and intellectual power than at any point since the 1920s."
John Bellamy Foster,Left,"We are in an emergency situation in the Anthropocene epoch in which the disruption of the Earth system, particularly the climate, is threatening the planet as a place of human habitation. However, our political-economic system, capitalism, is geared primarily to the accumulation of capital, which prevents us from addressing this enormous challenge and accelerates the destruction. Natural scientists have done an excellent and courageous job of sounding the alarm on the enormous dangers of the continuation of business as usual with respect to carbon emissions and other planetary boundaries. But mainstream social science as it exists today has almost completely internalized capitalist ideology; so much so that conventional social scientists are completely unable to address the problem on the scale and in the historical terms that are necessary. They are accustomed to the view that society long ago “conquered” nature and that social science concerns only people-people relations, never people-nature relations. This feeds a denialism where Earth system-scale problems are concerned. Those mainstream social scientists who do address environmental issues more often than not do so as if we are dealing with fairly normal conditions, and not a planetary emergency, not a no-analogue situation. There can be no gradualist, ecomodernist answer to the dire ecological problems we face, because when looking at the human effect on the planet there is nothing gradual about it; it is a Great Acceleration and a rift in the Earth system. The problem is rising exponentially, while worsening even faster than that would suggest, because we are in the process of crossing all sorts critical thresholds and facing a bewildering number of tipping points."
John Bellamy Foster,Left,Right now alternative energy is still treated as a supplement rather than a substitute for fossil fuels within the energy industry as presently constituted. The rapid growth of alternative energy should not therefore be seen as a radical break with the domination of fossil fuels. That still needs to occur.
John Bellamy Foster,Left,We are on a runaway train headed over the climate cliff as we stoke the engine with more coal to increase its speed.
John Bellamy Foster,Left,Unless we change ourselves as individuals and our culture—the way we relate to the earth—we can’t expect to make the overall changes in society that our necessary.
John Bellamy Foster,Left,It has been long understood that “consumer sovereignty” is a myth. To make fundamental changes in the commodity economy it is necessary to have power over production.
John Bellamy Foster,Left,"Marx once said that workers (and this would perhaps go for consumers even more) are in their purely economic action in a capitalist society always the weaker side, and therefore they need to organize politically."
John Bellamy Foster,Left,"Socialists have all too often failed to take ecological issues seriously enough. However, this is not a fault of socialists alone, as the fault applies even more to the liberal tradition taken as a whole. But whatever we choose to say about socialism in the twentieth century, it has to be emphasized that no one can be truly socialist and indeed Marxist in the twenty-first century and fail to acknowledge the full severity of the planetary ecological crisis. We are either at the forefront of the struggle to protect the earth as a place of human habitation (and as a home for innumerable species) or we are on the side of the system’s creative exterminism of the Earth system as we know it."
John Bellamy Foster,Left,"Capitalism imposes its laws of motion on the environment, irrespective of the biogeochemical cycles of the planet and the earth’s metabolism, so that it creates rifts or ruptures in the biogeochemical cycles of the Earth system, disrupting ecosystem relations in ways that transcend the mere scale-effects of economic growth. It is this problem of the metabolic rift that is our deepest challenge. Sustainability is more and more compromised at ever higher levels—a continually accelerating threat to civilization and life itself."
John Bellamy Foster,Left,"We are already facing growing catastrophes due to climate change. It is too late to avoid soaring temperatures, scarce water, and extreme weather. That ship has in many ways already sailed. The earth is going to be much less hospitable to human beings in the future."
John Bellamy Foster,Left,"What we need is courage and determination in facing up to seemingly insurmountable odds. What we have to do is not so difficult on the face of it, if we just look at the direct ecological measures that we need to take. What makes it seem like an insurmountable problem is the monstrosity of global capitalist society."
John Bellamy Foster,Left,"With Trump neofascism has entered the White House—its aim is a different way of managing the capitalist economy. It is both a break with neoliberalism and at the same time its successor on the right—a sign of the deep crisis of our times. Not only does the administration stand for climate denialism and has declared environmentalist enemies of the people, it is also threatening to undermine liberal democracy, and is attacking the racially oppressed, immigrants, women, LGBTQ people, environmentalists, and workers. The resistance movement to this thus needs to be a defense of humanity itself in all of its aspects."
Raj Patel,Left,"We are not the consumers of democracy, we are its proprietors."
Raj Patel,Left,"We are all familiar with the idea: Give a man a fish and you'll feed him for a day, but teach a man to fish and you'll feed him for a lifetime. That sounds reasonable enough. … But think of the model that rests on. It constructs people in developing countries that sort of people sitting by the rivers and eating fish and then they look at the river and said: ""- So what's that? - It looks like a fish. - Well, how do we get it out? - Well I have no idea, we would have to wait for white man to come and tell us."" It's important to remember that actually there are systems of governance that already exist. There are models of development that already exist in developing countries that actually are much more sustainable than the model of free markets that we have been trying to export."
Raj Patel,Left,"When you introduce markets in food, then you introduce two very simple rules. The first rule is this: if you have money you can get the food from wherever around the world. The other rule markets impose is this: if you do not have money, you will starve. This is an important point … The reason why people starve is because of poverty … not because of a shortage of food …  but because the only way to access the food is through the market."
Raj Patel,Left,The question is: why are there markets of food at all?
Raj Patel,Left,The opposite of consumption isn't thrift. It's generosity.
Raj Patel,Left,"Generosity makes us happiest. We'll be happier people when we share, not when we impose, but when we learn from one another. Because when I'm connected to everyone I disappear … in being excellent you lose yourself. And when you're connected to everyone, that's the best thing that can happen."
Raj Patel,Left,The problem is that we are living now with the consequences of the others people mistake. It would be nice to make our own and learn from them. That is the art of democracy. That is the art of citizenship.
Michael Parenti,Left,Our fear that Communism might someday take over most of the world blinds us to the fact that anti-communism already has.
Michael Parenti,Left,"In every class society that's ever existed, the ruling element does not rule nakedly. They always adorn their rule with myths, themes and symbols to justify their position at the apex of the social pyramid."
Michael Parenti,Left,"Someone once said that Margaret Thatcher satisfied the average Englishman's longing for the perfect dominatrix. No doubt about it, she could deliver pain. The Iron Lady should best be remembered as the Leather Lady. Indeed, today Thatcherism leaves its dreary imprint not only on the Conservative Party but---thanks also to Tony Blair---on a Labor Party that accepts most of her regressive policies."
Michael Parenti,Left,"For years the Dalai Lama was on the payroll of the CIA, an agency that has perpetrated killings against rebellious workers, peasants, students, and others in countries around the world. His eldest brother played an active role in a CIA-front group. Another brother established an intelligence operation with the CIA, which included a CIA-trained guerrilla unit whose recruits parachuted back into Tibet to foment insurgency. The Dalai Lama was no pacifist. He supported the U.S./NATO military intervention into Afghanistan, also the 78 days' bombing of Yugoslavia and the destruction of that country."
Michael Parenti,Left,"In sum, the Nobel Peace Prize often has nothing to do with peace and too much to do with war. It frequently sees ""peace"" through the eyes of the western plutocracy. For that reason alone, we should not join in the applause."
Michael Parenti,Left,"Nations that chart a self-defining course, seeking to use their  land, labor, natural resources, and markets as they see fit, free from the smothering embrace of the US corporate global order, frequently become a target of defamation. Their leaders often have their moral sanity called into question by US officials and US media, as has been the case at one time or another with Castro, Noriega, Ortega, Qaddafi, Aristide, Milosevic, Saddam Hussein, Hugo Chavez, and others."
Michael Parenti,Left,"After years of encirclement and repeated rebuffs from Washington, years of threat, isolation, and demonization, the Pyongyang leaders are convinced that the best way to resist superpower attack and domination is by developing a nuclear arsenal. It does not really sound so crazy. As already mentioned, the United States does not invade countries that are armed with long-range nuclear missiles (at least not thus far).  Having been pushed to the brink for so long, the North Koreans are now taking a gamble, upping the ante, pursuing an arguably “sane” deterrence policy in the otherwise insane world configured by an overweening and voracious empire."
Michael Parenti,Left,"It may come as a surprise to some academics, but there is a marked relationship between economic power and political power."
Michael Parenti,Left,The close relationship between politics and economics is neither neutral nor coincidental. Large governments evolve through history in order to protect large accumulations of property and wealth.
Michael Parenti,Left,Profits are what you make when not working.
Michael Parenti,Left,"American represents more than just an economic system; it is an entire cultural and social order, a plutocracy, a system of rule that is mostly by and for the rich. Most universities and colleges, publishing houses, mass circulation magazines, newspapers, television and radio stations, professional sports teams, foundations, churches, private museums, charity organizations, and hospitals are organized as corporations, ruled by boards of trustees (or directors or regents) composed overwhelmingly of affluent business people. These boards exercise final judgement over all institutional matters."
Michael Parenti,Left,"Among the institutions of plutocratic culture, our educational system looms as one of the more influential purveyors of dominant values. From the earliest school year, children are taught to compete individually rather than work cooperatively for mutual benefit. Grade-school students are fed stories of their nation's exploits that might be more valued for their inspirational nationalism than for their historical accuracy. Students are instructed to believe in America's global virtue and moral superiority and to hold a rather uncritical view of American politico economic institutions."
Michael Parenti,Left,"Ideological orthodoxy so permeates the plutocratic culture, masquerading as ""pluralism,"" ""democracy,"" and the ""open society,"" that it is often not felt as  indoctrination. The worst forms of tyranny are those so subtle, so deeply ingrained, so thoroughly controlling as not even to be consciously experienced. So, there are Americans who are afraid to entertain contrary notions for fear of jeopardizing their jobs, but who still think they are ""free."""
Michael Parenti,Left,"“Individualism” in the untied States refers to privatized ownership, consumption and recreation. You are individualist in that you are expected to get what you can for yourself and not be too troubled by the problems faced by others. This attitude, considered inhuman in some societies, is labeled approvingly as “ambition” in our own and is treated as a quality of grate social value."
Michael Parenti,Left,"Economically deprived groups are seen as a threat because they want more, and more for the have-nots might mean less for the haves."
Michael Parenti,Left,"The desire to ""make it,"" even at the expense of others, is not merely a wrong-headed at attitude but a reflection of the material conditions of capitalist society wherein no one is ever really economically secure except the superrich."
Michael Parenti,Left,It is ironic that people of modest means sometimes become conservative out of a scarcity fear bred by the very capitalist system they support.
Michael Parenti,Left,"The Federalists also used bribes, intimidation, and fraud against opponents of the Constitution."
Michael Parenti,Left,"Actually, the New Deal's central dedication was to business recovery rather than social reform."
Michael Parenti,Left,"The rich have grown richer, but their tax rate has declined. The poor have grown poorer, but their taxes have increased."
Michael Parenti,Left,Twelve states in the Great Plains have a wind energy potential greater then the electric use of our entire nation.
Michael Parenti,Left,"Capitalism's modus operandi is to produce and sell an ever expanding supply of goods and services for ever greater profits. But the earth is finite. So is its ability to absorb wastes and toxins. While food yields shrink, the world's population grows 90 million a year and the pkanet's life support systems move closer to catastrophe. An ever expanding capitalism and a fragile, finite ecology appear to be on a calamitous collision course."
Michael Parenti,Left,The trick is to steal big.
Michael Parenti,Left,"The police confront dangers and social miseries of a kind most of us can only imagine. They deal with the waste products of a competitive corporate society: the ill-fed, the ill-housed, the desperate, and the defeated. The slums are not the problem, they are the solution; they are the way capitalism deals with the surplus people of a market economy. And for all they cost the taxpayer in crime, police and welfare, the slums remain a source of profit for certain speculators, arsonists, realtors, big merchants, and others."
Michael Parenti,Left,One mechanism of repression is the grand jury.
Michael Parenti,Left,"Even though the crime rate has dropped in recent years, the United States has more police per capita then any other nation in the world."
Michael Parenti,Left,The two party electoral system performs the essential function of helping to legitimate the existing social order.
Michael Parenti,Left,Those who control the wealth of this society have an influence over political life far in excess of their number.
Michael Parenti,Left,"There is a century-old saying, ""The dollar votes more times than the man."""
Michael Parenti,Left,The peculiar danger of executive power is that it executes.
Michael Parenti,Left,"Conservatives insist that government should be "" run more like a business."" One might wonder how that could be possible, since government does not market goods and services for the purpose of capital accumulation."
Michael Parenti,Left,"The crucial role communists played in organizing industrial unions in the 1930s and struggling for social reforms, peace, and civil rights strengthened rather then undermined democratic forces."
Michael Parenti,Left,"There is no such thing as unbiased or objective reporting of news. All reports and analyses are selective and inferential to some inescapable degree - all the more reason to provide a wider ideological spectrum of opinions and not let one bias predominate. If we consider censorship to be a danger to our freedom, then we should not overlook the fact that the media are already heavily censored by those who own or advertise in them. The very process of selection allows the politico-economic interests of the selector to operate as a censor."
Michael Parenti,Left,"The American two-party electoral system, with its ballyhoo and hoopla, its impresarios and stunt artists, is the greatest show on earth. Campaign time is show time, a veritable circus brought into our living rooms via television as a form of entertainment. The important thing is that the show must go on - because it is more than just a show. The two-party system electoral social order. It channels and limits political expression, and blunts class grievances. It often leaves little time for the real issues because it gives so much attention to the contest per se who will run? who is ahead? who will win the primaries? who will win the election? It provides the form of republican government with little of the substance. It fives the plutocratic system of appearance of popular participation while being run by and for a select handful of affluent contestants."
Michael Parenti,Left,"It is not Socialism that subverts democracy, but democracy that subverts capitalism."
Michael Parenti,Left,"There is a tradition of popular struggle in the United States that has been downplayed and ignored. It  ebbs and flows but never ceases. Moved by a combination of anger and hope, ordinary people have organized, agitated, demonstrated, and engaged in electoral challenges, civil disobedience, strikes, sit-ins, takeovers, boycotts, and sometimes violent clashes with the authorities - for better wages and work conditions, a safer environment, racial and gender justice, and peace and nonintervention abroad. Against the heaviest odds, they have suffered many defeats but won some important victories, forcible extracting concessions and imposing reforms upon resistant rulers."
Michael Parenti,Left,"Democracy is something more than a set of political procedures. To be worthy of its name, democracy should produce substantive outcomes that advance the health and well-being of the people."
Michael Parenti,Left,"American socialism cannot be modeled on the former Soviet Union, China, Cuba, or other countries with different historical, economic, and cultural developments."
Michael Parenti,Left,"There is nothing sacred about the existing system.All economic and political institutions are contrivances that should serve the interests of the people. When they fail to do so, they should be replaced by something more responsive, more just, and more democratic. Marx said this, and so did Jefferson. It is a revolutionary doctrine, and very much an American one."
Michael Parenti,Left,"Here is a story of latifundia and death squads, masters and slaves, patriarchs and subordinated women, self-enriching capitalists and plundered provinces, profiteering slumlords and urban rioters. Here is a struggle between the plutocratic few and the indigent many, the privileged versus the proletariat, featuring corrupt politicians, money-driven elections, and the political assassination of popular leaders. I leave it to the reader to decide whether any of this might resonate with the temper of our own times."
Michael Parenti,Left,"The writing of history has long been a privileged calling undertaken within the church, royal court, landed estate, affluent town house, government agency, university, and corporate-funded foundation."
Michael Parenti,Left,"Those who think Roman slavery was such a benign institution have not explained why fugitive slaves were a constant problem. Owners did not lightly countenance the loss of valuable property. They regularly used chains, metal collars, and other restraining devices. Slaves who fled were hunted down and returned to irate masters who were keen to inflict a severe retribution."
Michael Parenti,Left,"Like most other people, Gibbon tended to perceive reality in accordance with the position he occupied in the social structure. As a gentleman scholar, he produced what elsewhere I have called ""gentlemen's history,"" a genre heavily indebted to an upper class ideological perspective. In 1773, we find him beginning a work on his magus opus, A History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, while settled in a comfortable town hohuse tended bt half-a-dozen servants. Being immersed in what he called the ""decent luxuries,"" and saturated with his own upper-class prepossession, Edward Gibbon was able to look kindly upon ancient Rome's violently acquisitive aristocracy. He might have produced a much different history had he been a self-educated cobbler, sitting in a cold shed, writing into the wee hours after a long day of unrewarding toil. No accident that the impoverished laborer, even if literate, seldom had the agency, agency to produce scholarly tomes."
Michael Parenti,Left,"Throughout the ages, in keeping with their ideological proclivities, gentlemen historians have tended to dismiss the populares of the Roman Republic as self aggrandizing demagogues who affronted constitutional principles by encroaching upon the Senate's dominain."
Michael Parenti,Left,"While unsparingly praised by generations of classicists for his principled ways, Cicero was often an unprincipled opportunist and dissembler. In 50 b.c., for example, with Caesar's fame and power ascendant, he persuaded the senate to decree a thanksgiving service in Caesar's honor, and himself delivered a hypocritical panegyric - which he privately recanted shortly thereafter in a letter to Atticus:""I was not exactly proud of my palinode. But goodnight to principle, sincerity and honor!"""
Michael Parenti,Left,"Conservatives are fond of telling us what a wonderful, happy, prosperous nation this is. The only thing that matches their love of country is the remarkable indifference they show toward the people who live in it."
Michael Parenti,Left,The dirty truth is that the rich are the great cause of poverty.
Michael Parenti,Left,The dirty truth is that many people find fascism to be not particularly horrible.
Michael Parenti,Left,Every ruling class has wanted only this: all the rewards and none of the burdens. The operational code is: we have a lot; we can get more; we want it all.
Michael Parenti,Left,"Revolutions are not push button affairs; rather, they evolve only if there exists a reservoir of hope and grievance that can be galvanized into popular action."
Michael Parenti,Left,The real danger we face is not from terrorism but what is being done under the pretext of fighting it.
Michael Parenti,Left,Conservative pundits have a remarkable amount of free speech.
Michael Parenti,Left,Conservatives have nothing against incumbency when it is their people who are filling the slots.
Michael Parenti,Left,"To complain about how the media are dominated by liberals, Limbaugh has an hour a day on network television, an hour on cable, and a radio show syndicated by over 600 stations."
Michael Parenti,Left,The mass media are class media.
Michael Parenti,Left,Union busting has become a major industry with more than a thousand consulting firms  teaching companies how to prevent workers from organizing and how to get rid of existing unions.
Michael Parenti,Left,"Maintaining silence about a dirty truth is another way of lying, a common practice in high places."
Michael Parenti,Left,"Russia became a juicy chunk of the Third World, with immense reserves of cheap labor, a vast treasure of natural resources, and industrial assets  to be sold off at giveaway prices."
Michael Parenti,Left,You will have no sensation of a leash around your neck if you sit by the peg. It is only when you stray that you feel the restraining tug.
Michael Parenti,Left,The media have been tireless in their efforts to suppress the truth about the gangster state.
Michael Parenti,Left,"To make the world safe for those who own it, politically active elements of the owning class have created a national security state that expends billions of dollars and enlists the efforts of vast numbers of people."
Michael Parenti,Left,"Archbishop Romero of El Salvador was a member of the Salvadoran aristocracy. He could not have risen to the top of the church hierarchy otherwise. But after he began voicing critical remarks about the war and concerned comments about the poor, he was assassinated."
Michael Parenti,Left,One does not have to be a Marxist to know there is something very wrong in this society.
Michael Parenti,Left,"When change threatens to rule, then the rules are changed."
Michael Parenti,Left,"In the end I created a career of my own, concentrating on my writing and lecturing, reaching larger audiences than I would had I ended up with tenure and a full teaching load. It was Virginia Woolf who said that it is terrible to be frozen out of a sacred tradition-but even more terrible to be frozen into it."
Michael Parenti,Left,"Fascism historically has been used to secure the interests of large capitalist interests against the demands of popular democracy. Then and now, fascism has made irrational mass appeals in order to secure the rational ends of class domination."
Michael Parenti,Left,"Some writers stress the ""irrational"" fearures of fascism. By doing so, they over look the rational politico-economic functions that fascism performed. Much of politics is the rational manipulation of irrational symbols. Certainly, this is true of fascist ideology, whose emotive appeals have served a class-control function."
Michael Parenti,Left,"Fascism is a false revolution. It cultivates the appearance of popular politics and a revolutionary aura without offering a genuine revolutionary class content. It propagates a ""New Order"" while serving the same old moneyed interests. Its leaders are not guilty of confusion but of deception. That they work hard to mislead the public does not mean they themselves are misled."
George Monbiot,Left,"People in eastern Congo are massacred to facilitate smart phone upgrades of ever diminishing marginal utility. Forests are felled to make “personalised heart-shaped wooden cheese board sets”. Rivers are poisoned to manufacture talking fish. This is pathological consumption: a world-consuming epidemic of collective madness, rendered so normal by advertising and the media that we scarcely notice what has happened to us."
George Monbiot,Left,"[About the Paris Agreement:] By comparison to what it could have been, it’s a miracle. By comparison to what it should have been, it’s a disaster."
George Monbiot,Left,Nobody ever rioted for austerity.
George Monbiot,Left,"Faced with a choice between the survival of the planet and a new set of matching tableware, most people would choose the tableware."
George Monbiot,Left,We are the most fortunate generation that has ever lived. And we are the most fortunate generation that ever will.
George Monbiot,Left,"While there are many reasons for the growth of individualism in the UK, the extreme libertarianism now beginning to take hold here begins on the road. When you drive, society becomes an obstacle."
George Monbiot,Left,No political challenge can be met by shopping.
John Gray,Left,"To affirm that humans thrive in many different ways is not to deny that there are universal human values. Nor is it to reject the claim that there should be universal human rights. It is to deny that universal values can only be fully realized in a universal regime. Human rights can be respected in a variety of regimes, liberal and otherwise. Universal human rights are not an ideal constitution for a single regime throughout the world, but a set of minimum standards for peaceful coexistence among regimes that will always remain different."
John Gray,Left,"I may not be as unambiguously hostile to capitalism as many people are, but what I don't like about it is the commodification of personal experiences, it turns everyone into actors."
John Gray,Left,"What I liked was Thatcherism's Bolshevik aspect, which was to shake up the whole of Britain quite fundamentally, and if you read what I wrote in those years I think you might agree that in taking the view that I did then — that this was necessary and desirable — I never subscribed to the main delusion of the Thatcherites, which was that you could change everything and everything would remain the same. If what you wanted was a very anarchic, globalised, polyglot, mixed-up society in which most of the structures which had somehow been renewed from the Edwardian period to the Sixties were destroyed, then Thatcherism was what would do the job."
John Gray,Left,"The core of the belief in progress is that human values and goals converge in parallel with our increasing knowledge. The twentieth century shows the contrary. Human beings use the power of scientific knowledge to assert and defend the values and goals they already have. New technologies can be used to alleviate suffering and enhance freedom. They can, and will, also be used to wage war and strengthen tyranny. Science made possible the technologies that powered the industrial revolution. In the twentieth century, these technologies were used to implement state terror and genocide on an unprecedented scale. Ethics and politics do not advance in line with the growth of knowledge — not even in the long run."
John Gray,Left,"Terror is not now, if it ever was, something that comes to us from outside. It is a part of the society in which we live. Both liberals and neoconservatives believe terrorism can be dealt with by removing its causes. The truth is less reassuring. Al-Qaeda has mutated into a decentralised, often locally based type of apocalyptic terrorism and, in this new guise, seems to be acquiring a formidable momentum."
John Gray,Left,"If you want to understand the beliefs that are shaping global politics, read the Book of Revelation."
John Gray,Left,"Blair has been the modern man he claims to be: for him, a sense of subjective certainty is all that is needed for an action to be right. If deception is needed to realise the providential design, it cannot be truly deceitful."
John Gray,Left,"Liberals tend to regard being subjects of the Queen as an insult to their dignity. But at least the archaic structures by which we are ruled do not force us to define ourselves by blood, soil or faith, and we are protected from the poisonous politics of identity."
John Gray,Left,The result of toppling tyranny in divided countries is usually civil war and ethnic cleansing.
John Gray,Left,"While the Marxist faith in central planning is now confined to a few dingy sects, a quasi-religious belief in free markets continues to shape the policies of governments.Many writers have pointed to the havoc and ruin that have accompanied the imposition of free markets across the world. Whether in Africa, Asia, Latin America or post-communist Europe, policies of wholesale privatisation and structural adjustment have led to declining economic activity and social dislocation on a massive scale."
John Gray,Left,"The whole world is in some ways better than it's ever been in the past. And, indeed, I think for many people the meaning of their lives really depends on that belief. If you strip out that belief in progress, if you start thinking of the world in the way in which the ancient pre-Christian Europeans did, or the Buddhists and the Hindus or the Taoists of China do, many people think that's a kind of despair.  I don't know how many times I've been told ""If I thought that, John, I wouldn't get up in the morning"" and ""If I agreed with you, John, that history had no pattern of that kind, I wouldn't get up in the morning."" I said, ""Well, stay in bed a bit longer, you might find a better reason for getting up."""
John Gray,Left,"Their minds befogged by fashionable nonsense about globalisation, western leaders believe liberal democracy is spreading unstoppably. The reality is continuing political diversity. Republics, empires, liberal and illiberal democracies, and a wide variety of authoritarian regimes will be with us for the foreseeable future. Globalisation is nothing more than the industrialisation of the planet, and increasing resource nationalism is an integral part of the process. (So is accelerating climate change, but that's another story.) As industrialisation spreads, countries that control natural resources use these resources to advance their strategic objectives."
John Gray,Left,"The US — its bankrupt mortgage institutions nationalised and its gigantic war machine effectively funded by foreign borrowing — is in steep decline. With its financial system in the worst mess since the 1930s, the west's ability to shape events is dwindling by the day. Sermonising about ""law-based international relations"" is laughable after Iraq, and at bottom not much more than nostalgia for a vanished hegemony."
John Gray,Left,"The true goal of the bourgeois life, in other words, is not self-enactment, but diversion.  Most people need the organised distraction of work (if they can find it).  Idleness - the life of the playboy who doesn't answer the phone - is simply too demanding."
John Gray,Left,"Most people today think they belong to a species that can be master of its destiny. This is faith, not science. We do not speak of a time when whales or gorillas will be masters of their destinies. Why then humans?"
John Gray,Left,"If Darwin's discovery had been made in a Taoist or Shinto, Hindu or animist culture it would very likely have become just one more strand in its intertwining mythologies. In these faiths humans and other animals are kin. By contrast, arising among Christians who set humans beyond all other living things, it triggered a bitter controversy that rages on to this day."
John Gray,Left,"The destruction of the natural world is not the result of global capitalism, industrialisation, 'Western civilisation' or any flaw in human institutions.  It is a consequence of the evolutionary success of an exceptionally rapacious primate.  Throughout all of history and prehistory, human advance has coincided with ecological devastation."
John Gray,Left,"The human population growth that has taken place over the past few hundred years resembles nothing so much as the spikes that occur in the numbers of rabbits, house mice and plague rats. Like them, it can only be short-lived."
John Gray,Left,"Pogroms are as old as Christendom; but without railways, the telegraph and poison gas there could have been no Holocaust.  There have always been tyrannies; but without modern means of transport and communication, Stalin and Mao could not have built their gulags."
John Gray,Left,"Cities are no more artificial than the hives of bees. The Internet is as natural as a spider's web. As Margulis and Sagan have written, we are ourselves technological devices, invented by ancient bacterial communities as means of genetic survival: 'We are a part of an intricate network that comes from the original bacterial takeover of the Earth. Our powers and intelligence do not belong specifically to us but to all life.'"
John Gray,Left,"The mass of mankind is ruled not by its intermittent moral sensations, still less by self-interest, but by the needs of the moment."
John Gray,Left,"Religious fundamentalists see themselves as having remedies for the maladies of the modern world. In reality they are symptoms of the disease they pretend to cure. They hope to recover the unreflective faith of traditional cultures, but this is a peculiarly modern fantasy. We cannot believe as we please; our beliefs are traces left by our unchosen lives. A view of the world is not something that can be conjured up as and when we please."
John Gray,Left,"Scientific fundamentalists claim that science is the disinterested pursuit of truth. But representing science in this way is to disregard the human needs science serves. Among us, science serves two needs: for hope and censorship. Today, only science supports the myth of progress. If people cling to the hope of progress, it is not so much from genuine belief as from fear of what may come if they give it up. The political projects of the twentieth century have failed, or achieved much less than they promised. At the same time, progress in science is a daily experience, confirmed whenever we buy a new electronic gadget, or take a new drug. Science gives us a sense of progress that ethical and political life cannot."
John Gray,Left,"Again, science has the power to silence heretics.  Today it is the only institution that can claim authority. Like the Church in the past, it has the power to destroy, or marginalise, independent thinkers.  (Think how orthodox medicine reacted to Freud, and orthodox Darwinians to Lovelock.)  In fact, science does not yield any fixed picture of things, but by censoring thinkers who stray too far from current orthodoxies it preserves the comforting illusion of a single established worldview."
John Gray,Left,"According to the most influential twentieth-century philosopher of science, Karl Popper, a theory is scientific only in so far as it is falsifiable, and should be given up as soon as it has been falsified.  By this standard, the theories of Darwin and Einstein should never have been accepted."
John Gray,Left,"Modern humanism is the faith that through science humankind can know the truth - and so be free. But if Darwin's theory of natural selection is true this is impossible. The human mind serves evolutionary success, not truth."
John Gray,Left,"In any case, only someone miraculously innocent of history could believe that competition among ideas could result in the triumph of truth.  Certainly ideas compete with one another, but the winners are normally those with power and human folly on their side.  When the medieval Church exterminated the Cathars, did Catholic memes prevail over the memes of heretics?  If the Final Solution had been carried to a conclusion, would that have demonstrated the inferiority of Hebrew memes?"
John Gray,Left,A lover who promises eternal fidelity is more likely to be believed if he believes his promise himself; he is no more likely to keep the promise.
John Gray,Left,"Science will never be used chiefly to pursue truth, or to improve human life. The uses of knowledge will always be as shifting and crooked as humans are themselves. Humans use what they know to meet their most urgent needs – even if the result is ruin."
John Gray,Left,"Science cannot be used to reshape humankind in a more rational mould. Any new-model humanity will only reproduce the familiar deformities of its designers. It is a strange fancy to suppose that science can bring reason to an irrational world, when all it can ever do is give another twist to the normal madness."
John Gray,Left,"...the idea of Gaia is anticipated most clearly in a line from the Tao Te Ching, the oldest Taoist scripture.  In ancient Chinese rituals, straw dogs were used as offerings to the gods.  During the ritual they were treated with the utmost reverence.  When it was over and they were no longer needed they were trampled on and tossed aside: 'Heaven and earth are ruthless, and treat the myriad creatures as straw dogs.'  If humans disturb the balance of the Earth they will be trampled on and tossed aside.  Critics of the Gaia theory say they reject it because it is unscientific.  The truth is that they fear and hate it because it means that humans can never be other than straw dogs."
John Gray,Left,"As commonly practised, philosophy is the attempt to find good reasons for conventional beliefs. In Kant's time the creed of conventional people was Christian, now it is humanist. Nor are these two faiths so different from one another.Over the past 200 years, philosophy has shaken off Christian faith. It has not given up Christianity's cardinal error — the belief that humans are radically different from all other animals."
John Gray,Left,"Like most philosophers, Kant worked to shore up the conventional beliefs of his time. Schopenhauer did the opposite. Accepting the arguments of Hume and Kant that the world is unknowable, he concluded that both the world and the individual subject that imagines it knows it are maya, dreamlike constructions with no basis in reality. ... Schopenhauer accepted the sceptical side of Kant's philosophy and turned it against him. Kant demonstrated that we are trapped in the world of phenomena and cannot know things in themselves. Schopenhauer went one step further and observed that we ourselves belong in the world of appearances. Unlike Kant, Schopenhauer was ready to follow his thoughts wherever they led. Kant argued that unless we accept that we are autonomous, freely choosing selves we cannot make sense of our moral experience. Schopenhauer responded that our actual experience is not of freely choosing the way we live but of being driven along by our bodily needs - by fear, hunger and, above all, sex."
John Gray,Left,"Our intellects are not impartial observers of the world but active participants in it. They shape a view of it that helps us in our struggles. Among the imaginary constructions created by the intellect working in the service of the will, perhaps the most delusive is the view it gives us of ourselves - as continuing, unified individuals."
John Gray,Left,"Nietzsche was an inveterately religious thinker, whose incessant attacks on Christian beliefs and values attest to the fact that he could never shake them off."
John Gray,Left,"Neither in the ancient pagan world nor in any other culture has human history ever been thought to have an overarching significance.  In Greece and Rome, it was a series of natural cycles of growth and decline.  In India, it was a collective dream, endlessly repeated.  The idea that history must make sense is just a Christian prejudice. If you believe that humans are animals, there can be no such thing as the history of humanity, only the lives of particular humans. If we speak of the history of the species at all, it is only to signify the unknowable sum of these lives. As with other animals, some lives are happy, others wretched. None has a meaning that lies beyond itsel£. Looking for meaning in history is like looking for patterns in clouds."
John Gray,Left,"Postmodernists parade their relativism as a superior kind of humility — the modest acceptance that we cannot claim to have the truth. In fact, the postmodern denial of truth is the worst kind of arrogance. In denying that the natural world exists independently of our beliefs about it, postmodernists are implicitly rejecting any limit on human ambitions. By making human beliefs the final arbiter of reality, they are in effect claiming that nothing exists unless it appears in human consciousness."
John Gray,Left,"Philosophers have always tried to show that we are not like other animals, sniffing their way uncertainly through the world.  Yet after all the work of Plato and Spinoza, Descartes and Bertrand Russell we have no more reason than other animals do for believing that the sun will rise tomorrow."
John Gray,Left,"It is significant that nothing resembling Platonism arose in China. Classical Chinese script is not ideographic, as used to be thought; but because of what A.C. Graham terms its 'combination of graphic wealth with phonetic poverty' it did not encourage the kind of abstract thinking that produced Plato's philosophy. Plato was what historians of philosophy call a realist - he believed that abstract terms designated spiritual or intellectual entities. In contrast, throughout its long history, Chinese thought has been nominalist - it has understood that even the most abstract terms are only labels, names for the diversity of things in the world. As a result, Chinese thinkers have rarely mistaken ideas for facts. Plato's legacy to European thought was a trio of capital letters - the Good, the Beautiful and the True. Wars have been fought and tyrannies established, cultures have been ravaged and peoples exterminated in the service of these abstractions. Europe owes much of its murderous history to errors of thinking engendered by the alphabet."
John Gray,Left,"The unalterable character with which Schopenhauer and sometimes Conrad believed all humans are born may not exist; but we cannot help looking within ourselves to account for what we do.  All we find are fragments, like memories of a novel we once read."
John Gray,Left,"Even the deepest contemplation only recalls us to our unreality.  Seeing that the self we take ourselves to be is illusory does not mean seeing through it to something else.  It is more like surrendering to a dream.  To see ourselves as figments is to awake, not to reality, but to a lucid dream, a false awakening that has no end."
John Gray,Left,We cannot be rid of illusions.  Illusion is our natural condition.  Why not accept it?
John Gray,Left,"It is sometimes asked why Western observers were so slow in recognising the truth about the Soviet Union. The reason is not that it was hard to come by. It was clear from hundreds of books by emigre survivors - and from statements by the Soviets themselves. But the facts were too uncomfortable for Western observers to admit. For the sake of their peace of mind they had to deny what they knew or suspected to be true. Like the Tasmanian aboriginals who could not see the tall ships that brought their end, these bien-pensants could not bring themselves to see that the pursuit of progress had ended in mass murder. ... What makes the twentieth century special is not the fact that it is littered with massacres. It is the scale of its killings and the fact that they were premeditated for the sake of vast projects of world improvement."
John Gray,Left,Today everyone knows that inequality is wrong.  A century ago everyone knew that gay sex was wrong.  The intuitions people have on moral questions are intensely felt.  They are also shallow and transient to the last degree.... Justice is an artefact of custom.  Where customs are unsettled its dictates soon become dated.  Ideas of justice are as timeless as fashion in hats.
John Gray,Left,"Freud taught that for any human being kindness or cruelty, having a sense of justice or lacking it, depend on the accidents of childhood. We all know this to be true, but it goes against much of what we say we believe. We cannot give up the pretence that being good is something anyone can achieve. If we did, we would have to admit that, like beauty and intelligence, goodness is a gift of fortune. We would have to accept that, in the parts of our lives where we are most attached to it, freedom of the will is an illusion."
John Gray,Left,Caring about your self as it will be in the future is no more reasonable than caring about the self you are now.
John Gray,Left,"In the Greek world in which Homer's songs were sung, it was taken for granted that everyone's life is ruled by fate and chance. For Homer, human life is a succession of contingencies: all good things are vulnerable to fortune. Socrates could not accept this archaic tragic vision. He believed that virtue and happiness were one and the same: nothing can harm a truly good man. So he re-envisioned the good to make it indestructible. Beyond the goods of human life - health, beauty, pleasure, friendship, life itself - there was a Good that surpassed them all. In Plato, this became the idea of the Form of the Good, the mystical fusion of all values into a harmonious spiritual whole - an idea later absorbed into the Christian conception of God. But the idea that ethics is concerned with a kind of value that is beyond contingency, that can somehow prevail over any kind of loss or misfortune, came from Socrates. It was he who invented 'morality'."
John Gray,Left,"Moral philosophy is very largely a branch of fiction.  Despite this, a philosopher has yet to write a great novel.  The fact should not be surprising.  In philosophy the truth about human life is of no interest."
John Gray,Left,"We are not authors of our lives; we are not even part-authors of the events that mark us most deeply. Nearly everything that is most important in our lives is unchosen. The time and place we are born, our parents, the first language we speak - these are chance, not choice. It is the casual drift of things that shapes our most fateful relationships. The life of each of us is a chapter of accidents."
John Gray,Left,"In Taoist thought, the good life comes spontaneously; but spontaneity is far from simply acting on the impulses that occur to us. In Western traditions such as Romanticism, spontaneity is linked with subjectivity. In Taoism it means acting dispassionately, on the basis of an objective view of the situation at hand. The common man cannot see things objectively, because his mind is clouded by anxiety about achieving his goals. Seeing clearly means not projecting our goals into the world; acting spontaneously means acting according to the needs of the situation. Western moralists will ask what is the purpose of such action, but for Taoists the good life has no purpose. It is like swimming in a whirlpool, responding to the currents as they come and go. 'I enter with the inflow, and emerge with the outflow, follow the Way of the water, and do not impose my selfishness upon it. This is how I stay afloat in it,' says the Chuang-Tzu. In this view, ethics is simply a practical skill, like fishing or swimming. The core of ethics is not choice or conscious awareness, but the knack of knowing what to do. It is a skill that comes with practice and an empty mind."
John Gray,Left,"Autonomy means acting on reasons I have chosen; but the lesson of cognitive science is that there is no self to do the choosing. We are far more like machines and wild animals than we imagine. But we cannot attain the amoral selflessness of wild animals, or the choiceless automatism of machines. Perhaps we can learn to live more lightly, less burdened by morality. We cannot return to a purely spontaneous existence. If humans differ from other animals, it is partly in the conflicts of their instincts. They crave security, but they are easily bored; they are peace-loving animals, but they have an itch for violence; they are drawn to thinking, but at the same time they hate and fear the unsettlement thinking brings. There is no way of life in which all these needs can be satisfied. Luckily, as the history of philosophy testifies, humans have a gift for self-deception, and thrive in ignorance of their natures."
John Gray,Left,"Today, for the mass of humanity, science and technology embody 'miracle, mystery, and authority'. Science promises that the most ancient human fantasies will at last be realized. Sickness and ageing will be abolished; scarcity and poverty will be no more; the species will become immortal. Like Christianity in the past, the modern cult of science lives on the hope of miracles. But to think that science can transform the human lot is to believe in magic. Time retorts to the illusions of humanism with the reality: frail, deranged, undelivered humanity. Even as it enables poverty to be diminished and sickness to be alleviated, science will be used to refine tyranny and perfect the art of war."
John Gray,Left,"The truth that Dostoevsky puts in the mouth of the Grand Inquisitor is that humankind has never sought freedom, and never will.  The secular religions of modern times tell us that humans yearn  to be free; and it is true that they find restraint of any kind irksome.  Yet it is rare that individuals value their freedom more than the comfort that comes with servility, and rarer still for whole peoples to do so."
John Gray,Left,"The needs that are met by tyrants are as real as those to which freedom answers; sometimes they are more urgent.  Tyrants promise security - and release from the tedium of everyday existence.  To be sure, this is only a confused fantasy.  The drab truth of tyranny is a life spent in waiting.  But the perennial romance of tyranny comes from its promising its subjects a life more interesting than any they can contrive for themselves."
John Gray,Left,"Atheists say they want a secular world, but a world defined by the absence of the Christians' god is still a Christian world.  Secularism is like chastity, a condition defined by what it denies."
John Gray,Left,"Christianity struck at the root of pagan tolerance of illusion. In claiming that there is only one true faith, it gave truth a supreme value it had not had before. It also made disbelief in the divine possible for the first time. The long-delayed consequence of Christian faith was an idolatry of truth that found its most complete expression in atheism. If we live in a world without gods, we have Christianity to thank for it."
John Gray,Left,"The practical effects of the Marxian-Federovian cult of technology were ruinous. Inspired by a materialist philosophy, the Soviet Union inflicted more far-reaching and lasting damage on the material environment than any regime in history. Green earth became desert, and pollution rose to life-threatening levels. No advantage to mankind was gained by the Soviet destruction of nature. Soviet citizens lived no longer than people in other countries - many of them a good deal less."
John Gray,Left,"The most pitiless warriors against drugs have always been militant progressives. In China, the most savage attack on drug use occurred when the country was convulsed by a modern western doctrine of universal emancipation — Maoism. It is no accident that the crusade against drugs is led today by a country wedded to the pursuit of happiness — the United States. For the corollary of that improbable quest is a puritan war on pleasure."
John Gray,Left,"Jesus promised the resurrection of the body, not an afterlife as a disembodied consciousness. Despite this, the followers of Jesus have always disparaged the flesh. Their belief that humans are marked off from the rest of creation by having an immortal soul has led them to disown the fate they share with other animals. They cannot reconcile their attachment to the body with their hope of immortality. When the two come into conflict it is always the flesh that is left behind."
John Gray,Left,"Progress is a fact.  Even so, faith in progress is a superstition. Science enables humans to satisfy their needs. It does nothing to change them. They are no different today from what they have always been. There is progress in knowledge, but not in ethics. This is the verdict both of science and history, and the view of every one of the world's religions. The growth of knowledge is real and - barring a worldwide catastrophe - it is now irreversible. Improvements in government and society are no less real, but they are temporary. Not only can they be lost, they are sure to be. History is not progress or decline, but recurring gain and loss. The advance of knowledge deludes us into thinking we are different from other animals, but our history shows that we are not."
John Gray,Left,"...we are approaching a time when, in Moravec's words, 'almost all humans work to amuse other humans.'  In rich countries, that time has already arrived.  The old industries have been exported to the developing world.  At home, new occupations have evolved, replacing those of the industrial era.  Many of them satisfy needs that in the past were repressed or disguised.  A thriving economy of psychotherapists, designer religions and spiritual boutiques has sprung up.  Beyond that, there is an enormous grey economy of illegal industries supplying drugs and sex.  The function of this new economy, legal and illegal, is to entertain and distract a population which - though it is busier than ever before - secretly suspects that it is useless.  Industrialisation created the working class.  Now it has made the working class obsolete.  Unless it is cut short by ecological collapse, it will eventually do the same to nearly everyone."
John Gray,Left,"Today the doses of madness that keep us sane are supplied by new technologies.  Anyone online has a limitless supply of virtual sex and violence.  But what will happen when we run out of new vices?  How will satiety and idleness be staved off when designer sex, drugs and violence no longer sell?  At that point, we may be sure, morality will come back into fashion.  We may not be far from a time when 'morality' is marketed as a new brand of transgression."
John Gray,Left,"Marx imagined the end of scarcity would bring the end of history. He could not bring himself to see that a world without scarcity had already been achieved - in the prehistoric societies that he and Engels lumped together as 'primitive communism'. Hunter-gatherers were less burdened by labour than the majority of mankind at any later stage, but their sparse communities were completely dependent on the Earth's bounty. Natural catastrophe could wipe them out at any time. Marx could not accept the constraint that was the price of the hunter-gatherers' freedom. Instead, animated by the faith that humans are destined to master the Earth, he insisted that freedom from labour could be achieved without any restraints on their desires. This was only the Brethren of the Free Spirit's apocalyptic fantasy returning as an Enlightenment utopia."
John Gray,Left,"In evolutionary prehistory, consciousness emerged as a side effect of language.  Today it is a by-product of the media."
John Gray,Left,"Theories of modernisation are cod-scientific projections of Enlightenment values. They tell us nothing about the future. But they do help us to understand the present. They show the lingering power of the Christian faith that history is a moral drama, a tale of progress or redemption, in which - despite everything we know of it - morality rules the world."
John Gray,Left,"A 'postmodern' organisation serving 'premodern' values, Al Qaeda has planted a question mark over the very idea of what it means to be modern."
John Gray,Left,A far smaller proportion of the population is in jail in Japan than in any Western country - around a twentieth of that in the United States. Evidently the Japanese have yet to embrace Western values.
John Gray,Left,"A high-tech Green utopia, in which a few humans live happily in balance with the rest of life, is scientifically feasible; but it is humanly unimaginable. If anything like it ever comes about, it will not be through the will of homo rapiens."
John Gray,Left,"As machines slip from human control they will do more than become conscious. They will become spiritual beings, whose inner life is no more limited by conscious thought than ours. Not only will they think and have emotions. They will develop the errors and illusions that go with self-awareness."
John Gray,Left,"Action preserves a sense of self-identity that reflection dispels. When we are at work in the world we have a seeming solidity. Action gives us consolation for our inexistence. It is not the idle dreamer who escapes from reality. It is practical men and women, who turn to a life of action as a refuge from insignificance."
John Gray,Left,"For the ancients, unending labour was the mark of a slave. The labours of Sisyphus are a punishment. In working for progress we submit to a labour no less servile."
John Gray,Left,"Gamblers wager for the sake of playing.  Among those who fish for pleasure, the best fisherman is not the one who catches the most fish but the one who enjoys fishing the most.  The point of playing is that the play has no point."
John Gray,Left,"Through fasting, concentration and prayer, mystics shut out the shifting world of the senses in order to reach a timeless reality. Quite often they find what they seek - but it is only a shadow play, an arabesque of their own anxieties, projected onto an inner screen. They end as they began, stuck fast in the personal time of memory and regret."
John Gray,Left,"In modern times, the immortal longings of the mystics are expressed in a cult of incessant activity.  Infinite progress . . . infinite tedium.  What could be more dreary than the perfection of mankind?  The idea of progress is only the longing for immortality given a techno-futurist twist.  Sanity is not found here, nor in the moth-eaten eternities of the mystics.  Other animals do not pine for a deathless life.  They are already in it.  Even a caged tiger passes its life half out of time.  Humans cannot enter that never-ending moment.  They can find a respite from time when - like Odysseus, who refused Calypso's offer of everlasting life on an enchanted island so he could return to his beloved home - they no longer dream of immortality."
John Gray,Left,"Other animals do not need a purpose in life.  A contradiction to itself, the human animal cannot do without one.  Can we not think of the aim of life as being simply to see?"
John Gray,Left,"The belief that torture is always wrong is a prejudice inherited from an obsolete philosophy. We need to shed the belief that human rights are violated when a terrorist is tortured. As Rawls and others have shown, basic freedoms must form a coherent whole. Self-evidently, there can be no right to attack basic human rights. Therefore, once the proper legal procedures are in place, torturing terrorists cannot violate their rights. In fact, in a truly liberal society, terrorists have an inalienable right to be tortured.This is what demonstrates the moral superiority of liberal societies over others, past and present. Other societies have degraded terrorists by subjecting them to lawless and unaccountable power. In the new world that is taking shape, terrorists, although they themselves degrade human rights by practising terrorism, will be afforded the full dignity of due legal process, even while being tortured."
John Gray,Left,"Human rights are not just cultural or legal constructions, as fashionable western relativists are fond of claiming. They are universal values. To deny the benefits of the new regime of rights to other cultures is to patronise them in a way that is reminiscent of the colonial era. If the new regime on torture is good enough for the US, who can say that it is not good for everyone?"
John Gray,Left,"If we are to put interrogators to work in defence of liberal values, their role in the community must receive proper recognition. They will require intensive counselling to overcome the inevitable traumas that this difficult work involves. They must be enabled to see themselves as dedicated workers in the cause of progress. Psychotherapy must be available to help them avoid the negative self-image from which some torturers have suffered in the past."
John Gray,Left,"In thinking of history in this [progressive & eschatological] way Islam shares common ground with Christianity and with the secular creeds of the modern West. It is misleading to represent Islam and ‘the West’ as forming civilisations that have nothing in common. Christianity and Islam are integral parts of western monotheism, and as such they share a view of history that marks them off from the rest of the world. Both are militant faiths that seek to convert all humankind. Other religions have been implicated in twentieth-century violence—the state cult of Shintō in Japan during the militarist period and Hindu nationalism in contemporary India, for example. But only Christianity and Islam have engendered movements that are committed to the systematic use of force to achieve universal goals."
John Gray,Left,"Contemporary liberals think of rights as universal human attributes that can be respected anywhere, but here they show a characteristic disregard of history. Current understandings of human rights developed along with the modern nation-state. It was the nation-state that emancipated individuals from the communal ties of medieval times and created freedom as it has come to be known in the modern world. This was not done without enormous conflict and severe costs. Large-scale violence was an integral feature of the process. If the US became a modern nation only after a civil war, France did so only after the Napoleonic wars and Germany after two world wars and the Cold War. In Africa and the Balkans the struggle for nationhood has run in parallel with ethnic cleansing, while the welding of China into a nation that is underway today involves the suppression of Muslim minorities and something not far from genocide in Tibet."
John Gray,Left,"Hobbes’s understanding of the dangers of anarchy resonates powerfully today. Liberal thinkers still see the unchecked power of the state as the chief danger to human freedom. Hobbes knew better: freedom’s worst enemy is anarchy, which is at its most destructive when it is a battleground of rival faiths. The sectarian death squads roaming Baghdad show that fundamentalism is itself a type of anarchy in which each prophet claims divine authority to rule. In well-governed societies, the power of faith is curbed. The state and the churches temper the claims of revelation and enforce peace. Where this kind is impossible, tyranny is better than being ruled by warring prophets. Hobbes is a more reliable guide to the present than the liberal thinkers who followed. Yet his view of human beings was too simple, and overly rationalistic. Assuming that humans dread violent death more than anything, he left out the most intractable sources of conflict. It is not always because human beings act irrationally that they fail to achieve peace. Sometimes it is because they do not want peace. They may want the victory of the One True Faith – whether a traditional religion or a secular successor such as communism, democracy or universal human rights. Or – like the young people who joined far-Left terrorist groups in the 1970s, another generation of which is now joining Islamist networks – they may find in war a purpose that is lacking in peace. Nothing is more human than the readiness to kill and die in order to secure a meaning in life."
John Gray,Left,"While it is much preferable to anarchy, government cannot abolish the evils of the human condition. At any time the state is only one of the forces that shape human behaviour, and its power is never absolute. At present, fundamentalist religion and organized crime, ethnic-national allegiances and market forces all have the ability to elude the control of government, sometimes to overthrow or capture it. States are at the mercy of events as much as any other human institution, and over the longer course of history all of them fail. As Spinoza recognized, there is no reason to think the cycle of order and anarchy will ever end. Secular thinkers find this view of human affairs dispiriting, and most have retreated to some version of the Christian view in which history is a narrative of redemption. The most common of these narratives are theories of progress, in which the growth of knowledge enables humanity to advance and improve its condition. Actually, humanity cannot advance or retreat, for humanity cannot act: there is no collective entity with intentions or purposes, only ephemeral struggling animals each with its own passions and illusions. The growth of scientific knowledge cannot alter this fact. Believers in progress – whether social democrats or neo-conservatives, Marxists, anarchists or technocratic Positivists – think of ethics and politics as being like science, with each step forward enabling further advances in future. Improvement in society is cumulative, they believe, so that the elimination of one evil can be followed by the removal of others in an open-ended process. But human affairs show no sign of being additive in this way: what is gained can always be lost, sometimes –as with the return of torture as an accepted technique in war and government – in the blink of an eye. Human knowledge tends to increase, but humans do not become any more civilized as a result. They remain prone to every kind of barbarism, and while the growth of knowledge allows them to improve their material conditions, it also increases the savagery of their conflicts."
John Gray,Left,"Darwinist thinkers such as Richard Dawkins and Daniel Dennett are militant opponents of Christianity.5 Yet their atheism and humanism are versions of Christian concepts. As a defender of Darwinism, Dawkins is committed to the view that humans are like other animal species in being ‘gene machines’ ruled by the laws of natural selection. He asserts nevertheless that humans, uniquely, can defy these natural laws: ‘We, alone on earth, can rebel against the tyranny of the selfish replicators.’ In affirming human uniqueness in this way, Dawkins relies on a Christian world-view."
John Gray,Left,"Talk of secularism is meaningful when it refers to the weakness of traditional religious belief or the lack of power of churches and other religious bodies. That is what is meant when we say Britain is a more secular country than the United States, and in this sense secularism is an achievable condition. But if it means a type of society in which religion is absent, secularism is a kind of contradiction, for it is defined by what it excludes. Post-Christian secular societies are formed by the beliefs they reject, whereas a society that had truly left Christianity behind would lack the concepts that shaped secular thought."
John Gray,Left,"The mass political movements of the 20th century were vehicles for myths inherited from religion, and it is no accident that religion is reviving now that these movements have collapsed."
John Gray,Left,"Might there not be a connection between the attempt to eradicate religion and the loss of freedom? It is unlikely that Mao, who launched his assault on the people and culture of Tibet with the slogan ""Religion is poison,"" would have agreed that his atheist world-view had no bearing on his policies."
John Gray,Left,"Knowledge grows, but human beings remain much the same.Belief in progress is a relic of the Christian view of history as a universal narrative, and an intellectually rigorous atheism would start by questioning it."
John Gray,Left,"Ridden with conflicts and lacking the industrial base of communism and nazism, Islamism is nowhere near a danger of the magnitude of those that were faced down in the 20th century."
John Gray,Left,"Not everything in religion is precious or deserving of reverence. There is an inheritance of anthropocentrism, the ugly fantasy that the Earth exists to serve humans, which most secular humanists share. There is the claim of religious authorities, also made by atheist regimes, to decide how people can express their sexuality, control their fertility and end their lives, which should be rejected categorically. Nobody should be allowed to curtail freedom in these ways, and no religion has the right to break the peace."
John Gray,Left,"Throughout the years in which the US was punishing countries that departed from fiscal prudence, it was borrowing on a colossal scale to finance tax cuts and fund its over-stretched military commitments. Now, with federal finances critically dependent on continuing large inflows of foreign capital, it will be the countries that spurned the American model of capitalism that will shape America's economic future."
John Gray,Left,"The populist rant about greedy banks that is being loudly ventilated in Congress is a distraction from the true causes of the crisis. The dire condition of America's financial markets is the result of American banks operating in a free-for-all environment that these same American legislators created. It is America's political class that, by embracing the dangerously simplistic ideology of deregulation, has responsibility for the present mess."
John Gray,Left,"The irony of the post-Cold War period is that the fall of communism was followed by the rise of another utopian ideology. In American and Britain, and to a lesser extent other Western countries, a type of market fundamentalism became the guiding philosophy. The collapse of American power that is underway is the predictable upshot."
John Gray,Left,"In the world as we find it, even the barest requirements of a life worth living cannot all be always met in full.  Toppling a tyranny may trigger civil war.  Protecting a broad range of liberal freedoms may result in the regime that guarantees them being short lived.  At the same time, supporting a strong state as a bulwark against anarchy may worsen the abuse of power.  Wise policy can temper these conflicts.  It cannot hope to overcome them."
John Gray,Left,It is because human needs are contradictory that no human life can be perfect.  That does not mean that human life is imperfect.  It means that the idea of perfection has no meaning.
John Gray,Left,"There is no more consensus on what justice means than there is on the character of the good.  If anything, there is less.  Among the virtues, justice is one of the most shaped by convention.  For that reason it is among the most changeable."
John Gray,Left,"Like other human freedoms, the freedoms embodied in market institutions are justified inasmuch as they meet human needs.  Insofar as they fail to do this they can reasonably be altered.  This is true not only of the rights that are involved in market institutions.  It is true of all human rights."
John Gray,Left,"The idea of a law of progress, or of an all but irresistible tendency to general improvement, is then merely a superstition, one of the tents of the modernist pseudo-religion of humanism.  Even if such a law or tendency existed and were demonstrable, the liberal faith in progress would for Santayana be pernicious.  For it leads to a corrupt habit of mind in which things are valued, not for their present excellence or perfection, but instrumentally, as leading to something better; and it insinuates into thought and feeling a sort of historical theodicy, in which past evil is justified as a means to present or future good.  The idea of progress embodies a kind of time-worship (to adopt an expression used by Wyndham Lewis) in which the particularities of our world are seen and valued, not in themselves, but for what they might perhaps become, thereby leaving us destitute of the sense of the present and, at the same time, of the perspective of eternity."
John Gray,Left,"The idea of politics as a conservation in which the collision of opinions is moderated and accommodated, in which what is sought is not truth but peace, has been almost entirely lost, and supplanted by a legalist paradigm in which all political claims and conflicts are modelled in the jargon of rights."
John Gray,Left,"In the life of the academic mind, the owl of Minerva seldom flies as early as the dusk."
John Gray,Left,"The repression of liberty that took place in the countries in which Communist regimes were established cannot be adequately explained as a product of backwardness, or of errors in the application of Marxian theory.  It was the result of a resolute attempt to realize an Enlightenment utopia - a condition of society in which no serious form of conflict any longer exists."
John Gray,Left,The evil of totalitarianism is not only that it fails to protect specific liberties but that it extinguishes the very possibility of freedom.
John Gray,Left,"Against the many Russian thinkers influenced by Hegel who believed that history was governed by universal laws to which one could only submit, Turgenev upheld the freedom of different societies to pursue different paths of development and of individuals to pursue, even in opposition to powerful historical forces, their own goals and values.  Here Turgenev endorsed the celebrated dictum of Alexander Herzen, with whom he disagreed on other matters: that history has no libretto.  Human history is a realm of contingency and unpredictability, in which each generation faces conflicts that have no ideal solution."
John Gray,Left,"The belief in unity that has fuelled so many utopian dreams is an effort to reconcile the irreconcilable that ends in repression.  Berlin suggests we renounce this venerable faith, and learn how to live with intractable conflict."
John Gray,Left,"When closed societies collapse but fail to make the transition to openness the reason need not be that they languish in anarchy or suffer a return to dictatorship.  It may be that they adopt an illiberal form of democracy.  Along with the liberal democratic tradition that goes back to Locke and the English civil war there is a tradition, originating in the French Revolution and formulated theoretically by Rousseau, which understands democracy as the expression of popular will.  The elective theocracy that is emerging in much of post-Saddam Iraq is a democratic polity in the latter sense, as is the current regime in Iran; so is the Hamas government in Palestine... To be sure, these regimes often lack freedom of information and expression and legal limitations on government power, which are essential features of democracy in the liberal tradition.  In these respects they are closed societies, but they are not dictatorships.  It is often forgotten that democracy, defined chiefly by elections and the exercise of power in the name of the majority, can be as repressive of individual freedom and minority rights as dictatorship - sometimes more so."
John Gray,Left,Much in the study of the paranormal was what we would now call pseudo-science. But the line between science and pseudo-science is smudged and shifting; where it lies seems clear only in retrospect. There is no pristine science untouched by the vagaries of faith.
John Gray,Left,"An old fairy tale has it that science began with the rejection of superstition. In fact it was the rejection of rationalism that gave birth to scientific inquiry. Ancient and medieval thinkers believed the world could be understood by applying first principles. Modern science begins when observation and experiment come first, and the results are accepted even when what they show seems to be impossible."
John Gray,Left,"Contrary to the cartoon history of ideas that prevails today, Darwinism’s threat to religion did not come principally from challenging the biblical account of creation. Until a few centuries ago the Genesis story was known to be a myth – a poetic way of rendering truths that would otherwise be inaccessible. At the beginning of the Christian religion, Augustine warned against the dangers of literalism. The Jewish scholars who preceded him always viewed the Genesis story as a metaphor for truths that could not be accessed in any other way. It was only with the rise of modern science that the Genesis myth came to be misunderstood as an explanatory theory. Yet Darwinism was still a major threat to religion, for it confronted Victorians with the prospect of their final mortality. Darwin forced them to ask why their lives should not end like those of other animals, in nothingness. If this was so, how could human existence have meaning? How could human values be maintained if human personality was destroyed at death?"
John Gray,Left,"The heterodox current in Judaism led by Jesus seems to have had no notion of an immortal soul, created by God and then infused into the body: immortality meant being raised from the dead in the body one had in life, then living for ever in a world without decay or corruption. In the Christian religion invented by Paul and Augustine, which was strongly influenced by Plato, immortality meant something quite different – a life out of time, enjoyed by the ‘soul’ or ‘spirit’ of the departed. How this Platonic immortality could preserve anything like the persons that once lived was not made clear."
John Gray,Left,"The basis of the [scientific] method is a belief in natural uniformity – if two events are regularly connected in our observations we can conclude that they obey a universal law. But this is not a conclusion we reach by observation. No amount of evidence can demonstrate the existence of laws of nature, since new experience can always overturn them. Science rests on the belief that the future will be like the past; but that belief is rationally groundless. This is not a new line of thinking. David Hume argued that the expectation that the future will be like the past, which is the basis of induction, is a matter of habit. Hume wanted to show that since miracles transgress known laws of nature it was unreasonable to accept reports of them, in the Bible or anywhere else. But his arguments against induction showed that the laws of nature could not in fact be known, so events that seemed impossible could happen at any time. The upshot was that faith in miracles returned by the back door of sceptical doubt."
John Gray,Left,"From a Darwinian point of view, human beliefs are adaptations to our part of the world. No doubt much of what we believe must be roughly accurate, or else we would not have survived. But the beliefs we have evolved might latch on to the world only enough to help us stumble our way through it, and then only for the time being. Human belief-systems could be useful illusions, appearing and disappearing as they prove to be more or less advantageous in the random walk of natural selection. Might not evolution be one of these illusions? Scientific naturalism is the theory that human beliefs are evolutionary adaptations whose survival has nothing to do with their truth. But in that case scientific naturalism is self-defeating, since on its own premises scientific theories cannot be known to be true."
John Gray,Left,"The basis of science is the empirical method, which uses the senses to build up a picture of the world; but science tells us that our senses have evolved to help us get by, not to show us the world as it is. Science is only a systematic examination of our impressions, and in the end all each of us has left are our own sensations ... The end-result of the empirical method, then, is that each individual is left alone with their own experiences. We can escape this solitude, Balfour suggested, only if we accept that there is a divine mind."
John Gray,Left,"The irony of scientific progress is that in solving human problems it creates problems that are not humanly soluble. Science has given humans a kind of power over the natural world achieved by no other animal. It has not given humans the ability to remodel the planet according to their wishes. The Earth is not a clock that can be wound up and stopped at will. A living system, the planet will surely rebalance itself. It will do so, however, without any regard for humans."
John Gray,Left,"If our universe is one of many, unlike others in containing observers like ourselves, there is no need to posit a designer. Most universes will be too chaotic to allow the emergence of life or mind. In that case, the fact that humans exist in this universe needs no special explanation"
John Gray,Left,"For a consistent naturalist science can only be a refinement of animal exploration, a practice humans have devised for finding their way in the bit of the universe in which they have so far survived. Instead of thinking of science as a law-seeking activity, we can think of it as a tool humans use to cope with a world they will never understand."
John Gray,Left,"Though it is often assumed that naturalism must be hostile to religion, the opposite is true. Enemies of religion think of it as an intellectual error, which humanity will eventually grow out of. It is hard to square this view with Darwinian science – why should religion be practically universal, if it has no evolutionary value?"
John Gray,Left,"Evangelical atheists preach the need for a scientific view of things, but a settled view does not go with scientific method. If we know anything it is that most of the theories that prevail at any one time are false. Scientific theories are not components of a world-view but tools we use to tinker with the world."
John Gray,Left,"Religion is not a primitive type of scientific theorizing, any more than science is a superior kind of belief-system. Just as rationalists have misunderstood myths as proto-versions of scientific theories, they have made the mistake of believing that scientific theories can be literally true. Both are systems of symbols, metaphors for a reality that cannot be rendered in literal terms. Every spiritual quest concludes in silence, and science also comes to a stop, if by another route. As George Santayana has written, ‘a really naked spirit cannot assume that the world is thoroughly intelligible. There may be surds, there may be hard facts, there may be dark abysses before which intelligence must be silent for fear of going mad.’ Science is like religion, an effort at transcendence that ends by accepting a world that is beyond understanding. All our inquiries come to rest in groundless facts. Just like faith, reason must at last submit; the final end of science is a revelation of the absurd."
John Gray,Left,"Before Christianity suicide was not in any way troubling. Our lives were our own, and when we tired of them we were at liberty to end them. One might think that as Christianity has declined, this freedom would be reclaimed. Instead secular creeds have sprung up, in which each person’s life belongs to everyone else. To hand back the gift of life because it does not please is still condemned as a kind of blasphemy, though the offended deity is now humanity instead of God."
John Gray,Left,"Cheating ageing by a low-calorie diet, uploading one’s mind into a super-computer, migrating into outer space … Longing for everlasting life, humans show that they remain the death-defined animal."
John Gray,Left,"Instead of enabling humans to improve their lot, science degrades the natural environment in which humans must live. Instead of enabling death to be overcome, it produces ever more powerful technologies of mass destruction. None of this is the fault of science; what it shows is that science is not sorcery. The growth of knowledge enlarges what humans can do. It cannot reprieve them from being what they are."
John Gray,Left,"For those who live inside a myth, it seems a self-evident fact. Human progress is a fact of this kind. If you accept it you have a place in the grand march of humanity. Humankind is, of course, not marching anywhere. ‘Humanity’ is a fiction composed from billions of individuals for each of whom life is singular and final. But the myth of progress is extremely potent. When it loses its power those who have lived by it are – as Conrad put it, describing Kayerts and Carlier – ‘like those lifelong prisoners who, liberated after many years, do not know what use to make of their freedoms’. When faith in the future is taken from them, so is the image they have of themselves. If they then opt for death, it is because without that faith they can no longer make sense of living."
John Gray,Left,"As Malaparte saw it, Naples was a pagan city with an ancient sense of time. Christianity taught those who were converted to it to think of history as the unfolding of a single plot – a moral drama of sin and redemption. In the ancient world there was no such plot – only a multitude of stories that were forever being repeated. Inhabiting that ancient world, the Neapolitans did not expect any fundamental alteration in human affairs. Not having accepted the Christian story of redemption, they had not been seduced by the myth of progress. Never having believed civilization to be permanent, they were not surprised when it foundered."
John Gray,Left,"There are not two kinds of human being, savage and civilized. There is only the human animal, forever at war with itself."
John Gray,Left,Progress in civilization seems possible only in interludes when history is idling.
John Gray,Left,"Contrary to generations of western progressives, it was not Russian backwardness or mistakes in applying Marxian theory that produced the society that Lyons observed. Similar regimes came into being wherever the communist project was attempted. Lenin’s Russia, Mao’s China, Ceausescu’s Romania and many more were variants of a single dictatorial model. From being a movement aiming for universal freedom, communism turned into a system of universal despotism. That is the logic of utopia. If 1984 is such a powerful myth, one reason is that it captures this truth. Yet there is a flaw in Orwell’s story, which emerges in his picture of the all-powerful interrogator. The dystopia of perpetual power is a fantasy, and so is O’Brien. Soviet torturers were sweating functionaries living in constant fear. Like their victims, they knew that they were resources that would be used up in the service of power. There was no inner-party elite safe from the contingencies of history."
John Gray,Left,"Tyranny offers relief from the burden of sanity and a licence to enact forbidden impulses of hatred and violence. By acting on these impulses and releasing them in their subjects tyrants give people a kind of happiness, which as individuals they may be incapable of achieving."
John Gray,Left,"Ichthyophils imagine that human beings want a life in which they can make their own choices. But what if they can be fulfilled only by a life in which they follow each other? The majority who obey the fashion of the day may be acting on a secret awareness that they lack the potential for a truly individual existence. Liberalism – the ichthyophil variety, at any rate – teaches that everyone yearns to be free. Herzen’s experience of the abortive European revolutions of 1848 led him to doubt that this was so. It was because of his disillusionment that he criticized Mill so sharply. But if it is true that Mill was deluded in thinking that everyone loves freedom, it may also be true that without this illusion there would be still less freedom in the world. The charm of a liberal way of life is that it enables most people to renounce their freedom unknowingly."
John Gray,Left,"If there is anything unique about the human animal it is that it has the ability to grow knowledge at an accelerating rate while being chronically incapable of learning from experience. Science and technology are cumulative, whereas ethics and politics deal with recurring dilemmas. Whatever they are called, torture and slavery are universal evils; but these evils cannot be consigned to the past like redundant theories in science. They return under different names: torture as enhanced interrogation techniques, slavery as human trafficking. Any reduction in universal evils is an advance in civilization. But, unlike scientific knowledge, the restraints of civilized life cannot be stored on a computer disc. They are habits of behaviour, which once broken are hard to mend. Civilization is natural for humans, but so is barbarism."
John Gray,Left,"The evidence of science and history is that humans are only ever partly and intermittently rational, but for modern humanists the solution is simple: human beings must in future be more reasonable. These enthusiasts for reason have not noticed that the idea that humans may one day be more rational requires a greater leap of faith than anything in religion. Since it requires a miraculous breach in the order of things, the idea that Jesus returned from the dead is not as contrary to reason as the notion that human beings will in future be different from how they have always been."
John Gray,Left,"Humanists today, who claim to take a wholly secular view of things, scoff at mysticism and religion. But the unique status of humans is hard to defend, and even to understand, when it is cut off from any idea of transcendence. In a strictly naturalistic view – one in which the world is taken on its own terms, without reference to a creator or any spiritual realm – there is no hierarchy of value with humans at the top. There are simply multifarious animals, each with their own needs. Human uniqueness is a myth inherited from religion, which humanists have recycled into science."
John Gray,Left,"The most important feature of natural selection is that it is a process of drift. Evolution has no end-point or direction, so if the development of society is an evolutionary process it is one that is going nowhere."
John Gray,Left,"As the Genesis story teaches, knowledge cannot save us from ourselves. If we know more than before, it means only that we have greater scope to enact our fantasies. But – as the Genesis myth also teaches – there is no way we can rid ourselves of what we know. If we try to regain a state of innocence, the result can only be a worse madness. The message of Genesis is that in the most vital areas of human life there can be no progress, only an unending struggle with our own nature."
John Gray,Left,"Human knowledge increases, while human irrationality stays the same. Scientific inquiry may be an embodiment of reason, but what such inquiry demonstrates is that humans are not rational animals. The fact that humanists refuse to accept the demonstration only confirms its truth."
John Gray,Left,"Through all of history and pre-history it has been accepted that there is something wrong with the human animal. Health may be the natural condition of other species, but in humans it is sickness that is normal. To be chronically unwell is part of what it means to be human. It is no accident that every culture has its own versions of therapy. Tribal shamans and modern psychotherapists answer the same needs and practise the same trade."
John Gray,Left,"Echoing the Christian faith in free will, humanists hold that human beings are – or may someday become – free to choose their lives. They forget that the self that does the choosing has not itself been chosen."
John Gray,Left,"Science is not distinguished from myth by science being literally true and myth only a type of poetic analogy. While their aims are different, both are composed of symbols we use to deal with a slippery world."
John Gray,Left,"In ancient Europe, Stoics asserted that a slave could be freer than a master who suffers from self-division. In China, Daoists imagined a type of sage who responded to the flow of events without weighing alternatives. Disciples of monotheistic faiths have believed something similar: freedom, they say, is obeying God’s will. What those who follow these traditions want most is not any kind of freedom of choice. Instead, what they long for is freedom from choice."
John Gray,Left,"In a traditional reading eating the apple was the original sin; but, as Gnostics understood the story, the two primordial humans were right to eat the apple. The God that commanded them not to do so was not the true God but only a demiurge, a tyrannical underling exulting in its power, while the serpent came to free them from slavery. True, when they ate the apple Adam and Eve fell from grace. This was indeed the Fall of Man – a fall into the dim world of everyday consciousness. But the Fall need not be final. Having eaten its fill from the Tree of Knowledge, humankind can then rise into a state of conscious innocence. When this happens, Herr C. declares, it will be ‘the final chapter in the history of the world'."
John Gray,Left,"Many people today hold to a Gnostic view of things without realizing the fact. Believing that human beings can be fully understood in the terms of scientific materialism, they reject any idea of free will. But they cannot give up hope of being masters of their destiny. So they have come to believe that science will somehow enable the human mind to escape the limitations that shape its natural condition. Throughout much of the world, and particularly in western countries, the Gnostic faith that knowledge can give humans a freedom no other creature can possess has become the predominant religion."
John Gray,Left,"The idea of evil as it appears in modern secular thought is an inheritance from Christianity. To be sure, rationalists have repudiated the idea; but it is not long before they find they cannot do without it. What has been understood as evil in the past, they insist, is error – a product of ignorance that human beings can overcome. Here they are repeating a Zoroastrian theme, which was absorbed into later versions of monotheism: the belief that ‘as the “lord of creation” man is at the forefront of the contest between the powers of Truth and Untruth.’ But how to account for the fact that humankind is deaf to the voice of reason? At this point rationalists invoke sinister interests – wicked priests, profiteers from superstition, malignant enemies of enlightenment, secular incarnations of the forces of evil. As so often is the case, secular thinking follows a pattern dictated by religion while suppressing religion’s most valuable insights. Modern rationalists reject the idea of evil while being obsessed by it. Seeing themselves as embattled warriors in a struggle against darkness, it has not occurred to them to ask why humankind is so fond of the dark. They are left with the same problem of evil that faces religion. The difference is that religious believers know they face an insoluble difficulty, while secular believers do not. Aware of the evil in themselves, traditional believers know it cannot be expelled from the world by human action. Lacking this saving insight, secular believers dream of creating a higher species. They have not noticed the fatal flaw in their schemes: any such species will be created by actually existing human beings."
John Gray,Left,"In Kleist’s essay humans are caught between the graceful automatism of the puppet and the conscious freedom of a god. The jerky, stuttering quality of their actions comes from their feeling that they must determine the course of their lives. Other animals live without having to choose their path through life. Whatever uncertainty they may feel sniffing their way through the world is not a permanent condition; once they reach a place of safety, they are at rest. In contrast, human life is spent anxiously deciding how to live."
John Gray,Left,"In Leopardi’s view, the universal claims of Christianity were a licence for universal savagery. Because it is directed to all of humanity, the Christian religion is usually praised, even by its critics, as an advance on Judaism. Leopardi – like Freud a hundred years later – did not share this view. The crimes of medieval Christendom were worse than those of antiquity, he believed, precisely because they could be defended as applying universal principles: the villainy introduced into the world by Christianity was ‘entirely new and more terrible … more horrible and more barbarous than that of antiquity’. Modern rationalism renews the central error of Christianity – the claim to have revealed the good life for all of humankind. Leopardi described the secular creeds that emerged in modern times as expressions of ‘half-philosophy’, a type of thinking with many of the defects of religion. What Leopardi called ‘the barbarism of reason’ – the project of remaking the world on a more rational model – was the militant evangelism of Christianity in a more dangerous form. Events have confirmed Leopardi’s diagnosis. As Christianity has waned, the intolerance it bequeathed to the world has only grown more destructive. From imperialism through communism and incessant wars launched to promote democracy and human rights, the most barbarous forms of violence have been promoted as means to a higher civilization."
John Gray,Left,"For Leopardi evil is integral to the way the world works; but when he talks of evil he does not mean any kind of malign agency of the sort that Gnostics imagined. Evil is the suffering that is built into the scheme of things. ‘What hope is there when evil is ordinary?’ he asks. ‘I mean, in an order where evil is necessary?’ These rhetorical questions show why Leopardi had no interest in projects of revolution and reform. No type of human action – least of all the harlequinade of politics – could fundamentally alter a world in which evil was ordinary."
John Gray,Left,"The modern world inherits the Christian view in which salvation is played out in history. In Christian myth human events follow a design known only to God; the history of humankind is an ongoing story of redemption. This is an idea that informs virtually all of western thought – not least when it is intensely hostile to religion. From Christianity onwards, human salvation would be understood (at least in the west) as involving movement through time. All modern philosophies in which history is seen as a process of human emancipation – whether through revolutionary change or incremental improvement – are garbled versions of this Christian narrative, itself a garbled version of the original message of Jesus."
John Gray,Left,"Rather than trying to escape violence, human beings more often become habituated to it. History abounds with long conflicts – the Thirty Years’ War in early seventeenth-century Europe, the Time of Troubles in Russia, twentieth-century guerrilla conflicts – in which continuous slaughter has been accepted as normal. Famously adaptable, the human animal quickly learns to live with violence and soon comes to find satisfaction in it."
John Gray,Left,"Humans kill one another – and in some cases themselves – for many reasons, but none is more human than the attempt to make sense of their lives. More than the loss of life, they fear loss of meaning."
John Gray,Left,"Today those who peer into the future want only relief from anxiety. Unable to face the prospect that the cycles of war will continue, they are desperate to find a pattern of improvement in history. It is only natural that believers in reason, lacking any deeper faith and too feeble to tolerate doubt, should turn to the sorcery of numbers. Happily there are some who are ready to assist them. Just as the Elizabethan magus transcribed tables shown to him by angels, the modern scientific scryer deciphers numerical auguries of angels hidden in ourselves."
John Gray,Left,Near-ubiquitous technological monitoring is a consequence of the decline of cohesive societies that has occurred alongside the rising demand for individual freedom.
John Gray,Left,"With new technologies of surveillance, economies of scale overcome problems of cost. Since all their electronic communications can be accessed, it is no longer necessary to segregate the inmates from one another. As there is no outside world, escape becomes unimaginable. Technological progress has brought into being a system of surveillance more far-reaching than any Bentham could have conceived. Enclosing the entire population in a virtual Panopticon might seem the ultimate invasion of freedom. But universal confinement need not be experienced as a privation. If they know nothing else, most are likely to accept it as normal. If the technology through which surveillance operates also provides continuous entertainment, they may soon find any other way of living intolerable."
John Gray,Left,The belief that there is some hidden cabal directing the course of events is a type of anthropomorphism – a way of finding agency in the entropy of history.
John Gray,Left,"Human beings act, certainly. But none of them knows why they act as they do. There is a scattering of facts, which can be known and reported. Beyond these facts are the stories that are told. Human beings may behave like puppets, but no one is pulling the strings."
John Gray,Left,"Nothing carries so much authority today as science, but there is actually no such thing as ‘the scientific world-view’. Science is a method of inquiry, not a view of the world. Knowledge is growing at accelerating speed; but no advance in science will tell us whether materialism is true or false, or whether humans possess free will. The belief that the world is composed of matter is metaphysical speculation, not a testable theory. Science may succeed in explaining events in terms of causes and effects. In some accounts it may be able to formulate laws of nature. But what does it mean for something to cause something else and what is a law of nature? These are questions for philosophy or religion, not for science."
John Gray,Left,"How we come to have the world-views we do is an interesting question. No doubt reason plays a part, but human needs for meaning and purpose are usually more important. At times personal taste may be what decides the issue. There is nothing to say that, when all the work of reason is done, only one view of the world will remain. There may be many that fit everything that can be known. In that case you might as well choose the view of the world you find most interesting or beautiful. Adopting a world-view is more like selecting a painting to furnish a room than testing a scientific theory. The test is how it fits with your life."
John Gray,Left,"The idea that consciousness is a mystery is a prejudice inherited from monotheism. The early seventeenth-century French philosopher René Descartes believed that animals other than humans are insensate machines. Obviously, this was a restatement in rationalist terms of the Christian belief that only humans have souls. Even if mind and matter were categorically distinct, that would not mean humans alone have minds. It was reported that in order to test his theories, Descartes used to throw animals out of the window and observe their reactions. Looking at behaviour of this kind, one might reasonably conclude that humans are the senseless machines."
John Gray,Left,"No doubt markets transmit information in the way that Hayek claimed. But what reason is there to believe that – unlike any other social institution – they have a built-in capacity to correct their mistakes? History hardly supports the supposition. Moods of irrational exuberance and panic can, and often do, swamp the price-discovery functions of markets."
John Gray,Left,"Hayek’s blind spot with regard to politics was clear in the early 1980s when the first Thatcher government, in an attempt to reduce inflation and bring the public finances closer to a balanced budget, was raising interest rates and cutting public spending. As he had done during the 1930s, Hayek attacked these policies as not being severe enough. It would be better, he told me in a conversation we had around this time, if Thatcher imposed a more drastic contraction on the economy so that the wage-setting power of the trade unions could be broken. He appeared unfazed by unemployment, which was already higher (more than three million people) than at any time since the 1930s, and would rise much further if his recommendations were accepted."
John Gray,Left,"Hayek may still have lessons to teach us. The policies he recommended during the Great Depression may have been badly flawed but his insight that prosperity cannot be restored by unending expansion of debt may have some value at a time when the limits of “Keynesian” quantitative easing are becoming clear. It is in any case far from obvious that Keynes would have supported a continuation of QE once a disastrous collapse had been averted. “Keynesianism” is a confection of Keynes’s more mechanical disciples, not an indication of how this mercurially brilliant mind would have responded to our present dilemmas. Again, Hayek’s claim that nothing can be done to mitigate the impact of free markets on social cohesion was dangerously misguided. But he was right to point out that capitalism cannot be remodelled to fit some conception of an ideally fair distribution of resources. Whether any kind of social democracy can be reconciled with the anarchic energies of global markets is an open question."
John Gray,Left,"Hayek watched the interwar collapse with horror, as Keynes did, and shared many of Keynes’s liberal values. What he failed to understand is that these values cannot be renewed by applying any formula or doctrine, or by trying to construct an ideal liberal regime in which freedom is insulated from the contingencies of politics."
Van Jones,Left,The end of the occupation. The right of return of the Palestinian people. These are critical dividing lines in human rights. We have to be here. No American would put up with an Israeli-style occupation of their hometown for 53 days let alone 54 years. US tax dollars are funding violence against people of color inside the US borders and outside the US borders.
Van Jones,Left,"If the road to social transformation can be paved only by saints who never make mistakes, the road will never be built. The upside is that we don’t have to be perfect to save our communities and restore the Earth. We just have to try hard and be as honest as we can be about the processes we are going through. So I share the mistakes and failures, as well as the successes, because that is the truth of my journey – and of anyone’s journey."
Van Jones,Left,"Our point of view is, lets not be so elitist that we can't honor good, hard, dignified, ennobling work: people working with their hands, building things, putting up solar panels, weatherizing homes, working on organic agriculture, building wind farms. We don't have robots in society, so somebody has to do that work. Lets make sure that the people who can use that work get a chance to do it. I see that as a first step toward bigger and better things."
Van Jones,Left,The green economy should not just be about reclaiming throw-away stuff. It should be about reclaiming thrown-away communities. It should not just be about recycling things to give them a second life. We should also be gathering up people and giving them a second chance.
Van Jones,Left,"We need a much deeper understanding of exactly what it is our industrial society, in its present creation, is jeopardizing. We need a more profound perception of what is at stake."
Van Jones,Left,The human family has invaluable friends and irreplaceable allies in the plant and animal worlds. We cannot continue to tug at the web of life without tearing a hole in the very fabric of our earthly existence — and eventually falling through that hole ourselves.
Van Jones,Left,The time has come to move beyond eco-elitism to eco-populism.
Van Jones,Left,"To change our laws and culture, the green movement must attract and include the majority of all people, not just the majority of affluent people."
Van Jones,Left,"A green economy begins to replace some of the clunking and chugging of ugly machines with the wise effort of beautiful, skilled people. That means more jobs."
Alexander Cockburn,Left,"The First Law of Journalism: to confirm existing prejudice, rather than contradict it."
Alexander Cockburn,Left,"We all have to go one day, but pray God let it not be over Afghanistan. An unspeakable country filled with unspeakable people, sheepshaggers and smugglers, who have furnished in their leisure hours some of the worst arts and crafts ever to penetrate the occidental world. I yield to none in my sympathy to those prostrate beneath the Russian jackboot, but if ever a country deserved rape it’s Afghanistan. Nothing but mountains filled with barbarous ethnics with views as medieval as their muskets, and unspeakably cruel too."
Alexander Cockburn,Left,"A ""just war"" is hospitable to every self-deception on the part of those waging it, none more than the certainty of virtue, under whose shelter every abomination can be committed with a clear conscience."
Alexander Cockburn,Left,No one believes for a moment the embargo will prompt the Iraqi people to rise against Saddam Hussein.
Alexander Cockburn,Left,There is still zero empirical evidence that anthropogenic production of CO2 is making any measurable contribution to the world’s present warming trend.
Alexander Cockburn,Left,No chord in populism reverberates more strongly than the notion that the robust common sense of an unstained outsider is the best medicine for an ailing polity. Caligula doubtless got big cheers from the plebs when he installed his horse as proconsul.
Terry Eagleton,Left,"Literature transforms and intensifies ordinary language, deviates systematically from everyday speech. If you approach me at a bus stop and murmur ""Thou still unravished bride of quietness,"" then I am instantly aware that I am in the presence of the literary."
Terry Eagleton,Left,"If the masses are not thrown a few novels, they may react by throwing up a few barricades."
Terry Eagleton,Left,All consciousness is consciousness of something: in thinking I am aware that my thought is 'pointing towards' some object.
Terry Eagleton,Left,"The present is only understandable through the past, with which it forms a living continuity; and the past is always grasped from our own partial viewpoint within the present."
Terry Eagleton,Left,"Literary texts do not exist on bookshelves: they are processes of signification materialized only in the practice of reading. For literature to happen, the reader is quite as vital as the author."
Terry Eagleton,Left,"Reading is not a straightforward linear movement, a merely cumulative affair: our initial speculations generate a frame of reference within which to interpret what comes next, but what comes next may retrospectively transform our original understanding, highlighting some features of it and backgrounding others."
Terry Eagleton,Left,"What was needed was a literary theory which, while preserving the formalist bent of New Criticism, its dogged attention to literature as aesthetic object rather than social practice, would make something a good deal more systematic and 'scientific' out of all this. The answer arrived in 1957, in the shape of the Canadian Northrop Fryes mighty 'totalization' of all literary genres, Anatomy of Criticism."
Terry Eagleton,Left,Reading a text is more like tracing this process of constant flickering than it is like counting the beads on a necklace.
Terry Eagleton,Left,"Writing seems to rob me of my being: it is a second hand mode of communication, a pallid, mechanical transcript of speech, and so always at one remove from my consciousness."
Terry Eagleton,Left,It is difficult to think of an origin without wanting to go back beyond it.
Terry Eagleton,Left,"It is language which speaks in literature, in all its swarming 'polysemic' plurality, not the author himself."
Terry Eagleton,Left,"If we were not called upon to work in order to survive, we might simply lie around all day doing nothing."
Terry Eagleton,Left,Schizophrenic language has in this sense an interesting resemblance to poetry.
Terry Eagleton,Left,"All desire springs from a lack, which it strives continually to fill."
Terry Eagleton,Left,"Language always pre-exists us: it is always already 'in place', waiting to assign us our places within it."
Terry Eagleton,Left,"We live in a society which on the one hand pressurizes us into the pursuit of instant gratification, and the other hand imposes on whole sectors of the population and endless deferment of fulfillment."
Terry Eagleton,Left,Any attempt to define literary theory in terms of a distinctive method is doomed to failure.
Terry Eagleton,Left,"Understanding is always in some sense retrospective, which is what Hegel meant by remarking that the owl of Minerva flies only at night."
Terry Eagleton,Left,"If history moves forward, knowledge of it travels backwards, so that in writing of our own recent past we are continually meeting ourselves coming the other way."
Terry Eagleton,Left,Chaucer was a class traitorShakespeare hated the mobDonne sold out a bit laterSidney was a nob.
Terry Eagleton,Left,"All propaganda or popularization involves a putting of the complex into the simple, but such a move is instantly deconstructive. For if the complex can be put into the simple, then it cannot be as complex as it seemed in the first place; and if the simple can be an adequate medium of such complexity, then it cannot after all be as simple as all that."
Terry Eagleton,Left,"Readers are less and less seen as mere non-writers, the subhuman “other” or flawed derivative of the author; the lack of a pen is no longer a shameful mark of secondary status but a positively enabling space, just as within every writer can be seen to lurk, as a repressed but contaminating antithesis, a reader."
Terry Eagleton,Left,Ideology is present to such an extent in all the agents' activities that it becomes indistinguishable from their lived experience.
Terry Eagleton,Left,Ideology ... is therefore necessarily false; its social function is not to give agents a true knowledge of the social structure but simply to insert them as it were into their practical activities.
Terry Eagleton,Left,At the level of experience the social whole remains opaque to the agents.
Terry Eagleton,Left,As opposed to science ideology has the precise function of hiding the real contradictions and of reconstituting on an imaginary level a relatively coherent discourse which serves as the horizon of agents' experience.
Terry Eagleton,Left,"What persuades men and women to mistake each other from time to time for gods or vermin is ideology. One can understand well enough how human beings may struggle and murder for good material reasons—reasons connected, for instance, with their physical survival. It is much harder to grasp how they may come to do so in the name of something as apparently abstract as ideas. Yet ideas are what men and women live by, and will occasionally die for."
Terry Eagleton,Left,"It is important to see that, in the critique of ideology, only those interventions will work which make sense to the mystified subject itself."
Terry Eagleton,Left,"I do not know whether to be delighted or outraged by the fact that Literary Theory: An Introduction was the subject of a study by a well known U.S. business school, which was intrigued to discover how an academic text could become a best-seller."
Terry Eagleton,Left,"""What perished in the Soviet Union was Marxist only in the sense that the Inquisition was Christian"""
Terry Eagleton,Left,"""Cultural theory as we have it promises to grapple with some fundamental problems, but on the whole fails to deliver.  It has been shamefaced about morality and metaphysics, embarrassed about love, biology, religion and revolution, largely silent about evil, reticent about death and suffering, dogmatic about essences, universals and foundations, and superficial about truth, objectivity and  disinterestedness. This, on any estimate, is rather a large slice of human existence to fall down on. It is also, as we have suggested before, rather an awkward moment in history to find oneself with little or nothing to say about such fundamental questions."""
Terry Eagleton,Left,"""In some traditionalist universities not long ago, you could not research on authors who were still alive. This was a great incentive to slip a knife between their ribs one foggy evening, or a remarkable test of patience if your chosen novelist was in rude health and only 34""."
Terry Eagleton,Left,"We face a probable future of nuclear-armed states warring over a scarcity of resources; and that scarcity is largely the consequence of capitalism itself. For the first time in history, our prevailing form of life has the power not simply to breed racism and spread cultural cretinism, drive us into war or herd us into labour camps, but to wipe us from the planet. Capitalism will behave antisocially if it is profitable for it to do so, and that can now mean human devastation on an unimaginable scale. What used to be apocalyptic fantasy is today no more than sober realism. The traditional leftist slogan ‘‘Socialism or barbarism’’ was never more grimly apposite."
Terry Eagleton,Left,History works itself out by an inevitable internal logic.
Terry Eagleton,Left,"The truth is that the past exists no more than the future, even though it feels as though it does."
Terry Eagleton,Left,There seems to be something in humanity which will not bow meekly to the insolence of power.
Terry Eagleton,Left,The most compelling confirmation of Marx's theory of history is late capitalist society. There is a sense in which this case is becoming truer as time passes.
Terry Eagleton,Left,Ivory towers are as rare as bowling alleys in tribal cultures.
Terry Eagleton,Left,"When it comes to who exactly should be exploited, the system is admirably egalitarian."
Terry Eagleton,Left,"Capitalism cannot survive without a working class, while the working class can flourish a lot more freely without capitalism."
Terry Eagleton,Left,"Socialism is the completion of democracy, not the negation of it."
Terry Eagleton,Left,Capitalism is the sorcerer's apprentice: it has summoned up powers which have spun wildly out of control and now threaten to destroy us. The task of socialism is not to spur on those powers but to bring them under rational human control.
David Harvey,Left,"The dominant notion of rationality is a capitalist notion of rationality, that is, whatever is profitable, whatever can be organised in terms of social control of labour-power and control of natural resources."
David Harvey,Left,The net worth of the 358 richest people in the world was then found to be 'equal to the combined income of the poorest 45 per cent of the worlds population - 2.3 billion people.'
David Harvey,Left,"Massive concentration of financial power, accompanied by the machinations of finance capital, can as easily de-stabilize as stabilize capitalism."
David Harvey,Left,The invocation of social necessity should alert us. It contains the seeds for Marx's critique of political economy as well as for his dissection of capitalism.
David Harvey,Left,"Marx set out to resolve the contradictions and to correct the errors in classical political economy. In this he thought he had succeeded very well. Judging by the sound and the fury of the controversy surrounding his interpretations, he either succeeded too well or deluded himself to the success of his enterprise."
David Harvey,Left,Skills that are monopolizable are anathema to capital.
David Harvey,Left,The equilibrium between supply and demand is achieved only through a reaction against the upsetting of the equilibrium.
David Harvey,Left,Money must exist before it can be turned into capital.
David Harvey,Left,"Technological change can become 'fetishized' as a 'thing in itself', as an exogenous guiding force in the history of capitalism."
David Harvey,Left,"Individual capitalists, in short, behave in such a way as to threaten the conditions that permit the reproduction of the capitalist class."
David Harvey,Left,"But the net effect of increasing scale, centralization of capital, vertical integration and diversification within the corporate form of enterprise has been to replace the 'invisible hand' of the market by the 'visible hand' of the managers."
David Harvey,Left,The social relations of capitalism have penetrated slowly into all spheres of life to make wage labour the general condition of existence only in fairly recent times.
David Harvey,Left,"Individual capitalists, in short, necessarily act in such a way as to de-stabilize capitalism."
David Harvey,Left,"The inner logic that governs the laws of motion of capitalism is cold, ruthless and inexorable, responsive only to the law of value. Yet value is a social relation, a product of a particular historical process. Human beings were organizers, creators and participants in that history. We have, Marx asserts, built a vast social enterprise which dominates us, delimits our freedoms and ultimately visits upon us the worst forms of degradation."
David Harvey,Left,Perpetual revolutions in technology can mean the devaluation of fixed capital on an extensive  scale.
David Harvey,Left,But planned obsolescence is possible only if the rate of technological change is contained.
David Harvey,Left,Money could not be converted into capital if wage labour did not exist.
David Harvey,Left,""" workers then have a strong stake in the preservation of the very system that exploits them because the destruction of that system entails the destruction of their savings."""
David Harvey,Left,"If all money capital invests in appropriation and none in actual production, than capitalism is not long for this world."
David Harvey,Left,When money functions as measure of value it must truly represent the values it helps to circulate.
David Harvey,Left,Rampant inflation is just as hard to live with as the devaluation of commodities.
David Harvey,Left,The onset of a crisis is usually triggered by a spectacular failure which shakes confidence in fictitious forms of capital.
David Harvey,Left,"If, for example, a conspiratorially minded elite is so powerful, has at its fingertips such multiple and delicate instruments with which to fine-tune accumulation, then how can the periodic headlong slides into crisis be explained?"
David Harvey,Left,"The capacity to transform itself from the inside makes capitalism a somewhat peculiar beast - chameleon-like, it perpetually changes it colour; snake-like, it periodically sheds its skin."
David Harvey,Left,The accumulation of capital involves the the expansion of value over time.
David Harvey,Left,Because the earth is not a product of labour it cannot have a value.
David Harvey,Left,All rent is based on the monopoly power of private owners of certain portions of the globe.
David Harvey,Left,"Speculation in land may be necessary to capitalism, but speculative orgies periodically become a quagmire of destruction for capital itself."
David Harvey,Left,"Monetary relations have penetrated into every nook and cranny of the world and into almost every aspect of social, even private life."
David Harvey,Left,"The geographical movement of money and commodities as capital is not the same as the movements of products and of precious metals. Capital is, after all, money used in a certain way, and is by no means identical with all money uses."
David Harvey,Left,The only solution to the contradictions of capitalism entails the abolition of wage labour.
David Harvey,Left,"The accumulation of capital and misery go hand in hand, concentrated in space."
David Harvey,Left,Capitalists behave like capitalists wherever they are. They pursue the expansion of value through exploitation without regard to the social consequences.
David Harvey,Left,"There is, in short, no 'spatial fix' that can contain the contradictions of capitalism in the long run."
David Harvey,Left,"Not only must weapons be bought and paid for out of surpluses of capital and labour, but they must also be put to use. For this is the only means that capitalism has at its disposal to achieve the level of devaluation now required. The idea is dreadful in its implications. What better reason could there be to declare that it is time for capitalism to be gone, to give way to some saner mode of production?"
David Harvey,Left,A work of this sort admits no conclusion.
David Harvey,Left,The ultimate Form of devaluation is military confrontation and global war.
Fredric Jameson,Left,"Adorno retains the concept of the system and even makes it, as target and object of critique, the very center of his own anti-systematic thinking. ... His most powerful philosophical and aesthetic interventions are all implacable monitory reminders—sometimes in well-nigh Weberian or Foucauldian tones—of our imprisonment within system, the forgetfulness or repression of which binds us all the more strongly to it."
Fredric Jameson,Left,"The moderns were interested in what was likely to come of such changes and their general tendency: they thought about the thing itself, substantively, in utopian or essential fashion."
Fredric Jameson,Left,"Postmodernism is what you have when the modernization process is complete and nature is gone for good. It is a more fully human world than the older one, but one in which ""culture"" has become a veritable ""second nature."""
Fredric Jameson,Left,"Postmodernism theory is one of those attempts: the effort to take the temperature of the age without instruments and in a situation in which we are not even sure there is so coherent a thing as an ""age,""or zeitgeist or ""system"" or ""current situation""any longer. Postmodernism theory is then dialectical at least insofar as it has the wit to seize on that very uncertainty as its first clue and to hold to its Ariadne's thread on its way through what may not turn out to be a labyrinth at all, but a gulag or perhaps a shopping mall."
Fredric Jameson,Left,"This matter of periodization is not , however, altogether alien to the signals given off by the expression ""late capitalism,"" which is by now clearly identified as a kind of leftist logo which is ideologically and politically booby-trapped, so that the very act of using it constitutes tacit agreement about a whole range of essentially Marxian social and economic propositions the other side may be far from wanting to endorse. Capitalist was itself always a funny word in this sense: just using the word - otherwise a neutral enough designation for an economic social system on whose properties all sides agree - seemed to position you in a vaguely critical suspicious, if not outright socialist stance: only committed right wing ideologues and full-throated apologists also use it with the same relish."
Fredric Jameson,Left,"What ""late"" generally conveys is rather the sense that something has changed, that things are different, that we have gone through a transformation of the life world which is somehow decisive but incomparable with the older convulsions of modernization and industrialization, less perceptible and dramatic, somehow, but more permanent precisely because more thoroughgoing and all-pervasive."
Fredric Jameson,Left,"The success story of the word postmodernism demands to be written, no doubt in best-seller format; such lexical neoevents, in which the coinage of a neologism has all the reality impact of a corporate merger, are among the novelties of media society which require not merely study but the establishment of a whole new media-lexicological subdiscipline."
Fredric Jameson,Left,"Utopia is a spatial matter that might be thought to know potential change in fortunes in so spatialized a culture as the  postmodern; but if this last is a dehistoricized and dehistorizing as I some times claim here, the synaptic chain that might lead the Utopian impulse to expression becomes harder to localize. Utopian representations knew an extraordinarily revival in the 1960's; if postmodernism is the substitute for the sixties and the compensation for their political failure, the question of Utopia would seem to be a crucial test of what is left of our capacity to imagine change at all."
Fredric Jameson,Left,"The last few years have been marked by an inverted millenarianism in which premonition of the future, catastrophic or redemptive, have been replaced by senses of the end of this or that (the end of ideology, art, or social class; the ""crisis"" of Leninism, social democracy, or the welfare state, etc., etc.,); taken together, all of these perhaps constitute what is increasing called postmodernism."
Fredric Jameson,Left,"If the ideas of a ruling class were once the dominant (or hegemonic) ideology of bourgeois society, the advanced capitalist countries today are now a field of stylistic and discursive heterogeneity without norm. Faceless masters continue to inflect the economic strategies which constrain our existence, but they no longer need to impose their speech (or are henceforth unable to); and the postliteracy of the late capitalist world reflects not only the absence of any great collective project but also the unavailability of the older national language itself."
Fredric Jameson,Left,"Theories of the postmodern - whether celebratory or couched in the language of moral revulsion and denunciation -  bear a strong family resemblance to all those more ambitious sociological generalizations which, at much the same time, bring us the news of the arrival and inauguration of a whole new type of society, most famously baptized ""postindustrial society""(Daniel Bell) but often also designated consumer society, media society, information society, electronic society, or high tech and the like. Such theories have the obvious ideological mission of demonstrating, to their own relief, that the new social formation in question no longer obeys the laws of classical capitalism, namely, the primacy of industrial production and the omnipresence of class struggle."
Fredric Jameson,Left,"If we are unable to unify the past, present, and future of the sentence, then we are similarly unable to unify the past, present, and future of our own biographical experience or psychic life."
Fredric Jameson,Left,"Fruit trees in this world are ancient and exhausted sticks coming out of poor soil; the people of the village are worn down to their skulls, caricatures of some ultimate grotesque typology of basic human feature types. How is it, then, that in Van Gogh such things as apple trees explode into a hallucinatory surface of color, while his village stereotypes are suddenly and garishly overlaid with hues of red and green?"
Fredric Jameson,Left,"The problem of postmodernism - how its fundamental characteristics are to be described, whether it even exists in the first place, whether the very  concept is of any use, or is, on the contrary, a mystification - this problem is a t one and the same time an aesthetic and political one."
Fredric Jameson,Left,"It would seem essential to distinguish the emergent forms of a new commercial culture - beginning with advertisements and spreading on to formal packaging of all kinds, from products to buildings, and not excluding artistic commodities such as television shows (the ""logo"") and best-sellers and films - from the older kinds of folk and genuinely ""popular"" culture which flourished when the older social classes of a peasantry and an urban artisanat still existed and which, from the mid-nineteenth century on, has gradually been colonized and extinguished by commodification and the market system."
Fredric Jameson,Left,It seems to be easier for us today to imagine the thoroughgoing deterioration of the earth and of nature than the breakdown of late capitalism; perhaps that is due to some weakness in our imaginations.
E. P. Thompson,Left,"...class happens when some men, as a result of common experiences (inherited or shared), feel and articulate the identity of their interests as between themselves, and as against other men whose interests are different from (and usually opposed to) theirs. The class experience is largely determined by the productive relations into which men are born—or enter involuntarily. Class-consciousness is the way in which these experiences are handled in cultural terms: embodied in traditions, value-systems, ideas, and institutional forms. If the experience appears as determined, class-consciousness does not. We can see a logic in the responses of similar occupational groups undergoing similar experiences, but we cannot predicate any law. Consciousness of class arises in the same way in different times and places, but never in just the same way."
E. P. Thompson,Left,"I am seeking to rescue the poor stockinger, the Luddite cropper, the ""obsolete"" hand-loom weaver, the ""Utopian"" artisan, and even the deluded follower of Joanna Southcott, from the enormous condescension of posterity. Their crafts and traditions may have been dying. Their hostility to the new industrialism may have been backward-looking. Their communitarian ideals may have been fantasies. Their insurrectionary conspiracies may have been foolhardy. But they lived through these times of acute social disturbance, and we did not. Their aspirations were valid in terms of their own experience; and, if they were casualties of history, they remain, condemned in their own lives, as casualties."
Eric Hobsbawm,Left,"First, utopianism is probably a necessary social device for generating the superhuman efforts without which no major revolution is achieved."
Eric Hobsbawm,Left,"(Carmine Crocco) A farm-labourer and cowherd, had joined the Bourbon army, killed a comrade in a brawl, deserted and lived as an outlaw for ten years. He joined the liberal insurgents in 1860 in the hope of an amnesty for his past offences, and subsequently became the most formidable guerilla chief and leader of men on the Bourbon side."
Eric Hobsbawm,Left,"Liberalism was failing. If I'd been German and not a Jew, I could see I might have become a Nazi, a German nationalist. I could see how they'd become passionate about saving the nation. It was a time when you didn't believe there was a future unless the world was fundamentally transformed."
Eric Hobsbawm,Left,Xenophobia looks like becoming the mass ideology of the 20th-century fin-de-siecle.
Eric Hobsbawm,Left,"As the global expansion of Indian and Chinese restaurants suggests, xenophobia is directed against foreign people, not foreign cultural imports."
Eric Hobsbawm,Left,"Though the web of history cannot be unraveled into separate threads without destroying it, a certain amount of subdivion of the subject is, for practical purposes, essential."
Eric Hobsbawm,Left,"Words are witnesses which often speak louder than documents. Let us consider a few English words, which were invented or gained their modern meanings, substantially in the period of sixty years with which this volume deals. They are such words as 'industry', 'industrialist', 'factory,' middle class,' 'working class,' and 'socialism.' They include 'aristocracy,' as well as 'railway,' 'liberal' and 'conservative' as political terms, 'nationality,'scientist,' and 'engineer,' 'proletariat,' and (economic) 'crisis'."
Eric Hobsbawm,Left,"In terms of political geography, The French Revolution ended the European Middle Ages."
Eric Hobsbawm,Left,"The really frightening risk of war was neglect, filth, poor organization, defective medical services, and hygenic ignorance, which conditions (as in the troops) practically everybody."
Eric Hobsbawm,Left,"Rarely has the incapacity of governments to hold up the course of history been more conclusively demonstrated than in the generation after 1815. To prevent a second French Revolution, or the even worse catastrophe of a general European revolution on the French model, was the supreme object of all the powers which had just spent more than twenty years in defeating the first; even of the British, who were not in sympathy with the reactionary absolutism which re-established themselves all over Europe and knew quite well that reforms neither could nor ought to be avoided, but who feared a new Franco-Jacobin expansion more than any other international contingency. And yet, never in European history and rarely anywhere else has revolutionarism been so endemic, so general, so likely to spread by spontaneous contagion as well as by deliberate propaganda."
Eric Hobsbawm,Left,"no groups of populations welcomed the opening of the career of talent to whatever kind more passionately than those minorities who had hitherto been disbarred not merely because they were not well-born, but because they suffered official and collective discrimination."
Eric Hobsbawm,Left,"Bourgeois triumph thus imbued the French Revolution with the agnostic or secular-moral ideology of the eighteenth century enlightenment, and since the idiom of that revolution became the general language of all subsequent social revolutionary movements, it transmitted this secularism..."
Eric Hobsbawm,Left,Happiness ( a term which caused its definers almost as much trouble as its pursuers) was each individual's supreme object; the greatest happiness of the greatest number was plainly the aim of society
Eric Hobsbawm,Left,"The progress of science is not a simple linear advance, each stage marking the solution of posing of problems previously implicit or explicit in it, and in turn posing new problems."
Eric Hobsbawm,Left,"In 1831 Victor Hugo had written that he already heard 'the full sound of revolution, still deep down in the earth, pushing out under the kingdom in Europe to its subterranean galleries from the central shaft of the mine which is Paris. 1847 the sound was loud and close. In 1848 the explosion burst."
Eric Hobsbawm,Left,"People may not like to meet bandits, especially on a dark night, but a taste for reading about them seems to be universal."
Eric Hobsbawm,Left,"The point about social bandits is that they are peasant outlaws whom the lord and state regard as criminals, but who remain within peasant society, and are considered by their people as heroes, as champions, avengers, fighters for justice, perhaps even leaders of liberation, and in any case as men to be admired, helped and supported."
Eric Hobsbawm,Left,"Banditry is freedom, but in a peasant society few can be free. most are shackled by double chains of lordship and labour, one reinforcing the other. For what makes peasants the victim of authority is not as much their economic vulnerability - indeed they are as often as not virtually self sufficient - as their mobility."
Eric Hobsbawm,Left,[N]o serious historian of nations and nationalism can be a committed political nationalist... Nationalism requires too much belief in what is patently not so.
Eric Hobsbawm,Left,"Nevertheless it is evident — if only from the Greek example just cited — that proto-nationalism, where it existed, made the task of nationalism easier, however great the differences between the two, insofar as existing symbols and sentiments of proto-national community could he mobilized behind a modern cause or a modern state. But this is far from saying that the two were the same, or even that one must logically or inevitably lead into the other. For it is evident that proto-nationalism alone is clearly not enough to form nationalities, nations, let alone states."
Eric Hobsbawm,Left,"However, mass expulsion and even genocide began to make their appearance on the southern margins of Europe during and after World War I, as the Turks set about the mass extirpation of the Armenians in 1915 and, after the Greco Turkish war of 1911, expelled between 1.3 and 1.5  millions of Greeks from Asia Minor, where they had lived since the days of Homer.1 Subsequently Adolph Hitler, who was in this respect a logical Wilsonian nationalist, arranged to transfer Germans not living on the territory of the fatherland, such as those of Italian South Tyrol, to Germany itself, as he also arranged for the permanent elimination of the Jews."
Eric Hobsbawm,Left,"My object is to understand ad explain why things turned out the way they did, and how they hang together. For anyone of my age-group who has lived through all or most of the Short Twentieth Century this is inevitably also a autobiographical endeavor. We are talking about, amplifying (and correcting) our own memories. And we are talking as men and women of a particular time and place, involved, in various ways,in its history as actors in its dramas - however insignificant our parts - as observers of our times and, not least, as people whose views of the century have been formed by what we have come to see as its crucial events."
Eric Hobsbawm,Left,"The destruction of the past, or rather of the social mechanisms that link one's contemporary experience to that of ealier generations, is one of the most characteristic and eerie phenomena of the late twentieth century."
Eric Hobsbawm,Left,The world that went to pieces at the end of the 1980's was the world shaped by the impact of the Russian Revolution of 1917.
Eric Hobsbawm,Left,In the simplest terms the question who or what caused the Second World War can be answered in two words: Adolf Hitler.
Eric Hobsbawm,Left,Human beings are not efficiently designed for a capitalist system of production.
Eric Hobsbawm,Left,The paradox of communism in power was that it was conservative.
Eric Hobsbawm,Left,"Why brilliant fashion-designers, a notoriously non-analytic breed,sometimes succeed in anticipating the shape of things to come better than professional predictors, is one of the most obscure questions in history; and, for the historian of culture, one of the most central."
Eric Hobsbawm,Left,"The best approach to this cultural revolution is therefore through family and household, i.e. through the structure of relations between the secondhand generations. In most societies this had been impressively resistant to sudden change, though this does not mean that such structures were static."
Eric Hobsbawm,Left,"The cultural revolution of the later twentieth century can thus best be understood as the triumph of the individual over society, or rather, the breaking of the threads which in the past had woven human beings into social textures. For such textures had consisted not only of the actual relations between human beings and their forms of organization but also of the general models of such relations and the texted patterns of people's behaviour towards each other; their roles were prescribed, though not always written. Hence the often traumatic insecurity when older conventions of behaviour were either overturned or lost their rationale, or the incomprehension between those who felt this loss and those too young to have known anything but anomic society."
Eric Hobsbawm,Left,"The old moral vocabulary of rights and duties, mutual obligations, sin and virtue, sacrifice, conscience, rewards, and penalties, could no longer be translated into the new language of desired gratification. Once such practices and institutions were no longer accepted as part of a way of ordering society that linked people to each other and ensured social cooperation and reproduction, most of their capacity to structure human social life vanished. They were reduced simply expressions of individuals' preferences, and claims that the law should recognize the supremacy of these preferences. Uncertainty and unpredictability impended. Compass needles no longer had a North, maps became useless."
Eric Hobsbawm,Left,"The tragedy of the October revolution was precisely that it could only produce its kind of ruthless, brutal, command socialism."
Eric Hobsbawm,Left,"As I think back, I ask myself, again and again: was there an alternative to the indiscriminate , brutal, basically unplanned rush forward of the Five-Year Plan? I wish I could say there was, but I cannot. I cannot find a answer."
Eric Hobsbawm,Left,"Communism as an ideology had been passionately committed to women's equality and liberation, in every sense including the erotic, in spite of Lenin's own dislike of casual sexual promiscuity. (However, both Krupskaya and Lenin were among the rare revolutionaries who specifically favored the sharing of housework between the sexes)...Yet, with rather rare exceptions...they were not prominent in the first political ranks of their parties, or indeed at all, and in the new communist-governed states they became even less visible. Indeed, women in leading political functions virtually disappeared...When women streamed into a profession opened to them, as in the U.S.S.R., where the medical profession became largely feminized in consequence, it lost status and income. As against Western feminists, most married Soviet women, long used to a lifetime of paid work, dreamed of the luxury of staying at home and doing only one job...whatever the achievements and failures of the socialist world, it did not generate specifically feminist movements,and could indeed hardly have done so, given the virtual impossibility of any political initiatives not sponsored by state and party before the mid-1980s"
Eric Hobsbawm,Left,"Surrealism was a genuine addition to the repertoire of avant-garde arts, its novelty attested by the ability to produce shock, incomprehension, or what amounted to the same thing, a sometimes, embarrassed laughter, even among the older avant-garde."
Eric Hobsbawm,Left,"The art most significantly affected by radio was music, since it was abolished the acoustic or mechanical limitations on the range of sounds. Music, the last of the arts to break out of the bodily prison that confines oral communication, had already entered the era of mechanical production before 1914 with the gramophone, although this was hardly yet within reach of the masses"
Eric Hobsbawm,Left,"It was the tragedy of modernist artists, Left or Right, that the much more effective political commitment of their own mass movements and politicians - not to mention their adversaries - rejected them. With the partial exception of Futurist-influenced Italian fascism, the new authoritarian regimes of both Right and Left preferred old-fashioned and gigantic monumental buildings and vistas in architecture, inspirational representations in both painting and sculpture, elaborate performances of the classics on stage, and ideological acceptability in literature."
Eric Hobsbawm,Left,"Nothing is easier than to see the Christ of the Sermon on the Mount as 'the first socialist' or communist, and though the majority of early socialist theorists were not Christians, many later members of socialists movements have found this reflection useful."
Eric Hobsbawm,Left,"Unlike the word 'communist', which always signified a programme, the word 'socialist' was primarily analytical and critical."
Eric Hobsbawm,Left,"Marx's ideas became the doctrines inspiring the labour and socialist movements of most of Europe. Mainly via Lenin and the Russian Revolution they became the quintessential international doctrine of twentieth-century social revolution, equally welcomes as such from China to Peru. Through the triumph of parties identified with these doctrines, versions of these ideas became the official ideology of the states in which, at their peak, something like a third of the human race lived, not to mention political movements of varying size an importance in the rest of the world. The only individually identifiable thinkers who have achieved comparable status are the founders of the great religions in the past, and with the possible exception of Muhammad none have triumphed on a comparable scale with such rapidity. No secular thinker can be named beside him in this respect."
Tariq Ali,Left,"The government of the US has no moral authority to elect itself as the judge over human rights in Cuba, where there has not been a single case of disappearance, torture or extra-judicial execution since 1959, and where despite the economic blockade, there are levels of health, education and culture that are internationally recognised."
Tariq Ali,Left,"We live, after all, in a world where illusions are sacred and truth profane."
Tariq Ali,Left,"For all their incoherence and senseless rage, their message is attractive to those layers of the population who yearn for some order in their lives. If the fanatics promise to feed them and educate their children they are prepared to forgo the delights of CNN and BBC World."
Tariq Ali,Left,"Let's discuss the world. To answer the question, ""is globalisation possible without God"", the simple answer is ""yes"". Globalisation is after all itself a code word, a mask, for not using the C-word, capitalism. Globalisation is basically the latest phase of expanding capitalism. This not something which is neutral, this is a capitalism that has its rules: it has its economic rules, it has its political rules, it has its cultural rules and it has its military rules. It is a system. At the heart of this system is the United States of America, the world's only existing empire today. The first time in the history of humanity that you have just had a single empire, so dominant, whose military budget is higher than the military budgets of the next 15 countries put together, and whose military-industrial complex itself is the eleventh largest economic entity in the world. This is the reality we live in, and this is the reality which confronts us in different ways."
Tariq Ali,Left,"Tragedies are always discussed as if they took place in a void, but actually each tragedy is conditioned by its setting, local and global. The events of 11 September 2001 are not exception."
Tariq Ali,Left,"Even if you reject everything, it is always better to know what it is you are rejecting."
Tariq Ali,Left,"History handed Lenin a gift in the shapre of the First World War. He grasped it with both hands and used it to craft an insurrection. It is revolutions that make history happen. Liberals of every sort, with rare exceptions, are found on the other side."
Tariq Ali,Left,Revolutionary periods invariably encompass a huge fluctuation of political consciousness that can never be registered accurately by any referendum.
Tariq Ali,Left,"Fractures in the state, divisions in the ruling class and indecision on the part of the intermediate classes pave the way for dual power, which, in Russia, led to the creation of new institutions and later, in  China, Vietnam, and Cuba, rested on revolutionary armies with varying class compositions that were locked in battle against their respective state machines."
Tariq Ali,Left,"Why is insurrection an art? Because an armed uprising against he capitalist state or occupying imperialist armies has to be choreographed with precision, especially during its final stages."
Tariq Ali,Left,"Time, then, to bury Lenin's body and revive some of his ideas. Future generations in Russia might realise that Lenin still has a bit more to offer than Prince Stolypin."
Tariq Ali,Left,"The assassination of the Austrian crown prince by a Serbian nationalist was the trigger for the conflict, not the underlying cause, comparable in modern times to the explosions of 9/11 that provided the pretext for the war on Iraq, the destruction of Libya, Syria and the Yemen and the total destabilisation of Afghanistan and Pakistan. The post 9/11 wars have lasted longer than the First and Second Wars put together."
Tariq Ali,Left,"Had the United States remained neutral, as a majority of the country wanted, a ceasefire and truce between the British and German empires would have been the only realistic solution."
Tariq Ali,Left,"In State and Revolution. the unfinished theoretical text interrupted by the revolution, Lenin abandoned all references to the divide between Russia and Western Europe that had littered previous writings."
Tariq Ali,Left,"Not even the largest party can 'make' or 'steal' a revolution, but the success of such an endeavor depends on the ability, lucidity, energy and single-mindedness of a revolutionary party when confronted with a prerevolutionary crisis."
Angela Davis,Left,"It is both humiliating and humbling to discover that a single generation after the events that constructed me as a public personality, I am remembered as a hairdo."
Angela Davis,Left,"Where cultural representations do not reach out beyond themselves, there is the danger that they will function as the surrogates for activism, that they will constitute both the beginning and the end of political practice."
Angela Davis,Left,"Progressive art can assist people to learn not only about the objective forces at work in the society in which they live, but also about the intensely social character of their interior lives. Ultimately, it can propel people toward social emancipation."
Angela Davis,Left,"Prisons do not disappear problems, they disappear human beings. And the practice of disappearing vast numbers of people from poor, immigrant and racially marginalized communities has literally become big business."
Angela Davis,Left,"Political repression in the United States has reached monstrous proportions. Black and Brown peoples especially, victims of the most vicious and calculated forms of class, national and racial oppression, bear the brunt of this repression. Literally tens of thousands of innocent men and women, the overwhelming majority of them poor, fill the jails and prisons; hundreds of thousands more, including the most presumably respectable groups and individuals, are subject to police, FBI and military intelligence surveillance. The Nixon administration most recently responded to the massive protests against the war in Indochina by arresting more than 13,000 people and placing them in stadiums converted into detention centers."
Angela Davis,Left,"Repression is the response of an increasingly desperate imperialist ruling clique to contain an otherwise uncontrollable and growing popular disaffection leading ultimately, we think, to the revolutionary transformation of society."
Angela Davis,Left,"We believe that the most pressing political necessity is the consolidation of a United Front joining together all sections of the revolutionary, radical and democratic movements. Only a united front—led in the first place by the national liberation movements and the working people—can decisively counter, theoretically, ideologically and practically, the increasingly fascistic and genocidal posture of the present ruling clique"
Angela Davis,Left,"In the heat of our pursuit for fundamental human rights, Black people have been continually cautioned to be patient. We are advised that as long as we remain faithful to the existing democratic order, the glorious moment will eventually arrive when we will come into our own as full-fledged human beings.But having been taught by bitter experience, we know that there is a glaring incongruity between democracy and the capitalist economy which is the source of our ills. Regardless of all rhetoric to the contrary, the people are not the ultimate matrix of the laws and the system which govern them—certainly not Black people and other nationally oppressed people, but not even the mass of whites. The people do not exercise decisive control over the determining factors of their lives."
Angela Davis,Left,"Needless to say, the history of the United States has been marred from its inception by an enormous quantity of unjust laws, far too many expressly bolstering the oppression of Black people. Particularized reflections of existing social inequities, these laws have repeatedly borne witness to the exploitative and racist core of the society itself. For Blacks, Chicanos, for all nationally oppressed people, the problem of opposing unjust laws and the social conditions which nourish their growth, has always had immediate practical implications. Our very survival has frequently been a direct function of our skill in forging effective channels of resistance. In resisting, we have sometimes been compelled to openly violate those laws which directly or indirectly buttress our oppression. But even when containing our resistance within the orbit of legality, we have been labeled criminals and have been methodically persecuted by a racist legal apparatus."
Angela Davis,Left,"The political prisoner’s words or deeds have in one form or another embodied political protests against the established order and have consequently brought him into acute conflict with the state. In light of the political content of his act, the “crime” (which may or may not have been committed) assumes a minor importance. In this country, however, where the special category of political prisoners is not officially acknowledged, the political prisoner inevitably stands trial for a specific criminal offense, not for a political act."
Angela Davis,Left,"Nat Turner and John Brown were political prisoners in their time. The acts for which they were charged and subsequently hanged, were the practical extensions of their profound commitment to the abolition of slavery."
Angela Davis,Left,"Racist oppression invades the lives of Black people on an infinite variety of levels. Blacks are imprisoned in a world where our labor and toil hardly allow us to eke out a decent existence, if we are able to find jobs at all. When the economy begins to falter, we are forever the first victims, always the most deeply wounded. When the economy is on its feet, we continue to live in a depressed state. Unemployment is generally twice as high in the ghettos as it is in the country as a whole and even higher among Black women and youth. The unemployment rate among Black youth has presently skyrocketed to 30 per cent. If one-third of America’s white youth were without a means of livelihood, we would either be in the thick of revolution or else under the iron rule of fascism. Substandard schools, medical care hardly fit for animals, overpriced, dilapidated housing, a welfare system based on a policy of skimpy concessions, designed to degrade and divide (and even this may soon be cancelled)—this is only the beginning of the list of props in the overall scenery of oppression which, for the mass of Blacks, is the universe."
Angela Davis,Left,"It goes without saying that the police would be unable to set into motion their racist machinery were they not sanctioned and supported by the judicial system. The courts not only consistently abstain from prosecuting criminal behavior on the part of the police, but they convict, on the basis of biased police testimony, countless Black men and women."
Angela Davis,Left,"The vicious circle linking poverty, police, courts and prison is an integral element of ghetto existence."
Angela Davis,Left,"The pivotal struggle which must be waged in the ranks of the working class is consequently the open, unreserved battle against entrenched racism. The white worker must become conscious of the threads which bind him to a James Johnson, Black auto worker, member of UAW, and a political prisoner presently facing charges for the killings of two foremen and a job setter. The merciless proliferation of the power of monopoly capital may ultimately push him inexorably down the very same path of desperation. No potential victim of the fascist terror should be without the knowledge that the greatest menace to racism and fascism is unity!"
Angela Davis,Left,"The eternally repetitive routine, the imposed anonymity and the rigid atomization of numbers and cages are just a few of the dehumanizing, desocializing mechanisms. As for the relationship of prisoners to life outside, it is supposed to be virtually nonexistent. In this respect, the impenetrable concrete, the barbed wire and the armed keepers, ostensibly there to deter escape-bound captives, also suggest something further: prisoners must be guarded from the ingressions of a moving, developing world outside. Disengaged from normal social life, its revelations and influences, they must finally be robbed of their humanity. Yet human beings cannot be willed and molded into nonexistence. In reality the facts of prison life have begun in recent years to bespeak the irrationality of its goals. Even the most drastic repressive measures have not obstructed the progressive ascent of captive men and women to new heights of social consciousness. This has been especially intense among Black and Brown prisoners"
Angela Davis,Left,"“Woman” was the test, but not every woman seemed to qualify. Black women, of course, were virtually invisible within the protracted campaign for woman suffrage. As for white working-class women, the suffrage leaders were probably impressed at first by the organizing efforts and militancy of their working-class sisters. But as it turned out, the working women themselves did not enthusiastically embrace the cause of woman suffrage."
Angela Davis,Left,"If Black people had simply accepted a status of economic and political inferiority, the mob murders would probably have subsided. But because vast numbers of ex-slaves refused to discard their dreams of progress, more than ten thousand lynchings occurred during the three decades following the war."
Angela Davis,Left,"The colonization of the Southern economy by capitalists from the North gave lynching its most vigorous impulse. If Black people, by means of terror and violence, could remain the most brutally exploited group within the swelling ranks of the working class, the capitalists could enjoy a double advantage. Extra profits would result from the superexploitation of Black labor, and white workers’ hostilities toward their employers would be defused. White workers who assented to lynching necessarily assumed a posture of racial solidarity with the white men who were really their oppressors. This was a critical moment in the popularization of racist ideology."
Angela Davis,Left,"Whoever challenged the racial hierarchy was marked a potential victim of the mob. The endless roster of the dead came to include every sort of insurgent—from the owners of successful Black businesses and workers pressing for higher wages to those who refused to be called “boy” and the defiant women who resisted white men’s sexual abuses. Yet public opinion had been captured, and it was taken for granted that lynching was a just response to the barbarous sexual crimes against white womanhood."
Angela Davis,Left,"As a rule, white abolitionists either defended the industrial capitalists or expressed no conscious class loyalty at all. This unquestioning acceptance of the capitalist economic system was evident in the program of the women’s rights movement as well. If most abolitionists viewed slavery as a nasty blemish which needed to be eliminated, most women’s righters viewed male supremacy in a similar manner—as an immoral flaw in their otherwise acceptable society. The leaders of the women’s rights movement did not suspect that the enslavement of Black people in the South, the economic exploitation of Northern workers and the social oppression of women might be systematically related."
Angela Davis,Left,"Judged by the evolving nineteenth-century ideology of femininity, which emphasized women’s roles as nurturing mothers and gentle companions and housekeepers for their husbands, Black women were practically anomalies."
Angela Davis,Left,"Many people are familiar with the campaign to abolish the death penalty. In fact, it has already been abolished in ost countries. Even the staunchest advocates of capital punishment acknowledge the fact that the death penalty faces serious challenges. Few people find life without the death penalty difficult to imagine."
Angela Davis,Left,"There are now thirty-three prisons, thirty eight camps, sixteen community correctional facilities, and five tiny prisoner mother facilities in California. In 2002, there were 157,979 people incarcerated in these institutions, including approximately twenty thousand people whom the state holds for immigration violations."
Angela Davis,Left,"On the whole, people tend to take prisons for granted. It is difficult to imagine life without them At the same time, there is reluctance to face the realities hidden within them, a fear of thinking about what happens inside them. Thus, the prison is present in our lives and, at the same time, it is absent from our lives. To think about this simultaneous presence and absence is to begin to acknowledge the part played by ideology in shaping the way we interact with our social surroundings. We take prisons for granted but are often afraid to face the realities they produce."
Angela Davis,Left,"The prison has become a black hole into which the detritus of contemporary capitalism is deposited. Mass imprisonment generates profits as it devours social wealth, and thus it tends to reproduce the very conditions that lead people to prison. There are thus real and often quite complicated connections between the deindustrialization of the economy—a process that reached its peak during the 1980s—and the rise of mass imprisonment, which also began to spiral during the Reagan-Bush era. However, the demand for more prisons was represented to the public in simplistic terms. More prisons were needed because there was more crime. Yet many scholars have demonstrated that by the time the prison construction boom began, official crime statistics were already falling."
Angela Davis,Left,"The most immediate question today is how to prevent as many imprisoned women and men as possible back into what prisoners call ""the free world."" How can we move to decriminalize drug use and the trade in sexual services? How can we take seriously strategies of restorative rather than elusively punitive justice? Effective alternatives involve both transformation of the techniques for addressing ""crime"" and of the social and economic conditions that track som any children from poor communities, and especially communities of color, into the juvenile system and then on to prison. The most difficult and urgent challenge today is that of creatively exploring new terrain of justice, where the prison no longer serves as our major anchor."
Angela Davis,Left,"The prison therefore functions ideologically as an abstract site into which undesirables are deposited, relieving us of the responsibility of thinking about the real issues afflicting those communities from which prisoners are drawn in such disproportionate numbers. This is the ideological work that the prison performs—it relieves us of the responsibility of seriously engaging with the problems of our society, especially those produced by racism and, increasingly, global capitalism."
Angela Davis,Left,"An attempt to create a new conceptual terrain for imagining alternatives to imprisonment involves the ideological work of questioning why ""criminals"" have been constituted as a class and, indeed, a class of human beings undeserving of the civil and human rights accorded to others. Radical criminologists have long pointed out that the category ""lawbreakers"" is far greater than the category of individuals who are deemed criminals since, many point out, almost all of us have broken the law at one time or another."
Angela Davis,Left,"The massive prison-building project that began in the 1980s created the means of concentrating and managing what the capitalist system had implicitly declared to be a human surplus. In the meantime, elected officials and the dominant media justified the new draconian sentencing practices, sending more and more people to prison in the frenzied drive to build more and more prisons by arguing that this was the only way to make our communities safe from murderers, rapists, and robbers"
Angela Davis,Left,Islamophobic violence is nurtured by histories of anti-black racist violence.
Angela Davis,Left,"Regimes of racial segregation were not disestablished because of the work of leaders and presidents and legislators but rather because of the fact that ordinary people adopted a critical stance in the way in which they perceived their relationship to reality. Social realities that may have appeared inalterable, impenetrable, came to be viewed as malleable and transformable; and people learned how to imagine what it might mean to live in a world that was not so exclusively governed by the principle of white supremacy. This collective consciousness emerged within the context of social struggles."
Angela Davis,Left,"The historical significance of the Proclamation is not so much that it enacted the emancipation of people of African descent; on the contrary, it was a military strategy. But if we examine the meaning of this historical moment we might better be able to grasp the failures as well as the successes of emancipation. I have thought that perhaps we were not asked to reflect on the significance of the Emancipation Proclamation because we might realize that we were never really emancipated. But anyway, at least we may be able to understand the dialectics of emancipation; because we still live the popular myth that Lincoln freed the slaves and that this continues to be perpetuated in popular culture, even by the film Lincoln. Lincoln did not free the slaves. We also live with the myth that the mid-twentieth century Civil Rights Movement freed the second-class citizens. Civil rights, of course, constitute an essential element of the freedom that was demanded at that time, but it was not the whole story."
Angela Davis,Left,"There is something for which Lincoln should be applauded, I believe. And it is that he was shrewd enough to know that the only hope of winning the Civil War resided in creating the opportunity to fight for their own freedom, and that was the significance of the Emancipation Proclamation."
Angela Davis,Left,"In the aftermath of the war, we find one of the most hidden eras of US history; and that is the period of radical reconstruction. It certainly remains the most radical era in the entire history of the United States of America. And this is an era that is rarely acknowledged in historical texts. ... There were progressive laws passed challenging male supremacy. This is an era that is rarely acknowledged. During that era of course we had the creation of what we now call historically black colleges and universities and there was economic development. This period didn’t last very long. From the aftermath of the abolition of slavery, we might take 1865 as that day until 1877 when a radical reconstruction was overturned—and not only was it overturned but it was erased from the historical record—and so in the 1960s we confronted issues that should have been resolved in the 1860s. One hundred years later."
Angela Davis,Left,The Klu Klux Klan and the racial segregation that was so dramatically challenged during the mid-twentieth century freedom movement was produced not during slavery but rather in an attempt to manage free black people who would have been far more successful in pushing forward democracy for all.
Angela Davis,Left,"There is this freedom movement and then there is an attempt to narrow the freedom movement so that it fits into a much smaller frame, the frame of civil rights. Not that civil rights is not immensely important, but freedom is more expansive that civil rights. And as that movement grew and developed it was inspired by and in turn inspired liberation struggles in Africa, Asia, Latin America and Australia. It was not only a question of acquiring the formal rights to fully participate in society, but rather it was also about substantive rights—it was about jobs, free education, free health care, affordable housing, and also about ending the racist police occupation of black communities."
Angela Davis,Left,"When I think about the violence of my own youth in Birmingham, Alabama, where bombs were planted repeatedly and houses were destroyed and churches were destroyed and lives were destroyed and we have yet to refer to those acts as the acts of terrorists. You know terrorism which is represented as external, as outside, is very much a domestic phenomenon. Terrorism very much shaped the history of the United States of America."
Angela Davis,Left,"Acknowledging continuities between nineteenth century anti-slavery struggles, twentieth century civil rights struggles, twenty-first century abolitionist struggles—and when I say abolitionist struggles I’m referring to the abolition of imprisonment as the dominant mode of punishment, the abolition of the prison industrial complex—acknowledging these continuities requires a challenge to the closures that isolate the freedom movement of the twentieth century from the century preceding and the century following."
Angela Davis,Left,"All around the world people are saying that we want to struggle to continue as global communities, to create a world free of xenophonbia and racism, a world from which poverty has been expunged, and the availability of food is not subject to the demands of capitalist profit. I would say a world where a corporation like Monsanto would be deemed criminal. Where homophobia and transphobia can truly be called historical relics along with the punishment of incarceration and institutions of confinement for disabled people; and where everyone learns how to respect the environment and all of the creatures, human and non-human alike, with whom we cohabit our worlds."
Mumia Abu-Jamal,Left,The state would rather give me an uzi than a microphone.
Mumia Abu-Jamal,Left,"At the risk of quoting Mephistopheles I repeat: Welcome to hell. A hell erected and maintained by human-governments, and blessed by black robed judges. A hell that allows you to see your loved ones, but not to touch them. A hell situated in America's boondocks, hundreds of miles away from most families. A white, rural hell, where most of the captives are black and urban. It is an American way of death."
Mumia Abu-Jamal,Left,"Do you see law and order? There is nothing but disorder, and instead of law there is the illusion of security. It is an illusion because it is built on a long history of injustices: racism, criminality, and the genocide of millions. Many people say it is insane to resist the system, but actually, it is insane not to."
Mumia Abu-Jamal,Left,"The role of television is the illusion of company, noise. I call it the fifth wall and the second window: the window of illusion."
Mumia Abu-Jamal,Left,"I spend my days preparing for life, not preparing for death... They haven't stopped me from doing what I want every day. I believe in life, I believe in freedom, so my mind is not consumed with death. It's with love, life and those things. In many ways, on many days, only my body is here, because I am thinking about what's happening around the world."
Mumia Abu-Jamal,Left,"Politics is the art of making the people believe that they are in power, when in fact, they have none."
Mumia Abu-Jamal,Left,"The media, itself an arm of mega-corporate power, feeds the fear industry, so that people are primed like pumps to support wars on rumor, innuendo, legends, and lies."
Howard Zinn,Left,"If patriotism were defined, not as blind obedience to government, nor as submissive worship to flags and anthems, but rather as love of one's country, one's fellow citizens (all over the world), as loyalty to the principles of justice and democracy, then patriotism would require us to disobey our government, when it violated those principles."
Howard Zinn,Left,There is no flag large enough to cover the shame of killing innocent people for a purpose which is unattainable.
Howard Zinn,Left,"The First Amendment and Fourteenth Amendment rights in the United States Constitution were being violated in Albany again and again — freedom of speech, freedom of assembly, the equal protection of the laws — I could count at least 30 such violations. Yet the president, sworn to uphold the Constitution, and all the agencies of the United States government at his disposal, were nowhere to be seen."
Howard Zinn,Left,"At the great Washington March of 1963, the chairman of the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee, John Lewis, speaking to the same enormous crowd that heard Martin Luther King's ""I Have a Dream,"" was prepared to ask the right question: ""Which side is the federal government on?"" That sentence was eliminated from his speech by organizers of the March to avoid offending the Kennedy Administration. But Lewis and his fellow SNCC workers had experienced, again and again, the strange passivity of the national government in the face of Southern violence, strange, considering how often this same government had been willing to intervene outside the country, often with overwhelming force.John Lewis and SNCC had reason to be angry. John had been beaten bloody by a white mob in Montgomery as a Freedom Rider in the spring of 1961. The federal government had trusted the notoriously racist Alabama police to protect the Riders, but done nothing itself except to have FBI agents take notes. Instead of insisting that blacks and whites had a right to ride the buses together, the Kennedy Administration called for a ""cooling-off period,"" a moratorium on Freedom Rides."
Howard Zinn,Left,"The white population could not possibly be unaffected by those events — some whites more stubborn in their defense of segregation, but others beginning to think in different ways. And the black population was transformed, having risen up in mass action for the first time, feeling its power, knowing now that if the old order could be shaken it could be toppled."
Howard Zinn,Left,"I am not an absolute pacifist, because I can't rule out the possibility that under some, carefully defined circumstances, some degree of violence may be justified, if it is focused directly at a great evil. Slave revolts are justified, and if John Brown had really succeeded in arousing such revolts throughout the South, it would have been much preferable to losing 600,000 lives in the Civil War, where the makers of the war — unlike slave rebels — would not have as their first priority the plight of the black slaves, as shown by the betrayal of black interests after the war. Again, the Zapatista uprising seems justified to me, but some armed struggles that start for a good cause get out of hand and the ensuing violence becomes indiscriminate. Each situation has to be evaluated separately, for all are different. In general, I believe in non-violent direct action, which involve organizing large numbers of people, whereas too often violent uprisings are the product of a small group. If enough people are organized, violence can be minimized in bringing about social change."
Howard Zinn,Left,"To put it briefly: the evidence is quite overwhelming on this matter. The Japanese had sent an envoy (Ambassador Sato) to Moscow (still officially a neutral) to work out a negotiated surrender. An instruction from Foreign Minister Togo came in a telegram (intercepted by American intelligence, which had broken the Japanese code early in the war), saying: ""Unconditional surrender is the only obstacle to peace... It is His Majesty's heart's desire to see the swift termination of the war."" The Japanese had one condition for surrender which the U.S. refused to meet — recognizing the sanctity of the Emperor. It seemed the U.S. was determined to drop the bomb before the Japanese could surrender — for a variety of reasons, none of them humanitarian. After the war, the official report of the U.S. Strategic Bombing Survey, based on hundreds of interviews with Japanese decision-makers right after the war, concluded that the war would have ended in a few months by a Japanese surrender ""even if the atomic bombs had not been dropped, even if Russia had not entered the war, and even if no invasion had been planned or contemplated."""
Howard Zinn,Left,"Why should we accept that the ""talent"" of someone who writes jingles for an advertising agency advertising dog food and gets $100,000 a year is superior to the talent of an auto mechanic who makes $40,000 a year? Who is to say that Bill Gates works harder than the dishwasher in the restaurant he frequents, or that the CEO of a hospital who makes $400,000 a year works harder than the nurse or the orderly in that hospital who makes $30,000 a year? The president of Boston University makes $300,000 a year. Does he work harder than the man who cleans the offices of the university? Talent and hard work are qualitative factors which cannot be measured quantitatively."
Howard Zinn,Left,"Scholars, who pride themselves on speaking their minds, often engage in a form of self-censorship which is called ""realism."" To be ""realistic"" in dealing with a problem is to work only among the alternatives which the most powerful in society put forth. It is as if we are all confined to a, b, c, or d in the multiple choice test, when we know there is another possible answer. American society, although it has more freedom of expression than most societies in the world, thus sets limits beyond which respectable people are not supposed to think or speak. So far, too much of the debate on Vietnam has observed these limits."
Howard Zinn,Left,"Not only did waging war against Hitler fail to save the Jews, it may be that the war itself brought on the Final Solution of genocide. This is not to remove the responsibility from Hitler and the Nazis, but there is much evidence that Germany's anti-Semitic actions, cruel as they were, would not have turned to mass murder were it not for the psychic distortions of war, acting on already distorted minds. Hitler's early aim was forced emigration, not extermination, but the frenzy of it created an atmosphere in which the policy turned to genocide."
Howard Zinn,Left,"Whenever I become discouraged (which is on alternate Tuesdays, between three and four) I lift my spirits by remembering: The artists are on our side! I mean those poets and painters, singers and musicians, novelists and playwrights who speak to the world in a way that is impervious to assault because they wage the battle for justice in a sphere which is unreachable by the dullness of ordinary political discourse."
Howard Zinn,Left,"We need to decide that we will not go to war, whatever reason is conjured up by the politicians or the media, because war in our time is always indiscriminate, a war against innocents, a war against children. War is terrorism, magnified a hundred times."
Howard Zinn,Left,"The term ""just war"" contains an internal contradiction. War is inherently unjust, and the great challenge of our time is how to deal with evil, tyranny, and oppression without killing huge numbers of people."
Howard Zinn,Left,"Americans have been taught that their nation is civilized and humane. But, too often, U.S. actions have been uncivilized and inhumane."
Howard Zinn,Left,David Ray Griffin has done admirable and painstaking research in reviewing the mysteries surrounding the 9/11 attacks. It is the most persuasive argument I have seen for further investigation [into] that historic and troubling event.
Howard Zinn,Left,"I don't believe it's possible to be neutral. The world is already moving in certain directions, and to be neutral, to be passive in a situation like that, is to collaborate with whatever is going on. And I, as a teacher, do not want to be a collaborator with whatever is happening in the world. I want myself, as a teacher, and I want you, as students, to intercede with whatever is happening in the world."
Howard Zinn,Left,"I would encourage people to look around them in their community and find an organization that is doing something that they believe in, even if that organization has only five people, or ten people, or twenty people, or a hundred people. And to look at history and understand that when change takes place it takes place as a result of large, large numbers of people doing little things unbeknownst to one another. And that history is very important for people to not get discouraged. Because if you look at history you see the way the labor movement was able to achieve things when it stuck to its guns, when it organized, when it resisted. Black people were able to change their condition when they fought back and when they organized. Same thing with the movement against the war in Vietnam, and the women's movement. History is instructive. And what it suggests to people is that even if they do little things, if they walk on the picket line, if they join a vigil, if they write a letter to their local newspaper. Anything they do, however small, becomes part of a much, much larger sort of flow of energy. And when enough people do enough things, however small they are, then change takes place."
Howard Zinn,Left,"We in the United States are still quite a long way from democracy and certainly a long way from economic democracy. Because of the control of the economy by corporations and the tax structure, which is set up by an unrepresentative Congress and approved by a president, a tax structure which has so far channeled the wealth of the country towards the richest one percent of the population."
Howard Zinn,Left,"Voting is easy and marginally useful, but it is a poor substitute for democracy, which requires direct action by concerned citizens."
Howard Zinn,Left,"To be hopeful in bad times is not just foolishly romantic. It is based on the fact that human history is a history not only of cruelty, but also of compassion, sacrifice, courage, kindness. What we choose to emphasize in this complex history will determine our lives. If we see only the worst, it destroys our capacity to do something. If we remember those times and places — and there are so many — where people have behaved magnificently, this gives us the energy to act, and at least the possibility of sending this spinning top of a world in a different direction. And if we do act, in however small a way, we don’t have to wait for some grand utopian future. The future is an infinite succession of presents, and to live now as we think human beings should live, in defiance of all that is bad around us, is itself a marvelous victory."
Howard Zinn,Left,"It is possible, reading standard histories, to forget half the population of the country. The explorers were men, the landholders and merchants men, the political leaders men, the military figures men. The very invisibility of women, the overlooking of women, is a sign of their submerged status."
Howard Zinn,Left,"Behind the rebel battle yells and the legendary spirit of the Confederate army, there was much reluctance to fight. A sympathetic historian of the South, E. Merton Coulter, asked ""Why did the Confederacy fail? The forces leading to the defeat were many but they may be summed up in this one fact""The People did not will hard enough and long enough to win.""Not money or soldiers, but willpower and morale were decisive."
Howard Zinn,Left,"To white Americans of the thirties, however, blacks North and South were invisible. Only the radicals made an attempt to break the racial barriers: Socialists, Trotskyists, Communists most of all."
Howard Zinn,Left,"While some multimillionaires started in poverty, most did not. A study of the origins of 303 textile, railroad and steel executives of the 1870s showed that 90 percent came from middle- or upper-class families. The Horatio Alger stories of ""rags to riches"" were true for a few men, but mostly a myth, and a useful myth for control."
Howard Zinn,Left,"One percent of the nation owns a third of the wealth. The rest of the wealth is distributed in such a way as to turn those in the 99 percent against one another: small property owners against the propertyless, black against white, native-born against foreign-born, intellectuals and professionals against the uneducated and the unskilled. These groups have resented one another and warred against one another with such vehemence and violence as to obscure their common position as sharers of leftovers in a very wealthy country (w:Divide & rule)."
Howard Zinn,Left,Capitalism has always been a failure for the ower classes. It is now beginning to fail for the middle classes.
Howard Zinn,Left,"It is very important for the Establishment - that uneasy club of business executives, generals, and politicos - to maintain the historic pretension of national unity, in which the government represents all the people, and the common enemy  is overseas, not at home... It is important for them also to make sure this artificial unity of highly privileged and slightly privileged is the only unity  - that the 99 percent remain split in countless ways, and turn against one another to vent their angers."
Howard Zinn,Left,"How skillful to tax the middle class to pay for the relief of the poor, building resentment on top of humiliation! How adroit to bus poor black youngsters into poor white neighborhoods, in a violent exchange of impoverished schools, while the schools of the rich remain untouched and the wealth of the nation, doled out carefully where children need free milk, is drained for billion-dollar aircraft carriers. How ingenious to meet the demands of blacks and women for equality by giving them small special benefits, and setting them in competition with everyone else for jobs made scarce by an irrational, wasteful system. How wise to turn the fear and anger of the majority toward a class of criminals bred - by economic inequity - faster than they can be put away, deflecting attention from the huge thefts of national resources carried out within the law by men in executive offices."
Howard Zinn,Left,"But with all the controls of power and punishment, enticements and concessions, diversions and decoys, operating throughout the history of the country, the Establishment has been unable to keep itself secure from revolt. Every time it looked as if it had succeeded, the very people it thought seduced or subdued, stirred and rose."
Howard Zinn,Left,"Blacks, cajoled by Supreme Court decisions and congressional statutes, rebelled. Women, wooed and ignored, romanticized and mistreated, rebelled. Indians, thought dead, reappeared, defiant. Young people, despite lures of career and comfort, defected. Working people, thought soothed by reforms, regulated by  law, kept within bounds by their own unions, went on strike. Government intellectuals, pledged to secrecy, began giving away secrets..."
Howard Zinn,Left,"To recall this is to remind people of what the Establishment would like them to forget-the enormous capacity of apparently helpless people to resist, of apparently contented people to demand change. To uncover such history is to find a powerful human impulse to assert one's humanity. It is to hold out, even in times of deep pessimism, the possibility of surprise. True, to overestimate class consciousness, to exaggerate rebellion and its successes, would be misleading. It would not account for the fact that the world-not just the United States, but  everywhere else-is still in the hands of the elites, that people's movements, although they show an infinite capacity for recurrence, have so far been either defeated or absorbed or perverted..."
Howard Zinn,Left,"But most histories understate revolt, overemphasize statesmanship, and thus encourage impotency among citizens. When we look closely at resistance movements, or even at isolated forms of rebellion, we discover that class consciousness, or any other awareness of injustice, has multiple levels. It has many ways of expression, many ways of revealing itself-open, subtle, direct, distorted. In a system of intimidation and control, people do not show how much they know, how deeply they feel, until their practical sense informs them they can do so without being destroyed."
Howard Zinn,Left,"History which keeps alive the memory of people's resistance suggests new definitions of power. By traditional definitions, whoever possesses military strength, wealth, command of  official ideology, cultural control, has power. Measured by these standards, popular rebellion never looks strong enough to survive. However, the unexpected victories  -even temporary ones - of insurgents show the vulnerability of the supposedly powerful."
Howard Zinn,Left,"In a highly developed society, the Establishment cannot survive without the obedience and loyalty of millions of people who are given small rewards to keep the system going: the soldiers and police, teachers and ministers, administrators and social workers, technicians and production workers, doctors, lawyers, nurses, transport and communications workers, garbage men and firemen. These people-the employed, the somewhat privileged-are drawn into alliance with the elite. They become the guards of the system, buffers between the upper and lower classes. If they stop obeying, the system falls."
Howard Zinn,Left,"That will happen... when all of us who are slightly privileged and slightly uneasy begin to see that we are like the guards in the prison uprising at Attica - expendable; that the Establishment, whatever rewards it gives us, will also, if necessary to maintain its control, kill us."
Howard Zinn,Left,"Certain new facts... emerge so clearly as to lead to general withdrawal of loyalty from the system. The new conditions of technology, economics, and war, in the atomic age, make it less and less possible for the guards of the system-the intellectuals, the home owners, the taxpayers, the skilled workers, the professionals, the servants of government - to remain immune from the violence (physical and psychic) inflicted on the black, the poor, the criminal, the enemy overseas. The internationalization of the economy, the movement of refugees and illegal immigrants across borders, both make it more difficult for the people of the industrial countries to be oblivious to hunger and disease in the poor countries of the world."
Howard Zinn,Left,"There is evidence of growing dissatisfaction among the guards. We have known for some time that the poor and ignored were the nonvoters, alienated from a political system they felt didn't care about them, and about which they could do little. Now alienation has spread upward into families above the poverty line."
Howard Zinn,Left,"These are white workers, neither rich nor poor, but angry over economic insecurity, unhappy with their work, worried about their neighborhoods, hostile to government-combining elements of racism with elements of class consciousness, contempt for the lower classes along with distrust for the elite, and thus open to solutions from any direction, right or left."
Howard Zinn,Left,"In the United States, we see the educational system, a burgeoning new literature, alternative radio stations, a wealth of documentary films outside the mainstream, even Hollywood itself and sometimes television-compelled to recognize the growing multiracial character of the nation. Yes, we have in this country, dominated by corporate wealth and military power and two antiquated political parties, what a fearful conservative characterized as ""a permanent adversarial culture"" challenging the present, demanding a new future."
Howard Zinn,Left,"It is a race in which we can all choose to participate, or just to watch. But we should know that our choice will help determine the outcome."
Judith Butler,Left,Indeed it may be only by risking the incoherence of identity that connection is possible.
Judith Butler,Left,Perhaps the promise of phallus is always dissatisfying in some way.
Judith Butler,Left,"The move from a structuralist account in which capital is understood to structure social relations in relatively homologous ways to a view of hegemony in which power relations are subject to repetition, convergence, and rearticulation brought the question of temporality into the thinking of structure, and marked a shift from a form of Althusserian theory that takes structural totalities as theoretical objects to one in which the insights into the contingent possibility of structure inaugurate a renewed conception of hegemony as bound up with the contingent sites and strategies of the rearticulation of power."
Judith Butler,Left,"There was a brief moment after 9/11 when Colin Powell said “we should not rush to satisfy the desire for revenge.” It was a great moment, an extraordinary moment, because what he was actually asking people to do was to stay with a sense of grief, mournfulness, and vulnerability."
Judith Butler,Left,"I am much more open about categories of gender, and my feminism has been about women's safety from violence, increased literacy, decreased poverty and more equality. I was never against the category of men."
Michael Moore,Left,"Well I failed to bring Roger to Flint. As we neared the end of the twentieth century, the rich were richer, the poor, poorer. And people everywhere now had a lot less lint, thanks to the lint rollers made in my hometown. It was truly the dawn of a new era."
Michael Moore,Left,"White people scare the crap out of me... I have never been attacked by a black person, never been evicted by a black person, never had my security deposit ripped off by a black landlord, never had a black landlord... never been pulled over by a black cop, never been sold a lemon by a black car salesman, never seen a black car salesman, never had a black person deny me a bank loan, never had a black person bury my movie, and I've never heard a black person say, ""We're going to eliminate ten thousand jobs here — have a nice day!"""
Michael Moore,Left,"Many families have been devastated tonight. This is just not right. They did not deserve to die. … If someone did this to get back at Bush, then they did so by killing thousands of people who DID NOT VOTE for him. Boston, New York, D.C., and the planes' destination of California — these were the places that voted AGAINST Bush."
Michael Moore,Left,"I can't even think about this movie. I don't WANT to think about it because if I think about it I will have to face an ugly truth that has been gnawing through my head... This started out as a documentary on gun violence in America, but the largest mass murder in our history was just committed — without the use of a single gun! Not a single bullet fired! No bomb was set off, no missile was fired, no weapon (i.e., a device that was solely and specifically manufactured to kill humans) was used. A boxcutter! — I can't stop thinking about this. A thousand gun control laws would not have prevented this massacre. What am I doing?"
Michael Moore,Left,"I'm a millionaire, I'm a multi-millionaire, I'm filthy rich. You know why I'm a multi-millionaire? 'Cause multi-millions like what I do. That's pretty good, isn't it? There's millions that believe in what I do. Pretty cool, huh?"
Michael Moore,Left,"If the small businesses suck they'll be driven out of business... If they got a good restaurant, people will go there and eat. You know in my town the small businesses that everyone wanted to protect? They were the people that supported all the right-wing groups. They were the Republicans in the town, they were in the Kiwanas, the Chamber of Commerce — people that kept the town all white. The small hardware salesman, the small clothing store salespersons, Jesse the Barber who signed his name three different times on three different petitions to recall me from the school board. Fuck all these small businesses — fuck 'em all! Bring in the chains. The small businesspeople are the rednecks that run the town and suppress the people. Fuck 'em all. That's how I feel."
Michael Moore,Left,You know he's there illegally. You know he was not elected either by the popular vote or by the vote in Florida.
Michael Moore,Left,"We know all those facts about Florida and what Katherine Harris did, and the private firm that took African-Americans off the voting rolls and prohibited them from voting. But I've been surprised in this first week how many average Americans were not aware of all of the trickery and deceit that took place in the year before the election to fix it for George W. Bush."
Michael Moore,Left,"It was the morning of April 20, 1999, and it was pretty much like any other morning in America. The Farmer did his chores. The milkman made his deliveries. The President bombed another country whose name we couldn't pronounce. Out in Fargo, North Dakota, Cary McWilliams went on his morning walk. Back in Michigan, Mrs Hughes welcomed her students for another day of school. And out in a little town in Colorado, two boys went bowling at 6 in the morning. Yes, it was a typical day in the United States of America."
Michael Moore,Left,"You survive by having your fear compass calibrated correctly. Our compass is off now because we're being told to be afraid of everything. The things that we're frightened of, or told to be frightened of, are not necessarily the things that we need to fear."
Michael Moore,Left,What the media are telling you to be afraid of are the wrong things... Fear is a necessary ingredient of our survival instincts.
Michael Moore,Left,"These bastards who run our country are a bunch of conniving, thieving, smug pricks who need to be brought down and removed and replaced with a whole new system that we control."
Michael Moore,Left,"Hey, here's a way to stop suicide bombings — give the Palestinians a bunch of missile-firing Apache helicopters and let them and the Israelis go at each other head to head. Four billion dollars a year to Israel — four billion dollars a year to the Palestinians — they can just blow each other up and leave the rest of us the hell alone."
Michael Moore,Left,"Whoa. On behalf of our producers Kathleen Glynn and Michael Donovan from Canada, I'd like to thank the Academy for this. I have invited my fellow documentary nominees on the stage with us, and we would like to — they're here in solidarity with me because we like nonfiction. We like nonfiction and we live in fictitious times. We live in the time where we have fictitious election results that elects a fictitious president. We live in a time where we have a man sending us to war for fictitious reasons. Whether it's the fictition of duct tape or fictition of orange alerts we are against this war, Mr. Bush. Shame on you, Mr. Bush, shame on you. And any time you got the Pope and the Dixie Chicks against you, your time is up. Thank you very much."
Michael Moore,Left,The majority of Americans — the ones who never elected you — are not fooled by your weapons of mass distraction.
Michael Moore,Left,"I think the United States, I think our government knows where he is and I don't think we're going to be capturing him or killing him any time soon."
Michael Moore,Left,Should such an ignorant people lead the world? How did it come to this in the first place? 82 percent of us don't even have a passport! Just a handful can speak a language other than English (and we don't even speak that very well.)
Michael Moore,Left,There's a gullible side to the American people. They can be easily misled. Religion is the best device used to mislead them.
Michael Moore,Left,"Maybe it's a sick fantasy of mine, but I am really looking forward to a debate between a general and a deserter. Plus, I really want to hear President Bush have to say, ""Yes, General, No, General."""
Michael Moore,Left,"I'm going to do damage with it. I'll make sure that my work gets out. That no publisher will ever be able to tell me to take things out. Because I'll put it out myself. The more money I earn, the less they can stop me. Where I come from it's called fuck you money because I don't have to take an ounce of shit from anybody."
Michael Moore,Left,"I stopped reading the comics page a long time ago. It seems that whoever is in charge of what to put on that page is given an edict that states:  “For God’s sake, try to be as bland as possible and by no means offend any one!” Thus, whenever something like Doonesbury would come along, it would be continually censored and, if lucky, eventually banished to the editorial pages. The message was clear: Keep it simple, keep it cute, and don’t be challenging, outrageous or political.  And keep it white!  It’s odd that considering all the black ink that goes into making the comics section (and color on Sundays) that you rarely see any black faces on that page. Well, maybe it’s not so odd after all, considering the makeup of most newsrooms in our country. It is even more stunning when you consider that in many of our large cities like New York, Los Angeles, or Chicago where the white population is barely a third of the overall citizenry, the comics pages seem to be one of the last vestiges of the belief that white faces are just…well, you know…so much more happy and friendly and funny!  Of course, the real funnies are on the front pages of most papers these days. That’s where you can see a lot of black faces. The media loves to cover black people on the front page. After all, when you live in a society that will lock up 30 percent of all black men at some time in their lives and send more of them to prison than to college, chances are a fair number of those black faces will end up in the newspaper.  Oops, there I go playing the race card. You see, in America these days, we aren’t supposed to talk about race. We have been told to pretend that things have gotten better, that the old days of segregation and cross burnings are long gone, and that no one needs to talk about race again because, hey, we fixed that problem.  Of course, nothing could be further from the truth. Sure, the “whites only” signs are down, but they have just been replaced by invisible ones that, if you are black, you see hanging in front of the home loan department of the local bank, across the entrance of the ritzy suburban or on the doors of the U.S. Senate (100 percent Caucasian and going strong!)"
Michael Moore,Left,"They are possibly the dumbest people on the planet... in thrall to conniving, thieving, smug pricks. We Americans suffer from an enforced ignorance. We don't know about anything that's happening outside our country. Our stupidity is embarrassing. National Geographic produced a survey which showed that 60 percent of 18-25 year olds don't know where Great Britain is on a map. And 92 percent of us don't own a passport."
Michael Moore,Left,"A lot of political people, especially people on the left, have forgotten the importance of humor as an incredible weapon, and a vehicle through which to affect change."
Michael Moore,Left,"I would like to apologize for referring to George W. Bush as a ""deserter."" What I meant to say is that George W. Bush is a deserter, an election thief, a drunk driver, a WMD liar, and a functional illiterate. And he poops his pants."
Michael Moore,Left,"Halliburton is not a ""company"" doing business in Iraq. It is a WAR PROFITEER, bilking millions from the pockets of average Americans. In past wars they would have been arrested — or worse. The Iraqis who have risen up against the occupation are not ""insurgents"" or ""terrorists"" or ""The Enemy."" They are the REVOLUTION, the Minutemen, and their numbers will grow — and they will win. Get it, Mr. Bush?"
Michael Moore,Left,"There is a lot of talk amongst Bush's opponents that we should turn this war over to the United Nations. Why should the other countries of this world, countries who tried to talk us out of this folly, now have to clean up our mess? I oppose the U.N. or anyone else risking the lives of their citizens to extract us from our debacle. I'm sorry, but the majority of Americans supported this war once it began and, sadly, that majority must now sacrifice their children until enough blood has been let that maybe — just maybe — God and the Iraqi people will forgive us in the end."
Michael Moore,Left,He is probably choking on a pretzel or something. I hope nobody tells him that I have won this award while he is eating a pretzel. … He has the funniest lines in the film. I am eternally grateful to him.
Michael Moore,Left,"I forgot out there on the stage to thank my cast. So if I could do that now, I want to thank Mr. Bush, Mr. Cheney, Paul Wolfowitz and Donald Rumsfeld. I thought the love scene between Cheney and Rumsfeld brought a tear to my eye."
Michael Moore,Left,"I don't agree with the copyright laws, and I don't have a problem with people downloading the movie and sharing it with people… as long as they're not doing it to make a profit off it as long as they're not, you know trying to make a profit off my labor — I would oppose that but you know I do quite well, and I don't know... I make these books and movies and TV shows because I want things to change, and so the more people who get to see them, the better. And so I'm…I'm happy I'm happy if that happens. Should I not be happy? I don't know, It's like if a friend of yours had the DVD of my movie — gave it to you to watch one night is that person doing something wrong? I'm not seeing any money from that, but he's just handing the DVD to you so that you can watch my movie, that he bought, and you're not buying it — and yet you're watching it without paying me any money you see, I think that's OK, I mean, that's always been okay right? — You share things with people and I think information, and art, and ideas should be shared."
Michael Moore,Left,"Our young people who go off to war and who join the service, we need to honor them because they're willing to risk their lives to protect us, to defend us, so we can have this way of life. And the agreement that they make with us is that we never send them into harm's way unless it is absolutely necessary. I think most Americans — I just saw the latest poll today — 54% now believe that invading Iraq wasn't the wisest thing to do — it wasn't certainly in self-defense. You weren't threatened; I wasn't being threatened, and that's the only time, because ultimately if it was your child…would you give up your child to secure Fallujah?"
Michael Moore,Left,"The motivation for war is simple. The U.S. government started the war with Iraq in order to make it easy for U.S. corporations to do business in other countries. They intend to use cheap labor in those countries, which will make Americans rich."
Michael Moore,Left,I would not use either of those words to describe myself. I would say I'm an Eagle Scout and I'm overweight.
Michael Moore,Left,"Nothing would make me happier than to have you share it with everyone you know. All surveys have shown that, the more people who see it — especially those still sitting on the fence — the more likely we will have regime change."
Michael Moore,Left,"There is no terrorist threat. Yes, there have been horrific acts of terrorism and, yes, there will be acts of terrorism again. But that doesn't mean that there's some kind of massive terrorist threat."
Michael Moore,Left,Fahrenheit 9/11: The temperature where freedom burns!
Michael Moore,Left,Controversy... What Controversy?
Michael Moore,Left,"They serve so that we don't have to. They offer to give up their lives so that we can be free. It is, remarkably, their gift to us. And all they ask for in return is that we never send them into harm's way unless it is absolutely necessary. Will they ever trust us again?"
Michael Moore,Left,"George Orwell once wrote: ""And it's not a matter of whether the war is not real or if it is. Victory is not possible. The war is not meant to be won, it is meant to be continuous. Hierarchical society is only possible on the basis of poverty and ignorance. This new version is the past and no different past can ever have existed. In principle the war effort is always planned to keep society on the brink of starvation. The war is waged by the ruling group against its own subjects and its object is not the victory over either Eurasia or East Asia but to keep the very structure of society intact."""
Michael Moore,Left,For once we agreed.
Michael Moore,Left,"You've got the Bush Administration using that event in such a disrespectful and immoral way — using the deaths of those people to try and shred our civil liberties, change our Constitution, round people up. That's not how you honor them, by using them to change our way of life as a free country."
Michael Moore,Left,"I may be preaching to the choir, but the choir needs a good song."
Michael Moore,Left,Clearly something has happened here that no one expected. And there aren't words to describe how any of us feel this morning on hearing this news.
Michael Moore,Left,"I want to thank all the right-wing organizations out there who tried to stop the film, either from their harassment campaign that didn't work on the theatre owners, or going to the FEC to get our ads removed from television, to all the things that have been said on television. It's only encouraged more people to go and see it. We are happy to announce that the efforts of the small-minded few have failed miserably."
Michael Moore,Left,"Early talk was that anti-Bush people would go see it and pro-Bush people would stay home, and that's not the case. Most people do not go around with labels. A lot of Republicans have open minds."
Michael Moore,Left,Because it would be Un-American.
Michael Moore,Left,"Dear Mr. Bush:Any idea where all our helicopters are? It's Day 5 of Hurricane Katrina and thousands remain stranded in New Orleans and need to be airlifted. Where on earth could you have misplaced all our military choppers? Do you need help finding them? I once lost my car in a Sears parking lot. Man, was that a drag.Also, any idea where all our national guard soldiers are? We could really use them right now for the type of thing they signed up to do like helping with national disasters. How come they weren't there to begin with?"
Michael Moore,Left,"No, Mr. Bush, you just stay the course. It's not your fault that 30 percent of New Orleans lives in poverty or that tens of thousands had no transportation to get out of town. C'mon, they're black! I mean, it's not like this happened to Kennebunkport. Can you imagine leaving white people on their roofs for five days? Don't make me laugh! Race has nothing — NOTHING — to do with this!"
Michael Moore,Left,How does it feel to know that the man you elected to lead us after we were attacked went ahead and put a guy in charge of FEMA whose main qualification was that he ran horse shows?
Michael Moore,Left,We are the richest country in the world. We spend more on health care than any other country. Yet we have the worst health care in the Western world. Come on. We can do better than this.
Michael Moore,Left,"The film that's leaked onto the Internet is not taken at a movie theatre with a little home video camera, right? The way it's usually done? This is an inside job... Now, if you were a police detective, one of the first questions you'd ask is motive. Who has a vested interest in destroying the opening weekend's box office of this movie? If I were the police or the FBI investigating this felony that's taken place, that's where I would look.  Having said that, I'm glad that people were able to see my movie. … I'm not a big believer in our copyright laws. I think they're way too restrictive. … I've never supported this concept of going after Napster. I think the rock bands who fought this were wrong. I think filmmakers are wrong about this. I think sharing's a good thing. …  They said television would kill the movies, it didn't. They said VCRs would kill the movies, it didn't. Now they're saying this is going to kill the movies. It won't. People want to get out of the house and go to the movies! Nothing's ever going to kill that, and I really hope people will do that on opening weekend."
Michael Moore,Left,Jesus told us that we would be judged by how we treat the least among us.
Michael Moore,Left,"The stories of the pharmaceutical companies and the health insurance companies is told. My film acts as a balance. I exist to provide balance, and I tell you, it isn't much balance. They're on every day, all day. My film is two hours. If for two hours during this entire year, people are exposed to the other side of the story, isn't that ok? It's amazing how they go after me. You asked me back there, 'You're biased. You have only one side.' Well, yeah, I have a bias. I have a bias on behalf of the little guy who doesn't have a say. I'm lucky enough to be able to have this bully pulpit, to be able to say the things I say, on behalf of the people who don't have a voice. The pharmaceutical companies and corporate America, they've got their voice. They own the networks and they can say whatever they want, all the time, and they do. So can we just have two hours for this side to have their say? I hope so, I think so. That's what I'm trying to do."
Michael Moore,Left,"The French, the British and the Canadian stuff that's in the films is through my American eyes, and I'm comparing it to America, and I'm not saying they don't have problems. But those aren't for me to fix. Trust me, from an American point of view, the Europeans look pretty good. You need to preserve what you have and fight to get back that which you lost."
Michael Moore,Left,"There are problems in all health-care systems, but at least [Europeans] have a health-care system that covers everyone, and it's not my position or my right or my responsibility to point out the flaws in [your] health-care system — that is your job — it is your job to fix those problems."
Michael Moore,Left,"I just decided to make a movie. I had no training, no film school, but I had been to a lot of movies."
Michael Moore,Left,"Democracy is not a spectator sport, it's a participatory event. If we don't participate in it, it ceases to be a democracy. So Obama will rise or fall based not so much on what he does but on what we do to support him."
Michael Moore,Left,"My mum taught me how to read before I went to kindergarden, I always thought that being able to read provided lightness, help to dispel darkness, ignorance and stupidity."
Michael Moore,Left,How about that McDonalds two blocks from Ground Zero? That's killed more people than the nineteen hijackers.
Michael Moore,Left,Today just 400 Americans have more wealth than half of all Americans combined.
Michael Moore,Left,"Four hundred obscenely wealthy individuals, 400 little Mubaraks -- most of whom benefited in some way from the multi-trillion-dollar taxpayer bailout of 2008 -- now have more cash, stock and property than the assets of 155 million Americans combined."
Michael Moore,Left,Guns don't kill people – Americans kill people.
Michael Moore,Left,"Donald J. Trump is going to win in November. This wretched, ignorant, dangerous part-time clown and full time sociopath is going to be our next president. President Trump. Go ahead and say the words, 'cause you'll be saying them for the next four years: ""PRESIDENT TRUMP."""
Michael Moore,Left,"Yes, on November 8, you Joe Blow, Steve Blow, Bob Blow, Billy Blow, all the Blows get to go and blow up the whole goddamn system because it's your right. Trump's election is going to be the biggest ""fuck you"" ever recorded in human history and it will feel good — for a day. Maybe a week. Possibly a month. And then, like the Brits, who wanted to send a message, so they voted to leave Europe, only to find out that if you vote to leave Europe, you actually have to leave Europe. And now they regret it. All the Ohioans, Pennsylvanians, Michiganders, and Wisconsinites of Middle England, right, they all voted to leave and now they regret it. And over 4 million of them signed a petition to have a do-over, they want another election, but it's not going to happen. Because you used the ballot as an anger management tool. And now you're fucked. And the rest of Europe. They're like, ""Bye Felicia!"" So when the rightfully angry people of Ohio and Michigan and Pennsylvania and Wisconsin find out after a few months in office that President Trump wasn't going to do a damn thing for them, it will be too late to do anything about it."
Michael Moore,Left,"“The next wave of fascists will not come with cattle cars and concentration camps, but they'll come with a smiley face and maybe a TV show ... That’s how the 21st-century fascists will essentially take over.”"
Yanis Varoufakis,Left,"Simple logic dictates that if you cannot even conceive the possibility of leaving a negotiation, then it is preferable never to enter one."
Yanis Varoufakis,Left,"I plan to concentrate on helping set up a Pan-European political movement, inspired by the Athens Spring, that will work toward Europe's democratization."
Yanis Varoufakis,Left,I will not contest my parliamentary seat in a sad election that will not produce a Parliament capable of endorsing a realistic reform agenda for Greece.
Yanis Varoufakis,Left,"Every non-Marxist economic theory that treats human and non-human productive inputs as interchangeable assumes that the dehumanisation of human labour is complete. But if it could ever be completed, the result would be the end of capitalism as a system capable of creating and distributing value."
Yanis Varoufakis,Left,We Greeks are the blacks of Europe.
Yanis Varoufakis,Left,"The social inefficiency of capitalism is going to clash at some point with the technological innovations capitalism engenders, and it is out of that contradiction that a more efficient way of organising production and distribution and culture will emerge."
Yanis Varoufakis,Left,"Berlin has traditionally backed a rules-based eurozone in which every member state is responsible for its own finances, including bank bailouts, with political union limited to a fiscal overlord's possessing veto power over national budgets that violate the rules."
Yanis Varoufakis,Left,"If the 'Athens Spring' - when the Greek people courageously rejected the catastrophic austerity conditions of the previous bailouts - has one lesson to teach, it is that Greece will recover only when the European Union makes the transition from 'We the states' to 'We the European people.'"
Yanis Varoufakis,Left,"Even though I resigned as Papandreou's adviser early in 2006 and turned into his government's staunchest critic during his mishandling of the post-2009 Greek implosion, my public interventions in the debate on Greece and Europe have carried no whiff of Marxism."
Yanis Varoufakis,Left,"My first encounter with Marx's writings came very early in life, as a result of the strange times I grew up in, with Greece exiting the nightmare of the neofascist dictatorship of 1967-74."
Yanis Varoufakis,Left,"My hope that Thatcher would inadvertently bring about a new political revolution was well and truly bogus. All that sprang out of Thatcherism were extreme financialisation, the triumph of the shopping mall over the corner store, the fetishisation of housing and Tony Blair."
Yanis Varoufakis,Left,"In occupied Iraq, the introduction of new paper money took almost a year, 20 or so Boeing 747s, the mobilisation of the U.S. military's might, three printing firms, and hundreds of trucks."
Yanis Varoufakis,Left,"The euro is a hybrid of a fixed exchange-rate regime, like the 1980s ERM or the 1930s gold standard, and a state currency."
Yanis Varoufakis,Left,"For some reason, lots of terrible things start here and then spread. The Cold War was one. It didn't start in Berlin - it started in Athens in December 1944; the contagion in the eurozone started here in 2010. We are perfectly capable as Europeans of messing things up unnecessarily."
Yanis Varoufakis,Left,Bankruptocracy is as much a European predicament as it is an American 'invention.' The difference between the experience of the two continents is that at least Americans did not have to labour under the enormous design faults of the eurozone.
Yanis Varoufakis,Left,Game theorists analyze negotiations as if they were split-a-pie games involving selfish players.
Yanis Varoufakis,Left,"Because I spent many years during my previous life as an academic researching game theory, some commentators rushed to presume that as Greece's new finance minister, I was busily devising bluffs, stratagems and outside options, struggling to improve upon a weak hand. Nothing could be further from the truth."
Jeremy Rifkin,Left,"Many of the genetically modified foods will be safe, I'm sure. Will most of them be safe? Nobody knows."
Jeremy Rifkin,Left,"Europe will not accept genetically modified foods. It doesn't make any difference in the final analysis what Brussels does, what Washington does, or what the World Trade Organization does."
Jeremy Rifkin,Left,We are entering a new phase in human history - one in which fewer and fewer workers will be needed to produce the goods and services for the global population.
Jeremy Rifkin,Left,We are already producing enough food to feed the world. We already have technology in place that allows us to produce more than we can find a market for.
Jeremy Rifkin,Left,"The industry's not stupid. The industry knows that if those foods are labeled 'genetically engineered', the public will shy away and won't take them."
Jeremy Rifkin,Left,"The electronic media introduced this idea to the larger audience very, very quickly. We spent years and years and years meeting with activists all over Europe to lay the groundwork for a political response, as we did here."
Jeremy Rifkin,Left,"Back in 1983, the United States government approved the release of the first genetically modified organism. In this case, it was a bacteria that prevents frost on food crops."
Jeremy Rifkin,Left,"If your corn has a herbicide-tolerant gene, it means you can spray your herbicides and kill the weeds; you won't kill your corn because it's producing a gene that makes it tolerant of the herbicide."
Jeremy Rifkin,Left,"We now have an opportunity, though, to do something we didn't do in the industrial age, and that is to get a leg up on this, to bring the public in quickly, to have an informed debate."
Jeremy Rifkin,Left,What's different here is that we have now technologies that allow these life science companies to bypass classical breeding. That's what makes it both powerful and exciting.
Jeremy Rifkin,Left,"In this country, the health concerns and the environmental concerns are as deep as in Europe. All the surveys show that. But here, we didn't have the cultural dimension. This is a fast-food culture."
Jeremy Rifkin,Left,"The interesting thing is, while we die of diseases of affluence from eating all these fatty meats, our poor brethren in the developing world die of diseases of poverty, because the land is not used now to grow food grain for their families."
Jeremy Rifkin,Left,"Many of the mainstream agricultural scientists, especially at the agricultural schools, but at all of our major universities, are tied into all sorts of contractual relationships and consulting relationships with the life science companies."
Jeremy Rifkin,Left,What I'm suggesting to you is that this could be a renaissance. We may be on the cusp of a future which could provide a tremendous leap forward for humanity.
Jeremy Rifkin,Left,"We were making the first step out of the age of chemistry and physics, and into the age of biology."
Jeremy Rifkin,Left,"The antitrust litigation currently in the federal courts in the U.S. against Monsanto will be the test case in the life sciences, just as the Microsoft case was the test case in the information sciences."
Jeremy Rifkin,Left,"The 10 largest antitrust law firms in the United States have gone into the federal courts charging Monsanto with creating a global conspiracy in violation of the antitrust laws, to control the global market in seeds."
Jeremy Rifkin,Left,"They're now turning those seeds into intellectual property, so they have a virtual lock on the seeds upon which we all depend for our food and survival."
Jeremy Rifkin,Left,One thing I've learned over these last 30 or 40 years is that people make history. There's no fait accompli to any of this.
Jeremy Rifkin,Left,"I wanted to make sure that this be the first scientific and technology revolution in history in which the public thoroughly discussed all the potential benefits and all the potential harms, in advance of the technology coming online and running its course."
Jeremy Rifkin,Left,"You can eliminate, for example, a Brazil nut gene if you know that it will create an allergenic effect."
Jeremy Rifkin,Left,"The American public is not aware that there might be potential allergenic and toxic reactions. With regular food, at least people know which foods they have an allergy to."
Jeremy Rifkin,Left,"It may be that everything the life science companies are telling us will turn out to be right, and there's no problem here whatsoever. That defies logic."
Jeremy Rifkin,Left,A refuge is supposed to prevent what? The genes from flowing out of sight? This refuge idea won't stop insects from moving across boundaries. That's absurd.
Jeremy Rifkin,Left,"I know quite a few farmers all over the United States who have tried this and have said the opposite, that they have to use more herbicides, not less. The same holds true with BT."
Jeremy Rifkin,Left,"When we seed millions of acres of land with these plants, what happens to foraging birds, to insects, to microbes, to the other animals, when they come in contact and digest plants that are producing materials ranging from plastics to vaccines to pharmaceutical products?"
Naomi Klein,Left,"After the Pearl Harbor attacks, around 120,000 Japanese Americans were jailed in internment camps. If an attack on U.S. soil were perpetrated by people who were not white and Christian, we can be pretty damn sure that racists would have a field day."
Naomi Klein,Left,"We can't leave everything to the free market. In fact, climate change is, I would argue, the greatest single free-market failure. This is what happens when you don't regulate corporations and you allow them to treat the atmosphere as an open sewer."
Naomi Klein,Left,"We live in an interconnected world, in an interconnected time, and we need holistic solutions. We have a crisis of inequality, and we need climate solutions that solve that crisis."
Naomi Klein,Left,"Look at the structure of the Gates Foundation and this idea that, rather than trying to solve these huge global problems through institutions with some kind of democracy and transparency baked into them, we're just going to outsource it to benevolent billionaires."
Naomi Klein,Left,"I've been trying to pinpoint what keeps drawing me back to the Gulf of Mexico, because I'm Canadian, and I can draw no ancestral ties."
Naomi Klein,Left,The divestment movement is a start at challenging the excesses of capitalism. It's working to delegitimize fossil fuels and showing that they're just as unethical as profits from the tobacco industry.
Naomi Klein,Left,"In the midst of the pain and panic of the Great Depression, as many as 2 million people of Mexican descent were expelled from the United States."
Naomi Klein,Left,"The more hardcore conservative you are, the more tightly identified you are with defending the interest of capital as an interest of the system based on hyper-competition, the more likely it is that you vehemently deny climate change. Because if climate change is real, your worldview will come crashing down around you."
Naomi Klein,Left,One shouldn't gamble with what is irreplaceable and precious.
Naomi Klein,Left,"In a marketplace where it's so easy to produce products, where your competitors can essentially match you on the product itself, you need to have something else. You need to have an added value, and that added value is the identity, the idea behind your brand."
Naomi Klein,Left,The truly powerful feed ideology to the masses like fast food while they dine on the most rarified delicacy of all: impunity.
Naomi Klein,Left,"Here in Canada, the people who oppose the tar sands most forcefully are Indigenous people living downstream from the tar sands. They are not opposing it because of climate change - they are opposing it because it poisons their bodies."
Naomi Klein,Left,"That's the big mistake the environmental movement made - 'We'll scare the hell out of you, and you'll become an activist'."
Naomi Klein,Left,"I do believe that our ability to jam the Trump brand is somewhat limited. I think we can chip away at it, but ultimately, the way to undermine the Trump brand is a better product in the political marketplace, if you'll forgive the capitalist metaphor."
Naomi Klein,Left,"As I explored Trump's inextricable relationship with his commercial brand, and its implications for the future of politics, I began to see why so many of the attacks on him have failed to stick - and how we can identify ways of resisting him that will be more effective."
Naomi Klein,Left,"We need to invest in healthcare, in education, in the sciences. And in so doing, we will tackle one of the most intractable problems we face, which is gross wealth inequality. We can't fight climate change without dealing with inequality in our countries and between our countries."
Naomi Klein,Left,I was the rebel in our family and a child of the eighties. That meant going to the mall.
Naomi Klein,Left,"Even though I believe in mass social movements, I'm uncomfortable in crowds."
Naomi Klein,Left,Africa is poor because its investors and its creditors are unspeakably rich.
Naomi Klein,Left,"This phrase, 'culture jamming,' was very much in vogue in the 1990s when these superbrands sort of emerged and started kind of projecting their names onto ever more surfaces."
Naomi Klein,Left,I had maybe watched 'The Apprentice' a couple of times. I didn't know that in later seasons they deported half of their contestants into tents in the backyard. They called it Trump's trailer park.
Naomi Klein,Left,"I think there has been this really bad habit of environmentalists being insufferably smug, where they are sort of saying, 'This is the issue that beats all other issues,' or, 'Your issue doesn't matter because nothing matters if the earth is fried.'"
Naomi Klein,Left,"Maybe Trump himself will be voted out through impeachment, right?"
Naomi Klein,Left,"The Heartland Institute, which people mostly only know in terms of the fact that it hosts these annual conferences of climate change skeptics or deniers, it's important to know that the Heartland Institute is first and foremost a free market think tank. It's not a scientific organization."
Naomi Klein,Left,"While everyone is focused on security and civil liberties, Trump's Cabinet of billionaires will try to quietly push through even more extreme measures to enrich themselves and their class, like dismantling Social Security or auctioning off major pieces of government for profit."
Michael Parenti,Left,"I argue that one of the functions of a capitalist state is to defend capitalism from itself, to defend capitalism from the capitalists."
Michael Parenti,Left,"I'm not one of those critics that believes U.S. foreign policy is confused, or stupid, or misinformed, or well-intentioned but it goes awry. I think it's a brilliant policy filled with many brilliant, terrible, horrible victories."
Michael Parenti,Left,"Julius Caesar was an aristocrat who sided with the Roman people. He's not my hero, but he was one of a long line of what we'll call 'populares,' which were popular leaders who tried to institute these reforms that the people were fighting for."
Michael Parenti,Left,I have never seen John Kerry give anything but an engineered response.
John Gray,Left,To offer a man unsolicited advice is to presume that he doesn't know what to do or that he can't do it on his own.
John Gray,Left,A women under stress is not immediately concerned with finding solutions to her problems but rather seeks relief by expressing herself and being understood.
John Gray,Left,Men are motivated and empowered when they feel needed. Women are motivated and empowered when they feel cherished.
John Gray,Left,"Just as women are afraid of receiving, men are afraid of giving."
John Gray,Left,"All men and women have an equal need for love. When these needs are not fulfilled it is easy to have our feelings hurt, for which we blame our partner."
John Gray,Left,"Generally speaking, when a woman offers unsolicited advice or tries to help a man, she has no idea of how critical and unloving he may sound to him."
Alexander Cockburn,Left,"The weapon of the advocate is the sword of the soldier, not the dagger of the assassin."
Alexander Cockburn,Left,A childish soul not inoculated with compulsory prayer is a soul open to any religious infection.
Alexander Cockburn,Left,"England in the late 1940s was famously grim. As I remember it, London back then was a very dirty place, from coal dust and smoke, from the grit stirred up every day by the jackhammers still clearing out rubble from the Blitz."
Alexander Cockburn,Left,"Be careful about Burma. Most people cannot remember whether it was Siam and has become Thailand, or whether it is now part of Malaysia and should be called Sri Lanka."
Alexander Cockburn,Left,"They keep telling us that in war truth is the first casualty, which is nonsense since it implies that in times of peace truth stays out of the sick bay or the graveyard."
Alexander Cockburn,Left,"Pose a political threat to Business As Usual, and sooner or later, mostly sooner, someone will try to kill you."
Alexander Cockburn,Left,"Wear the badge of environmental radicalism, and you're a citizen automatically under suspicion."
Alexander Cockburn,Left,"By 1967, J. Edgar Hoover had concluded that the Black Panther Party had replaced the Communist Party as the gravest threat to national security."
Alexander Cockburn,Left,"In its attempt to crush the Black Panthers, the FBI engineered frequent arrests on the flimsiest of pretexts."
Terry Eagleton,Left,"In the end, the humanities can only be defended by stressing how indispensable they are; and this means insisting on their vital role in the whole business of academic learning, rather than protesting that, like some poor relation, they don't cost much to be housed."
Terry Eagleton,Left,"Real men study law and engineering, while ideas and values are for sissies. The humanities should constitute the core of any university worth the name."
Terry Eagleton,Left,Those who sentimentally indulge humanity do it no favours.
Terry Eagleton,Left,"The British are supposed to be particularly averse to intellectuals, a prejudice closely bound up with their dislike of foreigners. Indeed, one important source of this Anglo-Saxon distaste for highbrows and eggheads was the French revolution, which was seen as an attempt to reconstruct society on the basis of abstract rational principles."
Terry Eagleton,Left,"We face a conflict between civilisation and culture, which used to be on the same side. Civilisation means rational reflection, material wellbeing, individual autonomy and ironic self-doubt; culture means a form of life that is customary, collective, passionate, spontaneous, unreflective and irrational."
Terry Eagleton,Left,"People do evil things because they are evil. Some people are evil in the way that some things are coloured indigo. They commit their evil deeds not to achieve some goal, but just because of the sort of people they are."
Terry Eagleton,Left,"Universities are no longer educational in any sense of the word that Rousseau would have recognised. Instead, they have become unabashed instruments of capital. Confronted with this squalid betrayal, one imagines he would have felt sick and oppressed."
Terry Eagleton,Left,"Dawkins considers that all faith is blind faith, and that Christian and Muslim children are brought up to believe unquestioningly. Not even the dim-witted clerics who knocked me about at grammar school thought that."
Terry Eagleton,Left,It is true that too much belief can be bad for your health.
Terry Eagleton,Left,"With fiction, you can talk about plot, character and narrative, whereas a poem brings home the fact that everything that happens in a work of literature happens in terms of language. And this is daunting stuff to deal with."
Terry Eagleton,Left,"The role of the intellectual, so it is said, is to speak truth to power. Noam Chomsky has dismissed this pious tag on two grounds. For one thing, power knows the truth already; it is just busy trying to conceal it. For another, it is not those in power who need the truth, but those they oppress."
Terry Eagleton,Left,"If history, philosophy and so on vanish from academic life, what they leave in their wake may be a technical training facility or corporate research institute. But it will not be a university in the classical sense of the term, and it would be deceptive to call it one."
Terry Eagleton,Left,"For Aristotle, goodness is a kind of prospering in the precarious affair of being human."
Terry Eagleton,Left,"Language, identity and forms of life are the terms in which political demands are shaped and voiced."
Terry Eagleton,Left,"The past can be used to renew the present, not just to bury it."
Terry Eagleton,Left,God chose what is weakest in the world to shame the strong.
Terry Eagleton,Left,"The conversion of agnostic High Tories to the Anglican church is always rather suspect. It seems too pat and predictable, too clearly a matter of politics rather than faith."
Terry Eagleton,Left,"Evil is unintelligible. It is just a thing in itself, like boarding a crowded commuter train wearing only a giant boa constrictor. There is no context which would make it explicable."
Terry Eagleton,Left,Evil is often supposed to be without rhyme or reason.
Terry Eagleton,Left,"It is true that some liberals and humanists, along with the laid-back Danes, deny the existence of evil. This is largely because they regard the word 'evil' as a device for demonising those who are really nothing more than socially unfortunate."
Terry Eagleton,Left,"The German philosopher Walter Benjamin had the curious notion that we could change the past. For most of us, the past is fixed while the future is open."
Terry Eagleton,Left,"There is no way in which we can retrospectively erase the Treaty of Vienna or the Great Irish Famine. It is a peculiar feature of human actions that, once performed, they can never be recuperated. What is true of the past will always be true of it."
David Harvey,Left,"There's a difference between an outburst of spontaneous anger, which doesn't have a political objective, and a more measured response that we saw in the Occupy Wall Street movement."
David Harvey,Left,"If Occupy Wall Street can see their way to more collaboration with the union movement, then there will be a great deal of political action possible."
Fredric Jameson,Left,"If it is, in reality, capitalism that is the motor force behind the destructive forms of globalization, then it must be in their capacity to neutralize or transform this particular mode of exploitation that one can best test these various forms of resistance to the West."
Fredric Jameson,Left,The more worrying feature of the new global corporate structures is their capacity to devastate national labour markets by transferring their operations to cheaper locations overseas.
Fredric Jameson,Left,In most of the European countries - France stands out in its resistance to this particular form of American cultural imperialism - the national film industries were forced onto the defensive after the war by such binding agreements.
Fredric Jameson,Left,"The standardization of world culture, with local popular or traditional forms driven out or dumbed down to make way for American television, American music, food, clothes and films, has been seen by many as the very heart of globalization."
Fredric Jameson,Left,"Often, these downplay the power of cultural imperialism - in that sense, playing the game of US interests - by reassuring us that the global success of American mass culture is not as bad as all that."
Fredric Jameson,Left,"The United States has made a massive effort since the end of the Second World War to secure the dominance of its films in foreign markets - an achievement generally pushed home politically, by writing clauses into various treaties and aid packages."
Fredric Jameson,Left,"So is it always nationalist to resist US globalization? The US thinks it is, and wants you to agree; and, moreover, to consider US interests as being universal ones."
Fredric Jameson,Left,"For when we talk about the spreading power and influence of globalization, aren't we really referring to the spreading economic and military might of the US?"
Fredric Jameson,Left,"And this fear that US models are replacing everything else now spills over from the sphere of culture into our two remaining categories: for this process is clearly, at one level, the result of economic domination - of local cultural industries closed down by American rivals."
Fredric Jameson,Left,"A further point is that, little by little, in the current universe, everything is slowly being named; nor does this have anything to do with the older Aristotelian universals in which the idea of a chair subsumes all its individual manifestations."
E. P. Thompson,Left,"I think you will find scientists that think like you in Germany and Britain, and you will find politicians that think like Weinberger. I think the most bellicose ruling group in the Western world at the moment is the British."
E. P. Thompson,Left,"There are no European voices at Geneva, there are no European voices at START."
E. P. Thompson,Left,"For two decades the state has been taking liberties, and these liberties were once ours."
E. P. Thompson,Left,I am convinced that we are in a terminal process.
E. P. Thompson,Left,I don't care tuppence whether I'm forced into a leadership position or not. I'd much sooner not.
E. P. Thompson,Left,I have become a prisoner of the peace movement. But you can't say that the termination is coming and then say that you are going back to your own garden to dig.
E. P. Thompson,Left,I will hear no talk that there are no intermediate-range weapons on the NATO side.
E. P. Thompson,Left,"Could I interrupt here, because there is an alternative explanation, which you are particularly well placed to examine. You know the argument that it is the alchemists in the laboratories who invent the sweet new kits."
E. P. Thompson,Left,"The missiles come first, and the justifications come second."
E. P. Thompson,Left,You know as a scientist that both were developed completely independently of each other in the laboratories. And only afterward were the political situations contrived out of which they could be justified.
E. P. Thompson,Left,"I think that the U.S. does have this very much more open attitude, and I admire it very much and I think it's very important to the world. But the information and the discussion sometimes come too late, after the effective decision has been made."
E. P. Thompson,Left,"The readings of Soviet society are as many as the experts you speak to. In my view, it's a society that is overdue for measures of democratization and organization."
E. P. Thompson,Left,"The talk about balance, nuclear balance, seems to me to be metaphysical and doesn't seem to be real at all."
Eric Hobsbawm,Left,"Nations without a past are contradictions in terms. What makes a nation is the past, what justifies one nation against others is the past, and historians are the people who produce it."
Eric Hobsbawm,Left,"It seems that American patriotism measures itself against an outcast group. The right Americans are the right Americans because they're not like the wrong Americans, who are not really Americans."
Eric Hobsbawm,Left,"There is not much that even the most socially responsible scientists can do as individuals, or even as a group, about the social consequences of their activities."
Tariq Ali,Left,"Power can shape 'truth,' but not forever."
Tariq Ali,Left,"I am, in general, favourable to activism and social movements and hostile to graft and corruption."
Tariq Ali,Left,The human voice deployed to recite the Vedas and later aid the temple dancers was paramount before any instruments emerged.
Tariq Ali,Left,"The patchwork political landscape of the Arab world - the client monarchies, degenerated nationalist dictatorships, and the imperial petrol stations known as the Gulf states - was the outcome of an intensive experience of Anglo-French colonialism."
Tariq Ali,Left,"In my eyes, a patriot is little more than an international blackleg."
Tariq Ali,Left,The only continent where social movements have led to political parties that have pushed through serious social and political reforms is in South America.
Tariq Ali,Left,"In 1962, President Kennedy expanded an earlier trade embargo put in place by a predecessor, President Eisenhower, to a total economic blockade, which pushed the Cubans further in Moscow's direction."
Tariq Ali,Left,Political pundits in Delhi and Islamabad have berated the West for its relativism and double-standards. After all why should Britain have a nuclear arsenal but not India? It is a reasonable question.
Tariq Ali,Left,"An act of unilateral nuclear disarmament by a European power would have a much more lasting impact than all the sanctions under consideration. Sanctions, as we know from the example of Iraq, always affect the least powerful citizens the most."
Tariq Ali,Left,"Poland, after the First World War, was beset by chaos, disorder, and a foolish incursion by the Red Army, which helped to produce the ultra-nationalist military dictatorship of General Pilsudski."
Tariq Ali,Left,"When Pakistan was carved out of India's rib in 1947, it was assumed by some that Bollywood's Muslim stars would defect to the new state and thus boost the Lahore film industry. But Lollywood did not happen."
Tariq Ali,Left,The hostility between India and Pakistan has become a habit to which both the elites have become addicted. Any attempt towards a rational solution to real problems is denounced by chauvinists on both sides.
Tariq Ali,Left,"Ralph Miliband was a socialist intellectual of great integrity. He belonged to a generation of socialists formed by the Russian revolution and the Second World War, a generation that dominated left-wing politics for almost a century."
Tariq Ali,Left,"In the calculus of western interests, there is no suffering, whatever its scale, which cannot be justified. Chechens, Palestinians, Iraqis, Afghans, Pakistanis are of little importance."
Tariq Ali,Left,Those who really value Ukrainian sovereignty should opt for real independence and a positive neutrality: neither a plaything of the West nor Moscow.
Tariq Ali,Left,Independence is the only way Scotland can realise its full political and cultural potential in the 21st century.
Tariq Ali,Left,The weakness in traditional Scottish nationalism lay in its own inability to grasp that identity could not be the only factor in the march to independence.
Tariq Ali,Left,An independent Scotland could be far more internationalist and would benefit a great deal from links to both Scandinavia and states in other continents.
Tariq Ali,Left,"Scotland's political identity was destroyed, and a huge Scottish emigration to North America followed the brutal Highland clearances. These included every layer of Scottish society, not just the remnants of the defeated clans."
Tariq Ali,Left,"As a political current, Maoism was always weak in Britain, confined largely to students from Asia, Africa and Latin America."
Tariq Ali,Left,"Scandinavia was awash with Maoism in the '70s. Sweden had Maoist groups with a combined membership and periphery of several thousand members, but it was Norway where Maoism became a genuine popular force and hegemonic in the culture."
Tariq Ali,Left,Young women and men who joined the far-left groups did so for the best of reasons. They wanted to change the world. Many fought against the stifling atmosphere in many groups.
Tariq Ali,Left,"When I arrived to study at Oxford in October 1963, the bohemian style was black plastic or leather jackets for women and black leather or navy donkey jackets for men. I stuck to cavalry twills and a duffle coat, at least for a few months."
Tariq Ali,Left,"The origins of Indian classical music, not unlike their western counterparts, lie in the Vedas, the ancient Hindu scriptures of 2,000 years ago."
Tariq Ali,Left,Indian classical music was born when time barely existed. It developed further within the structures of royal courts and a system of patronage where the ruler or the feudal master determined all.
Angela Davis,Left,"Poor people, people of color - especially are much more likely to be found in prison than in institutions of higher education."
Angela Davis,Left,"As a black woman, my politics and political affiliation are bound up with and flow from participation in my people's struggle for liberation, and with the fight of oppressed people all over the world against American imperialism."
Angela Davis,Left,I think the importance of doing activist work is precisely because it allows you to give back and to consider yourself not as a single individual who may have achieved whatever but to be a part of an ongoing historical movement.
Angela Davis,Left,"Jails and prisons are designed to break human beings, to convert the population into specimens in a zoo - obedient to our keepers, but dangerous to each other."
Angela Davis,Left,To understand how any society functions you must understand the relationship between the men and the women.
Angela Davis,Left,The work of the political activist inevitably involves a certain tension between the requirement that position be taken on current issues as they arise and the desire that one's contributions will somehow survive the ravages of time.
Angela Davis,Left,"Racism is a much more clandestine, much more hidden kind of phenomenon, but at the same time it's perhaps far more terrible than it's ever been."
Angela Davis,Left,"Racism, in the first place, is a weapon used by the wealthy to increase the profits they bring in by paying Black workers less for their work."
Angela Davis,Left,"Yes, I think it's really important to acknowledge that Dr. King, precisely at the moment of his assassination, was re-conceptualizing the civil rights movement and moving toward a sort of coalitional relationship with the trade union movement."
Angela Davis,Left,We have to talk about liberating minds as well as liberating society.
Angela Davis,Left,We know the road to freedom has always been stalked by death.
Angela Davis,Left,"You can never stop and as older people, we have to learn how to take leadership from the youth and I guess I would say that this is what I'm attempting to do right now."
Angela Davis,Left,"Had it not been for slavery, the death penalty would have likely been abolished in America. Slavery became a haven for the death penalty."
Angela Davis,Left,Radical simply means 'grasping things at the root.'
Angela Davis,Left,"Well for one, the 13th amendment to the constitution of the US which abolished slavery - did not abolish slavery for those convicted of a crime."
Angela Davis,Left,"I grew up in the southern United States in a city which at that time during the late '40's and early '50's was the most segregated city in the country, and in a sense learning how to oppose the status quo was a question of survival."
Angela Davis,Left,"My name became known because I was, one might say accidentally the target of state repression and because so many people throughout the country and other parts of the world organized around the demand for my freedom."
Angela Davis,Left,"Well of course I get depressed sometimes, yes I do."
Angela Davis,Left,I never saw myself as an individual who had any particular leadership powers.
Angela Davis,Left,I'm involved in the work around prison rights in general.
Angela Davis,Left,"It's true that it's within the realm of cultural politics that young people tend to work through political issues, which I think is good, although it's not going to solve the problems."
Angela Davis,Left,What this country needs is more unemployed politicians.
Angela Davis,Left,In a sense the quest for the emancipation of black people in the U.S. has always been a quest for economic liberation which means to a certain extent that the rise of black middle class would be inevitable.
Angela Davis,Left,I decided to teach because I think that any person who studies philosophy has to be involved actively.
Angela Davis,Left,I think that has to do with my awareness that in a sense we all have a certain measure of responsibility to those who have made it possible for us to take advantage of the opportunities.
Angela Davis,Left,That's true but I think the contemporary problem that we are facing increasing numbers of black people and other people of color being thrown into a status that involves work in alternative economies and increasing numbers of people who are incarcerated.
Howard Zinn,Left,"Most wars, after all, present themselves as humanitarian endeavors to help people."
Howard Zinn,Left,"In the United States today, the Declaration of Independence hangs on schoolroom walls, but foreign policy follows Machiavelli."
Howard Zinn,Left,Dissent is the highest form of patriotism.
Howard Zinn,Left,"When people don't understand that the government doesn't have their interests in mind, they're more susceptible to go to war."
Howard Zinn,Left,War itself is the enemy of the human race.
Judith Butler,Left,"We act as if that being of a man or that being of a woman is actually an internal reality or something that is simply true about us, a fact about us, but actually it's a phenomenon that is being produced all the time and reproduced all the time, so to say gender is performative is to say that nobody really is a gender from the start."
Judith Butler,Left,Masculine and feminine roles are not biologically fixed but socially constructed.
Judith Butler,Left,"When we say gender is performed, we usually mean that we've taken on a role or we're acting in some way and that our acting or our role playing is crucial to the gender that we are and the gender that we present to the world."
Judith Butler,Left,There is no gender identity behind the expressions of gender... identity is performatively constituted by the very 'expressions' that are said to be its results.
Judith Butler,Left,To say that gender is performative is a little different because for something to be performative means that it produces a series of effects. We act and walk and speak and talk in ways that consolidate an impression of being a man or being a woman.
Judith Butler,Left,"I think we won't be able to understand the operations of trans-phobia, homophobia, if we don't understand how certain kinds of links are forged between gender and sexuality in the minds of those who want masculinity to be absolutely separate from femininity and heterosexuality to be absolutely separate from homosexuality."
Judith Butler,Left,"When one set of Jews labels another set of Jews 'anti-Semitic,' they are trying to monopolize the right to speak in the name of the Jews. So the allegation of anti-Semitism is actually a cover for an intra-Jewish quarrel."
Judith Butler,Left,Sexual harassment law is very important. But I think it would be a mistake if the sexual harassment law movement is the only way in which feminism is known in the media.
Judith Butler,Left,"The point is not to stay marginal, but to participate in whatever network of marginal zones is spawned from other disciplinary centers and which, together, constitute a multiple displacement of those authorities."
Judith Butler,Left,"There is no original or primary gender a drag imitates, but gender is a kind of imitation for which there is no original."
Judith Butler,Left,I would say that I'm a feminist theorist before I'm a queer theorist or a gay and lesbian theorist.
Judith Butler,Left,"I grew very skeptical of certain kind of Jewish separatism in my youth. I mean, I saw the Jewish community was always with each other; they didn't trust anybody outside. You'd bring someone home, and the first question was, 'Are they Jewish, are they not Jewish?'"
Judith Butler,Left,"Only if we accept the proposition that the state of Israel is the exclusive and legitimate representative of the Jewish people would a movement calling for divestment, sanctions and boycott against that state be understood as directed against the Jewish people as a whole."
Judith Butler,Left,"A man who reads effeminate may well be consistently heterosexual, and another one might be gay. We can't read sexuality off of gender."
Judith Butler,Left,"In the earliest years of the AIDS crisis, there were many gay men who were unable to come out about the fact that their lovers were ill, A, and then dead, B. They were unable to get access to the hospital to see their lover, unable to call their parents and say, 'I have just lost the love of my life.'"
Judith Butler,Left,"It will not do to say that international law is the enemy of the Jewish people, since the Jewish people surely did not as a whole oppose the Nuremburg trials, or the development of human rights law."
Judith Butler,Left,"Life has to be protected. It is precarious. I would even go so far as to say that precarious life is, in a way, a Jewish value for me."
Judith Butler,Left,"When Zionism becomes co-extensive with Jewishness, Jewishness is pitted against the diversity that defines democracy, and if I may say so, betrays one of the most important ethical dimensions of the diasporic Jewish tradition: namely, the obligation of co-habitation with those different from ourselves."
Judith Butler,Left,"It's my view that gender is culturally formed, but it's also a domain of agency or freedom and that it is most important to resist the violence that is imposed by ideal gender norms, especially against those who are gender different, who are nonconforming in their gender presentation."
Judith Butler,Left,"Obama was late to affirm the Egyptian revolution as a democratic movement, and even then he was eager to have installed those military leaders who were known for their practices of torture."
Judith Butler,Left,"You only trust those who are absolutely like yourself, those who have signed a pledge of allegiance to this particular identity."
Judith Butler,Left,"The principle of academic freedom is designed to make sure that powers outside the university, including government and corporations, are not able to control the curriculum or intervene in extra-mural speech."
Judith Butler,Left,I think that every sexual position is fundamentally comic.
Judith Butler,Left,"Honestly, what can really be said about 'the Jewish people' as a whole? Is it not a lamentable stereotype to make large generalizations about all Jews, and to presume they all share the same political commitments?"
Judith Butler,Left,"Understanding Hamas/Hezbollah as social movements that are progressive, that are on the left, that are part of a global left, is extremely important. That does not stop us from being critical of certain dimensions of both movements."
Michael Moore,Left,You can't regulate child labor. You can't regulate slavery. Some things are just wrong.
Michael Moore,Left,"Capitalism and democracy are the opposite of each other. Capitalism is a system that guarantees that a few are going to do very well, and everybody else is going to serve the few. Democracy means everybody has a seat at the table. Everybody."
Michael Moore,Left,"I'm interested to see what happens with Fox News and phone hacking. I really can't believe it just happens in Great Britain. Because really, who cares about just hacking phones over there?"
Michael Moore,Left,"Greed has been with human beings forever. We have a number of things in our species that you would call 'the dark side,' and greed is one of them. If you don't put certain structures in place or restrictions on those parts of our being that come from that dark place, then it gets out of control."
Michael Moore,Left,"All religions teach the same basic thing, that you have to stand up for those that are considered the worst."
Michael Moore,Left,I don't want to do anything that violates my own personal code of ethics and morals.
Michael Moore,Left,"No decisions should ever be made without asking the question, is this for the common good?"
Michael Moore,Left,We're never gonna get rid of crazy people. They've been around for thousands of years - they'll continue to be around; they'll continue to do horrible things.
Michael Moore,Left,Here's what I don't think works: An economic system that was founded in the 16th century and another that was founded in the 19th century. I'm tired of this discussion of capitalism and socialism; we live in the 21st century; we need an economic system that has democracy as its underpinnings and an ethical code.
Michael Moore,Left,There's over a billion people on this planet that don't have access to clean drinking water.
Michael Moore,Left,We as Americans believe it's OK to kill people. We believe it's OK to invade a country that had nothing to do with 9/11. We think it's OK to invade a country where we think Osama Bin Laden is and he's in the other country. So we just go in and we just kill. And we have the death penalty; we sanction it.
Michael Moore,Left,"When the women's liberation movement began, when people began protesting against the Vietnam War, civil rights movement, at the beginning of those movements, the majority of the country was not with them, did not believe in the basic principles of any of those philosophies."
Michael Moore,Left,"The left, liberals, believe that if we just have more gun control laws, all the problems are going to go away. Well, I don't think so. I don't think so. I think - yes, it will, it will be reduced. There's no question about that."
Michael Moore,Left,Nobody had a credit card when I was a kid. No one had credit card debt. But these big companies and banks wanted to know how to get more money out of people - get them charging things.
Michael Moore,Left,"All of our political parties are bought and paid for by corporate America, Wall Street, and the wealthy interests. The Republican Party more so, but the Democrats take their share of the loot, too."
Michael Moore,Left,"If the Founding Fathers could have looked into a crystal ball and seen AK-47s and Glock semi-automatic pistols, I think they would say, you know, 'That's not really what we mean when we say bear arms.'"
Michael Moore,Left,"First of all, the American people are inundated with advertisement after advertisement of you buy, buy, buy. You've got to have the latest thing. The iPad 1 isn't any good anymore, you've got to have the iPad 2. The iPhone 4, now you've got to have iPhone 4S. Now you've got to have the 5b, now you've got to have the 6c."
Michael Moore,Left,"As far as what I do love, I love birds; I love lavender."
Michael Moore,Left,It really is disgusting when a guy in a ball cap with a high school education is the one asking the tough questions.
Michael Moore,Left,"I made 'Bowling for Columbine' in the hope the school shootings would stop and that we would address the issue of how easy it is to get a gun in the United States, and tragically, those school shootings continue."
Michael Moore,Left,"If we didn't have Social Security, our seniors would live mostly in poverty. You'd have another 18 million people in poverty."
Michael Moore,Left,"You do not have the right to take another human's life, unless it's in strict self-defense."
Michael Moore,Left,I assume everything I'm saying in an email or saying on the telephone is being looked at.
Noam Chomsky,Left,"I would feel no hesitation in saying that it is the responsibility of a decent human being to give assistance to a child who is being attacked by a rabid dog, but I would not intend this to imply that in all imaginable circumstances one must, necessarily, act in accordance with this general responsibility. One can easily concoct imaginary situations in which it would be inadvisable, even immoral to do so [...] [I will not defend] the assumption that it is reprehensible for a powerful nation to invade a weak and tiny neighbor in order to impose on it an ""acceptable"" government [...] just as I would not take the trouble to justify my belief that one should assist a child being attacked by a rabid dog."
Noam Chomsky,Left,"...I don't feel that they deserve a blanket condemnation at all. There are many things to object to in any society. But take China, modern China; one also finds many things that are really quite admirable. [...] There are even better examples than China. But I do think that China is an important example of a new society in which very interesting positive things happened at the local level, in which a good deal of the collectivization and communization was really based on mass participation and took place after a level of understanding had been reached in the peasantry that led to this next step."
Noam Chomsky,Left,"""A Review of B. F. Skinner's Verbal Behavior"" in Language, 35, No. 1 (1959), 26-58. Summation by Noam Chomsky: Rereading this review after eight years, I find little of substance that I would change if I were to write it today. I am not aware of any theoretical or experimental work that challenges its conclusions; nor, so far as I know, has there been any attempt to meet the criticisms that are raised in the review or to show that they are erroneous or ill-founded."
Noam Chomsky,Left,"I'm of course opposed to terror, any rational person is, but I think that if we're serious about the question of terror and serious about the question of violence we have to recognize that it is a tactical and hence moral matter. Incidentally, tactical issues are basically moral issues. They have to do with human consequences. And if we're interested in, let's say, diminishing the amount of violence in the world, it's at least arguable and sometimes true that a terroristic act does diminish the amount of violence in the world. Hence a person who is opposed to violence will not be opposed to that terroristic act."
Noam Chomsky,Left,"After the first International Days of Protest in October, 1965, Senator Mansfield criticized the ""sense of utter irresponsibility"" shown by the demonstrators. He had nothing to say then, nor has he since, about the ""sense of utter irresponsibility"" shown by Senator Mansfield and others who stand by quietly and vote appropriations as the cities and villages of North Vietnam are demolished, as millions of refugees in the South are driven from their homes by American bombardment. He has nothing to say about the moral standards or the respect for international law of those who have permitted this tragedy. I speak of Senator Mansfield precisely because he is not a breast-beating superpatriot who wants America to rule the world, but is rather an American intellectual in the best sense, a scholarly and reasonable man -- the kind of man who is the terror of our age. Perhaps this is merely a personal reaction, but when I look at what is happening to our country, what I find most terrifying is not Curtis LeMay, with his cheerful suggestion that we bomb everybody back into the stone age, but rather the calm disquisitions of the political scientists on just how much force will be necessary to achieve our ends, or just what form of government will be acceptable to us in Vietnam. What I find terrifying is the detachment and equanimity with which we view and discuss an unbearable tragedy. We all know that if Russia or China were guilty of what we have done in Vietnam, we would be exploding with moral indignation at these monstrous crimes."
Noam Chomsky,Left,"The war is simply an obscenity, a depraved act by weak and miserable men, including all of us who have allowed it to go on and on with endless fury and destruction - all of us who would have remained silent, had stability and order been secured."
Noam Chomsky,Left,"What can one say about a country where a museum of science in a great city can feature an exhibit in which people fire machine guns from a helicopter at Vietnamese huts, with a light flashing when a hit is scored? What can one say about a country where such an idea can even be considered? You have to weep for this country. [...] To me it seems that what is needed is a kind of denazification."
Noam Chomsky,Left,"No less insidious is the cry for 'revolution,' at a time when not even the germs of new institutions exist, let alone the moral and political consciousness that could lead to a basic modification of social life. If there will be a 'revolution' in America today, it will no doubt be a move towards some variety of fascism. We must guard against the kind of revolutionary rhetoric that would have had Karl Marx burn down the British Museum because it was merely part of a repressive society. It would be criminal to overlook the serious flaws and inadequacies in our institutions, or to fail to utilize the substantial degree of freedom that most of us enjoy, within the framework of these flawed institutions, to modify them or even replace them by a better social order. One who pays some attention to history will not be surprised if those who cry most loudly that we must smash and destroy are later found among the administrators of some new system of repression."
Noam Chomsky,Left,"The consistent anarchist, then, should be a socialist, but a socialist of a particular sort. He will not only oppose alienated and specialized labor and look forward to the appropriation of capital by the whole body of workers, but he will also insist that this appropriation be direct, not exercised by some elite force acting in the name of the proletariat."
Noam Chomsky,Left,"It is the fundamental duty of the citizen to resist and to restrain the violence of the state. Those who choose to disregard this responsibility can justly be accused of complicity in war crimes, which is itself designated as ‘a crime under international law’ in the principles of the Charter of Nuremberg."
Noam Chomsky,Left,"If we try to keep a sense of balance, the exposures of the past several months are analogous to the discovery that the directors of Murder, Inc. were also cheating on their income tax. Reprehensible, to be sure, but hardly the main point."
Noam Chomsky,Left,"Personally I'm in favor of democracy, which means that the central institutions in the society have to be under popular control. Now, under capitalism we can't have democracy by definition. Capitalism is a system in which the central institutions of society are in principle under autocratic control. Thus, a corporation or an industry is, if we were to think of it in political terms, fascist; that is, it has tight control at the top and strict obedience has to be established at every level -- there's a little bargaining, a little give and take, but the line of authority is perfectly straightforward. Just as I'm opposed to political fascism, I'm opposed to economic fascism. I think that until major institutions of society are under the popular control of participants and communities, it's pointless to talk about democracy."
Noam Chomsky,Left,"...capitalism is basically a system where everything is for sale, and the more money you have, the more you can get. And, in particular, that's true of freedom. Freedom is one of the commodities that is for sale, and if you are affluent, you can have a lot of it. It shows up in all sorts of ways. It shows up if you get in trouble with the law, let's say, or in any aspect of life it shows up. And for that reason it makes a lot of sense, if you accept capitalist system, to try to accumulate property, not just because you want material welfare, but because that guarantees your freedom, it makes it possible for you to amass that commodity. [...] what you're going to find is that the defense of free institutions will largely be in the hands of those who benefit from them, namely the wealthy, and the powerful. They can purchase that commodity and, therefore, they want those institutions to exist, like free press, and all that."
Noam Chomsky,Left,"In the American Jewish community, there is little willingness to face the fact that the Palestinian Arabs have suffered a monstrous historical injustice, whatever one may think of the competing claims. Until this is recognized, discussion of the Middle East crisis cannot even begin."
Noam Chomsky,Left,"Even today, as regards East Timor, where our brutal Indonesian satellite (authors of the 1965-1966 butcheries) have very possibly killed as many people as did the Khmer Rouge, there is a virtually complete blackout of information in the Free Press.  This is a bloodbath carried out by a friendly power and is thus of little interest to our readers.  It is a “benign bloodbath” in our terminology."
Noam Chomsky,Left,"We will consider the facts about postwar Indochina insofar as they can be ascertained, but a major emphasis will be on the ways in which these facts have been interpreted, filtered, distorted or modified by the ideological institutions in the West."
Noam Chomsky,Left,"When the facts are in, it may well turn out that the more extreme condemnations were in fact correct.  But even if that turns out to be the case, it will in no way alter the conclusions we have reached on the central question addressed here: how the available facts were selected, modified, or sometimes invented to create a certain image offered to the general population.  The answer to this question seems clear, and it is unaffected by whatever may be discovered about Cambodia in the future."
Noam Chomsky,Left,"Our primary concern has been U.S. global policy and propaganda, and the filtering and distorting effect of Western ideology, not the problems of reconstruction and modernization in societies that have been victimized by Western imperialism.  Correspondingly, we have not developed or expressed our views here on the nature of the Indochinese regimes.  To assess the contemporary situation in Indochina and the programs of the current ruling groups is a worthwhile endeavor, but it has not been our current objective. […] The success of the Free Press in reconstructing imperial ideology since the U.S. withdrawal has been spectacular.  The shift of the United States from causal agent to bystander – and even to leader of the struggle for human rights – in the face of its empire of client fascism and long, vicious assault on the peasant societies of Indochina, is a remarkable achievement.  The system of brainwashing under freedom, with mass media voluntary self-censorship in accord with the larger interests of the state, has worked brilliantly."
Noam Chomsky,Left,"Unfortunately, you can't vote the rascals out, because you never voted them in, in the first place."
Noam Chomsky,Left,"The Cold War ideology and the international communist conspiracy function in an important way as essentially a propaganda device to mobilize support at a particular historical moment for this long-time imperial enterprise. In fact, I believe that this is probably the main function of the Cold War: it serves as a useful device for the managers of American society and their counterparts in the Soviet Union to control their own populations and their own respective imperial systems."
Noam Chomsky,Left,"Roughly speaking, I think it's accurate to say that a corporate elite of managers and owners governs the economy and the political system as well, at least in very large measure. The people, so-called, do exercise an occasional choice among those who Marx once called ""the rival factions and adventurers of the ruling class."""
Noam Chomsky,Left,"One reason that propaganda often works better on the educated than on the uneducated is that educated people read more, so they receive more propaganda. Another is that they have jobs in management, media, and academia and therefore work in some capacity as agents of the propaganda system--and they believe what the system expects them to believe. By and large, they're part of the privileged elite, and share the interests and perceptions of those in power."
Noam Chomsky,Left,"[In] 'Democratic' societies … the state can't control behavior by force. It can to some extent, but it's much more limited in its capacity to control by force. Therefore, it has to control what you think… One of the ways you control what people think is by creating the illusion that there's a debate going on, but making sure that that debate stays within very narrow margins. Namely, you have to make sure that both sides in the debate accept certain assumptions, and those assumptions turn out to be the propaganda system. As long as everyone accepts the propaganda system, then you can have a debate."
Noam Chomsky,Left,"The Vietnam War is a classic example of America's propaganda system. In the mainstream media--the New York Times, CBS, and so on-- there was a lively debate about the war. It was between people called ""doves"" and people called ""hawks."" The hawks said, ""If we keep at it we can win."" The doves said, ""Even if we keep at it, it would probably be too costly for use, and besides, maybe we're killing too many people."" Both sides agreed on one thing. We had a right to carry out aggression against South Vietnam. Doves and hawks alike refused to admit that aggression was taking place. They both called our military presence in Southeast Asia the defense of South Vietnam, substituting ""defense"" for ""aggression"" in the standard Orwellian manner."
Noam Chomsky,Left,"There are significant strategic interests [in Oceania], and there's a lot of stuff going on that's important. Not just the United States. For example, France is doing some really vicious things there, in fact they're just wiping out islands because they want them for nuclear tests. And when the socialist government in France is asked, ""Why to do this?"", they say, ""Well look, we have to have nuclear tests."" Well, if you have to have nuclear tests, why not have them in southern France? [audience laughter] Why have them in some island in the Pacific? Well, the answer to that is clear, after all they're just a bunch of little brown people or something. But you can't say that exactly, especially if you're a socialist, so something else is said."
Noam Chomsky,Left,"From a comparative perspective, the United States is unusual if not unique in the lack of restraints on freedom of expression. It is also unusual in the range and effectiveness of methods employed to restrain freedom of thought... Where the voice of the people is heard, elite groups must insure their voice says the right things… The less the state is able to employ violence in the defense of the interest of the elite groups that effectively dominate it, the more it becomes necessary to devise techniques of ‘manufacture of consent’… Where obedience is guaranteed by violence, rulers may tend towards a ‘behaviourist’ conception; it is enough that people obey; what they think does not matter too much. Where the state lacks means of coercion, it is important to control what people think."
Noam Chomsky,Left,"In certain intellectual circles in France, the very basis for discussion—a minimal respect for facts and logic—has been virtually abandoned."
Noam Chomsky,Left,Lenin was a right-wing deviation of the socialist movement and he was so regarded…by the mainstream Marxists… Bolshevism was a right-wing deviation.
Noam Chomsky,Left,"There was nothing remotely like socialism in the Soviet Union… [Lenin] didn’t believe that it was possible to have socialism in the Soviet Union… He kept the view that the Soviet revolution was a holding action, they just kind of hold things in place, until the real revolution took place in Germany… That, presumably, gave some sort of justification for eliminating the socialist institutions."
Noam Chomsky,Left,"I think it only makes sense to seek out and identify structures of authority, hierarchy, and domination in every aspect of life, and to challenge them; unless a justification for them can be given, they are illegitimate, and should be dismantled, to increase the scope of human freedom."
Noam Chomsky,Left,"The war was a “tragic error,” but not “fundamentally wrong or immoral” (as the overwhelming majority of the American people continue to believe), and surely not criminal aggression - the judgment that would be reached at once on similar evidence if the responsible agent were not the USA, or an ally or client. Our point is not that the retrospectives fail to draw what seem to us, as to much of the population, the obvious conclusions; the more significant and instructive point is that principled objection to the war as “fundamentally wrong and immoral,” or as an outright criminal aggression - a war crime - is inexpressible.  It is not part of the spectrum of discussion.  The background for such a principled critique cannot be developed in the media, and the conclusions cannot be drawn.  It is not present even to be refuted.  Rather, the idea is unthinkable.  All of this reveals with great clarity how foreign to the mobilized media is a conception of the media as a free system of information and discussion, independent of state authority and elite interests."
Noam Chomsky,Left,"Roughly speaking, states are violent to the extent that they have the power to act in the interests of those with domestic power..."
Noam Chomsky,Left,"Cuba has probably been the target of more international terrorism than the rest of the world combined and, therefore, in the American ideological system it is regarded as the source of international terrorism, exactly as Orwell would have predicted."
Noam Chomsky,Left,"It goes back to the days when we were defending ourselves against the internal aggression of the Native American population, who we incidentally wiped out in the process. In the post World War II period, we've frequently had to carry out defense against internal aggression, that is against Salvadorans in El Salvador, Greeks in Greece, against Filipinos in the Philippines, against South Vietnamese in South Vietnam, and many other places. And the concept of internal aggression has been repeatedly invoked in this connection, and quite appropriately. It's an interesting concept, it's one that George Orwell would certainly have admired, and it's elaborated in many ways in the internal documentary record."
Noam Chomsky,Left,"The uniformity and obedience of the media, which any dictator would admire, [...]"
Noam Chomsky,Left,"Pointing to the massive amounts of propaganda spewed by government and institutions around the world, observers have called our era the age of Orwell. But the fact is that Orwell was a latecomer on the scene. As early as World War I, American historians offered themselves to President Woodrow Wilson to carry out a task they called ""historical engineering,"" by which they meant designing the facts of history so that they would serve state policy. In this instance, the U.S. government wanted to silence opposition to the war. This represents a version of Orwell's 1984, even before Orwell was writing."
Noam Chomsky,Left,"For those who stubbornly seek freedom around the world, there can be no more urgent task than to come to understand the mechanisms and practices of indoctrination. These are easy to perceive in the totalitarian societies, much less so in the propaganda system to which we are subjected and in which all too often we serve as unwilling or unwitting instruments."
Noam Chomsky,Left,"Israel is an embattled country. They rely very heavily on U.S. support. So they have developed a very sophisticated system of propaganda. They don't call it propaganda. They call it hasbarah. It is the only country I know of in the world that refers to propaganda as explanation. The Ministry of Propaganda is the Ministry of Explanation. The idea being that our position on everything is so obviously correct that if we only explain it to people, they will see that it is right."
Noam Chomsky,Left,"If any of you have ever looked at your FBI file, you discover that intelligence agencies in general are extremely incompetent. That's one of the reasons why there are so many intelligence failures. They just never get anything straight, for all kinds of reasons. Part of it is because of the information they get. The information they get comes from ideological fanatics, typically, who always misunderstand things in their own crazy way. If you look at an FBI file, say, about yourself, where you know what the facts are, you'll see that the information has some kind of relation to the facts, you can figure out what they're talking about, but by the time it works its way through the ideological fanaticism of the intelligence agencies, there's always weird distortion."
Noam Chomsky,Left,"During the 1960s, large groups of people who are normally passive and apathetic began to try to enter the political arena to press their demands.… The naive might call that democracy, but that's because they don't understand. The sophisticated understand that that's the crisis of democracy."
Noam Chomsky,Left,"Non-violent resistance activities cannot succeed against an enemy that is able freely to use violence. That's pretty obvious. You can't have non-violent resistance against the Nazis in a concentration camp, to take an extreme case..."
Noam Chomsky,Left,"We take for granted that the organism does not learn to grow arms or to reach puberty...  When we turn to the mind and its products, the situation is not qualitatively different from what we find in the case of the body."
Noam Chomsky,Left,Intrinsic (psychological) structure is rich . . . and diverse.
Noam Chomsky,Left,"[This view is contrasted with all forms of Empiricism, by which it is] assumed that development is uniform across (cognitive) domains, and that the intrinsic properties of the initial state (of the mind) are homogeneous and undifferentiated - an assumption found across a spectrum reaching from Skinner to Piaget (who differ on much else)."
Noam Chomsky,Left,"We may usefully think of the language faculty, the number faculty, and others as 'mental organs,' analogous to the heart or the visual system or the system of motor coordination and planning. There appears to be no clear demarcation line between physical organs, perceptual and motor systems and cognitive faculties in the respects in question."
Noam Chomsky,Left,"Now of course, the idealistic slogans are still needed for the media, for a lot of scholarship, for the schools, and so on. But, where the serious people are, the problem is that we have to maintain this disparity, and obviously it's gotta be maintained by force. So none of the idealistic slogans at home. So when you're setting up death squads in El Salvador under the Alliance for Progress, you're not hampered by these idealistic slogans. That's for the masses, for us. Well, given this kind of thinking, it's not too surprising that President Kennedy should say, with regard to El Salvador after supporting a military coup there, that ""Governments of the civil-military type of El Salvador are the most effective in containing communist penetration in Latin America."" This at the time when he organized the basic framework for the death squads that have been torturing and murdering ever since, and which we attribute to some kind of extreme right-wingers who somehow we can't get under control."
Noam Chomsky,Left,"We have a big argument here about whether Nicaragua and Cuba are sending arms to El Salvador. Well, I don't know, so far there's no evidence that they are, but that's not really the interesting question. I mean, you gotta watch the way questions are framed by the propaganda system. The way it's framed is, the doves say they're not sending arms, and the hawks say they are sending arms. But the real question, which is being suppressed in all of this, is, ""Should they be sending arms?"" And the answer is of course, ""Yes."" [applause] Everybody should be sending arms. You see, that question is not raised, just as if somebody was talking in, say, the Soviet Union, and the question came up: ""Should somebody send arms to Afghan rebels?"" Well, of course not. You know, that's terrorism or something like that. The point is that it's perfectly legitimate to send arms to people who finally try to use violence in self-defense against a gang of mass murderers installed by a foreign power. Of course it's legitimate to send them arms."
Noam Chomsky,Left,"On September 1st of last year, the Soviet Union shot down Korean KAL 007, killing 269 people, and the immediate response here was that this proves that the Russians are the most barbaric people since Attila the Hun or something, and therefore we have to step up the attack against Nicaragua, set in MX missiles, put Pershings in West Germany, and increase the military system.… The story was given unbelievable coverage. Not only the story, but the American government interpretation of it, which is roughly what I've just said, was given the kind of coverage that I doubt has ever been given to any story in history.… Right in the middle of all of this furor about the Korean airliner, on November 11th in fact, there was a 100 word item in the New York Times devoted to the interesting fact that UNITA—which is a group that we call ""freedom fighters"", supported by us and South Africa, in Angola—they took credit for shooting down a civilian Angolan jet, killing 126 people.… Now, under the very confused circumstances of KAL 007, if that was the worst atrocity in human history, well, what about the freedom fighters that we support along with South Africa, who did something much worse?"
Noam Chomsky,Left,"When the state says, ""Whip up hysteria against the evil empire,"" everybody starts yelling, jumping up and down, and screaming about the evil empire… See, if it happened in, say, Nazi Germany or the Soviet Union, we know how they pulled it off. Namely, an order came from the Ministry of Truth, and everybody had to obey it. Now that didn't happen here. Here it happened in the way American propaganda always works: by servility and cowardice and class interest."
Noam Chomsky,Left,"There have been times, however, when US officials have described what's going on in relatively frank terms; sometimes quite clearly. One put the matter in these words: ""The Central American area down to and including the Isthmus of Panama constitutes a legitimate sphere of influence for the United States [...] We do control the destinies of Central America and we do so for the simple reason that the national interest absolutely dictates such a course [...] We must decide whether we shall tolerate the interference of any other power in Central American affairs, or insist upon our own dominant position [...] Until now, Central America has always understood that governments that we recognize and support stay in power, while those we do not recognize and support, fall [...] Nicaragua has become a test case, it is difficult to see how we can afford to be defeated."" That's fairly familiar. These remarks were made by Under Secretary of State Robert Olds in 1927, and the outside power that he was concerned about was Mexico. [audience laughter] Mexico at that time was a Russian proxy. We were no longer fighting Huns in the Dominican Republic, now we were fighting Russians in Nicaragua, and in particular the Russian proxy Mexico. Mexico was then a proxy of the Bolsheviks, so the Marines had to be sent in, once again, and they established Somoza, and established the National Guard which was the basis for American power throughout the region, and in fact one of the most effective murder-incorporated forces down there for many years. They killed Sandino, he was killed off by stealth couple of years later, the guerilla leader. As President Coolidge sent the Marines in, he made the following declaration: ""Mexico is on trial before the world."" Mexico is on trial before the world as a proxy of the Soviet Union when we send the Marines into Nicaragua. Now things have changed a little bit, now it's Nicaragua that's threatening Mexico as a Russian proxy... But again there's the same conclusion, you know, kill the spics and the niggers and so on. That follows no matter who's the proxy for who. And all of this is repeated at every moment of history with great seriousness and awe and so on as if it had some meaning, as if it wasn't just some black comedy."
Noam Chomsky,Left,"Rio de Janeiro, incidentally, is not the poor part of the country, that sort of the rich part of the country. It's not the northeast, where 35 million people or so, nobody knows what happens to them, or cares. But Rio de Janeiro, that's where people are looking, the rich parts. And this journal is a science journal, kinda like Science in the United States. It was studying malnutrition. And here's the figures it had for Rio de Janeiro: infants from 0 to 5 months, severe malnutrition, meaning medically severe, 67%; 5 months to a year, 41%; a year to 5 years, 11%. Now the reason of course for the decline, from 67 to 41 to 11, is that they will die. So that's what happens under the conditions of the economic miracle, like in Guatemala. Now, it's a little wrong to say that the people die. The fact is, they don't die. We kill them, that's what happens. We kill them by carrying out policies, supporting the regimes of the kind that I've described. And by intervening with force and violence to suppress and destroy any attempt, however minimal, even on a speck like Grenada, we've got to stop any attempt to bring some change into this. That's the history of our hemisphere."
Noam Chomsky,Left,"There's nothing nice that you can say about any of [the Arab countries]. Syria, for example, is one of the most violent terrorist regimes in the world. But it doesn't happen to be aggressive. Maybe it would like to be, but it isn't. For objective reasons. There's virtually no correlation between the internal nature of some country and its commitment to external violence. And I think if you look back over history you'll never find a correlation, back to the Greeks."
Noam Chomsky,Left,A lot of the people who call themselves Left I would regard as proto-fascists.
Noam Chomsky,Left,"Of course, everybody says they're for peace. Hitler was for peace. Everybody is for peace. The question is: ""What kind of peace?"""
Noam Chomsky,Left,"If the Nuremberg laws were applied, then every post-war American president would have been hanged."
Noam Chomsky,Left,"The sign of a truly totalitarian culture is that important truths simply lack cognitive meaning and are interpretable only at the level of ""Fuck You"", so they can then elicit a perfectly predictable torrent of abuse in response. We've long ago reached that level."
Noam Chomsky,Left,"Strikingly, no concern was voiced over the glaringly obvious fact that no official reason was ever offered for going to war — no reason, that is, that could not be instantly refuted by a literate teenager."
Noam Chomsky,Left,"The crisis began with the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait a year ago. There was some fighting, leaving hundreds killed according to Human Rights groups. That hardly qualifies as war. Rather, in terms of crimes against peace and against humanity, it falls roughly into the category of the Turkish invasion of northern Cyprus, Israel's invasion of Lebanon in 1978, and the U.S. invasion of Panama. In these terms it falls well short of Israel's 1982 invasion of Lebanon, and cannot remotely be compared with the near-genocidal Indonesian invasion and annexation of East Timor, to mention only two cases of aggression that are still in progress, with continuing atrocities and with the crucial support of those who most passionately professed their outrage over Iraq's aggression. During the subsequent months, Iraq was responsible for terrible crimes in Kuwait, with several thousand killed and many tortured. But that is not war; rather, state terrorism, of the kind familiar among U.S. clients. The second phase of the conflict began with the U.S.-U.K. attack of January 15 (with marginal participation of others). This was slaughter, not war."
Noam Chomsky,Left,"The point of public relations slogans like ""Support Our Troops"" is that they don't mean anything ... that's the whole point of good propaganda. You want to create a slogan that nobody is going to be against and I suppose everybody will be for, because nobody knows what it means, because it doesn't mean anything. But its crucial value is that it diverts your attention from a question that does mean something, do you support our policy? And that's the one you're not allowed to talk about."
Noam Chomsky,Left,"Harold Laswell … explained a couple of years after this in the early 1930s that we should not succumb to what he called democratic dogmatisms about men being the best judges of their own interests.… In what's nowadays called a totalitarian state, military state or something, it's easy. You just hold a bludgeon over their heads, but as societies become more free and democratic you lose that capacity and therefore you have to turn to the techniques of propaganda. The logic is clear—propaganda is to a democracy what the bludgeon is to a totalitarian state…."
Noam Chomsky,Left,"If you quietly accept and go along no matter what your feelings are, ultimately you internalize what you're saying, because it's too hard to believe one thing and say another. I can see it very strikingly in my own background. Go to any elite university and you are usually speaking to very disciplined people, people who have been selected for obedience. And that makes sense. If you've resisted the temptation to tell the teacher, ""You're an asshole,"" which maybe he or she is, and if you don't say, ""That's idiotic,"" when you get a stupid assignment, you will gradually pass through the required filters. You will end up at a good college and eventually with a good job."
Noam Chomsky,Left,"Most problems of teaching are not problems of growth but helping cultivate growth. As far as I know, and this is only from personal experience in teaching, I think about ninety percent of the problem in teaching, or maybe ninety-eight percent, is just to help the students get interested. Or what it usually amounts to is to not prevent them from being interested. Typically they come in interested, and the process of education is a way of driving that defect out of their minds. But if children['s] [...] normal interest is maintained or even aroused, they can do all kinds of things in ways we don't understand."
Noam Chomsky,Left,"The intellectual tradition is one of servility to power, and if I didn't betray it I'd be ashamed of myself."
Noam Chomsky,Left,"If we don't believe in free expression for people we despise, we don't believe in it at all."
Noam Chomsky,Left,"One might ask why tobacco is legal and marijuana not. A possible answer is suggested by the nature of the crop. Marijuana can be grown almost anywhere, with little difficulty. It might not be easily marketable by major corporations. Tobacco is quite another story."
Noam Chomsky,Left,"Control of thought is more important for governments that are free and popular than for despotic and military states. The logic is straightforward: a despotic state can control its domestic enemies by force, but as the state loses this weapon, other devices are required to prevent the ignorant masses from interfering with public affairs, which are none of their business."
Noam Chomsky,Left,"I don't know if it's a hundred years, but it seems to me if history continues—that's not at all obvious, that it will—but if society continues to develop without catastrophe on something like the course that you can sort of see over time, I wouldn't be in the least surprised if it moves toward vegetarianism and protection of animal rights. In fact, what we've seen over the years—and it's hard to be optimistic in the twentieth century, which is one of the worst centuries in human history in terms of atrocities and terror and so on—but still, over the years, including the twentieth century, there is a widening of the moral realm, bringing in broader and broader domains of individuals who are regarded as moral agents."
Noam Chomsky,Left,"Naturally, any conqueror is going to play one group against another. For example, I think about 90% of the forces that the British used to control India were Indians. [...] It was true when the American forces conquered the Philippines, killing a couple hundred thousand people. They were being helped by Philippine tribes, exploiting conflicts among local groups. There were plenty who were going to side with the conquerors. But forget the Third World, just take a look at the Nazi conquest of nice, civilized Western Europe, places like Belgium and Holland and France. Who was rounding up the Jews? Local people, often. In France they were rounding them up faster than the Nazis could handle them. The Nazis also used Jews to control Jews. If the United States was conquered by the Russians, Ronald Reagan, George Bush, Elliott Abrams and the rest of them would probably be working for the invaders, sending people off to concentration camps. They're the right personality types."
Noam Chomsky,Left,"The Tet Offensive in January of 1968 [...] made the war unpopular. American corporate elites decided at that point that it just wasn't worth it, it was too costly, let's pull out. So at that time everybody became an opponent of the war because the orders from on high were that you were supposed to be opposed to it. And after that every single memoirist radically changed their story about what had happened. They all concocted this story that their hero, John F. Kennedy, was really planning to pull out of this unpopular war before he was killed and then Johnson changed it. If you look at the earlier memoirs, not a hint, I mean literally."
Noam Chomsky,Left,"Reactions to our adversity are not entirely uniform. At the dovish extreme, we find Senator John Kerry, who warns that we should never again fight a war ""without committing enough resources to win""; no other flaw is mentioned. And there is President Carter, the noted moral teacher and human rights apostle, who assured us that we owe Vietnam no debt and have no responsibility to render it any assistance because ""the destruction was mutual,"" an observation so uncontroversial as to pass with no reaction. [...] Properly statesmanlike, President Bush announces that ""It was a bitter conflict, but Hanoi knows today that we seek only answers without the threat of retribution for the past."" Their crimes against us can never be forgotten, but ""we can begin writing the last chapter of the Vietnam war"" if they dedicate themselves with sufficient zeal to the MIAs. We might even ""begin helping the Vietnamese find and identify their own combatants missing in action,"" [New York Times Asia correspondent] Crossette reports. The adjacent front-page story reports Japan's failure, once again, to ""unambiguously"" accept the blame ""for its wartime aggression."""
Noam Chomsky,Left,"Of course it's extremely easy to say, the heck with it. I'm just going to adapt myself to the structures of power and authority and do the best I can within them. Sure, you can do that. But that's not acting like a decent person. You can walk down the street and be hungry. You see a kid eating an ice cream cone and you notice there's no cop around and you can take the ice cream cone from him because you're bigger and walk away. You can do that. Probably there are people who do. We call them ""pathological."" On the other hand, if they do it within existing social structures we call them ""normal."" But it's just as pathological. It's just the pathology of the general society."
Noam Chomsky,Left,"A good way of finding out who won a war, who lost a war, and what the war was about, is to ask who's cheering and who's depressed after it's over - this can give you interesting answers. So, for example, if you ask that question about the Second World War, you find out that the winners were the Nazis, the German industrialists who had supported Hitler, the Italian Fascists and the war criminals that were sent off to South America - they were all cheering at the end of the war. The losers of the war were the anti-fascist resistance, who were crushed all over the world. Either they were massacred like in Greece or South Korea, or just crushed like in Italy and France. That's the winners and losers. That tells you partly what the war was about. Now let's take the Cold War: Who's cheering and who's depressed? Let's take the East first. The people who are cheering are the former Communist Party bureaucracy who are now the capitalist entrepreneurs, rich beyond their wildest dreams, linked to Western capital, as in the traditional Third World model, and the new Mafia. They won the Cold War. The people of East Europe obviously lost the Cold War; they did succeed in overthrowing Soviet tyranny, which is a gain, but beyond that they've lost - they're in miserable shape and declining further. If you move to the West, who won and who lost? Well, the investors in General Motors certainly won. They now have this new Third World open again to exploitation - and they can use it against their own working classes. On the other hand, the workers in GM certainly didn't win, they lost. They lost the Cold War, because now there's another way to exploit them and oppress them and they're suffering from it."
Noam Chomsky,Left,"Independent nationalism is unacceptable to the West, no matter where it is, and it has to be driven back into subordination. In the case of Grenada, you can do it in a weekend; in the case of the Soviet Union it may take 70 years. But these are matters of scale, the logic is essentially the same."
Noam Chomsky,Left,"As for drugs, my impression is that their effect was almost completely negative, simply removing people from meaningful struggle and engagement. Just the other day I was sitting in a radio studio waiting for a satellite arrangement abroad to be set up. The engineers were putting together interviews with Bob Dylan from about 1966-7 or so (judging by the references), and I was listening (I'd never heard him talk before — if you can call that talking). He sounded as though he was so drugged he was barely coherent, but the message got through clearly enough through the haze. He said over and over that he'd been through all of this protest thing, realized it was nonsense, and that the only thing that was important was to live his own life happily and freely, not to ""mess around with other people's lives"" by working for civil and human rights, ending war and poverty, etc. He was asked what he thought about the Berkeley ""free speech movement"" and said that he didn't understand it. He said something like: ""I have free speech, I can do what I want, so it has nothing to do with me. Period."" If the capitalist PR machine [term used in the question] wanted to invent someone for their purposes, they couldn't have made a better choice."
Noam Chomsky,Left,"In the United States, the political system is a very marginal affair. There are two parties, so-called, but they're really factions of the same party, the Business Party. Both represent some range of business interests. In fact, they can change their positions 180 degrees, and nobody even notices. In the 1984 election, for example, there was actually an issue, which often there isn't. The issue was Keynesian growth versus fiscal conservatism. The Republicans were the party of Keynesian growth: big spending, deficits, and so on. The Democrats were the party of fiscal conservatism: watch the money supply, worry about the deficits, et cetera. Now, I didn't see a single comment pointing out that the two parties had completely reversed their traditional positions. Traditionally, the Democrats are the party of Keynesian growth, and the Republicans the party of fiscal conservatism. So doesn't it strike you that something must have happened? Well, actually, it makes sense. Both parties are essentially the same party. The only question is how coalitions of investors have shifted around on tactical issues now and then. As they do, the parties shift to opposite positions, within a narrow spectrum."
Noam Chomsky,Left,"The political policies that are called conservative these days would appall any genuine conservative, if there were one around to be appalled. For example, the central policy of the Reagan Administration - which was supposed to be conservative - was to build up a powerful state. The state grew in power more under Reagan than in any peacetime period, even if you just measure it by state expenditures. The state intervention in the economy vastly increased. That's what the Pentagon system is, in fact; it's the creation of a state-guaranteed market and subsidy system for high-technology production. There was a commitment under the Reagan Administration to protect this more powerful state from the public, which is regarded as the domestic enemy. Take the resort to clandestine operations in foreign policy: that means the creation of a powerful central state immune from public inspection. Or take the increased efforts at censorship and other forms of control. All of these are called ""conservatism,"" but they're the very opposite of conservatism. Whatever the term means, it involves a concern for Enlightenment values of individual rights and freedoms against powerful external authorities such as the state, [or] a dominant Church, and so on. That kind of conservatism no one even remembers anymore."
Noam Chomsky,Left,"Boards of Directors have to make certain kinds of decisions, and those decisions are pretty narrowly constrained. They have to be committed to increasing profit share and market share. That means they're going to be forced to try to limit wages, to limit quality, to use advertising in a way that sells goods even if the product is lousy. Who tells them to do this? Nobody. But if they stopped doing it, they'd be out of business. Similarly, if an editorial writer for the New York Times were to start, say, telling the truth about the Panama invasion -- which is almost inconceivable, because to become an editorial writer you'd already have gone through a filtering process which would weed out the non-conformists -- well, the first thing that would happen is you'd start getting a lot of angry phone calls from investors, owners, and other sectors of power. That would probably suffice. If it didn't, you'd simply see the stock start falling. And if they continued with it systematically, the New York Times would be replaced by some other organ. After all, what is the New York Times? It's just a corporation. If investors and advertisers don't want to support it, and the government doesn't want to give it the special privileges and advantages that make it a ""newspaper of record,"" it's out of business."
Noam Chomsky,Left,"There is a noticeable general difference between the sciences and mathematics on the one hand, and the humanities and social sciences on the other. It's a first approximation, but one that is real. In the former, the factors of integrity tend to dominate more over the factors of ideology. It's not that scientists are more honest people. It's just that nature is a harsh taskmaster. You can lie or distort the story of the French Revolution as long as you like, and nothing will happen. Propose a false theory in chemistry, and it'll be refuted tomorrow."
Noam Chomsky,Left,"I never criticized United States planners for mistakes in Vietnam. True, they made some mistakes, but my criticism was always aimed at what they aimed to do and largely achieved. The Russians doubtless made mistakes in Afghanistan, but my condemnation of their aggression and atrocities never mentioned those mistakes, which are irrelevant to the matter -- though not for the commissars. Within our ideological system, it is impossible to perceive that anyone might criticize anything but ""mistakes"" (I suspect that totalitarian Russia was more open in that regard)."
Noam Chomsky,Left,"Nothing should be done to impede people from teaching and doing their research even if at that very moment it was being used to massacre and destroy. [...] the radical students and I wanted to keep the labs on campus, on the principle that what is going to be going on anyway ought to be open and above board, so that people would know what is happening and act accordingly."
Noam Chomsky,Left,"Perhaps this is an obvious point, but the democratic postulate is that the media are independent and committed to discovering and reporting the truth, and that they do not merely reflect the world as powerful groups wish it to be perceived. Leaders of the media claim that their new choices rest on unbiased professional and objective criteria, and they have support for this contention in the intellectual community. If, however, the powerful are able to fix the premises of discourse, to decide what the general populace is allowed to see, hear, and think about, and to “manage” public opinion by regular propaganda campaigns, the standard view of how the system works is at serious odds with reality."
Noam Chomsky,Left,"Modern industrial civilization has developed within a certain system of convenient myths. The driving force of modern industrial civilization has been individual material gain, which is accepted as legitimate, even praiseworthy, on the grounds that private vices yield public benefits, in the classic formulation. Now, it has long been understood, very well, that a society that is based on this principle will destroy itself in time. It can only persist, with whatever suffering and injustice that it entails, as long as it is possible to pretend that the destructive forces that humans create are limited, that the world is an infinite resource, and that the world is an infinite garbage can. At this stage of history either one of two things is possible. Either the general population will take control of its own destiny and will concern itself with community interests, guided by values of solidarity, sympathy and concern for others, or alternatively there will be no destiny for anyone to control. As long as some specialized class is in a position of authority, it is going to set policy in the special interests that it serves. But the conditions of survival, let alone justice, require rational social planning in the interests of the community as a whole, and by now that means the global community. The question is whether privileged elite should dominate mass communication and should use this power as they tell us they must—namely to impose necessary illusions, to manipulate and deceive the stupid majority and remove them from the public arena. The question in brief, is whether democracy and freedom are values to be preserved or threats to be avoided. In this possibly terminal phase of human existence, democracy and freedom are more than values to be treasured; they may well be essential to survival."
Noam Chomsky,Left,"Walter Lippmann … described what he called “the manufacture of consent” as “a revolution” in “the practice of democracy”... And he said this was useful and necessary because “the common interests” - the general concerns of all people - “elude” the public. The public just isn't up to dealing with them. And they have to be the domain of what he called a ""specialized class"" … [Reinhold Niebuhr]'s view was that rationality belongs to the cool observer.  But because of the stupidity of the average man, he follows not reason, but faith.  And this naive faith requires necessary illusion, and emotionally potent oversimplifications, which are provided by the myth-maker to keep the ordinary person on course. It's not the case, as the naive might think, that indoctrination is inconsistent with democracy. Rather, as this whole line of thinkers observes, it is the essence of democracy. The point is that in a military state or a feudal state or what we would now call a totalitarian state, it doesn't much matter because you've got a bludgeon over their heads and you can control what they do. But when the state loses the bludgeon, when you can't control people by force, and when the voice of the people can be heard, you have this problem—it may make people so curious and so arrogant that they don't have the humility to submit to a civil rule [Clement Walker, 1661], and therefore you have to control what people think. And the standard way to do this is to resort to what in more honest days used to be called propaganda, manufacture of consent, creation of necessary illusion. Various ways of either marginalizing the public or reducing them to apathy in some fashion."
Noam Chomsky,Left,"States are violent institutions. The government of any country, including ours, represents some sort of domestic power structure, and it's usually violent. States are violent to the extent that they're powerful, that's roughly accurate."
Noam Chomsky,Left,"If you believe in freedom of speech, you believe in freedom of speech for views you don't like. Goebbels was in favor of freedom of speech for views he liked. So was Stalin. If you're in favor of freedom of speech, that means you're in favor of freedom of speech precisely for views you despise."
Noam Chomsky,Left,"We're not analyzing the media on Mars or in the eighteenth century or something like that. We're dealing with real human beings who are suffering and dying and being tortured and starving because of policies that we are involved in, we as citizens of democratic societies are directly involved in and are responsible for, and what the media are doing is ensuring that we do not act on our responsibilities, and that the interests of power are served, not the needs of the suffering people, and not even the needs of the American people who would be horrified if they realized the blood that's dripping from their hands because of the way they are allowing themselves to be deluded and manipulated by the system."
Noam Chomsky,Left,"Going back years, I am absolutely certain that I have taken far more extreme positions on people who deny the Holocaust than you have...Even to enter into the arena of debate on whether the Nazis carried out such atrocities is already to lose one's humanity."
Noam Chomsky,Left,"A study of the inter-American system published by the Royal Institute of International Affairs in London concluded that, while the US pays lip service to democracy, the real commitment is to ""private, capitalist enterprise."" When the rights of investors are threatened, democracy has to go; if these rights are safeguarded, killers and torturers will do just fine."
Noam Chomsky,Left,"Sectors of the doctrinal system serve to divert the unwashed masses and reinforce the basic social values: passivity, submissiveness to authority, the overriding virtue of greed and personal gain, lack of concern for others, fear of real or imagined enemies, etc. The goal is to keep the bewildered herd bewildered. It's unnecessary for them to trouble themselves with what's happening in the world. In fact, it's undesirable -- if they see too much of reality they may set themselves to change it."
Noam Chomsky,Left,"In the United States you're not allowed to talk about class differences. In fact, only two groups are allowed to be class-conscious in the United States. One of them is the business community, which is rabidly class-conscious. When you read their literature, it's all full of the danger of the masses and their rising power and how we have to defeat them. It's kind of vulgar, inverted Marxism. The other group is the high planning sectors of the government. They talk the same way — how we have to worry about the rising aspirations of the common man and the impoverished masses who are seeking to improve standards and harming the business climate. So they can be class-conscious. They have a job to do. But it's extremely important to make other people, the rest of the population, believe that there is no such thing as class. We're all just equal, we're all Americans, we live in harmony, we all work together, everything is great."
Noam Chomsky,Left,"The idea is to create a picture among the population that we're all one happy family. We're America, we have a national interest, we're working together. There are us nice workers, the firms in which we work and the government who works for us. We pick them — they're our servants. And that's all there is in the world — no other conflicts, no other categories of people, no further structure to the system beyond that. Certainly nothing like class. Unless you happen to be in the ruling class, in which case you're very well aware of it."
Noam Chomsky,Left,"Spectator sports make people more passive, because you're not doing them—you're watching somebody doing them."
Noam Chomsky,Left,"... the stupefying effect spectator sports have in making people passive, atomized, obedient nonparticipants—nonquestioning, easily controlled and easily disciplined"
Noam Chomsky,Left,"If you look at the American army’s counterinsurgency literature (a lot of which is now declassified), it begins with an analysis of the German experience in Europe, written with the cooperation of Nazi officers. Everything is described from the point of view of the Nazis-which techniques for controlling resistance worked, which ones didn’t. With barely a change, that was transmuted into American counterinsurgency literature."
Noam Chomsky,Left,"When British and then American troops moved into southern Italy, they simply reinstated the fascist order—the industrialists. But the big problem came when the troops got to the north, which the Italian resistance had already liberated. The place was functioning—industry was running. We had to dismantle all of that and restore the old order."
Noam Chomsky,Left,"Next we worked on destroying the democratic process. The left was obviously going to win the elections; it had a lot of prestige from the resistance, and the traditional conservative order had been discredited. The US wouldn't tolerate that."
Noam Chomsky,Left,"Ricardo's ""science"" was founded on the principle that capital is more or less immobile and labor highly mobile. We are enjoined today to worship the consequences of Ricardo's science, despite the fact that the assumptions on which they are based have been reversed: capital is highly mobile, and labor virtually immobile -- libertarian conservatives lead the way in rejecting Adam Smith's principle that ""free circulation of labor"" is a cornerstone of free trade, in keeping with their contempt for markets (except for the weak)."
Noam Chomsky,Left,"[The ""liberal media""] love to be denounced from the right, and the right loves to denounce them, because that makes them look like courageous defenders of freedom and independence while, in fact, they are imposing all of the presuppositions of the propaganda system."
Noam Chomsky,Left,"I don't say you're self-censoring - I'm sure you believe everything you're saying; but what I'm saying is, if you believed something different, you wouldn't be sitting where you're sitting."
Noam Chomsky,Left,"Reform is a word you always ought to watch out for. Like, when Mao started the Cultural Revolution it wasn't called a reform. Reform is a change that you're supposed to like. So as soon as you hear the word reform you can reach for your wallet and see who's lifting it. [...] Subsidy is another interesting word, kind of like reform. It's a subsidy if public funds are used for public purposes. That's called a subsidy. It's not called a subsidy when it goes to private wealth. That's reform or something."
Noam Chomsky,Left,"""Tough love"" is just the right phrase: love for the rich and privileged, tough for everyone else."
Noam Chomsky,Left,"There are no conservatives in the United States. The United States does not have a conservative tradition. The people who call themselves conservatives, like the Heritage Foundation or Gingrich, are believers in -- are radical statists. They believe in a powerful state, but a welfare state for the rich."
Noam Chomsky,Left,"The question of whether a computer is playing chess, or doing long division, or translating Chinese, is like the question of whether robots can murder or airplanes can fly -- or people; after all, the ""flight"" of the Olympic long jump champion is only an order of magnitude short of that of the chicken champion (so I'm told). These are questions of decision, not fact; decision as to whether to adopt a certain metaphoric extension of common usage."
Noam Chomsky,Left,"If Hitler had been a crook... We're very fortunate in the United States, we've never had a charismatic leader who weren't a gangster. Every one of them was a thug, or a robber, or something. Which is fine, then they don't cause a lot of trouble. If you get one who's honest, like Hitler, then you're in trouble - they just want power."
Noam Chomsky,Left,"A lot of sophistication has been developed about the utilization of machines for complex purposes, and it doesn't make sense not to use it if you can think of a good question to ask. Playing chess is about the dumbest question you can ask. But, if you want, maybe can make money that way, or something. In fact, what's going on with the chess is about as interesting as the fact that a front-end loader can lift more than an Olympics champion, weight lifter, or something. Probably so, but, you know, these are just not serious questions."
Noam Chomsky,Left,"As the most powerful state, the U.S. makes its own laws, using force and conducting economic warfare at will. It also threatens sanctions against countries that do not abide by its conveniently flexible notions of ""free trade."" In one important case, Washington has employed such threats with great effectiveness (and GATT approval) to force open Asian markets for U.S. tobacco exports and advertising, aimed primarily at the growing markets of women and children. The U.S. Agriculture Department has provided grants to tobacco firms to promote smoking overseas. Asian countries have attempted to conduct educational anti-smoking campaigns, but they are overwhelmed by the miracles of the market, reinforced by U.S. state power through the sanctions threat. Philip Morris, with an advertising and promotion budget of close to $9 billion in 1992, became China's largest advertiser. The effect of Reaganite sanction threats was to increase advertising and promotion of cigarette smoking (particularly U.S. brands) quite sharply in Japan, Taiwan, and South Korea, along with the use of these lethal substances. In South Korea, for example, the rate of growth in smoking more than tripled when markets for U.S. lethal drugs were opened in 1988. The Bush Administration extended the threats to Thailand, at exactly the same time that the ""war on drugs"" was declared; the media were kind enough to overlook the coincidence, even suppressing the outraged denunciations by the very conservative Surgeon-General. Oxford University epidemiologist Richard Peto estimates that among Chinese children under 20 today, 50 million will die of cigarette-related diseases, an achievement that ranks high even by 20th century standards."
Noam Chomsky,Left,"The most effective way to restrict democracy is to transfer decision-making from the public arena to unaccountable institutions: kings and princes, priestly castes, military juntas, party dictatorships, or modern corporations."
Noam Chomsky,Left,"No individual gets up and says, I'm going to take this because I want it. He'd say, I'm going to take it because it really belongs to me and it would be better for everyone if I had it. It's true of children fighting over toys. And it's true of governments going to war. Nobody is ever involved in an aggressive war; it's always a defensive war -- on both sides."
Noam Chomsky,Left,"The U.S. has always insisted on its right to use force, whatever international law requires, and whatever international institutions decide.… The U.S., of course, is not alone in these practices. Other states commonly act in much the same way, if not constrained by external or internal forces."
Noam Chomsky,Left,"If you look into the history of what is called the CIA, which means the US White House, its secret wars, clandestine warfare, the trail of drug production just follows. It started in France after the Second World War when the United States was essentially trying to reinstitute the traditional social order, to rehabilitate Fascist collaborators, wipe out the Resistance and destroy the unions and so on. The first thing they did was reconstitute the Mafia, as strikebreakers or for other such useful services. And the Mafia doesn't do it for fun, so there was a tradeoff: Essentially, they allowed them to reinstitute the heroin production system, which had been destroyed by the Fascists. The Fascists tended to run a pretty tight ship; they didn't want any competition, so they wiped out the Mafia. But the US reconstituted it, first in southern Italy, and then in southern France with the Corsican Mafia. That's where the famous French Connection comes from. That was the main heroin center for many years. Then US terrorist activities shifted over to Southeast Asia. If you want to carry out terrorist activities, you need local people to do it for you, and you also need secret money to pay for it, clandestine hidden money. Well, if you need to hire thugs and murderers with secret money, there aren't many options. One of them is the drug connection. The so-called Golden Triangle around Burma, Laos and Thailand became a big drug producing area with the help of the United States, as part of the secret wars against those populations."
Noam Chomsky,Left,"The ""corporatization of America"" during the past century has been an attack on democracy—and on markets, part of the shift from something resembling ""capitalism"" to the highly administered markets of the modern state/corporate era. A current variant is called ""minimizing the state,"" that is, transferring decision-making power from the public arena to somewhere else: ""to the people"" in the rhetoric of power; to private tyrannies, in the real world."
Noam Chomsky,Left,"Because they don't teach the truth about the world, schools have to rely on beating students over the head with propaganda about democracy. If schools were, in reality, democratic, there would be no need to bombard students with platitudes about democracy. They would simply act and behave democratically, and we know this does not happen. The more there is a need to talk about the ideals of democracy, the less democratic the system usually is."
Noam Chomsky,Left,"For example, take Suharto's Indonesia, which is a brutal, murderous state. I think Canada was supporting it all the way through, because it was making money out of the situation. And we can go around the world. Canada strongly supported the US invasion of South Vietnam, the whole of Indochina. In fact Canada became the per capita largest war exporter, trying to make as much money as it could from the murder of people in Indochina. In fact, I'd suggest that you look back at the comment by a well known and respected Canadian diplomat, I think his name was John Hughes, some years ago, who defined what he called the Canadian idea, namely ""we uphold our principles but we find a way around them"". Well, that's pretty accurate. And Canada is not unique in this respect, maybe a little more hypocritical."
Noam Chomsky,Left,"Every year thousands of people, mostly children and poor farmers, are killed in the Plain of Jars in Northern Laos, the scene of the heaviest bombing of civilian targets in history it appears, and arguably the most cruel: Washington's furious assault on a poor peasant society had little to do with its wars in the region. The worst period was from 1968, when Washington was compelled to undertake negotiations (under popular and business pressure), ending the regular bombardment of North Vietnam. Kissinger-Nixon then decided to shift the planes to bombardment of Laos and Cambodia. The deaths are from ""bombies,"" tiny anti-personnel weapons, far worse than land-mines: they are designed specifically to kill and maim, and have no effect on trucks, buildings, etc. The Plain was saturated with hundreds of millions of these criminal devices, which have a failure-to-explode rate of 20%-30% according to the manufacturer, Honeywell. The numbers suggest either remarkably poor quality control or a rational policy of murdering civilians by delayed action. These were only a fraction of the technology deployed, including advanced missiles to penetrate caves where families sought shelter. Current annual casualties from ""bombies"" are estimated from hundreds a year to ""an annual nationwide casualty rate of 20,000,"" more than half of them deaths, according to the veteran Asia reporter Barry Wain of the Wall Street Journal -- in its Asia edition. A conservative estimate, then, is that the crisis this year is approximately comparable to Kosovo, though deaths are far more highly concentrated among children -- over half, according to analyses reported by the Mennonite Central Committee, which has been working there since 1977 to alleviate the continuing atrocities. There have been efforts to publicize and deal with the humanitarian catastrophe. A British-based Mine Advisory Group (MAG) is trying to remove the lethal objects, but the US is ""conspicuously missing from the handful of Western organizations that have followed MAG,"" the British press reports, though it has finally agreed to train some Laotian civilians. The British press also reports, with some anger, the allegation of MAG specialists that the US refuses to provide them with ""render harmless procedures"" that would make their work ""a lot quicker and a lot safer."" These remain a state secret, as does the whole affair in the United States. The Bangkok press reports a very similar situation in Cambodia, particularly the Eastern region where US bombardment from early 1969 was most intense."
Noam Chomsky,Left,"Let me just put the whole thing in a kind of mundane level. Like, suppose you walk out in the street, this evening, and you see a crime being committed, you know, somebody is robbing someone else. Well, you have three choices. One choice is to try to stop it, maybe you call 911 or something. Another choice is to do nothing. A third choice is to pick up an assault rifle and kill 'em both, and kill a bystander at the same time. Well, suppose you do that, and somebody says, ""Well, you know, why did you do that?"" And you say, ""Look, I couldn't stand by and do nothing."" I mean, is that a response? If you can think of nothing that wouldn't do harm, then do nothing. And the same is true, magnified, in international affairs. Apart from the fact that there were things that could have been done."
Noam Chomsky,Left,"The United States is not going in there to save the oppressed. If we wanted to save the oppressed we could have supported the nonviolent movement instead of selling them out at Dayton. Any kind of turbulence in the Balkans is a threat to the interests of rich, privileged, powerful people. Therefore, any turbulence in the Balkans is called a crisis. The same circumstances would not be a crisis were they to occur in Sierra Leone, or Central America, or even Turkey. But in Europe, the heartland of American economic interests, any threat in the Balkans has the possibility of spilling over."
Noam Chomsky,Left,"If the principle is, ""Let's not get lethal substances out to the public"", the first one you'd go after is tobacco. The next one you'd go after is alcohol. Way down the list you'd get to cocaine, and sort of invisibly low you'd get to marijuana."
Noam Chomsky,Left,"Very commonly substances are criminalized because they're associated with what's called the dangerous classes, you know, poor people, or working people.… Actually, the peak of marijuana use was as I said, in the seventies, but that was rich kids, so you don't throw them in jail. And then it got seriously criminalized, you know, you really throw people in jail for it, when it was poor people."
Noam Chomsky,Left,"The criticisms were so tepid they were embarrassing. Almost nobody, including me, dared to criticize the U.S. attack on South Vietnam. That's like talking Hittite. Nobody even understood the words."
Noam Chomsky,Left,"Mass education was designed to turn independent farmers into docile, passive tools of production. That was its primary purpose. And don't think people didn't know it. They knew it and they fought against it. There was a lot of resistance to mass education for exactly that reason. It was also understood by the elites. Emerson once said something about how we're educating them to keep them from our throats. If you don't educate them, what we call ""education,"" they're going to take control -- ""they"" being what Alexander Hamilton called the ""great beast,"" namely the people. The anti-democratic thrust of opinion in what are called democratic societies is really ferocious. And for good reason. Because the freer the society gets, the more dangerous the great beast becomes and the more you have to be careful to cage it somehow."
Noam Chomsky,Left,"I compared some passages of articles of [Robert McNamara] in the late 1960s, speeches, on management and the necessity of management, how a well-managed society controlled from above was the ultimate in freedom. The reason is if you have really good management and everything's under control and people are told what to do, under those conditions, he said, man can maximize his potential. I just compared that with standard Leninist views on vanguard parties, which are about the same. About the only difference is that McNamara brought God in, and I suppose Lenin didn't bring God in. He brought Marx in."
Noam Chomsky,Left,"Thomas Jefferson, the leading Enlightenment figure in the United States, along with Benjamin Franklin, who took exactly the same view, argued that dependence will lead to ""subservience and venality"", and will ""suffocate[s] the germs of virtue"". And remember, by dependence he meant wage labor, which was considered an abomination under classical liberal principles."
Noam Chomsky,Left,"Newt Gingrich … quite demonstrably is the leading welfare freak in the country.… His own district in Cobb County Georgia gets more federal subsidies than any suburban county in the country, outside of the federal system itself."
Noam Chomsky,Left,"By comparative standards, the country is undertaxed. And it's also regressively taxed, the tax burden falls mostly on the poor. What we need is a progressive tax system, of, incidentally, the kind that Jefferson advocated. You know, traditional libertarians, like Jefferson, advocated sharply progressive taxes, because they wanted a system of relative equality, knowing that that's a prerequisite for democracy. Jefferson specifically advocated it. We don't have it anymore, it's sort of there in legislation but it's gone. What we need is different social policies. And social policies which ought to be funded by the people who are going to benefit from it, that's the general public. So we'd be a lot better off if we were higher taxed, and it was used for proper purposes. And we know what those are. I mean, for example, for women taking care of children. You know, it makes sense to pay them for that work, they're doing important work for the society. [applause] And they should be paid for it, but that requires tax payments. And the same is true about protection of the environment."
Noam Chomsky,Left,"Yet to enter approved memory is the ""finale"" described in the official Air Force history, a 1000-plane raid on civilian targets organized by General ""Hap"" Arnold to celebrate the war's end, five days after Nagasaki. According to survivors, leaflets were dropped among the bombs announcing the surrender."
Noam Chomsky,Left,"The doves are pleased that [Robert McNamara] finally concedes that ""our blundering efforts to do good"" turned into a ""dangerous mistake,"" as Anthony Lewis put the matter long after corporate America had determined that the game was not worth the candle. As the doves had by then come to recognize, although we had pursued aims that were ""noble"" and ""motivated by the loftiest intentions,"" they were nevertheless ""illusory"" and it ended up as a ""failed crusade"" (Stanley Karnow). McNamara has now ""paid his debt,"" Theodore Draper writes in the New York Review, finally recognizing that ""The Vietnam War peculiarly demanded a hardheaded assessment of what it was worth in the national interest of the United States,"" just as the invasion of Afghanistan ""peculiarly demanded"" such an assessment in the Kremlin. Draper is outraged by the ""vitriolic and protracted campaign"" against McNamara by the New York Times. ""The case against McNamara largely hinges on the premise that he did not express his doubts"" about ""whether American troops should continue to die"" early on, but the Times did not either (though Draper did, he proudly reminds us). Could there be another question?"
Noam Chomsky,Left,The responsibility of the writer as a moral agent is to try to bring the truth about matters of human significance to an audience that can do something about them.
Noam Chomsky,Left,"Property rights are not like other rights, contrary to what Madison and a lot of modern political theory says. If I have the right to free speech, it doesn't interfere with your right to free speech. But if I have property, that interferes with your right to have that property, you don't have it, I have it. So the right to property is very different from the right to freedom of speech. This is often put very misleadingly about rights of property; property has no right. But if we just make sense out of this, maybe there is a right to property, one could debate that, but it's very different from other rights."
Noam Chomsky,Left,"The most extreme types, like Murray Rothbard, are at least honest. They'd like to eliminate highway taxes because they force you to pay for a road you may never drive on. As an alternative, they suggest that if you and I want to get somewhere, we should build a road there and charge people tolls on it. Just try generalizing that. Such a society couldn't survive, and even if it could, it would be so full of terror and hate that any human being would prefer to live in hell."
Noam Chomsky,Left,"The smart way to keep people passive and obedient is to strictly limit the spectrum of acceptable opinion, but allow very lively debate within that spectrum - even encourage the more critical and dissident views. That gives people the sense that there's free thinking going on, while all the time the presuppositions of the system are being reinforced by the limits put on the range of the debate."
Noam Chomsky,Left,"I should say that when people talk about capitalism it's a bit of a joke. There's no such thing. No country, no business class, has ever been willing to subject itself to the free market, free market discipline. Free markets are for others. Like, the Third World is the Third World because they had free markets rammed down their throat. Meanwhile, the enlightened states, England, the United States, others, resorted to massive state intervention to protect private power, and still do. That's right up to the present. I mean, the Reagan administration for example was the most protectionist in post-war American history. Virtually the entire dynamic economy in the United States is based crucially on state initiative and intervention: computers, the internet, telecommunication, automation, pharmaceutical, you just name it. Run through it, and you find massive ripoffs of the public, meaning, a system in which under one guise or another the public pays the costs and takes the risks, and profit is privatized. That's very remote from a free market. Free market is like what India had to suffer for a couple hundred years, and most of the rest of the Third World."
Noam Chomsky,Left,"...the incompetence of intelligence agencies is legendary.… Just take Vietnam.… In the late 1940s, the United States was kind of unclear about which side to support.… In the case of Indochina, for whatever reason, they decided at one point to support France in its reconquest of Indochina. Well, at that point, essentially orders went to the U.S. intelligence communities, CIA and others, to demonstrate … that Ho Chi Minh and the Viet Minh were agents of either the Russians or the Chinese.… They couldn't do it. They couldn't find anything.… The conclusion in the State Department was, ""OK, this proves that they're agents of the international communist conspiracy. Ho Chi Minh is such a loyal slave of""—pick it, Mao or Stalin—""that he doesn't even need orders.""."
Noam Chomsky,Left,"Israel invaded Lebanon in 1982 with the intention of destroying secular Palestinian nationalism.… OK, they did destroy the secular PLO and instead what they got was an Islamic fundamentalist movement that they couldn't control, that drove them out of most of Lebanon. What did they do next? They did exactly the same thing in the West Bank."
Noam Chomsky,Left,"In Somalia, we know exactly what they had to gain because they told us. The chairman of the Joint Chiefs, Colin Powell, described this as the best public relations operation of the Pentagon that he could imagine. His picture, which I think is plausible, is that there was a problem about raising the Pentagon budget, and they needed something that would be, look like a kind of a cakewalk, which would give a lot of prestige to the Pentagon. Somalia looked easy. Let's look back at the background. For years, the United States had supported a really brutal dictator, who had just devastated the country, and was finally kicked out. After he's kicked out, it was 1990, the country sank into total chaos and disaster, with starvation and warfare and all kind of horrible misery. The United States refused to, certainly to pay reparations, but even to look. By the middle of 1992, it was beginning to ease. The fighting was dying down, food supplies were beginning to get in, the Red Cross was getting in, roughly 80% of their supplies they said. There was a harvest on the way. It looked like it was finally sort of settling down. At that point, all of a sudden, George Bush announced that he had been watching these heartbreaking pictures on television, on Thanksgiving, and we had to do something, we had to send in humanitarian aid. The Marines landed, in a landing which was so comical, that even the media couldn't keep a straight face. Take a look at the reports of the landing of the Marines, it must've been the first week of December 1992. They had planned a night, there was nothing that was going on, but they planned a night landing, so you could show off all the fancy new night vision equipment and so on. Of course they had called the television stations, because what's the point of a PR operation for the Pentagon if there's no one to look for it. So the television stations were all there, with their bright lights and that sort of thing, and as the Marines were coming ashore they were blinded by the television light. So they had to send people out to get the cameramen to turn off the lights, so they could land with their fancy new equipment. As I say, even the media could not keep a straight face on this one, and they reported it pretty accurately. Also reported the PR aspect. Well the idea was, you could get some nice shots of Marine colonels handing out peanut butter sandwiches to starving refugees, and that'd all look great. And so it looked for a couple of weeks, until things started to get unpleasant. As things started to get unpleasant, the United States responded with what's called the Powell Doctrine. The United States has an unusual military doctrine, it's one of the reasons why the U.S. is generally disqualified from peace keeping operations that involve civilians, again, this has to do with sovereignty. U.S. military doctrine is that U.S. soldiers are not permitted to come under any threat. That's not true for other countries. So countries like, say, Canada, the Fiji Islands, Pakistan, Norway, their soldiers are coming under threat all the time. The peace keepers in southern Lebanon for example, are being attacked by Israeli soldiers all the time, and have suffered plenty of casualties, and they don't like it. But U.S. soldiers are not permitted to come under any threat, so when Somali teenagers started shaking fists at them, and more, they came back with massive fire power, and that led to a massacre. According to the U.S., I don't know the actual numbers, but according to U.S. government, about 7 to 10 thousand Somali civilians were killed before this was over. There's a close analysis of all of this by Alex de Waal, who's one of the world's leading specialists on African famine and relief, altogether academic specialist. His estimate is that the number of people saved by the intervention and the number killed by the intervention was approximately in the same ballpark. That's Somalia. That's what's given as a stellar example of the humanitarian intervention."
Noam Chomsky,Left,"Actually, on humanitarian intervention in general, I guess my view is not unlike the view that was attributed to Gandhi, accurately or not, when he was supposedly asked what he thought about western civilization. He is supposed to have said that he thought it would be a good idea. Similarly, humanitarian intervention would be a good idea, in principle. [...] can we expect that with the existing power structure, distribution of power in the world, there will be humanitarian intervention? There is nothing new about the question, of course. The idea of humanitarian intervention goes back to the days of the Concert of Europe a century ago - in the 19th Century there was lots of talk about civilizing missions and interventions that would do good things. The US intervened in the Philippines to ""uplift and christianize"" the backward people, killing a couple of hundred thousand of them and destroying the place. The same thing happened in Haiti, the same thing happened with other countries. We cannot disregard the historical record and talk about an ideal world. It makes sense to work towards a better world, but it doesn't make any sense to have illusions about what the real world is."
Noam Chomsky,Left,"Remember, every business firm, like even a mom and pop grocery store, is a market imperfection. A firm is defined in economic theory as a market imperfection introduced to deal with transaction costs. And the sort of theory is that the imperfections, the firms, are kinda like little islands in a free market sea. But the problem with that is that the sea doesn't remotely resemble a free market, and the islands are bigger than the sea; so that raises some questions about the picture. But these market imperfections, like a firm, or a transnational corporation, or a strategic alliance among them, this is a form of administering interchanges. And there's a real question about whether we want to accept that. Why, for example, should the international socioeconomic system, or for that matter our own society, be in the hands of unaccountable private tyrannies? That's a decision, it's not a law of nature."
Noam Chomsky,Left,"The most important victory, in fact, was in Indonesia. In 1965 there was a military coup, which instantly carried out a Rwanda-style slaughter, and it's not an exaggeration. Rwanda-style slaughter, which wiped out the only mass-based political organization, killed mostly landless peasants, and instituted a brutal and murderous regime. There was total euphoria in the United States. So happy, they couldn't contain it. When you read the press, it was just ecstatic. It's kind of suppressed now because it doesn't look pretty in retrospect, but it was understood. Years later, McGeorge Bundy, who was the national security advisor, recognized that, he said, and I think he's right, the U.S. should have stopped the war in Vietnam in 1965, because we basically won. By 1965 South Vietnam was largely destroyed, most of the rest was going to quickly be destroyed, and we had saved the major prize, Indonesia. The rot wasn't going to spread to Indonesia after this delightful Rwanda-style slaughter."
Noam Chomsky,Left,"Stability means we run it. There are countries that are very stable. Cuba is stable, but that’s not called stability."
Noam Chomsky,Left,"The Oslo agreements did represent a shift in U.S.-Israeli policy. Both states had by then come to recognize that it is a mistake to use the Israel Defense Forces to run the territories. It is much wiser to resort to the traditional colonial pattern of relying on local clients to control the subject population, in the manner of the British in India, South Africa under apartheid, the U.S. in Central America, and other classic cases. That is the assigned role of the Palestinian Authority, which like its predecessors, has to follow a delicate path: it must maintain some credibility among the population, while serving as a second oppressor, both militarily and economically, in coordination with the primary power centers that retain ultimate control. The long-term goal of the Oslo process was described accurately by Shlomo Ben-Ami shortly before he joined the Barak government: it is to establish a condition of permanent neo-colonialist dependency. The mechanisms have been spelled out explicitly in the successive interim agreements; and more important, implemented on the ground."
Noam Chomsky,Left,"Let's go back to our point of departure: the contested issues of freedom and rights, hence sovereignty, insofar as it's to be valued. Do they inhere in persons of flesh and blood or … in abstract constructions like corporations, or capital, or states? In the past century the idea that such entities have special rights, over and above persons, has been strongly advocated. The most prominent examples are Bolshevism, fascism, and private corporatism…. Two of these systems have collapsed. The third is alive and flourishing under the banner TINA—There Is No Alternative to the emerging system of state corporate mercantilism disguised with various mantras like globalization and free trade."
Noam Chomsky,Left,"The Ottoman Empire was an ugly affair, but they had the right idea. The rulers in Turkey were fortunately so corrupt that they left people alone pretty much -- were mostly interested in robbing them -- and they left them alone to run their own affairs, and their own regions and their own communities with a lot of local self determination."
Noam Chomsky,Left,"Take the Kyoto Protocol. Destruction of the environment is not only rational; it's exactly what you're taught to do in college. If you take an economics or a political science course, you're taught that humans are supposed to be rational wealth accumulators, each acting as an individual to maximize his own wealth in the market. The market is regarded as democratic because everybody has a vote. Of course, some have more votes than others because your votes depend on the number of dollars you have, but everybody participates and therefore it's called democratic. Well, suppose that we believe what we are taught. It follows that if there are dollars to be made, you destroy the environment. The reason is elementary. The people who are going to be harmed by this are your grandchildren, and they don't have any votes in the market. Their interests are worth zero. Anybody that pays attention to their grandchildren's interests is being irrational, because what you're supposed to do is maximize your own interests, measured by wealth, right now. Nothing else matters. So destroying the environment and militarizing outer space are rational policies, but within a framework of institutional lunacy. If you accept the institutional lunacy, then the policies are rational."
Noam Chomsky,Left,"The September 11 attacks were major atrocities. In terms of number of victims they do not reach the level of many others, for example, Clinton's bombing of the Sudan with no credible pretext, destroying half its pharmaceutical supplies and probably killing tens of thousands of people (no one knows, because the US blocked an inquiry at the UN and no one cares to pursue it). Not to speak of much worse cases, which easily come to mind. But that this was a horrendous crime is not in doubt. The primary victims, as usual, were working people: janitors, secretaries, firemen, etc. It is likely to prove to be a crushing blow to Palestinians and other poor and oppressed people. It is also likely to lead to harsh security controls, with many possible ramifications for undermining civil liberties and internal freedom."
Noam Chomsky,Left,"I think we can be reasonably confident that if the American population had the slightest idea of what is being done in their name, they would be utterly appalled."
Noam Chomsky,Left,"Right after September 11, the U.S. Trade Representative, Robert Zoellick, said the first thing that had to be done to combat terrorism was to pass fast-track. Now that should really make Osama bin Laden tremble in his boots - that the President has Kremlin-style authority to sign economic agreements."
Noam Chomsky,Left,"It is only in folk tales, children's stories, and the journals of intellectual opinion that power is used wisely and well to destroy evil. The real world teaches very different lessons, and it takes willful and dedicated ignorance to fail to perceive them."
Noam Chomsky,Left,"Nothing can justify crimes such as those of September 11, but we can think of the United States as an ""innocent victim"" only if we adopt the convenient path of ignoring the record of its actions and those of its allies, which are, after all, hardly a secret."
Noam Chomsky,Left,"Wanton killing of innocent civilians is terrorism, not a ""war against terrorism."""
Noam Chomsky,Left,The list of the states that have joined the coalition against terror is quite impressive. They have a characteristic in common. They are certainly among the leading terrorist states in the world. And they happen to be led by the world champion.
Noam Chomsky,Left,"It was a historic event. Not unfortunately because of its scale. Unpleasant to think about, but in terms of the scale it’s not that unusual. I did say it’s the worst, probably the worst instant human toll of any crime. And that may be true. But there are terrorist crimes with effects a bit more drawn out that are more extreme, unfortunately. Nevertheless, it’s a historic event because there was a change. The change was the direction in which the guns were pointing. That’s new. Radically new."
Noam Chomsky,Left,"What will happen we don’t know, but plans are being made and programs implemented on the assumption that they may lead to the death of several million people in the next couple of weeks. Very casually, with no comment, no particular thought about it, that’s just kind of normal, here, and in a good part of Europe."
Noam Chomsky,Left,"We cannot say much about human affairs with any confidence, but sometimes it is possible. We can, for example, be fairly confident that either there will be a world without war, or there won't be a world—at least, a world inhabited by creatures other than bacteria and beetles, with some scattering of others."
Noam Chomsky,Left,"Moral equivalence is a term of propaganda that was invented to try to prevent us from looking at the acts for which we are responsible. ...There is no such notion. There are many different dimensions and criteria. For example, there's no moral equivalence between the bombing of the World Trade Center and the destruction of Nicaragua or of El Salvador, of Guatemala. The latter were far worse, by any criterion. So there's no moral equivalence."
Noam Chomsky,Left,"Remember, the U.S. is a powerful state, it's not like Libya. If Libya wants to carry out terrorist acts, they hire Carlos the Jackal or something. The United States hires terrorist states."
Noam Chomsky,Left,"[Israel's military occupation is] in gross violation of international law and has been from the outset. And that much, at least, is fully recognized, even by the United States, which has overwhelming and, as I said, unilateral responsibility for these crimes. So George Bush No. 1, when he was the U.N. ambassador, back in 1971, he officially reiterated Washington's condemnation of Israel's actions in the occupied territories. He happened to be referring specifically to occupied Jerusalem. In his words, actions in violation of the provisions of international law governing the obligations of an occupying power, namely Israel. He criticized Israel's failure ""to acknowledge its obligations under the Fourth Geneva Convention as well as its actions which are contrary to the letter and spirit of this Convention."" [...] However, by that time, late 1971, a divergence was developing, between official policy and practice. The fact of the matter is that by then, by late 1971, the United States was already providing the means to implement the violations that Ambassador Bush deplored. [...] on December 5th [2001], there had been an important international conference, called in Switzerland, on the 4th Geneva Convention. Switzerland is the state that's responsible for monitoring and controlling the implementation of them. The European Union all attended, even Britain, which is virtually a U.S. attack dog these days. They attended. A hundred and fourteen countries all together, the parties to the Geneva Convention. They had an official declaration, which condemned the settlements in the occupied territories as illegal, urged Israel to end its breaches of the Geneva Convention, some ""grave breaches,"" including willful killing, torture, unlawful deportation, unlawful depriving of the rights of fair and regular trial, extensive destruction and appropriation of property not justified by military necessity and carried out unlawfully and wantonly. Grave breaches of the Geneva Convention, that's a serious term, that means serious war crimes. The United States is one of the high contracting parties to the Geneva Convention, therefore it is obligated, by its domestic law and highest commitments, to prosecute the perpetrators of grave breaches of the conventions. That includes its own leaders. Until the United States prosecutes its own leaders, it is guilty of grave breaches of the Geneva Convention, that means war crimes. And it's worth remembering the context. It is not any old convention. These are the conventions established to criminalize the practices of the Nazis, right after the Second World War. What was the U.S. reaction to the meeting in Geneva? The U.S. boycotted the meeting... and that has the usual consequence, it means the meeting is null and void, silence in the media."
Noam Chomsky,Left,"Prophet just means intellectual. They were people giving geopolitical analysis, moral lessons, that sort of thing. We call them intellectuals today. There were the people we honor as prophets, there were the people we condemn as false prophets. But if you look at the biblical record, at the time, it was the other way around. The flatterers of the Court of King Ahab were the ones who were honored. The ones we call prophets were driven into the desert and imprisoned."
Noam Chomsky,Left,"[Q: do you think the Palestinian suicide bombers are freedom fighters or terrorists?] They're terrorists - they're both, actually. They're trying to fight for freedom, but doing it in a totally unacceptable immoral way. Of course they're terrorists. And there's been Palestinian terrorism all the way through. I have always opposed it, I oppose it now. But it's very small as compared with the US-backed Israeli terrorism. Quite typically, violence reflects the means of violence. It's not unusual. State terror is almost always much more extreme than retail terror, and this is no exception."
Noam Chomsky,Left,"The Americans didn't even think about the outcome of the bombing, because the Sudanese were so far below contempt as to be not worth thinking about. Suppose I walk down the sidewalk in Cambridge and, without a second thought, step on an ant. That would mean that I regard the ant as beneath contempt, and that's morally worse than if I purposely killed that ant."
Noam Chomsky,Left,"I choose to live in what I think is the greatest country in the world, which is committing horrendous terrorist acts and should stop."
Noam Chomsky,Left,"September 11 shocked many Americans into an awareness that they had better pay much closer attention to what the US government does in the world and how it is perceived. Many issues have been opened for discussion that were not on the agenda before. That's all to the good. It is also the merest sanity, if we hope to reduce the likelihood of future atrocities. It may be comforting to pretend that our enemies ""hate our freedoms,"" as President Bush stated, but it is hardly wise to ignore the real world, which conveys different lessons. The president is not the first to ask: ""Why do they hate us?"" In a staff discussion 44 years ago, President Eisenhower described ""the campaign of hatred against us [in the Arab world], not by the governments but by the people"". His National Security Council outlined the basic reasons: the US supports corrupt and oppressive governments and is ""opposing political or economic progress"" because of its interest in controlling the oil resources of the region. ...What they hate is official policies that deny them freedoms to which they aspire."
Noam Chomsky,Left,"[Q: isn't there a certain calculus that someone who is sitting in the shoes of a Condoleezza Rice can make, that they're responsible for the best outcome for American citizens, and there's an upside of going into Iraq which is we get one of the greatest material possessions in world's history, and there're downsides which are: we upset the international community, and maybe there's more terrorism. Couldn't you envision a calculus where they say, sure, that's the reason, and it's a good reason, let's do it. What's the flaw in the calculus?] Oh, I think that's exactly their calculus. But then we ought to just be honest and say, ""Look, we're a bunch of Nazis."" So fine, let's just drop all the discussion, we save a lot of trees, we can throw out the newspapers and most of the scholarly literature, and just come out, state it straight, and tell the truth: we'll do whatever we want because we think we're going to gain by it. And incidentally, it's not American citizens who'll gain. They don't gain by this. It's narrow sectors of domestic power that the administration is serving with quite unusual dedication..."
Noam Chomsky,Left,"Before there were any suicide bombers, it was also reported by the same sources that Saddam Hussein was giving $10,000 to the families of anyone who was killed by Israeli atrocities, and there were plenty of them. Well, should he've been doing that? So let's take the first month of the current intifada. I'm just relying now on IDF sources. What they say is, that in the first few days of the intifada, the Israeli army fired a million bullets. One of the high military officers said 'that means one bullet for every child'. Within the first month of the intifada, they killed about 70 people. Using U.S. helicopters, and in fact Clinton shipped new helicopters to Israel as soon as they started using them against civilians. That's just the first month. And it goes on, no suicide bombers. At the time, it was reported that Saddam Hussein was giving $10,000 to every family. Well, is that supporting terror? It seems to me, sending helicopters to Israel when they're using them to attack apartment complexes, that's supporting terror."
Noam Chomsky,Left,"Armies usually aren’t interested in wars. They like preparation for war. But they have an understandable reluctance to fight a war. So I think if you look at, at least the history that I know, it’s usually the civilian leadership who is pushing the military to do something. It was the case in the early days of the Vietnam War."
Noam Chomsky,Left,"...another thing you sometimes find in non-literate cultures is development of the most extraordinary linguistic systems: often there's tremendous sophistication about language, and people play all sorts of games with language. So there are puberty rites where people who go through the same initiation period develop their own language that's usually some modification of the actual language, but with quite complex mental operations differentiating it -- then that's theirs for the rest of their lives, and not other people's. And what all these things look like is that people just want to use their intelligence somehow, and if you don't have a lot of technology and so on, you do other things. Well, in our society, we have things that you might use your intelligence on, like politics, but people really can't get involved in them in a very serious way -- so what they do is they put their minds into other things, such as sports. You're trained to be obedient; you don't have an interesting job; there's no work around for you that's creative; in the cultural environment you're a passive observer of usually pretty tawdry stuff; political and social life are out of your range, they're in the hands of the rich folks. So what's left? Well, one thing that's left is sports -- so you put a lot of the intelligence and the thought and the self-confidence into that. And I suppose that's also one of the basic functions it serves in the society in general: it occupies the population, and keeps them from trying to get involved with things that really matter."
Noam Chomsky,Left,"If you take a poll among U.S. intellectuals, support for bombing Afghanistan is just overwhelming, but how many of them think that you should bomb Washington because of the U.S. war against Nicaragua, let's say, or Cuba or Turkey, or anyone else? Now if anyone were to suggest this, they'd be considered insane, but why? I mean, if one is right, why is the other wrong? When you try to get someone to talk about this question, they just won't try. They can't comprehend what your question is, because you can't comprehend that we should apply to ourselves the standards that you apply to others. That is incomprehensible! There couldn't be a moral principle more elementary... There's a famous definition in the Gospels of the hypocrite. The hypocrite is the person who refuses to apply to himself the standards that he applies to others. By that standard, the entire commentary and discussion of the so-called ""war on terror"" is pure hypocrisy, virtually without exception. Can anybody understand that? No, can't understand that. But that's not so unusual... I know it was true in Germany and France and everywhere else. It's just standard. It's ugly, but it's standard."
Noam Chomsky,Left,"We certainly shouldn't trust to deal with [Saddam Hussein] anyone who supported him through his worst crimes, that's insane."
Noam Chomsky,Left,"There's one white powder which is by far the most lethal known. It's called sugar. If you look at the history of imperialism, a lot of it has to do with that. A lot of the imperial conquest, say in the Caribbean, set up a kind of a network... The Caribbean back in the 18th century was a soft drug producer: sugar, rum, tobacco, chocolate. And in order to do it, they had to enslave Africans, and it was done largely to pacify working people in England who were being driven into awful circumstances by the early industrial revolution. That's why so many wars took place around the Caribbean."
Noam Chomsky,Left,"Take any country that has laws against hate crimes, inspiring hatred and genocide and so on. The first thing they would do is ban the Old Testament. There's nothing like it in the literary canon that exalts genocide, to that extent. And it's not a joke either. Like where I live, New England, the people who liberated it from the native scourge were religious fundamentalist lunatics, who came waving the holy book, declaring themselves to be the children of Israel who are killing the Amalekites, like God told them."
Noam Chomsky,Left,"[Q: when do you think is it right to intervene in the affairs of another nation?] I think there are conditions under which that would be possible. One basic condition is that nonviolent -- you mean violent intervention? -- that nonviolent means have been exhausted. That's one condition. A second condition is that the people of the country in which you're intervening support the intervention. Under those conditions -- and you can think of others -- intervention would be justified. However, we don't ever apply those conditions."
Noam Chomsky,Left,There's a good reason why nobody studies history. It just teaches you too much.
Noam Chomsky,Left,"To gain control over this resource, and have probably military bases there, is a tremendous achievement for world control. You read counter-arguments to this, and they're worth looking at. So it's argued that it can't be true, because the costs of reconstruction are going to be greater than the profits that will be made. Well, maybe that's true, maybe it isn't, but it's totally irrelevant. And the reason is because the costs of reconstruction are going to be paid by the taxpayer, by you, and the profits are going to go right into the pockets of the energy corporations. So yeah, it doesn't matter how they balance out, it's just another taxpayer subsidy to the rich."
Noam Chomsky,Left,"[Q: do you believe that a nation should suffer a detrimental cost in order to compensate for wrongs committed by the governors of that nations, or by segments of that nation in the past?] Suppose you're living under a dictatorship, and the dictators carry out some horrendous acts. So you're living in Stalinist Russia, let's say, and Stalin carries out horrible crimes. Are the people of Russia responsible for those crimes? Well, to only a very limited extent, because living under a brutal, harsh, terrorist regime, there isn't very much they can do about it. There's something they can do, and to the extent that you can do something, you're responsible for what happens. Suppose you're living in a free, democratic society, with lots of privilege, enormous, incomparable freedoms, and the government carries out violent, brutal acts. Are you responsible for it? Yeah, a lot more responsible, because there's a lot that you can do about it. If you share responsibility in criminal acts, you are liable for the consequences."
Noam Chomsky,Left,"In September [2002] the government announced the national security strategy. That is not completely without precedent, but it is quite new as a formulation of state policy. What is stated is that we are tearing the entire system of the international law to shreds, the end of UN charter, and that we are going to carry out an aggressive war - which we will call ""preventive"" - and at any time we choose, and that we will rule the world by force. In addition, we will assure that there is never any challenge to our domination because we are so overwhelmingly powerful in military force that we will simply crush any potential challenge. That caused shudders around the world, including the foreign policy elite at home which was appalled by this. It is not that things like that haven't been heard in the past. Of course they had, but it had never been formulated as an official national policy. I suspect you will have to go back to Hitler to find an analogy to that. Now, when you propose new norms in the international behavior and new policies you have to illustrate it, you have to get people to understand that you mean it. Also you have to have what a Harvard historian called an ""exemplary war"", a war of example, which shows that we really mean what we say. And we have to choose the right target. The target has to have several properties. First it has to be completely defenseless. No one would attack anybody who might be able to defend themselves, that would be not prudent. Iraq meets that perfectly... And secondly, it has to be important. So there will be no point invading Burundi, for example. It has to be a country worthwhile controlling, owning, and Iraq has that property too."
Noam Chomsky,Left,"Somebody's paying the corporations that destroyed Iraq and the corporations that are rebuilding it. They're getting paid by the American taxpayer in both cases. So we pay them to destroy the country, and then we pay them to rebuild it."
Noam Chomsky,Left,"The US and Israel have demanded further that Palestinians not only recognize Israel's rights as a state in the international system, but that they also recognize Israel's abstract ""right to exist,"" a concept that has no place in international law or diplomacy, and a right claimed by no one. In effect, the US and Israel are demanding that Palestinians not only recognize Israel in the normal fashion of interstate relations, but also formally accept the legitimacy of their expulsion from their own land. They cannot be expected to accept that, just as Mexico does not grant the US the ""right to exist"" on half of Mexico's territory, gained by conquest."
Noam Chomsky,Left,"After September 11th I had tons of interviews everywhere, except the United States of course, and often it was national radio and TV. A couple of times it turned out to be Irish television and BBC back to back, and the difference in reaction was startling. If I said this much on Irish TV, OK, discussion over, everyone understands what I'm talking about. You try to say it on BBC, you have to go on for like about an hour to explain to them what you mean. The Irish sea is a chasm, and it just depends who's been holding the whip for 800 years and who's been under it for 800 years."
Noam Chomsky,Left,"Let us turn now to the most elementary principle of just war theory, universality. Those who cannot accept this principle should have the decency to keep silent about matters of right and wrong, or just war. If we can rise to this level, some obvious questions arise: for example, have Cuba and Nicaragua been entitled to set off bombs in Washington, New York, and Miami in self-defense against ongoing terrorist attack? Particularly so when the perpetrators are well known and act with complete impunity, sometimes in brazen defiance of the highest international authorities, so that the cases are far clearer than Afghanistan? If not, why not?"
Noam Chomsky,Left,"Those who want to face their responsibilities with a genuine commitment to democracy and freedom - even to decent survival - should recognize the barriers that stand in the way. In violent states these are not concealed. In more democratic societies barriers are more subtle. While methods differ sharply from more brutal to more free societies, the goals are in many ways similar: to ensure that the ""great beast,"" as Alexander Hamilton called the people, does not stray from its proper confines."
Noam Chomsky,Left,"The whole question of recognizing the right of a state to exist was invented solely for Israel. People, on the other hand, have a right to exist. So the people who live on the land - Israelis and Palestinians - have a right to live in security and peace."
Noam Chomsky,Left,"Even if [9/11 conspiracy theories] were true, which is extremely unlikely, who cares? It doesn't have any significance. It's a little bit like the huge energy that's put out on trying to figure out who killed John F. Kennedy. Who knows? And who cares? Plenty of people get killed all the time, why does it matter that one of them happened to be John F. Kennedy? If there was some reason to believe that there was a high level conspiracy, it might be interesting. But the evidence against that is just overwhelming. And after that, if it happened to be a jealous husband, or the mafia, or someone else, what difference does it make? It's just taking energy away from serious issues onto ones that don't matter. And I think the same is true here; it's my personal opinion."
Noam Chomsky,Left,"On May 27, the New York Times published one of the most incredible sentences I’ve ever seen. They ran an article about the Nixon-Kissinger interchanges. Kissinger fought very hard through the courts to try to prevent it, but the courts permitted it. You read through it, and you see the following statement embedded in it. Nixon at one point informs Kissinger, his right-hand Eichmann, that he wanted bombing of Cambodia. And Kissinger loyally transmits the order to the Pentagon to carry out ""a massive bombing campaign in Cambodia. Anything that flies on anything that moves."" That is the most explicit call for what we call genocide when other people do it that I’ve ever seen in the historical record. Right at this moment there is a prosecution of Milošević going on in the international tribunal, and the prosecutors are kind of hampered because they can’t find direct orders, or a direct connection even, linking Milošević to any atrocities on the ground. Suppose they found a statement like this. Suppose a document came out from Milošević saying, ""Reduce Kosovo to rubble. Anything that flies on anything that moves."" They would be overjoyed. The trial would be over. He would be sent away for multiple life sentences - if it was a U.S. trial, immediately the electric chair."
Noam Chomsky,Left,"I mean, what's the elections? You know, two guys, same background, wealth, political influence, went to the same elite university, joined the same secret society where you're trained to be a ruler - they both can run because they're financed by the same corporate institutions. At the Democratic Convention, Barack Obama said, 'only in this country, only in America, could someone like me appear here.' Well, in some other countries, people much poorer than him would not only talk at the convention - they'd be elected president. Take Lula. The president of Brazil is a guy with a peasant background, a union organizer, never went to school, he's the president of the second-biggest country in the hemisphere. Only in America? I mean, there they actually have elections where you can choose somebody from your own ranks. With different policies. That's inconceivable in the United States."
Noam Chomsky,Left,"Clinton, Kennedy, they all carried out mass murder, but they didn't think that that was what they were doing - nor does Bush. You know, they were defending justice and democracy from greater evils. And in fact I think you'd find it hard to discover a mass murderer in history who didn't think that."
Noam Chomsky,Left,"You can find things in the traditional religions which are very benign and decent and wonderful and so on, but I mean, the Bible is probably the most genocidal book in the literary canon. The God of the Bible - not only did He order His chosen people to carry out literal genocide - I mean, wipe out every Amalekite to the last man, woman, child, and, you know, donkey and so on, because hundreds of years ago they got in your way when you were trying to cross the desert - not only did He do things like that, but, after all, the God of the Bible was ready to destroy every living creature on earth because some humans irritated Him. That's the story of Noah. I mean, that's beyond genocide - you don't know how to describe this creature. Somebody offended Him, and He was going to destroy every living being on earth? And then He was talked into allowing two of each species to stay alive - that's supposed to be gentle and wonderful."
Noam Chomsky,Left,The invasion of Iraq was simply a war crime. Straight-out war crime.
Noam Chomsky,Left,"I think that the polls taken in Baghdad explain it very well, they seem to understand. The United States invaded Iraq to gain control of one of the major sources of the world’s energy, right in the heart of the world’s energy producing regions. To create, if they can, a dependent client state. To have permanent military bases. And to gain what’s called “critical leverage” - I’m quoting Zbigniew Brzezinski - to gain critical leverage over rivals, the European and Asian economies. It’s been understood since the Second World War, that if you have your hand on that spigot, the main source of the world’s energy, you have what early planners called “veto power” over others. Iraq is also the last part of the world where there are vast, untapped, easily accessible energy resources. And you can be sure that they want the profits from that to go primarily to U.S.-based multinationals and back to the U.S. Treasury, not to rivals. There are plenty of reasons for invading Iraq."
Noam Chomsky,Left,"It’s certainly true that the world is better off without Saddam Hussein, and also without the people who supported him through his worst atrocities, and are now telling us about them."
Noam Chomsky,Left,"I was very much involved in the resistance movement in the 1960's. In fact, I was just barely -- the only reason I missed a long jail sentence is because the Tet Offensive came along and the trials were called off."
Noam Chomsky,Left,"In my view, if there's going to be an army, I think it ought to be a citizens' army. Now, here I do agree with some people, the top brass, they don't want a citizens' army. They want a mercenary army, what we call a volunteer army. A mercenary army of the disadvantaged. And in fact, in the Vietnam War, the U.S. military realized, they had made a very bad mistake. I mean, for the first time I think ever in the history of European imperialism, including us, they had used a citizens' army to fight a vicious, brutal, colonial war, and civilians just cannot do that kind of a thing. For that, you need the French Foreign Legion, the Gurkhas or something like that. Every predecessor has used mercenaries, often drawn from the country that they're attacking, like England ran India with Indian mercenaries. You take them from one place and send them to kill people in the other place. That's the standard way to run imperial wars. They're just too brutal and violent and murderous. Civilians are not going to be able to do it for very long. What happened was, the army started falling apart. One of the reasons that the army was withdrawn was because the top military wanted it out of there. They were afraid they were not going to have an army anymore. Soldiers were fragging officers. The whole thing was falling apart. They were on drugs. And that's why I think that they're not going to have a draft. That's why I'm in favor of it. If there's going to be an army that will fight brutal, colonial wars... it ought to be a citizens' army so that the attitudes of the society are reflected in the military."
Noam Chomsky,Left,"[Q: can you conceive of any form in which you might support American military action taken, like the President's justification, in anticipation of an imminent and dangerous threat?] Why don't you generalize it, and say, can you conceive of any action which any state might take? Sure, you can imagine such things. Let's say you're in Iran right now. [audience laughter] It's under attack by the world's superpower, with embargoes... It's surrounded by states either occupied by its superpower enemy, or having nuclear weapons. Little way down the road is the regional superpower, which has hundreds of nuclear weapons, and other WMDs, and is essentially an offshore US military base. And has a bigger and more advanced air force than any NATO power, outside the United States. And in the past year has been supplied by the global superpower with 100 advanced jet bombers, openly advertised as able to fly to Iran and back to bomb it. And also provided with what the Hebrew press calls special weaponry, nobody knows what that means, but if you're an Iranian intelligence analyst you're going to give a worst case analysis, of course. And has actually been publicly provided with smart bombs, and deep penetration weapons... They have a terrific justification for anticipatory self defense, better than any other case I can think of. But would I approve of their bombing Israel, or carrying out terrorist acts in Washington? No, even though they have a pretty strong case, better than anything I can think of here. Just as the Japanese had a much better case than any that I can think of here, but I don't approve of Pearl Harbor. So yeah, we can conceive of cases, and in fact some of them are right in front of our eyes, but none of us approve of them. None of us. So if we don't approve of them in real cases, why discuss hypothetical cases that don't exist? We can do that in some philosophy seminar, but in the real world there're real cases that ought to concern us."
Noam Chomsky,Left,"The big debate in Washington is totally pointless. And the media, about whether Bush downgraded terror in order to invade Iraq. There's nothing to debate. He invaded Iraq. That proves beyond doubt that he downgraded the threat of terror in favor of invading Iraq. They anticipated, and their own intelligence agencies told them, and everyone else did too, that invasion of Iraq was likely to increase the threat of terror. It's not a high priority, so they invaded Iraq because that's much higher priority."
Noam Chomsky,Left,"...evidence-based approach, the U.S. negotiators argued, is interference with free markets, because corporations must have the right to deceive. [...] The claim itself is kind of amusing, I mean, even if you believe the free market rhetoric for a moment. The main purpose of advertising is to undermine markets. If you go to graduate school and you take a course in economics, you learn that markets are systems in which informed consumers make rational choices. That's what's so wonderful about it. But that's the last thing that the state corporate system wants. It is spending huge sums to prevent that, which brings us back to the viability of American democracy. For many years, elections here, election campaigns, have been run by the public relations industry and each time it's with increasing sophistication. And quite naturally, the industry uses the same technique to sell candidates that it uses to sell toothpaste or lifestyle drugs. The point is to undermine markets by projecting imagery to delude and suppressing information, and similarly, to undermine democracy by the same method, projecting imagery to delude and suppressing information. The candidates are trained, carefully trained, to project a certain image. Intellectuals like to make fun of George Bush's use of phrases like “misunderestimate,” and so on, but my strong suspicion is that he's trained to do that. He's carefully trained to efface the fact that he's a spoiled frat boy from Yale, and to look like a Texas roughneck kind of ordinary guy just like you, just waiting to get back to the ranch that they created for him..."
Noam Chomsky,Left,"I think the basic question you ask is a good one: if we were to withdraw our own beating people over the heads with clubs, would it necessarily follow that somebody else would take that role, or are there other alternatives? Well yeah, there are other alternatives. For example, the alternatives that are favored by the overwhelming majority of the population of the United States. I mentioned one piece of it: let the UN function. The UN isn't perfect, a lot of things wrong with it, just like the Universal Declaration of Human Rights isn't perfect... But one step would be to pay some respect to the ""decent opinion of mankind"", to quote the famous author, and let international institutions function so as to reduce the likelihood that anybody will use force..."
Noam Chomsky,Left,"If there was anyone who actually fit the category of conservative, if there was such a category of people, they would have a very easy way to deal with the fact that 60% of the children under 2 [in Nicaragua] are suffering probable brain damage. Namely, by paying their debts. Simple conservative principle. But that's beyond unthinkable. Compassionate conservatives might want to go beyond that, if they existed. But they're much more interested in making political capital over the fact that a woman in a vegetative state shouldn't be allowed to die in dignity."
Noam Chomsky,Left,"The dominant propaganda systems have appropriated the term ""globalization"" to refer to the specific version of international economic integration that they favor, which privileges the rights of investors and lenders, those of people being incidental. In accord with this usage, those who favor a different form of international integration, which privileges the rights of human beings, become ""anti-globalist."" This is simply vulgar propaganda, like the term ""anti-Soviet"" used by the most disgusting commissars to refer to dissidents. It is not only vulgar, but idiotic. Take the World Social Forum, called ""anti-globalization"" in the propaganda system -- which happens to include the media, the educated classes, etc., with rare exceptions. The WSF is a paradigm example of globalization. It is a gathering of huge numbers of people from all over the world, from just about every corner of life one can think of, apart from the extremely narrow, highly privileged elites who meet at the competing World Economic Forum, and are called ""pro-globalization"" by the propaganda system. An observer watching this farce from Mars would collapse in hysterical laughter at the antics of the educated classes."
Noam Chomsky,Left,"There's basically two principles that define the Bush Administration policies: stuff the pockets of your rich friends with dollars, and increase your control over the world. Almost everything follows from that. If you happen to blow up the world, well, you know, it's somebody else's business. Stuff happens, as Rumsfeld said."
Noam Chomsky,Left,"The Grand Inquisitor explains that you have to create mysteries because otherwise the common people will be able to understand things. They have to be subordinated so you have to make things look mysterious and complicated. That's the test of the intellectual. It's also good for them: then you're an important person, talking big words which nobody can understand. Sometimes it gets kind of comical, say in post-modern discourse. Especially around Paris, it has become a comic strip, I mean it's all gibberish. But it's very inflated, a lot of television cameras, a lot of posturing. They try to decode it and see what is the actual meaning behind it, things that you could explain to an eight-year old child. There's nothing there. But these are the ways in which contemporary intellectuals, including those on the Left, create great careers for themselves, power for themselves, marginalize people, intimidate people and so on."
Noam Chomsky,Left,"The crucial question for us is not whether they have a theocratic government. I'd personally prefer not, but I can think of a lot of places where I'd prefer not, like here. But, the question is whether the US will agree to let Iraq alone. That means to make it very clean and explicit, both in word and in action, that the US will withdraw, set a timetable for it, will not influence what goes on in Iraq, will not leave military bases, will let the country go off on its own. I think we also ought to pay massive reparations, but I'll stop short of that. Those are the crucial issues. It's not up to Rumsfeld what kind of government they have, it's up to him to get out."
Noam Chomsky,Left,"I think murdering Iraqi union leaders is criminal, for example. And a lot of what the insurgents have done is criminal. But, you know, you rank the priorities. Our priority is to stop major war crimes, like Fallujah for example. So yeah, what the resistance is doing, one can also criticize, harshly in fact. But in any kind of ranking, even if we're on Mars, and certainly if we're in the United States, what is vastly more important is our own crimes, which are much worse, and they're ours."
Noam Chomsky,Left,"Say, take Rachel Corrie, local young woman, she was extremely courageous. She's a martyr for peace and justice. We happened to kill her too, even if we don't like to admit it. She was killed by U.S. sent equipment, which is Caterpillar... [Q: you draw that line right back to you and me sitting here?] Absolutely, we're responsible for it. I mean, we didn't drive the bulldozer, but why is it there? What's it doing? Who provides the military, economic, and diplomatic support for destroying the occupied territories?"
Noam Chomsky,Left,"The Bush Administration do have moral values. Their moral values are very explicit: shine the boots of the rich and the powerful, kick everybody else in the face, and let your grandchildren pay for it. That simple principle predicts almost everything that's happening."
Noam Chomsky,Left,"...the argument is that by bombing at a time when most of the atrocities were attributed to the KLA guerrillas, with the anticipation that the bombing would lead to far worse atrocities, NATO was preventing atrocities. The fact that this is the strongest argument that can be contrived by serious analysts, and I stress serious because there's plenty of nonsense, that tells us a good deal about the decision to bomb, particularly when we recall that there apparently were diplomatic options."
Noam Chomsky,Left,"After the invasion, there was sophisticated massive looting of the installations that were constructed in the 1980s - that includes high-precision equipment capable of making parts for nuclear and chemical weapons and missiles, and also toxins for biological weapons. Prior to the US-British invasion, these sites had been monitored by UN inspectors, but they were quickly kicked out of the country and have not been back since, while the occupation forces left the sites unguarded, and very sophisticated looting operations took place. Where this huge massive equipment has gone no one knows, and it's uncomfortable to guess. The ironies are almost inexpressible. The US and Britain invaded to prevent the use of WMDs that did not exist, and they succeeded in providing the terrorists that they had mobilized with the means to develop WMDs that the US and Britain had provided to Saddam Hussein."
Noam Chomsky,Left,"It should have been the easiest invasion in history, and the incompetence and arrogance of the Pentagon planners turned it into a total catastrophe. So yes, it hasn't worked out the way they wanted, but that has nothing to do with their plans. It would be like saying that Hitler didn't intend to conquer the world because he failed. They actually succeeded in creating an insurgency, which didn't exist, there was no basis for it and no outside support. In fact, the U.S. and Britain were compelled to allow elections. The elections in Iraq are a triumph of mass popular nonviolent resistance. Washington and London tried in every way they could to evade elections. You go back through 2003, there was one after another scheme proposed, to try to avoid elections. But they couldn't do it, there were mass demonstrations, partially led by Ayatollah Sistani. Finally they had to back down, and allow elections. Now they're trying in every way to subvert them."
Noam Chomsky,Left,"Jesus himself, and most of the message of the Gospels, is a message of service to the poor, a critique of the rich and the powerful, and a pacifist doctrine. And it remained that way, that’s what Christianity was up ... until Constantine. Constantine shifted it so the cross, which was the symbol of persecution of somebody working for the poor, was put on the shield of the Roman Empire. It became the symbol for violence and oppression, and that’s pretty much what the church has been until the present."
Noam Chomsky,Left,"Science in the Dock, Discussion with Noam Chomsky, Lawrence Krauss & Sean M. Carroll, Science & Technology News, March 1, 2006."
Noam Chomsky,Left,"We might add now that we do have an authoritative account of why the United States bombed Serbia in 1999. It comes from Strobe Talbott, now the director of the Brookings Institution, but in 1999 he was in charge of the State Department-Pentagon team that supervised the diplomacy in the affair. He wrote the introduction to a recent book by his Director of Communications, John Norris, which presents the position of the Clinton administration at the time of the bombing. Norris writes that ""it was Yugoslavia's resistance to the broader trends of political and economic reform - not the plight of Kosovar Albanians - that best explains NATO's war"". In brief, they were resisting absorption into the U.S. dominated international socioeconomic system. Talbott adds that thanks to John Norris, anyone interested in the war in Kosovo ""will know … how events looked and felt at the time to those of us who were involved"" in the war, actually directing it. This authoritative explanation will come as no surprise at all to students of international affairs who are more interested in fact than rhetoric. And it will also come as no surprise, to those familiar with intellectual life, that the attack continues to be hailed as a grand achievement of humanitarian intervention, despite massive Western documentation to the contrary, and now an explicit denial at the highest level; which will change nothing, it's not the way intellectual life works."
Noam Chomsky,Left,"Personally I'm very much opposed to Hamas' policies in almost every respect. However, we should recognize that the policies of Hamas are more forthcoming and more conducive to a peaceful settlement than those of the United States or Israel. ... So, for example, Hamas has called for a long-term indefinite truce on the international border. There is a long-standing international consensus that goes back over thirty years that there should be a two-state political settlement on the international border, the pre-June 1967 border, with minor and mutual modifications. That's the official phrase. Hamas is willing to accept that as a long-term truce. The United States and Israel are unwilling even to consider it... The demand on Hamas by the United States and the European Union and Israel [...] is first that they recognize the State of Israel. Actually, that they recognize its right to exist. Well, Israel and the U.S. certainly don't recognize the right of Palestine to exist, nor recognize any state of Palestine. In fact, they have been acting consistently to undermine any such possibility. The second condition is that Hamas must renounce violence. Israel and the United States certainly do not renounce violence. The third condition is that Hamas accept international agreements. The United States and Israel reject international agreements. So, though the policies of Hamas are, again in my view, unacceptable, they happen to be closer to the international consensus on a political peaceful settlement than those of their antagonists, and it's a reflection of the power of the imperial states - the United States and Europe - that they are able to shift the framework, so that the problem appears to be Hamas' policies, and not the more extreme policies of the United States and Israel... And we must remember that in their case it's not just policies. It's not words - it's actions."
Noam Chomsky,Left,"Virtually all informed observers agree that a fair and equitable resolution of the plight of the Palestinians would considerably weaken the anger and hatred of Israel and the US in the Arab and Muslim worlds – and far beyond, as international polls reveal. Such an agreement is surely within reach, if the US and Israel depart from their long-standing rejectionism."
Noam Chomsky,Left,"In order to make it look dramatic, they staged what was ridiculed by some Israeli commentators, correctly, they staged a national trauma... There was a huge media extravaganza, you know, pictures of a little Jewish boy try to hold back the soldiers destroying his house... And a lot of the settlers were allowed in, so there could be a pretense of violence, though there wasn't any... The withdrawal could have been done perfectly quietly. All that was necessary was for Israel to announce that on August 1st the army will withdraw. And immediately the settlers, who had been subsidized to go there in the first place, and to stay there, would get on to the trucks that are provided for them and move over to the West Bank where they can move into new subsidized settlements. But if you did that way, there wouldn't have been any national trauma, any justification for saying, ""never can we give up another 1 mm² of land"". What made all of this even more ridiculous was that it was a repetition of what was described in Haaretz as ""Operation National Truama 1982"". After Israel finally agreed to Sadat's 1971 offer, they had to evacuate northeastern Sinai, and there was another staged trauma, which again was ridiculed by Israel commentators. By a miracle, none of the settlers who were resisting needed a Band-Aid, while Palestinians were being killed all over the place."
Noam Chomsky,Left,"As a number the specialists have pointed out, Bush is Osama bin Laden's best ally. ... [9/11] was bitterly condemned by the jihadi movement around the world. The leading figures, the radical clerics and others, were denouncing it. Well, there was an opportunity to make some moves towards the Muslim world, and in fact even the radical Islamic extremist elements of the Muslim world, and undermine support for Al-Qaeda. What Bush did was the opposite: resorted to violence, particularly in Iraq, which simply mobilized support for Osama bin Laden. That's the way to deal with terrorism if you want to escalate it."
Noam Chomsky,Left,"The Report calls for direct talks for Palestinians who ""accept Israel's right to exist"" (an absurd demand) but does not restrict Israelis to those who accept the right of a Palestinian state to exist, which would, for example, exclude Israel's Prime Minister Olmert, who received a rousing ovation in Congress when he declared that Israel's historic right to the land from Jordan to the sea is beyond question."
Noam Chomsky,Left,"Nobody doubts that the Russians committed aggression, that Saddam Hussein committed aggression. We attribute to them rational goals, maybe they wanted to control the energy of the Middle East or something. With regard to ourselves, it's impossible... We just cannot adopt towards ourselves the same sane attitudes that we adopt easily, in fact reflexively, when others commit crimes... And if anyone says it, educated people, liberal intellectuals, are infuriated. Because it suggests that we could do something that's not noble. We can make mistakes, that's easy. You can criticize mistakes. You can criticize low-level crimes, like Abu-Ghraib, you can criticize that. You can criticize My Lai. But not the educated, civilized people, the kind of people we have dinner with, see at concerts, sitting in air-conditioned offices planning mass-murder. So that's beyond criticism. On the other hand, if it's half-crazed G.I.s in the field, uneducated, don't know who's going to shoot at them next, you can blame them, you can say how awful they are. You can criticize Lynndie England, disadvantaged young woman, very different from us. But how about the guys who organized and planned it? No."
Noam Chomsky,Left,"The threat of China is not military. The threat of China is they can't be intimidated... Europe you can intimidate. When the US tries to get people to stop investing in Iran, European companies pull out, China disregards it. You look at history and understand why — they've been around for 4,000 years, they have contempt for the barbarians, they just don't give a damn. OK, you scream, we'll go ahead and take over a big piece of Saudi or Iranian oil. And that's the threat, you can't intimidate them — it's driving people in Washington berserk. But, you know, of all the major powers, they've been the least aggressive militarily."
Noam Chomsky,Left,"China is the center of the Asian energy security grid, which includes the Central Asian states and Russia. India is also hovering around the edge, South Korea is involved, and Iran is an associate member of some kind. If the Middle East oil resources around the Gulf, which are the main ones in the world, if they link up to the Asian grid, the United States is really a second-rate power. A lot is at stake in not withdrawing from Iraq."
Noam Chomsky,Left,"""Witness in Palestine: A Jewish American Woman in the Occupied Territories"", August 2007, ISBN: 978-1-59451-307-7. Review by Chomsky: Even those who are familiar with the grim reality of the occupied territories will quickly be drawn into a world they had barely imagined by these vivid, searingly honest, intensely acute portrayals."
Noam Chomsky,Left,"Mass non-violent protest is predicated on the humanity of the oppressor. Quite often it doesn't work. Sometimes it does, in unexpected ways. But judgements about that would have to be based on intimate knowledge of the society and its various strands."
Noam Chomsky,Left,"""Barack Obama and the Future of American Politics"", October 2008, ISBN: 978-1-59451-631-3. Review by Noam Chomsky: That the Obama phenomenon is of considerable significance in American social and political history should hardly be in doubt. But what exactly is it, and where might it lead? This lucid and penetrating book situates it firmly within the ‘corporate-dominated and militaristic U.S. elections system and political culture,’ explores in depth its substantive content and its limits, and draws valuable lessons about how these might be transcended in the unending struggle to achieve a more just and free society and a peaceful world. It is a very welcome contribution in complex and troubled times."
Noam Chomsky,Left,"In summary, it is the diversity of human behavior, its appropriateness to new situations, and man’s capacity to innovate – the creative aspect of language use providing the principal indication of this –that leads Descartes to attribute possession of mind to other humans, since he regards this capacity as beyond the limitations of any imaginable mechanism."
Noam Chomsky,Left,Modern linguistics has also failed to deal with the Cartesian observations regarding human language in any serious way.
Noam Chomsky,Left,"The deep structure that expresses the meaning is common to all languages, so it is claimed, being a simple reflection of the forms of thought."
Noam Chomsky,Left,"Cartesian linguistics was not concerned simply with descriptive grammar, in this sense, but rather with “grammaire générale,” that is, with the universal principles of language structure."
Noam Chomsky,Left,"Despite these shortcomings, the insights into the organization of grammar that were achieved in Cartesian linguistics remain quite impressive, and a careful study of this work can hardly fail to prove rewarding to a linguist who approaches it without prejudice or preconceptions as to the a priori limitations on permitted linguistic investigation."
Noam Chomsky,Left,The central doctrine of Cartesian linguistics is that the general features of grammatical structure are common to all languages and reflect certain fundamental properties of the mind.
Noam Chomsky,Left,We're supposed to worship Adam Smith but you're not supposed to read him. That's too dangerous. He's a dangerous radical.
Noam Chomsky,Left,"It is not that I am not a fan of American exceptionalism. That is like saying I am not a fan of the moon being made out of green cheese—it does not exist. Powerful states have quite typically considered themselves to be exceptionally magnificent, and the United States is no exception to that. The basis for it [""it"" meaning American exceptionalism] is not very substantial to put it politely. The problems with American foreign policy are rooted in its central nature, which we know about or can know about if we want to."
Noam Chomsky,Left,"Dayan's correct assumption was that the boss in Washington might object formally, but with a wink, and would continue to provide the decisive military, economic and diplomatic support for the criminal endeavors. The criminality has been underscored by repeated Security Council resolutions, more recently by the International Court of Justice, with the basic agreement of U.S. Justice Thomas Buergenthal in a separate declaration. Israel's actions also violate U.N. Security Council resolutions concerning Jerusalem. But everything is fine as long as Washington winks."
Noam Chomsky,Left,"There is a history of Christianity: the first three centuries of Christianity, it was a radical pacifist religion, which is why it was persecuted. It was the religion of the poor and the suffering, and Jesus was the symbol of the poor and the suffering. ..."
Noam Chomsky,Left,Chomsky on Religion (2010).
Noam Chomsky,Left,"Sometimes when I'm having a boring interview on the telephone, and I'm trying to think about something else because the questions are too boring, and I start looking around the room where I work, you know, full of books piled up to the sky, all different kinds of topics. I start calculating how many centuries would I have to live reading twenty-four hours a day every day of the week to make a dent in what I'd like to learn about things, it's pretty depressing.[...] You know, we have little bits of understanding, glimpses, a little bit of light here and there, but there's a tremendous amount of darkness, which is a challenge. I think life would be pretty boring if we understood everything. It's better if we don't understand anything... and know that we don't, that's the important part."
Noam Chomsky,Left,"""I don’t even know what an atheist is. When people ask me if I’m an atheist, I have to ask them what they mean. What is it that I’m supposed to not believe in? Until you can answer that question I can’t tell you whether I’m an atheist, and the question doesn’t arise. [...] I don’t see how one can be an agnostic when one doesn’t know what it is that one is supposed to believe in, or reject."
Noam Chomsky,Left,"Science talks about very simple things, and asks hard questions about them. As soon as things become too complex, science can't deal with them... But it's a complicated matter: Science studies what's at the edge of understanding, and what's at the edge of understanding is usually fairly simple. And it rarely reaches human affairs. Human affairs are way too complicated. In fact even understanding insects is an extremely complicated problem in the sciences. So the actual sciences tell us virtually nothing about human affairs."
Noam Chomsky,Left,"We might ask ourselves how we would be reacting if Iraqi commandos landed at George W. Bush's compound, assassinated him, and dumped his body in the Atlantic."
Noam Chomsky,Left,[ZEIT Campus: Political engagement like yours is rare among scholars. Are you sometimes furious at the “servants of power” as you say or at professor colleagues who only concentrate on their academic work?] Chomsky: I consider it immoral to be a supporter of a power system. However that does not mean that I am furious at anyone. Scholars per se do not have deeper political insights than other persons and are not morally superior to others. But they are obligated to help politicians seek and find the truth.
Noam Chomsky,Left,"[ZEIT Campus: You often say you are an anarchist. What do you mean by that?] Chomsky: Students should challenge authorities and join a long anarchist tradition. [ZEIT Campus: “Challenge authorities” – a liberal or a moderate leftist could accept that invitation.] Chomsky: As soon as one identifies, challenges and overcomes illegitimate power, he or she is an anarchist. Most people are anarchists. What they call themselves doesn’t matter to me. [ZEIT Campus: Who or what must challenge today’s student generation?] Chomsky: This world is full of suffering, distress, violence and catastrophes. Students must decide: does something concern you or not? I say: look around, analyze the problems, ask yourself what you can do and set out on the work!"
Noam Chomsky,Left,"Obama's now conducting the world's greatest international terrorist campaign – the drones and special forces campaign. It's also a terror-generating campaign. The common understanding at the highest level [is] that these actions generate potential terrorists. I'll quote General Stanley McChrystal, Petraeus' predecessor. He says that ""for every innocent person you kill"", and there are plenty of them, ""you create ten new enemies""."
Noam Chomsky,Left,I mentioned the Magna Carta. That’s the foundations of modern law. We will soon be commemorating the 800th anniversary. We won’t be celebrating it – more likely interring what little is left of its bones after the flesh has been picked off by Bush and Obama and their colleagues in Europe.
Noam Chomsky,Left,"In the past, the United States has sometimes, kind of sardonically, been described as a one-party state: the business party with two factions called Democrats and Republicans. That’s no longer true. It’s still a one-party state, the business party. But it only has one faction. The faction is moderate Republicans, who are now called Democrats. There are virtually no moderate Republicans in what’s called the Republican Party and virtually no liberal Democrats in what’s called the Democratic [sic] Party. It’s basically a party of what would be moderate Republicans and similarly, Richard Nixon would be way at the left of the political spectrum today. Eisenhower would be in outer space. There is still something called the Republican Party, but it long ago abandoned any pretence of being a normal parliamentary party. It’s in lock-step service to the very rich and the corporate sector and has a catechism that everyone has to chant in unison, kind of like the old Communist Party. The distinguished conservative commentator, one of the most respected – Norman Ornstein – describes today’s Republican Party as, in his words, “a radical insurgency – ideologically extreme, scornful of facts and compromise, dismissive of its political opposition” – a serious danger to the society, as he points out."
Noam Chomsky,Left,"One of the interesting WikiLeaks exposures was from Anne W. Patterson, the American ambassador in Pakistan, who supports U.S. policy in Pakistan but pointed out that it carries with it the danger of ""destabilizing the Pakistani state,"" maybe even leading to a coup, which could bring about the leaking of radioactive materials into the jihadi network."
Noam Chomsky,Left,WikiLeaks ... compromised the security that governments are usually concerned about:  their security from inspection by their own populations. (p. 109)
Noam Chomsky,Left,"One respect in which the United States is unusually open is in declassifying government documents.  ... [W]e have better access to internal government decisions than any country that I know of.  The system isn't perfect ... .  [Most] declassified documents ... are just totally boring.  You can read through volume after volume of the Foreign Relations of the United States and maybe you'll find three sentences that are worth paying any attention to.  Many of the classified documents have little to do with genuine security but a lot to do with preventing the population from knowing what the government is up to. I think that's true of what I've seen of WikiLeaks, too. Take the one example I mentioned.  Ambassador Patterson's comments about Pakistan and the danger of the Bush-Obama policy destabilizing a country with one of the biggest nuclear weapons programs in the world ... .  That's something the population out to know about, but it has to be kept from them.  You have to describe our policies in terms of defending ourselves from attack when you're in fact increasing the threat of attack.  That's true over and over again."
Noam Chomsky,Left,"If I was in the mainstream, I'd began to ask myself what I'm doing wrong."
Noam Chomsky,Left,"Incidentally, I don't say it [the US electoral system] is a charade; there are differences in the parties—I don’t think they're great differences, but they're real, and small differences in a system of great power can have enormous consequences."
Noam Chomsky,Left,"Turning finally to the question raised, to be precise, it appears that [Hillary] Clinton received a slight majority of the vote. The apparent decisive victory [of Donald Trump] has to do with curious features of American politics: among other factors, the Electoral College residue of the founding of the country as an alliance of separate states; the winner-take-all system in each state; the arrangement of congressional districts (sometimes by gerrymandering) to provide greater weight to rural votes (in past elections, and probably this one too, Democrats have had a comfortable margin of victory in the popular vote for the House, but hold a minority of seats); the very high rate of abstention (usually close to half in presidential elections, this one included). Of some significance for the future is the fact that in the age 18-25 range, Clinton won handily, and Sanders had an even higher level of support. How much this matters depends on what kind of future humanity will face."
Noam Chomsky,Left,"One of the great achievements of the doctrinal system has been to divert anger from the corporate sector to the government that implements the programs that the corporate sector designs, such as the highly protectionist corporate/investor rights agreements that are uniformly mis-described as ""free trade agreements"" in the media and commentary. With all its flaws, the government is, to some extent, under popular influence and control, unlike the corporate sector. It is highly advantageous for the business world to foster hatred for pointy-headed government bureaucrats and to drive out of people's minds the subversive idea that the government might become an instrument of popular will, a government of, by and for the people."
Noam Chomsky,Left,"The Native population (in the US) suffered a migrant crisis of an incredible kind … where the immigrants come in with the intention of exterminating and expelling the population... Should they institute war crimes trials...? It would not make a lot of sense. It would make a lot of sense to bring out understanding of what happened, to call for reparations and so on, but not war crimes trials. It just means nothing in these circumstances. Is it genocide? … The Western hemisphere had about 80 million people when Columbus arrived, and pretty soon about 90 percent of them were gone (killed)."
Noam Chomsky,Left,"The United States government must cease interfering in Venezuela’s internal politics, especially for the purpose of overthrowing the country’s government. Actions by the Trump administration and its allies in the hemisphere are almost certain to make the situation in Venezuela worse, leading to unnecessary human suffering, violence, and instability."
Noam Chomsky,Left,"Venezuela’s political polarization is not new; the country has long been divided along racial and socioeconomic lines. But the polarization has deepened in recent years. This is partly due to US support for an opposition strategy aimed at removing the government of Nicolás Maduro through extra-electoral means. While the opposition has been divided on this strategy, US support has backed hardline opposition sectors in their goal of ousting the Maduro government through often violent protests, a military coup d’etat, or other avenues that sidestep the ballot box."
Noam Chomsky,Left,"Under the Trump administration, aggressive rhetoric against the Venezuelan government has ratcheted up to a more extreme and threatening level, with Trump administration officials talking of “military action” and condemning Venezuela, along with Cuba and Nicaragua, as part of a “troika of tyranny.” Problems resulting from Venezuelan government policy have been worsened  by US economic sanctions, illegal under the Organization of American States and the United Nations ― as well as US law and other international treaties and conventions. These sanctions have cut off the means by which the Venezuelan government could escape from its economic recession, while causing a dramatic falloff in oil production and worsening the economic crisis, and causing many people to die because they can’t get access to life-saving medicines. Meanwhile, the US and other governments continue to blame the Venezuelan government ― solely ― for the economic damage, even that caused by the US sanctions."
Raymond Williams,Left,"[T]here are in fact no masses, but only ways of seeing people as masses."
Raymond Williams,Left,"It is the definition of an egoist that whatever occupies his attention is, for that reason, important."
Raymond Williams,Left,"From the late eighteenth century onwards, it is no longer from the practice of community but from being a wanderer that the instinct of fellow-feeling is derived. Thus an essential isolation and silence and loneliness become the carriers of nature and community against the rigours, the cold abstinence, the selfish ease of ordinary society."
Raymond Williams,Left,"There was, however, a difference between his mood and that of the rest of the cabinet. They felt desperate; he felt challenged."
Raymond Williams,Left,"If Gissing is less compassionately observant than Mrs Gaskell, less overtly polemical than Kingsley, still The Nether World and Demos would be sympathetically endorsed by either of them, or by their typical readers. Yet Gissing does introduce an important new element, and one that remains significant. He has often been called ‘the spokesman of despair,’ and this is true in both meanings of the phrase. Like Kingsley and Mrs Gaskell, he writes to describe the true conditions of the poor, and to protest against those brute forces of society which fill with wreck the abysses of the nether world. Yet he is also the spokesman of another kind of despair: the despair born of social and political disillusion. In this he is a figure exactly like Orwell in our own day, and for much the same reason. Whether one calls this honesty or not will depend on experience."
Raymond Williams,Left,Today's Europeans and Americans who reached the age of awareness after midcentury when the communications revolution lead to expectations of instantanaiy are exasperated by the slow toils of history. They assume that the thunderclap of cause will be swiftly followed by the lightening bolt of effect.
Raymond Williams,Left,"Biographer diagnoses reaction to restriction as a tell of true character. Some use even prison as a time of reflection and planning. Others, like Churchill, quickly chafe at missing interaction and opportunity."
Raymond Williams,Left,The total effect of Orwell's work is an effect of paradox. He was a humane man who communicated an extreme of inhuman terror; a man committed to decency who actualised a distinctive squalor.
Raymond Williams,Left,"After moving his family from Yakima to Paradise, California, in 1958, he enrolled at Chico State College. There, he began an apprenticeship under the soon-to-be-famous John Gardner, the first real writer he had ever met. He offered me the key to his office, Carver recalled in his preface to Gardner’s On Becoming a Novelist (1983). I see that gift now as a turning point. In addition, Gardner gave his student close, line-by-line criticism and taught him a set of values that was not negotiable. Among these values were convictions that Carver held until his death. Like Gardner, whose On Moral Fiction (1978) decried the nihilism of postmodern formalism, Carver maintained that great literature is life-connected, life-affirming, and life-changing. In the best fiction, he wrote the central character, the hero or heroine, is also the ‘moved’ character, the one to whom something happens in the story that makes a difference. Something happens that changes the way that character looks at himself and hence the world. Through the 1960s and 1970s he steered wide of the metafictional funhouse erected by Barth, Barthelme and Company, concentrating instead on what he called those basics of old-fashioned storytelling: plot, character, and action. Like Gardner and Chekhov, Carver declared himself a humanist. Art is not self-expression, he insisted, it’s communication."
Raymond Williams,Left,"Once more Mary Jo, Bobby, Kevin, Dennis, Raymond, Lucille, Frankie, Coddles, Lyle, John, Andy, Miss Ursula, Jim, Lonnie, Postmaster Jones, William, Travis, Todd, Tony, Dennis M. . . . On the ride home from Sheriff’s office, everyone was again on porches or at windows. Daron didn’t call out their names this time, and this time no one waved. Where do the black people live? In the front yards! It was funny. (I guess that’s better than the back of the bus, Louis had later added. Daron had thought that funny, too.) Louis’s absence was always noticeable. Though skinny, he’d filled space like a fat man on a crowded elevator, except a welcome addition, not someone who provoked strangers to regard each other with situational solidarity. He had, in fact, induced people to regard each other with suspicion, to question the known."
Raymond Williams,Left,"I just realized I know nothing about you. Do you have a family? Where are you from? The idea that I just invited a relative stranger, who owns nothing, to live in my apartment gave me a stomachache, but the weird thing was that I felt like I had known him forever.I’m from Detroit; my entire family still lives there. My mom works in a bakery at a grocery store and my dad is a retired electrician. I have twelve brothers and sisters.Really? I’m an only child. I can’t imagine having a huge family like that"
Raymond Williams,Left,When you go out first on your own. When you marry and settle. When your father dies. When your son leaves home.
Michel Chossudovsky,Left,"Relentlessly feeding on poverty and economic dislocation, a New World Order was taking shape."
Michel Chossudovsky,Left,"Humanity is undergoing, in the post-Cold War era, an economic and social crisis of unprecedented scale leading to the rapid impoverishment of large sectors of the world population."
Michel Chossudovsky,Left,Modern capitalism appears totally incapable of mobilizing these untapped human and resources.
Michel Chossudovsky,Left,"The WTO was put in place following the signing of a ""technical agreement"" negotiated behind closed doors by bureaucrats. Even the heads of country-level delegations to Marrakech in 1994 were not informed regarding the statutes of the WTO, which were drafted in separate clossed sessions by technocrats."
Michel Chossudovsky,Left,"Mainstream economics scholarship produces theory without facts (""pure theory"") and facts without theory (""applied economics"")"
Michel Chossudovsky,Left,"The budget targets imposed by the Bretton Woods institutions, combined with the effects of the devaluation, trigger the collapse of public investment."
Michel Chossudovsky,Left,"According to the World Bank, the concentration of wealth and the structures of corporate economic power have no bearing on woman's rights."
Michel Chossudovsky,Left,"Global poverty is an ""input"" on the supply side; the global economic system feeds on cheap labor."
Michel Chossudovsky,Left,"The experience of Somalia shows that famine in the late 20th century is not a consequence of a shortage of food. On the contrary, famines are spurred on as result of a global oversupply of grain staples."
Michel Chossudovsky,Left,"The civil war in Rwanda and other ethnic massacres were an integral part of US foreign policy, carefully staged in accordance with precise strategic and economic objectives."
Michel Chossudovsky,Left,"In return, US surpluses of genetically engineered maize (banned in the European Union) were being dumped on the horn of Africa, in the form of emergency aid."
Michel Chossudovsky,Left,"Both Hindu, as well as Islamic fundamentalism, feed on the poverty of the masses."
Michel Chossudovsky,Left,"Moreover, the entire international trading system is prone (from the lower echelons to top state officials) to corruption and bribery by foreign contractors."
Michel Chossudovsky,Left,"Macro-economic policy had accelerated the ""expulsion"" of landless peasants from the countryside leading to the formation of a nomadic migrant labor force moving from one metropolitan area to another."
Michel Chossudovsky,Left,"Macro-economic reform undermined the legal economy, reinforced illicit trade and contributed to the recycling of ""dirty money"" towards Peru's official and commercial creditors."
Michel Chossudovsky,Left,"For the West, the enemy was not ""socialism"" but capitalism. How to tame and subdue the polar bear, how to take over the talent, the science, the technology, how to buy out the human capital, how to acquire the intellectual property rights?"
Michel Chossudovsky,Left,"The collapse of the standard of living, engineered as result of macro-economic policy, is without precedent in Russian history: "" We had more to eat during the Second World War."""
Michel Chossudovsky,Left,Lost in the barrage of images and self-serving analysis are the economic and social causes of the conflict.
Michel Chossudovsky,Left,"While Financier George Soros was investing money in Kosovo's reconstruction, the George Soros Foundation for an Open Society had opened a branch office in Pristina establishing the Kosovo Foundation for an Open Society (KFOS) as part of the Soros' network of ""non-profit foundations"" in the Balkans."
Michel Chossudovsky,Left,Legal and illegal activities had become inextricably intertwined.
Michel Chossudovsky,Left,""" The Cayman Islands, a British Crown colony in the Caribbean, for instance, is the fifth largest banking center in the world,"""
Michel Chossudovsky,Left,A new global financial environment has unfolded in several stages since the collapse of the Bretton Woods system of fixed exchange rates in 1971.
Michel Chossudovsky,Left,"In a cruel irony, speculators - rather then elected politicians - are the shots on crisis management. In an absurd logic, those who foster financial turbulence have been invited by the G7 Finance ministers to identify policies which attenuate financial turbulence."
Michel Chossudovsky,Left,"America had come to the rescue of Korea's ""troubled banks"". The auction of commercial bank assets was an obvious fraud."
Perry Anderson,Left,The most advanced socialist thought in England is Raymond Williams’ superbly intricate and persuasive work... Any English Marxism will have to measure itself against this landmark in our social thought.
Perry Anderson,Left,"The international disputes which united and divided Luxemburg, Lenin, Lukács, Gramsci, Bordiga or Trotsky on these issues represent the last great strategic debate in the European workers’ movement. Since then, there has been little significant theoretical development of the political problems of revolutionary strategy in metropolitan capitalism that has had any direct contact with the masses. The structural divorce between original Marxist theory and the main organizations of the working class in Europe has yet to be historically resolved. The May-June revolt in France, the upheaval in Portugal, the approaching dénouement in Spain, presage the end of this long divorce, but have not accomplished it. The classical debates, therefore, still remain in many respects the most advanced limit of reference we possess today. It is thus not mere archaism to recall the strategic confrontations which occurred four or five decades ago. To reappropriate them, on the contrary, is a step towards a Marxist discussion that has the—necessarily modest—hope of assuming an ‘initial shape’ of correct theory today. Régis Debray has spoken, in a famous paragraph, of the constant difficulty of being contemporary with our present. In Europe at least, we have yet to be sufficiently contemporary with our past."
Perry Anderson,Left,"Self-satisfaction is scarcely unfamiliar in Europe. But the contemporary mood is something different: an apparently illimitable narcissism, in which the reflection in the water transfigures the future of the planet into the image of the beholder. What explains this degree of political vanity? Obviously, the landscape of the continent has altered in recent years, and its role in the world has grown. Real changes can give rise to surreal dreams, but they need to be calibrated properly, to see what the connections or lack of them might be."
Perry Anderson,Left,"What kind of political order, then, is taking shape in Europe, 15 years after Maastricht? The pioneers of European integration – Monnet and his fellow spirits – envisaged the eventual creation of a federal union that would one day be the supranational equivalent of the nation-states out of which it emerged, anchored in an expanded popular sovereignty, based on universal suffrage, its executive answerable to an elected legislature, and its economy subject to requirements of social responsibility. In short, a democracy magnified to semi-continental scale (they had only Western Europe in mind). But there was always another way of looking at European unification, which saw it more as a limited pooling of powers by member governments for certain – principally economic – ends, that did not imply any fundamental derogation of national sovereignty as traditionally understood, but rather the creation of a novel institutional framework for a specified range of transactions. De Gaulle famously represented one version of this outlook; Thatcher another. Between these federalist and inter-governmentalist visions of Europe, there has been a continual tension down to the present."
Perry Anderson,Left,"Polemical zeal can produce an fixation on the other side, or sides, of purely hostile intent."
Perry Anderson,Left,"Politics is not a self-enclosed activity, organically generating a body of concepts internal to it. What counts as a set of ideas with a bearing on the political conflicts of a time varies according to epoch and region. Today it stretches far beyond the purview of political science, traditionally conceived. Philosophy, economics, history, sociology, psychology, not to speak of the earth and life sciences, and the arts, all intersect at different points with terrain of politics, in its classic definition."
Perry Anderson,Left,"The classical legacies of political thought, from Plato to Nietzsche, and the immediate tasks of running the world, at home and abroad, have been of most concern to the Right. Normative philosophical constructions have become a specialty of the Centre. Economic, social and cultural investigations – of past and present – dominate the output of the Left. Any attempt to come to grips with all three outlooks is thus obliged to traverse quite variegated ground."
Perry Anderson,Left,"Beyond the discrepant local sympathies of these careers – with their splay of temporary identities: Conservative, Zionist, Nazi, Old Whig – they reflected a common theoretical calling. […] In Schmitt’s own writing, the obscure figure assumes various – typically oblique – historical guises, as political or juridical restrainer in different epochs. But the Stygian cap fits the collective effort of this cluster of thinkers. For these were indeed constructions designed to hold something back. What they all in the end sought to restrain was the risks of democracy – seen and feared through the prisms of their theories of law, as the abyss of its absence: to misterion tes anomias, the mystery of lawlessness."
Perry Anderson,Left,"The dichotomies which are the signature of their work – the esoteric and the exoteric, the civil and the managerial, the friend and the foe, the lawful and the legislative – are so many cordons. Their function is to hold popular sovereignty at bay. The different gifts displayed in this enterprise, whatever view is taken of it, were remarkable. For all his later tendency to textual dressage, Strauss's range and subtlety as a master of the canon of political philosophy had no equal in his generation. Schmitt's moral instability never impaired an extraordinary capacity to fuse conceptual insight and metaphoric imagination in lightning flashes of illumination around the state. Hayek could seem tactically ingenuous, but he fashioned a theoretical synthesis out of his epistemology and economics whose scope and strength has yet to be supplanted. Oakeshott was the literary artist in this gallery. His writing varies considerably in quality, and can be whimsically arch at one moment and curiously crude at another, disconcertingly close to Punch or Cross-Bencher. But at its best, when it moves into high register, it can rise to a lyrical beauty."
Perry Anderson,Left,"The trope was eminently Oakeshottian. Politics was not a battle of interests, or a quest for truth, or a voyage of progress – it was an aesthetic performance, to captivate an audience. But it was not high theatre (Oakeshott had also insisted that politics was a second-rate activity). It was more like commercial theatre, the drama of the boulevards that plays to our emotions or embarrassments – Rattigan rather than Racine, he explained. On this stage, Mount has certainly given us a stylish production. We might call it the comedy of reform."
Perry Anderson,Left,"Historically, Garton Ash belongs to the last levy of the Cold War, a cohort fired by an uncomplicated anti-Communism. His staunchness made him a natural candidate for recruitment to MI6, which propositioned him early on, as it had Ascherson in his time."
Perry Anderson,Left,"Values – ethical, epistemological, aesthetic – figure in the contests over the field, but they do not define it. Intellectuals are judged not by their morals, but by the quality of their ideas, which are rarely reducible to simple verdicts of truth or falsity, if only because banalities are by definition accurate."
Perry Anderson,Left,"For Rawls simultaneously appeals to the natural outlook of a democratic society to found his conception of the person, and to his conception of the person to found the basic structure of a democratic society. The warrant of the doctrine of two moral powers is that it ‘suits’ a society in which justice is conceived as fairness; and the warrant of justice as fairness, with its schedule of fundamental principles and primary goods, is that it ‘protects’ the exercise of the two moral powers. The attenuated idea of a person is the theoretical plinth of a desirable constitution, determining what count as primary goods ‘in advance’ of any further requirements of social life – yet is also no more than an ideological reflex of the culture it is supposed to generate. In a vicious circle, public arrangements are deduced from personal capacities defined as adapted to public arrangements."
Perry Anderson,Left,"What the structure of Rawls’s argument indicates is a more fundamental feature of his thought. This is an amphibious world, which contains just enough land of real social reference to avoid the tricky deeps of first philosophy (the gesture is roughly: let’s start out from where we’re at – in other words, Bush–Clinton country), while floating carefully enough on the waters of abstraction to avoid contact with the ground of actual political change (for example: what has happened in the US since the 1970s). The result is a kind of political cabotage, a critique of existing society that clings nervously to its shores. Readers of Rawls might well ask: where is the actual justice in the United States that corresponds to the ideal construct he offers us, if it is based on ‘plain truths widely accepted by citizens’?"
Perry Anderson,Left,"The first, and most obvious, feature that separates Habermas’s later treatment of law from his original study of the public sphere is its completely unhistorical method."
Perry Anderson,Left,"Bobbio’s theoretical defence of the distinction between Left and Right, for all its eloquence, may thus be more vulnerable than it appears. If we ask why this should be so, the answer surely lies in the difficulty of constructing an axiology of political values without coherent reference to the empirical social world. Bobbio often writes as if he could separate his ideal taxonomy from contemporary history, but of course he cannot. In practice he admits the political scenery of the present into his account selectively, for the purposes of his argument. But it is in that present that the deeper reasons and limits of his intervention lie."
Perry Anderson,Left,"Rawls resorted to Hegel in his internal reflections on a constitutional state. On the plane of inter-state relations, Kant remained his philosopher of reference, as the theorist of conditions for a perpetual peace. So too for Habermas. But since Kant failed to envisage the necessary legal framework for a cosmopolitan order, as it started to take shape through the permanent institutions of the United Nations, Habermas, when he came to review the progress made since 1945, also looked towards the philosopher of objective idealism. Measured against the sombre background of the disasters of the first half of the twentieth century, he decided, ‘the World Spirit, as Hegel would have put it, has lurched forward’. As we have seen, Bobbio was responsible for the most pointed appeal to Hegel of all. In one sense, he was more entitled to do so."
Perry Anderson,Left,"Welcoming Hegel’s idea of reconciliation as akin to his own enterprise of public reason, Rawls drew the line at his vision of the international realm as a domain of violence and anarchy, in which contention between sovereign states was bound to be regulated by war. Habermas’s gesture enlisted Hegel, on the contrary, as a patron of cosmopolitan peace. The first could not square his Law of Peoples with the lawlessness of Hegel’s states, the second could only enrol Hegel for pacific progress by turning him philosophically inside out. Bobbio, by contrast, could take the measure of Hegel’s conception of world history, as a ruthless march of great powers in which successive might founds overarching right, and invoke it in all logic to justify his approval of American imperial violence. Law was born of force, and the maxim of the conqueror – prior in tempore, potior in jure– still held."
Perry Anderson,Left,"It will take time to get a more settled sense of Thompson’s distinction as a historian and a writer. His work spans too many forms for easy judgement, and its aura can be a temptation to short cuts. But a tension between what might be called his nineteenth and his eighteenth century sensibility was certainly at the creative centre of it."
Perry Anderson,Left,"In certain temperaments, intellectual skills and political sympathies have little or no connection. Frege’s anti-Semitism or Wittgenstein’s philo-Stalinism lacked significant leads to their philosophy. Such cases are common enough. Timpanaro was not one of them."
Perry Anderson,Left,"Historically, even in the greatest minds of the Enlightenment, they could be at variance. Rousseau, the most advanced political thinker of his generation, was emotionally a pietist; Voltaire, politically at ease with a benevolent absolutism, scorned the consolations of Savoyard Christianity. For Timpanaro, Leopardi had represented the possibility of a synthesis beyond either: firm republicanism, unswerving atheism."
Perry Anderson,Left,"At times, in the scales of misery, society seemed of small account to Leopardi – emperor and beggar alike pitched into the grave. So conceived, philosophical pessimism always risked becoming political defeatism. Timpanaro was not subject to this temptation. He was intensely – even on occasion, he admitted, too vehemently – political. But he was also quite free from the monomania of any ‘pan-politicism’, as he once called it."
Perry Anderson,Left,"The – now shop-worn – label of ‘magical realism’ is customarily applied to Márquez’s novels. It has never fitted Vargas Llosa, who disavows the adjective."
Perry Anderson,Left,"The Violencia that ravaged Colombia for the next decade, pitting Liberals against the ruling Conservatives, took 200,000 lives – a catastrophe worse than any endured in Peru. This was the historical background to Márquez’s early career as a journalist and writer. But he seems to have remained eerily untouched by it."
Perry Anderson,Left,"Over this landscape, Göran Therborn’s Between Sex and Power rises up like some majestic volcano. Throwing up a billowing column of ideas and arguments, while a lava of evidence flows down its slopes, this is a great work of historical intellect and imagination, the effect of a rare combination of gifts. Trained as a sociologist, Therborn is a highly conceptual thinker, allying the formal rigour of his discipline at its best, with command of a vast range of empirical data. The result is a powerful theoretical structure, supported by a fascinating body of evidence. But it is also a set of macro-narratives that compose perhaps the first true example of a work of global history we possess."
Perry Anderson,Left,"Merchants and Revolution, dedicated to Stone, comprehensively overturns that judgement. Its author, Robert Brenner, belongs to that rare group of historians who have given their name to a whole literature – the ‘Brenner Debate’ on the origins of agrarian capitalism in Europe recalling the ‘Pirenne Thesis’ of old. His new book, in which the name of Marx is never mentioned but his spirit is omnipresent, transforms the landscape of the English Revolution. Merchants and Revolution is distinguished by three achievements, any one of which would be impressive enough. Together, their combination is an extraordinary feat."
Perry Anderson,Left,"Great men have foibles for which they can be forgiven; including an occasional failure to see where their greatness lies, or what might diminish it."
Perry Anderson,Left,"All hegemonies have their limits, and no policies ever achieve just what they intend. But the salient feature of the present is not that the world at large is out of control, but that it has never been subject to such an extent of control by one power, acting to diffuse and enforce one system, as we see today."
Perry Anderson,Left,The greater pleasures of reading the LRB are thus paid for in a more erratic and limited horizon.
Perry Anderson,Left,"Far from participating in a current literary scene agog with vogue and hyperbole, the LRB has kept what is widely perceived as a mandarin aloofness from it. Complicity with the institutions of literature, whether patrons or advertisers, is scarcely a charge that can be made against the paper."
Perry Anderson,Left,"A wonderful range of writing is offered in these and other forms. Stylistically, there are unspoken limits. The delphic or serpentine are not part of the repertoire. No fear could be more foreign to the journal than of ‘the mischief of premature clarification’, against which Fredric Jameson – whose arrival in its pages is a welcome departure from consistency – once warned. The too vehement is likewise at some discount, suspect of ‘rant’. Perhaps the best way of conveying the overall climate would be to say that the paper resists any trace of l’esprit du sérieux, in the Sartrean sense: that is, of the portentous, high-minded, hypocritical. Against all these, its playfulness finds expression on the largest as well as smallest of topics. Emblematic in this collection are the saturnine tones of Edward Luttwak, as a ‘heavy-weight’ contributor. 12 It is enough to think of the contributions of President Havel to the New York Review to understand their antithesis."
Perry Anderson,Left,"The range of emotions parents can arouse in their children – affection, rebellion, indifference, fear, adulation, their disturbing combinations – suggest a repertory of subjective universals, cutting in each individual case at random across cultures. What children know – as opposed to feel – about their parents, on the other hand, is likely to be a function of objective constraints that vary more systematically: tradition, place, life-span."
Raymond Williams,Left,"Every aspect of personal life is radically affected by the quality of general life, and yet the general life is seen at its most important in completely personal terms."
Raymond Williams,Left,The gap between our feelings and our social observation is dangerously wide.
Raymond Williams,Left,Culture is one of the two or three most complicated words in the English language.
Raymond Williams,Left,"It is as if a really secure nationalism, already in possession of its nation-state, can fail to see itself as 'nationalist' at all. Its own distinctive bonding is perceived as natural and obvious by contrast with the mere projections of any nationalism which is still in active progress and thus incomplete. At this point radicals and minority nationalists emphasize the artificialities of the settled 'common sense' nation-state and to their own satisfaction shoot them to pieces from history and from social theory."
Raymond Williams,Left,"Real independence is a time of new and active creation: people sure enough of themselves to discard their baggage; knowing the past is past, as shaping history, but with a new confident sense of the present and the future, where the decisive meanings and values will be made."
Raymond Williams,Left,"There has never been a time, until the last fifty years, when a majority of any population had regular and constant access to drama, and used this access. . . . It seems probable that in societies like Britain and the United States more drama is watched in a week or weekend, by the majority of viewers, than would have been watched in a year or in some cases a lifetime in any previous historical period. It is clearly one of the unique characteristics of advanced industrial societies that drama as an experience is now an intrinsic part of everyday life, at a quantitative level which is so very much greater than any precedent as to seem a fundamental qualitative change. Whatever the social and cultural reasons may finally be, it is clear that watching dramatic simulation of a wide range of experiences is now an essential part of our modern cultural pattern."
John Holloway,Left,"It is easy to forget that the beginning is not the word, but the scream. Faced with the mutilation of human lives by capitalism, a scream of sadness, a scream of horror, a scream of anger, a scream of refusal: NO. The starting point of theoretical reflection is opposition, negativity, struggle. It is from rage that thought is born, not from the pose of reason."
John Holloway,Left,"Feeling that the world is wrong does not necessarily mean that we have a picture of a utopia to put in its place. Nor does is necessarily mean a romantic, some-day-my-prince-will-come idea that, although things are wrong now, one day we shall come to a true world, a promised land, a happy ending. We need no promise of a happy ending to justify our rejection of a world we feel to be wrong."
John Holloway,Left,"There is no room for the scream in academic discourse. More than that: academic study provides us with a language and a way of thinking that makes it very difficult for us to express our scream. The scream, if it appears at all, appears as something to be explained, not as something to be articulated. The scream, from being the subject of our questions about society, becomes the object of analysis."
John Holloway,Left,"'Why so negative?' says the spider to the fly. 'Be objective, forget your prejudices'. But there is no way the fly can be objective, however much she may want to be: 'to look at the web objectively, from the outside - what a dream', muses the fly, 'what an empty, deceptive dream'. ... Any study of the web that does not start from the fly's entrapment in it is quite simply untrue."
John Holloway,Left,"We who scream exist ecstatically. We stand out beyond ourselves, we exist in two dimensions. The scream implies a tension between that which exists and that which might conceivably exist, between the indicative (that which is) and the subjunctive (that which might be)."
John Holloway,Left,"The most sensible thing seems to be to forget our negativity, to discard it as a fantasy of youth. And yet the world gets worse, the inequalities become more strident, the self-destruction of humanity seems to come closer. So perhaps we should not abandon our negativity but, on the contrary, try to theorise the world from the perspective of the scream."
John Holloway,Left,"In order to protect our jobs, our visas, our profits, our chances of receiving good grades, our sanity, we pretend not to see, we sanitise our own perception, filtering out the pain, pretending that it is not here but out there, far away, in Africa, in Russia, a hundred years ago, in an otherness that, by being alien, cleanses our own experience of all negativity."
John Holloway,Left,"The struggle is lost ... once the logic of power becomes the logic of the revolutionary process, once the negative of refusal is converted into the positive of power-building. ... If we revolt against capitalism, it is not because we want a different system of power, it is because we want a society in which power relations are dissolved. You cannot build a society of non-power relations by conquering power. Once the logic of power is adopted, the struggle against power is already lost."
John Holloway,Left,"Power, for those without the means of commanding others, is frustration. The existence of power-to as power-over means that the vast majority of doers are converted into the done-to, their activity transformed into passivity, their subjectivity into objectivity."
John Holloway,Left,"If domination is always a process of armed robbery, the peculiarity of capitalism is that the person with the arms stands apart from the person doing the robbery, merely supervising that the robbery conforms with the law."
John Holloway,Left,"The collectivity is divided into two classes of people: those who, by virtue of their ownership of the means of doing, command others to do, and those who, by virtue of the fact that they are deprived of access to the means of doing, do what the others tell them to do."
John Holloway,Left,"Capital acquires a dynamic of its own and the leading members of society are quite simply its most loyal servants, its most servile courtiers."
John Holloway,Left,"Under capitalism, subjectivity can only exist antagonistically, in opposition to its own objectification. To treat the subject as already emancipated, as most mainstream theory does, is to endorse the present objectification of the subject as subjectivity, as freedom."
John Holloway,Left,"Capitalist power … is like one of those horrific modern bullets which do not simply pierce the flesh of the victim but explode inside her into a thousand different fragments. … The concept of fetishism is concerned with the explosion of power inside us, not as something that is distinct from the separation of doing and done (as in the concepts of 'ideology' and 'hegemony'), but as something that is integral to that separation. That separation does not just divide capitalists from workers, but explodes inside us, shaping every aspect of what we do and what we think, transforming every breath of our lives into a moment of class struggle."
John Holloway,Left,Struggle against capitalism must be also struggle against the 'we' who are not only against but also in capitalism. To criticise is to recognise that we are a divided self. To criticise society is to criticise our own complicity in the reproduction of that society.
John Holloway,Left,Class struggle does not take place within the constituted forms of capitalist social relations: rather the constitution of those forms is itself class struggle.
John Holloway,Left,"We do not struggle as working class, we struggle against being working class, against being classified."
Raymond Williams,Left,"What breaks capitalism, all that will ever break capitalism, is capitalists. The faster they run the more strain on their heart."
Raymond Williams,Left,The human crisis is always a crisis of understanding: what we genuinely understand we can do.
Robert Reich,Progressive,"Globalization and free trade do spur economic growth, and they lead to lower prices on many goods."
Robert Reich,Progressive,True patriotism isn't cheap. It's about taking on a fair share of the burden of keeping America going.
Robert Reich,Progressive,"The faith that anyone could move from rags to riches - with enough guts and gumption, hard work and nose to the grindstone - was once at the core of the American Dream."
Robert Reich,Progressive,"The only way to grow the economy in a way that benefits the bottom 90 percent is to change the structure of the economy. At the least, this requires stronger unions and a higher minimum wage."
Robert Reich,Progressive,One tax dodge often used by multi-national companies is to squirrel their earnings abroad in foreign subsidiaries located in countries where taxes are lower.
Robert Reich,Progressive,"Bankruptcy laws allow companies to smoothly reorganize, but not college graduates burdened by student loans."
Robert Reich,Progressive,"As public schools deteriorate, the upper-middle class and wealthy send their kids to private ones. As public pools and playgrounds decay, the better-off buy memberships in private tennis and swimming clubs. As public hospitals decline, the well-off pay premium rates for private care."
Robert Reich,Progressive,"As income from work has become more concentrated in America, the super rich have invested in businesses, real estate, art, and other assets. The income from these assets is now concentrating even faster than income from work."
Robert Reich,Progressive,"What are called 'public schools' in many of America's wealthy communities aren't really 'public' at all. In effect, they're private schools, whose tuition is hidden away in the purchase price of upscale homes there, and in the corresponding property taxes."
Robert Reich,Progressive,Nations are becoming less relevant in a world where everyone and everything is interconnected. The connections that matter most are again becoming more personal.
Robert Reich,Progressive,"Before the rise of the nation-state, between the eighteenth and twentieth centuries, the world was mostly tribal. Tribes were united by language, religion, blood, and belief. They feared other tribes and often warred against them."
Robert Reich,Progressive,Standing up to bullies is the hallmark of a civilized society.
Robert Reich,Progressive,"Can we please agree that in the real world, corporations exist for one purpose and one purpose only - to make as much money as possible, which means cutting costs as much as possible?"
Robert Reich,Progressive,Those at the top would do better with a smaller share of a booming economy that elicits a positive politics than they will do with an ever-larger share of an anemic economy that fuels the politics of anger.
Robert Reich,Progressive,"A leader is someone who steps back from the entire system and tries to build a more collaborative, more innovative system that will work over the long term."
Robert Reich,Progressive,We do not want to live in a theocracy. We should maintain that barrier and government has no business telling someone what they ought to believe or how they should conduct their private lives.
Robert Reich,Progressive,"Our young people - their capacities to think, understand, investigate, and innovate - are America's future."
Robert Reich,Progressive,"The job creators are members of America's vast middle class and the poor, whose purchases cause businesses to expand and invest."
Robert Reich,Progressive,Technology is changing so fast that knowledge about specifics can quickly become obsolete. That's why so much of what technicians learn is on the job.
Robert Reich,Progressive,"It is hard to bite the hands that feed you, especially when you are competing for food."
Robert Reich,Progressive,Sugary drinks are blamed for increasing the rates of chronic disease and obesity in America. Yet efforts to reduce their consumption through taxes or other measures have gone nowhere. The beverage industry has spent millions defeating them.
Robert Reich,Progressive,The generosity of the super-rich is sometimes proffered as evidence they're contributing as much to the nation's well-being as they did decades ago when they paid a much larger share of their earnings in taxes.
Robert Reich,Progressive,It's not government's business what people do in their private bedrooms.
Robert Reich,Progressive,"We never used to blink at taking a leadership role in the world. And we understood leadership often required something other than drones and bombs. We accepted global leadership not just for humanitarian reasons, but also because it was in our own best interest. We knew we couldn't isolate ourselves from trouble. There was no place to hide."
Robert Reich,Progressive,"The largest party in America, by the way, is neither the Democrats nor the Republicans. It's the party of non-voters."
Nicholas Kristof,Progressive,"The wilderness is healing, a therapy for the soul."
Nicholas Kristof,Progressive,"Our world is enriched when coders and marketers dazzle us with smartphones and tablets, but, by themselves, they are just slabs. It is the music, essays, entertainment and provocations that they access, spawned by the humanities, that animate them - and us."
Nicholas Kristof,Progressive,"The conflict in Darfur could escalate to where we're seeing 100,000 victims per month."
Nicholas Kristof,Progressive,A few countries like Sri Lanka and Honduras have led the way in slashing maternal mortality.
Nicholas Kristof,Progressive,"Every high school and college graduate in America should, I think, have some familiarity with statistics, economics and a foreign language such as Spanish. Religion may not be as indispensable, but the humanities should be a part of our repertory. They may not enrich our wallets, but they do enrich our lives. They civilize us. They provide context."
Nicholas Kristof,Progressive,"I've always been interested in public health approaches because it seems to me we have this yearning for silver bullets, and that is not in fact how change comes about. Change comes through silver buckshot - a lot of little things that achieve results. That's a classic public health approach."
Nicholas Kristof,Progressive,"Most of the time in the 21st century, we dominate our surroundings: We tweak the thermostat, and the temperature falls one degree. We push a button, and Taylor Swift sings for us. It's the opposite in the wilderness, which teaches us constantly that we are not lords of the universe but rather building blocks of it."
Nicholas Kristof,Progressive,"Inequality causes problems by creating fissures in societies, leaving those at the bottom feeling marginalized or disenfranchised."
Nicholas Kristof,Progressive,"Humans pull together in an odd way when they're in the wilderness. It's astonishing how few people litter and how much they help one another. Indeed, the smartphone app to navigate the Pacific Crest Trail, Halfmile, is a labor of love by hikers who make it available as a free download."
Nicholas Kristof,Progressive,"One of the most crucial kinds of intervention is in advocacy. We can think about charities in the context of delivering services, and indeed that is part of their job, but advocacy is also getting governments to step up to the plate. They can also give more voice to those who don't have one."
Nicholas Kristof,Progressive,"One of the aims of higher education is to broaden perspectives, and what better way than by a home stay in a really different country, like Bangladesh or Senegal? Time abroad also leaves one more aware of the complex prism of suspicion through which the United States is often viewed."
Nicholas Kristof,Progressive,"Sure, food stamps are occasionally misused, but anyone familiar with business knows that the abuse of food subsidies is far greater in the corporate suite. Every time an executive wines and dines a hot date on the corporate dime, the average taxpayer helps foot the bill."
Nicholas Kristof,Progressive,"Wilderness trails constitute a rare space in America marked by economic diversity. Lawyers and construction workers get bitten by the same mosquitoes and sip from the same streams; there are none of the usual signals about socioeconomic status, for most hikers are in shorts and a T-shirt and enveloped by an aroma that would make a skunk queasy."
Nicholas Kristof,Progressive,You no more have the right to risk others by failing to vaccinate than you do by sending your child to school with a hunting knife. Vaccination isn't a private choice but a civic obligation.
Nicholas Kristof,Progressive,"Individual storytelling is incredibly powerful. We as journalists know intuitively what scientists of the brain are discovering through brain scans, which is that emotional stories tend to open the portals, and that once there's a connection made, people are more open to rational arguments."
Nicholas Kristof,Progressive,Random violence is incredibly infectious.
Nicholas Kristof,Progressive,"In Angola, I visited 'HeroRats' that have been trained to sniff out land mines (and, in some countries, diagnose tuberculosis). In a day, they can clear 20 times as much of a minefield as a human, and they work for bananas!"
Nicholas Kristof,Progressive,"Since the end of the 1970s, something has gone profoundly wrong in America. Inequality has soared. Educational progress slowed. Incarceration rates quintupled. Family breakdown accelerated. Median household income stagnated."
Nicholas Kristof,Progressive,The caricature of Islam as a violent and intolerant religion is horrendously incomplete. Remember that those standing up to Muslim fanatics are mostly Muslims.
Nicholas Kristof,Progressive,Utah may well be the most cosmopolitan state in America. Vast numbers of young Mormons - increasingly women as well as men - spend a couple of years abroad as missionaries and return jabbering in Thai or Portuguese and bearing a wealth of international experience.
Nicholas Kristof,Progressive,Beware of generalizations about any faith because they sometimes amount to the religious equivalent of racial profiling. Hinduism contained both Gandhi and the fanatic who assassinated him.
Nicholas Kristof,Progressive,"For all Trump's criticisms of government, his family wealth came from feeding at the government trough. His father, Fred Trump, leveraged government housing programs into a construction business; the empire was founded on public money."
Nicholas Kristof,Progressive,"There are very few things I've done just twice in my life, 40 years apart, and one is to backpack on the Pacific Crest Trail across the California/Oregon border."
Nicholas Kristof,Progressive,"Most moms and dads, they want to be good moms and dads. But it's an incredibly hard job when you are stressed out, when you are poor, when your life is in chaos. And giving them some of the tools to be better parents, to whittle away at that parenting gap, gives those kids a much better starting point in life."
Nicholas Kristof,Progressive,"We journalists are a bit like vultures, feasting on war, scandal and disaster. Turn on the news, and you see Syrian refugees, Volkswagen corruption, dysfunctional government. Yet that reflects a selection bias in how we report the news: We cover planes that crash, not planes that take off."
Polly Toynbee,Progressive,"People want the right to die at a time of their own choosing. Too many families have watched helplessly as a relative dies slowly, longing for death."
Polly Toynbee,Progressive,"Could a government dare to set out with happiness as its goal? Now that there are accepted scientific proofs, it would be easy to audit the progress of national happiness annually, just as we monitor money and GDP."
Polly Toynbee,Progressive,"Inequality makes everyone unhappy, the poor most of all, and that is well within the remit of the state. More money gives less extra happiness the richer we get, yet we are addicted to earning and spending more every year."
Polly Toynbee,Progressive,"But how odd that in this heathen nation of empty pews, where churches' bare, ruined choirs are converted into luxury loft living, a Labour government - yes, a Labour government - is deliberately creating a huge expansion of faith schools."
Polly Toynbee,Progressive,"How do you make any sense of history, art or literature without knowing the stories and iconography of your own culture and all the world's main religions?"
Polly Toynbee,Progressive,"Thresholds of pain, indignity and incapacity are entirely personal."
Polly Toynbee,Progressive,"Crime is only the worst example, but it is a paradigm for other Labour policy disasters. No one tells the voters that crime is falling: let them stay scared senseless."
Polly Toynbee,Progressive,But the single overwhelming reason why jails are bursting is longer sentences given for more crimes.
Polly Toynbee,Progressive,"So what really works? Treatments in jail do some good, but it's mostly too late: finding a family and a job or just growing older make most prisoners eventually give up crime."
Polly Toynbee,Progressive,"Is anyone serious about the politics of happiness? David Cameron dipped a toe in the water, using the word lightly, but denying the hard policies it implies. Labour shies away from it, but should take up the challenge."
Polly Toynbee,Progressive,"It is now possible to quantify people's levels of happiness pretty accurately by asking them, by observation, and by measuring electrical activity in the brain, in degrees from terrible pain to sublime joy."
Polly Toynbee,Progressive,"Happiness is a real, objective phenomenon, scientifically verifiable. That means people and whole societies can now be measured over time and compared accurately with one another. Causes and cures for unhappiness can be quantified."
Polly Toynbee,Progressive,One in six people suffer depression or a chronic anxiety disorder. These are not the worried well but those in severe mental pain with conditions crippling enough to prevent them living normal lives.
Polly Toynbee,Progressive,The strongest predictor of unhappiness is anyone who has had a mental illness in the last 10 years. It is an even stronger predictor of unhappiness than poverty - which also ranks highly.
Polly Toynbee,Progressive,Working lives are for the state to influence. Unemployment makes people unhappy. So does instability.
Polly Toynbee,Progressive,"My Lords temporal, today is the day to rise up against the regiment of Lords spiritual and proclaim the values of enlightenment, compassion and common sense."
Polly Toynbee,Progressive,"In the polls, over 80% support the right to die and have done for the last 25 years. Even 80% of practising Catholics and Protestants support it, plus 76% of Church Times readers."
Polly Toynbee,Progressive,"Most people come to fear not death itself, but the many terrible ways of dying."
Polly Toynbee,Progressive,The best care on earth cannot prevent us all dying in the end.
Polly Toynbee,Progressive,Openness about death has led to greater care about all aspects of dying.
Polly Toynbee,Progressive,"My mother begged doctors to end her life. She was beyond the physical ability to swallow enough of the weak morphine pills she had around her. When she knew she was dying I promised to make sure she could go at a time of her choosing, but it was impossible. I couldn't help."
Polly Toynbee,Progressive,There is all the difference in the world between teaching children about religion and handing them over to be taught by the religious.
Polly Toynbee,Progressive,"This is indeed a clash of civilisations, not between Islam and Christendom but between reason and superstition."
Polly Toynbee,Progressive,"But instead of standing up for reason, our government is handing education over to the world of faith."
Robert Reich,Progressive,"If nothing is done to counter present trends, the major fault line in American politics will no longer be between Democrats and Republicans, liberals and conservatives. It will be between the 'establishment'—political insiders, power brokers, the heads of American business, Wall Street, and the mainstream media—and an increasingly mad-as-hell populace determined to 'take back America' from them."
Robert Reich,Progressive,"Government doesn’t ""intrude"" on the ""free market."" It creates the market."
Robert Reich,Progressive,"Those who argue for ""less government"" area really arguing for a different government—often one that favors them or their patrons."
Robert Reich,Progressive,"The critical things to watch out for aren't the rare big events, such as the 2008 bailout of the Street itself, but the ongoing multitude of small rule changes that continuously alter the economic game. ... The ""free market"" is a myth that prevents us from examining these rule changes and asking whom they serve. The myth is therefore highly useful to those who do not wish such an examination to be undertaken."
Ezra Klein,Progressive,"If I'm sitting around exulting over traffic data, I'm an idiot."
Ezra Klein,Progressive,The thing to remember about being young is you eventually get old.
Ezra Klein,Progressive,"One of my big beliefs about Washington is that we highly overstate the power of individuals and highly underrate seeing Washington as a system, in general, but, in particular, we highly underrate the power of Congress."
Ezra Klein,Progressive,The idea of changing and fixing the problem of how news is presented on the Internet has been recognized for a long time.
Ezra Klein,Progressive,"When I talk to people about 'KnowMore', it is as an experiment. The biggest thing I'll say there is that we've learned a lot from 'KnowMore'."
Ezra Klein,Progressive,"My only advice is to try to get the job that's most like the job you want, rather than the one that's more prestigious. Always try to be the talent."
Ezra Klein,Progressive,Every newspaper in the country covers stories that other newspapers cover. Every industry is filled with people who are competing to do the best job providing a particular service.
Ezra Klein,Progressive,I think it's weird that the news cedes so much ground to Wikipedia. That isn't true in other informational sectors.
Ezra Klein,Progressive,"It's not a good idea to conceptualize a static relationship with long-standing policies, like health care."
Ezra Klein,Progressive,"When I first came to Washington, what I admired most was that people were just really, really smart with a tremendous amount of intellectual horsepower and the ability to look at an issue and say something fresh."
Ezra Klein,Progressive,"When you're trying to come up with a good approach to reporting on the bleeding edge of where the conversation's moving, you're just leaving a lot of people who aren't on the bleeding edge of that conversation out."
Ezra Klein,Progressive,People set newspapers on fire; they use them for wrapping fish. The Internet does not have that property. What I don't think we've gotten is that you can make things last longer than in print.
Juan Williams,Progressive,"In the 2000 presidential election, Al Gore got more votes than George W. Bush, but still lost the election. The Supreme Court's ruling in Florida gave Bush that pivotal state, and doomed Gore to lose the Electoral College. That odd scenario - where the candidate with the most votes loses - has happened three times in U.S. history."
Juan Williams,Progressive,"While Planned Parenthood provides abortions at some of their clinics, it also provides healthcare services for poor women, including checkups, mammograms, cervical cancer screenings and contraceptives."
Juan Williams,Progressive,"The 2012 presidential campaign's turn away from the classic, straight-up, American election - where the candidate who gets the most votes nationwide wins - is another sad reminder of the extreme political polarization distorting today's politics. No one talks about a 50-state strategy for winning the presidency these days."
Juan Williams,Progressive,I support gun control. But speaking honestly about the combustible mix of race and guns may be more important to stopping the slaughter in minority communities than any new gun-control laws.
Juan Williams,Progressive,I pointed out that the Atlanta Olympic bomber - as well as Timothy McVeigh and the people who protest against gay rights at military funerals - are Christians but we journalists don't identify them by their religion.
Juan Williams,Progressive,"If his presidency is to represent the full power of the idea that black Americans are just like everyone else - fully human and fully capable of intellect, courage and patriotism - then Barack Obama has to be subject to the same rough and tumble of political criticism experienced by his predecessors."
Juan Williams,Progressive,"As the 2012 elections approach the finish line, the chatter among columnists and political reporters is about upcoming books that take readers inside the campaigns, cutting-edge efforts to micro-target voters on Internet social applications, the enormous money flowing through super-PACs, and extreme political polarization."
Juan Williams,Progressive,"President Obama and Secretary Duncan have made stronger teacher evaluation a key part of their education reform efforts. Under their signature plan, called 'Race to the Top,' states can win federal support for schools by improving teacher evaluations."
Juan Williams,Progressive,In 2007 the 'dagger' of an idea that killed President Bush's effort at reforming the immigration system was lax border security.
Juan Williams,Progressive,"When I'm on TV, I'm often talking to a conservative host. I may have another conservative arguing with me. You've got very limited time, and you're using 'sound-bite' type language."
Juan Williams,Progressive,"Yes, agriculture subsidies are far too generous. They need to be reined in because they cater to special interests while distorting free market competition. Yes, the farm laws are an anachronistic mess."
Juan Williams,Progressive,"Every American president must be held to the highest standard. No president of any color should be given a free pass for screw-ups, lies or failure to keep a promise."
Juan Williams,Progressive,"The teachers' unions that block school reform have done serious damage to the union brand. The public no longer views unions as their friend, much less their champion. They view them as corrupt, intransigent and more interested in protecting their political clout within the Democratic Party than protecting their members or even school children."
Juan Williams,Progressive,"The critical importance of honest journalism and a free flowing, respectful national conversation needs to be had in our country. But it is being buried as collateral damage in a war whose battles include political correctness and ideological orthodoxy."
Juan Williams,Progressive,Gun-related violence and murders are concentrated among blacks and Latinos in big cities.
Juan Williams,Progressive,"And there is no getting away from the fact - and this is a key point of discontent among many who are upset with the health care reform bill is it didn't go far enough. They say why isn't it in place now? Why don't I see some benefits now? All I see is the potential for losing insurance coverage, for premiums going up. That's hurting Obama."
Juan Williams,Progressive,"For me, the key is I always have to be the same person. If someone was to hear me say something on Fox and hear me say something different on NPR, they would say, 'The guy is a hypocrite.'"
Juan Williams,Progressive,"Apparently, the heart of opposition to new gun regulations is in the white community. Yet white people face far less daily violence with guns."
Juan Williams,Progressive,Alaska and Montana are not in the south but they definitely form part of the crimson tide of red states where Republicans are dominant.
Juan Williams,Progressive,Teddy Kennedy rose to become a liberal lion by collaborating with Republicans.
Juan Williams,Progressive,"Democrats cannot win elections without capturing the votes of independent-minded swing voters. And that is where writing off the Tea Party as a bunch of racist kooks becomes self-destructive. The Tea Party outrage over health-care reform, deficit spending and entitlements run amok is no fringe concern."
Juan Williams,Progressive,"Yesterday NPR fired me for telling the truth. The truth is that I worry when I am getting on an airplane and see people dressed in garb that identifies them first and foremost as Muslims. This is not a bigoted statement. It is a statement of my feelings, my fears after the terrorist attacks of 9/11 by radical Muslims."
Juan Williams,Progressive,"Sometimes you have to understand that you push ahead, there's going to be a lot of flak, there's going to be a lot of dogs barking, but the wagon train moves ahead."
Juan Williams,Progressive,"The question now is does Obama have any hope of raising money? I don't think he'll raise it out of the New York people, I don't think he's going to raise it out the Hollywood people, so where's the money going to come from for Barack Obama?"
Juan Williams,Progressive,"When you stop and look at so much of the kind of activism that has been triggered, the Tea Party and the like, as a result of Obama's efforts - TARP, the stimulus package, and now the health care reform - there is a lot of sense this government is changing."
Bill Moyers,Progressive,Freedom begins the moment you realize someone else has been writing your story and it's time you took the pen from his hand and started writing it yourself.
Bill Moyers,Progressive,"In marriage, everyday you love,and everyday you forgive.It is an ongoing sacrament, love and forgiveness"
Bill Moyers,Progressive,Creativity is piercing the mundane to find the marvelous.
Bill Moyers,Progressive,"Constitutional democracy, you see, is no romantic notion. It's our defense against ourselves, the one foe who might defeat us."
Bill Moyers,Progressive,"America's corporate and political elites now form a regime of their own and they're privatizing democracy. All the benefits - the tax cuts, policies and rewards flow in one direction: up."
Bill Moyers,Progressive,"When a library is open, no matter its size or shape, democracy is open, too."
Bill Moyers,Progressive,Civilization is but a thin veneer stretched across the passions of the human heart. And civilization doesn't just happen; we have to make it happen.
Bill Moyers,Progressive,"Sharing is the essence of teaching. It is, I have come to believe, the essence of civilization . . . Without it, the imagination is but the echo of the self, trapped in a soundproof chamber, reverberating upon itself until it is spent in exhaustion or futility"
Bill Moyers,Progressive,"Conservatism is less a set of ideas than it is a pathological distemper, a militant anger over the fact that the universe is not closed and life is not static."
Bill Moyers,Progressive,"The question, then, is not about changing people; it's about reaching people. I'm not speaking simply of better information, a sharper and clearer factual presentation to disperse the thick fogs generated by today's spin machines. Of course, we always need stronger empirical arguments to back up our case. It would certainly help if at least as many people who believe, say, in a literal devil or that God sent George W. Bush to the White House also knew that the top 1 percent of households now have more wealth than the bottom 90 percent combined. Yes, people need more information than they get from the media conglomerates with their obsession for nonsense, violence and pap. And we need, as we keep hearing, new ideas. But we are at an extraordinary moment. The conservative movement stands intellectually and morally bankrupt while Democrats talk about a new direction without convincing us they know the difference between a weather vane and a compass. The right story will set our course for a generation to come."
Bill Moyers,Progressive,Democracy belongs to those who exercise it.
Bill Moyers,Progressive,Why are record numbers of Americans on food stamps? Because record numbers of Americans are in poverty. Why are people falling through the cracks? Because there are cracks to fall through.
Bill Moyers,Progressive,secrecy is the freedom tyrants dream of
Bill Moyers,Progressive,"When language fails, violence becomes a language."
Bill Moyers,Progressive,Our media and political system has turned into a mutual protection racket.
Bill Moyers,Progressive,A free press is one where it’s ok to state the conclusion you’re led to by the evidence.
Paul Krugman,Progressive,"I believe in a relatively equal society, supported by institutions that limit extremes of wealth and poverty. I believe in democracy, civil liberties, and the rule of law. That makes me a liberal, and I’m proud of it."
Paul Krugman,Progressive,"Politics determines who has the power, not who has the truth."
Paul Krugman,Progressive,"The media are desperately afraid of being accused of bias. And that's partly because there's a whole machine out there, an organized attempt to accuse them of bias whenever they say anything that the Right doesn't like. So rather than really try to report things objectively, they settle for being even-handed, which is not the same thing. One of my lines in a column"
Paul Krugman,Progressive,The rich are different from you and me: they have more influence.
Paul Krugman,Progressive,"Now, it’s true that some of the protesters are oddly dressed or have silly-sounding slogans, which is inevitable given the open character of the events. But so what? I, at least, am a lot more offended by the sight of exquisitely tailored plutocrats, who owe their continued wealth to government guarantees, whining that President Obama has said mean things about them than I am by the sight of ragtag young people denouncing consumerism."
Paul Krugman,Progressive,Wealthy Americans who benefit hugely from a system rigged in their favor react with hysteria to anyone who points out just how rigged the system is.
Paul Krugman,Progressive,"The appeal to the intellectually insecure is also more important than it might seem. Because economics touches so much of life, everyone wants to have an opinion. Yet the kind of economics covered in the textbooks is a technical subject that many people find hard to follow. How reassuring, then, to be told that it is all irrelevant -- that all you really need to know are a few simple ideas! Quite a few supply-siders have created for themselves a wonderful alternative intellectual history in which John Maynard Keynes was a fraud, Paul Samuelson and even Milton Friedman are fools, and the true line of deep economic thought runs from Adam Smith through obscure turn-of-the-century Austrians straight to them."
Paul Krugman,Progressive,"In our country, learned ignorance is on the rise."
Paul Krugman,Progressive,"And that's just the beginning. More and more, conventional wisdom says that the responsible thing is to make the unemployed suffer. And while the benefits from inflicting pain are an illusion, the pain itself will be all too real."
Paul Krugman,Progressive,"Political figures who talk a lot about liberty and freedom invariably turn out to mean the freedom to not pay taxes and discriminate based on race; freedom to hold different ideas and express them, not so much."
Paul Krugman,Progressive,"These are tough times for state governments. Huge deficits loom almost everywhere, from California to New York, from New Jersey to Texas.Wait"
Paul Krugman,Progressive,"For most Americans, economic growth is a spectator sport."
Paul Krugman,Progressive,On the political as on the economic front it's important not to fall into the not as bad as trap. High unemployment isn't O.K. just because it hasn't hit 1933 levels; ominous political trends shouldn’t be dismissed just because there’s no Hitler in sight.
Paul Krugman,Progressive,"Economics is really about two stories. One is the story of the old economist and younger economist walking down the street, and the younger economist says, ‘Look, there’s a hundred-dollar bill,’ and the older one says, ‘Nonsense, if it was there somebody would have picked it up already.’ So sometimes you do find hundred-dollar bills lying on the street, but not often"
Paul Krugman,Progressive,"If it were profitable to have indentured servants in the modern world, I'm sure that Richard Scaife's think tanks would have no trouble finding justifications, and assorted Christian groups would explain why it's God's will."
Paul Krugman,Progressive,Seriously bad ideas (are) bad ideas which appeal to the prejudices of serious people.
Paul Krugman,Progressive,"It was only with the crisis that debt soared.Yet many Europeans in key positions - especially politicians and officials in Germany, but also the leadership of the European Central Bank and opinion leaders throughout the world of finance and banking - are deeply committed to the Big Delusion, and no amount of contrary evidence will shake them. As a result, the problem of dealing with the crisis is often couched in moral terms: nations are in trouble because they have sinned, and they must redeem themselves through suffering.And that's a very bad way to approach the actual problems Europe faces."
Paul Krugman,Progressive,"[W]hat possible purpose does this lashing-out serve? Will activists be shamed into recovering their previous enthusiasm? Will Republicans stop their vicious attacks because Obama is lashing out to his left? It was pure self-indulgence; even if he feels aggrieved, he has to judge his words by their usefulness, not by his desire to vent. This isn't about him."
Paul Krugman,Progressive,"There's another element in the euro crisis, another weakness of a shared currency, that took many people, myself included, by surprise. It turns out that countries that lack their own currency are highly vulnerable to self-fulfilling panic, in which the efforts of investors to avoid losses from default end up triggering the very default they fear."
Paul Krugman,Progressive,One is reminded of the old joke about the centipede who was asked how he managed to coordinate his 100 legs : He started thinking about it and could never walk properly again.
Paul Krugman,Progressive,"As long as there are no routes back to full employment except that of somehow restoring business confidence, he pointed out, business lobbies in effect have veto power over government actions: propose doing anything they dislike, such as raising taxes or enhancing workers' bargaining power, and they can issue dire warnings that this will reduce confidence and plunge the nation into depression. But let monetary and fiscal policy be deployed to fight unemployment, and suddenly business confidence becomes less necessary, and the need to cater to capitalists' concern is much reduced."
Paul Krugman,Progressive,[Conventional wisdom] very heavily tends to reflect the preferences and the interests of the elite.
Paul Krugman,Progressive,"In the scientific world, the syndrome known as 'great man's disease' happens when a famous researcher in one field develops strong opinions about another field that he or she does not understand, such as a chemist who decides that he is an expert in medicine or a physicist who decides that he is an expert in cognitive science.They have trouble accepting that they must go back to school before they can make pronouncements in a new field."
Paul Krugman,Progressive,I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the power of doctrines
Paul Krugman,Progressive,"These senior claims were supposed to be very low-risk; after all, how likely was it that a large number of people would default on their mortgages at the same time? The answer, of course, is that it was quite likely in an environment where homes were worth 30, 40, 50 percent less than the borrowers originally paid for them. So a lot of supposedly safe assets, assets that had been rated AAA by Standard & Poor's or Moody's, ended up becoming toxic waste, worth only a fraction of their face value."
Paul Krugman,Progressive,Some people want the past repeated and have an interest in making sure we don't remember it.
Paul Krugman,Progressive,"In 1953 Time magazine, declaring that the real news of the nation’s political future and its economic direction lies in people who seldom see a reporter, sent one of its contributing editors, Alvin Josephy, on a national tour. His mission was to get a sense of America. The portrait he painted bore little resemblance to the America of 1929. Where the America of the twenties had been a land of extremes, of vast wealth for a few but hard times for many, America in the fifties was all of a piece. Even in the smallest towns and most isolated areas, the Time report began, the U.S. is wearing a very prosperous, middle-class suit of clothes…. People are not growing wealthy, but more of them than ever before are getting along. And where the America of the twenties had been a land of political polarization, of sharp divides between the dominant right and the embattled left, America in the fifties was a place of political compromise: Republicans and Democrats have a surprising sameness of outlook and political thinking. Unions had become staid establishment institutions. Farmers cheerfully told the man from Time that if farm subsidies were socialism, then they were socialists.1"
Paul Krugman,Progressive,The habit of disguising ideology as expertise has created a deficit of legitimacy.
Paul Krugman,Progressive,I joked back in the summer of 2011 that what we really need right now is a fake threat of alien invasion that leads to massive spending on anti-alien defense
Paul Krugman,Progressive,"Moreover, the reasons for proposing such tax cuts are often verbally transformed from those of the advocates"
Paul Krugman,Progressive,Businesspeople are not used to thinking about closed systems;economists are.
Paul Krugman,Progressive,"The next time you hear businesspeople propounding their views about the economy, ask yourself. Have they taken the time to study this subject? Have they read what the experts write?If not, never mind how successful they have been in business. Ignore them, because they probably have no idea what they are talking about."
Paul Krugman,Progressive,"Incentives aren't the only thing that matter for economic growth. Opportunity is also crucial, and extreme inequality deprives many people of the opportunity to fulfill their potential, and government programs that reduce inequality can make the nation as a whole richer by reducing that waste."
Paul Krugman,Progressive,"It seems no one is guaranteed a job anywhere anymore. These are troubled times for workers. The creeping sense that no one’s job is safe, even as the companies they work for are thriving, means the spread of fear, apprehension, and confusion. One sign of this growing unease: An American headhunting firm reported that more than half of callers making inquiries about jobs were still employed"
Paul Krugman,Progressive,"Still, one could argue"
Paul Krugman,Progressive,"Long, long ago, my great mentor in graduate school, the late Darb, he said if you're writing for a popular audience, you do not start by saying, 'Consider a small, open economy..' You say, 'In Belgium."
Paul Krugman,Progressive,"Paul krugman of the new york times, on baltimore 62 words …I do worry that the centrality of race and racism to this particular story may convey the false impression that debilitating poverty and alienation from society are uniquely black experiences. In fact, much though by no means all of the horror one sees in Baltimore and many other places is really about class, about the devastating effects of extreme and rising inequality."
Paul Krugman,Progressive,"At the level of economic theory, the great fallacy in the logic of David Ricardo, the father of free-trade theory, was to view the gains and losses of trade in a static fashion, as a snapshot at a single point in time. In Ricardo’s theory, whose variants are espoused by free-market economists to this day, if nineteenth-century Britain offered better and cheaper manufactured goods, the US should buy them and export something where it could compete"
Joseph E. Stiglitz,Progressive,"Development is about transforming the lives of people, not just transforming economies."
Joseph E. Stiglitz,Progressive,"Rather than justice for all, we are evolving into a system of justice for those who can afford it. We have banks that are not only too big to fail, but too big to be held accountable."
Joseph E. Stiglitz,Progressive,"There are two visions of America a half century from now. One is of a society more divided between the haves and the have-nots, a country in which the rich live in gated communities, send their children to expensive schools, and have access to first-rate medical care. Meanwhile, the rest live in a world marked by insecurity, at best mediocre education, and in effect rationed health care―they hope and pray they don't get seriously sick. At the bottom are millions of young people alienated and without hope. I have seen that picture in many developing countries; economists have given it a name, a dual economy, two societies living side by side, but hardly knowing each other, hardly imagining what life is like for the other. Whether we will fall to the depths of some countries, where the gates grow higher and the societies split farther and farther apart, I do not know. It is, however, the nightmare towards which we are slowly marching."
Joseph E. Stiglitz,Progressive,The only true and sustainable prosperity is shared prosperity.
Joseph E. Stiglitz,Progressive,"To put it baldly, there are two ways to become wealthy: to create wealth or to take wealth away from others. The former adds to society. The latter typically subtracts from it, for in the process of taking it away, wealth gets destroyed. A monopolist who overcharges for his product takes money from those whom he is overcharging and at the same time destroys value. To get his monopoly price, he has to restrict production."
Joseph E. Stiglitz,Progressive,"The more divided a society becomes in terms of wealth, the more reluctant the wealthy are to spend money on common needs. The rich don’t need to rely on government for parks or education or medical care or personal security."
Joseph E. Stiglitz,Progressive,"...decisions were often made because of ideology and politics. As a result many wrong-headed actions were taken, ones that did not solve the problem at hand but that fit with the interests or beliefs of the people in power."
Joseph E. Stiglitz,Progressive,The U.S. incarceration rate is the world’s highest and some nine to ten times that of many European countries. Almost 1 in 100 American adults is behind bars.61 Some U.S. states spend as much on their prisons as they do on their universities.
Joseph E. Stiglitz,Progressive,"Overborrowing or overlending? Lenders encourage indebtedness because it is profitable. Developing country governments are sometimes even pressured to overborrow ... Even without corruption, it is easy to be influenced by Western businessmen and financiers ... Countries that aren't sure that borrowing is worth the rist are told how important it is to establis a credit rating: borrow even if you really don't need the money."
Joseph E. Stiglitz,Progressive,The facts shouldn’t get in the way of a pleasant fantasy.
Joseph E. Stiglitz,Progressive,"In some circumstances, a focus on extrinsic rewards (money) can actually diminish effort. Most (or at least many) teachers enter their profession not because of the money but because of their love for children and their dedication to teaching. The best teachers could have earned far higher incomes if they had gone to banking. It is almost insulting to assume that they are not doing what they can to help their students learn, and that by paying them an extra $500 or $1,500, they would exert greater effort. Indeed, incentive pay can be corrosive: it reminds teachers of how bad their pay is, and those who are led thereby to focus on money may be induced to find a better paying job, leaving behind only those for whom teaching is the only alternative. (Of course, if teachers perceive themselves to be badly paid, that will undermine morale, and that will have adverse incentive effects)"
Joseph E. Stiglitz,Progressive,"The head of Goldman Sachs, Lloyd Blankfein, made it perfectly clear: sophisticated investors don’t, or at least shouldn’t, rely on trust. Those who bought the products the banks sold were consenting adults who should have known better."
Joseph E. Stiglitz,Progressive,"I became convinced that the advanced industrial countries, through international organizations like the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the World Trade Organization (WTO), and the World Bank, were not only not doing all that they could to help these [developing] countries but were sometimes making their life more difficult. IMF programs had clearly worsened the East Asian crisis, and the shock therapy they had pushed in the former Soviet Union and its satellites played an important role in the failure of the transition."
Joseph E. Stiglitz,Progressive,Americans all benefit from the physical and institutional infrastructure that has developed from the country’s collective efforts over generations.
Joseph E. Stiglitz,Progressive,"Ensuring that we have a well-informed public citizenry is important for a well-functioning democracy, and that in turn requires an active and diverse media."
Joseph E. Stiglitz,Progressive,"Part of the reason for this is that much of America’s inequality is the result of market distortions, with incentives directed not at creating new wealth but at taking it from others."
Joseph E. Stiglitz,Progressive,"We were not rich, but my parents had adjusted their lifestyle to their incomes"
Joseph E. Stiglitz,Progressive,"If a business borrows to buy a machine, it’s a good thing, not a bad thing. During the past six years, America"
Joseph E. Stiglitz,Progressive,"Growing inequality, combined with a flawed system of campaign finance, risks turning America’s legal system into a travesty of justice. Some may still call it the rule of law, but in today’s America the proud claim of justice for all is being replaced by the more modest claim of justice for those who can afford it."
Joseph E. Stiglitz,Progressive,it’s easy to get rich by getting a state asset at a deep discount.
Joseph E. Stiglitz,Progressive,"The financial sector provides ample rewards for those who agree with them: lucrative consultancies, research grants, and the like. The documentary raises a question: Could this have influenced some economists’ judgments?"
Joseph E. Stiglitz,Progressive,"Democracy, we now know, is more than periodic elections in some countries, such elections have been used to legitimize essentially authoritarian regimes and deprive large parts of the citizenry of basic rights."
Joseph E. Stiglitz,Progressive,"Today, China alone holds more than $1 trillion in public and private American IOUs. Cumulative borrowing from abroad during the six years of the Bush administration amounts to some $5 trillion. Most likely these creditors will not call in their loans"
Joseph E. Stiglitz,Progressive,It’s expensive to keep 2.3 million people in prison.
Joseph E. Stiglitz,Progressive,"If economic power in a country becomes too unevenly distributed, political consequences will follow. While we typically think of the rule of law as being designed to protect the weak against the strong, and ordinary citizens against the privileged, those with wealth will use their political power to shape the rule of law to provide a framework within which they can exploit others.9"
Joseph E. Stiglitz,Progressive,"Countries around the world provide frightening examples of what happens to societies when they reach the level of inequality toward which we are moving. It is not a pretty picture: countries where the rich live in gated communities, waited upon by hordes of low-income workers; unstable political systems where populists promise the masses a better life, only to disappoint. Perhaps most importantly, there is an absence of hope. In these countries, the poor know that their prospects of emerging from poverty, let along making it to the top, are minuscule. This is not something we should be striving for."
Joseph E. Stiglitz,Progressive,"(a) Recent U.S. income growth primarily occurs at the top 1 percent of the income distribution. (b) As a result there is growing inequality. (c) And those at the bottom and in the middle are actually worse-off today than they were at the beginning of the century. (d) Inequalities in wealth are even greater than inequalities in income. (e) Inequalities are apparent not just in income but in a variety of other variables that reflect standards of living, such as insecurity and health. (f) Life is particularly harsh at the bottom"
Joseph E. Stiglitz,Progressive,"The United States was the most unequal of the advanced industrial countries in the mid-1980s, and it has maintained that position.92 In fact, the gap between it and many other countries has increased: from the mid-1980s France, Hungary, and Belgium have seen no significant increase in inequality, while Turkey and Greece have actually seen a decrease in inequality. We are now approaching the level of inequality that marks dysfunctional societies"
Joseph E. Stiglitz,Progressive,"As we look out at the world, the United States not only has the highest level of inequality among the advanced industrial countries, but the level of its inequality is increasing in absolute terms relative to that in other countries."
Joseph E. Stiglitz,Progressive,"The other vision is of a society where the gap between the haves and the have-nots has been narrowed, where there is a sense of shared destiny, a common commitment to opportunity and fairness, where the words liberty and justice for all actually mean what they seem to mean, where we take seriously the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which emphasizes the importance not just of civil rights but of economic rights, and not just the rights of property but the economic rights of ordinary citizens. In this vision, we have an increasingly vibrant political system far different from the one in which 80 percent of the young are so alienated that they don’t even bother to vote. I believe that this second vision is the only one that is consistent with our heritage and our values. In it the well-being of our citizens"
Joseph E. Stiglitz,Progressive,"As medical care has improved, life expectancy has increased"
Joseph E. Stiglitz,Progressive,Those at the top have managed to design a tax system in which they pay less than their fair share
Joseph E. Stiglitz,Progressive,"In America the share of national income going to the top .01% (some 16,000 families) has risen from just over 1% in 1980 to almost 5% now"
Joseph E. Stiglitz,Progressive,"from 2007 to 2010, median wealth"
Joseph E. Stiglitz,Progressive,"If our economic system leads to so many people without jobs, or with jobs that do not pay a livable wage, dependent on the government for food, it means that our economic system has not worked in the way it should, and then government has to step in."
Joseph E. Stiglitz,Progressive,"For now, we simply note that the marked reduction in inequality in the period between 1950 and 1970, was due partly to developments in the markets but even more to government policies, such as the increased access to higher education provided by the GI Bill and the highly progressive tax system enacted during World War II."
Joseph E. Stiglitz,Progressive,as the good middle-class jobs
Joseph E. Stiglitz,Progressive,The success of an economy can be assessed only by looking at what is happening to the living standards
Joseph E. Stiglitz,Progressive,The wealth given to the elites and to the bankers seemed to arise out of their ability and willingness to take advantage of others. One
Joseph E. Stiglitz,Progressive,What America has been experiencing in recent years is the opposite of trickle-down economics: the riches accruing to the top have come at the expense of those down below.21
Joseph E. Stiglitz,Progressive,"over the last three decades those with low wages (in the bottom 90 percent) have seen a growth of only around 15 percent in their wages, while those in the top 1 percent have seen an increase of almost 150 percent and the top 0.1 percent of more than 300 percent.27 Meanwhile,"
Joseph E. Stiglitz,Progressive,"the six heirs to the Wal-Mart empire command wealth of $69.7 billion, which is equivalent to the wealth of the entire bottom 30 percent of U.S. society."
Joseph E. Stiglitz,Progressive,recent research has shown that by far the largest fraction of personal bankruptcies involve the illness of a family member.38
Joseph E. Stiglitz,Progressive,"In other advanced industrial countries, families don’t have to worry about how they will pay the doctor’s bill, or whether they can afford to pay for their parent’s health care. Access to decent health care is taken as a basic human right."
Joseph E. Stiglitz,Progressive,"People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public, or in some contrivance to raise prices.6"
Joseph E. Stiglitz,Progressive,"The irony is that just as markets started delivering more unequal outcomes, tax policy asked less of the top. The top marginal tax rate was lowered from 70 percent under Carter to 28 percent under Reagan; it went up to 39.6 percent under Clinton and down finally to 35 percent under George W. Bush.54 This reduction was supposed to lead to more work and savings, but it didn’t.55"
Joseph E. Stiglitz,Progressive,"especially in the United States, it seems that the political system is more akin to one dollar one vote than to one person one vote."
Joseph E. Stiglitz,Progressive,"we have a system that has been working overtime to move money from the bottom and middle to the top, but the system is so inefficient that the gains to the top are far less than the losses to the middle and bottom."
Joseph E. Stiglitz,Progressive,"Some thirty years ago, the top 1 percent of income earners received only 12 percent of the nation’s income.13"
Joseph E. Stiglitz,Progressive,The rule of law is supposed to protect the weak against the strong and ensure fair treatment for all.
Joseph E. Stiglitz,Progressive,"What’s worrying is that those in the 1 percent, in attempting to claim for themselves an unjust proportion of the benefits of this system, may be willing to destroy the system itself to hold on to what they have. This"
Joseph E. Stiglitz,Progressive,"Of all the costs imposed on our society by the top 1 percent, perhaps the greatest is this: the erosion of our sense of identity in which fair play, equality of opportunity, and a sense of community are so important. America has long prided itself on being a fair society, where everyone has an equal chance of getting ahead, but the statistics today, as we’ve seen, suggest otherwise: the chances that a poor or even a middle-class American will make it to the top in America are smaller than in many countries of Europe. And as inequality itself creates a weaker economy, the chance can only grow slimmer. There"
Joseph E. Stiglitz,Progressive,"there is always a worry that voters will be attracted to populists and extremists who attack the establishment that has created this unfair system21 and who make unrealistic promises of change. Distrust,"
Joseph E. Stiglitz,Progressive,"Individuals say they are working so hard for the family, but as they work so hard there is less and less time for the family, and family life deteriorates. Somehow, the means prove inconsistent with the stated end. T"
Joseph E. Stiglitz,Progressive,Individuals can often be better motivated by intrinsic rewards
Joseph E. Stiglitz,Progressive,"a cooperative day center had a problem with certain parents’ picking up their children in a timely way. It decided to impose a charge, to provide an incentive for them to do so. But many parents, including those who had occasionally been late, had struggled to pick up their children on time; they did as well as they did because of social pressure, the desire to do the right thing, even if they were less than fully successful. But charging a fee converted a social obligation into a monetary transaction. Parents no longer felt a social responsibility, but assessed whether the benefits of being late were greater or less than the fine. Lateness increased.62 There"
Joseph E. Stiglitz,Progressive,"University of California professor Emmanuel Saez, Thomas Piketty of the Paris School of Economics, and Stefanie Stantcheva of the MIT Department of Economics, carefully taking into account the incentive effects of higher taxation and the societal benefits of reducing inequality, have estimated that the tax rate at the top should be around 70 percent"
Joseph E. Stiglitz,Progressive,"The most important endowment, from our perspective, is a society’s learning capacities (which in turn is affected by the knowledge that it has; its knowledge about learning itself; and its knowledge about its own learning capacities),"
Joseph E. Stiglitz,Progressive,"Borrowers were told not to worry about paying the ever-mounting debt, because house prices would keep rising and they could refinance, taking out some of the capital gains to buy a car or pay for a vacation."
Joseph E. Stiglitz,Progressive,Loose money and light regulation were a toxic mixture. It exploded.
Joseph E. Stiglitz,Progressive,"Looking back at that belief during hearings this fall on Capitol Hill, Alan Greenspan said out loud, I have found a flaw. Congressman Henry Waxman pushed him, responding, In other words, you found that your view of the world, your ideology, was not right; it wasn’t working. Absolutely, precisely, Greenspan said."
Joseph E. Stiglitz,Progressive,"Suppose someone were to describe a small country that provided free education through university for all of its citizens, transportation for schoolchildren, and free health care - including heart surgery - for all. You might suspect that a country is either phenomenally rich or on the fast track to fiscal crisis."
Joseph E. Stiglitz,Progressive,"Most importantly, it became clear that the name free trade agreement was itself a matter of deceptive advertising: it was really a managed trade agreement, managed especially for special corporate interests, particularly in the United States."
Joseph E. Stiglitz,Progressive,"A lot of things went wrong in the nineties, and the footprints of the banks can be found at the scene of one suspicious deed after another. Investment banks are supposed to provide information that leads to a better allocation of resources. Instead, all too often, they trafficked in distorted or inaccurate information, and participated in schemes that helped others distort the information they provided and enriched others at shareholders’ expense. The offenses of Enron and WorldCom"
Joseph E. Stiglitz,Progressive,"The abolition occurred just as it became clear that much of the wealth that had been seemingly created in the Roaring Nineties was nothing more than a phantasm, that much of the wealth was stolen property, acquired through misleading accounting and tax scams, in an economy where corporate governance had failed, and failed badly. But for the lucky few who had cashed in, there was the basis to found a new set of dynasties. At least the railroad barons of the nineteenth century, who used political influence to attain their riches, left behind a legacy of railroads, of hard capital, which bound the country together and energized its growth. What was the legacy of so many of the dot-com millionaires and billionaires, the executives of Enron, Global Crossing, WorldCom, and Adelphi, other than the horror stories which would regale future generations?"
Joseph E. Stiglitz,Progressive,"Already, data showed that the American dream of rags to riches, the Horatio Alger story, was largely a myth. Economic mobility was extremely limited. The abolition of the estate tax could solidify these changes, creating a new class society, based not on ancient nobility as in Europe, but on the bonanza of the Roaring Nineties. The"
Joseph E. Stiglitz,Progressive,"The magnitude of the underfunding was astronomical. One study of just the 348 companies in the S&P 500 with defined benefit pension programs concluded that this underfunding amounted to between $184 and $323 billion (if non-pension benefits, such as health benefits, are included, the deficit is in the range of $458 to $638 billion). A Merrill Lynch study showed that companies with off-balance-sheet pension liabilities that exceed their total equity value include Campbell Soup, Maytag, Lucent, General Motors, Ford, Goodyear, Boeing, U.S. Steel, and Colgate Palmolive. While the accounting standards may have disguised the true size of the pension liabilities, they were in fact real liabilities, obligations of the corporations to their workers. They represented a potential source of bankruptcy for many of America’s most important companies."
Joseph E. Stiglitz,Progressive,"Economists have a name for these activities: they call them rent seeking, getting income not as a reward to creating wealth but by grabbing a larger share of the wealth that would otherwise have been produced without their effort. (We’ll give a fuller definition of the concept of rent seeking"
Joseph E. Stiglitz,Progressive,"But unlike naïve Marxians, we do not believe that economic interests alone drive change. Change is often affected by the evolution of ideas, and particularly of overarching beliefs.54 Once the Enlightenment notion that all men are created equal was accepted (however that idea came to be accepted, whatever the drivers), it was no surprise that it evolved in directions that brought within its ambit women and slaves. Given these beliefs, it would be hard to preserve the slavery system, in spite of the economic interests in preserving slavery"
Joseph E. Stiglitz,Progressive,"Minimum wages have not kept up with inflation (so that the real federal minimum wage in the United States in 2011 is 15 percent lower than it was almost a third of a century ago, in 1980);"
Joseph E. Stiglitz,Progressive,"The failures in politics and economics are related, and they reinforce each other. A political system that amplifies the voice of the wealthy provides ample opportunity for laws and regulations"
Joseph E. Stiglitz,Progressive,"The economic elite have pushed for a framework that benefits them at the expense of the rest, but it is an economic system that is neither efficient nor fair. I explain how our inequality gets reflected in every important decision that we make as a nation"
Joseph E. Stiglitz,Progressive,"It may seem to readers that I talk too much about the bankers and corporate CEOs, too much about the financial crisis of 2008 and its aftermath, especially (as I’ll explain) since the problems of inequality in America are of longer standing. It is not just that they have become the whipping boys of popular opinion. They are emblematic of what has gone wrong. Much of the inequality at the top is associated with finance and corporate CEOs. But it’s more than that: these leaders have helped shape our views about what is good economic policy, and unless and until we understand what is wrong with those views"
Joseph E. Stiglitz,Progressive,"Privatization, of course, is based on yet another myth: that government-run programs must be inefficient, and privatization accordingly must be better. In fact, as we noted in chapter 6, the transaction costs of Social Security and Medicare are much, much lower than those of private-sector firms providing comparable services. This should not come as a surprise. The objective of the private sector is to make profits"
Joseph E. Stiglitz,Progressive,"It shouldn’t, of course, come as a big surprise that some of the wealthiest Americans are promoting an economic fantasy in which their further enrichment benefits everyone. It is, perhaps, a surprise that they’ve done such a good job of selling these fantasies to so many Americans. The"
Joseph E. Stiglitz,Progressive,"Throughout its history, America has struggled with inequality. But with the tax policies and regulations that existed in the post–World War II war period"
Joseph E. Stiglitz,Progressive,"Trickle-up economics can work, even when trickle-down economics doesn’t. Even"
Joseph E. Stiglitz,Progressive,"We saw that balanced increases in taxes and expenditures stimulate the economy. By the same token, balanced cutbacks in expenditures and taxes will lead to a contraction in the economy. And if we go one step farther, as the Right wants to do, to cut back expenditures even more, in a valiant if possibly fruitless attempt to reduce the deficit, the contraction will be even greater. U"
Joseph E. Stiglitz,Progressive,looking out for the other guy isn’t just good for the soul; it’s good for business. The
Joseph E. Stiglitz,Progressive,"If one group’s economic opportunities leave it much poorer than other groups, then the interactions of the first group with people from other groups will be limited, and it is likely to develop a different culture. Then ideas about intrinsic differences of the poor group are more likely to take root and to persist."
Joseph E. Stiglitz,Progressive,"Opponents of regulation always complain that it’s bad for business. Regulations that prevent pollution, of course, are bad for businesses that would have otherwise polluted. Regulations that prevent child labor are bad for businesses that would have exploited children. Regulations that prevent American companies from engaging in bribery or abuses of human rights may be bad for businesses that engage in bribery or human rights abuses. As we’ve seen, private rewards and social returns often differ; and when they do, markets don’t work well. The task of government is to align the two. If"
Joseph E. Stiglitz,Progressive,"during the 2008 crisis, corporate welfare reached new heights. In the great bailout of the Great Recession, one corporation alone, AIG, got more than $180 billion"
Joseph E. Stiglitz,Progressive,"The powerful try to frame the discussion in a way that benefits their interests, realizing that, in a democracy, they cannot simply impose their rule on others. In one way or another, they have to co-opt the rest of society to advance their agenda. Here"
Joseph E. Stiglitz,Progressive,This is an idea called trickle-down economics. It has a long pedigree
Joseph E. Stiglitz,Progressive,"Lack of health insurance is one factor contributing to poorer health, especially among the poor. Life expectancy in the United States is 78 years, lower than Japan’s 83 years, or Australia’s or Israel’s 82 years. According to the World Bank, in 2009 the United States ranked fortieth overall, just below Cuba.54 Infant and maternal mortality in the United States is little better than in some developing countries; for infant mortality, it is worse than Cuba, Belarus, and Malaysia, to name a few.55 And these poor health indicators are largely a reflection of the dismal statistics for America’s poor. For instance, America’s poor have a life expectancy that is almost 10 percent lower than that of those at the top.56 We"
Joseph E. Stiglitz,Progressive,Some U.S. states spend as much on their prisons as they do on their universities.62 Such expenditures are not the hallmarks of a well-performing economy and society. Money that is spent on security
Joseph E. Stiglitz,Progressive,"There is another way for moneyed interests to get what they want out of government: convince the 99 percent that they have shared interests. This strategy requires an impressive sleight of hand; in many respects the interests of the 1 percent and the 99 percent differ markedly. The fact that the 1 percent has so successfully shaped public perception testifies to the malleability of beliefs. When others engage in it, we call it brainwashing and propaganda.1"
Joseph E. Stiglitz,Progressive,The 1 percent has captured and distorted the budget debate
Joseph E. Stiglitz,Progressive,"For most people, wages are the most important source of income. Macroeconomic and monetary policies that result in higher unemployment"
Joseph E. Stiglitz,Progressive,"In truth the macroeconomic models placed too little attention on inequality and the consequences of policies for distribution. Policies have been based on these flawed models both helped create the crisis and have proven ineffective in dealing with it. They may even be contributing to ensuring that when the recovery occurs, it will be jobless. Most importantly, for the purposes of this book, macroeconomic policies have contributed to the high level of inequality in America and elsewhere. While the advocates of these policies may claim that they are the best policies for all, this is not the case. There is no single, best policy. As I have stressed in this book, policies have distributive effects, so there are trade-offs between the interests of bondholders and debtors, young and old, financial sectors and other sectors, and so on. I have also stressed, however, that there are alternative policies that would have led to better overall economic performance"
Joseph E. Stiglitz,Progressive,"Curbing the financial sector. Since so much of the increase in inequality is associated with the excesses of the financial sector, it is a natural place to begin a reform program. Dodd-Frank is a start, but only a start. Here are six further reforms that are urgent: (a) Curb excessive risk taking and the too-big-to-fail and too-interconnected-to-fail financial institutions; they’re a lethal combination that has led to the repeated bailouts that have marked the last thirty years. Restrictions on leverage and liquidity are key, for the banks somehow believe that they can create resources out of thin air by the magic of leverage. It can’t be done. What they create is risk and volatility.2 (b) Make banks more transparent, especially in their treatment of over-the-counter derivatives, which should be much more tightly restricted and should not be underwritten by government-insured financial institutions. Taxpayers should not be backing up these risky products, no matter whether we think of them as insurance, gambling instruments, or, as Warren Buffett put it, financial weapons of mass destruction.3 (c) Make the banks and credit card companies more competitive and ensure that they act competitively. We have the technology to create an efficient electronics payment mechanism for the twenty-first century, but we have a banking system that is determined to maintain a credit and debit card system that not only exploits consumers but imposes large fees on merchants for every transaction. (d) Make it more difficult for banks to engage in predatory lending and abusive credit card practices, including by putting stricter limits on usury (excessively high interest rates). (e) Curb the bonuses that encourage excessive risk taking and shortsighted behavior. (f) Close down the offshore banking centers (and their onshore counterparts) that have been so successful both at circumventing regulations and at promoting tax evasion and avoidance. There is no good reason that so much finance goes on in the Cayman Islands; there is nothing about it or its climate that makes it so conducive to banking. It exists for one reason only: circumvention. Many"
Joseph E. Stiglitz,Progressive,End corporate welfare
Joseph E. Stiglitz,Progressive,Comprehensive reform of bankruptcy laws
Joseph E. Stiglitz,Progressive,"We should remember why those programs were started: before the arrival of Medicare and Social Security, the private sector left most elderly bereft of support, the market for annuities essentially didn’t exist, and the elderly couldn’t get health insurance. Even today, the private sector doesn’t provide the kind of security that Social Security provides"
Joseph E. Stiglitz,Progressive,"While it is not always clear what is fair, and people’s judgments of fairness can be biased by their self-interest, there is a growing sense that the present disparity in wages is unfair. When executives argue that wages have to be reduced or that there have to be layoffs in order for corporations to compete, but simultaneously increase their own pay, workers rightly consider that what is going on is unfair. That will affect their effort today, their loyalty to the firm, their willingness to cooperate with others, and their willingness to invest in its future."
Joseph E. Stiglitz,Progressive,"The growth in asset management income accounts for roughly 35 percent of the growth of the financial sector as a percent of GDP, driven by the opaque fee structures, especially when it comes to alternative investment vehicles.36 But in spite of their high fees, there is little evidence of any advantages, for instance in better long-run performance, when it comes to higher management fees.37 Other key sources of financial profits have come from their privileged position in running the economy’s payments system: ATM and sundry other fees levied on normal saving and checking accounts."
Joseph E. Stiglitz,Progressive,Oxfam found that the top 1 percent of the world now owned nearly half the world’s wealth
Joseph E. Stiglitz,Progressive,"Why do investors fail to realize that money placed in a mutual fund that tries to pick out-performing stocks is unlikely to yield a better return than money invested in the S&P 500? If fund managers and investment advisers are so good at picking stocks, why are they risking your money rather than their own? Some"
Joseph E. Stiglitz,Progressive,"During the nineties a new culture had developed, one in which firms focused on the bottom line"
Joseph E. Stiglitz,Progressive,"The NASDAQ Composite Index, containing mostly technology shares, soared from 500 in April 1991 to 1,000 in July 1995, surpassing 2,000 in July 1998, and finally peaking at 5,132 in March 2000. The stock market boom reinforced consumer confidence, which also reached new highs, and provided a strong impetus for investment, especially in the booming telecom and high-tech sectors. The next few years confirmed suspicions that the numbers were unreal, as the stock market set new records for declines. In the next two years, $8.5 trillion were wiped off the value of the firms on America’s stock exchange alone"
Joseph E. Stiglitz,Progressive,"The Securities and Exchange Commission was created in 1934, and, together with other checks and balances (including class-action suits), it helped build a sense of professional ethics among managers, auditors, and other market participants, leading to the creation of a securities market of unprecedented size, with unprecedented participation. At the peak of the market in March 2000, the market capitalization of U.S. stocks (as measured by the Wilshire index) was $17 trillion, or 1.7 times the value of American GDP. Half of all U.S. households owned equities. The world has changed a great deal, however, over the past sixty years. New forms of deception have been developed. In the go-go environment of the nineties while market values soared, human values eroded, and the playing field became terribly unlevel once again, contributing to the bubble that burst soon after the beginning of the new millennium. The"
Joseph E. Stiglitz,Progressive,"the newly elected government was told in effect that they had no choice: accept the conditions or your banking system will be destroyed, your economy will be devastated, and you will have to leave the euro. What does it mean to be a democracy, where the citizens seemingly have no say over the issues about which they care the most, or the way their economy is run?"
Joseph E. Stiglitz,Progressive,"As those, for instance, in Ireland celebrate the return to growth (in 2015 it was Europe’s fastest growing economy),1 they need to remember: every (or almost every) economy recovers from a downturn."
Joseph E. Stiglitz,Progressive,"While GDP is the standard measure of economic performance,2 there are other indicators, and in virtually every one, the eurozone’s overall performance is dismal, and that of the crisis countries, disastrous: unemployment is very high; youth unemployment is very, very high; and output per capita is lower than before the crisis for the eurozone as a whole, much lower for some of the crisis countries."
Joseph E. Stiglitz,Progressive,"On every criterion by which performance is usually measured, the eurozone has been failing. Its performance has been poor relative to the United States, from which the crisis originated, and relative to non-eurozone Europe. Even Germany could not escape."
Joseph E. Stiglitz,Progressive,"Just as Guantánamo and Abu Ghraib have eroded America’s moral authority, so the Bush administration’s fiscal housekeeping has eroded our economic authority."
Joseph E. Stiglitz,Progressive,Globalization is the field on which some of our major societal conflicts
Joseph E. Stiglitz,Progressive,"Europe’s reaction to the UK’s referendum was dominated by the same harsh response that greeted Greece’s June 2015 ballot-box rejection of its bailout package. Herman Van Rompuy, former European Council1 president, expressed a widespread feeling when he said that Cameron’s decision to hold a referendum was the worst policy decision in decades. In so saying, he revealed a deep antipathy toward democratic accountability."
Joseph E. Stiglitz,Progressive,"Jean-Claude Juncker, the proud architect of Luxembourg’s massive corporate tax-avoidance schemes and now the head of the European Commission, has taken a hard line"
Joseph E. Stiglitz,Progressive,"But Dutch and other European milk producers would like to increase sales by having their milk, transported over long distances, appear to be as fresh as the local product. In 2014 the Troika forced Greece to drop the label fresh on its truly fresh milk and extend allowable shelf life."
Joseph E. Stiglitz,Progressive,The eurozone was flawed at birth.
Joseph E. Stiglitz,Progressive,The euro was born with great hopes. Reality has proven otherwise.
Joseph E. Stiglitz,Progressive,"truth-telling, truth-discovering, and truth-verification institutions evolved, and we owe to them much of the success of our economy and our democracy.21 Central among them is an active media. Like all institutions, it is fallible; but its investigations are part of our society’s overall system of checks and balances, providing an important public good."
Joseph E. Stiglitz,Progressive,We know through advances in behavioral economics and marketing that one can manipulate perceptions and beliefs.
Joseph E. Stiglitz,Progressive,"Cigarette companies succeeded in using these methods to cast doubt on scientific findings that smoking was bad for health; and firms of all kinds succeed in persuading individuals to buy products that they might not otherwise have bought,"
Joseph E. Stiglitz,Progressive,misshapen economy creates misshapen individuals and a misshapen society
Joseph E. Stiglitz,Progressive,"Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country"
Jesse Jackson,Progressive,Never look down on anybody unless you're helping them up.
Jesse Jackson,Progressive,Dancing?' Annabeth asked.Thalia nodded. She cocked her ear to the music and made a face. 'Ugh. Who chose Jesse McCartney?'Grover looked hurt. 'I did.
Jesse Jackson,Progressive,Your children need your presence more than your presents.
Jesse Jackson,Progressive,Never look down on anybody unless you're helping him up.
Jesse Jackson,Progressive,It's a curious thing in American life that the most abject nonsense will be excused if the utterer can claim the sanction of religion. A country which forbids an established church by law is prey to any denomination. The best that can be said is that this is pluralism of a kind.
Jesse Jackson,Progressive,"Both tears and sweat are salty, but they render a different result. Tears will get you sympathy; sweat will get you change."
Jesse Jackson,Progressive,Don't look down on somebody unless you are helping them up.
Jesse Jackson,Progressive,"The white, the Hispanic, the black, the Arab, the Jew, the woman, the Native American, the small farmer, the businessperson, the environmentalist, the peace activist, the young, the old, the lesbian, the gay and the disabled make up the American quilt"
Jesse Jackson,Progressive,"When I came here, I put my hand on the Bible and swore to uphold the Constitution. I didn't put my hand on the Constitution and swear to uphold the Bible."
Jesse Jackson,Progressive,A new leadership. A choice. A chance. Don't cry about what you don't have. Use what you got.
Jesse Jackson,Progressive,"Our flag is red, white and blue, but our nation is a rainbow -- red, yellow, brown, black and white -- and we're all precious in God's sight."
Jesse Jackson,Progressive,"Hold your head high, stick your chest out. It gets dark sometimes, but morning comes. Keep hope alive."
Jesse Jackson,Progressive,Just because a chicken was born in the oven doesn't make it a biscuit.
Jesse Jackson,Progressive,"I was born in a slum, but the slum wasn't born in me."
Jesse Jackson,Progressive,never look down on somebody unless you are helping them up
Jesse Jackson,Progressive,Never look down on anyone unless you're helping him up
Jesse Jackson,Progressive,Never look down on people unless you are helping them up.
Jesse Jackson,Progressive,"Today's students can put dope in their veins or hope in their brains. If they can conceive it and believe it, they can achieve it. They must know it is not their aptitude but their attitude that will determine their altitude."
Jesse Jackson,Progressive,"All children wear a sign that says, ‘I want to be important NOW!’ Many of our problems with today’s youth arise because nobody reads the sign."
Jesse Jackson,Progressive,"If there are occasions when my grape turned into a raisin and my joy bell lost its resonance, please forgive me. Charge it to my head and not to my heart."
Jesse Jackson,Progressive,"On another occasion, Alinsky was working in his home base of Chicago to force Chicago’s department stores to give jobs to black activists who were Alinsky’s cronies. On this issue of course Alinsky was competing"
Jesse Jackson,Progressive,"When we're unemployed, we're called lazy; when the whites are unemployed it's called a depression."
George Soros,Progressive,I'm only rich because I know when I'm wrong.
George Soros,Progressive,"It is much easier to put existing resources to better use, than to develop resources where they do not exist."
George Soros,Progressive,Misconceptions play a prominent role in my view of the world.
George Soros,Progressive,"It's not whether you're right or wrong, but how much money you make when you're right and how much you lose when you're wrong."
George Soros,Progressive,"How good are markets in predicting real-world developments? Reading the record, it is striking how many calamities that I anticipated did not in fact materialise.Financial markets constantly anticipate events, both on the positive and on the negative side, which fail to materialise exactly because they have been anticipated.It is an old joke that the stock market has predicted seven of the last two recessions. Markets are often wrong."
George Soros,Progressive,My main concern is with the world order
George Soros,Progressive,The world order needs a major overhaul.
George Soros,Progressive,"In my view, philanthropy goes against the grain; therefore it generates a lot of hypocrisy and many paradoxes. Here are some examples: Philanthropy is supposed to be devoted to the benefit of others, but philanthropists are primarily concerned with their own benefit; philanthropy is supposed to help people, yet it often makes people dependent and turns them into objects of charity; applicants tell foundations what they want to hear, then proceed to do what the applicant wants to do."
George Soros,Progressive,"The fact that a thesis is flawed does not mean that we should not invest in it as long as other people believe in it and there is a large group of people left to be convinced. The point was made by John Maynard Keynes when he compared the stock market to a beauty contest where the winner is not the most beautiful contestant but the one whom the greatest number of people consider beautiful. Where I have something significant to add is in pointing out that it pays to look for the flaws; if we find them, we are ahead of the game because we can limit our losses when the market also discovers what we already know. It is when we are unaware of what could go wrong that we have to worry."
George Soros,Progressive,"At present, the developed countries condescend to the developing ones."
George Soros,Progressive,"Scientific method seeks to understand things as they are, while alchemy seeks to bring about a desired state of affairs. To put it another way, the primary objective of science is truth, - that of alchemy, operational success."
George Soros,Progressive,I commissioned two political experts to advise me about what I could do to oppose the re-election of President Bush.
George Soros,Progressive,"I start from the position that every human endeavor is flawed: if we were to discard everything that is flawed there would be nothing left. We must therefore make the most of what we have; the alternative is to embrace death. The choice is a real one, because death can be embraced in a number of ways; the pursuit of perfection and eternity in all its manifestations is equivalent to choosing the idea of death over the idea of life. If we carry this line of argument to its logical conclusion, the meaning of life consists of the flaws in one's conceptions and what one does about them. Life can be seen as a fertile fallacy."
George Soros,Progressive,"I developed a theory of salesmanship based on the principle that one must not on any account identify oneself with the merchandise one is selling. Selling is a game where you score when you make a sale. If you allow your ego to be involved, the customer can brush you off and you lose; but if you do not identify yourself with your work you will be able to redouble your efforts when you are rejected, and if you make a sale you come out the winner."
George Soros,Progressive,"Values are closely associated with with the concept of self - a reflexive concept if ever there was one. What we think has a much greater bearing on what we are than on the world around us. What we are cannot possibly correspond to what we think we are, but there is a two-way interplay between the two concepts. As we make our way in the world our sense of self evolves. The relationship between what we think we are and what we are in reality is the key to happiness - in other words, it provides the subjective meaning of life."
George Soros,Progressive,"There is a powerful case for the market mechanism, but it is not that markets are perfect; it is that in a world dominated by imperfect understanding, markets provide an efficient feedback mechanism for evaluating the results of one's decisions and correcting mistakes."
George Soros,Progressive,Markets are constantly in a state of uncertainty and flux and money is made by discounting the obvious and betting on the unexpected.
George Soros,Progressive,"My peculiarity is that I don't have a particular style of investing or, more exactly, I try to change my style to fit the conditions."
George Soros,Progressive,"On the abstract level, I have turned the belief in my own fallibility into the cornerstone of an elaborate philosophy. On a personal level, I am a very critical person who looks for defects in myself as well as in others. But, being so critical, I am also quite forgiving. I couldn't recognize my mistakes if I couldn't forgive myself. To others, being wrong is a source of shame; to me, recognizing my mistakes is a source of pride. Once we realize that imperfect understanding is the human condition, there is no shame in being wrong, only in failing to correct our mistakes."
George Soros,Progressive,"Now look at the ideology of American supremacy. It has a solid foundation in reality; namely, the United States is the dominant power in the world. The current government believes the United States ought to use this dominant position to impose its will on the world. That is the misconception. This approach is not what made America great. America did not arrive at its dominant position by imposing its will on the world.My position is that America is great precisely because it is an open society, and an open society recognizes that nobody is the ultimate arbiter"
George Soros,Progressive,"HillaryCare. He called it, with characteristic bluntness, The Project on Death in America.22 Its rationale was compassionate: to embed hospices and palliative care in U.S. health policy. But its basic objective was more pragmatic: rationing care to terminal and seriously ill patients for whom medical attention offered little payoff and who were thus a burden on the system. It was the direct forerunner of the death panels of ObamaCare that drew fire from the political right in the next decade."
George Soros,Progressive,"Be fearful when others are greedy, and greedy when others are fearful.6"
George Soros,Progressive,The agents of imperial demise would certainly be backed up by military power
George Soros,Progressive,"An investment philosophy is a set of beliefs about: the nature of investment reality: how markets work, why prices move; a theory of value, including how value can be identified, and what causes profits and losses; and the nature of a good investment."
George Soros,Progressive,"I wish I could write a book that will be read for as long as our civilization lasts... I would value it much more highly than any business success if I could contribute to an understanding of the world in which we live or, better yet, if I could help to preserve the economic and political system that has allowed me to flourish as a participant."
George Soros,Progressive,"We need to maintain law and order. We need to maintain peace in the world. We need to protect the environment. We need to have some degree of social justice, equality of opportunity. The markets are not designed to take care of those needs. That's a political process. And the market fundamentalists have managed to reduce providing those public goods."
George Soros,Progressive,"I'm not doing my philanthropic work, out of any kind of guilt, or any need to create good public relations. I'm doing it because I can afford to do it, and I believe in it."
George Soros,Progressive,"You know, I learned at a very early age that what kind of social system or political system prevails is very important. Not just for your well-being, but for your very survival. Because, you know, I could have been killed by the Nazis. I could have wasted my life under the Communists. So, that's what led me to this idea of an open society. And that is the idea that is motivating me."
George Soros,Progressive,"Although we cannot rid ourselves of misconceptions, we can correct them when we become aware of them."
George Soros,Progressive,"Now the Alinskyites had their hands on the federal money spigot. Ohlin and his colleagues directed the very first CAP grant into a program at Syracuse University through which Alinsky personally trained community activists.23 The federal government spent more than $300 billion on War on Poverty programs in the first five years. Much of this money went to street radicals such as Alinsky. During the Sixties, Alinsky’s under-the-radar influence was"
George Soros,Progressive,"The Motor-Voter bill eliminated many controls on voter fraud, making it easy to register but difficult to determine the validity of new registrations. Under the new law, states were required to provide opportunities for voter registration to any person who showed up at a government office to renew a driver’s license or apply for welfare or unemployment benefits. Examiners were under orders not to ask anyone for identification or proof of citizenship, notes Wall Street Journal columnist John Fund in his book, Stealing Elections. States also had to permit mail-in voter registrations, which allowed anyone to register without any personal contact with a registrar or election"
George Soros,Progressive,"I CAN STATE THE CORE IDEA in two relatively simple propositions. One is that in situations that have thinking participants, the participants’ view of the world is always partial and distorted. That is the principle of fallibility. The other is that these distorted views can influence the situation to which they relate because false views lead to inappropriate actions. That is the principle of reflexivity."
Donna Brazile,Progressive,"Hillary's was a sterile, math-driven campaign in an angry, populist cycle – a perfect case of professional-class hubris that will one day take its place alongside the expert-planned, systems-analyzed war in Vietnam as a parable of technocratic folly."
Donna Brazile,Progressive,"Pitting these two angry bears against the DNC was not a fair fight, Shawn Henry of CrowdStrike said in the Post article: This is a sophisticated foreign intelligence service with a lot of time, a lot of resources, and is interested in targeting the U.S. political system. You’ve got ordinary citizens who are doing hand-to-hand combat with trained military officers, and that’s an untenable situation."
Donna Brazile,Progressive,"If the DNC was a small business, it was like no small business I’ve ever seen. We change bosses and objectives with each election cycle and our goal is to spend every dime we raise to get people elected. Long-term planning for things like investment in cybersecurity is hard to do in this environment. And in this cycle it sometimes seemed like Brooklyn wanted to strip it of its functionality nearly as much as the Russians had."
Donna Brazile,Progressive,"Donald Trump is an extraordinary salesman. He knew how to exploit those grievances by deepening them instead of finding a way to address them. He put his supporters in this huge box, cut them off from the rest of the country, and said, We are going to make America great again because everyone else but you has abandoned those American values. They have put other people’s interests before your interest, and I’m going to take care of you. I alone can fix it. As I write this, we’re well into President Trump’s first year in office, and he has not been able to fix anything."
Donna Brazile,Progressive,"want to talk about the arrogance and isolation of the Clinton campaign and the cult of Robby Mook, who felt fresh but turned up stale, in a campaign haunted by ghosts and lacking in enthusiasm, focus, and heart. More than that, Hillary’s campaign and the legacy project of the outgoing Obamas drained the party of its vitality and its cash, a huge contributing factor to our defeats in state and local races."
Donna Brazile,Progressive,I had promised Bernie when I took the position of interim chair of the DNC that I would get to the bottom of whether or not Hillary’s team had rigged the party process in her favor so that only she would win the nomination.
Donna Brazile,Progressive,The agreement
Donna Brazile,Progressive,Almost as soon as I became interim chair I began to notice the ways that the Hillary campaign seemed not to respect the DNC and its staff. I had to beg the campaign to hire two buses to bring up the staff to Philadelphia to celebrate the nomination. Cheapskates. They were sitting on close to half a billion dollars.
Donna Brazile,Progressive,"By September 7, the day I was making this call to Bernie, I had found my proof and it broke my heart. I thought the party I had given so much of my life to was better than this."
Donna Brazile,Progressive,"By evening the campaign had worked to craft a statement from her doctor saying she had allergies that made her cough and now she had pneumonia. Did that make sense? Allergies do not cause pneumonia. When you have two explanations, my gut always senses one is a lie. And who was going to believe that a grandma with pneumonia would go to her daughter's house to recover with two vulnerable little ones around? The situation had to be pretty dangerous for her to risk exposing the grandbabies. The whole story stank, and the way the campaign handled it just made matters worse."
Donna Brazile,Progressive,"The hotel hosting the meeting threatened to shut me down for serving alcohol without a license, but somehow the DNC staff made that problem disappear."
Donna Brazile,Progressive,"Then came that Friday, when WikiLeaks dumped twenty thousand Democratic Party emails in a move deliberately timed to disrupt our convention. The WikiLeaks emails"
Donna Brazile,Progressive,"As I saw it, we had three Democratic parties: the party of Barack Obama, the party of Hillary Clinton, and this weak little vestige of a party led by Debbie that was doing a very poor job getting people who were not president elected. As I saw it, these three titanic egos"
Donna Brazile,Progressive,"What about the Russians? They had tried to destroy us. Was she going to help? I wanted to file a lawsuit. We needed to sue those sons of bitches for what they did to us. I knew the campaign had over $3 million set aside in a legal fund. Could she help me get this lawsuit started? And don’t forget the murder of Seth Rich, I told her. Did she want to contribute to Seth’s reward fund? We still hadn’t found the person responsible for the tragic murder of this bright young DNC staffer. You’re right, she said. We’re going to get to that. But she really had to go. She had made the call and checked it off her list, and"
Donna Brazile,Progressive,"know. This was not I can’t wait to see you. Let’s get together. You stepped up and I really wanted to thank you for doing it. I know Hillary. I know she was being as sincere as possible, but I wanted something more from her. The 2016 campaign, convention, and election had shattered long-standing relationships, leaving old friends wary of one another. This was more than the burnout and dejection that follows a crushing loss. The Russian dirty cybertricks that were still just coming to light had left everyone scarred and scared. We were all unable to reach out to the people we normally counted on. As the call wrapped up, Hillary said she hoped I would be okay. That was when I almost lost it. Even if the party was starting to regain its footing, I was not okay. I had nothing left to return to. This campaign had tarnished my reputation, forced me to step down from CNN, and strained my relationships with colleagues and friends."
Donna Brazile,Progressive,"I decided to call Virginia governor Terry McAuliffe for advice on getting the DNC back on its feet. I knew he’d just be getting out of church. Terry, I said. I’m sitting here in Debbie’s office about to meet the staff. What should I do? Paint that damn office blue! he said. I guess he didn’t like her Florida pink walls any more than I did. I knew I’d keep some part of the office pink out of respect for Debbie, who was a breast cancer survivor."
Donna Brazile,Progressive,Minyon said first I needed to talk to Gary Gensler. Again with the Gary Gensler. Who was Gary Gensler? Minyon assured me that I knew him. I’d worked with him on the platform committee. Was he that bald guy with the big glasses who acts like he knows everything? Minyon said the reason he acted like that was because he did know everything. Gary had been an undersecretary of the Treasury under Bill Clinton and the chair of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission under Obama. He had worked at Goldman Sachs before he got into politics. Not Goldman Sachs again!
Donna Brazile,Progressive,"Gary told me they were paying for CrowdStrike’s cybersecurity services out of the building fund, not paying it out of regular receipts, thereby depleting the rainy day fund."
Donna Brazile,Progressive,"When the name HILLARY CLINTON popped up on my phone in February 2017, I realized hers was a call I’d stopped waiting to receive. On Election Day, the tradition in politics is that candidates personally thank the people who helped most in the campaign. Win or lose, in the days that follow, the candidate extends that circle of gratitude to members of the party and the donors. Bernie Sanders called me on November 9, 2016, and Joe Biden, too. The vice president even came to our staff holiday party. But I never heard from Hillary."
Donna Brazile,Progressive,"After CrowdStrike rebuilt the system, all of our staff had to learn new computers, new log-ins, new procedures, at the moment when their personal lives were being destroyed by these leaks. Then their bosses resigned because of the emails that were distributed by WikiLeaks, creating even more chaos and insecurity. All of this was on top of a contentious campaign. Our regular task force conference calls gave me a new appreciation of the dedication of our staff, who endured this incredibly stressful time."
Donna Brazile,Progressive,"To me campaigning is about persuading, but this campaign was about models and data. I knew data was important. I had used it in campaigns I led, but my focus on energy, enthusiasm, and emotion had made me feel like a dinosaur. What electrified young people for Bernie was not data. It was the old-fashioned kind of politics that I knew, and that the party needed to know again."
Donna Brazile,Progressive,"While Trump refuses to admit that the Russians hacked our election, I lived it. I saw how it impacted the lives of everyone around me. The Russians may not have changed the totals in the voting machines, but they confused us, inflamed our doubts and our worst impulses, and destabilized the Democratic Party, making it an unfair fight. They paralyzed a significant portion of the electorate with all these disruptions. We're a country of more than 320 million people. In 2016, 69 millioin voted for Hillary, 66 million voted for Donald Trumpt, and 90 million eligible citizens did not vote.To this day it is astonishing to me that we do not treat this as a national emergency. Fair elections are the foundation of our collaboration, our unity, and htis is something we all agree on. The heqads of intelligence agencies and members of Congress predict our 2018 election hack is coming, but there have been no moves to block this next assault on our democracy. Both parties should come together to take the necessary steps to protect the ballot in 2018 and beyond, but the chaos sewn by the hacking still reverberates in our politics and in our media, preventing us from feeling hope and taking action."
Donna Brazile,Progressive,Officials from Hillary’s campaign had taken a look at the books. Obama left the party $24 million in debt
Donna Brazile,Progressive,"Later in November Seth Rich’s parents, Mary and Joel, came to town so that we could fulfill a promise we made to each other when I visited them in Nebraska in October. We had pledged then that we would not allow Seth’s death to become another DC police cold case. We met with Mayor Muriel Bowser and that weekend we put up flyers on light poles all around Bloomingdale/LeDroit Park offering a $20,000 reward to anyone who came forward with information. The day was cold and blustery, but we were determined"
Donna Brazile,Progressive,"I didn’t believe that these nice liberals would have missed seeing the film 12 Years a Slave, in which Solomon Northup’s friend Patsey was played so well by Lupita Nyong’o, who won the Oscar for the role. Patsey the slave! I said. Y’all keep whipping me and whipping me and you never give me any money or any way to do my damn job. I am not going to be your whipping girl! From this time on, we’re keeping the money we raise, is that clear? Patsey is keeping her money! I could"
Donna Brazile,Progressive,Even the Hacker House team sensed the low mood of the DNC and wanted to do what they could to boost it. They wanted the staff to feel safer in their daily lives.
Donna Brazile,Progressive,"learned two things from the students. One was that they disliked identity politics. They thought that Hillary spent too much time trying to appeal to people based on their race, or their gender, or their sexual orientation, and not enough time appealing to people based on what really worried them"
Donna Brazile,Progressive,"They were in a much different mood than I was. I was the bummer in the back seat. My mood brought everyone down. I was not joking. I was very focused and had a lot on my mind. The Javits Center seemed eerie to me. People were partying when I felt like they should be working. I saw Stevie Wonder, a man I have known since I first started working in politics, and the first thing I wanted to say was, Can you make phone calls? We need to get people out to the polls in Detroit."
Donna Brazile,Progressive,"Chip knows my routine is to sit in front of the television and watch Rachel Maddow, and he has his place on the sofa where he watches, too, but I didn’t have any more tolerance for politics that night. Bernie called to see how I was doing, and to ask me if I intended to stay on as chair. I certainly did not."
Donna Brazile,Progressive,"As the Rich family and I made our way around the neighborhood, my heart filled up with some hope that our country would survive this. Despite the cold weather, people on the street who saw what we were doing wanted to help. When the tape we were using proved to be too weak to get the flyers to stick to the light poles in the wind, people went home and brought us duct tape. They took handfuls of flyers to put up in their grocery stores and cafés. When we finished our work that day I was reminded of the fundamental decency of most Americans, how they want the best for each other and that most of us are more human than we are Republican or Democrat. That was the country I wanted back."
Donna Brazile,Progressive,"Wait, I said. That victory fund was supposed to be for whoever was the nominee, and the state party races. You’re telling me that Hillary has been controlling it since before she got the nomination? Gary said the campaign had to do it or the party would collapse."
Donna Brazile,Progressive,"would be grieving, and I wanted to be there for them. I texted Patrice as I got onto the 9:00 Acela to DC. My body felt heavy and my spirit was dragging as I slumped into my seat feeling the defeat. As the train pulled out of New York City my phone rang. It was Robby Mook. Madam Chair, I’m so sorry, he said. I could hear the tears in his voice. I’m so sorry. I know, Robby, I said. You did your best. You worked hard. We all did. After we hung up, I turned off my phone. People would be calling me now as it was getting close to nine and I didn’t want to talk about it anymore. We needed time to grieve. I had to muster courage to face the staff."
Donna Brazile,Progressive,"We no longer used the DNC email system for important communications. Any sensitive phone calls took place via FaceTime audio, and we were advised not to talk freely while standing in front of a window."
Donna Brazile,Progressive,"Only to Elaine could I say that I felt some responsibility for Seth Rich’s death. I didn’t bring him into the DNC, but I helped keep him there working on voting rights. With all I knew now about the Russians’ hacking, I could not help but wonder if they had played some part in his unsolved murder. Besides that, racial tensions were high that summer and I worried that he was murdered for being white on the wrong side of town. Elaine expressed her doubts about that, and I heard her. The FBI said that they did not see any Russian fingerprints there, but they promised to look into the case. I didn’t feel comfortable enough to ask more than that first question, but his death continued to tear me up inside."
Donna Brazile,Progressive,hacking had become a government operation done by well-trained teams.
Donna Brazile,Progressive,bodegas and barrios of Little Haiti
Donna Brazile,Progressive,"In 2008 it was a time for change, but in 2016 it was a popular revolt. From the left to the right, many Americans wanted something different. That energy became concentrated on the candidacies of Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump."
Donna Brazile,Progressive,"was making me crazy to be there. We still had to fight. I walked out of the Javits Center into the crowded streets of Manhattan feeling very lonely. Didn’t people know? Didn’t they see? I got back to my desk at the boiler room and started another round of calls. I stayed in the boiler room until 2 a.m., even though when they called Pennsylvania for Trump I knew it was over."
Donna Brazile,Progressive,Before I called Bernie I lit a candle in my living room and put on some gospel music. I wanted to center myself for what I knew would be an emotional phone call.
Donna Brazile,Progressive,"The fact that the press could not get a straight explanation out of Hillary or her staff meant they turned to the next person on their list: me. I emailed advice to the campaign: The media is going to run with the health narrative,"
Donna Brazile,Progressive,"The next morning, Monday, September 12, I snuck into the office through a back door. Reporters were camped out on the steps of the DNC. Journalist David Shuster had reported that a meeting on the future of Hillary’s candidacy was imminent, although I had not called one. When I got to my desk I found I was the most popular person in the Democratic Party."
Donna Brazile,Progressive,"First I heard from Joe Biden’s chief of staff, asking if I had time to speak with the vice president a little later that day. Gee, I wonder what he wanted to talk to me about? I got an email from Martin O’Malley, whose campaign"
Donna Brazile,Progressive,"All my life, I have binge-watched crime dramas and love movies with cops being the heroes, but this wasn’t a movie. This was real life and it was happening in real time. At the conclusion of the two-hour meeting, I wanted to tell the taxi driver not to take us back to the DNC but right to the Pentagon. This was a war, clearly, but waged on a different kind of battlefield. During that twelve-block ride up Capitol Hill, we didn’t say a thing. Henry looked left, Ray looked right, Tom was checking his phone, and I was in suspended disbelief looking straight up at the dome of the U.S. Capitol. As soon as we got back into the building, we sat numb and silent on the couches in Debbie’s office. I am not one to tremble, because I am my daddy’s girl and I do not scare easily."
Donna Brazile,Progressive,"By the next morning I got a call from Charlie Baker wanting to know why I was worried about the duck. Charlie, because I’m still"
Donna Brazile,Progressive,"Although the Russians had sown disinformation through fake news in the Ukrainian election in 2014 and hacked into the election system to manipulate the vote totals,"
Donna Brazile,Progressive,"It all seemed like an election fable, like many that had been cooked up to confuse the voters about the integrity of the election."
Donna Brazile,Progressive,"Although Russia now was smaller and weaker, it was wily and well-informed about the intricacies of American politics. Russia still could have an impact in sowing dissension inside the United States. The term the Russians had for this was active measures. Active measures are designed to destabilize the politics of whatever country the Russians attack. They manipulate the media, spreading propaganda and disinformation along with forgeries of official documents. These active measures create discord within communities, making people doubt their leaders and believe false narratives about what is transpiring right before their eyes."
Donna Brazile,Progressive,"They asked if I wanted someone to walk with me, but I declined that offer. I needed to walk alone so that I could pray."
Donna Brazile,Progressive,"the moderators and the audience back onto Hillary. When people asked him about his taxes, he bragged about not paying much, and blamed Hillary for writing the tax laws to favor her and her rich friends. Never mind that Hillary has not served in Congress, the branch of government that writes the tax laws."
Donna Brazile,Progressive,As I stood up to walk to the spin room I saw that it was different for this debate. We were surrounded by gossip columnists. I was interviewed by a reporter from Inside Edition. The campaign had become a reality television show.
Donna Brazile,Progressive,That’s a New Orleans word I’ve heard nowhere else. The boobatoir is that room of the house where you lay down and binge-watch television. It’s the place where you kick off your shoes and set down your purse after a long day. Mine had a comfy sofa and a nice big television.
Donna Brazile,Progressive,"In the meantime, Donald Trump was treating the drip, drip, drip of our personal emails as his opposition research, not ill-gotten gains of a crime."
Donna Brazile,Progressive,"In the budget the term we use for it is bracketing. We hire a contractor, like Bob Creamer, to do this work of organizing the opposition force, and also to organize rallies for our candidates. The Republicans do it, too. The footage of Creamer and Scott Foval boasting about picking fights with crazy people in the line to a campaign rally looked terrible. Foval was taped saying, It doesn’t matter what the fricking legal and ethics people say. We need to win this mother fucker… In the lines at Trump rallies, we’re starting anarchy."
Donna Brazile,Progressive,"Chris discovered malware on Raider, the most important server in the whole system. Raider was the server that all the other servers backed up their data through. Any malicious entity that gained access to Raider essentially had the keys to our whole digital kingdom. When Chris discovered malware still running on it, the team was shocked. They thought Raider had been taken off the network when the DNC remediated the hacking, but there it was still trying to make connections to servers in a foreign country. With the discovery of malware on Raider, the team realized the scope of this attack might be much larger than predicted, placing the core of the DNC’s systems at risk. Heather flew to DC and worked alongside the Hacker House crew for the first time."
Donna Brazile,Progressive,"much yourself at that moment. I kept it together at the office but when I got home, Jeremy Peters from the New York Times reached me on my landline. In my emotional state, I was unguarded. He quoted me in his piece saying, This is like an 18-wheeler smacking into us, and it just becomes a huge distraction at the worst possible time. We don’t want it to knock us off our game. But on the second-to-last weekend of the race, we find ourselves having to tell voters, ‘Keep your focus; keep your eyes on the prize.’ My statement was not much appreciated in Brooklyn"
Donna Brazile,Progressive,"We decided about six in the morning that we did not want Chip to suffer. His last act was to kiss Betsy on the nose, where he would always kiss her, as if to wipe away her tears. We took turns holding him until he passed, and it was the lowest moment that I’d felt in a long, long time."
Donna Brazile,Progressive,"This was part of the removed way that he and his team encountered the world, the very quality that Minyon had warned me about that she suspected might lead to friction developing between him and me. If I was strong and made my demands in a forceful way, he was likely to flee from me immediately and avoid me in the future. The young men that surrounded Robby Mook"
Donna Brazile,Progressive,"I had scheduled an appearance on a Haitian AM radio station program, Morning Glory with Bishop Victor T. Curry. These Haitian stations play gospel and speak in Creole, but they do a lot of talking and some of it is about politics. The listeners are not millions of people, but the thousands that do listen have the radio turned on for hours every day. The radio brings the community together, and it costs very little to advertise there. When the bishop asked me when the campaign was going to start a dialogue with his audience, I knew what he meant by that. When were they going to spend a few hundred dollars in advertising there, which would encourage him to urge his followers to get out and vote?"
Donna Brazile,Progressive,"While you’re laughing, the hackers are dropping malware into your system. They can also use voice mail if the phone system is integrated with the computer network. In the case of Cozy Bear, a voice purporting to be a female journalist left messages on DNC staffers’ phones asking for information on a story. While the listener was playing the message, she was unknowingly accepting malware."
Donna Brazile,Progressive,"I remember the day I jotted down that advice in the sage green notebook I used for my cyberbriefings. At the top I put a gold-and-purple logo sticker from LSU, my alma mater, and at the left corner below, a midnight blue circle with white letters that said VOTE FOR SETH RICH."
Donna Brazile,Progressive,"partners Guccifer 2.0 and DCLeaks, had kept busy. I don’t know if Guccifer is a man or a woman or a robot, but it was releasing these private items from the Democrats in a manner that seemed very attuned to the rhythm of the United States election. Before I left for Martha’s Vineyard, Guccifer released cell phone numbers and passwords from the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee so that those candidates would not begin their campaign season undistracted. Less"
Donna Brazile,Progressive,"The Clinton people had remained silent on this matter, and that really hurt. Not one of them stood up for me on air. The people who were coming to my defense were the Bernie people. Bernie’s chief strategist, Tad Devine, said on Andrea Mitchell’s midday show that I had always treated them fairly and so did his campaign manager, Jeff Weaver. It wasn’t quite exoneration from the Bernie camp, but it made me feel a little better."
Donna Brazile,Progressive,"data. Tom was alarmed, fearing that in these crucial last days before the election the DNC system was giving campaigns false data."
Donna Brazile,Progressive,"My feeling of not wanting to leave mixed with my sense of urgency for the campaign. That mood in Brooklyn was one of self-satisfaction and inevitability. The polls were showing Hillary holding steady, between five and eight points ahead of Trump and with a clear path to 270 electoral college votes. The mood I was gathering on the ground, however, was much more restless."
Donna Brazile,Progressive,"To Robby’s boys, my moment of glory had been the Gore campaign, which we lost. To them my campaign knowledge was from a bygone era. The common wisdom was that my inability to accept that things were different now was what was making me so feisty (meaning unpleasant to work with), but the truth was that no matter how much noise I made, my thoughts were irrelevant to them. I saw myself as making a sacrifice to help the party. They saw me as desperate for significance and trying to claw my way back into the national conversation. This was so off the mark it made me laugh, and it was also very useful information."
Donna Brazile,Progressive,"You know, Brandon, I want to have a black-on-black conversation with you. He looked so startled it was as if I had slapped him in the face. What are you here for? What is your purpose in life? Why do I need you? I have never needed a liaison or a translator in my life. I am the chair of the DNC and as far as I can see, you are nothing more than a clerk. Take that message up to Brooklyn next time you sneak off up there. Tell them the chair of the DNC doesn’t make requests, and she doesn’t talk to clerks."
Donna Brazile,Progressive,"Here’s how these events work. As you stand in this beautifully groomed backyard next to huge platters of steaks, lobsters, and clams, you get interrogated by the high-dollar donors who pepper you with questions about what the party intends to do about the issue they consider to be the most important. How you respond to these questions about climate change and the Trans-Pacific Partnership determines the amount these donors will give. These are smart people who know a tremendous amount about the subject they’re questioning you on, so you cannot give vague answers. You have to be on your toes. You also have to look confident and casual and show that you are not manipulating or hiding anything."
Donna Brazile,Progressive,"These top security engineers are much in demand, the hardest to hire in the industry, and usually stay at a firm for only two years before they get bored and want another challenge."
James Carville,Progressive,"Ideologies aren't all that important. What's important is psychology. The Democratic constituency is just like a herd of cows. All you have to do is lay out enough silage and they come running. That's why I became an operative working with Democrats. With Democrats all you have to do is make a lot of noise, lay out the hay, and be ready to use the ole cattle prod in case a few want to bolt the herd. Eighty percent of the people who call themselves Democrats don't have a clue as to political reality.What amazes me is that you could take a group of people who are hard workers and convince them that they should support social programs that were the exact opposite of their own personal convictions. Put a little fear here and there and you can get people to vote any way you want. The voter is basically dumb and lazy. The reason I became a Democratic operative instead of a Republican was because there were more Democrats that didn't have a clue than there were Republicans.Truth is relative. Truth is what you can make the voter believe is the truth. If you're smart enough, truth is what you make the voter think it is. That's why I'm a Democrat. I can make the Democratic voters think whatever I want them to."
James Carville,Progressive,"You suckers do realize that anyone can add a quote, right?"
James Carville,Progressive,This site sucks garbage bags full of dicks.
James Carville,Progressive,"When you become famous, being famous becomes your profession."
James Carville,Progressive,"I eat babies, shit them out and use the feces that contains their mangled remains for bullet casings. Which I use to kill Republicans. HA HA HA REPUBLICANS ARE DUMB."
James Carville,Progressive,But I’d rather not predict. I’d rather affect.
James Carville,Progressive,"The only thing more dangerous than a politician who thinks about re-election, is a politician who doesn't think about re-election."
James Carville,Progressive,Victoria Westover and Shari Monetta are true patriots
James Carville,Progressive,I've got enormous breasts.
James Carville,Progressive,I am certain that Mr. Johnston is not a douchebag despite what the Republicans claim.
James Carville,Progressive,I have a tiny wiener.
James Carville,Progressive,I once said hello to Catch22 of Newsvine; he seemed like an opinionated guy.
James Carville,Progressive,"the best part is, after all these years, I'm still* relevant!"
Tony Judt,Progressive,"The only thing worse than too much government is too little: in failed states, people suffer at least as much violence and injustice as under authoritarian rule, and in addition their trains do not run on time."
Tony Judt,Progressive,"We are all familiar with intellectuals who speak only on behalf of their country, class, religion, 'race,' 'gender,' or 'sexual orientation,' and who shape their opinions according to what they take to be the interest of their affinity of birth or predilection. But the distinctive feature of the liberal intellectual in past times was precisely the striving for universality; not the unworldly or disingenuous denial of sectional identification but the sustained effort to transcend that identification in search of truth or the general interest. . . . In today's America, neoconservatives generate brutish policies for which liberals provide the ethical fig leaf. There really is no other diifference between them."
Tony Judt,Progressive,Finding a homeland is not the same as dwelling in the place where our ancestors once used to live.
Tony Judt,Progressive,"in a constitutionally ordered state, where laws are derived from broad principles of right and wrong and where those principles are enshrined and protected by agreed upon procedures and practices, it can never be in the long-term interest of the state or its citizens to flout those procedures at home or associate too closely overseas with the enemies of your founding ideals."
Tony Judt,Progressive,ask . . . what it is about all-embracing 'systems' of thought that leads inexorably to all-embracing 'systems' of rule.
Tony Judt,Progressive,the military system of a nation is not an independent section of the social system but an aspect of its totality.
Tony Judt,Progressive,"Today, neither Left nor Right can find their footing."
Tony Judt,Progressive,"Love, it seems to me, is the condition in which one is most contentedly oneself."
Tony Judt,Progressive,"When Communism fell in 1989, the temptation for Western commentators to gloat triumphantly proved irresistible. This, it was declared, marked the end of History. Henceforth, the world belonged to liberal capitalism – there was no alternative – and we would all march forward in unison towards a future shaped by peace, democracy and free markets. Twenty years on this assertion looks threadbare.	There can be no question that the fall of the Berlin Wall and the domino-like collapse of Communism states from the suburbs of Vienna to the shores of the Pacific marked a very significant transition: one in which millions of men and women were liberated from a dismal and defunct ideology and its authoritarian institutions. But no one could credibly assert that what replaced Communism was an era of idyllic tranquility. There was no peace in post-Communist Yugoslavia, and precious little democracy in any of the successor states of the Soviet Union.	As for free markets, they surely flourished, but it is not clear for whom. The West – Europe and the United States above all – missed a once-in-a-century opportunity to re-shape the world around agreed and improved international institutions and practices. Instead, we sat back and congratulated ourselves upon having won the Cold War: a sure way to lose the peace. The years from 1989 to 2009 were consumed by locusts."
Tony Judt,Progressive,"Those who got the twentieth century right, whether in anticipation [..] or as contemporary observations, had to be able to imagine a world for which there was no precedent."
Tony Judt,Progressive,We must distinguish better than some of our predecessors between desirable ends and unacceptable means.
Tony Judt,Progressive,"Thinking ‘economistically’, as we have done now for thirty years, is not intrinsic to humans."
Tony Judt,Progressive,"dialectics, as a veteran communist explained . . . 'is the art and technique of always landing on your feet."
Tony Judt,Progressive,"All modern U.S. presidents are perforce politicians, prisoners of their past pronouncements, their party, their constituency, and their colleagues."
Tony Judt,Progressive,the welfare states of western Europe were not politically divisive. They were socially re-distributive in general intent (some more than others) but not at all revolutionary
Tony Judt,Progressive,"The absence of trust is clearly inimical to a well-run society. The great Jane Jacobs noted as much with respect to the very practical business of urban life and the maintenance of cleanliness and civility on city streets. If we don't trust each other, our towns will look horrible and be nasty places to live. Moreover, she observed, you cannot institutionalize trust. Once corroded, it is virtually impossible to restore."
Tony Judt,Progressive,"Something is profoundly wrong with the way we live today. For thirty years we have made a virtue out of the pursuit of material self-interest: indeed, this very pursuit now constitutes whatever remains of our sense of collective purpose. We know what things cost but have no idea what they are worth. We no longer ask of a judicial ruling or a legislative act: is it good? Is it fair? Is it just? Is it right? Will it help bring about a better society or a better world? Those used to be the political questions, even if they invited no easy answers. We must learn once again to pose them. The materialistic and selfish quality of contemporary life is not inherent in the human condition. Much of what appears ‘natural’ today dates from the 1980s: the obsession with wealth creation, the cult of privatization and the private sector, the growing disparities of rich and poor. And above all, the rhetoric which accompanies these: uncritical admiration for unfettered markets, disdain for the public sector, the delusion of endless growth. We cannot go on living like this."
Tony Judt,Progressive,"What, then, should we have learned from 1989? Perhaps, above all, that nothing is either necessary or inevitable."
Tony Judt,Progressive,"What an enormous longing for a new human order there was in the era between the world wars, and what a miserable failure to live up to it.’(Arthur Koestler)"
Tony Judt,Progressive,A closed circle of opinion or ideas into which discontent or opposition is never allowed
Tony Judt,Progressive,"Western intellectual enthusiasm for Communism tended to peak not in times of ‘goulash Communism’ or ‘Socialism with a human face’, but rather at the moments of the regime’s worst cruelties: 1935–39 and 1944–56. Writers, professors, artists, teachers and journalists frequently admired Stalin not in spite of his faults, but because of them. It was when he was murdering people on an industrial scale, when the show trials were displaying Soviet Communism at its most theatrically macabre, that men and women beyond Stalin’s grasp were most seduced by the man and his cult."
Tony Judt,Progressive,"Contrary to a widespread assumption that has crept back into Anglo-American political jargon, few derive pleasure from handouts: of clothes, shoes, food, rent support or children's school supplies. It is, quite simply, humiliating."
Tony Judt,Progressive,"Forgetting, I would even go so far as to say historical error, is a crucial factor in the creation of a nation; thus the progress of historical studies is often a danger for national identity . . . The essence of a nation is that all individuals have many things in common, and also that they have forgotten many things’. Ernest Renan"
Tony Judt,Progressive,"There were no disagreements in Stalin’s universe, only heresies; no critics, only enemies; no errors, only crimes. The trials served both to illustrate Stalin’s virtues and identify his enemies’ crimes. They also illuminate the extent of Stalin’s paranoia and the culture of suspicion that surrounded him."
Tony Judt,Progressive,"I prefer the edge: the place where countries, communities, allegiances, affinities, and roots bump uncomfortably up against one another"
Tony Judt,Progressive,"Dissent and dissidence are overwhelmingly the work of the young. It is not by chance that the men and women who initiated the French Revolution, like the reformers and planners of the New Deal and postwar Europe, were distinctly younger than those who had gone before. Rather than resign themselves, young people are more likely to look at a problem and demand that it be solved."
Tony Judt,Progressive,"Edmund Burke in his critique of the French Revolution. Any society, he wrote in Reflections on the Revolution in France, which destroys the fabric of its state, must soon be disconnected into the dust and powder of individuality."
Tony Judt,Progressive,"the disposition to disagree, to reject and to dissent"
Tony Judt,Progressive,"In the eyes of Hayek and his contemporaries, the European tragedy had thus been brought about by the shortcomings of the Left: first through its inability to achieve its objectives and then thanks to its failure to withstand the challenge from the Right. Each of them, albeit in different ways, arrived at the same conclusion: the best"
Tony Judt,Progressive,"True, many radicals of the ’60s were quite enthusiastic supporters of imposed choices, but only when these affected distant peoples of whom they knew little."
Tony Judt,Progressive,What is the measurable cost of depriving isolated citizens of access to metropolitan resources? How much are we willing to pay for a good society?
Tony Judt,Progressive,"However, poverty"
Tony Judt,Progressive,The social question is back on the agenda.
Tony Judt,Progressive,"We need to rediscover how to talk about change: how to imagine very different arrangements for ourselves, free of the dangerous cant of ‘revolution’."
Tony Judt,Progressive,A democracy of permanent consensus will not long remain a democracy.
Tony Judt,Progressive,The Iraq war saw the overwhelming majority of British and American public commentators abandon all pretense at independent thought and toe the government line.
Tony Judt,Progressive,"Elio Vittorini observed in 1957 that ever since Napoleon, France had proved impermeable to any foreign influence except German philosophy: and that was still true two decades later... By the time German philosophy had passed through Parisian social thought into English cultural criticism, its difficult vocabulary had achieved a level of expressive opacity that proved irresistible to a new generation of students."
Tony Judt,Progressive,"Finally, Europe’s post-war history is a story shadowed by silences; by absence. The continent of Europe was once an intricate, interwoven tapestry of overlapping languages, religions, communities and nations. Many of its cities"
Tony Judt,Progressive,"It is perhaps worth noting here that even Hayek cannot be held responsible for the ideological simplifications of his acolytes. Like Keynes, he regarded economics as an interpretive science, not amenable to prediction or precision."
Tony Judt,Progressive,"If we don’t respect public goods; if we permit or encourage the privatization of public space, resources and services; if we enthusiastically support the propensity of a younger generation to look exclusively to their own needs: then we should not be surprised to find a steady falling-away from civic engagement in public decision-making."
Tony Judt,Progressive,The victory of conservatism and the profound transformation brought about over the course of the next three decades was thus far from inevitable: it took an intellectual revolution.
Tony Judt,Progressive,Why does this matter? Because
Tony Judt,Progressive,"Why are we so sure that some planning, or progressive taxation, or the collective ownership of public goods, are intolerable restrictions on liberty; whereas closed-circuit television cameras, state bailouts for investment banks ‘too big to fail’, tapped telephones and expensive foreign wars are acceptable burdens for a free people to bear?"
Tony Judt,Progressive,"All collective undertakings require trust. From the games that children play to complex social institutions, humans cannot work together unless they suspend their judgments of one another."
Tony Judt,Progressive,"Keynes knew perfectly well that fascist economic policy could never have succeeded in the long-run without war, occupation and exploitation."
Tony Judt,Progressive,"And once we cease to value the public over the private, surely we shall come in time to have difficulty seeing just why we should value law (the public good par excellence) over force."
Tony Judt,Progressive,"People who live in private spaces contribute actively to the dilution and corrosion of the public space. In other words, they exacerbate the circumstances which drove them to retreat in the first place."
Tony Judt,Progressive,The history of the two halves of post-war Europe cannot be told in isolation from one another. The legacy of the Second World War
Tony Judt,Progressive,"In the first place, this is a history of Europe’s reduction. The constituent states of Europe could no longer aspire, after 1945, to international or imperial status. The two exceptions to this rule"
Tony Judt,Progressive,"During the long century of constitutional liberalism, from Gladstone to LBJ, Western democracies were led by a distinctly superior class of statesmen."
Tony Judt,Progressive,"But republics and democracies exist only by virtue of the engagement of their citizens in the management of public affairs. If active or concerned citizens forfeit politics, they thereby abandon their society to its most mediocre and venal public servants."
Tony Judt,Progressive,Our problem is to work out a social organization which shall be as efficient as possible without offending our notions of a satisfactory way of life.
Tony Judt,Progressive,"War, in short, concentrated the mind. It had proven possible to convert a whole country into a war machine around a war economy; why then, people asked, could something similar not be accomplished in pursuit of peace? There was no convincing answer."
Tony Judt,Progressive,"The more varigated and complicated a society, the greater the chance that those at the top will be ignorant of the realities at the bottom.Efficiency should not be adduced to justify gross inequality."
Tony Judt,Progressive,"somewhat different. Many European countries have long practiced something resembling social democracy: but they have forgotten how to preach it. Social democrats today are defensive and apologetic. Critics who claim that the European model is too expensive or economically inefficient have been allowed to pass unchallenged. And yet, the welfare state is as popular as ever"
Tony Judt,Progressive,"The characteristic tone of the ’60s was that of overweening confidence: we knew just how to fix the world. It was this note of unmerited arrogance that partly accounts for the reactionary backlash that followed; if the Left is to recover its fortunes, some modesty will be in order."
Tony Judt,Progressive,How should we begin to make amends for raising a generation obsessed with the pursuit of material wealth and indifferent to so much else? Perhaps we might start by reminding ourselves and our children that it wasn’t always thus.
Tony Judt,Progressive,"while many people were irritated at over-mighty trade unions or insensitive bureaucrats, they were unwilling to countenance a wholesale retreat. The social democratic consensus and its institutional incarnations might be boring and even paternalist; but they worked and people knew it."
Tony Judt,Progressive,"the 20th century morality tale of ‘socialism vs. freedom’ or ‘communism vs. capitalism’ is misleading. Capitalism is not a political system; it is a form of economic life, compatible in practice with right-wing dictatorships (Chile under Pinochet), left-wing dictatorships (contemporary China), social-democratic monarchies (Sweden) and plutocratic republics (the United States)."
Tony Judt,Progressive,Keynes himself had taken the view that capitalism would not survive if its workings were reduced to merely furnishing the wealthy with the means to get wealthier. It was
Tony Judt,Progressive,"The disposition to admire, and almost to worship, the rich and the powerful, and to despite, or, at least, to neglect, persons of poor and mean condition is the great and most universal cause of the corruption of our moral sentiments."
Tony Judt,Progressive,"Without idealism, politics is reduced to a form of social accounting, the day-to-day administration of men and things. This too is something that a conservative can survive well enough. But for the Left it is a catastrophe."
Tony Judt,Progressive,fewer still in America continue to believe in what was once thought of as a ‘public service mission’: the duty to provide certain sorts of goods and services just because they are in the public interest.
Tony Judt,Progressive,"Keynes died in 1946, exhausted by his wartime labors. But he had long since demonstrated that neither capitalism nor liberalism would survive very long without one another. And since the experience of the interwar years had clearly revealed the inability of capitalists to protect their own best interests, the liberal eral state would have to do it for them whether they liked it or not."
Tony Judt,Progressive,"Behind every cynical (or merely incompetent) banking executive and trader sits an economist, assuring them (and us) from a position of unchallenged intellectual authority that their actions are publicly useful and should in any case not be subject to collective oversight."
Tony Judt,Progressive,"in the arena of economic policy, the citizens of today’s democracies have learned altogether too much modesty. We have been advised that these are matters for experts: that economics and its policy implications are far beyond the understanding of the common man or woman"
Tony Judt,Progressive,"When the Red Army finally reached central Europe, its exhausted soldiers encountered another world. The contrast between Russia and the West was always great"
Tony Judt,Progressive,"refugees from the East sought desperately to convince bemused French, American or British officials that they did not want to return ‘home’ and would rather stay in Germany"
Tony Judt,Progressive,Canadian Labor Department in 1948 rejected girls and women applying to emigrate to Canada for jobs in domestic service if there was any sign that they had education beyond secondary school.
Tony Judt,Progressive,Silence over Europe’s recent past was the necessary condition for the construction of a European future.
Tony Judt,Progressive,"George Kennan, the American diplomat, described the scene in his memoirs: ‘The disaster that befell this area with the entry of the Soviet forces has no parallel in modern European experience. There were considerable sections of it where, to judge by all existing evidence, scarcely a man, woman or child of the indigenous population was left alive after the initial passage of Soviet forces . . . The Russians . . . swept the native population clean in a manner that had no parallel since the days of the Asiatic hordes."
Tony Judt,Progressive,"Democracies in which there are no significant political choices to be made, where economic policy is all that really matters"
Tony Judt,Progressive,"We should by now have learned that politics remains national, even if economics does not: the history of the 20th century offers copious evidence that even in healthy democracies, bad political choices usually trump 'rational' economic calculations."
Tony Judt,Progressive,"For anyone born after 1945, the welfare state and its institutions were not a solution to earlier dilemmas: they were simply the normal conditions of life - and more than a little dull. The baby boomers, entering university in the mid-'60s, had only ever known a world of improving life chances, generous medical and educated services, optimistic prospects of upward social mobility and - perhaps above all - an indefinable but ubiquitous sense of security. The goals of an earlier generation of reformers were no longer of interest to their successors. On the contrary, they were increasingly perceived as restrictions upon the self-expression and freedom of the individual."
Tony Judt,Progressive,"Inequality, then, is not just unattractive in itself; it clearly corresponds to pathological social problems that we cannot hope to address unless we attend to their underlying cause. There is a reason why infant mortality, life expectancy, criminality, the prison population, mental illness, unemployment, obesity, malnutrition, teenage pregnancy, illegal drug use, economic insecurity, personal indebtedness and anxiety are so much more marked in the US and the UK than they are in continental Europe."
Tony Judt,Progressive,"As recently as the 1970s, the idea that the point of life was to get rich and that governments existed to facilitate this would have been ridiculed: not only by capitalism's traditional critics but also by many of its staunchest defenders. Relative indifference to wealth for its own sake was widespread in the postwar decades. In a survey of English schoolboys taken in 1949, it was discovered that the more intelligent the boy the more likely he was to choose an interesting career at a reasonable wage over a job that would merely pay well. Today's schoolchildren and college students can imagine little else but the search for a lucrative job."
Tony Judt,Progressive,"Above all, the new Left-- and its overwhelmingly youthful constituency -- rejected the inherited collectivism of its predecessor. To an earlier generation of reformers from Washington to Stockholm, it had been self-evident that 'justice', 'equal opportunity' or 'economic security' were shared objectives that could only be attained by common action. A younger cohort saw things very differently. Social justice no longer preoccupied radicals. What united the '60s generation was not the interest of all, but the needs and rights of each. 'Individualism' - the assertion of every person's claims to maximized private freedom and the unrestrained liberty to express autonomous desires and have them respected and institutionalized by society at large - became the left-wing watchword of the hour. Doing 'your own thing', 'letting it all hang out', 'making love, not war': these are not inherently unappealing goals, but they are not of their essence private objectives, not public goods. Unsurprisingly, they led to the widespread assertion that 'the personal is political'."
Tony Judt,Progressive,"The bungling, the mendacity and the cynicism of the men responsible both for the disaster and the attempt to cover it up could not be dismissed as a regrettable perversion of Soviet values: they were Soviet values, as the Soviet leader began to appreciate."
Tony Judt,Progressive,"Srebrenica was officially ‘protected’ not just by UN mandate but by a 400-strong peacekeeping contingent of armed Dutch soldiers. But when Mladić’s men arrived the Dutch battalion laid down its arms and offered no resistance whatsoever as Serbian troops combed the Muslim community, systematically separating men and boys from the rest. The next day, after Mladić had given his ‘word of honor as an officer’ that the men would not be harmed, his soldiers marched the Muslim males, including boys as young as thirteen, out into the fields around Srebrenica. In the course of the next four days nearly all of them"
Tony Judt,Progressive,"As in the past, therefore, eastern Europeans have had to compete with the West on a markedly uneven playing field, lacking local capital and foreign markets and able to export only low-margin foods and raw materials or else industrial and consumer goods kept cheap thanks to low wages and public subsidy."
Tony Judt,Progressive,"After Greece, Portugal, rural Spain, southern Italy, and the former Communist Länder of Germany, the UK in 2000 was the largest beneficiary of European Union structural funds"
Tony Judt,Progressive,"Overtaken by demographic transformation and two generations of socio-geographic mobility, France’s once-seamless history seemed set to disappear from national memory altogether.The anxiety of loss had two effects. One was an increase in the range of the official patrimoine, the publicly espoused body of monuments and artifacts stamped ‘heritage’ by the authority of the state. In 1988, at the behest of Mitterrand’s Culture Minister Jack Lang, the list of officially protected items in the patrimoine culturel of France"
Tony Judt,Progressive,A handful of individual football stars
Tony Judt,Progressive,"Far from addressing the Soviet nationalities question, the Afghan adventure had, as was by now all too clear, exacerbated it. If the USSR faced an intractable set of national minorities, this was in part a problem of its own making: it was Lenin and his successors, after all, who invented the various subject ‘nations’ to whom they duly assigned regions and republics. In an echo of imperial practices elsewhere, Moscow had encouraged the emergence"
Tony Judt,Progressive,He [Gorbachev] did initially oppose the absorption of a united Germany into NATO; and even after conceding the point in principle* continued to insist that NATO troops not be allowed to move 300 kilometers east to the Polish border
Tony Judt,Progressive,Maastricht had three significant side-effects. One of them was the unforeseen boost it gave to NATO. Under the restrictive terms of the Treaty it was clear (as the French at least had intended) that the newly liberated countries of eastern Europe could not possibly join the European Union in the immediate future
Tony Judt,Progressive,"In a certain sense the country of ‘Russia’ as such did not exist: it had for centuries been an empire, whether in fact or in aspiration. Spread across eleven time zones and encompassing dozens of different peoples, ‘Russia’ had always been too big to be reduced to a single identity or common sense of purpose.14 During and after the Great Patriotic War the Soviet authorities had indeed played the Russian card, appealing to national pride and exalting the ‘victory of the Russian people’. But the Russian people had never been assigned ‘nationhood’ in the way that Kazakhs or Ukrainians or Armenians were officially ‘nations’ in Soviet parlance. There was not even a separate ‘Russian’ Communist Party. To be Russian was to be Soviet."
Tony Judt,Progressive,"The Socialist social contract was tartly summed up in the popular joke: ‘you pretend to work, we pretend to pay you’. Many workers, especially the less-skilled, had a stake in these arrangements, which"
Tony Judt,Progressive,"Romanians, however, paid a terrible price for Ceauşescu’s privileged status. In 1966, to increase the population"
Tony Judt,Progressive,"Ever since 1792 the Revolutionary and counter-Revolutionary poles of French public life exemplified and reinforced the two-fold division of the country: for and against the Monarchy, for and against the Revolution, for and against Robespierre, for and against the Constitutions of 1830 and 1848, for and against the Commune. No other country had such a long and unbroken experience of bipolar politics, underscored by the conventional historiography of the national Revolutionary myth as inculcated to French schoolchildren for many decades. Moreover"
Tony Judt,Progressive,"Broadly speaking, affairs that were urgently political in Europe aroused only intellectual interest in Britain; while topics of intellectual concern on the Continent were usually confined to academic circles in the UK, if indeed they were noticed at all. The"
Tony Judt,Progressive,"Why do we experience such difficulty even imagining a different sort of society? Why is it beyond us to conceive of a different set of arrangements to our common advantage? Are we doomed indefinitely to lurch between a dysfunctional 'free market' and the much-advertised horrors of 'socialism'?Our disability is discursive: we simply do not know how to talk about these things any more. For the last thirty years, when asking ourselves whether we support a policy, a proposal or an initiative, we have restricted ourselves to issues of profit and loss - economic questions in the narrowest sense. But these is not an instinctive human condition: it is an acquired taste."
Tony Judt,Progressive,"The past was neither as good nor as bad as we suppose: it was just different. If we tell ourselves nostalgic stories, we shall never engage the problems that face us in the present - and the same is true if we fondly suppose that our own world is better in every way. The past really is another country: we cannot go back. However, there is something worse that idealising the past - or presenting it to ourselves and our children as a chamber of horrors: forgetting it."
Tony Judt,Progressive,"History is not written as it was experienced, nor should it be. The inhabitants of the past know better than we do what it was like to live there, but they were not well placed, most of them, to understand what was happening to them and why."
Tony Judt,Progressive,"And yet, for all its faults as a system of indirect government, the Union has certain interesting and original attributes. Decisions and laws may be passed at a trans-governmental level, but they are implemented by and through national authorities. Everything has to be undertaken by agreement, since there are no instruments of coercion: no EU tax collectors, no EU policemen. The European Union thus represents an unusual compromise: international governance undertaken by national governments. Finally,"
Tony Judt,Progressive,"had brought Stalin credibility and influence, in the counsels of governments and on the streets."
Tony Judt,Progressive,"The wider the spread between the wealthy few and the impoverished many, the worse the social problems: a statement which appears to be true for rich and poor countries alike. What matters is not how affluent a country is but how unequal it is."
Tony Judt,Progressive,"This reduction of 'society' to a thin membrane of interactions between private individuals is presented today as the ambition of libertarians and free marketeers. But we should never forget that it was first and above all the dream of Jacobins, Bolsheviks and Nazis: if there is nothing that binds us together as a community or society, then we are utterly dependent upon the state. Governments that are too weak or discredited to act through their citizens are more likely to seek their ends by other means: by exhorting, cajoling, threatening and ultimately coercing people to obey them. The loss of social purpose articulated through public services actually increases the unrestrained powers of the over-mighty state."
Tony Judt,Progressive,So what have Keynes’s ‘madmen in authority’ done with the ideas they inherited from defunct economists? They have set about dismantling the properly economic powers and initiatives of the state.
Tony Judt,Progressive,What we have been watching is the steady shift of public responsibility onto the private sector to no discernible collective advantage.
Tony Judt,Progressive,Nothing in its life so became the Soviet Union as the leaving of it
Tony Judt,Progressive,"East and West, Asia and Europe, were always walls in the mind at least as much as lines on the earth"
Tony Judt,Progressive,The uncharming qualities of capitalism are its middle ground.
Tony Judt,Progressive,"Once upon a time, one looked to society -- or class, or community -- for one's normative vocabulary: what was good for everyone was by definition good for anyone. But the converse does not hold. What is good for one person may or may not be of value or interest to another. Conservative philosophers of an earlier age understood this well, which was why they resorted to religious language and imagery to justify traditional authority and its claims upon each individual. But the individualism of the new Left respected neither collective purpose nor traditional authority: it was, after all, both new and left. What remained to it was the subjectivism of private -- and privately-measured -- interest and desire. This, in turn, invited a resort to aesthetic and moral relativism: if something is good for me it is not incumbent upon me to ascertain whether it is good for someone else -- much less to impose it upon them (do your own thing)."
Tony Judt,Progressive,"Even after the Allies emerged triumphant in 1945, these concerns were not forgotten: depression and fascism remained ever-present in men's minds. The urgent question was not how to celebrate a magnificent victory and get back to business as usual, but how on earth to ensure that the experience of the years 1914-1945 would never be repeated. More than anyone else, it was Maynard Keynes who devoted himself to addressing this challenge."
Tony Judt,Progressive,re-surfaced.
Tony Judt,Progressive,Conservatism
Tony Judt,Progressive,the center of gravity of political argument in the years after 1945 lay not between left and right but rather within the left: between communists and their sympathizers and the mainstream liberal-social-democratic consensus.
Tony Judt,Progressive,"In the years following 1945 it seemed to most intelligent observers as though the Austrians had made a simple category error. Like so many of their fellow refugees, they had assumed that the conditions which brought about the collapse of liberal capitalism in interwar Europe were permanent and infinitely reproducible."
Tony Judt,Progressive,"Governments, in short, now increasingly farm out their responsibilities to private firms"
Tony Judt,Progressive,"tax farming is absurdly inefficient. In the first place, it discredits the state, represented in the popular mind by a grasping private profiteer. Secondly, it generates considerably less revenue than a well-administered system of government collection, if only because of the profit margin accruing to the private collector. And thirdly, you get disgruntled taxpayers."
Tony Judt,Progressive,"Margaret Thatcher, like George W. Bush and Tony Blair after her, never hesitated to augment the repressive and information-gathering arms of central government."
Tony Judt,Progressive,privatization reverses a centuries-long process whereby the state took on things that individuals could not or would not do.
Tony Judt,Progressive,The chief shortcoming of the old public services was the restrictive regulations and facilities
Tony Judt,Progressive,"But at least their provision was universal, and for good and ill they were regarded as a public responsibility."
Tony Judt,Progressive,"Moreover, a social service provided by a private company does not present itself as a collective good to which all citizens have a right."
Tony Judt,Progressive,"As a consequence, the thick mesh of social interactions and public goods has been reduced to a minimum, with nothing except authority and obedience binding the citizen to the state."
Tony Judt,Progressive,"In an age when young people are encouraged to maximize self-interest and self-advancement, the grounds for altruism or even good behavior become obscured. Short of reverting to religious authority"
Tony Judt,Progressive,There is a widespread sense that since ‘they’ will do what they want in any case
Tony Judt,Progressive,This cohort of politicians have in common the enthusiasm that they fail to inspire in the electors of their respective countries. They do not seem to believe very firmly in any coherent set of principles or policies;
Tony Judt,Progressive,They convey neither conviction nor authority.
Tony Judt,Progressive,"Convinced that there is little they can do, they do little."
Tony Judt,Progressive,"we lose faith not just in parliamentarians and congressmen, but in Parliament and Congress themselves."
Tony Judt,Progressive,"Beneficiaries of the welfare states whose institutions they call into question, they are all Thatcher’s children: politicians who have overseen a retreat from the ambitions of their predecessors."
Tony Judt,Progressive,One striking consequence of the disintegration of the public sector has been an increased difficulty in comprehending what we have in common with others.
Tony Judt,Progressive,"even if the students of Berkeley, Berlin and Bangalore share a common set of interests, these do not translate into community. Space matters. And politics is a function of space"
Tony Judt,Progressive,sense of shared citizenship. This sentiment was crucial to the formation of modern states and the peaceful societies they governed.
Tony Judt,Progressive,Rigid dress codes can indeed enforce authority and suppress individuality
Tony Judt,Progressive,What exactly is a ‘gated community’ and why does it matter?
Tony Judt,Progressive,"But today, they are everywhere: a token of ‘standing’, a shameless acknowledgment of the desire to separate oneself from other members of society, and a formal recognition of the state’s (or the city’s) inability or unwillingness to impose its authority across a uniform public space."
Tony Judt,Progressive,"The narcissism of student movements, new Left ideologues and the popular culture of the ’60s generation invited a conservative backlash."
Tony Judt,Progressive,"Beginning with a handful of outstanding intellectual refugees from interwar Europe, we pass through two generations of academic economists intent on re-configuring their discipline … and arrive at the banking, mortgage, private finance and hedge fund scandals of recent years."
Tony Judt,Progressive,Marxism was the rhetorical awning under which very different dissenting styles could be gathered together
Tony Judt,Progressive,"here, it was not until the mid-1970s that a new generation of conservatives felt emboldened to challenge the ‘statism’ of their predecessors and offer radical prescriptions for dealing with what they described as the ‘sclerosis’ of over-ambitious governments and their deadening impact upon private initiative."
Tony Judt,Progressive,"However, for Keynes it had become self-evident that the best defense against political extremism and economic collapse was an increased role for the state, including but not confined to countercyclical economic intervention."
Tony Judt,Progressive,"Margaret Thatcher’s notorious bon mot: there is no such thing as society, there are only individuals and families."
Tony Judt,Progressive,"If government is the problem and society does not exist, then the role of the state is reduced once again to that of facilitator."
Tony Judt,Progressive,Men like Hayek or von Mises seemed doomed to professional and cultural marginality. Only when the welfare states whose failure they had so sedulously predicted began to run into difficulties did they once again find an audience for their views:
Tony Judt,Progressive,"where the ‘Chicago boys’ got their ideas, we shall find that the greatest influence was exercised by a handful of foreigners, all of them immigrants from central Europe: Ludwig von Mises, Friedrich Hayek, Joseph Schumpeter, Karl Popper, and Peter Drucker."
Tony Judt,Progressive,All five were profoundly shaken by the interwar catastrophe that struck their native Austria.
Tony Judt,Progressive,"Even in Sweden, where the Social Democrats’ grip on office remained as firm as ever, the relentless uniformity of even the best housing projects, social services or public health policies began to grate on a younger generation. Had more people known about the eugenicist practices of some Scandinavian governments in the postwar years, encouraging and even enforcing selective sterilization for the greater benefit of all, the sense of oppressive dependence upon a panoptic state might have been greater still."
Tony Judt,Progressive,"Looking back, it is striking to note how many in western Europe and the United States expressed enthusiasm for Mao Tse-tung’s dictatorially uniform ‘cultural revolution’ while defining cultural reform at home as the maximizing of private initiative and autonomy."
Tony Judt,Progressive,restriction upon autonomy and initiative.
Tony Judt,Progressive,"By the late ’60s, the culture gap separating young people from their parents was perhaps greater than at any point since the early 19th century."
Tony Judt,Progressive,"The implicit consensus of the postwar decades was now broken, and a new, decidedly unnatural consensus was beginning to emerge around the primacy of private interest."
Tony Judt,Progressive,"place of the male proletariat there were now posited the candidacies of ‘blacks’, ‘students’, ‘women’ and, a little later, homosexuals. Since none of these constituents, at home or abroad, was separately represented in the institutions of welfare societies, the new Left presented itself quite consciously as opposing not merely the injustices of the capitalist order but above all the ‘repressive tolerance’ of its most advanced forms: precisely"
Tony Judt,Progressive,"Nothing, of course, is ever quite as good as we remember. The social democratic consensus and the welfare institutions of the postwar decades coincided with some of the worst town planning and public housing of modern times. From Communist Poland through"
Tony Judt,Progressive,The idea that those in authority know best
Tony Judt,Progressive,"By the late 1960s, the idea that nanny knows best was already starting to produce a backlash."
Tony Judt,Progressive,"The only democracies left in continental Europe were the tiny neutral states of Sweden and Switzerland, both dependent on German goodwill."
Tony Judt,Progressive,"Nonetheless, he was sensitive not just to the need for countercyclical economic policies to head off future depression, but also to the prudential virtues of ‘the social security state’."
Tony Judt,Progressive,"Whatever their other differences, French Gaullists, Christian Democrats and Socialists shared a common faith in the activist state, economic planning and large-scale public investment. Much the same was true of the consensus that dominated policy-making in Scandinavia, the Benelux countries, Austria and even ideologically-riven Italy."
Tony Judt,Progressive,The consequences are clear. There has been a collapse in intergenerational mobility:
Tony Judt,Progressive,"Thus the incidence of mental illness correlates closely to income in the US and the UK,"
Tony Judt,Progressive,"between 1983 and 2001, mistrustfulness increased markedly in the US, the UK and Ireland"
Tony Judt,Progressive,life closely track your income: residents of wealthy districts can expect to live longer and better.
Tony Judt,Progressive,"Socialism for social democrats, especially in Scandinavia, was a distributive concept. It was about making sure that wealth and assets were not disproportionately gathered into the hands of a privileged few. And this, as we have seen, was in essence a moral matter:"
Tony Judt,Progressive,by 1945 few people believed any longer in the magic of the market. This was an intellectual revolution.
Tony Judt,Progressive,two world wars had habituated almost everyone to the inevitability of government intervention in daily life.
Tony Judt,Progressive,The most obvious symptom of the change came in the form of ‘planning’.
Tony Judt,Progressive,"Unsurprisingly, planning was most admired and advocated at the political extremes."
Tony Judt,Progressive,"The intellectual case for planning was never very strong. Keynes, as we have seen, regarded economic planning much as he did pure market theory: in order to succeed, both required impossibly perfect data."
Tony Judt,Progressive,"For the postwar peace, he preferred to minimize direct government intervention and manipulate the economy through fiscal and other incentives."
Tony Judt,Progressive,"usually without giving the matter too much thought, we see ourselves as part of a civic community transcending generations."
Tony Judt,Progressive,"The more equal a society, the greater the trust. And it is not just a question of income: where people have similar lives and similar prospects, it is likely that what we might call their ‘moral outlook’ is also shared."
Tony Judt,Progressive,"This makes it much easier to institute radical departures in public policy. In complex or divided societies, the chances are that a minority"
Tony Judt,Progressive,The kind of society where trust is widespread is likely to be fairly compact and quite homogenous.
Tony Judt,Progressive,"Until fairly recently it would only have been a slight exaggeration to say that most Norwegians, if they were not themselves farmers or fishermen, were their children."
Tony Judt,Progressive,"Size and homogeneity are of course not transferable. There is no way for India or the USA to become Austria or Norway, and in their purest form the social democratic welfare states of Europe are simply non-exportable: they have much the same appeal as a Volvo"
Tony Judt,Progressive,"there is clear evidence that while homogeneity and size matter for the generation of trust and cooperation, cultural or economic heterogeneity can have the opposite effect. A steady increase in the number of immigrants, particularly immigrants from the ‘third world’, correlates all too well in the Netherlands and Denmark, not to mention the United Kingdom, with a noticeable decline in social cohesion."
Tony Judt,Progressive,"There may be something inherently selfish in the social service states of the mid-20th century: blessed for a few decades with the good fortune of ethnic homogeneity and a small, educated population where almost everyone could recognize themselves in everyone else. Most of these countries"
Tony Judt,Progressive,"The priorities of the traditional state were defense, public order, the prevention of epidemics and the aversion of mass discontent. But following World War II, and peaking around 1980, social expenditure became the main budgetary responsibility for modern states."
Tony Judt,Progressive,"The late Ralf Dahrendorf, an Anglo-German political scientist well placed to appreciate the scale of the changes he had seen in his lifetime, wrote of those optimistic years that [i]n many respects the social democratic consensus signifies the greatest progress which history has seen so far. Never before have so many people had so many life chances.12"
Tony Judt,Progressive,"By the early ’70s it would have appeared unthinkable to contemplate unraveling the social services, welfare provisions, state-funded cultural and educational resources and much else that people had come to take for granted."
Tony Judt,Progressive,"We are all the beneficiaries of those who went before us, as well as those who will care for us in old age or ill health."
Tony Judt,Progressive,An older generation of free market economists used to point out that what is wrong with socialist planning is that it requires the sort of perfect knowledge (of present and future alike) that is never vouchsafed to ordinary mortals. They were right. But it transpires that the same is true for market theorists:
Tony Judt,Progressive,"These days, we take pride in being tough enough to inflict pain on others."
Tony Judt,Progressive,"So why has this potentially self-destructive system of economic arrangements lasted? Probably because of habits of restraint, honesty and moderation which accompanied its emergence."
Tony Judt,Progressive,values such as these derived from longstanding religious or communitarian practices.
Tony Judt,Progressive,The European dilemma is
Tony Judt,Progressive,"decline, fear of strangers and an unfamiliar world"
Tony Judt,Progressive,All around us we see a level of individual wealth unequaled since the early years of the 20th century.
Tony Judt,Progressive,"financial transactions have displaced the production of goods or services as the source of private fortunes, distorting the value we place upon different kinds of economic activity."
Tony Judt,Progressive,"From the late 19th century until the 1970s, the advanced societies of the West were all becoming less unequal. Thanks to progressive taxation, government subsidies for the poor, the provision of social services and guarantees against acute misfortune, modern democracies were shedding extremes of wealth and poverty."
Tony Judt,Progressive,"But each in its own way was affected by the growing intolerance of immoderate inequality, initiating public provision to compensate for private inadequacy."
Tony Judt,Progressive,Over the past thirty years we have thrown all this away.
Tony Judt,Progressive,"We have become insensible to the human costs of apparently rational social policies, especially when we are advised that they will contribute to overall prosperity and thus"
Tony Judt,Progressive,"More than anything else, the welfare states of the mid-20th century established the profound indecency of defining civic status as a function of economic good fortune."
Tony Judt,Progressive,"The Scandinavian model followed a more selective but also more ambitious program: its goal, as articulated by the influential Swedish sociologist Gunnar Myrdal, was to institutionalize the state’s responsibility to protect people against themselves.11 Neither Americans nor British had any such ambitions."
Tony Judt,Progressive,The idea that it was the state’s business to know what was good for people
Tony Judt,Progressive,The welfare states of continental Europe
Tony Judt,Progressive,That the state might exceed its remit and damage the market by distorting its operations was not taken very seriously in these years.
Tony Judt,Progressive,"If we compare the gap separating rich and poor, whether measured by overall assets or annual income, we find that in every continental European country as well as in Great Britain and the US, the gap shrank dramatically in the generation following 1945."
Tony Judt,Progressive,"Moreover, it was social democracy and the welfare state that bound the professional and commercial middle classes to liberal institutions in the wake of World War II."
Tony Judt,Progressive,"Even at their height, the Scandinavian welfare states left the economy to the private sector"
Tony Judt,Progressive,"high taxation was not regarded in these years as an affront. On the contrary, steep rates of progressive income tax were seen as a consensual device to take excess resources away from the privileged"
Tony Judt,Progressive,"For three decades following the war, economists, politicians, commentators and citizens all agreed that high public expenditure, administered by local or national authorities with considerable latitude to regulate economic life at many levels, was good policy."
Tony Judt,Progressive,The disappearance of so many regimes so closely bound to a revolutionary narrative marked the death knell of a 200-year promise of radical progress.
Tony Judt,Progressive,Whether capitalist economies thrive best under conditions of freedom is perhaps more of an open question than we like to think.
Tony Judt,Progressive,"Take humiliation: what if we treated it as an economic cost, a charge to society? What if we decided to ‘quantify’ the harm done when people are shamed by their fellow citizens as a condition of receiving the mere necessities of life?"
Tony Judt,Progressive,The second dilemma we face concerns the social consequences of technological change.
Tony Judt,Progressive,The likely consequences of this coming age of uncertainty
Tony Judt,Progressive,"And few can deny that welfarism, taken to extremes, carries a whiff of do as you’re told!: there were moments in postwar Scandinavia when the enthusiasm for eugenics and social efficiency suggested not just a certain insensitivity to recent history but also to the natural human desire for autonomy and independence."
Tony Judt,Progressive,"If 1989 was about re-discovering liberty, what limits are we now willing to place upon it? Even in the most ‘freedom-loving’ societies, freedom comes with constraints. But if we accept some limitations"
Tony Judt,Progressive,Keynes’s warning on this matter: [i]t is not sufficient that the state of affairs which we seek to promote should be better than the state of affairs which preceded it; it must be sufficiently better to make up for the evils of the transition.
Tony Judt,Progressive,"It is tempting to conform: community life is a lot easier where everyone appears to agree with everyone else, and where dissent is blunted by the conventions of compromise."
Tony Judt,Progressive,a political class deeply sensitive to its moral and social responsibilities.
Tony Judt,Progressive,"Politically speaking, ours is an age of the pygmies."
Tony Judt,Progressive,"Elections to Parliament, congressional elections and the choice of National Assembly members are still our only means for converting public opinion into collective action under law. So young people must not abandon faith in our political institutions."
Tony Judt,Progressive,"Worse, the language of politics itself has been vacated of substance and meaning."
Tony Judt,Progressive,The democratic failure transcends national boundaries. The embarrassing fiasco of the Copenhagen climate conference of December 2009 is already translating into cynicism and despair among young people:
Tony Judt,Progressive,"Hence the famous bon mot of Lord Ismay, who took up his post as NATO’s"
Tony Judt,Progressive,in an Apparently Godless Era.
Tony Judt,Progressive,"In the conventional wisdom of the 1940s, the political polarizations of the last inter-war decade were born directly of economic depression and its social cost. Both Fascism and Communism thrived on social despair, on the huge gulf separating rich and poor."
Tony Judt,Progressive,The fox knows many things but the hedgehog knows one big thing.
Tony Judt,Progressive,Rilke’s admonition: love consists in leaving the loved one space to be themselves while providing the security within which that self may flourish. As
Tony Judt,Progressive,"In September 1944 there were 7,487,000 foreigners in Germany, most of them there against their will, and they constituted 21 percent of the country’s labour force."
Tony Judt,Progressive,"since throughout the years 1945-49 a consistent majority of Germans believed that ‘Nazism was a good idea, badly applied’."
Tony Judt,Progressive,An era was over and a new Europe was being born. This much was obvious. But with the passing of the old order many longstanding assumptions would be called into question. What had once seemed permanent and somehow inevitable would take on a more transient air. The Cold-War confrontation; the schism separating East from West; the contest between ‘Communism’ and ‘capitalism’; the separate and non-communicating stories of prosperous western Europe and the Soviet bloc satellites to its east: all these could no longer be understood as the products of ideological necessity or the iron logic of politics. They were the accidental outcomes of history
Tony Judt,Progressive,"The EEC was grounded in weakness, not strength. As Spaak’s 1956 report emphasized, ‘Europe, which once had the monopoly of manufacturing industries and obtained important resources from its overseas possessions, today sees its external position weakened, its influence declining and its capacity to progress lost in its divisions.’ It was precisely because the British did not"
Tony Judt,Progressive,"If social democracy has a future, it will be as a social democracy of fear."
Tony Judt,Progressive,"triple evils of modernity: Nazism, Communism and ‘Americanism’."
Tony Judt,Progressive,"Until 1957 the West German Ministry of the Interior banned any screenings of Wolfgang Staudte’s (East German) film of Heinrich Mann’s Der Untertan (‘Man of Straw’, 1951)"
Tony Judt,Progressive,A social democracy of fear is something to fight for. To abandon the labors of a century is to betray those who came before us as well as generations yet to come. It would be pleasing
Tony Judt,Progressive,"The left, to be quite blunt about it, has something to conserve. It is the right that has inherited the ambitious modernist urge to destroy and innovate in the name of a universal project."
Tony Judt,Progressive,Motor scooters appeared on the scene
Tony Judt,Progressive,"By the end of the 1970s, a clear majority of the employed population of Britain, Germany, France, the Benelux countries, Scandinavia and the Alpine countries worked in the service sector"
Tony Judt,Progressive,"Like large-scale state projects elsewhere, the Cassa was inefficient, and more than a little corrupt. Most of its benefits went to the favored coastal regions; much of the new industry that it brought in was capital-intensive and thus created few jobs."
Tony Judt,Progressive,"As Boris Yeltsin was to acknowledge many years later, in a speech to the Hungarian Parliament on November 11th 1992, ‘The tragedy of 1956 . . . will forever remain an indelible spot on the Soviet regime.’ But that was nothing when compared with the cost the Soviets had imposed on their victims. Thirty-three years later, on June 16th 1989, in a Budapest celebrating its transition to freedom, hundreds of thousands of Hungarians took part in another ceremonial reburial: this time of Imre Nagy and his colleagues. One of the speakers over Nagy’s grave was the young Viktor Orbán, future Prime Minister of his country. ‘It is a direct consequence of the bloody repression of the Revolution,’ he told the assembled crowds, ‘that we have had to assume the burden of insolvency and reach for a way out of the Asiatic dead end into which we were pushed. Truly, the Hungarian Socialist Workers’ Party robbed today’s youth of its future in 1956."
Tony Judt,Progressive,"It is not by chance that social democracy and welfare states have worked best in small, homogeneous countries, where issues of trust and mutual suspicion do not arise so acutely. A willingness to pay for other people’s services and benefits rests on the understanding that they in turn will do likewise for you and your children: because they are like you and see the world as you do. Conversely, where immigration and visible minorities have altered the demography of a country, we typically find suspicion of others and a loss of enthusiasm for the institutions of the welfare state."
Tony Judt,Progressive,"The result in all these cities, from Berlin to Stalingrad, was the classic Soviet-era housing solution: mile upon mile of identical gray or brown cement blocks; cheap, poorly-constructed, with no distinguishing architectural features and lacking any aesthetic indulgence (or public facilities)."
Tony Judt,Progressive,"However: the predictable consequence of the nanny state, even the post-ideological nanny state, was that for anyone who had grown up knowing nothing different it was the duty of the state to make good on its promise of an ever better society"
Tony Judt,Progressive,"Under Khrushchev, Stalin-era laws restricting job mobility were abandoned, the official workday was shortened, minimum wages were established and a system of maternity leave introduced, along with a national pension scheme (extended to collective farmers after 1965). In short, the Soviet Union"
Tony Judt,Progressive,"The imposition of a Russian rather than a German solution cut Europe’s vulnerable eastern half away from the body of the continent. At the time this was not a matter of great concern to western Europeans themselves. With the exceptions of the Germans, the nation most directly affected by the division of Europe but also ill-placed to voice displeasure at it, western Europeans were largely indifferent to the disappearance of eastern Europe. Indeed, they soon became so accustomed to it, and were anyway so preoccupied with the remarkable changes taking place in their own countries, that it seems quite natural that there should be an impermeable armed barrier running from the Baltic to the Adriatic. But for the people to the east of that barrier, thrust back as it seemed into a grimy, forgotten corner of their own continent, at the mercy of the semi-alien Great Power no better of than they and parasitic upon their shrinking resources, history itself ground slowly to a halt."
Jane Jacobs,Progressive,"Cities have the capability of providing something for everybody, only because, and only when, they are created by everybody."
Jane Jacobs,Progressive,To seek causes of poverty in this way is to enter an intellectual dead end because poverty has no causes. Only prosperity has causes.
Jane Jacobs,Progressive,"By its nature, the metropolis provides what otherwise could be given only by traveling; namely, the strange."
Jane Jacobs,Progressive,"A city street equipped to handle strangers, and to make a safety asset, in itself, our of the presence of strangers, as the streets of successful city neighborhoods always do, must have three main qualities:First, there must be a clear demarcation between what is public space and what is private space. Public and private spaces cannot ooze into each other as they do typically in suburban settings or in projects.Second, there must be eyes upon the street, eyes belonging to those we might call the natural proprietors of the street. The buildings on a street equipped to handle strangers and to insure the safety of both residents and strangers, must be oriented to the street. They cannot turn their backs or blank sides on it and leave it blind.And third, the sidewalk must have users on it fairly continuously, both to add to the number of effective eyes on the street and to induce the people in buildings along the street to watch the sidewalks in sufficient numbers. Nobody enjoys sitting on a stoop or looking out a window at an empty street. Almost nobody does such a thing. Large numbers of people entertain themselves, off and on, by watching street activity."
Jane Jacobs,Progressive,Not TV or illegal drugs but the automobile has been the chief destroyer of American communities.
Jane Jacobs,Progressive,"There is a quality even meaner than outright ugliness or disorder, and this meaner quality is the dishonest mask of pretended order, achieved by ignoring or suppressing the real order that is struggling to exist and to be served."
Jane Jacobs,Progressive,"There is no logic that can be superimposed on the city; people make it, and it is to them, not buildings, that we must fit our plans."
Jane Jacobs,Progressive,"We expect too much of new buildings, and too little of ourselves."
Jane Jacobs,Progressive,"You can neither lie to a neighbourhood park, nor reason with it. 'Artist's conceptions' and persuasive renderings can put pictures of life into proposed neighbourhood parks or park malls, and verbal rationalizations can conjure up users who ought to appreciate them, but in real life only diverse surroundings have the practical power of inducing a natural, continuing flow of life and use."
Jane Jacobs,Progressive,"Under the seeming disorder of the old city, wherever the old city is working successfully, is a marvelous order for maintaining the safety of the streets and the freedom of the city. It is a complex order. Its essence is intricacy of sidewalk use, bringing with it a constant succession of eyes. This order is all composed of movement and change, and although it is life, not art, we may fancifully call it the art form of the city and liken it to the dance"
Jane Jacobs,Progressive,"You can't rely on bringing people downtown, you have to put them there."
Jane Jacobs,Progressive,"As children get older, this incidental outdoor activity--say, while waiting to be called to eat--becomes less bumptious, physically and entails more loitering with others, sizing people up, flirting, talking, pushing, shoving and horseplay. Adolescents are always being criticized for this kind of loitering, but they can hardly grow up without it. The trouble comes when it is done not within society, but as a form of outlaw life.The requisite for any of these varieties of incidental play is not pretentious equipment of any sort, but rather space at an immediately convenient and interesting place. The play gets crowded out if sidewalks are too narrow relative to the total demands put on them. It is especially crowded out if the sidewalks also lack minor irregularities in building line. An immense amount of both loitering and play goes on in shallow sidewalk niches out of the line of moving pedestrian feet."
Jane Jacobs,Progressive,"Being human is itself difficult, and therefore all kinds of settlements (except dream cities) have problems. Big cities have difficulties in abundance, because they have people in abundance."
Jane Jacobs,Progressive,"Neighborhood is a word that has come to sound like a Valentine. As a sentimental concept, 'neighborhood' is harmful to city planning. It leads to attempts at warping city life into imitations of town or suburban life. Sentimentality plays with sweet intentions in place of good sense."
Jane Jacobs,Progressive,"I shared my office on 57th Street with Dr Jacob Ecstein, young (thirty-three), dynamic (two books published), intelligent (he and I usually agreed), personable (everyone liked him), unattractive (no one loved him), anal (he plays the stock market compulsively), oral (he smokes heavily), non-genital (doesn’t seem to notice women), and Jewish (he knows two Yiddish slang words). Our mutual secretary was a Miss Reingold. Mary Jane Reingold, old (thirty-six), undynamic (she worked for us), unintelligent (she prefers Ecstein to me), personable (everyone felt sorry for her), unattractive (tall, skinny, glasses, no one loved her), anal (obsessively neat), oral (always eating), genital (trying hard), and non-Jewish (finds use of two Yiddish slang words very intellectual). Miss Reingold greeted me efficiently."
Jane Jacobs,Progressive,"Traffic congestion is caused by vehicles, not by people in themselves."
Jane Jacobs,Progressive,"[Public housing projects] are not lacking in natural leaders,' [Ellen Lurie, a social worker in East Harlem] says. 'They contain people with real ability, wonderful people many of them, but the typical sequence is that in the course of organization leaders have found each other, gotten all involved in each others' social lives, and have ended up talking to nobody but each other. They have not found their followers. Everything tends to degenerate into ineffective cliques, as a natural course. There is no normal public life. Just the mechanics of people learning what s going on is so difficult. It all makes the simplest social gain extra hard for these people."
Jane Jacobs,Progressive,...frequent streets and short blocks are valuable because of the fabric of intricate cross-use that they permit among the users of a city neighbouhood.
Jane Jacobs,Progressive,"The more successfully a city mingles everyday diversity of uses and users in its everyday streets, the more successfully, casually (and economically) its people thereby enliven and support well-located parks that can thus give back grace and delight to their neighborhoods instead of vacuity. "
Jane Jacobs,Progressive,"Dull, inert cities, it is true, do contain the seeds of their own destruction and little else. But lively, diverse, intense cities contain the seeds of their own regeneration, with energy enough to carry over for problems and needs outside themselves."
Jane Jacobs,Progressive,"Neighborhoods built up all at once change little physically over the years as a rule...[Residents] regret that the neighborhood has changed. Yet the fact is, physically it has changed remarkably little. People's feelings about it, rather, have changed. The neighborhood shows a strange inability to update itself, enliven itself, repair itself, or to be sought after, out of choice, by a new generation. It is dead. Actually it was dead from birth, but nobody noticed this much until the corpse began to smell."
Jane Jacobs,Progressive,(The psuedoscience of planning seems almost neurotic in its determination to imitate empiric failure and ignore empiric success.)
Jane Jacobs,Progressive,"To generate exuberant diversity in a city's streets and districts four conditions are indispensable:1. The district, and indeed as many of its internal parts as possible, must serve more than one primary function; preferably more than two...2. Most blocks must be short; that is, streets and opportunities to turn corners must be frequent.3. The district must mingle buildings that vary in age and condition, including a good proportion of old ones so that they vary in the economic yield they must produce. This mingling must be fairly close-grained.4. There must be a sufficiently dense concentration of people, for whatever purposes they may be there..."
Jane Jacobs,Progressive,"The trouble with paternalists is that they want to make impossibly profound changes, and they choose impossibly superficial means for doing so."
Jane Jacobs,Progressive,"His aim was the creation of self sufficient small towns,really very nice towns if you were docile and had no plans of your own and did not mind spending your life with others with no plans of their own. As in all Utopias, the right to have plans of any significance belonged only to the planner in charge.- discussing Ebenezer Howards' Garden City"
Jane Jacobs,Progressive,"Detroit is largely composed, today, of seemingly endless square miles of low-density failure."
Jane Jacobs,Progressive,"Two parents, to say nothing of one, cannot possibly satisfy all the needs of a family-household. A community is needed as well, for raising children, and also to keep adults reasonably sane and cheerful. A community is a complex organism with complicated resources that grow gradually and organically."
Jane Jacobs,Progressive,"There are fashions in building. Behind the fashions lie economic and technological reasons, and these fashions exclude all but a few genuinely different possibilities in city dwelling construction at any one time."
Jane Jacobs,Progressive,Automobiles are often conveniently tagged as the villains responsible for the ills of cities and the disappointments and futilities of city planning. But the destructive effect of automobiles are much less a cause than a symptom of our incompetence at city building.
Jane Jacobs,Progressive,"The trust of a city street is formed over time from many, many little public sidewalk contacts... Most of it is ostensibly trivial but the sum is not trivial at all."
Jane Jacobs,Progressive,"I have been dwelling upon downtowns. This is not because mixtures of primary uses are unneeded elsewhere in cities. On the contrary they are needed, and the success of mixtures downtown (on in the most intensive portions of cities, whatever they are called) is related to the mixture possible in other part of cities."
Jane Jacobs,Progressive,"Everyone is aware that tremendous numbers of people concentrate in city downtowns and that, if they did not, there would be no downtown to amount to anything--certainly not one with much downtown diversity."
Jane Jacobs,Progressive,"No neighbourhood or district, no matter how well established, prestigious or well heeled and no matter how intensely populated for one purpose, can flout the necessity for spreading people through time of day without frustrating its potential for generating diversity."
Jane Jacobs,Progressive,"What is more dramatic, even romantic, than the tumbled towers of lower Manhattan, rising suddenly to the clouds like a magic castle girdled by water? Its very touch of jumbled jaggedness, its towering-sided canyons, are its magnificence."
Jane Jacobs,Progressive,"When distance and convenience sets in; the small, the various and the personal wither away."
Jane Jacobs,Progressive,"As in the pseudoscience of bloodletting, just so in the pseudoscience of city rebuilding and planning, years of learning and a plethora of subtle and complicated dogma have arisen on a foundation of nonsense."
Jane Jacobs,Progressive,"A border--the perimeter of a single massive or stretched-out use of territory--forms the edge of an area of 'ordinary' city. Often borders are thought of as passive objects, or matter-of-factly just as edges. However, a border exerts an active influence."
Jane Jacobs,Progressive,"There is a widespread belief that americans hate cities. I think it is probable that Americans hate city failure, but, from the evidence, we certainly do not hate successful and vital city areas. On the contrary, so many people want to make use of such places, so many people want to work in them or live in them or visit in them, that municipal self-destruction ensues. In killing successful diversity combinations with money, we are employing perhaps our nearest equivalent to killing with kindness."
Jane Jacobs,Progressive,"Planners, architects of city design, and those they have led along with them in their beliefs are not consciously disdainful of the importance of knowing how things work. On the contrary, they have gone to great pains to learn what saints and sages of modern orthodox planning have said about how cities ought to work and what ought to be good for people and business in them. They take this with such devotion that when contradictory reality intrudes, threatening tho shatter their dearly won learning, they must shrug reality aside."
Jane Jacobs,Progressive,"Googie architecture could...be seen in its finest flowering among the essentially homogeneous and standardized enterprises of roadside commercial strips: hot-dog stands in the shape of hot dogs, ice-cream stands in the shape of ice-cream cones. There are obvious examples of virtual sameness trying, by dint of exhibitionism, to appear unique and different from their similar commercial neighbors."
Jane Jacobs,Progressive,"A vigorous culture capable of making corrective,stabilizing changes depends heavily on its educated people, and especially upon their critical capacities and depth of understanding."
Jane Jacobs,Progressive,It has long been recognized that getting an education is effective for bettering oneself and one's chances in the world. But a degree and an education are not necessarily synonymous.
Jane Jacobs,Progressive,"I mentioned early in this book the kind of rereading distinctive of a fan--the Tolkien addict, say, or the devotee of Jane Austen or Trollope or the Harry Potter books. The return to such books is often motivated by a desire to dwell for a time in a self-contained fictional universe, with its own boundaries and its own rules. (It is a moot question whether Austen and Trollope's first readers were drawn to their novels for these reasons, but their readers today often are.) Such rereading is not purely a matter of escapism, even though that is one reason for its attraction: we should note that it's not what readers are escaping from but that they are escaping into that counts most. Most of us do not find fictional worlds appealing because we find our own lives despicable, though censorious people often make that assumption. Auden once wrote that there must always be ... escape-art, for man needs escape as he needs food and deep sleep. The sleeper does not disdain consciousness."
Jane Jacobs,Progressive,"Marshall Shafter...kept pasted in his desk drawer a piece of paper he looked at from time to time to remind himself of something. It said, A fool can put on his own clothes better than wise man can do it for him."
Jane Jacobs,Progressive,"Another thing: a living culture is forever changing, without losing itself as a framework and context of change. The reconstruction of a culture is not the same as its restoration."
Jane Jacobs,Progressive,The Puerto Ricans who come to our cities today have no place to roast pigs outdoors...
Jane Jacobs,Progressive,"Nobody strolled and laughed on the sidewalks as relaxing burghers would in sweet, mellow, rotting Europe."
Jane Jacobs,Progressive,"Play on lively, diversified sidewalks differs from virtually all other daily incidental play offered American children today: It is play not conducted in a matriarchy.Most city architectural designers and planners are men. Curiously, they design and plan to exclude men as part of normal, daytime life wherever people live. In planning residential life, they aim at filling the presumed daily needs of impossibly vacuous housewives and preschool tots. They plan, in short, strictly for matriarchal societies."
Jane Jacobs,Progressive,"Motor-scooter riders with big beards and girl friends who bounce on the back of the scooters and wear their hair long in front of their faces as well as behind, drunks who follow the advice of the Hat Council and are always turned out in hats, but not hats the Council would approve. Mr. Lacey, the locksmith,, shups up his shop for a while and goes to exchange time of day with Mr. Slube at the cigar store. Mr. Koochagian, the tailor, waters luxuriant jungle of plants in his window, gives them a critical look from the outside, accepts compliments on them from two passers-by, fingers the leaves on the plane tree in front of our house with a thoughtful gardener's appraisal, and crosses the street for a bite at the Ideal where he can keep an eye on customers and wigwag across the message that he is coming. The baby carriages come out, and clusters of everyone from toddlers with dolls to teenagers with homework gather at the stoops.When I get home from work, the ballet is reaching its cresendo. This is the time roller skates and stilts and tricycles and games in the lee of the stoop with bottletops and plastic cowboys, this is the time of bundles and packages, zigzagging from the drug store to the fruit stand and back over to the butcher's; this is the time when teenagers, all dressed up, are pausing to ask if their slips shows or their collars look right; this is the time when beautiful girls get out of MG's; this is the time when the fire engines go through; this is the time when anybody you know on Hudson street will go by.As the darkness thickens and Mr. Halpert moors the laundry cart to the cellar door again, the ballet goes under lights, eddying back nad forth but intensifying at the bright spotlight pools of Joe's sidewalk pizza, the bars, the delicatessen, the restaurant and the drug store. The night workers stop now at the delicatessen, to pick up salami and a container of milk. Things have settled down for the evening but the street and its ballet have not come to a stop.I know the deep night ballet and its seasons best from waking long after midnight to tend a baby and, sitting in the dark, seeing the shadows and hearing sounds of the sidewalk. Mostly it is a sound like infinitely patterning snatches of party conversation, and, about three in the morning, singing, very good singing. Sometimes their is a sharpness and anger or sad, sad weeping, or a flurry of search for a string of beads broken. One night a young man came roaring along, bellowing terrible language at two girls whom he had apparently picked up and who were disappointing him. Doors opened, a wary semicircle formed around him, not too close, until police came. Out came the heads, too, along the Hudsons street, offering opinion, Drunk...Crazy...A wild kid from the suburbsDeep in the night, I am almost unaware of how many people are on the street unless someone calls the together. Like the bagpipe. Who the piper is and why he favored our street I have no idea."
Jane Jacobs,Progressive,"Development isn't a collection of things but rather a process that yields things. Not knowing this, governments, their development and aid agencies, the World Bank, and much of the public put faith in a fallacious 'Thing Theory' of development. The Thing Theory supposes that development is the result of possessing things such as factories, dams, schools, tractors, whatever- often bunches of things subsumed under the category of infrastructure.To suppose that things, per se, are sufficient to produce development creates false expectations and futilities."
Jane Jacobs,Progressive,"You can’t prescribe decently for something you hate. It will always come out wrong. You can’t prescribe decently for something you despair in. If you despair of humankind, you’re not going to have good policies for nurturing human beings. I think people ought to give prescriptions who have ideas for improving things, ought to concentrate on the things that they love and that they want to nurture."
Jane Jacobs,Progressive,"Privacy is precious in cities. It is indispensable. Perhaps it is precious and indispensable everywhere, but in most places you cannot get it. In small settlements everyone knows your affairs. In the city everyone does not"
Jane Jacobs,Progressive,"To approach a city, or even a city neighborhood, as if it were a larger architectural problem, capable of being given order by converting it into a disciplined work of art, is to make the mistake of attempting to substitute art for life. The results of such profound confusion between art and life are neither life nor art. They are taxidermy. In its place, taxidermy can be a useful and decent craft. However, it goes too far when the specimens put on display are exhibitions of dead, stuffed cities."
Jane Jacobs,Progressive,"I tis hopeless to try to convert some borders into seams. Expressways and their ramps are examples. Moreover, even in the case of large parks, campuses or waterfronts, the barrier effects can likely be overcome well only along portions of perimeters."
Jane Jacobs,Progressive,"There are only two ultimate public powers in shaping and running American cities: votes and control of the money. To sound nicer, we may call these public opinion and disbursement of funds, but they are still votes and money."
Jane Jacobs,Progressive,"What if we fail to stop the erosion of cities by automobiles? What if we are prevented from catalyzing workable and vital cities because the practical steps needed to do so are in conflict with the practical steps demanded by erosion? There is a silver lining to everything. In that case we Americans will hardly need to ponder a mystery that has troubled men for millennia: What is the purpose of life? For us, the answer will be clear, established and for all practical purposes indisputable: The purpose of life is to produce and consume automobiles. It is not hard to understand that the producing and consuming of automobiles might properly seem the purpose of life to the General Motors management, or that it may seem so to other men and women deeply commtted economically or emotionally to this pursuit. If they so regard it, they should be commended rather than cricicized for this remarkable identification of philosophy with daily duty. It is harder to understand, however, why the production and consumption of automobiles should be the purpose of life for this country. Similarly, it is understandable that men who were young in the 1920's were captivated by the vision of the freeway Radiant City, with the specious promise that it would be appropriate to an automobile age. At least it was then a new idea; to men of the generation of New York's Robert Moses, for example, it was radical and exciting in the days when their minds were growing and their ideas forming. Some men tend to cling to old intellectual excitements, just as some belles, when they are old ladies, still cling to the fashions and coiffures of their exciting youth. But it is harder to understand why this form of arrested mental development should be passed on intact to succeeding generations of planners and designers. It is disturbing to think that men who are young today, men who are being trained now for their carreers, should accept *on the grounds that they must be modern in their thinking,* conceptions about cities and traffic which are not only unworkably, but also to which nothing new of any significance has been added since their fathers were children."
Jane Jacobs,Progressive,where large organizations are relied upon for economic expansion and development
Jane Jacobs,Progressive,"Adding and Dividing Work Ancient people seem to have understood perfectly well that economic life is a matter of adding new goods and services. But instead of seeing the logic and order by which this happens, they saw magic. Important activities had been given to men or taught to men in remote times by gods; they had been stolen from gods; they had been brought along, like a trousseau, by demigod progenitors of people."
Jane Jacobs,Progressive,"Is it not possible for the economy of a city to be highly efficient, and for the city also to excel at the development of new goods and services? No, it seems not. The conditions that promote development and the conditions that promote efficient production and distribution of already existing goods and services are not only different, in most ways they are diametrically opposed"
Jane Jacobs,Progressive,"Artificial symptoms of prosperity or a good image do not revitalize a city, but only explicit economic growth processes for which there are no substitutes."
Jane Jacobs,Progressive,"Cities are not ordained; they are wholly existential. To say that a city grew because it was located at a good site for trading is, in view of what we can see in the real world, absurd. Few resources in this world are more common than good sites for trading but most of the settlements that form at these good sites do not become cities."
Jane Jacobs,Progressive,"we can be absolutely sure of a few things about future cities. The cities will not be smaller, simpler or more specialized than cities of today. Rather, they will be more intricate, comprehensive, diversified, and larger than today’s, and will have even more complicated jumbles of old and new things than ours do. The bureaucratized, simplified cities, so dear to present-day city planners and urban designers, and familiar also to readers of science fiction and utopian proposals, run counter to the processes of city"
Jane Jacobs,Progressive,"Conformity and monotony, even when they are embellished with a froth of novelty, are not attributes of developing and economically vigorous cities. They are attributes of stagnant settlements."
Jane Jacobs,Progressive,"A city park in this fix, afflicted (for in such cases it is an affliction) with a good-sized terrain, is figuratively in the same position as a large store in a bad economic location."
Jane Jacobs,Progressive,"If the neighborhood were to lose the industries, it would be a disaster for us residents. Many enterprises, unable to exist on residential trade by itself, would disappear. Or if the industries were to lose us residents, enterprises unable to exist on the working people by themselves would disappear."
Jane Jacobs,Progressive,"To science, not even the bark of a tree or a drop of pond water is dull or a handful of dirt banal. They all arouse awe and wonder."
Jane Jacobs,Progressive,"Virtually all ideologues, of any variety, are fearful and insecure, which is why they are drawn to ideologies that promise prefabricated answers for all circumstances."
Jane Jacobs,Progressive,"what she ought to have done as soon as she discovered that Lady Webb was not in London to help her. She was going to find the Earl of Durbury if he was still in town. If he was not, she was going to find out where the Bow Street Runners had their headquarters and go there. She was going to write to Charles. She was going to tell her story to anyone who would listen. She was going to embrace her fate. Perhaps she would be arrested and tried and convicted of murder. Perhaps that would mean a hanging or at the very least transportation or lifelong imprisonment. But she would not give in meekly. She would fight like the very devil to the last moment"
Jane Jacobs,Progressive,Probably the most important element in intricacy is centering. Good small parks typically have a place somewhere within them commonly understood to be the center
Jane Jacobs,Progressive,"Owing to the corner pick-up stops required in any case by buses, the short signal frequencies interfere with bus travel time less than long signal frequencies. These same shorter frequencies, unstaggered, constantly hold up and slow down private transportation, which would thereby be discouraged from using these particular streets. In turn, this would mean still less interference and more speed for buses."
Jane Jacobs,Progressive,"Intricacy is related to the variety of reasons for which people come to neighborhood parks. Even the same person comes for different reasons at different times; sometimes to sit tiredly, sometimes to play or to watch a game, sometimes to read or work, sometimes to show off, sometimes to fall in love, sometimes to keep an appointment, sometimes to savor the hustle of the city from a retreat, sometimes in the hope of finding acquaintances, sometimes to get closer to a bit of nature, sometimes to keep a child occupied, sometimes simply to see what offers, and almost always to be entertained by the sight of other people.If the whole thing can be absorbed in a glance, like a good poster, and if every place looks like every other place in the park and also feels like every other place when you try it,"
Jane Jacobs,Progressive,"For her, the rallying cry of the 1968 Paris general strikes"
Jane Jacobs,Progressive,"A Tale of Two Parking Requirements The impact of parking requirements becomes clearer when we compare the parking requirements of San Francisco and Los Angeles. San Francisco limits off-street parking, while LA requires it. Take, for example, the different parking requirements for concert halls. For a downtown concert hall, Los Angeles requires, as a minimum, fifty times more parking than San Francisco allows as its maximum. Thus the San Francisco Symphony built its home, Louise Davies Hall, without a parking garage, while Disney Hall, the new home of the Los Angeles Philharmonic, did not open until seven years after its parking garage was built. Disney Hall's six-level, 2,188-space underground garage cost $110 million to build (about $50,000 per space). Financially troubled Los Angeles County, which built the garage, went into debt to finance it, expecting that parking revenues would repay the borrowed money. But the garage was completed in 1996, and Disney Hall"
Jane Jacobs,Progressive,My guess was that the jobs were being added specifically in the GTA
Jane Jacobs,Progressive,"most city diversity is the creation of incredible numbers of different people and different private organizations, with vastly differing ideas and purposes, planning and contriving outside the formal framework of public action."
Jane Jacobs,Progressive,"Montessori went straight to my heart, because it’s all about encountering the world through the senses. That’s how kids learn best. The hands are the instrument of the mind"
Jane Jacobs,Progressive,"Today’s Children, The Woman in White, and The Guiding Light crossed over and interchanged in respective storylines.) June 2, 1947–June 29, 1956, CBS. 15m weekdays at 1:45. Procter & Gamble’s Duz Detergent. CAST: 1937 to mid-1940s: Arthur Peterson as the Rev. John Ruthledge of Five Points, the serial’s first protagonist. Mercedes McCambridge as Mary Ruthledge, his daughter; Sarajane Wells later as Mary. Ed Prentiss as Ned Holden, who was abandoned by his mother as a child and taken in by the Ruthledges; Ned LeFevre and John Hodiak also as Ned. Ruth Bailey as Rose Kransky; Charlotte Manson also as Rose. Mignon Schrieber as Mrs. Kransky. Seymour Young as Jacob Kransky, Rose’s brother. Sam Wanamaker as Ellis Smith, the enigmatic Nobody from Nowhere; Phil Dakin and Raymond Edward Johnson also as Ellis. Henrietta Tedro as Ellen, the housekeeper. Margaret Fuller and Muriel Bremner as Fredrika Lang. Gladys Heen as Torchy Reynolds. Bill Bouchey as Charles Cunningham. Lesley Woods and Carolyn McKay as Celeste, his wife. Laurette Fillbrandt as Nancy Stewart. Frank Behrens as the Rev. Tom Bannion, Ruthledge’s assistant. The Greenman family, early characters: Eloise Kummer as Norma; Reese Taylor and Ken Griffin as Ed; Norma Jean Ross as Ronnie, their daughter. Transition from clergy to medical background, mid-1940s: John Barclay as Dr. Richard Gaylord. Jane Webb as Peggy Gaylord. Hugh Studebaker as Dr. Charles Matthews. Willard Waterman as Roger Barton (alias Ray Brandon). Betty Lou Gerson as Charlotte Wilson. Ned LeFevre as Ned Holden. Tom Holland as Eddie Bingham. Mary Lansing as Julie Collins. 1950s: Jone Allison as Meta Bauer. Lyle Sudrow as Bill Bauer. Charita Bauer as Bert, Bill’s wife, a role she would carry into television and play for three decades. Laurette Fillbrandt as Trudy Bauer. Glenn Walken as little Michael. Theo Goetz as Papa Bauer. James Lipton as Dr. Dick Grant. Lynn Rogers as Marie Wallace, the artist."
Lawrence Lessig,Progressive,Copyright law has got to give up its obsession with 'the copy.' The law should not regulate 'copies' or 'modern reproductions' on their own. It should instead regulate uses--like public distributions of copies of copyrighted work--that connect directly to the economic incentive copyright law was intended to foster.
Lawrence Lessig,Progressive,Every generation welcomes the pirates from the last.
Lawrence Lessig,Progressive,"Why should it be that just when technology ismost encouraging of creativity, the law should be most restrictive?"
Lawrence Lessig,Progressive,"If piracy means using the creative property of others without their permission- if if value, then right is true- then the history of the content industry is a history of piracy. Every important sector of big media today- film, records, radio, and cable TV-was born of a kind of piracy so defined. The consistent story is how last generation’s pirates join this generation’s country club-until now."
Lawrence Lessig,Progressive,"That tradition is the way our culture gets made. As I explain in the pages that follow, we come from a tradition of free culture"
Lawrence Lessig,Progressive,"If the law imposed the death penalty for parking tickets, we’d not only have fewer parking tickets, we’d also have muchless driving."
Lawrence Lessig,Progressive,Freedom is about stopping the past.
Lawrence Lessig,Progressive,"On December 17, 1903, on a windy North Carolina beach for just shy of one hundred seconds, the Wright brothers demonstrated that a heavier-than-air, self-propelled vehicle could fly. The moment was electric and its importance widely understood. Almost immediately, there was an explosion of interest in this newfound technology of manned flight, and a gaggle of innovators began to build upon it."
Lawrence Lessig,Progressive,"In the 1970s, 3 percent of retiring members became lobbyists. Thirty years later, that number has increased by an order of magnitude. Between 1998 and 2004, more than 50 percent of senators and 42 percent of House members made that career transition."
Lawrence Lessig,Progressive,"[The Internet] affects democracy... As more and more citizens express what they think, and defend it in writing, that will change the way people understand public issues. It is easy to be wrong and misguided in your head. It is harder when the product of your mind can be criticized by others. Of course, it is a rare human who admits that he has been persuaded that he is wrong. But it is even rarer for a human to ignore when he has been proven wrong. The writing of ideas, arguments, and criticism improves democracy."
Lawrence Lessig,Progressive,"And with a practice of writing comes a certain important integrity. A culture filled with bloggers thinks differently about politics or public affairs, if only because more have been forced through the discipline of showing in writing why A leads to B."
Lawrence Lessig,Progressive,"But, like all metaphoric wars, the copyright wars are not actual conflicts of survival. Or at least, they are not conflicts for survival of a people or a society, even if they are wars of survival for certain businesses or, more accurately, business models. Thus we must keep i mind the other values or objectives that might also be affected by this war. We must make sure this war doesn't cost more than it is worth. We must be sure it is winnable, or winnable at a price we're willing to pay."
Lawrence Lessig,Progressive,"If piracy means using value from someone else’s creative property without permission from that creator–as it is increasingly described today – then every industry affected by copyright today is the product and beneficiary of a certain kind of piracy. Film, records, radio, cable TV… Extremists in this debate love to say You wouldn’t go into Barnes & Noble and take a book off of the shelf without paying; why should it be any different with online music? The difference is, of course, that when you take a book from Barnes & Noble, it has one less book to sell. By contrast, when you take an MP3 from a computer network, there is not one less CD that can be sold. The physics of piracy of the intangible are different from the physics of piracy of the tangible."
Lawrence Lessig,Progressive,Technology means you can now do amazing things easily; but you couldn't easily do them legally.
Lawrence Lessig,Progressive,"Economics itself offers a parallel that explains why this integration affects creativity. Clay Christensen has written about the Innovator’s Dilemma: the fact that large traditional firms find it rational to ignore new, breakthrough technologies that compete with their core business. The same analysis could help explain why large, traditional media companies will undermine our tradition of free culture. The property right that is copyright is no longer the balanced right that it was, or was intended to be. The property right that is copyright has become unbalanced, tilted toward an extreme. The opportunity to create and transform becomes weakened in a world in which creation requires permission and creativity must check with a lawyer."
Lawrence Lessig,Progressive,"Free culture depends upon vibrant competition. Yet the effect of the law today is to stifle just this kind of competition. The effect is to produce an over-regulated culture, just as the effect of too much control in the market is to produce an over-regulated-regulated market."
Lawrence Lessig,Progressive,Politics is that rare sport where the amateur contest is actually more interesting than the professional.
Lawrence Lessig,Progressive,"So, ignorant we are. But we're not stupid. Indeed...remaining ignorant about politics and our government is a perfectly rational response to the government we have. The question isn't what we know. The question is what we're capable of knowing, and doing, if we have the right incentives, and the right opportunity."
Lawrence Lessig,Progressive,"But as well as copy-shop piracy, there is another kind of taking that is more directly related to the Internet. That taking, too, seems wrong to many, and it is wrong much of the time. Before we paint this taking piracy, however, we should understand its nature a bit more. For the harm of this taking is significantly more ambiguous than outright copying, and the law should account for that ambiguity, as it has so often done in the past."
Lawrence Lessig,Progressive,"It is said that those who fail to remember history are doomed to repeat it. That’s not quite correct. We all forget history. The key is whether we have a way to go back to rediscover what we forget. More directly, the key is whether an objective past can keep us honest."
Lawrence Lessig,Progressive,"The obvious point of Conrad’s cartoon is the weirdness of a world where guns are legal, despite the harm they can do, while VCRs (and circumvention technologies) are illegal. Flash: No one ever died from copyright circumvention. Yet the law bans circumvention technologies absolutely, despite the potential that they might do some good, but permits guns, despite the obvious and tragic harm they do."
Lawrence Lessig,Progressive,"We take this for granted in America today: a democracy in which the first test of credibility is not votes, or broad public support, but money."
Lawrence Lessig,Progressive,"But sometimes they're just oblivious, and their obliviousness brings out the worst in me. I remember once talking to one about the principle of 'one person, one vote' -- the Supreme Court's doctrine that forces states to ensure the weight one person's vote is equal to the weight of everyone else's. He had done work early in his career to push that principle along, and considered it, as he told me, 'among the most important values now written into our Constitution.' 'Isn't it weird then', I asked hime, 'that the law would obsess about making sure that on Election Day, my vote is just as powerful as yours, but stand blind to the fact that in the days before Election Day, because of your wealth, your ability to affect that election is a million times greater than mine?' My friend -- or at least friend until that moment -- didn't say a word."
Lawrence Lessig,Progressive,But it is to say that a basic idea of a representative democracy
Lawrence Lessig,Progressive,"Every schoolchild learns of L’Enfant’s design to make an invasion of Washington difficult. But more interesting is the placement of the White House relative to the Capitol. The distance between them is one mile, and at the time it was a mile through difficult terrain (the mall was a swamp). The distance was a barrier meant to tilt the intercourse between Congress and the president by making it marginally more difficult for them to connect"
Lawrence Lessig,Progressive,"The question is: Which means best advances the regulator’s goal, subject to the constraints (whether normative or material) that the regulator must recognize? My"
Lawrence Lessig,Progressive,"Peer-to-peer (p2p) file sharing is among the most efficient of the efficient technologies the Internet enables. Using distributed intelligence, p2p systems facilitate the easy spread of content in a way unimagined a generation ago. This"
Lawrence Lessig,Progressive,"If my writing produces angry reactions, then it might also effect a more balanced reflection. These are hard times to get it right, but the easy answers to yesterday’s debate won’t get it right."
Lawrence Lessig,Progressive,"Liberty in cyberspace will not come from the absence of the state. Liberty there, as anywhere, will come from a state of a certain kind. We build a world where freedom can flourish not by removing from society any self-conscious control, but by setting it in a place where a particular kind of self-conscious control survives. We build liberty as our founders did, by setting society upon a certain constitution."
Lawrence Lessig,Progressive,In speaking of a constitution in cyberspace we are simply asking: What values should be protected there? What values should be built into the space to encourage what forms of life?
Lawrence Lessig,Progressive,Cable TV was also born of a kind of piracy. When
Lawrence Lessig,Progressive,"For the first time that evening, a small idea was uttered by the representative of this extraordinary company. Schmidt spoke of invigorating the Google PAC, and pushing harder to get their side of the issue better heard. And I thought, Wow. This is a Google solution to this, the most important problem facing this republic? This the most they can imagine?"
Lawrence Lessig,Progressive,[I]t kind of terrified me to imagine myself spending the rest of my life tinkering on the margins of the small arguments.
Lawrence Lessig,Progressive,"The struggle in that world will not be government’s. It will be to assure that essential liberties are preserved in this environment of perfect control. As Siva Vaidhyanathan puts it,"
Lawrence Lessig,Progressive,"Code will be a central tool in this analysis. It will present the greatest threat to both liberal and libertarian ideals, as well as their greatest promise. We can build, or architect, or code cyberspace to protect values that we believe are fundamental. Or we can build, or architect, or code cyberspace to allow those values to disappear. There is no middle ground. There is no choice that does not include some kind of building. Code is never found; it is only ever made, and only ever made by us."
Glenn Greenwald,Progressive,"Terrorism': the word that means nothing, yet justifies everything."
Glenn Greenwald,Progressive,The way things are supposed to work is that we're supposed to know virtually everything about what they [the government] do: that's why they're called public servants. They're supposed to know virtually nothing about what we do: that's why we're called private individuals.
Glenn Greenwald,Progressive,The fact that war is the word we use for almost everything
Glenn Greenwald,Progressive,American political culture quickly and always outpaces any attempt to satirize it.
Glenn Greenwald,Progressive,"Democracy requires accountability and consent of the governed, which is only possible if citizens know what is being done in their name."
Glenn Greenwald,Progressive,"The term propaganda rings melodramatic and exaggerated, but a press that"
Glenn Greenwald,Progressive,"Revealingly, the central function of the Constitution as law--the supreme law--was to impose limitations not on the behavior of ordinary citizens but on the federal government. The government, and those who ran it, were not placed outside the law, but expressly targeted by it. Indeed, the Bill of Rights is little more than a description of the lines that the most powerful political officials are barred from crossing, even if they have the power to do so and even when the majority of citizens might wish them to do so."
Glenn Greenwald,Progressive,"Incestuous, homogeneous fiefdoms of self-proclaimed expertise are always rank-closing and mutually self-defending, above all else."
Glenn Greenwald,Progressive,"The many pro-surveillance advocates I have debated since Snowden blew the whistle have been quick to echo Eric Schmidt’s view that privacy is for people who have something to hide. But none of them would willingly give me the passwords to their email accounts, or allow video cameras in their homes."
Glenn Greenwald,Progressive,"There’s nothing grown-up about wanting the State to punish people without evidence of guilt so that you can feel safe. It’s actually a deeply childish need at the heart of all authoritarianism - the desire for a big daddy figure to keep you safe from the Bad People even it means there are no legal constraints, due process, or transparency.Children growing up learn that their Daddy is omnipotent and omniscient and exercises his unchecked power for benevolent ends - it’s a nice, safe feeling, and many continue to cling to it in adulthood, hoping the Security State will provide that. Many adjectives can and should be used to describe that need - grown-up definitely is not among them."
Glenn Greenwald,Progressive,"They're called 'facts', and my role is to amplify those, not cheerlead. And I don't care at all what you think of my motives."
Glenn Greenwald,Progressive,"Beyond all the other reasons not to do it, free speech assaults always backfire: they transform bigots into martyrs."
Glenn Greenwald,Progressive,The same president who has insisted that core moralism drives him has brought America to its lowest moral standing in history.
Glenn Greenwald,Progressive,The hallmark of an authoritarian idiot is yelling TERRORIST-LOVER! at anyone questioning the definition of Terrorist.
Glenn Greenwald,Progressive,"But the more significant factor is that one can easily remain free of even the most intense political oppression simply by placing one’s faith and trust in institutions of authority. People who get themselves to be satisfied with the behavior of their institutions of power, or who at least largely acquiesce to the Plegitimacy of prevailing authority, are almost never subjected to any oppression, even in the worst of tyrannies.Why would they be? Oppression is designed to compel obedience and submission to authority. Those who voluntarily put themselves in that state – by believing that their institutions of authority are just and good and should be followed rather than subverted – render oppression redundant, unnecessary.Of course people who think and behave this way encounter no oppression. That’s their reward for good, submissive behavior. As Rosa Luxemburg put this: Those who do not move, do not notice their chains. They are left alone by institutions of power because they comport with the desired behavior of complacency and obedience without further compulsion.But the fact that good, obedient citizens do not themselves perceive oppression does not mean that oppression does not exist. Whether a society is free is determined not by the treatment of its complacent, acquiescent citizens – such people are always unmolested by authority – but rather by the treatment of its dissidents and its marginalized minorities."
Glenn Greenwald,Progressive,"Taken in its entirety, the Snowden archive led to an ultimately simple conclusion: the US government had built a system that has as its goal the complete elimination of electronic privacy worldwide. Far from hyperbole, that is the literal, explicitly stated aim of the surveillance state: to collect, store, monitor, and analyze all electronic communication by all people around the globe. The agency is devoted to one overarching mission: to prevent the slightest piece of electronic communication from evading its systemic grasp."
Glenn Greenwald,Progressive,"As always, imagine how great the press corps would be if it devoted 1/1000th the energy to dissecting non-sex political wrongdoing"
Glenn Greenwald,Progressive,It's common to go from 'crashing the gate' to guarding it.
Glenn Greenwald,Progressive,"I know it's a really hard concept to process, but the fact that Govt accuses someone of being a Terrorist doesn't mean they are."
Glenn Greenwald,Progressive,"A president who is burdened with a failed and unpopular war, and who has lost the trust of the country, simply can no longer govern. He is destined to become as much a failure as his war."
Glenn Greenwald,Progressive,"No matter the specific techniques involved, historically mass surveillance has had several constant attributes. Initially, it is always the country’s dissidents and marginalized who bear the brunt of the surveillance, leading those who support the government or are merely apathetic to mistakenly believe they are immune. And history shows that the mere existence of a mass surveillance apparatus, regardless of how it is used, is in itself sufficient to stifle dissent. A citizenry that is aware of always being watched quickly becomes a compliant and fearful one."
Glenn Greenwald,Progressive,He's the President
Glenn Greenwald,Progressive,"When journalists are 'accused' of being 'advocates', that means: challenging and deviating from DC orthodoxies."
Glenn Greenwald,Progressive,For those suggesting criticisms of drone kills should wait until the election: that'd be reasonable if he stops killing until the election.
Glenn Greenwald,Progressive,"Every time I do an interview people ask similar questions, such as What is the most significant story that you have revealed? […] There really is only one overarching point that all of these stories have revealed, and that is–and I say this without the slightest bit of hyperbole or melodrama; it's not metaphorical and it's not figurative; it is literally true–that the goal of the NSA and it's five eyes partners in the English speaking world–Canada, New Zealand, Australia and especially the UK–is to eliminate privacy globally, to ensure that there could be no human communications that occur electronically, that evades their surveillance net; they want to make sure that all forms of human communications by telephone or by Internet, and all online activities are collected, monitored, stored and analyzed by that agency and by their allies.That means, to describe that is to describe a ubiquitous surveillance state; you don't need hyperbole to make that claim, and you do not need to believe me when I say that that's their goal. Document after document within the archive that Edward Snowden provided us declare that to be their goal. They are obsessed with searching out any small little premise of the planet where some form of communications might take place without they being able to invade it."
Glenn Greenwald,Progressive,"Bush violated FISA [...] because he wanted to violate the law in order to establish the general 'principle' that he was not bound by the law, to show that he has the power to break the law, that he is more powerful than the law."
Glenn Greenwald,Progressive,Fearlessness can be its own form of power.
Glenn Greenwald,Progressive,I'd like to vote for the candidate similar to the one the Right absurdly claims Obama is.
Glenn Greenwald,Progressive,"Converting the Internet into a system of surveillance thus guts it of its core potential. Worse, it turns the Internet into a tool of repression, threatening to produce the most extreme and oppressive weapon of state intrusion human history has ever seen."
Glenn Greenwald,Progressive,"To permit surveillance to take root on the Internet would mean subjecting virtually all forms of human interaction, planning, and even thought itself to comprehensive state examination."
Glenn Greenwald,Progressive,mass surveillance is a universal temptation for any unscrupulous power.
Glenn Greenwald,Progressive,"While I pray that public awareness and debate will lead to reform, bear in mind that the policies of men change in time, and even the Constitution is subverted when the appetites of power demand it. In words from history: Let us speak no more of faith in man, but bind him down from mischief by the chains of cryptography. I instantly recognized the last sentence as a play on a Thomas Jefferson quote from 1798 that I often cited in my writing: In questions of power, then, let no more be heard of confidence in man, but bind him down from mischief by the chains of the Constitution."
Glenn Greenwald,Progressive,"Through a carefully cultivated display of intimidation to anyone who contemplated a meaningful challenge, the government had striven to show people around the world that its power was constrained by neither law nor ethics, neither morality nor the Constitution: look what we can do and will do to those who impede our agenda."
Glenn Greenwald,Progressive,"The Obama administration, which has brought more prosecutions against leakers than all prior presidencies combined, has sought to create a climate of fear that would stifle any attempts at whistle-blowing. But Snowden destroyed that template. He has managed to remain free, outside the grasp of the United States; what's more, he has refused to remain in hiding but proudly came forward and identified himself. As a result, the public image of him is not a convict in orange jumpsuit and shackles but and independent, articulate figure who can speak for himself, explaining what he did and why."
Glenn Greenwald,Progressive,"US journalists, for years overwhelmingly enamored of Barack Obama, were now commonly speaking of him in these terms: as some sort of grave menace to press freedoms, the most repressive leader in this regard since Richard Nixon. That was quite a remarkable turn for a politician who was ushered into power vowing the most transparent administration in US history."
Glenn Greenwald,Progressive,"It's almost hard to imagine anything more undemocratic than the view that political officials should not debate American wars in public, but only express concerns 'privately with the administration.' That's just a small sliver of Johnson's radicalism: replacing Feingold in the Senate with Ron Johnson would be a civil liberties travesty analogous to the economic travesty from, say, replacing Bernie Sanders with Lloyd Blankfein."
Glenn Greenwald,Progressive,"But even when the principle of equal treatment was betrayed, American leaders in every era have emphatically affirmed it, not so much out of hypocrisy as out of aspiration. Indeed, for those who were devoted to justice, the persistence of inequality was precisely what made equality before the law so imperative."
Glenn Greenwald,Progressive,"Rich, famous, insider journalists do not want to subvert the status quo that so lavishly rewards them. Like all courtiers, they are eager to defend the system that vests them with their privileges and contemptuous of anyone who challenges that system."
Glenn Greenwald,Progressive,Objectivity means nothing more than reflecting the biases and serving the interests of entrenched Washington. Opinions are problematic only when they deviate from the acceptable range of Washington orthodoxy.
Glenn Greenwald,Progressive,the job of the press is to disprove the falsehoods that power invariably disseminates to protect itself.
Glenn Greenwald,Progressive,"Above even our physical well-being, a central value is keeping the state out of the private realm"
Glenn Greenwald,Progressive,"And in every instance, the motive is the same: suppressing dissent and mandating compliance."
Glenn Greenwald,Progressive,"If you expose what it is that we’re doing, if you inform your fellow citizens about all the things that we’re doing in the dark, we will destroy you. This is what their spate of prosecutions of whistleblowers have [sic] been about. It’s what trying to threaten journalists, to criminalize what they do, is about. It’s to create a climate of fear, so that nobody will bring accountability to them.It’s not going to work. I think it’s starting to backfire, because it shows their true character and exactly why they can’t be trusted to operate with power in secret. And we’re certainly not going to be deterred by it in any way. The people who are going to be investigated are not the people reporting on this, but are people like Dianne Feinstein and her friends in the National Security Agency, who need investigation and transparency for all the things that they’ve been doing."
Glenn Greenwald,Progressive,"I have been to the darkest corners of government, and what they fear is light."
Glenn Greenwald,Progressive,"Americans now considered the danger of surveillance of greater concern than the danger of terrorism: Overall, 47% say their greater concern about government anti-terrorism policies is that they have gone too far in restricting the average person’s civil liberties, while 35% say they are more concerned that policies have not gone far enough to protect the country. This is the first time in Pew Research polling that more have expressed concern over civil liberties than protection from terrorism since the question was first asked in 2004."
Glenn Greenwald,Progressive,"The ability to eavesdrop on people's communications vests immense power in those who do it. And unless such power is held in check by rigorous oversight and accountability, it is almost certain to be abused. Expecting the US government to operate a massive surveillance machine in complete secrecy without falling prey to its temptations runs counter to every historical example and all available evidence about human nature."
Glenn Greenwald,Progressive,A number I'd love to know: the % of those now saying 'we have to vote Obama to stop an attack on Iran' who will support one if Obama does it.
Glenn Greenwald,Progressive,"It is hard to imagine having a government more secretive than the United States. Virtually everything that government does, of any significance, is conducted behind an extreme wall of secrecy. The very few leaks that we’ve had over the last decade are basically the only ways that we’ve had to learn what our government is doing."
Glenn Greenwald,Progressive,"Edward Snowden made an audacious claim: I, sitting at my desk, could wiretap anyone, from you or your accountant, to a federal judge or even the president, if I had a personal email."
Glenn Greenwald,Progressive,"Finally, Snowden gave me an answer that felt vibrant and real. The true measurement of a person’s worth isn’t what they say they believe in, but what they do in defense of those beliefs, he said. If you’re not acting on your beliefs, then they probably aren’t real."
Glenn Greenwald,Progressive,Your personal life is now known as Facebook’s data. Its CEO’s personal life is now known as mind your own business.
Glenn Greenwald,Progressive,"All of the evidence highlights the implicit bargain that is offered to citizens: pose no challenge and you have nothing to worry about. Mind your own business, and support or at least tolerate what we do, and you’ll be fine. Put differently, you must refrain from provoking the authority that wields surveillance powers if you wish to be deemed free of wrongdoing. This is a deal that invites passivity, obedience, and conformity. The safest course, the way to ensure being left alone, is to remain quiet, unthreatening, and compliant."
Glenn Greenwald,Progressive,"It's really encouraging and inspiring to be around a gathering of so many people ... who really are committed to that vision. (While addressing the American Socialist Party, 2011)"
Glenn Greenwald,Progressive,Washington likes to threaten the people over whom they exercise power.
Glenn Greenwald,Progressive,"This theme, this moral construct for evaluating one’s identity and worth, was one he repeatedly encountered on his intellectual path, including, he explained with a hint of embarrassment, from video games. The lesson Snowden had learned from immersion in video games, he said, was that just one person, even the most powerless, can confront great injustice. The protagonist is often an ordinary person, who finds himself faced with grave injustices from powerful forces and has the choice to flee in fear or to fight for his beliefs. And history also shows that seemingly ordinary people who are sufficiently resolute about justice can triumph over the most formidable adversaries. He wasn’t the first person I’d heard claiming video games had been instrumental in shaping their worldview. Years earlier, I might have scoffed, but I’d come to accept that, for Snowden’s generation, they played no less serious a role in molding political consciousness, moral reasoning, and an understanding of one’s place in the world than literature, television, and film. They, too, often present complex moral dilemmas and provoke contemplation, especially for people beginning to question what they’ve been taught. Snowden"
Glenn Greenwald,Progressive,"What keeps a person passive and compliant, he explained, is fear of repercussions, but once you let go of your attachment to things that don’t ultimately matter"
Glenn Greenwald,Progressive,"The fourth article, which ran as planned on Saturday, was about BOUNDLESS INFORMANT, the NSA’s data-tracking program, and it described the reports showing that the NSA was collecting, analyzing, and storing billions of telephone calls and emails sent across the American telecommunications infrastructure. It also raised the question of whether NSA officials had lied to Congress when they had refused to answer senators about the number of domestic communications intercepted, claiming that they did not keep such records and could not assemble such data. After"
Glenn Greenwald,Progressive,"according to the NSA documents, provided the agency with direct access to their servers as part of PRISM: Facebook, Google, Apple, YouTube, Skype, and the rest."
Glenn Greenwald,Progressive,"For many kids, the Internet is a means of self-actualization. It allows them to explore who they are and who they want to be, but that works only if we’re able to be private and anonymous, to make mistakes without them following us."
Glenn Greenwald,Progressive,"Especially for the younger generation, the Internet is not some standalone, separate domain where a few of life’s functions are carried out. It is not merely our post office and our telephone. Rather, it is the epicenter of our world, the place where virtually everything is done. It is where friends are made, where books and films are chosen, where political activism is organized, where the most private data is created and stored. It is where we develop and express our very personality and sense of self. To turn that network"
Glenn Greenwald,Progressive,"It is difficult to overstate the extent to which congressionally bestowed retroactive immunity represents a profound departure from basic norms of justice. Ordinary Americans are sued every day and forced to endure the severe hardships and sometimes ruinous costs of litigation. When that happens, it is the role of the courts alone to determine who is at fault and whether liability should be imposed. The Constitution vests the judicial Power of the United States in courts, not Congress. And when it comes to lawsuits brought against ordinary Americans, that is how such suits are always resolved: by courts issuing rulings on the merits. The very idea that Congress would intervene in such proceedings and act to protect ordinary Americans from lawsuits is too outlandish even to entertain. But when the wealthiest, most powerful, and most well-connected financial elites are caught red-handed violating the privacy rights of their customers and committing clear felonies, their lobbyists call for a new law that has no purpose other than to declare that the old laws do not apply to them. That is the living, breathing embodiment of our two-tiered justice system"
Glenn Greenwald,Progressive,"People like Mike McConnell don’t really move from public office to the private sector and back again; that implies more separation than actually exists. Rather, the U.S. government and industry interests essentially form one gigantic, amalgamated, inseparable entity"
Glenn Greenwald,Progressive,"The first was about the secret order from the FISA court compelling Verizon, one of America’s largest telephone companies, to turn over to the NSA all the telephone records of all Americans."
Glenn Greenwald,Progressive,"The second covered the history of the Bush warrantless eavesdropping program, based on a top secret 2009 internal report from the NSA’s inspector general; another detailed the BOUNDLESS INFORMANT program that I had read about on the plane;"
Glenn Greenwald,Progressive,"the last story laid out the PRISM program, which I had first learned about at home in Brazil."
Glenn Greenwald,Progressive,"The third article, published that same day, disclosed a top secret presidential directive signed by President Obama in November 2012 ordering the Pentagon and related agencies to prepare for a series of aggressive offensive cyber operations around the world."
Glenn Greenwald,Progressive,"I found the sheer vastness of the spying system genuinely shocking, all the more so because it had clearly been implemented with virtually no accountability, no transparency, and no limits. The"
Glenn Greenwald,Progressive,"Another BOUNDLESS INFORMANT document detailed the international data collected in a single thirty-day period from Germany (500 million), Brazil (2.3 billion), and India (13.5 billion). And yet other files showed collection of metadata in cooperation with the governments of France (70 million), Spain (60 million), Italy (47 million), the Netherlands (1.8 million), Norway (33 million), and Denmark (23 million)."
Glenn Greenwald,Progressive,US government has the capability to remotely activate cell phones and convert them into listening devices.
Glenn Greenwald,Progressive,"Indeed, as Professor Felten notes, eavesdropping on calls can be quite difficult due to language differences, meandering conversations, the use of slang or deliberate codes, and other attributes that either by design or accident obfuscate the meaning. The content of calls are far more difficult to analyze in an automated fashion due to their unstructured nature, he argued. By contrast, metadata is mathematical: clean, precise, and thus easily analyzed. And as Felten put it, it is often a proxy for content:"
Glenn Greenwald,Progressive,"For years, President Obama and his top officials vehemently denounced China for using its surveillance capabilities for economic advantage while insisting that the United States and its allies never do any such thing. The Washington Post quoted an NSA spokesperson saying that the Department of Defense, of which the agency is a part,  ‘does engage’ in computer network exploitation, but does ***not*** engage in economic espionage in any domain, including ‘cyber’  [emphatic asterisks in the original]. That the NSA spies for precisely the economic motive it has denied is proven by its own documents. The agency acts for the benefit of what it calls its customers, a list that includes not only the White House, the State Department, and the CIA, but also primarily economic agencies, such as the US Trade Representative and the Departments of Agriculture, Treasury, and Commerce:"
Glenn Greenwald,Progressive,"while American companies were being warned away from supposedly untrustworthy Chinese routers, foreign organizations would have been well advised to beware of American-made ones. A June 2010 report from the head of the NSA’s Access and Target Development department is shockingly explicit. The NSA routinely receives"
Glenn Greenwald,Progressive,"In video games, one of the most helpless against injustice can even mighty."
Glenn Greenwald,Progressive,"In fact, both observing and breaking the rules involve moral choices, and both courses of action reveal something important about the individuals involved. Contrary to the accepted premise-that radical dissent demonstrates a personality disorder-the opposite could be true in the face of sever injustice, a refusal to dissent is the sign of a character flaw or moral failure."
Glenn Greenwald,Progressive,"A population, a country that venerates physical safety above all other values will ultimately give up its liberty and sanction any power seized by authority in exchange for the promise, no matter how illusory, of total security. However, absolute safety is itself chimeric, pursued by never obtained. The pursuit degrades those who engage in it as well as any nation that comes to be defined by it."
Glenn Greenwald,Progressive,We shouldn't have to be faithful loyalists of the powerful to feel safe from state surveillance. Nor should the price of immunity be refraining from controversial or provocative dissent. We shouldn't want a society where the message is conveyed that you will be left alone only if you mimic the accommodating behavior and conventional wisdom of an establishment columnist.
Glenn Greenwald,Progressive,"In the November 2010 issue of Rolling Stone, Matt Taibbi reported on the special courts established around the country for the express purpose of streamlining and accelerating foreclosure actions. Presided over by retired judges who were unfamiliar with the complexities involved in the mortgage fraud, these courts were not set up to decide right and wrong, but to clear cases and blast human beings out of their homes with ultimate velocity. The whole process was designed to transfer the property of ordinary citizens to the nation’s largest banks regardless of entitlement. As Taibbi wrote: The judges, in fact, openly admit that their primary mission is not justice but speed. One Jacksonville [Florida] judge, the Honorable A. C. Soud, even told a local newspaper that his goal is to resolve 25 cases per hour. Given the way the system is rigged, that means His Honor could well be throwing one ass on the street every 2.4 minutes. The following month, the Washington Post reported that similar courts in Virginia were making it easier for lenders to defend themselves when accused of giving homeowners too little warning of impending foreclosures. Indeed, the process moves so quickly in Virginia…that homeowners can receive less than two weeks’ notice that their house is about to be sold on the courthouse steps. The design of the courts guaranteed that even banks with no legal foreclosure entitlement had an almost insurmountable advantage. In the very short time they were accorded, homeowners seeking to stop foreclosure had to gather evidence, file a lawsuit and potentially post a bond with the court that could total thousands of dollars. These arduous requirements, combined with the near-impossible deadlines, meant that many borrowers simply ran out of time when trying to fight invalid foreclosure proceedings. It"
Glenn Greenwald,Progressive,"They recognized the significance of man’s spiritual nature, of his feelings and of his intellect. They knew that only a part of the pain, pleasure and satisfactions of life are to be found in material things. They sought to protect Americans in their beliefs, their thoughts, their emotions and their sensations. They conferred, as against the Government, the right to be let alone. Even"
Glenn Greenwald,Progressive,"The Right to Privacy, arguing that robbing someone of their privacy was a crime of a deeply different nature than the theft of a material belonging."
Glenn Greenwald,Progressive,"assurances that surveillance is only targeted at those who have done something wrong should provide little comfort, since a state will reflexively view any challenge to its power as wrongdoing. *"
Glenn Greenwald,Progressive,"authors had analyzed fifty cases of purported Islamic terrorist plots against the United States, only to conclude that virtually all of the perpetrators were ‘incompetent, ineffective, unintelligent, idiotic, ignorant, unorganized, misguided, muddled, amateurish, dopey, unrealistic, moronic, irrational, and foolish."
Glenn Greenwald,Progressive,"Discrediting the messenger as a misfit to discredit the message is an old ploy when it comes to whistle-blowing, and it often works. The"
Glenn Greenwald,Progressive,"For guardians of the status quo, there is nothing genuinely or fundamentally wrong with the prevailing order and its dominant institutions, which are viewed as just. Therefore, anyone claiming otherwise"
Glenn Greenwald,Progressive,"society pays great attention to the motives of dissenters, but none to those who submit to our institutions, either by ensuring that their actions remain concealed or by using any other means. Obedience to authority is implicitly deemed the natural state. In"
Glenn Greenwald,Progressive,"in the face of severe injustice, a refusal to dissent is the sign of a character flaw or moral failure. Philosophy"
Glenn Greenwald,Progressive,"Similarly it is possible that the system itself is sick, even though the actors within the organization are behaving in accord with organizational etiquette and respecting the internal bonds of trust. That"
Glenn Greenwald,Progressive,"The perceptions and pronouncements of human beings are inherently subjective. Every news article is the product of all sorts of highly subjective cultural, nationalistic, and political assumptions. And all journalism serves one faction’s interest or another’s. The"
Glenn Greenwald,Progressive,"The very idea that reporters should be free of opinions is far from some time-honored requirement of the profession; in fact, it is a relatively new concoction that has the effect, if not the intent, to neuter journalism. This"
Glenn Greenwald,Progressive,"Promoting the human capacity to reason and make decisions: that is the purpose of whistle-blowing, of activism, of political journalism."
Glenn Greenwald,Progressive,"For years, the US government loudly warned the world that Chinese routers and other Internet devices pose a threat because they are built with backdoor surveillance functionality that gives the Chinese government the ability to spy on anyone using them. Yet what the NSA’s documents show is that Americans have been engaged in precisely the activity that the United States accused the Chinese of doing."
Glenn Greenwald,Progressive,Technology has now enabled a type of ubiquitous surveillance that had previously been the province of only the most imaginative science fiction writers.
Glenn Greenwald,Progressive,"As part of these programs, the NSA exploits the access that certain telecom companies have to international systems, having entered into contracts with foreign telecoms to build, maintain, and upgrade their networks. The US companies then redirect the target country’s communications data to NSA repositories."
Glenn Greenwald,Progressive,"From its inception, FISA has been the ultimate rubber stamp. In its first twenty-four years, from 1978 to 2002, the court rejected a total of zero government applications while approving many thousands. In the subsequent decade, through 2012, the court has rejected just eleven government applications."
Glenn Greenwald,Progressive,"for a thirty-day period ending in February 2013, one unit of the NSA collected more than three billion pieces of communication data from US communication systems"
Glenn Greenwald,Progressive,"The free press guarantee does not only protect corporate reporters but anyone engaged in journalism, whether employed or not."
Glenn Greenwald,Progressive,"The collect-it-all system did nothing to detect, let alone disrupt, the 2012 Boston Marathon bombing. It did not detect the attempted Christmas-day bombing of a jetliner over Detroit, or the plan to blow up Times Square, or the plot to attack the New York City subway system"
Glenn Greenwald,Progressive,"Among other devices, the agency intercepts and tampers with routers and servers manufactured by Cisco to direct large amounts of Internet traffic back to the NSA’s repositories."
Glenn Greenwald,Progressive,Courage is contagious.
Glenn Greenwald,Progressive,"contrary to repeated claims from President Obama and the NSA, it is already clear that a substantial number of the agency’s activities have nothing to do with antiterrorism efforts or even with national security. Much of the Snowden archive revealed what can only be called economic espionage: eavesdropping and email interception aimed at the Brazilian oil giant Petrobras, economic conferences in Latin America, energy companies in Venezuela and Mexico, and spying by the NSA’s allies"
Glenn Greenwald,Progressive,"Beyond collecting comprehensive data about the online activities of hundreds of millions of people, X-KEYSCORE allows any NSA analyst to search the system’s databases by email address, telephone number, or identifying attributes such as an IP address."
Glenn Greenwald,Progressive,"The Internet has long been heralded as an unprecedented instrument of democratization and liberalization, even emancipation. But in the eyes of the US government, this global network and other types of communications technology threaten to undermine American power."
Glenn Greenwald,Progressive,"Ultimately, beyond diplomatic manipulation and economic gain, a system of ubiquitous spying allows the United States to maintain its grip on the world. When the United States is able to know everything that everyone is doing, saying, thinking, and planning"
Glenn Greenwald,Progressive,"But the importance of privacy is evident in the fact that even those who devalue it, who have declared it dead or dispensable, do not believe the things they say. Anti-privacy advocates have often gone to great lengths to maintain control over the visibility of their own behavior and information. The US government itself has used extreme measures to shield its actions from public view, erecting an ever-higher wall of secrecy behind which it operates. As a 2011 report from the ACLU argued, Today much of our government’s business is conducted in secret. So secretive is this shadowy world, so large, so unwieldy, as the Washington Post reported, that no one knows how much money it costs, how many people it employs, how many programs exist within it or exactly how many agencies do the same work."
Glenn Greenwald,Progressive,"The same contradiction is expressed by the many ordinary citizens who dismiss the value of privacy yet nonetheless have passwords on their email and social media accounts. They put locks on their bathroom doors; they seal the envelopes containing their letters. They engage in conduct when nobody is watching that they would never consider when acting in full view. They say things to friends, psychologists, and lawyers that they do not want anyone else to know. They give voice to thoughts online that they do not want associated with their names."
Glenn Greenwald,Progressive,"the desire for privacy is shared by us all as an essential, not ancillary, part of what it means to be human. We all instinctively understand that the private realm is where we can act, think, speak, write, experiment, and choose how to be, away from the judgmental eyes of others. Privacy is a core condition of being a free person."
Glenn Greenwald,Progressive,"The principle which protects personal writings and all other personal productions, not against theft and physical appropriation, but against publication in any form, is in reality not the principle of private property, but that of an inviolate personality."
Glenn Greenwald,Progressive,"people radically change their behavior when they know they are being watched. They will strive to do that which is expected of them. They want to avoid shame and condemnation. They do so by adhering tightly to accepted social practices, by staying within imposed boundaries, avoiding action that might be seen as deviant or abnormal."
Glenn Greenwald,Progressive,"you believe you are always being watched and judged, you are not really a free individual."
Glenn Greenwald,Progressive,"What made the Internet so appealing was precisely that it afforded the ability to speak and act anonymously, which is so vital to individual exploration."
Glenn Greenwald,Progressive,"is in the realm of privacy where creativity, dissent, and challenges to orthodoxy germinate. A society in which everyone knows they can be watched by the state"
Glenn Greenwald,Progressive,"The persons to be inspected should always feel themselves as if under inspection, at least as standing a great chance of being so. They would thus act as if they were always being watched, even if they weren’t."
Glenn Greenwald,Progressive,"British philosopher Jeremy Bentham’s eighteenth-century conception of the Panopticon, a building design he believed would allow institutions to effectively control human behavior."
Glenn Greenwald,Progressive,"this model of control has the great advantage of simultaneously creating the illusion of freedom. The compulsion to obedience exists in the individual’s mind. Individuals choose on their own to comply, out of fear that they are being watched. That eliminates the need for all the visible hallmarks of compulsion, and thus enables control over people who falsely believe themselves to be free. For this reason, every oppressive state views mass surveillance as one of its most critical instruments of control."
Glenn Greenwald,Progressive,"mass surveillance kills dissent in a deeper and more important place as well: in the mind, where the individual trains him- or herself to think only in line with what is expected and demanded."
Glenn Greenwald,Progressive,threat or actuality of government surveillance may psychologically inhibit freedom of speech.
Glenn Greenwald,Progressive,"Since such assumptions are limited only by one’s imagination and are encouraged daily by revelations of government and institutional invasion of privacy, they wrote, the boundaries between paranoid delusions and justified cautions indeed become tenuous."
Glenn Greenwald,Progressive,It is true that surveillance can at times promote what some may consider desirable behavior. One study found that rowdiness in Swedish soccer stadiums
Glenn Greenwald,Progressive,"there are all sorts of things people do that they are eager to keep private, even though these sorts of things do not constitute doing something wrong. Privacy is indispensable to a wide range of human activities."
Glenn Greenwald,Progressive,"what goals drive all institutions of authority. Doing something wrong, in the eyes of such institutions, encompasses far more than illegal acts, violent behavior, and terrorist plots. It typically extends to meaningful dissent and any genuine challenge. It is the nature of authority to equate dissent with wrongdoing, or at least with a threat."
Glenn Greenwald,Progressive,The record is suffused with examples of groups and individuals being placed under government surveillance by virtue of their dissenting views and activism
Glenn Greenwald,Progressive,"The evidence shows that assurances that surveillance is only targeted at those who have done something wrong should provide little comfort, since a state will reflexively view any challenge to its power as wrongdoing."
Glenn Greenwald,Progressive,"This is the case in every society: those who pose no challenge are rarely targeted by oppressive measures, and from their perspective, they can then convince themselves that oppression does not really exist. But the true measure of a society’s freedom is how it treats its dissidents and other marginalized groups, not how it treats good loyalists."
Glenn Greenwald,Progressive,"Radical expansions of power are often introduced in this way, by persuading people that they affect just a specific, discrete group. Governments have long convinced populations to turn a blind eye to oppressive conduct by leading citizens to believe, rightly or wrongly, that only certain marginalized people are targeted, and everyone else can acquiesce to or even support that oppression without fear that it will be applied to them."
Glenn Greenwald,Progressive,"Progress both in the United States and other nations was only ever achieved through the ability to challenge power and orthodoxies and to pioneer new ways of thinking and living. Everyone, even those who do not engage in dissenting advocacy or political activism, suffers when that freedom is stifled by the fear of being watched."
Glenn Greenwald,Progressive,"That capability at any time could be turned around on the American people and no American would have any privacy left, such is the capability to monitor everything"
Glenn Greenwald,Progressive,"Surveillance cheerleaders essentially offer only one argument in defense of mass surveillance: it is only carried out to stop terrorism and keep people safe. Indeed, invoking an external threat is a historical tactic of choice to keep the population submissive to government powers."
Glenn Greenwald,Progressive,"much of the data collection conducted by the NSA has manifestly nothing to do with terrorism or national security. Intercepting the communications of the Brazilian oil giant Petrobras or spying on negotiation sessions at an economic summit or targeting the democratically elected leaders of allied states or collecting all Americans’ communications records has no relationship to terrorism. Given the actual surveillance the NSA does, stopping terror is clearly a pretext."
Glenn Greenwald,Progressive,the Justice Department failed to cite a single case in which analysis of the NSA’s bulk metadata collection actually stopped an imminent terrorist attack.
Glenn Greenwald,Progressive,concluded that the metadata program was not essential to preventing attacks and could readily have been obtained in a timely manner using conventional [court] orders.
Glenn Greenwald,Progressive,"the NSA databases store information about your political views, your medical history, your intimate relationships and your activities online. The agency claims this personal information won’t be abused, but these documents show that the NSA probably defines ‘abuse’ very narrowly."
Glenn Greenwald,Progressive,"Emphasizing that people make decisions for emotional reasons not rational ones, the GCHQ contends that online behavior is driven by mirroring (people copy each other while in social interaction with them), accommodation, and mimicry (adoption of specific social traits by the communicator from the other participant). The document then lays out what it calls the Disruption Operational Playbook."
Glenn Greenwald,Progressive,"once the citizenry acquiesces to a new power, believing that it does not affect them, it becomes institutionalized and legitimized and objection becomes impossible."
Glenn Greenwald,Progressive,"The usefulness of the bulk collection program has been greatly exaggerated. We have yet to see any proof that it provides real, unique value in protecting national security. In spite of our repeated requests, the N.S.A. has not provided evidence of any instance when the agency used this program to review phone records that could not have been obtained using a regular court order or emergency authorization."
Glenn Greenwald,Progressive,"The presumption is that, with rare exception, will know everything their political officials are doing, which is why they are called public servants, working in the public sector, in public service, for public agencies. Conversely, the presumption is that the government, with rare exception, will not know anything that law-abiding citizens are doing. That is why we are called private individuals, functioning in our private capacity. Transparency is for those who carry out public duties and exercise public power. Privacy is for everyone else."
Glenn Greenwald,Progressive,"The email began: The security of people’s communications is very important to me,"
Glenn Greenwald,Progressive,"Encryption matters, and it is not just for spies and philanderers."
Glenn Greenwald,Progressive,"I do not want to live in a world where we have no privacy and no freedom, where the unique value of the Internet is snuffed out,"
Glenn Greenwald,Progressive,"Attributing dissent to personality disorders is hardly an American invention. Soviet dissidents were routinely institutionalized in psychological hospitals, and Chinese dissidents are still often forcibly treated for mental illness."
Glenn Greenwald,Progressive,"citizens, had been targeted as well. Still, the sheer scale of diplomatic surveillance the NSA has practiced is unusual and noteworthy. In addition to foreign"
Glenn Greenwald,Progressive,"Mass surveillance by the state is therefore inherently repressive, even in the unlikely case that it is not abused by vindictive officials to do things like gain private information about political opponents. Regardless of how surveillance is used or abused, the limits it imposes on freedom are intrinsic to its existence."
Glenn Greenwald,Progressive,being debated by the UN that involved imposing new sanctions on Iran. A similar surveillance document from August 2010 reveals that the United States spied on eight members of
Glenn Greenwald,Progressive,"adviser, repeatedly requested that the NSA spy on the internal discussions of key member states to learn their negotiation strategies. A May 2010 SSO report"
Glenn Greenwald,Progressive,"The United States government has perfected a technological capability that enables us to monitor the messages that go through the air.… That capability at any time could be turned around on the American people, and no American would have any privacy left, such is the capability to monitor everything"
Glenn Greenwald,Progressive,"I realized, he said, that they were building a system whose goal was the elimination of all privacy, globally. To make it so that no one could communicate electronically without the NSA being able to collect, store, and analyze the communication."
Glenn Greenwald,Progressive,Time magazine’s Jay Carney and Richard Stengel are now in government while Obama aides David Axelrod and Robert Gibbs are commentators on MSNBC.
Glenn Greenwald,Progressive,"Snowden had been clear from our first conversation about his rationale for distrusting the establishment media with his story, repeatedly referring to the New York Times’s concealment of NSA eavesdropping. He had come to believe that the paper’s concealment of that information may very well have changed the outcome of the 2004 election. Hiding that story changed history, he said."
Glenn Greenwald,Progressive,"there is no check or limit on the NSA’s bulk collection of metadata, thanks to the government’s interpretation of the Patriot Act"
Glenn Greenwald,Progressive,"More remarkable is the fact that in country after country, revelations that the NSA was spying on hundreds of millions of their citizens produced little more than muted objections from their political leadership. True indignation came gushing forward only once those leaders understood that they, and not just their citizens, had been targeted as well."
Glenn Greenwald,Progressive,"While the NSA is officially a public agency, it has countless overlapping partnerships with private sector corporations, and many of its core functions have been outsourced."
Glenn Greenwald,Progressive,Equally nonsensical was the notion that Snowden would try to save himself by giving away surveillance secrets. He had dismantled his life and risked a future in prison to tell the world about a clandestine surveillance system he believed must be stopped.
Glenn Greenwald,Progressive,"Most remarkably, Americans now considered the danger of surveillance of greater concern than the danger of terrorism:"
Glenn Greenwald,Progressive,The idea that we should dismantle the core protections of our political system to erect a ubiquitous surveillance state for the sake of this risk is the height of irrationality. Yet exaggeration of the threat is repeated over and over.
Glenn Greenwald,Progressive,"Mueller and Stewart estimate that expenditures on domestic homeland security (i.e., not counting the wars in Iraq or Afghanistan) have increased by more than $1 trillion since 9/11,"
Glenn Greenwald,Progressive,"was a full-throated harangue, a typical performance when American officials speak about a regime not aligned with the United States."
Glenn Greenwald,Progressive,the powerful and the powerless.
Glenn Greenwald,Progressive,"The drumbeat of American accusations against Chinese Internet device manufacturers was unrelenting. In 2012, for example, a report from the House Intelligence Committee, headed by Mike Rogers, claimed that Huawei and ZTE, the top two Chinese telecommunications equipment companies, may be violating United States laws and have not followed United States legal obligations or international standards of business behavior. The committee recommended that the"
Glenn Greenwald,Progressive,"As the New Yorker’s Ryan Lizza put it in a December 2013 article, instead of providing oversight, the Senate committee more often treats senior intelligence officials like matinée idols."
Glenn Greenwald,Progressive,"I knew from my years of writing about NSA abuses that it can be hard to generate serious concern about secret state surveillance: invasion of privacy and abuse of power can be viewed as abstractions, ones that are difficult to get people to care about viscerally."
Glenn Greenwald,Progressive,"function is another manifestation of the public/private merger: the for-profit prison companies have, in essence, established themselves as part of the government, and laws are written by them and for their benefit. In the case of the prison industry, that’s particularly"
Glenn Greenwald,Progressive,"Abused in this way, law becomes a tool"
Glenn Greenwald,Progressive,"The lesson for me was clear: national security officials do not like the light. They act abusively and thuggishly only when they believe they are safe, in the dark. Secrecy is the linchpin of abuse of power, we discovered, its enabling force. Transparency is the only real antidote. *"
Glenn Greenwald,Progressive,"Patriotism is not defined by loyalty to a particular elected official or political party. Indeed, excess loyalty to a single individual or party is the very antithesis of patriotism, as it places fealty to that individual or party over allegiance to the country, its interests, and its values. True patriotism is measured by the extent to which one believes in, and is willing to fight for and defend, the defining values and core principles of our country."
Glenn Greenwald,Progressive,"I only have one fear in doing all of this, he said, which is that people will see these documents and shrug, that they’ll say, ‘we assumed this was happening and don’t care.’ The only thing I’m worried about is that I’ll do all this to my life for nothing."
Glenn Greenwald,Progressive,"That’s what makes Snowden’s revelations so stunning and so vitally important. By daring to expose the NSA’s astonishing surveillance capabilities and its even more astounding ambitions, he has made it clear, with these disclosures, that we stand at a historic crossroads. Will the digital age usher in the individual liberation and political freedoms that the Internet is uniquely capable of unleashing? Or will it bring about a system of omnipresent monitoring and control, beyond the dreams of even the greatest tyrants of the past? Right now, either path is possible. Our actions will determine where we end up."
Glenn Greenwald,Progressive,"The Obama administration had waged what people across the political spectrum were calling an unprecedented war on whistle-blowers. The president, who had campaigned on a vow to have the most transparent administration in history, specifically pledging to protect whistleblowers, whom he hailed as noble and courageous, had done exactly the opposite. Obama’s administration has prosecuted more government leakers under the Espionage Act of 1917"
Glenn Greenwald,Progressive,"The agency regards itself as needing no specific justification to collect any particular electronic communication,"
Glenn Greenwald,Progressive,I think Dianne Feinstein may be the most Orwellian political official in Washington.
Glenn Greenwald,Progressive,The hacking practice is quite widespread in its own right: one NSA document indicates that the agency has succeeded in infecting at least fifty thousand individual computers with a type of malware called Quantum Insertion. One map shows the places where such operations have been performed and the number of successful insertions:
Glenn Greenwald,Progressive,"Certain documents, such as the FISA court order allowing collection of telephone records and Obama’s presidential directive to prepare offensive cyber-operations, were among the US government’s most closely held secrets. Deciphering the archive and the NSA’s language"
Glenn Greenwald,Progressive,NSA has increasingly made use of a secret technology that enables it to enter and alter data in computers even if they are not connected to the Internet.
Glenn Greenwald,Progressive,One NSA slide details PRISM’s special surveillance powers:
Glenn Greenwald,Progressive,"Not only was all this collaboration conducted with no transparency, but it contradicted public statements made by Skype. ACLU technology expert Chris Soghoian said the revelations would surprise many Skype customers. In the past, Skype made affirmative promises to users about their inability to perform wiretaps, he said. It’s hard to square Microsoft’s secret collaboration with the NSA with its high-profile efforts to compete on privacy with Google."
Glenn Greenwald,Progressive,"The National Security Agency is currently collecting the telephone records of millions of US customers of Verizon, one of America’s largest telecom providers, under a top secret court order issued in April. The order, a copy of which has been obtained by the Guardian, requires Verizon on an ongoing, daily basis to give the NSA information on all telephone calls in its systems, both within the US and between the US and other countries. The document shows for the first time that under the Obama administration the communication records of millions of US citizens are being collected indiscriminately and in bulk"
Glenn Greenwald,Progressive,most politically powerful right-wing families have an almost perfect record of advocating numerous wars while ensuring that their own sons and daughters do not risk their lives to fight in them.
Al Gore,Progressive,Here is the truth: The Earth is round; Saddam Hussein did not attack us on 9/11; Elvis is dead; Obama was born in the United States; and the climate crisis is real.
Al Gore,Progressive,The planet is in distress and all of the attention is on Paris Hilton.
Al Gore,Progressive,"In a time of social fragmentation, vulgarity becomes a way of life. To be shocking becomes more important - and often more profitable - than to be civil or creative or truly original."
Al Gore,Progressive,"As many know, the Chinese expression for crisis consists of two characters side by side. The first is the symbol for danger, the second the symbol for opportunity."
Al Gore,Progressive,"Global warming, along with the cutting and burning of forests and other critical habitats, is causing the loss of living species at a level comparable to the extinction event that wiped out the dinosaurs 65 million years ago. That event was believed to have been caused by a giant asteroid. This time it is not an asteroid colliding with the Earth and wreaking havoc: it is us."
Al Gore,Progressive,you can't be value free when it comes to marriage
Al Gore,Progressive,"The global environment crisis is, as we say in Tennessee, real as rain, and I cannot stand the thought of leaving my children with a degraded earth and a diminished future."
Al Gore,Progressive,We have to abandon the conceit that isolated personal actions are going to solve this crisis. Our policies have to shift.
Al Gore,Progressive,"We can believe in the future and work to achieve it and preserve it, or we can whirl blindly on, behaving as if one day there will be no children to inherit our legacy. The choice is ours; the earth is in balance."
Al Gore,Progressive,"No matter how hard the loss, defeat might serve as well as victory to shake the soul and let the glory out."
Al Gore,Progressive,Most people in politics draw energy from backslapping and shaking hands and all that. I draw energy from discussing ideas.
Al Gore,Progressive,Air travel is nature's way of making you look like your passport photo.
Al Gore,Progressive,The 'well-informed citizenry is in danger of becoming the 'well-amused audience'.
Al Gore,Progressive,"I actually thought and believed that the story would be compelling enough to cause a real sea change in the way Congress reacted to that issue. I thought they would be startled, too. And they weren't."
Al Gore,Progressive,"Dude, said Hassan softly. Khanzeer. (Arabic:Pig) Matha, al-khanazeer la yatakalamoon araby? Colin asked. (Arabic: What, pigs don't speak Arabic?That's no pig, answered Hassan in Enlgish. That's a goddamned monster. The pig stopped its rotting and looked up at them. I mean. Wilbur is a fugging pig. Babe is a fugging pig. That thing was birthed from the loins of Iblis. (Arabic: Satan) It was clear now the pig could see them. Colin could see the black in its eyes.Stop cursing. The feral hog shows a remarkable understanding of human speech, especially profane speech, he mumbled, quoting from the book.That's a bunch of bullshit, Hassan said, and then the pig took two lumbering steps towards them, and Hassan said, Okay. Or not. Fine. No cursing. Listen. Satan Pig. We're cool. We don't want to shoot you. The guns are for show, dude.Stand up so he knows we're bigger than he is, Colin said.Did you read that in the book? Hassan asked as he stood.No, I read it in a book about grizzly bears.We're gonna get gored to death by a feral fugging hog and your best strategy is to pretend it's a grizzly bear?"
Al Gore,Progressive,The rule of reason is the true sovereign in the American system.
Al Gore,Progressive,Having a TV
Al Gore,Progressive,How are we going to bring about these transformations? Politics as usual
Al Gore,Progressive,"Cersei cupped the other woman’s breast. Softly at first, hardly touching, feeling the warmth of it beneath her palm, the skin as smooth as satin. She gave it a gentle squeeze, then ran her thumbnail lightly across the big dark nipple, back and forth and back and forth until she felt it stiffen. When she glanced up, Taena’s eyes were open.Does that feel good? she asked.Yes, said Lady Merryweather.And this? Cersei pinched the nipple now, puling on it hard, twisting it between her fingers.The Myrish woman gave a gasp of pain. You’re hurting me.It’s just the wine. I had a flagon with my supper, and another with the widow Stokeworth. I had to drink to keep her calm. She twisted Taena’s other nipple too, puling until the other woman gasped. I am the queen. I mean to claim my rights.Do what you wil. Taena’s hair was as black as Robert’s, even down between her legs, and when Cersei touched her there she found her hair al sopping wet, where Robert’s had been coarse and dry. Please, the Myrish woman said, go on, my queen. Do as you wil with me. I’m yours.But it was no good. She could not feel it, whatever Robert felt on the nights he took her. There was no pleasure in it, not for her. For Taena, yes. Her nipples were two black diamonds, her sex slick and steamy. Robert would have loved you, for an hour. The queen slid a finger into that Myrish swamp, then another, moving them in and out, but once he spent himself inside you, he would have been hard-pressed to recal your name.She wanted to see if it would be as easy with a woman as it had always been with Robert. Ten thousand of your children perished in my palm, Your Grace, she thought, slipping a third finger into Myr. Whilst you snored, I would lick your sons of my face and fingers one by one, al those pale sticky princes. You claimed your rights, my lord, but in the darkness I would eat your heirs. Taena gave a shudder. She gasped some words in a foreign tongue, then shuddered again and arched her back and screamed. She sounds as if she is being gored, the queen thought. For a moment she let herself imagine that her fingers were a bore’s tusks, ripping the Myrish woman apart from groin to throat.It was stil no good.It had never been any good with anyone but Jaime.When she tried to take her hand away, Taena caught it and kissed her fingers. Sweet queen, how shal I pleasure you? She slid her hand down Cersei’s side and touched her sex. Tel me what you would have of me, my love."
Al Gore,Progressive,"The subjugation of news by entertainment seriously harms our democracy: It leads to dysfunctional journalism that fails to inform the people. And when the people are not informed, they cannot hold government accountable when it is incompetent, corrupt, or both."
Al Gore,Progressive,"The flight insurance example highlights another psychological phenomenon that is important to understanding how fear influences our thinking: probability neglect. Social scientists have found that when confronted with either an enormous threat or a huge reward, people tend to focus on the magnitude of the consequence and ignore the probability. Consider how the Bush administration has used some of the techniques identified by Professor Glassner. Repeating the same threat over and over again, misdirecting attention (from al-Qaeda to Saddam Hussein), and using vivid imagery (a mushroom cloud over an American city). September 11 had a profound impact on all of us. But after initially responding in an entirely appropriate way, the administration began to heighten and distort public fear of terrorism to create a political case for attacking Iraq. Despite the absence of proof, Iraq was said to be working hand in hand with al-Qaeda and to be on the verge of a nuclear weapons capability. Defeating Saddam was conflated with bringing war to the terrorists, even though it really meant diverting attention and resources from those who actually attacked us."
Al Gore,Progressive,"if consumption by the one billion people in the developed countries declined, it is certainly nowhere close to doing so where the other six billion of us are concerned. If the rest of the world bought cars and trucks at the same per capita rate as in the United States, the world’s population of cars and trucks would be 5.5 billion. The production of global warming pollution and the consumption of oil would increase dramatically over and above today’s unsustainable levels. With the increasing population and rising living standards in developing countries, the pressure on resource constraints will continue, even as robosourcing and outsourcing reduce macroeconomic demand in developed countries. Around the same time that The Limits to Growth was published, peak oil production was passed in the United States. Years earlier, a respected geologist named M. King Hubbert collected voluminous data on oil production in the United States and calculated that an immutable peak would be reached shortly after 1970. Although his predictions were widely dismissed, peak production did occur exactly when he predicted it would. Exploration, drilling, and recovery technologies have since advanced significantly and U.S. oil production may soon edge back slightly above the 1970 peak, but the new supplies are far more expensive. The balance of geopolitical power shifted slightly after the 1970 milestone. Less than a year after peak oil production in the U.S., the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) began to flex its muscles, and two years later, in the fall of 1973, the Arab members of OPEC implemented the first oil embargo. Since those tumultuous years when peak oil was reached in the United States, energy consumption worldwide has doubled, and the growth rates in China and other emerging markets portend further significant increases. Although the use of coal is declining in the U.S., and coal-fired generating plants are being phased out in many other developed countries as well, China’s coal imports have already increased 60-fold over the past decade"
Al Gore,Progressive,"Bernays’s business partner, Paul Mazur, said, We must shift America from a needs to a desires culture.… People must be trained to desire, to want new things, even before the old have been entirely consumed. We must shape a new mentality. Man’s desires must overshadow his needs. As Bernays later wrote, in 1928, the conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society. Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government that is the true ruling power of this country. We are governed, our minds molded, our tastes formed, our ideas suggested, largely by men we have never heard of. This is a logical result of the way in which our democratic society is organized.… In almost every act of our daily lives, whether in the sphere of politics or business, in our social conduct or our ethical thinking, we are dominated by the relatively small number of persons … who understand the mental processes and social patterns of the masses. It is they who pull the wires which control the public mind."
Al Gore,Progressive,"the opportunity presented by the climate crisis is not only the opportunity for new and better jobs, new technologies, new opportunities for profit, and a higher quality of life. It gives us an opportunity to experience something that few generations ever have the privilege of knowing: a common moral purpose compelling enough to lift us above our limitations and motivate us to set aside some of the bickering to which we as human beings are naturally vulnerable."
Al Gore,Progressive,"China has led the world in new tree planting; in fact, over the last several years, China has planted 40 percent as many tress as the rest of the world put together. Since 1981, all citizens of China older than age eleven (and younger than sixty) have been formally required to plant at least three trees per year. To date, China has planted approximately 100 million acres of new tress. Following China, the countries with the largest net gains in tress include the U.S., India, Vietnam, and Spain."
Al Gore,Progressive,"Two thousand scientists in a hundred countries, engaged in the most elaborate, well-organized scientific collaboration in the history of humankind, have long since produced a consensus that we will face a string of terrible catastrophes unless we act to prepare ourselves and deal with the underlying causes of global warming."
Al Gore,Progressive,Our political system today does not engage the best minds in our country to help us get the answers and deploy the resources we need to move into the future. Bringing these people in
Al Gore,Progressive,"Charting liberal hypocrisy is now old hat. From academia to the Sierra Club, elite progressives expect to live lives that are quite different from what they envision for the less sophisticated. No one believes that Elizabeth Warren would wish affirmative action to work for everyone in the way that she herself subverted it. Nor would we expect Warren not to be in the 1 percent that she so scolds"
Al Gore,Progressive,"The persistent and sustained reliance on falsehoods as the basis of policy, even in the face of massive and well-understood evidence to the contrary, seems to many Americans to have reached levels that were previously unimaginable."
Al Gore,Progressive,It may well be that the disuse of democracy’s calisthenics
Al Gore,Progressive,"the simplicity of many of Bush’s pronouncements is often misinterpreted as evidence that he has penetrated to the core of a complex issue, when in fact exactly the opposite is true: They often mark his refusal even to consider complexity. And that’s particularly troubling in a world where the challenges America faces are often quite complex and require rigorous, sustained, disciplined analysis."
Al Gore,Progressive,I heard precious little questioning of the preposterous logic by which the president and vice president had conflated Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein. It was as if the nation had decided to suspend the normal rigors of logical analysis while we pursued war against a noun (terror) and a nation (Iraq) that had absolutely nothing to do with the attack we were seeking to avenge.
Al Gore,Progressive,"After invoking the language and symbols of religion to bypass reason and convince the country to go to war, Bush found it increasingly necessary to disdain and dispute inconvenient facts that began to surface in public discussions. He sometimes seemed to wage war against reason itself in his effort to deny obvious truths that were totally inconsistent with the false impressions the nation had been given prior to making the decision to invade. He and his team seemed to approach every question of fact as a partisan fight to the finish. Those who questioned the faulty assumptions on which the war was based were attacked as unpatriotic. Those who pointed to the forged evidence and glaring inconsistencies were accused of supporting terrorism. One of Bush’s congressional allies, John Boehner, then House majority leader, said, If you want to let the terrorists win in Iraq, just vote for the Democrats."
Al Gore,Progressive,The progressive abandonment of concern for reason or evidence has required the administration to develop a highly effective propaganda machine with which it attempts to embed in the public mind mythologies that grow out of one central doctrine upon which all the special interests agree: Government is very bad and should be done away with as much as possible
Al Gore,Progressive,We often
Al Gore,Progressive,"Roosevelt said, in April 1906, Behind the ostensible government sits enthroned an invisible government owing no allegiance and acknowledging no responsibility to the people. To destroy this invisible government, to befoul the unholy alliance between corrupt business and corrupt politics, is the first task of the statesmanship of the day."
Al Gore,Progressive,"even as looters were carrying off many of Iraq’s priceless antiquities from museums designed to commemorate the cradle of civilization, only one government building was protected by American troops: the petroleum ministry. In 2007, even as Iraq was disintegrating into sectarian violence, the Bush administration was carefully crafting legal documents"
Al Gore,Progressive,Faith in the power of reason
Al Gore,Progressive,"Abraham Lincoln, said in 1838, when he and the United States were both very young, Reason"
Al Gore,Progressive,"When you pray, move your feet. Prayer without action, like optimism without engagement, is passive aggression toward the future. Even"
Al Gore,Progressive,"Batteries: The Key to a Renewable Future Modern civilization depends upon a constant, reliable stream of energy. However, renewables such as wind and solar are notoriously intermittent; wind depends on the whim of nature, and solar power dries up as the sun goes down. Batteries solve this problem by storing excess power generated throughout the day and supplying it in the absence of sunlight or wind. In addition, batteries respond well to high electricity demands, help lower energy costs, and ensure reliability. They are the most crucial components in any clean power future. Power storage is a much more difficult technological problem than power generation. From lithium ion to rechargeable flow, inventors and developers have experimented with many new ideas. There is not yet a magic bullet to solve our power storing needs. The good news, however, is that in the past decade, batteries have made great strides in capacity and lower prices. This is due in part to the electric vehicle industry, which relies heavily on efficient lithium ion batteries. In 2016, Tesla Inc. began manufacturing its Powerwall and Powerpack energy products at its Gigafactory, currently the world’s largest lithium ion battery factory. The goal of the plant is to drive down the cost of the company’s electric vehicle and energy storage batteries while also spurring innovation. Doing so, according to the company, will make renewable energy storage a more accessible and viable option."
Al Gore,Progressive,"Nevertheless, the obvious and overwhelming evidence of the damage we are causing is now increasingly impossible for reasonable people to ignore. It is widely known by now that there is a nearly unanimous view among all scientists authoring peer-reviewed articles related to the climate crisis that it threatens our future, that human activities are largely if not entirely responsible, and that action is needed urgently to prevent the catastrophic harm it is already starting to bring. More importantly, Mother Nature is reminding us almost daily that the impacts of the climate crisis are growing steadily more severe, with more frequent and powerful climate-related extreme weather events. Every night, the TV news is like a nature hike through the Book of Revelation. But before diving further into examples of the unprecedented harm we are causing, please remember how important it is to guard against feelings of despair. Despair, after all, is simply another form of denial, and can serve to paralyze the will we need to fight our way out of this crisis. And bear in mind that the hopeful news about the availability of solutions is a powerful antidote to the feelings that can be aroused by the disconcerting news about the self-harm we are presently inflicting upon humanity."
Al Gore,Progressive,"I believe that the vividness experienced in the reading of words is automatically modulated by the constant activation of the reasoning centers of the brain that are used in the process of cocreating the representation of reality the author has intended. By contrast, the visceral vividness portrayed on television has the capacity to trigger instinctual responses similar to those triggered by reality itself -- and without being modulated by logic, reason, and reflective thought."
Al Gore,Progressive,"It is well documented that humans are especially fearful of threats than can be easily pictured or imagined. For example, one study found that people are willing to spend significantly more for flight insurance that covers death from 'terrorist acts' than for flight insurance that covers death from 'all possible causes'. Now, logically, flight insurance for death by any cause would cover terrorism in addition to a number of other potential problems. But something about the buzzword terrorism created a vivid impression that generates excessive fear.The flight insurance example highlights another psychological phenomenon that is important to understanding how fear influences our thinking: probability neglect. Social scientists have found that when confronted with either an enormous threat or a huge reward, people tend to focus on the magnitude of the consequence and ignore probability."
Al Gore,Progressive,"The American experiment was based on the emergence in the second half of the eighteenth century of a fresh new possibility in human affairs: that the rule of reason could be sovereign. You could say that the age of print begat the Age of Reason which begat the age of democracy. The eighteenth century witnessed more and more ordinary citizens able to use knowledge as a source of power to mediate between wealth and privilege. The democratic logic inherent in these new trends was blunted and forestalled by the legacy structures of power in Europe. But the intrepid migrants who ventured across the Atlantic -- many of them motivated by a desire to escape the constraints of class and creed -- carried the potent seeds of the Enlightenment and planted them in the fertile soil of the New World.Our Founders understood this better than any others; they realized that a well-informed citizenry could govern itself and secure liberty for individuals by substituting reason for brute force. They decisively rejected the three-thousand-year-old superstitious belief in the divine right of kings to rule absolutely and arbitrarily. They reawakened the ancient Greek and Roman traditions of debating the wisest courses of action by exchanging information and opinions in new ways.Whether it is called a public forum or a public sphere or a marketplace of ideas, the reality of open and free public discussion and debate was considered central to the operation of our democracy in America's earliest decades. Our first self-expression as a nation -- We the People -- made it clear where the ultimate source of authority lay.It was universally understood that the ultimate check and balance for American government was its accountability to the people. And the public forum was the place where the people held the government accountable. That is why it was so important the marketplace for ideas operated independent from and beyond the authority of government. The three most important characteristics of this marketplace of ideas were the following:1. It was open to every individual, with no barriers to entry save the necessity of literacy. This access, it is crucial to add, applied not only to the receipt of information but also the ability to contribute information directly into the flow of ideas that was available to all.2. The fate of ideas contributed by individuals depended, for the most part, on an emergent meritocracy of ideas. Those judged by the market to be good rose to the top, regardless of the wealth or class of the individual responsible for them.3. The accepted rules of discourse presumed that the participants were all governed by an unspoken duty to search for general agreement. That is what a conversation of democracy is all about."
Al Gore,Progressive,"MoveOn.org tried to buy an ad for the 2004 Super Bowl broadcast to express opposition to Bush's economic policy, which was then being debated by Congress. CBS told MoveOn that issue advocacy was not permissible. Then, CBS, having refused the MoveOn ad, began running advertisements by the White House in favor of one of the president's controversial policies. So MoveOn complained, and the White House ad was temporarily removed. By temporarily, I mean it was removed until the White House complained, and CBS immediately put the ad back on, yet still refused to present the MoveOn ad."
Al Gore,Progressive,"Television's ability to evoke the fear response is especially significant because Americans spend so much of their lives watching TV. An important explanation for why we spend so much time motionless in front of the screen is that television constantly triggers the orienting response in our brains.As I noted in the introduction, the purpose of the orienting response is to immediately establish in the present moment whether or not fear is appropriate by determining whether or not the sudden movement that has attracted attention is evidence of a legitimate threat. (The orienting response also serves to immediately focus attention on potential prey or on individuals of the opposite sex). When there is a sudden movement in our field of vision, somewhere deep below the conscious brain a message is sent: LOOK! So we do. When our ancestors saw the leaves move, their emotional response was different from and more subtle than fear. The response might be described as Red Alert! Pay attention!.Now, television commercials and many action sequences on television routinely activate that orienting reflex once per second. And since we in this country, on average, watch television more than four and a half hours per day, those circuits of the brain are constantly being activated.The constant and repetitive triggering of the orienting response induces a quasi-hypnotic state. It partially immobilizes viewers and creates an addiction to the constant stimulation of two areas of the brain: the amygdala and the hippocampus (part of the brain's memory and contextualizing system). It's almost as though we have a receptor for television in our brains."
Al Gore,Progressive,"Having spent the better part of my life for the past several decades trying to learn from experts on the climate crisis and working with technology and policy innovators to develop solutions for the unprecedented challenge humanity faces, I have never been more hopeful. At this point in the fight to solve the climate crisis, there are only three questions remaining: Must we change? Can we change? Will we change? In the pages that follow, you will find the best available evidence supporting the overwhelming conclusion that the answer to the first two of these three questions is a resounding Yes. I am convinced that the answer to the third question"
Al Gore,Progressive,"The present threat is not based on conflicting ideas about America's basic principles. It is based on several serious problems that stem from the dramatic and fundamental change in the way we communicate among ourselves. Our challenge now is to understand that change and see those problems for what they are.Consider the rules by which our present public forum now operates and how different they are from the norms our Founders knew during the age of print. Today's massive flows of information are largely only in one direction. The world of television makes it virtually impossible for individuals to take part in what passes for a national conversation.Individuals receive, but they cannot send. They absorb, but they cannot share. They hear, but they do not speak. They see constant motion, but they do not move themselves. The well-informed citizenry is in danger of becoming the well-amused audience.Ironically, television programming is actually more accessible to more people than any source of information has ever been in all of history. But here is the crucial distinction: It is accessible in only one direction. There is no true interactivity, and certainly no conversation. Television stations and networks are almost completely inaccessible to individual citizens and almost always uninterested in ideas contributed by citizens.So, unlike the marketplace of ideas that emerged in the wake of the printing press, there is much less of an exchange of ideas in television's domain because of the imposing barriers to entry that exclude contributions from most citizens."
Al Gore,Progressive,The fact that an astronomer knows so little about the inherent uncertainties in different scientific disciplines suggests to me that our current crop of pop-science icons should be largely ignored for information outside their specific areas of expertise.
Al Gore,Progressive,"What is the Paris Climate Agreement? 195 countries signed a pledge to keep global temperature rise below 2°C (3.6°F), and, if possible, below 1.5°C (2.7°F). All countries agree to reduce global greenhouse gas emissions to net zero as soon as possible in the second half of the century. The U.S. pledged to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 26 to 28 percent below 2005 levels by 2025. India aims to install 175 gigawatts of renewable energy capacity by 2022. China will peak its CO2 emissions by 2030. Developed countries will provide $100 billion in climate finance by 2020. Countries should raise the ambition of their initial commitments over time to make sure we meet the goals of the Paris Agreement. The Paris Agreement entered into force on November 4, 2016."
Al Gore,Progressive,"TRUTH TO POWER This section presents a blueprint for what you can do personally to hasten the solution to the climate crisis. As you may have noticed, the year 2017 has already been marked by an enormous upsurge in political activism in the United States, especially on the part of the many millions of Americans who strongly oppose the policies and proposals of the Trump administration."
Al Gore,Progressive,One of the large uncertainties about climate change is the extent to which it changes naturally. This dirty little secret is usually swept under the rug.
Al Gore,Progressive,"If your prayers are not fertile, what are they? How do you make the Buddy System feminine? Pink is feminine."
Alan Bennett,Progressive,"The best moments in reading are when you come across something – a thought, a feeling, a way of looking at things – which you had thought special and particular to you. Now here it is, set down by someone else, a person you have never met, someone even who is long dead. And it is as if a hand has come out and taken yours."
Alan Bennett,Progressive,"Books are not about passing time. They're about other lives. Other worlds. Far from wanting time to pass, one just wishes one had more of it. If one wanted to pass the time one could go to New Zealand."
Alan Bennett,Progressive,"You don't put your life into your books, you find it there."
Alan Bennett,Progressive,How do I define history? It's just one fucking thing after another
Alan Bennett,Progressive,"We started off trying to set up a small anarchist community, but people wouldn't obey the rules."
Alan Bennett,Progressive,"A bookshelf is as particular to its owner as are his or her clothes; a personality is stamped on a library just as a shoe is shaped by the foot.[Baffled at a Bookcase (London Review of Books, Vol. 33 No. 15, 28 July 2011)]"
Alan Bennett,Progressive,History is a commentary on the various and continuing incapabilities of men. What is history? History is women following behind with the bucket.
Alan Bennett,Progressive,Above literature?' said the Queen. 'Who is above literature? You might as well say one was above humanity.
Alan Bennett,Progressive,"Sometimes there is no next time, no time-outs, no second chances. Sometimes it’s now or never."
Alan Bennett,Progressive,One of the hardest things for boys to learn is that a teacher is human. One of the hardest things for a teacher to learn is not to try and tell them.
Alan Bennett,Progressive,"[B]riefing is not reading. In fact it is the antithesis of reading. Briefing is terse, factual and to the point. Reading is untidy, discursive and perpetually inviting. Briefing closes down a subject, reading opens it up."
Alan Bennett,Progressive,"Why do we not care to acknowledge them? The cattle, the body count. We still don't like to admit the war was even partly our fault because so many of our people died. A photograph on every mantlepiece. And all this mourning has veiled the truth. It's not so much lest we forget, as lest we remember. Because you should realise the Cenotaph and the Last Post and all that stuff is concerned, there's no better way of forgetting something than by commemorating it."
Alan Bennett,Progressive,Definition of a classic: a book everyone is assumed to have read and often thinks they have. 
Alan Bennett,Progressive,I'm not happy but I'm not unhappy about it.
Alan Bennett,Progressive,"I don't always understand poetry!''You don't always understand it? Timms, I never understand it. But learn it now, know it now and you will understand it...whenever."
Alan Bennett,Progressive,"It's subjunctive history. You know, the subjunctive? The mood used when something may or may not have happened. When it is imagined."
Alan Bennett,Progressive,One reads for pleasure...it is not a public duty.
Alan Bennett,Progressive,"Cloisters, ancient libraries ... I was confusing learning with the smell of cold stone."
Alan Bennett,Progressive,"... Once I start a book I finish it. That was the way one was brought up. Books, bread and butter, mashed potato - one finishes what's on one's plate. That's always been my philosophy."
Alan Bennett,Progressive,"To begin with, it's true, she read with trepidation and some unease. The sheer endlessness of books outfaced her and she had no idea how to go on; there was no system to her reading, with one book leading to another, and often she had two or three on the go at the same time."
Alan Bennett,Progressive,Clichés can be quite fun. That's how they got to be clichés.
Alan Bennett,Progressive,...she felt about reading what some writers felt about writing: that it was impossible not to do it and that at this late stage of her life she had been chosen to read as others were chosen to write.
Alan Bennett,Progressive,History is just one fucking thing after another.
Alan Bennett,Progressive,"But then books, as I'm sure you know, seldom prompt a course of action. Books generally just confirm you in what you have, perhaps unwittingly, decided to do already. You go to a book to have your convictions corroborated. A book, as it were, closes the book."
Alan Bennett,Progressive,"Authors, she soon decided, were probably best met within the pages of their novels, and were as much creatures of the reader's imagination as the characters in their books. Nor did they seem to think one had done them a kindness by reading their writings. Rather they had done one the kindness by writing them."
Alan Bennett,Progressive,To read is to withdraw.To make oneself unavailable. One would feel easier about it if the pursuit inself were less...selfish.
Alan Bennett,Progressive,It was the kind of libraryhe had only read about in books.
Alan Bennett,Progressive,"[talking about the Holocaust]'But to put something in context is a step towards saying it can be understood and that it can be explained. And if it can be explained that it can be explained away.''But this is History. Distance yourselves. Our perspective on the past alters. Looking back, immediately in front of us is dead ground. We don't see it, and because we don't see it this means that there is no period so remote as the recent past. And one of the historian's jobs is to anticipate what our perspective of that period will be... even on the Holocaust."
Alan Bennett,Progressive,"All the effort went into getting there and then I had nothing left. I thought I'd got somewhere, then I found I had to go on."
Alan Bennett,Progressive,Life is rather like a tin of sardines - we're all of us looking for the key.
Alan Bennett,Progressive,The transmission of knowledge is in itself an erotic act.
Alan Bennett,Progressive,"Can there be any greater pleasure than to come across an author one enjoys and then to find they have written not just one book or two, but at least a dozen?"
Alan Bennett,Progressive,One recipe for happiness is to have to sense of entitlement.' To this she added a star and noted at the bottom of the page: 'This is not a lesson I have ever been in a position to learn.
Alan Bennett,Progressive,"I would have thought, said the prime minister, that Your Majesty was above literature. Above literature? said the Queen. Who is above literature? You might as well say one is above humanity."
Alan Bennett,Progressive,"God doesn't do notes, either. Did Jesus Christ say, Can I be excused the Crucifixion? No!"
Alan Bennett,Progressive,"I saw someone peeing in Jermym Street the other day. I thought, is this the end of civilization as we know it? Or is it simply someone peeing in Jermyn Street?"
Alan Bennett,Progressive,"History nowadays is not a matter of conviction.It’s a performance. It’s entertainment. And if it isn’t, make it so."
Alan Bennett,Progressive,"HEADMASTER: I was a geographer. I went to Hull.IRWIN: Oh. Larkin.HEADMASTER: Everybody says that. 'Hull? Oh, Larkin.' I don't know about the poetry...as I say, I was a geographer...but as a librarian he was pitiless. The Himmler of the Accessions Desk. And now, we're told, women in droves. Art. They get away with murder."
Alan Bennett,Progressive,"[...] But then books, as I'm sure you know, seldom prompt a course of actions. Books generally just confirm you in what you have, perhaps unwittingly, decided to do already. You go to a book to have your convictions corroborated. A book, as it were, closes the book."
Alan Bennett,Progressive,"IRWIN: At the time of the Reformation there were fourteen foreskins of Christ preserved, but it was thought that the church of St John Lateran in Rome had the authentic prepuce.DAKIN: Don't think we're shocked by your mention of the word 'foreskin', sir.CROWTHER: No, sir. Some of us even have them.LOCKWOOD: Not Posner, though, sir. Posner's like, you know, Jewish.It's one of several things Posner doesn't have. (Posner mouths 'fuck off.')"
Alan Bennett,Progressive,"Dakin: The more you read, though, the more you'll see that literature is actually about losers.Scripps: No.Dakin: It's consolation. All literature is consolation."
Alan Bennett,Progressive,"Archbishop. Why do I never read the lesson? I beg your pardon, ma’am? In church. Everybody else gets to read and one never does. It’s not laid down, is it? It’s not off-limits? Not that I’m aware, ma’am.Good. Well in that case I’m going to start. Leviticus, here I come. Goodnight. The archbishop shook his head and went back to Strictly Come Dancing."
Alan Bennett,Progressive,"I have to seem like a human being all the time, but I seldom have to be one. I have people to do that for me."
Alan Bennett,Progressive,"...to her all books were the same and, as with her subjects, she felt a duty to approach them without prejudice...Lauren Bacall, Winifred Holtby, Sylvia Plath - who were they? Only be reading could she find out."
Alan Bennett,Progressive,"Remember. You are a physician. You are not a policeman nor are you a minister of religion. You must take people as they come. Remember, too that though you will generally know more about the condition than the patient, it is the patient who has the condition and this if nothing else bestows on him or her a kind of wisdom. You have the knowledge but that does not entitle you to be superior. Knowledge makes you the servant not the master."
Alan Bennett,Progressive,Never at my best when at my best behaviour.
Alan Bennett,Progressive,Marriage is supposed to be a partnership. Good-looking people marry good-looking people and the others take what's left.
Alan Bennett,Progressive, . . . there was little to choose between Jews and Catholics. The Jews had holidays that turned up out of the blue and the Catholics had children in much the same way.
Alan Bennett,Progressive,"Good nature, or what is often considered as such, is the most selfish of all virtues: it is nine times out of ten mere indolence of disposition. William Hazlitt, ‘On the Knowledge of Character’ (1822)"
Alan Bennett,Progressive,I know what’s required. It’s perfectly simple: Justice.
Alan Bennett,Progressive,At eighty things do not occur; they recur.
Alan Bennett,Progressive,"...But what is it all about, what am I trying to do, is there a message? Nobody knows, and I certainly don't. If one could answer these questions in any other way than by writing what one has written, then there would be no point in writing at all."
Alan Bennett,Progressive,"Too late. It was all too late. But she went on, determined as ever and always trying to catch up."
Alan Bennett,Progressive,You don't put your life into books. You find it there.
Alan Bennett,Progressive,"Still, though reading absorbed her, what the Queen had not expected was the degree to which it drained her of enthusiasm for anything else."
Alan Bennett,Progressive,"I am the King. I tell. I am not told. I am the verb, sir. I am not the object. (King George III)"
Alan Bennett,Progressive,"To her, though, nothing could have been more serious, and she felt about reading what some writers felt about writing: that it was impossible not to do it and that at this late stage of her life she had been chosen to read as others were chosen to write."
Alan Bennett,Progressive,"Deluded liberal that I am, I persist in thinking that those with a streak of sexual unorthodoxy ought to be more tolerant of their fellows than those who lead an entirely godly, righteous and sober life. Illogically, I tend to assume that if you ( Philip Larkin) dream of caning schoolgirls bottoms, it disqualifies you from dismissing half the nation as work-shy."
Alan Bennett,Progressive,"One has met and indeed entertained many visiting heads of state, some of them unspeakable crooks and blackguards....One has given one's white-gloved hand to hands that were steeped in blood and conversed politely with men who have personally slaughtered children. One has waded through excrement and gore....Sometimes one has felt like a scented candle, sent in to perfume a regime, or aerate a policy, monarchy these days just a government-issue deoderant."
Alan Bennett,Progressive,"Still, to be urged to write and to be urged to publish are two different things and nobody so far was urging her to do the latter."
Alan Bennett,Progressive,"TIMMS: I don't see how we can understand it. Most of the stuff poetry's about hasn't happened to us yet.HECTOR: But it will, Timms. It will. And then you will have the antidote ready! Grief. Happiness. Even when you're dying. We're making your deathbeds here, boys.LOCKWOOD: Fucking Ada.HECTOR: Poetry is the trailer! Forthcoming attractions!"
Alan Bennett,Progressive,"When they arrived at the palace she had a word with Grant, the young footman in charge, who said it was security and that while ma'am had been in the Lords the sniffer dogs had been round and security had confiscated the book. He though it had probably been exploded.'Exploded?' said the Queen. 'But it was Anita Brookner."
Alan Bennett,Progressive,"Pass the parcel. That's sometimes all you can do. Take it, feel it, and pass it on. Not for me, not for you, but for someone, somewhere, one day. Pass it on, boys. That's the game I want you to learn. Pass it on."
Alan Bennett,Progressive,"And it occurred to her that reading was, among other things, a muscle and one that she had seemingly developed. She could read the novel with ease and great pleasure, laughing at remarks, they were hardly jokes, that she had not even noticed before."
Alan Bennett,Progressive,"What she was finding also was how one book led to another, doors kept opening wherever she turned and the days weren’t long enough for the reading she wanted to do."
Alan Bennett,Progressive,The prime minister did not wholly believe in the past or in any lessons that might be drawn from it.
Alan Bennett,Progressive,"Librarians who are arguing and lobbying for clever ebook lending solutions are completely missing the point. They are defending library as warehouse as opposed to fighting for the future, which is librarian as producer, concierge, connector, teacher and impresario."
Alan Bennett,Progressive,the more institutions and freedoms and benefits one can take for granted – of which in my view free state-supported galleries and museums come high on the list – the more civilised a society is.
Alan Bennett,Progressive,"She wasn't wholly infatuated, though she liked the way he looked; but, so too did he and that unfatuated her a bit."
Alan Bennett,Progressive,"She‘d never taken much interest in reading. She read, of course, as one did, but liking books was something she left to other people."
Alan Bennett,Progressive,"The appeal of reading, she thought, lay in its indifference: there was something undeferring about literature. Books did not care who was reading them or whether one read them or not. All readers were equal, herself included. Literature, she thought, is a commonwealth; letters a republic. Actually she had heard this phrase, the republic of letters, used before, at graduation ceremonies, honorary degrees and the like, though without knowing quite what it meant. At that time talk of a republic of any sort she had thought mildly insulting and in her actual presence tactless to say the least. It was only now she understood what it meant. Books did not defer. All readers were equal and this took her back to the beginning of her life. As a girl, one of her greatest thrills had been on VE night when she and her sister had slipped out of the gates and mingled unrecognised with the crowds. There was something of that, she felt, to reading. It was anonymous; it was shared; it was common. And she who had led a life apart now found that she craved it. Here in these pages and between these covers she could go unrecognised."
Alan Bennett,Progressive,One seldom was able to do her a good turn without some thoughts of strangulation.
Alan Bennett,Progressive,"They fuck you up, your mum and dad', and if you're planning on writing that's probably a good thing. But if you are planning on writing and they haven't fucked you up, well, you've got nothing to go on, so then they've fucked you up good and proper."
Alan Bennett,Progressive,"Today's ideology masquerades as pragmatism with that pragmatism reduced to the simplistic assumption that the basis of human nature is self-interest, a view which discount philanthropy, discredits altruism, with the only motive deserving of trust self-promotion and self-advancement.This so-called pragmatism is wicked and it is doubly so because it is held up as being both realistic and a virtue. Whereas it is shallow, shabby and all too often callous."
Alan Bennett,Progressive,"Never be prime minister at the start of a war, Nessie [..] The man that lead you into it isn't the one to lead you out of it."
Alan Bennett,Progressive,A man has been arrested in Epsom for signalling to German planes with a lighted cigarette
Alan Bennett,Progressive,"Still as I've said all along, you can't polish a turd."
Alan Bennett,Progressive,"Still, for all that everybody, while not happy, is not unhappy about it. And so they go on."
Alan Bennett,Progressive,The closest she got to pretence was politeness.
Alan Bennett,Progressive,"30 November. My dustbin has been on its last legs for some time, and after the binmen have called this morning I find no trace of it. Never having heard of tautology, the binmen have put the dustbin in the dustbin."
Alan Bennett,Progressive,"I note at the age of ten a fully developed ability not quite to enjoy myself, a capacity I have retained intact ever since."
Alan Bennett,Progressive,"The next library is a place, still. A place where people come together to do co-working and coordinate and invent projects worth working on together. Aided by a librarian who can bring domain knowledge and people knowledge and access to information to bear."
Alan Bennett,Progressive," The king is up. You attend on the king, not on the clock. When the king is awake, you are awake."
Alan Bennett,Progressive,"Since Betty was on the pill or took precautions of her own which Graham did not choose to enquire into, the marital bed was untrammelled by tedious prophylaxis so that what Graham had been expecting to find an onerous and even distasteful duty unexpectedly partook of a freedom and absence of restraint that he found exhilerating."
Alan Bennett,Progressive,How old does one have to be still to say tits?
Alan Bennett,Progressive,"Proust's is a long book, though, water- skiing permitting, you could get through it in the summer recess"
Alan Bennett,Progressive,"She said, 'He knows what I mean. Where did you get those shoes?' He said, 'They're training shoes.' She said, 'Training for what? Are you not fully qualified?' He said, 'If Jesus were alive today, Mrs Whittaker, I think you'd find these were the type of shoes he would be wearing."
Alan Bennett,Progressive,it is seldom at the frontier that discoveries are made but more often in the dustbin.
Alan Bennett,Progressive,What people want to read often seems incongruous. A pair of biker-types taking away Thoughts of the Dalai Lama. People without access to instruments requesting sheet music. Aspiring poets sharing their work and then borrowing horror stories.
Alan Bennett,Progressive,"Books are wonderful, aren't they?' she said to the vice-chancellor who concurred.'At the risk of sounding like a piece of steak,' she said, 'they tenderise one."
Alan Bennett,Progressive,"Arriving at the hotel, like leaving it, was fraught with anxiety: there was always the question of ‘the tip’. Dad would probably have his shilling ready before he’d even signed the register, and when the porter had shown them up to their room would give it to him, as often as not misjudging the moment, not waiting till his final departure but slipping it to him while he was still demonstrating what facilities the room had to offer – the commodious wardrobe, the luxurious bathroom – so the tip came as an unwelcome interruption. Once the potentially dangerous procedure of arrival had been got through, the luggage fetched up, the porter endowed with his shilling, and the door finally closed, my parents’ apprehension gave way to huge relief – it was as if they’d bluffed their way into the enemy camp, and relief gave way to giggles as they explored the delights of the place. ‘Come look in here, Dad. It’s a spanking place – there’s umpteen towels."
Alan Bennett,Progressive,"Unlike today's ideologues, whom I would call single-minded if mind came into it at all, I have no fear of the state."
Alan Bennett,Progressive,"Had she been asked if reading had enriched her life she would have had to say yes, undoubtedly, though adding with equal certainty that it had at the same time drained her life of all purpose."
Alan Bennett,Progressive,"Do you know,' she said one afternoon as they were reading in her study, 'do you know the area in which one would truly excel?''No, ma'am?''The pub quiz. One has been everywhere, seen everything, and though one might have difficulty with pop music and some sport, when it comes to the capital of Zimbabwe, say, or the principle exports of New South Wales, I have all that at my fingertips."
Alan Bennett,Progressive,One does try not to be an Old Git but they don't make it easy.
Alan Bennett,Progressive,"A library in the middle of a community is a cross between an emergency exit, a life raft and a festival. They are cathedrals of the mind; hospitals of the soul; theme parks of the imagination."
Alan Bennett,Progressive,For a child a library needs to be round the corner. And if we lose local libraries it is children who will suffer.
Alan Bennett,Progressive,I think the need for reading boils down to one simple issue: children are selfish. Reading about other people creates a sense of balance in a child’s life. It gives them the knowledge that there is a world outside themselves. It tells them that the language they are learning at home is the key to unlocking the mysteries of the greater world.
Alan Bennett,Progressive,"Kids who read become students who do well in school. Students who do well in school go to college. College students graduate to good jobs and pay higher taxes. Libraries don’t service only left-wingers or right. They don’t judge by class, race or religion. They service everyone in their community, no matter their circumstances. Rich or poor; no one is denied. Libraries are not simply part of our guarantee to the pursuit of happiness. They are a civil right. If we lose our libraries, we risk losing our communities, our families and ourselves."
Alan Bennett,Progressive,"Libraries are very special spaces, spaces where people come together in separate but joint pursuits of knowledge, of learning. Libraries are the heartbeats of communities."
Alan Bennett,Progressive,"It was almost a side-effect that this caused me to educate myself to a degree which was beyond anything a school could hope to achieve. My own appetite for knowledge and reading and connection had led me, and that is how education works, not by spoon-feeding, but by stimulating the appetite so that children cannot wait to feed themselves."
Alan Bennett,Progressive,"20 March - All the Leeds trains have been cancelled and I am wandering the station not knowing what to do when Rupert discovers me, having managed to get on to a Scottish train and change at Doncaster. Greatly elated by this we have a supper at La Grilla (halibut and chips) and then drive homeward in good spirits. Except that just after the Addingham bypass R. cries out and I see a grey shape in the headlights and he hits a badger - a young one, I would have thought and which, with its striped nose now lies senseless by the kerb. We drive back round the roundabout and then up the road again - and for one exultant moment it seems to have picked itself up and gone, but there it is, lying like an old rug by the roadside. We discuss running it over again to make sure it is dead - but neither of us can face it. R. is devastated; it's like Vronsky breaking his horse's back - a moment he can never call back - and feeling himself guilty and polluted by everything he hates - heedless cars, thoughtless motorists with him now one of their number. What particularly upsets him is that I have never seen a live badger - all the badgers I have seen like this one is now, a dirty corpse by the roadside. We drive on in sadness and silence."
Alan Bennett,Progressive,"16 December. In his book The Poetics of Space (1958) the critic and philosopher Gaston Bachelard quotes the advice of a dictionary of botany: ‘Reader, study the periwinkle in detail, and you will see how detail increases an object’s stature.’ ‘To use a magnifying glass’, Bachelard comments a little later, ‘is to pay attention.’ (From The Man with a Blue Scarf by Martin Gayford.)"
Alan Bennett,Progressive,"as I think Hebbel says, in a good play everyone is right."
Alan Bennett,Progressive,"I tried to explain to her the significance of the great poet, but without much success, The Waste Land not figuring very largely in Mam's scheme of things. The thing is, I said finally, he won the Nobel Prize. Well, she said, with that unerring grasp of inessentials which is the prerogative of mothers, Im not surprised. It was a beautiful overcoat."
Alan Bennett,Progressive,"Much comment on Mrs T.’s courage the next morning, when she arrives at the Conservative conference on the dot, but it’s not difficult to appear calm and unruffled in such circumstances, as any actor could tell you. The majority of people perform well in a crisis and when the spotlight is on them; it’s on the Sunday afternoons of this life, when nobody is looking, that the spirit falters."
Alan Bennett,Progressive,"and when Mrs Thatcher came to the college for a scientific symposium Tyson was deputed to take her round the Common Room. This is hung with portraits and photographs of dead fellows, including one of the economist G. D. H. Cole. Tyson planned to take Mrs Thatcher up to it saying, ‘And this, Prime Minister, is a former fellow, G. D. H. Dole.’ Whereupon, with luck, Mrs Thatcher would have had to say, ‘Cole not Dole.’ In the event he did take her round but lost his nerve."
Alan Bennett,Progressive,One of the hardest things for boys to learn is that a teacher is human. One of the hardest things for a teacher to learn is not to try to tell them.
Alan Bennett,Progressive,"Books and bookcases cropping up in stuff that I've written means that they have to be reproduced on stage or on film. This isn't as straightforward as it might seem. A designer will either present you with shelves lined with gilt-tooled library sets, the sort of clubland books one can rent by the yard as decor, or he or she will send out for some junk books from the nearest second-hand bookshop and think that those will do. Another short cut is to order in a cargo of remaindered books so that you end up with a shelf so garish and lacking of character it bears about as much of a relationship to literature as a caravan site does to architecture. A bookshelf is as particular to its owner as are his or her clothes; a personality is stamped on a library just as a shoe is shaped to the foot."
Alan Bennett,Progressive,"BURGESSHow do you like Moscow?CORALLoathe it, darling. I cannot understand what those Three Sisters were on about. It gives the play a very sinister slant."
Alan Bennett,Progressive,"May 1976. I have had some manure delivered for the garden and, since the manure heap is not far from the van, Miss S. is concerned that people passing might think the smell is coming from there. She wants me to put a notice on the gate to the effect that the smell is the manure, not her. I say no, without adding, as I could, that the manure actually smells much nicer.I am working in the garden when Miss B., the social worker, comes with a boxful of clothes.Miss S. is reluctant to open the van door, as she is listening to 'Any Answers', but eventually she slides on her bottom to the door of the van and examines the clothes. She is unimpressed.MISS S.: I only asked for one coat.MISS B.: Well, I brought three just in case you wanted a change.MISS S.: I haven't got room for three. Besides, I was planning to wash this coat in the near future. That makes four.MISS B.: This is my old nursing mac.MISS S.: I have a mac. Besides, green doesn't suit me. Have you got the stick?MISS B.: No. That's being sent down. It made to be made specially.MISS S.: Will it be long enough?MISS B.: Yes. It's a special stick.MISS S.: I don't want a special stick. I want an ordinary stick. Does it have a rubber thing on?"
Alan Bennett,Progressive,"To reduce a library to simple architecture, bricks and mortar is a mistake. Similarly, to suggest a library is defined by the books on the shelf is erroneous."
Alan Bennett,Progressive,Watching people behave is nothing special; watching them trying to behave is always fascinating.
Alan Bennett,Progressive,Then down into Giggleswick to a silly supper and a game of Trivial Pursuit. To play Trivial Pursuit with a life like mine could be said to be a form of homeopathy.
Alan Bennett,Progressive,The names Americans visit on their children never ceases to amaze me. One of Diana Ross' daughters labours under the name of Chudney.
Alan Bennett,Progressive,Once upon a time I had my life planned out...
Alan Bennett,Progressive,"I am married,’ she shouted, ‘to the cupboard under the sink.’ A remark made more mysterious to Mrs Barnes by the sound of a passing ice-cream van playing the opening bars of the ‘Blue Danube’."
Alan Bennett,Progressive,"Mrs Lintott: Now. How do you define history, Mr Rudge? Rudge: Can I speak freely, Miss? Without being hit? Mrs Lintott: I will protect you. Rudge: How do I define history? It’s just one fucking thing after another.’ ALAN BENNETT, THE HISTORY BOYS"
Alan Bennett,Progressive,"Books and stories are lifelines, and libraries house those lifelines, making them available to all. They are important not just for the books, but for the space and freedom they provide, as well as the navigation and advice provided by librarians."
Alan Bennett,Progressive,I suppose everyone gets written about sooner or later.
Alan Bennett,Progressive,"Exploded?' said the Queen. 'But it was Anita Brookner.'The young man, who seemed remarkably undeferential, said security may have thought it was a device.The Queen said: 'Yea. That is exactly what it is. A book is a device to ignite the imagination.'The footman said: 'Yes, ma'am."
Alan Bennett,Progressive,"Shut up this minute, you silly little creatures..."
Alan Bennett,Progressive,"To read is to withdraw. To make oneself unavailable. One would feel easier about it’, said Sir Kevin, ‘if the pursuit itself were less … selfish."
Alan Bennett,Progressive,"I think of literature’, she wrote, ‘as a vast country to the far borders of which I am journeying but cannot possibly reach. And I have started too late. I will never catch up.’ Then (an unrelated thought): ‘Etiquette may be bad but embarrassment is worse."
Alan Bennett,Progressive,"Yet still the unresting castles thresh In fullgrown thickness every May. Last year is dead, they seem to say, Begin afresh, afresh, afresh."
Alan Bennett,Progressive,You don’t put your life into your books. You find it there.
Alan Bennett,Progressive,One recipe for happiness is to have no sense of entitlement.
Bill Moyers,Progressive,"Our very lives depend on the ethics of strangers, and most of us are always strangers to other people."
Bill Moyers,Progressive,Secrecy is the freedom tyrants dream of.
Bill Moyers,Progressive,"What's right and good doesn't come naturally. You have to stand up and fight for it - as if the cause depends on you, because it does."
Bill Moyers,Progressive,"War, except in self-defense, is a failure of moral imagination."
Bill Moyers,Progressive,"When I learn something new - and it happens every day - I feel a little more at home in this universe, a little more comfortable in the nest."
Bill Moyers,Progressive,We don't care really about children as a society and television reflects that indifference to children as human beings.
Bill Moyers,Progressive,"For the first time in our history, ideology and theology hold a monopoly of power in Washington."
Bill Moyers,Progressive,As a student I learned from wonderful teachers and ever since then I've thought everyone is a teacher.
Bill Moyers,Progressive,This is the first time in my 32 years in public broadcasting that PBS has ordered up programs for ideological instead of journalistic reasons.
Bill Moyers,Progressive,I work for him despite his faults and he lets me work for him despite my deficiencies.
Bill Moyers,Progressive,"Democracy may not prove in the long run to be as efficient as other forms of government, but it has one saving grace: it allows us to know and say that it isn't."
Bill Moyers,Progressive,Hyperbole was to Lyndon Johnson what oxygen is to life.
Bill Moyers,Progressive,"The printed page conveys information and commitment, and requires active involvement. Television conveys emotion and experience, and it's very limited in what it can do logically. It's an existential experience - there and then gone."
Bill Moyers,Progressive,I own and operate a ferocious ego.
Bill Moyers,Progressive,"Ideas are great arrows, but there has to be a bow. And politics is the bow of idealism."
Bill Moyers,Progressive,We see more and more of our Presidents and know less and less about what they do.
Bill Moyers,Progressive,There are honest journalists like there are honest politicians - they stay bought.
Paul Krugman,Progressive,"Debt is one person's liability, but another person's asset."
Paul Krugman,Progressive,"I think so long as fossil fuels are cheap, people will use them and it will postpone a movement towards new technologies."
Paul Krugman,Progressive,"As I've often said, you can shop online and find whatever you're looking for, but bookstores are where you find what you weren't looking for."
Paul Krugman,Progressive,The science fiction world has a lot of people doing seriously imaginative thinking.
Paul Krugman,Progressive,"The problem isn't that people don't understand how good things are. It's that they know, from personal experience, that things really aren't that good."
Paul Krugman,Progressive,We know that advanced economies with stable governments that borrow in their own currency are capable of running up very high levels of debt without crisis.
Paul Krugman,Progressive,Social Security is a social insurance program - it is not designed to be the same thing as a 401(k).
Paul Krugman,Progressive,I admit it: I had fun watching right-wingers go wild as health reform finally became law.
Paul Krugman,Progressive,The great thing about fiscal policy is that it has a direct impact and doesn't require you to bind the hands of future policymakers.
Paul Krugman,Progressive,"I have friends, political scientists, sociologists, who all share an interest at least in certain kinds of science fiction."
Paul Krugman,Progressive,"I don't think I've had any great success in predicting politics or social change, nor have I really tried."
Paul Krugman,Progressive,"The real danger with debt is what happens if lots of people decide, or are forced, to pay it off at the same time."
Paul Krugman,Progressive,"But Wall Street people are in fact very smart; they're funny, they're not company men who work their way up the chain."
Jesse Jackson,Progressive,"If you fall behind, run faster. Never give up, never surrender, and rise up against the odds."
Jesse Jackson,Progressive,"At the end of the day, we must go forward with hope and not backward by fear and division."
Jesse Jackson,Progressive,"What is the American dream? The American dream is one big tent. One big tent. And on that big tent you have four basic promises: equal protection under the law, equal opportunity, equal access, and fair share."
Jesse Jackson,Progressive,"Watch the walls come down, whether it's in the South or on Wall Street. When the walls come down, what do we find? More markets, more talent, more capital and growth. Which means that the race and sex discrimination stunt economic growth. It's not good for capitalism. It's not good for America's growth. And it's not morally right."
Jesse Jackson,Progressive,"In many ways, history is marked as 'before' and 'after' Rosa Parks. She sat down in order that we all might stand up, and the walls of segregation came down."
Jesse Jackson,Progressive,Life has its dimensions in the mysterious.
Jesse Jackson,Progressive,Deliberation and debate is the way you stir the soul of our democracy.
Jesse Jackson,Progressive,"A man must be willing to die for justice. Death is an inescapable reality and men die daily, but good deeds live forever."
Jesse Jackson,Progressive,"America is not a blanket woven from one thread, one color, one cloth."
Jesse Jackson,Progressive,It is a historical error for those who were not there to just refer to August 28th as 'I Have a Dream' speech day. That is a real disservice to those who were there. It was a sad day. It was not a celebration environment.
Jesse Jackson,Progressive,"A check or credit card, a Gucci bag strap, anything of value will do. Give as you live."
Jesse Jackson,Progressive,"In Afghanistan, there is a plan to build democracy; hundreds of thousands of troops are protecting it. There is a plan to rebuild and reconstruct there. But many thousands of Americans die from violence and poverty every year and we don't have a plan for reconstruction at home."
Jesse Jackson,Progressive,Leadership cannot just go along to get along. Leadership must meet the moral challenge of the day.
Jesse Jackson,Progressive,"Many kids come out of college, they have a credit card and a diploma. They don't know how to buy a house or a car or health insurance or life insurance. They do not know basic microeconomics."
Jesse Jackson,Progressive,"Those powers that control the tent are not threatened at all by any activity that you engage in, in the shadows, that's not moving toward the tent. And I am rather convinced that we have a generation that is so preoccupied with life in the shadows, they never even focus on getting to the sunlight where you open up the big tent."
Jesse Jackson,Progressive,From seeds of his body blossomed the flower that liberated a people and touched the soul of a nation.
Jesse Jackson,Progressive,"No one should negotiate their dreams. Dreams must be free to fly high. No government, no legislature, has a right to limit your dreams. You should never agree to surrender your dreams."
Jesse Jackson,Progressive,We've removed the ceiling above our dreams. There are no more impossible dreams.
Jesse Jackson,Progressive,Success needs no explanation. Failure does not have one that matters.
Jesse Jackson,Progressive,"If you don't feel apologetic for slavery, if you don't feel apologetic for colonialism, if you feel proud of it then say that."
George Soros,Progressive,The financial markets generally are unpredictable. So that one has to have different scenarios... The idea that you can actually predict what's going to happen contradicts my way of looking at the market.
George Soros,Progressive,I put forward a pretty general theory that financial markets are intrinsically unstable. That we really have a false picture when we think about markets tending towards equilibrium.
George Soros,Progressive,"I see tremendous imbalance in the world. A very uneven playing field, which has gotten tilted very badly. I consider it unstable. At the same time, I don't exactly see what is going to reverse it."
George Soros,Progressive,"Now that I have called you on your false accusation, you are using additional smear tactics."
George Soros,Progressive,"The reality is that financial markets are self-destabilizing; occasionally they tend toward disequilibrium, not equilibrium."
George Soros,Progressive,A full and fair discussion is essential to democracy.
George Soros,Progressive,"The worse a situation becomes the less it takes to turn it around, the bigger the upside."
George Soros,Progressive,"Well, you know, I was a human being before I became a businessman."
George Soros,Progressive,Bush's war in Iraq has done untold damage to the United States. It has impaired our military power and undermined the morale of our armed forces. Our troops were trained to project overwhelming power. They were not trained for occupation duties.
George Soros,Progressive,"Just as the process of repealing national alcohol prohibition began with individual states repealing their own prohibition laws, so individual states must now take the initiative with respect to repealing marijuana prohibition laws."
George Soros,Progressive,The criminalization of marijuana did not prevent marijuana from becoming the most widely used illegal substance in the United States and many other countries. But it did result in extensive costs and negative consequences.
George Soros,Progressive,Who most benefits from keeping marijuana illegal? The greatest beneficiaries are the major criminal organizations in Mexico and elsewhere that earn billions of dollars annually from this illicit trade - and who would rapidly lose their competitive advantage if marijuana were a legal commodity.
George Soros,Progressive,"Law has become a business. Health care has become a business. Unfortunately, politics has also become a business. That really undermines society."
George Soros,Progressive,"Increasingly, the Chinese will own a lot more of the world because they will be converting their dollar reserves and U.S. government bonds into real assets."
George Soros,Progressive,"Regulating and taxing marijuana would simultaneously save taxpayers billions of dollars in enforcement and incarceration costs, while providing many billions of dollars in revenue annually."
George Soros,Progressive,An open society is a society which allows its members the greatest possible degree of freedom in pursuing their interests compatible with the interests of others.
George Soros,Progressive,"There is a resurgence of anti-Semitism in Europe. The policies of the Bush administration and the Sharon administration contribute to that. It's not specifically anti-Semitism, but it does manifest itself in anti-Semitism as well."
Donna Brazile,Progressive,"It takes but one person, one moment, one conviction, to start a ripple of change."
Donna Brazile,Progressive,"If you rely on the media for your information, to educate yourself about the candidates and what issues are facing the country, then you get just part of the equation. I think it's important that we as citizens of this democracy take the responsibility to get as much information as possible before we go into the voting booth."
Donna Brazile,Progressive,We can be thankful President Barack Obama is taking aim at one of the prime causes of climate change and extreme weather: air pollution. The EPA's carbon pollution standards are the most significant step forward our country has ever taken to protect our health by addressing climate change.
Donna Brazile,Progressive,"As Democrats, we believe in giving every eligible citizen the opportunity to vote - whether it's early because they can't take off work on Election Day or absentee because they might have plans to be out of town."
Donna Brazile,Progressive,"I think people involved in politics make good actors. Acting and politics both involve fooling people. People like being fooled by actors. When you get right down to it, they probably like being fooled by politicians even more. A skillful actor will make you think, but a skillful politician will make you never have to think."
Donna Brazile,Progressive,I was motivated to be different in part because I was different.
Donna Brazile,Progressive,"Hurricane Katrina was the storm of the 21st century. It devastated an area the size of Great Britain. More than 1,800 Americans died. Three hundred thousand homes were destroyed. There was $96 billion in property damage. I served on the Louisiana Recovery Authority. I saw Congress write one big check and then skip town."
Donna Brazile,Progressive,The walk from Selma to Montgomery that turned into Bloody Sunday leaves us with a strong reminder of how much those before us gave for basic human rights.
Donna Brazile,Progressive,"If you want your checkbook to follow your heart, make a donation to those doing work you support."
Donna Brazile,Progressive,"When I was growing up, our nation was partitioned: Blacks were segregated by law in the South and largely by custom in the North, though it, too, had segregation laws. Our best universities had quota systems. Many white communities had real estate covenants to keep nonwhites out."
Donna Brazile,Progressive,"I have a simple rule: when I'm on TV, I'm not talking to just my anchor or my colleague on my right. I'm talking to America. I look into the lens, and in my head, I'm talking to somebody in Nebraska. Why Nebraska? Why the Cornhusker State? I have no idea. But it feels like it's a good place to talk to people."
Donna Brazile,Progressive,"I grew up in the once segregated South. I experienced forced integration during my formative school years. I lived the sacrifices, burdens, and tears. I also lived the moments of understanding, of acknowledgment, of fellowship and success. I saw my parents and grandparents coming home beaten down - and some of my friends beaten up."
Donna Brazile,Progressive,"A government of, by, and for the people requires that people talk to people, that we can agree to disagree but do so in civility. If we let the politicians and those who report dictate our discourse, then our course will be dictated."
Donna Brazile,Progressive,"I think that five, 10, 50 years down the road, we'll be honoring President Barack Obama for ending two wars, stopping the economic hemorrhage and, yes, reducing the number of uninsured. And the polls won't matter."
Donna Brazile,Progressive,Being on food stamps can be demeaning. Cashiers know the difference between the new plastic SNAP cards and a credit card. Some food stamp recipients say some cashiers have made them feel uncomfortable and embarrassed.
Donna Brazile,Progressive,"A white-boy attitude is 'I must exclude, denigrate, and leave behind.' They don't see it or think about it. It's a culture."
Donna Brazile,Progressive,Events like Hurricane Katrina and Superstorm Sandy were unlike any weather disasters before. They showed the world who suffers the most from the impacts of extreme weather: low-income families and communities of color.
Donna Brazile,Progressive,We all know that an angry electorate is a voting electorate.
Donna Brazile,Progressive,"Why not add benefits for making healthy food choices, provide a transition bonus for getting off food stamps, or increase job training opportunities and income - raising minimum wage?"
Donna Brazile,Progressive,I've appeared three times on 'The Good Wife.' I'm proud of being associated with the show. 'Time' magazine called it 'the best thing on TV outside cable.' Did I mention that I also appear on cable?
Donna Brazile,Progressive,"Ask any worker at Starbucks, Cosi, McDonald's or Walmart, 'How many jobs do you have?' and likely he or she will tell you: 'Two.' I know colleagues who've had breakfast at one store, and gone to lunch in another, only to find the same person waiting on them."
Donna Brazile,Progressive,"In modern politics, polls often serve as the canary in the mine - an early warning signal of danger or trends. But polls can also be used to wag the dog - diverting attention from something significant."
Donna Brazile,Progressive,"Over the years, I've worked for and alongside the American Federation of Teachers and National Education Association. That's because I am proud of our public school teachers - including my niece who teaches down in Louisiana - just as I am proud of our nation's education system."
Donna Brazile,Progressive,"We have become bound by a political straitjacket that frames every debate: Too much federal government. Yet our forefathers forged this system for us. The federal government can accomplish what the states, acting alone or even in concert, cannot."
Donna Brazile,Progressive,"At the same time that Donald Trump was facing a federal discrimination lawsuit for refusing to rent to minority families, Hillary Clinton risked her own safety to seek out the truth, to comfort the afflicted, and to make a home for justice where there was none. It was at the Children's Defense Fund that I met Hillary."
Donna Brazile,Progressive,"Sixty years after Brown v. Board of Education, it's time for us to take a hard look at the separate and unequal conditions that still exist in our schools and our communities and rededicate ourselves to fulfilling the promise of equal opportunity for all."
James Carville,Progressive,I had a remarkably happy childhood; whatever scars I have are self-inflicted.
James Carville,Progressive,"The only person that ever stumbles is a guy moving forward. You don't stumble backwards; you stumble forward, and you never stumble when you're stationary. So don't worry about stumbling. Keep pushing it forward."
James Carville,Progressive,"Like a lot of people, I pray for a sick relative or that kind of thing, but I don't pray to make my next flight connection at the airport. I find prayers before sports contests to be insensitive and kind of demeaning, at least when someone prays to beat the other team or something like that."
James Carville,Progressive,"If you want to believe that the government's coming for our guns or that being gay is a choice and a sin or that ObamaCare signals the end of civilization or that cutting taxes for rich people is the path to a better America, that's your choice. I'm never going to believe in any of that."
James Carville,Progressive,I believe that loyalty is a cardinal virtue. Nowhere in the world is loyalty so little revered and tittle-tattle so greatly venerated as in Washington.
James Carville,Progressive,"You know there's nothing a Hill Democrat would rather do than criticize another Democrat. It is their favorite activity. Then they can read about how honorable they are in an Op-Ed piece, how bipartisan."
James Carville,Progressive,"If a statesman is one who looks to the next generation and a politician one who looks to the next election, a political consultant must be one who looks to the next tracking poll."
James Carville,Progressive,"Sometimes the right thing gets done for the wrong reason and sometimes, unfortunately, the wrong thing gets done for the right reason."
James Carville,Progressive,"My favorite Saturday, outside any Saturday that Louisiana State University plays football, is the Kentucky Derby."
James Carville,Progressive,"Some comments are within bounds, while some are not. But by whining about every little barb, candidates are trying to win the election through a war of staff resignation attrition, and Americans are losing the ability to distinguish between what is fair game and what is not."
James Carville,Progressive,"Some of these people think the universe is five thousand years old, and they say it with a straight face. If somebody had an explanation saying why they thought the earth was five thousand years old, there's only two possible explanations: you're really stupid, or you're really cynical and trying to get really stupid people's votes."
James Carville,Progressive,"I have people ask me if I'm going to convince my daughters to be Democrats, and I say, 'I have yet to convince my daughters to close a door.' I don't how in the world I would ever convince them to be in a political affiliation."
James Carville,Progressive,"As with mosquitoes, horseflies, and most bloodsucking parasites, Kenneth Starr was spawned in stagnant water."
James Carville,Progressive,"In 1992, the most treasured voter was a voter that would sort of swing back and forth, one that might vote for Republican for president, Democrat for governor. The voter that didn't have that strong of a partisan ID. These were the voters that we targeted."
James Carville,Progressive,It's better to be married to someone who hates your politics than someone who hates your momma.
James Carville,Progressive,Every day Catholics prove that you can be a good Catholic and a good Democrat and have a different position from the Church on abortion.
James Carville,Progressive,"My high school job was putting insulation in attics - in Louisiana in the summer. It must have been 95 degrees every day, and the insulation used to get all over me. It was not fun. But I didn't know any different. It wasn't like I was spending summers on Cape Cod."
James Carville,Progressive,Democratic strategists and operatives should not design a strategy based off today's conditions. They should be setting a strategy for where the trajectory of polling is headed.
James Carville,Progressive,"I would describe myself as having a healthy income, but I sure wouldn't describe the son of a postmaster and an encyclopedia saleswoman as upper class, by any stretch of the imagination. I would describe myself as decidedly middle class. I think I'm extremely fortunate."
James Carville,Progressive,"The American psyche has not recovered, and likely will not ever fully recover, from the profound and relentless incompetence of George W. Bush's disastrous, multitrillion-dollar war."
James Carville,Progressive,"I have always loved the college atmosphere - sometimes too much, which is why I spent so long at LSU."
James Carville,Progressive,"Bill Clinton is a person who causes a lot of passion both ways about people, and there's certainly a lot of turmoil if you look back at the eight years. But there was a lot of good, too."
James Carville,Progressive,"I point out the Democratic party won two world wars and beat the depression, cut out the poverty by two thirds, and was responsible for the same sustained prosperity that we've had in the United States. What the hell do we have to apologize for?"
James Carville,Progressive,"Back when I went to Louisiana State University a million years ago, we got the Baton Rouge paper. But if you wanted to read 'The New York Times' or 'The Wall Street Journal,' you had to go to the reading room of the student union, and you got the edition several days after it had been published, and you had to read it on a wooden stick."
James Carville,Progressive,"After all of my years in politics, I've learned that sometimes things that are said are true, and other things that are said are less than true."
Tony Judt,Progressive,History always happens to us and nothing ever stays the same.
Tony Judt,Progressive,"I just like being on my own on trains, traveling. I spent all my pocket money travelling the London Underground and Southern Railway, what used to be the Western region, and in Europe as much as I could afford it. My parents used to think I was going places, but I wasn't, I was just travelling the trains."
Tony Judt,Progressive,"Apparently, the line you take on Israel trumps everything else in life."
Tony Judt,Progressive,Social democracy does not represent an ideal future; it does not even represent the ideal past.
Tony Judt,Progressive,"Popularizing - much less venturing beyond one's secure turf - was frowned upon for many years. I think I probably internalized the prohibition, even though I was - and knew I was - among the best speakers and writers of my age cohort. I don't mean I was the best historian - a quite different measure."
Tony Judt,Progressive,"If we have learned nothing else from the 20th century, we should at least have grasped that the more perfect the answer, the more terrifying its consequences. Incremental improvements upon unsatisfactory circumstances are the best that we can hope for, and probably all we should seek."
Tony Judt,Progressive,"I started work on my first French history book in 1969; on 'Socialism in Provence' in 1974; and on the essays in Marxism and the French Left in 1978. Conversely, my first non-academic publication, a review in the 'TLS', did not come until the late 1980s, and it was not until 1993 that I published my first piece in the 'New York Review.'"
Tony Judt,Progressive,It would be suicide in the American academy to show too early an interest beyond your doctoral specialization: charges of everything from charlatanry to ambition would be levied and tenure denied. I've seen this first-hand.
Tony Judt,Progressive,"What I am against is false optimism: the notion either that things have to go well, or else that they tend to, or else that the default condition of historical trajectories is characteristically beneficial in the long-run."
Tony Judt,Progressive,"Healthcare reform is a paradigmatic case. It is self-evidently necessary and inevitable and has been on the agenda for 35 years, and the political class seems completely unable to respond to it."
Tony Judt,Progressive,"We need to start talking about inequality again; we need to start talking about the inequities and unfairnesses and the injustices of an excessively divided society, divided by wealth, by opportunity, by outcome, by assets and so forth."
Tony Judt,Progressive,"I can still boss people around. I can still write. I can still read. I can still eat, and I can still have very strong views."
Tony Judt,Progressive,"I do think we're on the edge of a terrifying world, and that many young people know that but don't know how to talk about it."
Tony Judt,Progressive,"I don't believe in an afterlife. I don't believe in a single or multiple godhead. I respect people who do, but I don't believe it myself."
Tony Judt,Progressive,"My history writing was based on what I saw in strange, exotic places rather than just reading books."
Tony Judt,Progressive,"Obviously a primary liberal conviction is that we should be tolerant of other peoples' convictions. But if we believe in something, we had better find ways to say so convincingly."
Tony Judt,Progressive,"I grew up in a world where the social democratic state was the norm, not the exception."
Tony Judt,Progressive,"I was born in 1948, so I'm a '60s kid, and in the '60s everyone talked all the time, endlessly, about socialism versus capitalism, about political choices, ideology, Marxism, revolution, 'the system' and so on."
Tony Judt,Progressive,"What has gone catastrophically wrong in England and the States is that for 30 years we've lost the ability to talk about the state in positive terms. We've raised a generation or two of young people who don't think to ask, 'What can the state do that is good?'"
Tony Judt,Progressive,"No one wants to live in a wheelchair unable to talk, only winking once for yes and twice for no. It's perfectly reasonable that there will come a point where the balance of judgment of life over death swings the other way."
Tony Judt,Progressive,"I see myself as, first and above all, a teacher of history; next, a writer of European history; next, a commentator on European affairs; next, a public intellectual voice within the American left; and only then an occasional, opportunistic participant in the pained American discussion of the Jewish matter."
Tony Judt,Progressive,It does irritate me when I am described as a controversialist and commentator on Israel.
Tony Judt,Progressive,"You don't have to be Jewish to understand the history of Europe in the 20th century, but it helps."
Tony Judt,Progressive,I'm not sure I've learned anything new about life; but I've had to think harder about death and what comes after for other people.
Tony Judt,Progressive,"I went to live on a kibbutz, and I'd idealized the world of collective, agrarian work, where everyone was equal, everyone contributed, that all this awful European intellectual stuff just fell away."
Jane Jacobs,Progressive,Sentimentality about nature denatures everything it touches.
Jane Jacobs,Progressive,The point of cities is multiplicity of choice.
Jane Jacobs,Progressive,Design is people.
Lawrence Lessig,Progressive,"Before the monopoly should be permitted, there must be reason to believe it will do some good - for society, and not just for monopoly holders."
Lawrence Lessig,Progressive,"Remember the refrain: We always build on the past; the past always tries to stop us. Freedom is about stopping the past, but we have lost that ideal."
Lawrence Lessig,Progressive,"When government disappears, it's not as if paradise will take its place. When governments are gone, other interests will take their place."
Lawrence Lessig,Progressive,"Notwithstanding the fact that the most innovative and progressive space we've seen - the Internet - has been the place where intellectual property has been least respected. You know, facts don't get in the way of this ideology."
Lawrence Lessig,Progressive,"We have a massive system to regulate creativity. A massive system of lawyers regulating creativity as copyright law has expanded in unrecognizable forms, going from a regulation of publishing to a regulation of copying."
Glenn Greenwald,Progressive,"There are different ways that kids who are gay take on the rejection and alienation they feel. The way I dealt with it was to say, 'You know what? You're imposing judgments on me and condemnations, but I don't accept them. I'm going to instead turn the light on you and see what your flaws are and impose the same judgmental standards on you.'"
Glenn Greenwald,Progressive,Surveillance breeds conformity.
Glenn Greenwald,Progressive,"An elite class that is free to operate without limits - whether limits imposed by the rule of law or fear of the responses from those harmed by their behavior - is an elite class that will plunder, degrade, and cheat at will, and act endlessly to fortify its own power."
Glenn Greenwald,Progressive,The definition of an extreme authoritarian is one who is willing blindly to assume that government accusations are true without any evidence presented or opportunity to contest those accusations.
Glenn Greenwald,Progressive,"The most important thing my grandfather taught me was that the most noble way to use your skills, intellect and energy is to defend the marginalized against those with the greatest power - and that the resulting animosity from those in power is a badge of honor."
Glenn Greenwald,Progressive,Who cares if virtually the entire world views Obama's drone attacks as unjustified and wrong? Who cares if the Muslim world continues to seethe with anti-American animus as a result of this aggression? Empires do what they want.
Glenn Greenwald,Progressive,"There is a massive apparatus within the United States government that with complete secrecy has been building this enormous structure that has only one goal, and that is to destroy privacy and anonymity, not just in the United States, but around the world."
Glenn Greenwald,Progressive,"There's a huge dichotomy between people who grow up with alienation, which, for me, was invaluable, and people who grow up so completely privileged that it breeds this complacency and lack of desire to question or challenge or do anything significant. Those are the types of people who become partners at the corporate law firms."
Glenn Greenwald,Progressive,"The United States government in Washington constantly gives amnesty to its highest officials, even when they commit the most egregious crimes. And yet the idea of amnesty for a whistleblower is considered radical and extreme."
Glenn Greenwald,Progressive,The single most remarkable (and revealing) fact of the Obama presidency may very well be the lack of a single prosecution of Wall Street executives for the massive fraud that precipitated the 2008 financial crisis.
Glenn Greenwald,Progressive,What made Guantanamo such a travesty - and what still makes it such - is that it is a system of indefinite detention whereby human beings are put in cages for years and years without ever being charged with a crime.
Glenn Greenwald,Progressive,It's always easy to get people to condemn threats to free speech when the speech being threatened is speech that they like. It's much more difficult to induce support for free speech rights when the speech being punished is speech they find repellent.
Glenn Greenwald,Progressive,"It is true that the Internet can be used to disseminate falsehoods quickly, but it just as quickly roots them out and exposes them in a way that the traditional model of journalism and its closed, insular, one-way form of communication could never do."
Glenn Greenwald,Progressive,"It shouldn't take extreme courage and a willingness to go to prison for decades or even life to blow the whistle on bad government acts done in secret. But it does. And that is an immense problem for democracy, one that all journalists should be united in fighting."
Glenn Greenwald,Progressive,The American Right has an amazing ability to lionize leaders whose lives are the precise antithesis of the political values that define their image.
Glenn Greenwald,Progressive,Free speech rights means that government officials are barred from creating lists of approved and disapproved political ideas and then using the power of the state to enforce those preferences.
Glenn Greenwald,Progressive,"It is beyond dispute that President Obama and his aides have an extreme, even unprecedented obsession with concealing embarrassing information, controlling the flow of information, and punishing anyone who stands in the way. But, at least theoretically speaking, it is the job of journalists to impede that effort, not to serve and enable it."
Glenn Greenwald,Progressive,"Many of the benefits from keeping terrorism fear levels high are obvious. Private corporations suck up massive amounts of Homeland Security cash as long as that fear persists, while government officials in the National Security and Surveillance State can claim unlimited powers and operate with unlimited secrecy and no accountability."
Glenn Greenwald,Progressive,"The most extremist power any political leader can assert is the power to target his own citizens for execution without any charges or due process, far from any battlefield. The Obama administration has not only asserted exactly that power in theory, but has exercised it in practice."
Glenn Greenwald,Progressive,"I personally think honestly disclosing rather than hiding one's subjective values makes for more honest and trustworthy journalism. But no journalism - from the most stylistically 'objective' to the most brazenly opinionated - has any real value unless it is grounded in facts, evidence, and verifiable data."
Glenn Greenwald,Progressive,"Whistleblowers are typically rendered incommunicado, either because they're in hiding, or advised by their lawyers to stay silent, or imprisoned. As a result, the public hears only about them, but never from them, which makes their demonization virtually inevitable."
Glenn Greenwald,Progressive,The purpose of whistleblowing is to expose secret and wrongful acts by those in power in order to enable reform.
Glenn Greenwald,Progressive,"Somehow, when the authoritarians on the Right search for icons of manly warrior power to venerate, they find only those who like to melodramatically play-act as such, but who ran away when it came time to actually perform."
Glenn Greenwald,Progressive,Obama supporters pretended that his 2008 campaign was some sort of populist uprising even as Wall Street overwhelmingly supported his candidacy.
Glenn Greenwald,Progressive,"'Terrorism' itself is not an objective term or legitimate object of study, but was conceived of as a highly politicized instrument and has been used that way ever since."
Glenn Greenwald,Progressive,"The highest compliment one can give a writer is not to say that one wholeheartedly agrees with his observations, but that he provoked - really, forced - difficult thinking about consequential matters and internal questioning of one's own assumptions, often without quick or clear resolution."
Al Gore,Progressive,"Today we're dumping 70 million tons of global-warming pollution into the environment, and tomorrow we will dump more, and there is no effective worldwide response. Until we start sharply reducing global-warming pollution, I will feel that I have failed."
Al Gore,Progressive,"As human beings, we are vulnerable to confusing the unprecedented with the improbable. In our everyday experience, if something has never happened before, we are generally safe in assuming it is not going to happen in the future, but the exceptions can kill you and climate change is one of those exceptions."
Al Gore,Progressive,"In digital era, privacy must be a priority. Is it just me, or is secret blanket surveillance obscenely outrageous?"
Al Gore,Progressive,The entire North Polar ice cap is disappearing before our very eyes. It's been the size of the continental United States for the last 3 million years and now 40 percent is gone and the rest of it is going.
Al Gore,Progressive,I think the cost of energy will come down when we make this transition to renewable energy.
Al Gore,Progressive,There is an air of unreality in debating these arcane points when the world is changing in such dramatic ways right in front of our eyes because of global warming.
Al Gore,Progressive,"Civil disobedience has an honourable history, and when the urgency and moral clarity cross a certain threshold, then I think that civil disobedience is quite understandable, and it has a role to play."
Al Gore,Progressive,A president who breaks the law is a threat to the very structure of our government.
Al Gore,Progressive,Airplane travel is nature's way of making you look like your passport photo.
Al Gore,Progressive,I have faith in the United States and our ability to make good decisions based on the facts.
Al Gore,Progressive,"I'm naturally an optimist, but my basis for hope is rooted in my understanding of human nature."
Al Gore,Progressive,I've learned the importance of changing people's minds at the grassroots level so that whoever does run will have a much better chance of encountering public opinion that reaches a critical mass and brings about a change not only in White House policies but in the Congress and in the state legislatures and all around the world.
Al Gore,Progressive,"The struggle against poverty in the world and the challenge of cutting wealthy country emissions all has a single, very simple solution... Here it is: Put a price on carbon."
Al Gore,Progressive,"Hey, you know what, I've gotta go on that 'Letterman' show. That show is so lame."
Al Gore,Progressive,"I remember as a boy when the conversation on civil rights was won in the South. I remember a time when one of my friends made a racist joke and another said, 'Hey man, we don't go for that anymore.'"
Al Gore,Progressive,"I'm old enough to know that a red carpet's just a rug, and I've been able to enjoy the pageantry without letting it go to my head."
Al Gore,Progressive,Surveillance technologies now available - including the monitoring of virtually all digital information - have advanced to the point where much of the essential apparatus of a police state is already in place.
Al Gore,Progressive,The conversation on global warming has been stalled because a shrinking group of denialists fly into a rage when it's mentioned.
Al Gore,Progressive,"The first less is this: take it from me, every vote counts."
Al Gore,Progressive,"During my service in the United States Congress, I took the initiative in creating the Internet."
Al Gore,Progressive,"Population growth is straining the Earth's resources to the breaking point, and educating girls is the single most important factor in stabilizing that. That, plus helping women gain political and economic power and safeguarding their reproductive rights."
Al Gore,Progressive,"CO2 is the exhaling breath of our civilization, literally... Changing that pattern requires a scope, a scale, a speed of change that is beyond what we have done in the past."
Al Gore,Progressive,"When people flirt with despair about the future, they are less likely to take the actions necessary to safeguard it, focusing instead on the short-term."
Al Gore,Progressive,"I do genuinely believe that the political system is not linear. When it reaches a tipping point fashioned by a critical mass of opinion, the slow pace of change we're used to will no longer be the norm. I see a lot of signs every day that we're moving closer and closer to that tipping point."
Alan Bennett,Progressive,"The bits I most remember about my school days are those that took place outside the classroom, as we were taken on countless theatre visits and trips to places of interest."
Alan Bennett,Progressive,Life is like a box of sardines and we are all looking for the key.
Alan Bennett,Progressive,"If you think squash is a competitive activity, try flower arranging."
Alan Bennett,Progressive,"Closing a public library is child abuse, really, because it hinders child development."
Alan Bennett,Progressive,"Those who have known the famous are publicly debriefed of their memories, knowing as their own dusk falls that they will only be remembered for remembering someone else."
Alan Bennett,Progressive,"I can't complain that I've had a public all through my writing life, but people don't quite know what I've written. People don't read you too closely. Perhaps, after I've died, they'll look at my stuff, and read it through, and find there's more in it. That may be wrong, but that's what I comfort myself with."
Alan Bennett,Progressive,Life is generally something that happens elsewhere.
Alan Bennett,Progressive,I write plays about things that I can't resolve in my mind. I try to root things out.
Alan Bennett,Progressive,All knowledge is precious whether or not it serves the slightest human use.
Alan Bennett,Progressive,I'm all in favour of free expression provided it's kept rigidly under control.
Alan Bennett,Progressive,"I've never seen the point of the sea, except where it meets the land. The shore has a point. The sea has none."
Alan Bennett,Progressive,"Teachers need to feel they are trusted. They must be allowed some leeway to use their imagination; otherwise, teaching loses all sense of wonder and excitement."
Alan Bennett,Progressive,Your whole life is on the other side of the glass. And there is nobody watching.
Alan Bennett,Progressive,"Feeling I'd scarcely arrived at a style, I now find I'm near the end of it. I'm not quite sure what Late Style means except that it's some sort of licence, a permit for ageing practitioners to kick their heels up."
Alan Bennett,Progressive,I don't want to see libraries close; I want to find local solutions that will make them sustainable.
Alan Bennett,Progressive,Children always assume the sexual lives of their parents come to a grinding halt at their conception.
Alan Bennett,Progressive,"Cancer, like any other illness, is a bore."
Alan Bennett,Progressive,"Were we closer to the ground as children, or is the grass emptier now?"
Alan Bennett,Progressive,We were put to Dickens as children but it never quite took. That unremitting humanity soon had me cheesed off.
Alan Bennett,Progressive,"I'm more socialist certainly than New Labour - I'm very old Labour, really."
Alan Bennett,Progressive,I don't believe in private education.
Alan Bennett,Progressive,"I always like to break out and address the audience. In 'The History Boys', for instance, without any ado, the boys will suddenly turn and talk to the audience and then go back into the action. I find it more adventurous doing it in prose than on the stage, but I like being able to make the reader suddenly sit up."
Alan Bennett,Progressive,I always feel over-appreciated but underestimated.
Bill Moyers,Progressive,"[George Washington] in uniform patriotism can salute one flag only, embrace but the first circle of life — one's own land and tribe. In war that is necessary, in peace it is not enough. Events enlarged his embrace to a wholly new idea of nation — the United States of America. But less than a century later his descendant by marriage could not slip the more parochial tether. In the halls of the family home standing on the hill above us, General Robert E. Lee paced back and forth as he weighed the offer of Abraham Lincoln to take command of the Union Army on the eve of the Civil War. Lee turned the offer down and that evening took the train to Richmond. His country was still Virginia. We struggle today with the imperative of a new patriotism and citizenship. The Peace Corps has been showing us the way, and the volunteers and staff whom we honor this morning are the vanguard of that journey."
Bill Moyers,Progressive,"As every volunteer testifies, the Peace Corps is more than a program or mission. It is a way of being in the world. This is a conservative notion because it holds dear the ground of one's own being — the culture and customs that gave meaning to a particular life. But it is a liberal notion for respecting the ground revered by others. This double helix in America's DNA may yet be the source of a new political and patriotism that could save us from toxic self-absorption."
Bill Moyers,Progressive,Journalists who make mistakes get sued for libel; historians who make mistakes get to publish a revised edition.
Bill Moyers,Progressive,"Conservatives — or better, pro-corporate apologists — hijacked the vocabulary of Jeffersonian liberalism and turned words like ""progress,"" ""opportunity,"" and ""individualism"" into tools for making the plunder of America sound like divine right … This ""degenerate and unlovely age,"" as one historian calls it, exists in the mind of Karl Rove — the reputed brain of George W. Bush — as the seminal age of inspiration for politics and governance of America today."
Bill Moyers,Progressive,"The corporate right and the political right declared class warfare on working people a quarter of a century ago and they've won … Take the paradox of Rush Limbaugh, ensconced in a Palm Beach mansion massaging the resentments across the country of white-knuckled wage earners, who are barely making ends meet in no small part because of the corporate and ideological forces for whom Rush has been a hero."
Bill Moyers,Progressive,No wonder scoundrels find refuge in patriotism; it offers them immunity from criticism.
Bill Moyers,Progressive,"This ""zeal for secrecy"" I am talking about — and I have barely touched the surface — adds up to a victory for the terrorists. When they plunged those hijacked planes into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon three years ago this morning, they were out to hijack our Gross National Psychology. If they could fill our psyche with fear — as if the imagination of each one of us were Afghanistan and they were the Taliban — they could deprive us of the trust and confidence required for a free society to work. They could prevent us from ever again believing in a safe, decent or just world and from working to bring it about. By pillaging and plundering our peace of mind they could panic us into abandoning those unique freedoms — freedom of speech, freedom of the press — that constitute the ability of democracy to self-correct and turn the ship of state before it hits the iceberg."
Bill Moyers,Progressive,"On the eve of the election last month my wife Judith and I were driving home late in the afternoon and turned on the radio for the traffic and weather. What we instantly got was a freak show of political pornography: lies, distortions, and half-truths — half-truths being perhaps the blackest of all lies. They paraded before us as informed opinion."
Bill Moyers,Progressive,Standing up to your government can mean standing up for your country.
Bill Moyers,Progressive,"A free press is one where it's okay to state the conclusion you're led to by the evidence. One reason I'm in hot water is because my colleagues and I at NOW didn't play by the conventional rules of Beltway journalism. Those rules divide the world into Democrats & Republicans, liberals & conservatives, and allow journalists to pretend they have done their job if instead of reporting the truth behind the news, they merely give each side an opportunity to spin the news."
Bill Moyers,Progressive,"""News is what people want to keep hidden and everything else is publicity."""
Bill Moyers,Progressive,"Bullies — political bullies, economic bullies, and religious bullies — cannot be appeased; they have to be opposed with courage, clarity, and conviction. This is never easy. These true believers don't fight fair. Robert's Rules of Order is not one of their holy texts."
Bill Moyers,Progressive,"All my life I've prayed the Lord's Prayer, but I've never prayed, ""Give me this day my daily bread."" It is always, ""Give us this day our daily bread."" Bread and life are shared realities. They do not happen in isolation. Civilization is an unnatural act. We have to make it happen, you and I, together with all the other strangers."
Bill Moyers,Progressive,"For the life of me I cannot fathom why we expect so much from teachers and provide them so little in return. In 1940, the average pay of a male teacher was actually 3.6 percent more than what other college-educated men earned. Today it is 60 percent lower. Women teachers now earn 16 percent less than other college-educated women. This bewilders me. … There was no Plato without Socrates, and no John Coltrane without Miles Davis."
Bill Moyers,Progressive,"In tracking down and eliminating terrorists, we need to change our metaphor from a ""war on terror"" — exactly what, pray tell, is that? — to the mind-set of Interpol tracking down master criminals through intense global cooperation among nations, or the FBI stalking the Mafia, or local police determined to quell street gangs without leveling the entire neighborhood in the process."
Bill Moyers,Progressive,"Reagan's story of freedom superficially alludes to the Founding Fathers, but its substance comes from the Gilded Age, devised by apologists for the robber barons. It is posed abstractly as the freedom of the individual from government control — a Jeffersonian ideal at the roots of our Bill of Rights, to be sure. But what it meant in politics a century later, and still means today, is the freedom to accumulate wealth without social or democratic responsibilities and license to buy the political system right out from everyone else."
Bill Moyers,Progressive,"The most fundamental liberal failure of the current era: the failure to embrace a moral vision of America based on the transcendent faith that human beings are more than the sum of their material appetites, our country is more than an economic machine, and freedom is not license but responsibility."
Bill Moyers,Progressive,Jesus would not be crucified today. The prophets would not be stoned. Socrates would not drink the hemlock. They would instead be banned from the Sunday talk shows and op-ed pages by the sentries of establishment thinking who guard against dissent with the one weapon of mass destruction most cleverly designed to obliterate democracy: the rubber stamp.
Bill Moyers,Progressive,"Here is the crisis of the times as I see it: We talk about problems, issues, policies, but we don't talk about what democracy means — what it bestows on us — the revolutionary idea that it isn't just about the means of governance but the means of dignifying people so they become fully free to claim their moral and political agency."
Bill Moyers,Progressive,"In those days [1955], affirmative action was for whites only. I might still be working for the grocery store in the small Texas town where I grew up were it not for affirmative action for Southern white boys."
Bill Moyers,Progressive,[Martin Luther] King subpoened the nation's conscience. He was killed for it.
Bill Moyers,Progressive,"Terms like ""liberty"" and ""individual freedom"" invoked by generations of Americans who battled to widen the 1787 promise to ""promote the general welfare"" have been perverted to create a government primarily dedicated to the state and the political class that runs it. Yes, Virginia, there is a class war and ordinary people are losing it."
Bill Moyers,Progressive,"The property qualifications for federal office that the framers of the Constitution expressly chose to exclude for demonstrating an unseemly ""veneration of wealth"" are now de facto in force and higher than the Founding Fathers could have imagined."
Bill Moyers,Progressive,People who don't believe in government are likely to defile government.
Bill Moyers,Progressive,"Ed Murrow told his generation of journalists bias is okay as long as you don't try to hide it. So here, one more time, is mine: plutocracy and democracy don't mix. Plutocracy, the rule of the rich, political power controlled by the wealthy.  Plutocracy is not an American word but it's become an American phenomenon. Back in the fall of 2005, the Wall Street giant Citigroup even coined a variation on it, plutonomy, an economic system where the privileged few make sure the rich get richer with government on their side. By the next spring, Citigroup decided the time had come to publicly ""bang the drum on plutonomy."" … over the past 30 years the plutocrats, or plutonomists — choose your poison — have used their vastly increased wealth to capture the flag and assure the government does their bidding. … This marriage of money and politics has produced an America of gross inequality at the top and low social mobility at the bottom, with little but anxiety and dread in between, as middle class Americans feel the ground falling out from under their feet.  … Like those populists of that earlier era, millions of Americans have awakened to a sobering reality: they live in a plutocracy, where they are disposable. Then, the remedy was a popular insurgency that ignited the spark of democracy. Now we have come to another parting of the ways, and once again the fate and character of our country are up for grabs. … Democracy only works when we claim it as our own."
Bill Moyers,Progressive,"One of the great reporters of the 20th century, I.F. Stone, told journalism students never to forget that ""All governments lie."" He could speak with authority, having spent seven decades exposing deception and official lies by digging deep into government documents and transcripts. He gained his greatest fame and impact publishing the newsletter called ""I.F. Stone's Weekly,"" taking on McCarthyism, racism in the military, and the Vietnam War. ""In this age of corporation men,"" he wrote in 1963, ""I am an independent capitalist, the owner of my own enterprise."" This critically acclaimed documentary, produced in 1973, offered an inside look at how Izzy Stone worked."
Bill Moyers,Progressive,"Historian and activist Howard Zinn died in 2010, and the progressive world greatly misses his spirit and guidance. One wonders what he’d have to say about America today — one in which senators create legislation in secret and a president denigrates foes and allies alike via Twitter. What would he, a former Cub Scout, think about the president’s recent speech in which he exhorted Boy Scouts to boo a previous president? We can be pretty sure that he’d be dismayed and disgusted by an America where CEOs make 271 times the pay of an average worker... He’d certainly be no fan of a culture that made serious, though unsuccessful, attempts to ban his signature work, A People’s History of the United States."
Anthony Giddens,Progressive,"The main dimensions of Marx’s discussion of alienation are as follows: ...1. The worker … has no power to determine the fate of what he produces. ...2. The work task does not offer intrinsic satisfactions. ...3. Human relations, in capitalism, tend to become reduced to operations of the market. … Money promotes the rationalization of social relationships, since it provides an abstract standard in terms of which the most heterogeneous qualities can be compared, and reduced, to one another. ...4. Some animals do produce, of course, but only in a mechanical, adaptive fashion. Alienated labor reduces human productive activity to the level of adaptation to, rather than active mastery of, nature."
Anthony Giddens,Progressive,"Political economy … founds its theory of society upon the self-seeking of the isolated individual. Political economy, in this way, “incorporates private property into the very essence of man.”"
Anthony Giddens,Progressive,"It is usually assumed that, in speaking, in the 1844 Manuscripts, of man’s “being reduced to the level of the animals,” and of man’s alienation from his “species-being” under the conditions of capitalist production, Marx is thinking in terms of an abstract conception of “man” as being alienated from his biological characteristics as a species. So, it is presumed, at this initial stage in the evolution of his thought, Marx believed that man is essentially a creative being whose “natural” propensities are denied by the restrictive character of capitalism. Actually, Marx holds, on the contrary, that the enormous productive power of capitalism generates possibilities for the future development of man which could not have been possible under prior forms of productive system. The organization of social relationships within which capitalist production is carried on in fact leads to the failure to realize these historically generated possibilities. The character of alienated labor does not express a tension between “man in nature” (non-alienated) and “man in society” (alienated), but between the potential generated by a specific form of society—capitalism—and the frustrated realization of that potential. What separates man from the animals is not the mere existence of biological differences between mankind and other species, but the cultural achievements of men, which are the outcome of a very long process of social development."
Anthony Giddens,Progressive,"The main form of crude communism is based upon emotional antipathy towards private property, and asserts that all men should be reduced to a similar level, so that everyone has an equal share of property. This is not genuine communism, Marx asserts, since it rests upon the same sort of distorted objectification of labor as is found in the theory of political economy. Crude communism of this sort becomes impelled towards a primitive asceticism, in which the community has become the capitalist instead of the individual. In crude communism, the rule of property is still dominant, but negatively: “Universal envy setting itself up as a power is only a camouflaged form of cupidity which re-establishes itself and satisfies itself in a different way.”"
Anthony Giddens,Progressive,"Human consciousness is conditioned in a dialectical interplay between subject and object, in which man actively shapes the world he lives in at the same time as it shapes him."
Anthony Giddens,Progressive,"The expropriated peasantry are “turned en masse into beggars, vagabonds, partly from inclination, in most cases from stress of circumstances.” This is met with fierce legislation against vagrancy, by which means the vagabond population is subjected to “the discipline necessary for the wage system.”"
Anthony Giddens,Progressive,"The concept of the “isolated individual” is a construction of the bourgeois philosophy of individualism, and serves to conceal the social character which production always manifests."
Anthony Giddens,Progressive,"Marx rejects as “absurd” the contention made by John Stuart Mill, and many of the political economists, that while production is governed by definite laws, distribution is controlled by (malleable) human institutions. Such a view underlies the assumption that classes are merely inequalities in the distribution of income, and therefore that class conflict can be alleviated or even eliminated altogether by the introduction of measures which minimize discrepancies between incomes."
Anthony Giddens,Progressive,"The main defect of idealism in philosophy and history is that it attempts to analyze the properties of societies by inference from the content of the dominant systems of ideas in those societies. But this neglects altogether the fact that there is not a unilateral relationship between values and power: the dominant class is able to disseminate ideas which are the legitimations of its position of dominance. Thus the ideas of freedom and equality which come to the fore in bourgeois society cannot be taken at their “face value,” as directly summing up social reality; on the contrary, the legal freedoms which exist in bourgeois society actually serve to legitimize the reality of contractual obligations in which propertyless wage-labor is heavily disadvantaged as compared to the owners of capital. … While ideologies obviously show continuity over time, neither this continuity. nor any changes which occur, can be explained purely in terms of their internal content. Ideas do not evolve on their own account; they do so as elements of the consciousness of men living in society."
Anthony Giddens,Progressive,"To renew the energy expended in physical labour, the worker must be provided with the requirements of his existence as a functioning organism—food, clothing, and shelter for himself and his family. The labour time socially necessary to produce the necessities of life of the worker is the value of the worker’s labour power. The latter’s value is, therefore, reducible to a specifiable quantity of commodities: those which the worker requires to be able to subsist and reproduce."
Anthony Giddens,Progressive,"This situation [alienation] can therefore [according to Durkheim] be remedied by providing the individual with a moral awareness of the social importance of his particular role in the division of labour. He is then no longer an alienated automaton. but is a useful part of an organic whole: ‘from that time, as special and uniform as his activity may be, it is that of an intelligent being, for it has direction, and he is aware of it.’ This is entirely consistent with Durkheim’s general account of the growth of the division of labour, and its relationship to human freedom. It is only through moral acceptance in his particular role in the division of labour that the individual is able to achieve a high degree of autonomy as a self-conscious being, and can escape both the tyranny of rigid moral conformity demanded in undifferentiated societies on the one hand and the tyranny of unrealisable desires on the other.Not the moral integration of the individual within a differentiated division of labour but the effective dissolution of the division of labour as an organising principle of human social intercourse, is the premise of Marx’s conception. Marx nowhere specifies in detail how this future society would be organised socially, but, at any rate,. this perspective differs decisively from that of Durkheim. The vision of a highly differentiated division of labour integrated upon the basis of moral norms of individual obligation and corporate solidarity. is quite at variance with Marx’s anticipation of the future form of society.According to Durkheim’s standpoint. the criteria underlying Marx’s hopes for the elimination of technological alienation represent a reversion to moral principles which are no longer appropriate to the modern form of society. This is exactly the problem which Durkheim poses at the opening of The Division of Labour: ‘Is it our duty to seek to become a thorough and complete human being. one quite sufficient unto himself; or, on the contrary, to be only a part of a whole, the organ of an organism?’ The analysis contained in the work, in Durkheim’s view, demonstrates conclusively that organic solidarity is the ‘normal’ type in modern societies, and consequently that the era of the ‘universal man’ is finished. The latter ideal, which predominated up to the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries in western Europe is incompatible with the diversity of the contemporary order. In preserving this ideal. by contrast. Marx argues the obverse: that the tendencies which are leading to the destruction of capitalism are themselves capable of effecting a recovery of the ‘universal’ properties of man. which are shared by every individual."
Anthony Giddens,Progressive,"Every left of centre party that gets into power is doomed to disappoint – more so, probably, than governments of the right, since the left aspires more definitively to reshape society. It is a phenomenon found around the world in democratic countries. Once into the grind of day to day government, the left’s erstwhile supporters will be quick to say that the party lacks direction, or it has betrayed its values, or that its policies are not radical enough, or all three together. The 1945 Attlee government is fondly remembered by many activists as the most radical and accomplished of all Labour regimes. Yet at the time it was vociferously denounced for its timidity and its lack of purpose."
Anthony Giddens,Progressive,I argued more recently for a hypothecated wealth tax on very high earners to support the campaign against child poverty. Why shouldn’t the super-rich be obliged to help the super-poor?
Paul Krugman,Progressive,"If there were an Economist's Creed, it would surely contain the affirmations 'I understand the Principle of Comparative Advantage' and 'I advocate Free Trade'"
Paul Krugman,Progressive,"If there is one single area of economics in which path dependence is unmistakable, it is in economic geography – the location of production in space."
Paul Krugman,Progressive,"In the course of describing my formative moment in 1978, I have already implicitly given my four basic rules for research. Let me now state them explicitly, then explain. Here are the rules:1. Listen to the Gentiles2. Question the question3. Dare to be silly4. Simplify, simplify"
Paul Krugman,Progressive,"I do not mean to say that formal economic analysis is worthless, and that anybody's opinion on economic matters is as good as anyone else's. On the contrary! I am a strong believer in the importance of models, which are to our minds what spear-throwers were to stone age arms: they greatly extend the power and range of our insight. In particular, I have no sympathy for those people who criticize the unrealistic simplifications of model-builders, and imagine that they achieve greater sophistication by avoiding stating their assumptions clearly. The point is to realize that economic models are metaphors, not truth. By all means express your thoughts in models, as pretty as possible (more on that below). But always remember that you may have gotten the metaphor wrong, and that someone else with a different metaphor may be seeing something that you are missing."
Paul Krugman,Progressive,"But the honest truth is that what drives me as an economist is that economics is fun. I think I understand why so many people think that economics is a boring subject, but they are wrong. On the contrary, there is hardly anything I know that is as exciting as finding that the great events that move history, the forces that determine the destiny of empires and the fate of kings, can sometimes be explained, predicted, or even controlled by a few symbols on a printed page. We all want power, we all want success, but the ultimate reward is the simple joy of understanding."
Paul Krugman,Progressive,"If you want a simple model for predicting the unemployment rate in the United States over the next few years, here it is: It will be what Greenspan wants it to be, plus or minus a random error reflecting the fact that he is not quite God."
Paul Krugman,Progressive,"If economists ruled the world, there would be no need for a World Trade Organization. The economist's case for free trade is essentially a unilateral case- that is, it says that a country serves its own interests by pursuing free trade regardless of what other countries may do."
Paul Krugman,Progressive,"It is a bit funny, but also quite sad: Those who preach the doctrine of global glut are tilting at windmills, when there are some real monsters out there that need slaying."
Paul Krugman,Progressive,"The idea of comparative advantage—with its implication that trade between two nations normally raises the real incomes of both—is, like evolution via natural selection, a concept that seems simple and compelling to those who understand it. Yet anyone who becomes involved in discussions of international trade beyond the narrow circle of academic economists quickly realizes that it must be, in some sense, a very difficult concept indeed."
Paul Krugman,Progressive,"By 2005 or so, it will become clear that the Internet's impact on the economy has been no greater than the fax machine's."
Paul Krugman,Progressive,"Now I’m not saying that Keynes was right about everything, that we should treat The General Theory as a sort of secular bible - the way that Marxists treat Das Kapital. But the essential truth of Keynes’s big idea - that even the most productive economy can fail if consumers and investors spend too little, that the pursuit of sound money and balanced budgets is sometimes (not always!) folly rather than wisdom - is as evident in today’s world as it was in the 1930s. And in these dangerous days, we ignore or reject that idea at the world economy’s peril."
Paul Krugman,Progressive,"So the story of the baby-sitting co-op is not a mere amusement. If people would only take it seriously—if they could only understand that when great economic issues are at stake, whimsical parables are not a waste of time but the key to enlightenment—it is a story that could save the world."
Paul Krugman,Progressive,"Here, then, is a revised version of Marshall's rules: (1) Figure out what you think about an issue, working back and forth among verbal intuition, evidence, and as much math as you need. (2) Stay with it till you are done. (3) Publish the intuition, the math, and the evidence - all three - in an economics journal. (4) But also try to find a way of expressing the idea without the formal apparatus. (5) If you can, publish that where it can do the world some good."
Paul Krugman,Progressive,"In short, the success of macroeconomic activism, in both theory and practice, has made it possible for free market microeconomics to survive--again both in theory and in practice."
Paul Krugman,Progressive,"The hangover theory, then, turns out to be intellectually incoherent; nobody has managed to explain why bad investments in the past require the unemployment of good workers in the present. Yet the theory has powerful emotional appeal. Usually that appeal is strongest for conservatives, who can't stand the thought that positive action by governments (let alone—horrors!—printing money) can ever be a good idea. Some libertarians extol the Austrian theory, not because they have really thought that theory through, but because they feel the need for some prestigious alternative to the perceived statist implications of Keynesianism. And some people probably are attracted to Austrianism because they imagine that it devalues the intellectual pretensions of economics professors. But moderates and liberals are not immune to the theory's seductive charms—especially when it gives them a chance to lecture others on their failings."
Paul Krugman,Progressive,"The serious lesson of the antics in Argentina, then, is that the big issues of monetary economics--fixed vs. flexible exchange rates, whether countries should have independent currencies at all--are still wide open. It's an eternal controversy, and not even the pope can resolve it."
Paul Krugman,Progressive,"So you can take your pick as to which Mundell you prefer; but the Nobel committee basically honored Mundell the younger, the economist who was iconoclastic enough to imagine that Canada, of all places, was the economy of the future--and was right."
Paul Krugman,Progressive,"The whole subject of the liquidity trap has a sort of Alice-through-the-looking glass quality. Virtues like saving, or a central bank known to be strongly committed to price stability, become vices; to get out of the trap a country must loosen its belt, persuade its citizens to forget about the future, and convince the private sector that the government and central bank aren’t as serious and austere as they seem."
Paul Krugman,Progressive,There is no economic policy. That's really important to say. The general modus operandi of the Bushies is that they don't make policies to deal with problems. They use problems to justify things they wanted to do anyway. So there is no policy to deal with the lack of jobs. There really isn't even a policy to deal with terrorism. It's all about how can we spin what's happening out there to do what we want to do.
Paul Krugman,Progressive,"...Exxon Mobil is a worse environmental villain than other big oil companies...Exxon, headed by Mr. Raymond, chose a different course of action: it decided to fight the science....And that's just what Exxon Mobil has done: lavish grants have supported a sort of alternative intellectual universe of global warming skeptics....the fact is that whatever small chance there was of action to limit global warming became even smaller because ExxonMobil chose to protect its profits by trashing good science."
Paul Krugman,Progressive,"It’s a tribute to the importance of Friedman’s work that questions about his legacy bear so directly on contemporary policy issues. But for that reason it’s also important not to engage in hagiography. Friedman was a great economist, but like every other great economist in history, he was also wrong about some important things."
Paul Krugman,Progressive,"Whether the influence of increasing returns on trade and geography is rising or falling, one thing is clear: much was learned from the intellectual revolution that brought increasing returns into the heart of how we think about the world economy. It wasn't just that economists could make sense of previously puzzling data, we found ourselves able to see things that had previously been in an intellectual blind spot. Many people contributed to this process of enlightenment; I'm proud to have been a part of the journey."
Paul Krugman,Progressive,So let’s bid a not at all fond farewell to the Big Zero — the decade in which we achieved nothing and learned nothing.
Paul Krugman,Progressive,"I know that when I look at today’s Mexicans and Central Americans, they seem to me fundamentally the same as my grandparents seeking a better life in America. On the other side, however, open immigration can’t coexist with a strong social safety net; if you’re going to assure health care and a decent income to everyone, you can’t make that offer global. So Democrats have mixed feelings about immigration; in fact, it’s an agonizing issue."
Paul Krugman,Progressive,"… politics determine who has the power, not who has the truth."
Paul Krugman,Progressive,"It’s a great honour to be asked to give this talk, especially because I’m arguably not qualified to do so. I am, after all, not a Keynes scholar, nor any kind of serious intellectual historian. Nor have I spent most of my career doing macroeconomics. Until the late 1990s my contributions to that field were limited to international issues; although I kept up with macro research, I avoided getting into the frontline theoretical and empirical disputes."
Paul Krugman,Progressive,"If we discovered that, you know, space aliens were planning to attack and we needed a massive buildup to counter the space alien threat and really inflation and budget deficits took secondary place to that, this slump would be over in 18 months. … There was a Twilight Zone episode like this in which scientists fake an alien threat in order to achieve world peace. Well, this time, we don't need it, we need it in order to get some fiscal stimulus."
Paul Krugman,Progressive,"...and Newt [Gingrich] — although somebody said ""he’s a stupid man’s idea of what a smart person sounds like,"" but he is more plausible than the other guys that they’ve been pushing up."
Paul Krugman,Progressive,"International trade in goods and services has expanded steadily over the past six decades thanks to declines in shipping and communication costs, globally negotiated reductions in government trade barriers, the widespread outsourcing of production activities, and a greater awareness of foreign cultures and products. New and better communications technologies, notably the Internet, have revolutionized the way people in all countries obtain and exchange information."
Paul Krugman,Progressive,"More than four years after the financial crisis began, the world's major advanced economies remain deeply depressed, in a scene all too reminiscent of the 1930s. And the reason is simple: we are relying on the same ideas that governed policy in the 1930s. These ideas, long since disproved, involve profound errors both about the causes of the crisis, its nature, and the appropriate response.These errors have taken deep root in public consciousness and provide the public support for the excessive austerity of current fiscal policies in many countries. So the time is ripe for a Manifesto in which mainstream economists offer the public a more evidence-based analysis of our problems."
Paul Krugman,Progressive,"This is a serious analysis of a ridiculous subject, which is of course the opposite of what is usual in economics."
Paul Krugman,Progressive,"When the economy is in a depression, scarcity ceases to rule. Productive resources sit idle, so that it is possible to have more of some things without having less of others; free lunches are all around. As a result, all the usual rules of economics are stood on their head; we enter a looking-glass world in which virtue is vice and prudence is folly. Thrift hurts our future prospects; sound money makes us poorer. Moreover, that's the kind of world we have been living in for the past several years, which means that it is a kind of world that students should understand. […] Depression economics is marked by paradoxes, in which seemingly virtuous actions have perverse, harmful effects. Two paradoxes in particular stand out: the paradox of thrift, in which the attempt to save more actually leads to the nation as a whole saving less, and the less-well-known paradox of flexibility, in which the willingness of workers to protect their jobs by accepting lower wages actually reduces total employment. […] In times of depression, the rules are different. Conventionally sound policy – balanced budgets, a firm commitment to price stability – helps to keep the economy depressed. Once again, this is not normal. Most of the time we are not in a depression. But sometimes we are – and 2013, when this chapter was written, was one of those times."
Paul Krugman,Progressive,"I do not think this is a permanent condition. The craziness comes more from cultural ethnic issues than anything else, because you have a… A lot of the real craziness come from, if you like, from rural White Americans who feel that they’re losing their country, they’re losing ownership of the country. And they are right — we are becoming more diverse, more multicultural. And in the end, they are they…they…they are not the future. In the end, the power they still have will go away. But it’s a very difficult time until then. So the future is Mayor Deblasio of New York, but Ted Cruz is still out there with the ability to do a lot of damage."
Paul Krugman,Progressive,"Economics is harder than physics; luckily it is not quite as hard as sociology. Why is economics such a hard subject? Part of the answer has to do with complexity. The economy cannot be put in a box. [...] Another reason economics is hard is that the critical sociologist is right: it involves human beings, who do not behave in simple, mechanical ways."
Paul Krugman,Progressive,"As the example of Ronald Reagan shows, real political success comes not simply from appealing to the interests that people currently perceive but from finding ways to redefine their perceived interests, to harness their discontent in favor of changes that you can lead."
Paul Krugman,Progressive,"Where do ideas about economics come from? They come, of course from economists—where by an ""economist"" I mean someone who thinks and writes regularly about economic issues. But not all economists are alike, and in fact the genus includes two radically distinct species: The professors and the policy entrepreneurs."
Paul Krugman,Progressive,"The usual and basic Keynesian answer to recessions is a monetary expansion. But Keynes worried that even this might sometimes not be enough, particularly if a recession had been allowed to get out of hand and become a true depression. Once the economy is deeply depressed, households and especially firms may be unwilling to increase spending no matter how much cash they have, they may simply add any monetary expansion to their board. Such a situation, in which monetary policy has become ineffective, has come to be known as a ""liquidity trap""; Keynes believed that the British and American economies had entered such a trap by the mid-1930s, and some economists believed that the United States was on the edge of such a tap in 1992.The Keynesian answer to a liquidity trap is for the government to do what the private sector will not: spend. When monetary expansion is ineffective, fiscal expansion—such as public works programs financed by borrowing—must take its place. Such a fiscal expansion can break the vicious circle of low spending and low incomes, ""priming the pump: and getting the economy moving again. But remember that this is not by any means an all-purpose policy recommendation; it is essentially a strategy of desperation, a dangerous drug to be prescribed only when the usual over-the-counter remedy of monetary policy has failed."
Paul Krugman,Progressive,"Like any major intellectual contribution, Keynes's ideas were bitterly criticized. To many people it seems obvious that massive economic slumps must have deep roots. To them, Keynes's argument that they are essentially no more than a problem of mixed signals, which can be cured by printing a bit more money, seems unbelievable."
Paul Krugman,Progressive,"The new trade theory picture of the world looks something like this: Each country has, at any given time, a set of broad resources—land, skilled labor, capital, climate, general technological competence. These resources define up to a point the industries in which the country can hope to be competitive on world markets. [...] But a country's resources do not fully determine what it produces, because the detailed pattern of advantage reflects the self-reinforcing virtuous circles, set in motion by the vagaries of history."
Paul Krugman,Progressive,"It's tempting to give up—either to retreat to the ivory tower, or to start to play the policy entrepreneur game. After all, what is the use of sophisticated policy thinking or careful examination of the facts if simplistic ideas win every time?One answer is simply that it would be wrong to give up. If the people with good ideas do not fight for them, they have no right to complain about the outcome.But good ideas will still often lose to convenient nonsense. When that happens, every serious economist is ultimately sustained by a faith that the right ideas will eventually prevail."
Paul Krugman,Progressive,"Economists, like everyone, have their political biases, but these are by no means as strong an influence on what they are willing to consider as you might think. For example, one might have thought that strongly liberal economists like, say, James Tobin would be at least mildly sympathetic to the views of radical economists who draw their inspiration from Marx, or of heterodox economic thinkers like Galbraith. After all, in such fields as history and sociology the Marxist or post-Marxist left has long received a respectful hearing. And yet you don't find this happening: liberal economists are almost as quick as their conservative colleagues to condemn heterodox leftist ideas as foolish it was the liberal Robert Solow, not Milton Friedman, who defended orthodoxy in the bitter ""capital controversy"" with British radicals."
Paul Krugman,Progressive,"Consider John Kenneth Galbraith or Lester Thurow, both leading economists in the view of the general public, both with all the formal qualifications, both totally ignored by the academic mainstream. Or consider Robert Mundell, who is still revered for his contributions to international monetary theory, yet whose later incarnation as the father of supply-side economics has similarly been ignored."
Paul Krugman,Progressive,The history of economic geography of the study of the location of economic activity is more like the story of geological thought about the shapes and location of continents and mountain ranges.
Paul Krugman,Progressive,"Economists can often be remarkably obtuse, failing to see things that are right in front of them. But sometimes a bit of obtuseness is not entirely a bad thing."
Paul Krugman,Progressive,Many of those who reject the idea of economic models are ill-informed or even (perhaps unconsciously) intellectually dishonest.
Paul Krugman,Progressive,"A temporary evolution of ignorance, a period when our insistence on looking in certain directions leaves us unable to see what is right under our noses, may be the price of progress, an inevitable part of what happens when we try to make sense of the world's complexity."
Paul Krugman,Progressive,"Whose fault is the replacement of serious discussion of world trade by what I have come to think of as ""pop internationalism""? To some extent, of course, it is the result of basic human instincts: intellectual laziness, even among those who would be seen as wise and deep, will always be a powerful force. To some extent it also reflects the decline in the influence of economists in general: the high prestige of the profession a generation ago had much to do with the presumed effectiveness of Keynesian macroeconomic policies, and has suffered greatly as macroeconomics has dissolved into squabbling factions. And one should not ignore the role of editors, who often prefer what pop internationalists have to say to the disturbingly difficult ideas of people who know how to read national accounts or understand that the trade balance is also the difference between savings and investment. Indeed, some important editors, like James Fallows at The Atlantic or Robert Kuttner at The American Prospect are pop internationalists themselves; they deliberately use their magazines as platforms for what amounts to an anti-intellectual crusade."
Paul Krugman,Progressive,"The idea that a country's economic fortunes are largely determined by its success on world markets is a hypothesis, not a necessary truth; and as a practical, empirical matter, that hypothesis is flatly wrong. That is, it is simply not the case that the world's leading nations are to any important degree in economic competition with each other, or that any of their major economic problems can be attributed to failures to compete on world markets."
Paul Krugman,Progressive,"This article makes three points. First, it argues that concerns about competitiveness are, as an empirical matter, almost completely unfounded. Second, it tries to explain why defining the economic problem as one of international competition is nonetheless so attractive to so many people. Finally, it argues that the obsession with competitiveness is not only wrong but dangerous, skewing domestic policies and threatening the international economic system."
Paul Krugman,Progressive,"To make a harsh but not entirely unjustified analogy, a government wedded to the ideology of competitiveness is as unlikely to make good economic policy as a government committed to creationism is to make good science policy, even in areas that have no direct relationship to the theory of evolution."
Paul Krugman,Progressive,So let's start telling the truth: competitiveness is a meaningless word when applied to national economies. And the obsession with competitiveness is both wrong and dangerous.
Paul Krugman,Progressive,"First, most of the speculation about the superiority of the communist system - including the popular view that Western economies could painlessly accelerate their own growth by borrowing some aspects of that system - was off base. Rapid Soviet economic growth was based entirely on one attribute: the willingness to save, to sacrifice current consumption for the sake of future production. The communist example offered no hint of a free lunch.Second, the economic analysis of communist countries' growth implied some future limits to their industrial expansion - in other words, implied that a naive projection of their past growth rates into the future was likely to greatly overstate their real prospects. Economic growth that is based on expansion of inputs, rather than on growth in output per unit of input, is inevitably subject to diminishing returns. It was simply not possible for the Soviet economies to sustain the rates of growth of labor force participation, average education levels, and above all the physical capital stock that had prevailed in previous years. Communist growth would predictably slow down, perhaps drastically."
Paul Krugman,Progressive,"If growth in East Asia is indeed running into diminishing returns, however, the conventional wisdom about an Asian-centered world economy needs some rethinking."
Paul Krugman,Progressive,"That's a hard answer to accept, especially for those American policy intellectuals who recoil from the dreary task of reducing deficits and raising the national savings rate. But economics is not a dismal science because the economists like it that way; it is because in the end we must submit to the tyranny not just of the numbers, but of the logic they express."
Paul Krugman,Progressive,"In this book I try to show how models of self-organization can be applied to many economic phenomena - how the principle of ""order from instability,"" which explains the growth of hurricanes and embryos, can also explain the formation of cities and business cycles; how the principle of ""order from random growth"" can explain the strangely simple rules that describe the sizes of earth quakes, meteorites, and metropolitan areas. I believe that the ideas of self-organization theory can add substantially to our understanding of the economy; whatever their ultimate usefulness, these ideas are very exciting, and playing around with them is tremendous fun."
Paul Krugman,Progressive,"The world is full of self-organizing systems, systems that form structures not merely in response to inputs from outside but also, indeed primarily, in response to their own internal logic. Global weather is a self-organizing system; so, surely, is the global economy."
Paul Krugman,Progressive,"There are three kinds of writing in economics: Greek-letter, up-and-down, and airport. Greek-letter writing formal, theoretical, mathematical is how professors communicate. Like any academic field, economics has its fair share of hacks and phonies, who use complicated language to hide the banality of their ideas; it also contains profound thinkers, who use the specialized language of the discipline as an efficient way to express deep insights. [...] Up-and-down economics is what one encounters on the business pages of newspapers, or for that matter on TV. It is preoccupied with the latest news and the latest numbers, hence its name. [...] Finally, airport economics is the language of economics bestsellers. These books are most prominently displayed at airport bookstores, where the delayed business traveler is likely to buy them. Most of these books predict disaster: a new great depression, the evisceration of our economy by Japanese multinationals, the collapse of our money. A minority have the opposite view, a boundless optimism: new technology or supply-side economics is about to lead us into an era of unprecedented economic progress. Whether pessimistic or optimistic, airport economics is usually fun, rarely well informed, and never serious."
Paul Krugman,Progressive,"Productivity isn't everything, but in the long run it is almost everything. A country's ability to improve its standard of living over time depends almost entirely on its ability to raise its output per worker."
Paul Krugman,Progressive,"The legend of King Midas has been generally misunderstood. Most people think the curse that turned everything the old miser touched into gold, leaving him unable to eat or drink, was a lesson in the perils of avarice. But Midas’s true sin was his failure to understand monetary economics. What the gods were really telling him is that gold is just a metal. If it sometimes seems to be more, that is only because society has found it convenient to use gold as a medium of exchange—a bridge between other, truly desirable, objects. There are other possible mediums of exchange, and it is silly to imagine that this pretty, but only moderately useful, substance has some irreplaceable significance."
Paul Krugman,Progressive,"Will the tax cut destroy America’s prosperity? Probably not. As Adam Smith observed, there’s a deal of ruin in a nation. We have a huge, resilient economy that can survive and recover from even quite bad government policies. Yet while the tax cut may not be a matter of economic life or death, it is a very serious issue. For one thing, like it or not, the tax cut has become the central political issue in the United States right now. Conservatives who want to reshape America view passage of a large tax cut as a first step toward realizing their vision. For that reason, those who do not share this vision feel, rightly, that they must oppose the plan."
Paul Krugman,Progressive,"To be a progressive, then, means being a partisan—at least for now. The only way a progressive agenda can be enacted is if Democrats have both the presidency and a large enough majority in Congress to overcome Republican opposition. And achieving that kind of political preponderance will require leadership that makes opponents of the progressive agenda pay a political price for their obstructionism—leadership that, like FDR, welcomes the hatred of the interest groups trying to prevent us from making our society better."
Paul Krugman,Progressive,"Most economists, to the extent that they think about the subject at all, regard the Great Depression of the 1930s as a gratuitous, unnecessary tragedy."
Paul Krugman,Progressive,"The kind of economic trouble that Asia experienced a decade ago, and that we're all experiencing now, is precisely the sort of thing we thought we had learned to prevent. In the bad old days big, advanced economies with stable governments-like Britain in the 1920s-might have had no answer to prolonged periods of stagnation and deflation; but between John Maynard Keynes and Milton Friedman, we thought we knew enough to keep that from happening again."
Paul Krugman,Progressive,"At the time, I thought of it this way: it was as if bacteria that used to cause deadly plagues, but had long been considered conquered by modem medicine, had reemerged in a form resistant to all the standard antibiotics. Here's what I wrote in the introduction to the first edition: ""So far only a limited number of people have actually fallen prey to the newly incurable strains; but even those of us who have so far been lucky would be foolish not to seek new cures, new prophylactic regimens, whatever it takes, lest we tum out to be the next victims."" Well, we were foolish. And now the plague is upon us."
Paul Krugman,Progressive,"We will not achieve the understanding we need, however, unless we are willing to think clearly about our problems and to follow those thoughts wherever they lead. Some people say that our economic problems are structural, with no quick cure available; but I believe that the only important structural obstacles to world prosperity are the obsolete doctrines that clutter the minds of men."
Paul Krugman,Progressive,"Many of the stories economists tell take the form of models—for whatever else they are, economic models are stories about how the world works."
Paul Krugman,Progressive,"As is often the case with major disputes in economics, the argument over fiscal policy went on for years, with some critics of fiscal policy still defending their position when this book went to press. It seems fair, however, to say that among economists a more or less Keynesian view of the effects of fiscal policy came to prevail. Careful statistical studies at the International Monetary Fund and else where showed that austerity policies have historically been followed by contraction, not expansion. Recent experience, in which countries like Spain and Greece that were forced into severe austerity also experienced severe slumps, seemed to confirm that observation. Furthermore, it was clear that those who had predicted a sharp rise in U.S. interest rates due to budget deficits, leading to conventional crowding out, had been wrong: U.S. long-term interest rates remained near record lows even during the years from 2009 to 2012, when the government ran very large deficits."
Paul Krugman,Progressive,"What saved the economy, and the New Deal was the enormous public-works project known as World War II, which finally provided a fiscal stimulus adequate to the economy's needs."
Paul Krugman,Progressive,"When it comes to the all-too-human problem of recessions and depressions, economists need to abandon the neat but wrong solution of assuming that everyone is rational and markets work perfectly. The vision that emerges as the profession rethinks its foundations may not be all that clear; it certainly won’t be neat; but we can hope that it will have the virtue of being at least partly right."
Paul Krugman,Progressive,"I do not think that word “compromise” means what Mr. Ryan thinks it means. Above all, he failed to offer the one thing the White House won’t, can’t bend on: an end to extortion over the debt ceiling. Yet even this ludicrously unbalanced offer was too much for conservative activists, who lambasted Mr. Ryan for basically leaving health reform intact.Does this mean that we’re going to hit the debt ceiling? Quite possibly; nobody really knows, but careful observers are giving no better than even odds that any kind of deal will be reached before the money runs out. Beyond that, however, our current state of dysfunction looks like a chronic condition, not a one-time event. Even if the debt ceiling is raised enough to avoid immediate default, even if the government shutdown is somehow brought to an end, it will only be a temporary reprieve. Conservative activists are simply not willing to give up on the idea of ruling through extortion, and the Obama administration has decided, wisely, that it will not give in to extortion.So how does this end? How does America become governable again?"
Paul Krugman,Progressive,"Things could have been even worse. This week, we managed to avoid driving off a cliff. But we’re still on the road to nowhere."
Paul Krugman,Progressive,Many liberals have changed their views in response to new evidence. It’s an interesting experience; conservatives should try it some time.
Paul Krugman,Progressive,"Holding people accountable for their past is O.K., but imposing a standard of purity, in which any compromise or misstep makes you the moral equivalent of the bad guys, isn’t. Abraham Lincoln didn’t meet that standard; neither did F.D.R. Nor, for that matter, has Bernie Sanders (think guns)."
Paul Krugman,Progressive,"The Sanders campaign has brought out a lot of idealism and energy that the progressive movement needs. It has also, however, brought out a streak of petulant self-righteousness among some supporters. Has it brought out that streak in the candidate, too?"
Paul Krugman,Progressive,"If the question is when markets will recover, a first-pass answer is never."
Paul Krugman,Progressive,The fact is that Democrats have already been pursuing policies that are much better for the white working class than anything the other party has to offer. Yet this has brought no political reward.
Paul Krugman,Progressive,Nobody can credibly promise to bring the old jobs back; what you can promise — and Mrs. Clinton did — are things like guaranteed health care and higher minimum wages. But working-class whites overwhelmingly voted for politicians who promise to destroy those gains.
Paul Krugman,Progressive,"You can’t explain the votes of places like Clay County as a response to disagreements about trade policy. The only way to make sense of what happened is to see the vote as an expression of, well, identity politics — some combination of white resentment at what voters see as favoritism toward nonwhites (even though it isn’t) and anger on the part of the less educated at liberal elites whom they imagine look down on them."
Paul Krugman,Progressive,"Democrats have to figure out why the white working class just voted overwhelmingly against its own economic interests, not pretend that a bit more populism would solve the problem."
Paul Krugman,Progressive,"If Keynes was Luther, Friedman was Ignatius of Loyola, founder of the Jesuits. And like the Jesuits, Friedman’s followers have acted as a sort of disciplined army of the faithful, spearheading a broad, but incomplete, rollback of Keynesian heresy. By the century’s end, classical economics had regained much though by no means all of its former dominion, and Friedman deserves much of the credit."
Paul Krugman,Progressive,"Keynesian theory initially prevailed because it did a far better job than classical orthodoxy of making sense of the world around us, and Friedman’s critique of Keynes became so influential largely because he correctly identified Keynesianism’s weak points. And just to be clear: although this essay argues that Friedman was wrong on some issues, and sometimes seemed less than honest with his readers, I regard him as a great economist and a great man."
Paul Krugman,Progressive,"Keynes didn’t make an all-out assault on Economic Man, but he often resorted to plausible psychological theorizing rather than careful analysis of what a rational decision-maker would do. Business decisions were driven by “animal spirits,” consumer decisions by a psychological tendency to spend some but not all of any increase in income, wage settlements by a sense of fairness, and so on.But was it really a good idea to diminish the role of Economic Man that much? No, said Friedman, who argued in his 1953 essay “The Methodology of Positive Economics” that economic theories should be judged not by their psychological realism but by their ability to predict behavior. And Friedman’s two greatest triumphs as an economic theorist came from applying the hypothesis of rational behavior to questions other economists had thought beyond its reach."
Paul Krugman,Progressive,"One interesting footnote: although Friedman made great strides in macroeconomics by applying the concept of individual rationality, he also knew where to stop. In the 1970s, some economists pushed Friedman’s analysis of inflation even further, arguing that there is no usable trade-off between inflation and unemployment even in the short run, because people will anticipate government actions and build that anticipation, as well as past experience, into their price-setting and wage-bargaining. This doctrine, known as “rational expectations,” swept through much of academic economics. But Friedman never went there."
Paul Krugman,Progressive,"In effect, Japan in the Nineties offered a fresh opportunity to test the views of Friedman and Keynes regarding the effectiveness of monetary policy in depression conditions. And the results clearly supported Keynes’s pessimism rather than Friedman’s optimism."
Paul Krugman,Progressive,"What’s odd about Friedman’s absolutism on the virtues of markets and the vices of government is that in his work as an economist’s economist he was actually a model of restraint. As I pointed out earlier, he made great contributions to economic theory by emphasizing the role of individual rationality—but unlike some of his colleagues, he knew where to stop. Why didn’t he exhibit the same restraint in his role as a public intellectual?The answer, I suspect, is that he got caught up in an essentially political role. Milton Friedman the great economist could and did acknowledge ambiguity. But Milton Friedman the great champion of free markets was expected to preach the true faith, not give voice to doubts. And he ended up playing the role his followers expected. As a result, over time the refreshing iconoclasm of his early career hardened into a rigid defense of what had become the new orthodoxy.In the long run, great men are remembered for their strengths, not their weaknesses, and Milton Friedman was a very great man indeed—a man of intellectual courage who was one of the most important economic thinkers of all time, and possibly the most brilliant communicator of economic ideas to the general public that ever lived. But there’s a good case for arguing that Friedmanism, in the end, went too far, both as a doctrine and in its practical applications. When Friedman was beginning his career as a public intellectual, the times were ripe for a counterreformation against Keynesianism and all that went with it. But what the world needs now, I’d argue, is a counter-counterreformation."
Paul Krugman,Progressive,"Equally important, the financial industry’s political power has not gone away. Banks have waged a fierce campaign against what many expected to be an easily passed reform proposal, the creation of a new agency to protect financial consumers. Despite the steady drumbeat of scandalous revelations—most recently, the discovery that Goldman Sachs helped Greece cook its books, while Lehman cooked its own books—top financial executives continue to have ready access to the corridors of power. And as many have noted, President Obama’s chief economic and financial officials are men closely associated with Clinton-era deregulation and financial triumphalism; they may have revised their views but the continuity remains striking.In that sense, this time really is different: while the first great global financial crisis was followed by major reforms, it’s not clear that anything comparable will happen after the second. And history tells us what will happen if those reforms don’t take place. There will be a resurgence of financial folly, which always flourishes given a chance. And the consequence of that folly will be more and quite possibly worse crises in the years to come."
Paul Krugman,Progressive,"Piketty ends Capital in the Twenty-First Century with a call to arms — a call, in particular, for wealth taxes, global if possible, to restrain the growing power of inherited wealth. It’s easy to be cynical about the prospects for anything of the kind. But surely Piketty’s masterly diagnosis of where we are and where we’re heading makes such a thing considerably more likely. So Capital in the Twenty-First Century is an extremely important book on all fronts. Piketty has transformed our economic discourse; we’ll never talk about wealth and inequality the same way we used to."
Paul Krugman,Progressive,"We’re living in a Dark Age of macroeconomics. Remember, what defined the Dark Ages wasn’t the fact that they were primitive — the Bronze Age was primitive, too. What made the Dark Ages dark was the fact that so much knowledge had been lost, that so much known to the Greeks and Romans had been forgotten by the barbarian kingdoms that followed."
Paul Krugman,Progressive,"The best you can say about economic policy in this slump is that we have for the most part avoided a full repeat of the Great Depression. I say “for the most part” because we actually are seeing a Depression-level slump in Greece, and very bad slumps elsewhere in the European periphery. Still, the overall downturn hasn’t been a full 1930s replay. But all of that, I think, can be attributed to the financial rescue of 2008-2009 and automatic stabilizers. Deliberate policy to offset the crash in private spending has been largely absent."
Paul Krugman,Progressive,"Sometimes economists in official positions give bad advice; sometimes they give very, very bad advice; and sometimes they work at the OECD."
Paul Krugman,Progressive,"We’re now in the seventh year of a slump brought on by Wall Street excess; the wizardly job of “allocating the economy’s investment resources” consisted, we now know, largely of funneling money into a real estate bubble."
Paul Krugman,Progressive,"I would summarize the Keynesian view in terms of four points:1. Economies sometimes produce much less than they could, and employ many fewer workers than they should, because there just isn’t enough spending. Such episodes can happen for a variety of reasons; the question is how to respond.2. There are normally forces that tend to push the economy back toward full employment. But they work slowly; a hands-off policy toward depressed economies means accepting a long, unnecessary period of pain.3. It is often possible to drastically shorten this period of pain and greatly reduce the human and financial losses by “printing money”, using the central bank’s power of currency creation to push interest rates down.4. Sometimes, however, monetary policy loses its effectiveness, especially when rates are close to zero. In that case temporary deficit spending can provide a useful boost. And conversely, fiscal austerity in a depressed economy imposes large economic losses."
Paul Krugman,Progressive,"It has been obvious for quite a while that Sanders — not just his supporters, not even just his surrogates, but the candidate himself — has a problem both in facing reality and in admitting mistakes."
Paul Krugman,Progressive,"As Branko says, there was a time when Serbs and Croats seemed to get along fairly well, indeed intermarrying at a high rate. But could anyone now put Yugoslavia back together? At this rate, we’ll soon be asking the same question about America."
Paul Krugman,Progressive,What does Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez know about tax policy? A lot.
Benjamin Barber,Progressive,"Suffering is not necessarily a fixed and universal experience that can be measured by a single rod: it is related to situations, needs, and aspirations. But there must be some historical and political parameters for the use of the term so that political priorities can be established and different forms and degrees of suffering can be given the most attention."
Benjamin Barber,Progressive,"I don't divide the world into the weak and the strong, or the successes and the failures, those who make it or those who don't. I divide the world into learners and nonlearners."
Benjamin Barber,Progressive,Jefferson thought schools would produce free men: we prove him right by putting dropouts in jail.
Benjamin Barber,Progressive,"Civility is a work of the imagination, for it is through the imagination that we render others sufficiently like ourselves for them to become subjects of tolerance and respect, if not always affection."
Benjamin Barber,Progressive,Those who have read the Russian novelists Bulgakov and Solzhenitsyn know how effective the debilitation can be which treats free actions as clinical abnormalities requiring hospitalization. … Acts of rebellion formerly regarded as manifestation of mere bestiality are now condoned as pathological outbursts; the possibility that such acts are the intentional projects of conscious men who are at once both demanding and expressing freedom is beyond the pale of conception. Thus are men robbed not only of their freedom but also of their dignity as creative human beings.
Benjamin Barber,Progressive,"Not only psychiatry itself but also the values reflected in its statistical definition of “normalcy” serve to condition men to habitual, unthinking, conformist behavior."
Benjamin Barber,Progressive,"Under these circumstances, men lose sight of themselves and escape into the security of work or sociability or other forms of what Vidich and Bensman have called the “externalization of the self.” Vidich and Bensman sketch a troubling picture of such men: “What is left of the personality is the dulled, autonomic ritualization of behavior where … no disturbing interferences are allowed to enter into thought. … Personal and social life becomes barren, and the personal mechanics and daily routine of living become the end-all of existence. All types of activity whose operation is based upon an objective, external, automatic rhythm to which an individual can bend himself serve the function of enabling him to lose himself in an objective ceremony.”"
Benjamin Barber,Progressive,"A form of influence such as advertising sets out intentionally to insulate reactors (mindless consumers) from the more conscious and critical selves (potential abstainers) not by multiplying alternatives (as laisser-faire advocates of the market economy would like to believe) but by provoking dormant and partial desires in a way that circumvents the normal, conscious, rational process."
Benjamin Barber,Progressive,The real struggle is in fact not for but against the minds of men. Persuasion as a form of coercion represents an assault on consciousness and intentionality.
Benjamin Barber,Progressive,"There is a therapy of self-indulgence and adjustment which is little more than another weapon in the arsenal of social conformity, and there is a therapy which “makes the unconscious conscious, enlarges the scope of awareness.” There is a socialization which turns curious children into adult automatons in a social environment of repressive uniformity, and there is a socialization which turns selfish, impulsive children into self-aware and deliberate participants in a larger community."
Benjamin Barber,Progressive,"It is not inappropriate to describe the function of the teacher as that of acting to compel awareness. This is not to say that such compulsion contrives to bring a subject to act in the way in which the teacher believes the free man ought to act. It aspires only to assure that the subject is acting for himself and not as the mere instrument of unmediated impulses. There is even a compulsory quality about the Socratic method for, by asking questions, by enquiring in the reasons and grounds for doing this or that, it forces a man to conceive of himself in terms of intentions; it thereby forces him to be free.It does not force him, however, to act in a manner substantively different from this original impulses. … The man who swings at his enemy in blind rage may, after lengthy consideration of creative alternatives, swing at him with cool deliberation. The intentionalist cannot accept the tradition of Kant, Green, and Bosanquet which polarizes conscious duty and preconscious desire and presupposes that reflective awareness will always produce substantive changes in the character of our goals, for to him it is the qualitative change that turns mere impulses into goals that is significant for freedom."
Benjamin Barber,Progressive,"We know ourselves by understanding our temporality, our embeddedness in time, our connection to roots—even roots from which we have knowingly severed ourselves."
Benjamin Barber,Progressive,"Truly to be free, my choices must truly be mine—must accord with the “me” with which I associate my core identity. I must make them in keeping with rational life plans. They cannot be triggered by invisible external or covert influences; they must make manifest a will that is unfettered yet rationally informed by life plans."
Benjamin Barber,Progressive,"Liberal democracy has been one of the sturdiest political systems in the history of the modern West. As the dominant modern form of democracy, it has informed and guided several of the most successful and enduring governments the world has known, not least among them that of the United States."
Benjamin Barber,Progressive,"The American political system is a remarkable example of the coexistence — sometimes harmonious, more often uncomfortable — of all three dispositions. Americans, we might say, are anarchists in their values (privacy, liberty, individualism, property, and rights); realists in their means (power, law, coercive mediation, and sovereign adjudication); and minimalists in their political temper (tolerance wariness of government, pluralism, and such institutionalizations of caution as the separation of powers and judicial review."
Joseph E. Stiglitz,Progressive,"There is little doubt that the observation that quality may depend on price (productivity on wages; default probability on interest rates) has provided a rich mine for economic theorists: A simple modification of the basic assumptions results in a profound alteration of many of the basic conclusions of the standard paradigm. The Law of Supply and Demand has been repealed. The Law of the Single Price has been repealed. The Fundamental Theorem of Welfare Economics has been shown not to be valid.More than that, the theories that we describe here provide the basis of progress toward a unification of macroeconomics and microeconomics. They pro vide an explanation of unemployment and credit rationing, derived from basic microeconomic principles. It is a theory in which the extensive idleness that periodically confronts society's resources, human and capital, is seen as but the most obvious example of market failures that prevasively and persistently distort the allocation of resources."
Joseph E. Stiglitz,Progressive,Most poor people earn more than minimum wage when they are working; their problem is not low wages.  The problem comes when they are not working.
Joseph E. Stiglitz,Progressive,The reason that the invisible hand often seems invisible is that it is often not there.
Joseph E. Stiglitz,Progressive,"They [free market policies] were never based on solid empirical and theoretical foundations, and even as many of these policies were being pushed, academic economists were explaining the limitations of markets — for instance, whenever information is imperfect, which is to say always."
Joseph E. Stiglitz,Progressive,It's actually a tribute to the quality of economics teaching that they have persuaded so many generations of students to believe in so much that seems so counter to what the world is like. Many of the things that I'm going to describe make so much more common sense than these notions that seem counter to what ones eyes see every day.
Joseph E. Stiglitz,Progressive,The fall of Wall Street is for market fundamentalism what the fall of the Berlin Wall was for communism.
Joseph E. Stiglitz,Progressive,"The theories that I (and others) helped develop explained why unfettered markets often not only do not lead to social justice, but do not even produce efficient outcomes. Interestingly, there has been no intellectual challenge to the refutation of Adam Smith’s invisible hand: individuals and firms, in the pursuit of their self-interest, are not necessarily, or in general, led as if by an invisible hand, to economic efficiency. The only question that has been raised concerns the ability of government to remedy the deficiencies of the market. Within academia, a significant fraction of economists are involved with developing and expanding on the ideas of imperfect information (and imperfect markets) that I explored. For instance, Edmund Phelps, this year’s Nobel Prize winner, belongs to this ""school"" of thought. But in political discourse, simplistic “market fundamentalism” continues to exert enormous influence."
Joseph E. Stiglitz,Progressive,"The top 1 percent have the best houses, the best educations, the best doctors, and the best lifestyles, but there is one thing that money doesn’t seem to have bought: an understanding that their fate is bound up with how the other 99 percent live. Throughout history, this is something that the top 1 percent eventually do learn. Too late."
Joseph E. Stiglitz,Progressive,"1. The standard neoclassical model the formal articulation of Adam Smith's invisible hand, the contention that market economies will ensure economic efficiency provides little guidance for the choice of economic systems, since once information imperfections (and the fact that markets are incomplete) are brought into the analysis, as surely they must be, there is no presumption that markets are efficient.2. The Lange-Lerner-Taylor theorem, asserting the equivalence of market and market socialist economies, is based on a misguided view of the market, of the central problems of resource allocation, and (not surprisingly, given the first two failures) of how the market addresses those basic problems.3. The neoclassical paradigm, through its incorrect characterization of the market economies and the central problems of resource allocation, provides a false sense of belief in the ability of market socialism to solve those resource allocation problems. To put it another way, if the neoclassical paradigm had provided a good description of the resource allocation problem and the market mechanism, then market socialism might well have been a success. The very criticisms of market socialism are themselves, to a large extent, criticisms of the neoclassical paradigm.4. The central economic issues go beyond the traditional three questions posed at the beginning of every introductory text: What is to be produced? How is it to be produced? And for whom is it to be produced? Among the broader set of questions are: How should these resource allocation decisions be made? Who should make these decisions? How can those who are responsible for making these decisions be induced to make the right decisions? How are they to know what and how much information to acquire before making the decisions? How can the separate decisions of the millions of actors decision makers in the economy be coordinated?5. At the core of the success of market economies are competition, markets, and decentralization. It is possible to have these, and for the government to still play a large role in the economy; indeed it may be necessary for the government to play a large role if competition is to be preserved. There has recently been extensive confusion over to what to attribute the East Asian miracle, the amazingly rapid growth in countries of this region during the past decade or two. Countries like Korea did make use of markets; they were very export oriented. And because markets played such an important role, some observers concluded that their success was convincing evidence of the power of markets alone. Yet in almost every case, government played a major role in these economies. While Wade may have put it too strongly when he entitled his book on the Taiwan success Governing the Market, there is little doubt that government intervened in the economy through the market.6. At the core of the failure of the socialist experiment is not just the lack of property rights. Equally important were the problems arising from lack of incentives and competition, not only in the sphere of economics but also in politics. Even more important perhaps were problems of information. Hayek was right, of course, in emphasizing that the information problems facing a central planner were overwhelming. I am not sure that Hayek fully appreciated the range of information problems. If they were limited to the kinds of information problems that are at the center of the Arrow-Debreu model consumers conveying their preferences to firms, and scarcity values being communicated both to firms and consumers then market socialism would have worked. Lange would have been correct that by using prices, the socialist economy could ""solve"" the information problem just as well as the market could. But problems of information are broader."
Joseph E. Stiglitz,Progressive,"There must have been something in the air of Gary that led one into economics: the first Nobel Prize winner, Paul Samuelson, was also from Gary, as were several other distinguished economists... Certainly, the poverty, the discrimination, the episodic unemployment could not but strike an inquiring youngster: why did these exist, and what could we do about them."
Joseph E. Stiglitz,Progressive,My teachers helped guide and motivate me; but the responsibility of learning was left with me.
Joseph E. Stiglitz,Progressive,"In debate, one randomly was assigned to one side or the other. This had at least one virtue — it made one see that there was more than one side to these complex issues."
Joseph E. Stiglitz,Progressive,"The notion that every well educated person would have a mastery of at least the basic elements of the humanities, sciences, and social sciences is a far cry from the specialized education that most students today receive, particularly in the research universities."
Joseph E. Stiglitz,Progressive,"The best teachers still taught in a Socratic style, asking questions, responding to the answers with still another question. And in all of our courses, we were taught that what mattered most was asking the right question — having posed the question well, answering the question was often a relatively easy matter."
Joseph E. Stiglitz,Progressive,"I, like many members of my generation, was concerned with segregation and the repeated violation of civil rights. We were impatient with those (like President Kennedy) who took a cautious approach. How could we continue to countenance these injustices that had gone on so long? (The fact that so many people in the establishment seemed to do so — as they had accepted colonialism, slavery, and other forms of oppression — left a life-long mark.  It reinforced a distrust of authority which I had had from childhood)."
Joseph E. Stiglitz,Progressive,"There was an incongruity between many of the models that we were taught and the policy positions that our teachers (and we) believed in. The models seemed more consonant with free market prescriptions, though they were presented more as benchmarks rather than full characterizations."
Joseph E. Stiglitz,Progressive,"Once I undertook the analysis of a problem, I often looked at it from a variety of perspectives.  I approached the problem as a series of thought experiments — unlike many other sciences, we typically cannot do actual experiments."
Joseph E. Stiglitz,Progressive,If stability and efficiency required that there existed markets that extended infinitely far into the future — and these markets clearly did not exist — what assurance do we have of the stability and efficiency of the capitalist system?
Joseph E. Stiglitz,Progressive,"Economists often like startling theorems, results which seem to run counter to conventional wisdom."
Joseph E. Stiglitz,Progressive,An early insight in my work on the economics of information concerned the problem of appropriability — the difficulty that those who pay for information have in getting returns.
Joseph E. Stiglitz,Progressive,"I recognized that information was, in many respects, like a public good, and it was this insight that made it clear to me that it was unlikely that the private market would provide efficient resource allocations whenever information was endogenous."
Joseph E. Stiglitz,Progressive,"Seeing an economy that is, in many ways, quite different from the one grows up in, helps crystallize issues: in one's own environment, one takes too much for granted, without asking why things are the way they are."
Joseph E. Stiglitz,Progressive,"Growing up in Gary Indiana gave me, I think, a distinct advantage over many of my classmates who had grown up in affluent suburbs. They could read articles that argued that in competitive equilibrium, there could not be discrimination, so long as there are some non-discriminatory individuals or firms, since it would pay any such firm to hire the lower wage discriminated-against individuals, and take them seriously. I knew that discrimination existed, even though there were many individuals who were not prejudiced. To me, the theorem simply proved that one or more of the assumptions that went into the theory was wrong."
Jesse Jackson,Progressive,I am somebody.  I am a somebody. I am a child of God. I may not be educated but I am somebody. I may not have any money but I am somebody. I may not eat steak every day but I am somebody. I may not look the way you look but I am somebody.
Jesse Jackson,Progressive,"Politicians argue for abortion largely because they do not want to spend the necessary money to feed, clothe and educate more people... There are those who argue that the right to privacy is of higher order than the right to life. I do not share that view... That was the premise of slavery. You could not protest the existence or treatment of slaves on the plantation because that was private and therefore outside of your right to concerned."
Jesse Jackson,Progressive,"If my mind can conceive it, if my heart can believe it, I know I can achieve it because I am somebody!Respect me! Protect me! Never neglect me! I am somebody! My mind is a pearl! I can learn anything in the world! Nobody can save us, from us, for us, but us! I can learn. It is possible. I ought to learn. It is moral. I must learn. It is imperative."
Jesse Jackson,Progressive,That's all Hymie wants to talk about is Israel. Every time you go to Hymietown that's all they want to talk about.
Jesse Jackson,Progressive,"You must not surrender. You may or may not get there, but just know that you're qualified and hold on and hold out. We must never surrender. America will get better and better. Keep hope alive!"
Jesse Jackson,Progressive,"There is nothing more painful to me at this stage in my life than to walk down the street and hear footsteps and start thinking about robbery. Then look around and see somebody white and feel relieved.... After all we have been through. Just to think we can't walk down our own streets, how humiliating."
Jesse Jackson,Progressive,We need a regime change in this country.… If we launch a pre-emptive strike on Iraq we lose all moral authority.
Jesse Jackson,Progressive,"See, Barack been, um, talking down to black people on this faith-based... I want to cut his nuts off. Barack, he's talking down to black people."
George Soros,Progressive,"Economic theory is devoted to the study of equilibrium positions. The concept of equilibrium is very useful. It allows us to focus on the final outcome rather than the process that leads up to it. But the concept is also very deceptive. It has the aura of something empirical: since the adjustment process is supposed to lead to an equilibrium, an equilibrium position seems somehow implicit in our observations. That is not true. Equilibrium itself has rarely been observed in real life — market prices have a notorious habit of fluctuating."
George Soros,Progressive,The bureaucratic method of building an integrated Europe has exhausted its potential.
George Soros,Progressive,"How can we escape from the trap that the terrorists have set us? Only by recognizing that the war on terrorism cannot be won by waging war. We must, of course, protect our security; but we must also correct the grievances on which terrorism feeds. Crime requires police work, not military action."
George Soros,Progressive,"The supremacist ideology of the Bush Administration stands in opposition to the principles of an open society, which recognize that people have different views and that nobody is in possession of the ultimate truth. The supremacist ideology postulates that just because we are stronger than others, we know better and have right on our side. The very first sentence of the September 2002 National Security Strategy (the President's annual laying out to Congress of the country's security objectives) reads, ""The great struggles of the twentieth century between liberty and totalitarianism ended with a decisive victory for the forces of freedom and a single sustainable model for national success: freedom, democracy, and free enterprise."" The assumptions behind this statement are false on two counts. First, there is no single sustainable model for national success. Second, the American model, which has indeed been successful, is not available to others, because our success depends greatly on our dominant position at the center of the global capitalist system, and we are not willing to yield it."
George Soros,Progressive,"Americans, sadly, are now victims who have turned into perpetrators. Indeed, since September 2001, the war on terror has claimed more innocent victims than those terrorist attacks. This fact is unrecognized at home because the victims of the war on terror are not Americans. But the rest of the world does not draw the same distinction, and world opinion has turned against America."
George Soros,Progressive,"If investing is entertaining, if you're having fun, you're probably not making any money. Good investing is boring."
George Soros,Progressive,"The main difference between me and other people who have amassed this kind of money is that I am primarily interested in ideas, and I don't have much personal use for money. But I hate to think what would have happened if I hadn't made money: My ideas would not have gotten much play."
George Soros,Progressive,"Esperanto was a very useful language, because wherever you went, you found someone to speak with."
George Soros,Progressive,"So the euro is here to stay, and the arrangements that evolved in response to the crisis have become established as the new order governing the eurozone. This confirms my worst fears. It’s the nightmare I’ve been talking about. I’m hopeful that the Russian invasion of Crimea may serve as a wake-up call. Germany is the only country in a position to change the prevailing order."
George Soros,Progressive,Companies earn their profits by exploiting their environment. Mining and oil companies exploit the physical environment; social media companies exploit the social environment. This is particularly nefarious because social media companies influence how people think and behave without them even being aware of it.
George Soros,Progressive,"The truth is, successful investing is a kind of alchemy."
George Soros,Progressive,I made two major discoveries in the course of writing: one is a reflexive connection between credit and collateral; the other is a reflexive relationship between regulators and the economies they regulate
George Soros,Progressive,The act of lending can change the value of the collateral
George Soros,Progressive,"The prevailing wisdom is that markets are always right. I take the opposition position. I assume that markets are always wrong. Even if my assumption is occasionally wrong, I use it as a working hypothesis. It does not follow that one should always go against the prevailing trend. On the contrary, most of the time the trend prevails; only occasionally are the errors corrected. It is only on those occasions that one should go against the trend. This line of reasoning leads me to look for the flaw in every investment thesis. ... I am ahead of the curve. I watch out for telltale signs that a trend may be exhausted. Then I disengage from the herd and look for a different investment thesis. Or, if I think the trend has been carried to excess, I may probe going against it. Most of the time we are punished if we go against the trend. Only at an inflection point are we rewarded."
George Soros,Progressive,"We live in a global economy, but the political organization of our global society is woefully inadequate. We are bereft of the capacity to preserve peace and to counteract the excesses of the financial markets. Without these controls, the global economy, is liable to break down"
George Soros,Progressive,"The development of a global economy has not been matched by the development of a global society. The basic unit for political and social life remains the nation-state. International law and international institutions, insofar as they exist, are not strong enough to prevent war or the large-scale abuse of human rights in individual countries. Ecological threats are not adequately dealt with. Global financial markets are largely beyond the control of national or international authorities."
George Soros,Progressive,"Financial markets are supposed to swing like a pendulum: They may fluctuate wildly in response to exogenous shocks, but eventually they are supposed to come to rest at an equilibrium point and that point is supposed to be the same irrespective of the interim fluctuations. Instead, as I told Congress, financial markets behaved more like a wrecking ball, swinging from country to country and knocking over the weaker ones.  It is difficult to escape the conclusion that the international financial system itself constituted the main ingredient in the meltdown process."
George Soros,Progressive,The global crisis is caused by pathologies inherent in the global financial system itself.
George Soros,Progressive,"It is time to recognize that financial markets are inherently unstable. Imposing market discipline means imposing instability, and how much instability can society take? ... To put it bluntly, the choice confronting us is whether we will regulate global financial markets internationally or leave it to each individual state to protect its interests as best it can. The latter course will surely lead to the breakdown of the gigantic circulatory system, which goes under the name of global capitalism."
George Soros,Progressive,"A global society does not mean a global state. To abolish the existence of states is neither feasible nor desirable; but insofar as there are collective interests that transcend state boundaries, the sovereignty of states must be subordinated to international law and international institutions."
George Soros,Progressive,"I think there's a lot of merit in an international economy and global markets, but they're not sufficient because markets don't look after social needs. Markets are designed to allow individuals to look after their private needs and to pursue profit. It's really a great invention and I wouldn't under-estimate the value of that, but they're not designed to take care of social needs."
George Soros,Progressive,"Each state is guided by its interests, not by some nebulous concept of common interest. And not many states are even democratic. So, you have a problem with the concept between international institutions and sovereignty. To my mind, there is a solution which has to do with democracy, because democratic governments are subject to the will of the people. So, if the people will it, you can actually create international institutions through the democratic states."
George Soros,Progressive,"I advocate an alliance of democratic states, with a dual purpose. One, to promote what I call open society. I talk about an alliance of open societies which would first foster the development of open societies within individual countries, because there's a lot that needs to be done in that effort. And secondly, to establish basic international law and international institutions that you need for a global, open society. So that's my sort of broad concept. Now, I have not worked out the details, because I don't think it's for me to work out the details. It's for them to work out the details."
George Soros,Progressive,"I used to be opposed to the idea of social entrepreneurship. I said, you know, let business be business, and philanthropy be philanthropy. Keep the two separate, don't mix it up, and this is what I did, and I did that rather successfully, but I now recognize that actually you do need to mix it up and I think there is room for social entrepreneurship."
George Soros,Progressive,"It's more difficult, you know, to bring about positive change than it is to make money. It's much easier to make money, because it's a much easier way to measure success — the bottom line. When it comes to social consequences, they've got all different people acting in different ways, very difficult to even have a proper criterion of success. So, it's a difficult task. Why not use an entrepreneurial, rather than a bureaucratic, approach. As long as people genuinely care for the people they're trying to help, they can actually do a lot of good."
George Soros,Progressive,"I argue that it's appropriate for people to pursue their profit motive in business. If you want to change that, you're going against human nature. But when it comes to setting the rules or creating the institutions, then you should have the general interest at heart, even if it conflicts with your personal interest."
George Soros,Progressive,"You know, these things interested me before I became a businessman and I kind of neglected them during twenty, twenty-five years, while I was engaged in making money, because running a hedge fund takes, you know, a hundred percent of your attention on Saturday morning, and so I didn't get involved in these issues very much. It's only when I was rather successful at it and I've made enough money for my personal needs and to look after my family that we established this interest and, by now, it is more important to me than my business."
George Soros,Progressive,"I did spearhead the introduction of the Internet in countries like Russia, the former Soviet Union, because it is a very open system of communication. I think it has great potential for self-organization and self-organization is very much at the heart of an open society. The Internet is sort of a medium of open society. However, it can also be a medium of control and so we have to be careful it doesn't destroy you."
George Soros,Progressive,"I think you will have to be very, very careful to have the regulations that will protect freedom."
George Soros,Progressive,"The Republican Party has been captured by a bunch of extremists … People who maintain that markets will take care of everything, that you leave it to the markets and the markets know best. Therefore, you need no government, no interference with business. Let everybody pursue his own interests. And that will serve the common interest. Now, there is a good foundation for this. But it's a half-truth."
George Soros,Progressive,"I give away something up to $500 million a year throughout the world promoting Open Society. My foundations support people in the country who care about an open society. It's their work that I'm supporting. So it's not me doing it. But I can empower them. I can support them, and I can help them."
George Soros,Progressive,"The people currently in charge have forgotten the first principle of an open society, namely that we may be wrong and that there has to be free discussion. That it's possible to be opposed to the policies without being unpatriotic."
George Soros,Progressive,"We are the dominant power. And that imposes on us a responsibility to be actually concerned with the well being of the world. Because we set the agenda. And there are a lot of problems, including terrorism and weapons of mass destruction, that can only be tackled by collective action. And we ought to be leading that collective action, instead of riding roughshod over other people's opinions and interests."
George Soros,Progressive,"If the terrorists have the sympathy of people, it's much harder to find them. So we need people on our side, and that leads us to be responsible leaders of the world, show some concern with the problems."
George Soros,Progressive,I think he's a man of good intentions. I don't doubt it. But I think he's leading us in the wrong direction.
George Soros,Progressive,"If we re-elect Bush, we are endorsing the Bush doctrine. And then we are off to a vicious circle of escalating violence in the world. And I think, you know, terrorism, counter-terrorism, it's a very scary spectacle to me. If we reject him, then we are effectively rejecting the Bush doctrine. Because he was elected on a platform of a more humble foreign policy. Then we can go back to a more humble foreign policy. And treat this episode as an aberration. We have to pay a heavy price. You know, 100 billion dollars a year in Iraq. We can't get out of that. We mustn't get out of it. But still, we can then regain the confidence of the world, and our rightful place as leaders of the world, working to make the world a better place."
George Soros,Progressive,"Stock market bubbles don't grow out of thin air. They have a solid basis in reality — but reality as distorted by a misconception. Under normal conditions misconceptions are self-correcting, and the markets tend toward some kind of equilibrium. Occasionally, a misconception is reinforced by a trend prevailing in reality, and that is when a boom-bust process gets under way. Eventually the gap between reality and its false interpretation becomes unsustainable, and the bubble bursts."
George Soros,Progressive,"I find the idea that you can introduce democracy by military force a very quaint idea. Moreover, if I wanted to choose a testing ground for doing it, Iraq would be the last nation I would choose."
George Soros,Progressive,"Most of the poverty and misery in the world is due to bad government, lack of democracy, weak states, internal strife, and so on. We do need to intervene, to improve political and economic conditions inside countries that have bad governments, where people are suffering. One way of doing this, without violating sovereignty, is through constructive actions — reinforcements and incentives for countries that are moving in the right direction, toward an open society, a market economy, et cetera. That is what I'm advocating. I'm advocating preventive action of a constructive nature. And I would use military force only as the very last resort, when nothing else works."
George Soros,Progressive,"This is the most important election of my lifetime. I have never been heavily involved in partisan politics but these are not normal times. President Bush is endangering our safety, hurting our vital interests and undermining American values. That is why I am publishing this message. I have been demonized by the Bush campaign but I hope you will give me a hearing."
George Soros,Progressive,"We face a vicious circle of escalating violence. President Bush ran on the platform of a ""humble"" foreign policy in 2000. If we re-elect him now, we endorse the Bush doctrine of preemptive action and the invasion of Iraq, and we will have to live with the consequences."
George Soros,Progressive,"I grew up in Hungary, lived through fascism and the Holocaust, and then had a foretaste of communism. I learned at an early age how important it is what kind of government prevails. I chose America as my home because I value freedom and democracy, civil liberties and an open society. When I had made more money than I needed for myself and my family, I set up a foundation to promote the values and principles of a free and open society."
George Soros,Progressive,We are losing the values that have made America great. The destruction of the twin towers of the World Trade Center was such a horrendous event that it required a strong response. But the President committed a fundamental error in thinking: the fact that the terrorists are manifestly evil does not make whatever counter-actions we take automatically good. What we do to combat terrorism may also be wrong. Recognizing that we may be wrong is the foundation of an open society.
George Soros,Progressive,President Bush inadvertently played right into the hands of bin Laden. The invasion of Afghanistan was justified: that was where bin Laden lived and al Qaeda had its training camps. The invasion of Iraq was not similarly justified. It was President Bush's unintended gift to bin Laden.
George Soros,Progressive,"War and occupation create innocent victims. We count the body bags of American soldiers; there have been more than 1000 in Iraq. The rest of the world also looks at the Iraqis who get killed daily. There have been 15 times more. Some were trying to kill our soldiers; far too many were totally innocent, including many women and children. Every innocent death helps the terrorists' cause by stirring anger against America and bringing them potential recruits."
George Soros,Progressive,I have been crisscrossing the country for the last three weeks arguing against the reelection of President Bush. I feel strongly that he has led us in the wrong direction. The invasion of Iraq was a colossal blunder and only by rejecting the President at the polls can we hope to escape from the quagmire in which we find ourselves.
George Soros,Progressive,"The nation is deeply divided and the two camps seem to be talking past each other. John Kerry won all three debates but President Bush invokes his faith and that inspires his followers. In the end, it boils down to a philosophical difference over how to deal with an often confusing and threatening reality."
George Soros,Progressive,"An open society such as ours is based on the recognition that our understanding of reality is inherently imperfect. Nobody is in possession of the ultimate truth. As the philosopher Karl Popper has shown, the ultimate truth is not attainable even in science. All theories are subject to testing and the process of replacing old theories with better ones never ends."
George Soros,Progressive,"Faith plays an important role in an open society. Exactly because our understanding is imperfect, we cannot base our decisions on knowledge alone. We need to rely on beliefs, religious or otherwise, to help us make decisions. But we must remain open to the possibility that we may be wrong so that we can correct our mistakes. Otherwise, we are bound to be wrong."
George Soros,Progressive,"President Bush has shown that he is incapable of recognizing his mistakes. He insists on making reality conform to his beliefs even at the cost of deceiving himself and deliberately deceiving the public. There is something appealing in the strength of his faith, especially in our troubled time. But the cost is too high. By putting our faith in a President who cannot admit his mistakes we commit ourselves to the wrong policies."
George Soros,Progressive,"We are the most powerful nation on earth. No external power, no terrorist organization, can defeat us. But we can defeat ourselves by getting caught in a quagmire."
George Soros,Progressive,If we reelect President Bush we are endorsing his policies and we shall have to live with the consequences. We are facing a vicious circle of escalating violence with no end in sight. If we reject him at the polls we shall have a better chance to regain the respect and support of the world and break the vicious circle. Our future depends on it.
George Soros,Progressive,"I have devoted half my fortune and most of my energies in the last 15 years to promoting the values of democracy and open society all over the world, especially in the former Soviet Empire. After 9/11 I came to feel that those principles need to be defended at home."
George Soros,Progressive,The invasion of Afghanistan was justified: that was where Osama bin Laden lived and al Qaeda had its training camps. The invasion of Iraq was not similarly justified.
George Soros,Progressive,"The war in Iraq was misconceived from start to finish — if it has a finish. It is a war of choice, not of necessity, as President Bush claims. It goes without saying that Saddam was a tyrant, and it is good to be rid of him. But in invading Iraq as we did, without a second UN resolution, we violated international law. By mistreating and even torturing prisoners, we violated the Geneva conventions. President Bush has boasted that we do not need a permission slip from the international community, but our disregard for international law has endangered our security, particularly the security of our troops."
George Soros,Progressive,"The war on terror is an abstraction. But the terrorists are real people and they are not all alike. Most of the people attacking our soldiers in Iraq originally had nothing to do with al Qaeda. They have been generated by the policies of the Bush administration. We have been spared a terrorist attack at home but it is quite a stretch to attribute that to the invasion of Iraq. The insurrection in Iraq, however, is a somber reality and it doesn't make us safer at home. Our security, far from improving as President Bush claims, is deteriorating."
George Soros,Progressive,"Before the invasion of Iraq, we could project overwhelming power in any part of the world. We cannot do so any more because we are bogged down in Iraq. Iran and North Korea are moving ahead with their nuclear programs at full speed and our hand in dealing with them has been greatly weakened."
George Soros,Progressive,The war on terror as defined by President Bush is a one-dimensional presentation of reality. We cannot fight terrorism by military means alone. We can use military force only when we have a known target; but it is the habit of terrorists to keep their whereabouts hidden. To track them down we need the support of the populations amongst whom they hide. Offense is not necessarily the best defense if it offends those whose allegiance we need.
George Soros,Progressive,"George W. Bush revels in being a war president. His campaign is shamelessly exploiting the fears generated by 9/11. Vice President Cheney is conjuring mushroom clouds into our cities. But fear is a bad counselor; we must resist it wherever it comes from. President Roosevelt had the right idea when he said, ""We have nothing to fear but Fear itself."""
George Soros,Progressive,"An open society is always in danger. It must constantly reaffirm its principles in order to survive. We are being sorely tested, first by 9/11 and then by President Bush's response. To pass the test we must face reality instead of finding solace in false certainties. This election transcends party loyalties. Our future as an open society depends on resisting the Siren's song."
George Soros,Progressive,"The main obstacle to a stable and just world order is the United States. This is a harsh — indeed, for me, painful — thing to say, but unfortunately I am convinced it is true. The United States continues to set the agenda for the world in spite of its loss of influence since 9/11, and the Bush administration is setting the wrong agenda . The Bush agenda is nationalistic: it emphasizes the use of force and ignores global problems whose solution requires international cooperation. The rest of the world dances to the tune the United States is playing, and if that continues too long we are in danger of destroying our civilization. Changing the attitude and policies of the United States remains my top priority."
George Soros,Progressive,"We must recognize that as the dominant power in the world we have a special responsibility. In addition to protecting our national interests, we must take the leadership in protecting the common interests of humanity. I go into some detail as to what that entails.   Mankind’s power over nature has increased cumulatively while its ability to govern itself has not kept pace. There is no other country that can take the place of the United States in the foreseeable future. If the United States fails to provide the right kind of leadership our civilization may destroy itself. That is the unpleasant reality that confronts us."
George Soros,Progressive,"I am not a Zionist, nor am I am a practicing Jew, but I have a great deal of sympathy for my fellow Jews and a deep concern for the survival of Israel."
George Soros,Progressive,"The Bush administration is once again in the process of committing a major policy blunder in the Middle East ... Hamas won the elections in an upset victory. Then came the blunder I am talking about. Israel, with the strong backing of the United States, refused to recognize the democratically elected Hamas government."
George Soros,Progressive,"The Palestine problem does not have a purely military solution. Military superiority is necessary for Israel's national security, but it is not sufficient. The solution has to be political, as President Clinton recognized."
George Soros,Progressive,"The pro-Israel lobby has been remarkably successful in suppressing criticism. Politicians challenge it at their peril because of the lobby's ability to influence political contributions. ... Following his criticism of repressive Israeli policy on the West Bank, former president Jimmy Carter has suffered the loss of some of the financial backers of his center."
George Soros,Progressive,"One of the myths propagated by the enemies of Israel is that there is an all-powerful Zionist conspiracy. That is a false accusation. Nevertheless, that AIPAC has been so successful in suppressing criticism has lent some credence to such false beliefs. Demolishing the wall of silence that has protected AIPAC would help lay them to rest. A debate within the Jewish community, instead of fomenting anti-Semitism, would only help diminish it.  Anticipating attacks, I should like to emphasize that I do not subscribe to the myths propagated by enemies of Israel and I am not blaming Jews for anti-Semitism. Anti-Semitism predates the birth of Israel. Neither Israel's policies nor the critics of those policies should be held responsible for anti-Semitism. At the same time, I do believe that attitudes toward Israel are influenced by Israel's policies, and attitudes toward the Jewish community are influenced by the pro-Israel lobby's success in suppressing divergent views."
Donna Brazile,Progressive,"“Gary, how did they do this without me knowing?” I asked. “I don’t know how Debbie relates to the officers,” Gary said. He described the party as fully under the control of Hillary’s campaign, which seemed to confirm the suspicions of the Bernie camp. The campaign had the DNC on life support, giving it money every month to meet its basic expenses, while the campaign was using the party as a fund-raising clearinghouse. Under FEC law, an individual can contribute a maximum of $2,700 directly to a presidential campaign. But the limits are much higher for contributions to state parties and a party’s national committee."
Donna Brazile,Progressive,"Republicans bring out Colin Powell and J.C. Watts because they have no program, no policy. The play that game because they have no other game. They have no love and no joy. They'd rather take pictures with black children than feed them."
Donna Brazile,Progressive,"There are people who just don't believe in the existence of a god. I don't know why because clearly, there is strong evidence that there's a god. But I believe that you serve all the people, not just those who profess to have faith but those with little or no faith. That's how you convert them."
James Carville,Progressive,"Stay focused. Talk about things that’ll matter to the people, you know? It’s the economy, stupid."
James Carville,Progressive,"Let me buy a [security] pass … so that they can scan me and and search me and measure my penis, then let me get on the plane."
James Carville,Progressive,"John McCain, if you liked the last eight, you are going to love the next four."
James Carville,Progressive,"You can call the dogs in, wet the fire, and leave the house. The hunt's over."
James Carville,Progressive,"[On Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama] If she gave him one of her cojones, they'd both have two."
James Carville,Progressive,"Mr. Richardson’s endorsement came right around the anniversary of the day when Judas sold out for 30 pieces of silver, so I think the timing is appropriate, if ironic."
James Carville,Progressive,"Whenever I hear a campaign talk about a need to energize the base, that's a campaign that's going down the toilet. It's a pretty good indication that they're not eating up any territory, they can't get anybody in the center to support them, they're getting shelled back into their own bunker."
James Carville,Progressive,[Hollywood] hates America.
James Carville,Progressive,Who cares? Sometimes you need rebirth. (On the destruction of America)
James Carville,Progressive,Washington is a dirty diaper. It's time for a change.
James Carville,Progressive,"Hurricane [Katrina] hit the Gulf Coast and destroyed much of the Gulf Coast — that was an act of God … Now what happened to New Orleans, that was a complete failure of the federal government. Complete negligence by the feds."
James Carville,Progressive,I didn’t just experiment with marijuana — if you know what I mean.
James Carville,Progressive,"Yeah, I graduated with a 4.0… blood alcohol level."
James Carville,Progressive,"Back in 2000 a Republican friend warned me that if I voted for Al Gore and he won, the stock market would tank, we'd lose millions of jobs, and our military would be totally overstretched. You know what? I did vote for Al Gore, he did win, and I'll be damned if all those things didn't come true!"
James Carville,Progressive,Republicans want smaller government for the same reason crooks want fewer cops: it's easier to get away with murder.
James Carville,Progressive,"Between Paoli and Penn Hills, Pennsylvania is Alabama without the blacks. They didn't film The Deer Hunter there for nothing -- the state has the second-highest concentration of NRA members, behind Texas."
James Carville,Progressive,"Look, if George W. Bush and his Republican cronies walked on water, I'd be the guy out there yelling that they couldn't swim. But don't take it from me: we've now heard it from the military commanders and our intelligence community: George Bush's actions in Iraq have not made us safer. They've done the opposite."
James Carville,Progressive,"What I'm suggesting is, stand for yourself, be for something and the hell with it. Because the hand-wringers and the editorialists and the sigh-and-pontificate crowd will be against you, whatever you do."
James Carville,Progressive,"Drag a hundred-dollar bill through a trailer park, you never know what you'll find."
James Carville,Progressive,Elections are about fucking your enemies. Winning is about fucking your friends.
James Carville,Progressive,"When your opponent is drowning, throw the son of a bitch an anvil."
Tony Judt,Progressive,"Some people, myself included, advocated foreign intervention in Bosnia and Kosovo while opposing our adventure in Iraq. Sam Moyn might find this inconsistent, but (on this occasion at least) it is the world that is inconsistent, not us. During the Balkan wars individuals’ rights were under ascertainable threat in real time. Outside intervention could make a difference, and it did. This was not the case in Iraq. We should always be suspicious of the invocation of universal “rights” as a cover for sectional interests. But it doesn’t follow from this that talk of rights is “really” always about something else. Sometimes it is, and sometimes it isn’t. How, then, should we adjust our response? Well, there is a serviceable Keynesian answer to that: “When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do?”"
Tony Judt,Progressive,"My concern tonight is the following: Why is it that here in the United States we have such difficulty even imagining a different sort of society from the one whose dysfunctions and inequalities trouble us so? We appear to have lost the capacity to question the present, much less offer alternatives to it. Why is it so beyond us to conceive of a different set of arrangements to our common advantage?"
Tony Judt,Progressive,"What, then, is to be done? We have to begin with the state: as the incarnation of collective interests, collective purposes, and collective goods. If we cannot learn to “think the state” once again, we shall not get very far. But what precisely should the state do? Minimally, it should not duplicate unnecessarily: as Keynes wrote, “The important thing for Government is not to do things which individuals are doing already, and to do them a little better or a little worse; but to do those things which at present are not done at all.” And we know from the bitter experience of the past century that there are some things that states should most certainly not be doing."
Tony Judt,Progressive,"We don’t live in a world of fixed historical laws that says the—as you describe it—liberal state was born at a particular time, lived and died, and that’s what we’re stuck with. But there are reasons why some things are much harder to retain, to invent, to reinvent than others."
Tony Judt,Progressive," What’s missing from public conversation and public policy conversation is precisely a sort of moral underpinning, a sense of the moral purposes that bind people together in functional societies. And part of the attraction of someone who otherwise didn’t appeal to me in the least—like, say, Pope John Paul II—was how he managed to connect with young people. Whether it was in Eastern Europe or Latin America or wherever, his was the sense of an absolutely, unambiguously, morally noncompromising view about what is right and what is wrong. It seems to me that we need to reintroduce some of that. We need to reintroduce confidently and unashamedly that kind of language into the public realm. And not expel it, so to speak, into church for Sunday. It’s not only on Sunday that some things are right and some things are wrong."
Tony Judt,Progressive,One of the very few things that I know I believe strongly is that we must learn how to make a better world out of usable pasts rather than dreaming of infinite futures. It’s a very late-Enlightenment view that says that the only way to make a better future is to believe that the future will be better. Smarter people than me used to believe very differently and I think it is time to listen to them once again.
Tony Judt,Progressive,"Where does that leave me? Trying, as usual, to square general truths with particular circumstances. That’s the difference between pure ethics and political theory; but it isn’t resolved by simply abandoning the tension and sliding to one end of the pole."
Tony Judt,Progressive,"God knows I can think of enough things that I did wrong both personally and as part of my cohort. But I never abandoned what I thought of as the benefits of the postwar consensus in favour of sectional advantage. Actually, I was always a bit awkward in this as other respects. As you know, I was against root-and-branch school comprehensivization on the grounds that the postwar arrangements combining meritocracy with opportunity, while imperfect and logically indefensible, were better than the radical schemes on offer – which have trashed much of the pedagogical gains of the early postwar decades."
Tony Judt,Progressive,"I hate publicity, celebrity, fame, and notoriety, all of which are associated with controversy in its public form. But, in fairness, all my life I've been rather upfront with my opinions and never hidden them on grounds of conformity or (I fear) politesse. However, until the wretched Polish consulate affair, I don't think I was ever controversial—I was certainly not known outside of the hermetic little world of the academy, and my contrarian scholarly writings aroused no great fuss."
Tony Judt,Progressive,"I am, I discover in late middle age, a work in progress."
Tony Judt,Progressive,"In practice, the writer or scholar who aspires to that public position which defines intellectuals and distinguishes them from mere scribblers has always had to choose between being the apologist for rulers or an advisor to the people; the tragedy of the twentieth century is that these two functions have ceased to exist independently of one another, and intellectuals like Sartre who thought they were fulfilling one role were inevitably drawn to play both. If their successors, in France or elsewhere, are truly to put this past behind them, it will not be enough to recognize past mistakes. It will also be necessary to accept that entailed in the very meaning for modern society of the term intellectual are a number of roles that writers and scholars today may no longer wish to fulfill; indeed, a refusal to occupy the post of the (engaged) intellectual may be the most positive of the steps modern thinkers can take in any serious effort to come to terms with their own responsibility for our common recent past."
Tony Judt,Progressive,"From the end of World War I until the middle of the middle of the 1970s, French public life was shaped and misshaped by three overlapping and intersecting forms of collective and individual irresponsibility. The first of these was political. Reading the history of interwar France, one is struck again and again by the incompetence, the insouciance and the culpable negligence of the men who governed the country and represented its citizens. This is not a political observation, in the partisan sense, but rather a cultural one."
Tony Judt,Progressive,"If the era of political irresponsibility in France lasted from 1918 to 1958, the age of moral irresponsibility may be said to have begun in the mid-thirties and endured for the best part of four decades."
Tony Judt,Progressive,"This book is about three Frenchmen who lived and wrote against the grain of these three ages of irresponsibility. They were very different men and would have been surprised to think of themselves as a group, yet they have something rather distinctive in common. All three played an important role in the France of their lifetime but lived at a slightly awkward tangent to their contemporaries. For much of his adult life each was an object of dislike, suspicion, contempt, or hatred for many of his peers and contemporaries; only at the end of their long lives were Léon Blum and Raymond Aron, for quite different reasons, able to relax into the comfort of near-universal admiration, respect, and, in some quarters, adulation. Camus, who had experienced all three by the age of thirty-five, died twelve years later an insecure and much-maligned figure; it would be thirty years before his reputation would recover."
Tony Judt,Progressive,"Europe is the smallest continent. It is not really even a continent—just a subcontinental annexe to Asia. The whole of Europe (excluding Russia and Turkey) comprises just five and a half million square kilometers: less than two thirds the area of Brazil, not much more than half the size of China or the US. It is dwarfed by Russia, which covers seventeen million square kilometers. But in the intensity of its internal differences and contrasts, Europe is unique."
Tony Judt,Progressive,"Europe is not re-entering its troubled wartime past—on the contrary, it is leaving it. Germany today, like the rest of Europe, is more conscious of its twentieth-century history than at any time in the past fifty years. But this does not mean that it is being drawn back into it. For that history never went away."
Tony Judt,Progressive,"Sixty years after Hitler's death, his war and its consequences are entering history. Postwar in Europe lasted a very long time, but it is finally coming to a close."
Tony Judt,Progressive,"We have entered an age of insecurity—economic insecurity, physical insecurity, political insecurity. The fact that we are largely unaware of this is small comfort: few in 1914 predicted the utter collapse of their world and the economic and political catastrophes that followed. Insecurity breeds fear. And fear—fear of change, fear of decline, fear of strangers and an unfamiliar  world—is corroding the trust and interdependence on which civil societies rest."
Tony Judt,Progressive,"All change is disruptive. We have seen that the specter of terrorism is enough to cast stable democracies into turmoil. Climate change will have even more dramatic consequences. Men and women will be thrown back upon the resources of the state. They will look to their political leaders and representatives to protect them: open societies will once again be urged to close in upon themselves, sacrificing freedom for ‘security’. The choice will no longer be between the state and the market, but between two sorts of state. It is thus incumbent upon us to re-conceive the role of government. If we do not, others will."
Tony Judt,Progressive,Inequality is corrosive. It rots societies from within. The impact of material differences takes a while to show up: but in due course competition for status and goods increases; people feel a growing sense of superiority (or inferiority) based on their possessions; prejudice towards those on the lower ranks of the social ladder hardens; crime spikes and the pathologies of social disadvantage become ever more marked. The legacy of unregulated wealth creation is bitter indeed.
Tony Judt,Progressive,"The ‘false precision’ of which Maynard Keynes accused his economist critics is with us still. Worse: we have smuggled in a misleadingly ‘ethical’ vocabulary to bolster our economic arguments, furnishing us with a self-satisfied gloss upon crassly utilitarian calculations. When imposing welfare cuts on the poor, for example, legislators in the UK and US alike have taken a singular pride in the ‘hard choices’ they have had to make."
Tony Judt,Progressive,"What did trust, cooperation, progressive taxation and the interventionist state bequeath to western societies in the decades following 1945? The short answer is, in varying degrees, security, prosperity, social services and greater equality. We have grown accustomed in recent years to the assertion that the price paid for these benefits—in economic inefficiency, insufficient innovation, stifled entrepreneurship, public debt and a loss of private initiative—was too high. Most of these criticisms are demonstrably false."
Tony Judt,Progressive,"We no longer have political movements. While thousands of us may come together for a rally or march, we are bound together on such occasions by a single shared interest. Any effort to convert such interests into collective goals is usually undermined by the fragmented individualism of our concerns. Laudable goals—fighting climate change, opposing war, advocating public healthcare or penalizing bankers—are united by nothing more than the expression of emotion. In our political as in our economic lives, we have become consumers: choosing from a broad gamut of competing objectives, we find it hard to imagine ways or reasons to combine these into a coherent whole. We must do better than this."
Tony Judt,Progressive,"Unfortunately, pragmatism is not always good politics. The greatest asset of mid-20th century social democracy—its willingness to compromise its own core beliefs in the name of balance, tolerance, fairness and freedom—now looks more like weakness: a loss of nerve in the face of changed circumstances. We find it hard to look past those compromises to recall the qualities that informed progressive thought in the first place: what the early 20th century syndicalist Edouard Berth termed “a revolt of the spirit against . . . a world in which man was threatened by a monstrous moral and metaphysical materialism”."
Tony Judt,Progressive,"We face today two practical dilemmas. The first can be succinctly described as the return of the ‘social question’. For Victorian reformers—or American activists of the pre-1914 age of reform—the challenge posed by the social question of their time was straightforward: how was a liberal society to respond to the poverty, overcrowding, dirt, malnutrition and ill health of the new industrial cities? How were the working masses to be brought into the community—as voters, as citizens, as participants—without upheaval, protest and even revolution? What should be done to alleviate the suffering and injustices to which the urban working masses were now exposed and how was the ruling elite of the day to be brought to see the need for change?The history of the 20th century West is in large measure the history of efforts to answer these questions. The responses proved spectacularly successful: not only was revolution avoided but the industrial proletariat was integrated to a remarkable degree. Only in countries where any liberal reform was prevented by authoritarian rulers did the social question rephrase itself as a political challenge, typically ending in violent confrontation. In the middle of the 19th century, sharp-eyed observers like Karl Marx had taken it for granted that the only way the inequities of industrial capitalism could be overcome was by revolution. The idea that they could be dissolved peacefully into New Deals, Great Societies and welfare states simply never would have occurred to him."
Tony Judt,Progressive,"Political skepticism is the source of so many of our dilemmas. Even if free markets worked as advertised, it would be hard to claim that they constituted a sufficient basis for the well-lived life. So what precisely is it that we find lacking in unrestrained financial capitalism, or ‘commercial society’ as the 18th century had it? What do we find instinctively amiss in our present arrangements and what can we do about them? What is it that offends our sense of propriety when faced with unfettered lobbying by the wealthy at the expense of everyone else? What have we lost?We are all children of the Greeks. We intuitively grasp the need for a sense of moral direction: it is not necessary to be familiar with Socrates to feel that the unexamined life is not worth much. Natural Aristotelians, we assume that a just society is one in which justice is habitually practiced; a good society one in which people behave well. But in order for such an implicitly circular account to convince, we need to agree on the meaning of ‘just’ or ‘well’."
Tony Judt,Progressive,"The case for reviving the state does not rest uniquely upon its contributions to modern society as a collective project; there is a more urgent consideration. We have entered an age of fear. Insecurity is once again an active ingredient of political life in Western democracies. Insecurity born of terrorism, of course; but also, and more insidiously, fear of the uncontrollable speed of change, fear of the loss of employment, fear of losing ground to others in an increasingly unequal distribution of resources, fear of losing control of the circumstances and routines of our daily life. And, perhaps above all, fear that it is not just we who can no longer shape our lives but that those in authority have also lost control, to forces beyond their reach."
Tony Judt,Progressive,"It would seem to follow that the ‘invisible hand’ is not much help when it comes to practical legislation. There are too many areas of life where we cannot be relied upon to advance our collective interests merely by doing what we think is best for each of us. Today, when the market and the free play of private interests so obviously do not come together to collective advantage, we need to know when to intervene."
Tony Judt,Progressive,"Even in Scandinavia, where social democratic institutions were far more culturally ingrained, membership of the EU—or even just participation in the World Trade Organization and other international agencies—appeared to constrain locally-initiated legislation. In short, social democracy seemed doomed by that same internationalization which its early theorists had so enthusiastically adumbrated as the future of capitalism.From this perspective, social democracy—like liberalism—was a byproduct of the rise of the European nation-state: a political idea keyed to the social challenges of industrialization in developed societies. Not only was there no ‘socialism’ in America, but social democracy as a working compromise between radical goals and liberal traditions lacked widespread support in any other continent. There was no shortage of enthusiasm for revolutionary socialism in much of the non-Western world, but the distinctively European compromise did not export well."
Tony Judt,Progressive,"In writing this book, I hope I have offered some guidance to those—the young especially—trying to articulate their objections to our way of life. However, this is not enough. As citizens of a free society, we have a duty to look critically at our world. But if we think we know what is wrong, we must act upon that knowledge. Philosophers, it was famously observed, have hitherto only interpreted the world in various ways; the point is to change it."
Jane Jacobs,Progressive,"I would spend a nickel on the subway and go arbitrarily to some other stop and look around there. So I was roaming the city in the afternoons and applying for jobs in the morning. And one day I found myself in a neighborhood I just liked so much…it was one of those times I had put a nickel in and just invested something. And where did I get out? I just liked the sound of the name: Christopher Street — so I got out at Christopher Street, and I was enchanted with this neighborhood, and walked around it all afternoon and then I rushed back to Brooklyn. And I said, ""Betty I found out where we have to live."""
Jane Jacobs,Progressive,I did have an inkling that I was going to be a writer. That was my intention.
Jane Jacobs,Progressive,"I was brought up to believe that there is no virtue in conforming meekly to the dominant opinion of the moment. I was encouraged to believe that simple conformity results in stagnation for a society, and that American progress has been largely owing to the opportunity for experimentation, the leeway given initiative, and to a gusto and a freedom for chewing over odd ideas."
Jane Jacobs,Progressive,"I was taught that the American's right to be a free individual, not at the mercy of the state, was hard-won and that its price was eternal vigilance, that I too would have to be vigilant. I was made to feel that it would be a disgrace to me, as an individual, if I should not value or should give up rights that were dearly bought. I am grateful for that upbringing."
Jane Jacobs,Progressive,"We must demonstrate that it is possible to overcome poverty, misery and decay by democratic means, and we must ourselves believe, and must show others, that our American tradition of the dignity and liberty of the individual is not a luxury for easy times but is the basic source of the strength and security of a successful society."
Jane Jacobs,Progressive,"The other threat to the security of our tradition, I believe, lies at home. It is the current fear of radical ideas and of people who propound them. I do not agree with the extremists of either the left or the right, but I think they should be allowed to speak and to publish, both because they themselves have, and ought to have, rights, and once their rights are gone, the rights of the rest of us are hardly safe. Extremists typically want to squash not only those who disagree with them diametrically, but those who disagree with them at all. It seems to me that in every country where extremists of the left have gotten sufficiently in the saddle to squash the extremists of the right, they have ridden on to squash the center or terrorize it also. And the same goes for extremists of the right. I do not want that to happen in our country."
Jane Jacobs,Progressive,"Great cities are not like towns, only larger. They are not like suburbs, only denser. They differ from towns and suburbs in basic ways, and one of them is that cities are, by definition, full of strangers."
Jane Jacobs,Progressive,"It may be that we have become so feckless as a people that we no longer care how things do work, but only what kind of quick, easy outer impression they give. If so, there is little hope for our cities or probably for much else in our society. But I do not think this is so."
Jane Jacobs,Progressive,A region is an area safely larger than the last one to whose problems we found no solution.
Jane Jacobs,Progressive,"As for really new ideas of any kind—no matter how ultimately profitable or otherwise successful some of them might prove to be—there is no leeway for such chancy trial, error and experimentation in the high-overhead economy of new construction. Old ideas can sometimes use new buildings. New ideas must use old buildings."
Jane Jacobs,Progressive,"This is both a gloomy and a hopeful book.  The subject itself is gloomy. A Dark Age is a culture's dead end. We in North America and Western Europe, enjoying the many benefits of the culture conventionally known as the West, customarily think of a Dark Age as happening once, long ago, following the collapse of the Western Roman Empire. But in North America we live in a graveyard of lost aboriginal cultures, many of which were decisively finished off by mass amnesia in which even the memory of what was lost was also lost. Throughout the world Dark Ages have scrawled finis to successions of cultures receding far into the past."
Jane Jacobs,Progressive,The salient mystery of Dark Ages sets the stage for mass amnesia. People living in vigorous cultures typically treasure those cultures and resist any threat to them. How and why can a people so totally discard a formerly vital culture that it becomes vitally lost?
Jane Jacobs,Progressive,"Writing, printing, and the Internet give a false sense of security about the permanence of culture."
Jane Jacobs,Progressive,"While politicians, clergy, creators of advertisements, and other worthies assert stoutly that the family is the foundation of society, the nuclear family, as an institution, is currently in grave trouble."
Jane Jacobs,Progressive,"Credentialing, not education, has become the primary business of North American universities."
Jane Jacobs,Progressive,One wonders at the docility of the students who evidently must be satisfied enough with the credentials to be uncaring about the lack of education.
Jane Jacobs,Progressive,Subsidiarity is the principle that government works best — most responsibly and responsively — when it is closest to the people it serves and the needs it addresses. Fiscal accountability is the principle that institutions collecting and disbursing taxes work most responsibly when they are transparent to those providing the money.
Jane Jacobs,Progressive,"Advanced cultures are usually sophisticated enough, or have been sophisticated enough at some point in their pasts, to realize that foxes shouldn't be relied on to guard henhouses."
Jane Jacobs,Progressive,"In wretched outcomes, the devil is in the details."
Jane Jacobs,Progressive,Redundancy is expensive but indispensable.
Jane Jacobs,Progressive,"Beneficent spirals, operating by benign feedback, mean that everything needful is not required at once: each individual improvement is beneficial for the whole"
Jane Jacobs,Progressive,I have learned yet again (this has been going on all my life) what folly it is to take any thing for granted without examining it skeptically.
Jane Jacobs,Progressive,"Privately run jails are a mark of American ""reinvented government"" that has been picked up by neoconservatives in Canada."
Lawrence Lessig,Progressive,"We are on the cusp of this time where I can say, ""I speak as a citizen of the world"" without others saying, ""God, what a nut."""
Lawrence Lessig,Progressive,"One thing we know about incentives is you can't incent a dead person. No matter what we do, Hawthorne will not produce any more works, [even if] we can give him all the money in the world."
Lawrence Lessig,Progressive,"Americans have been selling this view around the world: that progress comes from perfect protection of intellectual property. Notwithstanding the fact that the most innovative and progressive space we've seen — the Internet — has been the place where intellectual property has been least respected. You know, facts don't get in the way of this ideology."
Lawrence Lessig,Progressive,"Our problem is that lawyers have taught us that there is only one kind of economic market for innovation out there and it is this kind of isolated inventor who comes up with an idea and then needs to be protected. That is a good picture of maybe what pharmaceutical industry does. It's a bad picture of what goes on, for example, in the context of software development, in particular. In the context of software development, where you have sequential and complementary developments, patents create an extraordinarily damaging influence on innovation and on the process of developing and bringing new ideas to market. So the particular mistake that lawyers have compounded is the unwillingness to discriminate among different kinds of innovation. We really need to think quite pragmatically about whether intellectual property is helping or hurting, and if you can't show it's going to help, then there is no reason to issue this government-backed monopoly."
Lawrence Lessig,Progressive,"There’s going to be an i-9/11 event. Which doesn’t necessarily mean an Al Qaeda attack, it means an event where the instability or the insecurity of the internet becomes manifest during a malicious event which then inspires the government into a response. You’ve got to remember that after 9/11 the government drew up the Patriot Act within 20 days and it was passed. … So I was having dinner with Richard Clarke and I asked him if there is an equivalent, is there an i-Patriot Act just sitting waiting for some substantial event as an excuse to radically change the way the internet works. He said “of course there is”."
Lawrence Lessig,Progressive,"I received an email from JSTOR four days before Aaron died, from the president of JSTOR, announcing, celebrating that JSTOR was going to release all of these journal articles to anybody around the world who wanted access — exactly what Aaron was fighting for. And I didn’t have time to send it to Aaron; I was on — I was traveling. But I looked forward to seeing him again — I had just seen him the week before — and celebrating that this is what had happened. So, all of us think there are a thousand things we could have done, a thousand things we could have done, and we have to do, because Aaron Swartz is now an icon, an ideal. He is what we will be fighting for, all of us, for the rest of our lives. … Every time you saw Aaron, he was surrounded by five or 10 different people who loved and respected and worked with him. He was depressed because he was increasingly recognizing that the idealism he brought to this fight maybe wasn’t enough. When he saw all of his wealth gone, and he recognized his parents were going to have to mortgage their house so he could afford a lawyer to fight a government that treated him as if he were a 9/11 terrorist, as if what he was doing was threatening the infrastructure of the United States, when he saw that and he recognized how — how incredibly difficult that fight was going to be, of course he was depressed.  Now, you know, I’m not a psychiatrist. I don’t know whether there was something wrong with him because of — you know, beyond the rational reason he had to be depressed, but I don’t — I don’t — I don’t have patience for people who want to say, ""Oh, this was just a crazy person; this was just a person with a psychological problem who killed himself."" No. This was somebody — this was somebody who was pushed to the edge by what I think of as a kind of bullying by our government. A bullying by our government."
Lawrence Lessig,Progressive,"A time is marked not so much by ideas that are argued about as by ideas that are taken for granted. The character of an era hangs upon what needs no defense. Power runs with ideas that only the crazy would draw into doubt. The ""taken for granted"" is the test of sanity; ""what everyone knows"" is the line between us and them. This means that sometimes a society gets stuck. Sometimes these unquestioned ideas interfere, as the cost of questioning becomes too great. In these times, the hardest task for social or political activists is to find a way to get people to wonder again about what we all believe is true. The challenge is to sow doubt."
Lawrence Lessig,Progressive,"All around us are the consequences of the most significant technological, and hence cultural, revolution in generations. This revolution has produced the most powerful and diverse spur to innovation of any in modern times. Yet a set of ideas about a central aspect of this prosperity — ""property"" — confuses us. This confusion is leading us to change the environment in ways that will change the prosperity. Believing we know what makes prosperity work, ignoring the nature of the actual prosperity all around, we change the rules within which the Internet revolution lives. These changes will end the revolution."
Lawrence Lessig,Progressive,"We live in a world with ""free"" content, and this freedom is not an imperfection. We listen to the radio without paying for the songs we hear; we hear friends humming tunes that they have not licensed. We tell jokes that reference movie plots without the permission of the directors. We read our children books, borrowed from a library, without paying the original copyright holder for the performance rights."
Lawrence Lessig,Progressive,"In arguing for increasing content owners' control over content users, it's not sufficient to say ""They didn't pay for this use."""
Lawrence Lessig,Progressive,Creation always involves building upon something else. There is no art that doesn't reuse. And there will be less art if every reuse is taxed by the appropriator. Monopoly controls have been the exception in free societies; they have been the rule in closed societies.
Lawrence Lessig,Progressive,"While control is needed, and perfectly warranted, our bias should be clear up front: Monopolies are not justified by theory; they should be permitted only when justified by facts. If there is no solid basis for extending a certain monopoly protection, then we should not extend that protection. This does not mean that every copyright must prove its value initially. That would be a far too cumbersome system of control. But it does mean that every system or category of copyright or patent should prove its worth. Before the monopoly should be permitted, there must be reason to believe it will do some good — for society, and not just for monopoly holders."
Lawrence Lessig,Progressive,"The current term of protection for software is the life of an author plus 70 years, or, if it's work-for-hire, a total of 95 years. This is a bastardization of the Constitution's requirement that copyright be for ""limited times."" By the time Apple's Macintosh operating system finally falls into the public domain, there will be no machine that could possibly run it. The term of copyright for software is effectively unlimited."
Lawrence Lessig,Progressive,"While the creative works from the 16th century can still be accessed and used by others, the data in some software programs from the 1990s is already inaccessible. Once a company that produces a certain product goes out of business, it has no simple way to uncover how its product encoded data. The code is thus lost, and the software is inaccessible. Knowledge has been destroyed."
Lawrence Lessig,Progressive,"I would dramatically reduce the safeguards for software — from the ordinary term of 95 years to an initial term of 5 years, renewable once. And I would extend that government-backed protection only if the author submitted a duplicate of the source code to be held in escrow while the work was protected. Once the copyright expired, that escrowed version would be publicly available from the copyright office.  Most programmers should like this change. No code lives for 10 years, and getting access to the source code of even orphaned software projects would benefit all. More important, it would unlock the knowledge built into this protected code for others to build upon as they see fit. Software would thus be like every other creative work — open for others to see and to learn from."
Lawrence Lessig,Progressive,"The problems with software are just examples of the problems found generally with creativity. Our trend in copyright law has been to enclose as much as we can; the consequence of this enclosure is a stifling of creativity and innovation. If the Internet teaches us anything, it is that great value comes from leaving core resources in a commons, where they're free for people to build upon as they see fit."
Lawrence Lessig,Progressive,"If you understand this refrain, you're gonna' understand everything I want to say to you today. It has four parts:"
Lawrence Lessig,Progressive,"In 1774, free culture was born. In a case called Donaldson v. Beckett in the House of Lords in England, free culture was made because copyright was stopped. In 1710, the statute had said that copyright should be for a limited term of just 14 years. But in the 1740s, when Scottish publishers started reprinting classics — you gotta' love the Scots — the London publishers said ""Stop!"" They said, ""Copyright is forever!""... These publishers demanded a common-law copyright that would be forever. In 1769, in a case called Miller v. Taylor, they won their claim, but just five years later, in Donaldson, Miller was reversed, and for the first time in history, the works of Shakespeare were freed, freed from the control of a monopoly of publishers. Freed culture was the result of that case."
Lawrence Lessig,Progressive,"That free culture was carried to America; that was our birth — 1790. We established a regime that left creativity unregulated. Now it was unregulated because copyright law only covered ""printing."" Copyright law did not control derivative work. And copyright law granted this protection for the limited time of 14 years."
Lawrence Lessig,Progressive,"Forget the 18th century, the 19th century, even at the birth of the 20th century. Here's my favorite example, here: 1928, my hero, Walt Disney, created this extraordinary work, the birth of Mickey Mouse in the form of Steamboat Willie. But what you probably don't recognize about Steamboat Willie and his emergence into Mickey Mouse is that in 1928, Walt Disney, to use the language of the Disney Corporation today, ""stole"" Willie from Buster Keaton's ""Steamboat Bill.""  It was a parody, a take-off; it was built upon Steamboat Bill. Steamboat Bill was produced in 1928 — no 14 years — just take it, rip, mix, and burn, as he did to produce the Disney empire."
Lawrence Lessig,Progressive,"Now the Disney Corporation could do this because that culture lived in a commons, an intellectual commons, a cultural commons, where people could freely take and build. It was a lawyer-free zone.  It was culture, which you didn't need the permission of someone else to take and build upon. That was the character of creativity at the birth of the last century. It was built upon a constitutional requirement that protection be for limited times, and it was originally limited. Fourteen years, if the author lived, then 28, then in 1831 it went to 42, then in 1909 it went to 56, and then magically, starting in 1962, look — no hands, the term expands. Eleven times in the last 40 years it has been extended for existing works — not just for new works that are going to be created, but existing works. The most recent is the Sonny Bono copyright term extension act."
Lawrence Lessig,Progressive,"The meaning of this pattern is absolutely clear to those who pay to produce it. The meaning is: No one can do to the Disney Corporation what Walt Disney did to the Brothers Grimm. That though we had a culture where people could take and build upon what went before, that's over. There is no such thing as the public domain in the minds of those who have produced these 11 extensions these last 40 years because now culture is owned."
Lawrence Lessig,Progressive,"Law and technology produce, together, a kind of regulation of creativity we've not seen before."
Lawrence Lessig,Progressive,"Here's a simple copyright lesson: Law regulates copies. What's that mean? Well, before the Internet, think of this as a world of all possible uses of a copyrighted work. Most of them are unregulated. Talking about fair use, this is not fair use; this is unregulated use. To read is not a fair use; it's an unregulated use. To give it to someone is not a fair use; it's unregulated. To sell it, to sleep on top of it, to do any of these things with this text is unregulated. Now, in the center of this unregulated use, there is a small bit of stuff regulated by the copyright law; for example, publishing the book — that's regulated. And then within this small range of things regulated by copyright law, there's this tiny band before the Internet of stuff we call fair use: Uses that otherwise would be regulated but that the law says you can engage in without the permission of anybody else. For example, quoting a text in another text — that's a copy, but it's a still fair use. That means the world was divided into three camps, not two: Unregulated uses, regulated uses that were fair use, and the quintessential copyright world. Three categories.  Enter the Internet. Every act is a copy, which means all of these unregulated uses disappear. Presumptively, everything you do on your machine on the network is a regulated use. And now it forces us into this tiny little category of arguing about, ""What about the fair uses? What about the fair uses?"" I will say the word: To hell with the fair uses. What about the unregulated uses we had of culture before this massive expansion of control?"
Lawrence Lessig,Progressive,"Now, here's the thing you've got to remember. You've got to see this. This is the point. (And Jack Valenti misses this.) Here's the point: Never has it been more controlled ever. Take the addition, the changes, the copyrights turn, take the changes to copyrights scope, put it against the background of an extraordinarily concentrated structure of media, and you produce the fact that never in our history have fewer people controlled more of the evolution of our culture. Never."
Lawrence Lessig,Progressive,"Here's a story: There was a documentary filmmaker who was making a documentary film about education in America. And he's shooting across this classroom with lots of people, kids, who are completely distracted at the television in the back of the classroom. When they get back to the editing room, they realize that on the television, you can barely make out the show for two seconds; it's ""The Simpsons,"" Homer Simpson on the screen. So they call up Matt Groening, who was a friend of the documentary filmmaker, and say, you know, Is this going to be a problem? It's only a couple seconds. Matt says, No, no, no, it's not going to be a problem, call so and so. So they called so and so, and so and so said call so and so. Eventually, the so and so turns out to be the lawyers, so when they got to the lawyers, they said, Is this going to be a problem? It's a documentary film. It's about education. It's a couple seconds. The so and so said 25,000 bucks. 25,000 bucks?! It's a couple seconds! What do you mean 25,000 bucks? The so and so said, I don't give a goddamn what it is for. $25,000 bucks or change your movie. Now you look at this and you say this is insane. It's insane. And if it is only Hollywood that has to deal with this, OK, that's fine. Let them be insane. The problem is their insane rules are now being applied to the whole world. This insanity of control is expanding as everything you do touches copyrights."
Lawrence Lessig,Progressive,It's insane. It's extreme. It's controlled by political interests. It has no justification in the traditional values that justify legal regulation. And we've done nothing about it. We're bigger than they are. We've got rights on our side. And we've done nothing about it. We let them control this debate. Here's the refrain that leads to this: They win because we've done nothing to stop it.
Lawrence Lessig,Progressive,"J. C. Watts is the only black member of the Republican Party in leadership. He's going to resign from Congress. He's been there seven and a half years. He's had enough. Nobody can believe it. Nobody in Washington can believe it. ... In an interview two days ago, Watts said, Here's the problem with Washington: ""If you are explaining, you are losing."" If you are explaining, you're losing. It's a bumper sticker culture. People have to get it like that, and if they don't, if it takes three seconds to make them understand, you're off their radar screen. Three seconds to understand, or you lose. This is our problem. Six years after this battle began, we're still explaining. We're still explaining and we are losing. They frame this as a massive battle to stop theft, to protect property. ... They extend copyrights perpetually. They don't get how that in itself is a form of theft. A theft of our common culture. We have failed in getting them to see what the issues here are and that's why we live in this place where a tradition speaks of freedom and their controls take it away."
Lawrence Lessig,Progressive,"If you don't do something now, this freedom that you built, that you spend your life coding, this freedom will be taken away. Either by those who see you as a threat, who then invoke the system of law we call patents, or by those who take advantage of the extraordinary expansion of control that the law of copyright now gives them over innovation. Either of these two changes through law will produce a world where your freedom has been taken away. And, If you can't fight for your freedom . . . you don't deserve it."
Lawrence Lessig,Progressive,"This is not a left and right issue. This is the important thing to recognize: This is not about conservatives versus liberals.  In our case, in Eldred, we have this brief filed by 17 economists, including Milton Friedman, James Buchanan, Ronald Kost, Ken Arrow, you know, lunatics, right? Left-wing liberals, right? Friedman said he'd only join if the word ""no-brainer"" existed in the brief somewhere, like this was a complete no-brainer for him. This is not about left and right. This is about right and wrong. That's what this battle is."
Lawrence Lessig,Progressive,"I believe it would be right for common sense to revolt against the extreme claims made today on behalf of ""intellectual property."" What the law demands today is increasingly as silly as a sheriff arresting an airplane for trespass. But the consequences of this silliness will be much more profound."
Lawrence Lessig,Progressive,"A free culture has been our past, but it will only be our future if we change the path we are on right now. Like Stallman's arguments for free software, an argument for free culture stumbles on a confusion that is hard to avoid, and even harder to understand. A free culture is not a culture without property; it is not a culture in which artists don't get paid. A culture without property, or in which creators can't get paid, is anarchy, not freedom. Anarchy is not what I advance here. Instead, the free culture that I defend in this book is a balance between anarchy and control. A free culture, like a free market, is filled with property. It is filled with rules of property and contract that get enforced by the state. But just as a free market is perverted if its property becomes feudal, so too can a free culture be queered by extremism in the property rights that define it. That is what I fear about our culture today. It is against that extremism that this book is written."
Lawrence Lessig,Progressive,"There has never been a time in history when more of our ""culture"" was as ""owned"" as it is now. And yet there has never been a time when the concentration of power to control the uses of culture has been as unquestioningly accepted as it is now."
Lawrence Lessig,Progressive,"Overregulation stifles creativity. It smothers innovation. It gives dinosaurs a veto over the future. It wastes the extraordinary opportunity for a democratic creativity that digital technology enables.  In addition to these important harms, there is one more that was important to our forebears, but seems forgotten today. Overregulation corrupts citizens and weakens the rule of law.  The war that is being waged today is a war of prohibition. As with every war of prohibition, it is targeted against the behavior of a very large number of citizens. According to The New York Times, 43 million Americans downloaded music in May 2002. According to the RIAA, the behavior of those 43 million Americans is a felony. We thus have a set of rules that transform 20 percent of America into criminals."
Lawrence Lessig,Progressive,"By insisting on the Constitution's limits to copyright, obviously Eldred was not endorsing piracy. Indeed, in an obvious sense, he was fighting a kind of piracy — piracy of the public domain. When Robert Frost wrote his work and when Walt Disney created Mickey Mouse, the maximum copyright term was just fifty-six years. Because of interim changes, Frost and Disney had already enjoyed a seventy-five-year monopoly for their work. They had gotten the benefit of the bargain that the Constitution envisions: In exchange for a monopoly protected for fifty-six years, they created new work. But now these entities were using their power — expressed through the power of lobbyists' money — to get another twenty-year dollop of monopoly. That twenty-year dollop would be taken from the public domain. Eric Eldred was fighting a piracy that affects us all."
Lawrence Lessig,Progressive,"Some people view the public domain with contempt. In their brief before the Supreme Court, the Nashville Songwriters Association wrote that the public domain is nothing more than ""legal piracy."" But it is not piracy when the law allows it; and in our constitutional system, our law requires it. Some may not like the Constitution's requirements, but that doesn't make the Constitution a pirate's charter.  As we've seen, our constitutional system requires limits on copyright as a way to assure that copyright holders do not too heavily influence the development and distribution of our culture. Yet, as Eric Eldred discovered, we have set up a system that assures that copyright terms will be repeatedly extended, and extended, and extended. We have created the perfect storm for the public domain. Copyrights have not expired, and will not expire, so long as Congress is free to be bought to extend them again."
Lawrence Lessig,Progressive,"It is valuable copyrights that are responsible for terms being extended. Mickey Mouse and ""Rhapsody in Blue."" These works are too valuable for copyright owners to ignore. But the real harm to our society from copyright extensions is not that Mickey Mouse remains Disney's. Forget Mickey Mouse. Forget Robert Frost. Forget all the works from the 1920s and 1930s that have continuing commercial value. The real harm of term extension comes not from these famous works. The real harm is to the works that are not famous, not commercially exploited, and no longer available as a result."
Lawrence Lessig,Progressive,"Of all the creative work produced by humans anywhere, a tiny fraction has continuing commercial value. For that tiny fraction, the copyright is a crucially important legal device. For that tiny fraction, the copyright creates incentives to produce and distribute the creative work. For that tiny fraction, the copyright acts as an ""engine of free expression.""  But even for that tiny fraction, the actual time during which the creative work has a commercial life is extremely short. As I've indicated, most books go out of print within one year. The same is true of music and film. Commercial culture is sharklike. It must keep moving. And when a creative work falls out of favor with the commercial distributors, the commercial life ends."
Lawrence Lessig,Progressive,"Now that copyrights can be just about a century long, the inability to know what is protected and what is not protected becomes a huge and obvious burden on the creative process. If the only way a library can offer an Internet exhibit about the New Deal is to hire a lawyer to clear the rights to every image and sound, then the copyright system is burdening creativity in a way that has never been seen before because there are no formalities."
Lawrence Lessig,Progressive,"The most powerful and sexy and well loved of lobbies really has as its aim not the protection of ""property"" but the rejection of a tradition. Their aim is not simply to protect what is theirs. Their aim is to assure that all there is is what is theirs.  It is not hard to understand why the warriors take this view. It is not hard to see why it would benefit them if the competition of the public domain tied to the Internet could somehow be quashed."
Lawrence Lessig,Progressive,"A simple idea blinds us, and under the cover of darkness, much happens that most of us would reject if any of us looked. So uncritically do we accept the idea of property in ideas that we don't even notice how monstrous it is to deny ideas to a people who are dying without them. So uncritically do we accept the idea of property in culture that we don't even question when the control of that property removes our ability, as a people, to develop our culture democratically. Blindness becomes our common sense. And the challenge for anyone who would reclaim the right to cultivate our culture is to find a way to make this common sense open its eyes. So far, common sense sleeps. There is no revolt. Common sense does not yet see what there could be to revolt about."
Lawrence Lessig,Progressive,"When it has become silly to suppose that the role of our government should be to ""seek balance,"" then count me with the silly, for that means that this has become quite serious indeed. If it should be obvious to everyone that the government does not seek balance, that the government is simply the tool of the most powerful lobbyists, that the idea of holding the government to a different standard is absurd, that the idea of demanding of the government that it speak truth and not lies is just naïve, then who have we, the most powerful democracy in the world, become?"
Lawrence Lessig,Progressive,"It might be crazy to expect a high government official to speak the truth. It might be crazy to believe that government policy will be something more than the handmaiden of the most powerful interests. It might be crazy to argue that we should preserve a tradition that has been part of our tradition for most of our history — free culture. If this is crazy, then let there be more crazies. Soon."
Lawrence Lessig,Progressive,"The danger in media concentration comes not from the concentration, but instead from the feudalism that this concentration, tied to the change in copyright, produces. It is not just that there are a few powerful companies that control an ever expanding slice of the media. It is that this concentration can call upon an equally bloated range of rights — property rights of a historically extreme form — that makes their bigness bad."
Lawrence Lessig,Progressive,"We Americans have a long history of fighting ""big,"" wisely or not. That we could be motivated to fight ""big"" again is not something new.  It would be something new, and something very important, if an equal number could be rallied to fight the increasing extremism built within the idea of ""intellectual property."" Not because balance is alien to our tradition; indeed, as I've argued, balance is our tradition. But because the muscle to think critically about the scope of anything called ""property"" is not well exercised within this tradition anymore. If we were Achilles, this would be our heel. This would be the place of our tragedy."
Lawrence Lessig,Progressive,"I've told a dark story. The truth is more mixed. A technology has given us a new freedom. Slowly, some begin to understand that this freedom need not mean anarchy. We can carry a free culture into the twenty-first century, without artists losing and without the potential of digital technology being destroyed. ... Common sense must revolt. It must act to free culture. Soon, if this potential is ever to be realized."
Lawrence Lessig,Progressive,"Common sense is with the copyright warriors because the debate so far has been framed at the extremes — as a grand either/or: either property or anarchy, either total control or artists won't be paid. If that really is the choice, then the warriors should win.  The mistake here is the error of the excluded middle. There are extremes in this debate, but the extremes are not all that there is. There are those who believe in maximal copyright — ""All Rights Reserved"" — and those who reject copyright — ""No Rights Reserved."" The ""All Rights Reserved"" sorts believe that you should ask permission before you ""use"" a copyrighted work in any way. The ""No Rights Reserved"" sorts believe you should be able to do with content as you wish, regardless of whether you have permission or not. ... What's needed is a way to say something in the middle — neither ""all rights reserved"" nor ""no rights reserved"" but ""some rights reserved"" — and thus a way to respect copyrights but enable creators to free content as they see fit. In other words, we need a way to restore a set of freedoms that we could just take for granted before."
Lawrence Lessig,Progressive,We will not reclaim a free culture by individual action alone. It will also take important reforms of laws. We have a long way to go before the politicians will listen to these ideas and implement these reforms. But that also means that we have time to build awareness around the changes that we need.
Lawrence Lessig,Progressive,"I'm a lawyer. I make lawyers for a living. I believe in the law. I believe in the law of copyright. Indeed, I have devoted my life to working in law, not because there are big bucks at the end but because there are ideals at the end that I would love to live.  Yet much of this book has been a criticism of lawyers, or the role lawyers have played in this debate. The law speaks to ideals, but it is my view that our profession has become too attuned to the client. And in a world where the rich clients have one strong view, the unwillingness of the profession to question or counter that one strong view queers the law.  The evidence of this bending is compelling. I'm attacked as a ""radical"" by many within the profession, yet the positions that I am advocating are precisely the positions of some of the most moderate and significant figures in the history of this branch of the law."
Lawrence Lessig,Progressive,"The legal system doesn't work. Or more accurately, it doesn't work for anyone except those with the most resources. Not because the system is corrupt. I don't think our legal system (at the federal level, at least) is at all corrupt. I mean simply because the costs of our legal system are so astonishingly high that justice can practically never be done."
Lawrence Lessig,Progressive,"The law should regulate in certain areas of culture — but it should regulate culture only where that regulation does good. Yet lawyers rarely test their power, or the power they promote, against this simple pragmatic question: ""Will it do good?"" When challenged about the expanding reach of the law, the lawyer answers, ""Why not?""  We should ask, ""Why?"" Show me why your regulation of culture is needed. Show me how it does good. And until you can show me both, keep your lawyers away."
Lawrence Lessig,Progressive,"We, the most powerful democracy in the world, have developed a strong norm against talking about politics. It's fine to talk about politics with people you agree with. But it is rude to argue about politics with people you disagree with. Political discourse becomes isolated, and isolated discourse becomes more extreme. We say what our friends want to hear, and hear very little beyond what our friends say."
Lawrence Lessig,Progressive,"""Writing"" is the Latin of our times. The modern language of the people is video and sound."
Jane Jacobs,Progressive,"Most sentimental ideas imply, at bottom, a deep if unacknowledged disrespect."
Jane Jacobs,Progressive,"The only guide which I feel that I can follow is not the fluctuating dicta of those who are victors in the battle for popularity at a given moment, but my own understanding of the American tradition in which I was brought up."
Jane Jacobs,Progressive,"Some who are fortunate enough to have communities still do fight to keep them, but they have seldom prevailed. While people possess a community, they usually understand that they can't afford to lose it; but after it is lost, gradually even the memory of what was lost is lost."
Jane Jacobs,Progressive,"Working places and commerce must be mingled right in with residences if men, like the men who work on or near Hudson Street, for example, are to be around city children in daily life"
Jane Jacobs,Progressive,"Ebenezer Howard’s vision of the Garden City would seem almost feudal to us. He seems to have thought that members of the industrial working classes would stay neatly in their class, and even at the same job within their class; that agricultural workers would stay in agriculture; that businessmen (the enemy) would hardly exist as a significant force in his Utopia; and that planners could go about their good and lofty work, unhampered by rude nay-saying from the untrained. It was the very fluidity of the new nineteenth-century industrial and metropolitan society, with its profound shiftings of power, people and money, that agitated Howard so deeply"
Jane Jacobs,Progressive,"And so, each day, several thousand more acres of our countryside are eaten by the bulldozers, covered by pavement, dotted with suburbanites who have killed the thing they thought they came to find."
Jane Jacobs,Progressive,If the sameness of use is shown candidly for what it is
Jane Jacobs,Progressive,"It is possible in a city street neighborhood to know all kinds of people without unwelcome entanglements, without boredom, necessity for excuses, explanations, fears of giving offense, embarrassments respecting impositions or commitments, and all such paraphernalia of obligations which can accompany less limited relationships. It is possible to be on excellent sidewalk terms with people who are very different from oneself, and even, as time passes, on familiar public terms with them. Such relationships can, and do, endure for many years, for decades; they could never have formed without that line, much less endured. The form precisely because they are by-the-way to people’s normal public sorties.‘Togetherness’ is a fittingly nauseating name for an old ideal in planning theory. This ideal is that if anything is shared among people, much should be shared. ‘Togetherness,’ apparently a spiritual resource of the new suburbs, works destructively in cities. The requirement that much shall be shared drives city people apart. When an area of a city lacks a sidewalk life, the people of the place must enlarge their private lives is they are to have anything approaching equivalent contact with their neighbors. They must settle for some form of ‘togetherness,’ in which more is shared with one another than in the life of the sidewalks, or else they must settle for lack of contact. Inevitably the outcome is one or the other; it has to be, and either has distressing results. In the case of the first outcome, where people do share much, they become exceedingly choosy as to who their neighbors are, or with whom they associate at all. They have to become so."
Jane Jacobs,Progressive,"Overcrowding, which is one symptom of the population instability, continues. It continues, not because the overcrowded people remain, but because they leave. Too many of those who overcome the economic necessity to overcrowd get out, instead of improving their lot within the neighborhood. They are quickly replaced by others who currently have little economic choice. The buildings, naturally, wear out with disproportionate swiftness under these conditions."
Jane Jacobs,Progressive,"the presence of buildings around a park is important in design. They enclose it. They make a definite shape out of the space, so that it appears as an important event in the city scene, a positive feature, rather than a no-account leftover."
Jane Jacobs,Progressive,"Our difficulty is no longer how to contain people densely in metropolitan areas and avoid the ravages of disease, bad sanitation and child labor. To go on thinking in these terms is anachronistic. Our difficulty today is rather how to contain people in metropolitan areas and avoid the ravages of apathetic and helpless neighborhoods."
Jane Jacobs,Progressive,"Intricacy that counts is mainly intricacy at eye level, change in the rise of ground, groupings of trees, openings leading to various focal points"
Jane Jacobs,Progressive,The desirability of segregating dwellings from work has been so dinned into us that it takes an effort to look at real life and observe that residential districts lacking mixture with work do not fare well in cities.
Jane Jacobs,Progressive,The bedrock attribute of a successful city district is that a person must feel personally safe and secure on the street among all these strangers.
Jane Jacobs,Progressive,"The primary economic conflict, I think, is between people whose interests are with already well-established economic activities, and those whose interests are with the emergence of new economic activities."
Al Gore,Progressive,"People who suffer the most from a given state of affairs are paradoxically the least likely to question, challenge, reject, or change it. To explain this peculiar phenomenon, Jost’s team developed a theory of system justification. Its core idea is that people are motivated to rationalize the status quo as legitimate"
Al Gore,Progressive,"think of climate change as slow, but it is unnervingly fast. We think of the technological change necessary to avert it as fast-arriving, but unfortunately it is deceptively slow"
Al Gore,Progressive,"The remedy for what ails our democracy is not simply better education (as important as that is) or civic education (as important as that can be), but the reestablishment of a genuine democratic discourse in which individuals can participate in a meaningful way"
Al Gore,Progressive,"Thomas Jefferson once wrote that whenever the people are well-informed, they can be trusted with their own government; that, whenever things get so far wrong as to attract their notice, they may be relied on to set them right. He also said: If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be. But we are right now in a period of great vulnerability. As noted earlier, when television became the primary source of information in the United States, the marketplace of ideas changed radically. Most communication was in only one direction, with a sharp decline in participatory democracy. During this period of vulnerability for American democracy"
Al Gore,Progressive,"Just as the printing press led to the appearance of a new set of possibilities for democracy, beginning five hundred years ago"
Al Gore,Progressive,"The planet has a fever. If your baby has a fever you go to the doctor. If the doctor says you need to intervene here, you don't say, 'Well, I read a science fiction novel that told me it's not a problem.' If the crib's on fire, you don't speculate that the baby is flame retardant. You take action."
Al Gore,Progressive,Oftentimes the child is the father of the man.
Al Gore,Progressive,"every grain of sand. Joan Baez sang the mournful yet uplifting spiritual, Swing Low, Sweet Chariot. Each member of the family recounted a few stories or read a poem. His mind was never a captive of reality, Laurene said. He possessed an epic sense of possibility. He looked at things from the standpoint of perfection. Mona Simpson, as befitting a novelist, had a finely crafted eulogy. He was an intensely emotional man, she recalled. Even ill, his taste, his discrimination, and his judgment held. He went through sixty-seven nurses before finding kindred spirits. She spoke of her brother’s love of work and noted that even in the last year, he embarked upon projects and elicited promises from his friends at Apple to finish them. She also, more personally, stressed his love of Laurene and all four of his children. Although he had achieved his wish of living to see Reed’s graduation, he would not see his daughters’ weddings. He’d wanted to walk them down the aisle as he’d walked me the day of my wedding, she said. Those chapters would not be written. We all"
Al Gore,Progressive,"If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it."
Al Gore,Progressive,"This is not a political issue. This is a moral issue. It affects the survival of human civilization. It is not a question of Left vs. Right; it is a question of right vs. wrong. Put simply, it is wrong to destroy the habitability of our planet and ruin the prospects of every generation that follows ours."
Al Gore,Progressive,"The good news is we know what to do. The good news is we have everything we need now to respond to the challenge of global warming. We have all the technologies we need, though more and better ones are being developed, and as they become available and become more affordable when produced in scale, they will make it easier to respond. We have everything we need"
Al Gore,Progressive,"This is a moral moment. This is not ultimately about any scientific debate or political dialogue. Ultimately, it is about who we are as human beings and whether or not we have the capacity to transcend our own limitations and rise to this new occasion. It is about whether or not we can see with our hearts, as well as our heads, the unprecedented response that is now called for; whether or not we can"
Al Gore,Progressive,"An executive who arrogates to himself the power to ignore the legitimate legislative directives of the Congress or to act free of the check of the judiciary becomes the central threat that the Founders sought to nullify in the Constitution. In the words of James Madison, The accumulation of all powers, legislative, executive, and judiciary, in the same hands, whether of one, a few, or many, and whether hereditary, self-appointed, or elective, may justly be pronounced the very definition of tyranny. What would Benjamin Franklin think of President Bush’s assertion that he has the inherent power, even without a declaration of war by the Congress, to launch an invasion of any nation on earth, at any time he chooses, for any reason he wishes, even if that nation poses no imminent threat to the United States? How long would it take James Madison to dispose of our current president’s claim, in Department of Justice legal opinions, that he is largely above the rule of law so long as he is acting in his role as commander in chief? I think it is safe to say that our Founders would be genuinely concerned about these recent developments in American democracy and that they would feel that we, here, are now facing a clear and present danger with the potential to threaten the future of the American experiment. Shouldn’t we be equally concerned, and shouldn’t we ask ourselves how it is that we have come to this point? In the name of security, this administration has attempted to relegate the Congress and the courts to the sidelines and replace our democratic system of checks and balances with an unaccountable executive. And all the while, it has constantly angled for new ways to exploit the sense of crisis for partisan gain and political dominance."
Al Gore,Progressive,"Should we amend all of the textbooks in America to explain to schoolchildren that what has been taught for more than two centuries about checks and balances is no longer valid? Should we teach them instead that the United States Congress and the courts are merely advisory groups that make suggestions to the president on what the law should be, but that the president is all-powerful and now has the final say on everything? Should we teach them that we are a government of men, not laws? Should we teach them that we used to be a democracy but now we only pretend to be?"
Al Gore,Progressive,"The Politics of Fear Fear is the most powerful enemy of reason. Both fear and reason are essential to human survival, but the relationship between them is unbalanced. Reason may sometimes dissipate fear, but fear frequently shuts down reason. As Edmund Burke wrote in England twenty years before the American Revolution, No passion so effectually robs the mind of all its powers of acting and reasoning as fear."
Al Gore,Progressive,"new techniques of mass persuasion. We must shift America from a needs to desires culture, Mazur said. People must be trained to desire, to want new things, even before the old have been entirely consumed. We must shape a new mentality. Man’s desires must overshadow his needs."
Al Gore,Progressive,"We are by nature a courageous and adaptive people. Our forebears overcame great challenges, and so will we. We are already seeing the emergence of new and innovative defenses against the assault on reason. It is my greatest hope that those who read this book will choose to become part of a new movement to rekindle the true spirit of America. Dr. Martin Luther King once said, Perhaps a new spirit is rising among us. If it is, let us trace its movements and pray that our own inner being may be sensitive to its guidance, for we are deeply in need of a new way beyond the darkness that seems so close around us. As John Adams wrote in 1780, ours is a government of laws and not of men. What is at stake today is that defining principle of our nation and thus the very nature of America. As the Supreme Court has written, Our Constitution is a covenant running from the first generation of Americans to us and then to future generations. The Constitution includes no wartime exception, though its framers knew well the reality of war. And as Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes reminded us shortly after World War I, the Constitution’s principles have value only if we apply them in the difficult times as well as in those when it matters less. The question before us could be of no greater moment: Will we continue to live as a people under the rule of law as embodied in our Constitution? Or will we fail future generations by leaving them a Constitution far diminished from the charter of liberty we have inherited from our forebears? Our choice is clear."
Al Gore,Progressive,"Whether it is called a public forum or a public sphere or a marketplace of ideas, the reality of open and free public discussion and debate was considered central to the operation of our democracy in America’s earliest decades. Our first self-expression as a nation"
Al Gore,Progressive,"As we now know, of course, there was absolutely no connection between Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein. In spite of that fact, President Bush actually said to the nation at a time of greatly enhanced vulnerability to the fear of attack, You can’t distinguish between al-Qaeda and Saddam. History will surely judge America’s decision to invade and occupy a fragile and unstable nation that did not attack us and posed no threat to us as a decision that was not only tragic but absurd. Saddam Hussein was a brutal dictator, to be sure, but not one who posed an imminent danger to us. It is a decision that could have been made only at a moment in time when reason was playing a sharply diminished role in our national deliberations. Thomas Jefferson would have recognized the linkage between absurd tragedy and the absence of reason. As he wrote to James Smith in 1822, Man, once surrendering his reason, has no remaining guard against absurdities the most monstrous, and like a ship without rudder, is the sport of every wind. I spoke at the Iowa Democratic Convention in the fall of 2001. Earlier in August, I had prepared a very different kind of speech. But in the aftermath of this tragedy, I proudly, with complete and total sincerity, stood before the Democrats of Iowa and said, George W. Bush is my president, and I will follow him, as will we all, in this time of crisis. I was one of millions who felt that same sentiment and gave the president my total trust, asking him to lead us wisely and well. But he redirected the focus of America’s revenge onto Iraq, a nation that had nothing whatsoever to do with September 11."
Al Gore,Progressive,"The increased participation of women in the workforce, the dramatic changes in the education of women, and changes in social values have also led to significant structural changes in the institution of the family. Divorces have increased dramatically in almost every part of the world, partly due to new legislation making them easier to obtain, and, according to experts, partly because of the increased participation of women in the workforce. Some experts also note the role of online relationships; according to several analyses, between 20 and 30 percent of all divorces in the U.S. now involve Facebook."
Al Gore,Progressive,"If democracy seems to work, and if people receive a consistent, reliable, and meaningful response from others when they communicate their opinions and feelings about shared experiences, they begin to assume that self-expression in democracy matters. When they can communicate with others regularly, in ways that produce meaningful changes, they learn that democracy matters. If they receive responses that seem to be substantive but actually are not, citizens begin to feel as if they were being manipulated. If the messages they receive from the media feed this growing cynicism, the decline of democracy can be accelerated. Moreover, if citizens of a country express their opinions and feelings over an extended period of time without evoking a meaningful response, then they naturally begin to feel angry. If the flow of communication provides little opportunity for citizens to express themselves meaningfully, they naturally begin to feel frustration and powerlessness. This has happened all too often to minority communities who suffer prejudice and are not given a fair hearing by the majority for complaints. My generation learned in our youth to expect that democracy would work. Our frustration with the ineptitude and moral insensitivity of our national leaders in the last several years is balanced by the knowledge we gained in an earlier time and is influenced by the basic posture we adopted during our first experiences as citizens. Although many in my generation became disillusioned with self-government, most of us still believe that democracy works"
Al Gore,Progressive,"Here’s the solution. We need a CO2 tax, revenue-neutral, to replace taxation on employment, which was invented by Bismarck"
Al Gore,Progressive,"In the early days of America’s democracy, education and literacy were the prerequisites for establishing a connection to the body politic. In a world where communication was dominated by the printed word, those who learned to read also learned to write. Gaining the ability to receive ideas was automatically accompanied by the ability to send ideas, expressing your own thoughts in the same medium through which you took in the thoughts of others. The connection, once established, was two-way. As Thomas Jefferson wrote, The art of printing secures us against the retrogradation of reason and information. In practice, the use of the printing press was mainly by the elites in America’s early decades, and the scurrilous, vitriolic attacks of that age certainly rivaled the worst of any modern political attacks. Nevertheless, the easy accessibility to the printed word opened up avenues of participation in the dialogue of democracy for people like Thomas Paine, who had neither family wealth nor political influence"
Al Gore,Progressive,"As Jefferson wrote in a letter to Charles Yancey: The functionaries of every government have propensities to command at will the liberty and property of their constituents. There is no safe deposit for these but with the people themselves, nor can they be safe with them without information. Where the press is free, and every man able to read, all is safe. In the age of our Founders, this human impulse to demand the right of co-creating shared wisdom accounted for the ferocity with which the states demanded protection for free access to the printing press, freedom of assembly, freedom to petition the government, freedom of religion, and freedom of speech. General George Washington, in a speech to officers of the army in 1783, said, If men are to be precluded from offering their sentiments on a matter which may involve the most serious and alarming consequences that can invite the consideration of mankind, reason is of no use to us; the freedom of speech may be taken away, and dumb and silent we may be led, like sheep to the slaughter. But the twentieth century brought its own bitter lessons. The new and incredibly powerful electronic media that began to replace the printing press"
Al Gore,Progressive,"Nazism, fascism, and communism were belief systems adopted passionately by millions of well-educated men and women. Taken together, all of the totalitarian ideologies were self-contained and delivered through a one-way flow of propaganda that prevented the people who were enmeshed in the ideology from actively participating in challenging its lack of human values. Unfortunately, the legacy of the twentieth century’s ideologically driven bloodbaths has included a new cynicism about reason itself"
Al Gore,Progressive,"The alienation of Americans from the democratic process has also eroded knowledge of the most basic facts about our constitutional architecture of checks and balances. When the Annenberg Public Policy Center at the University of Pennsylvania conducted a broad survey on our Constitution, released in September 2006, they found that more than a third of the respondents believed the executive branch has the final say on all issues and can overrule the legislative and judicial branches. Barely half"
Al Gore,Progressive,"We must ensure that the Internet remains open and accessible to all citizens without any limitation on the ability of individuals to choose the content they wish regardless of the Internet service provider they use to connect to the World Wide Web. We cannot take this future for granted. We must be prepared to fight for it, because of the threat of corporate consolidation and control over the Internet marketplace of ideas. Far too much is at stake to ever allow that to happen. We must ensure by all means possible that this medium of democracy’s future develops in the mold of the open and free marketplace of ideas that our Founders knew was essential to the health and survival of freedom."
Jonathan Haidt,Moderate,Morality binds and blinds. It binds us into ideological teams that fight each other as though the fate of the world depended on our side winning each battle. It blinds us to the fact that each team is composed of good people who have something important to say.
Jonathan Haidt,Moderate,Sports is to war as pornography is to sex.
Jonathan Haidt,Moderate,"If you are in passionate love and want to celebrate your passion, read poetry. If your ardor has calmed and you want to understand your evolving relationship, read psychology. But if you have just ended a relationship and would like to believe you are better off without love, read philosophy."
Jonathan Haidt,Moderate,"Happiness is not something that you can find, acquire, or achieve directly. You have to get the conditions right and then wait. Some of those conditions are within you, such as coherence among the parts and levels of your personality. Other conditions require relationships to things beyond you: Just as plants need sun, water, and good soil to thrive, people need love, work, and a connection to something larger. It is worth striving to get the right relationships between yourself and others, between yourself and your work, and between yourself and something larger than yourself. If you get these relationships right, a sense of purpose and meaning will emerge."
Jonathan Haidt,Moderate,"[W]hen a group of people make something sacred, the members of the cult lose the ability to think clearly about it. Morality binds and blinds."
Jonathan Haidt,Moderate,"We should not expect individuals to produce good, open-minded, truth-seeking reasoning, particularly when self-interest or reputational concerns are in play. But if you put individuals together in the right way, such that some individuals can use their reasoning powers to disconfirm the claims of others, and all individuals feel some common bond or shared fate that allows them to interact civilly, you can create a group that ends up producing good reasoning as an emergent property of the social system. This is why it's so important to have intellectual and ideological diversity within any group or institution whose goal is to find truth (such as an intelligence agency or a community of scientists) or to produce good public policy (such as a legislature or advisory board)."
Jonathan Haidt,Moderate,Love and work are to people what water and sunshine are to plants.
Jonathan Haidt,Moderate,"If you grow up in a WEIRD society, you become so well educated in the ethic of autonomy that you can detect oppression and inequality even where the apparent victims see nothing wrong."
Jonathan Haidt,Moderate,"People bind themselves into political teams that share moral narratives. Once they accept a particular narrative, they become blind to alternative moral worlds."
Jonathan Haidt,Moderate,"Those who think money can't buy happiness just don't know where to shop … People would be happier and healthier if they took more time off and spent it with their family and friends, yet America has long been heading in the opposite direction. People would be happier if they reduced their commuting time, even if it meant living in smaller houses, yet American trends are toward even larger houses and ever longer commutes. People would be happier and healthier if they took longer vacations even if that meant earning less, yet vacation times are shrinking in the United States, and in Europe as well. People would be happier, and in the long run and wealthier, if they bought basic functional appliances, automobiles, and wristwatches, and invested the money they saved for future consumption; yet, Americans and in particular spend almost everything they have – and sometimes more – on goods for present consumption, often paying a large premium for designer names and superfluous features."
Jonathan Haidt,Moderate,Our moral thinking is much more like a politician searching for votes than a scientist searching for truth.
Jonathan Haidt,Moderate,"Understanding the simple fact that morality differs around the world, and even within societies, is the first step toward understanding your righteous mind."
Jonathan Haidt,Moderate,People who devote their lives to studying something often come to believe that the object of their fascination is the key to understanding everything.
Jonathan Haidt,Moderate,"The omnivore's dilemma (a term coined by Paul Rozin) is that omnivores must seek out and explore new potential foods while remaining wary of them until they are proven safe. Omnivores therefore go through life with two competing motives: neophilia (an attraction to new things) and neophobia (a fear of new things). People vary in terms of which motive is stronger, and this variation will come back to help us in later chapters: Liberals score higher on measures of neophilia (also known as openness to experience), not just for new foods but also for new people, music, and ideas. Conservatives are higher on neophobia; they prefer to stick with what's tried and true, and they care a lot more about guarding borders, boundaries, and traditions."
Jonathan Haidt,Moderate,"There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so."
Jonathan Haidt,Moderate,Groups create supernatural beings not to explain the universe but to order their societies.
Jonathan Haidt,Moderate,"If you really want to change someone’s mind on a moral or political matter, you’ll need to see things from that person’s angle as well as your own. And if you do truly see it the other person’s way"
Jonathan Haidt,Moderate,The rider evolved to serve to the elephant.
Jonathan Haidt,Moderate,"Work on your strengths, not your weaknesses. How many of your New Year’s resolutions have been about fixing a flaw? And how many of those resolutions have you made several years in a row? It’s difficult to change any aspect of your personality by sheer force of will, and if it is a weakness you choose to work on, you probably won’t enjoy the process. If you don’t find pleasure or reinforcement along the way, then"
Jonathan Haidt,Moderate,"The word coherence literally means holding or sticking together, but it is usually used to refer to a system, an idea, or a worldview whose parts fit together in a consistent and efficient way. Coherent things work well: A coherent worldview can explain almost anything, while an incoherent worldview is hobbled by internal contradictions. …Whenever a system can be analyzed at multiple levels, a special kind of coherence occurs when the levels mesh and mutually interlock. We saw this cross-level coherence in the analysis of personality: If your lower-level traits match up with your coping mechanisms, which in turn are consistent with your life story, your personality is well integrated and you can get on with the business of living. When these levels do not cohere, you are likely to be torn by internal contradictions and neurotic conflicts. You might need adversity to knock yourself into alignment. And if you do achieve coherence, the moment when things come together may be one of the most profound of your life. … Finding coherence across levels feels like enlightenment, and it is crucial for answering the question of purpose within life.People are multilevel systems in another way: We are physical objects (bodies and brains) from which minds somehow emerge; and from our minds, somehow societies and cultures form. To understand ourselves fully we must study all three levels"
Jonathan Haidt,Moderate,...human beings are 90 percent chimp and 10 percent bee.
Jonathan Haidt,Moderate,"Letting off steam makes people angrier, not calmer. Pennebaker discovered that it’s not about steam; it’s about sense making. The people in his studies who used their writing time to vent got no benefit. The people who showed deep insight into the causes and consequences of the event on their first day of writing got no benefit, either: They had already made sense of things. It was the people who made progress across the four days, who showed increasing insight; they were the ones whose health improved over the next year."
Jonathan Haidt,Moderate,"Everyone cares about fairness, but there are two major kinds. On the left, fairness often implies equality, but on the right it means proportionality"
Jonathan Haidt,Moderate,Reasoning can take you wherever you want to go.
Jonathan Haidt,Moderate,"Moral matrices bind people together and blind them to the coherence, or even existence, of other matrices. This makes it very difficult for people to consider the possibility that there might really be more than one form of moral truth, or more than one valid framework for judging people or running a society."
Jonathan Haidt,Moderate,"Words of wisdom, the meaning of life,perhaps even the answer sought by Borges's librarians"
Jonathan Haidt,Moderate,"I have striven not to laugh at human actions, not to weep at them, not to hate them, but to understand them."
Jonathan Haidt,Moderate,"Do people believe in human rights because such rights actually exist, like mathematical truths, sitting on a cosmic shelf next to the Pythagorean theorem just waiting to be discovered by Platonic reasoners? Or do people feel revulsion and sympathy when they read accounts of torture, and then invent a story about universal rights to help justify their feelings?"
Jonathan Haidt,Moderate,"Creating gods who can see everything, and who hate cheaters and oath breakers, turns out to be a good way to reduce cheating and oath breaking."
Jonathan Haidt,Moderate,"Societies that exclude the exoskeleton of religion should reflect carefully to what will happen to them over several generations. We don’t really know, because the first atheistic societies have only emerged in Europe in the last few decades. They are the least efficient societies ever known at turning resources (of which they have a lot) into offspring (of which they have few)."
Jonathan Haidt,Moderate,"Finding fault with yourself is also the key to overcoming the hypocrisy and judgmentalism that damage so many valuable relationships. The instant you see some contribution you made to a conflict, your anger softens"
Jonathan Haidt,Moderate,"If you want to change people's minds, you've got to talk to their elephants."
Jonathan Haidt,Moderate,"The mind is divided, like a rider on an elephant, and the rider's job is to serve the elephant."
Jonathan Haidt,Moderate,"If you think that moral reasoning is something we do to figure out the truth, you’ll be constantly frustrated by how foolish, biased, and illogical people become when they disagree with you. But if you think about moral reasoning as a skill we humans evolved to further our social agendas"
Jonathan Haidt,Moderate,"An important dictum of cultural psychology is that each culture develops expertise in some aspects of human existence, but no culture can be expert in all aspects. The same goes for the two ends of the political spectrum. My research3 confirms the common perception that liberals are experts in thinking about issues of victimization, equality, autonomy, and the rights of individuals, particularly those of minorities and nonconformists. Conservatives, on the other hand, are experts in thinking about loyalty to the group, respect for authority and tradition, and sacredness.4 When one side overwhelms the other, the results are likely to be ugly. A society without liberals would be harsh and oppressive to many individuals. A society without conservatives would lose many of the social structures and constraints that Durkheim showed are so valuable. Anomie would increase along with freedom. A good place to look for wisdom, therefore, is where you least expect to find it: in the minds of your opponents. You already know the ideas common on your own side. If you can take off the blinders of the myth of pure evil, you might see some good ideas for the first time."
Jonathan Haidt,Moderate,"What we are today comes from our thoughts of yesterday, and our present thoughts build our life of tomorrow: our life is the creation of our mind."
Jonathan Haidt,Moderate,"The social psychologist Tom Gilovich studies the cognitive mechanisms of strange beliefs. His simple formulation is that when we want to believe something, we ask ourselves, Can I believe it?28 Then (as Kuhn and Perkins found), we search for supporting evidence, and if we find even a single piece of pseudo-evidence, we can stop thinking. We now have permission to believe. We have a justification, in case anyone asks. In contrast, when we don’t want to believe something, we ask ourselves, Must I believe it? Then we search for contrary evidence, and if we find a single reason to doubt the claim, we can dismiss it."
Jonathan Haidt,Moderate,conflicts in relationships
Jonathan Haidt,Moderate,"We’re not always selfish hypocrites. We also have the ability, under special circumstances, to shut down our petty selves and become like cells in a larger body, or like bees in a hive, working for the good of the group. These experiences are often among the most cherished of our lives, although our hivishness can blind us to other moral concerns. Our bee-like nature facilitates altruism, heroism, war, and genocide."
Jonathan Haidt,Moderate,"The president is the high priest of what sociologist Robert Bellah calls the 'American civil religion.' The president must invoke the name of God (though not Jesus), glorify America's heroes and history,quote its sacred texts (the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution), and perform the transubstantiation of pluribus unum."
Jonathan Haidt,Moderate,"If the only effect of these rampant esteem-inflating biases was to make people feel good about themselves, they would not be a problem. In fact, evidence shows that people who hold pervasive positive illusions about themselves, their abilities, and their future prospects are mentally healthier, happier, and better liked than people who lack such illusions.20 But such biases can make people feel that they deserve more than they do, thereby setting the stage for endless disputes with other people who feel equally over-entitled."
Jonathan Haidt,Moderate,"You can see the rider serving the elephant when people are morally dumbfounded. They have strong gut feelings about what is right and wrong, and they struggle to construct post hoc justifications for those feelings. Even when the servant (reasoning) comes back empty-handed, the master (intuition) doesn't change his judgment."
Jonathan Haidt,Moderate,The emotion of disgust evolved initially to optimize responses to the omnivore's dilemma. Individuals who had a properly calibrated sense of disgust were able to consume more calories than their overly disgustable cousins while consuming fewer dangerous microbes than their insufficiently disgustable cousins.
Jonathan Haidt,Moderate,"With all foreign travel, you learn as much about where you're from as what you're visiting."
Jonathan Haidt,Moderate,"let’s imagine that 95 percent of the food on Earth magically disappears tonight, guaranteeing that almost all of us will starve to death within two months. Law and order collapse. Chaos and mayhem ensue. Who among us will still be alive a year from now? Will it be the biggest, strongest, and most violent individuals in each town? Or will it be the people who manage to work together in groups to monopolize, hide, and share the remaining food supplies among themselves?"
Jonathan Haidt,Moderate,"it would explain why extreme partisans are so stubborn, closed-minded, and committed to beliefs that often seem bizarre or paranoid. Like rats that cannot stop pressing a button, partisans may be simply unable to stop believing weird things. The partisan brain has been reinforced so many times for performing mental contortions that free it from unwanted beliefs. Extreme partisanship may be literally addictive."
Jonathan Haidt,Moderate,"The point of these studies is that moral judgment is like aesthetic judgment. When you see a painting, you usually know instantly and automatically whether you like it. If someone asks you to explain your judgment, you confabulate. You don’t really know why you think something is beautiful, but your interpreter module (the rider) is skilled at making up reasons, as Gazzaniga found in his split-brain studies. You search for a plausible reason for liking the painting, and you latch on to the first reason that makes sense (maybe something vague about color, or light, or the reflection of the painter in the clown’s shiny nose). Moral arguments are much the same: Two people feel strongly about an issue, their feelings come first, and their reasons are invented on the fly, to throw at each other. When you refute a person’s argument, does she generally change her mind and agree with you? Of course not, because the argument you defeated was not the cause of her position; it was made up after the judgment was already made."
Jonathan Haidt,Moderate,"life is much like a movie we walk into well after its opening scene, and we will have to step out long before most of the story lines reach their conclusions. We are acutely aware that we need to know a great deal if we are to understand the few confusing minutes that we do watch. Of course, we don’t know exactly what it is that we don’t know, so we can’t frame the question well. We ask, What is the meaning of life?"
Jonathan Haidt,Moderate,"It is easy to see the faults of others, but difficult to see one’s own faults. One shows the faults of others like chaff winnowed in the wind, but one conceals one’s own faults as a cunning gambler conceals his dice.5"
Jonathan Haidt,Moderate,"Religions are moral exoskeletons. If you live in a religious community, you are enmeshed in a set of norms, relationships, and institutions that work primarily on the elephant to influence your behavior. But if you are an atheist living in a looser community with a less binding moral matrix, you might have to rely somewhat more on an internal moral compass, read by the rider. That might sound appealing to rationalists, but it is also a recipe for anomie"
Jonathan Haidt,Moderate,"Does helping others really confer happiness or prosperity on the helper? I know of no evidence showing that altruists gain money from their altruism, but the evidence suggests that they often gain happiness. People who do volunteer work are happier and healthier than those who don’t; but, as always, we have to contend with the problem of reverse correlation: Congenitally happy people are just plain nicer to begin with,24 so their volunteer work may be a consequence of their happiness, not a cause. The happiness-as-cause hypothesis received direct support when the psychologist Alice Isen25 went around Philadelphia leaving dimes in pay phones. The people who used those phones and found the dimes were then more likely to help a person who dropped a stack of papers (carefully timed to coincide with the phone caller’s exit), compared with people who used phones that had empty coin-return slots. Isen has done more random acts of kindness than any other psychologist: She has distributed cookies, bags of candy, and packs of stationery; she has manipulated the outcome of video games (to let people win); and she has shown people happy pictures, always with the same finding: Happy people are kinder and more helpful than those in the control group."
Jonathan Haidt,Moderate,Focusing on effective leadership without focusing on a willingness to follow is like studying clapping by studying only the left hand.
Jonathan Haidt,Moderate,"With such a vast and wonderful library spread out before us, we often skim books or read just the reviews. We might already have encountered the Greatest Idea, the insight that would have transformed us had we savored it, taken it to heart, and worked it into our lives."
Jonathan Haidt,Moderate,"When bad things happen to good people, we have a problem. We know consciously that life is unfair, but unconsciously we see the world through the lens of reciprocity. The downfall of an evil man (in our biased and moralistic assessment) is no puzzle: He had it coming to him. But when the victim was virtuous, we struggle to make sense of his tragedy. At an intuitive level, we all believe in karma, the Hindu notion that people reap what they sow. The psychologist Mel Lerner has demonstrated that we are so motivated to believe that people get what they deserve and deserve what they get that we often blame the victim of a tragedy, particularly when we can’t achieve justice by punishing a perpetrator or compensating the victim."
Jonathan Haidt,Moderate,"So now you know where to shop. Stop trying to keep up with the Joneses. Stop wasting your money on conspicuous consumption. As a first step, work less, earn less, accumulate less, and consume more family time, vacations, and other enjoyable activities."
Jonathan Haidt,Moderate,"Leo Tolstoy wrote: One can live magnificently in this world, if one knows how to work and how to love, to work for the person one loves and to love one’s work.19"
Jonathan Haidt,Moderate,"When I was a teenager I wished for world peace, but now I yearn for a world in which competing ideologies are kept in balance, systems of accountability keep us all from getting away with too much, and fewer people believe that righteous ends justify violent means. Not a very romantic wish, but one that we might actually achieve."
Jonathan Haidt,Moderate,But the fact is that we care a lot about what others think of us. The only people known to have no sociometer are psychopaths.
Jonathan Haidt,Moderate,"We humans have an extraordinary ability to care about things beyond ourselves, to circle around those things with other people, and in the process to bind ourselves into teams that can pursue larger projects. That’s what religion is all about."
Jonathan Haidt,Moderate,"Do not seek to have events happen as you want them to, but instead want them to happen as they do happen, and your life will go well."
Jonathan Haidt,Moderate,"If thinking is confirmatory rather than exploratory in these dry and easy cases, then what chance is there that people will think in an open-minded, exploratory way when self-interest, social identity, and strong emotions make them want or even need to reach a preordained conclusion? 3. WE LIE, CHEAT, AND JUSTIFY SO WELL THAT WE HONESTLY BELIEVE WE ARE HONEST"
Jonathan Haidt,Moderate,"changing an institution’s environment to increase the sense of control among its workers, students, patients, or other users was one of the most effective possible ways to increase their sense of engagement, energy, and happiness."
Jonathan Haidt,Moderate,"Schwitzgebel even scrounged up the missing-book lists from dozens of libraries and found that academic books on ethics, which are presumably borrowed mostly by ethicists, are more likely to be stolen or just never returned than books in other areas of philosophy.49 In other words, expertise in moral reasoning does not seem to improve moral behavior, and it might even make it worse (perhaps by making the rider more skilled at post hoc justification)."
Jonathan Haidt,Moderate,"The mind is divided into parts that sometimes conflict. Like a rider on the back of an elephant, the conscious reasoning part of the mind has only limited control of what the elephant does."
Jonathan Haidt,Moderate,"Loyalty, respect for authority and some degree of sanctification create a more binding social order that places some limits on individualism and egoism."
Jonathan Haidt,Moderate,"I had escaped from my prior partisan mind-set (reject first, ask rhetorical questions later) and began to think about liberal and conservative policies as manifestations of deeply conflicting but equally heartfelt visions of the good society.28"
Jonathan Haidt,Moderate,"The effectance motive helps explain the progress principle: We get more pleasure from making progress toward our goals than we do from achieving them because, as Shakespeare said, Joy’s soul lies in the doing."
Jonathan Haidt,Moderate,"In Wegner’s studies, participants are asked to try hard not to think about something, such as a white bear, or food, or a stereotype. This is hard to do. More important, the moment one stops trying to suppress a thought, the thought comes flooding in and becomes even harder to banish. In other words, Wegner creates minor obsessions in his lab by instructing people not to obsess. Wegner explains this effect as an ironic process of mental control. 32 When controlled processing tries to influence thought (Don’t think about a white bear!), it sets up an explicit goal. And whenever one pursues a goal, a part of the mind automatically monitors progress, so that it can order corrections or know when success has been achieved. When that goal is an action in the world (such as arriving at the airport on time), this feedback system works well. But when the goal is mental, it backfires. Automatic processes continually check: Am I not thinking about a white bear? As the act of monitoring for the absence of the thought introduces the thought, the person must try even harder to divert consciousness. Automatic and controlled processes end up working at cross purposes, firing each other up to ever greater exertions. But because controlled processes tire quickly, eventually the inexhaustible automatic processes run unopposed, conjuring up herds of white bears. Thus, the attempt to remove an unpleasant thought can guarantee it a place on your frequent-play list of mental ruminations."
Jonathan Haidt,Moderate,to really get a mass atrocity going you need idealism
Jonathan Haidt,Moderate,People who are told that they have performed poorly on a test of social intelligence think extra hard to find reasons to discount the test; people who are asked to read a study showing that one of their habits
Jonathan Haidt,Moderate,"Religiosity developed because successful religions made groups more efficient at turning resources into offspring. (including art, cathedrals, cities, earthworks, etc?)"
Jonathan Haidt,Moderate,"It might feel, at least to some of us, that our opinions about issues such as abortion and the death penalty are the products of careful deliberation and that our specific moral acts, such as deciding to give to charity or visit a friend in the hospital"
Jonathan Haidt,Moderate,"So the next time a salesman gives you a free gift or consultation, or makes a concession of any sort, duck. Don’t let him press your reciprocity button. The best way out, Cialdini advises, is to fight reciprocity with reciprocity. If you can reappraise the salesman’s move for what it is"
Jonathan Haidt,Moderate,"When the moral history of the 1990s is written, it might be titled Desperately Seeking Satan. With peace and harmony ascendant, Americans seemed to be searching for substitute villains. We tried drug dealers (but then the crack epidemic waned) and child abductors (who are usually one of the parents). The cultural right vilified homosexuals; the left vilified racists and homophobes. As I thought about these various villains, including the older villains of communism and Satan himself, I realized that most of them share three properties: They are invisible (you can’t identify the evil one from appearance alone); their evil spreads by contagion, making it vital to protect impressionable young people from infection (for example from communist ideas, homosexual teachers, or stereotypes on television); and the villains can be defeated only if we all pull together as a team. It became clear to me that people want to believe they are on a mission from God, or that they are fighting for some more secular good (animals, fetuses, women’s rights), and you can’t have much of a mission without good allies and a good enemy."
Jonathan Haidt,Moderate,"Even if we take Nietzsche figuratively (which he would have much preferred anyway), fifty years of research on stress shows that stressors are generally bad for people,3 contributing to depression, anxiety disorders, and heart disease."
Jonathan Haidt,Moderate,"Having once reviewed the literature on the catharsis hypothesis, I knew that there was no evidence for it.31 Letting off steam makes people angrier, not calmer."
Jonathan Haidt,Moderate,authorities often exploit their subordinates for their own benefit while believing they are perfectly just.
Jonathan Haidt,Moderate,"It would be nice to believe that we humans were designed to love everyone unconditionally. Nice, but rather unlikely from an evolutionary perspective. Parochial love"
Jonathan Haidt,Moderate,"I’ll show that religion is (probably) an evolutionary adaptation for binding groups together and helping them to create communities with a shared morality. It is not a virus or a parasite, as some scientists (the New Atheists) have argued in recent years."
Jonathan Haidt,Moderate,"Idealism easily becomes dangerous because it brings with it, almost inevitably, the belief that the ends justify the means. If you are fighting for good or for God, what matters is the outcome, not the path. People have little respect for rules; we respect the moral principles that underlie most rules. But when a moral mission and legal rules are incompatible, we usually care more about the mission."
Jonathan Haidt,Moderate,"Although I am a political liberal, I believe that conservatives have a better understanding of moral development (although not of moral psychology in general"
Jonathan Haidt,Moderate,"If you take home one souvenir from this part of the tour, may I suggest that it be a suspicion of moral monists. Beware of anyone who insists that there is one true morality for all people, times, and places"
Jonathan Haidt,Moderate,"Keep your eye on the intuitions, and don’t take people’s moral arguments at face value. They’re mostly post hoc constructions made up on the fly, crafted to advance one or more strategic objectives."
Jonathan Haidt,Moderate,"Putting this all together, it makes sense that WEIRD philosophers since Kant and Mill have mostly generated moral systems that are individualistic, rule-based, and universalist. That’s the morality you need to govern a society of autonomous individuals."
Jonathan Haidt,Moderate,There’s the unusual stuff that psychopaths do
Jonathan Haidt,Moderate,"Gossip is a policeman and a teacher. Without it, there would be chaos and ignorance."
Jonathan Haidt,Moderate,"If you want your children to grow up to be healthy and independent, you should hold them, hug them, cuddle them, and love them. Give them a secure base and they will explore and then conquer the world on their own."
Jonathan Haidt,Moderate,"We’re all stuck here for a while, so let’s try to work it out."
Jonathan Haidt,Moderate,"The inner lawyer, the rose-colored mirror, naive realism, and the myth of pure evil"
Jonathan Haidt,Moderate,"Here’s a simple definition of ideology: A set of beliefs about the proper order of society and how it can be achieved.8 And here’s the most basic of all ideological questions: Preserve the present order, or change it? At the French Assembly of 1789, the delegates who favored preservation sat on the right side of the chamber, while those who favored change sat on the left. The terms right and left have stood for conservatism and liberalism ever since. Political theorists since Marx had long assumed that people chose ideologies to further their self-interest. The rich and powerful want to preserve and conserve; the peasants and workers want to change things (or at least they would if their consciousness could be raised and they could see their self-interest properly, said the Marxists). But even though social class may once have been a good predictor of ideology, that link has been largely broken in modern times, when the rich go both ways (industrialists mostly right, tech billionaires mostly left) and so do the poor (rural poor mostly right, urban poor mostly left). And when political scientists looked into it, they found that self-interest does a remarkably poor job of predicting political attitudes.9 So for most of the late twentieth century, political scientists embraced blank-slate theories in which people soaked up the ideology of their parents or the TV programs they watched.10 Some political scientists even said that most people were so confused about political issues that they had no real ideology at all.11 But then came the studies of twins. In the 1980s, when scientists began analyzing large databases that allowed them to compare identical twins (who share all of their genes, plus, usually, their prenatal and childhood environments) to same-sex fraternal twins (who share half of their genes, plus their prenatal and childhood environments), they found that the identical twins were more similar on just about everything.12 And what’s more, identical twins reared in separate households (because of adoption) usually turn out to be very similar, whereas unrelated children reared together (because of adoption) rarely turn out similar to each other, or to their adoptive parents; they tend to be more similar to their genetic parents. Genes contribute, somehow, to just about every aspect of our personalities.13 We’re not just talking about IQ, mental illness, and basic personality traits such as shyness. We’re talking about the degree to which you like jazz, spicy foods, and abstract art; your likelihood of getting a divorce or dying in a car crash; your degree of religiosity, and your political orientation as an adult. Whether you end up on the right or the left of the political spectrum turns out to be just as heritable as most other traits: genetics explains between a third and a half of the variability among people on their political attitudes.14 Being raised in a liberal or conservative household accounts for much less. How can that be? How can there be a genetic basis for attitudes about nuclear power, progressive taxation, and foreign aid when these issues only emerged in the last century or two? And how can there be a genetic basis for ideology when people sometimes change their political parties as adults? To answer these questions it helps to return to the definition of innate that I gave in chapter 7. Innate does not mean unmalleable; it means organized in advance of experience. The genes guide the construction of the brain in the uterus, but that’s only the first draft, so to speak. The draft gets revised by childhood experiences. To understand the origins of ideology you have to take a developmental perspective, starting with the genes and ending with an adult voting for a particular candidate or joining a political protest. There are three major steps in the process. Step"
Jonathan Haidt,Moderate,"Morality binds people into groups. It gives us tribalism, it gives us genocide, war, and politics. But it also gives us heroism, altruism, and sainthood."
Jonathan Haidt,Moderate,"Cultural variation in morality can be explained in part by noting that cultures can shrink or expand the current triggers of any module. For example, in the past fifty years people in many Western societies have come to feel compassion in response to many more kinds of animal suffering, and they’ve come to feel disgust in response to many fewer kinds of sexual activity. The current triggers can change in a single generation, even though it would take many generations for genetic evolution to alter the design of the module and its original triggers."
Jonathan Haidt,Moderate,"To replace wiring diagrams, Marcus suggests a better analogy: The brain is like a book, the first draft of which is written by the genes during fetal development. No chapters are complete at birth, and some are just rough outlines waiting to be filled in during childhood. But not a single chapter"
Jonathan Haidt,Moderate,"The ethic of autonomy is based on the idea that people are, first and foremost, autonomous individuals with wants, needs, and preferences. People should be free to satisfy these wants, needs, and preferences as they see fit, and so societies develop moral concepts such as rights, liberty, and justice, which allow people to coexist peacefully without interfering too much in each other’s projects. This is the dominant ethic in individualistic societies. You find it in the writings of utilitarians such as John Stuart Mill and Peter Singer11 (who value justice and rights only to the extent that they increase human welfare), and you find it in the writings of deontologists such as Kant and Kohlberg (who prize justice and rights even in cases where doing so may reduce overall welfare). But as soon as you step outside of Western secular society, you hear people talking in two additional moral languages. The ethic of community is based on the idea that people are, first and foremost, members of larger entities such as families, teams, armies, companies, tribes, and nations. These larger entities are more than the sum of the people who compose them; they are real, they matter, and they must be protected. People have an obligation to play their assigned roles in these entities. Many societies therefore develop moral concepts such as duty, hierarchy, respect, reputation, and patriotism. In such societies, the Western insistence that people should design their own lives and pursue their own goals seems selfish and dangerous"
Jonathan Haidt,Moderate,"Awe acts like a kind of reset button: it makes people forget themselves and their petty concerns. Awe opens people to new possibilities, values, and directions in life. Awe is one of the emotions most closely linked to the hive switch, along with collective love and collective joy."
Jonathan Haidt,Moderate,"Asking children to grow virtues hydroponically, looking only within themselves for guidance, is like asking each one to invent a personal language―a pointless and isolating task if there is no community with whom to speak."
Jonathan Haidt,Moderate,"Darwin, writing in Victorian England, shared Glaucon’s view (from aristocratic Athens) that people are obsessed with their reputations."
Jonathan Haidt,Moderate,"We lie, cheat, and cut ethical corners quite often when we think we can get away with it, and then we use our moral thinking to manage our reputations and justify ourselves to others."
Jonathan Haidt,Moderate,My expectations were reduced to zero when I was twenty-one. Everything since then has been a bonus.
Jonathan Haidt,Moderate,Variety is the spice of life because it is the natural enemy of adaptation.
Jonathan Haidt,Moderate,"it sometimes happens that evidence accumulates across many studies to the point where scientists must change their minds. I’ve seen this happen in my colleagues (and myself) many times,34 and it’s part of the accountability system of science"
Jonathan Haidt,Moderate,"In fact, happiness is one of the most highly heritable aspects of personality. Twin studies generally show that from 50 percent to 80 percent of all the variance among people in their average levels of happiness can be explained by differences in their genes rather than in their life experiences. 28 (Particular episodes of joy or depression, however, must usually be understood by looking at how life events interact with a person’s emotional predisposition.)"
Jonathan Haidt,Moderate,"A person’s average or typical level of happiness is that person’s affective style. (Affect refers to the felt or experienced part of emotion.) Your affective style reflects the everyday balance of power between your approach system and your withdrawal system, and this balance can be read right from your forehead. It has long been known from studies of brainwaves that most people show an asymmetry: more activity either in the right frontal cortex or in the left frontal cortex. In the late 1980s, Richard Davidson at the University of Wisconsin discovered that these asymmetries correlated with a person’s general tendencies to experience positive and negative emotions. People showing more of a certain kind of brainwave coming through the left side of the forehead reported feeling more happiness in their daily lives and less fear, anxiety, and shame than people exhibiting higher activity on the right side. Later research showed that these cortical lefties are less subject to depression and recover more quickly from negative experiences.29 The difference between cortical righties and lefties can be seen even in infants: Ten-month-old babies showing more activity on the right side are more likely to cry when separated briefly from their mothers.30 And this difference in infancy appears to reflect an aspect of personality that is stable, for most people, all the way through adulthood. 31 Babies who show a lot more activity on the right side of the forehead become toddlers who are more anxious about novel situations; as teenagers, they are more likely to be fearful about dating and social activities; and, finally, as adults, they are more likely to need psychotherapy to loosen up."
Jonathan Haidt,Moderate,"When we combine the adaptation principle with the discovery that people’s average level of happiness is highly heritable,11 we come to a startling possibility: In the long run, it doesn’t much matter what happens to you. Good fortune or bad, you will always return to your happiness setpoint"
Jonathan Haidt,Moderate,"Three psychologists, Sonja Lyubomirsky, Ken Sheldon, and David Schkade, reviewed the available evidence and realized that there are two fundamentally different kinds of externals: the conditions of your life and the voluntary activities that you undertake.33 Conditions include facts about your life that you can’t change (race, sex, age, disability) as well as things that you can (wealth, marital status, where you live). Conditions are constant over time, at least during a period in your life, and so they are the sorts of things that you are likely to adapt to. Voluntary activities, on the other hand, are the things that you choose to do, such as meditation, exercise, learning a new skill, or taking a vacation. Because such activities must be chosen, and because most of them take effort and attention, they can’t just disappear from your awareness the way conditions can. Voluntary activities, therefore, offer much greater promise for increasing happiness while avoiding adaptation effects."
Jonathan Haidt,Moderate,There’s more to morality than harm and fairness.
Jonathan Haidt,Moderate,"I was already an atheist, and by my senior year I had became obsessed with the question What is the meaning of life? I wrote my personal statement for college admissions on the meaninglessness of life. I spent the winter of my senior year in a kind of philosophical depression"
Jonathan Haidt,Moderate,"Most psychopaths are not violent (although most serial murderers and serial rapists are psychopaths). They are people, mostly men, who have no moral emotions, no attachment systems, and no concerns for others.5 Because they feel no shame, embarrassment, or guilt, they find it easy to manipulate people into giving them money, sex, and trust."
Jonathan Haidt,Moderate,"In Lerner’s experiments, the desperate need to make sense of events can lead people to inaccurate conclusions (for example, a woman led on a rapist);"
Jonathan Haidt,Moderate,"Aristotle asked about aretē (excellence/virtue) and telos (purpose/goal), and he used the metaphor that people are like archers, who need a clear target at which to aim.13 Without a target or goal, one is left with the animal default: Just let the elephant graze or roam where he pleases. And because elephants live in herds, one ends up doing what everyone else is doing. Yet the human mind has a rider, and as the rider begins to think more abstractly in adolescence, there may come a time when he looks around, past the edges of the herd, and asks: Where are we all going? And why?"
Jonathan Haidt,Moderate,"Many political scientists used to assume that people vote selfishly, choosing the candidate or policy that will benefit them the most. But decades of research on public opinion have led to the conclusion that self-interest is a weak predictor of policy preferences. Parents of children in public school are not more supportive of government aid to schools than other citizens; young men subject to the draft are not more opposed to military escalation than men too old to be drafted; and people who lack health insurance are not more likely to support government-issued health insurance than people covered by insurance.35 Rather, people care about their groups, whether those be racial, regional, religious, or political. The political scientist Don Kinder summarizes the findings like this: In matters of public opinion, citizens seem to be asking themselves not ‘What’s in it for me?’ but rather ‘What’s in it for my group?’ 36 Political opinions function as badges of social membership.37"
Jonathan Haidt,Moderate,"Durkheim frequently criticized his contemporaries, such as Freud, who tried to explain morality and religion using only the psychology of individuals and their pairwise relationships. (God is just a father figure, said Freud.) Durkheim argued, in contrast, that Homo sapiens was really Homo duplex, a creature who exists at two levels: as an individual and as part of the larger society."
Jonathan Haidt,Moderate,"life is a journey, the metaphor guides you to some conclusions: You should learn the terrain, pick a direction, find some good traveling companions, and enjoy the trip, because there may be nothing at the end of the road."
Jonathan Haidt,Moderate,"Another reason for Buddha’s emphasis on detachment may have been the turbulent times he lived in: Kings and city-states were making war, and people’s lives and fortunes could be burned up overnight. When life is unpredictable and dangerous (as it was for the Stoic philosophers, living under capricious Roman emperors), it might be foolish to seek happiness by controlling one’s external world. But now it is not. People living in wealthy democracies can set long-term goals and expect to meet them. We are immunized against disease, sheltered from storms, and insured against fire, theft, and collision. For the first time in human history, most people (in wealthy countries) will live past the age of seventy and will not see any of their children die before them. Although all of us will get unwanted surprises along the way, we’ll adapt and cope with nearly all of them, and many of us will believe we are better off for having suffered. So to cut off all attachments, to shun the pleasures of sensuality and triumph in an effort to escape the pains of loss and defeat"
Jonathan Haidt,Moderate,"No one can live happily who has regard to himself alone and transforms everything into a question of his own utility; you must live for your neighbour, if you would live for yourself."
Jonathan Haidt,Moderate,Csikszentmihalyi teamed up with two other leading psychologists
Jonathan Haidt,Moderate,"And she draws Boethius’s imagination far up into the heavens so that he can look down on the Earth and see it as a tiny speck on which even tinier people play out their comical and ultimately insignificant ambitions. She gets him to admit that riches and fame bring anxiety and avarice, not peace and happiness."
Jonathan Haidt,Moderate,"Nothing is miserable unless you think it so; and on the other hand, nothing brings happiness unless you are content with it.7"
Jonathan Haidt,Moderate,Scientists became moral exhibitionists in the lecture hall as they demonized fellow scientists and urged their students to evaluate ideas not for their truth but for their consistency with progressive ideals such as racial and gender equality.14
Jonathan Haidt,Moderate,"Words of wisdom, the meaning of life, p e r h a p s even theanswer sought by Borges's librarians"
Jonathan Haidt,Moderate,"That was a tear of celebration, a tear of receptiveness to what is good in the world, a tear that says it’s okay, relax, let down your guard, there are good people in the world, there is good in people, love is real, it’s in our nature. That kind of tear is also like being pricked, only now the love pours in."
Jonathan Haidt,Moderate,"Because you can’t change your natural and usual state of tranquility, the riches you accumulate will just raise your expectations and leave you no better off than you were before. Yet, not realizing the futility of our efforts, we continue to strive, all the while doing things that help us win at the game of life. Always wanting more than we have, we run and run and run, like hamsters on a wheel. AN"
Jonathan Haidt,Moderate,"It is not clear that married people are, on average, happier than those who never married, because unhappily married people are the least happy group of all and they pull down the average."
Jonathan Haidt,Moderate,"Baumeister's point is that we have a deep need to understand violence and cruelty through what he calls the myth of pure evil. Of this myth's many parts, the most important are that evildoers are pure in their evil motives (they have no motives for their actions beyond sadism and greed); victims are pure in their victimhood (they did nothing to bring about their victimization); and evil comes from outside and is associated with a group or force that attacks our group. Furthermore, anyone who questions the application of the myth, who dares muddy the waters of moral certainty, is in league with evil."
Jonathan Haidt,Moderate,"If people are like plants, what are the conditions we need to flourish? In the happiness formula from chapter 5, H(appiness) = S(etpoint) + C(onditions) + V(oluntary activities), what exactly is C? The biggest part of C, as I said in chapter 6, is love. No man, woman, or child is an island. We are ultrasocial creatures, and we can’t be happy without having friends and secure attachments to other people. The second most important part of C is having and pursuing the right goals, in order to create states of flow and engagement. In the modern world, people can find goals and flow in many settings, but most people find most of their flow at work."
Jonathan Haidt,Moderate,"If you think about religion as a set of beliefs about supernatural agents, you’re bound to misunderstand it."
Jonathan Haidt,Moderate,"After analyzing the DNA of 13,000 Australians, scientists recently found several genes that differed between liberals and conservatives."
Jonathan Haidt,Moderate,"Groups that were able to put their by-product gods to some good use had an advantage over groups that failed to do so, and so their ideas (not their genes) spread."
Jonathan Haidt,Moderate,"The gods of hunter-gatherers are often capricious and malevolent. They sometimes punish bad behavior, but they bring suffering to the virtuous as well. As groups take up agriculture and grow larger, however, their gods become far more moralistic."
Jonathan Haidt,Moderate,You don’t need a social scientist to tell you that people behave less ethically when they think nobody can see them.
Jonathan Haidt,Moderate,"Eliade’s most compelling point, for me, is that sacredness is so irrepressible that it intrudes repeatedly into the modern profane world in the form of crypto-religious behavior. Eliade noted that even a person committed to a profane existence has privileged places, qualitatively different from all others"
Jonathan Haidt,Moderate,"For hierarchy, according to the anthropologist Christopher Boehm. Boehm studied tribal cultures early in his career, but had also studied chimpanzees with Jane Goodall. He recognized the extraordinary similarities in the ways that humans and chimpanzees display dominance and submission. In his book Hierarchy in the Forest, Boehm concluded that human beings are innately hierarchical, but that at some point during the last million years our ancestors underwent a political transition that allowed them to live as egalitarians by banding together to rein in, punish, or kill any would-be alpha males who tried to dominate the group. Alpha male chimps are not truly leaders of their groups. They perform some public services, such as mediating conflicts.28 But most of the time, they are better described as bullies who take what they want. Yet even among chimpanzees, it sometimes happens that subordinates gang up to take down alphas, occasionally going as far as to kill them.29 Alpha male chimps must therefore know their limits and have enough political skill to cultivate a few allies and stave off rebellion."
Jonathan Haidt,Moderate,"In Tetlock’s research, subjects are asked to solve problems and make decisions.11 For example, they’re given information about a legal case and then asked to infer guilt or innocence. Some subjects are told that they’ll have to explain their decisions to someone else. Other subjects know that they won’t be held accountable by anyone. Tetlock found that when left to their own devices, people show the usual catalogue of errors, laziness, and reliance on gut feelings that has been documented in so much decision-making research.12 But when people know in advance that they’ll have to explain themselves, they think more systematically and self-critically. They are less likely to jump to premature conclusions and more likely to revise their beliefs in response to evidence."
Jonathan Haidt,Moderate,That might be good news for rationalists
Jonathan Haidt,Moderate,"The moral matrix of liberals, in America and elsewhere, rests more heavily on the Care foundation than do the matrices of conservatives"
Jonathan Haidt,Moderate,"Even in Chicago, Shweder found relatively little evidence of social-conventional thinking. There were plenty of stories that contained no obvious harm or injustice, such as a widow eating fish, and Americans predictably said that those cases were fine. But more important, they didn’t see these behaviors as social conventions that could be changed by popular consent. They believed that widows should be able to eat whatever they darn well please, and if there’s some other country where people try to limit widows’ freedoms, well, they’re wrong to do so. Even in the United States the social order is a moral order, but it’s an individualistic order built up around the protection of individuals and their freedom. The distinction between morals and mere conventions is not a tool that children everywhere use to self-construct their moral knowledge. Rather, the distinction turns out to be a cultural artifact, a necessary by-product of the individualistic answer to the question of how individuals and groups relate. When you put individuals first, before society, then any rule or social practice that limits personal freedom can be questioned. If it doesn’t protect somebody from harm, then it can’t be morally justified. It’s just a social convention."
Jonathan Haidt,Moderate,Experiment participants asked to pick which politician looked more confident in a photograph picked the winner of the race two thirds of the time. This phenomenon held up even when they only glimpsed the photographs for a 10th of a second.
Jonathan Haidt,Moderate,"In their book American Grace: How Religion Divides and Unites Us, political scientists Robert Putnam and David Campbell analyzed a variety of data sources to describe how religious and nonreligious Americans differ. Common sense would tell you that the more time and money people give to their religious groups, the less they have left over for everything else. But common sense turns out to be wrong. Putnam and Campbell found that the more frequently people attend religious services, the more generous and charitable they become across the board.58 Of course religious people give a lot to religious charities, but they also give as much as or more than secular folk to secular charities such as the American Cancer Society.59 They spend a lot of time in service to their churches and synagogues, but they also spend more time than secular folk serving in neighborhood and civic associations of all sorts. Putnam and Campbell put their findings bluntly: By many different measures religiously observant Americans are better neighbors and better citizens than secular Americans"
Jonathan Haidt,Moderate,"When an artist submerges a crucifix in a jar of his own urine, or smears elephant dung on an image of the Virgin Mary, do these works belong in art museums?21 Can the artist simply tell religious Christians, If you don’t want to see it, don’t go to the museum? Or does the mere existence of such works make the world dirtier, more profane, and more degraded? If you can’t see anything wrong here, try reversing the politics. Imagine that a conservative artist had created these works using images of Martin Luther King Jr. and Nelson Mandela instead of Jesus and Mary. Imagine that his intent was to mock the quasi-deification by the left of so many black leaders. Could such works be displayed in museums in New York or Paris without triggering angry demonstrations? Might some on the left feel that the museum itself had been polluted by racism, even after the paintings were removed?"
Jonathan Haidt,Moderate,"Schools don’t teach people to reason thoroughly; they select the applicants with higher IQs, and people with higher IQs are able to generate more reasons. The findings get more disturbing. Perkins found that IQ was by far the biggest predictor of how well people argued, but it predicted only the number of my-side arguments. Smart people make really good lawyers and press secretaries, but they are no better than others at finding reasons on the other side. Perkins concluded that people invest their IQ in buttressing their own case rather than in exploring the entire issue more fully and evenhandedly.22"
Jonathan Haidt,Moderate,"Among the most important such innovations is the human love of using symbolic markers to show our group memberships. From the tattoos and face piercings used among Amazonian tribes through the male circumcision required of Jews to the tattoos and facial piercings used by punks in the United Kingdom, human beings take extraordinary, costly, and sometimes painful steps to make their bodies advertise their group memberships"
Jonathan Haidt,Moderate,"Webster's Third New International Dictionary defines delusion as a false conception and persistent belief unconquerable by reason in something that has no existence in fact. As an intuitionist, I'd say that the worship of reason is itself an illustration of the most long-lived delusions in Western history: the rationalist delusion. It's the idea that reasoning is our most noble attribute, one that makes us like the gods (for Plato) or that brings us beyond the delusion of believing in gods (for the New Atheists). The rationalist delusion is not just a claim about human nature. It's also a claim that the rational caste (philosophers or scientists) should have more power, and it usually comes along with a utopian program for raising more rational children."
Jonathan Haidt,Moderate,the wise man chooses not the greatest quantity of food but the most tasty.
Jonathan Haidt,Moderate,"If you ask people to sing a song together, or to march in step, or just to tap out some beats together on a table, it makes them trust each other more and be more willing to help each other out, in part because it makes people feel more similar to each other."
Jonathan Haidt,Moderate,"Increase similarity, not diversity. To make a human hive, you want to make everyone feel like a family. So don’t call attention to racial and ethnic differences; make them less relevant by ramping up similarity and celebrating the group’s shared values and common identity.49 A great deal of research in social psychology shows that people are warmer and more trusting toward people who look like them, dress like them, talk like them, or even just share their first name or birthday.50 There’s nothing special about race. You can make people care less about race by drowning race differences in a sea of similarities, shared goals, and mutual interdependencies.51"
Jonathan Haidt,Moderate,When I speak to liberal audiences about the three binding foundations
Jonathan Haidt,Moderate,"I want to show you that an obsession with righteousness (leading inevitably to self-righteousness) is the normal human condition. It is a feature of our evolutionary design, not a bug or error that crept into minds that would otherwise be objective and rational.6"
Jonathan Haidt,Moderate,"Those same three factors applied to human beings. Like bees, our ancestors were (1) territorial creatures with a fondness for defensible nests (such as caves) who (2) gave birth to needy offspring that required enormous amounts of care, which had to be given while (3) the group was under threat from neighboring groups. For hundreds of thousands of years, therefore, conditions were in place that pulled for the evolution of ultrasociality, and as a result, we are the only ultrasocial primate. The human lineage may have started off acting very much like chimps,48 but by the time our ancestors started walking out of Africa, they had become at least a little bit like bees. And much later, when some groups began planting crops and orchards, and then building granaries, storage sheds, fenced pastures, and permanent homes, they had an even steadier food supply that had to be defended even more vigorously. Like bees, humans began building ever more elaborate nests, and in just a few thousand years, a new kind of vehicle appeared on Earth"
Jonathan Haidt,Moderate,"If you see one hundred insects working together toward a common goal, it’s a sure bet they’re siblings. But when you see one hundred people working on a construction site or marching off to war, you’d be astonished if they all turned out to be members of one large family. Human beings are the world champions of cooperation beyond kinship, and we do it in large part by creating systems of formal and informal accountability. We’re really good at holding others accountable for their actions, and we’re really skilled at navigating through a world in which others hold us accountable for our own. Phil Tetlock, a leading researcher in the study of accountability, defines accountability as the explicit expectation that one will be called upon to justify one’s beliefs, feelings, or actions to others, coupled with an expectation that people will reward or punish us based on how well we justify ourselves.8 When nobody is answerable to anybody, when slackers and cheaters go unpunished, everything falls apart."
Jonathan Haidt,Moderate,"Morality binds and blinds. This is not just something that happens to people on the other side. We all get sucked into tribal moral communities. We circle around sacred values and then share post hoc arguments about why we are so right and they are so wrong. We think the other side is blind to truth, reason, science, and common sense, but in fact everyone goes blind when talking about their sacred objects.If you want to understand another group, follow the sacredness. As a first step, think about the six moral foundations, and try to figure out which one or two are carrying the most weight in a particular controversy. And if you really want to open your mind, open your heart first.If you can have at least one friendly interaction with a member of the other group, you’ll find it far easier to listen to what they’re saying, and maybe even see a controversial issue in a new light. You may not agree, but you’ll probably shift from Manichaean disagreement to a more respectful and constructive yin-yang disagreement."
Jonathan Haidt,Moderate,"The human mind is a story processor, not a logic processor. Everyone loves a good story; every culture bathes its children in stories. Among the most important stories we know are stories about ourselves, and these life narratives are McAdams’s third level of personality."
Jonathan Haidt,Moderate,"As I continued to read the writings of conservative intellectuals, from Edmund Burke in the eighteenth century through Friedrich Hayek and Thomas Sowell in the twentieth, I began to see that they had attained a crucial insight into the sociology of morality that I had never encountered before. They understood the importance of what I’ll call moral capital. (Please note that I am praising conservative intellectuals, not the Republican Party.)36"
Jonathan Haidt,Moderate,"This book explained why people are divided by politics and religion. The answer is not, as Manichaeans would have it, because some people are good and others are evil. Instead, the explanation is that our minds were designed for groupish righteousness. We are deeply intuitive creatures whose gut feelings drive our strategic reasoning. This makes it difficult"
Jonathan Haidt,Moderate,"The god Krishna says: I love the man who hates not nor exults, who mourns not nor desires … who is the same to friend and foe, [the same] whether he be respected or despised, the same in heat and cold, in pleasure and in pain, who has put away attachment and remains unmoved by praise or blame … contented with whatever comes his way.33"
Jonathan Haidt,Moderate,"Our life is the creation of our mind,"
Jonathan Haidt,Moderate,"But when secular organizations demand sacrifice, every member has a right to ask for a cost-benefit analysis, and many refuse to do things that don’t make logical sense. In other words, the very ritual practices that the New Atheists dismiss as costly, inefficient, and irrational turn out to be a solution to one of the hardest problems humans face: cooperation without kinship."
Jonathan Haidt,Moderate,"In the next three chapters I’ll catalogue the moral intuitions, showing exactly what else there is beyond harm and fairness. I’ll show how a small set of innate and universal moral foundations can be used to construct a great variety of moral matrices. I’ll offer tools you can use to understand moral arguments emanating from matrices that are not your own."
Jonathan Haidt,Moderate,"two different kinds of social capital: bridging capital refers to trust between groups, between people who have different values and identities, while bonding capital refers to trust within groups."
Jonathan Haidt,Moderate,"Manichaeism, a religion that spread throughout the Middle East and influenced Western thinking. If you think about politics in a Manichaean way, then compromise is a sin."
Jonathan Haidt,Moderate,"Muller began by distinguishing conservatism from orthodoxy. Orthodoxy is the view that there exists a transcendent moral order, to which we ought to try to conform the ways of society."
Jonathan Haidt,Moderate,"John Stuart Mill said that liberals and conservatives are like this: A party of order or stability, and a party of progress or reform, are both necessary elements of a healthy state of political life.44 The philosopher Bertrand Russell saw this same dynamic at work throughout Western intellectual history: From 600 BC to the present day, philosophers have been divided into those who wished to tighten social bonds and those who wished to relax them.45 Russell then explained why both sides are partially right, using terms that are about as close a match to moral capital as I could ever hope to find: It is clear that each party to this dispute"
Jonathan Haidt,Moderate,The third-century Persian prophet Mani preached that the visible world is the battleground between the forces of light (absolute goodness) and the forces of darkness (absolute evil).
Jonathan Haidt,Moderate,"first principle: Intuitions come first, strategic reasoning second.7 Moral intuitions arise automatically and almost instantaneously, long before moral reasoning has a chance to get started, and those first intuitions tend to drive our later reasoning."
Jonathan Haidt,Moderate,"the second principle of moral psychology, which is that there’s more to morality than harm and fairness. The central metaphor of these four chapters is that the righteous mind is like a tongue with six taste receptors."
Jonathan Haidt,Moderate,the third principle: Morality binds and blinds. The central metaphor of these four chapters is that human beings are 90 percent chimp and 10 percent bee. Human nature was produced by natural selection working at two levels simultaneously.
Jonathan Haidt,Moderate,"Children construct their moral understanding on the bedrock of the absolute moral truth that harm is wrong. Specific rules may vary across cultures, but in all of the cultures Turiel examined, children still made a distinction between moral rules and conventional rules.14"
Jonathan Haidt,Moderate,"These subjects were reasoning. They were working quite hard at reasoning. But it was not reasoning in search of truth; it was reasoning in support of their emotional reactions. It was reasoning as described by the philosopher David Hume, who wrote in 1739 that reason is, and ought only to be the slave of the passions, and can never pretend to any other office than to serve and obey them."
Jonathan Haidt,Moderate,"For most of us, it’s not every day or even every month that we change our mind about a moral issue without any prompting from anyone else. Far more common than such private mind changing is social influence."
Jonathan Haidt,Moderate,"Empathy is an antidote to righteousness, although it’s very difficult to empathize across a moral divide."
Jonathan Haidt,Moderate,"who is nice to them. Puppies can do that too. But these findings suggest that by six months of age, infants are watching how people behave toward other people, and they are developing a preference for those who are nice rather than those who are mean."
Jonathan Haidt,Moderate,"What, then, is the function of moral reasoning? Does it seem to have been shaped, tuned, and crafted (by natural selection) to help us find the truth, so that we can know the right way to behave and condemn those who behave wrongly? If you believe that, then you are a rationalist, like Plato, Socrates, and Kohlberg.7 Or does moral reasoning seem to have been shaped, tuned, and crafted to help us pursue socially strategic goals, such as guarding our reputations and convincing other people to support us, or our team, in disputes? If you believe that, then you are a Glauconian."
Jonathan Haidt,Moderate,"Penn students were the most unusual of all twelve groups in my study. They were unique in their unwavering devotion to the harm principle, which John Stuart Mill had put forth in 1859: The only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilized community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others."
Jonathan Haidt,Moderate,"The ethic of divinity is based on the idea that people are, first and foremost, temporary vessels within which a divine soul has been implanted.12 People are not just animals with an extra serving of consciousness; they are children of God and should behave accordingly."
Jonathan Haidt,Moderate,"Many societies therefore develop moral concepts such as sanctity and sin, purity and pollution, elevation and degradation. In such societies, the personal liberty of secular Western nations looks like libertinism, hedonism, and a celebration of humanity’s baser instincts."
Jonathan Haidt,Moderate,"The Penn students spoke almost exclusively in the language of the ethic of autonomy, whereas the other groups (particularly the working-class groups) made much more use of the ethic of community, and a bit more use of the ethic of divinity.14"
Jonathan Haidt,Moderate,"In this world, equality and personal autonomy were not sacred values. Honoring elders, gods, and guests, protecting subordinates, and fulfilling one’s role-based duties were more important."
Jonathan Haidt,Moderate,"In the ethic of divinity, there is an order to the universe, and things (as well as people) should be treated with the reverence or disgust that they deserve."
Jonathan Haidt,Moderate,"I could see beauty in a moral code that emphasized self-control, resistance to temptation, cultivation of one’s higher, nobler self, and negation of the self’s desires. I could see the dark side of this ethic too: once you allow visceral feelings of disgust to guide your conception of what God wants, then minorities who trigger even a hint of disgust in the majority (such as homosexuals or obese people) can be ostracized and treated cruelly. The ethic of divinity is sometimes incompatible with compassion, egalitarianism, and basic human rights."
Jonathan Haidt,Moderate,The ethic of divinity lets us give voice to inchoate feelings of elevation and degradation
Jonathan Haidt,Moderate,"Shweder’s writings were my red pill. I began to see that many moral matrices coexist within each nation. Each matrix provides a complete, unified, and emotionally compelling worldview, easily justified by observable evidence and nearly impregnable to attack by arguments from outsiders."
Jonathan Haidt,Moderate,"There’s The Utilitarian Grill, serving only sweeteners (welfare), and The Deontological Diner, serving only salts (rights). Those are your options."
Jonathan Haidt,Moderate,"The two leading ethical theories in Western philosophy were founded by men who were as high as could be on systemizing, and were rather low on empathizing."
Jonathan Haidt,Moderate,"Kant, like Plato, wanted to discover the timeless, changeless form of the Good. He believed that morality had to be the same for all rational creatures, regardless of their cultural or individual proclivities."
Jonathan Haidt,Moderate,Kant provided an abstract rule from which (he claimed) all other valid moral rules could be derived. He called it the categorical (or unconditional) imperative: Act only according to that maxim whereby you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law.22
Jonathan Haidt,Moderate,"principle of utility, which he defined as the principle which approves or disapproves of every action whatsoever, according to the tendency which it appears to have to augment or diminish the happiness of the party whose interest is in question.16 Each law should aim to maximize the utility of the community, which is defined as the simple arithmetic sum of the expected utilities of each member. Bentham then systematized"
Jonathan Haidt,Moderate,"But in psychology our goal is descriptive. We want to discover how the moral mind actually works, not how it ought to work, and that can’t be done by reasoning, math, or logic. It can be done only by observation, and observation is usually keener when informed by empathy."
Jonathan Haidt,Moderate,"As Western societies became more educated, industrialized, rich, and democratic, the minds of its intellectuals changed. They became more analytic and less holistic.26 Utilitarianism and deontology became far more appealing to ethicists than Hume’s messy, pluralist, sentimentalist approach."
Jonathan Haidt,Moderate,"I didn’t want to make the classic mistake of amateur evolutionary theorists, which is to pick a trait and then ask: Can I think of a story about how this trait might once have been adaptive? The answer to that question is almost always yes because reasoning can take you wherever you want to go."
Jonathan Haidt,Moderate,"• Hume’s pluralist, sentimentalist, and naturalist approach to ethics is more promising than utilitarianism or deontology for modern moral psychology. As a first step in resuming Hume’s project, we should try to identify the taste receptors of the righteous mind."
Jonathan Haidt,Moderate,conservative caring is somewhat different
Jonathan Haidt,Moderate,"loyalty tend to be teams and coalitions for boys, in contrast to two-person relationships for girls.21"
Jonathan Haidt,Moderate,"If you’ve ever felt a flash of distaste when a salesperson called you by first name without being invited to do so, or if you felt a pang of awkwardness when an older person you have long revered asked you to call him by first name, then you have experienced the activation of some of the modules that comprise the Authority/subversion foundation."
Jonathan Haidt,Moderate,"When people within a hierarchical order act in ways that negate or subvert that order, we feel it instantly, even if we ourselves have not been directly harmed. If authority is in part about protecting order and fending off chaos, then everyone has a stake in supporting the existing order and in holding people accountable for fulfilling the obligations of their station.35"
Jonathan Haidt,Moderate,"Cultures differ in their attitudes toward immigrants, and there is some evidence that liberal and welcoming attitudes are more common in times and places where disease risks are lower."
Jonathan Haidt,Moderate,"If Mill’s harm principle prevents us from outlawing their actions, then Mill’s harm principle seems inadequate as the basis for a moral community. Whether or not God exists, people feel that some things, actions, and people are noble, pure, and elevated; others are base, polluted, and degraded."
Jonathan Haidt,Moderate,"The philosopher Leon Kass is among the foremost spokesmen for Shweder’s ethic of divinity, and for the Sanctity foundation on which it is based. Writing in 1997, the year after Dolly the sheep became the first cloned mammal, Kass lamented the way that technology often erases moral boundaries and brings people ever closer to the dangerous belief that they can do anything they want to do. In an essay titled The Wisdom of Repugnance, Kass argued that our feelings of disgust can sometimes provide us with a valuable warning that we are going too far, even when we are morally dumbfounded and can’t justify those feelings by pointing to victims:"
Jonathan Haidt,Moderate,"Indeed, in this age in which everything is held to be permissible so long as it is freely done, in which our given human nature no longer commands respect, in which our bodies are regarded as mere instruments of our autonomous rational wills, repugnance may be the only voice left that speaks up to defend the central core of our humanity. Shallow are the souls that have forgotten how to shudder.48"
Jonathan Haidt,Moderate,• The Care/harm foundation
Jonathan Haidt,Moderate,• The Fairness/cheating foundation
Jonathan Haidt,Moderate,• The Loyalty/betrayal foundation
Jonathan Haidt,Moderate,• The Authority/subversion foundation
Jonathan Haidt,Moderate,• The Sanctity/degradation foundation
Jonathan Haidt,Moderate,It is no coincidence that the only Democrat since Franklin Roosevelt to win election and then reelection combined gregariousness and oratorical skill with an almost musical emotionality. Bill Clinton knew how to charm elephants.
Jonathan Haidt,Moderate,"became the party of family values, Republicans inherited a powerful network of Christian ideas about sanctity and sexuality that allowed them to portray Democrats as the party of Sodom and Gomorrah."
Jonathan Haidt,Moderate,"Democrats since the 1960s, in contrast, seemed narrow, too focused on helping victims and fighting for the rights of the oppressed. The Democrats offered just sugar (Care) and salt (Fairness as equality), whereas Republican morality appealed to all five taste receptors."
Jonathan Haidt,Moderate,"A Durkheimian society would value self-control over self-expression, duty over rights, and loyalty to one’s groups over concerns for out-groups."
Jonathan Haidt,Moderate,"I showed that a Durkheimian society cannot be supported by the Care and Fairness foundations alone.18 You have to build on the Loyalty, Authority, and Sanctity foundations as well."
Jonathan Haidt,Moderate,"It seems to take more than just a high level of social intelligence to get reciprocal altruism going. It takes the sort of gossiping, punitive, moralistic community that emerged only when language and weaponry made it possible for early humans to take down bullies and then keep them down with a shared moral matrix.43"
Jonathan Haidt,Moderate,"Yet punish we do, and our propensity to punish turns out to be one of the keys to large-scale cooperation."
Jonathan Haidt,Moderate,"And if the love of political equality rests on the Liberty/oppression and Care/harm foundations rather than the Fairness/cheating foundation, then the Fairness foundation no longer has a split personality; it’s no longer about equality and proportionality. It is primarily about proportionality."
Jonathan Haidt,Moderate,When a few members of a group contributed far more than the others
Jonathan Haidt,Moderate,"Liberal moral matrices rest on the Care/harm, Liberty/oppression, and Fairness/cheating foundations, although liberals are often willing to trade away fairness (as proportionality) when it conflicts with compassion or with their desire to fight oppression."
Jonathan Haidt,Moderate,"Group selection may or may not be common among other animals, but it happens whenever individuals find ways to suppress selfishness and work as a team, in competition with other teams."
Jonathan Haidt,Moderate,found a way to forge a sense of we that extended beyond kinship. We trust and cooperate more readily with people who look and sound like us.69 We expect them to share our values and norms.
Jonathan Haidt,Moderate,"Our tribal minds make it easy to divide us, but without our long period of tribal living there’d be nothing to divide in the first place. There’d be only small families of foragers"
Jonathan Haidt,Moderate,After just thirty generations the foxes had become so tame that they could be kept as pets.
Jonathan Haidt,Moderate,"he simply picked the cages that produced the most eggs in each generation. Then he bred all of the hens in those cages to produce the next generation. Within just three generations, aggression levels plummeted. By the sixth generation, the death rate fell from the horrific baseline of 67 percent to a mere 8 percent. Total eggs produced per hen jumped from 91 to 237, mostly because the hens started living longer, but also because they laid more eggs"
Jonathan Haidt,Moderate,"genetic evolution greatly accelerated during the last 50,000 years. The rate at which genes changed in response to selection pressures began rising around 40,000 years ago, and the curve got steeper and steeper after 20,000 years ago."
Jonathan Haidt,Moderate,"If genetic evolution was able to fine-tune our bones, teeth, skin, and metabolism in just a few thousand years as our diets and climates changed, how could genetic evolution not have tinkered with our brains and behaviors as our social environments underwent the most radical transformation in primate history?"
Jonathan Haidt,Moderate,"Group selection does not require war or violence. Whatever traits make a group more efficient at procuring food and turning it into children makes that group more fit than its neighbors. Group selection pulls for cooperation, for the ability to suppress antisocial behavior and spur individuals to act in ways that benefit their groups. Group-serving behaviors sometimes impose a terrible cost on outsiders (as in warfare). But in general, groupishness is focused on improving the welfare of the in-group, not on harming an out-group."
Jonathan Haidt,Moderate,"But as a psychologist studying morality, I can say that multilevel selection would go a long way toward explaining why people are simultaneously so selfish and so groupish.91"
Jonathan Haidt,Moderate,"Words are inadequate to describe the emotion aroused by the prolonged movement in unison that drilling involved. A sense of pervasive well-being is what I recall; more specifically, a strange sense of personal enlargement; a sort of swelling out, becoming bigger than life, thanks to participation in collective ritual.1"
Jonathan Haidt,Moderate,"creating a temporary superorganism. Muscular bonding enabled people to forget themselves, trust each other, function as a unit, and then crush less cohesive groups."
Jonathan Haidt,Moderate,We have the ability (under special conditions) to transcend self-interest and lose ourselves (temporarily and ecstatically) in something larger than ourselves. That ability is what I’m calling the hive switch.
Jonathan Haidt,Moderate,"If the hive hypothesis is true, then it has enormous implications for how we should design organizations, study religion, and search for meaning and joy in our lives."
Jonathan Haidt,Moderate,"European travelers to every continent witnessed people coming together to dance with wild abandon around a fire, synchronized to the beat of drums, often to the point of exhaustion. In Dancing in the Streets: A History of Collective Joy, Barbara Ehrenreich describes how European explorers reacted to these dances: with disgust."
Jonathan Haidt,Moderate,"why did Europeans give it up? Ehrenreich’s historical explanation is too nuanced to summarize here, but the last part of the story is the rise of individualism and more refined notions of the self in Europe, beginning in the sixteenth century. These cultural changes accelerated during the Enlightenment and the Industrial Revolution. It is the same historical process that gave rise to WEIRD culture in the nineteenth century"
Jonathan Haidt,Moderate,"Durkheim put it: The very act of congregating is an exceptionally powerful stimulant. Once the individuals are gathered together, a sort of electricity is generated from their closeness and quickly launches them to an extraordinary height of exaltation.13"
Jonathan Haidt,Moderate,"Durkheim believed that these collective emotions pull humans fully but temporarily into the higher of our two realms, the realm of the sacred, where the self disappears and collective interests predominate. The realm of the profane, in contrast, is the ordinary day-to-day world where we live most of our lives, concerned about wealth, health, and reputation, but nagged by the sense that there is, somewhere, something higher and nobler."
Jonathan Haidt,Moderate,"Emerson and Darwin each found in nature a portal between the realm of the profane and the realm of the sacred. Even if the hive switch was originally a group-related adaptation, it can be flipped when you’re alone by feelings of awe in nature, as mystics and ascetics have known for millennia."
Jonathan Haidt,Moderate,"We took such an infinitesimal amount of psilocybin, and yet it connected me to infinity."
Jonathan Haidt,Moderate,"a modern version of the muscular bonding that Ehrenreich and McNeill had described. The scene and the experience awed him, shut down his I, and merged him into a giant we."
Jonathan Haidt,Moderate,"singing in choruses, performing in marching bands, listening to sermons, attending political rallies, and meditating. Most of my students have experienced the switch at least once, although only a few had a life-changing experience. More commonly, the effects fade away within a few hours or days."
Jonathan Haidt,Moderate,We are conditional hive creatures. We are more likely to mirror and then empathize with others when they have conformed to our moral matrix than when they have violated it.40
Jonathan Haidt,Moderate,"Self-interested employees are Glauconians, far more interested in looking good and getting promoted than in helping the company.43 In contrast, an organization that takes advantage of our hivish nature can activate pride, loyalty, and enthusiasm among its employees and then monitor them less closely."
Jonathan Haidt,Moderate,transformational leadership)44 generates more social capital
Jonathan Haidt,Moderate,Studies show that intergroup competition increases love of the in-group far more than it increases dislike of the out-group.
Jonathan Haidt,Moderate,"But pitting individuals against each other in a competition for scarce resources (such as bonuses) will destroy hivishness, trust, and morale."
Jonathan Haidt,Moderate,"In fact, a nation that is full of hives is a nation of happy and satisfied people. It’s not a very promising target for takeover by a demagogue offering people meaning in exchange for their souls. Creating a nation of multiple competing groups and parties was, in fact, seen by America’s founding fathers as a way of preventing tyranny.60 More recently, research on social capital has demonstrated that bowling leagues, churches, and other kinds of groups, teams, and clubs are crucial for the health of individuals and of a nation. As political scientist Robert Putnam put it, the social capital that is generated by such local groups makes us smarter, healthier, safer, richer, and better able to govern a just and stable democracy.61"
Jonathan Haidt,Moderate,"If people can’t satisfy their need for deep connection in other ways, they’ll be more receptive to a smooth-talking leader who urges them to renounce their lives of selfish momentary pleasure and follow him onward to that purely spiritual existence in which their value as human beings consists."
Jonathan Haidt,Moderate,"Durkheim’s idea that we are Homo duplex; we live most of our lives in the ordinary (profane) world, but we achieve our greatest joys in those brief moments of transit to the sacred world, in which we become simply a part of a whole."
Jonathan Haidt,Moderate,"You’ve got to look at the ways that religious beliefs work with religious practices to create a religious community.11 Believing, doing, and belonging are three complementary yet distinct aspects of religiosity"
Jonathan Haidt,Moderate,Angry gods make shame more effective as a means of social control.
Jonathan Haidt,Moderate,"There is now a great deal of evidence that religions do in fact help groups to cohere, solve free rider problems, and win the competition for group-level survival."
Jonathan Haidt,Moderate,"Gods really do help groups cohere, succeed, and outcompete other groups."
Jonathan Haidt,Moderate,"Religions that do a better job of binding people together and suppressing selfishness spread at the expense of other religions, but not necessarily by killing off the losers."
Jonathan Haidt,Moderate,"In his book Darwin’s Cathedral, Wilson catalogues the ways that religions have helped groups cohere, divide labor, work together, and prosper."
Jonathan Haidt,Moderate,"Whatever its origins, it’s a great metaphor for the role that gods play in Wilson’s account of religion. Gods (like maypoles) are tools that let people bind themselves together as a community by circling around them. Once bound together by circling, these communities can function more effectively. As Wilson puts it: Religions exist primarily for people to achieve together what they cannot achieve on their own.43"
Jonathan Haidt,Moderate,"Gods and religions, in sum, are group-level adaptations for producing cohesiveness and trust. Like maypoles and beehives, they are created by the members of the group, and they then organize the activity of the group. Group-level adaptations, as Williams noted, imply a selection process operating at the group level."
Jonathan Haidt,Moderate,But even those who reject all religions cannot shake the basic religious psychology of figure 11.2: doing linked to believing linked to belonging.
Jonathan Haidt,Moderate,"Does religion make people good or bad? The New Atheists assert that religion is the root of most evil. They say it is a primary cause of war, genocide, terrorism, and the oppression of women.50 Religious believers, for their part, often say that atheists are immoral, and that they can’t be trusted. Even John Locke, one of the leading lights of the Enlightenment, wrote that promises, covenants, and oaths, which are the bonds of human society, can have no hold upon an atheist. The taking away of God, though but even in thought, dissolves all."
Jonathan Haidt,Moderate,"Putnam and Campbell reject the New Atheist emphasis on belief and reach a conclusion straight out of Durkheim: It is religious belongingness that matters for neighborliness, not religious believing.61"
Jonathan Haidt,Moderate,"my approach starts with Durkheim, who said: What is moral is everything that is a source of solidarity, everything that forces man to … regulate his actions by something other than … his own egoism.65"
Jonathan Haidt,Moderate,"Moral systems are interlocking sets of values, virtues, norms, practices, identities, institutions, technologies, and evolved psychological mechanisms that work together to suppress or regulate self-interest and make cooperative societies possible.66"
Jonathan Haidt,Moderate,Utilitarians since Jeremy Bentham have focused intently on individuals. They try to improve the welfare of society by giving individuals what they want. But a Durkheimian version of utilitarianism would recognize that human flourishing requires social order and embeddedness. It would begin with the premise that social order is extraordinarily precious and difficult to achieve. A Durkheimian utilitarianism would be open to the possibility that the binding foundations
Jonathan Haidt,Moderate,Ignorant people see everything in black and white
Jonathan Haidt,Moderate,"The Sanctity foundation is crucial for understanding the American culture wars, particularly over biomedical issues. If you dismiss the Sanctity foundation entirely, then it’s hard to understand the fuss over most of today’s biomedical controversies."
Jonathan Haidt,Moderate,We do moral reasoning not to reconstruct the actual reasons why we ourselves came to a judgment; we reason to find the best possible reasons why somebody else ought to join us in our judgment.36
Jonathan Haidt,Moderate,"Intuition is the best word to describe the dozens or hundreds of rapid, effortless moral judgments and decisions that we all make every day."
Jonathan Haidt,Moderate,"The claim that some races were innately superior to others was later championed by Hitler, and so if Hitler was a nativist, then all nativists were Nazis. (That conclusion is illogical, but it makes sense emotionally if you dislike nativism.)13 The"
Jonathan Haidt,Moderate,"Once people join a political team, they get ensnared in its moral matrix. They see confirmation of their grand narrative everywhere, and it's difficult-perhaps impossible-to convince them that they are wrong if you argue with them from outside of their matrix."
Jonathan Haidt,Moderate,"In other words, you can’t study the mind while ignoring culture, as psychologists usually do, because minds function only once they’ve been filled out by a particular culture. And you can’t study culture while ignoring psychology, as anthropologists usually do, because social practices and institutions (such as initiation rites, witchcraft, and religion) are to some extent shaped by concepts and desires rooted deep within the human mind, which explains why they often take similar forms on different continents. I"
Jonathan Haidt,Moderate,"he still shouldn’t do it because it degrades him, dishonors his creator, and violates the sacred order of the universe."
Jonathan Haidt,Moderate,...civility doesn't require consensus or the suspension of criticism. It is simply the ability to disagree productively with others while respecting their sincerity and decency.
Jonathan Haidt,Moderate,"In the 1890s Wilhelm Wundt, the founder of experimental psychology, formulated the doctrine of affective primacy.7 Affect refers to small flashes of positive or negative feeling that prepare us to approach or avoid something. Every emotion (such as happiness or disgust) includes an affective reaction, but most of our affective reactions are too fleeting to be called emotions (for example, the subtle feelings you get just from reading the words happiness and disgust)."
Jonathan Haidt,Moderate,"Wundt said that affective reactions are so tightly integrated with perception that we find ourselves liking or disliking something the instant we notice it, sometimes even before we know what it is.8 These flashes occur so rapidly that they precede all other thoughts about the thing we’re looking at. You can feel affective primacy in action the next time you run into someone you haven’t seen in many years. You’ll usually know within a second or two whether you liked or disliked the person, but it can take much longer to remember who the person is or how you know each other."
Jonathan Haidt,Moderate,"we are all, by nature, hypocrites, and this is why it is so hard for us to follow the Golden Rule faithfully."
Jonathan Haidt,Moderate,"It is, rather, self-constructed as kids play with other kids. Taking turns in a game is like pouring water back and forth between glasses. No matter how often you do it with three-year-olds, they’re just not ready to get the concept of fairness,7 any more than they can understand the conservation of volume. But once they’ve reached the age of five or six, then playing games, having arguments, and working things out together will help them learn about fairness far more effectively than any sermon from adults."
Jonathan Haidt,Moderate,"BORN TO BE RIGHTEOUS I could have titled this book The Moral Mind to convey the sense that the human mind is designed to do morality, just as it’s designed to do language, sexuality, music, and many other things described in popular books reporting the latest scientific findings. But I chose the title The Righteous Mind to convey the sense that human nature is not just intrinsically moral, it’s also intrinsically moralistic, critical, and judgmental."
Jonathan Haidt,Moderate,"If there is any one secret of success it lies in the ability to get the other person’s point of view and see things from their angle as well as your own.50 It’s such an obvious point, yet few of us apply it in moral and political arguments because our righteous minds so readily shift into combat mode."
Jonathan Haidt,Moderate,Liberals sometimes say that religious conservatives are sexual prudes for whom anything other than missionary-position intercourse within marriage is a sin. But conservatives can just as well make fun of liberal struggles to choose a balanced breakfast
Jonathan Haidt,Moderate,"The moral matrix of American libertarians. At YourMorals.​org, we’ve found that Wilkinson is"
Jonathan Haidt,Moderate,Reciprocity is a deep instinct; it is the basic currency of social life.
Jonathan Haidt,Moderate,"Whatever its origins, the psychology of sacredness helps bind individuals into moral communities.42 When someone in a moral community desecrates one of the sacred pillars supporting the community, the reaction is sure to be swift, emotional, collective, and punitive. To"
Jonathan Haidt,Moderate,"Life is a hierarchy of nested levels, like Russian dolls: genes within chromosomes within cells within individual organisms within hives, societies, and other groups."
Jonathan Haidt,Moderate,"(Humans can be turned into suicide bombers, but it takes a great deal of training, pressure, and psychological manipulation. It doesn’t come naturally to us.)"
Jonathan Haidt,Moderate,"Genes are selfish,3 selfish genes create people with various mental modules, and some of these mental modules make us strategically altruistic, not reliably or universally altruistic."
Jonathan Haidt,Moderate,"When Freud was asked what a normal person should be able to do well, he is reputed to have said, Love and work."
Jonathan Haidt,Moderate,Morality is like taste in many ways
Jonathan Haidt,Moderate,"leadership on virtue can never come from the major political actors; it will have to come from a movement of people, such as the people of a town who come together and agree to create moral coherence across the many areas of children’s lives."
Jonathan Haidt,Moderate,"Like Plato, Kant believed that human beings have a dual nature: part animal and part rational. The animal part of us follows the laws of nature, just as does a falling rock or a lion killing its prey. There is no morality in nature; there is only causality. But the rational part of us, Kant said, can follow a different kind of law: It can respect rules of conduct, and so people (but not lions) can be judged morally for the degree to which they respect the right rules. What might those rules be? Here Kant devised the cleverest trick in all moral philosophy. He reasoned that for moral rules to be laws, they had to be universally applicable. If gravity worked differently for men and women, or for Italians and Egyptians, we could not speak of it as a law. But rather than searching for rules to which all people would in fact agree (a difficult task, likely to produce only a few bland generalities), Kant turned the problem around and said that people should think about whether the rules guiding their own actions could reasonably be proposed as universal laws. If you are planning to break a promise that has become inconvenient, can you really propose a universal rule that states people ought to break promises that have become inconvenient? Endorsing such a rule would render all promises meaningless. Nor could you consistently will that people cheat, lie, steal, or in any other way deprive other people of their rights or their property, for such evils would surely come back to visit you. This simple test, which Kant called the categorical imperative, was extraordinarily powerful. It offered to make ethics a branch of applied logic, thereby giving it the sort of certainty that secular ethics, without recourse to a sacred book, had always found elusive."
Jonathan Haidt,Moderate,"It is vain to say that human beings ought to be satisfied with tranquility: they must have action; and they will make it if they cannot find it. (CHARLOTTE BRONTË, 1847)46"
Jonathan Haidt,Moderate,All things come into being by conflict of opposites.
Jonathan Haidt,Moderate,"Religion and science, for example, are often thought to be opponents, but as I have shown, the insights of ancient religions and of modern science are both needed to reach a full understanding of human nature and the conditions of human satisfaction. The ancients may have known little about biology, chemistry, and physics, but many were good psychologists. Psychology and religion can benefit by taking each other seriously, or at least by agreeing to learn from each other while overlooking the areas of irreconcilable difference."
Jonathan Haidt,Moderate,We do not live but a quarter part of our life
Jonathan Haidt,Moderate,"For Buddha, attachments are like a game of roulette in which someone else spins the wheel and the game is rigged: The more you play, the more you lose. The only way to win is to step away from the table. And the only way to step away, to make yourself not react to the ups and downs of life, is to meditate and tame the mind. Although you give up the pleasures of winning, you also give up the larger pains of losing."
Jonathan Haidt,Moderate,"Our politics is groupish, not selfish."
Jonathan Haidt,Moderate,The psychologist Mark Schaller has shown that disgust is part of what he calls the behavioral immune system
Jonathan Haidt,Moderate,"As the colonial insects did to the other insects, we have pushed all other mammals to the margins, to extinction, or to servitude."
Jonathan Haidt,Moderate,human cognition veered away from that of other primates when our ancestors developed shared intentionality
Jonathan Haidt,Moderate,"I do not want to suggest that utilitarianism and Kantian deontology are incorrect as moral theories just because they were founded by men who may have had Asperger’s syndrome. That would be an ad hominem argument, a logical error, and a mean thing to say."
Jonathan Haidt,Moderate,"It is inconceivable that you would ever see two chimpanzees carrying a log together.52 I was stunned. Chimps are arguably the second-smartest species on the planet, able to make tools, learn sign language, predict the intentions of other chimps, and deceive each other to get what they want. As individuals, they’re brilliant. So why can’t they work together? What are they missing?"
Jonathan Haidt,Moderate,No man can ever be secure until he has been forsaken by Fortune.
Jonathan Haidt,Moderate,We humans have a dual nature
Jonathan Haidt,Moderate,Conservative professors are more willing to reward the best students and punish the worst.60
Jonathan Haidt,Moderate,"If you find yourself in a Whole Foods store, there’s an 89 percent chance that the county surrounding you voted for Barack Obama. If you want to find Republicans, go to a county that contains a Cracker Barrel restaurant (62 percent of these counties went for McCain)."
Jonathan Haidt,Moderate,"Let me state clearly that moral capital is not always an unalloyed good. Moral capital leads automatically to the suppression of free riders, but it does not lead automatically to other forms of fairness such as equality of opportunity. And while high moral capital helps a community to function efficiently, the community can use that efficiency to inflict harm on other communities. High moral capital can be obtained within a cult or a fascist nation, as long as most people truly accept the prevailing moral matrix. Nonetheless, if you are trying to change an organization or a society and you do not consider the effects of your changes on moral capital, you’re asking for trouble. This, I believe, is the fundamental blind spot of the left. It explains why liberal reforms so often backfire,43 and why communist revolutions usually end up in despotism. It is the reason I believe that liberalism"
Jonathan Haidt,Moderate,"I reviewed five areas of research showing that moral thinking is more like a politician searching for votes than a scientist searching for truth: • We are obsessively concerned about what others think of us, although much of the concern is unconscious and invisible to us. • Conscious reasoning functions like a press secretary who automatically justifies any position taken by the president. • With the help of our press secretary, we are able to lie and cheat often, and then cover it up so effectively that we convince even ourselves. • Reasoning can take us to almost any conclusion we want to reach, because we ask Can I believe it? when we want to believe something, but Must I believe it? when we don’t want to believe. The answer is almost always yes to the first question and no to the second. • In moral and political matters we are often groupish, rather than selfish. We deploy our reasoning skills to support our team, and to demonstrate commitment to our team."
Jonathan Haidt,Moderate,"In such prototribal societies, individuals who found it harder to play along, to restrain their antisocial impulses, and to conform to the most important collective norms would not have been anyone’s top choice when it came time to choose partners for hunting, foraging, or mating. In particular, people who were violent would have been shunned, punished, or in extreme cases killed. This process has been described as self-domestication.71 The ancestors of dogs, cats, and pigs got less aggressive as they were domesticated and shaped for partnership with human beings. Only the friendliest ones approached human settlements in the first place; they volunteered to become the ancestors of today’s pets and farm animals. In a similar way, early humans domesticated themselves when they began to select friends and partners based on their ability to live within the tribe’s moral matrix. In fact, our brains, bodies, and behavior show many of the same signs of domestication that are found in our domestic animals: smaller teeth, smaller body, reduced aggression, and greater playfulness, carried on even into adulthood.72 The reason is that domestication generally takes traits that disappear at the end of childhood and keeps them turned on for life. Domesticated animals (including humans) are more childlike, sociable, and gentle than their wild ancestors. These"
Jonathan Haidt,Moderate,"The social intuitionist model offers an explanation of why moral and political arguments are so frustrating: because moral reasons are the tail wagged by the intuitive dog. A dog’s tail wags to communicate. You can’t make a dog happy by forcibly wagging its tail. And you can’t change people’s minds by utterly refuting their arguments. Hume diagnosed the problem long ago: And as reasoning is not the source, whence either disputant derives his tenets; it is in vain to expect, that any logic, which speaks not to the affections, will ever engage him to embrace sounder principles.49"
Jonathan Haidt,Moderate,"The liberal radio host Garrison Keillor captured the spirit and self-image of the modern American left when he wrote: I am a liberal, and liberalism is the politics of kindness. Liberals stand for tolerance, magnanimity, community spirit, the defense of the weak against the powerful, love of learning, freedom of belief, art and poetry, city life, the very things that make America worth dying for.50 I"
Jonathan Haidt,Moderate,"I find it ironic that liberals generally embrace Darwin and reject intelligent design as the explanation for design and adaptation in the natural world, but they don’t embrace Adam Smith as the explanation for design and adaptation in the economic world. They sometimes prefer the intelligent design of socialist economies, which often ends in disaster from a utilitarian point of view.68 YANG"
Jonathan Haidt,Moderate,"Conservatives are the party of order and stability, in Mill’s formulation. They generally resist the changes implemented by the party of progress or reform. But to put things in those terms makes conservatives sound like fearful obstructionists, trying to hold back the hands of time and the noble human aspirations of the liberal progress narrative. A more positive way to describe conservatives is to say that their broader moral matrix allows them to detect threats to moral capital that liberals cannot perceive. They do not oppose change of all kinds (such as the Internet), but they fight back ferociously when they believe that change will damage the institutions and traditions that provide our moral exoskeletons (such as the family). Preserving those institutions and traditions is their most sacred value. For"
Jonathan Haidt,Moderate,Anything that binds people together into dense networks of trust makes people less selfish. In
Jonathan Haidt,Moderate,"you don’t usually help the bees by destroying the hive. Finally,"
Jonathan Haidt,Moderate,"first principle of moral psychology: Intuitions come first, strategic reasoning second."
Jonathan Haidt,Moderate,"Muller asserted that modern conservatism is really about creating the best possible society, the one that brings about the greatest happiness given local circumstances."
Jonathan Haidt,Moderate,"Conservatives believe that people are inherently imperfect and are prone to act badly when all constraints and accountability are removed (yes, I thought; see Glaucon, Tetlock, and Ariely in chapter 4). Our reasoning is flawed and prone to overconfidence, so it’s dangerous to construct theories based on pure reason, unconstrained by intuition and historical experience (yes; see Hume in chapter 2 and Baron-Cohen on systemizing in chapter 6). Institutions emerge gradually as social facts, which we then respect and even sacralize, but if we strip these institutions of authority and treat them as arbitrary contrivances that exist only for our benefit, we render them less effective. We then expose ourselves to increased anomie and social disorder (yes; see Durkheim in chapters 8 and 11). Based"
Jonathan Haidt,Moderate,"Liberals stand up for victims of oppression and exclusion. They fight to break down arbitrary barriers (such as those based on race, and more recently on sexual orientation). But their zeal to help victims, combined with their low scores on the Loyalty, Authority, and Sanctity foundations, often lead them to push for changes that weaken groups, traditions, institutions, and moral capital. For example, the urge to help the inner-city poor led to welfare programs in the 1960s that reduced the value of marriage, increased out-of-wedlock births, and weakened African American families.72 The urge to empower students by giving them the right to sue their teachers and schools in the 1970s has eroded authority and moral capital in schools, creating disorderly environments that harm the poor above all.73 The urge to help Hispanic immigrants in the 1980s led to multicultural education programs that emphasized the differences among Americans rather than their shared values and identity. Emphasizing differences makes many people more racist, not less.74 On issue after issue, it’s as though liberals are trying to help a subset of bees (which really does need help) even if doing so damages the hive. Such reforms may lower the overall welfare of a society, and sometimes they even hurt the very victims liberals were trying to help."
Jonathan Haidt,Moderate,"If your moral matrix rests entirely on the Care and Fairness foundations, then it's hard to hear the sacred overtones in America's unofficial motto: E pluribus unum (from many, one). By sacred, I mean... the ability to endow ideas, objects, and events, with infinite value, particularly those ideas, objects, and events that bind a group together into a single entity. The process of converting pluribus (diverse people) into unum (a nation) is a miracle that occurs in every successful nation on Earth. Nations decline or divide when they stop performing this miracle."
Jonathan Haidt,Moderate,skilled arguers … are not after the truth but after arguments supporting their views.50
Jonathan Haidt,Moderate,"each individual reasoner is really good at one thing: finding evidence to support the position he or she already holds, usually for intuitive reasons."
Jonathan Haidt,Moderate,"[A corporation is] a collection of many individuals united into one body, under a special denomination, having perpetual succession under an artificial form, and vested, by policy of the law, with the capacity of acting, in several respects, as an individual.41 This legal fiction, recognizing a collection of many individuals as a new kind of individual, turned out to be a winning formula. It let people place themselves into a new kind of boat within which they could divide labor, suppress free riding, and take on gigantic tasks with the potential for gigantic rewards. Corporations and corporate law helped England pull out ahead of the rest of the world in the early days of the industrial revolution."
Jonathan Haidt,Moderate,"transformational leaders understand (at least implicitly) that human beings have a dual nature. They set up organizations that engage, to some degree, the higher level of that nature. Good leaders create good followers, but followership in a hivish organization is better described as membership. POLITICAL"
Jonathan Haidt,Moderate,"Happiness comes from between. It comes from getting the right relationships between yourself and others, yourself and your work, and yourself and something larger than yourself. Once"
Jonathan Haidt,Moderate,"If you want your kids to learn about the physical world, let them play with cups and water; don’t lecture them about the conservation of volume. And if you want your kids to learn about the social world, let them play with other kids and resolve disputes; don’t lecture them about the Ten Commandments."
Jonathan Haidt,Moderate,"Our minds have the potential to become righteous about many different concerns, and only a few of these concerns are activated during childhood. Other"
Jonathan Haidt,Moderate,"I am a Durkheimian, I think Emil Durkheim got it right. I think you need to see communities as absolutely needing a sense of cohesion, trust, shared values and a sense of who we are. This is why mass immigration can be a bad thing. I'm Jewish and my grandparents came to America in 1905 fleeing pogroms, and I look at the videos and see the kids coming out of Syria and it is the same thing, so I'm sympathetic to the moral case. But you can only have mass immigration if you have mass assimilation, which my grandparents and my parents went through. If you have a society that has the moral resources to say 'This is America, welcome, adapt, learn English', then you can have mass immigration. Immigration clearly boosted America's creativity and economy, so there is plenty of good things with immigration. I'm not saying immigration is bad. But from a Durkheimian perspective, to have massive Muslim immigration into secular European societies where not only do you not have assimilation, you have a political left arguing that assimilation is genocide, which is ridiculous. With an anti-assimilation ethos, Europe is setting itself up for massive failure. Their generous redistributive welfare states can only work if people have a strong sense of social solidarity. Diversity can be divisive, as research has shown. So Europe is in huge trouble and the sociology is worrisome for what Europe is going to be like in one or two generations."
Jonathan Haidt,Moderate,"Liberals are so committed to a narrative of oppression and exploitation that they can’t take good news, they can’t accept good news."
Jonathan Haidt,Moderate,"In all human cultures, the social world has two clear dimensions: a horizontal dimension of closeness or liking, and a vertical one of hierarchy or status. . . . Now imagine yourself happily moving around your two-dimensional social world, a flat land where the X axis is closeness and the Y axis is hierarchy. Then one day, you see a person do something extraordinary, or you have an overwhelming experience of natural beauty , and you feel lifted up. But it is not the up of hierarchy, it’s some other kind of elevation. This chapter is about that vertical movement. My claim is that the human mind perceives a third dimension, a specifically moral dimension that I will call divinity."
Jonathan Haidt,Moderate,Hume believed that reason was (and was only fit to be) the servant of the passions.
Jonathan Haidt,Moderate,oxytocin made men more willing to hurt other teams (in a prisoner’s dilemma game) because doing so was the best way to protect their own group.
Jonathan Haidt,Moderate,"Events in the world affect us only through our interpretations of them, so if we can control our interpretations, we can control our world."
Jonathan Haidt,Moderate,If the hive switch is real
Jonathan Haidt,Moderate,"Our ability to believe in supernatural agents may well have begun as an accidental by-product of a hypersensitive agency detection device, but once early humans began believing in such agents, the groups that used them to construct moral communities were the ones that lasted and prospered. Like those nineteenth-century religious communes, they used their gods to elicit sacrifice and commitment from members. Like those subjects in the cheating studies and trust games, their gods helped them to suppress cheating and increase trustworthiness. Only groups that can elicit commitment and suppress free riding can grow. This is why human civilization grew so rapidly after the first plants and animals were domesticated. Religions and righteous minds had been coevolving, culturally and genetically, for tens of thousands of years before the Holocene era, and both kinds of evolution sped up when agriculture presented new challenges and opportunities. Only groups whose gods promoted cooperation, and whose individual minds responded to those gods, were ready to rise to these challenges and reap the rewards."
Jonathan Haidt,Moderate,"Tetlock found two very different kinds of careful reasoning. Exploratory thought is an evenhanded consideration of alternative points of view. Confirmatory thought is a one-sided attempt to rationalize a particular point of view.13 Accountability increases exploratory thought only when three conditions apply: (1) decision makers learn before forming any opinion that they will be accountable to an audience, (2) the audience’s views are unknown, and (3) they believe the audience is well informed and interested in accuracy. When all three conditions apply, people do their darnedest to figure out the truth, because that’s what the audience wants to hear. But the rest of the time"
Jonathan Haidt,Moderate,"Whether you believe in hell, whether you pray daily, whether you are a Catholic, Protestant, Jew, or Mormon ... none of these things correlated with generosity. The only thing that was reliably and powerfully associated with the moral benefits of religion was how enmeshed people were in relationships with their co-religionists. It's the friendships and group activities, carried out within a moral matrix that emphasizes selflessness. That's what brings out the best in people."
Jonathan Haidt,Moderate,are important for binding groups together.
Jonathan Haidt,Moderate,"Once you see our righteous minds as primate minds with a hivish overlay, you get a whole new perspective on morality, politics, and religion."
Jonathan Haidt,Moderate,"We are terrible at seeking evidence that challenges our own beliefs, but other people do us this favor, just as we are quite good at finding errors in other people’s beliefs. When discussions are hostile, the odds of change are slight. The elephant leans away from the opponent, and the rider works frantically to rebut the opponent’s charges. But if there is affection, admiration, or a desire to please the other person, then the elephant leans toward that person and the rider tries to find the truth in the other person’s arguments. The"
Jonathan Haidt,Moderate,"Millon et al. 1998. Psychopaths often care what others think, but only as part of a plan to manipulate or exploit others. They don’t have emotions such as shame and guilt that make it painful for them when others see through their lies and come to hate them. They don’t have an automatic unconscious sociometer."
Jonathan Haidt,Moderate,Kohlberg’s most influential finding was that the most morally advanced kids (according to his scoring technique) were those who had frequent opportunities for role taking
Jonathan Haidt,Moderate,Ultimately our moral sense or conscience becomes a highly complex sentiment
Jonathan Haidt,Moderate,"The 9/11 attacks activated several of these group-related adaptations in my mind. The attacks turned me into a team player, with a powerful and unexpected urge to display my team’s flag and then do things to support the team, such as giving blood, donating money, and, yes, supporting the leader.31 And my response was tepid compared to the hundreds of Americans who got in their cars that afternoon and drove great distances to New York in the vain hope that they could help to dig survivors out of the wreckage, or the thousands of young people who volunteered for military service in the following weeks. Were these people acting on selfish motives, or groupish motives? The rally-round-the-flag reflex is just one example of a groupish mechanism."
Jonathan Haidt,Moderate,"Zajonc was able to make people like any word or image more just by showing it to them several times.9 The brain tags familiar things as good things. Zajonc called this the mere exposure effect, and it is a basic principle of advertising."
Jonathan Haidt,Moderate,"In one of the most bizarre demonstrations of this effect, Eric Helzer and David Pizarro asked students at Cornell University to fill out surveys about their political attitudes while standing near (or far from) a hand sanitizer dispenser. Those told to stand near the sanitizer became temporarily more conservative.27"
Jonathan Haidt,Moderate,"Rather, my research on the moral emotions has led me to conclude that the human mind simply does perceive divinity and sacredness, whether or not God exists."
Jonathan Haidt,Moderate,"Even atheists have intimations of sacredness, particularly when in love or in nature. We just don’t infer that God caused those feelings."
Jonathan Haidt,Moderate,"When any . . . act of charity or of gratitude, for instance, is presented either to our sight or imagination, we are deeply impressed with its beauty and feel a strong desire in ourselves of doing charitable and grateful acts also. On the contrary, when we see or read of any atrocious deed, we are disgusted with its deformity, and conceive an abhorrence of vice. Now every emotion of this kind is an exercise of our virtuous dispositions, and dispositions of the mind, like limbs of the body, acquire strength by exercise.24"
Jonathan Haidt,Moderate,"If the third dimension and perceptions of sacredness are an important part of human nature, then the scientific community should accept religiosity as a normal and healthy aspect of human nature"
Jonathan Haidt,Moderate,"naive realism: Each of us thinks we see the world directly, as it really is. We further believe that the facts as we see them are there for all to see, therefore others should agree with us. If they don’t agree, it follows either that they have not yet been exposed to the relevant facts or else that they are blinded by their interests and ideologies."
Jonathan Haidt,Moderate,"I think these drugs could just as well be called Durkheimogens, given their unique (though unreliable) ability to shut down the self and give people experiences they later describe as religious or"
Jonathan Haidt,Moderate,We have the ability (under special circumstances) to transcend self-interest and lose ourselves (temporarily and ecstatically) in something larger than ourselves. I called this ability the hive switch.
Jonathan Haidt,Moderate,A college football game is a superb analogy for religion.
Jonathan Haidt,Moderate,"Morality binds and blinds. Many scientists misunderstand religion because they ignore this principle and examine only what is most visible. They focus on individuals and their supernatural beliefs, rather than on groups and their binding practices."
Jonathan Haidt,Moderate,"The Perfect Way is only difficult                 for those who pick and choose;                 Do not like, do not dislike;                 all will then be clear.                 Make a hairbreadth difference,                 and Heaven and Earth are set apart;                 If you want the truth to stand clear before you,                 never be for or against.                 The struggle between for and against                 is the mind’s worst disease.11"
Jonathan Haidt,Moderate,"adverse fortune is more beneficial than good fortune; the latter only makes men greedy for more, but adversity makes them strong."
Jonathan Haidt,Moderate,"The philosopher Edmund Pincoffs has argued that consequentialists and deontologists worked together to convince Westerners in the twentieth century that morality is the study of moral quandaries and dilemmas. Where the Greeks focused on the character of a person and asked what kind of person we should each aim to become, modern ethics focuses on actions, asking when a particular action is right or wrong. ... This turn from character ethics to quandary ethics has turned moral education away from virtues and toward moral reasoning. If morality is about dilemmas, then moral education is training in problem solving."
Jonathan Haidt,Moderate,I quickly realized that there are two main kinds of diversity
Jonathan Haidt,Moderate,"Education must be seen as at least partially an effort to produce the good human being, to foster the good life and the good society.46"
Jonathan Haidt,Moderate,"We've all heard that what doesn't kill us makes us stronger, but that is a dangerous oversimplification. Many of the things that don't kill you can damage you for life."
Jonathan Haidt,Moderate,"we see faces in the clouds, but never clouds in faces, because we have special cognitive modules for face detection."
Jonathan Haidt,Moderate,The developmental psychologist Paul Bloom has shown that our minds were designed for dualism
Jonathan Haidt,Moderate,"We do not receive wisdom, we must discover it for ourselves, after a journey through the wilderness which no one else can make for us, which no one can spare us, for our wisdom is the point of view from which we come at last to regard the world.45"
Jonathan Haidt,Moderate,"A more promising hypothesis is that happiness comes from within and cannot be obtained by making the world conform to your desires. This idea was widespread in the ancient world: Buddha in India and the Stoic philosophers in ancient Greece and Rome all counseled people to break their emotional attachments to people and events, which are always unpredictable and uncontrollable, and to cultivate instead an attitude of acceptance. This ancient idea deserves respect, and it is certainly true that changing your mind is usually a more effective response to frustration than is changing the world."
Jonathan Haidt,Moderate,Morality often involves tension within the group motivated by competition between different groups.
Jonathan Haidt,Moderate,"In the last chapter I suggested that humans are, like our primate ancestors, innately equipped to live in dominance hierarchies that can be quite brutal. But if that’s true, then how come nomadic hunter-gatherers are always egalitarian? There’s no hierarchy (at least among the adult males), there’s no chief, and the norms of the group actively encourage sharing resources, particularly meat.26 The archaeological evidence supports this view, indicating that our ancestors lived for hundreds of thousands of years in egalitarian bands of mobile hunter-gatherers.27 Hierarchy only becomes widespread around the time that groups take up agriculture or domesticate animals and become more sedentary. These changes create much more private property and much larger group sizes. They also put an end to equality. The best land and a share of everything people produce typically get dominated by a chief, leader, or elite class (who take some of their wealth with them to the grave for easy interpretation by later archaeologists). So were our minds structured in advance of experience for hierarchy or for equality? For hierarchy,"
Jonathan Haidt,Moderate,"Imagine early hominid life as a tense balance of power between the alpha (and an ally or two) and the larger set of males who are shut out of power. Then arm everyone with spears. The balance of power is likely to shift when physical strength no longer decides the outcome of every fight. That’s essentially what happened, Boehm suggests, as our ancestors developed better weapons for hunting and butchering beginning around five hundred thousand years ago, when the archaeological record begins to show a flowering of tool and weapon types.30 Once early humans had developed spears, anyone could kill a bullying alpha male. And if you add the ability to communicate with language, and note that every human society uses language to gossip about moral violations,31 then it becomes easy to see how early humans developed the ability to unite in order to shame, ostracize, or kill anyone whose behavior threatened or simply annoyed the rest of the group."
Jonathan Haidt,Moderate,"Boehm’s claim is that at some point during the last half-million years, well after the advent of language, our ancestors created the first true moral communities.32 In these communities, people used gossip to identify behavior they didn’t like, particularly the aggressive, dominating behaviors of would-be alpha males. On the rare occasions when gossip wasn’t enough to bring them into line, they had the ability to use weapons to take them down. Boehm quotes a dramatic account of such a community in action among the !Kung people of the Kalahari Desert: A man named Twi had killed three other people, when the community, in a rare move of unanimity, ambushed and fatally wounded him in full daylight. As he lay dying, all of the men fired at him with poisoned arrows until, in the words of one informant, he looked like a porcupine. Then, after he was dead, all the women as well as the men approached his body and stabbed him with spears, symbolically sharing the responsibility for his death.33"
Jonathan Haidt,Moderate,"It’s not that human nature suddenly changed and became egalitarian; men still tried to dominate others when they could get away with it. Rather, people armed with weapons and gossip created what Boehm calls reverse dominance hierarchies in which the rank and file band together to dominate and restrain would-be alpha males. (It’s uncannily similar to Marx’s dream of the dictatorship of the proletariat.)34 The result is a fragile state of political egalitarianism achieved by cooperation among creatures who are innately predisposed to hierarchical arrangements. It’s a great example of how innate refers to the first draft of the mind. The final edition can look quite different, so it’s a mistake to look at today’s hunter-gatherers and say, See, that’s what human nature really looks like!"
Jonathan Haidt,Moderate,"For groups that made this political transition to egalitarianism, there was a quantum leap in the development of moral matrices. People now lived in much denser webs of norms, informal sanctions, and occasionally violent punishments. Those who could navigate this new world skillfully and maintain good reputations were rewarded by gaining the trust, cooperation, and political support of others. Those who could not respect group norms, or who acted like bullies, were removed from the gene pool by being shunned, expelled, or killed. Genes and cultural practices (such as the collective killing of deviants) coevolved. The end result, says Boehm, was a process sometimes called self-domestication. Just as animal breeders can create tamer, gentler creatures by selectively breeding for those traits, our ancestors began to selectively breed themselves (unintentionally) for the ability to construct shared moral matrices and then live cooperatively within them."
Jonathan Haidt,Moderate,"For what the flesh desires is opposed to the Spirit, and what the Spirit desires is opposed to the flesh; for these are opposed to each other, to prevent you from doing what you want."
Jonathan Haidt,Moderate,"Anything that binds people together into a moral matrix that glorifies the in-group while at the same time demonizing another group can lead to moralistic killing, and many religions are well suited for that task. Religion is therefore often an accessory to atrocity, rather than the driving force of the atrocity."
Jonathan Haidt,Moderate,I once overheard a Kohlberg-style moral judgment interview being conducted in the bathroom of a McDonald’s restaurant in northern Indiana. The person interviewed
Jonathan Haidt,Moderate,"as the social sciences advanced in the twentieth century, their course was altered by two waves of moralism that turned nativism into a moral offense. The first was the horror among anthropologists and others at social Darwinism"
Jonathan Haidt,Moderate,"Several of the peculiarities of WEIRD culture can be captured in this simple generalization: The WEIRDer you are, the more you see a world full of separate objects, rather than relationships. It has long been reported that Westerners have a more independent and autonomous concept of the self than do East Asians.3 For example, when asked to write twenty statements beginning with the words I am …, Americans are likely to list their own internal psychological characteristics (happy, outgoing, interested in jazz), whereas East Asians are more likely to list their roles and relationships (a son, a husband, an employee of Fujitsu). The differences run deep; even visual perception is affected. In what’s known as the framed-line task, you are shown a square with a line drawn inside it. You then turn the page and see an empty square that is larger or smaller than the original square. Your task is to draw a line that is the same as the line you saw on the previous page, either in absolute terms (same number of centimeters; ignore the new frame) or in relative terms (same proportion relative to the frame). Westerners, and particularly Americans, excel at the absolute task, because they saw the line as an independent object in the first place and stored it separately in memory. East Asians, in contrast, outperform Americans at the relative task, because they automatically perceived and remembered the relationship among the parts.4"
Jonathan Haidt,Moderate,"In 1960, Peter Wason (creator of the 4-card task from chapter 2) published his report on the 2–4–6 problem.18 He showed people a series of three numbers and told them that the triplet conforms to a rule. They had to guess the rule by generating other triplets and then asking the experimenter whether the new triplet conformed to the rule. When they were confident they had guessed the rule, they were supposed to tell the experimenter their guess. Suppose a subject first sees 2–4–6. The subject then generates a triplet in response: 4–6–8? Yes, says the experimenter. How about 120–122–124? Yes. It seemed obvious to most people that the rule was consecutive even numbers. But the experimenter told them this was wrong, so they tested out other rules: 3–5–7? Yes. What about 35–37–39? Yes. OK, so the rule must be any series of numbers that rises by two? No. People had little trouble generating new hypotheses about the rule, sometimes quite complex ones. But what they hardly ever did was to test their hypotheses by offering triplets that did not conform to their hypothesis. For example, proposing 2–4–5 (yes) and 2–4–3 (no) would have helped people zero in on the actual rule: any series of ascending numbers. Wason called this phenomenon the confirmation bias, the tendency to seek out and interpret new evidence in ways that confirm what you already think. People are quite good at challenging statements made by other people, but if it’s your belief, then it’s your possession"
Jonathan Haidt,Moderate,"But if that were the case, then moral philosophers"
Jonathan Haidt,Moderate,"The Chinese sage Mencius made the analogy between morality and food 2,300 years ago when he wrote that moral principles please our minds as beef and mutton and pork please our mouths.4 In this chapter and the next two, I’ll develop the analogy that the righteous mind is like a tongue with six taste receptors. In this analogy, morality is like cuisine: it’s a cultural construction, influenced by accidents of environment and history, but it’s not so flexible that anything goes. You can’t have a cuisine based on tree bark, nor can you have one based primarily on bitter tastes. Cuisines vary, but they all must please tongues equipped with the same five taste receptors.5 Moral matrices vary, but they all must please righteous minds equipped with the same six social receptors."
Jonathan Haidt,Moderate,"It grabs the wrist of the other hand and tries to stop it from executing the person’s conscious plans. Sometimes, the alien hand actually reaches for the person’s own neck and tries to strangle him.13"
Jonathan Haidt,Moderate,"I concluded by warning that the worship of reason, which is sometimes found in philosophical and scientific circles, is a delusion. It is an example of faith in something that does not exist."
Jonathan Haidt,Moderate,The author says we enlist reasons to convince others to join the direction of our instincts.
Jonathan Haidt,Moderate,"Psychologists often approach personality by measuring basic traits such as the big five: neuroticism, extroversion, openness to new experiences, agreeableness (warmth/niceness), and conscientiousness.15 These traits are facts about the elephant, about a person’s automatic reactions to various situations. They are fairly similar between identical twins reared apart, indicating that they are influenced in part by genes, although they are also influenced by changes in the conditions of one’s life or the roles one plays, such as becoming a parent.16 But psychologist Dan McAdams has suggested that personality really has three levels... The third level of personality is that of the life story. Human beings in every culture are fascinated by stories; we create them wherever we can. (See those seven stars up there? They are seven sisters who once . . . ) It’s no different with our own lives. We can’t stop ourselves from creating what McAdams describes as an evolving story that integrates a reconstructed past, perceived present, and anticipated future into a coherent and vitalizing life myth.18 Although the lowest level of personality is mostly about the elephant, the life story is written primarily by the rider. You create your story in consciousness as you interpret your own behavior, and as you listen to other people’s thoughts about you. The life story is not the work of a historian"
Jonathan Haidt,Moderate,"In 1931, at the age of four, my father was diagnosed with polio. He wasimmediately put into an isolation room at the local hospital in Brooklyn,New York. There was no cure and no vaccine for polio at that time, and citydwellers lived in fear of its spread. For several weeks my father had no humancontact, save for an occasional visit by a masked nurse. His mothercame to see him every day, but that’s all she could do"
Jonathan Haidt,Moderate,Shallow are the souls that have forgotten how to shudder. Leon Cass
Jonathan Haidt,Moderate,"The author found participants in a study able to come up with more reasons to support their position but not anymore likely to change their minds based on contradictory evidence. In effect, they enlist their IQ on behalf of their instincts."
Jonathan Haidt,Moderate,The advantage which disciplined soldiers have over undisciplined hordes follows cheaply from the confidence which each man feels in his comrades. Charles Darwin
Jonathan Haidt,Moderate,"Suppose you entered a boat race. One hundred rowers, each in a separate rowboat, set out on a ten-mile race along a wide and slow-moving river. The first to cross the finish line will win $10,000. Halfway into the race, you’re in the lead. But then, from out of nowhere, you’re passed by a boat with two rowers, each pulling just one oar. No fair! Two rowers joined together into one boat! And then, stranger still, you watch as that rowboat is overtaken by a train of three such rowboats, all tied together to form a single long boat. The rowers are identical septuplets. Six of them row in perfect synchrony while the seventh is the coxswain, steering the boat and calling out the beat for the rowers. But those cheaters are deprived of victory just before they cross the finish line, for they in turn are passed by an enterprising group of twenty-four sisters who rented a motorboat. It turns out that there are no rules in this race about what kinds of vehicles are allowed. That was a metaphorical history of life on Earth. For the first billion years or so of life, the only organisms were prokaryotic cells (such as bacteria). Each was a solo operation, competing with others and reproducing copies of itself. But then, around 2 billion years ago, two bacteria somehow joined together inside a single membrane, which explains why mitochondria have their own DNA, unrelated to the DNA in the nucleus.35 These are the two-person rowboats in my example. Cells that had internal organelles could reap the benefits of cooperation and the division of labor (see Adam Smith). There was no longer any competition between these organelles, for they could reproduce only when the entire cell reproduced, so it was one for all, all for one. Life on Earth underwent what biologists call a major transition.36 Natural selection went on as it always had, but now there was a radically new kind of creature to be selected. There was a new kind of vehicle by which selfish genes could replicate themselves. Single-celled eukaryotes were wildly successful and spread throughout the oceans."
Jonathan Haidt,Moderate,This was my first hint that morality often involves tension within the group linked to competition between different groups.
Jonathan Haidt,Moderate,"These groups were a new kind of vehicle: a hive or colony of close genetic relatives, which functioned as a unit (e.g., in foraging and fighting) and reproduced as a unit. These are the motorboating sisters in my example, taking advantage of technological innovations and mechanical engineering that had never before existed. It was another transition. Another kind of group began to function as though it were a single organism, and the genes that got to ride around in colonies crushed the genes that couldn’t get it together and rode around in the bodies of more selfish and solitary insects. The colonial insects represent just 2 percent of all insect species, but in a short period of time they claimed the best feeding and breeding sites for themselves, pushed their competitors to marginal grounds, and changed most of the Earth’s terrestrial ecosystems (for example, by enabling the evolution of flowering plants, which need pollinators).43 Now they’re the majority, by weight, of all insects on Earth. What about human beings? Since ancient times, people have likened human societies to beehives. But is this just a loose analogy? If you map the queen of the hive onto the queen or king of a city-state, then yes, it’s loose. A hive or colony has no ruler, no boss. The queen is just the ovary. But if we simply ask whether humans went through the same evolutionary process as bees"
Jonathan Haidt,Moderate,Cultural change works orders of magnitude faster then genetic change. Stephen Jay Gould
Jonathan Haidt,Moderate,"A few hundred million years later, some of these eukaryotes developed a novel adaptation: they stayed together after cell division to form multicellular organisms in which every cell had exactly the same genes. These are the three-boat septuplets in my example. Once again, competition is suppressed (because each cell can only reproduce if the organism reproduces, via its sperm or egg cells). A group of cells becomes an individual, able to divide labor among the cells (which specialize into limbs and organs). A powerful new kind of vehicle appears, and in a short span of time the world is covered with plants, animals, and fungi.37 It’s another major transition. Major transitions are rare. The biologists John Maynard Smith and Eörs Szathmáry count just eight clear examples over the last 4 billion years (the last of which is human societies).38 But these transitions are among the most important events in biological history, and they are examples of multilevel selection at work. It’s the same story over and over again: Whenever a way is found to suppress free riding so that individual units can cooperate, work as a team, and divide labor, selection at the lower level becomes less important, selection at the higher level becomes more powerful, and that higher-level selection favors the most cohesive superorganisms.39 (A superorganism is an organism made out of smaller organisms.) As these superorganisms proliferate, they begin to compete with each other, and to evolve for greater success in that competition. This competition among superorganisms is one form of group selection.40 There is variation among the groups, and the fittest groups pass on their traits to future generations of groups. Major transitions may be rare, but when they happen, the Earth often changes.41 Just look at what happened more than 100 million years ago when some wasps developed the trick of dividing labor between a queen (who lays all the eggs) and several kinds of workers who maintain the nest and bring back food to share. This trick was discovered by the early hymenoptera (members of the order that includes wasps, which gave rise to bees and ants) and it was discovered independently several dozen other times (by the ancestors of termites, naked mole rats, and some species of shrimp, aphids, beetles, and spiders).42 In each case, the free rider problem was surmounted and selfish genes began to craft relatively selfless group members who together constituted a supremely selfish group."
Jonathan Haidt,Moderate,"Religion is therefore well suited to be the handmaiden of groupishness, tribalism, and nationalism. To take one example, religion does not seem to be the cause of suicide bombing. According to Robert Pape, who has created a database of every suicide terrorist attack in the last hundred years, suicide bombing is a nationalist response to military occupation by a culturally alien democratic power.62 It’s a response to boots and tanks on the ground"
Jonathan Haidt,Moderate,"When corporations are given the ring of Gyges, we can expect catastrophic results (for the ecosystem, the banking system, public health, etc.)."
Jonathan Haidt,Moderate,A Liberal authority is someone or something that earns society’s respect through making things happen that unify society and suppress its enemy.
Jonathan Haidt,Moderate,"Reasoning was merely the servant of the passions, and when the servant failed to find any good arguments, the master did not change his mind."
Jonathan Haidt,Moderate,"Animals that fly seem to violate the laws of physics, but only until you learn a bit more about physics."
Jonathan Haidt,Moderate,"Animals that live in large peaceful societies seem to violate the laws of evolution (such as competition and survival of the fittest), but only until you learn a bit more about evolution."
Jonathan Haidt,Moderate,"Humans construct moral communities out of shared norms, institutions, and gods that, even in the twenty-first century, they fight, kill, and die to defend."
Jonathan Haidt,Moderate,"The only force left on Earth that can stand up to the largest corporations are national governments, some of which still maintain the power to tax, regulate, and divide corporations into smaller pieces when they get too powerful."
Jonathan Haidt,Moderate,"The Western conception of the person as a bounded, unique, more or less integrated motivational and cognitive universe, a dynamic center of awareness, emotion, judgment, and action organized into a distinctive whole and set contrastively both against other such wholes and against its social and natural background, is, however incorrigible it may seem to us, a rather peculiar idea within the context of the world’s cultures."
Jonathan Haidt,Moderate,I’ll praise Glaucon for the rest of the book as the guy who got it right
Jonathan Haidt,Moderate,"Human nature is a complex mix of preparations for extreme selfishness and extreme altruism. Which side of our nature we express depends on culture and context. When opponents of evolution object that human beings are not mere apes, they are correct. We are also part bee."
Jonathan Haidt,Moderate,"We assume that there is one person in each body, but in some ways we are each more like a committee whose members have been thrown together to do a job, but who often find themselves working at cross purposes."
Jonathan Haidt,Moderate,"I believe the Scottish philosopher David Hume was closer to the truth than was Plato when he said, Reason is, and ought only to be the slave of the passions, and can never pretend to any other office than to serve and obey them."
Jonathan Haidt,Moderate,"If you are a member of a WEIRD society, your eyes tend to fall on individual objects such as people, and you don’t automatically see the relationships among them. Having a concept such as social capital is helpful because it forces you to see the relationships within which those people are embedded, and which make those people more productive. I propose that we take this approach one step further. To understand the miracle of moral communities that grow beyond the bounds of kinship we must look not just at people, and not just at the relationships among people, but at the complete environment within which those relationships are embedded, and which makes those people more virtuous (however they themselves define that term). It takes a great deal of outside-the-mind stuff to support a moral community. For example, on a small island or in a small town, you typically don’t need to lock your bicycle, but in a big city in the same country, if you only lock the bike frame, your wheels may get stolen. Being small, isolated, or morally homogeneous are examples of environmental conditions that increase the moral capital of a community. That doesn’t mean that small islands and small towns are better places to live overall"
Jonathan Haidt,Moderate,"The genius of Peterson and Seligman’s classification is to get the conversation going, to propose a specific list of strengths and virtues, and then let the scientific and therapeutic communities work out the details. Just as the DSM is thoroughly revised every ten or fifteen years, the classification of strengths and virtues (known among positive psychologists as the un-DSM) is sure to be revised and improved in a few years. In daring to be specific, in daring to be wrong, Peterson and Seligman have demonstrated ingenuity, leadership, and hope."
Jonathan Haidt,Moderate,"The troubadours did give us a particular myth of true love--the idea that real loveburns brightly and passionately, and then it just keeps on burning until death, and then itjust keeps on burning after death as the lovers are reunited in heaven. This myth seemsto have grown and diffused in modern times into a set of interrelated ideas about loveand marriage. As I see it, the modern myth of true love involves these beliefs: True loveis passionate love that never fades; if you are in true love, you should marry that person;if love ends, you should leave that person because it was not true love; and if you canfind the right person, you will have true love forever. You might not believe this mythyourself, particularly if you are older than thirty; but many young people in the Westernnations are raised on it, and it acts as an ideal that they unconsciously carry with themeven if they scoff at it. (It’s not just Hollywood that perpetrates the myth; Bollywood, theIndian film industry, is even more romanticized.) But if true love is defined as eternalpassion, it is biologically impossible. p. 124"
Jonathan Haidt,Moderate,You can't have much of a mission without good allies and a good enemy.
Jonathan Haidt,Moderate,"This is the essence of psychological rationalism: We grow into our rationality as caterpillars grow into butterflies. If the caterpillar eats enough leaves, it will (eventually) grow wings. And if the child gets enough experiences of turn taking, sharing, and playground justice, it will (eventually) become a moral creature, able to use its rational capacities to solve ever harder problems. Rationality is our nature, and good moral reasoning is the end point of development."
Jonathan Haidt,Moderate,"There is a special pleasure in the irony of a moralist brought down for the very moral failings he has condemned. It’s the pleasure of a well-told joke. Some jokes are funny as one-liners, but most require three verses: three guys, say, who walk into a bar one at a time, or a priest, a minister, and a rabbi in a lifeboat. The first two set the pattern, and the third violates it. With hypocrisy, the hypocrite’s preaching is the setup, the hypocritical action is the punch line. Scandal is great entertainment because it allows people to feel contempt, a moral emotion that gives feelings of moral superiority while asking nothing in return. With contempt you don’t need to right the wrong (as with anger) or flee the scene (as with fear or disgust). And best of all, contempt is made to share. Stories about the moral failings of others are among the most common kinds of gossip,3 they are a staple of talk radio, and they offer a ready way for people to show that they share a common moral orientation. Tell an acquaintance a cynical story that ends with both of you smirking and shaking your heads and voila, you’ve got a bond."
Jonathan Haidt,Moderate,"So convenient a thing is it to be a reasonable creature, since it enables one to find or make a reason for every thing one has a mind to do."
Jonathan Haidt,Moderate,"When you first catch sight of a fault in yourself, you'll likely hear frantic arguments from your inner lawyer excusing you and blaming others, but try not to listen. You are on a mission to find at least one thing that you did wrong. When you extract a splinter it hurts, briefly, but if you keep going and acknowledge the fault, you are likely to be rewarded with a flash of pleasure that is mixed, oddly, with a hint of pride. It is the pleasure of taking responsibility for your own behavior. It is the feeling of honor."
Jonathan Haidt,Moderate,"The two biggest causes of evil are two that we think are good, and that we try to encourage in our children: high self-esteem and moral idealism. Having high self-esteem doesn’t directly cause violence, but when someone’s high esteem is unrealistic or narcissistic, it is easily threatened by reality; in reaction to those threats, people"
Jonathan Haidt,Moderate,"Believing, doing, and belonging are three complementary yet distinct aspects of religiosity, according to many scholars.12 When you look at all three aspects at the same time, you get a view of the psychology of religion that’s very different from the view of the New Atheists. I’ll call this competing model the Durkheimian model, because it says that the function of those beliefs and practices is ultimately to create a community. Often our beliefs are post hoc constructions designed to justify what we’ve just done, or to support the groups we belong to."
Jonathan Haidt,Moderate,"People don’t adopt their ideologies at random, or by soaking up whatever ideas are around them. People whose genes gave them brains that get a special pleasure from novelty, variety, and diversity, while simultaneously being less sensitive to signs of threat, are predisposed (but not predestined) to become liberals. They tend to develop certain characteristic adaptations and life narratives that make them resonate"
Jonathan Haidt,Moderate,"The mind is its own place, and in itself can make a heaven of hell, a hell of heaven.32"
Jonathan Haidt,Moderate,"This principle, called negativity bias,13 shows up all over psychology. In marital interactions, it takes at least five good or constructive actions to make up for the damage done by one critical or"
Jonathan Haidt,Moderate,"Clinical psychologists sometimes say that two kinds of people seek therapy: those who need tightening, and those who need loosening. But for every patient seeking help in becoming more organized, self-controlled, and responsible about her future, there is a waiting room full of people hoping to loosen up, lighten up, and worry less about the stupid things"
Jonathan Haidt,Moderate,We are not so sensible of the greatest Health as of the least Sickness.
Jonathan Haidt,Moderate,Marcel Proust wrote that the only true voyage . . . would be not to visit strange lands but to possess other eyes.41
Jonathan Haidt,Moderate,"David Perkins,12 a Harvard psychologist who has devoted his career to improving reasoning, found the same thing. He says that thinking generally uses the makessense stopping rule. We take a position, look for evidence that supports it, and if we find some evidence"
Jonathan Haidt,Moderate,"And Dunbar points out that in our ultrasocial species, success is largely a matter of playing the social game well. It’s not what you know, it’s who you know."
Jonathan Haidt,Moderate,"The strong version of the adversity hypothesis might be true, but only if we add caveats: For adversity to be maximally beneficial, it should happen at the right time (young adulthood), to the right people (those with the social and psychological resources to rise to challenges and find benefits), and to the right degree (not so severe as to cause PTSD)."
Jonathan Haidt,Moderate,"Suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope."
Jonathan Haidt,Moderate,"In French, as in other romance languages, speakers are forced to choose whether they’ll address someone using the respectful form (vous) or the familiar form (tu). Even English, which doesn’t embed status into verb conjugations, embeds it elsewhere. Until recently, Americans addressed strangers and superiors using title plus last name (Mrs. Smith, Dr. Jones), whereas intimates and subordinates were called by first name."
Jonathan Haidt,Moderate,"Moderates and conservatives were most accurate in their predictions, whether they are pretending to be liberals or conservatives. Liberals were the least accurate."
Jonathan Haidt,Moderate,"If we could just erase the borders and boundaries that divide us, then thew world would be as one. It's a vision of heaven for liberals, but conservatives believe it would quickly descend into hell... If you destroy all groups and dissolve all internal structure, you destroy your moral capital."
Jonathan Haidt,Moderate,"Passions often corrupt reason, but if we can learn to control those passions, our God-given rationality will shine forth and guide us to do the right thing, not the popular thing."
Jonathan Haidt,Moderate,"If I could nominate one candidate for biggest obstacle to world peace and social harmony, it would be naive realism because it is so easily ratcheted up from the individual to the group level: My group is right because we see things as they are. Those who disagree are obviously biased by their religion, their ideology, or their self-interest. Naive realism gives us a world full of good and evil, and this brings us to the most disturbing implication of the sages’ advice about hypocrisy: Good and evil do not exist outside of our beliefs about them."
Jonathan Haidt,Moderate,"The mind is divided, like a rider on an elephant, and the rider’s job is to serve the elephant."
Jonathan Haidt,Moderate,"Why do you see the speck in your neighbor’s eye, but do not notice the log in your own eye? … You hypocrite, first take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your neighbor’s eye. (MATTHEW 7:3–5)"
Jonathan Haidt,Moderate,"The Weirdest People in the World?2 The authors pointed out that nearly all research in psychology is conducted on a very small subset of the human population: people from cultures that are Western, educated, industrialized, rich, and democratic (forming the acronym WEIRD). They then reviewed dozens of studies showing that WEIRD people are statistical outliers; they are the least typical, least representative people you could study if you want to make generalizations about human nature. Even within the West, Americans are more extreme outliers than Europeans, and within the United States, the educated upper middle class (like my Penn sample) is the most unusual of all."
Jonathan Haidt,Moderate,"animal brains are designed to create flashes of pleasure when the animal does something important for its survival, and small pulses of the neurotransmitter dopamine in the ventral striatum (and a few other places) are where these good feelings are manufactured. Heroin and cocaine are addictive because they artificially trigger this dopamine response. Rats who can press a button to deliver electrical stimulation to their reward centers will continue pressing until they collapse from starvation.44"
Jonathan Haidt,Moderate,"Anyone who values truth should stop worshipping reason. We all need to take a cold hard look at the evidence and see reasoning for what it is. The French cognitive scientists Hugo Mercier and Dan Sperber recently reviewed the vast research literature on motivated reasoning (in social psychology) and on the biases and errors of reasoning (in cognitive psychology). They concluded that most of the bizarre and depressing research findings make perfect sense once you see reasoning as having evolved not to help us find truth but to help us engage in arguments, persuasion, and manipulation in the context of discussions with other people. As they put it, skilled arguers … are not after the truth but after arguments supporting their views.50 This explains why the confirmation bias is so powerful, and so ineradicable. How hard could it be to teach students to look on the other side, to look for evidence against their favored view? Yet, in fact, it’s very hard, and nobody has yet found a way to do it.51 It’s hard because the confirmation bias is a built-in feature (of an argumentative mind), not a bug that can be removed (from a platonic mind)."
Jonathan Haidt,Moderate,"Behind every act of altruism, heroism, and human decency you’ll find either selfishness or stupidity."
Jonathan Haidt,Moderate,"people who grow up in Western, educated, industrial, rich, and democratic (WEIRD) societies are statistical outliers on many psychological measures, including measures of moral psychology"
Jonathan Haidt,Moderate,soldiers don’t risk their lives for their country or for the army; they do so for their buddies in the same squad or platoon.
Jonathan Haidt,Moderate,leadership can only be understood as the complement of followership.45 Focusing on leadership alone is like trying to understand clapping by studying only the left hand. They point out that leadership is not even the more interesting hand; it’s no puzzle to understand why people want to lead. The real puzzle is why people are willing to follow.
Ian Bremmer,Moderate,"In American and European politics, them is often an immigrant hoping to come inside"
Ian Bremmer,Moderate,"There are many reasons why the tech revolution will hit the emerging world much harder than it will hit Europe and the United States. In developed countries, children are more likely to grow up with digital technologies as toys and then to encounter them in school. Governments in these countries have money to invest in educational systems that prepare workers, both blue and white collar, for change. Their universities have much greater access to state-of-the-art technologies. Their companies produce the innovations that drive tech change in the first place. This creates a dynamic in which high-wage countries are more likely than low-wage ones to dominate the skill-intensive industries that will generate twenty-first-century growth, leaving behind large numbers of those billion-plus people who only recently emerged from age-old deprivation. The wealth in developed countries helps them maintain much stronger social safety nets than in poorer countries to help citizens who lose their jobs, fall ill, or need to care for sick children or aging parents. In short, wealthier countries are both more adaptable and more resilient than developing ones."
Ian Bremmer,Moderate,"many developing countries, governments are becoming victims of their own success. Those who have joined the new middle class don’t just want better government; they expect it. They demand it. This is the natural result of a larger international success story that is now visible even to those who haven’t fully shared in it."
Ian Bremmer,Moderate,"Our superhero foreign policy draws rivers of taxpayer dollars toward the center, empowering Washington at the expense of local governments. It also empowers the president at the expense of Congress in ways that upset the balance that the authors of the Constitution took great pains to design."
Ian Bremmer,Moderate,"During his final year in office, at the height of the Cold War, the U.S. government posted a more than $1 billion surplus. In 2013, the federal deficit topped $680 billion, down from $1.1 trillion in 2012. As of this writing, the U.S. national debt has surpassed $18 trillion. For perspective, in 1960, the national debt was about 52 percent of the country’s gross domestic product. By 1970, that figure had fallen to 34 percent. On October 17, 2013, it passed the 100 percent mark. In other words, the national debt now exceeds the value of America’s entire economic output."
Ian Bremmer,Moderate,"Those who champion a so-called Independent America will tell you that drones create more enemies than they kill, and that America will attract more admirers by perfecting American democracy. Do you really believe that young men living among the tribes of the Afghan-Pakistan border are less likely to support extremist ideologies if we build better schools in Ohio and better hospitals in Arkansas? Do you accept that Somali jihadis are less likely to plan attacks on Western targets or that U.S. embassies around the world will be safer if U.S. policymakers redouble their commitment to American civil liberties? In the real world, a leader must often choose the least bad of many bad options. Drones achieve military objectives with much less risk for our military and at much lower cost to our economy. Use them. Never"
Ian Bremmer,Moderate,"Some argue that the use of drones violates international law. If you oppose their use on that basis, then you must also oppose the manned attack that killed Osama bin Laden, an assault that also violated Pakistan’s territorial integrity. In that case, you value the sanctity of Pakistani airspace more than the opportunity to kill the world’s most accomplished terrorist. That’s a legitimate moral position. But leaders faced with imminent threats must often choose among options that are terrible each in its own way, and it is immoral to ignore that reality. It is also immoral to condemn a leader’s choice without offering an honest, well-considered alternative."
Ian Bremmer,Moderate,U.S. foreign policy should be designed to make the United States safer and more prosperous; it’s foolish to think that Americans can safeguard their interests and promote prosperity without accepting some costs and risks far beyond our borders.
Ian Bremmer,Moderate,"things protect and serve our most vital interests. Afghanistan and Iraq have soured the American people on potentially costly commitments abroad. But these two poorly designed foreign policy adventures do not represent the best we can do. We cannot shrink from the future. There will be more threats, more costs, and more opportunities, and U.S. policymakers must be prepared to confront them. In"
Ian Bremmer,Moderate,"Isolationism appeals to every instinct we have to cut our risks and maximize our benefits, but it is dangerously naïve to believe that the world will simply leave us alone. No country can do more than America to lead an international fight against terrorism, and it must be done. Islamic State militants in Iraq and Syria can threaten the stability of the entire Middle East and could eventually promote terrorist attacks inside America and Europe. Washington can’t continue to ignore this region’s small problems until they turn into big ones. The United States can and should lead an international effort to ensure that ISIS remains isolated, even if it can’t immediately be dismantled and destroyed."
Ian Bremmer,Moderate,"In addition, according to credible press reports, U.S. Special Operations now uses African air bases in Burkina Faso, South Sudan, Kenya, Uganda, Djibouti, and the Seychelles to gather information on and target al-Qaeda-inspired militant groups in Mali, Niger, Yemen, Somalia, Nigeria, the Democratic Republic of Congo, the Central African Republic, and Sudan.16 That’s necessary,"
Ian Bremmer,Moderate,"In Libya in 2011, fourteen NATO members and four partner countries prevented Muammar Qaddafi from carrying out a promise to slaughter tens of thousands of his own people"
Ian Bremmer,Moderate,"U.S. forces invaded Iraq in 2003 because President Bush determined that if sanctions could not force regime change, the military must. In this case, shrugging off Saddam’s bravado and keeping him isolated was the better choice. In 2013, when Syria’s Bashar al-Assad appeared ready to use chemical weapons on his own people, President Obama drew a red line. Assad’s use of these weapons, Obama warned, was a game-changer. Assad is then believed to have used those chemical weapons, but Washington took no action against his government, instead allowing Russia to broker a hasty deal to destroy the weapons. Obama chose flexibility; he was wise to do nothing."
Ian Bremmer,Moderate,"When Donald Trump became president, he asked Congress to increase U.S. defense spending by $54 billion, an incremental increase that tops the entire 2017 Russian defense budget"
Ian Bremmer,Moderate,Another factor that’s likely to exacerbate inequality: next-generation automation. The technological revolution in the workplace has only just begun. A 2017 study published by the Institute for Spatial Economic Analysis found that nearly every major American city will see half of its current jobs replaced by robots by 2035.
Ian Bremmer,Moderate,"China has some obvious advantages. It’s the one government that, at least for now, can afford to spend huge amounts of money to create unnecessary jobs to avoid political unrest. China’s historic successes suggest this might be the one country that can find a way to adjust, and the aging of its population could be a plus as the country needs fewer jobs in coming years than rival India. We all better hope so, because, month by month, the entire global economy is becoming more dependent on China’s continued stability and growth."
Ian Bremmer,Moderate,"Russia, like all other countries not named China, faces an uphill battle to establish the degree of content dominance that an autocrat might want."
Ian Bremmer,Moderate,"There is the Great Firewall, which blocks access to tens of thousands of websites the Chinese government doesn’t want citizens to see. The Golden Shield is an online surveillance system that uses keywords and other tools to shut down attempts to access content that the state considers politically sensitive. There is an ever expanding list of words and phrases that trigger denial messages online. More recently, China has moved on offense by introducing the Great Cannon, which can alter content accessed online and attack websites that the state considers dangerous to China’s security via a dedicated denial of service attack that can overwhelm servers to knock them offline."
Ian Bremmer,Moderate,"As job creation becomes a more sensitive subject in years to come, we can expect controversies over immigration even in developing countries, just as the flow of people from crisis-plagued Venezuela has already raised this issue even in Latin America."
Ian Bremmer,Moderate,"The social credit system is a tool the state can use to decide whether it can trust you. If it trusts you, your horizons are limitless. If the state cannot trust you, you’re not going anywhere."
Ian Bremmer,Moderate,"Over time, a lower oil price will push Russia’s military spending still lower. But attacks in cyberspace are much less expensive and not nearly as dangerous as conventional attacks, because it isn’t always clear who is responsible. That’s why we can expect a lot more of them"
Ian Bremmer,Moderate,"Around the world, tougher economic times make governments less popular. In response, political leaders then spend too much money, including on subsidies."
Ian Bremmer,Moderate,"In 2018, it’s still too soon to know whether the tech revolution will kill more jobs than it creates."
Peter Drucker,Moderate,"Manners are the lubricating oil of an organization. It is a law of nature that two moving bodies in contact with each other create friction. This is as true for human beings as it is for inanimate objects. Manners- simple things like saying 'please' and 'thank you' and knowing a person’s name or asking after her family enable two people to work together whether they like each other or not. Bright people, especially bright young people, often do not understand this. If analysis shows that someone’s brilliant work fails again and again as soon as cooperation from others is required, it probably indicates a lack of courtesy – that is, a lack of manners."
Peter Drucker,Moderate,Schools everywhere are organized on the assumption that there is only one right way to learn and that it is the same way for everybody.
Peter Drucker,Moderate,Brilliant men are often strikingly ineffectual; they fail to realize that the brilliant insight is not by itself achievement. They never have learned that insights become effectiveness only through hard systematic work.
Peter Drucker,Moderate,"Each [co-worker] works his or her way, not your way. And each is entitled to work in his or her way. What matters is whether they perform and what their values are. As far as how they perform--each is likely to do it differently. The first secret to effectiveness is to understand the people you work with and depend on so that you can make use of their strengths, their ways of working, and their values. Working relationships are as much based on the people as they are on the work."
Peter Drucker,Moderate,De minimis non curat praetor (The magistrate does not consider trifles) said the Roman law almost two thousand years ago
Peter Drucker,Moderate,"It is, above all, fruitless and a waste of time to worry about what is acceptable and what one had better not say so as not to evoke resistance. The things one worries about never happen. And objections and difficulties no one thought about suddenly turn out to be almost insurmountable obstacles. One gains nothing, in other words, by starting out with the question What is acceptable? And in the process of answering it, one loses any chance to come up with an effective, let alone with the right, answer."
Peter Drucker,Moderate,"Above all, disagreement is needed to stimulate the imagination. One may not need imagination to find the one right solution to a problem. But then this is of value only in mathematics. In all matters of true uncertainty such as the executive deals with"
Peter Drucker,Moderate,"in its people decisions, management must demonstrate that it realizes that integrity is one absolute requirement of a manager, the one quality that he has to bring with him and cannot be expected to acquire later on. And management must demonstrate that it requires the same integrity of itself."
Peter Drucker,Moderate,"In an organization which manages by drives people either neglect their job to get on with the current drive, or silently organize for collective sabotage of the drive in order to get their work done. In either event they become deaf to the cry of wolf. And when the real crisis comes, when all hands should drop everything and pitch in, they treat it as just another case of management-created hysteria. Management by drive is a sure sign of confusion. It is an admission of incompetence. It is a sign that management does not think. But, above all, it is a sign that the company does not know what to expect of its managers and that, not knowing how to direct them, it misdirects them."
Peter Drucker,Moderate,The best way to predict the future is to create it. ~ PETER DRUCKER
Peter Drucker,Moderate,"this book itself is not a book on what people at the top do or should do. It is addressed to everyone who, as a knowledge worker, is responsible for actions and decisions which are meant to contribute to the performance capacity of his organization."
Peter Drucker,Moderate,"Measuring requires, first and foremost, analytical ability. But it also demands that measurement be used to make self-control possible rather than abused to control people from the outside and above"
Peter Drucker,Moderate,No institution can possibly survive if it needs geniuses or supermen to manage it. It must be organized in such a way as to be able to get along under a leadership composed of average human beings.
Peter Drucker,Moderate,"The non-profit institution neither supplies goods or services nor controls. Its product is neither a pair of shoes nor an effective regulation. Its product is a changed human being. The non-profit institutions are human-change agents. Their product is a cured patient, a child that learns, a young man or woman grown into a self-respecting adult; a changed human life altogether."
Peter Drucker,Moderate,Effective executives know that their subordinates are paid to perform and not to please their superiors. They know that it does not matter how many tantrums a prima donna throws as long as she brings in the customers.
Peter Drucker,Moderate,Successful innovators are..not risk-focused; they are opportunity focused.
Peter Drucker,Moderate,"As a rule, theory does not precede practice. Its role is to structure and codify already proven practice. Its role is to convert the isolated and atypical from exception to rule and system, and therefore into something that can be learned and taught and, above all, into something that can be generally applied."
David Brooks,Moderate,We are primarily the products of thinking that happens below the level of awareness.
David Brooks,Moderate,"The victims of PTSD often feel morally tainted by their experiences, unable to recover confidence in their own goodness, trapped in a sort of spiritual solitary confinement, looking back at the rest of the world from beyond the barrier of what happened. They find themselves unable to communicate their condition to those who remained at home, resenting civilians for their blind innocence.The Moral Injury, New York Times. Feb 17, 2015"
David Brooks,Moderate,"Self-respect is not the same as self-confidence or self-esteem. Self-respect is not based on IQ or any of the mental or physical gifts that help get you into a competitive college. It is not comparative. It is not earned by being better than other people at something. It is earned by being better than you used to be, by being dependable in times of testing, straight in times of temptation. It emerges in one who is morally dependable. Self-respect is produced by inner triumphs, not external ones."
David Brooks,Moderate,Learning was a by-product of her search for pleasure
David Brooks,Moderate,"Moral improvement occurs most reliably when the heart is warmed, when we come into contact with people we admire and love and we consciously and unconsciously bend our lives to mimic theirs."
David Brooks,Moderate,"Large angels take a long time unfolding their wings, but when they do, soar out of sight."
David Brooks,Moderate,"Humility is a virtue of self-understanding in context, acquired by the practice of other centeredness."
David Brooks,Moderate,"Today, teachers tend to look for their students’ intellectual strengths, so they can cultivate them. But a century ago, professors tended to look for their students’ moral weaknesses, so they could correct them."
David Brooks,Moderate,"Sometimes you don’t even notice these people, because while they seem kind and cheerful, they are also reserved. They possess the self-effacing virtues of people who are inclined to be useful but don’t need to prove anything to the world: humility, restraint, reticence, temperance, respect, and soft self-discipline. They radiate a sort of moral joy. They answer softly when challenged harshly. They are silent when unfairly abused. They are dignified when others try to humiliate them, restrained when others try to provoke them. But they get things done. They perform acts of sacrificial service with the same modest everyday spirit they would display if they were just getting the groceries. They are not thinking about what impressive work they are doing. They are not thinking about"
David Brooks,Moderate,"Nothing that is worth doing can be achieved in our lifetime; therefore we must be saved by hope. Nothing which is true or beautiful or good makes complete sense in any immediate context of history; therefore we must be saved by faith. Nothing we do, however virtuous, can be accomplished alone; therefore we are saved by love. No virtuous act is quite as virtuous from the standpoint of our friend or foe as it is from our standpoint. Therefore we must be saved by the final form of love, which is forgiveness.51"
David Brooks,Moderate,It is especially painful when narcissists suffer memory loss because they are losing parts of the person they love most. 
David Brooks,Moderate,"You have to give to receive. You have to surrender to something outside yourself to gain strength within yourself. You have to conquer your desire to get what you crave. Success leads to the greatest failure, which is pride. Failure leads to the greatest success, which is humility and learning. In order to fulfill yourself, you have to forget yourself. In order to find yourself, you have to lose yourself."
David Brooks,Moderate,"People generally overestimate how distinct their lives are, so the commonalities seemed to them like a series of miracles."
David Brooks,Moderate,"But we often put our loves out of order. If someone tells you something in confidence and then you blab it as good gossip at a dinner party, you are putting your love of popularity above your love of friendship. If you talk more at a meeting than you listen, you may be putting your ardor to outshine above learning"
David Brooks,Moderate,"People generally don’t suffer high rates of PTSD after natural disasters. Instead, people suffer from PTSD after moral atrocities. Soldiers who’ve endured the depraved world of combat experience their own symptoms. Trauma is an expulsive cataclysm of the soul.The Moral Injury, New York Times. Feb 17, 2015"
David Brooks,Moderate,the art of being wise is the art of knowing what to overlook.
David Brooks,Moderate,"the line separating good and evil passes not through states, nor between classes, nor between political parties either"
David Brooks,Moderate,"The point of being a teacher is to do more than impart facts, it's to shape the way students perceive the world, to help a student absorb the rules of a discipline. The teachers who do that get remembered."
David Brooks,Moderate,What if we take away the cool music and the cushioned chairs? What if the screens are gone and the stage is no longer decorated? What if the air conditioning is off and the comforts are removed? Would his Word still be enough for his people to come together? At Brook Hills we decided to try to answer this question. We actually stripped away the entertainment value and invited people to come together simply to study God’s Word for hours at a time. We called it Secret Church. We set a date
David Brooks,Moderate,"We can be knowledgeable with other men’s knowledge, but we can’t be wise with other men’s wisdom."
David Brooks,Moderate,"I believe we inherit a great river of knowledge, a flow of patterns coming from many sources. The information that comes from deep in the evolutionary past we call genetics. The information passed along from hundreds of years ago we call culture. The information passed along from decades ago we call family, and the information offered months ago we call education. But it is all information that flows through us. The brain is adapted to the river of knowledge and exists only as a creature in that river. Our thoughts are profoundly molded by this long historic flow, and none of us exists, self-made, in isolation from it."
David Brooks,Moderate,"As Paul Tillich put it, suffering introduces you to yourself and reminds you that you are not the person you thought you were."
David Brooks,Moderate,"Twelve years ago, when I was 10, I played at being a soldier. I walked up the brook behind our house in Bronxville to a junglelike, overgrown field and dug trenches down to water level with my friends. Then, pretending that we were doughboys in France, we assaulted one another with clods of clay and long, dry reeds. We went to the village hall and studied the rust rifles and machine guns that the Legion post had brought home from the First World War and imagined ourselves using them to fight Germans.But we never seriously thought that we would ever have to do it. The stories we heard later; the Depression veterans with their apple stands on sleety New York street corners; the horrible photographs of dead bodies and mutilated survivors; Johnny Got His Gun and the shrill college cries of the Veterans of Future Wars drove the small-boy craving for war so far from our minds that when it finally happened, it seemed absolutely unbelievable. If someone had told a small boy hurling mud balls that he would be throwing hand grenades twelve years later, he would probably have been laughed at. I have always been glad that I could not look into the future."
David Brooks,Moderate,"Since self-control is a muscle that tires easily, it is much better to avoid temptation in the first place rather than try to resist it once it arises."
David Brooks,Moderate,"In a 2008 wedding toast to Cass Sunstein and Samantha Power, Leon Wieseltier put it about as well as possible: Brides and grooms are people who have discovered, by means of love, the local nature of happiness. Love is a revolution in scale, a revision of magnitudes; it is private and it is particular; its object is the specificity of this man and that woman, the distinctness of this spirit and that flesh. Love prefers deep to wide, and here to there; the grasp to the reach…. Love is, or should be, indifferent to history, immune to it"
David Brooks,Moderate,"Always take your job seriously, never yourself."
David Brooks,Moderate,"In times of crisis, you get a public reaction that is incoherence on stilts. On the one hand, most people know that the government is not in the oil business. They don't want it in the oil business. They know there is nothing a man in Washington can do to plug a hole a mile down in the gulf.On the other hand, they demand that the president 'take control.' They demand that he hold press conferences, show leadership, announce that the buck stops here and do something. They want him to emote and perform the proper theatrical gestures so they can see their emotions enacted on the public stage.They want to hold him responsible for things they know he doesn't control. Their reaction is a mixture of disgust, anger, longing and need. It may not make sense. But it doesn't make sense that the country wants spending cuts and doesn't want cuts, wants change and doesn't want change."
David Brooks,Moderate,"This is what Kierkegaard called the dizziness of freedom. When the external constraints are loosened, when a person can do what he wants, when there are a thousand choices and distractions, then life can lose coherence and direction if there isn’t a strong internal structure."
David Brooks,Moderate,"Instead, parents just have to be good enough. They have to provide their kids with stable and predictable rhythms. They need to be able to fall in tune with their kids’ needs, combining warmth and discipline. They need to establish the secure emotional bonds that kids can fall back upon in the face of stress. They need to be there to provide living examples of how to cope with the problems of the world so that their children can develop unconscious models in their heads."
David Brooks,Moderate,"People become solid, stable, and worthy of self-respect because they have defeated or at least struggled with their own demons. If you take away the concept of sin, then you take away the thing the good person struggles against."
David Brooks,Moderate,"I had thought that the magic of the information age was that it allowed us to know more, but then I realized the magic of the information age is that it allows us to know less. It provides us with external cognitive servants-silicon memory systems, collaborative online filters, consumer preference algorithms and networked knowledge. We can burden these servants and liberate ourselves."
David Brooks,Moderate,"To get the most attention, the essay should be wrong. Logical essays are read and understood. But an illogical or wrong essay will prompt dozens of other writers to rise and respond, thus giving the author mounds of publicity."
David Brooks,Moderate,"You can't really know God if you ignore his laws, especially the ones that regulate the most intimate spheres of life. You may be responsible and healthy, but you will also be shallow and inconsequential."
David Brooks,Moderate,Harrison had turned social awkwardness into a form of social power.
David Brooks,Moderate,"Out of the crooked timber of humanity, no straight thing was ever made."
David Brooks,Moderate,"The problem, Augustine came to believe, is that if you think you can organize your own salvation you are magnifying the very sin that keeps you from it. To believe that you can be captain of your own life is to suffer the sin of pride. What is pride? These days the word pride has positive connotations. It means feeling good about yourself and the things associated with you. When we use it negatively, we think of the arrogant person, someone who is puffed up and egotistical, boasting and strutting about. But that is not really the core of pride. That is just one way the disease of pride presents itself. By another definition, pride is building your happiness around your accomplishments, using your work as the measure of your worth. It is believing that you can arrive at fulfillment on your own, driven by your own individual efforts. Pride can come in bloated form. This is the puffed-up Donald Trump style of pride. This person wants people to see visible proof of his superiority. He wants to be on the VIP list. In conversation, he boasts, he brags. He needs to see his superiority reflected in other people’s eyes. He believes that this feeling of superiority will eventually bring him peace. That version is familiar. But there are other proud people who have low self-esteem. They feel they haven’t lived up to their potential. They feel unworthy. They want to hide and disappear, to fade into the background and nurse their own hurts. We don’t associate them with pride, but they are still, at root, suffering from the same disease. They are still yoking happiness to accomplishment; it’s just that they are giving themselves a D– rather than an A+. They tend to be just as solipsistic, and in their own way as self-centered, only in a self-pitying and isolating way rather than in an assertive and bragging way. One key paradox of pride is that it often combines extreme self-confidence with extreme anxiety. The proud person often appears self-sufficient and egotistical but is really touchy and unstable. The proud person tries to establish self-worth by winning a great reputation, but of course this makes him utterly dependent on the gossipy and unstable crowd for his own identity. The proud person is competitive. But there are always other people who might do better. The most ruthlessly competitive person in the contest sets the standard that all else must meet or get left behind. Everybody else has to be just as monomaniacally driven to success. One can never be secure. As Dante put it, the ardor to outshine / Burned in my bosom with a kind of rage. Hungry for exaltation, the proud person has a tendency to make himself ridiculous. Proud people have an amazing tendency to turn themselves into buffoons, with a comb-over that fools nobody, with golden bathroom fixtures that impress nobody, with name-dropping stories that inspire nobody. Every proud man, Augustine writes, heeds himself, and he who pleases himself seems great to himself. But he who pleases himself pleases a fool, for he himself is a fool when he is pleasing himself.16 Pride, the minister and writer Tim Keller has observed, is unstable because other people are absentmindedly or intentionally treating the proud man’s ego with less reverence than he thinks it deserves. He continually finds that his feelings are hurt. He is perpetually putting up a front. The self-cultivator spends more energy trying to display the fact that he is happy"
David Brooks,Moderate,"Many veterans feel guilty because they lived while others died. Some feel ashamed because they didn’t bring all their men home and wonder what they could have done differently to save them. When they get home they wonder if there’s something wrong with them because they find war repugnant but also thrilling. They hate it and miss it.Many of their self-judgments go to extremes. A comrade died because he stepped on an improvised explosive device and his commander feels unrelenting guilt because he didn’t go down a different street. Insurgents used women and children as shields, and soldiers and Marines feel a totalistic black stain on themselves because of an innocent child’s face, killed in the firefight. The self-condemnation can be crippling.The Moral Injury, New York Times. Feb 17, 2015"
David Brooks,Moderate,Change your behavior and eventually you rewire your brain.
David Brooks,Moderate,"Good, wise hearts are obtained through lifetimes of diligent effort to dig deeply within and heal lifetimes of scars…. You can’t teach it or email it or tweet it. It has to be discovered within the depths of one’s own heart when a person is finally ready to go looking for it, and not before. The job of the wise person is to swallow the frustration and just go on setting an example of caring and digging and diligence in their own lives."
David Brooks,Moderate,A person who is interrupted while performing a task takes 50% more time to complete it and make 50% more errors.
David Brooks,Moderate,"Fixate on whole cultures, not specific pieces of poverty. No specific intervention is going to turn around the life of a child or an adult in any consistent way, but if you can surround a person with a new culture, and different web of relationships, then they will absorb new habits of thought and behavior in ways you will never be able to measure or understand. And if you do surround that person with a new, enriching culture, then you had better keep surrounding them with it, because if they slip back into a different culture, and most of the gains will fade away."
David Brooks,Moderate,"Plato believed the soul was divided into three parts: reason, spirit, and appetite. Reason seeks truth and wants the best for the whole person. Spirit seeks recognition and glory. Appetite seeks base pleasures."
David Brooks,Moderate,"Plain speaking is necessary in any discussion of religion, for if the freethinker attacks the religious dogmas with hesitation, the orthodox believer assumes that it is with regret that the freethinker would remove the crutch that supports the orthodox. And all religious beliefs are 'crutches' hindering the free locomotive efforts of an advancing humanity. There are no problems related to human progress and happiness in this age which any theology can solve, and which the teachings of freethought cannot do better and without the aid of encumbrances."
David Brooks,Moderate,"I was walking in a meadow, the source of a small brook, when the sun at last, just before setting, after a cold, gray day, reached a clear stratum in the horizon, and the softest, brightest morning sunlight fell on the dry grass and on the stems of the trees in the opposite horizon and on the leaves of the shrub oaks on the hillside, while our shadows stretched long over the meadow east-ward, as if we were the only motes in its beams. It was such a light as we could not have imagined a moment before, and the air also was so warm and serene that nothing was wanting to make a paradise of that meadow."
David Brooks,Moderate,"Populism and elitism are the same thing. They are class prejudices, crude class prejudices that so-and-so, because they are uneducated, is less worthy, or so-and-so, because they are richer or more educated, is unworthy."
David Brooks,Moderate,"In the educated class even social life is a series of aptitude tests; we all must perpetually perform in accordance with the shifting norms of propriety, ever advancing signals of cultivation."
David Brooks,Moderate,"Bruce looked at David and David asked, Is that Harold?He was wearing the same Meadow Brook Basketball jacket and had only a few gray hairs left on his round head. Harold walked up to his two favorite players and exclaimed, Give me five! and he extended both hands and the guys lightly slapped his palms, as the other eight ex-players chuckled in the background.The cylinders started clicking in David’s mind as Harold said, On the other side.The guys lightly slapped the knuckle side of Harold’s hand as David said, Oh, shit!"
David Brooks,Moderate,"I couldn’t help but laugh when Landon’s round eyes met mine again. This was my life. A leopard print couch, a David Beckham look-alike, two lesbians, and a Felix the Cat clock. Sure, it wasn’t the JumboTron at Safeco Field, but it was by far the most romantic thing I’d ever experienced."
David Brooks,Moderate,"Government is not the only solution, but it is also not the only problem."
David Brooks,Moderate,I read therefore I write.
David Brooks,Moderate,We’re not bad. But we are morally inarticulate.
David Brooks,Moderate,"This is the inverted logic of people who see around them a fallen world. The midcentury thinker most associated with this ironic logic is Reinhold Niebuhr. People like Randolph, Rustin, and King thought along Niebuhrian lines, and were influenced by him. Niebuhr argued that, beset by his own sinful nature, man is a problem to himself. Human actions take place in a frame of meaning too large for human comprehension."
David Brooks,Moderate,In their best moments they understood that they would become guilty of self-righteousness because their cause was just; they would become guilty of smugness as their cause moved successfully forward; they would become vicious and tribal as group confronted group; they would become more dogmatic and simplistic as they used propaganda to mobilize their followers; they would become more vain as their audiences enlarged;
David Brooks,Moderate,"Many observers have noticed that love eliminates the distinction between giving and receiving. Since the selves of the two lovers are intermingled, scrambled, and fused, it feels more delicious to give to the beloved than to receive."
David Brooks,Moderate,"It’s not that worldly achievement and public acclaim are automatically bad, it’s just that they are won on a planet that is just a resting place for the soul and not our final destination. Success here, acquired badly, can make ultimate success less likely, and that ultimate success is not achieved through competition with others."
David Brooks,Moderate,College is about exposing students to many things and creating an aphrodisiac atmosphere so that they might fall in lifelong love with a few.
David Brooks,Moderate,"The great works of art and literature have a lot to say on how to tackle the concrete challenges of living, like how to escape the chains of public opinion, how to cope with grief or how to build loving friendships. Instead of organizing classes around academic concepts"
David Brooks,Moderate,People tend to want to live up to their friends’ high regard.
David Brooks,Moderate,"(William) Deresiewicz offers a vision of what it takes to move from adolescence to adulthood. Everyone is born with a mind, he writes, but it is only through introspection, observation, connecting the head and the heart, making meaning of experience and finding an organizing purpose that you build a unique individual self."
David Brooks,Moderate,Sin is a necessary piece of our mental furniture because it reminds us that life is a moral affair.
David Brooks,Moderate,In the evenings she got on her knees and inflicted her piety on her sister:
David Brooks,Moderate,"She was carried along by events, not reflecting on them, just letting them sweep over her."
David Brooks,Moderate,trying to mold one’s life around the heroic and deep souls one found in books. Day read as if her whole life depended upon it.
David Brooks,Moderate,"Not shackled to a one-track mind, he always applied two, three, or four"
David Brooks,Moderate,Moderation is not just finding the midpoint between two opposing poles and opportunistically planting yourself there.
David Brooks,Moderate,"If you have realistically low expectations, you'll end up pleased in most circumstances."
David Brooks,Moderate,"Just as he was slowly bringing order to his own internal life, he would also bring order to his language."
David Brooks,Moderate,Samuel Johnson placed this on his watch as a reminder near the end of his life; The night cometh.
David Brooks,Moderate,"Social media technology creates a culture in which people turn into little brand managers, using Facebook, twitter, text messages to create a falsely upbeat, slightly overexuberant, external self that can be famous first in a small sphere and then, with luck, in a large one."
David Brooks,Moderate,The parental relationship sits outside the the logic of meritocracy and is the closest humans come to grace.
David Brooks,Moderate,Pride blinds us to the reality of our divided nature.
David Brooks,Moderate,Every virtue can come with its own accompanying vice. The virtue of reticence can yield the vice of aloofness.
David Brooks,Moderate,"Overshadowing all Roosevelt’s decisions, Perkins wrote, was his feeling that nothing in human judgment is final. One may courageously take the step that seems right today because it can be modified tomorrow if it does not work well. He was an improviser, not a planner. He took a step and adjusted, a step and adjusted. Gradually a big change would emerge."
David Brooks,Moderate,vocations almost always involve tasks that transcend a lifetime. They almost always involve throwing yourself into a historical process. They involve compensating for the brevity of life by finding membership in a historic commitment.
David Brooks,Moderate,"Abilene had gone from boomtown to Bible Belt, from whorehouses to schoolmarms, without any of the intervening phases."
David Brooks,Moderate,The shock of public hostility served as a stimulant. It made them acutely conscious of how society functioned.
David Brooks,Moderate,"Her characters tend to err when they reject the grubby and complex circumstances of everyday life for abstract and radical notions. They thrive when they work within the rooted spot, the concrete habit, the particular reality of their town and family."
David Brooks,Moderate,"Life to him was a very serious proposition, and that’s the way he lived it, soberly and with due reflection."
David Brooks,Moderate,"Your reason and your will are simply too weak to defeat your desires all the time. Individuals are strong, but they are not self-sufficient. To defeat sin you need help from outside."
Arianna Huffington,Moderate,"Why worry about minor little details like clean air, clean water, safe ports and the safety net when Jesus is going to give the world an Extreme Makeover: Planet Edition right after he finishes putting Satan in his place once and for all?"
Arianna Huffington,Moderate,Fearlessness is not the absence of fear. It's the mastery of fear. It's about getting up one more time than we fall down.
Arianna Huffington,Moderate,"We think, mistakenly, that success is the result of the amount of time we put in at work, instead of the quality of time we put in."
Arianna Huffington,Moderate,My mother was a continual source of wisdom and great advice...she taught me that there is always a way around a problem-you've just got to find it. Keep trying doors; one will eventually open. She also taught me to accept failure as part and parcel of life. It's not the opposite of success; it's an integral part of success.I talk a lot about learning to become fearless in your approach to life. But fearlessness is not the absence of fear. It's the mastery of fear. It's all about getting up one more time than you fall down.
Arianna Huffington,Moderate,"it is very telling what we don’t hear in eulogies. We almost never hear things like: The crowning achievement of his life was when he made senior vice president. Or: He increased market share for his company multiple times during his tenure. Or: She never stopped working. She ate lunch at her desk. Every day. Or: He never made it to his kid’s Little League games because he always had to go over those figures one more time. Or: While she didn’t have any real friends, she had six hundred Facebook friends, and she dealt with every email in her in-box every night. Or: His PowerPoint slides were always meticulously prepared. Our eulogies are always about the other stuff: what we gave, how we connected, how much we meant to our family and friends, small kindnesses, lifelong passions, and the things that made us laugh."
Arianna Huffington,Moderate,I do not try to dance better than anyone else. I only try to dance better than myself.
Arianna Huffington,Moderate,"And every day, the world will drag you by the hand, yelling, This is important! And this is important! And this is important! You need to worry about this! And this! And this! And each day, it’s up to you to yank your hand back, put it on your heart and say, No. This is what’s important."
Arianna Huffington,Moderate,"It’s not ‘What do I want to do?’, it’s ‘What kind of life do I want to have?’ "
Arianna Huffington,Moderate,"Have you notices that when we die, our eulogies celebrate our lives very differently from the way society defines success?"
Arianna Huffington,Moderate,"Treat people like family, and they will be loyal and give their all."
Arianna Huffington,Moderate,"And whenever I’d complain or was upset about something in my own life, my mother had the same advice: Darling, just change the channel. You are in control of the clicker. Don’t replay the bad, scary movie."
Arianna Huffington,Moderate,For a long time it had seemed to me that life was about to begin
Arianna Huffington,Moderate,"We may not be able to witness our own eulogy, but we’re actually writing it all the time, every day."
Arianna Huffington,Moderate,Today we often use deadlines
Arianna Huffington,Moderate,"The people we invite on the train are those with whom we are prepared to be vulnerable and real, with whom there is no room for masks and games. They strengthen us when we falter and remind us of the journey’s purpose when we become distracted by the scenery. And we do the same for them. Never let life’s Iagos"
Arianna Huffington,Moderate,We forget we’re mostly water till the rain falls and every atom in our body starts to go home.
Arianna Huffington,Moderate,Sometimes people let the same problem make them miserable for years when they could just say so what. That’s one of my favorite things to say.
Arianna Huffington,Moderate,"A purpose of human life, no matter who is controlling it, is to love whoever is around to be loved."
Arianna Huffington,Moderate,What is success? It is being able to go to bed each night with your soul at peace.
Arianna Huffington,Moderate,"Ten thousand flowers in spring, the moon in autumn, a cool breeze in summer, snow in winter. If your mind isn’t clouded by unnecessary things, this is the best season of your life."
Arianna Huffington,Moderate,We all have within us the ability to move from struggle to grace.
Arianna Huffington,Moderate,"Imagine how our culture, how our lives, will change when we begin valuing go-givers as much as we value go-getters."
Arianna Huffington,Moderate,"If you look at the best research on parenting, it comes down to one thing and one thing only. Not what you teach your children or how much time you spend with them, or if you read to them or not. What it comes down to is who you are, because we teach who we are. You read, your child will read. You watch too much TV, your child will. You do service in the world, your child will do service in the world. So the best way to get past all the worries is to be the best you that you can be. And forgive yourself when you are not. And not to hold unrealistic expectations of your children when you are in no way showing them the behavior you demand from them. Be an example to yourself that your child can be proud of."
Arianna Huffington,Moderate,The greatest weapon against stress is our ability to choose one thought over another.
Arianna Huffington,Moderate,"An old Cherokee is teaching his grandson about life.94 A fight is going on inside me, he said to the boy. It is a terrible fight and it is between two wolves. One is evil"
Arianna Huffington,Moderate,And yet we spend so much time and effort and energy on those résumé entries
Arianna Huffington,Moderate,"You are not your bank account, or your ambitiousness. You’re not the cold clay lump with a big belly you leave behind when you die. You’re not your collection of walking personality disorders. You are spirit, you are love."
Arianna Huffington,Moderate,"Meditation is not about stopping thoughts, but recognizing that we are more than our thoughts and our feelings."
Arianna Huffington,Moderate,"Whenever we look around the world, we see smart leaders – in politics, in business, in media – making terrible decisions. What they're lacking is not IQ, but wisdom. Which is no surprise; it has never been harder to tap into our inner wisdom, because in order to do so, we have to disconnect from all our omnipresent devices – our gadgets, our screens, our social media – and reconnect with ourselves."
Arianna Huffington,Moderate,Making money and doing good in the world are not mutually exclusive.
Arianna Huffington,Moderate,"It matters, it matters very much, what each of us chooses to do. The journey toward self-discovery and self-knowledge is not only life's highest adventure, but also the only way to transform society from one based on self-centeredness and compulsory compassion to one based on service and mutual responsibility."
Arianna Huffington,Moderate,"What Women's Lib might achieve if their 'consciousness raising' - or in plain English, brainwashing"
Arianna Huffington,Moderate,"We are not on this earth to accumulate victories, things, and experiences, but to be whittled and sandpapered until what’s left is who we truly are."
Arianna Huffington,Moderate,"My heart is at ease knowing that what was meant for me will never miss me, and that what misses me was never meant for me."
Arianna Huffington,Moderate,"We have little power to choose what happens, but we have complete power over how we respond."
Arianna Huffington,Moderate,THE MOST INTIMATE relationship we'll ever have is with our own body. It's the headquarters of our fears and anxieties. It's also the cause of many of them. Which is why we can never really be fearless until we stop judging our looks and accept them. I've
Arianna Huffington,Moderate,"As Steve Jobs said in his now legendary commencement address at Stanford, You can’t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something"
Arianna Huffington,Moderate,"When we are all mind, things can get rigid. When we are all heart, things can get chaotic. Both lead to stress. But when they work together, the heart leading through empathy, the mind guiding us with focus and attention, we become a harmonious human being."
Arianna Huffington,Moderate,"As you set out for Ithaka, hope the voyage is a long one, full of adventure, full of discovery."
Arianna Huffington,Moderate,"Angels fly because they take themselves lightly,"
Arianna Huffington,Moderate,"Have patience with all things, but chiefly have patience with yourself. Do not lose courage by considering your own imperfections, but instantly set about remedying them; every day begin the task anew."
Arianna Huffington,Moderate,"By helping us keep the world in perspective, sleep gives us a chance to refocus on the essence of who we are. And in that place of connection, it is easier for the fears and concerns of the world to drop away."
Arianna Huffington,Moderate,These two threads that run through our life
Arianna Huffington,Moderate,music can reach those places where words alone can’t go.
Arianna Huffington,Moderate,The average smartphone user checks his or her device every six and a half minutes.
Arianna Huffington,Moderate,Countless things in our daily lives can awaken the almost constant state of wonder we knew as children. But sometimes to see them we must look through a different set of eyes.
Arianna Huffington,Moderate,Why do we spend so much of our limited time on this earth focusing on all the things that our eulogies will never cover?
Arianna Huffington,Moderate,the ease with which the big crises can wipe out the small ones that seemed so critical just a moment before. All of our small anxieties and trivial preoccupations evaporate with the sudden recognition of what really matters. We are reminded of the impermanence of much that we assume is forever and the value of so much we take for granted.
Arianna Huffington,Moderate,"Taoist philosophy, Rest is prior to motion and stillness prior to action."
Arianna Huffington,Moderate,"When a child loses confidence in his or her creativity, the impact can be profound. People start to separate the world into those who are creative and those who are not. They come to see these categories as fixed, forgetting that they too once loved to draw and tell imaginative stories. Too often they opt out of being creative."
Arianna Huffington,Moderate,"I slept and dreamt that life was joy. I awoke and saw that life was service. I acted and behold, service was joy."
Arianna Huffington,Moderate,"When you wake up in the morning, tell yourself: The people I deal with today will be meddling, ungrateful, arrogant, dishonest, jealous and surly.112 They are like this because they can’t tell good from evil. But I have seen the beauty of good, and the ugliness of evil and have recognized that the wrongdoer has a nature related to my own"
Arianna Huffington,Moderate,"as the Zen saying goes, ‘If you take care of your mind, you take care of the world.’ "
Arianna Huffington,Moderate,"When we feel like there isn’t enough time in the day for us to get everything done, when we wish for more time, wrote sociologist Christine Carter, we don’t actually need more time. We need more stillness."
Arianna Huffington,Moderate,the prevalent cultural norm of sleep deprivation as essential to achievement and success.
Arianna Huffington,Moderate,"Give me a place to stand, and I will move the world."
Arianna Huffington,Moderate,"We need to accept that we won’t always make the right decisions, that we’ll screw up royally sometimes–understanding that failure is not the opposite of success, it’s part of success."
Arianna Huffington,Moderate,"But do not pretend that people become great by doing great things. They do great things because they are great, if the great things come along. But they are great just the same when the great things do not come along."
Arianna Huffington,Moderate,"We master our fears by embracing them, not by subduing them."
Arianna Huffington,Moderate,"People look for retreats for themselves, in the country, by the coast, or in the hills, when it is possible for you to retreat into yourself any time you want. There"
Arianna Huffington,Moderate,And time inherently creates a story. Things begin and they end. How they end is the story. Or maybe it's what happens between when they begin and end that's the story.
Arianna Huffington,Moderate,"And during the day, to prevent stress from building up"
Arianna Huffington,Moderate,"True understanding is to see the events of life in this way: You are here for my benefit, though rumor paints you otherwise. And everything is turned to one’s advantage when he greets a situation like this: You are the very thing I was looking for. Truly whatever arises in life is the right material to bring about your growth and the growth of those around you. This, in a word, is art"
Arianna Huffington,Moderate,"really true that while we grow physically by what we get, we grow spiritually by what we give. Ever since I became a mother, I’ve"
Arianna Huffington,Moderate,"In December 2013, a tourist in Melbourne fell off a pier and plunged into the sea while checking Facebook on her phone. She still had it in her hand when she was rescued."
Arianna Huffington,Moderate,Too many of us leave our lives
Arianna Huffington,Moderate,"A study funded by the National Institutes of Health showed a 23 percent decrease in mortality in people who meditated versus those who did not,"
Arianna Huffington,Moderate,being connected in a shallow way to the entire world can prevent us from being deeply connected to those closest to us
Arianna Huffington,Moderate,"I can change nearly everything about myself. I can run from my children and trade in my spouse, move to another country and raise green rabbits for a living, but unless I care for my soul, I will not have changed who I am."
Arianna Huffington,Moderate,"To really find God is to search for him not only in ourselves, not only in our loved ones, not only in our neighbors, not only in the strangers that we encounter, but ultimately in our enemies as well."
Arianna Huffington,Moderate,"I think that when people hear the president [George W. Bush] speak, frankly, they think he's really stupid. But what people don't realize is that there's a genius behind that stupidity, and that genius is Harlan McCraney."
Arianna Huffington,Moderate,"One of the most popular classes Google offers employees is known as SIY, which is an acronym for Search Inside Yourself."
Arianna Huffington,Moderate,"The quest for knowledge may be pursued at higher speeds with smarter tools today, but wisdom is found no more readily than it was three thousand years ago in the court of King Solomon."
Arianna Huffington,Moderate,"It’s not that capitalism isn’t working. It’s that what we have right now is not capitalism. What we have is corporatism. It’s welfare for the rich. It’s the government picking winners and losers. It’s Wall Street having its taxpayer-funded cake and eating it, too. It’s socialized losses and privatized gains."
Arianna Huffington,Moderate,"As Nassim Taleb, the author of The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable, writes, Big data may mean more information, but it also means more false information. And even when the information is not false, the problem is that the needle comes in an increasingly larger haystack."
Arianna Huffington,Moderate,"Like airlines, we routinely overbook ourselves, fearful of any unused capacity, confident that we can fit everything in. We fear that if we don’t cram as much as possible into our day, we might miss out on something fabulous, important, special, or career advancing. But there are no rollover minutes in life. We don’t get to keep all that time we save. It’s actually a very costly way to live."
Arianna Huffington,Moderate,"In our daily lives, moving from struggle to grace requires practice and commitment."
Arianna Huffington,Moderate,"Giving up drugs is easy compared to dealing with the emotions drugs protected you from. Learning to be vulnerable without shame and accepting our emotions without judgment becomes much easier when we realize that we are more than our emotions, our thoughts, our fears, and our personalities. And the stronger the realization, the easier it becomes to move from struggle to grace. The harder we press on a violin string, the less we can feel it. The louder we play, the less we hear.… If I try to play, I fail; if I race, I trip. The only road to strength is vulnerability."
Arianna Huffington,Moderate,enough. Nothing else really counts at all. Nature
Arianna Huffington,Moderate,"We have a choice when we face difficult decisions: We can act with faith or we can act with fear. There are no guarantees except this one: If we dwell on our fears, we will definitely miss the joys of the unexpected."
Arianna Huffington,Moderate,"So great becomes the fear of losing what we have that many of us rush back to hide under the temporary shelter of convention rather than follow the path of self-discovery wherever it might lead. Given adequate time and sufficient fear, we may hide so long that we hardly notice we're slowly suffocating."
Arianna Huffington,Moderate,Our most meaningful relationships are based on a longing for expansion rather than a preoccupation with comfort and security. To live exuberantly
Arianna Huffington,Moderate,"As in our own lives, the story’s outward form must track the inner journey of the hero. When we disconnect from our inner selves and identify exclusively with our ego, that’s when we lose our connection with life’s meaning and purpose and are left facing a void that we try to fill with more money, more sex, more power, more fame. And as we see in all modern literature, when the ego separates itself from the self, the end is always frustration and destruction"
Arianna Huffington,Moderate,"ON THE morning of April 6, 2007, I was lying on the floor of my home office in a pool of blood. On my way down, my head had hit the corner of my desk, cutting my eye and breaking my cheekbone. I had collapsed from exhaustion and lack of sleep. In the wake of my collapse, I found myself going from doctor to doctor, from brain MRI to CAT scan to echocardiogram, to find out if there was any underlying medical problem beyond exhaustion. There wasn’t, but doctors’ waiting rooms, it turns out, were good places for me to ask myself a lot of questions about the kind of life I was living."
Arianna Huffington,Moderate,"meditation was always a challenge because I was under the impression that I had to do meditation. And I didn’t have time for another burdensome thing to do. Fortunately, a friend pointed out one day that we don’t do meditation; meditation does us. That opened the door for me. The only thing to do in meditation is nothing. Even writing that I don’t have to do one more thing makes me relax."
Arianna Huffington,Moderate,"state of calm produced by meditation, yoga, and breathing exercises"
Arianna Huffington,Moderate,"2. Tuck Me In: Relaxing Yourself to Sleep by Martha Ringer Martha Ringer, a productivity consultant, created this soothing eight-minute meditation to recapture the feeling of comfort and safety we felt as children being tucked in to bed. Available for $0.99 on Amazon.​com, Google Play, and iTunes."
Arianna Huffington,Moderate,"5. Dying Each Day Meditation by John-Roger Invoking the traditional biblical idea that we are born and die each day, spiritual teacher John-Roger’s Dying Each Day meditation guides you in finding stillness at the end of the day by letting go of your attachments. As you surrender your challenges and worries, you’ll experience an expanded sense of peace and love"
Arianna Huffington,Moderate,"6. Body Balance Meditation by John-Roger In this meditation, John-Roger guides you to release any tensions, pains, or stuck energy from the day through an exercise in progressive relaxation. Once your body is relaxed, you’ll imagine yourself being transformed by a healing white light, which will help you drift off to sleep. Free download available from the Movement of Spiritual Inner Awareness online store. Go to bit.​ly/​bodyb​alanc​emed​itati​on and use promo code 4MS1A8."
Arianna Huffington,Moderate,"More money, Etcoff writes, is spent on beauty than on education or social services. FEARS"
Arianna Huffington,Moderate,"2004 Centers for Disease Control study found that one in ten women take antidepressants such as Prozac. The National Sleep Foundation (yes, there is one) found that 63 percent of women experience symptoms of insomnia several nights a week. And one health care company reported that in 2004, 58 percent more women than men took prescription drugs to sleep."
Arianna Huffington,Moderate,"The waking have one common world, but the sleeping turn aside each into a world of his own."
Arianna Huffington,Moderate,"As Marlo Thomas once said, A man has to be Joe McCarthy to be called ruthless. All a woman has to do is put you on hold."
Arianna Huffington,Moderate,Like dropping through a hole in everything that the world said was important….Like discovering that nothing else mattered and all I needed was now….Temporarily removed from the game….Like floating weightless on the Dead Sea and looking up at an empty sky.
Arianna Huffington,Moderate,"Those who do contemplative retreats in hermitages are far from doing nothing, since they are constantly engaged in training their minds, but there is no ‘noise,’ no ‘waste’ to eliminate, no stress to cure, no chaos to reorganize. This means that there is less to repair during sleep and the sleep quality of meditators is deeper."
Arianna Huffington,Moderate,"But, if we let it, technology can also add a lot of noise and distraction that get in the way of our most fundamental creative capabilities"
Arianna Huffington,Moderate,The growing number of students who have not only identified the problem of sleep deprivation but are actively taking part in its solution is a key driver of the sleep revolution. This
Arianna Huffington,Moderate,It’s also our collective delusion that overwork and burnout are the price we must pay in order to succeed.
Arianna Huffington,Moderate,"Methinks that the moment my legs begin to move, my thoughts begin to flow,"
Arianna Huffington,Moderate,And Cindi came up with a new trick to use if she was having trouble falling asleep: Counting backward from 300 by threes
Arianna Huffington,Moderate,"A study conducted at Harvard Medical School found that people who got more sleep than the bare minimum they needed increased the volume of gray matter in their brains, which is linked to improved psychological health."
Arianna Huffington,Moderate,"Robert F. Kennedy in 1968: Too much and too long, we seem to have surrendered personal excellence and community values in the mere accumulation of material things. Our gross national product … if we judge America by that … counts air pollution and cigarette advertising, and ambulances to clear our highways of carnage.… Yet the gross national product does not allow for the health of our children, the quality of their education, or the joy of their play. It does not include the beauty of our poetry or the strength of our marriages; the intelligence of our public debate or the integrity of our public officials. It measures neither our wit nor our courage; neither our wisdom nor our learning; neither our compassion nor our devotion to our country; it measures everything, in short, except that which makes life worthwhile."
Arianna Huffington,Moderate,"Wisdom The endless cycle of idea and action, Endless invention, endless experiment, Brings knowledge of motion, but not of stillness; Knowledge of speech, but not of silence; Knowledge of words, and ignorance of the Word.… Where is the Life we have lost in living? Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge? Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?"
Arianna Huffington,Moderate,"There is a purpose to our lives, even if it is sometimes hidden from us, and even if the biggest turning points and heartbreaks only make sense as we look back, rather than as we are experiencing them. So we might as well live life as if"
Arianna Huffington,Moderate,Montaigne: To practice death is to practice freedom.71 A man who has learned how to die has unlearned how to be a slave. Being a slave to our job and our status in the world makes it much harder to put our day behind us and surrender to sleep.
Arianna Huffington,Moderate,"because an infant is born with only 25 percent of its adult brain volume, its physiological systems are unable to function optimally without contact with the mother’s body, which continues to regulate the baby much like it did during gestation. McKenna"
Arianna Huffington,Moderate,"Darkness, within the intimate confines of a bed, leveled social distinctions despite differences in gender and status. Most individuals did not readily fall asleep but conversed freely. In the absence of light, bedmates coveted that hour when, frequently, formality and etiquette perished by the bedside. Further"
Arianna Huffington,Moderate,"According to Steven Pressfield, the author of Turning Pro, when we turn pro, things become much simpler. It changes what time we get up and it changes what time we go to bed, he writes. It changes what we do and what we don’t do. It changes the activities we engage in and with what attitude we engage in them. It changes what we read and what we eat. It changes the shape of our bodies. When we were amateurs, our life was about drama, about denial, and about distraction. Our days were simultaneously full to the bursting point and achingly, heartbreakingly empty."
Arianna Huffington,Moderate,"When we shrink our whole reality down to pending projects, when our life becomes our endless to-do list, it's difficult to put them aside each night and let ourselves fall asleep and connect with something deeper."
Arianna Huffington,Moderate,"British historian Tony Judt died of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, or Lou Gehrig’s disease, in 2010. In an extraordinary interview with Terry Gross on NPR’s Fresh Air, Judt explained that with a severe condition like ALS, in which you’re surrounded by equipment and health professionals, the danger isn’t that you’ll lash out and be mean. But, rather, it’s that you’ll disconnect from those you love. It’s that they lose a sense of your presence, he says, that you stop being omnipresent in their lives. And so, he said, his responsibility to his family and friends was not to be unfailingly positive and Pollyanna, which wouldn’t be honest. It’s to be as present in their lives now as I can be so that in years to come they don’t feel either guilty or bad at my having been left out of their lives, that they feel still a very strong … memory of a complete family rather than a broken one. Asked"
Arianna Huffington,Moderate,"We simply need to claim it back and share it. We are too quick to censor or judge our natural creative impulses as not being good enough. But we need to give ourselves permission to follow what makes us feel most alive. And when we are most alive we are most compassionate and vice versa. If you love to sing, sing"
Arianna Huffington,Moderate,A eulogy is often the first formal marking down of what our lives were about
Arianna Huffington,Moderate,"In the new definition of success, building and looking after our financial capital is not enough. We need to do everything we can to protect and nurture our human capital."
Arianna Huffington,Moderate,"Intuition, not intellect, is the open sesame of yourself."
Arianna Huffington,Moderate,"It's nice to be nice, but it can be extremely draining and self-destructive when it mutes our voice, holds us back, and undermines our authenticity."
Arianna Huffington,Moderate,"WE HAVE, if we’re lucky, about thirty thousand days to play the game of life. How we play it will be determined by what we value. Or, as David Foster Wallace put it, Everybody worships. The only choice we get is what to worship. And the compelling reason for maybe choosing some sort of god or spiritualtype thing to worship"
Arianna Huffington,Moderate,human beings cannot distinguish between real dangers and imagined ones.
Arianna Huffington,Moderate,"predictable time off (PTO), in which you take a planned night off"
Arianna Huffington,Moderate,"is a way of being that gives you the resources to deal with the ups and downs of life,"
Arianna Huffington,Moderate,A friend of mine has a ritual: He writes a poem every day with his morning coffee.
Arianna Huffington,Moderate,"To live the lives we truly want and deserve, and not just the lives we settle for, we need a Third Metric, a third measure of success that goes beyond the two metrics of money and power, and consists of four pillars: well-being, wisdom, wonder, and giving. These four pillars make up the four sections of this book."
Arianna Huffington,Moderate,"And when we’re living a life of perpetual time famine, we rob ourselves of our ability to experience another key element of the Third Metric: wonder, our sense of delight in the mysteries of the universe, as well as the everyday occurrences and small miracles that fill our lives."
Arianna Huffington,Moderate,the ideas and emotions people carry with them through life often determine the quality of their death.
Arianna Huffington,Moderate,expressing gratitude for even the smallest kindnesses shown to me;
Arianna Huffington,Moderate,the purpose of death is the release of love.
Arianna Huffington,Moderate,"Two thousand children under the age of five die every day from diseases that could have been prevented with clean water and proper sanitation,"
Arianna Huffington,Moderate,peeping Toms at the keyhole of eternity
Arianna Huffington,Moderate,Essayist and philosopher Alain de Botton describes art as an apothecary for the soul.
Arianna Huffington,Moderate,"No matter where you go, there you are."
Arianna Huffington,Moderate,"live fuller, more complete lives, aligned with what matters: A life that isn’t defined by our salaries and résumés."
Arianna Huffington,Moderate,To truly redefine success we need to redefine our relationship with death.
Arianna Huffington,Moderate,we can only achieve true wisdom when our soul is liberated from our bodies by death.
Arianna Huffington,Moderate,"Sherry Turkle, MIT professor and author of Alone Together, has written about the cost of constantly documenting"
Arianna Huffington,Moderate,"Mona Simpson, rose to honor him at his memorial service, that’s not what she focused on. Yes, she talked about his work and his work ethic. But mostly she raised these as manifestations of his passions. Steve worked at what he loved, she said. What really moved him was love. Love was his supreme virtue, she said, his god of gods. When [his son] Reed was born, he began gushing and"
Arianna Huffington,Moderate,"Those who have matured spiritually, now put service to others at the center of their quest and of their lives."
Arianna Huffington,Moderate,Moving ourselves to the background and others to the foreground is evidence that the (spiritual) search is achieving its purpose.
Arianna Huffington,Moderate,"One company that did wake up to the importance of employee health was Safeway. The supermarket chain’s former CEO Steve Burd recounts that in 2005 Safeway’s health care bill hit $1 billion and was going up by $100 million a year. What we discovered was that 70 percent of health care costs are driven by people’s behaviors, he says. Now as a business guy, I thought if we could influence the behavior of our 200,000-person workforce, we could have a material effect on health care costs."
Arianna Huffington,Moderate,"It is the Fourth Instinct (the spirit - RJ) that urges us to exceed ourselves ... by awakening our intuitive selves, and striving to be all that we were intended to be. It takes us beyond self-centeredness and enables us to resist the combined forces of indifference and meaninglessness. It awakens us to a sense of responsibility for those most in need of our society as well as for that world that future generations will inherit."
Arianna Huffington,Moderate,"Everything is connected to everything else: every rock, every living form, is infused by the same force. To say this is to put the lie to a million false dualities, to all the forced seperations between spirit and mind, soul and body, God and man."
Arianna Huffington,Moderate,"To speak about this universal force that will lead us beyond on the last horizon of our known self toward a wiser, more loving, more luminous states of being, we do not need to invent a new language. But we do need to listen to the old, the ancient one, not with our jaded minds, but with our awakened souls."
Arianna Huffington,Moderate,Pessimism is a denial of the reality of God and the power man draws from being connected to it.
Arianna Huffington,Moderate,"Lasting social change unfolds from inside out: from the inner to the outer being, from inner to outer realities."
Arianna Huffington,Moderate,"It's a longing, an aching to complete ourselves, to unite with that which makes us whole. We are longing for God the way a soldier longs for his wife faraway. It a relentless homesickness that, however desperately we try, will accept no substitutes."
Arianna Huffington,Moderate,"Use it or lose it is a law of nature, but mercifully not a soul will be lost is a law of the spirit that supersedes it."
Arianna Huffington,Moderate,Worry is a form of atheism. And so is most fear.
Arianna Huffington,Moderate,Socrates defines his life’s mission as awakening the Athenians to the supreme importance of attending to their souls. His timeless plea that we connect to ourselves remains the only way for any of us to truly thrive.
Arianna Huffington,Moderate,"Socrates said, the unexamined life is not worth living."
Arianna Huffington,Moderate,The poet Mark Nepo defines sacrifice as giving up with reverence and compassion what no longer works in order to stay close to what is sacred. So recognizing when habits are no longer working for us and sacrificing them is a cornerstone of wisdom.
Arianna Huffington,Moderate,A New Blueprint: Time to Renovate the Architecture of Our Lives
Arianna Huffington,Moderate,"Then I asked him the question that would change my life. Mr. Trump, I said, one of the things people love about you is you speak your mind and you don’t use a politician’s filter. However, that is not without its downsides. In particular, when it comes to women. You’ve called women you don’t like ‘fat pigs,’ ‘dogs,’ ‘slobs,’ and ‘disgusting animals.’ Only Rosie O’Donnell, he quipped. The crowd chuckled at his Rosie O’Donnell comment. I passed no judgment on the audience, but I was not going to join them in laughing. For the record, I said, it was well beyond Rosie O’Donnell. Trump knew it too. I’m sure it was, he said. We had fact-checked every word of that question. Rosie had, no question, been vicious toward Trump too, and if it had only been her, I would not have asked that question. But what I’d seen in my research binder was that he’d made a habit of attacking women regularly with these sorts of terms"
Arianna Huffington,Moderate,"As Nicholas Kristof put it in The New York Times: Cues of a hostile or indifferent environment flood an infant, or even a fetus, with stress hormones like cortisol in ways that can disrupt the body’s metabolism or the architecture of the brain. The upshot is that children are sometimes permanently undermined. Even many years later, as adults, they are more likely to suffer heart disease, obesity, diabetes and other physical ailments. They are also more likely to struggle in school, have short tempers and tangle with the law."
Arianna Huffington,Moderate,"According to a study from the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research, sleep deprivation reduces our emotional intelligence, self-regard, assertiveness, sense of independence, empathy toward others, the quality of our interpersonal relationships, positive thinking, and impulse control. In fact, the only thing the study found that gets better with sleep deprivation is magical thinking and reliance on superstition. So if you’re interested in fortune-telling, go ahead and burn the midnight oil."
Arianna Huffington,Moderate,Eighty percent of those she examined were found to have periods of email apnea.
Arianna Huffington,Moderate,What study after study show is that meditation and mindfulness training profoundly affects every aspect of our lives
Arianna Huffington,Moderate,"That’s because women are paying an even higher price than men for their participation in a work culture fueled by stress, sleep deprivation, and burnout. That is one reason why so many talented women, with impressive degrees working in high-powered jobs, end up abandoning their careers when they can afford"
Arianna Huffington,Moderate,"In fact, we take much better care of our smartphones than ourselves."
Arianna Huffington,Moderate,"Those who can sit in a chair, undistracted for hours, mastering subjects and creating things will rule the world"
Arianna Huffington,Moderate,"Email is your servant. Corner-office people have secretaries to prevent them from being interrupted.… Email will do all this for you too. His advice: Turn off all notifications; you should control when you want information, not the reverse."
Arianna Huffington,Moderate,meditation a reboot for your brain and your soul.
Arianna Huffington,Moderate,Rob yourself of sleep and you’ll find you do not function at your personal best.
Arianna Huffington,Moderate,"Everything you do, you’ll do better with a good night’s sleep,"
Arianna Huffington,Moderate,"bring ourselves back to that place of stillness, imperturbability, and loving"
Arianna Huffington,Moderate,"You learn to speak by speaking, to study by studying, to run by running, to work by working; and just so you learn to love … by loving."
Arianna Huffington,Moderate,"Just as money can’t buy happiness, neither can it buy time affluence."
Arianna Huffington,Moderate,"According to a 2011 Gallup poll, the more money you have, the more likely you are to suffer from time famine."
Arianna Huffington,Moderate,those at the top of the income spectrum are among the most likely to be time-poor.
Arianna Huffington,Moderate,the word deadline has its American origin in Civil War prison camps;
Arianna Huffington,Moderate,"People look for retreats for themselves, in the country, by the coast, or in the hills … There is nowhere that a person can find a more peaceful and trouble-free retreat than in his own mind.… So constantly give yourself this retreat, and renew yourself."
Arianna Huffington,Moderate,"pictures of pictures, or of other"
Arianna Huffington,Moderate,"It’s time we recognize that, as the workplace is currently structured, a lot of women don’t want to get to the top and stay there because they don’t want to pay the price"
Arianna Huffington,Moderate,"beings. When we are all mind, things can get rigid. When"
Arianna Huffington,Moderate,There are no lobbyists for the American Dream.
Arianna Huffington,Moderate,"Robert F. Kennedy called on Americans to look at our economy in a radically different way. Our gross national product is now over $800 billion a year, he said, but that GNP"
Arianna Huffington,Moderate,"Throughout history, famous nappers have included Leonardo da Vinci, Thomas Edison, Eleanor Roosevelt, Winston Churchill, and John F. Kennedy."
Arianna Huffington,Moderate,"The Exxon Valdez wreck, the explosion of the Challenger space shuttle, and the nuclear accidents at Chernobyl and Three Mile Island all were at least partially caused by a lack of sleep.5"
Arianna Huffington,Moderate,"If I were called upon to state in a few words the essence of everything I was trying to say both as a novelist and as a preacher, it would be something like this: Listen to your life. See it for the fathomless mystery that it is. In the boredom and pain of it, no less than in the excitement and gladness: touch, taste, smell your way to the holy and hidden heart of it, because in the last analysis, all moments are key moments, and life itself is grace."
Arianna Huffington,Moderate,"The evidence is all around us. For instance, do you know what happens if you type the words why am I into Google? Before you can type the next word, Google’s autocomplete function"
Arianna Huffington,Moderate,How did it get so late so soon? he wrote. It’s night before it’s afternoon. December is here before it’s June. My goodness how the time has flewn. How did it get so late so soon?
Arianna Huffington,Moderate,we might as well live life as if -as the poet Rumi put it-everything is rigged in our favor
Arianna Huffington,Moderate,"As Sheryl Sandberg told me, I found that when I cut my office hours dramatically once I had kids, I was not just working less, but I was more productive. Having children forced me to treat every minute of my time as precious"
Arianna Huffington,Moderate,sleep is profoundly intertwined with virtually every aspect of brain health. Lack of sleep over time can lead to an irreversible loss of brain cells
Arianna Huffington,Moderate,"Studies show that U.S. employers spend 200 to 300 percent more on the indirect costs of health care, in the form of absenteeism, sick days, and lower productivity, than they do on actual health care payments."
Arianna Huffington,Moderate,"Perhaps smartphones at a party should be treated like coats, usually taken to a back room or otherwise stowed away until guests are ready to leave"
Arianna Huffington,Moderate,"Researchers from Harvard and the University of Virginia did an experiment in which they gave people a choice to be alone in a room, without anything"
Arianna Huffington,Moderate,"More and more people, of all ages and from all walks of life, are coming to realize that there’s more to life than climbing the ladder, that we are more than our résumés, and that we don’t have to buy into the collective delusion that burnout is the necessary price we must pay for success."
Arianna Huffington,Moderate,"Lydia Slaby's story is unique and very personal, but the life lessons she learned in the years after getting a cancer diagnosis at 33"
Arianna Huffington,Moderate,"Fearlessness is not the absence of fear. Rather, it's the mastery of fear"
Fareed Zakaria,Moderate,"We have not noticed how fast the rest has risen. Most of the industrialized world--and a good part of the nonindustrialized world as well--has better cell phone service than the United States. Broadband is faster and cheaper across the industrial world, from Canada to France to Japan, and the United States now stands sixteenth in the world in broadband penetration per capita. Americans are constantly told by their politicians that the only thing we have to learn from other countries' health care systems is to be thankful for ours. Most Americans ignore the fact that a third of the country's public schools are totally dysfunctional (because their children go to the other two-thirds). The American litigation system is now routinely referred to as a huge cost to doing business, but no one dares propose any reform of it. Our mortgage deduction for housing costs a staggering $80 billion a year, and we are told it is crucial to support home ownership, except that Margaret Thatcher eliminated it in Britain, and yet that country has the same rate of home ownership as the United States. We rarely look around and notice other options and alternatives, convinced that we're number one."
Fareed Zakaria,Moderate,"...foreign policy is a matter of costs and benefits, not theology."
Fareed Zakaria,Moderate,"The crucial challenge is to learn how to read critically, analyze data, and formulate ideas"
Fareed Zakaria,Moderate,"We are drowning in information, while starving for wisdom. The world henceforth will be run by synthesizers, people able to put together the right information at the right time, think critically about it, and make important choices wisely."
Fareed Zakaria,Moderate,"the central virtue of a liberal education is that it teaches you how to write, and writing makes you think. Whatever you do in life, the ability to write clearly, cleanly, and reasonably quickly will prove to be an invaluable skill."
Fareed Zakaria,Moderate,"Being forced to write clearly means, first, you have to think clearly."
Fareed Zakaria,Moderate,"It all looks American because America, the country that invented mass capitalism and consumerism, got there first. the impact of mass capitalism is now universal."
Fareed Zakaria,Moderate,"liberal education should give people the skills that will help them get ready for their sixth job, not their first job."
Fareed Zakaria,Moderate,"As John Adams famously wrote during the American Revolution, I must study politics and war, that our sons may have liberty to study mathematics and philosophy. Our sons ought to study mathematics and philosophy, geography, natural history and naval architecture, navigation, commerce and agriculture in order to give their children a right to study painting, poetry, music, architecture, statuary, tapestry and porcelain. So maybe today they’re writing apps rather than studying poetry, but that’s an adjustment for the age."
Fareed Zakaria,Moderate,"Suppose the elections are free and fair and those elected are racists, fascists, separatists, said the American diplomat Richard Holbrooke about Yugoslavia in 1990s. that is the dilemma"
Fareed Zakaria,Moderate,"If you listen to the political discourse in America today, you would think that all our problems have been caused by the Mexicans of the Chinese or the Muslims. The reality is that we have caused our own problems. Whatever has happened has been caused by isolating ourselves or blaming others."
Fareed Zakaria,Moderate,The twentieth century was marked by two broad trends: the regulation of capitalism and the deregulation of democracy. Both experiments overreached.
Fareed Zakaria,Moderate,"Edmund Burke once described society as a partnership between the dead, the living, and the yet unborn. It is difficult to see in the evolving system who will speak for the yet unborn, for the future."
Fareed Zakaria,Moderate,"...during the Asian financial crisis the United States and other Western countries demanded that the Asians take three steps--let bad banks fail, keep spending under control, and keep interest rates high. In it own crisis, the West did exactly the opposite on all three fronts."
Fareed Zakaria,Moderate,"Because of the times we live in, all of us, young and old, do not spend enough time and effort thinking about the meaning of life. We do not look inside ourselves enough to understand our strengths and weaknesses, and we do not look around enough - a the world, in history - to ask the deepest and broadest questions. The solution surely is that, even now, we could all use a little bit more of a liberal education."
Fareed Zakaria,Moderate,"In thirty years Iraq too has gone from being among the most modern and secular of Arab countries -with women working, artists thriving, journalists writing- into a squalid playpen for a megalomaniac."
Fareed Zakaria,Moderate,"Frederick Douglass saw the same connection. When his master heard that young Frederick was reading well, he was furious, saying, Learning will spoil the best nigger in the world. If he learns to read the Bible it will forever unfit him to be a slave. Douglass recalled that he instinctively assented to the proposition, and from that moment I understood the direct pathway from slavery to freedom."
Fareed Zakaria,Moderate,"California has often led the country, indeed the world, in the technology, consumption, trends, lifestyles, and of course, mass entertainment. It is where the car found its earliest and fullest expression, where suburbs blossomed, where going to gym replaced going to church, where forces that lead so many to assume that direct democracy is the wave of the future - declining political parties, telecommuting, new technology, the internet generation 0 are all most well developed in this vast land."
Fareed Zakaria,Moderate,What we need in politics today is not more democracy but less.
Fareed Zakaria,Moderate,"But now, we are becoming suspicious of the very things we have long celebrated - free markets, trade, immigration, and technological change. And all this is happening when the tide is going our way. Just as the world is opening up, America is closing down."
Fareed Zakaria,Moderate,British rule meant not democracy -colonialism is almost by definition underdemocratic - but limited constitutional liberalism and capitalism
Fareed Zakaria,Moderate,The Yale report explained that the essence of liberal education was not to teach that which is peculiar to any one of the professions; but to lay the foundation which is common to them all.
Fareed Zakaria,Moderate,"The solution is not that people need to major in marketing in college, but that their liberal education should be more structured and demanding. Majors should have some required sequence of basic courses, as in economics."
Fareed Zakaria,Moderate,"In the Middle East today there are too many people consumed by political dreams and too few interested in practical plans. That is why, to paraphrase Winston Churchill's line about the Balkans, the region produces more history than it consumes."
Fareed Zakaria,Moderate,"More intriguingly, in poll after poll, when Americans are asked what public institutions they most respect, three bodies are always at the top of their list: the Supreme Court, the armed forces, and the Federal Reserve System. All three have one thing in common: they are insulated from the public pressures and operate undemocratically. It would seem that Americans admire these institutions, preciselly because they lead rather than follow."
Fareed Zakaria,Moderate,"Good programming, like good books, asks a little more of the viewer. But no executive today will risk having the viewer bored for even a minute."
Fareed Zakaria,Moderate,"For Jefferson, there was one step crucial to creating a genuine natural aristocracy. The poor and rich had to have equal access to a good education. That's why, despite being soemthing of a liberatarian, he repeatedly proposed that the state pay for universal primary education as well as fund education at later stages. He was met with opposition from many quarters, mostly those wary of big government or highter taxes. Yet interestingly, one of this most ardent supporters was an old friend and political opponent, the conservative John Adams. The whole people must take upon themselves the education of the whole people, and must be willing to bear the expenses of it, Adams wrote. There should not be a district of one mile square, without a school in it, not founded by a charitable individual, but maintained at the public expense of the people."
Fareed Zakaria,Moderate,"Walter Lippmann was once asked his views on a particular topic, he is said to have replied, I don’t know what I think on that one. I haven’t written about it yet."
Fareed Zakaria,Moderate,The basic problem for American workers of all ages has been that their hours and productivity keep rising but their wages do not.
Fareed Zakaria,Moderate,... low interest rates and cheap credit also cause people to act foolishly or greedily ...
Fareed Zakaria,Moderate,"A nations path to greatness lies in its economic prowess and that militarism, empire, and aggression lead to a dead end."
Fareed Zakaria,Moderate,"What remains of the old Protestant fundamentalism is politics: abortion, gays, evolution. these issues are what binds congregations together. but even here things have changed as Americans have become more tolerant of many of these social taboos. Today many fundamentalist churches take nominally tough positions on, say, homosexuality but increasingly do little else for fear of offending the average believer, whom one schollar calls the unchurched Harry. All it really takes to be a fundamentalist these days is to watch the TV shows, go to the theme parks, buy Christian rock, and vote Republican. The Sociologist Mark Shilbey, calls it the Californication of conservative Protestantism."
Fareed Zakaria,Moderate,"The political history of the twentieth century is the story of greater and more direct political participation. And success kept expanding democracy's scope. Whatever the ailment, more democracy became the cure."
Fareed Zakaria,Moderate,"Andrew Moraviscik, one of the best American scholars of Europe, points out that once you exclude translators and clerical workers, the European Commission employs 2.500 officials, fewer than any moderately sized European city and less than 1 percent of the number employed by the French state alone. As for its undemocratic nature, any new law it wishes to pass needs more than 71 percent of the weighted national-government votes - a larger proportion than the required to amend the American Constitution."
Fareed Zakaria,Moderate,"In the world of journalism, the personal Web site (blog) was hailed as the killer of the traditional media. In fact it has become hailed as the killer of the traditional media. In fact it has become something quite different. Far from replacing newspapers and magazines, the best blogs-and the best are very clever- have become guides to them, pointing to unusual sources and commenting on familiar ones. They have become mediators for the informed public."
Fareed Zakaria,Moderate,"Legitimacy is the elixir of political power. The strongest is never strong enough to be the master, Jean-Jaques Rousseau observed, unless he translates strength into right and obedience into duty. Only democracy has that authority in the world today."
Fareed Zakaria,Moderate,"Eighty years ago, Woodrow Wilson took America into the twentieth century with a challenge to make the world safe for democracy. As we enter the twenty-first century, our task is to make democracy safe for the world."
Fareed Zakaria,Moderate,"Politically Incorrect was the name of the show Bill Maher hosted in the 1990s. It's also an apt description of the man himself. Now host of -- HBO's hit show Real Time, I find Maher to be one of the sharpest observers of American politics and life in general out there. It doesn't mean I always agree with him. I always find him funny, though."
Fareed Zakaria,Moderate,"The real challenges that the country faces come from the winners, not the losers, of the new world."
Fareed Zakaria,Moderate,"Democracy is also a single ideology, and, like all such templates, it has its limits. what works in a legislature might not work in a corporation"
Fareed Zakaria,Moderate,"In fact, some have said that the clash between Catholicism and Protestantism illustrates the old maxim that religious freedom is the product of two equally pernicious fanaticisms, each cancelling the other out"
Fareed Zakaria,Moderate,"France placed the state above society , democracy above constitutionalism, and equality above liberty. As a result, for much of the nineteenth century it was democratic, with broad suffrage and elections, but hardly liberal. it was certainly a less secure home for individual freedom than was England or America."
Fareed Zakaria,Moderate,"Russia's fundamental problem is not that it is a poor country struggling to modernize, but rather that it is a rich country struggling to modernize. Schoolchildren in the Soviet era were taught that they lived in the richest country in the world. In this case communist propaganda was true"
Fareed Zakaria,Moderate,"Religions are vague, of course. This means that they are easy to follow -you can interpret their prescriptions as you like. but it also means that it is easy to slip up -there is always some injunction you are violating. But Islam has no religious establishment - no popes, no bishops - that can declare by fiat which is the correct interpretation. As a result, the decision to oppose the state on the grounds that is insufficiently Islamic belongs to anyone who wishes to exercise it."
Fareed Zakaria,Moderate,"In an almost unthinkable reversal of a global pattern, almost every Arab country today is less free than it was forty years ago. There are few places in the world about which one can say that."
Fareed Zakaria,Moderate,"For years many in the oil-rich states argued that their enormous wealth would bring modernizations. They pointed to the impressive appetites of Saudis and Kuwaitis for things Western, from McDonald's hamburgers to Rolex watches to Cadillac limousines. but importing Western good is easy; importing the inner stuffing of modern society - a free market, political parties, accountability, the rule of law - is difficult and even dangerous for the ruling elites"
Fareed Zakaria,Moderate,The education system is an increasingly powerful mechanism for the intergenerational reproduction of privilege.
Fareed Zakaria,Moderate,"Civically engaged, business oriented, technology obsessed, and socially skilled, Franklin was our founding Yuppie, declares the New York Times columnist David Brooks. Franklin would have felt right at home in the information revolution, Walter Isaacson writes in his biography of the statesman. We can easily imagine having a beer with him after work, showing him how to use the latest digital device, sharing the business plan of a new venture, and discussing the most recent political scandals or policy ideas. The essence of Franklin's appeal is that he was brilliant but practical, interested in everything, but especially in how things work."
Fareed Zakaria,Moderate,"Glimpses of World History,"
Fareed Zakaria,Moderate,"the test scores used in admissions are a measure of what colleges take in, not what they produce. The fact that an Ivy League school has freshmen with high SAT scores tells us that it is a good magnet for talent but nothing else. What should matter is how students, including those with low SAT scores, improve over the course of their time in school."
Fareed Zakaria,Moderate,"FOR MOST OF human history, education was job training. Hunters, farmers, and warriors taught the young to hunt, farm, and fight. Children of the ruling class received instruction in the arts of war and governance, but this too was intended first and foremost as preparation for the roles they would assume later in society, not for any broader purpose. All that began to change twenty-five hundred years ago in ancient Greece."
Fareed Zakaria,Moderate,forces you to make choices and brings clarity and order to your ideas.
Fareed Zakaria,Moderate,"Mark Zuckerberg and Jeff Bezos are far more important symbols than any politician today, and they occupy the space that iconic political figures did in earlier eras."
Fareed Zakaria,Moderate,"crucial element of Greek education. In the city-state of Sparta, the most extreme example of this focus, young boys considered weak at birth were abandoned to die. The rest were sent to grueling boot camps, where they were toughened into Spartan soldiers from an early age. Around the fifth century BC, some Greek city-states, most notably Athens, began to experiment with a new form of government. Our constitution is called a democracy, the Athenian statesman Pericles noted in his funeral oration, because power is in the hands not of a minority but of the"
Fareed Zakaria,Moderate,"Chief Justice Warren Burger, a conservative appointed by Richard Nixon, described the new interpretation of the Second Amendment in an interview after his tenure as 'one of the greatest pieces of fraud-I repeat the word FRAUD-on the American public by special-interest groups that I have ever seen in my lifetime."
Fareed Zakaria,Moderate,liberty came to the West centuries before democracy. Liberty led to democracy and not the other way around.
Fareed Zakaria,Moderate,"In 1778, Jefferson presented to the Virginia legislature A Bill for the More General Diffusion of Knowledge, in which he argued that all forms of government could degenerate into tyranny. The best way of preventing this, he wrote, is to illuminate, as far as practicable, the minds of the people at large. The study of history could serve as an especially effective bulwark, allowing the people to learn how to defeat tyranny from past examples. Jefferson would return again and again to the importance of education in a democracy."
Fareed Zakaria,Moderate,"I should have paid greater attention to my mentor in graduate school, Samuel Huntington, who once explained that Americans never recognize that, in the developing world, the key is not the kind of government"
Fareed Zakaria,Moderate,"This isolation has left Americans quite unaware of the world beyond their borders. Americans speak few languages, know little about foreign cultures, and remain unconvinced that they need to rectify this. Americans rarely benchmark to global standards because they are sure that their way must be the best and most advanced. There is a growing gap between America's worldly business elite and cosmopolitan class, on the one hand and the majority of the American people on the other. Without real efforts to bridge it, this divide could destroy America's competitive edge and its political future."
Fareed Zakaria,Moderate,FAR CRY 4 FULL UNLOCKED TORRENT RELOADED CRACK FREE DOWNLOAD
Fareed Zakaria,Moderate,"As it enters the twenty-first century, the United States is not fundamentally a weak economy, or a decadent society. But it has developed a highly dysfunctional politics. An antiquated and overly rigid political system to begin with"
Fareed Zakaria,Moderate,"But looking under the covers of Indian democracy one sees a more complex and troubling reality. In recent decades, India has become something quite different from the picture in the hearts of its admirers. Not that it is less democratic: in important ways it has become more democratic. But it has become less tolerant, less secular, less law-abiding, less liberal. And these two trends"
Fareed Zakaria,Moderate,The most recent edition of the test
Fareed Zakaria,Moderate,Education Arne Duncan has estimated that Chinese students spend 25 to 30 percent longer a year in school than their American counterparts.
Fareed Zakaria,Moderate,The Romans saw loss of virtue all around them. The Victorians decried the decline in religiosity in the next generation.
Fareed Zakaria,Moderate,"in 2010, foreign students received more than 50 percent of all Ph.D.’s awarded in every subject in the United States. In the sciences, that figure is closer to 75 percent. Half of all Silicon Valley start-ups have one founder who is an immigrant or first-generation American. America’s potential new burst of productivity, its edge in nanotechnology, biotechnology, its ability to invent the future"
Chris Matthews,Moderate,"Historically, the coupling of president and Speaker has been a tricky one that encourages a choreography both quick-footed and wary"
Chris Matthews,Moderate,The author attributes part of the Carter-Reagan divide to their respective attitudes toward the city from which they governed. Carter was deeply suspicious of its coziness. Reagan intended to enjoy his temporary home even while delivering it from its reigning ideology.
Chris Matthews,Moderate,The author defines professionalism as exemplified by his subjects in their mutual unwillingness to take expected opposition personally. They would not allow grudges to get in the way of more important business.
Chris Matthews,Moderate,the Senate in 1958. He was the
Chris Matthews,Moderate,"Earlier that year, at the hundredth anniversary of his Harvard club, a member was talking about the spirit of Harvard College and saying how glad he was that the school had produced neither a Joseph McCarthy or an Alger Hiss. On hearing that coupling, Kennedy jumped from his chair. How dare you compare the name of a great American patriot with that of a traitor! and left the room. As for his father, the very thought"
Chris Matthews,Moderate,"In one brain imaging study, psychology professor Matthew Lieberman of the University of California, Los Angeles, found that when people are shown photos of faces expressing strong emotion, the brain shows greater activity in the amygdala, the part that generates fear. But when they are asked to label the emotion, the activity moves to the areas that govern rational thinking. In other words, labeling an emotion"
Chris Matthews,Moderate,"But in 2009, even as the British track cycling team was preparing for the London Olympics, Brailsford embarked upon a new challenge. He created a road cycling team, Team Sky, while continuing to oversee the track team. On the day the new outfit was announced to the world, Brailsford also announced that they would win the Tour de France within five years. Most people laughed at this aspiration. One commentator said: Brailsford has set himself up for an almighty fall. But in 2012, two years ahead of schedule, Bradley Wiggins became the first-ever British rider to win the event. The following year, Team Sky triumphed again when Chris Froome, another Brit, won the general classification. It was widely acclaimed as one of the most extraordinary feats in British sporting history. How did it happen? How did Brailsford conquer not one cycling discipline, but two? These were the questions I asked him over dinner at the team’s small hotel after the tour of the facilities. His answer was clear: It is about marginal gains, he said. The approach comes from the idea that if you break down a big goal into small parts, and then improve on each of them, you will deliver a huge increase when you put them all together. It sounds simple, but as a philosophy, marginal gains has become one of the hottest concepts not just in sports, but beyond. It has formed the basis of business conferences, and seminars and has even been debated in the armed forces. Many British sports now employ a director of marginal gains."
David Rockefeller,Moderate,"We are grateful to the Washington Post, the New York Times, Time Magazine and other great publications whose directors have attended our meetings and respected their promises of discretion for almost 40 years......It would have been impossible for us to develop our plan for the world if we had been subjected to the lights of publicity during those years. But, the world is more sophisticated and prepared to march towards a world government. The supernational sovereignty of an intellectual elite and world bankers is surely preferable to the national autodetermination practiced in past centuries."
David Rockefeller,Moderate,"David Meerman Scott says, You are what you publish."
Peter Thiel,Moderate,"ZERO TO ONE EVERY MOMENT IN BUSINESS happens only once. The next Bill Gates will not build an operating system. The next Larry Page or Sergey Brin won’t make a search engine. And the next Mark Zuckerberg won’t create a social network. If you are copying these guys, you aren’t learning from them."
Peter Thiel,Moderate,"The best entrepreneurs know this: every great business is built around a secret that’s hidden from the outside. A great company is a conspiracy to change the world; when you share your secret, the recipient becomes a fellow conspirator."
Peter Thiel,Moderate,"Elite students climb confidently until they reach a level of competition sufficiently intense to beat their dreams out of them. Higher education is the place where people who had big plans in high school get stuck in fierce rivalries with equally smart peers over conventional careers like management consulting and investment banking. For the privilege of being turned into conformists, students (or their families) pay hundreds of thousands of dollars in skyrocketing tuition that continues to outpace inflation. Why are we doing this to ourselves?"
Peter Thiel,Moderate,The most valuable businesses of coming decades will be built by entrepreneurs who seek to empower people rather than try to make them obsolete.
Peter Thiel,Moderate,Madness is rare in individuals
Peter Thiel,Moderate,"Customers won’t care about any particular technology unless it solves a particular problem in a superior way. And if you can’t monopolize a unique solution for a small market, you’ll be stuck with vicious competition."
Peter Thiel,Moderate,All Rhodes Scholars had a great future in their past.
Peter Thiel,Moderate,"CREATIVE MONOPOLY means new products that benefit everybody and sustainable profits for the creator. Competition means no profits for anybody, no meaningful differentiation, and a struggle for survival."
Peter Thiel,Moderate,"When Yahoo! offered to buy Facebook for $1 billion in July 2006, I thought we should at least consider it. But Mark Zuckerberg walked into the board meeting and announced: Okay, guys, this is just a formality, it shouldn’t take more than 10 minutes. We’re obviously not going to sell here. Mark saw where he could take the company, and Yahoo! didn’t."
Peter Thiel,Moderate,"Even in engineering-driven Silicon Valley, the buzzwords of the moment call for building a lean startup that can adapt and evolve to an ever-changing environment. Would-be entrepreneurs are told that nothing can be known in advance: we’re supposed to listen to what customers say they want, make nothing more than a minimum viable product, and iterate our way to success. But leanness is a methodology, not a goal. Making small changes to things that already exist might lead you to a local maximum, but it won’t help you find the global maximum. You could build the best version of an app that lets people order toilet paper from their iPhone. But iteration without a bold plan won’t take you from 0 to 1. A company is the strangest place of all for an indefinite optimist: why should you expect your own business to succeed without a plan to make it happen? Darwinism may be a fine theory in other contexts, but in startups, intelligent design works best."
Peter Thiel,Moderate,"Indefinite attitudes to the future explain what’s most dysfunctional in our world today. Process trumps substance: when people lack concrete plans to carry out, they use formal rules to assemble a portfolio of various options. This describes Americans today. In middle school, we’re encouraged to start hoarding extracurricular activities. In high school, ambitious students compete even harder to appear omnicompetent. By the time a student gets to college, he’s spent a decade curating a bewilderingly diverse résumé to prepare for a completely unknowable future. Come what may, he’s ready"
Peter Thiel,Moderate,"That’s why hiring consultants doesn’t work. Part-time employees don’t work. Even working remotely should be avoided, because misalignment can creep in whenever colleagues aren’t together full-time, in the same place, every day. If you’re deciding whether to bring someone on board, the decision is binary. Ken Kesey was right: you’re either on the bus or off the bus."
Peter Thiel,Moderate,Entrepreneurship: you put one dumb foot in front of the other while the world throws bricks at your head.
Peter Thiel,Moderate,"The best projects are likely to be overlooked, not trumpeted by a crowd; the best problems to work on are often the ones nobody else even tries to solve."
Peter Thiel,Moderate,"A startup is the largest endeavor over which you can have definite mastery. You can have agency not just over your own life, but over a small and important part of the world. It begins by rejecting the unjust tyranny of Chance. You are not a lottery ticket."
Peter Thiel,Moderate,The most successful companies make the core progression
Peter Thiel,Moderate,"Watson, Deep Blue, and ever-better machine learning algorithms are cool. But the most valuable companies in the future won’t ask what problems can be solved with computers alone. Instead, they’ll ask: how can computers help humans solve hard problems?"
Peter Thiel,Moderate,Recruiting should never be outsourced. Everyone at your company should be different in the same way.
Peter Thiel,Moderate,Vertical progress is harder to imagine because it requires doing something nobody else has ever done.
Peter Thiel,Moderate,Your company needs to sell more than its product. You must also sell your company to employees and investors.
Peter Thiel,Moderate,"MONOPOLY. Tesla started with a tiny submarket that it could dominate: the market for high-end electric sports cars. Since the first Roadster rolled off the production line in 2008, Tesla’s sold only about 3,000 of them, but at $109,000 apiece that’s not trivial. Starting small allowed Tesla to undertake the necessary R&D to build the slightly less expensive Model S, and now Tesla owns the luxury electric sedan market, too. They sold more than 20,000 sedans in 2013 and now Tesla is in prime position to expand to broader markets in the future."
Peter Thiel,Moderate,"As a founder, your first job is to get the first things right, because you cannot build a great company on a flawed foundation."
Peter Thiel,Moderate,"A board of three is ideal. Your board should never exceed five people, unless your company is publicly held. (Government regulations effectively mandate that public companies have larger boards"
Peter Thiel,Moderate,"When Baby Boomers grow up and write books to explain why one or another individual is successful, they point to the power of a particular individual’s context as determined by chance. But they miss the even bigger social context for their own preferred explanations: a whole generation learned from childhood to overrate the power of chance and underrate the importance of planning. Gladwell at first appears to be making a contrarian critique of the myth of the self-made businessman, but actually his own account encapsulates the conventional view of a generation."
Peter Thiel,Moderate,"A definite pessimist believes the future can be known, but since it will be bleak, he must prepare for it. Perhaps surprisingly, China is probably the most definitely pessimistic place in the world today. When Americans see the Chinese economy grow ferociously fast (10% per year since 2000), we imagine a confident country mastering its future. But that’s because Americans are still optimists, and we project our optimism onto China. From China’s viewpoint, economic growth cannot come fast enough. Every other country is afraid that China is going to take over the world; China is the only country afraid that it won’t. China can grow so fast only because its starting base is so low. The easiest way for China to grow is to relentlessly copy what has already worked in the West. And that’s exactly what it’s doing: executing definite plans by burning ever more coal to build ever more factories and skyscrapers. But with a huge population pushing resource prices higher, there’s no way Chinese living standards can ever actually catch up to those of the richest countries, and the Chinese know it. This is why the Chinese leadership is obsessed with the way in which things threaten to get worse. Every senior Chinese leader experienced famine as a child, so when the Politburo looks to the future, disaster is not an abstraction. The Chinese public, too, knows that winter is coming. Outsiders are fascinated by the great fortunes being made inside China, but they pay less attention to the wealthy Chinese trying hard to get their money out of the country. Poorer Chinese just save everything they can and hope it will be enough. Every class of people in China takes the future deadly seriously."
Peter Thiel,Moderate,". . . the bond bubble, the tech bubble, the stock bubble, the emerging markets bubble, the housing bubble. . . One by one they had all burst, and their bursting showed that they had been temporary solutions to long-term problems, maybe evasions of those problems, distractions. With so many bubbles-so many people chasing ephemera, all at the same time-it was clear that things were fundamentally not working."
Peter Thiel,Moderate,only by believing in and looking for secrets could you see beyond the convention to an opportunity hidden in plain sight.
Peter Thiel,Moderate,"An extreme representative of this view is Ted Kaczynski, infamously known as the Unabomber. Kaczynski was a child prodigy who enrolled at Harvard at 16. He went on to get a PhD in math and become a professor at UC Berkeley. But you’ve only ever heard of him because of the 17-year terror campaign he waged with pipe bombs against professors, technologists, and businesspeople. In late 1995, the authorities didn’t know who or where the Unabomber was. The biggest clue was a 35,000-word manifesto that Kaczynski had written and anonymously mailed to the press. The FBI asked some prominent newspapers to publish it, hoping for a break in the case. It worked: Kaczynski’s brother recognized his writing style and turned him in. You might expect that writing style to have shown obvious signs of insanity, but the manifesto is eerily cogent. Kaczynski claimed that in order to be happy, every individual needs to have goals whose attainment requires effort, and needs to succeed in attaining at least some of his goals. He divided human goals into three groups: 1. Goals that can be satisfied with minimal effort; 2. Goals that can be satisfied with serious effort; and 3. Goals that cannot be satisfied, no matter how much effort one makes. This is the classic trichotomy of the easy, the hard, and the impossible. Kaczynski argued that modern people are depressed because all the world’s hard problems have already been solved. What’s left to do is either easy or impossible, and pursuing those tasks is deeply unsatisfying. What you can do, even a child can do; what you can’t do, even Einstein couldn’t have done. So Kaczynski’s idea was to destroy existing institutions, get rid of all technology, and let people start over and work on hard problems anew. Kaczynski’s methods were crazy, but his loss of faith in the technological frontier is all around us. Consider the trivial but revealing hallmarks of urban hipsterdom: faux vintage photography, the handlebar mustache, and vinyl record players all hark back to an earlier time when people were still optimistic about the future. If everything worth doing has already been done, you may as well feign an allergy to achievement and become a barista."
Peter Thiel,Moderate,This would be depressing but for one crucial fact: humans are distinguished from other species by our ability to work miracles. We call these miracles technology.
Peter Thiel,Moderate,"The Field of Dreams conceit is especially popular in Silicon Valley, where engineers are biased toward building cool stuff rather than selling it. But customers will not come just because you build it. You have to make that happen, and it’s harder than it looks."
Peter Thiel,Moderate,"Sometimes you do have to fight. Where that’s true, you should fight and win. There is no middle ground: either don’t throw any punches, or strike hard and end it quickly."
Peter Thiel,Moderate,The single greatest danger for a founder is to become so certain of his own myth that he loses his mind. But an equally insidious danger for every business is to lose all sense of myth and mistake disenchantment for wisdom.
Peter Thiel,Moderate,"Jobs planned the iPod to be the first of a new generation of portable post-PC devices, but that secret was invisible to most people."
Peter Thiel,Moderate,"Every living thing is just a random iteration on some other organism, and the best iterations win."
Peter Thiel,Moderate,"There’s no reason why the future should happen only at Stanford, or in college, or in Silicon Valley."
Peter Thiel,Moderate,"Nutrition matters for everybody, but you can’t major in it at Harvard. Most top scientists go into other fields. Most of the big studies were done 30 or 40 years ago, and most are seriously flawed. The food pyramid that told us to eat low fat and enormous amounts of grains was probably more a product of lobbying by Big Food than real science; its chief impact has been to aggravate our obesity epidemic. There’s plenty more to learn: we know more about the physics of faraway stars than we know about human nutrition. It won’t be easy, but it’s not obviously impossible: exactly the kind of field that could yield secrets."
Peter Thiel,Moderate,True heroes take their personal honor so seriously that they will fight for things that do not matter.
Peter Thiel,Moderate,"Paradoxically, then, network effects businesses must start with especially small markets. Facebook started with just Harvard students"
Peter Thiel,Moderate,"take unorthodox ideas seriously today, and the mainstream sees that as a sign of progress. We can be glad that there are fewer crazy cults now, yet that gain has come at great cost: we have given up our sense of wonder at secrets left to be discovered."
Peter Thiel,Moderate,"Nerds are used to transparency. They add value by becoming expert at a technical skill like computer programming. In engineering disciplines, a solution either works or it fails. You can evaluate someone else’s work with relative ease, as surface appearances don’t matter much. Sales is the opposite: an orchestrated campaign to change surface appearances without changing the underlying reality. This strikes engineers as trivial if not fundamentally dishonest. They know their own jobs are hard, so when they look at salespeople laughing on the phone with a customer or going to two-hour lunches, they suspect that no real work is being done. If anything, people overestimate the relative difficulty of science and engineering, because the challenges of those fields are obvious. What nerds miss is that it takes hard work to make sales look easy. SALES"
Peter Thiel,Moderate,"A definite view, by contrast, favors firm convictions. Instead of pursuing many-sided mediocrity and calling it well-roundedness, a definite person determines the one best thing to do and then does it. Instead of working tirelessly to make herself indistinguishable, she strives to be great at something substantive"
Peter Thiel,Moderate,A good startup should have the potential for great scale built into its first design.
Peter Thiel,Moderate,"The convergence of desire is even more obvious at the top: all oligarchs have the same taste in Cristal, from Petersburg to Pyongyang."
Peter Thiel,Moderate,"When we think about the future, we hope for a future of progress. That progress can take one of two forms. Horizontal or extensive progress means copying things that work"
Peter Thiel,Moderate,invest in a tech CEO that wears a suit
Peter Thiel,Moderate,Bob Dylan has said that he who is not busy being born is busy dying.
Peter Thiel,Moderate,Great companies have secrets: specific reasons for success that other people don’t see.
Peter Thiel,Moderate,Whoever is first to dominate the most important segment of a market with viral potential will be the last mover in the whole market.
Peter Thiel,Moderate,"We have to find our way back to a definite future,"
Peter Thiel,Moderate,"The other buzzword that epitomizes a bias toward substitution is big data. Today’s companies have an insatiable appetite for data, mistakenly believing that more data always creates more value. But big data is usually dumb data. Computers can find patterns that elude humans, but they don’t know how to compare patterns from different sources or how to interpret complex behaviors. Actionable insights can only come from a human analyst (or the kind of generalized artificial intelligence that exists only in science fiction)."
Peter Thiel,Moderate,but how to establish a process by which a sales team of modest size can move the product to a wide audience.
Peter Thiel,Moderate,we don’t live in a normal world; we live under a power law.
Peter Thiel,Moderate,"As we said, even the best venture investors have a portfolio, but investors who understand the power law make as few investments as possible."
Peter Thiel,Moderate,"if men were angels, no government would be necessary. But anarchic companies miss what James Madison saw: men aren’t angels."
Peter Thiel,Moderate,Competition can make people hallucinate opportunities where none exist.
Peter Thiel,Moderate,A start up messed up at the foundation cannot be fixed.
Peter Thiel,Moderate,Question for job applicants: What important truth do very few people agree with you on?
Peter Thiel,Moderate,"Every monopoly is unique, but they usually share some combination of the following characteristics: proprietary technology, network effects, economies of scale, and branding."
Peter Thiel,Moderate,"No one gets into Stanford by excelling at just one thing, unless that thing happens to involve throwing or catching a leather ball."
Peter Thiel,Moderate,"...a lone genius might create a classic work of art or literature, but he could never create an entire industry."
Peter Thiel,Moderate,So you might ask: are there any fields that matter but haven’t been standardized and institutionalized?
Peter Thiel,Moderate,"The actual truth is that there are many more secrets left to find, but they will yield only to relentless searchers."
Peter Thiel,Moderate,A product is viral if its core functionality encourages users to invite their friends to become users too.
Peter Thiel,Moderate,Indefinite fears about the far future shouldn’t stop us from making definite plans today.
Peter Thiel,Moderate,Everything important to us
Peter Thiel,Moderate,"Most cleantech companies crashed because they neglected one or more of the seven questions that every business must answer: 1. The Engineering Question Can you create breakthrough technology instead of incremental improvements? 2. The Timing Question Is now the right time to start your particular business? 3. The Monopoly Question Are you starting with a big share of a small market? 4. The People Question Do you have the right team? 5. The Distribution Question Do you have a way to not just create but deliver your product? 6. The Durability Question Will your market position be defensible 10 and 20 years into the future? 7. The Secret Question Have you identified a unique opportunity that others don’t see? We’ve discussed these elements before. Whatever your industry, any great business plan must address every one of them. If you don’t have good answers to these questions, you’ll run into lots of bad luck and your business will fail. If you nail all seven, you’ll master fortune and succeed. Even getting five or six correct might work."
Peter Thiel,Moderate,"Winning is better than losing, but everybody loses when the war isn’t one worth fighting."
Peter Thiel,Moderate,The best place to look for secrets is where no one else is looking.
Peter Thiel,Moderate,"Unless you have perfectly conventional beliefs, it’s rarely a good idea to tell everybody everything that you know. So who do you tell? Whoever you need to, and no more. In practice, there’s always a golden mean between telling nobody and telling everybody"
Peter Thiel,Moderate,"People are scared of secrets because they are scared of being wrong. By definition, a secret hasn’t been vetted by the mainstream. If your goal is to never make a mistake in your life, you shouldn’t look for secrets. The prospect of being lonely but right"
Peter Thiel,Moderate,"Elon describes his staff this way: If you’re at Tesla, you’re choosing to be at the equivalent of Special Forces. There’s the regular army, and that’s fine, but if you are working at Tesla, you’re choosing to step up your game."
Peter Thiel,Moderate,"But there is no reason why technology should be limited to computers. Properly understood, any new and better way of doing things is technology."
Peter Thiel,Moderate,"The airlines compete with each other, but Google stands alone. Economists use two simplified models to explain the difference: perfect competition and monopoly."
Peter Thiel,Moderate,"life is not a portfolio: not for a startup founder, and not for any individual. An entrepreneur cannot diversify herself: you cannot run dozens of companies at the same time and then hope that one of them works out well. Less obvious but just as important, an individual cannot diversify his own life by keeping dozens of equally possible careers in ready reserve."
Peter Thiel,Moderate,"For a company to be valuable it must grow and endure, but many entrepreneurs focus only on short-term growth. They have an excuse: growth is easy to measure, but durability isn’t. Those who succumb to measurement mania obsess about weekly active user statistics, monthly revenue targets, and quarterly earnings reports. However, you can hit those numbers and still overlook deeper, harder-to-measure problems that threaten the durability of your business."
Peter Thiel,Moderate,"College students can become extremely skilled at a few specialties, but many never learn what to do with those skills in the wider world."
Peter Thiel,Moderate,"Finance epitomizes indefinite thinking because it’s the only way to make money when you have no idea how to create wealth. If they don’t go to law school, bright college graduates head to Wall Street precisely because they have no real plan for their careers. And once they arrive at Goldman, they find that even inside finance, everything is indefinite. It’s still optimistic"
Peter Thiel,Moderate,Daimler uses Tesla’s battery packs; Mercedes-Benz uses a Tesla powertrain; Toyota uses a Tesla motor. General Motors has even created a task force to track Tesla’s next moves. But
Peter Thiel,Moderate,"If you have a 10-year plan of how to get [somewhere], you should ask: Why can’t you do this in 6 months?"
Peter Thiel,Moderate,"Of the six people who started PayPal, four had built bombs in high school."
Peter Thiel,Moderate,"In the short term I want to change the world, In the long term I want to live forever."
Peter Thiel,Moderate,Customers will not come just because you build it. You have to make that happen and it’s harder than it looks.
Peter Thiel,Moderate,The engineer’s grail is a product great enough that it sells itself. But anyone who would actually say this about a real product must be lying: either he’s delusional (lying to himself) or he’s selling something (and thereby contradicting himself).
Peter Thiel,Moderate,"You should focus relentlessly on something you’re good at doing, but before that you must think hard about whether it will be valuable in the future. For the startup world, this means you should not necessarily start your own company, even if you are extraordinarily talented. If anything, too many people are starting their own companies today. People who understand the power law will hesitate more than others when it comes to founding a new venture: they know how tremendously successful they could become by joining the very best company while it’s growing fast. The power law means that differences between companies will dwarf the differences in roles inside companies. You could have 100% of the equity if you fully fund your own venture, but if it fails you’ll have 100% of nothing. Owning just 0.01% of Google, by contrast, is incredibly valuable (more than $35 million as of this writing)."
Peter Thiel,Moderate,"Network effects can be powerful, but you’ll never reap them unless your product is valuable to its very first users when the network is necessarily small."
Peter Thiel,Moderate,"Zero to One is about how to build companies that create new things. It draws on everything I’ve learned directly as a co-founder of PayPal and Palantir and then an investor in hundreds of startups, including Facebook and SpaceX."
Peter Thiel,Moderate,Jobs’s return to Apple 12 years later shows how the most important task in business
Peter Thiel,Moderate,"No company has a culture, every company is a culture"
Peter Thiel,Moderate,Today our challenge is to both imagine and create the new technologies that can make the 21st century more peaceful and prosperous than the 20th.
Peter Thiel,Moderate,"You’ve probably heard about first mover advantage: if you’re the first entrant into a market, you can capture significant market share while competitors scramble to get started. But moving first is a tactic, not a goal. What really matters is generating cash flows in the future, so being the first mover doesn’t do you any good if someone else comes along and unseats you. It’s much better to be the last mover"
Peter Thiel,Moderate,"Indeed, the single most powerful pattern I have noticed is that successful people find value in unexpected places, and they do this by thinking about business from first principles instead of formulas."
Peter Thiel,Moderate,"War metaphors invade our everyday business language: we use headhunters to build up a sales force that will enable us to take a captive market and make a killing. But really it’s competition, not business, that is like war: allegedly necessary, supposedly valiant, but ultimately destructive."
Peter Thiel,Moderate,U.S. companies are letting cash pile up on their balance sheets without investing in new projects because they don’t have any concrete plans for the future.
Peter Thiel,Moderate,No sector will ever be so important that merely participating in it will be enough to build a great company.
Peter Thiel,Moderate,"It’s a cliché that tech workers don’t care about what they wear, but if you look closely at those T-shirts, you’ll see the logos of the wearers’ companies"
Peter Thiel,Moderate,"since he started Apple in 1976, Jobs saw that you can change the world through careful planning, not by listening to focus group feedback"
Peter Thiel,Moderate,"So when thinking about what kind of company to build, there are two distinct questions to ask: What secrets is nature not telling you? What secrets are people not telling you?"
Peter Thiel,Moderate,"When assigning responsibilities to employees in a startup, you could start by treating it as a simple optimization problem to efficiently match talents with tasks. But even if you could somehow get this perfectly right, any given solution would quickly break down. Partly that’s because startups have to move fast, so individual roles can’t remain static for long. But it’s also because job assignments aren’t just about the relationships between workers and tasks; they’re also about relationships between employees. The best thing I did as a manager at PayPal was to make every person in the company responsible for doing just one thing. Every employee’s one thing was unique, and everyone knew I would evaluate him only on that one thing. I had started doing this just to simplify the task of managing people. But then I noticed a deeper result: defining roles reduced conflict. Most fights inside a company happen when colleagues compete for the same responsibilities. Startups face an especially high risk of this since job roles are fluid at the early stages. Eliminating competition makes it easier for everyone to build the kinds of long-term relationships that transcend mere professionalism. More than that, internal peace is what enables a startup to survive at all. When a startup fails, we often imagine it succumbing to predatory rivals in a competitive ecosystem. But every company is also its own ecosystem, and factional strife makes it vulnerable to outside threats. Internal conflict is like an autoimmune disease: the technical cause of death may be pneumonia, but the real cause remains hidden from plain view."
Peter Thiel,Moderate,"The two houses are alike, yet they hate each other. They grow even more similar as the feud escalates. Eventually, they lose sight of why they started fighting in the first place."
Peter Thiel,Moderate,"Every company starts in unique circumstances, and every company starts only once."
Peter Thiel,Moderate,No technology company can be built on branding alone.
Peter Thiel,Moderate,"a young Goldman Sachs banker named Joseph Park was sitting in his apartment, frustrated at the effort required to get access to entertainment. Why should he trek all the way to Blockbuster to rent a movie? He should just be able to open a website, pick out a movie, and have it delivered to his door. Despite raising around $250 million, Kozmo, the company Park founded, went bankrupt in 2001. His biggest mistake was making a brash promise for one-hour delivery of virtually anything, and investing in building national operations to support growth that never happened. One study of over three thousand startups indicates that roughly three out of every four fail because of premature scaling"
Peter Thiel,Moderate,"In the world of business, at least, Shakespeare proves the superior guide. Inside a firm, people become obsessed with their competitors for career advancement. Then the firms themselves become obsessed with their competitors in the marketplace. Amid all the human drama, people lose sight of what matters and focus on their rivals instead."
Peter Thiel,Moderate,"The hazards of imitative competition may partially explain why individuals with an Asperger’s-like social ineptitude seem to be at an advantage in Silicon Valley today. If you’re less sensitive to social cues, you’re less likely to do the same things as everyone else around you."
Peter Thiel,Moderate,It’s the logic of two campers and the bear
Peter Thiel,Moderate,You rush in to stamp out the sparks and end up fanning them into flames. This is the risk.
Peter Thiel,Moderate,"The essential first step is to think for yourself. Only by seeing our world anew, as fresh and strange as it was to the ancients who saw it first, can we both re-create it and preserve it for the future."
Peter Thiel,Moderate,"To anticipate likely sources of misalignment in any company, it’s useful to distinguish between three concepts: • Ownership: who legally owns a company’s equity? • Possession: who actually runs the company on a day-to-day basis? • Control: who formally governs the company’s affairs? A typical startup allocates ownership among founders, employees, and investors. The managers and employees who operate the company enjoy possession. And a board of directors, usually comprising founders and investors, exercises control."
Peter Thiel,Moderate,"In a single tweet, Yahoo! summarized Mayer’s plan as a chain reaction of people then products then traffic then revenue."
Peter Thiel,Moderate,"The only good answers are specific to your company, so you won’t find them in this book. But there are two general kinds of good answers: answers about your mission and answers about your team."
Peter Thiel,Moderate,Anybody who would be more powerfully swayed by free laundry pickup or pet day care would be a bad addition to your team.
Peter Thiel,Moderate,"But today it’s possible to wonder whether the genuine difficulty of biology has become an excuse for biotech startups’ indefinite approach to business in general. Most of the people involved expect some things to work eventually, but few want to commit to a specific company with the level of intensity necessary for success. It starts with the professors who often become part-time consultants instead of full-time employees"
Peter Thiel,Moderate,"not why it’s important in general, but why you’re doing something important that no one else is going to get done. That’s the only thing that can make its importance unique."
Peter Thiel,Moderate,"Just as war cost the Montagues and Capulets their children, it cost Microsoft and Google their dominance: Apple came along and overtook them all. In January 2013, Apple’s market capitalization was $500 billion, while Google and Microsoft combined were worth $467 billion. Just three years before, Microsoft and Google were each more valuable than Apple. War is costly business."
Peter Thiel,Moderate,"All Rhodes scholars had a great future, in their past."
Peter Thiel,Moderate,"Americans mythologize competition and credit it with saving us from socialist bread lines. Actually, capitalism and competition are opposites. Capitalism is premised on the accumulation of capital, but under perfect competition all profits get competed away. The lesson for entrepreneurs is clear: if you want to create and capture lasting value, don’t build an undifferentiated commodity business. LIES"
Peter Thiel,Moderate,you think your naan is superior because of your great-grandmother’s recipe
Peter Thiel,Moderate,"Startups should risk boldness, have a plan, avoid competitive markets, and focus as much on sales as product."
Peter Thiel,Moderate,"The best way to sell a product is to allow it to go viral, to allow its users to spread the word."
Peter Thiel,Moderate,"As globalization advances, people perceive the world as one homogeneous, highly competitive marketplace: the world is flat. Given that assumption, anyone who might have had the ambition to look for a secret will first ask himself: if it were possible to discover something new, wouldn’t someone from the faceless global talent pool of smarter and more creative people have found it already? This voice of doubt can dissuade people from even starting to look for secrets in a world that seems too big a place for any individual to contribute something unique."
Peter Thiel,Moderate,"From the start, I wanted PayPal to be tightly knit instead of transactional. I thought stronger relationships would make us not just happier and better at work but also more successful in our careers even beyond PayPal. So we set out to hire people who would actually enjoy working together. They had to be talented, but even more than that they had to be excited about working specifically with us. That was the start of the PayPal Mafia."
Peter Thiel,Moderate,"In order to be successful, a startup company needs a strong foundation, founders who are well-suited for each other, and employees who work well together."
Peter Thiel,Moderate,"WHENEVER I INTERVIEW someone for a job, I like to ask this question: What important truth do very few people agree with you on?"
Peter Thiel,Moderate,"Had I actually clerked on the Supreme Court, I probably would have spent my entire career taking depositions or drafting other people’s business deals instead of creating anything new."
Peter Thiel,Moderate,Statistics doesn’t work when the sample size is one.
Peter Thiel,Moderate,Think about how Google talks about its business. It certainly doesn’t claim to be a monopoly.
Peter Thiel,Moderate,"The rest of their generation was left behind, but the wealthy Boomers who shape public opinion today see little reason to question their naïve optimism."
Peter Thiel,Moderate,We are more fascinated today by statistical predictions of what the country will be thinking in a few weeks’ time than by visionary predictions of what the country will look like 10 or 20 years from now.
Peter Thiel,Moderate,"In this one particular at least, business is like chess. Grandmaster José Raúl Capablanca put it well: to succeed, you must study the endgame before everything else."
Peter Thiel,Moderate,That doesn’t mean the opposite ideas are automatically true: you can’t escape the madness of crowds by dogmatically rejecting them. Instead ask yourself: how much of what you know about business is shaped by mistaken reactions to past mistakes? The most contrarian thing of all is not to oppose the crowd but to think for yourself.
Peter Thiel,Moderate,"Actually, if American business is going to succeed, we are going to need hundreds, or even thousands, of miracles."
Peter Thiel,Moderate,"The paradox of teaching entrepreneurship is that such a formula necessarily cannot exist; because every innovation is new and unique, no authority can prescribe in concrete terms how to be innovative."
Peter Thiel,Moderate,"Computers already have enough power to outperform people in activities we used to think of as distinctively human. In 1997, IBM’s Deep Blue defeated world chess champion Garry Kasparov. Jeopardy!’s best-ever contestant, Ken Jennings, succumbed to IBM’s Watson in 2011. And Google’s self-driving cars are already on California roads today. Dale Earnhardt Jr. needn’t feel threatened by them, but the Guardian worries (on behalf of the millions of chauffeurs and cabbies in the world) that self-driving cars could drive the next wave of unemployment."
Peter Thiel,Moderate,Google is a small fish in a big pond. We could be swallowed whole at any time. We are not the monopoly that the government is looking for.
Peter Thiel,Moderate,Loiseau killed himself anyway in 2003 when a competing French dining guide downgraded his restaurant.) The competitive ecosystem pushes people toward ruthlessness or death.
Peter Thiel,Moderate,"If you focus on near-term growth above all else, you miss the most important question you should be asking: will this business still be around a decade from now? Numbers alone won’t tell you the answer; instead you must think critically about the qualitative characteristics of your business."
Peter Thiel,Moderate,"Technological advance seemed to accelerate automatically, so the Boomers grew up with great expectations but few specific plans for how to fulfill them."
Peter Thiel,Moderate,"This implies two very strange rules for VCs. First, only invest in companies that have the potential to return the value of the entire fund. This is a scary rule, because it eliminates the vast majority of possible investments. (Even quite successful companies usually succeed on a more humble scale.) This leads to rule number two: because rule number one is so restrictive, there can’t be any other rules."
Peter Thiel,Moderate,People who sell advertising are called account executives. People who sell customers work in business development. People who sell companies are investment bankers. And people who sell themselves are called politicians. There’s a reason for these redescriptions: none of us wants to be reminded when we’re being sold.
Peter Thiel,Moderate,"Our schools teach the opposite: institutionalized education traffics in a kind of homogenized, generic knowledge. Everybody who passes through the American school system learns not to think in power law terms. Every high school course period lasts 45 minutes whatever the subject. Every student proceeds at a similar pace. At college, model students obsessively hedge their futures by assembling a suite of exotic and minor skills. Every university believes in excellence, and hundred-page course catalogs arranged alphabetically according to arbitrary departments of knowledge seem designed to reassure you that it doesn’t matter what you do, as long as you do it well. That is completely false. It does matter what you do. You should focus relentlessly on something you’re good at doing, but before that you must think hard about whether it will be valuable in the future."
Peter Thiel,Moderate,"While a definitely optimistic future would need engineers to design underwater cities and settlements in space, an indefinitely optimistic future calls for more bankers and lawyers."
Peter Thiel,Moderate,"The entrepreneurs who stuck with Silicon Valley learned four big lessons from the dot-com crash that still guide business thinking today: 1. Make incremental advances Grand visions inflated the bubble, so they should not be indulged. Anyone who claims to be able to do something great is suspect, and anyone who wants to change the world should be more humble. Small, incremental steps are the only safe path forward. 2. Stay lean and flexible All companies must be lean, which is code for unplanned. You should not know what your business will do; planning is arrogant and inflexible. Instead you should try things out, iterate, and treat entrepreneurship as agnostic experimentation. 3. Improve on the competition Don’t try to create a new market prematurely. The only way to know you have a real business is to start with an already existing customer, so you should build your company by improving on recognizable products already offered by successful competitors. 4. Focus on product, not sales If your product requires advertising or salespeople to sell it, it’s not good enough: technology is primarily about product development, not distribution. Bubble-era advertising was obviously wasteful, so the only sustainable growth is viral growth. These lessons have become dogma in the startup world; those who would ignore them are presumed to invite the justified doom visited upon technology in the great crash of 2000. And yet the opposite principles are probably more correct: 1. It is better to risk boldness than triviality. 2. A bad plan is better than no plan. 3. Competitive markets destroy profits. 4. Sales matters just as much as product."
Peter Thiel,Moderate,"However, when you add competition to consume scarce resources, it’s hard to see how a global plateau could last indefinitely. Without new technology to relieve competitive pressures, stagnation is likely to erupt into conflict. In case of conflict on a global scale, stagnation collapses into extinction."
Peter Thiel,Moderate,"In 2001, my co-workers at PayPal and I would often get lunch on Castro Street in Mountain View. We had our pick of restaurants, starting with obvious categories like Indian, sushi, and burgers. There were more options once we settled on a type: North Indian or South Indian, cheaper or fancier, and so on. In contrast to the competitive local restaurant market, PayPal was at that time the only email-based payments company in the world. We employed fewer people than the restaurants on Castro Street did, but our business was much more valuable than all of those restaurants combined. Starting a new South Indian restaurant is a really hard way to make money. If you lose sight of competitive reality and focus on trivial differentiating factors"
Peter Thiel,Moderate,"Look around. If you don’t see any salespeople, you’re the salesperson."
Peter Thiel,Moderate,"It’s no surprise that these fields all attract disproportionate numbers of high-achieving Ivy League optionality chasers; what could be a more appropriate reward for two decades of résumé-building than a seemingly elite, process-oriented career that promises to keep options open?"
Peter Thiel,Moderate,competition is an ideology
Peter Thiel,Moderate,"a great business is defined by its ability to generate cash flows in the future. Investors expect Twitter will be able to capture monopoly profits over the next decade, while newspapers’ monopoly days are over."
Peter Thiel,Moderate,"(To properly value a business, you also have to discount those future cash flows to their present worth, since a given amount of money today is worth more than the same amount in the future.)"
Peter Thiel,Moderate,same problem as every Hollywood studio: how can you reliably produce a constant stream of popular entertainment for a fickle audience? (Nobody knows.)
Peter Thiel,Moderate,"Google’s search algorithms, for example, return results better than anyone else’s. Proprietary technologies for extremely short page load times and highly accurate query autocompletion add to the core search product’s robustness and defensibility. It"
Peter Thiel,Moderate,"unhappy Barnes & Noble filed a lawsuit three days before Amazon’s IPO, claiming that Amazon was unfairly calling itself a bookstore when really it was a book broker."
Peter Thiel,Moderate,"the Apple Stores’ sleek minimalist design and close control over the consumer experience, the omnipresent advertising campaigns, the price positioning as a maker of premium goods, and the lingering nimbus of Steve Jobs’s personal charisma all contribute to a perception that Apple offers products so good as to constitute a category of their own."
Peter Thiel,Moderate,"Apple has a complex suite of proprietary technologies, both in hardware (like superior touchscreen materials) and software (like touchscreen interfaces purpose-designed for specific materials)."
Peter Thiel,Moderate,"it enjoys strong network effects from its content ecosystem: thousands of developers write software for Apple devices because that’s where hundreds of millions of users are, and those users stay on the platform because it’s where the apps are."
Peter Thiel,Moderate,"Shawn Fanning and Sean Parker, Napster’s then-teenage founders, credibly threatened to disrupt the powerful music recording industry in 1999. The next year, they made the cover of Time magazine. A year and a half after that, they ended up in bankruptcy court."
Peter Thiel,Moderate,Definite planning even went beyond the surface of this planet: NASA’s Apollo Program began in 1961 and put 12 men on the moon before it finished in 1972.
Peter Thiel,Moderate,"In 1928, Scottish scientist Alexander Fleming found that a mysterious antibacterial fungus had grown on a petri dish he’d forgotten to cover in his laboratory: he discovered penicillin by accident. Scientists have sought to harness the power of chance ever since. Modern drug discovery aims to amplify Fleming’s serendipitous circumstances a millionfold: pharmaceutical companies search through combinations of molecular compounds at random, hoping to find a hit."
Peter Thiel,Moderate,"At the macro level, the single word for horizontal progress is globalization"
Peter Thiel,Moderate,"10,000 years of fitful advance from primitive agriculture to medieval windmills and 16th-century astrolabes, the modern world suddenly experienced relentless technological progress from the advent of the steam engine in the 1760s all the way up to about 1970."
Peter Thiel,Moderate,"Positively defined, a startup is the largest group of people you can convince of a plan to build a different future. A new company’s most important strength is new thinking: even more important than nimbleness, small size affords space to think."
Peter Thiel,Moderate,Companies are like countries in this way. Bad decisions made early on
Peter Thiel,Moderate,It’s true that every great entrepreneur is first and foremost a designer. Anyone
Peter Thiel,Moderate,A business with a good definite plan will always be underrated in a world where people see the future as random.
Peter Thiel,Moderate,"what valuable company is nobody building? Every correct answer is necessarily a secret: something important and unknown, something hard to do but doable. If there are many secrets left in the world, there are probably many world-changing companies yet to be started."
Peter Thiel,Moderate,"Entrepreneurs are always biased to understate the scale of competition, but that is the biggest mistake a startup can make. The fatal temptation is to describe your market extremely narrowly so that you dominate it by definition."
Peter Thiel,Moderate,Cleantech shows the result: hundreds of undifferentiated products all in the name of one overbroad goal.
Peter Thiel,Moderate,"A half-billion-dollar subsidy was unthinkable in the mid-2000s. It’s unthinkable today. There was only one moment where that was possible, and Tesla played it perfectly."
Peter Thiel,Moderate,"The internet had yet to take off, partly because its commercial use was restricted until late 1992 and partly due to the lack of user-friendly web browsers."
Peter Thiel,Moderate,"By spring of ’98, each company’s stock had more than quadrupled. Skeptics questioned earnings and revenue multiples higher than those for any non-internet company. It was easy to conclude that the market had gone crazy."
Peter Thiel,Moderate,"For PayPal to work, we needed to attract a critical mass of at least a million users. Advertising was too ineffective to justify the cost. Prospective deals with big banks kept falling through. So we decided to pay people to sign up. We gave new customers $10 for joining, and we gave them $10 more every time they referred a friend. This got us hundreds of thousands of new customers and an exponential growth rate."
Peter Thiel,Moderate,The era of cornucopian hope was relabeled as an era of crazed greed and declared to be definitely over.
Peter Thiel,Moderate,"Globalization replaced technology as the hope for the future. Since the ’90s migration from bricks to clicks didn’t work as hoped, investors went back to bricks (housing) and BRICs (globalization). The result was another bubble, this time in real estate."
Peter Thiel,Moderate,"If that doesn’t seem dominant enough, consider the fact that the word google is now an official entry in the Oxford English Dictionary"
Peter Thiel,Moderate,"The 1990s have a good image. We tend to remember them as a prosperous, optimistic decade that happened to end with the internet boom and bust. But many of those years were not as cheerful as our nostalgia holds. We’ve long since forgotten the global context for the 18 months of dot-com mania at decade’s end."
Peter Thiel,Moderate,"Twitter already has more than 250 million users today. It doesn’t need to add too many customized features in order to acquire more, and there’s no inherent reason why it should ever stop growing."
Peter Thiel,Moderate,"In business, money is either an important thing or it is everything. Monopolists can afford to think about things other than making money; non-monopolists can’t. In perfect competition, a business is so focused on today’s margins that it can’t possibly plan for a long-term future. Only one thing can allow a business to transcend the daily brute struggle for survival: monopoly profits."
Peter Thiel,Moderate,"In the real world outside economic theory, every business is successful exactly to the extent that it does something others cannot. Monopoly is therefore not a pathology or an exception. Monopoly is the condition of every successful business. Tolstoy opens Anna Karenina by observing: All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way. Business is the opposite. All happy companies are different: each one earns a monopoly by solving a unique problem. All failed companies are the same: they failed to escape competition."
Peter Thiel,Moderate,"The division of the world into the so-called developed and developing nations implies that the developed world has already achieved the achievable, and that poorer nations just need to catch up.But I don’t think that’s true."
Peter Thiel,Moderate,"New technology has never been an automatic feature of history. Our ancestors lived in static, zero-sum societies where success meant seizing things from others."
Peter Thiel,Moderate,"Every startup is small at the start. Every monopoly dominates a large share of its market. Therefore, every startup should start with a very small market. Always err on the side of starting too small."
Peter Thiel,Moderate,"Time and decision-making themselves follow a power law, and some moments matter far more than others"
Peter Thiel,Moderate,"But in a power law world, you can’t afford not to think hard about where your actions will fall on the curve."
Peter Thiel,Moderate,Is a lukewarm attitude to one’s work a sign of mental health? Is a merely professional attitude the only sane approach?
Peter Thiel,Moderate,You should never assume that people will admire your company without a public relations strategy
Peter Thiel,Moderate,The famous and infamous have always served as vessels for public sentiment: they’re praised amid prosperity and blamed for misfortune.
Peter Thiel,Moderate,"Before execution, scapegoats were often worshipped like deities."
Peter Thiel,Moderate,"If we define the future as a time that looks different from the present, then most people aren’t expecting any future at all."
Peter Thiel,Moderate,China is the paradigmatic example of globalization;
Peter Thiel,Moderate,"The indefiniteness of finance can be bizarre. Think about what happens when successful entrepreneurs sell their company. What do they do with the money? In a financialized world, it unfolds like this: • The founders don’t know what to do with it, so they give it to a large bank. • The bankers don’t know what to do with it, so they diversify by spreading it across a portfolio of institutional investors. • Institutional investors don’t know what to do with their managed capital, so they diversify by amassing a portfolio of stocks. • Companies try to increase their share price by generating free cash flows. If they do, they issue dividends or buy back shares and the cycle repeats. At no point does anyone in the chain know what to do with money in the real economy. But in an indefinite world, people actually prefer unlimited optionality; money is more valuable than anything you could possibly do with it. Only in a definite future is money a means to an end, not the end itself."
Peter Thiel,Moderate,"Indefinite Pessimism Every culture has a myth of decline from some golden age, and almost all peoples throughout history have been pessimists. Even today pessimism still dominates huge parts of the world. An indefinite pessimist looks out onto a bleak future, but he has no idea what to do about it. This describes Europe since the early 1970s, when the continent succumbed to undirected bureaucratic drift. Today the whole Eurozone is in slow-motion crisis, and nobody is in charge. The European Central Bank doesn’t stand for anything but improvisation: the U.S. Treasury prints In God We Trust on the dollar; the ECB might as well print Kick the Can Down the Road on the euro. Europeans just react to events as they happen and hope things don’t get worse. The indefinite pessimist can’t know whether the inevitable decline will be fast or slow, catastrophic or gradual. All he can do is wait for it to happen, so he might as well eat, drink, and be merry in the meantime: hence Europe’s famous vacation mania."
Peter Thiel,Moderate,"You can expect the future to take a definite form or you can treat it as hazily uncertain. If you treat the future as something definite, it makes sense to understand it in advance and to work to shape it. But if you expect an indefinite future ruled by randomness, you’ll give up on trying to master it."
Peter Thiel,Moderate,"Because globalization and technology are different modes of progress, it’s possible to have both, either, or neither at the same time. For example, 1815 to 1914 was a period of both rapid technological development and rapid globalization. Between the First World War and Kissinger’s trip to reopen relations with China in 1971, there was rapid technological development but not much globalization. Since 1971, we have seen rapid globalization along with limited technological development, mostly confined to IT.This age of globalization has made it easy to imagine that the decades ahead will bring more convergence and more sameness. But I don’t think that’s true. [...] Most people think the future of the world will be defined by globalization, but the truth is that technology matters more. Without technological change, if China doubles its energy production over the next two decades, it will also double its air pollution. If every one of India’s hundreds of millions of households were to live the way Americans already do"
Peter Thiel,Moderate,Long-term planning is often undervalued by our indefinite short-term world.
Peter Thiel,Moderate,The most valuable kind of company maintains an openness to invention that is most characteristic of beginnings.
Peter Thiel,Moderate,"In the most minimal sense, the future is simply the set of all moments yet to come."
Peter Thiel,Moderate,"When unsavvy observers see a nonprofit organization with dozens of people on its board, they think: Look how many great people are committed to this organization! It must be extremely well run. Actually, a huge board will exercise no effective oversight at all; it merely provides cover for whatever microdictator actually runs the organization."
Peter Thiel,Moderate,"In this sense, if nothing about our society changes for the next 100 years, then the future is over 100 years away."
Peter Thiel,Moderate,Disruptive companies often pick fights they can’t win. Think of Napster:
Peter Thiel,Moderate,"As you craft a plan to expand to adjacent markets, don’t disrupt: avoid competition as much as possible."
Peter Thiel,Moderate,"By indirect proof, the New Economy of the internet was the only way forward. MANIA: SEPTEMBER 1998–MARCH 2000 Dot-com mania was intense but short"
Peter Thiel,Moderate,"De-escalating the rivalry post-merger wasn’t easy, but as far as problems go, it was a good one to have."
Peter Thiel,Moderate,"less than 1% of new businesses started each year in the U.S. receive venture funding, and total VC investment accounts for less than 0.2% of GDP. But the results of those investments disproportionately propel the entire economy. Venture-backed companies create 11% of all private sector jobs. They generate annual revenues equivalent to an astounding 21% of GDP. Indeed, the dozen largest tech companies were all venture-backed. Together those 12 companies are worth more than $2 trillion, more than all other tech companies combined."
Peter Thiel,Moderate,cleantech was even more of a social phenomenon than an environmental imperative.
Peter Thiel,Moderate,the knowledge underlying civilization is so widespread today
Peter Thiel,Moderate,"Competition means no profit for everybody , no meaningful differentiation, and a struggle for survival so why do people believe that competition is healthy ? ....... ....The more we compete the less we gain ."
Peter Thiel,Moderate,"If you treat the future something definite, it makes to understand it in advance and to work to shape it ."
Peter Thiel,Moderate,Something needed to work
Peter Thiel,Moderate,"To build the next generation of companies, we must abandon the dogmas created after the crash."
Peter Thiel,Moderate,"Since consumer tech is a $964 billion market globally, Google owns less than 0.24% of it"
Peter Thiel,Moderate,Selling your company to the media is a necessary part of selling it to everyone else. Nerds who instinctively mistrust the media often make the mistake of trying to ignore it.
Peter Thiel,Moderate,"Unless they invest in the difficult task of creating new things, companies will fail in the future no matter how big their profits remain today."
Peter Thiel,Moderate,Employees should love their work. They should enjoy going to the office so much that formal business hours become obsolete and nobody watches the clock.
Peter Thiel,Moderate,that success results from a patchwork of lucky breaks and arbitrary advantages.
Peter Thiel,Moderate,Luke is a brilliant and eccentric thinker; his co-founder was an MBA type who didn’t want to miss out on the ’90s gold rush.
Peter Thiel,Moderate,"Our educational system both drives and reflects our obsession with competition. Grades themselves allow precise measurement of each student’s competitiveness; pupils with the highest marks receive status and credentials. We teach every young person the same subjects in mostly the same ways, irrespective of individual talents and preferences. Students who don’t learn best by sitting still at a desk are made to feel somehow inferior, while children who excel on conventional measures like tests and assignments end up defining their identities in terms of this weirdly contrived academic parallel reality."
Peter Thiel,Moderate,"Like acting, sales works best when hidden. This explains why almost everyone whose job involves distribution"
Peter Thiel,Moderate,"pessimism works because it’s self-fulfilling: if you’re a slacker with low expectations, they’ll probably be met."
Peter Thiel,Moderate,"There are several different frameworks one could use to get a handle on the indeterminate vs. determinate question. The math version is calculus vs. statistics. In a determinate world, calculus dominates. You can calculate specific things precisely and deterministically. When you send a rocket to the moon, you have to calculate precisely where it is at all times. It’s not like some iterative startup where you launch the rocket and figure things out step by step. Do you make it to the moon? To Jupiter? Do you just get lost in space? There were lots of companies in the ’90s that had launch parties but no landing parties. But the indeterminate future is somehow one in which probability and statistics are the dominant modality for making sense of the world. Bell curves and random walks define what the future is going to look like. The standard pedagogical argument is that high schools should get rid of calculus and replace it with statistics, which is really important and actually useful. There has been a powerful shift toward the idea that statistical ways of thinking are going to drive the future."
Peter Thiel,Moderate,"The government used to be able to coordinate complex solutions to problems like atomic weaponry and lunar exploration. But today, after 40 years of indefinite creep, the government mainly just provides insurance; our solutions to big problems are Medicare, Social Security, and a dizzying array of other transfer payment programs. It’s no surprise that entitlement spending has eclipsed discretionary spending every year since 1975. To increase discretionary spending we’d need definite plans to solve specific problems. But according to the indefinite logic of entitlement spending, we can make things better just by sending out more checks."
Peter Thiel,Moderate,"when I arrived at Stanford in 1985, economics, not computer science, was the most popular major. To most people on campus, the tech sector seemed idiosyncratic or even provincial."
Peter Thiel,Moderate,"Let’s test the Shakespearean model in the real world. Imagine a production called Gates and Schmidt, based on Romeo and Juliet. Montague is Microsoft. Capulet is Google. Two great families, run by alpha nerds, sure to clash on account of their sameness."
Peter Thiel,Moderate,"EVERYBODY SELLS Nerds might wish that distribution could be ignored and salesmen banished to another planet. All of us want to believe that we make up our own minds, that sales doesn’t work on us. But it’s not true. Everybody has a product to sell"
Peter Thiel,Moderate,STARTUP THINKING New technology tends to come from new ventures
Peter Thiel,Moderate,Creating value is not enough
Peter Thiel,Moderate,"people then products then traffic then revenue. The people are supposed to come for the coolness: Yahoo! demonstrated design awareness by overhauling its logo, it asserted youthful relevance by acquiring hot startups like Tumblr, and it has gained media attention for Mayer’s own star power. But the big question is what products Yahoo! will actually create."
Peter Thiel,Moderate,"Properly understood, technology is the one way for us to escape competition in a globalizing world. As computers become more and more powerful, they won’t be substitutes for humans: they’ll be complements."
Peter Thiel,Moderate,"The most obvious clue was sartorial: cleantech executives were running around wearing suits and ties. This was a huge red flag, because real technologists wear T-shirts and jeans. So we instituted a blanket rule: pass on any company whose founders dressed up for pitch meetings."
Peter Thiel,Moderate,"Our task today is to find singular ways to create the new things that will make the future not just different, but better"
Peter Thiel,Moderate,Doing something different is what’s truly good for society
Peter Thiel,Moderate,"The lesson for business is that we need founders. If anything, we should be more tolerant of founders who seem strange or extreme; we need unusual individuals to lead companies beyond mere incrementalism."
Peter Thiel,Moderate,rap star joins elite group of hackers to catch the shark that killed his friend.
Peter Thiel,Moderate,"What valuable company is nobody building? This question is harder than it looks, because your company could create a lot of value without becoming very valuable itself. Creating value isn't enough"
Peter Thiel,Moderate,THE MOST CONTENTIOUS question in business is whether success comes from luck or skill.
Peter Thiel,Moderate,"Today, we exaggerate the differences between left-liberal egalitarianism and libertarian individualism because almost everyone shares their common indefinite attitude. In philosophy, politics, and business, too, arguing over process has become a way to endlessly defer making concrete plans for a better future."
Peter Thiel,Moderate,"It’s better to think of distribution as something essential to the design of your product. If you’ve invented something new but you haven’t invented an effective way to sell it, you have a bad business"
Peter Thiel,Moderate,"Company culture doesn’t exist apart from the company itself: no company has a culture; every company is a culture. A startup is a team of people on a mission, and a good culture is just what that looks like on the inside."
Peter Thiel,Moderate,"Of course, it’s easier to copy a model than to make something new. Doing what we already know how to do takes the world from 1 to n, adding more of something familiar. But every time we create something new, we go from 0 to 1. The act of creation is singular, as is the moment of creation, and the result is something fresh and strange."
Peter Thiel,Moderate,"In a world of gigantic administrative bureaucracies both public and private, searching for a new path might seem like hoping for a miracle."
Peter Thiel,Moderate,But entrepreneurs should take cultures of extreme dedication seriously.
Peter Thiel,Moderate,Better to be called a cult
Peter Thiel,Moderate,"If you can identify a delusional popular belief, you can find what lies hidden behind it: the contrarian truth."
Peter Thiel,Moderate,The first step to thinking clearly is to question what we think we know about the past.
Peter Thiel,Moderate,indefinite optimism seems inherently unsustainable: how can the future get better if no one plans for it?
Peter Thiel,Moderate,Google makes so much money that it’s now worth three times more than every U.S. airline combined.
Peter Thiel,Moderate,An entrepreneur can’t benefit from macro-scale insight unless his own plans begin at the micro-scale.
Peter Thiel,Moderate,valuable business must start by finding a niche and dominating a small market.
Peter Thiel,Moderate,"Simply stated, the value of a business today is the sum of all the money it will make in the future. (To properly value a business,"
Peter Thiel,Moderate,"If you have invented sth new but you have not invented an effective way to sell it, you have a bad business - no matter how good the product"
Peter Thiel,Moderate,"Economists copied their mathematics from the work of 19th-century physicists: they see individuals and businesses as interchangeable atoms, not as unique creators. Their theories describe an equilibrium state of perfect competition because that’s what’s easy to model, not because it represents the best of business. But"
Peter Thiel,Moderate,"Hamlet: Exposing what is mortal and unsure To all that fortune, death, and danger dare, Even for an eggshell. Rightly to be great Is not to stir without great argument, But greatly to find quarrel in a straw When honor’s at the stake. For Hamlet, greatness means willingness to fight for reasons as thin as an eggshell: anyone would fight for things that matter; true heroes take their personal honor so seriously they will fight for things that don’t matter. This twisted logic is part of human nature, but it’s disastrous in business. If you can recognize competition as a destructive force instead of a sign of value, you’re already more sane than most."
Peter Thiel,Moderate,"On the inside, every individual should be sharply distinguished by her work."
Peter Thiel,Moderate,disruption has recently transmogrified into a self-congratulatory buzzword for anything posing as trendy and new. This
Peter Thiel,Moderate,"The Road goes ever on and on Down from the door where it began. Life is a long journey; the road marked out by the steps of previous travelers has no end in sight. But later on in the tale, another verse appears: Still round the corner there may wait A new road or a secret gate, And though we pass them by today, Tomorrow we may come this way And take the hidden paths that run Towards the Moon or to the Sun. The road doesn’t have to be infinite after all. Take the hidden paths."
Peter Thiel,Moderate,"Spreading old ways to create wealth around the world will result in devastation, not riches. In a world of scarce resources, globalization without new technology is unsustainable."
Peter Thiel,Moderate,"If you overachieve and end up learning something that’s not on the test, you won’t receive credit for it. But in exchange for doing exactly what’s asked of you (and for doing it just a bit better than your peers), you’ll get an A. This process extends all the way up through the tenure track, which is why academics usually chase large numbers of trivial publications instead of new frontiers."
Peter Thiel,Moderate,The polar opposite business cliché warns that the best product doesn’t always win.
Peter Thiel,Moderate,"Unless they invest in the difficult task of creating new things, American companies will fail in the future no matter how big their profits remain today."
Peter Thiel,Moderate,Rivalry causes us to overemphasize old opportunities and slavishly copy what has worked in the past.
Peter Thiel,Moderate,"The strange history of the Baby Boom produced a generation of indefinite optimists so used to effortless progress that they feel entitled to it. Whether you were born in 1945 or 1950 or 1955, things got better every year for the first 18 years of your life, and it had nothing to do with you."
Peter Thiel,Moderate,"Once you create and dominate a niche market, then you should gradually expand into related and slightly broader markets. Amazon shows how it can be done. Jeff Bezos’s founding vision was to dominate all of online retail, but he very deliberately started with books. There were millions of books to catalog, but they all had roughly the same shape, they were easy to ship, and some of the most rarely sold books"
Peter Thiel,Moderate,"A company has a monopoly on its own brand by definition, so creating a strong brand is a powerful way to claim a monopoly."
Peter Thiel,Moderate,Beginning with brand rather than substance is dangerous.
Peter Thiel,Moderate,"Therefore, every startup should start with a very small market. Always err on the side of starting too small. The reason is simple: it’s easier to dominate a small market than a large one. If you think your initial market might be too big, it almost certainly is."
Peter Thiel,Moderate,It was much easier to reach a few thousand people who really needed our product than to try to compete for the attention of millions of scattered individuals.
Peter Thiel,Moderate,"Whatever your views on thermodynamics, it’s a powerful metaphor: in business, equilibrium means stasis, and stasis means death."
Peter Thiel,Moderate,improvement is to invent something completely new.
Peter Thiel,Moderate,"Or you can radically improve an existing solution: once you’re 10x better, you escape competition."
Peter Thiel,Moderate,Amazon made its first 10x improvement in a particularly visible way: they offered at least 10 times as many books as any other bookstore.
Peter Thiel,Moderate,You can also make a 10x improvement through superior integrated design.
Peter Thiel,Moderate,This is why successful network businesses rarely get started by MBA types: the initial markets are so small that they often don’t even appear to be business opportunities at all.
Peter Thiel,Moderate,"You can achieve difficult things, but you can’t achieve the impossible."
Peter Thiel,Moderate,"Every entrepreneur should plan to be the last mover in her particular market. That starts with asking yourself: what will the world look like 10 and 20 years from now, and how will my business fit in?"
Peter Thiel,Moderate,Social entrepreneurs aim to combine the best of both worlds and do well by doing good. Usually they end up doing neither.
Peter Thiel,Moderate,The most fundamental reason that even businesspeople underestimate the importance of sales is the systematic effort to hide it at every level of every field in a world secretly driven by it.
Peter Thiel,Moderate,"Ever since Justin Timberlake portrayed him in The Social Network, Sean has been perceived as one of the coolest people in America. JT is still more famous, but when he visits Silicon Valley, people ask if he’s Sean Parker."
Peter Thiel,Moderate,In between personal sales (salespeople obviously required) and traditional advertising (no salespeople required) there is a dead zone. Suppose you create a software service that
Peter Thiel,Moderate,Today’s best practices lead to dead ends; the best paths are new and untried.
Peter Thiel,Moderate,"From the Renaissance and the Enlightenment to the mid-20th century, luck was something to be mastered, dominated, and controlled; everyone agreed that you should do what you could, not focus on what you couldn’t. Ralph Waldo Emerson captured this ethos when he wrote: Shallow men believe in luck, believe in circumstances.… Strong men believe in cause and effect."
Peter Thiel,Moderate,"The perfect target market for a startup is a small group of particular people concentrated together and served by few or no competitors. Any big market is a bad choice, and a big market already served by competing companies is even worse. This is why it’s always a red flag when entrepreneurs talk about getting 1% of a $100 billion market. In practice, a large market will either lack a good starting point or it will be open to competition, so it’s hard to ever reach that 1%. And even if you do succeed in gaining a small foothold, you’ll have to be satisfied with keeping the lights on: cutthroat competition means your profits will be zero."
Peter Thiel,Moderate,"But this spray and pray approach usually produces an entire portfolio of flops, with no hits at all. This is because venture returns don’t follow a normal distribution overall. Rather, they follow a power law: a small handful of companies radically outperform all others. If you focus on diversification instead of single-minded pursuit of the very few companies that can become overwhelmingly valuable, you’ll miss those rare companies in the first place."
Peter Thiel,Moderate,"We cannot take for granted that the future will be better, and that means we need to work to create it today."
Peter Thiel,Moderate,"If you think something hard is impossible, you’ll never even start trying to achieve it. Belief in secrets is an effective truth."
Peter Thiel,Moderate,selling and delivering a product is at least as important as the product itself.
Peter Thiel,Moderate,You would be dressed in fine clothes and feast royally until your brief reign ended and they cut your heart out.
Peter Thiel,Moderate,General and undifferentiated pitches don’t say anything about why a recruit should join your company instead of many others.
Peter Thiel,Moderate,"You would notice that monopolists downplay their monopoly status to avoid scrutiny, while competitive firms strategically exaggerate their uniqueness. The differences between firms only seem small on the surface; in fact, they are enormous."
Peter Thiel,Moderate,Everybody should have known that the mania was unsustainable; the most successful companies seemed to embrace a sort of anti-business model where they lost money as they grew.
Peter Thiel,Moderate,"Monopolists, by contrast, disguise their monopoly by framing their market as the union of several large markets:"
Peter Thiel,Moderate,"having invested the principal of a lifetime’s brilliance, Einstein continues to earn interest on it from beyond the grave by receiving credit for things he never said."
Peter Thiel,Moderate,"Technology companies follow the opposite trajectory. They often lose money for the first few years: it takes time to build valuable things, and that means delayed revenue. Most of a tech company’s value will come at least 10 to 15 years in the future."
Peter Thiel,Moderate,This book is about the questions you must ask and answer to succeed in the business of doing new things: what follows is not a manual or a record of knowledge but an exercise in thinking. Because that is what a startup has to do: question received ideas and rethink business from scratch.
Peter Thiel,Moderate,"I wish I had asked myself when I was younger. My path was so tracked that in my 8th-grade yearbook, one of my friends predicted"
Peter Thiel,Moderate,"the future is simply the set of all moments yet to come. But what makes the future distinctive and important isn’t that it hasn’t happened yet, but rather that it will be a time when the world looks different from today."
Peter Thiel,Moderate,"Consider the monopoly secret again: competition and capitalism are opposites. If you didn’t already know it, you could discover it the natural, empirical way: do a quantitative study of corporate profits and you’ll see they’re eliminated by competition."
Peter Thiel,Moderate,The smartphones that distract us from our surroundings also distract us from the fact that our surroundings are strangely old:
Peter Thiel,Moderate,"Professors downplay the cutthroat culture of academia, but managers never tire of comparing business to war."
Peter Thiel,Moderate,Disruption also attracts attention: disruptors are people who look for trouble and find it.
Peter Thiel,Moderate,"To an indefinite optimist, the future will be better, but he doesn’t know how exactly, so he won’t make any specific plans."
Peter Thiel,Moderate,"in exchange for better insurance contracts, we seem to have given up the search for secrets about longevity."
Peter Thiel,Moderate,"you can change the world through careful planning, not by listening to focus group feedback or copying others’ successes."
Peter Thiel,Moderate,"Every individual is unavoidably an investor, too. When you choose a career, you act on your belief that the kind of work you do will be valuable decades from now."
Peter Thiel,Moderate,Recruiting is a core competency for any company. It should never be outsourced.
Peter Thiel,Moderate,A great technology company should have proprietary technology an order of magnitude better than its nearest substitute.
Peter Thiel,Moderate,"Under perfect competition, in the long run no company makes an economic profit."
Peter Thiel,Moderate,"For example, a world without secrets would enjoy a perfect understanding of justice. Every injustice necessarily involves a moral truth that very few people recognize early on: in a democratic society, a wrongful practice persists only when most people don’t perceive it to be unjust. At first, only a small minority of abolitionists knew that slavery was evil; that view has rightly become conventional, but it was still a secret in the early 19th century. To say that there are no secrets left today would mean that we live in a society with no hidden injustices."
Peter Thiel,Moderate,"Superior sales and distribution by itself can create a monopoly, even with no product differentiation."
Peter Thiel,Moderate,"For whoever has will be given more, and they will have an abundance. Whoever does not have, even what they have will be taken from them (Matthew 25:29)."
Peter Thiel,Moderate,"So why are economists obsessed with competition as an ideal state? It’s a relic of history.Economists copied their mathematics from the work of 19th-century physicists: they see individualsand businesses as interchangeable atoms, not as unique creators. Their theories describe anequilibrium state of perfect competition because that’s what’s easy to model, not because itrepresents the best of business. But it’s worth recalling that the long-run equilibrium predicted by19th-century physics was a state in which all energy is evenly distributed and everything comes torest"
Peter Thiel,Moderate,"No one can predict the future exactly, but we know two things: it’s going to be different, and it must be rooted in today’s world."
Peter Thiel,Moderate,"Now when I consider investing in a startup, I study the founding teams. Technical abilities and complementary skill sets matter, but how well the founders know each other and how well they work together matter just as much. Founders should share a prehistory before they start a company together"
Peter Thiel,Moderate,"cash-poor executive, by contrast, will focus on increasing the value of the company as a whole."
Peter Thiel,Moderate,high cash compensation teaches workers to claim value from the company as it already exists instead of investing their time to create new value in the future.
Peter Thiel,Moderate,the culture was strong enough to transcend the original company.
Peter Thiel,Moderate,Talented people don’t need to work for you; they have plenty of options. You should ask yourself a more pointed version of the question: Why would someone join your company as its 20th engineer when she could go work at Google for more money and more prestige?
Peter Thiel,Moderate,This is why so many small and medium-sized businesses don’t use tools that bigger firms take for granted. It’s not that small business proprietors are unusually backward or that good tools don’t exist: distribution is the hidden bottleneck.
Peter Thiel,Moderate,"The most obvious market segment in email-based payments was the millions of emigrants still using Western Union to wire money to their families back home. Our product made that effortless, but the transactions were too infrequent."
Peter Thiel,Moderate,"In 2008, Box had a good way for companies to store their data safely and accessibly in the cloud. But people didn’t know they needed such a thing"
Peter Thiel,Moderate,"As a general rule, everyone you involve with your company should be involved full-time. Sometimes you’ll have to break this rule; it usually makes sense to hire outside lawyers and accountants, for example. However, anyone who doesn’t own stock options or draw a regular salary from your company is fundamentally misaligned."
Peter Thiel,Moderate,"At the margin, they’ll be biased to claim value in the near term, not help you create more in the future. That’s why hiring consultants doesn’t work. Part-time employees don’t work. Even working remotely should be avoided,"
Peter Thiel,Moderate,"For people to be fully committed, they should be properly compensated. Whenever an entrepreneur asks me to invest in his company, I ask him how much he intends to pay himself. A company does better the less it pays the CEO"
Peter Thiel,Moderate,"Anyone who prefers owning a part of your company to being paid in cash reveals a preference for the long term and a commitment to increasing your company’s value in the future. Equity can’t create perfect incentives, but it’s the best way for a founder to keep everyone in the company broadly aligned."
Peter Thiel,Moderate,"However, for equity to create commitment rather than conflict, you must allocate it very carefully. Giving everyone equal shares is usually a mistake: every individual has different talents and responsibilities as well as different opportunity costs, so equal amounts will seem arbitrary and unfair from the start. On the other hand, granting different amounts up front is just as sure to seem unfair. Resentment at this stage can kill a company, but there’s no ownership formula to perfectly avoid it."
Peter Thiel,Moderate,"The lawyers I worked with ran a valuable business, and they were impressive individuals one by one. But the relationships between them were oddly thin. They spent all day together, but few of them seemed to have much to say to each other outside the office. Why work with a group of people who don’t even like each other? Many seem to think it’s a sacrifice necessary for making money. But taking a merely professional view of the workplace, in which free agents check in and out on a transactional basis, is worse than cold: it’s not even rational. Since time is your most valuable asset, it’s odd to spend it working with people who don’t envision any long-term future together. If you can’t count durable relationships among the fruits of your time at work, you haven’t invested your time well"
Peter Thiel,Moderate,"Here are some bad answers: Your stock options will be worth more here than elsewhere. You’ll get to work with the smartest people in the world. You can help solve the world’s most challenging problems. What’s wrong with valuable stock, smart people, or pressing problems? Nothing"
Peter Thiel,Moderate,"promise what no others can: the opportunity to do irreplaceable work on a unique problem alongside great people. You probably can’t be the Google of 2014 in terms of compensation or perks, but you can be like the Google of 1999 if you already have good answers about your mission and team."
Peter Thiel,Moderate,What makes a startup employee instantly distinguishable to outsiders is the branded T-shirt or hoodie that makes him look the same as his co-workers. The startup uniform encapsulates a simple but essential principle: everyone at your company should be different in the same way
Peter Thiel,Moderate,confidence in our own independence of mind. But advertising doesn’t exist to make you buy a product right away; it exists to embed subtle impressions that will drive sales later. Anyone who can’t acknowledge its likely effect on himself is doubly deceived.
Peter Thiel,Moderate,"All salesmen are actors: their priority is persuasion, not sincerity. That’s why the word salesman can be a slur and the used car dealer is our archetype of shadiness. But we only react negatively to awkward, obvious salesmen"
Peter Thiel,Moderate,"Most businesses get zero distribution channels to work: poor sales rather than bad product is the most common cause of failure. If you can get just one distribution channel to work, you have a great business. If you try for several but don’t nail one, you’re finished."
Peter Thiel,Moderate,"The stark differences between man and machine mean that gains from working with computers are much higher than gains from trade with other people. We don’t trade with computers any more than we trade with livestock or lamps. And that’s the point: computers are tools, not rivals."
Peter Thiel,Moderate,Creative monopolists give customers more choices by adding entirely new categories of abundance to the world. Creative monopolies aren’t just good for the rest of society; they’re powerful engines for making it better.
Peter Thiel,Moderate,"In the 1950s, people welcomed big plans and asked whether they would work. Today a grand plan coming from a schoolteacher would be dismissed as crankery, and a long-range vision coming from anyone more powerful would be derided as hubris. You can still visit the Bay Model in that Sausalito warehouse, but today it’s just a tourist attraction: big plans for the future have become archaic curiosities."
Peter Thiel,Moderate,progress without planning is what we call evolution.
Peter Thiel,Moderate,"small groups of people bound together by a sense of mission have changed the world for the better. The easiest explanation for this is negative: it’s hard to develop new things in big organizations, and it’s even harder to do it by yourself. Bureaucratic hierarchies move slowly, and entrenched interests shy away from risk. In the most dysfunctional organizations, signaling that work is being done becomes a better strategy for career advancement than actually doing work (if this describes your company, you should quit now)."
Peter Thiel,Moderate,"Advertising can work for startups, too, but only when your customer acquisition costs and customer lifetime value make every other distribution channel uneconomical."
Peter Thiel,Moderate,"The company states plainly on its website that TV is a great big megaphone, and when you can only afford to spend dozens of dollars acquiring a new customer, you need the biggest megaphone you can find."
Peter Thiel,Moderate,"The best sales is hidden. There’s nothing wrong with a CEO who can sell, but if he actually looks like a salesman, he’s probably bad at sales and worse at tech."
Peter Thiel,Moderate,"If there are many secrets left in the world, there are probably many world-changing companies yet to be started. This"
Peter Thiel,Moderate,"One 40-something grad student that I knew was running six different companies in 1999. (Usually, it’s considered weird to be a 40-year-old graduate student. Usually, it’s considered insane to start a half-dozen companies at once. But in the late ’90s, people could believe that was a winning combination.)"
Peter Thiel,Moderate,reducing human capabilities into specialized tasks that computers can be trained to conquer one by one.
Peter Thiel,Moderate,"As a good rule of thumb, proprietary technology must be at least 10 times better than its closest substitute in some important dimension to lead to a real monopolistic advantage. Anything less than an order of magnitude better will probably be perceived as a marginal improvement and will be hard to sell, especially in an already crowded market."
Peter Thiel,Moderate,"if your company can be summed up by its opposition to already existing firms, it can’t be completely new and it’s probably not going to become a monopoly."
Peter Thiel,Moderate,"Facebook, the best investment in our 2005 fund, returned more than all the others combined. Palantir, the second-best investment, is set to return more than the sum of every other investment aside from Facebook. This highly uneven pattern is not unusual: we see it in all our other funds as well. The biggest secret in venture capital is that the best investment in a successful fund equals or outperforms the entire rest of the fund combined."
Peter Thiel,Moderate,"When an imminent catastrophe requires the evacuation of humanity’s original home, the population escapes on three giant ships. The thinkers, leaders, and achievers take the A Ship; the salespeople and consultants get the B Ship; and the workers and artisans take the C Ship. The B Ship leaves first, and all its passengers rejoice vainly. But the salespeople don’t realize they are caught in a ruse: the A Ship and C Ship people had always thought that the B Ship people were useless, so they conspired to get rid of them. And it was the B Ship that landed on Earth."
Peter Thiel,Moderate,"In Silicon Valley, nerds are skeptical of advertising, marketing, and sales because they seem superficial and irrational. But advertising matters because it works."
Peter Thiel,Moderate,every single company in a good venture portfolio must have the potential to succeed at vast scale.
Peter Thiel,Moderate,That seems impressive
Peter Thiel,Moderate,VCs usually spend even more time on the most problematic companies
Peter Thiel,Moderate,"the more people believe in efficiency, the bigger the bubbles get.)"
Peter Thiel,Moderate,but it was the evil nature of our enemy that was somehow super galvanizing.
Peter Thiel,Moderate,"Mr. A had said the more they studied Gawker, the more they interacted with this organization, the harder it was to see any redeeming qualities: because of what Gawker’s writers would say, how its lawyers acted, and everyone’s inability to show even a slight understanding of what Terry Bollea was so upset about."
Peter Thiel,Moderate,"For all the claims that what Peter had done was personal and unethical and wrong, that he had made the world a worse place and horribly wronged a group of journalists, something surprising happened: Media actually did change. Because they knew they needed to"
Peter Thiel,Moderate,Peter and a team of conspirators and a judge and a jury in Florida had spoken. They said: We don’t want to live in a world where the media can publish someone having sex
Peter Thiel,Moderate,strategically humble.
Peter Thiel,Moderate,Today our society is permeated by the twin ideas that death is both inevitable and random.
Peter Thiel,Moderate,"Many of us at PayPal logged 100-hour workweeks. No doubt that was counterproductive,"
Peter Thiel,Moderate,"One of our engineers actually designed a bomb for this purpose; when he presented the schematic at a team meeting, calmer heads prevailed and the proposal was attributed to extreme sleep deprivation."
Peter Thiel,Moderate,"The line attributed to the management guru Peter Drucker is that culture eats strategy. It’s a truism that applies as much to conspiracies as it does to businesses. It doesn’t matter how great your plan is, it doesn’t matter who your people are, if what binds them all together is weak or toxic, so, too, will be the outcome"
Peter Thiel,Moderate,"There is a moment in The Great Gatsby when Jay Gatsby introduces Nick Carraway to Meyer Wolfsheim, mentioning offhandedly that he is the man who fixed the 1919 World Series. The idea staggers Gatsby’s idealistic young friend. Of course, Carraway knew the series had been thrown. But if I had thought of it at all, he says, I would have thought of it as a thing that merely happened, the end of some inevitable chain. It was unbelievable to him then, as it is to us now, that a single person could have been responsible for changing the outcome of an event watched by some fifty million people. In real life, the 1919 World Series was fixed not by Wolfsheim, but with great skill and audacity by Arnold Rothstein, a Jewish gangster. A young lieutenant colonel in the U.S. Army named Dwight Eisenhower eagerly followed the game as the scores came in via telegram, and like everyone else, never suspected a thing. He would remark years later that the revelation of the conspiracy that had thrown the series produced a profound change in his perspective about the world; it taught him never to trust in first appearances."
Peter Thiel,Moderate,"This is a book for a world that has come to think like Nick Carraway, riding in disbelief through life on the wake of conspiracies we won’t believe until we see, unable to comprehend why they happen and who makes them happen. This ignorance of how things really work is depressing to me. Because it opens us up to manipulation. It closes us off from opportunities to produce fruitful change and advance our own goals. It is time to grow up."
Peter Thiel,Moderate,His path was in some ways traditional
Peter Thiel,Moderate,"First, a slight of some kind, which grows into a larger dissatisfaction with the status quo. A sense that things should be different, and will be different, except for the worse, if something doesn’t change. But then comes a second step, a weighing of the stakes. What if I do something about this? What might happen? What might happen if I do nothing? Which is riskier: to act or to ignore? History is uncertain on this question, as were the people in Peter’s life, the ones trying to tell him that there wasn’t much that could be done. Peter would, at one point, pass me a copy of The Fifteen Decisive Battles of the World by Sir Edward Shepherd Creasy, the book he had read as he’d mulled his options over. The epigraph to the chapter on the Battle of Valmy quotes Shakespeare: A little fire is quickly trodden out, Which, being suffered, rivers cannot quench."
Jeffrey D. Sachs,Moderate,We need to defend the interests of those whom we've never met and never will.
Jeffrey D. Sachs,Moderate,"The vast differences in power contributed to faulty social theories of these differences that are still with us today. When a society is economically dominant, it is easy for its members to assume that such dominance reflects a deeper superiority--whether religious, racial, genetic, cultural, or institutional--rather than an accident of timing or geography."
Jeffrey D. Sachs,Moderate,"Similarly, though the United States is one of the world’s richest economies by per capita income, it ranks only around seventeenth in reported life satisfaction. It is superseded not only by the likely candidates of Finland, Norway, and Sweden, which all rank above the United States but also by less likely candidates such as Costa Rica and the Dominican Republic. Indeed, one might surmise that it is health and longevity rather than income that give the biggest boost to reported life satisfaction. Since good health and longevity can be achieved at per capita income levels well below those of the United States, so too can life satisfaction. One marketing expert put it this way, with only slight exaggeration: Basic Survival goods are cheap, whereas narcissistic self-stimulation and social-display products are expensive. Living doesn’t cost much, but showing off does."
Jeffrey D. Sachs,Moderate,The rich control our politics to a huge extend. In return they get tax cuts and deregulation. It's been and is an amazing ride for the rich.
Jeffrey D. Sachs,Moderate,"There is no economic imperative that will condemn us to deplete our vital resource base, but neither is there an invisible hand that will prevent us from doing so."
Jeffrey D. Sachs,Moderate,"The energy and daring is to resist the noes, until the final yes has been achieved."
Jeffrey D. Sachs,Moderate,world is not a zero-sum struggle in which one country's gain is another's loss.
Jeffrey D. Sachs,Moderate,The current situation reminds me too much of the fable of the farmer whose chickens are dying. The local priest gives one remedy af- ter another
Jeffrey D. Sachs,Moderate,We have entered a new era. Global society is interconnected as never before. [...] I suggest that we have arrived in the Age of Sustainable Development.
Jeffrey D. Sachs,Moderate,"The Millennials, as a result, are less likely to be divided or even torn asunder by the culture wars of the boomer generation. They will live naturally with diversity. They will accept a more activist government. They will be more attuned to environmental needs. All this points in the direction of the mindful economy, if the healing strengths of the Millennial generation’s tolerance and optimism are mobilized for collective political action. What,"
Jeffrey D. Sachs,Moderate,"The Great Rupture At the beginning of the twentieth century, globalization was viewed as so inevitable that some thought war itself was probably passé, and certainly so irrational that no right-thinking leader in Europe would ever take his country to war. In 1910, a leading British pundit, Norman Angell, wrote The Great Illusion, which rightly argued that national economies had become so interdependent, so much part of a global division of labor, that war among the economic leaders had become unimaginably destructive. War, Angell warned, would so undermine the network of international trade that no military venture by a European power against another could conceivably lead to economic benefits for the aggressor. He surmised that war itself would cease once the costs and benefits of war were more clearly understood. Angell tremendously underestimated the irrationalities and social processes that lead to devastating outcomes, even when they make no sense."
Jeffrey D. Sachs,Moderate,"The rich world dominates the training of Ph.D. economists, and the students of rich-world Ph.D. programs dominate the international institutions like the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank, which have the lead in advising poor countries on how to break out of poverty."
Jeffrey D. Sachs,Moderate,"Markets are reasonably efficient institutions for allocating society’s scarce economic resources and lead to high productivity and average living standards. Efficiency, however, does not guarantee fairness (or justice) in the allocation of incomes. Fairness requires the government to redistribute income among the citizenry, especially from the richest members of the society to the poorest and most vulnerable members. Markets systematically underprovide certain public goods, such as infrastructure, environmental regulation, education, and scientific research, whose adequate supply depends on the government. The market economy is prone to financial instability, which can be alleviated through active government policies, including financial regulation and well-directed monetary and fiscal policies. Samuelson"
Jeffrey D. Sachs,Moderate,"expecting to find good twenty-first-century economic answers in a constitution that dates back to 1789 is unrealistic. The Founding Fathers were clever, to be sure, but the cleverest thing they realized is that Thomas Jefferson’s famous aphorism that the earth belongs to the living means laws from a premodern age should not blindly bind us today."
Jeffrey D. Sachs,Moderate,"Sustainability, or fairness to the future, therefore involves the concept of stewardship, the idea that the living generation must be stewards of the earth’s resources for the generations that will come later. That’s a tough role to play. There is nothing natural or innate about it. We need to defend the interests of those whom we’ve never met and never will. Yet those are our descendants and our fellow humanity. Alas, it’s a role that we’ve mostly ignored till now, to the increasing peril of all who will follow. The"
Jeffrey D. Sachs,Moderate,"Libertarians aim to absolve the rich of any social responsibilities toward the rest of society. As a school of thought, libertarianism is based on three kinds of arguments. The first is a moral assertion: that every individual has the overriding right to liberty, that is, the right to be left alone, free from taxes, regulations, or other demands of the state. The second is political and pragmatic: that only free markets protect democracy from government despotism. The third is economic: that free markets alone are enough to ensure prosperity. Such"
Jeffrey D. Sachs,Moderate,"In many cases, help for the poor is not simply an income transfer used for short-run consumption but is a government benefit that enables poor households to raise their long-term productivity. Some of the key government programs for poor households include help for nutrition of mothers and young children; preschool; college tuition; and job training. Each of these is a government-supported investment in human capital and specifically a way for a poor household to raise its long-term productivity. Taxing the rich to help the poor can then mean cutting lavish consumption spending by the rich to support high-return human investments by the poor. The outcome is not only fairer but also more efficient. The"
Jeffrey D. Sachs,Moderate,"When libertarians deride the idea of social fairness as just one more nuisance, they unleash greed. The kind of unconstrained greed that is now loose in America is leading not to real liberty but to corporate criminality and deceit; not to democracy but to politics dominated by special interests; and not to prosperity but to income stagnation for much of the population and untold riches at the very top."
Jeffrey D. Sachs,Moderate,"We need to reconceive the idea of a good society in the early twenty-first century and to find a creative path toward it. Most important, we need to be ready to pay the price of civilization through multiple acts of good citizenship: bearing our fair share of taxes, educating ourselves deeply about society’s needs, acting as vigilant stewards for future generations, and remembering that compassion is the glue that holds society together."
Jeffrey D. Sachs,Moderate,Our greatest national illusion is that a healthy society can be organized around the single-minded pursuit of wealth.
Jeffrey D. Sachs,Moderate,"Here, then, are some things on which Americans broadly agree. They agree that there should be equality of opportunity for American citizens. They agree that individuals should make the maximum effort to help themselves. They agree that government should help those in real need, as long as they are also trying to help themselves. And they broadly agree that the rich should pay more in taxes. These core values can form the basis of a broad and effective consensus on the basic direction of economic policy. In"
Jeffrey D. Sachs,Moderate,"DISPARITIES AND HIGH COSTS FUEL THE HEALTH CARE CRISIS America’s health crisis is really three crises rolled into one. The first is public health: America’s average life expectancy is now several years below that of many other countries, and for some parts of the population, life expectancy is falling. The second is health inequality: The gaps in public health according to race and class are shockingly large. The third is health care cost: America’s health care is by far the costliest in the world. The Sustainable Development Goals put good health for all in a central place in sustainable development, notably in SDG 3. This goal calls for massive reductions of the burdens of both communicable and noncommunicable diseases. SDG 3 (Target 3.8) also emphasizes the need for universal and equitable access to quality health care, in order to achieve universal health coverage, including financial risk protection, access to quality essential health-care services and access to safe, effective, quality and affordable essential medicines and vaccines for all."
Jeffrey D. Sachs,Moderate,"measures like GDP per person give only a rough reflection of the overall level of wellbeing of an individual or a nation. But for sustainable development we are interested in raising human wellbeing, not just in raising income, still less in a mad race for more riches for people who are already rich. Therefore, it is important to ask how we can best measure wellbeing (or life satisfaction) beyond GDP per capita."
Jeffrey D. Sachs,Moderate,"They did not understand that by liberalizing imports, the government was also promoting exports."
Jeffrey D. Sachs,Moderate,sweatshops are the first rung on the ladder out of extreme poverty
Jeffrey D. Sachs,Moderate,Knowing that an economy is in decline is not enough. We must know why the economy is failing to achieve economic growth if we are to take steps to establish or reestablish it.
Jeffrey D. Sachs,Moderate,"reason why prosperity spread, and why it continues to spread, is the transmission of technologies and the ideas underlying them."
Jeffrey D. Sachs,Moderate,Markets cannot meet the needs of the very poor. The desperately poor are not consumers who will create an immediate profit.
Jeffrey D. Sachs,Moderate,"With higher saving and investment rates, both public and private, directed towards productive capital, the United States could overcome secular stagnation."
Jeffrey D. Sachs,Moderate,"Is there a way forward, when campaign financing and mega-lobbying have displaced the common good and have led Americans to despair about the functioning of the political system? Since incumbent politicians won’t vote for campaign reform on their own, are we doomed to a vicious circle of big money, big corruption, failing public services, and a collapse of democratic rule?"
Jeffrey D. Sachs,Moderate,"we may well look back at the 2016 election as the moment when the corruption and sheer incompetence of Washington became so large and transparent that an era of reform finally got underway. Even if Washington goes badly in the wrong direction in 2017 and beyond, the American people may begin to mobilize for true and deep political reforms."
Jeffrey D. Sachs,Moderate,The political beauty of our online age is that it’s now actually feasible
Jeffrey D. Sachs,Moderate,"This is an age of impunity, a time when the rich and powerful get away with their misdeeds, and are even lauded for them in some quarters."
Jeffrey D. Sachs,Moderate,"Come Senators, Congressmen, Please heed the call, Don’t stand in the doorways, Don’t block up the halls…For the times they are a changin’."
Jeffrey D. Sachs,Moderate,"The scale of U.S. military operations is remarkable. The U.S. Department of Defense has (as of a 2014 inventory) 4,855 military facilities, of which 4,154 are in the United States; 114 are in overseas U.S. territories; and 587 are in forty-two foreign countries and foreign territories in all regions of the world.2 Not counted in this list are the secret facilities of the U.S. intelligence agencies. The cost of running these military operations and the wars they support is extraordinary, around $900 billion per year, or 5 percent of U.S. national income, when one adds the budgets of the Pentagon, the intelligence agencies, homeland security, nuclear weapons programs in the Department of Energy, and veterans’ benefits. The $900 billion in annual spending is roughly one-quarter of all federal government outlays."
Jeffrey D. Sachs,Moderate,"Over the course of nearly a half-century, Cuba, Congo, Ghana, Indonesia, Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Iran, Namibia, Mozambique, Chile, Afghanistan, Lebanon, and even tiny Granada, among many others, were interpreted by U.S. strategists as battlegrounds with the Soviet empire."
Jeffrey D. Sachs,Moderate,"There is a major economic difference, however, between now and 1991, much less 1950. At the start of the Cold War in 1950, the United States produced around 27 percent of world output. As of 1991, when the Cheney-Wolfowitz dreams of U.S. dominance were taking shape, that figure was around 22 percent. By now, according to IMF estimates, the U.S. share is 16 percent, while China has surpassed the United States at 18 percent.6 By 2021, according to IMF projections, the United States will produce 15 percent of global output compared with China’s 20 percent."
Jeffrey D. Sachs,Moderate,"Here is my recommendation for President Trump and the new Congress. Turn immediately to our glorious national institutions, the National Academies of Science, Engineering, and Medicine, for a report to the nation on the key areas for science and technology investments in the coming generation. Ask them to recommend an organizational strategy for a science-based scaling up of national and global R&D efforts. Call on America’s research universities to add their own brainstorming to the work of the national academies. Later in 2017, the president and Congress should then meet in a joint session of Congress to set forth a new technology vision for the nation and an R&D strategy to achieve it."
Jeffrey D. Sachs,Moderate,I like to pay taxes. With them I buy civilization.5
Jeffrey D. Sachs,Moderate,"America cut back on welfare from the 1970s onward. Family income support fell from 0.4 percent of GDP in 1970 to under 0.2 percent in 2010.16 Welfare still looms large in the public’s imagination, but it plays little role in the budget and the deficit. It’s been a long time since America was generous to its poor families with children! The"
Jeffrey D. Sachs,Moderate,"The supposition that there is massive waste to be cut in the civilian budget is simply a myth. To recapitulate: ending all earmarks and foreign aid and achieving all of the specific cuts on civilian programs proposed by the deficit commission, even if such choices were meritorious, would amount to less than 1 percent of GDP. True"
Jeffrey D. Sachs,Moderate,"the United States will need substantially more revenues to close the budget deficit, especially recognizing the need to increase federal spending in certain critical areas. I"
Jeffrey D. Sachs,Moderate,"humans have a profound ability both to cooperate and nurture and to shun others and fight.8 In our advanced technological age, with the capacity of our weapons to end human life, our ability to master our baser emotions and channel them toward constructive and cooperative outcomes will provide the basis for our survival."
Jeffrey D. Sachs,Moderate,"We exist in a bizarre combination of Stone Age emotions, medieval beliefs, and god-like technology. That, in a nutshell, is how we have lurched into the early twenty-first century.9"
Jeffrey D. Sachs,Moderate,"is not peace, in the last analysis, basically a matter of human rights"
Jeffrey D. Sachs,Moderate,our common humanity made it possible to find common cause in the midst of competition and that peace depended on our own virtue and ethical behavior.
Jeffrey D. Sachs,Moderate,"The compromises made with the rich are consistently out of line with public opinion. The public desires to tax the rich more heavily, cut military spending, and develop renewable energy alternatives to oil. The outcome instead is tax cuts for the rich, unchecked military spending, and a continued stagnation in alternatives to oil, gas, and coal. Both"
Jeffrey D. Sachs,Moderate,"we need an honest approach to poverty, not one that blames the poor and leaves them to their fate. We know that the single most important key to ending the cycle of poverty is to enable today’s children growing up in poverty to reach their full human potential. That in turn requires that America as a society invest in the human capital"
Jeffrey D. Sachs,Moderate,"Whatever the cause, the United States is privately rich but socially poor. It caters to the pursuit of wealth but pays scant attention to those left behind. And though American culture emphasizes individualism and the pursuit of individual wealth perhaps more than any other society, that focus does not lead to greater happiness. Of"
Jeffrey D. Sachs,Moderate,"it is the provision of public services, notably the universal access to affordable day care, even more than income support to families, that is key to the elimination of poverty among families with children. Sweden’s public services, of uniformly high quality, ensure a decent start for all children. Sweden"
Jeffrey D. Sachs,Moderate,It is easy to lose sight of the ultimate purpose of economic policy: the life satisfaction of the population. That ultimate goal should be unassailable for a country founded precisely to defend the inalienable right to the pursuit of happiness.
Jeffrey D. Sachs,Moderate,"According to the latest wealth data of the Federal Reserve Board in the Flow of Funds, the total net worth of households is around $56.8 trillion.27 The wealth of the top 1 percent is therefore around $20.6 trillion. With roughly 113 million households, the average wealth of the richest 1 percent is roughly $18.2 million per household."
Jeffrey D. Sachs,Moderate,"The combination of higher income taxation and wealth taxation would thereby raise at least 2 percentage points of GDP from the very top earners. But even if they had to pay another 2 percent of GDP, there would certainly be no need to shed tears for the rich. Their net-of-tax income would remain around 10 percent of GDP, a share of national income two-thirds higher than the 6 percent of GDP in 1980. There"
Jeffrey D. Sachs,Moderate,"The United States is absolutely ripe for a rise in gasoline taxes. The nominal gasoline excise tax rate has been fixed at 18.4 cents per gallon since 1994.29 Inflation alone has reduced the real value of that tax per gallon by around 30 percent. As with other federal tax rates, the U.S. excise tax rate on gasoline is extremely low by international comparison. We might conservatively assume that by 2015 an extra 0.5 percent of GDP could be collected by some combination of a higher gasoline excise tax and modest carbon levies on other fossil fuels (such as on coal at the utilities). Other"
Jeffrey D. Sachs,Moderate,"The upshot is the following: Perhaps 4 percent of extra GDP could be collected as of 2015 mainly by taxing the rich (2 percent), tightening corporate taxation (1 percent), strengthening tax enforcement (0.5 to 1 percent), taxing financial transactions, and taxing carbon emissions (0.5 percent). Introducing a VAT would raise even more revenues and could be phased in over several years. The point is that there are lots of options, and most of them could be concentrated near the top of the income distribution, where they belong. How"
Jeffrey D. Sachs,Moderate,"My point here is to insist that the rich should pay their way, and that they can easily afford to do so. All of the angst of canceling vital government programs to close the deficit is a charade put on by the rich for the rich. With a fair tax structure and a just contribution of the rich to the rest of society, we can afford a truly civilized America. Let"
Jeffrey D. Sachs,Moderate,"We need the rich today to do their modest part to enable all of society to share in prosperity. By passing that hurdle, we would reduce the need for long-term transfers from rich to poor in the future. The"
Jeffrey D. Sachs,Moderate,"A new governing majority will depend on two breakthroughs. The first is that voters, not big money, once again determine election outcomes. We need to break out of the money-politics-media trap. The second is that government be able to translate increased revenues into effective public services and infrastructure. We need, in short, a return to civic virtue, in which Americans recommit to contributing to the common benefit and to cooperating for mutual gain."
Jeffrey D. Sachs,Moderate,"The problems facing America have become much more complex over time, and the political class lacks the capacity to deal with them. The problems are global, interconnected across many areas of politics and policy, and often highly technical. The climate change challenge, for example, involves agriculture (both as a source of greenhouse gas emissions and as a highly vulnerable sector), electricity generation and distribution, federal and private land use, transportation, urban design, nuclear power, disaster risk management, climate modeling, international financing, public health, and global negotiations. Could one imagine a problem less easily handled by a layman Congress operating on a two-year election cycle? The"
Jeffrey D. Sachs,Moderate,We need not presume to shape the distant future; we need only respect the prospects of those newly born today. End
Jeffrey D. Sachs,Moderate,"The most powerful tool for breaking extreme poverty is a holistic community-based development strategy that combines vocational training and job placement, early childhood development, educational upgrading, and local infrastructure. Each part of the antipoverty effort supports all of the others. This kind of ground-up development effort must in practice be led by the communities themselves but backed with financing from the federal and state governments. Options"
Jeffrey D. Sachs,Moderate,"The Tea Party is a concoction of the anger of middle-aged, middle-class white Americans who sense that their cohort is slipping from economic security and social dominance. They are furious, of course, and are easily manipulated by the status quo interests. That’s an old story. Time is against them. The"
Jeffrey D. Sachs,Moderate,"When the political and economic situation is as dangerous as it is today, cynicism and loss of time are far more dangerous than they look. History plays cruel tricks on the unserious. American political leaders have been in an unserious mood for years, unwilling to level with the American people. The"
Jeffrey D. Sachs,Moderate,"The end result of all this consumption is a society running furiously to stay in place. The overwork by each member of society puts a burden (a negative externality) on others, who must also run hard to keep up. Consumers also run because others are running, with everybody finding themselves in a race they’d rather do without. The"
Jeffrey D. Sachs,Moderate,"A considerable amount of American consumption spending is not for the enjoyment of consumption per se, but to show off wealth, status, or sexual allure. In the famous phrase of the economist and social critic Thorstein Veblen, this is conspicuous consumption, that is, consumption whose main purpose is to impress others rather than to be enjoyed by oneself.2"
Jeffrey D. Sachs,Moderate,The first cut at the problem
Jeffrey D. Sachs,Moderate,"The most important concept about our economic future is that it is our choice and in our hands, both individually and collectively as citizens."
John Rawls,Moderate,Many of our most serious conflicts are conflicts within ourselves. Those who suppose their judgements are always consistent are unreflective or dogmatic.
John Rawls,Moderate,"Justice is the first virtue of social institutions, as truth is of systems of thought. A theory however elegant and economical must be rejected or revised if it is untrue; likewise laws and institutions no matter how efficient and well-arranged must be reformed or abolished if they are unjust. Each person possesses an inviolability founded on justice that even the welfare of society as a whole cannot override. For this reason justice denies that the loss of freedom for some is made right by a greater good shared by others. It does not allow that the sacrifices imposed on a few are outweighed by the larger sum of advantages enjoyed by many. Therefore in a just society the liberties of equal citizenship are taken as settled; the rights secured by justice are not subject to political bargaining or to the calculus of social interests."
John Rawls,Moderate,The sense of justice is continuous with the love of mankind.
John Rawls,Moderate,Thus I assume that to each according to his threat advantage is not a conception of justice.
John Rawls,Moderate,It is of first importance that the military be subordinate to civilian government
John Rawls,Moderate,"Generally speaking, the errors in religion are dangerous; those in philosophy only ridiculous."
John Rawls,Moderate,"The perspective of eternity is not a perspective from a certain place beyond the world, nor the point of view of a transcendent being; rather it is a certain form of thought and feeling that rational persons can adopt within the world. And having done so, they can, whatever their generation, bring together into one scheme all individual perspectives and arrive together at regulative principles that can be affirmed by everyone as he lives by them, each from his own standpoint. Purity of heart, if one could attain it, would be to see clearly and to act with grace and self-command from this point of view."
John Rawls,Moderate,"We try to show that the well-ordered society of justice as fairness is indeed possible according to our nature and those requirements. This endeavor belongs to political philosophy as reconciliation; for seeing that the conditions of a social world at least allow for that possibility affects our view of the world itself and our attitude toward it. No longer need it seem hopelessly hostile, a world in which the will to dominate and oppressive cruelties, abetted by prejudice and folly, must inevitably prevail. None of these may ease our loss, situated as we may be in a corrupt society. But we may reflect that the world is not in itself inhospitable to political justice and its good. Our social world might have been different and there is hope for those at another time and place"
John Rawls,Moderate,We strive for the best we can attain within the scope the world allows.
John Rawls,Moderate,"As free persons, citizens recognize one another as having the moral power to have a conception of the good. This means that they do not view themselves as inevitably tied to the pursuit of the particular conception of the good and its final ends which they espouse at any given time. "
John Rawls,Moderate,"Historically one of the main defects of constitutional government has been the failure to insure the fair value of political liberty. The necessary corrective steps have not been taken, indeed, they never seem to have been seriously entertained. Disparities in the distribution of property and wealth that far exceed what is compatible with political equality have generally been tolerated by the legal system. Public resources have not been devoted to maintaining the institutions required for the fair value of political liberty. Essentially the fault lies in the fact that the democratic political process is at best regulated rivalry; it does not even in theory have the desirable properties that price theory ascribes to truly competitive markets. Moreover, the effects of injustices in the political system are much more grave and long lasting than market imperfections. Political power rapidly accumulates and becomes unequal; and making use of the coercive apparatus of the state and its law, those who gain the advantage can often assure themselves of a favored position. Thus inequities in the economic and social system may soon undermine whatever political equality might have existed under fortunate historical conditions. Universal suffrage is an insufficient counterpoise; for when parties and elections are financed not by public funds but by private contributions, the political forum is so constrained by the wishes of the dominant interests that the basic measures needed to establish just constitutional rule are seldom properly presented. These questions, however, belong to political sociology. 116 I mention them here as a way of emphasizing that our discussion is part of the theory of justice and must not be mistaken for a theory of the political system. We are in the way of describing an ideal arrangement, comparison with which defines a standard for judging actual institutions, and indicates what must be maintained to justify departures from it."
John Rawls,Moderate,"Hume's skepticism in morals does not arise from his being struck bythe diversity of the moral judgments of mankind. As I have indicated, he thinks that people more or less naturally agree in their moral judgments and count the same qualities of character as virtues and vices; it is rather the enthusiasms of religion and superstition that lead to differences, not to mention the corruptions of political power."
John Rawls,Moderate,The other limitation on our discussion is that for the most part I examine the principles of justice that would regulate a well-ordered society. Everyone is presumed to act justly and to do his part in upholding just institutions.
John Rawls,Moderate,There is no reason to suppose ahead of time that the principles satisfactory for the basic structure hold for all cases.
John Rawls,Moderate,"The significance of this special case is obvious and needs no explanation. It is natural to conjecture that once we have a sound theory for this case, the remaining problems of justice will prove more tractable in the light of it."
John Rawls,Moderate,"Normally leaving one's country is a grave step: it involves leaving the society and culture in which we have been raised,, the society and culture whose language we use in speech and thought to express and understand ourselves, our aims, goals and values; the society and culture, customs, and conventions we depend on to find our place in the social world. In large part, we affirm our society and culture, and have an intimate and inexpressible knowledge of it, even though much of it we may question, if not reject. The government’s authority cannot, then be freely accepted in the sense that the bonds of society and culture, of history and social place of origin, begin so early to shape our life and are normally so strong that the right of emigration does not suffice to make accepting its authority free, politically speaking, in the way that liberty of conscience suffices to make accepting ecclesiastical authority free."
John Rawls,Moderate,"Luther and Calvin were as dogmatic and intolerant as the Church had been. For those who had to decide whether to become Protestant or to remain Catholic, it was a terrible time. For once the original religion fragments, which religion then leads to salvation?"
John Rawls,Moderate,"A gloomy, harebrained enthusiast, after his death may have a place in the calendar; but will scarcely ever be admitted, when alive, into intimacy and society, except by those who are as delirious and dismal as himself (E:II:27o)."
John Rawls,Moderate,closed system
John Rawls,Moderate,The refusal to take part in all war under any conditions is an unworldly view bound to remain a sectarian doctrine. It no more challenges the state's authority than the celibacy of priests challenges the sanctity of marriage.
John Rawls,Moderate,"Perhaps the most obvious political inequality is the violation of the precept one person one vote. Yet until recent times most writers rejected equal universal suffrage. Indeed, persons were not regarded as the proper subjects of representation at all. Often it was interests that were to be represented, with Whig and Tory differing as to whether the interest of the rising middle class should be given a place alongside the landed and ecclesiastical interests. For others it is regions that are to be represented, or forms of culture, as when one speaks of the representation of the agricultural and urban elements of society. At the first sight, these kinds of representation appear unjust. How far they depart from the precept one person one vote is a measure of their abstract injustice, and indicates the strength of the countervailing reasons that must be forthcoming.119"
John Rawls,Moderate,"REMEMBER WATAHANTOWET? he asked me. I remember, I said. Then he smiled at the penguin who was trying to make him comfortable in her lap; her wimple was covered with his blood, and she had wrapped as much of her habit around him as she could manage"
John Rawls,Moderate,"So, to conclude, we say: the ancients asked about the most rational way to true happiness, or the highest good, and they inquired about how virtuous conduct and the virtues as aspects of character-the virtues of courage and temperance, wisdom and justice, which are themselves good--are related to that highest good, whether as means, or as constituents, or both. Whereas the moderns asked primarily, or at least in the first instance, about what they saw as authoritative prescriptions of right reason, and the rights, duties, and obligations to which these prescriptions of reason gave rise. Only afterward did their attention turn to the goods these prescriptions permitted us to pursue and to cherish."
John Rawls,Moderate,"It is true that in the classical world the irreligious and the atheist were feared and thought dangerous when their rejection of civic pieties was openly flaunted. This was because the Greeks thought such conduct showed that they were untrustworthy and not reliable civic friends on whom one could count. People who made fun of the gods invited rejection, but this was a matter not so much of their unbelief as such as of their manifest unwillingness to participate in shared civic practice."
John Rawls,Moderate,"Finally, moral philosophy was always the exercise of free, disciplined reason alone. It was not based on religion, much less on revelation, since civic religion did not offer a rival to it. In seeking moral ideals more suited than those of the Homeric age to the society and culture of fifth-century Athens, Greek moral philosophy from the beginning stood more or less by itself."
John Rawls,Moderate,"A well-ordered society as one de­signed to advance the good of its members and effectively regulated by a public conception of justice. Thus it is a society in which everyone ac­cepts and knows that the others accept the same principles of justice, and the basic social institutions satisfy and are known to satisfy these princi­ples."
Edward Snowden,Moderate,Arguing that you don't care about the right to privacy because you have nothing to hide is no different than saying you don't care about free speech because you have nothing to say.
Edward Snowden,Moderate,"Under observation, we act less free, which means we effectively are less free."
Edward Snowden,Moderate,"The true measurement of a person’s worth isn’t what they say they believe in, but what they do in defense of those beliefs, he said. If you’re not acting on your beliefs, then they probably aren’t real."
Edward Snowden,Moderate,"But the true measure of a society’s freedom is how it treats its dissidents and other marginalized groups, not how it treats good loyalists."
Edward Snowden,Moderate,Being called a traitor by Dick Cheney is the highest honor you can give to an American.
Edward Snowden,Moderate,"Democracy requires accountability and consent of the governed, which is only possible if citizens know what is being done in their name."
Edward Snowden,Moderate,"These programs were never about terrorism: they're about economic spying, social control, and diplomatic manipulation. They're about power."
Edward Snowden,Moderate,"The lesson for me was clear: national security officials do not like the light. They act abusively and thuggishly only when they believe they are safe, in the dark. Secrecy is the linchpin of abuse of power, we discovered, its enabling force. Transparency is the only real antidote."
Edward Snowden,Moderate,"Study after study has show that human behavior changes when we know we’re being watched. Under observation, we act less free, which means we effectively *are* less free."
Edward Snowden,Moderate,"I was right outside the NSA [on 9/11], so I remember the tension on that day. I remember hearing on the radio, 'the plane's hitting,' and I remember thinking my grandfather, who worked for the FBI at the time, was in the Pentagon when the plane hit it...I take the threat of terrorism seriously, and I think we all do. And I think it's really disingenuous for the government to invoke and sort-of scandalize our memories to sort-of exploit the national trauma that we all suffered together and worked so hard to come through -- and to justify programs that have never been shown to keep us safe, but cost us liberties and freedoms that we don't need to give up, and that our Constitution says we should not give up."
Edward Snowden,Moderate,"We'd do well to remember that at the end of the day, the law doesn't defend us; we defend the law. And when it becomes contrary to our morals, we have both the right and the responsibility to rebalance it toward just ends."
Edward Snowden,Moderate,"No matter the specific techniques involved, historically mass surveillance has had several constant attributes. Initially, it is always the country’s dissidents and marginalized who bear the brunt of the surveillance, leading those who support the government or are merely apathetic to mistakenly believe they are immune. And history shows that the mere existence of a mass surveillance apparatus, regardless of how it is used, is in itself sufficient to stifle dissent. A citizenry that is aware of always being watched quickly becomes a compliant and fearful one."
Edward Snowden,Moderate,"We all instinctively understand that the private realm is where we can act, think, speak, write, experiment, and choose how to be, away from the judgmental eyes of others. Privacy is a core condition of being a free person."
Edward Snowden,Moderate,"Even though we don't know which companies the NSA has compromised – or by what means – knowing that they could have compromised any of them is enough to make us mistrustful of all of them. This is going to make it hard for large companies like Google and Microsoft to get back the trust they lost. Even if they succeed in limiting government surveillance. Even if they succeed in improving their own internal security. The best they'll be able to say is: We have secured ourselves from the NSA, except for the parts that we either don't know about or can't talk about."
Edward Snowden,Moderate,"Encryption works. Properly implemented strong crypto systems are one of the few things that you can rely on. Unfortunately, endpoint security is so terrifically weak that NSA can frequently find ways around it."
Edward Snowden,Moderate,"Ultimately, if people lose their willingness to recognize that there are times in our history when legality becomes distinct from morality, we aren't just ceding control of our rights to government, but our agency in determining our futures."
Edward Snowden,Moderate,"Converting the Internet into a system of surveillance thus guts it of its core potential. Worse, it turns the Internet into a tool of repression, threatening to produce the most extreme and oppressive weapon of state intrusion human history has ever seen."
Edward Snowden,Moderate,"To permit surveillance to take root on the Internet would mean subjecting virtually all forms of human interaction, planning, and even thought itself to comprehensive state examination."
Edward Snowden,Moderate,"You shouldn’t change your behavior because a government agency somewhere is doing the wrong thing. If we sacrifice our values because we’re afraid, we don’t care about those values very much."
Edward Snowden,Moderate,My sole motive is to inform the public as to that which is done in their name and that which is done against them.
Edward Snowden,Moderate,mass surveillance is a universal temptation for any unscrupulous power.
Edward Snowden,Moderate,"the presumption is that the government, with rare exception, will not know anything that law-abiding citizens are doing. That is why we are called private individuals, functioning in our private capacity. Transparency is for those who carry out public duties and exercise public power. Privacy is for everyone else."
Edward Snowden,Moderate,"While I pray that public awareness and debate will lead to reform, bear in mind that the policies of men change in time, and even the Constitution is subverted when the appetites of power demand it. In words from history: Let us speak no more of faith in man, but bind him down from mischief by the chains of cryptography. I instantly recognized the last sentence as a play on a Thomas Jefferson quote from 1798 that I often cited in my writing: In questions of power, then, let no more be heard of confidence in man, but bind him down from mischief by the chains of the Constitution."
Edward Snowden,Moderate,"Through a carefully cultivated display of intimidation to anyone who contemplated a meaningful challenge, the government had striven to show people around the world that its power was constrained by neither law nor ethics, neither morality nor the Constitution: look what we can do and will do to those who impede our agenda."
Edward Snowden,Moderate,"US journalists, for years overwhelmingly enamored of Barack Obama, were now commonly speaking of him in these terms: as some sort of grave menace to press freedoms, the most repressive leader in this regard since Richard Nixon. That was quite a remarkable turn for a politician who was ushered into power vowing the most transparent administration in US history."
Edward Snowden,Moderate,"Rich, famous, insider journalists do not want to subvert the status quo that so lavishly rewards them. Like all courtiers, they are eager to defend the system that vests them with their privileges and contemptuous of anyone who challenges that system."
Edward Snowden,Moderate,Objectivity means nothing more than reflecting the biases and serving the interests of entrenched Washington. Opinions are problematic only when they deviate from the acceptable range of Washington orthodoxy.
Edward Snowden,Moderate,the job of the press is to disprove the falsehoods that power invariably disseminates to protect itself.
Edward Snowden,Moderate,"Above even our physical well-being, a central value is keeping the state out of the private realm"
Edward Snowden,Moderate,"And in every instance, the motive is the same: suppressing dissent and mandating compliance."
Edward Snowden,Moderate,"I have been to the darkest corners of government, and what they fear is light."
Maureen Dowd,Moderate,"Military guys are rarely as smart as they think they are, and they've never gotten over the fact that civilians run the military."
Maureen Dowd,Moderate,Romantic googling can be as dangerous as drunk text messaging. Of course hell hath no fury like a woman who Google-bombs her old flames name with a word like impotent.
Maureen Dowd,Moderate,"Materialism has defeated feminism as well. In a sign of the times, Gloria Steinem was on the picket line when the first American DeBeers store opened on Fifth Avenue in June 2005, protesting the evictions of Bushmen in Botswana to make room for diamond miners and the charges that the company dealt in blood diamonds used to finance civil wars in Africa.Her presence meant nothing to young Hollywood beauties who are pleased to shill for the diamond industry in magazine layouts and personal appearances.As Steinem stood outside, Lindsay Lohan was inside the party, gushing over the possibility that she could get to wear one of the big rocks.Asked by reporters about the Bushmen controversy, she shrugged it off: I don't get involved in any drama."
Maureen Dowd,Moderate,"I never presume to give advice on writing. I think the best way to learn to write is to read booksand stories by bood writers. It's a hard thing to preach about. As Thelonious Monk once said abouthis field, Talking about music is like dancing about architecture."
Maureen Dowd,Moderate,McChrystal's defenders at the Pentagon were making the case Tuesday that the president and his men
Maureen Dowd,Moderate,"McChrystal never should have been hired for this job given the outrageous cover-up he participated in after the friendly fire death of Pat Tillman. He was lucky to keep the job after his 'Seven Days in May' stunt in London last year when he openly lobbied and undercut the president on the surge.But with the latest sassing, and the continued Sisyphean nature of the surge he urged, McChrystal should offer his resignation. He should try subordination for a change."
Maureen Dowd,Moderate,"The sounds of silence are a dim recollection now, like mystery, privacy and paying attention to one thing"
Maureen Dowd,Moderate,"Instead of broadening the choices of how to look good, we have only broadened the ways we try to look alike. Women are headed toward one face, one body and one expression."
Maureen Dowd,Moderate,We no longer have natural selection. We have unnatural selection. Survival of the fittest has been replaced by survival of the fakest.
Maureen Dowd,Moderate,"We've become a nation of Frankensteins, and our monster is us. With everyone working so hard at altering their facades, we no longer have natural selection. We have unnatural selection."
Maureen Dowd,Moderate,Women are affected by lunar tides only once a month; men have raging hormones every day.
Maureen Dowd,Moderate,"Who knows? If women all end up with the same face and body, men may gravitate toward the quirky. Then the chicks with the laugh lines and love handles will be the lucky ones."
Maureen Dowd,Moderate,"Women can stand on the Empire State Building and scream to the heavens that they are equal to men and liberated, but until they have the same anatomy, it's a lie. It's more of a man's world today than ever. Men can eat their cake in unlimited bakeries."
Maureen Dowd,Moderate,"We had the Belle Epoque. Now we have the Botox Epoque, permeated by plastic emotions from antidepressants and plastic veneers from collagen, silicone, cosmetic surgery and Botox."
Maureen Dowd,Moderate,"It is men's worst fear, personally and professionally, that women will pin the sin on them."
Maureen Dowd,Moderate,American women are evolving backward--becoming more focused on their looks than ever. Feminism has been defeated by narcissism.
Maureen Dowd,Moderate,Women fear that men will have their way and then slither away. Men fear that women will come back and boil their bunnies.
Maureen Dowd,Moderate,"Trump is the Kim Kardashian of American politics, replacing substance with solipsism and issues debates with Twitter feuds, and showing a rare talent for grabbing the attention of an ADD nation round the clock as he tries to be Troll in Chief. Celebrity"
Maureen Dowd,Moderate,So this general with the background in intelligence who is supposed to conquer Afghanistan can't even figure out what Rolling Stone is? We're not talking Guns & Ammo here; we're talking the antiwar hippie magazine.
Maureen Dowd,Moderate,Afghanistan is more than the 'graveyard of empires.' It's the mother of vicious circles.
Maureen Dowd,Moderate,"As much as anybody since George Wallace or Pat Buchanan, he has overtly sent dog whistles of race out to white working-class voters. That gratuitous defamation of group after group, person after person, is just anathema to Obama. He genuinely believes this guy would be a calamity for the country. Unlike the Bushes, who outsourced their political thuggery, Donald Trump does his own wet work. He"
Maureen Dowd,Moderate,"Given the electoral history of the Republicans since Nixon’s Southern Strategy, winning races by stirring up racist, homophobic and misogynist feelings, it was rich to see them criticizing Trump for those qualities. They simply wanted a nominee who would be a more subtle bigot, as party tradition demands. The"
Maureen Dowd,Moderate,"{My mom] long ago advised me, when I was feeling blue or self-doubting about men, that the best thing to do was go out and buy a red lipstick or a red dress. 'It will be your red badge of courage,' she said."
Maureen Dowd,Moderate,"Women have become so obsessed with not withering, they've forgotten that there are infinite ways to be beautiful."
Maureen Dowd,Moderate,He did not seem interested in raising his game beyond Twitter insults and ill-advised retweets (including one about Megyn Kelly as a bimbo and some that originated on white-supremacist message boards). Even the quietly supportive Melania told Donald to knock off the retweets. He
Maureen Dowd,Moderate,"We have an out-of-control id taunting a tightly controlled superego. We have the king of winging it versus the queen of homework. She says he’s too unpredictable to be president, he says she’s too predictable. Trump can excite his crowds but falters on substance; Hillary has substance but falters on exciting her crowds. The boor versus the bore, Time’s Charlotte Alter call it. He’s"
Maureen Dowd,Moderate,"Will Trump, who has scant impulse control and who’s willing to say the most insulting, provocative things that people wouldn’t say at a dinner party much less a global forum, get into a tweet battle with a madman and start a world war? Will Hillary ever seem on the level? Or will she always be surrounded by a cordon of creepy henchmen and Clinton Inc. sycophants, shrouded in a miasma of money grabs and conveniently disappearing records and emails? Both"
Maureen Dowd,Moderate,"Over the years, I have written about the duality in Hillary that disturbs even many Democrats. She has the bright, idealistic public service side but it is offset by a dark ends-justify-the-means side. She’s confident and capable but she can also make decisions from a place of insecurity and paranoia."
Maureen Dowd,Moderate,"This is a deeply, deeply polarized country not just by party but by class, David Axelrod, former senior advisor to President Obama, told me. While Obama’s attention to nuance and emphasis on diplomacy was seen by many as a strength after the bellicose, black-and-white W., Axelrod said, now some find those qualities a weakness and yearn for a strongman. There"
Maureen Dowd,Moderate,"We have two candidates with the highest unfavorables ever recorded and a majority of voters who feel stuck voting against, rather than for, someone. Both parties nominated the only person who could possibly lose to the other. Voters are agonizing about whether they can trust either candidate."
Maureen Dowd,Moderate,"Not to credit Donald Trump, because he’s crude and combative and an egomaniac, but in a weird way, he’s at least being candid. And I guess there’s something oddly thrilling about a guy who rips the mask off it all and is standing there as the naked id of politics. He is the destroyer of the old world. The"
Leon Kass,Moderate,"Cloning represents a very clear, powerful, and immediate example in which we are in danger of turning procreation into manufacture."
Leon Kass,Moderate,Cloning looks like a degrading of parenthood and a perversion of the right relation between parents and children.
Leon Kass,Moderate,Technological innovation is indeed important to economic growth and the enhancement of human possibilities.
Leon Kass,Moderate,"The benefits of biomedical progress are obvious, clear, and powerful. The hazards are much less well appreciated."
Leon Kass,Moderate,I've been opposed to human cloning from the very beginning.
Leon Kass,Moderate,"Biology, meaning the science of all life, is a late notion."
Leon Kass,Moderate,"If one is seriously interested in preventing reproductive cloning, one must stop the process before it starts."
Leon Kass,Moderate,"In the case of abortion, one pits the life of the fetus against the interests of the pregnant woman."
Leon Kass,Moderate,"If you have easy self-contentment, you might have a very, very cheap source of happiness."
Leon Kass,Moderate,"Many other countries have already banned human cloning, and there are efforts at the UN to make such a ban universal."
Leon Kass,Moderate,Sexuality itself means mortality - equally for both man and woman.
Leon Kass,Moderate,Limits have to be set on how far one can simply use the... cleverness that we have to make changes.
Leon Kass,Moderate,I don't believe that efforts to prohibit only so-called reproductive cloning can be successful.
Leon Kass,Moderate,It's a short step from the belief that every child should be wanted to the belief that a child exists to satisfy our wants.
Leon Kass,Moderate,"In cloning, in contrast, reproduction is asexual - the cloned child is the product not of two but of one."
Leon Kass,Moderate,"The technological way of thinking has infected even ethics, which is supposed to be thinking about the good."
Leon Kass,Moderate,We are enmeshed in a lineage that came from somewhere and is going to make way for the next generation.
Leon Kass,Moderate,There is a lot of hype and fear about this much-talked-about prospect of designer babies.
Leon Kass,Moderate,"Once you put human life in human hands, you have started on a slippery slope that knows no boundaries."
Leon Kass,Moderate,It's very hard to make arguments about the effects of cloning on family relations if family relations are in tatters.
Leon Kass,Moderate,Almost everybody is enthusiastic about the promise of biotechnology to cure disease and to relieve suffering.
Leon Kass,Moderate,"Genetics is crude, but neuroscience goes directly to work on the brain, and the mind follows."
Leon Kass,Moderate,The neuroscience area - which is absolutely in its infancy - is much more important than genetics.
Leon Kass,Moderate,An enormous amount of direct advertising from pharmaceutical companies are offering a kind of instantaneous solution to problems.
Leon Kass,Moderate,"As bad as it might be to destroy a creature made in God's image, it might be very much worse to be creating them after images of one's own."
Leon Kass,Moderate,"Even if certain rogue countries do things we wish nobody did, it doesn't necessarily mean that their foolishness should justify our following suit."
Jonathan Haidt,Moderate,The most powerful force ever known on this planet is human cooperation - a force for construction and destruction.
Jonathan Haidt,Moderate,"Liberals are my friends, my colleagues, my social world."
Jonathan Haidt,Moderate,"I think Republicans need to take income inequality more seriously. Not because I favor equality of outcomes. I do not. I think the Right is correct to stress merit and earned rewards, not handouts and forced equality. But I think what Republicans are blind to is that power corrupts."
Jonathan Haidt,Moderate,"Congress is full of good, decent, smart people who have devoted their lives to public service."
Jonathan Haidt,Moderate,"People can believe pretty much whatever they want to believe about moral and political issues, as long as some other people near them believe it, so you have to focus on indirect methods to change what people want to believe."
Jonathan Haidt,Moderate,"When you hear someone criticize a policy on the other side, that's fine. But when you start hearing motive-mongering and demonization, stand up to it just as you would if it were something that was racist or sexist. If we avoid the demonization, disagreements can be positive."
Jonathan Haidt,Moderate,Trying to run Congress without human relationships is like trying to run a car without motor oil. Should we be surprised when the whole thing freezes up?
Jonathan Haidt,Moderate,"Liberals tend to be much more concerned about business and corporations as the oppressors. They look to government as the solution. On the Right it's the opposite. They see business as good, as what generates wealth in society, and they see government as the oppressor, which makes it hard for especially small businesspeople."
Jonathan Haidt,Moderate,Politics is really religion. Politics is about sacredness. Politics is about offering a vision that will bind the nation together to pursue greatness.
Jonathan Haidt,Moderate,"I did say that in-group, authority and purity are necessary for the maintenance of order, but I would never give them a blanket endorsement."
Jonathan Haidt,Moderate,"If you have high IQ, you're really good at finding post-hoc arguments to support your feelings of truthiness."
Jonathan Haidt,Moderate,"By temperament and disposition and emotions, I'm a liberal; but in my beliefs about what's best for the country, I'm a centrist."
Jonathan Haidt,Moderate,Dividing into teams doesn't necessarily mean denigrating others. Studies of groupishness have generally found that groups increase in-group love far more than they increase out-group hostility.
Jonathan Haidt,Moderate,Economic issues are just as much moral issues as social issues.
Jonathan Haidt,Moderate,Let me say it diplomatically: Most religions are tribal to some degree.
Jonathan Haidt,Moderate,"In accounts of men in battle, there is an incredible adrenaline rush from group-versus-group conflict. The fervor and passion of partisans is clearly rewarding; and if it's rewarding, it involves dopamine; and if it involves dopamine, then it is potentially addictive."
Jonathan Haidt,Moderate,"My early research - I'm a social psychologist, and my early research was on how people make moral judgments. When I entered the field in 1987, everybody was looking at moral reasoning - how do kids reason about a moral dilemma? Should a guy steal a drug to save his wife's life?"
Jonathan Haidt,Moderate,"People are voting for the kind of country they want to live in, and there are different views about what kind of country we should have."
Jonathan Haidt,Moderate,"We humans are really good at forming groups to compete, and then dissolving the groups and reforming them along different lines to compete in a different way."
Jonathan Haidt,Moderate,"The great conservative insight is that order is really hard to achieve. It's really precious, and it's really easy to lose."
Jonathan Haidt,Moderate,Morality binds and blinds. It binds us into teams... but thereby makes us go blind to objective reality.
Jonathan Haidt,Moderate,"When I think about life on Earth, there should not be a species like us. And if there was, we should be out in the jungle killing each other in small groups. That's what you should expect."
Jonathan Haidt,Moderate,"It really is a fact that liberals are much higher than conservatives on a major personality trait called 'openness to experience.' People who are high on openness to experience just crave novelty, variety, diversity, new ideas, travel. People low on it like things that are familiar, that are safe and dependable."
Jonathan Haidt,Moderate,"Anytime we're interacting with someone, we're judging them, we're sharing expectations, we think they didn't live up to those expectations."
Jonathan Haidt,Moderate,Our moral sense really evolved to bind groups together into teams that can cooperate in order to compete with other teams.
Thomas Friedman,Moderate,"When I was growing up, my parents told me, 'Finish your dinner. People in China and India are starving.' I tell my daughters, 'Finish your homework. People in India and China are starving for your job.'"
Thomas Friedman,Moderate,Do you know what my favorite renewable fuel is? An ecosystem for innovation.
Thomas Friedman,Moderate,"In Globalization 1.0, which began around 1492, the world went from size large to size medium. In Globalization 2.0, the era that introduced us to multinational companies, it went from size medium to size small. And then around 2000 came Globalization 3.0, in which the world went from being small to tiny."
Thomas Friedman,Moderate,We are led by lawyers who do not understand either technology or balance sheets.
Thomas Friedman,Moderate,"It created a global platform that allowed more people to plug and play, collaborate and compete, share knowledge and share work, than anything we have ever seen in the history of the world."
Thomas Friedman,Moderate,The historical debate is over. The answer is free-market capitalism.
Thomas Friedman,Moderate,"When I wrote 'The World Is Flat,' I said the world is flat. Yeah, we're all connected. Facebook didn't exist; Twitter was a sound; the cloud was in the sky; 4G was a parking place; LinkedIn was a prison; applications were what you sent to college; and Skype, for most people, was a typo."
Thomas Friedman,Moderate,The merger of globalization and the I.T. revolution means new products are being phased in and out so fast that companies cannot afford to wait until the end of the year to figure out whether a team leader is doing a good job.
Thomas Friedman,Moderate,"Nature is regulating our climate for free. Mother Nature, she's been doing that for free, for a long, long time. Now do you really want to get in there and do geo-engineering and all this kind of stuff?"
Thomas Friedman,Moderate,"Every sport needs its temple, its cathedral."
Thomas Friedman,Moderate,There is no substitute for face-to-face reporting and research.
Thomas Friedman,Moderate,I think we have lost our groove as a country. One of the reasons was the attack on 9/11. We got knocked off our game. From a country that always exported hope we went into the business of exporting fear.
Thomas Friedman,Moderate,"I can see a day soon where you'll create your own college degree by taking the best online courses from the best professors from around the world - some computing from Stanford, some entrepreneurship from Wharton, some ethics from Brandeis, some literature from Edinburgh - paying only the nominal fee for the certificates of completion."
Thomas Friedman,Moderate,"Optimists are usually wrong. But all the great change in history, positive change, was done by optimists."
Thomas Friedman,Moderate,"When I think back on my favorite teachers, I don't remember anymore much of what they taught me, but I sure remember being excited about learning it. What has stayed with me are not the facts they imparted, but the excitement about learning they inspired."
Thomas Friedman,Moderate,"Lord knows there's a lot of bad news in the world today to get you down, but there is one big thing happening that leaves me incredibly hopeful about the future, and that is the budding revolution in global online higher education."
Thomas Friedman,Moderate,"I was in Bangalore, India, the Silicon Valley of India, when I realized that the world was flat."
Thomas Friedman,Moderate,There is nothing more valuable than great classroom instruction. But let's stop putting the whole burden on teachers. We also need better parents. Better parents can make every teacher more effective.
Thomas Friedman,Moderate,There's nothing like living a little close to the edge that gets you motivated to ensure that you get the credentials you need to succeed.
Thomas Friedman,Moderate,"Basically all the world's computer parts come from the same supply chain that runs from Korea, down through coastal China, over to Taiwan, and down to Malaysia."
Thomas Friedman,Moderate,"Yes, the world is now flat for publishing as well."
Thomas Friedman,Moderate,"America still has the right stuff to thrive. We still have the most creative, diverse, innovative culture and open society - in a world where the ability to imagine and generate new ideas with speed and to implement them through global collaboration is the most important competitive advantage."
Thomas Friedman,Moderate,"We've gone from thinking the fuels that powered our growth were inexpensive, inexhaustible and benign to understanding they are exhaustible, expensive and toxic. Once you frame the problem that way, people will look at solutions differently."
Thomas Friedman,Moderate,"Many jobs at Google require math, computing, and coding skills, so if your good grades truly reflect skills in those areas that you can apply, it would be an advantage. But Google has its eyes on much more."
Thomas Friedman,Moderate,"I am hoping, though, that many of them have kids, who, when they have a moment to take a break from their iPods, Internet, or Google, will explain to their parents running the country just how the world is being flattened."
Peter Drucker,Moderate,The most important thing in communication is hearing what isn't said.
Peter Drucker,Moderate,Management is doing things right; leadership is doing the right things.
Peter Drucker,Moderate,The aim of marketing is to know and understand the customer so well the product or service fits him and sells itself.
Peter Drucker,Moderate,"Knowledge has to be improved, challenged, and increased constantly, or it vanishes."
Peter Drucker,Moderate,The purpose of a business is to create a customer.
Peter Drucker,Moderate,"The entrepreneur always searches for change, responds to it, and exploits it as an opportunity."
Peter Drucker,Moderate,Efficiency is doing things right; effectiveness is doing the right things.
Peter Drucker,Moderate,There is nothing so useless as doing efficiently that which should not be done at all.
Peter Drucker,Moderate,Plans are only good intentions unless they immediately degenerate into hard work.
Peter Drucker,Moderate,Making good decisions is a crucial skill at every level.
Peter Drucker,Moderate,Most discussions of decision making assume that only senior executives make decisions or that only senior executives' decisions matter. This is a dangerous mistake.
Peter Drucker,Moderate,Effective leadership is not about making speeches or being liked; leadership is defined by results not attributes.
Peter Drucker,Moderate,My greatest strength as a consultant is to be ignorant and ask a few questions.
Peter Drucker,Moderate,Trying to predict the future is like trying to drive down a country road at night with no lights while looking out the back window.
Peter Drucker,Moderate,People who don't take risks generally make about two big mistakes a year. People who do take risks generally make about two big mistakes a year.
Peter Drucker,Moderate,Follow effective action with quiet reflection. From the quiet reflection will come even more effective action.
Peter Drucker,Moderate,Time is the scarcest resource and unless it is managed nothing else can be managed.
Peter Drucker,Moderate,Innovation is the specific instrument of entrepreneurship. The act that endows resources with a new capacity to create wealth.
Peter Drucker,Moderate,We now accept the fact that learning is a lifelong process of keeping abreast of change. And the most pressing task is to teach people how to learn.
Peter Drucker,Moderate,The productivity of work is not the responsibility of the worker but of the manager.
Peter Drucker,Moderate,The new information technology... Internet and e-mail... have practically eliminated the physical costs of communications.
Peter Drucker,Moderate,The most efficient way to produce anything is to bring together under one management as many as possible of the activities needed to turn out the product.
Peter Drucker,Moderate,Executives owe it to the organization and to their fellow workers not to tolerate nonperforming individuals in important jobs.
David Brooks,Moderate,"People used to complain that selling a president was like selling a bar of soap. But when you buy soap, at least you get the soap. In this campaign you just get two guys telling you they really value cleanliness."
David Brooks,Moderate,"America is not just a democracy, it represents a certain culture of competitive mobility and personality aspirations, politics is not merely a clash of interests, but a clash of dreams."
David Brooks,Moderate,To explain the unknown by the known is a logical procedure; to explain the known by the unknown is a form of theological lunacy.
David Brooks,Moderate,"Highly educated young people are tutored, taught and monitored in all aspects of their lives, except the most important, which is character building. When it comes to this, most universities leave them alone."
David Brooks,Moderate,This death cult has no reason and is beyond negotiation. This is what makes it so frightening. This is what causes so many to engage in a sort of mental diversion. They don't want to confront this horror. So they rush off in search of more comprehensible things to hate.
David Brooks,Moderate,The rich don't exploit the poor. They just out-compete them.
David Brooks,Moderate,What family you were born into matters so much more than it did before in a perverse way.
David Brooks,Moderate,People want reality that tells them how right they are all the time.
David Brooks,Moderate,"When you cover politics, you realize that knowing how to talk about character matters more and more. The way we hold ideas is more important than the ideas."
Arianna Huffington,Moderate,The fastest way to break the cycle of perfectionism and become a fearless mother is to give up the idea of doing it perfectly - indeed to embrace uncertainty and imperfection.
Arianna Huffington,Moderate,"The goal of any true resistance is to affect outcomes, not just to vent. And the only way to affect outcomes and thrive in our lives is to find the eye in the hurricane and act from that place of inner strength."
Arianna Huffington,Moderate,We take better care of our smartphones than we do of ourselves - the phones are always recharged!
Arianna Huffington,Moderate,"In a culture fueled by burnout, a culture that has run itself down, our national resilience becomes compromised. And when our collective immune system is weakened, we become more susceptible to viruses that are part of every culture because they're part of human nature - fear-mongering, scapegoating, conspiracy theories, and demagoguery."
Arianna Huffington,Moderate,"There's something sacred in all of us that we need to protect, and sleep is a way to connect with it, nourish it, and make it more present in our lives."
Arianna Huffington,Moderate,The economic game is not supposed to be rigged like some shady ring toss on a carnival midway.
Arianna Huffington,Moderate,I declare an end to my day by removing my phone from my bedroom and putting it in a phone charging bed.
Arianna Huffington,Moderate,It's no longer an exaggeration to say that middle-class Americans are an endangered species.
Arianna Huffington,Moderate,The land of burnout is not a place I ever want to go back to.
Arianna Huffington,Moderate,"There's no love more intense than the love we have for our kids - and where there is intense love, there is also intense fear lurking beneath the surface."
Arianna Huffington,Moderate,Fearlessness is like a muscle. I know from my own life that the more I exercise it the more natural it becomes to not let my fears run me.
Arianna Huffington,Moderate,"I can tell you with authority that when I'm exhausted, when I'm running on empty, I'm the worst version of myself."
Arianna Huffington,Moderate,"A lot of effort and money are - rightly - expended keeping the president physically safe. But it's up to the president to maintain a schedule that allows for refueling, so as to be physically and cognitively at his or her best at all times. That's what it means to be strong, tough, and truly fit for the highest office."
Arianna Huffington,Moderate,"If we live in a perpetual state of outrage, Trump wins. Because when we become depleted and exhausted and sapped of our energy, we're not as resourceful, creative, or effective."
Arianna Huffington,Moderate,"Women process stress differently. If we can change the workplace culture to make it more welcoming for women, we're also going to improve behavior, and we're going to improve outcomes."
Arianna Huffington,Moderate,"Mainstream media tend to just mouth the conventional wisdom, to see everything through the filter of right and left."
Arianna Huffington,Moderate,But you have to do what you dream of doing even while you're afraid.
Arianna Huffington,Moderate,"The middle class is teetering on the brink of collapse just as surely as AIG was in the fall of 2009 - only this time, it's not just one giant insurance company (and its banking counterparties) facing disaster, it's tens of millions of hardworking Americans who played by the rules."
Arianna Huffington,Moderate,"I get asked all the time how much sleep I get. That's what happens when you write a book called 'The Sleep Revolution,' travel around the world talking about it, and found a company committed to ending our global burnout crisis."
Arianna Huffington,Moderate,"When we take care of ourselves, we are more effective, we are more creative, and we are more successful in a broad definition of the word."
Arianna Huffington,Moderate,"But, in fact, there is nothing that can bring you closer to fearlessness about everything else in the world than being a parent - because everyday fears - like not being approved of - pale by comparison to the fears you have about your children."
Arianna Huffington,Moderate,"It would be futile to attempt to fit women into a masculine pattern of attitudes, skills and abilities and disastrous to force them to suppress their specifically female characteristics and abilities by keeping up the pretense that there are no differences between the sexes."
Arianna Huffington,Moderate,"Liberation is an ever shifting horizon, a total ideology that can never fulfill its promises. It has the therapeutic quality of providing emotionally charged rituals of solidarity in hatred - it is the amphetamine of its believers."
Arianna Huffington,Moderate,"Not only is it harder to be a man, it is also harder to become one."
Fareed Zakaria,Moderate,"During the Cold War, we were interested because we were scared that Russia and the United States were going to go to war. We were scared that Russia was going to take over the world. Every country became a battleground."
Fareed Zakaria,Moderate,"Americans have so far put up with inequality because they felt they could change their status. They didn't mind others being rich, as long as they had a path to move up as well. The American Dream is all about social mobility in a sense - the idea that anyone can make it."
Fareed Zakaria,Moderate,"If there is one lesson for U.S. foreign policy from the past 10 years, it is surely that military intervention can seem simple but is in fact a complex affair with the potential for unintended consequences."
Fareed Zakaria,Moderate,"The tallest building in the world is now in Dubai, the biggest factory in the world is in China, the largest oil refinery is in India, the largest investment fund in the world is in Abu Dhabi, the largest Ferris wheel in the world is in Singapore."
Fareed Zakaria,Moderate,"The Berlin Wall wasn't the only barrier to fall after the collapse of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War. Traditional barriers to the flow of money, trade, people and ideas also fell."
Fareed Zakaria,Moderate,"What we see today is an American economy that has boomed because of policies and developments of the 1950s and '60s: the interstate-highway system, massive funding for science and technology, a public-education system that was the envy of the world and generous immigration policies."
Fareed Zakaria,Moderate,"In a very weak economy, when you say 'cut government spending,' what you mean is you're laying off school teachers and you're de-funding various programs that put money into the economy. This means you have more unemployed people that then draw unemployment benefits and don't pay taxes."
Fareed Zakaria,Moderate,"In the 1990s, we were certain that Saddam Hussein had a nuclear arsenal. In fact, his factories could barely make soap."
Fareed Zakaria,Moderate,The technological revolution at home makes it much easier for computers to do our work.
Fareed Zakaria,Moderate,I grew up in this world where everything seemed possible.
Fareed Zakaria,Moderate,"If we didn't have the rest of the world growing, the United States economy would be in much worse shape than it is today."
Fareed Zakaria,Moderate,I enjoy writing but I much prefer the experience of having written.
Fareed Zakaria,Moderate,Politics and power is a realm of relative influence.
Fareed Zakaria,Moderate,The markets are much more interested in America's long-term trajectory than they are in feeling that there is an acute short-term crisis.
Fareed Zakaria,Moderate,"The great drama of Russian history has been between its state and society. Put simply, Russia has always had too much state and not enough society."
Fareed Zakaria,Moderate,I don't want to paint a picture of total gloom and doom.
Fareed Zakaria,Moderate,"But as the arms-control scholar Thomas Schelling once noted, two things are very expensive in international life: promises when they succeed and threats when they fail."
Fareed Zakaria,Moderate,"I am an American, not by accident of birth but by choice. I voted with my feet and became an American because I love this country and think it is exceptional."
Fareed Zakaria,Moderate,It's not possible for two countries to be the leading dominant political power at the same time.
Fareed Zakaria,Moderate,"In a world awash in debt, power shifts to creditors."
Fareed Zakaria,Moderate,"America's growth historically has been fueled mostly by investment, education, productivity, innovation and immigration. The one thing that doesn't seem to have anything to do with America's growth rate is a brutal work schedule."
Fareed Zakaria,Moderate,"It is absolutely clear that government plays a key role, as a catalyst, in promoting long-run growth."
Fareed Zakaria,Moderate,"I very much want to be in the business of creating content, of doing stories all over the world rather than figuring out what the business model is for 'Newsweek' on the iPad, although that's very important work as well."
Fareed Zakaria,Moderate,What happens in the media is the cult of personality. The brands who have been forced to cut their staff have been forced to take on the brands of journalists.
Fareed Zakaria,Moderate,My friends all say I'm going to be Secretary of State. But I don't see how that would be much different from the job I have now.
Chris Matthews,Moderate,"Reagan was all about America, and you talked about it. Obama is, 'We are above that now. We're not just parochial, we're not just chauvinistic, we're not just provincial. We stand for something.' I mean, in a way, Obama's standing above the country, above - above the world. He's sort of God. He's going to bring all different sides together."
Chris Matthews,Moderate,"Then the administration tied it in to the regional dispute between Israel and its enemies, as if that's about international terrorism. No, it's not."
Chris Matthews,Moderate,"I can't find a reason to be for this war. I've looked, and I can't, so I'm not."
Chris Matthews,Moderate,"And on the war, I think my numbers would be a lot higher if I were out there beating the drum for this war. In fact, I don't think it, I know it. But I can't be for the war."
Chris Matthews,Moderate,"And then there's Israel - a lot of people support Israel, and it's important to Israel to take out Iraq. So it's all mixed together. It's a combination of motives."
Chris Matthews,Moderate,C'mon. He'd be embarrassing upstairs at the White House. So I think she'd have a hard time. I think a woman president would have to be very conservative to get elected.
Chris Matthews,Moderate,"Five years from now, 10 years from now, there's going to be a huge Islamic population in the world, they're going to be nationalistic, they're going to be religious, and they're going to be militant."
Chris Matthews,Moderate,I don't believe he had a responsibility to even answer that question - you have no responsibility to answer personal questions that people have no right to ask you.
Chris Matthews,Moderate,"I don't know why his lawyers didn't tell him, 'You don't have to answer any questions about your private life, Mr. President. Let them sue you. Take the heat. You don't have to answer.'"
Chris Matthews,Moderate,"I know one thing: There are a billion Islamic people in the world today, and there will be about 2 billion by the time we're dead. They're not going to give up their religion."
Chris Matthews,Moderate,"I mean, if somebody said to me, junior year of college, you can go anywhere, your old man's paying for it, I'd have been gone in a flash. But I had to work. Every summer my mother would say, 'Get that job and hold on to it until August 30.'"
Chris Matthews,Moderate,"I mean, the idea that Bar could have sent him off on a Grand Tour. But he wasn't the least bit interested. Why? Why isn't he interested in the world? Because here's the bad news for him: He's in the world now."
Chris Matthews,Moderate,"I tell my staff, we're riding a tour bus around, and we're going to stop and look at some weird stuff - but we're taking our viewers around safely. They're just looking out the window at it. I'm trying to create a sense of comfort for my center audience."
Chris Matthews,Moderate,"I'm not just gonna go after the black Jesse Jackson they all want to make fun of, but I know the wrong people are gonna laugh at that. I don't want to play to that crowd. I don't."
Chris Matthews,Moderate,It doesn't serve an American interest. It really doesn't really serve Israeli interests - it serves the interests of the political party that's getting the votes of the settlers on the West Bank.
Chris Matthews,Moderate,"Just look at who won the third debate between Bush and Gore. I knew Bush won, because people liked him more. People just didn't like Gore. But all the journalists thought Gore won big, he cleaned the guy's clock."
Chris Matthews,Moderate,"My audience is much more center right, or centrist."
Chris Matthews,Moderate,"Once it was suggested that Saddam Hussein might give his weaponry to terrorists, or might use weapons himself in the region, then it became hard for the Democrats to say, 'Well, that can't happen.'"
Chris Matthews,Moderate,"Someone needs to talk sense to the president. But these people are not world travelers. This president, much as I like him, had all the opportunities in the world."
Chris Matthews,Moderate,"The Democrats just don't have a foreign policy that they're willing to defend, that they're willing to use to take down the president's. We're dealing with the power of suggestion here."
Chris Matthews,Moderate,"The difference between me and them is that I'll look at Jesse Jackson and I'll see four Jesse Jacksons, and they'll just see one, the clown ambulance chaser."
Chris Matthews,Moderate,They were unable to stand up and say: 'Here's our policy. It's Unite the world against terrorism.'
Chris Matthews,Moderate,"Unity is the most important thing on the road to stamping out terror. You need global rules of law and order, and they have to be enforced. Start with that principle."
Chris Matthews,Moderate,"We supported the contras. We're not against all opposition to government, or all paramilitary operations."
Chris Matthews,Moderate,"We've always had a dual role in the region - friend of Israel, and honest broker. We've given up the honest broker role completely."
Chris Matthews,Moderate,"We've got to recognize that when we march into Iraq, we're setting up the card tables in front of every university in the Arab world, the Islamic world, to recruit for al-Qaida."
David Rockefeller,Moderate,"I owe much to mother. She had an expert's understanding, but also approached art emotionally."
David Rockefeller,Moderate,"I am convinced that material things can contribute a lot to making one's life pleasant, but, basically, if you do not have very good friends and relatives who matter to you, life will be really empty and sad and material things cease to be important."
David Rockefeller,Moderate,"My own interest in art was because of my mother. My father didn't like contemporary art, so he didn't give her large sums to spend. So, she began buying prints and drawings. During my school days, I remember sitting in on many of the early meetings."
David Rockefeller,Moderate,"Philanthropy is involved with basic innovations that transform society, not simply maintaining the status quo or filling basic social needs that were formerly the province of the public sector."
David Rockefeller,Moderate,"When you have a lot of resources, the most important thing is to have had good parents and to have been brought up by people who gave one the proper values."
David Rockefeller,Moderate,"I am a passionate traveler, and from the time I was a child, travel formed me as much as my formal education. In order to appreciate cultures of another nation, one needs to go there, know the people and mingle with the culture of that country. One way to do that, if one is lucky enough, is to buy things from those cultures."
David Rockefeller,Moderate,I think I am basically a happy person.
David Rockefeller,Moderate,"The conventional notions of art have changed, and a lot of things done today are considered works of art that would have been rejected in the past."
David Rockefeller,Moderate,"I never kept a diary, but I wrote detailed notes of my travels."
David Rockefeller,Moderate,"Money can add very much to one's ability to lead a constructive life, not only pleasant for oneself, but, hopefully, beneficial to others."
David Rockefeller,Moderate,"My grandfather, along with Carnegie, was a pioneer in philanthropy, which my father then practiced on a very large scale."
David Rockefeller,Moderate,Mother's interest in contemporary American artists emerged during the 1920s.
David Rockefeller,Moderate,"The attacks on the World Trade Center and the current economic recession, which is particularly powerful in New York City, have put a number of building plans on hold for the time being."
David Rockefeller,Moderate,"When I see something I like, I buy it, but I do not look for it madly."
David Rockefeller,Moderate,I hope the Guggenheim plan will be revived.
David Rockefeller,Moderate,"You know, gentlemen, that I do not owe any personal income tax. But nevertheless, I send a small check, now and then, to the Internal Revenue Service out of the kindness of my heart."
David Rockefeller,Moderate,"A museum has to renew its collection to be alive, but that does not mean we give on important old works."
David Rockefeller,Moderate,"As children we recognized that we belonged to an unusual, even exceptional, family, but the effect was different on each of us."
David Rockefeller,Moderate,"By a museum, I assume you mean an institution dedicated to the events of Sept. 11 and the aftermath. If that is done with sensitivity, I think it would be most appropriate."
David Rockefeller,Moderate,"Eventually, most people felt MoMA had filled a very important gap."
David Rockefeller,Moderate,I believe that government is the servant of the people and not their master.
David Rockefeller,Moderate,I can only say that I have had a wonderful life.
David Rockefeller,Moderate,I learned more from my mother than from all the art historians and curators who have informed me about technical aspects of art history and art appreciation over the years.
Peter Thiel,Moderate,"The next Bill Gates will not start an operating system. The next Larry Page won't start a search engine. The next Mark Zuckerberg won't start a social network company. If you are copying these people, you are not learning from them."
Peter Thiel,Moderate,Technology just means information technology.
Peter Thiel,Moderate,"People are spending way too much time thinking about climate change, way too little thinking about AI."
Peter Thiel,Moderate,People always say you should live your life as if it were your last day. I think you should live your life as though it will go on for ever; that every day is so good that you don't want it to end.
Peter Thiel,Moderate,Monopolies are bad and deserve their reputation when things are static and the monopolies function as toll collectors... But I think they're quite positive when they're dynamic and do something new.
Peter Thiel,Moderate,All of us have to work toward a definite future... that can motivate and inspire people to change the world.
Peter Thiel,Moderate,Creating value isn't enough - you also need to capture some of the value you create.
Peter Thiel,Moderate,'Perfect competition' is considered both the ideal and the default state in Economics 101. So-called perfectly competitive markets achieve equilibrium when producer supply meets consumer demand.
Peter Thiel,Moderate,The future is limitless.
Peter Thiel,Moderate,The core problem in our society is political correctness.
Peter Thiel,Moderate,An entrepreneur must deal with more uncertainty than a professional with a well-defined role.
Peter Thiel,Moderate,I think it's a problem that we don't have more companies like Facebook. It shouldn't be the only company that's doing this well.
Peter Thiel,Moderate,"Education is a bubble in a classic sense. To call something a bubble, it must be overpriced, and there must be an intense belief in it."
Peter Thiel,Moderate,The most successful businesses have an idea for the future that's very different from the present - and that's not fully valued.
Peter Thiel,Moderate,"There's no single right place to be an entrepreneur, but certainly there's something about Silicon Valley."
Peter Thiel,Moderate,"I think anything that requires real global breakthroughs requires a degree of intensity and sustained effort that cannot be done part time, so it's something you have to do around the clock, and that doesn't compute with our existing educational system."
Peter Thiel,Moderate,"I believe that evolution is a true account of nature, but I think we should try to escape it or transcend it in our society."
Peter Thiel,Moderate,The best start-ups might be considered slightly less extreme kinds of cults. The biggest difference is that cults tend to be fanatically wrong about something important. People at a successful start-up are fanatically right about something those outside it have missed.
Peter Thiel,Moderate,"From my perspective, I think the question of how we build a better future is an extremely important overarching question, and I think it's become obscured from us because we no longer think it's possible to have a meaningful conversation about the future."
Peter Thiel,Moderate,I'm very pro-science and pro-technology; I believe that these have been key drivers of progress in the world in the last centuries.
Peter Thiel,Moderate,A diploma is a dunce hat in disguise.
Peter Thiel,Moderate,"Seventy percent of the planet is covered with water, and there's so much we can be doing with oceans, and it was one of the frontiers that people have more or less abandoned."
Peter Thiel,Moderate,Every one of today's smartphones has thousands of times more processing power than the computers that guided astronauts to the moon.
Peter Thiel,Moderate,"I'm not a politician. But neither is Donald Trump. He is a builder, and it's time to rebuild America."
John Rawls,Moderate,The bad man desires arbitrary power. What moves the evil man is the love of injustice.
John Rawls,Moderate,Certainly it is wrong to be cruel to animals and the destruction of a whole species can be a great evil. The capacity for feelings of pleasure and pain and for the form of life of which animals are capable clearly impose duties of compassion and humanity in their case.
John Rawls,Moderate,"In constant pursuit of money to finance campaigns, the political system is simply unable to function. Its deliberative powers are paralyzed."
John Rawls,Moderate,"Ideally citizens are to think of themselves as if they were legislators and ask themselves what statutes, supported by what reasons satisfying the criterion of reciprocity, they would think is most reasonable to enact."
Edward Snowden,Moderate,"Every person remembers some moment in their life where they witnessed some injustice, big or small, and looked away because the consequences of intervening seemed too intimidating. But there's a limit to the amount of incivility and inequality and inhumanity that each individual can tolerate. I crossed that line. And I'm no longer alone."
Edward Snowden,Moderate,I think the most important idea is to remember that there have been times throughout American history where what is right is not the same as what is legal.
Edward Snowden,Moderate,"Sometimes to do the right thing, you have to break a law. And the key there is in terms of civil disobedience. You have to make sure that what you're risking, what you're bringing onto yourself, does not serve as a detriment to anyone else. It doesn't hurt anybody else."
Edward Snowden,Moderate,No system of mass surveillance has existed in any society that we know of to this point that has not been abused.
Edward Snowden,Moderate,"The NSA has built an infrastructure that allows it to intercept almost everything. With this capability, the vast majority of human communications are automatically ingested without targeting. If I wanted to see your emails or your wife's phone, all I have to do is use intercepts. I can get your emails, passwords, phone records, credit cards."
Edward Snowden,Moderate,"If an NSA, FBI, CIA, DIA, etc analyst has access to query raw SIGINT databases, they can enter and get results for anything they want. Phone number, email, user id, cell phone handset id (IMEI), and so on - it's all the same."
Edward Snowden,Moderate,I don't see myself as a hero because what I'm doing is self-interested: I don't want to live in a world where there's no privacy and therefore no room for intellectual exploration and creativity.
Edward Snowden,Moderate,"I have been a systems engineer, systems administrator, a senior adviser for the Central Intelligence Agency, a solutions consultant and a telecommunications information systems officer."
Edward Snowden,Moderate,"I can't in good conscience allow the U.S. government to destroy privacy, internet freedom and basic liberties for people around the world with this massive surveillance machine they're secretly building."
Edward Snowden,Moderate,There can be no faith in government if our highest offices are excused from scrutiny - they should be setting the example of transparency.
Edward Snowden,Moderate,"Being a patriot doesn't mean prioritizing service to government above all else. Being a patriot means knowing when to protect your country, knowing when to protect your Constitution, knowing when to protect your countrymen, from the violations of and encroachments of adversaries. And those adversaries don't have to be foreign countries."
Edward Snowden,Moderate,I've been a spy for almost all of my adult life - I don't like being in the spotlight.
Edward Snowden,Moderate,"I did not seek to sell U.S. secrets. I did not partner with any foreign government to guarantee my safety. Instead, I took what I knew to the public so what affects all of us can be discussed by all of us in the light of day, and I asked the world for justice."
Edward Snowden,Moderate,You could watch entire villages and see what everyone was doing. I watched NSA tracking people's Internet activities as they typed. I became aware of just how invasive U.S. surveillance capabilities had become. I realized the true breadth of this system. And almost nobody knew it was happening.
Edward Snowden,Moderate,"Congress hasn't declared war on the countries - the majority of them are our allies - but without asking for public permission, NSA is running network operations against them that affect millions of innocent people. And for what? So we can have secret access to a computer in a country we're not even fighting?"
Edward Snowden,Moderate,"Even if you're not doing anything wrong, you are being watched and recorded."
Edward Snowden,Moderate,"I do agree that when it comes to cyber warfare, we have more to lose than any other nation on earth."
Edward Snowden,Moderate,"I'm an engineer, not a politician."
Edward Snowden,Moderate,I understand that I will be made to suffer for my actions.
Edward Snowden,Moderate,"Bathtub falls and police officers kill more Americans than terrorism, yet we've been asked to sacrifice our most sacred rights for fear of falling victim to it."
Edward Snowden,Moderate,The only time you can be completely free from risk is when you're in prison.
Edward Snowden,Moderate,"For me, in terms of personal satisfaction, the mission's already accomplished. I already won. As soon as the journalists were able to work, everything that I had been trying to do was validated. Because, remember, I didn't want to change society. I wanted to give society a chance to determine if it should change itself."
Edward Snowden,Moderate,"I grew up with the understanding that the world I lived in was one where people enjoyed a sort of freedom to communicate with each other in privacy, without it being monitored, without it being measured or analyzed or sort of judged by these shadowy figures or systems, any time they mention anything that travels across public lines."
Edward Snowden,Moderate,"What we've seen over the last decade is we've seen a departure from the traditional work of the National Security Agency. They've become sort of the national hacking agency, the national surveillance agency. And they've lost sight of the fact that everything they do is supposed to make us more secure as a nation and a society."
Edward Snowden,Moderate,America is a fundamentally good country. We have good people with good values who want to do the right thing. But the structures of power that exist are working to their own ends to extend their capability at the expense of the freedom of all publics.
Edward Snowden,Moderate,You can't come forward against the world's most powerful intelligence agencies and be completely free from risk.
Maureen Dowd,Moderate,"Eric Schmidt looks innocent enough, with his watercolor blue eyes and his tiny office full of toys and his Google campus stocked with volleyball courts and unlocked bikes and wheat-grass shots and cereal dispensers and Haribo Gummi Bears and heated toilet seats and herb gardens and parking lots with cords hanging to plug in electric cars."
Maureen Dowd,Moderate,"Obama sees himself as such a huge change that he can be cautious about other societal changes. But what he doesn't realize is that legalizing gay marriage is like electing a black president. Before you do it, it seems inconceivable. Once it's done, you can't remember what all the fuss was about."
Maureen Dowd,Moderate,My eating habits were so bad for many years that I didn't actually know the intricacies of making a salad.
Maureen Dowd,Moderate,"Digital platforms are worthless without content. They're shiny sacks with bells and whistles, but without content, they're empty sacks. It is not about pixels versus print. It is not about how you're reading. It is about what you're reading."
Maureen Dowd,Moderate,"And as far as doing God's work, I think the bankers who took government money and then gave out obscene bonuses are the same self-interested sorts Jesus threw out of the temple."
Maureen Dowd,Moderate,"Why can't Google, which likes to see itself as a 'Don't Be Evil' benevolent force in society, just write us a big check for using our stories, so we can keep checks and balances alive and continue to provide the search engine with our stories?"
Maureen Dowd,Moderate,"One must not attempt to justify them, but rather to sense their nature simply and clearly."
Maureen Dowd,Moderate,"I'm into clothes, but in a way that's related to wanting to walk into a film noir movie. You know, I love to go to vintage stores, but mostly it's stuff that I don't have anywhere to wear... I don't have the life that goes with the clothes."
Maureen Dowd,Moderate,"Everybody is continuously connected to everybody else on Twitter, on Facebook, on Instagram, on Reddit, e-mailing, texting, faster and faster, with the flood of information jeopardizing meaning. Everybody's talking at once in a hypnotic, hyper din: the cocktail party from hell."
Maureen Dowd,Moderate,"The Clintons want to do big worthy things, but they also want to squeeze money from rich people wherever they live on planet Earth, insatiably gobbling up cash for politics and charity and themselves from the same incestuous swirl."
Maureen Dowd,Moderate,"Celebrity distorts democracy by giving the rich, beautiful, and famous more authority than they deserve."
Maureen Dowd,Moderate,"As blue chips turn into penny stocks, Wall Street seems less like a symbol of America's macho capitalism and more like that famous Jane Austen character Mrs. Bennet, a flibbertigibbet always anxious about getting richer and her 'poor nerves.'"
Maureen Dowd,Moderate,"Obama invented himself against all odds and repeated parental abandonment, and he worked hard to regiment his emotions. But now that can come across as imperviousness and inflexibility. He wants to run the agenda; he doesn't want the agenda to run him. Once you become president, though, there's no way to predict what your crises will be."
Maureen Dowd,Moderate,"Wooing the press is an exercise roughly akin to picnicking with a tiger. You might enjoy the meal, but the tiger always eats last."
Maureen Dowd,Moderate,"Reagan didn't socialize with the press. He spent his evenings with Nancy, watching TV with dinner trays. But he knew that to transcend, you can't condescend."
Maureen Dowd,Moderate,"The Obamas, especially Michelle, have radiated the sense that Americans do not appreciate what they sacrifice by living in a gilded cage. They've forgotten Rule No. 1 of politics: No one sheds tears for anyone lucky enough to live at the White House."
Maureen Dowd,Moderate,Maybe Obama was not even the person he was waiting for.
Maureen Dowd,Moderate,"As a woman, I know that if I write about another woman, it will be perceived as a catfight."
Maureen Dowd,Moderate,"When I started as a White House correspondent, there was a lot of criticism from guys saying, 'She focuses too much on the person but not enough on policy.' I never understood that argument at all. I just didn't agree with the premise."
Maureen Dowd,Moderate,It takes a lot of adrenaline and fear to make me actually write.
Maureen Dowd,Moderate,I find having a column a very difficult form of journalism. I'm not a natural like Tom Friedman and Anna Quindlen.
Maureen Dowd,Moderate,"I feel like I owe it to the readers to try to pull back the veil and give them the honest version of what's going on. But it's not more fun. If Obama, as he does sometimes already, gets a little snippy with me about something I've written, you're thinking, 'Oh God, the president of the United States is already annoyed with me.'"
Maureen Dowd,Moderate,"The C.E.O. of Google doesn't look like a Dick Cheney World Domination sort whom we should worry about as Google ogles our houses, our oceans, our foibles, our movements and our tastes."
Maureen Dowd,Moderate,Washington is a place where people have always been suspect of style and overt sexuality. Too much preening signals that you're not up late studying cap-and-trade agreements.
Maureen Dowd,Moderate,"Journalism, spooked by rumors of its own obsolescence, has stopped believing in itself. Groans of doom alternate with panicked happy talk."
Leon Kass,Moderate,"Grappling with real-life concerns — from cloning to courtship, from living authentically to dying with dignity — has made me a better reader. Reciprocally, reading in a wisdom-seeking spirit has helped me greatly in my worldly grapplings. Not being held to the usual dues expected of a licensed humanist — professing specialized knowledge or publishing learned papers — I have been able to wander freely and most profitably in all the humanistic fields. I have come to believe that looking honestly for the human being, following the path wherever it leads, may itself be an integral part of finding it. A real question, graced by a long life to pursue it among the great books, has been an unadulterated blessing."
Leon Kass,Moderate,"Fifty years ago, when Europeans and Americans still distinguished high culture from popular culture, and when classical learning was still highly esteemed in colleges and universities, C. P. Snow delivered his famous Rede Lecture at Cambridge University, ""The Two Cultures and the Scientific Revolution."" Snow did more than warn of the growing split between the old culture of the humanities and the rising culture of science. He took Britain's literary aristocracy to task for its dangerous dismissal of scientific and technological progress, which Snow believed offered the solutions to the world's deepest problems. In a vitriolic response to Snow, the literary critic F. R. Leavis defended the primacy of the humanities for a civilizing education, insisting that science must not be allowed to operate outside of the moral norms that a first-rate humanistic education alone could provide."
Leon Kass,Moderate,"In contrast to 50 years ago, few licensed humanists today embrace any view of the humanities that could in fact justify making them the centerpiece of a college curriculum."
Leon Kass,Moderate,"Diogenes … refuses to be taken in by complacent popular belief that we already know human goodness from our daily experience, or by confident professorial claims that we can capture the mystery of our humanity in ­definitions. But mocking or not, and perhaps speaking better than he knew, Diogenes gave elegantly simple expression to the humanist quest for self-knowledge: I seek the human being — my human being, your human being, our humanity. In fact, the embellished version of Diogenes' question comes to the same thing: To seek an honest man is, at once, to seek a human being worthy of the name, an honest-to-goodness exemplar of the idea of humanity, a truthful and truth-speaking embodiment of the animal having the power of articulate speech."
Leon Kass,Moderate,"[Medical] science was indeed powerful, but its self-understanding left much to be desired. It knew the human parts in ever-finer detail, but it concerned itself little with the human whole.  … The art of healing does not inquire into what health is, or how to get and keep it: The word ""health"" does not occur in the index of the leading textbooks of medicine. To judge from the way we measure medical progress, largely in terms of mortality ­statistics and defeats of deadly diseases, one gets the unsettling impression that the tacit goal of medicine is not health but rather bodily immortality, with every death today regarded as a tragedy that future medical research will prevent."
Leon Kass,Moderate,"According to Lewis, the dehumanization threatened by the mastery of nature has, at its deepest cause, less the emerging biotechnologies that might directly denature bodies and flatten souls, and more the underlying value-neutral, soulless, and heartless accounts that science proffers of living nature and of man. By expunging from its account of life any notion of soul, aspiration, and purpose, and by setting itself against the evidence of our lived experience, modern biology ultimately undermines our self-understanding as creatures of freedom and dignity, as well as our inherited teachings regarding how to live — teachings linked to philosophical anthropologies that science has now seemingly dethroned."
Leon Kass,Moderate,"I turned to [Aristotle's] De Anima (On Soul), expecting to get help with understanding the difference between a living human being and its corpse, relevant for the difficult task of determining whether some persons on a respirator are alive or dead. I discovered to my amazement that Aristotle has almost no interest in the difference between the living and the dead. Instead, one learns most about life and soul not, as we moderns might suspect, from the boundary conditions when an organism comes into being or passes away, but rather when the organism is at its peak, its capacious body actively at work in energetic relation to—that is, in ""souling""—the world: in the activities of sensing, imagining, desiring, moving, and thinking. Even more surprising, in place of our dualistic ideas of soul as either a ""ghost in the machine,"" invoked by some in order to save the notion of free will, or as a separate immortal entity that departs the body at the  time of death, invoked by others to address the disturbing fact of apparent personal extinction, Aristotle offers a powerful and still defensible holistic idea of soul as the empowered and empowering ""form of a naturally organic body."" ""Soul"" names the unified powers of aliveness, awareness, action, and appetite that living beings all manifest.This is not mysticism or superstition, but biological fact, albeit one that, against current prejudice, recognizes the difference between mere material and its empowering form. Consider, for example, the eye. The eye's power of sight, though it ""resides in"" and is inseparable from material, is not itself material. Its light-absorbing chemicals do not see the light they absorb. Like any organ, the eye has extension, takes up space, can be touched and grasped by the hand. But neither the power of the eye — sight — nor sight's activity — seeing — is extended, ­touchable, ­corporeal. Sight and seeing are powers and activities of soul, relying on the underlying materials but not reducible to them. Moreover, sight and seeing are not knowable through our objectified science, but only through lived experience. A blind neuroscientist could give precise quantitative details regarding electrical discharges in the eye produced by the stimulus of light, and a blind craftsman could with instruction fashion a good material model of the eye; but sight and seeing can be known only by one who sees."
Leon Kass,Moderate,"For most Americans, ethical matters are usually discussed either in utilitarian terms of weighing competing goods or balancing benefits and harms, looking to the greatest good for the greatest number, or in moralist terms of rules, rights and duties, ""thou shalts"" and ""thou shalt nots."" Our public ethical discourse is largely negative and ""other-directed"": We focus on condemning and avoiding misconduct by, or on correcting and preventing injustice to, other people, not on elevating or improving ourselves. How liberating and encouraging, then, to encounter an ethics focused on the question, ""How to live?"" and that situates what we call the moral life in the larger context of human ­flourishing. How eye-opening are arguments that suggest that happiness is not a state of passive feeling but a life of fulfilling activity, and especially of the unimpeded and excellent activity of our specifically human powers—of acting and making, of thinking and  learning, of loving and befriending. How illuminating it is to see the ethical life discussed not in terms of benefits and harms or rules of right and wrong, but in terms of character, and to understand that good character, formed through habituation, is more than holding right opinions or having ""good values,"" but is a binding up of heart and mind that both frees us from enslaving passions and frees us for fine and beautiful deeds. How encouraging it is to read an account of human life—the only such account in our philosophical tradition—that speaks at length and profoundly about friendship, culminating in the claim that the most fulfilling form of friendship is the sharing of speeches and thoughts."
Leon Kass,Moderate,"Perhaps the most remarkable feature of Aristotle's teaching concerns the goals of ethical conduct. Unlike the moralists, Aristotle does not say that morality is a thing of absolute worth or that the virtuous person acts in order to adhere to a moral rule or universalizable maxim. And unlike the utilitarians, he does not say morality is good because it contributes to civic peace or to private gain and reputation. Instead, Aristotle says over and over again that the ethically excellent human being acts for the sake of the noble, for the sake of the beautiful. The human being of fine character seeks to display his own fineness in word and in deed, to show the harmony of his soul in action and the rightness of his choice in the doing of graceful and gracious deeds. The beauty of his action has less to do with the cause that his action will serve or the additional benefits that will accrue to himself or another — though there usually will be such benefits. It has, rather, everything to do with showing forth in action the beautiful soul at work, exactly as a fine dancer dances for the sake of dancing finely. As the ballerina both exploits and resists the downward pull of gravity to rise freely and gracefully above it, so the person of ethical virtue exploits and elevates the necessities of our embodied existence to act freely and gracefully above them. Fine conduct is the beautiful and intrinsically fulfilling being-at-work of the harmonious or excellent soul."
Leon Kass,Moderate,"With his attractive picture of human flourishing, Aristotle offers lasting refuge against the seas of moral relativism. Taking us on a tour of the museum of the virtues — from courage and moderation, through liberality, magnificence, greatness of soul, ambition, and gentleness, to the social virtues of friendliness, truthfulness, and wit — and displaying each of their portraits as a mean between two corresponding vices, ­Aristotle gives us direct and immediate experience in seeing the humanly beautiful. Anyone who cannot see that courage is more beautiful than cowardice or rashness, or that liberality is more beautiful than miserliness or prodigality, suffers, one might say, from the moral equivalent of color-blindness."
Leon Kass,Moderate,"To act nobly, a noble heart is not enough. It needs help from a sharp mind. Though the beginnings of ethical virtue lie in habituation, starting in our youth, and though the core of moral virtue is the right-shaping of our loves and hates, by means of praise and blame, reward and punishment, the perfection of character finally requires a certain perfection of the mind."
Leon Kass,Moderate,"Prudence is … more than mere shrewdness. If not tied down to the noble and just ends that one has been habituated to love, the soul's native power of cleverness can lead to the utmost knavery."
Leon Kass,Moderate,"I have discovered in the Hebrew Bible teachings of righteousness, humaneness, and human dignity—at the source of my parents' teachings of mentschlichkeit—undreamt of in my prior philosophizing. In the idea that human beings are equally God-like, equally created in the image of the divine, I have seen the core principle of a humanistic and democratic politics, respectful of each and every human being, and a necessary correction to the uninstructed human penchant for worshiping brute nature or venerating mighty or clever men. In the Sabbath injunction to desist regularly from work and the flux of getting and spending, I have discovered an invitation to each human being, no matter how lowly, to step outside of time, in imitatio Dei, to contemplate the beauty of the world and to feel gratitude for its—and our—existence. In the injunction to honor your father and your mother, I have seen the foundation of a dignified family life, for each of us  the nursery of our humanization and the first vehicle of cultural transmission. I have satisfied myself that there is no conflict between the Bible, rightly read, and modern science, and that the account of creation in the first chapter of Genesis offers ""not words of information but words of appreciation,"" as Abraham Joshua Heschel put it: ""not a description of how the world came into being but a song about the glory of the world's having come into being""—the recognition of which glory, I would add, is ample proof of the text's claim that we human beings stand highest among the creatures. And thanks to my Biblical studies, I have been moved to new attitudes of gratitude, awe, and attention. For just as the world as created is a world summoned into existence under command, so to be a human being in that world—to be a mentsch—is to live in search of our ­summons. It is to recognize that we are here not by choice or on account of merit, but  as an undeserved gift from powers not at our disposal. It is to feel the need to justify that gift, to make something out of our indebtedness for the opportunity of existence. It is to stand in the world not only in awe of its and our existence but under an obligation to answer a call to a worthy life, a life that does honor to the special powers and possibilities—the divine-likeness—with which our otherwise animal existence has been, no thanks to us, endowed."
Jonathan Haidt,Moderate,"The lesson Buddha and Marcus Aurelius had taught centuries earlier: ""Nothing is miserable unless you think it so; and on the other hand, nothing brings happiness unless you are content with it""."
Jonathan Haidt,Moderate,"Gossip and reputation make sure that what comes around - a person who is cruel will find that the others are cruel back to him, and a person who is kind will find others are kind in return. Gossip paired with reciprocity allow karma to work here on earth, not in the next life. As long as everyone plays tit-for-tat augmented by gratitude, vengeance, and gossip, the whole system should work beautifully."
Jonathan Haidt,Moderate,"Science is a smorgasbord, and Google will guide you to the study that's right for you."
Jonathan Haidt,Moderate,"And so, uh, uh, a wonderful book, um, American Grace by, uh, Putnam and Campbell, um, uh, is the ultimate authority on this. What they find is that, um, it doesn’t matter what religion you are, and it doesn’t matter what you believe, if you are part of a religious community, then on average, you’re a better citizen, you give more to charity. Religion does bring out the good in people. Now, secular people can be perfectly good, too, but on average, they give less and they give less of their time. So, I’d like to think that I simply, as a secular atheist scientist, followed the evidence, and it showed me that I was wrong in thinking that religion was evil."
Jonathan Haidt,Moderate,"I know this is the question period, but there’s a quote here which is just so relevant. I hope I can — I hope I can read it. It’s from an article by, uh, Yossi Klein Halevi on Pesach Jews versus Purim Jews. So he talks about these — there’s these two threads, these two strands among — among — among Jews in — actually, there’s more in Israel. But it’s here, too. So he — I just love this, and it fits so well with — with — with The Righteous Mind. He says, uh, Jewish history speaks to our generation in the voice of two Biblical commands to remember."
Jonathan Haidt,Moderate,"So, we’ve reached the state that George Will described. He said there’s a certain kind of liberal that wants diversity in everything, except thought. And so, we do need certain kinds of diversity. But the key to remember is that, diversity by its very nature is divisive, and so, what’s the function of your group? If your group needs cohesion, you don’t want diversity. If your group needs good, clear thinking and you want people to challenge your prejudices, then you need it. So in the academic world, we need that kind of diversity, and we don’t have it."
Jonathan Haidt,Moderate,"I think we went through — in America, at least, we went through a period in the ’60s and ’70s when the education establishment became extremely liberal, and part of that is a flirtation with relativism. And a resistance — it’s horrible to think of — of adults telling kids what’s right and wrong. What a terrible thing. That’s oppression. And so we created these sort of value-free spaces, which conveys a value, which is that there’s no right or wrong, everyone decides for themselves. Uh, everyone’s opinion is equal. You should say your opinion and then you get a lot of incivility. What I would like to see is a revamped civics curriculum where we teach very explicitly the long tradition of left-right. Um, we teach what each side is. You can’t say right about it, that’s my language. But, um, you teach what each side is concerned about. You know, very much like the line here. Uh, both are essential. One without the other creates an unbalanced American civic order."
Ian Bremmer,Moderate,The great thing about partisanship is you don't have to spend time understanding the issues to know what side you're on.
Ian Bremmer,Moderate,Money talks: financing the periphery buys Berlin a leading role recasting the eurozone governance framework. The recent ‘six pack’ of legislative reforms hints at what’s to come: institutionalized fiscal discipline and an excessive imbalances procedure that protects against future moral hazard. The whole eurozone will tilt toward the German surplus model as we get more fiscal integration and more German leverage.
Ian Bremmer,Moderate,"In China, the state controls the corporations, whereas in the United States, the corporations control the state."
Ian Bremmer,Moderate,"The G-Zero isn't aspirational, it's analytic. Unfortunately, it's also where we are."
Ian Bremmer,Moderate,Up until now Washington has worried that terrorists will become hackers. Perhaps we all should worry that hackers will become terrorists.
Ian Bremmer,Moderate,Authoritarian governments are now trying to ensure that the increasingly free flow of ideas and information through cyberspace fuels their economies without threatening their political power.
Ian Bremmer,Moderate,It's very clear to me–you do not want corporations captured by states. Equally you do not want states captured by corporations.
Ian Bremmer,Moderate,"I believe that if you go and ask a chief executive of a Goldman Sachs or a BP, and they answer you honestly...they want monopolies, they want government subsidies, they want preferences – they're not interested in free markets."""
Ian Bremmer,Moderate,"Everyone's talked about Bank of America and Citigroup and the rest being too big to fail, but no, no, no.  The most important point...is that the US must be perceived to be too big to fail."
Ian Bremmer,Moderate,"It's not a third way between state capitalism and free markets, it is the free market way. Multi-national corporations should be the principal actors, but they should be properly regulated."
Ian Bremmer,Moderate,"In the last 21 months, if you've learnt anything, it's that the state is back. If the free market fails, it's not because it's been defeated by state capitalism; the only people that can defeat the free market is us, we're the only ones who can destroy it."
Ian Bremmer,Moderate,"When you're leaving your teenage kids alone, probably a good idea to let them know you're going to be checking in on them occasionally. I suspect Greenspan missed that part."
Ian Bremmer,Moderate,"State capitalism is about more than emergency government spending, implementation of more intelligent regulation, or a stronger social safety net. It’s about state dominance of economic activity for political gain."
Ian Bremmer,Moderate,"The great thing about the U.S. economy right now is that we are the smart kids in the stupid-kid class. America has fiscal problems and gridlock issues and polarity and partisanship in Congress -- and yet, compared to Japan and Europe, the U.S. looks great."
Ian Bremmer,Moderate,"The free market tide has now receded.  In its place has come state capitalism, a system in which the state functions as the leading economic actor and uses markets primarily for political gain."
Ian Bremmer,Moderate,"New York used to be the financial capital of the world. It's no longer even the financial capital of the U.S. For the moment, Washington is."
Ian Bremmer,Moderate,"India and China offer intriguing mirror images. Modern India has long been open politically and, until recently, closed economically. Modern China has opened economically, but remains politically closed. The comparison reveals that, while politics and economics can never fully be separated, political openness is a better guarantor of long-term stability than economic openness."
Ian Bremmer,Moderate,The developed world should neither shelter nor militarily destabilize authoritarian regimes—unless those regimes represent an imminent threat to the national security of other states. Developed states should instead work to create the conditions most favorable for a closed regime’s safe passage through the least stable segment of the J curve—however and whenever the slide toward instability comes. And developed states should minimize the risk these states pose the rest of the world as their transition toward modernity begins.
Ian Bremmer,Moderate,An emerging market is a country where politics matters at least as much as economics to the market.
Ian Bremmer,Moderate,"Political scientists don't work at banks—which is a problem. As political issues become more important for the markets, analysts at banks are asked all sorts of questions they don't have the ability to answer. And if you're getting paid to answer questions—as analysts at banks are—you never want to be in the position of saying you don't know."
Thomas Friedman,Moderate,"Only if you give the Palestinians something to lose is there a hope that they will agree to moderate their demands.… I believe that as soon as Ahmed has a seat in the bus, he will limit his demands."
Thomas Friedman,Moderate,"After two years of traveling almost exclusively to Western Europe and the Middle East, Poland feels like a geopolitical spa. I visited here for just three days and got two years of anti-American bruises massaged out of me. Get this: people here actually tell you they like America -- without whispering. What has gotten into these people? Have all their subscriptions to Le Monde Diplomatique expired? Haven't they gotten the word from Berlin and Paris? No, they haven't. In fact, Poland is the antidote to European anti-Americanism. Poland is to France what Advil is to a pain in the neck. Or as Michael Mandelbaum, the Johns Hopkins foreign affairs specialist, remarked after visiting Poland: ""Poland is the most pro-American country in the world -- including the United States."""
Thomas Friedman,Moderate,"Sooner or later, Mr. Bush argued, sanctions would force Mr. Hussein's generals to bring him down, and then Washington would have the best of all worlds: an iron-fisted Iraqi junta without Saddam Hussein."
Thomas Friedman,Moderate,"The hidden hand of the market will never work without a hidden fist. McDonald's cannot flourish without McDonnell Douglas, the designer of the F-15. And the hidden fist that keeps the world safe for Silicon Valley's technologies to flourish is called the US Army, Air Force, Navy and Marine Corps."
Thomas Friedman,Moderate,"The Golden Straitjacket is the defining political-economic garment of globalization. […] The tighter you wear it, the more gold it produces."
Thomas Friedman,Moderate,"We need to send the message that anyone who orders suicide bombings against Americans, or protects those who do, commits suicide himself. And U.S. marines will search every cave in Afghanistan to make that principle stick. You order, you die — absolutely, positively, you die."
Thomas Friedman,Moderate,"Reading Europe's press, it is really reassuring to see how warmly Europeans have embraced President Bush's formulation that an ""axis of evil"" threatens world peace. There's only one small problem. President Bush thinks the axis of evil is Iran, Iraq and North Korea, and the Europeans think it's Donald Rumsfeld, Dick Cheney and Condi Rice."
Thomas Friedman,Moderate,"You win the presidency by connecting with the American people's gut insecurities and aspirations. You win with a concept. The concept I'd argue for is ""neoliberalism."" More Americans today are natural neolibs, than neocons. Neoliberals believe in a muscular foreign policy and a credible defense budget, but also a prudent fiscal policy that balances taxes, deficit reduction and government services."
Thomas Friedman,Moderate,"We needed to go over there, basically, and take out a very big stick right in the heart of that world and burst that bubble.… What they [Muslims] needed to see was American boys and girls going house to house from Basra to Baghdad and basically saying ""Which part of this sentence don't you understand? You don't think we care about our open society? You think this bubble fantasy, we're just going to let it grow? Well, suck on this!"" That, Charlie, is what this war was about. We could have hit Saudi Arabia! It was part of that bubble. We could have hit Pakistan. We hit Iraq because we could."
Thomas Friedman,Moderate,"Now we've entered Globalization 3.0, and it is shrinking the world from size small to a size tiny."
Thomas Friedman,Moderate,"The first rule of holes is when you’re in one, stop digging. When you’re in three, bring a lot of shovels."
Thomas Friedman,Moderate,"One-party autocracy certainly has its drawbacks. But when it is led by a reasonably enlightened group of people, as China is today, it can also have great advantages. That one party can just impose the politically difficult but critically important policies needed to move a society forward in the 21st century."
Thomas Friedman,Moderate,The only engine big enough to impact Mother Nature is Father Greed.
Thomas Friedman,Moderate,Israel should really reflect on what's going on in Egypt. It does not want to be the Hosni Mubarak of the peace process.
Thomas Friedman,Moderate,"You really do have to wonder whether a few years from now we’ll look back at the first decade of the 21st century—when food prices spiked, energy prices soared, world population surged, tornados plowed through cities, floods and droughts set records, populations were displaced and governments were threatened by the confluence of it all—and ask ourselves: What were we thinking? How did we not panic when the evidence was so obvious that we’d crossed some growth/climate/natural resource/population redlines all at once?"
Thomas Friedman,Moderate,"The next six months in Iraq — which will determine the prospects for democracy-building there — are the most important six months in U.S. foreign policy in a long, long time."
Thomas Friedman,Moderate,"What I absolutely don't understand is just at the moment when we finally have a UN-approved Iraqi-caretaker government made up of — I know a lot of these guys — reasonably decent people and more than reasonably decent people, everyone wants to declare it's over. I don't get it. It might be over in a week, it might be over in a month, it might be over in six months, but what's the rush? Can we let this play out, please?"
Thomas Friedman,Moderate,"What we're gonna find out, Bob, in the next six to nine months is whether we have liberated a country or uncorked a civil war."
Thomas Friedman,Moderate,Improv time is over. This is crunch time. Iraq will be won or lost in the next few months. But it won't be won with high rhetoric. It will be won on the ground in a war over the last mile.
Thomas Friedman,Moderate,"That will become clear in the next few months as we see just what kind of minority the Sunnis in Iraq intend to be. If they come around, a decent outcome in Iraq is still possible, and we should stay to help build it. If they won't, then we are wasting our time. We should arm the Shiites and Kurds and leave the Sunnis of Iraq to reap the wind."
Thomas Friedman,Moderate,"I think we're in the end-game now…. I think we're in a six-month window here where it's going to become very clear and this is all going to pre-empt, I think, the next congressional election — that's my own feeling — let alone the presidential one."
Thomas Friedman,Moderate,"The only thing I am certain of is that in the wake of this election, Iraq will be what Iraqis make of it — and the next six months will tell us a lot. I remain guardedly hopeful."
Thomas Friedman,Moderate,"We've teed up this situation for Iraqis, and I think the next six months really are going to determine whether this country is going to collapse into three parts or more or whether it's going to come together."
Thomas Friedman,Moderate,"We're at the beginning of, I think, the decisive, I would say, six months in Iraq, OK, because I feel like this election — you know, I felt from the beginning Iraq was going to be ultimately, Charlie, what Iraqis make of it."
Thomas Friedman,Moderate,"I think that we're going to know after six to nine months whether this project has any chance of succeeding. In which case, I think the American people as a whole will want to play it out or whether it really is a fool's errand."
Thomas Friedman,Moderate,"I think we're in the end game there, in the next three to six months, Bob. We've got for the first time an Iraqi government elected on the basis of an Iraqi constitution. Either they're going to produce the kind of inclusive consensual government that we aspire to in the near term, in which case America will stick with it, or they're not, in which case I think the bottom's going to fall out."
Thomas Friedman,Moderate,I think we are in the end game. The next six to nine months are going to tell whether we can produce a decent outcome in Iraq.
Thomas Friedman,Moderate,"Can Iraqis get this government together? If they do, I think the American public will continue to want to support the effort there to try to produce a decent, stable Iraq. But if they don't, then I think the bottom is going to fall out of public support here for the whole Iraq endeavor. So one way or another, I think we're in the end game in the sense it's going to be decided in the next weeks or months whether there's an Iraq there worth investing in. And that is something only Iraqis can tell us."
Thomas Friedman,Moderate,"Well, I think that we're going to find out, Chris, in the next year to six months — probably sooner — whether a decent outcome is possible there, and I think we're going to have to just let this play out."
Peter Drucker,Moderate,"Morale in an organization does not mean that ""people get along together""; the test is performance not conformance."
Peter Drucker,Moderate,"Large organizations cannot be versatile.  A large organization is effective through its mass rather than through its agility.  Fleas can jump many times their own height, but not an elephant."
Peter Drucker,Moderate,"The world economy is not yet a community--not even an economic community...Yet the existence of the ""global shopping center"" is a fact that cannot be undone.  The vision of an economy for all will not be forgotten again."
Peter Drucker,Moderate,"If ""socialism"" is defined as ""ownership of the means of production""--and this is both the orthodox and the only rigorous definition--then the United States is the first truly Socialist country."
Peter Drucker,Moderate,"Whenever anything is being accomplished, it is being done, I have learned, by a monomaniac with a mission."
Peter Drucker,Moderate,"Few companies that installed computers to reduce the employment of clerks have realized their expectations; most computer users have found that they now need more, and more expensive clerks, even though they call them ""operators"" or ""programmers."
Peter Drucker,Moderate,"All economic activity is by definition ""high risk.""  And defending yesterday--that is, not innovating--is far more risky than making tomorrow."
Peter Drucker,Moderate,"Ideas are somewhat like babies--they are born small, immature, and shapeless.  They are promise rather than fulfillment.  In the innovative company executives do not say, ""This is a damn-fool idea.""  Instead they ask, ""What would be needed to make this embryonic, half-baked, foolish idea into something that makes sense, that is an opportunity for us?"""
Peter Drucker,Moderate,"The citizen of today in every developed country is typically an employee. He works for one of the institutions. He looks to them for his livelihood. He looks to them for his opportunities. He looks to them for access to status and function in society, as well as for personal fulfillment and achievement."
Peter Drucker,Moderate,Without institution there is no management. But without management there is no institution.
Peter Drucker,Moderate,We will have to learn to lead people rather then to contain them.
Peter Drucker,Moderate,A primary task of management in the developed countries in the decades ahead will be to make knowledge productive.
Peter Drucker,Moderate,A management decision is irresponsible if it risks disaster this year for the sake of a grandiose future.
Peter Drucker,Moderate,The only thing we know about the future is that it is going to be different.
Peter Drucker,Moderate,"The prevailing economic theory of business enterprise and behavior, the maximization of profit—which is simply a complicated way of phrasing the old saw of buying cheap and selling dear—may adequately explain how Richard Sears operated. But it cannot explain how Sears, Roebuck or any other business enterprise operates, nor how it should operate. The concept of profit maximization is, in fact, meaningless."
Peter Drucker,Moderate,Profit is not a cause but a result-
Peter Drucker,Moderate,Success always obsoletes the very behavior that achieved it.
Peter Drucker,Moderate,The basic definition of the business and of its purpose and mission have to be translated into objectives.
Peter Drucker,Moderate,It is better to pick the wrong priority than none at all.
Peter Drucker,Moderate,Decisions exist only in the present.
Peter Drucker,Moderate,The fault is in the system and not in the men.
Peter Drucker,Moderate,"A success that has outlived its usefulness may, in the end, be more damaging than failure."
Peter Drucker,Moderate,One cannot hire a hand; the whole man always comes with it.
Peter Drucker,Moderate,"Frederick W. Taylor was the first man in recorded history who deemed work deserving of systematic observation and study. On Taylor's 'scientific management' rests, above all, the tremendous surge of affluence in the last seventy-five years which has lifted the working masses in the developed countries well above any level recorded before, even for the well-to-do. Taylor, though the Isaac Newton (or perhaps the Archimedes) of the science of work, laid only first foundations, however. Not much has been added to them since – even though he has been dead all of sixty years."
Peter Drucker,Moderate,"As with every phenomenon of the objective universe, the first step toward understanding work is to analyze it."
Peter Drucker,Moderate,"""Loafing"" is easy, but ""leisure"" is difficult."
Peter Drucker,Moderate,The first step toward making the worker achieving is to make work productive.
Peter Drucker,Moderate,"When Henry Ford said, ""The customer can have a car in any color as long as it's black,"" he was not joking."
Peter Drucker,Moderate,"A tool is not necessarily better because it is bigger. A tool is best if it does the job required with a minimum of effort, with a minimum of complexity, and with a minimum of power."
Peter Drucker,Moderate,"An employer has no business with a man's personality. Employment is a specific contract calling for a specific performance... Any attempt to go beyond that is usurpation.  It is immoral as well as an illegal intrusion of privacy.  It is abuse of power.  An employee owes no ""loyalty,"" he owes no ""love"" and no ""attitudes""--he owes performance and nothing else. .... The task is not to change personality, but to enable a person to achieve and to perform."
Peter Drucker,Moderate,The society of ]]organizations\\ is new-only seventy years ago employees were a small minority in every society.
Peter Drucker,Moderate,[[Management] has authority only as long as it performs.
Peter Drucker,Moderate,"It has been said, and only half in jest, that a tough, professionally led union is a great force for improving management performance. It forces the manager to think about what he is doing and to be able to explain his actions and behavior."
Peter Drucker,Moderate,"And no matter how serious an environmental problem the automobile poses in today's big city, the horse was dirtier, smelled worse, killed and maimed more people, and congested the streets just as much."
Peter Drucker,Moderate,"Wherever an impact can be eliminated by dropping the activity that causes it, this is therefore the best-indeed the only truly good-solution."
Peter Drucker,Moderate,The manager is a servant. His master is the institution he manages and his first responsibility must therefore be to it.
Peter Drucker,Moderate,We do not need more laws. No country suffers from a shortage of laws. We need a new model.
Peter Drucker,Moderate,The worker's effectiveness is determined largely by the way he is being managed.
Peter Drucker,Moderate,"To be a manager requires more than a title, a big office, and other outward symbols of rank. It requires competence and performance of a high order."
Peter Drucker,Moderate,A superior who works on his own development sets an almost irresistible example.
Peter Drucker,Moderate,The purpose of an organization is to enable common men to do uncommon things.
Peter Drucker,Moderate,"Executives do many things in addition to making decisions. But only executives make decisions. The first managerial skill is, therefore, the making of effective decisions."
Peter Drucker,Moderate,One has to make a decision when a condition is likely to degenerate if nothing is done.
Peter Drucker,Moderate,"Communication is always ""propaganda."" The emitter always wants ""to get something across."""
Peter Drucker,Moderate,"The tool user, provided the tool is made well, need not, and indeed should not, know anything about the tool."
Peter Drucker,Moderate,The first organization structure in the modern West was laid down in the canon law of the Catholic Church eight hundred years ago.
Peter Drucker,Moderate,"One reason for the tremendous increase in health-care costs in the U.S. is managerial neglect of the ""hotel services"" by the people who dominate the hospital, such as doctors and nurses."
Peter Drucker,Moderate,The rule should be to minimize the need for people to get together to accomplish anything.
Peter Drucker,Moderate,"Top management as a function and as a structure was first developed by Georg von Siemens (1839-1901) in Germany between 1870 and 1880, when he designed and built the Deutsche Bank and made it, within a very few years, into continental Europe's leading and most dynamic financial institution."
Peter Drucker,Moderate,There is a point at which a transformation has to take place.
Peter Drucker,Moderate,"""Value added"" is a meaningless concept for a retail business , for a bank, for a life insurance company, and for any other business which is not primarily engaged in manufacturing."
Peter Drucker,Moderate,"Absolute size by itself is no indicator of success and achievement, let alone of managerial competence. Being the right size is."
Peter Drucker,Moderate,There is a point of complexity beyond which a business is no longer manageable.
Peter Drucker,Moderate,"Financial ""synergy""  is a will-o'-the-wisp.It looks good on paper, but it fails to work out in practice."
Peter Drucker,Moderate,"The world political system is till based on the concept of the national sovereign state. For the first time therefore, in three hundred years economy and sovereignty are becoming divorced from each other."
Peter Drucker,Moderate,Organizationally what is required - and evolving - is systems management.
Peter Drucker,Moderate,"Growth as a goal, to repeat, is delusion. William James, the American philosopher, talked of the ""bitch goddess success."" A philosopher of business today might well talk of the ""bitch goddess growth."""
Peter Drucker,Moderate,"There is every indication that the period ahead will be an innovative one, one of rapid change in technology, society, economy, and institutions."
Peter Drucker,Moderate,"One of the great movements in my lifetime among educated people is the need to commit themselves to action. Most people are not satisfied with giving money; we also feel we need to work. That is why there is an enormous surge in the number of unpaid staff, volunteers. The needs are not going to go away. Business is not going to take up the slack, and government cannot."
Peter Drucker,Moderate,"Sören Kierkegaard has another answer: human existence is possible as existence not in despair, as existence not in tragedy; it is possible as existence in faith... Faith is the belief that in God the impossible is possible, that in Him time and eternity are one, that both life and death are meaningful."
Peter Drucker,Moderate,"For the social ecologist language is not ""communication.""  It is not just ""message.""  It is substance.  It is the cement that holds humanity together.  It creates community and communication. ...Social ecologists need not be ""great"" writers; but they have to be respectful writers, caring writers."
Peter Drucker,Moderate,"That people even in well paid jobs choose ever earlier retirement is a severe indictment of our organizations -- not just business, but government service, the universities. These people don't find their jobs interesting."
Peter Drucker,Moderate,"...what's absolutely unforgivable is the financial benefit top management people get for laying off people.  There is no excuse for it.  No justification.  This is morally and socially unforgivable, and we will pay a heavy price for it."
Peter Drucker,Moderate,"Thirty years from now the big university campuses will be relics. Universities won't survive. It's as large a change as when we first got the printed book.  Do you realize that the cost of higher education has risen as fast as the cost of health care? And for the middle-class family, college education for their children is as much of a necessity as is medical care—without it the kids have no future.  Such totally uncontrollable expenditures, without any visible improvement in either the content or the quality of education, means that the system is rapidly becoming untenable. Higher education is in deep crisis."
Peter Drucker,Moderate,"Universities won't survive. The future is outside the traditional campus, outside the traditional classroom. Distance learning is coming on fast."
Peter Drucker,Moderate,"...human beings need community. If there are no communities available for constructive ends, there will be destructive, murderous communities... Only the social sector, that is, the nongovernmental, nonprofit organization, can create what we now need, communities for citizens... What the dawning 21st century needs above all is equally explosive growth of the nonprofit social sector in building communities in the newly dominant social environment, the city."
Peter Drucker,Moderate,"...all earlier pluralist societies destroyed themselves because no one took care of the common good. They abounded in communities but could not sustain community, let alone create it."
Peter Drucker,Moderate,"Knowing Yourself ...We also seldom know what gifts we are not endowed with. We will have to learn where we belong, what we have to learn to get the full benefit from our strengths, where our weaknesses lie, what our values are. We also have to know ourselves temperamentally: ""Do I work well with people, or am I a loner? What am I committed to? And what is my contribution?"""
Peter Drucker,Moderate,"...the information revolution. Almost everybody is sure ...that it is proceeding with unprecedented speed; and ...that its effects will be more radical than anything that has gone before. Wrong, and wrong again. Both in its speed and its impact, the information revolution uncannily resembles its two predecessors ...The first industrial revolution, triggered by James Watt's improved steam engine in the mid-1770s...did not produce many social and economic changes until the invention of the railroad in 1829 ...Similarly, the invention of the computer in the mid-1940s, ...it was not until 40 years later, with the spread of the Internet in the 1990s, that the information revolution began to bring about big economic and social changes. ...the same emergence of the “super-rich” of their day, characterized both the first and the second industrial revolutions. ...These parallels are close and striking enough to make it almost certain that, as in the earlier industrial revolutions, the main effects of the information revolution on the next society still lie ahead."
Peter Drucker,Moderate,"This new knowledge economy will rely heavily on knowledge workers. ...the most striking growth will be in “knowledge technologists:” computer technicians, software designers, analysts in clinical labs, manufacturing technologists, paralegals. ...They are not, as a rule, much better paid than traditional skilled workers, but they see themselves as “professionals.” Just as unskilled manual workers in manufacturing were the dominant social and political force in the 20th century, knowledge technologists are likely to become the dominant social—-and perhaps also political—-force over the next decades."
Peter Drucker,Moderate,"Once a year ask the boss, ""What do I or my people do that helps you to do your job?"" and ""What do I or my people do that hampers you?"""
Peter Drucker,Moderate,"The subordinate's job is not to reform or reeducate the boss, not to make him conform to what the business schools or the management book say bosses should be like.  It is to enable a particular boss to perform as a unique individual."
Peter Drucker,Moderate,A manager's task is to make the strengths of people effective and their weakness irrelevant - and that applies fully as much to the manager's boss as it applies to the manager's subordinates
Peter Drucker,Moderate,"Keep the boss aware. Bosses, after all, are held responsible by their own bosses for the performance of their subordinates. They must be able to say: ""I know what Anne [or John] is trying to do."""
Peter Drucker,Moderate,Never underrate the boss! The boss may look illiterate. He may look stupid. But there is no risk at all in overrating a boss. If you underrate him he will bitterly resent it or impute to you the deficiency in brains and knowledge you imputed to him.
Peter Drucker,Moderate,"The postwar [WWII] GI Bill of Rights - and the enthusiastic response to  it on the part of America's veterans - signaled the shift to the knowledge society. Future historians may consider it the most important event of the twentieth century.We are clearly in the midst of this transformation; indeed, if history is any guide, it will not be completed until 2010 or 2020. But already it has changed the political, economic and moral landscape of the world."
Peter Drucker,Moderate,"That knowledge has become the resource, rather than a resource, is what makes our society ""post-capitalist."
Peter Drucker,Moderate,"In the 1950s, industrial workers had become the largest single group in every developed country, and unionized industrial workers in mass-production industry (which was then dominant everywhere) had attained upper-middle-class income levels. They had extensive job security, pensions, long paid vacations, and comprehensive unemployment insurance or ""lifetime employment."" Above all, they had achieved political power... Thirty-five years later, in 1990, industrial workers and their unions were in retreat. They had become marginal in numbers. Whereas industrial workers who make or move things had accounted for two fifths of the American work force in the 1950s, they accounted for less than one fifth in the early 1990s--that is, for no more than they had accounted for in 1900, when their meteoric rise began...  By the year 2000 or 2010, in every developed free-market country, industrial workers will account for no more than an eighth of the work force. Union power has been declining just as fast... By the year 2000 or 2010, in every developed free-market country, industrial workers will account for no more than an eighth of the work force. Union power has been declining just as fast."
Peter Drucker,Moderate,"The newly emerging dominant group is ""knowledge workers."" The very term was unknown forty years ago. (I coined it in a 1959 book, Landmarks of Tomorrow.) By the end of this century knowledge workers will make up a third or more of the work force in the United States--as large a proportion as manufacturing workers ever made up, except in wartime. The majority of them will be paid at least as well as, or better than, manufacturing workers ever were. And the new jobs offer much greater opportunities."
Peter Drucker,Moderate,"Increasingly, politics is not about ""who gets what, when, how"" but about values, each of them considered to be absolute. Politics is about ""the right to life""...It is about the environment.  It is about gaining equality for groups alleged to be oppressed...None of these issues is economic.  All are fundamentally moral."
Peter Drucker,Moderate,"This society in which knowledge workers dominate is in danger of a new ""class conflict"" between the large minority of knowledge workers and the majority of workers who will make their livings through traditional ways, either by manual work... or by service work. The productivity of knowledge work - still abysmally low - will predictably become the economic challenge of the knowledge society.  On it will depend the ability of the knowledge society to give decent incomes, and with them dignity and status, to non knowledge people."
Peter Drucker,Moderate,I think the growth industry of the future in this country and the world will soon be the continuing education of adults. ...I think the educated person of the future is somebody who realizes the need to continue to learn.  That is the new definition and it is going to change the world we live in and work in.
Peter Drucker,Moderate,"I would hope that American managers - indeed, managers worldwide - continue to appreciate what I have been saying almost from day one: that management is so much more than exercising rank and privilege, that it is much more than ""making deals."" Management affects people and their lives."
David Brooks,Moderate,"Almost nobody in the peace camp will stand up and say that Saddam Hussein is not a fundamental problem for the world. Almost nobody in that camp is willing even to describe what the world will look like if the peace camp's advice is taken and Saddam is permitted to remain in power in Baghdad, working away on his biological, chemical, and nuclear weapons programs... They are playing culture war, and they are disguising their eruptions as position-taking on Iraq, a country about which they haven't even taken the trouble to inform themselves. … For most in the peace camp, there is only the fog. The debate is dominated by people who don't seem to know about Iraq and don't care. Their positions are not influenced by the facts of world affairs."
David Brooks,Moderate,"As good, naive Americans, we think that if only we can show the world the seriousness of the threat Saddam poses, then they will embrace our response. In our good, innocent way, we assume that in persuading our allies we are confronted with a problem of understanding. But suppose we are confronted with a problem of courage? Perhaps the French and the Germans are simply not brave enough to confront Saddam. Or suppose we are confronted with a problem of character? Perhaps the French and the Germans understand the risk Saddam poses to the world order. Perhaps they know that they are in danger as much as anybody. They simply would rather see American men and women--rather than French and German men and women--dying to preserve their safety. Far better, from this cynical perspective, to signal that you will not take on the terrorists--so as to earn their good will amidst the uncertain times ahead."
David Brooks,Moderate,"I do suspect that the decision to pursue this confrontational course emerges from Bush's own nature. He is a man of his word. He expects others to be that way too. It is indisputably true that Saddam has not disarmed. If people are going to vote against a resolution saying Saddam has not disarmed then they are liars. Bush wants them to do it in public, where history can easily judge them. Needless to say, neither the French nor the Russians nor the Chinese believe that honesty has anything to do with diplomacy. They see the process through an entirely different lens."
David Brooks,Moderate,"So now we stand at an epochal moment. The debate is over. The case has gone to the jury, and the jury is history. Events will soon reveal who was right, Bush or Chirac."
David Brooks,Moderate,"The political history of the 20th century is the history of social-engineering projects executed by well-intentioned people that began well and ended badly. There were big errors like communism, but also lesser ones, like a Vietnam War designed by the best and the brightest, urban renewal efforts that decimated neighborhoods, welfare policies that had the unintended effect of weakening families and development programs that left a string of white elephant projects across the world.These experiences drove me toward the crooked timber school of public philosophy: Michael Oakeshott, Isaiah Berlin, Edward Banfield, Reinhold Niebuhr, Friedrich Hayek, Clinton Rossiter and George Orwell. These writers — some left, some right — had a sense of epistemological modesty. They knew how little we can know. They understood that we are strangers to ourselves and society is an immeasurably complex organism. They tended to be skeptical of technocratic, rationalist planning and suspicious of schemes to reorganize society from the top down."
David Brooks,Moderate,Our moral and economic system is based on individual responsibility. It’s based on the idea that people have to live with the consequences of their decisions. This makes them more careful deciders. This means that society tends toward justice — people get what they deserve as much as possible.
David Brooks,Moderate,"The nation’s economy is not just the sum of its individuals. It is an interwoven context that we all share. To stabilize that communal landscape, sometimes you have to shower money upon those who have been foolish or self-indulgent. The greedy idiots may be greedy idiots, but they are our countrymen. And at some level, we’re all in this together. If their lives don’t stabilize, then our lives don’t stabilize."
David Brooks,Moderate,The message of the summoned life is that you don’t need to panic if you don’t yet know what you want to do with your life. But you probably want to throw yourselves into circumstances where the summons will come.
David Brooks,Moderate,"...list of different spheres of her life: reflection, creativity, community, intimacy, and service."
David Brooks,Moderate,Britain is blessed with a functioning political culture. It is dominated by people who live in London and who have often known each other since prep school. This makes it gossipy and often incestuous.
David Brooks,Moderate,"The journalists at Charlie Hebdo are now rightly being celebrated as martyrs on behalf of freedom of expression, but let’s face it. If they had tried to publish their satirical newspaper on any American university campus over the last two decades it wouldn't have lasted 30 seconds. Student and faculty groups would have accused them of hate speech. The administration would have cut financing and shut them down."
David Brooks,Moderate,"Americans may laud Charlie Hebdo for being brave enough to publish cartoons ridiculing the Prophet Muhammad, but, if Ayaan Hirsi Ali is invited to campus, there are often calls to deny her a podium. So this might be a teachable moment. As we are mortified by the slaughter of those writers and editors in Paris, it’s a good time to come up with a less hypocritical approach to our own controversial figures, provocateurs and satirists. The first thing to say, I suppose, is that whatever you might have put on your Facebook page yesterday, it is inaccurate for most of us to claim, Je Suis Charlie Hebdo, or I Am Charlie Hebdo. Most of us don’t actually engage in the sort of deliberately offensive humor that that newspaper specializes in."
David Brooks,Moderate,About once a month I run across a person who radiates an inner light. These people can be in any walk of life. They seem deeply good. They listen well. They make you feel funny and valued. You often catch them looking after other people and as they do so their laugh is musical and their manner is infused with gratitude. They are not thinking about what wonderful work they are doing. They are not thinking about themselves at all.
David Brooks,Moderate,"Donald Trump just has more courage. Whatever you might think of him, and I don’t think much of him, but he has more courage than his opponents... He's a marketing genius who offers no substance. And people either got pushed into subprime loans by Trump Mortgage, or they got suckered into racking up huge credit card debt to buy courses on Trump University, and they were left high and dry when those things went belly up. And so that’s a story that I think can be told. In a country which is feeling betrayed, he is a mass and serial betrayer... Given the numbers now, it’s very hard to see he could win, given the huge numbers of Americans, the vast majority of Americans who say they could not support the guy. And I still find it hard to believe that somebody as policy-thin and as knowledge-thin would very well — he might be able to wear well with the electorate that we have."
David Brooks,Moderate,"Are we really here? Is this really happening? Is this America? Are we a great country talking about trying to straddle the world and create opportunity in this country? It's just mind-boggling. And we have sort of become acculturated, because this campaign has been so ugly. We have become acculturated to sleaze and unhappiness that you just want to shower from every 15 minutes. The Trump comparison of the looks of the wives, he does have, over the course of his life, a consistent misogynistic view of women as arm candy, as pieces of meat. It’s a consistent attitude toward women which is the stuff of a diseased adolescent. And so we have seen a bit of that show up again. But if you go back over his past, calling into radio shows bragging about his affairs, talking about his sex life in public, he is childish in his immaturity. And his — even his misogyny is a childish misogyny. And that’s why I do not think Republicans, standard Republicans, can say, yes, I’m going to vote for this guy because he’s our nominee. He’s of a different order than your normal candidate. And this whole week is just another reminder of that... The odd thing about his whole career and his whole language, his whole world view is there is no room for love in it. You get a sense of a man who received no love, can give no love, so his relationship with women, it has no love in it. It’s trophy. And his relationship toward the world is one of competition and beating, and as if he’s going to win by competition what other people get by love. And so you really are seeing someone who just has an odd psychology unleavened by kindness and charity, but where it’s all winners and losers, beating and being beat. And that’s part of the authoritarian personality, but it comes out in his attitude towards women."
David Brooks,Moderate,"Donald Trump betrays. It can start with Trump University, where Trump betrayed schoolteachers and others who dreamed of building a better life for themselves."
David Brooks,Moderate,"[Donald Trump is] clearly racist... It fits into a pattern that we have seen since the beginning of his career, maybe through his father's career, frankly. There's been a consistency, pattern of harsh judgment against black and brown people."
David Brooks,Moderate,"Trump has almost nothing but a national story, which he returned to with a vengeance in the closing days of this year’s campaigns. It happens to be a cramped, reactionary and racial story. Trump effectively defines America as a white ethnic nation that is being overrun by aliens — people who don’t look like us, don’t share our values, who threaten our safety and take our jobs... [B]lood-and-soil nationalism overturns the historical ideal of American nationalism, which was pluralistic — that we are united by creed, not blood; that our common culture is defined by a shared American dream... Republicans have flocked to Trump’s cramped nationalism and abandoned their creedal story. That’s left the Democrats with a remarkable opportunity. They could seize the traditional American national story, or expand it to gather in the unheard voices, while providing a coherent, unifying vehicle to celebrate the American dream. And yet what have we heard from the Democrats? Crickets. What is the Democratic national story? A void."
David Brooks,Moderate,"After 30 years of multiculturalism, the bonds of racial solidarity trump the bonds of national solidarity.... [Democrats] do not have a strong story to tell about what we owe to other Americans, how we define our national borders and what binds us as Americans."
David Brooks,Moderate,"If you don’t offer people a positive, uplifting nationalism, they will grab the nasty one. History and recent events have shown us that."
David Brooks,Moderate,"If conservatism is ever to recover it has to achieve two large tasks. First, it has to find a moral purpose large enough to displace the lure of blood-and-soil nationalism. Second, it has to restore standards of professional competence and reassert the importance of experience, integrity and political craftsmanship. When you take away excellence and integrity, loyalty to the great leader is the only currency that remains."
Mark Satin,Moderate,The participants in the Second American Experiment have differing views of the First Experiment.  Some ... think it was a noble and brilliant experiment that is no longer sustainable.  Others ... think it was ignoble and wrong-headed from the start. ...  But the larger point – and the point that concerns us in this book – is that all participants in the Second Experiment are convinced that the First Experiment is no longer wise.  Here are some of the questions they've been asking:
Mark Satin,Moderate,"Because of the consensus on full employment, certain observations rarely break in to the public political dialogue.  These include: ... that even if full employment were possible, it might not be desirable in the new kind of society we are entering; and that even today, most of the useful work we do is not structured into paying ""jobs."""
Mark Satin,Moderate,"There is an emerging alternative to the big government-big business-big labor kind of ""rebuilding"" of America.  Its basic strategy is to get investment capital out of the hands of the big banks ... and into the hands of the communities.  Its greatest champions are neither politicians nor oppositional political groups, but – remarkably – bankers; or, more specifically, those few bankers who describe themselves as ""community development bankers."""
Mark Satin,Moderate,"Typically, ""progressives"" and change agents have demanded more money for social programs.  But today it's clear that the way we do things needs to change – and that if things were done more appropriately, more humanely, more intelligently, we might end up spending less on social programs than we do now.  Take education ... .  Over the last 10 years or so, a handful of education reformers have ... come up with exciting new ideas for changing the ways our schools are administered, the ways our children are taught, and the kinds of things they're taught.  And nearly all their ideas would cost no more than our current practices cost.  Some would actually save us money!"
Mark Satin,Moderate,"Thoughtful conservatives are not unattracted to holistic providers' emphasis on self-care and personal responsibility.  Thoughtful liberals and socialists are not unattracted to holistic providers' emphasis on environmental factors in disease.   But neither left nor right has ever acknowledged that the holistic health movement carries within it the seeds of a whole new approach to a national health care program for this country, with its own coherent ideas about finance, delivery, research and education."
Mark Satin,Moderate,"The U.S. could seek to acquire the moral authority to act as a healing presence in the world.  Our role could be to adjudicate disputes, support ""all-win"" solutions to international problems, and make our resources available to people, groups and governments that were willing to help themselves. ...  We could seek to play a catalytic, rather than a dominant, role in the Third World.  We could pay more attention to what the poor themselves want.  We could concentrate less on funding massive projects, and more on building up the capacity of indigenous institutions to do for themselves.  We could pay more attention to the context in which our aid is given.  This may be a highly unconventional approach to foreign aid.  But it could also be highly popular.  It combines the traditional left's emphasis on equity and the traditional right's emphasis on self-help."
Mark Satin,Moderate,"This article was written for those who believe that the spectrum of opinion is more like a circle than a straight line.  It was written for those who believe that each of the different perspectives on terrorism has something to add to the whole.  In this view, coming up with a solution to terrorism is not a matter of adopting ""correct"" political beliefs.  It is, rather, a matter of learning to listen – really, listen – to everyone in the circle of humankind.  And to take their insights into account.  For everyone has a true and unique perspective on the whole.  Fifteen years ago the burning question was, How radical are you?  Hopefully someday soon the question will be, How much can you synthesize?  How much do you dare to take in?"
Mark Satin,Moderate,"Slowly at first, and now in growing numbers, from kitchen tables to nonprofit organizations to corporate boards, Americans are turning away from the politics of bickering and division and working on a new politics – a politics of creative problem solving.  It would have us take the best from the political left and right, and come up with something new that serves us all.  It would have us come up with solutions to public issues that are thoughtful enough, clever enough, and inclusive enough, to bring people and factions together."
Mark Satin,Moderate,"Politics is stuck in America today.  We need to break through the stale debates and self-serving non-solutions that are coming from both political parties, and we need to do it without ending up at the ""mushy middle,"" where there's no direction or principle.  That's where the radical middle comes in.  The radical middle is an attempt to break out of that stuckness in a fresh and principled way.  It consists of everyone who's bold and yet savvy enough to want idealism without illusions – a fresh and hopeful vision that doesn't fall into the trap, as many leftists do, of looking back to chestnuts from the counter-culture of the Sixties and Seventies. ..."
Mark Satin,Moderate,"The radical middle movement is phenomenally diverse.  But if you look at what everyone who might be called radical middle is saying and doing, you'll discover we share four goals.  I like to call them our Four Key Values:"
Mark Satin,Moderate,"Put these values together and you can see how the radical middle draws holistically on our entire political tradition.  Each value is a sort of updated version of an aspect of our 18th-century political heritage – liberty, equality, happiness, and fraternity, respectively."
Mark Satin,Moderate,"The caring person is the carrier of radical middle politics. ...  To see this clearly, it helps to look at three competing archetypes of the Good American. ...  Self-aggrandizers are ambitious strivers.  They get their primary identity from their occupation and the social status associated with that. ...  Self-sacrificing individuals are not personally ambitious – and when they are they try to hide it.  They get their primary identity from their ethnic, racial, or religious affiliation or sexual orientation. ...  Caring persons may or may not be personally ambitious, but they want their jobs to provide them with opportunities for personal growth and social relevance.  They get their primary identity from the lifestyle choices they make and the values they consciously choose.  They are equally committed to personal freedom and social justice, self-development and social change."
Mark Satin,Moderate,"If Thomas Jefferson is the liberals' (and libertarians') Founding Father, and George Washington is the conservatives', and Tom Paine is the radicals', then Benjamin Franklin is the radical middle's.  He was extremely practical. ...  At the same time, he was extraordinarily creative. ...  He was a man of principle. ... Yet synthesis and healing were an art with him.  He became our most ardent champion of religious tolerance.  And better than anyone at the Constitutional Convention, he was able to get the warring factions and wounded egos to transcend their differences and come up with a Constitution for the ages."
Mark Satin,Moderate,"If done right, biotechnology can enhance the entire world's well-being.  And that's why the radical middle is drawn to it.  One of our key value commitments is maximizing human potential. ...  Although the biotech debate may seem hopelessly polarized, a third voice – nuanced, hopeful, adult – has begun to be heard.  Call it the voice of cautious optimism.  Call it the voice of the radical middle."
Mark Satin,Moderate,We need mandatory national service so we will all take part in performing the collective tasks we know are ours.  We need mandatory national service because duty and honor are as necessary to us as oxygen and water.  That's what I was trying to tell the Army in my application to the JAG corps at the age of 52.  And that's what the radical middle needs to tell the American people.
Mark Satin,Moderate,"For most of the 20th century, small radical groups were seen as social change incubators.  The various socialist and communist parties, the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), and a thousand local or regional variants were where it was at. ...  But we live in a knowledge society now – a world that depends increasingly on professional expertise and special skills.  If we want to change that world, we'll need to be even more expert and skilled than those who'd defend the status quo.  That's why professional schools, not radical groups, are our social change incubators now.  And radical middle social change agents know it.  Many of the most idealistic and dedicated of them have been pouring into our graduate schools, including our great medical, business, and law schools."
Mark Satin,Moderate,"This new edition of New Age Politics – stripped-down and updated for the 21st century – has been launched to reassert, in thunder, that the movements of our time have generated a perspective or ideology of their own. It's as coherent an ideology as liberalism or Marxism – and far more relevant to our needs as life-loving human beings on a finite planet. In other words, New Age Politics gives us a common ground on which to stand."
Mark Satin,Moderate,"I'd do some things differently if I were writing this book from scratch today. I would be more nuanced in the history sections. I'd be less inclined to see everyone at ""Self-development Stages Six and Seven"" as the cat's meow. Above all, perhaps, I would emphasize that some of what I call ""monolithic institutions"" are evolving (i.e., are being shoved by us) in a positive direction today – so I'd bend over backward to encourage immersion as well as resistance. We need transformers everywhere, inside ""The System"" as well as outside it. But even with such ""flaws"" (mainly the flaws of youth), I think New Age Politics is still the best single expression of the new politics as a coherent, systemic, integral whole."
Mark Satin,Moderate,"Lorian Press could have simply reprinted the first edition of New Age Politics, from 1976. I liked its length (only 50,000 words), it covered almost all the ground I do here, and I wanted to prove to you that the perspective I synthesized – the perspective of many people in the social change movements of today – goes back to the Nixon-Ford era, when the traditional left and right both lost their way. It was not spontaneously generated by any single social movement of the last 40 years. Rather, all our movements have been re-inventing, adding to, and deepening a perspective that already in the 1970s stood as our only real alternative to More Of The Same."
Mark Satin,Moderate,"What Keys, Laszlo, Falk, and many other New Agers arte proposing … could be called a ""planetary guidance system."" ...  A planetary guidance system would regulate the world, not run it. ...  Does this chapter strike you as impossibly idealistic?  In 2011, Parag Khanna of the New America Foundation argued that a decentralized planetary guidance system is currently arising outside the confines of the United Nations.  To Khanna, it consists of an ever-changing (depending on the issue) array of representatives of governments, non-governmental organizations (nonprofits), corporations, super-wealthy individuals, and universities.  Although Khanna, a buttoned-down radical centrist, doesn't use terms like ""synergic power"" and ""win-win approach,"" it is obvious from his text that that's exactly how (some of) these entities are beginning to operate in the global context."
Mark Satin,Moderate,"Few political authors employ the term New Age anymore; however, ... many use equivalents or near-equivalents such as communitarian, evolutionary, green, holistic, integral, post-socialist, radical centrist, spiritual, transformational, and transpartisan, and that's OK. Perhaps the new generation, not being ego-attached to any of these, will finally come up with a term we can all say ""Aha!"" to."
Mark Satin,Moderate,"These 100 books do not agree on everything – and that's OK too. You don't need total agreement when you're an open-hearted, decentralist, experimentalist New Ager. After the Prison and its institutions lose their hold over us, you won't even want such agreement. Within the parameters of certain life-affirming values, you'll want a hundred flowers to bloom. Synergy is all; cooperation and coordination is all."
Arianna Huffington,Moderate,"America is a country ready to be taken—in fact, longing to be taken—by political leaders ready to restore democracy and trust to the political process."
Arianna Huffington,Moderate,Our current obsession with creativity is the result of our continued striving for immortality in an era when most people no longer believe in an afterlife.
Arianna Huffington,Moderate,"When your house is burning down, you don't worry about the remodeling."
Arianna Huffington,Moderate,"Isn't it really, really offensive that our president is simply not telling us the truth about what's happening in Iraq? For me, that was one of the most offensive things about the entire convention. There was no truth-telling there. It was all a complete masquerade. Both about Iraq and about the domestic economy... The problem is not that the people think the Democratic Party is not sufficiently hawkish; it's the problem that they are not sufficiently bold and sufficiently visionary. They need to go back to Bobby Kennedy and 1968. That was the last time that a Democrat truly inspired red states and blue states and everybody and the millions of people out there."
Stephen Walt,Moderate,"Right now, [the Israel lobby] has become a subject that you can barely talk about without people immediately trying to silence you, immediately trying to discredit you in various ways, such that no American politicians will touch this, which is quite remarkable when you consider how much Americans argue about every other controversial political issue. To me, this is a national security priority for us, and we ought to be having an open debate on it, not one where only one side is being heard from."
Stephen Walt,Moderate,"So here’s the puzzle: Realist advice has performed better than its main rivals over the past two-and-a-half decades, yet realists are largely absent from prominent mainstream publications."
Stephen Walt,Moderate,"So here’s my challenge to Rupert Murdoch, Jeff Bezos, the Sulzberger family, and anyone else who runs a major media operation: Why not hire a realist? If you’re looking for some suggestions, how about Paul Pillar, Chas Freeman Jr., Robert Blackwill, Steve Clemons, Michael Desch, Steve Chapman, John Mearsheimer, Barry Posen, Andrew Bacevich, or Daniel Larison? Give one of them a weekly column, and then you could genuinely claim to be offering your readers a reasonably comprehensive and balanced range of opinion on international affairs. I mean: What are you folks so afraid of?"
Fareed Zakaria,Moderate,"On almost every issue involving postwar Iraq, [Bush's] assumptions and policies have been wrong. This strange combination of arrogance and incompetence has not only destroyed the hopes for a new Iraq. It has had the much broader effect of turning the United States into an international outlaw."
Fareed Zakaria,Moderate,"Strip away the usual hot air, and bin Laden's audiotape is the sign of a seriously weakened man."
Fareed Zakaria,Moderate,"America washes its dirty linen in public. When scandals such as this one hit, they do sully America's image in the world. But what usually also gets broadcast around the world is the vivid reality that the United States forces accountability and punishes wrongdoing, even at the highest levels."
Tibor R. Machan,Moderate,"Politicians are leaches, mostly."
Tibor R. Machan,Moderate,The institution of taxation is not a civilized but a barbaric method to fund anything... it amounts to... a gross violation of human liberty.
Tibor R. Machan,Moderate,"This right to life, this right to liberty, and this right to pursue one’s happiness is unabashedly individualistic, without in the slightest denying at the same time our thoroughly social nature.   It’s only that our social relations, while vital to us all, must be chosen—that is what makes the crucial difference."
Tibor R. Machan,Moderate,"Without a market in which allocations can be made in obedience to the law of supply and demand, it is difficult or impossible to funnel resources with respect to actual human preferences and goals."
Tibor R. Machan,Moderate,"To Marx any talk of rights possessed by people equally, unalienably, absolutely, and universally would have to await the communist epoch when all persons will have reached a common nature, total equality and perfection. Until then people are in a state of incompletion and imperfection, incapable of justifying equal human rights."
Tibor R. Machan,Moderate,"[The media] assume, in the way they address politicians or report on social problems, that whatever is important to society must be a matter of public or state concern."
Tibor R. Machan,Moderate,[T]here is little doubt that only a totalitarian government aims to take on every possible concern of the citizenry.
Tibor R. Machan,Moderate,"[C]oercive human interactions [are] destructive, even where the coercion is urged from honorable motives, and advocates confining  the use of physical force in human relations to instances of the administration of justice understood as the protection and maintenance of individual (negative) human rights."
Tibor R. Machan,Moderate,"While individualism was once widely hailed in Britain and especially the United States, today it is deemed amoral and heartless. The individualist viewpoint is unable to promise honestly that everyone will eventually be completely well-off. Critics find this defeatist and insist that ‘we must do better’ while calling upon the forces of the state to see that we do."
Tibor R. Machan,Moderate,"If welfare and equality are to be primary aims of law, some people must necessarily possess a greater power of coercion in order to force redistribution of material goods. Political power alone should be equal among human beings; yet striving for other kinds of equality absolutely requires political inequality."
Tibor R. Machan,Moderate,"Regulatory policies are inherently redistributive; that is, they involve the seizure of earned income for purposes of allocating this income in ways the government’s policymakers believe are more important than do those whose income has been seized."
Tibor R. Machan,Moderate,"If one behaved as a good citizen or a charitable person simply because one was dreadfully scared of the state placing one in jail, one would not be a good citizen or person but barely more than a circus animal."
Tibor R. Machan,Moderate,"Ethics requires the kind of personal reflection, in the end, that no one else can do decisively for any individual."
Chris Matthews,Moderate,"There's actually a network that I could think of that [does not ask difficult questions] for a living, which is tell the people at home the same answer all the time, because it makes them feel good. And they don't like hearing arguments on that network, the people that watch it. There are people out there that — there was a great scene at the end of Carnal Knowledge — remember that old movie — where Jack Nicholson is going to the hooker, and he wants it exactly the same every time. And when she— when Rita Moreno, who played the hooker, said something just a little bit different in their normal sort of business they did, and he couldn't do it. They want it exactly the same way, these people who watch Fox. Every night they want it the same way. They can't do it if it's not exactly the same way."
Chris Matthews,Moderate,"The period between 9/11 and [the invasion of] Iraq was not a good time for America. There wasn't a robust discussion of what we were doing.  If we stop trying to figure out the other side, we've given up. The person on the other side is not evil. They just have a different perspective. The smartest people understand the enemy's point of view, because they understand what's driving them."
Chris Matthews,Moderate,"I have to tell you, you know, it's part of reporting this case, this election, the feeling most people get when they hear Barack Obama's speech. My, I felt this thrill going up my leg. I mean, I don't have that too often. No, seriously. It's a dramatic event. He speaks about America in a way that has nothing to do with politics. It has to do with the feeling we have about our country. And that is an objective assessment."
David Rockefeller,Moderate,Courting Peggy McGrath provided me with a very pleasant diversion and eventually with the most important relationship of my life.
David Rockefeller,Moderate,"If the disagreement was strong enough, we could end up pretty close to the borderline of incivility."
David Rockefeller,Moderate,"I don't recall that I have said — and I don't think that I really feel — that we need a world government. We need governments of the world that work together and collaborate. But, I can't imagine that there would be any likelihood — or even that it would be desirable — to have a single government elected by the people of the world."
David Rockefeller,Moderate,"There have been people — ever since I've had any kind of position in the world — who have accused me of being ruler of the world. I have to say that I think for the large part, I would have to decide to describe them as crack pots. It makes no sense whatsoever, and isn't true, and won't be true, and to raise it as a serious issue seems to me to be irresponsible."
David Rockefeller,Moderate,"I think that one of the things that is needed is the fact that I don't think enough people in high positions in our country accept the importance of our world role with sufficient gravity. In other words, I think the tendency, because of politics and getting elected, is to stress local issues; and of course, they are important. But, I would like to see more of the leaders of our country spend more time traveling for one thing, getting to know the world, and studying history. To me, one of the sad things about our country is that our leadership — to a greater extent than I would like — is more concerned about very domestic issues than they are about our relations in the world."
David Rockefeller,Moderate,"I think that that has to be related to the problems within our own country. I was reading in the papers today that there's a grave concern about what our role should be, how it should be handled, and how we should better manage our own domestic economy. And I think that this is becoming a serious issue. And it's gonna have to be addressed by any politicians who wish to be re-elected. They have to see that the issue of our economy and what influences it is better understood and more successfully addressed."
David Rockefeller,Moderate,"I think that the best hope for peace and prosperity in the world is greater cooperation among nations, which in turn will be produced if both our governments and the people of our countries travel more and get to know each other better."
Peter Thiel,Moderate,"I remain committed to the faith of my teenage years: to authentic human freedom as a precondition for the highest good. I stand against confiscatory taxes, totalitarian collectives, and the ideology of the inevitability of the death of every individual. For all these reasons, I still call myself ""libertarian."" ... But I must confess that over the last two decades, I have changed radically on the question of how to achieve these goals. Most importantly, I no longer believe that freedom and democracy are compatible... The 1920s were the last decade in American history during which one could be genuinely optimistic about politics. Since 1920, the vast increase in welfare beneficiaries and the extension of the franchise to women — two constituencies that are notoriously tough for libertarians — have rendered the notion of ""capitalist democracy"" into an oxymoron."
Peter Thiel,Moderate,"Gay marriage can’t be a partisan issue because as long as there are partisan issues or cultural issues in this country, you’ll have trench warfare like on the western front in World War I. You’ll have lots of carnage and no progress."
Peter Thiel,Moderate,"Most of our political leaders are not engineers or scientists and do not listen to engineers or scientists. Today a letter from Einstein would get lost in the White House mail room, and the Manhattan Project would not even get started; it certainly could never be completed in three years. I am not aware of a single political leader in the U.S., either Democrat or Republican, who would cut health-care spending in order to free up money for biotechnology research — or, more generally, who would make serious cuts to the welfare state in order to free up serious money for major engineering projects. ... Men reached the moon in July 1969, and Woodstock began three weeks later. With the benefit of hindsight, we can see that this was when the hippies took over the country, and when the true cultural war over Progress was lost. Today's aged hippies no longer understand that there is a difference between the election of a black president and the creation of cheap solar energy; in their minds, the movement towards greater civil rights parallels general progress everywhere. Because of these ideological conflations and commitments, the 1960s Progressive Left cannot ask whether things actually might be getting worse."
Peter Thiel,Moderate,"The university system in 2014, it's like the Catholic Church circa 1514... You have this priestly class of professors that doesn't do very much work; people are buying indulgences in the form of amassing enormous debt for the sort of the secular salvation that a diploma represents. And what I think is also similar to the 16th century is that the Reformation will come largely from the outside."
Peter Thiel,Moderate,"It’s good to test yourself and develop your talents and ambitions as fully as you can and achieve greater success; but I think success is the feeling you get from a job well done, and the key thing is to do the work."
Peter Thiel,Moderate,"[The media] never takes [Trump] seriously, but it always takes him literally. I think a lot of the voters who vote for Trump take Trump seriously, but not literally."
Peter Thiel,Moderate,"Confirm [the age of Apple is over]. We know what a smartphone looks like and does. It's not the fault of Tim Cook, but it's not an area where there will be any more innovation."
Josh Marshall,Moderate,"In the popular political imagination we're familiar with the neocons as conniving militarists, masters of intrigue and cabals, graspers for the oil supplies of the world, and all the rest. But here we have them in what I suspect is the truest light: as college kid rubes who head out for a weekend in Vegas, get scammed out of their money by a two-bit hustler on the first night and then get played for fools by a couple hookers who leave them naked and handcuffed to their hotel beds."
Josh Marshall,Moderate,Authoritarianism and secrecy breed incompetence; the two feed on each other. It's a vicious cycle. Governments with authoritarian tendencies point to what is in fact their own incompetence as the rationale for giving them yet more power.
Josh Marshall,Moderate,"If you think back to the Swift Boat debacle of 2004, the surface issue was John Kerry's honesty and bravery as a sailor in Vietnam. Far more powerful, however, was the meta-message: George Bush slaps John Kerry around and Kerry either can't or won't hit back. For voters concerned with security and the toughness of their leaders, that's a devastating message — and one that has little or nothing to do with the truth of the surface charges. Someone who can't fight for himself certainly can't fight for you. At the time I called it the ""Republicans' bitch-slap theory of electoral politics."""
Josh Marshall,Moderate,"To the president the Democrats should be saying, Double or Nothing is Not a Foreign Policy.The great bulk of the public doesn't believe this president any more when he tries to gin up a phony crisis. They don't believe he'd have much of an idea of how to deal with a real one. Enough of the lies. Enough of the incompetence and failure.No buying into another of the president's phony crises."
Josh Marshall,Moderate,"With all the efforts now to disassociate President Bush from conservatism, I am starting to believe that conservatism itself — not the political machine, mind you, but the ideology — is heading toward that misty land-over-the-ocean where ideologies go after they've shuffled off this mortal coil. Sort of like the way post-Stalinist lefties used to say, ""You can't say Communism's failed. It's just never really been tried.""But as it was with Communism, so with conservatism. When all the people who call themselves conservatives get together and run the government, they're on the line for it. Conservative president. Conservative House. Conservative Senate.What we appear to be in for now is the emergence of this phantom conservatism existing out in the ether, wholly cut loose from any connection to the actual people who are universally identified as the conservatives and who claim the label for themselves.We can even go a bit beyond this though. The big claim now is that President Bush isn't a conservative because he hasn't shrunk the size of government and he's a reckless deficit spender.But let's be honest: Balanced budgets and shrinking the size of government hasn't been part of conservatism — or to be more precise, Movement Conservatism — for going on thirty years. The conservative movement and the Republican party are the movement and party of deficit spending. And neither has any claim to any real association with limited or small government. Just isn't borne out by any factual record or political agenda. Not in the Reagan presidency, the Bush presidency or the second Bush presidency. The intervening period of fiscal restraint comes under Clinton."
Josh Marshall,Moderate,"There's this old line the wise folks in Washington have that ""it's not the crime, but the cover-up.""But only fools believe that. It's always about the crime. The whole point of the cover-up is that a full revelation of the underlying crime is not survivable."
Josh Marshall,Moderate,The president just seems to be living in some sort of alternative universe populated by the failed gods of his narcissism and vainglory.
Josh Marshall,Moderate,Primitive animals will sometimes keep chattering or twitching their muscles even after their heads have been cut off.  And that's probably the best analogy today to the president's continuing enunciation of his policies.
Jeffrey D. Sachs,Moderate,"We are in the process of utterly wrecking the planet by burning fossil fuels and thereby raising Earth’s temperature. We are now experiencing higher temperatures than in any decade of the past 10,000 years, and the temperature continues to rise.  As a result, humanity faces the risk of a catastrophic multimeter sea level rise at the current or slightly warmer temperature."
Jeffrey D. Sachs,Moderate,"Enter the Green New Deal. It endorses the science... We’re not talking about a bit less emissions; we're talking about a phaseout of emissions by 2050 in order to have a fighting chance to hold Earth’s temperature rise to 1.5-degrees Celsius above the pre-industrial level, a rise that should not in any way be construed as “safe,” just potentially not catastrophic."
Jeffrey D. Sachs,Moderate,"How do we get to zero by 2050, not only in the U.S. but also in Europe, China, India and the rest of the world?  We need to move rapidly to zero emissions while keeping the energy system functioning robustly and reliably during the transition. It’s a massive transplant operation requiring the greatest skills of our top engineers and power-grid operators."
Jeffrey D. Sachs,Moderate,"As with every great engineering challenge our nation has faced — the Erie Canal, the 20th-century power grid, the Interstate Highway System, the civil aviation system and the moonshot — we need bold timelines, clear milestones, breakthrough engineering and public-sector leadership.   No doubt, when properly regulated and guided by engineering plans, the private sector will do its part with excellence and timeliness."
Jeffrey D. Sachs,Moderate,"The US foreign policy establishment had rhetorically justified America’s presence in Syria as part of the war on the Islamic State (ISIS). With ISIS essentially defeated and dispersed, Trump called the establishment’s bluff. Yet suddenly, the establishment declared the actual reasons for the extended US presence. Trump’s move, it was charged, would hand geopolitical advantages to Syria’s Bashar al-Assad, Russia’s Vladimir Putin, and Iran’s Ali Khamenei, while imperiling Israel, betraying the Kurds, and causing other ills that are essentially unrelated to ISIS."
Jeffrey D. Sachs,Moderate,"This shift had the benefit of unmasking America’s real purposes in the Middle East, which are not so obscure, after all, except for the fact that mainstream pundits, US establishment strategists, and members of Congress tend not to mention them in polite company. The United States has not been in Syria (or Iraq, Afghanistan, Yemen, the Horn of Africa, Libya, and elsewhere in the region) because of ISIS. In fact, ISIS was more a consequence than a cause of the US presence. The real purposes have been US regional hegemony; and the real consequences have been disastrous."
Jeffrey D. Sachs,Moderate,"The truth about the US presence in Syria has rarely been told. But one can be sure that the US has had no scruples about democracy in Syria or elsewhere in the region, as its warm embrace of Saudi Arabia amply demonstrates. The US decided to promote an insurgency to overthrow Bashar al-Assad in 2011 not because the US and allies like Saudi Arabia longed for Syrian democracy, but because they decided that Assad was a hindrance to US regional interests. Assad’s sins were clear: he allied with Russia, and he received support from Iran."
Jeffrey D. Sachs,Moderate,"The Paris accord assumes that each government consults with its own country’s engineers to devise a national energy strategy, with each of the 193 UN member states essentially producing a separate plan... Global engineering systems require global coordination. ...Both the scale and reliability of... globally connected high-tech systems are astounding, and depend on solutions implemented internationally, not country by country."
Jeffrey D. Sachs,Moderate,"The transition to renewable energy can be greatly accelerated if the world’s governments finally bring the engineers to the fore... I was recently on a panel with three economists and a senior business-sector engineer. After the economists spoke... the engineer spoke succinctly and wisely. “I don’t really understand what you economists were just speaking about, but I do have a suggestion... Tell us engineers the desired ‘specs’ and the timeline, and we’ll get the job done.” This is not bravado.... The next big act belongs to the engineers. Energy transformation for climate safety is our twenty-first-century moonshot."
Jeffrey D. Sachs,Moderate,"Down through the ages, presidents and princes around the world have been murderers and accessories to murder, as...documented in...masterwork Power and Morality. One of the... main findings was that the behavior of ruling groups tends to be more criminal and amoral than that of the people over whom they rule."
Jeffrey D. Sachs,Moderate,"Things like the proposed tech tax are actually a very good idea. The specific form of it is debatable, but the idea is that five companies are worth $3.5tn, basically because of network externalities and information monopolies, and therefore are absolutely right for efficient taxation... The marginal cost of production of AI is effectively zero. The ability to make these technologies available to the poorest countries at no cost is an evident option. So we should be taking special care to make sure that this revolution can reach everybody."
Jeffrey D. Sachs,Moderate,"The intensity of these storms...is rising because of climate change. This isn’t about the future – it’s about right now....The governments are not representing you properly right now. Because the planet is facing profound dangers, we’re all at risk, and our governments need to act. And they promised that they would act, and they’re not...we’re running out of time...because in Canberra and in Washington and in other places they are not representing the common interest at all. They’re representing a few big companies, but not the people."
Jeffrey D. Sachs,Moderate,"Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Netherlands, Germany – are the countries with the largest so-called social welfare states. They... have a degree of equality that is unmatched in other parts of the world... And people do want to go to work. The idea that this has taken away the work incentive is actually the opposite...a social welfare system does is enable people to live with dignity if they don’t have the means on their own.... We should have the decency to provide dignity for everybody."
Jeffrey D. Sachs,Moderate,"It’s a terrible blow for the world when countries as rich and talented and stable and well-off as this country doesn’t fulfil the global responsibility...in development aid... If we all did it, we would save millions of lives, we would have all the kids in school. They would be growing up to be productive members of their society, we wouldn’t have the mass refugee movements...  Donald  Trump’s  “America  First”  foreign  policy  represents  a new  and  vulgar  strain  of  American  exceptionalism... to  maintain  U.S.  military  dominance as  the  core  pillar  of  U.S.  foreign  policy."
Jeffrey D. Sachs,Moderate,"The world economy is pumping trillions of dollars into the accounts of a few thousand people. These riches should be directed first and foremost to end the millions of needless deaths caused by extreme poverty, and to educate the hundreds of millions of children who lack schooling. The billionaires would still have enough left over to indulge their longing for mega-yachts, personal space ships, private tropical islands, and other conspicuous consumption."
Jeffrey D. Sachs,Moderate,"...History is written by the rich, and so the poor get blamed for everything."""
Jeffrey D. Sachs,Moderate,"Deep down, if we really accept that their lives - African lives - are equal to ours, we would all be doing more to put the fire out. Its an uncomfortable truth."
Jeffrey D. Sachs,Moderate,...four very powerful corporate lobbies have repeatedly come out on top and turned our democracy into what might more accurately be called a corporatocracy.”
Jeffrey D. Sachs,Moderate,"The US plutocracy has declared war on sustainable development. Billionaires such as Charles and David Koch (oil and gas), Robert Mercer (finance), and Sheldon Adelson (casinos) play their politics for personal financial gain. They fund Republican politicians who promise to cut their taxes, deregulate their industries, and ignore the warnings of environmental science, especially climate science.”"
Jeffrey D. Sachs,Moderate,We need... a much more competent and honest government. Economic reform and political reform must go hand in hand. Without the one there cannot be the other.
Jeffrey D. Sachs,Moderate,"The Panama Papers opened yet another window on the global system of financial corruption, showing how political leaders and businesses use shell companies in secrecy havens like the British Virgin Islands and many US states to evade taxes and hide corruption and other crimes. Yet the system of corruption depends on another factor beyond secrecy, one that is perhaps even more important: impunity. Impunity means that the rich and powerful escape from punishment even when their malfeasance is in full view."
Jeffrey D. Sachs,Moderate,Impunity is epidemic in America. The rich and powerful get away with their heists in broad daylight. ... The Journal recently opposed the corruption sentence of former Virginia governor Bob McDonnell for taking large gifts and bestowing official favors — because everybody does it. And one of its columnists praised Panama for facilitating the ability of wealthy individuals to hide their income from “predatory governments” trying to collect taxes. No kidding.
Jeffrey D. Sachs,Moderate,"Von Hayek was wrong. In strong and vibrant democracies, a generous social-welfare state is not a road to serfdom but rather to fairness, economic equality and international competitiveness."
Jeffrey D. Sachs,Moderate,"America is losing its democracy as our politicians trade their votes for campaign contributions from the corporate lobbies. We have a corporatocracy rather than a democracy... The Wall Street Journal... is the leading print mouthpiece for the corporatocracy... America’s corporatocracy is governed by vested interests rather than moral or economic principles.... Americans today by large majorities support public education, Medicare, Social Security, help for the indigent, stronger regulation of the banks, and higher taxation of the rich.  The problem is... with the failure of our government to translate American values into American policies."
John Rawls,Moderate,"This is a long book, not only in pages."
John Rawls,Moderate,I am particularly grateful to Nozick for his unfailing help and encouragement during the last stages.
John Rawls,Moderate,"The concept of justice I take to be defined, then, by the role of its principles in assigning rights and duties and in defining the appropriate division of social advantages. A conception of justice is an interpretation of this role."
John Rawls,Moderate,It may be expedient but it is not just that some should have less in order that others may prosper.
John Rawls,Moderate,"A conception of justice cannot be deduced from self evident premises or conditions on principles; instead, its justification is a matter of the mutual support of many considerations, of everything fitted together into one coherent view."
John Rawls,Moderate,"Indeed, it is tempting to suppose that it is self evident that things should be so arranged so as to lead to the most good."
John Rawls,Moderate,An individual who finds that he enjoys seeing others in positions of lesser liberty understands that he has no claim whatever to this enjoyment.
John Rawls,Moderate,"An intuitionist conception of justice is, one might say, but half a conception."
John Rawls,Moderate,We may suppose that everyone has in himself the whole form of a moral conception.
John Rawls,Moderate,"Intuitionism is not constructive, perfectionism is unacceptable."
John Rawls,Moderate,Our concern is solely with the basic structure of society and its major institutions and therefore with the standard cases of social justice.
John Rawls,Moderate,"The first statement of the two principles reads as follows. First: each person is to have an equal right to the most extensive basic liberty compatible with a similar liberty for others. Second: social and economic inequalities are to be arranged so that they are both(a)reasonably expected to be to everyone's advantage, and (b) attached to positions and offices open to all."
John Rawls,Moderate,In all sectors of society there should be roughly equal prospects of culture and achievement for everyone similarly motivated and endowed. The expectations of those with the same abilities and aspirations should not be affected by their social class.
John Rawls,Moderate,"A scheme is unjust when the higher expectations, one or more of them, are excessive. If these expectations were decreased, the situation of the less favored would be improved."
John Rawls,Moderate,"The even larger difference between rich and poor makes the latter even worse off, and this violates the principle of mutual advantage."
John Rawls,Moderate,In justice as fairness society is interpreted as a cooperative venture for mutual advantage.
John Rawls,Moderate,"We may reject the contention that the ordering of institutions is always defective because the distribution of natural talents and the contingencies of social circumstance are unjust, and this injustice must inevitably carry over to human arrangements. Occasionally this reflection is offered as an excuse for ignoring injustice, as if the refusal to acquiesce in injustice is on a par with being unable to accept death. The natural distribution is neither just nor unjust; nor is it unjust that persons are born into society at some particular position. These are simply natural facts. What is just and unjust is the way that institutions deal with these facts. Aristocratic and caste societies are unjust because they make these contingencies the ascriptive basis for belonging to more or less enclosed and privileged social classes. The basic structure of these societies incorporates the arbitrariness found in nature. But there is no necessity for men to resign themselves to these contingencies. The social system is not an unchangeable order beyond human control but a pattern of human action. In justice as fairness men agree to avail themselves of the accidents of nature and social circumstance only when doing so is for the common benefit. The two principles are a fair way of meeting the arbitrariness of fortune; and while no doubt imperfect in other ways, the institutions which satisfy these principles are just."
John Rawls,Moderate,"Greater intelligence, wealth and opportunity, for example, allow a person to achieve ends he could not rationally contemplate otherwise."
John Rawls,Moderate,"The difference principle, for example, requires that the higher expectations of the more advantaged contribute to the prospects of the least advantaged."
John Rawls,Moderate,No one deserves his greater natural capacity nor merits a more favorable starting place in society.
John Rawls,Moderate,"If A were not allowed his better position, B would be even worse off than he is."
John Rawls,Moderate,"First of all, no one knows his place in society, his class position or social status; nor does he know his fortune in the distribution of natural assets and abilities, his intelligence and strength, and the like. Nor, again, does anyone know his conception of the good, the particulars of his rational plan of life, or even the special features of psychology such as his aversion to risk or liability to optimism or pessimism. More than this, I assume that the parties do not know the particular circumstances of their own society. That is, they do not know its particular economic or political situation, or the level of civilization and culture it has been able to achieve. The persons in the original position have no information as to which generation they belong."
John Rawls,Moderate,There are infinitely many variations of the initial situation and therefore no doubt indefinitely many theorems of moral geometry.
John Rawls,Moderate,The circumstances of justice may be described as the normal conditions under which human cooperation is both possible and necessary.
John Rawls,Moderate,"First of all, principles should be general. That is, it must be possible to formulate them without use of what would be intuitively recognized as proper names, or rigged definite descriptions."
John Rawls,Moderate,The claims of existing social arrangements and of self interest have been duly allowed for. We cannot at the end count them a second time because we do not like the result.
John Rawls,Moderate,To each according to his threat advantage does not count as a principle of justice.
John Rawls,Moderate,I have assumed throughout that the persons in the original position are rational.
John Rawls,Moderate,"Inequalities are permissible when they maximize, or at least all contribute to, the long term expectations of the least fortunate group in society."
John Rawls,Moderate,"Yet it seems extraordinary that the justice of increasing the expectations of the better placed by a billion dollars, say, should turn on whether the prospects of the least favored increase or decrease by a penny."
John Rawls,Moderate,We must not be enticed by mathematically attractive assumptions into pretending that the contingencies of men's social positions and the asymmetries of their situations somehow even out in the end. Rather we must choose our conception of justice fully recognizing that this is not and cannot be the case.
John Rawls,Moderate,"When the basic structure of society is publicly known to satisfy its principles for an extended period of time, those subject to these arrangements tend to develop a desire to act in accordance with these principles and to do their part in institutions which exemplify them"
John Rawls,Moderate,Justice as fairness provides what we want.
John Rawls,Moderate,The fault of the utilitarian doctrine is that it mistakes impersonality for impartiality.
John Rawls,Moderate,Ideally a just constitution would be a just procedure arranged to insure a just outcome.
John Rawls,Moderate,Clearly when the liberties are left unrestricted they collide with one another.
John Rawls,Moderate,We must choose for others as we have reason to believe they would choose for themselves if they were at the age of reason and deciding rationally.
John Rawls,Moderate,The suppression of liberty is always likely to be irrational.
John Rawls,Moderate,"Let us now consider whether justice requires the toleration of the intolerant, and if so under what conditions. There are a variety of situations in which this question arises. Some political parties in democratic states hold doctrines that commit them to suppress the constitutional liberties whenever they have the power. Again, there are those who reject intellectual freedom but who nevertheless hold positions in the university. It may appear that toleration in these cases is inconsistent with the principles of justice, or at any rate not required by them."
John Rawls,Moderate,An intolerant sect has no right to complain when it is denied an equal liberty. … A person’s right to complain is limited to principles he acknowledges himself.
John Rawls,Moderate,Justice does not require that men must stand idly by while others destroy the basis of their existence.
John Rawls,Moderate,The fundamental criterion for judging any procedure is the justice of its likely results.
John Rawls,Moderate,"Properly understood, then, the desire to act justly derives in part from the desire to express most fully what we are or can be, namely free and equal rational beings with the liberty to choose."
John Rawls,Moderate,A just system must generate its own support.
John Rawls,Moderate,There is a divergence between private and social accounting that the market fails to register. One essential task of law and government is to institute the necessary conditions.
John Rawls,Moderate,Ideal legislators do not vote their interests.
John Rawls,Moderate,Justice is happiness according to virtue.
John Rawls,Moderate,"The intolerant can be viewed as free-riders, as persons who seek the advantages of just institutions while not doing their share to uphold them."
John Rawls,Moderate,"Many conservative writers have contended that the tendency to equality in modern social movements is the expression of envy. In this way they seek to discredit this trend, attributing it to collectively harmful impulses."
John Rawls,Moderate,That persons have opposing interests and seek to advance their own conception of the good is not at all the same thing as their being moved by envy and jealousy.
John Rawls,Moderate,"Men resign themselves to their position should it ever occur to them to question it; and since all may view themselves as assigned their vocation, everyone is held to be equally fated and equally noble in the eyes of providence."
John Rawls,Moderate,Being happy involves both a certain achievement in action and a rational assurance about the outcome.
John Rawls,Moderate,The extreme nature of dominant-end views is often concealed by the vagueness and ambiguity of the end proposed.
John Rawls,Moderate,At best the principles that economists have supposed the choices of rational individuals to satisfy can be presented as guidelines for us to consider when we make our decisions.
John Rawls,Moderate,The hazards of the generalized prisoner's dilemma are removed by the match between the right and the good.
John Rawls,Moderate,I have tried to set forth a theory that enables us to understand and to assess these feelings about the primacy of justice. Justice as fairness is the outcome: it articulates these opinions and supports their general tendency.
Robert Kagan,Moderate,"I think most Americans believe that although it's better not to use military force if you can avoid it, that the world simply doesn't provide us the luxury of giving away military force as an important tool of foreign policy."
Robert Kagan,Moderate,"Based on all criteria - military power, economic influence, cultural dominance - America remains number one, even though other, new players are increasingly challenging it in that role."
Robert Kagan,Moderate,"Well, I think he's right to notice that there is a difference in attitudes and even in the broadest sense of world view between Eastern Europe and Western Europe. Which is old and which is new is an interesting question, and I almost think that maybe he's got it backwards."
Robert Kagan,Moderate,I left Russia in 1993 optimistic that democracy had taken hold despite the obstacles.
Robert Kagan,Moderate,I believe it is still true that conflicts among major powers usually stem from geopolitical rivalries but rarely from economic competition.
Robert Kagan,Moderate,"Britain has taken itself out as a major player in the international system, at least for a while, with the kind of cuts that they've made in their national security budget."
Robert Kagan,Moderate,The thing that I would say is that U.S. power is not eternal. I am not saying that it won't come to an end. Because it will.
Robert Kagan,Moderate,"Americans are from Mars, Europeans are from Venus: they agree on little and understand each other less and less."
Robert Kagan,Moderate,"When it comes to setting national priorities, determining threats, defining challenges, and fashioning and implementing foreign and defense policies, the United States and Europe have parted ways."
Robert Kagan,Moderate,It is true that I have known Straussians almost all my life. And the one thing I was taught about them from the earliest age is that they are wrong.
Robert Kagan,Moderate,"Under our Constitution, military leaders have no choice but to endorse the president's decision after giving him their best advice."
Robert Kagan,Moderate,"In my view, America has never had the opportunity to enter paradise. Europe enjoys the paradise it enjoys, in part because the United States provides the overall security that allows Europe to live in a system where military power is not a major issue."
John Avlon,Moderate,One tell-tale sign of a Wingnut: they always confuse partisanship with patriotism.
John Avlon,Moderate,"I'm an independent. I'm a centrist. A new generation is arriving that has grown up with a multiplicity of choice in every aspect of their lives, and yet politics is the last place that they are told that they should be satisfied with a choice between brand A and brand B. It doesn't fit the way they think. It doesn't fit the way they live."
John Avlon,Moderate,"A wingnut is someone on the far-right wing or far-left wing of the political spectrum - the professional partisans, the unhinged activists and the paranoid conspiracy theorists. They're the people who always try to divide rather than unite us."
John Avlon,Moderate,"It's important to remember that Bush Derangement Syndrome on the left - comparing him to Hitler, calling him a terrorist and a tyrant - preceded Obama Derangement Syndrome on the right."
John Avlon,Moderate,"What's different now is that while political leaders used to give talking points to talk radio, now talk-radio hosts are giving talking points to political leaders. It's all part of the suffocating spin cycle we're in. In media, politics and publishing, the conventional wisdom is to play to this base."
John Avlon,Moderate,"I believe that the far-right and the far-left can be equally insane - but there's no question that in the first years of the Obama administration, the far-right has been far crazier. In part, this comes from parties being out of power - without the responsibility of governing to ground them, the activists and the ideologues take over."
John Avlon,Moderate,The American people are smart. They've gotten sick of the predictable hyperpartisan talking points and canned anger.
John Avlon,Moderate,The two parties are still more polarized than ever before and the rise of partisan media is an important reason for it.
John Avlon,Moderate,"Right now, politics follows the rules of talk radio - using conflict, tension, fear, and resentment to find new recruits."
John Avlon,Moderate,What might be good for ratings can be bad for the country. The hard-core partisans are self-segregating themselves into separate political realities. But the majority of Americans are starting to wake up to the game.
John Avlon,Moderate,"When people tap into this politics of resentment, it usually ends ugly."
John Avlon,Moderate,"First, I think more Americans need to declare their independence from partisan politics on both sides. The more that Americans declare their independence, the more the parties will have to compete for their votes using reason rather than the hateful appeals."
John Avlon,Moderate,We need to punch back against the extremes of both the left and the right and define the terms of the debate ourselves.
Ben Bernanke,Moderate,"The ultimate purpose of economics, of course, is to understand and promote the enhancement of well-being."
Ben Bernanke,Moderate,"In many spheres of human endeavor, from science to business to education to economic policy, good decisions depend on good measurement."
Ben Bernanke,Moderate,Only a strong economy can create higher asset values and sustainably good returns for savers.
Ben Bernanke,Moderate,Aggregate statistics can sometimes mask important information.
Ben Bernanke,Moderate,"Smart financial planning - such as budgeting, saving for emergencies, and preparing for retirement - can help households enjoy better lives while weathering financial shocks. Financial education can play a key role in getting to these outcomes."
Ben Bernanke,Moderate,Identity theft is a serious crime that affects millions of Americans each year.
Ben Bernanke,Moderate,"I think most of us would agree that people who have, say, little formal schooling but labor honestly and diligently to help feed, clothe, and educate their families are deserving of greater respect - and help, if necessary - than many people who are superficially more successful."
Ben Bernanke,Moderate,"The Depression was an incredibly dramatic episode - an era of stock-market crashes, breadlines, bank runs and wild currency speculation, with the storm clouds of war gathering ominously in the background... For my money, few periods are so replete with human interest."
Ben Bernanke,Moderate,"Growth in U.S. real imports slowed to about 3 percent in 2006, in part reflecting a drop in real terms in imports of crude oil and petroleum products."
Ben Bernanke,Moderate,"In the future, financial firms of any type whose failure would pose a systemic risk must accept especially close regulatory scrutiny of their risk-taking."
Ben Bernanke,Moderate,"I think one of the lessons of the Depression - and this is something that Franklin Roosevelt demonstrated - was that when orthodoxy fails, then you need to try new things. And he was very willing to try unorthodox approaches when the orthodox approach had shown that it was not adequate."
Ben Bernanke,Moderate,"Because a person has to be either working or looking for work to be counted as part of the labor force, an increase in the number of people too discouraged to continue their search for work would reduce the unemployment rate, all else being equal - but not for a positive reason."
Ben Bernanke,Moderate,"The Mexican debt crisis, Latin American debt crisis, the crises of the 1990s, the Wall Street stock market crash, and other events should have reminded us, and did remind us, that financial instability remains a concern, remains a problem."
Ben Bernanke,Moderate,"Many foreclosed homes are neglected or abandoned, as legal proceedings or other factors delay their resale. Deteriorating or vacant properties can, in turn, directly affect the quality of life in a neighborhood, for example, by leading to increases in vandalism or crime."
Ben Bernanke,Moderate,Remember that physical beauty is evolution's way of assuring us that the other person doesn't have too many intestinal parasites.
Ben Bernanke,Moderate,Community development has a long history of innovation and learning from experience.
Ben Bernanke,Moderate,"No economy can succeed without a high-quality workforce, particularly in an age of globalization and technical change."
Ben Bernanke,Moderate,"As an educator myself, I understand the profound effect that good teachers and a quality education have on the lives of our young people."
Ben Bernanke,Moderate,"High levels of homeownership have been shown to foster greater involvement in school and civic organizations, higher graduation rates, and greater neighborhood stability."
Ben Bernanke,Moderate,"Income inequality is troubling because, among other things, it means that many people in our society don't have the opportunities to advance themselves."
Ben Bernanke,Moderate,"Textbooks describe economics as the study of the allocation of scarce resources. That definition may be the 'what,' but it certainly is not the 'why.'"
Ben Bernanke,Moderate,Interest rates are used to achieve overall economic stability.
Ben Bernanke,Moderate,Low and stable inflation in many countries is an important accomplishment that will continue to bring significant benefits.
Ben Bernanke,Moderate,Stronger regulation and supervision aimed at problems with underwriting practices and lenders' risk management would have been a more effective and surgical approach to constraining the housing bubble than a general increase in interest rates.
Ben Bernanke,Moderate,Fostering transparency and accountability at the Federal Reserve was one of my principal objectives when I became Chairman in February 2006.
Ben Bernanke,Moderate,The financial crisis that began in the summer of 2007 was an extraordinarily complex event with multiple causes.
Joseph Nye,Moderate,"We live in a world of diverse cultures, and we know very little about social engineering and how to 'build nations.' And when we cannot be sure how to improve the world, hubristic visions pose a grave danger."
Joseph Nye,Moderate,Transformational leaders are important because they make choices that most other leaders would not.
Joseph Nye,Moderate,"As we think of power in the 21st century, we want to get away from the idea that power's always zero sum - my gain is your loss and vice versa. Power can also be positive sum, where your gain can be my gain."
Joseph Nye,Moderate,"Leadership experts and the public alike extol the virtues of transformational leaders - those who set out bold objectives and take risks to change the world. We tend to downplay 'transactional' leaders, whose goals are more modest, as mere managers."
Joseph Nye,Moderate,America rests on shared values rather than shared ethnicity.
Joseph Nye,Moderate,American power in the world relies on these ideals of openness and critical debate.
Joseph Nye,Moderate,Terrorism is like jujitsu: The small players win if they make the large player use his strength against himself.
Robert Kagan,Moderate,"When you don't have a hammer, you don't want anything to look like a nail."
Robert Kagan,Moderate,The force de frappe was little more than symbolism; it relieved neither France nor Europe from strategic dependence on the United States...
Robert Kagan,Moderate,"The vast majority of Europeans always believed that the threat posed by Saddam Hussein was more tolerable than the risk of removing him. But Americans, being stronger, developed a lower threshold of tolerance for Saddam and his weapons of mass destruction."
Robert Kagan,Moderate,"The United States was losing interest in preserving European security, but at the same time it was hostile to European aspirations to take on the task themselves. Europeans complained about American perfidy, and Americans complained about European weakness and ingratitude."
Robert Kagan,Moderate,"Americans officials have found it hard to believe, but leading officials and politicians in Europe really have worried more about how the United States might handle or mishandle the problem on Iraq — by undertaking unilateral and extralegal military action — than they have ever worried about Iraq itself and Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction."
Robert Kagan,Moderate,"When President Dwight Eisenhower undermined and humiliated Britain and France at Suez in 1956, it was only the most blatant of many American efforts to cut Europe down to size and reduce its already weakening global influence."
Robert Kagan,Moderate,"And now, in the final irony, the fact that the US military power has solved the European problem, especially the ""German problem"", allows Europeans today, and Germans in particular, to believe that American military power, and the ""strategic culture"" that has created and sustained it, is outmoded and dangerous."
Robert Kagan,Moderate,"American nationalism is not a blood-and-soil nationalism. No one's an American just because they were born in America or had American parents. American nationalism is built around this idea - and it happened to be, certainly at the time, an extremely revolutionary idea that only Americans believed in, by the way, at the time. Which was the principle of universal rights..."
Robert Kagan,Moderate,"[T]o say that the United States is bad because it behaves like a group of humans behave I think is a mistake. And I think we have to have more realistic basis of comparison. And this is part of the problem with the myth that we create of ourselves. We create an idealized image of ourselves in the past that we are never living up to in the present, and I think that's an evasion really from facing reality."
Robert Kagan,Moderate,"Americans - one of the founders, Gouverneur Morris, described Americans as the first-born children of the commercial age. Because when American was founded, the ideas of Adam Smith, the ideas of John Locke were dominant. And American was founded on the ethos that individuals should go out and prosper and acquire. And Americans have been trying to acquire ever since, and this does affect American foreign policy. I wouldn't focus particularly on the middle class because I think it's true of all Americans of all classes. And it has shaped American policy."
Robert Kagan,Moderate,"The thing that I find striking, in addition to Americans not being aware always how they are bumping into others and intruding upon others, Americans also - because they have this view - because we have this view that we don't care, that we're really just about minding our own business, then events occur and we surprise ourselves and we do care."
Robert Kagan,Moderate,"No one sitting in Germany in 1945 would have said, “Oh don’t worry, it’s just natural to become a democracy.”"
Robert Kagan,Moderate,"I think people are absolutely dreaming if they think that when the United States pulls out of Europe that Europe will just stay this calm, placid place. I think that we will throw Europe back into the same problem. And you don’t have to talk about Nazis or Hitler or any of that to say the norm in Europe is competition, conflict. And if we think that that’s over, I think that history tells us otherwise. And then again, so do we wind up – can we allow Europe in a way to fail as a liberal system without it affecting us? Again given the level of our trade, given the level of our communication, our involvement with them."
John Avlon,Moderate,"""Politics is history in the present tense."""
John Avlon,Moderate,"""Politics follows the lines of physics: every action creates an equal and opposite reaction."""
John Avlon,Moderate,"""Extremes are ultimately their own side's worst enemy."""
John Avlon,Moderate,"""Terrorism is always one bad day away from being issue No. 1."""
John Avlon,Moderate,"""Demagogues always do well in economic downturns."""
John Avlon,Moderate,"""Professional partisans are still playing politics by industrial-age rules. They haven’t woken up to the information-age reality. Younger generations have grown up with a multiplicity of choice on every front, which can be tailored to suit their individual beliefs. Politics is the last place where we are supposed to be satisfied with a choice between Brand A and Brand B."""
John Avlon,Moderate,"""If you only take offense when the president of your party is compared to Hitler, then you're part of the problem."""
John Avlon,Moderate,"""Us and against them is the opposite of our national motto, e pluribus unum: Out of many, one."""
John Avlon,Moderate,"""The independence of our nation is inseparable from our interdependence as a people"""
John Avlon,Moderate,"""Semi-obvious but bears repeating: Much of the evil in the world comes from seeing and judging people as members of groups rather than individuals."""
Ben Bernanke,Moderate,"There’s no denying that a collapse in stock prices today would pose serious macroeconomic challenges for the United States. Consumer spending would slow, and the U.S. economy would become less of a magnet for foreign investors. Economic growth, which in any case has recently been at unsustainable levels, would decline somewhat. History proves, however, that a smart central bank can protect the economy and the financial sector from the nastier side effects of a stock market collapse."
Ben Bernanke,Moderate,"The economic repercussions of a stock market crash depend less on the severity of the crash itself than on the response of economic policymakers, particularly central bankers."
Ben Bernanke,Moderate,"Let me end my talk by abusing slightly my status as an official representative of the Federal Reserve System. I would like to say to Milton and Anna: Regarding the Great Depression. You're right, we did it. We're very sorry. But thanks to you, we won't do it again."
Ben Bernanke,Moderate,"House prices have risen by nearly 25 percent over the past two years. Although speculative activity has increased in some areas, at a national level these price increases largely reflect strong economic fundamentals, including robust growth in jobs and incomes, low mortgage rates, steady rates of household formation, and factors that limit the expansion of housing supply in some areas."
Ben Bernanke,Moderate,"To avoid large and unsustainable budget deficits, the nation will ultimately have to choose among higher taxes, modifications to entitlement programs such as Social Security and Medicare, less spending on everything else from education to defense, or some combination of the above."
Ben Bernanke,Moderate,"Economics is a highly sophisticated field of thought that is superb at explaining to policymakers precisely why the choices they made in the past were wrong. About the future, not so much. However, careful economic analysis does have one important benefit, which is that it can help kill ideas that are completely logically inconsistent or wildly at variance with the data. This insight covers at least 90 percent of proposed economic policies."
Ben Bernanke,Moderate,"It was a global depression, had many causes, the whole story requires you to look at the whole international system. But policy errors in United States, as well as abroad, did play an important role. And in particular as I said, the Federal Reserve failed in this first challenge in both parts of its mission. It did not use monetary policy aggressively to prevent deflation and the collapse in the economy, so it failed in its economic stability function. And it didn't adequately perform its function as lender of last resort allowing many bank failures and a resulting contraction in credit and also with the money supply. So, in that respect, again, the Fed did not fulfill its intended mission."
Ben Bernanke,Moderate,"I want to make sure you keep your eyes on the ball, that is, the two basic missions of a central bank. The first is maintaining macroeconomic stability: maintaining stable growth and keeping inflation low and stable. The principal policy tool for maintaining macroeconomic stability is monetary policy. In normal times, the Fed and other central banks use open market operations—purchases and sales of securities in markets—to move interest rates up or down, and in doing so try to create a more stable macroeconomic environment.The second part of a central bank's mission is maintaining financial stability. Central banks are focused on trying to ensure that the financial system functions properly, and in particular, they want to prevent, if possible, and if not, to mitigate the effects of a financial crisis or a financial panic."
Ben Bernanke,Moderate,"We did stop the meltdown. We avoided what would have been, I think, a collapse of the global financial system. That was obviously a good thing. But one thing that I was always sure of and the Federal Reserve was always sure of was that a collapse of some of these big financial firms was going to have very serious collateral consequences. There were people arguing even as late as September 2008, “Well, why don't you just let the firms collapse? There is a system that can take care of it: bankruptcy. Why don't you let them fail?” We never thought that was a good option. Particularly, if the whole system had collapsed, we would have had extraordinarily serious consequences."
Ben Bernanke,Moderate,"Obviously, based on the crisis and what happened and the effects that we're still feeling, it's now clear that maintaining financial stability is just as an important a responsibility as monetary and economic stability. And indeed, this is, you know, very much a return to the—where the Fed came from in the beginning. Remember the reason that Fed was created was to try to reduce the incidents of financial panics, so financial stability was the original goal of creation of the Fed. So now we sort of come full circle."
Joseph Nye,Moderate,"Effective foreign policymaking requires an understanding of not only international and transnational systems, but also the intricacies of domestic politics in multiple countries. It also demands recognition of just how little is known about “building nations,” particularly after revolutions – a process that should be viewed in terms of decades, not years."
Joseph Nye,Moderate,"In foreign policy, as in medicine, leaders must “first do no harm.”"
Joseph Nye,Moderate,"The world at the beginning of the twenty-first century is a strange cocktail of continuity and change. Some aspects of international politics have not changed since Thucydides. There is a certain logic of hostility, a dilemma about security that goes with interstate politics. Alliances, balance of power, and choices in in policy between war and compromise have remained similar over the millennia."
Joseph Nye,Moderate,I have found in my experience in government that I could ignore neither the age-old nor the brand-new dimensions of world politics.
Joseph Nye,Moderate,Any sense of global community is weak.
Joseph Nye,Moderate,Cooperation is difficult in the absence of communication.
Joseph Nye,Moderate,No one can tell the whole story of anything.
Joseph Nye,Moderate,"The cure to misunderstanding history is to read more, not less."
Joseph Nye,Moderate,"Anarchy means without government, but it does not necessarily mean chaos or total disorder."
Joseph Nye,Moderate,The international system consists not only of states. The international political system is the pattern of relationships among the states.
Joseph Nye,Moderate,Systems can create consequences not intended by any other of their constituent actors.
Joseph Nye,Moderate,"Humans sometimes make surprising choices, and human history is full of uncertainties."
Joseph Nye,Moderate,"Power, like love, is easier to experience than to define or measure."
Joseph Nye,Moderate,"Power conversion is the capacity to convert potential power, as measured by resources, to realized power, as measured by the changed behavior of others."
Joseph Nye,Moderate,Some say precipitating events are like buses - they come along every ten minutes.
Joseph Nye,Moderate,"Chamberlain's sins were not his intentions, but rather his ignorance and arrogance in failing to appraise the situation properly. And in that failure he was not alone."
Joseph Nye,Moderate,Some observers feel it is harder to change public opinion in democracies than it is to change policies in totalitarian  countries.
Joseph Nye,Moderate,The best hope for the future is to ask what is being determined as well as who determines it.
Joseph Nye,Moderate,"When words are both descriptive and prescriptive, thyey become political words used in struggles for power."
Joseph Nye,Moderate,"Some economists believe that the Great Depression of the 1930s was aggravated by bad monetary policy and lack of American leadership. Britain was too weak to maintain an open international economy, and the United States was not living up to its new responsibilities."
Joseph Nye,Moderate,"Governments now have to share the stage with actors who can use information to enhance their soft power and press governments directly, or indirectly by mobilizing their publics."
Joseph Nye,Moderate,"Attention rather than information becomes the scarce resource, and those who can distinguish valuable information from the background clutter gain power."
Joseph Nye,Moderate,"The territorial state has not always existed in the past, so it need not necessarily exist in the future."
Joseph Nye,Moderate,"Just as gunpowder and infantry penetrated and destroyed the medieval castle, so have nuclear missiles and the internet made the nation-state obsolete."
Joseph Nye,Moderate,"If Thucydides were plopped down in the Middle East or East Asia, he would probably recognize ... the situation quite quickly."
Joseph Nye,Moderate,"The bipolar world is over, but it not going to be replaced by a unipolar world empire that the United States controls alone. The world is already economically multipolar, and there will be a diffusion of power as the information revolution progresses, interdependence increases, and transnational actors become more important. The new world will not be neat, and you will have to live with that."
William F. Buckley Jr.,Conservative,I won't insult your intelligence by suggesting that you really believe what you just said.
William F. Buckley Jr.,Conservative,I would rather be governed by the first 2000 people in the Manhattan phone book than the entire faculty of Harvard.
William F. Buckley Jr.,Conservative,Life can't be all bad when for ten dollars you can buy all the Beethoven sonatas and listen to them for ten years.
William F. Buckley Jr.,Conservative,I would like to take you seriously but to do so would affront your intelligence.
William F. Buckley Jr.,Conservative,Back in the thirties we were told we must collectivize the nation because the people were so poor. Now we are told we must collectivize the nation because the people are so rich.
William F. Buckley Jr.,Conservative,"The academic community has in it the biggest concentration of alarmists, cranks and extremists this side of the giggle house."
William F. Buckley Jr.,Conservative,"Truth is a demure lady, much too ladylike to knock you on your head and drag you to her cave. She is there, but people must want her, and seek her out."
William F. Buckley Jr.,Conservative,The best defense against usurpatory government is an assertive citizenry.
William F. Buckley Jr.,Conservative,There is an inverse relationship between reliance on the state and self-reliance.
William F. Buckley Jr.,Conservative,I had much more fun criticizing than praising.
William F. Buckley Jr.,Conservative,"The obvious differences apart, Karl Marx was no more a reliable prophet than was the Reverend Jim Jones. Karl Marx was a genius, an uncannily resourceful manipulator of world history who shoved everything he knew, thought, and devised into a Ouija board from whose movements he decocted universal laws. He had his following, during the late phases of the Industrial Revolution. But he was discredited by historical experience longer ago than the Wizard of Oz: and still, great grown people sit around, declare themselves to be Marxists, and make excuses for Gulag and Afghanistan."
William F. Buckley Jr.,Conservative,Industry is the enemy of melancholy
William F. Buckley Jr.,Conservative,Conservatives should be adamant about the need for the reappearance of Judeo-Christianity in the public square.
William F. Buckley Jr.,Conservative,"The more complicated and powerful the job, the more rudimentary the preparation for it."
William F. Buckley Jr.,Conservative,I profoundly believe it takes a lot of practice to become a moral slob.
William F. Buckley Jr.,Conservative,I catch fire and find the reserves of courage and assertiveness to speak up. When that happens I get quite carried away. My blood gets hot my brow wet I become unbearably and unconscionably sarcastic and bellicose I am girded for a total showdown.
William F. Buckley Jr.,Conservative,"[D]emocracy can itself be as tyrannical as a dictatorship, since it is the extent, not the source, of government power that impinges on freedom.-William F Buckley"
William F. Buckley Jr.,Conservative,"Halfway through the second term of Franklin Roosevelt, the New Deal braintrusters began to worry about mounting popular concern over the national debt. In those days the size of the national debt was on everyone’s mind. Indeed, Franklin Roosevelt had talked himself into office, in 1932, in part by promising to hack away at a debt which, even under the frugal Mr. Hoover, the people tended to think of as grown to menacing size. Mr. Roosevelt’s wisemen worried deeply about the mounting tension ...And then, suddenly, the academic community came to the rescue. Economists across the length and breadth of the land were electrified by a theory of debt introduced in England by John Maynard Keynes. The politicians wrung their hands in gratitude. Depicting the intoxicating political consequences of Lord Keynes’s discovery, the wry cartoonist of the Washington Times Herald drew a memorable picture. In the center, sitting on a throne in front of a Maypole, was a jubilant FDR, cigarette tilted almost vertically, a grin on his face that stretched from ear to ear. Dancing about him in a circle, hands clasped together, their faces glowing with ecstasy, the braintrusters, vested in academic robes, sang the magical incantation, the great discovery of Lord Keynes: We owe it to ourselves. With five talismanic words, the planners had disposed of the problem of deficit spending. Anyone thenceforward who worried about an increase in the national debt was just plain ignorant of the central insight of modern economics: What do we care how much we - the government - owe so long as we owe it to ourselves? On with the spending. Tax and tax, spend and spend, elect and elect ..."
William F. Buckley Jr.,Conservative,"The loneliness of flight is not entirely overwhelmed by cabin movies, the drinks, the Gemütlichkeit of shoulder-to-shoulder life."
William F. Buckley Jr.,Conservative,Modern formulations are necessary even in defense of very ancient truths. Not because of any alleged anachronism in the old ideas – the Beatitudes remain the essential statements of the Western code – but because the idiom of life is always changing
William F. Buckley Jr.,Conservative,"For people who like that sort of thing, that's the sort of thing they like."
William F. Buckley Jr.,Conservative,What would happen if the Communists occupied the Sahara? Answer: Nothing
William F. Buckley Jr.,Conservative,"We find that in the absence of demonstrable truth, the best we can do is to exercise the greatest diligence, humility, insight, intelligence, and industry in trying to arrive at the nearest values to truth. I hope, of course, to argue convincingly that having done this, we have an inescapable duty to seek to inculcate others with these values."
William F. Buckley Jr.,Conservative,"Pentagon ought to win the Nobel Peace Prize every year, because the U.S. military is the world’s foremost guarantor of peace"
William F. Buckley Jr.,Conservative,Conservatism aims to maintain in working order the loyalties of the community to perceived truths and also to those truths which in their judgment have earned universal recognition.
William F. Buckley Jr.,Conservative,Liberals don’t care what you do so long as it’s compulsory.
William F. Buckley Jr.,Conservative,"Curiously, the failures of Communism are more often treated as a joke than as a tragedy."
William F. Buckley Jr.,Conservative,"The individualist insists that drastic depressions are the result of credit inflation; (not excessive savings, as the Keynesians would have it) which at all times in history has been caused by direct government action or by government influence. As for aggravated unemployment, the individualist insists that it is exclusively the result of government intervention through inflation, wage rigidities, burdensome taxes, and restrictions on trade and production such as price controls and tariffs. The inflation that comes inevitably with government pump-priming soon catches up with the laborer, wipes away any real increase in his wages, discourages private investment, and sets off a new deflationary spiral which can in turn only be counteracted by more coercive and paternalistic government policies. And so it is that the long run is very soon a-coming, and the harmful effects of government intervention are far more durable than those that are sustained by encouraging the unhampered free market to work out its own destiny."
William F. Buckley Jr.,Conservative,"...my beloved Eudosia [a member of Buckley's household staff], who is Cuban, very large, quite old, and altogether superstitious, and speaks only a word or two of English (even though she has been with us for 19 years), is quite certain that the gentleman who raped the 16-year-old girl in New Caanan three years ago and escaped has successfully eluded the police only because of his resourceful determination to ravage Eudosia before he dies. Accordingly she demanded, and I gave her, a shotgun, into which I have inserted two empty shells. Still, Eudosia with blank cartridges is more formidable than Eugene McCarthy with The Bomb."
William F. Buckley Jr.,Conservative,"[Professor Greene's] reaction to GAMAY, as published in the Yale Daily News, fairly took one's breath away. He fondled the word fascist as though he had come up with a Dead Sea Scroll vouchsafing the key word to the understanding of God and Man at Yale. In a few sentences he used the term thrice. Mr. Buckley has done Yale a great service (how I would tire of this pedestrian rhetorical device), and he may well do the cause of liberal education in America an even greater service, by stating the fascist alternative to liberalism. This fascist thesis . . . This . . . pure fascism . . . What more could Hitler, Mussolini, or Stalin ask for . . . ? (They asked for, and got, a great deal more.)What survives, from such stuff as this, is ne-plus-ultra relativism, idiot nihlism. What is required, Professor Greene spoke, is more, not less tolerance--not the tolerance of indifference, but the tolerance of honest respect for divergent convictions and the determination of all that such divergent opinions be heard without administrative censorship. I try my best in the classroom to expound and defend my faith, when it is relevant, as honestly and persuasively as I can. But I can do so only because many of my colleagues are expounding and defending their contrasting faiths, or skepticisms, as openly and honestly as I am mine.A professor of philosophy! Question: What is the 1) ethical, 2) philosophical, or 3) epistemological argument for requiring continued tolerance of ideas whose discrediting it is the purpose of education to effect? What ethical code (in the Bible? in Plato? Kant? Hume?) requires honest respect for any divergent conviction?"
William F. Buckley Jr.,Conservative,How can one deduce the cause of Hamlet or Saint Matthew's Passion? What is the cause of inspiration? 
William F. Buckley Jr.,Conservative,National Review will support the rightwardmost viable candidate.
William F. Buckley Jr.,Conservative,"But how reassuring it was for us, you remember, every now and then (Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall), to vibrate to the music of the very heartstrings of the Leader of the Free World who, to qualify convincingly as such, had after all to feel a total commitment to the Free World."
William F. Buckley Jr.,Conservative,"Do you favor mandated free tuition? I answered: Most positively not. The crowd unanimously and lustily booed me. Do you realize, I persisted, that you are asking men and women who are, many of them poorer than you, and poorer than your parents; many of whom earn less money than you yourselves will be earning in the course of a few years, to make sacrifices in your behalf? Boo! If you don’t believe me, I said, go to your economics teachers and ask them. Boo! All right, I said, don’t go to your economics teachers, and don’t discover the economic realities"
William F. Buckley Jr.,Conservative,"What did Miss Rand in was her anxiety to theologize her beliefs. She was an eloquent and persuasive antistatist, and if only she had left it at that"
William F. Buckley Jr.,Conservative,"To Buckley, she embodied the worst of what in subsequent decades would be called political correctness: the mindless application to every issue of a platitudinous egalitarianism whose practical effect invariably is to expand the reach of totalitarianism."
William F. Buckley Jr.,Conservative,"If he was, somehow at the margin deficient, it was because the country did not rise to ask of him the performance of a thunderbolt. He gave what he was asked to give. And he leaves us (or will leave) if not exactly bereft, lonely; lonely for the quintessential American. END."
William F. Buckley Jr.,Conservative,"Birch fallacy is the assumption that you can infer subjective intention from objective consequence: we lost China to the Communists, therefore the President of the United States and the Secretary of State wished China to go to the Communists."
William F. Buckley Jr.,Conservative,"Khrushchev murders people without regard to race, color, or creed, and therefore whatever he is guilty of, he is not guilty of discrimination?"
William F. Buckley Jr.,Conservative,"Ladies and Gentlemen, we deem it the central revelation of Western experience that man cannot ineradicably stain himself, for the wells of regeneration are infinitely deep. No temple has ever been so profaned that it cannot be purified; no man is ever truly lost; no nation is irrevocably dishonored. Khrushchev cannot take permanent advantage of our temporary disadvantage, for it is the West he is fighting. And in the West there lie, however encysted, the ultimate resources, which are moral in nature. Khrushchev is not aware that the gates of hell shall not prevail against us. Even out of the depths of despair, we take heart in the knowledge that it cannot matter how deep we fall, for there is always hope. In the end, we will bury him."
William F. Buckley Jr.,Conservative,"Yes, Murray Rothbard believed in freedom, and yes, David Koresh believed in God."
William F. Buckley Jr.,Conservative,There is a man who has won the decathlon of human existence.*
William F. Buckley Jr.,Conservative,"Mr. Churchill had struggled to diminish totalitarian rule in Europe, which, however, increased. He fought to save the empire, which dissolved. He fought socialism, which prevailed. He struggled to defeat Hitler"
William F. Buckley Jr.,Conservative,He was everything. The soldier who loved poetry. The historian who loved to paint. The diplomat who thrived on indiscretion. The patriot with international vision. The orderly man given to electric spontaneities. (on Winston Churchill)
William F. Buckley Jr.,Conservative,"A second marked characteristic of the Liberal in debate with the conservative is the tacit premise that debateis ridiculous....Many people shrink from arguments over facts because facts are tedious, because they require a formal familiarity with the subject under discussion, and because they can be ideologically dislocative. Many Liberals accept their opinions, ideas, and evaluations as others accept revealed truths."
William F. Buckley Jr.,Conservative,"It is widely known that whenever Senator Johnson feels the urge to act the statesman at the cost of a little political capital, WFB wrote in June 1958, he lies down until he gets over it."
William F. Buckley Jr.,Conservative,"I do not, in short, myself believe it is in the least bit undignified to confess to having been critically influenced in one's thinking by a teacher, or a faculty, or a book; but the accent these days is so strong on atomistic intellectual independence that to suggest such a thing is, as I have noted, highly inflammatory."
William F. Buckley Jr.,Conservative,"Dr. King’s flouting of the law does not justify the flouting by others of the law, but it is a terrifying thought that, most likely, the cretin who leveled his rifle on the head of Martin Luther King, may have absorbed the talk, so freely available, about the supremacy of the individual conscience, such talk as Martin Luther King, God rest his soul, had so widely, and so indiscriminately, made."
William F. Buckley Jr.,Conservative,"the genius of Churchill was his union of affinities of the heart and of the mind, the total fusion of animal and spiritual energy"
William F. Buckley Jr.,Conservative,"He told us that most of our civic problems were problems brought on or exacerbated by government, not problems that could be solved by government. That, of course, is enduringly true. Only government can cause inflation, preserve monopoly, and punish enterprise."
William F. Buckley Jr.,Conservative,"She [Ayn Rand] had to declare that....altruism was despicable, that only self-interest is good and noble. (About Ayn Rand)"
William F. Buckley Jr.,Conservative,"There is no greater paradox in the cosmos, the deceased had written, than the apparent contradiction of our helplessness (‘without me, you can do nothing’) alongside God’s ‘helplessness.’ Oh, I know, God is all-powerful, and so on; but he cannot undo what he has done, and what he once did was to make men free. This means that he ‘needs’ us in order to get us to Heaven as his lovers, and in order to do his will in the world. All we have to do in order to frustrate those wishes"
William F. Buckley Jr.,Conservative,But is God a Yale man?
William F. Buckley Jr.,Conservative,for December 19 and for a day or two bracketing the
William F. Buckley Jr.,Conservative,"It is all very well to take the revolutionists by the scruff of the neck and show them that revolutions, as Professor Toynbee preaches, historically have not brought about the ends explicitly desired, but something very like their opposite; but the success of such demonstrations presupposes a clinical curiosity on the part of the observer, and such is not the temper of those in America who are talking about revolution."
William F. Buckley Jr.,Conservative,"I quite understand a future without Marx, but it has always seemed to me that if our future is indeed to be without Jesus, the decision will be His, not ours; and that in any event, Jesus is not bound even by the deliberations of the American Society of Newspaper Editors."
William F. Buckley Jr.,Conservative,"By temperament I am content with the doctrine that good fences make good neighbors; but good fences shouldn’t evolve into barbed-wire barricades, though much of this is happening: the atomistic pull of high-tech living, in a high-tech age."
William F. Buckley Jr.,Conservative,"The united nations is the most concentrated assault on moral reality in the history of free institutions, and it does not do to ignore that fact or, worse, to get used to it."
Bill O'Really,Conservative,"Communism has become an intensely dogmatic and almost mystical religion, and whatever you say, they have ways of twisting it into shapes which put you in some lower category of mankind, wrote novelist and screenwriter F. Scott Fitzgerald,"
Bill O'Really,Conservative,"Great leaders take care of their men first, and then worry about their own needs."
Bill O'Really,Conservative,"Calvin Coolidge, There is no right to strike against the public safety, by anybody, anywhere, at any time. In"
Bill O'Really,Conservative,"the Sedition Act was a direct challenge to the Bill of Rights. It specifically made it illegal for people to assemble with intent to oppose any measure … of the government or print, utter, or publish … any false, scandalous and malicious writing … against the government. Incredibly,"
Bill O'Really,Conservative,"Among many other slurs, the Republicans attacked the president as a hideous hermaphroditical character, which has neither the force and firmness of a man, nor the gentleness and sensibility of a woman. The Federalists were no better, calling Jefferson a mean-spirited, low-lived fellow, the son of a half-breed Indian squaw, sired by a Virginia mulatto father. Even"
Bill O'Really,Conservative,"From time to time there will be some complaints that we are pushing our people too hard. I don’t give a good Goddamn about such complaints. I believe in the old and sound rule that an ounce of sweat will save a gallon of blood. The harder we push, the more Germans we will kill. The more Germans we kill, the fewer of our men will be killed. Pushing means fewer casualties. I want you all to remember that. There is one great thing that you men will all be able to say after this war is over and you are home once again. You may be thankful that twenty years from now when you are sitting by the fireplace with your grandson on your knee and he asks you what you did in the great World War II, you won’t have to cough, shift him to the other knee and say, Well, your Granddaddy shoveled shit in Louisiana."
Bill O'Really,Conservative,"A handful of the senior officers listening to the speech disapproved of Patton’s coarse language. Patton could not care less. He believes that profanity is the language of the soldier, and that to speak to soldiers one must use words that will have the most impact."
Bill O'Really,Conservative,God had a divine purpose in placing this land between two great oceans to be found by those who had a special love of freedom and courage.
Bill O'Really,Conservative,The crisis isn’t over. The prospect of nuclear war has never been greater. The United States is so close to invading Cuba that one bad joke in the nonstop series of ExComm meetings is that Bobby Kennedy will soon be mayor of Havana.
Bill O'Really,Conservative,"Our goal is not the victory of might, but the vindication of right. Not peace at the expense of freedom, but both peace and freedom"
Bill O'Really,Conservative,"This child is destined to cause the falling and rising of many in Israel, and to be a sign that will be spoken against, so that the thoughts of many hearts will be revealed. And a sword will pierce your own soul, too."
Bill O'Really,Conservative,"Don’t let it be forgot, that once there was a spot, for one brief shining moment, that was known as Camelot."
Bill O'Really,Conservative,We thought you would not die
Bill O'Really,Conservative,truly believe this child to be the new king. A furious Herod summons his religious advisers. As a secular
Bill O'Really,Conservative,These so-called entertainers get rich while the kids who emulate their lyrics and attitude destroy themselves.
Bill O'Really,Conservative,Yet it is America that now commits the unconscionable act of deferring to Russia at the expense of Britain
Bill O'Really,Conservative,"We'll do it live... WE'LL DO IT LIVE! FUCK IT! DO IT LIVE... look, I'll write it and we'll do it live! Fucking thing SUCKS!"
Bill O'Really,Conservative,"I’m gonna make race the basis of politics in this state, and I’m gonna make it the basis of politics in this country. Later, at his inaugural, he proclaimed, I have stood where once Jefferson Davis stood, and took an oath to my people. It is very appropriate then that from this cradle of the Confederacy, this very heart of the great Anglo-Saxon Southland, that today we sound the drum for freedom … Let us rise to the call of freedom-loving blood that is in us … In the name of the greatest people that have ever trod this earth, I draw the line in the dust and toss the gauntlet before the feet of tyranny. And I say, segregation today! Segregation tomorrow! Segregation forever!"
Bill O'Really,Conservative,"From their lofty summits overlooking Boston Harbor and the city itself, the colonists can fire cannonballs"
Bill O'Really,Conservative,"the aging diplomat sits down at the desk of French foreign minister Charles Gravier, the"
Bill O'Really,Conservative,"Ask not what your country can do for you, he commands, his voice rising to deliver the defining sentence, but what you can do for your country."
Bill O'Really,Conservative,"It’s almost comical that a man plotting a murder takes the bus to and from target practice,"
Bill O'Really,Conservative,either live happily ever after
Bill O'Really,Conservative,enormity of the German caravan
Bill O'Really,Conservative,"Estimates of the number of people killed by Stalin range from as low as twenty million to as high as sixty-two million unnatural deaths during Stalin’s time as Soviet leader. The man who is credited with saying that death solves all problems and One death is a tragedy; one million is a statistic murdered his own citizens through executions, artificial famines, forced-labor camps, incarceration, and torture."
Bill O'Really,Conservative,"Civilians! they read in Japanese. Evacuate at once! These leaflets are being dropped to notify you that your city has been listed for destruction by our powerful air force. This advance notice will give your military authorities ample time to take necessary defensive measures to protect you from our inevitable attack. Watch and see how powerless they are to protect you. Systematic destruction of city after city will continue as long as you blindly follow your military leaders whose blunders have placed you on the very brink of oblivion. It is your responsibility to overthrow the military government now and save what is left of your beautiful country. In the meanwhile, we encourage all civilians to evacuate at once."
Bill O'Really,Conservative,President Franklin Roosevelt issues a special exhortation. He encourages citizens not just to give thanks but to read their own version of Scripture every day between now and Christmas to ensure a renewed and strengthening contact with those eternal truths and majestic principles which have inspired such measure
Bill O'Really,Conservative,"If every man would wait till his wife got willing for him to go to war, there would be no fighting done till we all got killed in our own house."
Bill O'Really,Conservative,"Davy Crockett did not go to Texas to die at the Alamo but rather to live in a country he described in a letter to his children as the garden spot of the world. The best land and the best prospects for health I ever saw, and I do believe it is a fortune to any man to come here."
Bill O'Really,Conservative,"Custer simply did not appreciate the determination of the tribes camped on the banks of the Little Bighorn River. This was not only a battle for their sacred land, but their last chance to protect their way of life. Freedom to roam the plains was being taken from them. They weren’t fighting for something; they were fighting for everything. Sitting Bull was their great chief, which meant he was in charge of the civil affairs, including all negotiations with the United States government, but when the fighting began, Crazy Horse was in command. Crazy Horse was himself a great warrior, a veteran of many indigenous battles, and an excellent tactician. He is credited with devising some of the basic strategies of guerrilla warfare on which special operations are still based. And in his daring and bravery, he was at least the equal of Custer. Both"
Bill O'Really,Conservative,they respect the private; he is the company
Bill O'Really,Conservative,"behaving in an almost giddy fashion, some slathering on sunscreen in"
Bill O'Really,Conservative,Corporal
Bill O'Really,Conservative,"tactician. He also has a deep understanding of Japanese culture, believing that the nation"
Bill O'Really,Conservative,"Such is life in the Roman Empire, which has begun its slow decline into ruin. There is little justice or nobility among"
Bill O'Really,Conservative,"Hard work and discipline lead to economic success. Government handouts and unsupervised policies of pity only rob people of incentive. If tax money continues to be wasted, it becomes morally wrong for our government to confiscate huge percentages of income and property from Americans, even if they are wealthy."
Bill O'Really,Conservative,"You only have to travel to Europe to see the difference that an entitlement culture makes. While the United States is a vibrant, creative, and exciting place, Europe today is largely stagnant. Workers there have little incentive to move ahead, because the rate of taxation is punishing and the governments guarantee a certain standard of living."
Bill O'Really,Conservative,"KRAUTHAMMER: Well, remember they’re not the same as us because it was the more independent ones, the ones who didn’t like the strictures of government, the regulations, the religious oppression, who came here. This spirit of being independent and not wanting to be controlled by the government is something that is intrinsic in America, it’s the essence of America, it’s what distinguishes Americans who are essentially refugees of the old society in Europe. That’s why it’s always been harder to make Americans break to the yoke of government as happened in Europe. Once you get accustomed to the kinds of entitlements that you have in Sweden, England, France, elsewhere, it doesn’t get undone. And America is different"
Bill O'Really,Conservative,"If you live your life subject to the rules of Judeo-Christian tradition (or Buddhist, Islamic, or another religious tradition), then you will do more good than harm on this earth. You will love your neighbor and help other people out. You will not do things that hurt others or yourself. So, if everyone was religious wouldn’t the world be a much better place in which to live? Of course it would. And if there is no God at the end of it all, what does it matter? You’re in the ground or scattered to the winds. If the deity is a fraud, you won’t possibly care. You’re gone. But"
Bill O'Really,Conservative,"All great philosophers, even the atheists, realized that one of the essential attributes of a civilized people is a belief that good will be rewarded and evil will be punished. In"
Bill O'Really,Conservative,"Love, he will respond, answering his own question. I loved my men and they loved me … I just couldn’t give them up, just like a mother couldn’t give up the child.7 *"
Bill O'Really,Conservative,"Here’s something that really surprises me: The more stuff I have, the more stuff I want. And so I looked around and saw that everyone else was the same way. It was not until I had a few things that I noticed how this works. The material stuff is addicting! Remembering my parents, I try to fight against the stuff addiction. I refuse to buy jewelry or trinkets. I don’t need expensive toys like Jet Skis or snowblowers. I keep the material things under control, and I banish thoughts of them from my brain. Besides, I am very busy. My life doesn’t include window-shopping or paging through mail-order catalogs by the pool or jaunts to compact disc stores or Home Depot. These are all invitations to spend money unnecessarily.… Greed is the destroyer of success. You cannot be creatively successful and greedy at the same time. I’m talking about both material and emotional greed here. Sorry,"
Bill O'Really,Conservative,"In short, this country has developed a ridiculous blind spot: the power and glorification of money. This is truly an affliction. It is holding us back as a nation, as a community. The true heroes of America are not the new Internet billionaires or the overpaid sports stars and movie actors or the wise guys who jack up their companies’ stocks. The true heroes of America are the men, women, and teenagers who go to work for a modest wage, fulfill their responsibilities to their families and friends, and are kind and generous to others"
Bill O'Really,Conservative,"the idea that someone with a different upbringing, from a different part of the country, with a different outlook and a different viewpoint, might actually have something valid to say, something worth listening to."
Bill O'Really,Conservative,"A fiery horse, with a speed of light"
Bill O'Really,Conservative,"I’m that same David Crockett, fresh from the backwoods, half horse, half alligator, a little touched with the snapping turtle; can wade the Mississippi, leap the Ohio, ride upon a streak of lightning and slip without a scratch down a honey locust; can whip my weight in wildcats and, if any gentleman pleases, for a ten dollar bill he may throw in a panther …"
Bill O'Really,Conservative,Remember the Alamo was the battle cry that led Sam Houston’s troops to victory at the Battle of San Jacinto six weeks later
Bill O'Really,Conservative,"The general public had no love for either the banks or the railroads, which were controlled by fat cats in the North and the East who cared not at all for the troubles of the poor workingman. All Jesse James was doing was fighting back for all the people who had no fight left in them. He became the nation’s most revered outlaw."
Bill O'Really,Conservative,But the question remains: How accurate
Bill O'Really,Conservative,"Cole Younger led eight men into Russellville, Kentucky, on May 20, 1868, and rode out with exactly $9,035.92. As the gang made its escape, shooting into the air to discourage gawkers, one member shot at the metal fish weather vane atop the courthouse, sending it spinning. Almost a century later, that historic weather vane, with a bullet hole through it, could still be seen on the roof of the new courthouse, where it had been placed to honor the town’s history. One man was eventually convicted for that robbery, for which he served three years in prison."
Bill O'Really,Conservative,"By the time Doc Holliday rode into Tombstone in 1880, the town already had an estimated 110 saloons, 14 gambling halls, a plentiful number of brothels, and 1 bowling alley."
Bill O'Really,Conservative,"The gunfight at the O.K. Corral took place on October 26, 1881. It took about thirty seconds to write a chapter in American history that will never be forgotten."
Bill O'Really,Conservative,"James Butler Hickok was the most famous gunslinger of the Old West; a man known to be reluctant to shoot, but when it became necessary, his draw was as quick as thought and his aim was always true."
Bill O'Really,Conservative,"With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation’s wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations,"
Bill O'Really,Conservative,comes the one more
Bill O'Really,Conservative,is completely
Bill O'Really,Conservative,"infantry, cavalry, and artillery begin slogging"
Bill O'Really,Conservative,By Eric Boehlert and Media Matters for America
Bill O'Really,Conservative,"No one embodied the spirit of the frontier more than Daniel Boone, who faced and defeated countless natural and man-made dangers to literally hand cut the trail west through the wilderness. He marched with then colonel George Washington in the French and Indian War, established one of the most important trading posts in the West, served three terms in the Virginia Assembly, and fought in the Revolution. His exploits made him world famous; he served as the model for James Fenimore Cooper’s Leatherstocking Tales and numerous other pioneer stories. He was so well known and respected that even Lord Byron, in his epic poem Don Juan, wrote, Of the great names which in our faces stare, The General Boon, back-woodsman of Kentucky, Was happiest amongst mortals anywhere … And yet he was accused of treason"
Bill O'Really,Conservative,"Jesus once trusted Judas, appointing him treasurer of the disciples, and openly called him friend. But as so often happens when money is involved, years of friendship can quickly evaporate."
Bill O'Really,Conservative,and has created an atmosphere of suspicion
Bill O'Really,Conservative,Early American history has been told
Bill O'Really,Conservative,"Thomas Cole’s Daniel Boone Sitting at the Door of His Cabin on the Great Osage Lake, Kentucky,"
Bill O'Really,Conservative,But not in Mississippi. Though police
Bill O'Really,Conservative,"Many are convinced that the Second World War will be the war to end all wars, but Patton knows better. As a reminder to himself that war is inevitable, he has been reading Julius Caesar’s Gallic Wars each night before bed. The memoir recounts Caesar’s battles in Gaul4 and Germany from 58 to 51 BC. The words rise up off the page for Patton, and he feels a personal connection to the action."
Bill O'Really,Conservative,"Although cable news has, I believe, done much damage in undercutting civility in political discourse"
Bill O'Really,Conservative,faith is vital when it comes to doing the impossible.
Bill O'Really,Conservative,"In his lifetime, Stalin will murder millions of people. Some will be shot, others will be denied food and ultimately die of starvation, millions will be sent to die in the deep winter snows of Siberia, and many will be tortured to death. Already, during one infamous murder spree in April and May of 1940, some twenty-two thousand Polish nationals were shot dead. What began as an attempt to execute every member of the Polish officer corps soon expanded to include police officers, landowners, intelligence agents, lawyers, and priests. The shootings were conducted for nights on end, often beginning at dusk and continuing until dawn. Some were mass killings carried out in the Katyn Forest, while others were individual executions inside the Kalinin and Kharkiv prisons. Mikhailovich Blokhin, chief executioner at Kalinin, personally shot seven thousand men in the back of the head as they knelt before him. Those killings took place inside a cell whose walls were lined with sandbags to deaden the sound. As soon as a victim fell dead, he was dragged from the room and thrown onto a truck for delivery to the burial site, while another handcuffed prisoner was marched before Blokhin and told to kneel. Noting that Russian pistols had so much recoil that his hand hurt after just a dozen killings, Blokhin opted for the smoother feel of the German Walther PPK."
Bill O'Really,Conservative,"Franni knew I loved these tours, but one year she said to me in frustration, You don’t see Bill O’Reilly going on USO tours. That’s not fair, honey, I said. He has no talent."
Bill O'Really,Conservative,"meritocracy,"
Bill O'Really,Conservative,bathroom
Bill O'Really,Conservative,fight the
Bill O'Really,Conservative,Fantasy island before
Bill O'Really,Conservative,"The Wehrmacht soldiers have the advantage of surprise and know this terrain far better than their enemies do. They slaughter the men of the Third Army where they lie hiding, killing them one by one. The last words many of the Americans will ever hear are spoken in German, in the quiet whisper of an assassin. Last"
Bill O'Really,Conservative,American Sniper
Bill O'Really,Conservative,"The press knows Patton’s arrogance. The British understand his competitive nature. The Germans believe him to be America’s top general. But now he is battling his own generals, who despite the rapid American advance toward Messina are appalled by his willingness to embrace unnecessary danger. But only those close to him understand how emotional he becomes at the sight of wounded American soldiers. He is deeply moved by their bravery, and thus cannot stand the sight of those he considers cowards. Two"
Bill O'Really,Conservative,"Two days after slapping Kuhl, he writes a memo to each of his commanders, ordering them not to allow men suffering from combat fatigue to receive medical care. Such men are cowards and bring disgrace to their comrades, he writes, whom they heartlessly leave to endure the danger of battle while they themselves use the hospital as a means of escape. You will see that such cases are not sent to the hospital. On"
Bill O'Really,Conservative,"And what’s happened to you? Patton asks the young man. His name is Pvt. Paul Bennett. He has been in the army four years, serving with C Battery of the Seventeenth Field Artillery Regiment. He is just twenty-one years old. Until a friend died in combat, he had never once complained about battle. But he now shakes from convulsions. His red-rimmed eyes brim with tears. It’s my nerves, sir. I can’t stand the shelling anymore. Your nerves, hell. You’re just a goddamned coward. Bennett begins sobbing. Patton slaps him. Shut up, he orders, his voice rising. I won’t have these brave men here who’ve been shot see a yellow bastard sitting here crying. Patton hits him again, knocking off Bennett’s helmet, which falls to the dirt floor. You’re a disgrace to the army and you’re going back to the front to fight, he screams. You ought to be lined up against a wall and shot. In fact, I ought to shoot you right now. Patton"
Bill O'Really,Conservative,Morlocks (Google
Bill O'Really,Conservative,Visigoths and
Bill O'Really,Conservative,Hirs!
Bill O'Really,Conservative,"Shakespeare, Dickens,"
Bill O'Really,Conservative,activism. As
Bill O'Really,Conservative,"The autumn air is chill and damp. As he does each morning at just about this time, Adolf Hitler emerges from the artificial light of his concrete bunker into the morning sun. He holds his two-year-old German shepherd Blondi on a short leash for their daily walk through the thick birch forest. A fussy man of modest height and weight who is prone to emotional outbursts, Hitler wears his dark brown hair parted on the right and keeps his Charlie Chaplin mustache carefully combed and trimmed. Hitler"
Bill O'Really,Conservative,Hitler spends more time at the Wolf’s Lair than in Berlin
Bill O'Really,Conservative,"But Hitler is not tranquil. His right eardrum was ruptured in the bomb blast during the assassination attempt and has only recently stopped bleeding. That same blast hurled him to a concrete floor, bruising his buttocks as blue as a baboon’s behind and filling his legs with wooden splinters as it ripped his black uniform pants to shreds. However,"
Bill O'Really,Conservative,"Despite recent German setbacks on the battlefield, the Wolf still has hope that his plans for global domination will yet be realized. His greatest goal is the eradication of the Jewish people, with whom he is obsessed, despite not having had any intentional contact with a Jew in twenty years. This war can end two ways, he said in a January 30, 1942, address to the German parliament. Either the extermination of the Aryan peoples or the disappearance of Jewry from Europe. Prior"
Bill O'Really,Conservative,His wife greets him warmly as his two young
Bill O'Really,Conservative,that the decision to use force should not be determined by men whose careers depend upon its use.
Bill O'Really,Conservative,"apoplexy, chagrin,"
Bill O'Really,Conservative,gross motor
Bill O'Really,Conservative,"Churchill understands this harsh political reality. And though he won't admit it to Stalin, both men know that England has already seen its global power seriously diminished...Even now, as Churchill attempts to seduce a madman, American soldiers flood the streets of London. They are paid a higher salary than their British counterparts, and spend it freely. British soldiers seethe at the sight of American GIs with English girls on their arms, but there is nothing the Tommies, as they are called, can do about it."
Bill O'Really,Conservative,witness
Bill O'Really,Conservative,"Patton pulls his ivory-handled pistol from its holster with his right hand. With his left, he backhands Bennett across the face with such force that nearby doctors rush to intervene. The medical staff is disturbed by Patton’s actions and file a report. Word of the incidents soon reaches Eisenhower. I must so seriously question, Ike writes to Patton on August 16, your good judgment and your self-discipline as to raise serious doubts in my mind as to your future usefulness. But that is to be the end of it. Eisenhower needs Patton’s tactical genius. As Assistant Secretary of War John J. McCloy will later remind Ike, Abraham Lincoln was faced with similar concerns about the leadership of Gen. Ulysses S. Grant. I can’t spare this man, Lincoln had responded to those calling for Grant’s dismissal. He fights. Patton fights. *"
Bill O'Really,Conservative,coffee
Bill O'Really,Conservative,"algorithm, the"
Bill O'Really,Conservative,University of
Bill O'Really,Conservative,"Her-Story Department,"
Bill O'Really,Conservative,app from
Bill O'Really,Conservative,"misanthropic society,"
Bill O'Really,Conservative,"Caligula and the mouth of Marilyn Monroe, in reference"
Bill O'Really,Conservative,"I am rejoiced at my fate. I would rather be in my present situation than be elected to a seat in Congress for life. Do not be uneasy about me, I am with my friends … Farewell, David Crockett. His"
Bill O'Really,Conservative,Barry Soetoro’s declaration of martial law stunned the nation. His reason
Bill O'Really,Conservative,"At age sixty-one, Donovan is just a year younger than the president. The two have known each other since they were classmates at Columbia Law School. But there the similarities end. Roosevelt is a liberal while Donovan is a staunch conservative Republican. Roosevelt is in failing health; Donovan is so robust and larger-than-life that he seems bulletproof. And while Roosevelt is happiest basking in the adulation of a large crowd, the swaggering Donovan prefers to work in the shadows. Even before the war began, Roosevelt brought in this quick-thinking former attorney and Medal of Honor2 winner to be his global eyes and ears"
Bill O'Really,Conservative,"of character for John Kennedy, a man"
Bill O'Really,Conservative,"In the days following the Zimmerman verdict, Bill O’Reilly used his Fox News program to call attention to the disintegration of the African America family, which he identified as the ultimate source of so much violence and chaos in black communities. So long as 73 percent of black children are born to single mothers, said O’Reilly, blacks will find themselves overrepresented among delinquents."
Bill O'Really,Conservative,infidelity is as common as sunrise.
Bill O'Really,Conservative,"To understand what Jesus accomplished and how he paid with his life, we have to understand what was happening around him. His was a time when Rome dominated the Western world and brooked no dissent. Human life was worth little. Life expectancy was less than forty years, and far less if you happened to anger the Roman powers that were. An excellent description of the time was written"
Bill O'Really,Conservative,He had compared the taxation to a form of slavery and had encouraged his fellow Jews to rise up against their oppressors.
Bill O'Really,Conservative,John upon their return from a trip. The
Bill O'Really,Conservative,"Lincoln has become so addicted to the telegraph’s instant news from the front that he still can’t let go of the need for just one more bit of information, even though the prospect of another great battle is slim."
Bill O'Really,Conservative,Let ’em up easy.
Bill O'Really,Conservative,but to live in constant dread is to die over and over again.
Bill O'Really,Conservative,"black, and become infested with maggots"
Bill O'Really,Conservative,"You are the Christ, the son of the living God."
Bill O'Really,Conservative,The Nazarene tells a parable about a wealthy landowner and his troublesome tenants. The summation is a line stating that the religious leaders will lose their authority and be replaced by others whose belief is more genuine.
Bill O'Really,Conservative,"In that moment of revealing, one historian will write of Cleopatra, her desire grew greater than it had been before."
Bill O'Really,Conservative,diplomacy by balance of fear.
Bill O'Really,Conservative,"All free men, wherever they live, are citizens of Berlin, said the president. And therefore, as a free man, I take pride in the words, ‘Ich bin ein Berliner."
Bill O'Really,Conservative,and building his own home into the slope of a Nazarene hill. But the young Jesus is not long for this small town. The holiness and magnificence of Jerusalem call to him. He comes to know the smells and music of the city during his
Bill O'Really,Conservative,The end of the world is no time to keep the American people uninformed.
Bill O'Really,Conservative,Thousands of snapshots are taken of JFK that day. Many of them remain hanging in the pubs and homes of Galway.
Bill O'Really,Conservative,"In Moscow, Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev, fearing that Kennedy’s popularity would lead to an erosion of support in East Berlin, quickly flew to that divided city to reassert his nation’s claims. He and Kennedy did not meet. In fact, crowds a fraction of the size that greeted Kennedy even noticed that Khrushchev was in town, underscoring JFK’s amazing popularity and sending a clear message that Khrushchev’s power was on the wane."
Bill O'Really,Conservative,When you have to deal with a beast you have to treat him as a beast. It is most regrettable but nevertheless true. *
Bill O'Really,Conservative,"Whether ideas like this are inspiration or insomnia, I don’t know, he writes in his journal. I do things by sixth sense. Patton"
Bill O'Really,Conservative,"Patton, at heart, is a simple man who wears his emotions on his sleeve. This makes him extremely poor at the sort of political posturing at which rivals such as Montgomery excel. The"
Bill O'Really,Conservative,"The mere thought that the fighting will soon end fills Patton with dread. Peace is going to be hell on me, he writes to his wife, Beatrice."
Bill O'Really,Conservative,"Churchill is a creature of habit, rising each morning at 7:30 in his official residence at 10 Downing Street, just a half mile up the road from the Houses of Parliament. He works in bed until 11:00, whereupon he bathes, pours a weak Johnnie Walker Red scotch and water, and then works some more.3 He sips Pol Roger champagne with lunch at 1:00 p.m. Whenever possible, this is followed by a game of backgammon with Clementine at 3:30. He takes a ninety-minute nap at 5:00 p.m. Arising, Churchill bathes a second time, works for an hour, eats a sumptuous dinner at 8:00 p.m., and smokes a post-dinner cigar with a vintage Hine brandy. After that, he goes back to his study for more work until well past midnight. Unless"
Bill O'Really,Conservative,Thus begins a sideshow to the war itself: the undercover battle led by William Donovan and the OSS to ensure that Eastern Europe fall into the hands of Soviet Russia.
Bill O'Really,Conservative,"I had all my staffs, except for VIII Corps, in for a conference. As usual on the verge of an attack, they were full of doubt. I seemed always to be the ray of sunshine, and by God, I always am. We can and will win, God helping. *"
Bill O'Really,Conservative,"Faith and patience be damned! You have just got to make up Your mind whose side You are on. You must come to my assistance, so that I may dispatch the entire German Army as a birthday present to your Prince of Peace. Sir, I have never been an unreasonable man; I am not going to ask You to do the impossible."
Bill O'Really,Conservative,"For two long years the Franks evaded detection by the Nazis. They were less than a month away from Amsterdam’s liberation by the Allies when the end came. On August 4, 1944, a secret informant, whose name has never become known, gave away the family’s hiding place to the Gestapo."
Bill O'Really,Conservative,"Eisenhower’s greatest strength and his greatest weakness: compromise. He wants to make everyone happy, and believes that public opinion wins wars. Very often it seems Eisenhower would rather make the popular decision than the right one."
Bill O'Really,Conservative,"Yet the informality belies the truth: everyone, with the exception of Adolf Hitler, is terrified. You felt it to the point of physical illness, one German officer will later write. Nothing was authentic except fear. And"
Bill O'Really,Conservative,"Hitler specifically chooses Carlyle’s book because it was the eminent Scottish historian who set forth the Great Man theory of history, which states that the history of the world is but a biography of great men. Leonidas"
Bill O'Really,Conservative,"Winston was in a self-described political wilderness for much of his career, and was considered out of touch with political reality, thanks to his criticism of Nazi Germany in the 1930s, a time when few British politicians were bothered by the rise of Adolf Hitler."
Bill O'Really,Conservative,"Christmas Eve is known throughout Germany, ends late for Adolf Hitler. It is four o’clock on Christmas morning as he slowly ascends the stairs from his War Room and readies himself for bed. Rising at noon, the man who seeks to remove any sort of religious tone from Christmas6 receives the news that Peiper and his division have escaped entrapment."
Bill O'Really,Conservative,"Franklin Roosevelt’s biggest love is reserved for the American people, whom he has led through twelve daunting years of deprivation and warfare."
Bill O'Really,Conservative,The Chinese Communist rebels want twenty million dollars to purchase arms for themselves to battle China’s Japanese occupiers.
Bill O'Really,Conservative,"The real hero, Holmlund heard George S. Patton say just four months ago, is the man who fights even though he’s scared."
Bill O'Really,Conservative,"Audacity, audacity, always audacity"
Bill O'Really,Conservative,"He oversaw American forces in the Korean War,"
Bill O'Really,Conservative,"The real hero is the man who fights even though he is scared. Some men get over their fright in a minute under fire. For some, it takes an hour. For some, it takes days. But a real man will never let his fear of death overpower his honor, his sense of duty to his country, and his innate manhood."
Bill O'Really,Conservative,"Remember that the enemy is just as frightened as you are, and probably more so."
Bill O'Really,Conservative,"The sand beneath the blast was instantly turned into a layer of green glass ten feet deep, and the shock waves could be felt one hundred miles away."
Bill O'Really,Conservative,I’m [having sex] for God. I’m not a negro tonight!
Bill O'Really,Conservative,"Starvation, literal starvation, was doing its deadly work. So depleted and poisoned was the blood of many of Lee’s men from insufficient and unsound food that a slight wound which would probably not have been reported at the beginning of the war would often cause blood poison, gangrene, and death, one Confederate general will later write."
Bill O'Really,Conservative,"If you have not lost your self-control, and sensibly conceive what this might lead to, then, Mr. President, we and you ought not to pull on the ends of the rope in which you have tied the knot of war, because the more the two of us pull, the tighter the knot will be tied. And a moment may come when that knot will be tied so tight that even he who tied it will not have the strength to untie it, and then it will be necessary to cut that knot."
Bill O'Really,Conservative,made to the American people. He
Bill O'Really,Conservative,The tone of pessimism and defeat that marked Carter’s first day in office came to define his entire presidency.
Bill O'Really,Conservative,"From the very first question, Cronkite attempts"
Bill O'Really,Conservative,"But I dream things that never were and say, ‘Why not?"
Bill O'Really,Conservative,Reagan has come to believe that less governmental interference is the best path for America.
Bill O'Really,Conservative,Lincoln telegraphs his heartfelt reply: 'Let the thing be pressed.
Bill O'Really,Conservative,"The president’s philandering aside, unquestionably the biggest change between the Kennedy"
Bill O'Really,Conservative,"aware that it is the year in which he will remarry, father a new child, and vote Republican for the first time in his life."
Bill O'Really,Conservative,"and shocking, I kept on until I arrived in the East Room, which I entered. There I was met with a sickening surprise. Before me was a catafalque, on which rested a corpse wrapped in funeral vestments. Around it were stationed soldiers who were acting as guards. And there were a throng of people, some gazing mournfully upon the corpse, whose face was covered, others weeping pitifully. ‘Who is dead in the White House?’ I"
Bill O'Really,Conservative,"audience looking on, and 3,700 mourners in the pews, Margaret Thatcher’s taped eulogy concludes."
Bill O'Really,Conservative,calling the Soviet Union
Bill O'Really,Conservative,throwback
Bill O'Really,Conservative,Ronald Reagan is directly responsible for initiating the fame of Marilyn Monroe.
Bill O'Really,Conservative,"autobiography, he claimed"
Bill O'Really,Conservative,a touchy-feely vision of our society that places individual self-expression and rights over self-sacrifice and adult responsibility.
Bill O'Really,Conservative,The man with forty-five minutes to live cannot defend himself.
Bill O'Really,Conservative,George Patton and Winston Churchill are simpatico.
Bill O'Really,Conservative,"No drunken, saddened, addled, enraged citizens of Richmond so much as attacks Lincoln with their fists."
Bill O'Really,Conservative,engraved on the Jefferson Memorial in Washington: God who gave us life gave us liberty. Can the liberties of a nation be secure when we have removed a conviction that these liberties are the gift of God?
Bill O'Really,Conservative,"On September 6, 1819, he wrote: The Constitution … is a mere thing of wax in the hands of the judiciary, which they may twist and shape into any form they please."
Bill O'Really,Conservative,"It’s so dark, Patton says. So late. He closes his eyes and falls back to sleep."
Bill O'Really,Conservative,"George Shultz, who will one day serve as Reagan’s secretary of state, will call this the most important foreign policy decision Reagan has ever made."
Bill O'Really,Conservative,few months before heading
Bill O'Really,Conservative,"The Russian general is used to such supplicant behavior. During the war, he ordered his troops to shoot any of their comrades who ran from the Germans, and any Russian village that was thought to have collaborated with the Nazis was burned to the ground. Zhukov is so feared that other Russian generals have been known to tremble in his presence. Patton does not tremble. He was in full dress uniform much like comic opera and covered in medals, Patton later wrote to Beatrice of Zhukov. He is short, rather fat and has a prehensile chin like an ape but good blue eyes. As Russian tanks rolled past the reviewing stand, Patton noticed Zhukov gloating over the new Soviet IS-3 model"
Bill O'Really,Conservative,"It is a powerful statement that a good man suffered for me, that a just God was looking out for me, and if I lived a good life, I would be rewarded after death. Those beliefs, sincerely held, can get a human being through many hard times.…"
Bill O'Really,Conservative,The wrists will then also be shackled
Bill O'Really,Conservative,Digital lights in the center of the round door began
Bill O'Really,Conservative,"Most people live their lives as if the end were always years away. They measure their days in love, laughter, accomplishment, and loss. There are moments of sunshine and storm. There are schedules, phone calls, careers, anxieties, joys, exotic trips, favorite foods, romance, shame, and hunger. A person can be defined by clothing, the smell of his breath, the way she combs her hair, the shape of his torso, or even the company she keeps. All over the world, children love their parents and yearn for love in return. They revel in the touch of parental hands on their faces. And even on the worst of days, each person has dreams about the future"
Bill O'Really,Conservative,Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.
Bill O'Really,Conservative,"command structure, they would travel and live in small"
Bill O'Really,Conservative,"Your greatest fault, Eisenhower tells Patton, is your audacity."
Bill O'Really,Conservative,"Reagan’s victory notwithstanding, the landslide loss by Barry Goldwater in the 1964 presidential election makes it abundantly clear that conservative Republican values are falling out of fashion."
Bill O'Really,Conservative,"But in the West today, we see a free world that has achieved a level of prosperity and well-being unprecedented in all human history. In the Communist world, we see failure, technological backwardness, declining standards of health, even want of the most basic kind"
Bill O'Really,Conservative,"The religious freedom promoted by Bill O'Reilly, Sarah Palin, the Conference of Catholic Bishops, the Religious Right of Ken Ham and Tony Perkins is a fraud and a scam; it is antithetical to true freedom of conscience and belief."
Bill O'Really,Conservative,"I know in my heart that man is good, the inscription on Reagan’s tombstone reads, that what is right will always eventually triumph, and there is purpose and worth to each and every life."
Bill O'Really,Conservative,helicopter to
Bill O'Really,Conservative,Reagan will later write
Bill O'Really,Conservative,"Screaming Meemie rockets screech into the darkness, a deadly sound that American soldiers everywhere find unnerving."
Bill O'Really,Conservative,"The less you want, the happier you'll be."
Bill O'Really,Conservative,"If you want to be a happy man, he will counsel a friend years from now, just don’t ever cheat on your wife. Ronald Reagan and"
Bill O'Really,Conservative,"the camera as he talks, looking at notes."
Bill O'Really,Conservative,"He is himself again, more himself than at any time on this Earth. Nancy Reagan on her husband"
Bill O'Really,Conservative,"O’Reilly also shared another significant Ailesian trait: he understood television news was nothing but a show. Bill O’Reilly is one of the greatest bullshitters in the world, Ailes’s brother, Robert, said. He can talk about any subject, he can get the best out of his guest by taking the opposite point of view even if he doesn’t believe it."
Bill O'Really,Conservative,"On the night of September 13, Bill O’Reilly had an exchange with Sam Husseini, a former spokesperson for the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee, that characterized Fox’s position as it was developing. Here’s what we’re going to do, and I’ll let you react to it, O’Reilly said. We’re going to take out this Osama bin Laden. Now, whether we go in with air power or whether we go in with a Delta force, he’s a dead man walking. He’s through. He should have been through long before this. He’s been wanted for eight years. Now, they’re going to go in and they’re going to get him. If the Taliban government of Afghanistan does not cooperate, then we will damage that government with air power, probably. All right? We will blast them, because … Husseini told O’Reilly that innocent Afghans would be killed by a protracted air strike. Doesn’t make any difference, O’Reilly huffed. Bill"
Bill O'Really,Conservative,"The assassin is immediately punched in the head by a nearby spectator, then gang-tackled by the crowd. Hinckley is buried beneath several hundred pounds of angry citizens as Secret Service agents try to take him alive. Ironically, their job is to now protect Hinckley with the same vigor they devote to protecting the president."
Bill O'Really,Conservative,"I took some heat from the far right, but my strategy is clear: If traditionalists want to win the culture war, they must fight with honor, because honor, as the true traditionalist understands, is a hallmark of America."
Bill O'Really,Conservative,"No question, the S-P leadership, as well as their sympathizers in the media, will not at all like the exposition you are reading. Laying bare the secular-progressive agenda and their strategy of imposing it on America leaves the S-Ps exposed. That, of course, will anger them. The smear campaign will likely begin on the Net, quickly spread to left-wing newspaper columnists, and then go on to the Fox-hating MSNBC network. Of course, there will be a counterattack by me and other traditional forces, because hatred must be answered with resolve and facts. It's going to be nasty. Just wait and see."
Bill O'Really,Conservative,The world is filled with concern but also with hypocrisy. Hypocrisy on the part of people who see no evil and speak no evil to avoid becoming involved.--- Marcello Pera
Bill O'Really,Conservative,"To replace this loss of spirituality, millions of Europeans have embraced the secular concept of relativism. According to this way of thinking, there is no absolute truth, no certain right and wrong. Everything is relative. What is wrong in my eyes might not be wrong in your eyes. By this logic, even heinous acts can be explained, so they should not - in fact, they cannot - be condemned.The wide acceptance of relativism has rendered Europe weak, confused, and chaotic."
Bill O'Really,Conservative,"For now, Patton keeps his comments to himself. Volatile words could get him fired - or even killed. Patton is a man of strong beliefs, and as he will tell the press in a few weeks, he is utterly sure of the Russian danger: 'Churchill had a sense of history. Unfortunately, some of our leaders were just damn fools who had no idea of Russian history. Hell, I doubt if they even knew [that] Russia, just less than a hundred years ago, owned Finland, sucked the blood out of Poland, and were using Siberia as a prison for their own people. How Stalin must have sneered when he got through with them at all those phony conferences."
Bill O'Really,Conservative,Sugar Act modified an existing but rarely enforced law and added new goods
Bill O'Really,Conservative,"The face of Capt. Daniel-Hyacinthe-Marie Liénard de Beaujeu is striped in war paint. Primeval forest conceals his French Marines, Canadian militia, and Indian allies as they maneuver into position. Hidden behind boulders and ancient oak trees, they await the massive combined force of the British and colonial armies now marching toward them. Beaujeu’s French and Indians are heavily outnumbered. Unlike the British, they don’t have cannon that can kill and maim dozens with a single blast of canister shot. Instead, their weapons are those of a nimble guerrilla fighting force: muskets, tomahawks, war clubs to bash skulls, and sharp knives for slicing the flesh and hair from a dying man’s head"
Bill O'Really,Conservative,"The term head, in reference to a toilet, comes from the special board extending from the beak head of the ship (the pointed bow) out over the ocean for passengers to use as a communal toilet. The wind and waves dispatch any odor or mess."
Bill O'Really,Conservative,"For the first time in modern history, anti-Semitism became governmental policy."
Bill O'Really,Conservative,"Of the 9,600,000 Jews who lived in Nazi-dominated Europe, 60 percent are authoritatively estimated to have perished. Five million seven hundred thousand Jews are missing from the countries in which they formerly lived, and over 4,500,000 cannot be accounted for by the normal death rate nor by immigration; nor are they included among displaced persons."
Bill O'Really,Conservative,Himmler and these men are all members of a Nazi paramilitary organization known in German as the Schutzstaffel.
Bill O'Really,Conservative,"By 1933, when Adolf Hitler’s National Socialist Party assumed power in Germany, the military was divided between the Wehrmacht"
Bill O'Really,Conservative,"In 1947 alone, an estimated eight thousand members of the SS safely travel to Canada and the United States utilizing false documents."
Bill O'Really,Conservative,These four men
Bill O'Really,Conservative,The German penchant for detailed record keeping proved to be their undoing: the date and cause of death for each inmate was dutifully recorded.
Bill O'Really,Conservative,"Between 1933 and 1943, just 190,000 Jews were allowed to immigrate into America"
Bill O'Really,Conservative,"I had 3,000 Einsatzgruppen members who every day went out and shot as many Jews as they could and Gypsies as well. I tried twenty-two, I convicted twenty-two, thirteen were sentenced to death, four of them were actually executed, the rest of them got out after a few years. The other 3,000"
Bill O'Really,Conservative,"Outside Milan, the couple visits the gas station where Italian dictator Benito Mussolini and his mistress were hanged by an angry mob."
Bill O'Really,Conservative,"The United States Office of Strategic Services (OSS) is not aggressively pursuing war crimes prosecutions. Instead, it is recruiting members of the Nazi Party to spy against the Soviet Union."
Bill O'Really,Conservative,"Incredibly, Klaus Barbie, the Butcher of Lyon, finds sanctuary with the OSS."
Bill O'Really,Conservative,The second secret is Juan and Eva Perón’s deep ties to the Nazi Party.
Bill O'Really,Conservative,"Immediately after the war, a group of Jewish partisans known as the Nokmim traveled throughout Germany and Austria hunting down former members of the SS. Also known as the Avengers, this band of mercenaries paid by the government of Great Britain made northern Italy their home base.3"
Bill O'Really,Conservative,"The fact of the matter is that hundreds of SS officials are now in the United States, with some even working for the CIA. This is a truth that must never be revealed."
Bill O'Really,Conservative,"It is ironic that the people who make history are some of the most bold, courageous, and passionate people that have ever walked the earth, but the actual writing of history is often so fact driven that all emotion is deflated from the telling of a person's life story."
Bill O'Really,Conservative,"We passed by the large chambers and, on the way back, I saw a big curtain at the entrance to the large chambers, a curtain used to cover the Ark containing the Torah Scrolls with the Shield of David on it, and on the curtain there was the inscription: This is the gate of the Lord, through which the righteous shall enter."
Bill O'Really,Conservative,"Q: Until you actually reached Auschwitz, you had no idea that the deportations to the East were for the purpose of extermination? A: No, I did not know this and we did not know it. We knew very well that the London radio spoke about the gas chambers, but we didn’t take it at all seriously. We thought it was propaganda"
Bill O'Really,Conservative,A stone wall twelve feet high now divides the city into east and west
Bill O'Really,Conservative,"However, all works of history lean on a smaller bank of key resources as a gateway into the research: The Nazi Hunters and Hunting Eichmann by Neal Bascomb; The Nazi Hunters by Andrew Nagorski; Hunting Evil by Guy Walters; Simon Wiesenthal: The Life and Legends by Tom Segev; Nazi Hunter: The Wiesenthal File by Alan Levy; Nazis on the Run: How Hitler’s Henchmen Fled Justice by Gerald Steinacher; The Nazis Next Door: How America Became a Safe Haven for Hitler’s Men by Eric Lichtblau; the seminal Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil by Hannah Arendt; and the equally spectacular Eichmann Before Jerusalem: The Unexamined Life of a Mass Murderer by Bettina Stangneth. The best research we came across concerning the validity of claims about the existence of an ODESSA group can be found in The Real Odessa: How Peron Brought the Nazi War Criminals to Argentina by Uki Goni."
Bill O'Really,Conservative,"Otto Rasch, whose Einsatz unit massacred exactly 33,771 Jews over a two-day period outside Kiev, Russia."
Bill O'Really,Conservative,So astonishing was his physique that another man unabashedly described young Abraham Lincoln as a cross between Venus and Hercules.
Bill O'Really,Conservative,"* * * Thus, General Washington gets emotional and delivers a rare poetic speech to his troops: This army, the main American Army, will certainly not suffer itself to be outdone by their northern brethren.… Let it never be said, that in a day of action, you turned your backs on the foe. Let the enemy no longer triumph. They brand you with ignominious epithets. Will you patiently endure that reproach? Will you suffer the wounds given to your country to go unrevenged? Will you resign your parents, wives, children and friends to be the wretched vassals of a proud, insulting foe"
Bill O'Really,Conservative,I am usually insubordinate. I don’t take orders that I know are stupid or illegal.
Bill O'Really,Conservative,Skorzeny recounts his escapades in
Bill O'Really,Conservative,former cavalry barracks in a
William F. Buckley Jr.,Conservative,"I'm probably the most violent advocate of peanut butter in history. On a dare from one of my sons, I actually shaved with peanut butter and it wasn't bad, but it smells."
William F. Buckley Jr.,Conservative,"The modern conservative movement was inspired by Barry Goldwater’s canonical text from 1960, The Conscience of a Conservative."
William F. Buckley Jr.,Conservative,"...Now let's set the record straight. There's no argument over the choice between peace and war, but there's only one guaranteed way you can have peace"
William F. Buckley Jr.,Conservative,"Barry Goldwater, in his 1964 presidential campaign, aggressively exploited the riots and fears of black crime, laying the foundation for the get tough on crime movement that would emerge years later. In a widely quoted speech, Goldwater warned voters, Choose the way of [the Johnson] Administration and you have the way of mobs in the street.41 Civil rights activists who argued that the uprisings were directly related to widespread police harassment and abuse were dismissed by conservatives out of hand. If [blacks] conduct themselves in an orderly way, they will not have to worry about police brutality, argued West Virginia senator Robert Byrd.42 While"
William F. Buckley Jr.,Conservative,Reagan is described as delivering Barry Goldwater's doctrine with John F. Kennedy's technique.
William F. Buckley Jr.,Conservative,"position an exploding seashell near where Fidel Castro snorkeled in Cuba. The iconic image of the hearings came when committee members passed around a pistol that the CIA had built to shoot poison darts and Senator Barry Goldwater pointed the gun into the air as he looked through its sights. CIA director William Colby tried to make clear that the weapon had never been used, but the image endured. Before the committee had even wrapped up its work, President Ford signed an executive order banning the government from carrying out assassinations of foreign heads of state or other foreign politicians."
William F. Buckley Jr.,Conservative,"Now, we Americans understand freedom. We have earned it, we have lived for it, and we have died for it. This nation and its people are freedom’s model in a searching world. We can be freedom’s missionaries in a doubting world. But, ladies and gentlemen, first we must renew freedom’s mission in our own hearts and in our own homes."
William F. Buckley Jr.,Conservative,"Freedom of association is one of the natural rights of man. Clearly, therefore, it should also be a civil right. Right-to-work laws derive from the natural law: they are simply an attempt to give freedom of association the added protection of civil law. I"
William F. Buckley Jr.,Conservative,Let us henceforth make war on all monopolies
William F. Buckley Jr.,Conservative,"We have been led to look upon taxation as merely a problem of public financing: How much money does the government need? We have been led to discount, and often to forget altogether, the bearing of taxation on the problem of individual freedom. We have been persuaded that the government has an unlimited claim on the wealth of the people, and that the only pertinent question is what portion of its claim the government should exercise. The American taxpayer, I think, has lost confidence in his claim to his money."
William F. Buckley Jr.,Conservative,"The graduated tax is a confiscatory tax. Its effect, and to a large extent its aim, is to bring down all men to a common level. Many of the leading proponents of the graduated tax frankly admit that their purpose is to redistribute the nation's wealth. Their aim is an egalitarian society"
William F. Buckley Jr.,Conservative,"Most important of all: in our anxiety to improve the world and insure progress we have permitted our schools to become laboratories for social and economic change according to the predilections of the professional educators. We have forgotten that the proper function of the school is to transmit the cultural heritage of one generation to the next generation, and to so train the minds of the new generation as to make them capable of absorbing ancient learning and applying it to the problem of its own day. The"
William F. Buckley Jr.,Conservative,"Truth be told, the party was moving in entirely the wrong direction. Ever since 1964, when Barry Goldwater championed states’ rights"
William F. Buckley Jr.,Conservative,But I am here concerned not so much by the abandonment of States' Rights by the national Democratic Party
William F. Buckley Jr.,Conservative,"The Conservative approach is nothing more or less than an attempt to apply the wisdom and experience and the revealed truths of the past to the problems of today. The challenge is not to find new or different truths, but to learn how to apply established truths to the problems of the contemporary world."
William F. Buckley Jr.,Conservative,"The Conservative knows that to regard man as part of an undifferentiated mass is to consign him to ultimate slavery. Secondly,"
William F. Buckley Jr.,Conservative,"Thus, for the American Conservative, there is no difficulty in identifying the day's overriding political challenge: it is to preserve and extend freedom."
William F. Buckley Jr.,Conservative,"Here we have, by prominent spokesmen of both political parties, an unqualified repudiation of the principle of limited government. There is no reference by either of them to the Constitution, or any attempt to define the legitimate functions of government. The government can do whatever needs to be done; note, too, the implicit but necessary assumption that it is the government itself that determines what needs to be done."
Roger Stone,Conservative,The Dark Side of Camelot.
Roger Stone,Conservative,"…The children of God, being the children of the resurrection.… For he is not a God of the dead, but of the living: for all live unto him."
Roger Stone,Conservative,"Joe Jr.’s death would be the first in a series of tragedies in the Kennedy family, later dubbed by the press as the Curse of the Kennedys. There was no curse, only a family whose privileged nature and commitment to excel led them to make reckless decisions."
Roger Stone,Conservative,trouble getting 91 octane gas when we need it.30 It was
Roger Stone,Conservative,"If our imagined tribe just is not disposed to cross the boundaries as a matter of inclination, they do not in our sense have an institutional fact. They simply have a disposition to behave in certain ways, and their behavior is just like the case of animals marking the limits of their territory. There is nothing deontic about such markings. The animals simply behave in such and such ways, and behave here means they simply move their bodies in specific ways. But if we suppose that the members of the tribe recognize that the line of stones creates rights and obligations, that they are forbidden to cross the line, that they are not supposed to cross it, then we have symbolization. The stones now symbolize something beyond themselves; they function like words. I"
Roger Stone,Conservative,"In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists, and will persist."
Roger Stone,Conservative,"One cannot examine the actions of the Secret Service on November 22, 1963, without concluding that the Service stood down on protecting President Kennedy. Indeed, the 120-degree turn into Dealey Plaza violates Secret Service procedures, because it required the presidential limousine to come to a virtual stop. The reduction of the president’s motorcycle escort from six police motorcycles to two and the order for those two officers to ride behind the presidential limousine also violates standard Secret Service procedure. The failure to empty and secure the tall buildings on either side of the motorcade route through Dealey Plaza likewise violates formal procedure, as does the lack of any agents dispersed through the crowd gathered in Dealey Plaza. Readers who are interested in a comprehensive analysis of the Secret Service’s multiple failures and the conspicuous violation of longstanding Secret Service policies regarding the movement and protection of the president on November 22, 1963, should read Vince Palamara’s Survivor’s Guilt: The Secret Service and the Failure to Protect. The difference in JFK Secret Service protection and its adherence to the services standard required procedures in Chicago and Miami would be starkly different from the arrangements for Dallas. Palamara established that Agent Emory Roberts worked overtime to help both orchestrate the assassination and cover up the unusual actions of the Secret Service in the aftermath. Roberts was commander of the follow-up car trailing the presidential limousine. Roberts covered up the escapades of his fellow secret servicemen at The Cellar, a club in downtown Ft. Worth, where agents, some directly responsible for the safety of President Kennedy during the motorcade, drank until dawn on November 22. He also ordered a perplexed agent Donald Lawton off the back of the presidential limousine while at Love Field, thus giving the assassins clearer, more direct shots and more time to get them off. Also, although Roberts recognized rifle fire being discharged in Dealey Plaza, he neglected to mobilize any of the agents under his watch to act. To mask the inactivity of his agents, Roberts, in sworn testimony, falsely increased the speed of the cars (from 9–11 mph to 20–25 mph) and the distance between them (from five feet to 20–25 feet).85 No analysis of the Secret Service’s actions on the day of the assassination can be complete without mentioning that Secret Service director James Rowley was a former FBI agent and close ally of FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover, as well as a crony of Lyndon Johnson. Hoover was one of Johnson’s closest associates. The FBI Director would take the unusual step of flying to Dallas for a victory celebration in 1948 when Johnson illegally stole his Senate seat through election fraud. Johnson and Hoover were neighbors in the Foxhall Road area of the District of Columbia. Hoover’s budget would virtually triple during the years LBJ dominated the appropriations process as Senate Majority Leader. Rowley was a protégé of the director and one of the few men who left the FBI on good terms with Hoover. Rowley’s first public service job in the Roosevelt administration was arranged for him by LBJ. The neglect of assigning even one Secret Service agent to secure Dealey Plaza, as well as cleaning blood and other relatable pieces of evidence from the presidential limousine immediately following the assassination, seizing Kennedy’s body from Parkland Hospital to prevent a proper, well-documented autopsy, failing to record Oswald’s interrogation"
Roger Stone,Conservative,"Some readers found my depiction of Lyndon Johnson the man as stunning. Johnson was a course, crude, loudmouthed bully with an insatiable appetite for cigarettes, alcohol, and women. Far from the civil rights-crusading statesman that the media likes to portray, Johnson was epically corrupt, greedy, vain, manipulative, ambitious, vindictive, and nasty. LBJ was a sadist who enjoyed the discomfort of the people who worked for him and reveled in being viciously abusive to his rabidly loyal staff. Richard"
Roger Stone,Conservative,"At this late date, it’s hard for me to believe that anyone with intelligence or objectivity can continue to believe the Warren Commission’s ludicrous claim that President Kennedy was assassinated by a lone gunman named Lee Harvey Oswald, and that no conspiracy existed. We now know that Oswald was a US intelligence asset who had worked for both the CIA and FBI and that both agencies lied to the Warren Commission about their previous knowledge of him and his activities. Important to note are the systematic seizing of witnesses whose testimony bolstered the Commission’s conclusions while at the same time ignoring multiple witnesses who contradicted the Commission’s version of events. These witnesses provided evidence additional to the fingerprint evidence which tied Johnson’s gunman Wallace to the crime, i.e. multiple witnesses described a man who fit the description of Wallace, heavyset, and bespeckled, wearing a brown sports coat. It adds to the evidence that Lee Harvey Oswald was not the shooter from the sixth floor of the Texas School Book Depository building; Malcolm Wallace, LBJ’s longtime hitman, was."
Roger Stone,Conservative,"Many have questioned how Lyndon Johnson could have put his closest protégé and right hand man John Connally in mortal danger by having him ride with JFK in the presidential limousine in the Dallas motorcade . Indeed, Johnson maneuvered desperately to get Connally moved to the vice-presidential car and substitute his archenemy Yarborough in the presidential vehicle. Senator George Smathers said in his memoirs that JFK complained to him prior to the trip about an effort by LBJ to get first lady Jacqueline Kennedy to ride in the vice presidential car, an idea JFK flatly rejected.39 Shortly before Kennedy’s death in the motorcade LBJ would visit the president’s hotel room and try again to convince him to have Connally and Yarborough swap places. Again, JFK refused, and Johnson stormed from the room after a shouting match.40 The outburst was so loud that first lady Jacqueline Kennedy expressed to her husband that Johnson sounded mad.41 Perhaps this explains LBJ’s taciturn behavior from the moment the presidential motorcade left Love Field for Dealey Plaza. An earlier rain had subsided, giving way to sunny skies. The crowds were large and friendly, yet LBJ stared straight ahead and never cracked a smile or waved to the crowds as did Lady Bird, Senator Yarborough, the Connallys, and the Kennedys. LBJ would actually tell Robert Kennedy, of all things in life, this [campaigning] is what I enjoy most.42 Normally, the gregarious Johnson would wave his hat, pose and wave to the crowd and shout howdy, but on this day he seemed non-expressive and focused. New 3-D imaging analysis and more sophisticated photographic analysis now show without question that LBJ ducked to the floor of his limousine before the first shots were fired.43"
Roger Stone,Conservative,"Sometimes the problem is recognizing what's right in front of you, because what might look like a huge stone, blocking your way, is realy a ladder leading to all new heights, you just have to find the right hand holds."
Roger Stone,Conservative,"It’s the Munich of the Republic Party, said Senator Barry Goldwater."
Roger Stone,Conservative,I feel that I am uniquely qualified to make the case that LBJ had John F. Kennedy killed so that he could become president.
Roger Stone,Conservative,"I climbed the ditch, walked out into the middle of the prayer stones and stared across to the monks' island. If you stood there and thought you heard mass when it wasn't being sung, how would it be different to standing there when it was being sung? Would the mass in your head be any less real?"
Roger Stone,Conservative,Nixon knew that in 1960 the American people were unlikely to elect a man who was seeing a shrink. Although the advances in our perceptions about psychiatry
Roger Stone,Conservative,"In one of his last moves in office, President Clinton cemented his reputation of being one of the most notorious grifters to ever occupy the oval office. This was of course the precursor to the Lyndon Johnson–like wheeling and dealing that would engulf the Bill, Hillary & Chelsea Clinton Foundation in 2015. President Clinton gave a pardon to billionaire swindler Marc Rich, then a fugitive. In return, Rich’s ex-wife Denise gave Clinton millions of dollars for his library. It was Arkansas pay-for-play politics at its worst. The story of how it happened is breathtaking."
Roger Stone,Conservative,"The Sinhalese were perplexed by their endemic restlessness and their eating habits, declaring the Portuguese to be a very white and beautiful people, who wear hats and boots of iron and never stop in one place. They eat a sort of white stone and drink blood. Such"
Roger Stone,Conservative,Governments and corporations involved in arms deals approved by Hillary Clinton’s State Department have given between $54 million and $141 million to the Clinton Foundation as well as hundreds of thousands of dollars in payments to the Clinton family. This is according to the International Business Times. These
Roger Stone,Conservative,"Between 2009 and 2012, Hillary’s State Department approved of $165 billion worth of commercial arms sales to twenty nations whose governments have given money to the Clinton Foundation.546 In addition, the Clinton State Department also authorized $151 billion of separate Pentagon brokered deals for sixteen countries that donated to the Clinton Foundation.547"
Roger Stone,Conservative,"In addition, the Clinton Foundation accepted donations from six companies benefiting from U.S. State Department arms export approvals. They are as follows: Defense Contractor Donation Min. Boeing $5,000,000 General Electric $1,000,000 Goldman Sachs (Hawker Beechcraft) $500,000 Honeywell $50,000 Lockheed Martin $250,000 United Technologies $50,000548 One arms contractor that got millions from Hillary was General Electric. General Electric owned 49 percent of NBC. NBC hired Chelsea Clinton for $600 thousand just prior to their enormous contract, approved by the State Department. Chelsea, who is a fully matured adult, has become a grifter like her mother. Those"
Roger Stone,Conservative,"Since 2013, when Hillary stepped down from her position as secretary of state, $262 million has come in from foreign entities. The largest share of donations from the financial services sector has been from those contributors with close ties to Wall Street. A third of foundation donors who have given more than $1 million are foreign governments or other entities based outside the United States, and foreign donors make up more than half of those who have given more than $5 million. The role of interests located in countries such as Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and Argentina may spur questions about the independence of a potential commander in chief who has solicited money from foreign donors with a stake in the actions of the US government.569 This, of course, ignores the fact that these Islamic nations brutally oppress women denying them the right to vote, drive a car, get an education, choose their own husbands, or show their face in the public square."
Roger Stone,Conservative,"Hillary wants the American people to believe she is a champion of women’s rights. Women’s issues are America’s issues, she has said over and again, adding that women’s rights are human rights. She neglects to mention the plethora of women whose voices she silenced and whose rights she took away. She has not only enabled the behavior of her husband for almost forty years, she has engaged in a war of character assassination and caused both physical and emotional trauma to the women who were victims of her husband’s depraved behavior."
Roger Stone,Conservative,"Statement Preliminary to the Invention of SolaceWhether they bend as compliantly as black leavesCurved and hanging in the heavy dew in the grey dawn, Or whether they wait as motionless as ice-coatedInsects and spears of roots on a northern cliff;Whether they tighten once like the last white edgeOf primrose taken suddenly skywardBy a gust of frost, or swallow as hard as stonesCareened and scattered by a current of river; Whether they mourn by the bright light of griefRunning like a spine of grass straight through the soundOf their songs, or whether they fall quietlyThrough indefinite darkness like a seed of sorrelBound alive beneath snow;whether they mourn in multitudes, blessedlike a congregation of winter forest moaning for the whitedrifting children of storms they can never remember, or whether they grieve separately, dividedeven from themselves, parted like golden plovers blown and calling over a buffeted sea;something must come to them, something as clear and fairand continuous as the eye of the bluegill open in calm water,something as silent as the essential spaces of breathheard inside the voice naming all of their wishes, something touching them in the same way the sun deep in the pit of the pear touches the spring sky by the lightof its own leaf. A comfort understood like that must be present now and possible."
Roger Stone,Conservative,"Will you not bid me welcome, Brother? the beast mocked. The dragon’s voice paralyzed Roger where he stood. Hearing it sapped his strength, stole his will, made him feel as though his mind had been crushed between slabs of stone. There was chaos in it, and destruction"
Roger Stone,Conservative,Perhaps it was because George H. W. Bush has no fixed ideology that he was underrated within his own party.
Roger Stone,Conservative,"George Bush is high-handed, secretive, and fueled by an incredible sense of entitlement."
Roger Stone,Conservative,"Post election in 1988, he famously swept a copy of Bill Buckley’s National Review off a coffee table in his Kennebunkport, Maine home and said well we don’t need this shit anymore."
Roger Stone,Conservative,An Echo in the Bone (novel)
Milton Friedman,Conservative,"The Great Depression, like most other periods of severe unemployment, was produced by government mismanagement rather than by any inherent instability of the private economy."
Milton Friedman,Conservative,"Even the most ardent environmentalist doesn't really want to stop pollution. If he thinks about it, and doesn't just talk about it, he wants to have the  right amount  of pollution. We can't really  afford  to eliminate it - not without abandoning all the benefits of technology that we not only enjoy but on which we depend."
Milton Friedman,Conservative,He moves fastest who moves alone.
Milton Friedman,Conservative,"I think that nothing is so important for freedom as recognizing in the law each individual’s natural right to property, and giving individuals a sense that they own something that they’re responsible for, that they have control over, and that they can dispose of."
Milton Friedman,Conservative,Education spending will be most effective if it relies on parental choice & private initiative -- the building blocks of success throughout our society.
Milton Friedman,Conservative,"The key insight of Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations is misleadingly simple: if an exchange between two parties is voluntary, it will not take place unless both believe they will benefit from it. Most economic fallacies derive from the neglect of this simple insight, from the tendency to assume that there is a fixed pie, that one party can gain only at the expense of another."
Milton Friedman,Conservative,"For example, the supporters of tariffs treat it as self-evident that the creation of jobs is a desirable end, in and of itself, regardless of what the persons employed do. That is clearly wrong. If all we want are jobs, we can create any number--for example, have people dig holes and then fill them up again, or perform other useless tasks. Work is sometimes its own reward. Mostly, however, it is the price we pay to get the things we want. Our real objective is not just jobs but productive jobs--jobs that will mean more goods and services to consume."
Milton Friedman,Conservative,"This plea comes from the bottom of my heart. Every friend of freedom, and I know you are one, must be as revolted as I am by the prospect of turning the United States into an armed camp, by the vision of jails filled with casual drug users and of an army of enforcers empowered to invade the liberty of citizens on slight evidence. A country in which shooting down unidentified planes on suspicion can be seriously considered as a drug-war tactic is not the kind of United States that either you or I want to hand on to future generations."
Milton Friedman,Conservative,"We do not influence the course of events by persuading people that we are right when we make what they regard as radical proposals. Rather, we exert influence by keeping options available when something has to be done at a time of crisis."
Milton Friedman,Conservative,"I do not believe that the solution to our problem is simply to elect the right people. The important thing is to establish a political climate of opinion which will make it politically profitable for the wrong people to do the right thing. Unless it is politically profitable for the wrong people to do the right thing, the right people will not do the right thing either, or it they try, they will shortly be out of office."
Milton Friedman,Conservative,"I’m in favor of legalizing drugs. According to my values system, if people want to kill themselves, they have every right to do so. Most of the harm that comes from drugs is because they are illegal."
Milton Friedman,Conservative,"I am a libertarian with a small 'l' and a Republican with a capital 'R'. And I am a Republican with a capital 'R' on grounds of expediency, not on principle."
Milton Friedman,Conservative,"Oh, I thought you were trying to build a canal. If it's jobs you want, then you should give these workers spoons, not shovels. [Reply to the government bureaucrat of one Asian country who told him that, reason why there were workers with shovels instead of modern tractors and earth movers at a worksite of a new canal, was that: You don't understand. This is a jobs program.]"
Milton Friedman,Conservative,Is it really true that political self-interest is nobler somehow than economic self-interest? . . . And just tell me where in the world you find these angels who are going to organize society for us.
Milton Friedman,Conservative,A society that puts equality
Milton Friedman,Conservative,"The unions might be good for the people who are in the unions but it doesn't do a thing for the people who are unemployed. Because the union keeps down the number of jobs, it doesn't do a thing for them."
Milton Friedman,Conservative,"The existence of a free market does not of course eliminate the need for government. On the contrary, government is essential both as a forum for determining the rule of the game and as an umpire to interpret and enforce the rules decided on."
Milton Friedman,Conservative,With respect to teachers' salaries .... Poor teachers are grossly overpaid and good teachers grossly underpaid. Salary schedules tend to be uniform and determined far more by seniority.
Milton Friedman,Conservative,Anybody who was easily converted was not worth converting.
Milton Friedman,Conservative,"I say thank God for government waste. If government is doing bad things, it's only the waste that prevents the harm from being greater."
Milton Friedman,Conservative,"Keynes was a great economist. In every discipline, progress comes from people who make hypotheses, most of which turn out to be wrong, but all of which ultimately point to the right answer. Now Keynes, in The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money,set forth a hypothesis which was a beautiful one, and it really altered the shape of economics. But it turned out that it was a wrong hypothesis. That doesn't mean that he wasn't a great man!"
Milton Friedman,Conservative,"With some notable exceptions, businessmen favor free enterprise in general but are opposed to it when it comes to themselves."
Milton Friedman,Conservative,"There is still a tendency to regard any existing government intervention as desirable, to attribute all evils to the market, and to evaluate new proposals for government control in their ideal form, as they might work if run by able, disinterested men free from the pressure of special interest groups."
Milton Friedman,Conservative,"There are four ways in which you can spend money. You can spend your own money on yourself. When you do that, why then you really watch out what you’re doing, and you try to get the most for your money. Then you can spend your own money on somebody else. For example, I buy a birthday present for someone. Well, then I’m not so careful about the content of the present, but I’m very careful about the cost. Then, I can spend somebody else’s money on myself. And if I spend somebody else’s money on myself, then I’m sure going to have a good lunch! Finally, I can spend somebody else’s money on somebody else. And if I spend somebody else’s money on somebody else, I’m not concerned about how much it is, and I’m not concerned about what I get. And that’s government. And that’s close to 40% of our national income. [In a Fox News interview in May 2004]"
Milton Friedman,Conservative,"The ICC [Interstate Commerce Commission] illustrates what might be called the natural history of government intervention. A real or fancied evil leads to demands to do something about it. A political coalition forms consisting of sincere, high-minded reformers and equally sincere interested parties. The incompatible objectives of the members of the coalition (e.g., low prices to consumers and high prices to producers) are glossed over by fine rhetoric about the public interest, fair competition, and the like. The coalition succeeds in getting Congress (or a state legislature) to pass a law. The preamble to the law pays lip service to the rhetoric and the body of the law grants power to government officials to do something. The high-minded reformers experience a glow of triumph and turn their attention to new causes. The interested parties go to work to make sure that the power is used for their benefit. They generally succeed. Success breeds its problems, which are met by broadening the scope of intervention. Bureaucracy takes its toll so that even the initial special interests no longer benefit. In the end the effects are precisely the opposite of the objectives of the reformers and generally do not even achieve the objectives of the special interests. Yet the activity is so firmly established and so many vested interests are connected with it that repeal of the initial legislation is nearly inconceivable. Instead, new government legislation is called for to cope with the problems produced by the earlier legislation and a new cycle begins."
Milton Friedman,Conservative,.'Deserves' is an impossible thing to decide. No one deserves anything. Thank God we don't get what we deserve.
Milton Friedman,Conservative,In the past century a myth has grown up that free market capitalism
Milton Friedman,Conservative,"This points to a nagging and important question about free-market ideologues: Are they ‘true believers’, driven by ideology and faith that free markets will cure underdevelopment, as is often asserted, or do the ideas and theories frequently serve as an elaborate rationale to allow people to act on unfettered greed while still invoking an altruistic motive?"
Milton Friedman,Conservative,"The true test of any scholar's work is not what his contemporaries say, but what happens to his work in the next 25 or 50 years. And the thing that I will really be proud of is if some of the work I have done is still cited in the text books long after I am gone."
Milton Friedman,Conservative,A major source of objection to a free economy is precisely that it gives people what they want instead of what a particular group thinks they ought to want. Underlying most arguments against the free market is a lack of belief in freedom itself.
Milton Friedman,Conservative,By this point in history
Milton Friedman,Conservative,"Only government can take perfectly good paper, cover it with perfectly good ink and make the combination worthless."
Milton Friedman,Conservative,"Thanks to economists, all of us, from the days of Adam Smith and before right down to the present, tariffs are perhaps one tenth of one percent lower than they otherwise would have been. … And because of our efforts, we have earned our salaries ten-thousand fold."
Milton Friedman,Conservative,Silence was pleased.
Milton Friedman,Conservative,"Believers in aristocracy and socialism share a faith in centralized rule, in rule by command rather than by voluntary cooperation."
Milton Friedman,Conservative,Inflation is taxation without representation.
Milton Friedman,Conservative,"The power to do good is also the power to do harm; those who control the power today may not tomorrow; and, more important, what one man regards as good, another may regard as harm."
Milton Friedman,Conservative,"Not all 'schooling' is 'education,' and not all 'education' is 'schooling'."
Milton Friedman,Conservative,"The smaller the unit of government and the more restricted the functions assigned government, the less likely it is that its actions will reflect special interests rather than the general interest."
Milton Friedman,Conservative,Inflation is always and everywhere a monetary phenomenon.
Milton Friedman,Conservative,"Although these examples only scratch the surface, they illustrate the fundamental proposition that freedom is one whole, that anything that reduces freedom in one part of our lives is likely to affect freedom in the other parts."
Milton Friedman,Conservative,Sloppy writing reflects sloppy thinking.
Milton Friedman,Conservative,"None of this means that government does not have a very real function. Indeed, the tragedy is that because government is doing so many things it ought not to be doing, it performs the functions it ought to be performing badly. The basic functions of government are to defend the nation against foreign enemies, to prevent coercion of some individuals by others within the country, to provide a means of deciding on our rules, and to adjudicate disputes.3"
Milton Friedman,Conservative,"I have been enormously impressed by the role that pure chance plays in determining our life history. I was reminded of some famous lines of Robert Frost:Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,And sorry I could not travel bothI took the one less travled by,And that has made all the difference.As I recalled my own experience and development, I was impressed by the series of lucky accidents that determined the road I traveled.> From Lives of the Laureates pg.67"
Milton Friedman,Conservative,"The role of government just considered is to do something that the market cannot do for itself, namely, to determine, arbitrate, and enforce the rules of the game."
Milton Friedman,Conservative,"Only people have incomes and they derive them through the market from the resources they own, whether these be in the form of corporate stock, or of bonds, or of land, or of their personal capacity."
Milton Friedman,Conservative,"Asking economists for investment advice is like asking a physicist to fix a broken toilet. Not their field, though sort of related."
Milton Friedman,Conservative,"I can understand the teachers saying it’s a gun at my head, but they’ve got the same gun at the parents’ head at the moment. The parent goes up to the teacher and says, well, I’m not satisfied with what you’re doing, and the teacher can say, well tough. You can’t take him away, you can’t move him, you can’t do what you like, so go away and stop bothering me. That can be the attitude of some teachers today, and often is. But now that the positions are being reversed [with vouchers] and the roles are changed, I can only say tough on the teachers. Let them pull their socks up and give us a better deal and let us participate more."
Milton Friedman,Conservative,The harm done by the FDA does not result from defects in the people in charge
Milton Friedman,Conservative,"it is one thing to have free immigration to jobs. It is another thing to have free immigration to welfare. And you cannot have both. If you have a welfare state, if you have a state in which every resident is promised a certain minimal level of income, or a minimum level of subsistence, regardless of whether he works or not, produces it or not. Then it really is an impossible thing."
Milton Friedman,Conservative,"Every special group around the country tries to get its hands on whatever bits and pieces it can. The result is that there is hardly an issue on which government is not on both sides. For example, in one massive building in Washington some government employees are working full-time trying to devise and implement plans to spend our money to discourage us from smoking cigarettes. In another massive building, perhaps miles away from the first, other employees, equally dedicated, equally hard-working, are working full-time spending our money to subsidize farmers to grow tobacco."
Milton Friedman,Conservative,"No one can disagree with the objectives of the legislation that culminated in the 1962 amendments. Of course it is desirable that the public be protected from unsafe and useless drugs. However, it is also desirable that new drug development should be stimulated, and that new drugs should be made available to those who can benefit from them as soon as possible. As is so often the case, one good objective conflicts with other good objectives. Safety and caution in one direction can mean death in another."
Milton Friedman,Conservative,Children are responsible individuals in embryo. They have ultimate rights of their own and are not simply the playthings of their parents.
Milton Friedman,Conservative,All learning is ultimately self-learning.
Milton Friedman,Conservative,"At the end of World War II, we had wage and price controls. Under wartime inflationary conditions, many employers found it difficult to recruit employees. To get around the limitations of wage control, many began to offer health care as a fringe benefit to attract workers. As a new benefit, it took some years for the Internal Revenue Service to get around to requiring the cost of the medical care to be included in the reported taxable income of the employees. By the time it did, workers had come to regard nontaxable medical care provided by the employer as a right"
Milton Friedman,Conservative,There is no law of conservation which forces the growth of new centers of economic strength to be at the expense of existing centers.
Milton Friedman,Conservative,"These people live in many lands, speak different languages, practice different religions, may even hate one another- yet none of these differences prevented them from cooperating to produce a pencil. How did it happen? Adam Smith gave us the answer two hundred years ago."
Milton Friedman,Conservative,"There is all the difference in the world, however, between two kinds of assistance through government that seem superficially similar: first, 90 percent of us agreeing to impose taxes on ourselves in order to help the bottom 10 percent, and second, 80 percent voting to impose taxes on the top 10 percent to help the bottom 10 percent"
Milton Friedman,Conservative,"We now know, as a few knew then, that the depression was not produced by a failure of private enterprise, but rather by a failure of government in an area in which the government had from the first been assigned responsibility"
Milton Friedman,Conservative,"The family, rather than the individual, has always been and remains today the basic building block of our society, though its hold has clearly been weakening"
Milton Friedman,Conservative,"Fundamentally, there are only two ways of co-ordinating the economic activities of millions. One is central direction involving the use of coercion - the technique of the army and of the modern totalitarian state. The other is voluntary co-operation of individuals - the technique of the market place."
Milton Friedman,Conservative,"Social responsibility is a fundamentally subversive doctrine in a free society, and have said that in such a society, there is one and only one social responsibility of business–to use it resources and engage in activities designed to increase its profits so long as it stays within the rules of the game, which is to say, engages in open and free competition without deception or fraud."
Milton Friedman,Conservative,"No arbitrary obstacles should prevent people from achieving those positions for which their talents fit them and which their values lead them to seek. Not birth, nationality, color, religion, sex, nor any other irrelevant characteristic should determine the opportunities that are open to a person"
Milton Friedman,Conservative,"One reason inflation is so destructive is because some people benefit greatly while other people suffer; society is divided into winners and losers. The winners regard the good things that happen to them as the natural result of their own foresight, prudence, and initiative. They regard the bad things, the rise in the prices of the things they buy, as produced by forces outside their control. Almost everyone will say that he is against inflation; what he generally means is that he is against the bad things that have happened to him."
Milton Friedman,Conservative,"Here, too, we tend to be schizophrenic. We would all like to see government spending go down, provided it is not spending that benefits us. We would all like to see deficits reduced, provided it is through taxes imposed on others."
Milton Friedman,Conservative,"To the despair of every economist, it seems almost impossible for most people other than trained economists to comprehend how a price system works. Reporters and TV commentators seem especially resistant to the elementary principles they supposedly imbibed in freshman economics. Second,"
Milton Friedman,Conservative,"So far as we know, no pollster has asked the public, Are you getting your money’s worth for the more than 40 percent of your income being spent on your behalf by government? But"
Milton Friedman,Conservative,"Both the fragmentation of power and the conflicting government policies are rooted in the political realities of a democratic system that operates by enacting detailed and specific legislation. Such a system tends to give undue political power to small groups that have highly concentrated interests, to give greater weight to obvious, direct, and immediate effects of government action than to possibly more important but concealed, indirect, and delayed effects, to set in motion a process that sacrifices the general interest to serve special interests, rather than the other way around. There is, as it were, an invisible hand in politics that operates in precisely the opposite direction to Adam Smith’s invisible hand. Individuals who intend only to promote the general interest are led by the invisible political hand to promote a special interest that they had no intention to promote."
Milton Friedman,Conservative,"The majority does rule. But it is a rather special kind of majority. It consists of a coalition of special interest minorities. The way to get elected to Congress is to collect groups of, say, 2 or 3 percent of your constituents, each of which is strongly interested in one special issue that hardly concerns the rest of your constituents. Each group will be willing to vote for you if you promise to back its issue regardless of what you do about other issues. Put together enough such groups and you will have a 51 percent majority. That is the kind of logrolling majority that rules the country."
Milton Friedman,Conservative,"A common objection to totalitarian societies is that they regard the end as justifying the means. Taken literally, this objection is clearly illogical. If the end does not justify the means, what does? But this easy answer does not dispose of the objection; it simply shows that the objection is not well put. To deny that the end justifies the means is indirectly to assert that the end in question is not the ultimate end, that the ultimate end is itself the use of the proper means. Desirable or not, any end that can be attained only by the use of bad means must give way to the more basic end of the use of acceptable means."
Milton Friedman,Conservative,"A fourth argument, one that was made by Alexander Hamilton and continues to be repeated down to the present, is that free trade would be fine if all other countries practiced free trade but that so long as they do not, the United States cannot afford to. This argument has no validity whatsoever, either in principle or in practice. Other countries that impose restrictions on international trade do hurt us. But they also hurt themselves. Aside from the three cases just considered, if we impose restrictions in turn, we simply add to the harm to ourselves and also harm them as well. Competition in masochism and sadism is hardly a prescription for sensible international economic policy! Far from leading to a reduction in restrictions by other countries, this kind of retaliatory action simply leads to further restrictions."
Milton Friedman,Conservative,"In the modern world, tariffs and similar restrictions on trade have been one source of friction among nations. But a far more troublesome source has been the far-reaching intervention of the state into the economy in such collectivist states as Hitler's Germany, Mussolini's Italy, and Franco's Spain, and especially the communist countries, from Russia and its satellites to China."
Milton Friedman,Conservative,"It is often maintained that while a let-alone, limited government policy was feasible in sparsely settled nineteenth-century America, government must play a far larger, indeed dominant, role in a modern urbanized and industrial society. One hour in Hong Kong will dispose of that view. Our society is what we make it. We can shape our institutions. Physical and human characteristics limit the alternatives available to us. But none prevents us, if we will, from building a society that relies primarily on voluntary cooperation to organize both economic and other activity, a society that preserves and expands human freedom, that keeps government in its place, keeping it our servant and not letting it become our master"
Milton Friedman,Conservative,Exchange is truly voluntary only when nearly equivalent alternatives exist. Monopoly implies the absence of alternatives and thereby inhibits effective freedom of exchange.
Milton Friedman,Conservative,"Given greater freedom about where to send their children, parents of a kind would flock together and so prevent a healthy intermingling of children from decidedly different backgrounds."
Milton Friedman,Conservative,"As these remarks indicate, the Social Security program involves a transfer from the young to the old. To some extent such a transfer has occurred throughout history"
Milton Friedman,Conservative,"Currently, the only widely available alternative to a local public school is a parochial school. Only churches have been in a position to subsidize schooling on a large scale and only subsidized schooling can compete with free schooling. (Try selling a product that someone else is giving away!) The voucher plan would produce a much wider range of alternatives"
Milton Friedman,Conservative,"The question that has perhaps divided students of vouchers more than any other is their likely effect on the social and economic class structure. Some have argued that the great value of the public school has been as a melting pot, in which rich and poor, native- and foreign-born, black and white have learned to live together. That image was and is largely true for small communities, but almost entirely false for large cities. There, the public school has fostered residential stratification, by tying the kind and cost of schooling to residential location. It is no accident that most of the country’s outstanding public schools are in high-income enclaves."
Milton Friedman,Conservative,"Nor do the spokesmen for these organizations ever explain why, if the public school system is doing such a splendid job, it needs to fear competition from nongovernmental, competitive schools or, if it isn’t, why anyone should object to its destruction."
Milton Friedman,Conservative,"The threat to public schools arises from their defects, not their accomplishments. In small, closely knit communities where public schools, particularly elementary schools, are now reasonably satisfactory, not even the most comprehensive voucher plan would have much effect. The public schools would remain dominant, perhaps somewhat improved by the threat of potential competition. But elsewhere, and particularly in the urban slums where the public schools are doing such a poor job, most parents would undoubtedly try to send their children to nonpublic schools."
Milton Friedman,Conservative,Inflation is the one form of taxation that can be imposed without legislation.’
Milton Friedman,Conservative,"As Dr. Gunnar Biörck, an eminent Swedish professor of medicine and head of the department Of medicine at a major Swedish hospital, has written:   The setting in which medicine has been practiced during thousands of years has been one in which the patient has been the client and employer of the physician. Today the State, in one manifestation or the other, claims to be the employer and, thus, the one to prescribe the conditions under which the physician has to carry out his work. These conditions may not"
Milton Friedman,Conservative,"One feature of the voucher plan that has aroused particular concern is the possibility that parents could and would add on to the vouchers. If the voucher were for, say, $1,500, a parent could add another $500 to it and send his child to a school charging $2,000 tuition. Some fear that the result might be even wider differences in educational opportunities than now exist because low-income parents would not add to the amount of the voucher while middle-income and upper-income parents would supplement it extensively."
Milton Friedman,Conservative,"This view seems to us an example of the kind of egalitarianism discussed in the preceding chapter: letting parents spend money on riotous living but trying to prevent them from spending money on improving the schooling of their children. It is particularly remarkable coming from Coons and Sugarman, who elsewhere say, A commitment to equality at the deliberate expense of the development of individual children seems to us the final corruption of whatever is good in the egalitarian instinct18"
Milton Friedman,Conservative,"(7) The impact on public schools. It is essential to separate the rhetoric of the school bureaucracy from the real problems that would be raised. The National Education Association and the American Federation of Teachers claim that vouchers would destroy the public school system, which, according to them, has been the foundation and cornerstone of our democracy. Their claims are never accompanied by any evidence that the public school system today achieves the results claimed for it"
Milton Friedman,Conservative,"(i) Social benefits. When we first started writing about higher education, we had a good deal of sympathy for the first justification. We no longer do. In the interim we have tried to induce the people who make this argument to be specific about the alleged social benefits. The answer is almost always simply bad economics. We are told that the nation benefits by having more highly skilled and trained people, that investment in providing such skills is essential for economic growth, that more trained people raise the productivity of the rest of us. These statements are correct. But none is a valid reason for subsidizing higher education. Each statement would be equally correct if made about physical capital (i.e., machines, factory buildings, etc.), yet hardly anyone would conclude that tax money should be used to subsidize the capital investment of General Motors or General Electric. If higher education improves the economic productivity of individuals, they can capture that improvement through higher earnings, so they have a private incentive to get the training. Adam Smith's invisible hand makes their private interest serve the social interest. It is against the social interest to change their private interest by subsidizing schooling. The extra students"
Milton Friedman,Conservative,The widespread enthusiasm for reducing government taxes and other impositions is not matched by a comparable enthusiasm for eliminating government programs
Milton Friedman,Conservative,"On the contrary, the inflation itself is partly a response to the reaction. As it has become politically less attractive to vote higher taxes to pay for higher spending, legislators have resorted to financing spending through inflation, a hidden tax that can be imposed without having been voted, taxation without representation. That is no more popular in the twentieth century than it was in the eighteenth."
Milton Friedman,Conservative,"Higher government spending will not lead to more rapid monetary growth and inflation if additional spending is financed either by taxes or by borrowing from the public. In that case, government has more to spend, the public has less. Higher government spending is matched by lower private spending for consumption and investment. However,"
Milton Friedman,Conservative,"The major way that society has come to agree on the rules of property is through the growth of common law, though more recently legislation has played an increasing role."
Milton Friedman,Conservative,On another level compulsion would change matters drastically: the kind of society that would emerge if such acts of redistribution were voluntary is altogether different
Milton Friedman,Conservative,"Nobody spends somebody else’s money as carefully as he spends his own. Nobody uses somebody else’s resources as carefully as he uses his own. So if you want efficiency and effectiveness, if you want knowledge to be properly utilized, you have to do it through the means of private property."
Milton Friedman,Conservative,The government solution to a problem is usually as bad as the problem.
Milton Friedman,Conservative,"Experience should teach us to be most on our guard to protect liberty when the government's purposes are beneficial. Men born to freedom are naturally alert to repel invasion of their liberty by evil-minded rulers. The greater dangers to liberty lurk in insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well-meaning but without understanding."
Milton Friedman,Conservative,"Abraham Lincoln talked about a government of the people, by the people, for the people. What we now have is a government of the people, by the bureaucrats, including the legislators who have become bureaucrats, for the bureaucrats."
Milton Friedman,Conservative,"It is ironic that the Great Depression was produced by government but was blamed on the private enterprise system. The Federal Reserve System explained in its 1933 annual report how much worse things would have been if the Federal Reserve had not behaved so well, yet the Federal Reserve was the chief culprit in making the depression as deep as it was. So the government produced the depression, the private enterprise system got blamed for it, and there was a tremendous change in attitudes."
Milton Friedman,Conservative,"Another social problem is the high cost of housing and the destruction of housing. The North Bronx looks like the pictures recently coming from Yugoslavia of areas that have been shelled. There is no doubt what the cause is: rent control in the city of New York, both directly and via the government taking over many dwelling units because rent control prevented owners from keeping them up."
Milton Friedman,Conservative,"Highway Congestion We all complain about highway congestion. That is interesting for a different reason. The private automobile industry is able to produce all the automobiles anybody wants to drive, but the government is apparently not able to produce a comparably adequate highway system, a clear contrast."
Milton Friedman,Conservative,"A thoroughgoing paternalist who holds it cannot be dissuaded by being shown that he is making a mistake in logic. He is our opponent on grounds of principle, not simply a well-meaning but misguided friend. Basically, he believes in dictatorship, benevolent and maybe majoritarian, but dictatorship none the less. Those of us who believe in freedom must believe also in the freedom of individuals to make their own mistakes. If a man knowingly prefers to live for today, to use his resources for current enjoyment, deliberately choosing a penurious old age, by what right do we prevent him from doing so? We may argue with him, seek to persuade him that he is wrong, but are we entitled to use coercion to prevent him from doing what he chooses to do? Is there not always the possibility that he is right and that we are wrong? Humility is the distinguishing virtue of the believer in freedom; arrogance, of the paternalist."
Milton Friedman,Conservative,"Make the acvocacy of radical causes sufficiently remunerative, and the supply of advocates will be unlimited."
Milton Friedman,Conservative,"Self-interest is not myopic selfishness. It is whatever it is that interests the participants, whatever they value, whatever goals they pursue. The scientist seeking to advance the frontiers of his discipline, the missionary seeking to convert infidels to the true faith, the philanthropist seeking to bring comfort to the needy - all are pursuing their interests, as they see them, as they judge them by their own values."
Milton Friedman,Conservative,A very different meaning of equality has emerged in the United States in recent decades
Milton Friedman,Conservative,unfairness can take many forms. It can take the form of the inheritance of property
Milton Friedman,Conservative,"The drive for equality failed for a much more fundamental reason. It went against one of the most basic instincts of all human beings. In the words of Adam Smith, The uniform, constant, and uninterrupted effort of every man to better his condition9"
Milton Friedman,Conservative,"When the law interferes with people's pursuit of their own values, they will try to find a way around. They will evade the law, they will break the law, or they will leave the country. Few of us believe in a moral code that justifies forcing people to give up much of what they produce to finance payments to persons they do not know for purposes they may not approve of. When the law contradicts what most people regard as moral and proper, they will break the law"
Milton Friedman,Conservative,"From the founding of the Republic to 1929, spending by governments at all levels, federal, state, and local, never exceeded 12 percent of the national income except in time of major war, and two-thirds of that was state and local spending. Federal spending typically amounted to 3 percent or less of the national income. Since 1933 government spending has never been less than 20 percent of national income and is now over 40 percent, and two-thirds of that is spending by the federal government. True, much of the period since the end of World War II has been a period of cold or hot war. However, since 1946 nondefense spending alone has never been less than 16 percent of the national income and is now roughly one-third the national income. Federal government spending alone is more than one-quarter of the national income in total, and more than a fifth for nondefense purposes alone. By this measure the role of the federal government in the economy has multiplied roughly tenfold in the past half-century."
Milton Friedman,Conservative,"Consider, for example, language. It is a complex structure that is continually changing and developing. It has a well-defined order, yet no central body planned it. No one decided what words should be admitted into the language, what the rules of grammar should be, which words should be adjectives, which nouns. The French Academy does try to control changes in the French language, but that was a late development. It was established long after French was already a highly structured language and it mainly serves to put the seal of approval on changes over which it has no control. There have been few similar bodies for other languages. How did language develop? In much the same way as an economic order develops through the market"
Milton Friedman,Conservative,"We regard the minimum wage rate as one of the most, if not the most, antiblack laws on the statute books. The government first provides schools in which many young people, disproportionately black, are educated so poorly that they do not have the skills that would enable them to get good wages. It then penalizes them a second time by preventing them from offering to work for low wages as a means of inducing employers to give them on-the-job training. All this is in the name of helping the poor."
Milton Friedman,Conservative,Labor unions can and often do provide useful services for their members
Milton Friedman,Conservative,"If we continue on this path, there is no doubt where it will end. If the government has the responsibility of protecting us from dangerous substances, the logic surely calls for prohibiting alcohol and tobacco. If it is appropriate for the government to protect us from using dangerous bicycles and cap guns, the logic calls for prohibiting still more dangerous activities such as hang-gliding, motorcycling, and skiing. Even the people who administer the regulatory agencies are appalled at this prospect and withdraw from it. As for the rest of us, the reaction of the public to the more extreme attempts to control our behavior"
Milton Friedman,Conservative,"Hardly any worker today engages in the kind of backbreaking labor that was common a century or so ago and that is still common over most of the globe. Working conditions are better; hours of work are shorter; vacations and other fringe benefits are taken for granted. Earnings are far higher, enabling the ordinary family to achieve a level of living that only the affluent few could earlier enjoy. If Gallup were to conduct a poll asking: What accounts for the improvement in the lot of the worker? the most popular answer would very likely be labor unions, and the next, government"
Milton Friedman,Conservative,"There is a connection, and a close connection, for most unions most of the time. However, there are enough cases of union officials acting to benefit themselves at the expense of their members, both in legal ways and by misuse and misappropriation of union funds, to warn against the automatic equating of the interests of labor unions with the interests of labor union members, let alone with the interests of labor as a whole."
Milton Friedman,Conservative,"The misuse of language contributes also to the belief that labor unions are a product of modern industrial development. They are nothing of the kind. On the contrary, they are a throwback to a preindustrial period, to the guilds that were the characteristic form of organization of both merchants and craftsmen in the cities and city-states that grew out of the feudal period. Indeed, the modern labor union can be traced back even further, nearly 2,500 years to an agreement reached among medical men in Greece."
Milton Friedman,Conservative,"Given that members of strong unions are highly paid, the obvious question is: are they highly paid because their unions are strong, or are their unions strong because they are highly paid? Defenders of the unions claim that the high pay of their members is a tribute to the strength of union organization, and that if only all workers were members of unions, all workers would be highly paid. The situation is, however, much more complex. Unions of highly skilled workers have unquestionably been able to raise the wages of their members; however, people who would in any event be highly paid are in a favorable position to form strong unions. Moreover, the ability of unions to raise the wages of some workers does not mean that universal unionism could raise the wages of all workers. On the contrary, and this is a fundamental source of misunderstanding, the gains that strong unions win for their members are primarily at the expense of other workers."
Milton Friedman,Conservative,The key to understanding the situation is the most elementary principle of economics: the law of demand
Milton Friedman,Conservative,"A successful union reduces the number of jobs available of the kind it controls. As a result, some people who would like to get such jobs at the union wage cannot do so. They are forced to look elsewhere. A greater supply of workers for other jobs drives down the wages paid for those jobs. Universal unionization would not alter the situation. It could mean higher wages for the persons who get jobs, along with more unemployment for others. More likely, it would mean strong unions and weak unions, with members of the strong unions getting higher wages, as they do now, at the expense of members of weak unions."
Milton Friedman,Conservative,"The Department of Health, Education and Welfare, established in 1953 to consolidate the scattered welfare programs, began with a budget of $2 billion, less than 5 percent of expenditures on national defense. Twenty-five years later, in 1978, its budget was $160 billion, one and a half times as much as total spending on the army, the navy, and the air force. It had the third largest budget in the world, exceeded only by the entire budget of the U.S. government and of the Soviet Union. The department supervised a huge empire, penetrating every corner of the nation. More than one out of every 100 persons employed in this country worked in the HEW empire, either directly for the department or in programs for which HEW had responsibility but which were administered by state or local government units. All of us were affected by its activities. (In late 1979, HEW was subdivided by the creation of a separate Department of Education.)"
Milton Friedman,Conservative,"The charge of heartlessness, epitomized in the remark that William H. Vanderbilt, a railroad tycoon, is said to have made to an inquiring reporter, The public be damned, is belied by the flowering of charitable activity in the United States in the nineteenth century. Privately financed schools and colleges multiplied; foreign missionary activity exploded; nonprofit private hospitals, orphanages, and numerous other institutions sprang up like weeds. Almost every charitable or public service organization, from the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals to the YMCA and YWCA, from the Indian Rights Association to the Salvation Army, dates from that period. Voluntary cooperation is no less effective in organizing charitable activity than in organizing production for profit. The charitable activity was matched by a burst of cultural activity"
Milton Friedman,Conservative,"every country, it always is and must be the interest of the great body of the people to buy whatever they want of those who sell it cheapest. The proposition is so very manifest, that it seems ridiculous to take any pains to prove it; nor could it ever have been called in question, had not the interested sophistry of merchants and manufacturers confounded the common sense of mankind. Their interest is, in this respect, directly opposite to that of the great body of the people."
Milton Friedman,Conservative,"Category IV spending tends also to corrupt the people involved. All such programs put some people in a position to decide what is good for other people. The effect is to instill in the one group a feeling of almost God-like power; in the other, a feeling of childlike dependence. The capacity of the beneficiaries for independence, for making their own decisions, atrophies through disuse. In addition to the waste of money, in addition to the failure to achieve the intended objectives, the end result is to rot the moral fabric that holds a decent society together."
Milton Friedman,Conservative,"The compulsory attendance laws are the justification for government control over the standards of private schools. But it is far from clear that there is any justification for the compulsory attendance laws themselves. Our own views on this have changed over time. When we first wrote extensively a quarter of a century ago on this subject, we accepted the need for such laws on the ground that a stable democratic society is impossible without a minimum degree of literacy and knowledge on the part of most citizens.15 We continue to believe that, but research that has been done in the interim on the history of schooling in the United States, the United Kingdom, and other countries has persuaded us that compulsory attendance at schools is not necessary to achieve that minimum standard of literacy and knowledge. As already noted, such research has shown that schooling was well-nigh universal in the United States before attendance was required. In the United Kingdom, schooling was well-nigh universal before either compulsory attendance or government financing of schooling existed. Like most laws, compulsory attendance laws have costs as well as benefits. We no longer believe the benefits justify the costs. We realize that these views on financing and attendance laws will appear to most readers to be extreme. That is why we only state them here to keep the record straight without seeking to support them at length. Instead, we return to the voucher plan"
Milton Friedman,Conservative,"In which of these respects the public is more stubborn is an empirical question to be judged from the factual evidence, not something that can be determined by reason alone."
Milton Friedman,Conservative,"In fiscal policy as in monetary policy, all political considerations aside, we simply do not know enough to be able to use deliberate changes in taxation or expenditures as a sensitive stabilizing mechanism."
Milton Friedman,Conservative,"For fiscal policy, the appropriate counterpart to the monetary rule would be to plan expenditure programs entirely in terms of what the community wants to do through government rather than privately, and without any regard to problems of year-to-year economic stability; to plan tax rates so as to provide sufficient revenues to cover planned expenditures on the average of one year with another, again without regard to year-to-year changes in economic stability; and to avoid erratic changes in either governmental expenditures or taxes."
Milton Friedman,Conservative,"It is extremely convenient to have a label for the political and economic viewpoint elaborated in this book. The rightful and proper label is liberalism. Unfortunately, As a supreme, if unintended compliment, the enemies of the system of private enterprise have thought it wise to appropriate its label,' so that liberalism has, in the United States, come to have a very different meaning than it did in the nineteenth century or does today over much of the Continent of Europe."
Milton Friedman,Conservative,"As it developed in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, the intellectual movement that went under the name of liberalism emphasized freedom as the ultimate goal and the individual as the ultimate entity in the society. It supported laissez faire at home as a means of reducing the role of the state in economic affairs and thereby enlarging the role of the individual; it supported free trade abroad as a means of linking the nations of the world together peacefully and democratically. In political matters, it supported the development of representative government and of parliamentary institutions, reduction in the arbitrary power of the state, and protection of the civil freedoms of individuals."
Milton Friedman,Conservative,The nineteenth-century liberal regarded an extension of freedom as the most effective way to promote welfare and equality; the twentieth-century liberal regards welfare and equality as either prerequisites of or alternatives to freedom.
Milton Friedman,Conservative,"By relying primarily on voluntary co-operation and private enterprise, in both economic and other activities, we can insure that the private sector is a check on the powers of the governmental sector and an effective protection of freedom of speech, of religion, and of thought."
Milton Friedman,Conservative,The preservation of freedom is the protective reason for limiting and decentralizing governmental power.
Milton Friedman,Conservative,"In all those cases, in accordance with the theme of this book, increases in economic freedom have gone hand in hand with increases in political and civil freedom and have led to increased prosperity; competitive capitalism and freedom have been inseparable."
Milton Friedman,Conservative,"Similarly, Alexis de Tocqueville, the famous French political philosopher and sociologist, in his classic Democracy in America, written after a lengthy visit in the 1830s, saw equality, not majority rule, as the outstanding characteristic of America. In America, he wrote,   the aristocratic element has always been feeble from its birth; and if at the present day it is not actually destroyed, it is at any rate so completely disabled, that we can scarcely assign to it any degree of influence on the course of affairs. The"
Milton Friedman,Conservative,There seems little correlation between poverty and honesty. One would rather expect the opposite; dishonesty may not always pay but surely it sometimes does
Milton Friedman,Conservative,"That is why, as Adam Smith put it, an individual who intends only his own gain is led by an invisible hand to promote an end which was no part of his intention. Nor is it always the worse for the society that it was no part of it. By pursuing his own interest he frequently promotes that of the society more effectually than when he really intends to promote it. I have never known much good done by those who affected to trade for the public good."
Milton Friedman,Conservative,"This revolution in the role of government has been accompanied, and largely produced, by an achievement in public persuasion that must have few rivals. Ask yourself what products are currently least satisfactory and have shown the least improvement over time. Postal service, elementary and secondary schooling, railroad passenger transport would surely be high on the list. Ask yourself which products are most satisfactory and have improved the most. Household appliances, television and radio sets, hi-fi equipment, computers, and, we would add, supermarkets and shopping centers would surely come high on that list. The shoddy products are all produced by government or government-regulated industries. The outstanding products are all produced by private enterprise with little or no government involvement. Yet the public"
Milton Friedman,Conservative,"(6) Doubt about new schools. Is this not all a pipe dream? Private schools now are almost all either parochial schools or elite academies. Will the effect of the voucher plan simply be to subsidize these, while leaving the bulk of the slum dwellers in inferior public schools? What reason is there to suppose that alternatives will really arise? The reason is that a market would develop where it does not exist today. Cities, states, and the federal government today spend close to $100 billion a year on elementary and secondary schools. That sum is a third larger than the total amount spent annually in restaurants and bars for food and liquor. The smaller sum surely provides an ample variety of restaurants and bars for people in every class and place. The larger sum, or even a fraction of it, would provide an ample variety of schools. It would open a vast market that could attract many entrants, both from public schools and from other occupations. In the course of talking to various groups about vouchers, we have been impressed by the number of persons who said something like, I have always wanted to teach [or run a school] but I couldn't stand the educational bureaucracy, red tape, and general ossification of the public schools. Under your plan, I'd like to try my hand at starting a school. Many of the new schools would be established by nonprofit groups. Others would be established for profit. There is no way of predicting the ultimate composition of the school industry. That would be determined by competition. The one prediction that can be made is that only those schools that satisfy their customers will survive"
Milton Friedman,Conservative,"(1) The church-state issue. If parents could use their vouchers to pay tuition at parochial schools, would that violate the First Amendment? Whether it does or not, is it desirable to adopt a policy that might strengthen the role of religious institutions in schooling? The Supreme Court has generally ruled against state laws providing assistance to parents who send their children to parochial schools, although it has never had occasion to rule on a full-fledged voucher plan covering both public and nonpublic schools. However it might rule on such a plan, it seems clear that the Court would accept a plan that excluded church-connected schools but applied to all other private and public schools. Such a restricted plan would be far superior to the present system, and might not be much inferior to a wholly unrestricted plan. Schools now connected with churches could qualify by subdividing themselves into two parts: a secular part reorganized as an independent school eligible for vouchers, and a religious part reorganized as an after-school or Sunday activity paid for directly by parents or church funds. The constitutional issue will have to be settled by the courts. But it is worth emphasizing that vouchers would go to parents, not to schools. Under the GI bills, veterans have been free to attend Catholic or other colleges and, so far as we know, no First Amendment issue has ever been raised. Recipients of Social Security and welfare payments are free to buy food at church bazaars and even to contribute to the collection plate from their government subsidies, with no First Amendment question being asked. Indeed, we believe that the penalty that is now imposed on parents who do not send their children to public schools violates the spirit of the First Amendment, whatever lawyers and judges may decide about the letter. Public schools teach religion, too"
Milton Friedman,Conservative,"(4) The racial issue. Voucher plans were adopted for a time in a number of southern states to avoid integration. They were ruled unconstitutional. Discrimination under a voucher plan can be prevented at least as easily as in public schools by redeeming vouchers only from schools that do not discriminate. A more difficult problem has troubled some students of vouchers. That is the possibility that voluntary choice with vouchers might increase racial and class separation in schools and thus exacerbate racial conflict and foster an increasingly segregated and hierarchical society. We believe that the voucher plan would have precisely the opposite effect; it would moderate racial conflict and promote a society in which blacks and whites cooperate in joint objectives, while respecting each other's separate rights and interests. Much objection to forced integration reflects not racism but more or less well-founded fears about the physical safety of children and the quality of their schooling. Integration has been most successful when it has resulted from choice, not coercion. Nonpublic schools, parochial and other, have often been in the forefront of the move toward integration."
Milton Friedman,Conservative,"Let schools specialize, as private schools would, and common interest would overcome bias of color and lead to more integration than now occurs. The integration would be real, not merely on paper. The voucher scheme would eliminate the forced busing that a large majority of both blacks and whites object to. Busing would occur, and might indeed increase, but it would be voluntary"
Milton Friedman,Conservative,"In the international trade area, the language is almost always about how we must export, and what’s really good is an industry that produces exports, and if we buy from abroad and import, that’s bad. But surely that’s upside-down. What we send abroad, we can’t eat, we can’t wear, we can’t use for our houses. The goods and services we send abroad, are goods and services not available to us. On the other hand, the goods and services we import, they provide us with TV sets we can watch, with automobiles we can drive, with all sorts of nice things for us to use.The gain from foreign trade is what we import. What we export is a cost of getting those imports. And the proper objective for a nation as Adam Smith put it, is to arrange things so that we get as large a volume of imports as possible, for as small a volume of exports as possible.This carries over to the terminology we use. When people talk about a favorable balance of trade, what is that term taken to mean? It’s taken to mean that we export more than we import. But from the point of our well-being, that’s an unfavorable balance. That means we’re sending out more goods and getting fewer in. Each of you in your private household would know better than that. You don’t regard it as a favorable balance, when you have to send out more goods to get fewer coming in. It’s favorable when you can get more by sending out less."
Milton Friedman,Conservative,"The argument for collectivism is simple if false; it is an immediate emotional argument. The argument for individualism is subtle and sophisticated; it is an indirect rational argument. And the emotional faculties are more highly developed in most men than the rational, paradoxically or especially even in those who regard themselves as intellectuals"
Milton Friedman,Conservative,Many other unions have taken advantage of this exemption and are better interpreted as enterprises selling the services of cartellizing an industry than as labor organizations. The Teamster’s Union is perhaps the most notable.
Milton Friedman,Conservative,"Our gain from foreign trade is what we import. Exports are the price we pay to get imports. As Adam Smith saw so clearly, the citizens of a nation benefit from getting as large a volume of imports as possible in return for its exports, or equivalently, from exporting as little as possible to pay for its imports."
Milton Friedman,Conservative,"John Stuart Mill,   The sole end for which mankind are warranted, individually or collectively, in interfering with the liberty of action of any of their number, is self protection.... [T]he only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilized community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others. His own good, either physical or moral, is not a sufficient warrant.... The only part of the conduct of any one, for which he is amenable to society, is that which concerns others. In the part which merely concerns himself, his independence is, of right, absolute. Over himself, over his own body and mind, the individual is sovereign.2"
Milton Friedman,Conservative,"Economic freedom is an essential requisite for political freedom. By enabling people to cooperate with one another without coercion or central direction, it reduces the area over which political power is exercised. In addition, by dispersing power, the free market provides an offset to whatever concentration of political power may arise. The combination of economic and political power in the same hands is a sure recipe for tyranny."
Milton Friedman,Conservative,"The fecundity of freedom is demonstrated most dramatically and clearly in agriculture. When the Declaration of Independence was enacted, fewer than 3 million persons of European and African origin (i.e., omitting the native Indians) occupied a narrow fringe along the eastern coast. Agriculture was the main economic activity. It took nineteen out of twenty workers to feed the country's inhabitants and provide a surplus for export in exchange for foreign goods. Today it takes fewer than one out of twenty workers to feed the 220 million inhabitants and provide a surplus that makes the United States the largest single exporter of food in the world."
Milton Friedman,Conservative,The most harm of all is done when power is in the hands of people who are absolutely persuaded of the purity of their instincts-- and the purity of their intentions
Milton Friedman,Conservative,"The view has been gaining widespread acceptance that corporate officials and labor leaders have a social responsibility that goes beyond serving the interest of their stockholders or their members. This view shows a fundamental misconception of the character and nature of a free economy. In such an economy, there is one and only one social responsibility of business"
Milton Friedman,Conservative,"...[One] of the paradoxes of experience is that, in spite of...historical evidence, it is precisely the minority groups that have frequently furnished the most vocal and numerous advocates of fundamental alterations in a capitalist society. They have tended to attribute to capitalism the residual restrictions they experience rather than to recognize that the free market has been the major factor enabling these restrictions to be as small as they are...the purchaser of bread does not know whether it was made from wheat grown by a white man or a [black man], by a Christian or a Jew. In consequence, the producer of wheat is in a position to use resources as effectively as he can, regardless of what the attitudes of the community may be toward his color, the religion, or other characteristics of the people he hires."
Milton Friedman,Conservative,"Fair’ is in the eye of the beholder; ‘free’ is the verdict of the market. The word ‘free’ is used three times in the Declaration of Independence and once in the First Amendment to the Constitution, along with ‘freedom.’ The word ‘fair’ is not used in either of our founding documents."
Milton Friedman,Conservative,What most people really object to when they object to a free market is that it is so hard for them to shape it to their own will. The market gives people what the people want instead of what other people think they ought to want. At the bottom of many criticisms of the market economy is really lack of belief in freedom itself.
Milton Friedman,Conservative,"The government has no more right to tell me what goes into my mouth, including illegal drugs, than it has to tell me what comes out of my mouth."
Milton Friedman,Conservative,"We economists don’t know much, but we do know how to create a shortage. If you want to create a shortage of tomatoes, for example, just pass a law that retailers can’t sell tomatoes for more than two cents per pound. Instantly you’ll have a tomato shortage."
Thomas Sowell,Conservative,"When you want to help people, you tell them the truth. When you want to help yourself, you tell them what they want to hear."
Thomas Sowell,Conservative,It’s amazing how much panic one honest man can spread among a multitude of hypocrites. 
Thomas Sowell,Conservative,The problem isn't that Johnny can't read. The problem isn't even that Johnny can't think. The problem is that Johnny doesn't know what thinking is; he confuses it with feeling.
Thomas Sowell,Conservative,Some of the biggest cases of mistaken identity are among intellectuals who have trouble remembering that they are not God.
Thomas Sowell,Conservative,Racism does not have a good track record. It's been tried out for a long time and you'd think by now we'd want to put an end to it instead of putting it under new management. 
Thomas Sowell,Conservative,Intellect is not wisdom.
Thomas Sowell,Conservative,"Despite a voluminous and often fervent literature on income distribution, the cold fact is that most income is not distributed: It is earned."
Thomas Sowell,Conservative,"Socialism is a wonderful idea. It is only as a reality that it has been disastrous. Among people of every race, color, and creed, all around the world, socialism has led to hunger in countries that used to have surplus food to export.... Nevertheless, for many of those who deal primarily in ideas, socialism remains an attractive idea -- in fact, seductive. Its every failure is explained away as due to the inadequacies of particular leaders. "
Thomas Sowell,Conservative,The fact that the market is not doing what we wish it would do is no reason to automatically assume that the government would do better.
Thomas Sowell,Conservative,Socialism in general has a record of failure so blatant that only an intellectual could ignore or evade it.
Thomas Sowell,Conservative,There are only two ways of telling the complete truth--anonymously and posthumously.
Thomas Sowell,Conservative,Freedom has cost too much blood and agony to be relinquished at the cheap price of rhetoric.
Thomas Sowell,Conservative,Bailing out people who made ill-advised mortgages makes no more sense that bailing out people who lost their life savings in Las Vegas casinos.
Thomas Sowell,Conservative,"Since this is an era when many people are concerned about 'fairness' and 'social justice,' what is your 'fair share' of what someone else has worked for?"
Thomas Sowell,Conservative,Can you cite one speck of hard evidence of the benefits of diversity that we have heard gushed about for years? Evidence of its harm can be seen
Thomas Sowell,Conservative,"Unfortunately, the real minimum wage is always zero, regardless of the laws, and that is the wage that many workers receive in the wake of the creation or escalation of a government-mandated minimum wage, because they lose their jobs or fail to find jobs when they enter the labor force. Making it illegal to pay less than a given amount does not make a worker’s productivity worth that amount"
Thomas Sowell,Conservative,Competition does a much more effective job than government at protecting consumers.
Thomas Sowell,Conservative,"One of the consequences of such notions as ‘entitlements’ is that people who have contributed nothing to society feel that society owes them something, apparently just for being nice enough to grace us with their presence."
Thomas Sowell,Conservative,"The most basic question is not what is best, but who shall decide what is best."
Thomas Sowell,Conservative,"If politicians stopped meddling with things they don't understand, there would be a more drastic reduction in the size of government than anyone in either party advocates."
Thomas Sowell,Conservative,Rhetoric is no substitute for reality.
Thomas Sowell,Conservative,"What sense would it make to classify a man as handicapped because he is in a wheelchair today, if he is expected to be walking again in a month, and competing in track meets before the year is out? Yet Americans are generally given 'class' labels on the basis of their transient location in the income stream. If most Americans do not stay in the same broad income bracket for even a decade, their repeatedly changing 'class' makes class itself a nebulous concept. Yet the intelligentsia are habituated, if not addicted, to seeing the world in class terms."
Thomas Sowell,Conservative,"Virtually no idea is too ridiculous to be accepted, even by very intelligent and highly educated people, if it provides a way for them to feel special and important. Some confuse that feeling with idealism."
Thomas Sowell,Conservative,What is history but the story of how politicians have squandered the blood and treasure of the human race?
Thomas Sowell,Conservative,"When people get used to preferential treatment, equal treatment seems like discrimination."
Thomas Sowell,Conservative,"Economics is a study of cause-and-effect relationships in an economy. It's purpose is to discern the consequences of various ways of allocating resources which have alternative uses. It has nothing to say about philosophy or values, anymore than it has to say about music or literature."
Thomas Sowell,Conservative,Life does not ask what we want. It presents us with options
Thomas Sowell,Conservative,It doesn't matter how smart you are unless you stop and think.
Thomas Sowell,Conservative,"If you have been voting for politicians who promise to give you goodies at someone else's expense, then you have no right to complain when they take your money and give it to someone else, including themselves."
Thomas Sowell,Conservative,Don't you get tired of seeing so many non-conformists with the same non-conformist look?
Thomas Sowell,Conservative,"The fact that so many successful politicians are such shameless liars is not only a reflection on them, it is also a reflection on us. When the people want the impossible, only liars can satisfy."
Thomas Sowell,Conservative,"One of the sad signs of our times is that we have demonized those who produce, subsidized those who refuse to produce, and canonized those who complain."
Thomas Sowell,Conservative,"Whenever someone refers to me as someone who happens to be black, I wonder if they realize that both my parents are black. If I had turned out to be Scandinavian or Chinese, people would have wondered what was going on."
Thomas Sowell,Conservative,"If you are not prepared to use force to defend civilization, then be prepared to accept barbarism."
Thomas Sowell,Conservative,Most officially poor Americans today have things that middle-class Americans of an earlier time could only dream about
Thomas Sowell,Conservative,"If you have always believed that everyone should play by the same rules and be judged by the same standards, that would have gotten you labeled a radical 50 years ago, a liberal 25 years ago and a racist today."
Thomas Sowell,Conservative,It takes considerable knowledge just to realize the extent of your own ignorance.
Thomas Sowell,Conservative,We seem to be getting closer and closer to a situation where nobody is responsible for what they did but we are all responsible for what somebody else did.
Thomas Sowell,Conservative,"Everyone may be called comrade, but some comrades have the power of life and death over other comrades."
Thomas Sowell,Conservative,"Hilary Clinton said you know, it takes a village to raise a child and somebody said it takes a village idiot to believe that … it is part of the whole thing of third parties wanting to make decisions for which they pay no price for when they’re wrong."
Thomas Sowell,Conservative,"I think we're raising whole generations who regard facts as more or less optional. We have kids in elementary school who are being urged to take stands on political issues, to write letters to congressmen and presidents about nuclear energy. They're not a decade old, and they're being thrown these kinds of questions that can absorb the lifetime of a very brilliant and learned man. And they're being taught that it's important to have views, and they're not being taught that it's important to know what you're talking about. It's important to hear the opposite viewpoint, and more important to learn how to distinguish why viewpoint A and viewpoint B are different, and which one has the most evidence or logic behind it. They disregard that. They hear something, they hear some rhetoric, and they run with it."
Thomas Sowell,Conservative,"If facts, logic, and scientific procedures are all just arbitrarily socially constructed notions, then all that is left is consensus--more specifically peer consensus, the kind of consensus that matters to adolescents or to many among the intelligentsia."
Thomas Sowell,Conservative,"It takes no more research than a trip to almost any public library or college to show the incredibly lopsided coverage of slavery in the United States or in the Western Hemisphere, as compared to the meager writings on even larger number of Africans enslaved in the Islamic countries of the Middle East and North Africa, not to mention the vast numbers of Europeans also enslaved in centuries past in the Islamic world and within Europe itself. At least a million Europeans were enslaved by North African pirates alone from 1500 to 1800, and some Europeans slaves were still being sold on the auction blocks in the Egypt, years after the Emancipation Proclamation freed blacks in the United States."
Thomas Sowell,Conservative,The welfare state is the oldest con game in the world. First you take people's money away quietly and then you give some of it back to them flamboyantly.
Thomas Sowell,Conservative,"Liberals seem to assume that, if you don’t believe in their particular political solutions, then you don’t really care about the people that they claim to want to help."
Thomas Sowell,Conservative,"The question is not what anybody deserves. The question is who is to take on the God-like role of deciding what everybody else deserves. You can talk about social justice all you want. But what death taxes boil down to is letting politicians take money from widows and orphans to pay for goodies that they will hand out to others, in order to buy votes to get reelected. That is not social justice or any other kind of justice."
Thomas Sowell,Conservative,One of the first things taught in introductory statistics textbooks is that correlation is not causation. It is also one of the first things forgotten.
Thomas Sowell,Conservative,"The staunchest conservatives advocate a range of changes which differ in specifics, rather than in number or magnitude, from the changes advocated by those considered liberal…change, as such, is simply not a controversial issue. Yet a common practice among the anointed is to declare themselves emphatically, piously, and defiantly in favor of 'change.' Thus those who oppose their particular changes are depicted as being against change in general. It is as if opponents of the equation 2+2=7 were depicted as being against mathematics. Such a tactic might, however, be more politically effective than trying to defend the equation on its own merits. "
Thomas Sowell,Conservative,"The concept of microaggression is just one of many tactics used to stifle differences of opinion by declaring some opinions to be hate speech, instead of debating those differences in a marketplace of ideas. To accuse people of aggression for not marching in lockstep with political correctness is to set the stage for justifying real aggression against them."
Thomas Sowell,Conservative,"Each new generation born is in effect an invasion of civilization by little barbarians, who must be civilized before it is too late."
Thomas Sowell,Conservative,"What is ominous is the ease with which some people go from saying that they don't like something to saying that the government should forbid it. When you go down that road, don't expect freedom to survive very long."
Thomas Sowell,Conservative,Extrapolations are the last refuge of a groundless argument.
Thomas Sowell,Conservative,Among the many other questions raised by the nebulous concept of greed is why it is a term applied almost exclusively to those who want to earn more money or to keep what they have already earned
Thomas Sowell,Conservative,What then is the intellectual advantage of civilization over primitive savagery? It is not necessarily that each civilized man has more knowledge but that he requires far less.
Thomas Sowell,Conservative,"As an entrepreneur in India put it: 'Indians have learned from painful experience that the state does not work on behalf of the people. More often than not, it works on behalf of itself."
Thomas Sowell,Conservative,"It was Thomas Edison who brought us electricity, not the Sierra Club. It was the Wright brothers who got us off the ground, not the Federal Aviation Administration. It was Henry Ford who ended the isolation of millions of Americans by making the automobile affordable, not Ralph Nader. Those who have helped the poor the most have not been those who have gone around loudly expressing 'compassion' for the poor, but those who found ways to make industry more productive and distribution more efficient, so that the poor of today can afford things that the affluent of yesterday could only dream about."
Thomas Sowell,Conservative,"Clearly, only very unequal intellectual and moral standing could justify having equality imposed, whether the people want it or not, as Dworkin suggests, and only very unequal power would make it possible."
Thomas Sowell,Conservative,"Whatever we wish to achieve in the future, it must begin by knowing where we are in the present- not where we wish we were, or whee we wish others to think we are, but where we are in fact."
Thomas Sowell,Conservative,"However much history may be invoked in support of these policies (affirmative action), no policy can apply to history but can only apply to the present or the future. The past may be many things, but it is clearly irrevocable. Its sins can no more be purged than its achievements can be expunged. Those who suffered in centuries past are as much beyond our help as those who sinned are beyond our retribution."
Thomas Sowell,Conservative,"What all these lofty and vague phrases boil down to is that the court can impose things that the voters don't want and the Constitution does not require, but which are in vogue in circles to which the court responds."
Thomas Sowell,Conservative,"For the anointed, traditions are likely to be seen as the dead hand of the past, relics of a less enlightened age, and not as the distilled experience of millions who faced similar human vicissitudes before."
Thomas Sowell,Conservative,"One of the common failings among honorable people is a failure to appreciate how thoroughly dishonorable some other people can be, and how dangerous it is to trust them."
Thomas Sowell,Conservative,Mystical references to 'society' and its programs to 'help' may warm the hearts of the gullible but what it really means isputting more power in the hands of bureaucrats.
Thomas Sowell,Conservative,The first lesson of economics is scarcity: there is never enough of anything to fully satisfy all those who want it. The first lesson of politics is to disregard the first lesson of economics.
Thomas Sowell,Conservative,Ronald Reagan had a vision of America. Barack Obama has a vision of Barack Obama.
Thomas Sowell,Conservative,"A mere enumeration of government activity is evidence -- often the sole evidence offered -- of inadequate nongovernment institutions, whose inability to cope with problems obviously required state intervention. Government is depicted as acting not in response to its own political incentives and constraints but because it is compelled to do so by concern for the public interest: it cannot keep its hands off when so much is at stake, when emergency compels it to supersede other decision making processes. Such a tableau simple ignores the possibility that there are political incentives for the production and distribution of emergencies to justify expansions of power as well as to use episodic emergencies as a reason for creating enduring government institutions."
Thomas Sowell,Conservative,Age gives you an excuse for not being very good at things that you were not very good at when you were young.
Thomas Sowell,Conservative,"The government is indeed an institution, but the market is nothing more than an option for each individual to chose among numerous existing institutions, or to fashion new arrangements suited to his own situation and taste."
Thomas Sowell,Conservative,Weighing benefits against costs is the way most people make decisions
Thomas Sowell,Conservative,"Where recyling takes place only in response to political pressures and exhortations, it need not meet the test of being incrementally worth its incremental costs. Accordingly, studies of government-imposed recycling programs in the United States have shown that what they salvage is usually worth less than the cost of salvaging it."
Thomas Sowell,Conservative,"People are all born ignorant but they are not born stupid. Much of the stupidity we see today is induced by our educational system, from the elementary schools to the universities. In a high-tech age that has seen the creation of artificial intelligence by computers, we are also seeing the creation of artificial stupidity by people who call themselves educators."
Thomas Sowell,Conservative,"No matter how much people on the left talk about compassion, they have no compassion for the taxpayers."
Thomas Sowell,Conservative,"If people in the media cannot decide whether they are in the business of reporting news or manufacturing propaganda, it is all the more important that the public understand that difference, and choose their news sources accordingly."
Thomas Sowell,Conservative,"The New York Times’ long-standing motto, All the News That’s Fit to Print should be changed to reflect today’s reality: Manufacturing News to Fit an Ideology."
Thomas Sowell,Conservative,No one will really understand politics until they understand that politicians are not trying to solve our problems. They are trying to solve their own problems
Thomas Sowell,Conservative,"The fatal attraction of government is that it allows busybodies to impose decisions on others without paying any price themselves. That enables them to act as if there were no price, even when there are ruinous prices - paid by others."
Thomas Sowell,Conservative,"Despite whatever the left may say, or even believe, about their concern for the poor, their actual behavior shows their interest in the poor to be greatest when the poor can be used as a focus of the left’s denunciations of society."
Thomas Sowell,Conservative,People who enjoy meetings should not be in charge of anything.
Thomas Sowell,Conservative,"I am so old that I can remember when other people’s achievements were considered to be an inspiration, rather than a grievance."
Thomas Sowell,Conservative,"Economics is more than just a way to see patterns or to unravel puzzling anomalies. Its fundamental concern is with the material standard of living of society as a whole and how that is affected by particular decisions made by individuals and institutions. One of the ways of doing this is to look at economic policies and economic systems in terms of the incentives they create, rather than simply the goals they pursue. This means that consequences matter more than intentions"
Thomas Sowell,Conservative,The only people I truly envy are those who can play a musical instrument and those who can eat anything they want without gaining weight.
Thomas Sowell,Conservative,"Talk about how various people have been winners in the lottery of life or have things that others don’t have just because they happen to have money is part of the delegitimizing of property as a prelude to seizing it. Luck certainly plays a very large role in all our lives. But we need to be very clear about what that role is. Very few people just happen to have money. Typically, they have it because their fellow human beings have voluntarily paid them for providing some goods or services, which are valued more than the money that is paid for them. It is not a zero-sum game. Both sides are better off because of it"
Thomas Sowell,Conservative,Government planning is not an alternative to chaos. It is a pre-emption of other people’s plans.
Thomas Sowell,Conservative,"You cannot take any people, of any color, and exempt them from the requirements of civilization -- including work, behavioral standards, personal responsibility and all the other basic things that the clever intelligentsia disdain -- without ruinous consequences to them and to society at large."
Thomas Sowell,Conservative,Slippery use of the word privilege is part of a vogue of calling achievements privileges
Thomas Sowell,Conservative,"Seldom do people think things through foolishly. More often, they do not bother to think things through at all, so that even brainy individuals can reach untenable conclusions because their brainpower means little if it is not deployed and applied."
Thomas Sowell,Conservative,Reality does not go away when it is ignored.
Thomas Sowell,Conservative,"But that such an administration could be elected in the first place, headed by a man whose only qualifications to be President of the United States at a dangerous time in the history of the world were rhetoric, style and symbolism"
Thomas Sowell,Conservative,"As history has also shown, especially in the twentieth century, one of the first things an ideologue will do after achieving absolute power is kill."
Thomas Sowell,Conservative,What is called an educated person is often someone who has had a dangerously superficial exposure to a wide spectrum of subjects.
Thomas Sowell,Conservative,"The only way anyone can have a right to something that has to be produced is to force someone else to produce it for him. The more things are provided as rights, the less the recipients have to work and the more others have to carry their load."
Thomas Sowell,Conservative,It takes considerable knowledge just to realize the extent of our own ignorance.
Thomas Sowell,Conservative,Alaska is much larger than France and Germany
Thomas Sowell,Conservative,Systemic processes tend to reward people for making decisions that turn out to be right
Thomas Sowell,Conservative,"Nothing could be more jolting and discordant with the vision of today's intellectuals than the fact that it was businessmen, devout religious leaders and Western imperialists who together destroyed slavery around the world. And if it doesn't fit their vision, it is the same to them as if it never happened."
Thomas Sowell,Conservative,[beware that] many of what are called social problems are differences between the theories of intellectuals and the realities of the world
Thomas Sowell,Conservative,The essence of bigotry is denying others the same rights you claim for yourself. Green bigots are a classic example.
Thomas Sowell,Conservative,"A very distinct pattern has emerged repeatedly when policies favored by the anointed turn out to fail. This pattern typically has four stages: STAGE 1. THE CRISIS: Some situation exists, whose negative aspects the anointed propose to eliminate. Such a situation is routinely characterized as a crisis, even though all human situations have negative aspects, and even though evidence is seldom asked or given to show how the situation at hand is either uniquely bad or threatening to get worse. Sometimes the situation described as a crisis has in fact already been getting better for years. STAGE 2. THE SOLUTION: Policies to end the crisis are advocated by the anointed, who say that these policies will lead to beneficial result A. Critics say that these policies will lead to detrimental result Z. The anointed dismiss these latter claims as absurd and simplistic, if not dishonest. STAGE 3. THE RESULTS: The policies are instituted and lead to detrimental result Z. STAGE 4. THE RESPONSE: Those who attribute detrimental result Z to the policies instituted are dismissed as simplistic for ignoring the complexities involved, as many factors went into determining the outcome. The burden of proof is put on the critics to demonstrate to a certainty that these policies alone were the only possible cause of the worsening that occurred. No burden of proof whatever is put on those who had so confidently predicted improvement. Indeed, it is often asserted that things would have been even worse, were it not for the wonderful programs that mitigated the inevitable damage from other factors. Examples of this pattern are all too abundant. Three will be considered here. The first and most general involves the set of social welfare policies called the war on poverty during the administration of President Lyndon B. Johnson, but continuing under other labels since then. Next is the policy of introducing sex education into the public schools, as a means of reducing teenage pregnancy and venereal diseases. The third example will be policies designed to reduce crime by adopting a less punitive approach, being more concerned with preventive social policies beforehand and rehabilitation afterwards, as well as showing more concern with the legal rights of defendants in criminal cases."
Thomas Sowell,Conservative,While greed is one of the most popular
Thomas Sowell,Conservative,"The history of which peoples, nations, or civilizations have conquered or enslaved which other peoples, nations, or civilizations has been largely a history of who has been in a position to do so."
Thomas Sowell,Conservative,No one chooses which culture to be born into or can be blamed for how that culture evolved in past centuries.
Thomas Sowell,Conservative,"Have you gone crazy, Lefty? No. On the contrary, I have become educated. Sometimes that’s worse, these days."
Thomas Sowell,Conservative,"The really painful surprise is that so many people based their hopes on his words, rather than on the record of his deeds. What that means is that, even if we somehow manage to survive this man’s reckless economic policies at home and his potentially fatal foreign policy actions and inactions, the gullibility and fecklessness of those voters who put him in the White House will still be there to be exploited by the next master of glib demagoguery and emotional images, who can lead us into another vortex of dangers, from which there is no guarantee that we will emerge as a free people or even as a viable society."
Thomas Sowell,Conservative,"Electric cars may be fun at amusement parks, where they don’t have to go very far or very fast. But if the consuming public wanted electric cars for regular use, Detroit would be manufacturing them by the millions. Only people infatuated with their own wonderful specialness would think that their job is to coerce both the manufacturers and the consuming public into something that neither of them wants."
Thomas Sowell,Conservative,"Nowhere in the world do you find this evenness that people use as a norm. And I find it fascinating that they will hold up as a norm something that has never been seen on this planet, and regard as an anomaly something that is seen in country after country."
Thomas Sowell,Conservative,"Price controls almost invariably produce black markets, where prices are not only higher than the legally permitted prices, but also higher than they would be in a free market, since the legal risks must also be compensated. While small-scale black markets may function in secrecy, large-scale black markets usually require bribes to officials to look the other way."
Thomas Sowell,Conservative,". . ideology. . . is an instrument of power; a defense mechanism against information; a pretext for eluding moral constraints in doing or approving evil with a clean conscience; and finally, a way of banning the criterion of experience, that is, of completely eliminating or indefinitely postponing the pragmatic criteria of success and failure."
Thomas Sowell,Conservative,"Failure is part of the natural cycle of business. Companies are born, companies die, capitalism moves forward. Fortunemagazine{115}"
Thomas Sowell,Conservative,The term liberal originally referred politically to those who wanted to liberate people
Thomas Sowell,Conservative,"As a young Marxist in college during the 1950s heyday of the anti-Communist crusade led by Senator Joseph McCarthy, I had more freedom to express my views in class, without fear of retaliation, than conservative students have on many campuses today."
Thomas Sowell,Conservative,"Many have blamed the gasoline shortages and long lines at filling stations in 1973 on the Arab Oil embargo of that year. However, the shortages and long lines began months before the Arab oil embargo, right after price controls were imposed."
Thomas Sowell,Conservative,"Misconceptions of business are almost inevitable in a society where most people have neither studied nor run businesses. In a society where most people are employees and consumers, it is easy to think of businesses as them – as impersonal organizations, whose internal operations are largely unknown and whose sums of money may sometimes be so huge as to be unfathomable."
Thomas Sowell,Conservative,"What is called planning in political rhetoric is the government’s suppression of other people’s plans by superimposing on them a collective plan, created by third parties, armed with the power of government and exempted from paying the costs that these collective plans impose on others."
Thomas Sowell,Conservative,…the very commonness of common sense makes it unlikely to have any appeal to the anointed. How can they be wiser and nobler than everyone else while agreeing with everyone else?
Thomas Sowell,Conservative,"Despite widespread misconceptions in the United States today that the institution of slavery was based on race, for most of the thousands of years in which slavery existed around the world, it was based on whoever was vulnerable to enslavement and within striking distance. Thus Europeans enslaved other Europeans, just as Asians enslaved other Asians and Africans enslaved other Africans, while Polynesians enslaved other Polynesians and the indigenous peoples of the Western Hemisphere enslaved other indigenous peoples of the Western Hemisphere. The very word slave derived from the word for Slavs, who were enslaved by fellow Europeans for centuries before Africans began to be brought in chains to the Western Hemisphere. Africans were not singled out by a race for ownership by Europeans, they were resorted to after the rise of nation-states with armies and navies in other parts of the world which reduced the number of places that could be raided for slaves without great costs and risks. Slave-raiding continued in Africa, primarily by Africans enslaving other Africans and then, in West Africa, selling some of their slaves to whites to take to the Western Hemisphere. Meanwhile, the growing range of ships and the growing wealth of nations eventually made economically feasible the transportation of vast numbers of slaves from one continent to another, creating racial differences between the enslaved and their owners as a dominant pattern in the Western Hemisphere. Such a pattern was by no means limited to Europeans owning non-Europeans, however. There were many examples of the reverse, quite aside from vast regions of the earth where neither the slaves nor their owners were either black or white."
Thomas Sowell,Conservative,Suppose you are wrong? How would you know? How would you test for that possibility?
Thomas Sowell,Conservative,People who want special taxes or subsidies for particular things seem not to understand that what they are really asking for is for the prices to misstate the relative scarcities of things and the relative values that the users of these things put on them. One
Thomas Sowell,Conservative,It is usually futile to try to talk facts and analysis to people who are enjoying a sense of moral superiority in their ignorance.
Thomas Sowell,Conservative,"The media are less a window on reality, than a stage on which officials and journalists perform self-scripted, self-serving fictions."
Thomas Sowell,Conservative,"Should a professor of accounting or chemistry be fired for using up class time to sound off about homelessness or the war in Iraq? Yes! There is no high moral principle that prevents it. What prevents it are tenure rules that have saddled so many colleges with so many self-indulgent prima donnas who seem to think that they are philosopher kings, when in fact they are often grossly ignorant or misinformed outside the narrow confines of their particular specialty."
Thomas Sowell,Conservative,"One of the many signs of verbal virtuosity among intellectuals is the repackaging of words to mean things that are not only different from, but sometimes the direct opposite of, their original meanings. 'Freedom' and 'power' are among the most common of these repackaged words. The basic concept of freedom as not being subjected to other people's restrictions, and of power as the ability to restrict other people's options have both been stood on their heads in some of the repackaging of these words by intellectuals discussing economic issues. Thus business enterprises who expand the public's options, either quantitatively (through lower prices) or qualitatively (through better products) are often spoken of as 'controlling' the market, whenever this results in a high percentage of consumers choosing to purchase their particular products rather than the competing products of other enterprises.In other words, when consumers decide that particular brands of products are either cheaper or better than competing brands of those products, third parties take it upon themselves to depict those who produced these particular brands as having exercised 'power' or 'control.' If, at a given time, three-quarters of the consumers prefer to buy the Acme brand of widgets to any other brand, then Acme Inc. will be said to 'control' three-quarters of the market, even though consumers control 100 percent of the market, since they can switch to another brand of widgets tomorrow if someone else comes up with a better widget, or stop buying widgets altogether if a new product comes along that makes widgets obsolete. ....by saying that businesses have 'power' because they have 'control' of their markets, this verbal virtuosity opens the way to saying that government needs to exercise its 'countervailing power' (John Kenneth Galbraith's phrase) in order to protect the public. Despite the verbal parallels, government power is in fact power, since individuals do not have a free choice as to whether or not to obey government laws and regulations, while consumers are free to ignore the products marketed by even the biggest and supposedly most 'powerful' corporations in the world."
Thomas Sowell,Conservative,Minimum wage laws appear to give low-income workers something for nothing
Thomas Sowell,Conservative,"President Obama keeps telling us that he is creating jobs. But more and more Americans have no jobs. The unemployment rate has declined slightly, but only because many people have stopped looking for jobs. You are only counted as unemployed if you are still looking for a job."
Thomas Sowell,Conservative,Free-loading at emergency rooms
Thomas Sowell,Conservative,"It would be very heard, for example, a basketball owner, no matter how racist he was, to try to operate without Blacks. It would be suicidal."
Thomas Sowell,Conservative,"In short, numbers are accepted as evidence when they agree with preconceptions, but not when they don’t."
Thomas Sowell,Conservative,"isolation is a recurring factor in poverty and backwardness around the world, whether that is physical isolation or cultural isolation, for any number of particular reasons"
Thomas Sowell,Conservative,teachers who pander to minority students by turning their courses into rap sessions and ethnic navel-gazing exercises capture their interest and allegiance.
Thomas Sowell,Conservative,"Nothing is easier than to get peaceful people to renounce violence, even when they provide no concrete ways to prevent violence from others."
Thomas Sowell,Conservative,"Gun control zealots compare the United States and England to show that murder rates are lower where restrictions on ownership of firearms are more severe. But you could just as easily compare Switzerland and Germany, the Swiss having lower murder rates than the Germans, even though gun ownership is three times higher in Switzerland. Other countries with high rates of gun ownership and low murder rates include Israel, New Zealand, and Finland."
Thomas Sowell,Conservative,"Today, there are more people of Irish ancestry in the United States than in Ireland, more Jews than in Israel, more blacks than in most African countries. There are more people of Polish ancestry in Detroit than in most of the leading cities in Poland, and more than twice as many people of Italian ancestry in New York as in Venice."
Thomas Sowell,Conservative,People who have time on their hands will inevitably waste the time of people who have work to do.
Thomas Sowell,Conservative,No-one is equal to anything. Even the same man is not equal to himself on different days.
Thomas Sowell,Conservative,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,Conservative,"Just as ancient tyrants gave the people bread and circuses, in exchanged for their loyalty, so visions can acquire a tyrannical sway over people’s minds by offering them an exalted sense of themselves in exchange for their loyalty to the vision through all the vicissitudes of facts to the contrary. This self-exaltation can take on many forms on many issues.Whether the particular issue is crime, automobile safety, income statistics, military defense, or overpopulation theories, the one consistency among them is that the conclusions reached exalt those who share the vision over the great unwashed who do not."
Thomas Sowell,Conservative,Looking at old photographs makes it hard for me to believe that I was ever that thin physically. And remembering some of the things I did in those days makes it hard to believe that I was ever that thin mentally.
Thomas Sowell,Conservative,"There have always been ignorant people, but they haven't always had college degrees to make them unaware of their ignorance. Some people imagine that they are well informed because they have memorized a whole galaxy of trendy dogmas and fashionable attitudes."
Thomas Sowell,Conservative,"To be sensitive, as ideologically defined, requires that one not merely accept but affirm other people’s way of life or even celebrate diversity in general. Like other demands for sensitivity, this demand offers no reason"
Thomas Sowell,Conservative,"The results show how unreliable peer consensus can be, even when it is a peer consensus of highly intellectual people, if those people share a very similar vision of the world and treat its conclusions as axioms, rather than as hypotheses that need to be checked against facts."
Thomas Sowell,Conservative,"1:THE CRISIS: Although Chief Judge Bazelon said in 1960 that we desperately need all the help we can get from modern behavioral scientists69 in dealing with the criminal law, the cold facts suggest no such desperation or crisis. Since the most reliable long-term crime data are on murder, what was the murder rate at that point? The number of murders committed in the United States in 1960 was less than in 1950, 1940, or 1930"
Thomas Sowell,Conservative,"While the Obama administration in Washington is not the root cause of the ominous dangers that face this country, at home and abroad, it is the embodiment, the personification and the culmination of dangerous trends that began decades ago. Moreover, it has escalated those dangers to what may be a point of no return. The specifics of the missteps and the misdeeds of this administration are among the things chronicled, here and there, in the essays that follow, which were first published as my syndicated newspaper columns."
Thomas Sowell,Conservative,"The monumental tragedies of the 20th century -- a world-wide Great Depression, two devastating World Wars, the Holocaust, famines killing millions in the Soviet Union and tens of millions in China -- should leave us with a sobering sense of the threats to any society. But this generation's ignorance of history leaves them free to be frivolous -- until the next catastrophe strikes, and catches them completely by surprise."
Thomas Sowell,Conservative,"In an age of artificial intelligence, too many of our schools and colleges are producing artificial stupidity."
Thomas Sowell,Conservative,"The fundamental confusion that makes income bracket data and individual income data seem mutually contradictory is the implicit assumption that people in particular income brackets at a given time are an enduring class at that level. If that were true, then trends over time in comparisons between income brackets would be the same as trends over time between individuals. Because that is not the case, the two sets of statistics lead not only to different conclusions but even opposite conclusions."
Thomas Sowell,Conservative,"Guns are completely inappropriate for the kind of sheep-like people the anointed envision or the orderly, prepackaged world in which they are to live. When you are in mortal danger, you are supposed to dial 911, so that the police can arrive on the scene some time later, identify your body, and file reports in triplicate."
Thomas Sowell,Conservative,Only in the light of this agenda does it make sense that so-called sex education should be advocated to take place throughout the school years
Thomas Sowell,Conservative,"If you are serious about education, then you need to start a lot earlier than fifteen years old to give each child a decent shot at life in the real world, as distinguished from make-believe equality while in school. Ability grouping or tracking"
Thomas Sowell,Conservative,"There are many who find a good alibi far more attractive than an achievement. For an achievement does not settle anything permanently. We still have to prove our worth anew each day: we have to prove that we are as good today as we were yesterday. But when we have a valid alibi for not achieving anything we are fixed, so to speak, for life.288"
Thomas Sowell,Conservative,"Although Adam Smith is today often regarded as a conservative figure, he in fact attacked some of the dominant ideas and interests of his own times. Moreover, the idea of a spontaneously self-equilibrating system"
Thomas Sowell,Conservative,"Perhaps the most important thing about risk is its inescapability. Particular individuals, groups, or institutions may be sheltered from risk - but only at the cost of having someone else bear that risk. For a society as a whole, there is no someone else."
Thomas Sowell,Conservative,prices are not costs. Prices are what pay for costs.
Thomas Sowell,Conservative,"Differences in habits and attitudes are differences in human capital, just as much as differences in knowledge and skills"
Thomas Sowell,Conservative,External explanations of black-white differences
Thomas Sowell,Conservative,"Lamenting the vagaries of fate may leave us with a galling sense of helpless frustration, which many escape by transforming the tragedy of the human condition into the specific sins of specific societies. This turns an insoluble problem of cosmic justice into an apparently manageable issue of social justice. Since the sins of human beings are virtually inexhaustible, there is seldom a lack of examples of wrongdoing to which intergroup differences can be attributed, rightly or wrongly. Where the quest for injustice is over-riding, among the things it over-rides are logic and evidence."
Thomas Sowell,Conservative,"If we wanted to be serious about evidence, we might compare where blacks stood a hundred years after the end of slavery with where they stood after 30 years of the liberal welfare state. In other words, we could compare hard evidence on the legacy of slavery with hard evidence on the legacy of liberals.Despite the grand myth that black economic progress began or accelerated with the passage of the civil rights laws and war on poverty programs of the 1960s, the cold fact is that the poverty rate among blacks fell from 87 percent in 1940 to 47 percent by 1960. This was before any of those programs began.Over the next 20 years, the poverty rate among blacks fell another 18 percentage points, compared to the 40-point drop in the previous 20 years. This was the continuation of a previous economic trend, at a slower rate of progress, not the economic grand deliverance proclaimed by liberals and self-serving black leaders.Nearly a hundred years of the supposed legacy of slavery found most black children [78%] being raised in two-parent families in 1960. But thirty years after the liberal welfare state found the great majority of black children being raised by a single parent [66%]. Public housing projects in the first half of the 20th century were clean, safe places, where people slept outside on hot summer nights, when they were too poor to afford air conditioning. That was before admissions standards for public housing projects were lowered or abandoned, in the euphoria of liberal non-judgmental notions. And it was before the toxic message of victimhood was spread by liberals. We all know what hell holes public housing has become in our times. The same toxic message produced similar social results among lower-income people in England, despite an absence of a legacy of slavery there.If we are to go by evidence of social retrogression, liberals have wreaked more havoc on blacks than the supposed legacy of slavery they talk about."
Thomas Sowell,Conservative,"As in the general society, fertility tends to be greatest where people are poorest: The rich get richer, and the poor have children. In"
Thomas Sowell,Conservative,"When people are presented with the alternatives of hating themselves for their failure or hating others for their success, they seldom choose to hate themselves."
Thomas Sowell,Conservative,"The purpose of education is to give the student the intellectual tools to analyze, whether verbally or numerically, and to reach conclusions based on logic and evidence."
Thomas Sowell,Conservative,"Is diversity our strength? Or anybody’s strength, anywhere in the world? Does Japan’s homogeneous population cause the Japanese to suffer? Have the Balkans been blessed by their heterogeneity"
Thomas Sowell,Conservative,The massive ethnic communities that make up the mosaic of American society cannot be adequately described as minorities. There is no majority.
Thomas Sowell,Conservative,"The cavemen had the same natural resources at their disposal as we have today, and the difference between their standard of living and ours is a difference between the knowledge they could bring to bear on those resources and the knowledge used today."
Thomas Sowell,Conservative,"Freedom must be distinguished from democracy, with which it is often confused."
Thomas Sowell,Conservative,Justice at all costs' is not justice.
Thomas Sowell,Conservative,"The history of black workers in the United States illustrates the point. As already noted, from the late nineteenth-century on through the middle of the twentieth century, the labor force participation rate of American blacks was slightly higher than that of American whites. In other words, blacks were just as employable at the wages they received as whites were at their very different wages. The minimum wage law changed that. Before federal minimum wage laws were instituted in the 1930s, the black unemployment rate was slightly lower than the white unemployment rate in 1930. But then followed the Davis-Bacon Act of 1931, the National Industrial Recovery Act of 1933 and the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938"
Thomas Sowell,Conservative,"White liberals, instead of comparing what has happened to the black family since the liberal welfare state policies of the 1960s were put into practice, compare black families to white families and conclude that the higher rates of broken homes and unwed motherhood among blacks are due to a legacy of slavery. But why the large-scale disintegration of the black family should have begun a hundred years after slavery is left unexplained. Whatever the situation of the black family relative to the white family, in the past or the present, it is clear that broken homes were far more common among blacks at the end of the twentieth century than they were in the middle of that century or at the beginning of that century"
Thomas Sowell,Conservative,"We do not have a choice whether or not to discuss history. History has always been invoked in contemporary controversies.The only choice is between discussing what actually happened in the past and discussing notions projected into the past for present purposes. History is the memory of the human race. For an individual to wake up some morning with no memory would be devastating. In addition to the emotional trauma of suddenly finding everything and everybody unknown and unfathomable, there would be no way to carry out the practical necessities of work or managing a home, much less maintaining or establishing relations with other human beings. It would not be much better to wake up some morning with a false memory, induced in you by some means by some other person"
Thomas Sowell,Conservative,"Epithets like fascist and imperialist stooge became common currency, along with unbridled expressions of tribal chauvinism."
Thomas Sowell,Conservative,"Where beliefs are not checked against facts, but instead facts must meet the test of consonance with the prevailing vision, we are in the process of sealing ourselves off from feedback from reality.Heedless of the past, we are flying blind into the future."
Thomas Sowell,Conservative,"The prevalence and power of a vision is shown, not by what its evidence or logic can prove, but precisely by its exemption from any need to provide evidence or logic--by the number of things that can be successfully asserted because they fit the vision, without having to meet the test of fitting the facts."
Thomas Sowell,Conservative,"He talks about the way in which the American academy assigns an official group identity to students, eliminating the distinction between voluntary association and imposed group identity. For example, a Jewish student who is totally assimilated"
Thomas Sowell,Conservative,"Information or allegations reflecting negatively on individuals or groups seen less sympathetically by the intelligentsia pass rapidly into the public domain with little scrutiny and much publicity. Two of the biggest proven hoaxes of our time have involved allegations of white men gang-raping a black woman-- first the Tawana Brawley hoax of 1987 and later the false rape charges against three Duke University students in 2006. In both cases, editorial indignation rang out across the land, without a speck of evidence to substantiate either of these charges. Moreover, the denunciations were not limited to the particular men accused, but were often extended to society at large, of whom these men were deemed to be symptoms or 'the tip of the iceberg.' In both cases, the charges fit a pre-existing vision, and that apparently made mundane facts unnecessary. Another widely publicized hoax-- one to which the President of the United States added his sub-hoax-- was a 1996 story appearing in USA Today under the headline, 'Arson at Black Churches Echoes Bigotry of the Past.' There was, according to USA Today, 'an epidemic of church burning,' targeting black churches. Like the gang-rape hoaxes, this story spread rapidly through the media. The Chicago Tribune referred to 'an epidemic of criminal and cowardly arson' leaving black churches in ruins. As with the gang-rape hoaxes, comments on the church fire stories went beyond those who were supposed to have set these fires to blame forces at work in society at large. Jesse Jackson was quoted was quoted in the New York Times as calling these arsons part of a 'cultural conspiracy' against blacks, which 'reflected the heightened racial tensions in the south that have been exacerbated by the assault on affirmative action and the populist oratory of Republican politicians like Pat Buchanan.' Time magazine writer Jack White likewise blamed 'the coded phrases' of Republican leaders for 'encouraging the arsonists.' Columnist Barbara Reynolds of USA Today said that the fires were 'an attempt to murder the spirit of black America.' New York Times columnist Bob Herbert said, The fuel for these fires can be traced to a carefully crafted environment of bigotry and hatred that was developed over the last century.'As with the gang-rape hoaxes, the charges publicized were taken as reflecting on the whole society, not just those supposedly involved in what was widely presumed to be arson, rather than fires that break out for a variety of other reasons. Washington Post columnist Dorothy Gilliam said that society in effect was 'giving these arsonists permission to commit these horrible crimes.' The climax of these comments came when President Bill Clinton, in his weekly radio address, said that these church burnings recalled similar burnings of black churches in Arkansas when he was a boy. There were more that 2,000 media stories done on the subject after the President's address. This story began to unravel when factual research showed that (1) no black churches were burned in Arkansas when Bill Clinton was growing up, (2) there had been no increase in fires at black churches, but an actual decrease over the previous 15 years, (3) the incidence of fires at white churches was similar to the incidence of fires at black churches, and (4) where there was arson, one-third of the suspects were black. However, retractions of the original story-- where there were retractions at all-- typically were given far less prominence than the original banner headlines and heated editorial comments."
Thomas Sowell,Conservative,"There cannot be a law-abiding society if no one knows in advance what law they are to abide by, but must wait for judges to create ex post facto legal rulings based on evolving standards rather than known rules."
Thomas Sowell,Conservative,"By the late eighteenth century, the lowlands of Scotland had developed the most extensive system of educationin"
Thomas Sowell,Conservative,"Top colleges turn out extraordinary graduates because they take in extraordinary freshmen. That tells very little about what happened in the intervening four years, except that it did not ruin these individuals completely. It tells even less about what would have happened if these same extraordinary people had been educated elsewhere. Whether a given individual will do better, either educationally or financially, by going to a bigname college is very doubtful. Hard"
Thomas Sowell,Conservative,"The virtually unanimous support of bilingualism among Hispanic activists, leaders and spokesmen"
Thomas Sowell,Conservative,"When it is proclaimed that one must become more sensitive to various ethnic, linguistic, sexual, or lifestyle groups, neither a reason nor a definition usually accompanies this opaque imperative."
Thomas Sowell,Conservative,"If you have no right to disapprove, then your approval means nothing. It may indeed be distressing to someone to have you express your opinion that his lifestyle is disgusting and his art, music or writing is crude, shallow, or repugnant, but unless you are free to reach such conclusions, any praise you bestow is hollow and suspect. To say that A has a right to B’s approval is to say that B has no right to his own opinion. What is even more absurd, the sensitivity argument is not even consistent, because everything changes drastically according to who is A and who is B. Those in the chosen groups may repudiate any aspect of the prevailing culture, without being considered insensitive, but no one from the prevailing culture may repudiate any aspect of other cultures. The"
Thomas Sowell,Conservative,"That educators who have repeatedly failed to do what they are hired to do, and trained to do, should take on sweeping roles as amateur psychologists, sociologists, and social philosophers seems almost inexplicable"
Thomas Sowell,Conservative,"Other countries whose educational systems achieve more than ours often do so in part by attempting less. While school children in Japan are learning science, mathematics, and a foreign language, American school children are sitting around in circles, unburdening their psyches and expressing themselves on scientific, economic and military issues for which they lack even the rudiments of competence. Worse than what they are not learning is what they are learning"
Thomas Sowell,Conservative,"The U.S. Air Force Academy likewise sought racial diversity through double standards. A 1982 memorandum on Air Force Academy stationery, with the notation for your eyes only, listed different cut-off scores to use when identifying possible candidates for the Academy from different racial ethnic groups. Composite SAT scores as low as 520 were acceptable for blacks, though Hispanics and American Indians had to do somewhat better, and Asian Americans had to meet the general standards. For athletes lower cut-offs were permissible.52 Given that composite SAT scores begin at 400 (out of a possible 1600) a requirement of 520 is really a requirement to earn only 120 points out of a possible 1200 points earned."
Thomas Sowell,Conservative,"Like mismatched minority students, mismatched minority faculty have sought refuge in non-intellectual pursuits, such as community activities and campus political activism, in denunciations of standards they do not meet, and in complaints about the moral shortcomings of colleagues, or of American society in general. Given the stark alternatives of (1) losing one’s self-respect by accepting the prevailing academic standards and values, and (2) protecting one’s self-respect by repudiating those standards and values, it can hardly be surprising that many have chosen the latter. Clearly,"
Thomas Sowell,Conservative,"Whether blatant or subtle, brainwashing has become a major, time-consuming activity in American education at all levels. Some zealots have not hesitated to use the traditional brain-washing technique of emotional trauma in the classroom to soften up children for their message. Gruesome and graphic movies on nuclear war, for example, have reduced some school children to tears"
Thomas Sowell,Conservative,"Just as Karl Marx did not attribute what he saw as the detrimental effects of a market economy to the ill will of individual capitalists, so Adam Smith did not attribute what he saw as the beneficial effects of a market economy to the good will of individual capitalists. Smith’s depictions of businessmen were at least as negative as those of Marx,21 even though Smith is rightly regarded as the patron saint of free market economics. According to Smith, the beneficial social effects of the businessman’s endeavors are no part of his intention.22"
Thomas Sowell,Conservative,"Much of what is taught in our schools and colleges today seeks to break down traditional values, and replace them with more fancy and fashionable notions, of which a duty to die is just one."
Thomas Sowell,Conservative,millions of people died in the war to make the world safe for democracy
Thomas Sowell,Conservative,"The next time you see a bum leaving drug needles in a park where children play or urinating in the street, you are seeing your tax dollars at work and the end result of the vision of the anointed."
Thomas Sowell,Conservative,"The vision of the anointed is one in which ills as poverty, irresponsible sex, and crime derive primarily from ‘society,’ rather than from individual choices and behavior. To believe in personal responsibility would be to destroy the whole special role of the anointed, whose vision casts them in the role of rescuers of people treated unfairly by ‘society."
Thomas Sowell,Conservative,"languages as Asians, who outnumber them nearly four to one.121 Linguistic diversity is not only a sign of cultural isolation and fragmentation, it contributes to the barriers"
Thomas Sowell,Conservative,"As George J. Stigler said of some of his fellow Nobel Laureates, they issue stern ultimata to the public on almost a monthly basis, and sometimes on no other basis."
Thomas Sowell,Conservative,"The traditional fixed-rate 30-year mortgages, which were once a majority of all mortgages, were no longer a majority during the housing boom, as ARMs and other creative ways of financing the purchase of a home grew rapidly to cope with soaring housing prices. Such innovative mortgages quickly went from being rare to becoming common, especially in places with very high housing costs."
Thomas Sowell,Conservative,"Income tax rules also made borrowing against a home’s equity attractive. Because mortgage interest payments can be deducted for income tax purposes, the interest paid on home equity loans could also be deducted, although interest on credit card debt or other debt was not deductible. Therefore it often paid anyone with any other kind of debt to pay off that debt with a home equity loan, whose interest would be deductible for income tax purposes. More and more people began to do this during the housing boom. In 2003, home equity loans totaled $593 billion. Such loans soared during the housing boom, nearly doubling to $1.13 trillion in 2007."
Thomas Sowell,Conservative,"Including the differential mortgage loan approval rates between Asian Americans and whites shows that the same methods to conclude that that blacks are discriminated against in mortgage lending would also lead to the conclusion that whites are discriminated against in favor of Asian Americans, reducing this whole procedure to absurdity, since no one believes that banks are discriminating against whites...[W]hen loan approval rates are not cited, but loan denial rates are, that creates a larger statistical disparity, since most loans are approved. Even if 98 percent of blacks had their mortgage loan applications approved, if 99 percent of whites were approved than by quoting denial rates alone it could be said that blacks were rejected twice as often as whites."
Thomas Sowell,Conservative,The United States as a whole is larger than the Roman Empire at its greatest expansion.
Thomas Sowell,Conservative,"The initial wealth of a group and its time of arrival are obviously important, as many wealthy old families  show, but the Jews arrived late and penniless in the nineteenth century and are now more affluent than any other ethnic group."
Thomas Sowell,Conservative,"lthough the basic principles of economics are not very complicated, the very ease with which they can be learned also makes them easy to dismissed as simplistic by those who do not want to accept analyses which contradict their cherished beliefs. Evasions of the obvious are often far more complicated than the facts. Nor is it automatically true that complex effects must have complex causes. The ramifications of something very simple can become enormously complex."
Thomas Sowell,Conservative,"Failure to use tax money to finance things not liked by the taxpaying public is routinely called ‘censorship.’ If such terminology were used consistently, virtually all of life would be just one long, unending censorship, as individuals choose whether to buy apples instead of oranges, vacations rather than violins, furniture rather than mutual funds. But of course no such consistency is intended. This strained use of the word ‘censorship’ appears only selectively, to describe public choices and values at variance with the choices and values of the anointed."
Thomas Sowell,Conservative,"Moreover, even in the absence of accumulating personal experience, it was difficult to believe that soaring murder statistics reflected simply better record keeping, since it had always been hard to ignore a dead body."
Thomas Sowell,Conservative,"People who have already been out in the real world, practicing for years whatever their particular specialty might be, have some basis for determining which things are relevant enough to go into a curriculum to teach those who follow. The idea that students can determine relevance in advance is one of the many counterproductive notions to come out of the 1960s."
Thomas Sowell,Conservative,"Japan, newly emerging on the world scene in the late nineteenth century, sought its science and engineering in Scotland."
Thomas Sowell,Conservative,"A society in which such decisions can only be made by males has thrown away half of its knowledge, talents, and insights."
Thomas Sowell,Conservative,"But his was an understandable mistake, given how little attention is paid to accuracy in history and how often history is used as just a propaganda tool in current controversies."
Thomas Sowell,Conservative,"In short, some of the least qualified students, taught by the least qualified professors in the lowest quality courses supply most American public school teachers."
Thomas Sowell,Conservative,"Evidence is fact that discriminates between one theory and another. Facts do not „speak for themselves. they speak for or against competing theories. Theories can be devastated by facts but they can never be proven correct by facts.What empirical verification can do is to reveal which of the competing theories currently being considered is more consistent with that which is known factually. Some other theory may come along tomorrow that is still more consistent with the facts, or explains those facts with fewer, clearer, or more manageable assumptions."
Thomas Sowell,Conservative,Among the precepts that Andrew Jackson's mother taught him were never to sue anybody for slander or for assault and battery: Always settle them cases yourself.
Thomas Sowell,Conservative,opportunity alone is not sufficient for economic or other accomplishments.
Thomas Sowell,Conservative,The ending of the slave trade was one of many European policiesimposed upon Africa by the conquerors.
Thomas Sowell,Conservative,"In short, rent control reduces the rate of housing turnover."
Thomas Sowell,Conservative,"Just as price fluctuations allocate scarce resources which have alternative uses, price controls which limit those fluctuations reduce the incentives for individuals to limit their own use of scarce resources desired by others."
Thomas Sowell,Conservative,"Piketty’s crucial misstep is verbally converting a fluid process over time into a rigid structure, with a more or less permanent top one percent living isolated from the rest of society that is supposedly subjected to their control or influence. It is a vision divorced from demonstrable facts, however consonant it may be with prevailing preconceptions."
Thomas Sowell,Conservative,"The intelligentsia in the media can decide what to emphasize, what to downplay and what to ignore entirely when it comes to race. These may be individual choices, rather than a conspiracy, but individual choices growing out of a common vision of the world can produce results all too similar to what is produced by centralized censorship or propaganda."
Thomas Sowell,Conservative,"One of the greatest inventions of the 20th century -- indeed, one of the landmark inventions in the history of the human race -- was the work of a couple of young men who had never gone to college and who were just bicycle mechanics in Dayton, Ohio.That part of the United States is often referred to as 'flyover country' because it is part of America that the east coast and west coast elites fly over on their way to what they consider more important places. But they are able to fly over it only because of those mechanics in Dayton."
Thomas Sowell,Conservative,"Cultural differences are real, and cannot be talked away by using pejorative terms such as stereotypes or racism."
Thomas Sowell,Conservative,"In its pursuit of justice for a segment of society, in disregard of the consequences for society as a whole, what is called social justice might more accurately be called anti-social justice, since what consistently gets ignored or dismissed are precisely the costs to society."
Thomas Sowell,Conservative,"The crucial question is not whether evils exist but whether the evils of the past or present are automatically the cause of major economic, educational and other social disparities today. The bedrock assumption underlying many political or ideological crusades is that socioeconomic disparities are automatically somebody's fault, so that our choices are either to blame society or to 'blame the victim.' Yet whose fault are demographic differences, geographic differences, birth order differences or cultural differences that evolved over the centuries before any of us were born?"
Thomas Sowell,Conservative,"Some things are believed because they are demonstrably true, but many other things are believed simply because they have been asserted repeatedly and repetition has been accepted as a substitute for evidence."
Thomas Sowell,Conservative,"That some leader dangerous to the basic institutions of American society would arise, Lincoln thought inevitable. Safeguarding these institutions would require a public sufficiently united, sufficiently attached to freedom, and sufficiently wise, to successfully frustrate his designs. Today it would also require a public sufficiently resistant to incessant criticisms and condemnations of their society for failing to achieve cosmic justice. Moreover, if the dangers in our own times were limited to those of towering genius, there would be much less danger than there is. However, all that is needed are towering presumptions, which are increasingly mass-produced in our schools and colleges by the educational vogue of encouraging immature and inexperienced students to sit in emotional judgment on the complex evolution of whole ages and vast civilizations."
Thomas Sowell,Conservative,Geography is not egalitarian.
Thomas Sowell,Conservative,Nothing is more complex than avoiding the obvious
Thomas Sowell,Conservative,"More to the point, if he did cancel the tour in order to fight that tax, would we regard him as a rational man of high principle or as a doctrinaire, a moral exhibitionist, or an egomaniac"
Thomas Sowell,Conservative,"Not since the days of the Hitler Youth have young people been subjected to more propaganda on more politically correct issues. At one time, educators boasted that their role was not to teach students what to think but how to think. Today, their role is far too often to teach students what to think on everything from immigration to global warming to the new sacred trinity of 'race, class and gender."
Thomas Sowell,Conservative,"The remarkable reversal of public attitudes toward the Japanese over the years -- especially in Australia, Peru and the United States -- suggests that behavior and performance are more effective ways of changing other people's minds than moral crusades or emotional denunciations."
Thomas Sowell,Conservative,"If there is an optimistic aspect of preferential doctrines, it is that they may eventually make so many Americans so sick of hearing of group labels and percentages that the idea of judging each individual on his or her own performance may become more attractive than ever."
Thomas Sowell,Conservative,"The reality of an historic struggle for civil rights has degenerated into the hustling rhetoric of Newspeak. Equal opportunity now means preferential treatment. Voting rights now include preferential chances to win. School desegregation no longer means the right to attend any public school, regardless of race, but being forced to attend where you are told, according to race. Equal justice for all now means compensatory benefits for some"
Thomas Sowell,Conservative,were now not only affluent themselves but were also able to help family members-hut only so long as they stayed in office.'-
Thomas Sowell,Conservative,"A Yoruba governor, defeated through vote fraud, was later found by a court to have won in fact by a million votes."
Thomas Sowell,Conservative,"The tsetse fly infests more than half the mainland,' making cattle and draft animals impracticable in the infected regions."
Thomas Sowell,Conservative,"Foreign workers, attracted to Nigeria from other African countries during boom times, were deeply resented during hard times-and were brutally expelled en masse, largely to Ghana.1N"
Thomas Sowell,Conservative,"In short, even though some individual slaveowners grew rich and some family fortunes were founded on the exploitation of slaves, that is very different from saying that the whole society, or even its non-slave population as a whole, was more economically advanced than it would have been in the absence of slavery. What this means is that, whether employed as domestic servants or producing crops or other goods, millions suffered exploitation and dehumanization for no higher purpose than the transient aggrandizement of slaveowners."
Thomas Sowell,Conservative,that does not distinguish Germans from Europeans in general
Thomas Sowell,Conservative,"This was possible only because the anti-slavery movement coincided with an era in which Western power and hegemony were at their zenith, so that it was essentially European imperialism which ended slavery. This idea might seem shocking, not because it does not fit the facts, but because it does not fit the prevailing vision of our time."
Thomas Sowell,Conservative,"A 1972 study showed that the amount of pollution per mile traveled by horse was a hundred times the amount of pollution per mile traveled by automobile.27 Since the cars produced in later years have had reduced pollution levels, the disparity today would be even greater. It should also be noted that the replacement of horses by automobiles made it possible to restore more than 80 million acres of forestlands that had once been cleared for horse pasture.28"
Thomas Sowell,Conservative,"Such are the ways of politics, where the crusade of the hour often blocks out everything else, at least until another crusade comes along and takes over the same monopoly of our minds."
Thomas Sowell,Conservative,"Galling as it may be to be helpless to redress the crying injustices of the past, symbolic expiation in the present can only create new injustices among the living and new problems for the future, when newborn babies enter the world with pre-packaged grievances against other babies born the same day. Both have their future jeopardized, not only by their internal strife but also by the increased vulnerability of disunited society to external dangers from nations and from international terrorist networks."
Thomas Sowell,Conservative,"At various times and places, particular individuals have argued that existing tax rates are so high that the government could collect more tax revenues if it lowered those tax rates, because the changed incentives would lead to more economic activity, resulting in more tax revenues out of rising incomes, even though the tax rate was lowered."
Thomas Sowell,Conservative,"Moreover, the reasons for proposing such tax cuts are often verbally transformed from those of the advocates"
Thomas Sowell,Conservative,"Some years ago, in my syndicated column, I challenged anyone to name any economist, of any school of thought, who had actually advocated a trickle down theory. No one quoted any economist, politician or person in any other walk of life who had ever advocated such a theory, even though many readers named someone who claimed that someone else had advocated it, without being able to quote anything actually said by that someone else. 2"
Thomas Sowell,Conservative,It is a classic example of arguing against a caricature instead of confronting the argument actually made. While
Thomas Sowell,Conservative,"But the actual arguments advocated by Secretary Mellon had nothing to do with a trickle-down theory. Mellon pointed out that, under the high income tax rates at the end of the Woodrow Wilson administration in 1921, vast sums of money had been put into tax shelters such as tax-exempt municipal bonds, instead of being invested in the private economy, where this money would create more output, incomes and jobs.[8"
Thomas Sowell,Conservative,"The facts are unmistakably plain, for those who bother to check the facts. In 1921, when the tax rate on people making over $100,000 a year was 73 percent, the federal government collected a little over $700 million in income taxes, of which 30 percent was paid by those making over $100,000. By 1929, after a series of tax rate reductions had cut the tax rate to 24 percent on those making over $100,000, the federal government collected more than a billion dollars in income taxes, of which 65 percent was collected from those making over $100,000.[10"
Thomas Sowell,Conservative,"What actually followed the cuts in tax rates in the 1920s were rising output, rising employment to produce that output, rising incomes as a result and rising tax revenues for the government because of the rising incomes, even though the tax rates had been lowered."
Thomas Sowell,Conservative,"Under these escalating wartime income tax rates, the number of people reporting taxable incomes of more than $300,000"
Thomas Sowell,Conservative,"Far from being a national crisis of affordable housing, outrageous rents and astronomical home prices are largely confined to a relatively few places along the east and west coasts. Rent per square foot of apartment space in San Francisco is more than double what it is in Denver, Dallas, or Kansas City, and nearly three times as high as in Memphis. Home prices show even greater disparities."
Thomas Sowell,Conservative,"While market economies are often thought of as money economies, they are still more so knowledge economies…. Economic transactions are purchases and sales of knowledge.   After all, the cavemen had the same natural resources at their disposal as we have today…. We are all in the business of buying and selling knowledge from one another, because we are each so profoundly ignorant of what it takes to complete the whole process of which we are a part.   ‘How could we have gone so wrong?’ … The short answer is that power trumps knowledge."
Thomas Sowell,Conservative,"In 1962, Democratic President John F. Kennedy, like both Democratic and Republican Presidents and Secretaries of the Treasury in earlier years, pointed out that it is a paradoxical truth that tax rates are too high today and tax revenues are too low and the soundest way to raise the revenues in the long run is to cut the rates now."
Thomas Sowell,Conservative,"By 1709, the Irish owned only 14 percent of the land in their own"
Thomas Sowell,Conservative,Cromwell's punitive expedition marked a watershed in Irish history. An estimated 40 percent of the Irish population died either in the war or in the famine which accompanied the devastation.
Thomas Sowell,Conservative,"building and patronizing churches and schools, both of which were outstanding by the standards of the times."
Thomas Sowell,Conservative,internal disunity made Ireland vulnerable to conquest by a united Britain.
Thomas Sowell,Conservative,"The most spectacular-and embittering-of the British suppressions of the Irish was Oliver Cromwell's punitive expedition of 1649,"
Thomas Sowell,Conservative,The low and precarious economic conditions of the nineteenth-century Irish were reflected in their living conditions
Thomas Sowell,Conservative,"Economics and politics confront the same fundamental problem: What everyone wants adds up to more than there is. Market economies deal with this problem by confronting individuals with the costs of producing what they want, and letting those individuals make their own trade-offs when presented with prices that convey those costs. That leads to self-rationing, in the light of each individual’s own circumstances and preferences."
Thomas Sowell,Conservative,"Blaming economic crises on greed is like blaming plane crashes on gravity. Certainly planes wouldn’t crash if it wasn’t for gravity. But when thousands of planes fly millions of miles every day without crashing, explaining why a particular plane crashed because of gravity gets you nowhere. Neither does talking about greed, which is constant like gravity."
Thomas Sowell,Conservative,Many of us have been so brainwashed over the years
Thomas Sowell,Conservative,"Another dogma among gun control supporters is thathaving a gun in the home for self-defense is futile and is only likely to increase the chances of your getting hurt or killed. Your best bet is to offer no resistance to an intruder, according to this dogma.Actual research tells just the opposite story. People who have not resisted have gotten hurt twice as often as people who resisted with a firearm. Those who resisted without a firearm of course got hurt the most often."
Thomas Sowell,Conservative,"The old are not really smarter than the young, in terms of sheer brainpower. It is just that we have already made the kinds of mistakes that the young are about to make, and we have already suffered the consequences that the young are going to suffer if they disregard the record of the past."
Thomas Sowell,Conservative,"As late as 1951, out of the 16 million people in the northern region, only one had a full university degree-and he was a convert to Christianity."
Thomas Sowell,Conservative,"Eventually, this black leadership pressured and negotiated independence for Nigeria, beginning in 1960."
Thomas Sowell,Conservative,"Out of 160 physicians in Nigeria in the early1950s, 76 were Yorubas, 49 were Ibos and only one was Hausa-Fulani."
Thomas Sowell,Conservative,"Not only were the Ibos a poorer group from a less fertile region of Nigeria, those who migrated to the northern region were treated as outsiders and forced to live in separate residential areas, and to send their children to separate schools, by order of the local"
Thomas Sowell,Conservative,"Britain's earlier development of strong and widespread labor unions, which were able to restrict the application of new technology, both directly and by appropriating a sufficient share of technology's economic benefits to reduce the incentives for further technological investment."
Thomas Sowell,Conservative,"1914, the coal mines in Wales employed more than a quarter of a million people and supplied approximately one third of the world's coal exports."
Thomas Sowell,Conservative,"The greatest abuse of all-the slave trade-was ended as a direct result of the political influence of evangelical Christians in Britain, who were connected with missionary work in Africa."
Thomas Sowell,Conservative,Whether people are united by navigable waterways or cut off by rugged mountains or other geographical barriers has enormous cultural as well as economic and political significance.
Thomas Sowell,Conservative,"At the lower end of the social scale, as well as among the gentry, enterprise and social mobility were part of the pattern in England."
Thomas Sowell,Conservative,France had the intellectual foundations for modern industry without the commercial and financial complements.
Thomas Sowell,Conservative,"1870, Britain produced 32 percent of all the manufactured goods in the world, followed by the United States at 23 percent and Germany at 13 percent."
Thomas Sowell,Conservative,Britain was overtaken not only in gross output but also in output per worker. It lost its lead in technological innovation.
Thomas Sowell,Conservative,All that is necessary is for the conqueror to establish a degree of law and order under which others can feel secure.
Thomas Sowell,Conservative,Much of what sophisticates loftily refer to as the complexity of the real world is in fact the inconsistency in their own minds.
Thomas Sowell,Conservative,"Egalitarians never seem to understand that promoting economic equality in theory means promoting resentments and polarization in practice, making everyone worse off."
Thomas Sowell,Conservative,The people I feel sorry for are those who insist on continuing to do what they have always done but want the results to be different from what they have always been.
Thomas Sowell,Conservative,"massive role of government in the economy has made politics the pre-eminent route to prosperity, as well as power-whether for individuals, tribes, or regions."
Thomas Sowell,Conservative,many poverty-stricken countries were unable to obtain much-needed capital because of their undependable laws and confiscatory policies toward foreign investors.
Thomas Sowell,Conservative,"In understanding Black Africa, geography is more important than history.Fernand Braudel"
Thomas Sowell,Conservative,a desert more vast than the continental United States
Thomas Sowell,Conservative,for centuries much of the world's international trade was carried in ships that sailed past West Africa on their way between Europe and Asia around the southern tip of the continent.
Thomas Sowell,Conservative,"African languages one third of all the languages of the world,"
Thomas Sowell,Conservative,"Hundreds of families throughout New England responded to appeals to donate either 12 shillings per family or a peck of grain to help support the fledgling little college established near the Charles River, early in the colony's history, by John Harvard.:`°"
Thomas Sowell,Conservative,"The highly moralistic and uncompromising outlook of the Puritans eventually put them and their descendants on a collision course with the institution of slavery and produced. among others, Harriet Beecher Stowe, who was called by Abraham Lincoln the little lady who started the Civil War because of her novel Uncle Tom's Cabin."
Thomas Sowell,Conservative,the complacency of assured social position dulled the incentives necessary for the arduous task of developing native talents to the fullest.
Thomas Sowell,Conservative,"More generally, confidence that an investment of labor and resources could claim its reward-whether at harvest time or when dividends were issued years later-has been crucial to the economic efforts which create national prosperity."
Thomas Sowell,Conservative,The power of the intelligentsia is demonstrated not only by their ability to create a general climate of opinion that strikes fear into those who oppose their agenda but also by their ability to create a climate of opinion which richly rewards those political leaders whose decisions are consonant with the vision of the intelligentsia.
Thomas Sowell,Conservative,90 percent of all deaths from malaria in the world occur in sub-Saharan Africa.45
Thomas Sowell,Conservative,when the monetary value of output per capita in Nigeria is less than 2 percent of that in the United States-and in Tanzania less than 1 percent°~-that clearly cannot all be due to exchange rates.
Thomas Sowell,Conservative,"The Islamic jihads of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries created new Moslem states in West Africa, which in turn promoted enslavement on a larger scale.7'Altogether, between 1650 and 1850, at least 5 million slaves were shipped from West Africa alone.74"
Thomas Sowell,Conservative,"Most of the slaves shipped across the Atlantic were purchased, rather than captured, by Europeans."
Thomas Sowell,Conservative,The President is a phrase-maker par excellence. He admires trite sayings and revels in formulating them. But when he comes to their practical application he is so vague that their worth may well be doubted. He apparently never thought out in advance where they would lead or how they would he interpreted by others.
Thomas Sowell,Conservative,"How, in the first place, did a peripheral island rise from primitive squalor to world domination?"
Thomas Sowell,Conservative,"Romans withdrew from Britain four centuries later, the Britons began to retrogress,"
Thomas Sowell,Conservative,"the Britons that Julius Caesar saw were to him primitive exotics with long hair, dyed bodies, and living in a society of shared wives."
Thomas Sowell,Conservative,"The only competition for the Welsh vote, after the decline of the Liberal Party led by the Welsh Prime Minister of Britain, David Lloyd George, was the Communist Party."
Thomas Sowell,Conservative,Britain's iron ore and coal deposits were located near to one another and both were located near the sea-an
Thomas Sowell,Conservative,"those parts of the British Isles without the advantage of coal deposits or ports, industrialization was as handicapped as in other countries."
Thomas Sowell,Conservative,Engineers and mechanics were as much products of the industrialization process as the material goods and the machinery by which those goods were produced.
Thomas Sowell,Conservative,British mechanics and engineers were in demand around the world.
Thomas Sowell,Conservative,"As late as 1876, there were more than a hundred foreign industrial workers in the Japanese railroad industry alone and, of these, 94 were British."
Thomas Sowell,Conservative,"Railroads, in turn, were revolutionary in their social consequences. The concentrations of the world's populations along coasts and near rivers was reduced, as land transport into interior hinterlands became cheaper."
Thomas Sowell,Conservative,nineteenth century economic development was the development of continents instead of coast lines.98
Thomas Sowell,Conservative,enabling Germans to become major producers of steel and with it one of the leading industrial powers of the world.
Thomas Sowell,Conservative,"As late as 1912, Britain carried more than half the goods shipped across the seas of the"
Thomas Sowell,Conservative,"the railroad and the steamship affected not only industry and commerce, but also the lives of millions of ordinary people."
Thomas Sowell,Conservative,but cheap transportation made all these things available to the masses.'°
Thomas Sowell,Conservative,"At the heart of the industrialization process was iron and steel, and Britain was pre-eminent in their production."
Thomas Sowell,Conservative,"Even Karl Marx, who spent more than three decades living in Victorian England, acknowledged the rise in British workers' living standards between the 1840s and the 1860s."
Thomas Sowell,Conservative,"Even when the British took part in these wars, they fought on other people's territory or at sea."
Thomas Sowell,Conservative,"Eventually, however, the fact that many once-poor places like Hong Kong, South Korea, and Singapore achieved prosperity through freer international trade and investment became so blatant and so widely known that, by the end of the twentieth century, the governments of many other countries began abandoning their zero-sum view of economic transactions. China and India have been striking examples of poor countries whose abandonment of severe international trade and investment restrictions led to dramatic increases in their economic growth rates, which in turn led to tens of millions of their citizens rising out of poverty."
Thomas Sowell,Conservative,"Access is one of the great dishonest words of our times. I have had as much access to a career in professional basketball as Michael Jordan had. He just happened to play the game a lot better. Indeed, practically everybody has played the game a lot better than I did."
Thomas Sowell,Conservative,"large disparities in school performances among racial or ethnic groups (1) are unusual and suspicious, and (2) reflect differences in the way those groups are treated by the schools and/or the society. These"
Thomas Sowell,Conservative,"Abstract moral decisions are much easier to make on paper or in a classroom in later centuries than in the midst of the dilemmas actually faced by those living in very different circumstances, including serious dangers."
Thomas Sowell,Conservative,It has often been claimed that there has been very little change in the average real income of American households over a period of decades. It is an undisputed fact that the average real income
Thomas Sowell,Conservative,"Darwinian adaptation to environment applies not only to nature but also to society. Just as you don't find eagles living in the ocean or fish living on mountain tops, so you don't find leftists concentrated where their ideas have to stand the test of performance."
Thomas Sowell,Conservative,The world's first university chair in engineering was founded in Glasgow in 1840.2'x
Thomas Sowell,Conservative,Nothing is easier than to find some individuals
Thomas Sowell,Conservative,even in their poverty they carried themselves with a fierce and stubborn pride that warned others to treat them with respect.
Thomas Sowell,Conservative,"It was these elite families which produced such notable Americans of Scotch-Irish ancestry as Patrick Henry. Andrew Jackson, John Calhoun, James Polk, Zachary Taylor, Sam Houston. and others."
Thomas Sowell,Conservative,The era of mass education and the standardization of the English language left such expressions as marks of uneducated people in the American South
Thomas Sowell,Conservative,"Contrary to various economic theories of imperialism, Africa was not a major outlet for European investment or exports."
Thomas Sowell,Conservative,the idea of separated powers and of rules governing all the contenders for power became imbedded in British tradition over the centuries.
Thomas Sowell,Conservative,freedom of the press from prior censorship was instituted in 1695.
Thomas Sowell,Conservative,"An estimated 60,000 out of the 80,000 Herero were in fact killed before the general was recalled to Berlin.122"
Thomas Sowell,Conservative,"The impact of European conquerors on Africa, for good and evil, was relatively brief as history is measured-about three generations, as compared to the centuries in which the Romans ruled Britain or imperial China ruled parts of southeast Asia or the Moors ruled Spain."
Thomas Sowell,Conservative,"Britain's historic decision to ban the international slave trade in the early nineteenth century entailed a large and long-run political and military commitment in West Africa, the source of most transatlantic slave shipments."
Thomas Sowell,Conservative,"When I was an undergraduate studying economics under Professor Arthur Smithies of Harvard, he asked me in class one day what policy I favored on a particular issue of the times. Since I had strong feelings on that issue, I proceeded to answer him with enthusiasm, explaining what beneficial consequences I expected from the policy I advocated. And then what will happen? he asked. The question caught me off guard. However, as I thought about it, it became clear that the situation I described would lead to other economic consequences, which I then began to consider and to spell out. And what will happen after that? Professor Smithies asked. As I analyzed how the further economic reactions to the policy would unfold, I began to realize that these reactions would lead to consequences much less desirable than those at the first stage, and I began to waver somewhat. And then what will happen? Smithies persisted. By now I was beginning to see that the economic reverberations of the policy I advocated were likely to be pretty disastrous"
Thomas Sowell,Conservative,"Slaves were among the main commodities traded during this era, which preceded the era of European territorial conquests in sub-Saharan Africa."
Thomas Sowell,Conservative,"In Virginia, the printing press was deliberately restricted by the powers that be, to keep reading matter from the masses, while the aristocracy often had impressive libraries in their homes.396"
Thomas Sowell,Conservative,"For thousands of years, imperial conquests have been launched by Asians, Africans, and indigenous peoples of the Western Hemisphere, as well as by Europeans."
Thomas Sowell,Conservative,the British became the world's largest slaveholders in their Western Hemisphere colonies in the Caribbean.
Thomas Sowell,Conservative,"By 1912, the British Empire had a population of more than 440 million people, of whom only 10 percent lived in the British Isles.41"
Thomas Sowell,Conservative,One third of all Scots in the mid-nineteenth century moved from one county to another
Thomas Sowell,Conservative,"Julius Caesar's victories in Gaul were in significant part a result of the disunity of the Celts there, and of his ability to divide and conquer, both politically and militarily.269"
Thomas Sowell,Conservative,"As of 1641, the indigenous Irish Catholics owned an estimated three-fifths of the land of Ireland but, just 24 years later,"
Thomas Sowell,Conservative,"The dire poverty of the early nineteenth century Irish may be indicated by their average life expectancy of 19 years-compared to 36 years for contemporary American slaves-and the fact that slaves in the United States typically lived in houses a little larger than the unventilated huts of the Irish and slept on mattresses, while the Irish slept in piles of"
Thomas Sowell,Conservative,"by 1891, nearly two-fifths of all living people born in Ireland were living outside Ireland."
Thomas Sowell,Conservative,not one private bank was opened in Dublin in the quarter century before 1793.
Thomas Sowell,Conservative,"The coast of what is now Nigeria became known as the slave coast, just as the coast of neighboring Ghana to the west was called the gold coast and that west of Ghana was (and still is) called the ivory coast."
Thomas Sowell,Conservative,"more than a third of Europe's land mass consists of islands and peninsulas, only 2 percent of Africa's land mass consists of islands andpeninsulas."
Thomas Sowell,Conservative,expedition returned in triumph to Rome with captured British slaves marching behind them in the procession.12
Thomas Sowell,Conservative,In Winston Churchill's words: We owe London to Rome.34
Thomas Sowell,Conservative,"1950, Britain's share was down to 3 percent and that of the United States was 82 percent."
Thomas Sowell,Conservative,"Wales' most famous writer, Dylan Thomas, spoke no Welsh."
Thomas Sowell,Conservative,The rise of a British iron and steel industry was intertwined with the development of coal mining.
Thomas Sowell,Conservative,Woodlands in Britain increased in area by more than one-fourth between 1873 and 1911.87
Thomas Sowell,Conservative,Using machines to make other machines allowed finer tolerances to be maintained-sometimes down to a thousandth of an inch-and this in turn meant that parts could be made interchangeable.
Thomas Sowell,Conservative,"Because the common law was not simply the creature of political power-holders, it became another of the forces for separation of powers and of rights limiting the scope of officials."
Thomas Sowell,Conservative,An estimated one out of every five Africans is a Nigerian.
Thomas Sowell,Conservative,Iron was smelted in what is now Nigeria five centuries before Christ.
Thomas Sowell,Conservative,"Mauritania officially abolished slavery in 1980, though its own government admitted that the practice continued nevertheless."
Thomas Sowell,Conservative,"Much as the withdrawal of Roman rule from Britain led to widespread retrogressions, so in many parts of Africa the departure of the European rulers was followed by technological breakdowns, failing economies, and political chaos."
Thomas Sowell,Conservative,"attained democracy, as brutal dictatorships took over, led to the cynical phrase: One man, one vote-one time."
Thomas Sowell,Conservative,Forced labor was one of the most widespread and most deeply resented of the chronic abuses to which conquered Africans were subjected.
Thomas Sowell,Conservative,"In the Portuguese colony of Angola, during the closing decades of the nineteenth century, no contract laborer who went to the offshore island of Sao Tome was ever known to have returned alive."
Thomas Sowell,Conservative,"In the second Boer war 26,000 Boer women and children perished in British concentration camps."
Thomas Sowell,Conservative,"The need for Nigerian clerks and other subordinates to help man the colonial administration required creating a new class of African people with education in the English language, with Westernized concepts, and with experience in Westernized ways of doing things."
Thomas Sowell,Conservative,"The Zaire River, for example, is 2,900 miles long and has a volume of water second only to that of the Amazon, but its rapids and waterfalls near the sea prevent ocean-going ships from reaching inland."
Thomas Sowell,Conservative,No river in sub-Saharan Africa reaches from the open sea to deep into the interior.
Thomas Sowell,Conservative,"much of tropical Africa consists of high plateaus-almost the entire continent is more than 1.000 feet above sea-level and half the continent is more than 2,500 feet above sea-level-African rivers must plunge greater vertical distances to reach the sea, making them less navigable en route."
Thomas Sowell,Conservative,"Over the centuries, African nations rose and fell, like nations elsewhere around the world, the strong conquering the weak and either subjugating or enslaving those unable to resist."
Thomas Sowell,Conservative,"To the Ibos, Western education was a rare opportunity to be seized."
Thomas Sowell,Conservative,"Perhaps an even more remarkable contribution of Britain to the growth of freedom in the world was its leading role in the destruction of the international slave trade, and then of slavery itself."
Thomas Sowell,Conservative,"slavery was a worldwide institution, entrenched on every inhabited continent, subjugating people of every color, language, and religion,"
Thomas Sowell,Conservative,"It would be hard to find anywhere in history a record of any other country going to such efforts, for so long, in a cause from which it could gain so little and lose so much."
Thomas Sowell,Conservative,"After the American civil war, the U. S. Navy also joined the anti-slave patrols in the Atlantic."
Thomas Sowell,Conservative,The world dominance of Great Britain enabled it to impose its anti-slavery edicts on many other sovereign nations.
Thomas Sowell,Conservative,"Banning the institution of slavery itself long remained only a distant hope in much of Africa and the Middle East, even after it was a reality in the Western Hemisphere."
Thomas Sowell,Conservative,"Contrary to many theories of imperialism, this greatest of all empires did not revolve around an export of capital to the Third World."
Thomas Sowell,Conservative,So dominant did the Indians become over vast regions of East Africa that the rupee became the prevailing currency in much of that region.
Thomas Sowell,Conservative,"No government of the left has done as much for the poor as capitalism has. Even when it comes to the redistribution of income, the left talks the talk but the free market walks the walk. What do the poor most need? They need to stop being poor. And how can that be done, on a mass scale, except by an economy that creates vastly more wealth? Yet the political left has long had a remarkable lack of interest in how wealth is created. As far as they are concerned, wealth exists somehow and the only interesting question is how to redistribute it."
Thomas Sowell,Conservative,"High voter turnout, which some equate with a healthy democracy, has been in Nigeria (and in some other countries) an indication instead of a fever pitch of political polarization."
Thomas Sowell,Conservative,"From the flourishing trade center of Zanzibar, whose leading trade items were ivory and African slaves, the Arabs began to conquer parts of coastal East Africa."
Thomas Sowell,Conservative,Contrast societies with such restricted sources of decision-making ability with a society in which a farm boy who walked eight miles to Detroit to look for a job could end up creating the Ford Motor Company and changing the face of America with mass-produced automobiles
Thomas Sowell,Conservative,"In many countries – perhaps most countries – the establishment of law and order over large regions was a long and arduous process. Yet those who today advocate that government's economic role is to preserve the essential framework of law and order, leaving more specific economic decisions to the marketplace, are accused of saying that government should do nothing – even though (1) it took centuries to accomplish what is today called nothing and (2) that nothing has brought widespread economic beliefs to great numbers of human beings."
Thomas Sowell,Conservative,"Only optimists thought this possible at the time and even the leaders of the anti-slavery movement did not at first attempt the direct abolition of the institution of slavery itself, hoping instead that stopping the buying and selling of human beings would dry up the source and cause slavery as an institution to wither on the vine.At this juncture in history, Britain was the world's largest slave trader and the powerful vested interests which this created were able to roundly defeat early attempts to get Parliament to ban the trade. In the long run, however, such powerful opposition to the proposed ban, combined with equal tenacity on the other side, simply dragged out the political struggle for decades, making ever wider circles of people aware of the issue. Something that had never been a public issue before now became a subject of inescapable and heated controversy for years on end. Slavery could no longer be accepted as simply one of those facts of life that most people do not bother to think about. The long, drawn-out political controversy meant that more and more people had to think about it"
Thomas Sowell,Conservative,"Similar reasoning has promoted educational policies which seek to create more equal outcomes for special education students with mental, physical, or psychological handicaps"
Thomas Sowell,Conservative,"For most of human history, and for nearly all of the non-Western world prior to Western contact, freedom was, and for many still remains, anything but an obvious or desirable goal. Other values and ideals were, or are, of far greater importance to them"
Thomas Sowell,Conservative,"Drug prevention and sex education might seem to be very different activities, and a program for gifted and talented students still more different from both of these. But that is true only where these programs are legitimately confined to what they claim to be. Far too often, however, these words are mere flags of convenience under which schools set sail on an uncharted sea of social experimentation"
Thomas Sowell,Conservative,the selling of curriculum materials of a more general nature is a substantial business in itself. A captive audience of more than 40 million school children is attractive to all sorts of people for all sorts of reasons. The susceptibility of educators to such fasionable innovations is what opens the floodgates to permit the intrusion of such programs into the public schools. This susceptibility is only partly spontaneous.
Thomas Sowell,Conservative,"It would be naive to overlook the self-interest behind many of the glowing pleas for expanded educational opportunity for youth. Since youth must compete against each other for jobs, more opportunity for tax-subsidized education of middle-class students means a continued escalation of degree requirements for jobs and corresponding restriction of opportunity for youths from poorer families."
Thomas Sowell,Conservative,"Definitions being what they are, young people who waste their time around the house or on street corners are called unemployed, while those who waste their time in classrooms are called students."
Thomas Sowell,Conservative,"In the complexities of real life, seldom is any argument right 100 percent of the time or wrong 100 percent of the time."
Thomas Sowell,Conservative,"Equal opportunity laws and policies require that individuals be judged on their qualifications as individuals, without regard to race, sex, age, etc. Affirmative action requires that they be judged with regard to such group membership, receiving preferential or compensatory treatment in some cases to achieve a more proportional representation in various institutions and occupations."
Thomas Sowell,Conservative,"Empirically, political activity and political success have been neither necessary nor sufficient for economic advancement. Nor has eager political participation or outstanding success in politics been translated into faster group achievement."
Thomas Sowell,Conservative,The civil rights vision tends to view group characteristics as mere stereotypes and concentrates on changing the public’s perceptions or raising the public’s consciousness. Yet the reality of group patterns that transcend any given society cannot be denied.
Thomas Sowell,Conservative,"In short, despite the unpromising record of politics as a means of raising a group from poverty to affluence, and despite the dangers of politicizing race, there are built-in incentives for individual political leaders to do just that."
Thomas Sowell,Conservative,"If there are not equal results among groups presumed to have equal genetic potential, then some inequality of opportunity must have intervened somewhere, and the question of precisely where is less important than the remedy of restoring the less fortunate to their just position. The fatal flaw in this kind of thinking is that there are many reasons, besides genes and discrimination, why groups differ in their economic performances and rewards. Groups differ by large amounts demographically, culturally, and geographically"
Thomas Sowell,Conservative,The civil rights vision relies heavily on statistical disparities in income and employment between members of different groups to support its sweeping claims of rampant discrimination.
Thomas Sowell,Conservative,"Treating the causes of higher prices and higher interest rates in low-income neighborhoods as being personal greed or exploitation, and trying to remedy it by imposing price controls and interest rate ceilings only ensures that even less will be supplied to people living in low-income neighborhoods thereafter."
Thomas Sowell,Conservative,"In the United States, government regulations are estimated to cost about $7,800 per employee in large businesses and about $10,600 per employee in small businesses.{662} Among other things, this suggests that the existence of numerous government regulations tends to give competitive advantages to big business, since there are apparently economies of scale in complying with these regulations."
Thomas Sowell,Conservative,"Among the greatest external costs imposed in a society can be those imposed politically by legislators and officials who pay no costs whatever, while imposing billions of dollars in costs on others, in order to respond to political pressures from advocates of particular interests or ideologies."
Thomas Sowell,Conservative,"No exchanges of goods (for other goods or for money) would ever take place, unless the same physical thing had different values to different people."
Thomas Sowell,Conservative,"When wheat prices soar, for example, nothing is easier for a demagogue than to cry out against the injustice of a situation where speculators, sitting comfortably in their air-conditioned offices, grow rich on the sweat of farmers toiling in the fields for months under a hot sun. The years when the speculators took a financial beating at harvest time, while the farmers lived comfortably on the guaranteed wheat prices paid by speculators, are of course forgotten."
Thomas Sowell,Conservative,"When laws and policies make honesty increasingly costly, then government is, in effect, promoting dishonesty. Such dishonesty can then extend beyond the particular laws and policies in question to a more general habit of disobeying laws, to the detriment of the whole economy and society."
Thomas Sowell,Conservative,"In short, honesty is more than a moral principle. It is also a major economic factor. While government can do little to create honesty directly, in various ways it can indirectly either support or undermine the traditions on which honest conduct is based. This it can do by what it teaches in its schools, by the examples set by public officials, or by the laws that it passes. These laws can create incentives toward either moral or immoral conduct. Where laws create a situation in which the only way to avoid ruinous losses is by violating the law, the government is in effect reducing public respect for laws in general, as well as rewarding specific dishonest behavior."
Thomas Sowell,Conservative,"If low-wage employers make workers worse off than they would be otherwise, then it is hard to imagine why workers would work for them. Because they have no alternative may be one answer. But that answer implies that low-wage employers provide a better option than these particular workers have otherwise"
Thomas Sowell,Conservative,"Envy was once considered to be one of the seven deadly sins before it became one of the most admired virtues under its new name, 'social justice'."
Thomas Sowell,Conservative,"Here the poor are a means to an end. These kinds of leftists show remarkably little interest in the creation of wealth, which has raised living standards for the poor, as compared to their obsession with redistribution, which has not.These kinds of leftists concentrate on inequalities that can be dealt with by turning money and power over to people like themselves. These kinds of leftists will never desert the cause that serves them so well, no matter how badly it serves others."
Thomas Sowell,Conservative,"Like everything human, authority is imperfect and subject to abuse, so it cannot be unlimited"
Thomas Sowell,Conservative,"When John Rawls, in his A Theory of Justice repeatedly referred to outcomes that 'society' can 'arrange,' these euphemisms finessed aside the plain fact that only government has the power to override millions of people's mutually agreed transactions terms. Interior decorators arrange. Governments compel. It is not a subtle distinctions."
Thomas Sowell,Conservative,...lifelong benefits [to students who learn to think for themselves] include a healthy skepticism towards political slogans and a healthy desire to check out the facts before repeating rhetoric on other issues.
Thomas Sowell,Conservative,"The time is long overdue to count the costs of runaway rhetoric and heedless accusations - especially since most of the costs, including the high social cost of a breakdown of law and order, are paid by vulnerable people for whose benefit such rhetoric and such accusations are ostensibly being made."
Thomas Sowell,Conservative,"Wrongs abound in times and places around the world - inflicted on, and perpetrated by, people of virtually every race, creed and color. But what can any society today hope to gain by having newborn babies in that society enter the word as heirs to prepackaged grievances against other babies born into that same society on the same day."
Thomas Sowell,Conservative,"Any serious consideration of the world as it is around us today must tell us that maintaining common decency, much less peace and harmony, among living contemporaries is a major challenge, both among nations and within nations. To admit that we can do nothing about what happened among the dead is not to give up the struggle for a better world, but to concentrate our efforts where they have at least some hope of making things better for the living."
Thomas Sowell,Conservative,"Despite the inability to confiscate and redistribute human capital, nevertheless human capital is - ironically - one of the few things that can be spread to others without those with it having any less remaining for themselves. But one of the biggest obstacles to this happening is the 'social justice' vision, in which the fundamental problem of the less fortunate is not an absence of sufficient human capital, but the presence of other people's malevolence. For some, abandoning that vision would mean abandoning a moral melodrama, starring themselves as crusaders against the forces of evil. How many are prepared to give up all that - with all its psychic, political and other rewards - is an open question."
Thomas Sowell,Conservative,"People who depict markets as cold, impersonal institutions, and their own notions as humane and compassionate, have it directly backwards. It is when people make their own economic decisions, taking into account costs that matter to themselves, and known only to themselves, that this knowledge becomes part of the trade-odds they choose, whether as consumers or producers."
Thomas Sowell,Conservative,Most notable achievements involve multiple factors
Thomas Sowell,Conservative,"Engels said: what each individual wills is obstructed by everyone else, and what emerges is something that no one willed."
Thomas Sowell,Conservative,"Economists tend to rely on revealed preference rather than verbal statements. That is, what people do reveals what their values are, better than what they say."
Thomas Sowell,Conservative,24 percent of something is larger than 73 percent of nothing.
Thomas Sowell,Conservative,All that the government can do in reality is change the tax rate. How much tax revenue that will produce depends on how people react.
Thomas Sowell,Conservative,"Statistics compiled from what people say may be worse than useless, if they lead to a belief that those numbers convey a reality that can be relied on for serious decision-making about social policies."
Thomas Sowell,Conservative,Alternative explanations for these changing patterns of racial differences
Thomas Sowell,Conservative,"But, if the wealth of rich capitalists comes from exploitation of poor workers, then we might expect to find that where there are larger concentrations of rich capitalists, we would find correspondingly larger concentrations of poverty."
Thomas Sowell,Conservative,"the supply of customers and the supply of labor are almost totally under the control of the education establishment. Compulsory attendance laws guarantee a captive audience, except for about 13 percent of American youngsters who attend private schools,5 and official requirements of education courses for permanent tenure keep out the unwanted competition of potential teachers from outside the existing establishment."
Thomas Sowell,Conservative,"At Columbia Teachers College, 120th Street is said to be the widest street in the world because it separates that institution from the rest of Columbia University."
Thomas Sowell,Conservative,"People who have acquired academic degrees, without acquiring many economically meaningful skills, not only face personal disappointment and disaffection with society, but also have often become negative factors in the economy and even sources of danger, especially when they lash out at economically successful minorities and ethnically polarize the whole society they live in. . . . . In many places and times, soft-subject students and intellectuals have inflamed hostility, and sometimes violence, against many other successful groups."
Charles Murray,Conservative,"A man who is holding down a menial job and thereby supporting a wife and children is doing something authentically important with his life. He should take deep satisfaction from that, and be praised by his community for doing so. If that same man lives under a system that says the children of the woman he sleeps with will be taken care of whether or not he contributes, then that status goes away. I am not describing a theoretical outcome, but American neighborhoods where, once working at a menial job to provide for his family made a man proud and gave him status in his community, and where now it doesn't. Taking the trouble out of life strips people in major ways which human beings look back on their lives and say, ‘I made a difference."
Charles Murray,Conservative,"Instead of feeling sorry for the exceptionally able student who has no one to talk to, we need to worry about what happens when the exceptionally able students hang out only with one another."
Charles Murray,Conservative,"Considerable social science research has found that constant praise of children can backfire, because it so often consists of telling children how smart they are, not of praising children for the things they actually do. As a result, many children become protective of their image of being smart and are reluctant to take chances that might actually damage that image."
Charles Murray,Conservative,No one should be allowed to work in the West Wing of the White House who has not suffered a major disappointment in life... the responsibility of working there was too great... to be entrusted to people who weren't painfully aware of how badly things can go wrong.
Charles Murray,Conservative,"Responsibility for the consequences of actions is not the price of freedom, but one of its rewards."
Charles Murray,Conservative,Let me put it formally: If we ask what are the domains through which human beings achieve deep satisfactions in life
Charles Murray,Conservative,"A free society is most threatened not by uses of government that are obviously bad, but by uses of government that seem obviously good."
Charles Murray,Conservative,"When the government intervenes to help, whether in the European welfare state or in America’s more diluted version, it not only diminishes our responsibility for the desired outcome, it enfeebles the institutions through which people live satisfying lives."
Charles Murray,Conservative,"The tacit assumption of the advanced welfare state is correct when human beings face starvation or death by exposure. Then, food and shelter are all that count. But in an advanced society, the needs for food and shelter can be met in a variety of ways, and at that point human needs can no longer be disaggregated. The ways in which food and shelter are obtained affects whether the other human needs are met. People need self-respect, but self-respect must be earned"
Charles Murray,Conservative,it is said that roosters think the sun rises because they crow. Politicians are much the same.
Charles Murray,Conservative,"Many of the members of the new upper class are balkanized. Furthermore, their ignorance about other Americans is more problematic than the ignorance of other Americans about them. It is not a problem if truck drivers cannot empathize with the priorities of Yale professors. It is a problem if Yale professors, or producers of network news programs, or CEOs of great corporations, or presidential advisers cannot empathize with the priorities of truck drivers. It is inevitable that people have large areas of ignorance about how others live, but that makes it all the more important that the members of the new upper class be aware of the breadth and depth of their ignorance."
Charles Murray,Conservative,"The responsibilities of marriage induce young men to settle down, focus, and get to work."
Charles Murray,Conservative,The human impulse behind the isolation of class is as basic as impulses get: People like to be around other people who understand them and to whom they can talk.
Charles Murray,Conservative,They don't know the distinction between taking care of a child and raising a child.
Charles Murray,Conservative,"The genius of free human beings is that, given responsibility, they join together to take care of each other"
Charles Murray,Conservative,Humility is the proper estimate of oneself. CHARLES SPURGEON
Charles Murray,Conservative,"I think that the species of oppression by which democratic nations are menaced is unlike anything that ever before existed in the world.… The supreme power then extends its arm over the whole community. It covers the surface of society with a network of small, complicated rules, minute and uniform, through which the most original minds and the most energetic characters cannot penetrate to rise above the crowd. The will of man is not shattered, but softened, bent, and guided; men are seldom forced by it to act, but they are constantly restrained from acting. Such a power does not destroy, but it prevents existence; it does not tyrannize, but it compresses, enervates, extinguishes, and stupefies a people, till each nation is reduced to be nothing better than a flock of timid and industrious animals, of which the government is the shepherd."
Charles Murray,Conservative,"All the other virtues, and the living of a virtuous life, depend on them. If you took an introductory philosophy course in college, they were probably translated from the Greek as courage, justice, temperance, and prudence."
Charles Murray,Conservative,the process of writing is your most valuable single tool for developing better ideas. The process of writing is the dominant source of intellectual creativity.
Charles Murray,Conservative,"Many curmudgeons believe that a malady afflicts many of today’s twenty-somethings: their sense of entitlement. It is their impression that too many of you think doing routine office tasks is beneath you, and your supervisors are insufficiently sensitive to your needs. Curmudgeons are also likely to think that you have a higher opinion of your abilities than your performance warrants."
Charles Murray,Conservative,I propose another explanation: The reason so many Americans have become alienated from government since the poll of 1964 is that government really has become more incompetent and really has become alienated from the public it is supposed to serve. Political cycles and political fashion have nothing to do with it. American government isn’t what it used to be.
Charles Murray,Conservative,"Regardless of whether people have free will, human flourishing requires that they live in an environment in which they are treated as if they did."
Charles Murray,Conservative,"the most lovable of exceptional American qualities (is) our tradition of insisting that we are part of the middle class, even if we aren’t, and of interacting with our fellow citizens as if we were all middle class."
Charles Murray,Conservative,A new upper class that makes decisions affecting the lives of everyone else but increasingly doesn’t know much about how everybody else lives is vulnerable to making mistakes. How vulnerable are you?
Charles Murray,Conservative,Changing the new upper class by force majeure won’t work and isn’t a good idea in any case. The new upper class will change only if its members decide that it is in the interest of themselves and of their families to change. And possibly also because they decide it is in the interest of the country they love.
Charles Murray,Conservative,"Your career is likely to bear more resemblance to that of a writer than that of an athlete or painter. You should look ahead to your forties as the time when you will be at your peak of creativity, technical proficiency, and energy, and also have enough phronesis to realize your potential. The more your field depends on good judgment that comes only from experience, the longer you can expect to sustain a high level of performance into your fifties and sixties. To put it another way: Even if you wait as late as thirty to start accumulating the fifty thousand chunks of expertise, you will still have completed that apprenticeship when you approach the peak of your other powers in your forties. So push out your time horizon and don’t get frustrated if what you hoped would be a meteoric rise proves to be more measured. You’re not failing; you’re getting better at your craft and can reasonably aspire to master it one day. In the meantime, consult Wikipedia to check on the lives of those who became conspicuously successful at a young age. Ted Sorenson? After JFK was assassinated, he had a financially successful career as an attorney and remained a participant in politics, but, like sports heroes, rock stars, and pure mathematicians, he had to turn forty knowing that his most exciting professional years were behind him. How sad. And how happy you should be that you aren’t going to be a famous presidential aide at thirty-two."
Charles Murray,Conservative,The percentage of people qualifying for federal disability benefits because they are unable to work rose from 0.7 percent of the size of the labor force in 1960 to 5.3% in 2010.
Charles Murray,Conservative,Charles Martel’s victory at the Battle of Tours in 732 is recognised for having prevented the spread of Islam throughout Europe.
Charles Murray,Conservative,"In The Price of Admission, journalist Daniel Golden documents the ways in which elite schools manage to find room for the children of alums, big donors, celebrities, athletes, the elite college’s own faculty, and wealthy parents whose estates might eventually make their heirs into big donors.20"
Charles Murray,Conservative,To notice a difference is to have an opinion about it
Charles Murray,Conservative,"Using which instead of that. That introduces essential clauses while which introduces nonessential clauses. Consider the sentence Tools that have sharp edges can cause nasty cuts. If you remove the words that have sharp edges, the sentence loses much of its meaning. The clause is essential. Now consider Roses, which come in many colors, have thorns on their stems. You can remove which come in many colors and the meaning of the rest of the sentence is intact. The clause is not essential. Another way to remember: If the clause obviously needs to be set off by commas, use which."
Charles Murray,Conservative,Nice and good are different. Being nice involves immediate actions and immediate consequences
Charles Murray,Conservative,"there’s a lot to like about day-to-day life in the advanced welfare states of western Europe. They are great places to visit. But the view of life that has taken root in those same countries is problematic. It seems to go something like this: The purpose of life is to while away the time between birth and death as pleasantly as possible, and the purpose of government is to make it as easy as possible to while away the time as pleasantly as possible"
Charles Murray,Conservative,"Burlington, Vermont, is an example of a certain kind of small city that David Brooks calls Latte Towns, enclaves of affluent and well-educated people, sometimes in scenic locales such as Santa Fe or Aspen and sometimes in university towns such as Ann Arbor, Berkeley, or Chapel Hill. Of Burlington, Brooks writes: Burlington boasts a phenomenally busy public square. There are kite festivals and yoga festivals and eating festivals. There are arts councils, school-to-work collaboratives, environmental groups, preservation groups, community-supported agriculture, antidevelopment groups, and ad hoc activist groups.… And this public square is one of the features that draw people to Latte Towns. People in these places apparently would rather spend less time in the private sphere of their home and their one-acre yard and more time in the common areas."
Charles Murray,Conservative,The argument starts by accepting that the American government will continue to spend a huge amount of money on income transfers. It then contends that we should take all of that money and give it back to the American people in cash grants. The
Charles Murray,Conservative,"Henceforth, federal, state, and local governments shall make no law nor establish any program that transfers general tax revenues to some citizens and not to others, whether those transfers consist of money or in-kind benefits. All programs currently providing such benefits are to be terminated. The funds formerly allocated to them are to be used instead to provide every citizen with a Universal Basic Income beginning at age twenty-one and continuing until death. The maximum annual value of the grant at the program’s outset is to be $13,000, of which $3,000 must be devoted to catastrophic health insurance."
Charles Murray,Conservative,"The main attraction of a generous NIT is that it could resolve an impasse. As matters stand, every element of limited government now faces a blanket objection: But what about poor people? An NIT could take poverty off the table by giving every adult an income above the poverty line. Doing so is probably the single most important step in getting the nation to think seriously about restoring limited government. The left has always claimed it wanted to end material poverty. A generous NIT would do that. Is the left willing to give up the apparatus of the welfare state in return? But"
Charles Murray,Conservative,The goal of an end to poverty is so noble that governments have successfully used the end to justify the means. The means have been high taxation of the productive members of society and arrays of bureaucracies that increasingly regulate the lives of us all. 1
Charles Murray,Conservative,"He is certainly not a good citizen who does not wish to promote, by every means in his power, the welfare of the whole society of his fellow citizens. That is Adam Smith talking, the apostle of laissez-faire."
Charles Murray,Conservative,Discarding the welfare state in favor of a universal basic income is no longer something that would be economically feasible in America’s future. It is economically feasible right now.
Charles Murray,Conservative,"In the decades ahead, a life well-lived will often have to be one that does not involve a job traditionally defined. A universal basic income will be an essential part of the transition to a world unlike any in the history of our species."
Charles Murray,Conservative,Traditions decay when the reality facing the new generation changes. The habit of thrift decays if there is no penalty for not saving. The work ethic decays if there is no penalty for not working. Neighborliness
Charles Murray,Conservative,"During the second half of the twentieth century, the welfare state confronted accelerating increases in the number of people who were not just poor, but who behaved in destructive ways that ensured they would remain poor, sometimes living off their fellow citizens, sometimes preying on them. As their numbers grew, they acquired a new name: the underclass. The"
Charles Murray,Conservative,"The libertarian solution is to prevent the government from redistributing money in the first place. Imagine for a moment that the $2 trillion that the US government spends on transfer payments were left instead in the hands of the people who started with it. If I could wave a magic wand, that would be my solution. It is a case I have made elsewhere.2 Leave the wealth where it originates, and watch how its many uses, individual and collaborative, enable civil society to meet the needs that government cannot."
Charles Murray,Conservative,"People are unequal in the abilities that lead to economic success in life. To the extent that inequality of wealth is grounded in the way people freely choose to conduct their lives, I do not find it troubling. People"
Charles Murray,Conservative,"Some people pursue happiness in ways that tend to be accompanied by large incomes, others in ways that tend to be accompanied by lower incomes. In a free society, these choices are made voluntarily, with psychic rewards balanced against monetary rewards. Income inequality is accordingly large. So what?"
Charles Murray,Conservative,"Inequality of wealth grounded in unequal abilities is different. For most of us, the luck of the draw cuts several ways: one person is not handsome, but is smart; another is not as smart, but is industrious; and still another is not as industrious, but is charming. This kind of inequality of human capital is enriching, making life more interesting for everyone. But some portion of the population gets the short end of the stick on several dimensions. As the number of dimensions grows, so does the punishment for being unlucky. When a society tries to redistribute the goods of life to compensate the most unlucky, its heart is in the right place, however badly the thing has worked out in practice."
Charles Murray,Conservative,"A variant of the NIT puts it within our power to end poverty, provide for comfortable retirement and medical care for everyone, and"
Charles Murray,Conservative,"The entry of government into social insurance and then into a broader range of social interventions has caused incalculable human suffering. It has not produced a society in which fewer people are dependent than would otherwise have been the case. The welfare state has artificially, needlessly created a large dependent class. At the bottom is the underclass, stripped of dignity and autonomy, producing new generations socialized to their parents’ behavior. There"
Charles Murray,Conservative,"That’s the UBI. A cash grant, with a surtax, funded by eliminating the transfers that currently exist. I require that $3,000 be devoted to health care, but otherwise I will argue that many of the best effects of the UBI are fostered by the least direction: Here’s the money. Use it as you see fit. Your life is in your hands."
Charles Murray,Conservative,"Why is it a good thing to understand this movie so well? Because it will help you live a good life. Absorbing the deep meaning of the Nicomachean Ethics will also help you live a good life, but Groundhog Day will do it with a lot less effort. 35."
Charles Murray,Conservative,solutions are beyond the reach of the electoral process and legislative process.
Charles Murray,Conservative,"All systematic civil disobedience should involve acts that are malum prohibitum: illegal because the state says so, not because they are bad in themselves."
Charles Murray,Conservative,"Joan played den mother to the rebirth of American individualism. That she filled that role for so many is why I am grateful that this biography is appearing. In ways that a biography of QUOTE FOR PERSUADED BY REASON:one of the more famous figures could not do, Jeff Riggenbach's account of Joan Kennedy Taylor's journey captures the spirit of the individualist movement she so vividly embodied"
Charles Murray,Conservative,"The twin propositions of this book are that we are at the end of the American project as the founders intended it, but that opportunities are opening for preserving the best qualities of the American project in a new incarnation."
Charles Murray,Conservative,"Since they are in fact academically gifted, it is fine to tell them that. Trying to hide their academic ability from them would be futile anyway. But they must also be told explicitly, forcefully, and repeatedly that their intellectual talent is a gift that they have done nothing to deserve. They are not superior human beings, but very, very lucky ones. They should feel humbled by their good luck."
Charles Murray,Conservative,"An unavoidable side effect of ambition is to be gnawed by ambition anxiety about whether you’re going to succeed. You’re bound to feel it in your twenties and thirties. Put it away in your forties. By that time, you should have learned enough to recognize that fame and wealth are trivial"
Charles Murray,Conservative,"when the country began, the Founders were unanimously of the opinion that their creation could work in practice only because of qualities that already existed in the American people"
Charles Murray,Conservative,An expert is one who knows more and more about less and less. NICHOLAS MURRAY BUTLER
Charles Murray,Conservative,The average Harvard freshman in 1952 would have placed in the bottom 10 percent of the incoming class by 1960.
Charles Murray,Conservative,"The main vehicle for nineteenth-century socialization was the leading textbook used in elementary school. They were so widely used that sections in them became part of the national language. Theodore Roosevelt, scion of an elite New York family, schooled by private tutors, had been raised on the same textbooks as the children of Ohio farmers, Chicago tradesman, and New England fishermen. If you want to know what constituted being a good American from the mid-nineteenth century to World War I, spend a few hours browsing through the sections in the McGuffey Readers."
Charles Murray,Conservative,Corruption in the political process varies directly with the number and value of things that politicians have to sell. This
Charles Murray,Conservative,"family structure that produces the best outcomes for children, on average, are two biological parents who remain married. Divorced parents produce the next-best outcomes. Whether the parents remarry or remain single while the children are growing up makes little difference. Never-married women produce the worst outcomes. All of these statements apply after controlling for the family’s socioeconomic status.14 I know of no other set of important findings that are as broadly accepted by social scientists who follow the technical literature, liberal as well as conservative, and yet are so resolutely ignored by network news programs, editorial writers for the major newspapers, and politicians of both major political parties. In"
Charles Murray,Conservative,"There is more to life than work, and a life without ample space for family and friends is incomplete. But this much should not be controversial: Vocation"
Charles Murray,Conservative,When I came to again
Charles Murray,Conservative,"If I’m wrong, and you find yourself in an organization where sucking up is in fact a good way to get ahead, look for a new job. It’s not a quality organization after all, no matter how glittering its public reputation may be. Life is too short to work there."
Glenn Beck,Conservative,Sometimes the hardest part of the journey is believing you're worthy of the trip.
Glenn Beck,Conservative,Whoever thought a tiny candy bar should be called fun size was a moron.
Glenn Beck,Conservative,Most times we're so focused on what we think we want that we can't appreciate how happy we already are. It's only when we forget about our problems and help others forget theirs that we realize how good we really have it.
Glenn Beck,Conservative,"When you choose the path, you choose the destination."
Glenn Beck,Conservative,All men are created equal. It is what you do from there that makes the difference. We are all free agents in life. We make our own decisions. We control our own destiny.
Glenn Beck,Conservative,The moment you stop worrying about success is when success will happen.
Glenn Beck,Conservative,"You cannot take away freedom to protect it, you cannot destroy the free market to save it, and you cannot uphold freedom of speech by silencing those with whom you disagree. To take rights away to defend them or to spend your way out of debt defies common sense."
Glenn Beck,Conservative,"You can't love your mother or father if you don't also have the capacity to grieve their deaths and, perhaps even more so, grieve parts of their lives."
Glenn Beck,Conservative,"Everyone wants to feel loved, but when all you feel is alone it's tough to accomplish anything else."
Glenn Beck,Conservative,"Besides, life isn't meant to be safe. It's only in our mistakes, our errors, and our faults that we grow and truly live."
Glenn Beck,Conservative," After the signing of the Constitution, Benjamin Franklin was asked by a woman on the street, What have you given us, sir? Franklin Responded, A Republic, if you can keep it. A critical moment in history has come; our Republic is in jeopardy. Can we keep it? If the answer to that question, as I fear, is no, then we have no one to blame but ourselves."
Glenn Beck,Conservative,Life is what you make of it. There's always fun and laughs right under your nose if you're willing to open your eyes to see it.
Glenn Beck,Conservative,Application of your faith will change your life
Glenn Beck,Conservative,"I was still searching for someone to blame for my suffering. I really wanted someone to transfer my hate to, so that I could stop hating myself."
Glenn Beck,Conservative,"Always remember where we come from, how we got here, and Who led us into the warmth of the sunshine."
Glenn Beck,Conservative,"When you aren't drinking or using drugs or spending lots of money on fancy toys or basking in the glow of fame or working all the time or eating your way through the refrigerator, being hateful and angry is a very handy shield from the truth. It lets you focus on everyone else's shortcomings, and all the ways they have let you down. You can bemoan how all these broken people keep finding you somehow. That way you don't have to focus on what really matters -- the tough work of fiing what is broken inside you."
Glenn Beck,Conservative,Sometimes our strengths are also our weaknesses. Sometimes to be strong you have to first be weak. You have to share your burdens; you have to lean on other people while you face your problems and yourself.
Glenn Beck,Conservative,You never fully appreciate what you had until you don’t have it anymore
Glenn Beck,Conservative,"Because others have let us down, it is now our duty to face the hard truths and do the right thing--no matter the personal cost."
Glenn Beck,Conservative,...no one who has passed through the storm has ever regretted the journey. No one stands here and wishes to go back to the other side.
Glenn Beck,Conservative,Money doesn't talk it screams
Glenn Beck,Conservative,"But are we even capable of maintaining a Republic anymore? Are there enough citizens willing to do the hard work that self-rule requires, or have we become a people who would rather be cared for, fed, clothed, housed, and told what's best for us by a parentlike state? Unfortunately, the evidence suggests the latter."
Glenn Beck,Conservative,Everyone needs a place where they can go to just ponder for a while. Silence is important; it's the only time you can hear the whispering of truth.
Glenn Beck,Conservative,"Good for you, you have a heart, you can be a liberal. Now, couple your heart with your brain, and you can be a conservative."
Glenn Beck,Conservative,"We have allowed the system to be so corrupted that many want justice to be empathetic, not blind."
Glenn Beck,Conservative,"Look, calling somebody in a wheelchair handicapable doesn`t all of a sudden give them the power to climb stairs or the ability to grab Ho-Hos off the top shelf."
Glenn Beck,Conservative,"Defeat anger, stop using it as a shield against truth, and you will find the compassion you need to forgive the people you love."
Glenn Beck,Conservative,Not a single time have we gotten a right from Congress or from the President. We get them from God.
Glenn Beck,Conservative,"A-tone-ment-its a chance to fix the unfixable and to start all over again. It begins when you forgive yourself for all you've done wrong, and forgive others for all they've done to you. Your mistakes aren't mistakes anymore, they're just things that make you stronger."
Glenn Beck,Conservative,"You can either complain about how hard your life is, or you can realize that only you are responsible for it."
Glenn Beck,Conservative,When we support or vote for candidates outside the two major political parties we are immediately lectured about wasting our vote or making it easier for the less desirable of the two major candidates to claim victory. These lies are repeated every election and they must be ignored. You never waste your vote if you vote your conscience.
Glenn Beck,Conservative,"I told you, God is not coy. He's more likely to hit you across the forehead with a two-by-four than whisper in your ear"
Glenn Beck,Conservative,"By the way, I'm not just one man with a chalkboard. I'm one man with four chalkboards."
Glenn Beck,Conservative,"It is only on the battlefield of ideas that the best ones can be recognized and ultimately prevail. Only those afraid of the truth seek to silence debate, intimidate those with whom they disagree, or slander their ideological counterparts. Those who know they are right have no reason to stifle debate because they realize that all opposing arguments will ultimately be overcome by fact."
Glenn Beck,Conservative,"God thank you for everything you've given us. For the time we have together. And for the miracle of Christmas. Thank you for the Atonement, the chance to start all over again. Help us to always remember who we are and to trust that we are worthy to make it through our storms. Amen>"
Glenn Beck,Conservative,"Never forget who you are; a daughter of a Heavenly Father. You have royal heritage, and anyone who makes you feel like less that is not a man,husband,father, or friend,simply someone who is afraid of you because he knows who you are, but doesn't know who he is."
Glenn Beck,Conservative,Don't fall into the trap of believing so deeply in your own ideology that you cannot even see the flaws in it.
Glenn Beck,Conservative,Oh yeah brother I was right they started in with that mormon vudo right off the bat as soon as we walked in everybody was friendly. One of them who later became known to my family as the amazing Mr. Plastic Man even told me that he loved us. Please there are times I don't even like us how could you possibly love us. I was thinking spend some time with me pal and I'll cure you of that.
Glenn Beck,Conservative,"The only difference between Las Vegas and Washington, D.C. is that at least Vegas has the decency to admit the town is full of hookers and crooks."
Glenn Beck,Conservative,"Government should not be involved in marriage at all, I believe. There’s no reason for it. I don’t get the value of my marriage government, I get it from God. I want the government out of my life. If you want to find a church that marries a gay couple, that’s totally fine. My church does not do that and it will fundamentally change what i believe is the eternal family, the basic building block. And I have a right to believe that, and I have a right to go to a church that believes that and we have a right to practice. As long as I’m not trying to force you to do anything."
Glenn Beck,Conservative,"I don't have to wear a three-piece suit to be a good person, but I would like everything about me-even my clothes-to reflect a certain uncompromising integrity."
Glenn Beck,Conservative,"I collapsed to my knees and looked up at the predawn sky. I hate you, I said softly.I love you, the voice whispered back."
Glenn Beck,Conservative,"Without morality and virtue most things in a free society fall apart. But with them, anything is possible."
Glenn Beck,Conservative,"If you don’t find a leader, perhaps it is because you were meant to lead."
Glenn Beck,Conservative,...the people who talk most about the need to regulate guns are also usually the same people who know the least about them. Ask these gun prohibitionists about the Second Amendment and they'll usually mention hunting or sport shooting.
Glenn Beck,Conservative,"I considered him and felt the now familiar crush of emotions weighing on me, begging me to cave in and fall into his strong arms.I pushed back with every ounce of energy I had left. Every time I trusted someone, I got hurt. Every time I let go, I was let down. Not again. I would drive them away before the left."
Glenn Beck,Conservative,"If you treat an animal right, they don't run away. They're not like us. They run away from people they don't trust; most times we run away from ourselves."
Glenn Beck,Conservative,There's a big difference between not knowing the truth and not liking it.
Glenn Beck,Conservative,"How blind to believe the civil rights movement ever ended. The civil rights movement never ends, and it never will. It has been marching since the beginning of time. Where Martin Luther King started is where Gandhi left off, and where he started, Abe Lincoln left off, and before that Whitfield all the way back to Moses. God has not moved. We have. But it is never too late. We are not at the mercy of these events. We can alter the course of history. We can stand against the dangerous arc of this story. But we need people who are willing to speak truth."
Glenn Beck,Conservative,God takes attendance every day.
Glenn Beck,Conservative,"You can hold on to the smallest doubt and take comfort in it, stay in denial and go on with your carefree life, until one day you're finally cornered by a truth that can no longer be ignored."
Glenn Beck,Conservative,"The reason that history so often repeats is not only human nature, but also human ignorance."
Glenn Beck,Conservative,"The Second Amendment, like all of our rights, is reliant on a moral and virtuous people. Without that, nothing else matters. Man can not rule himself if... moral sentiment is missing."
Glenn Beck,Conservative,We are redeemed one man at a time. There is no family pass ticket or park hopping pass to life. One ticket
Glenn Beck,Conservative,"Some things are worth believing in. That the little guy can make it. Every single life has value and is worth living. That honor and integrity do matter. That justice will prevail – if not in this life – then the next, and that God does exist. And what we do in our lives matters."
Glenn Beck,Conservative,"There is no such thing as social justice. Only God can balance things out, and we are not God. But honest and decent men can fight for and establish equal justice. There is no such thing as collective salvation. We, however, are going to be judged on how we treat our fellow brothers and sisters. Thus we must serve them, help them with charity toward all. Malice toward none, Lincoln said. God said it slightly differently – vengeance is mine."
Glenn Beck,Conservative,"Thanks is part to our education system, we tend to think that we're smarter than the stupid guys in funny wigs who came before us. But that's because we are mistaking technology, progress, and access to information for intelligence. We think that because we know how to use iPhones (but not build them), browse the Internet (but not understand how it works), and use Google (but not really know anything), our educational system is working just great. By the same token, we think that those dumb aristocrats who used horses to get around and didn't have electricity were neanderthals."
Glenn Beck,Conservative,"You are at the same time arrogant and self-loathing. You are a puzzle. But the ancient truth remains: as the light grows dimmer, things begin to become harder to see. I came to love you in time, but I feared the dark side as well. I still do. You have tremendous potential, potential for joy or hate, light or dark, life or death. But in the end, you choose. What a gift, what a joy to witness."
Glenn Beck,Conservative,"Given enough time, guns and ammunition will eventually become so costly and time consuming to purchase, maintain, and insure that a ban will no longer be necessary. And that's what this is really about: control. Not of guns, but of us."
Glenn Beck,Conservative,"In my view, the right to bear arms is in the Constitution for three main reasons: self-protection, community protection, and protection from tyrrany."
Glenn Beck,Conservative,Maybe he thought I would run then. Maybe he thought I would be done. But I had been hurt before. I think he underestimated my ability to pick myself up and keep going. Done? Far from it.
Glenn Beck,Conservative,STORY is more than half of the word HISTORY. And that’s no accident.
Glenn Beck,Conservative,"The government, he told me one night, is there to act as a safety net, not a candy machine."
Glenn Beck,Conservative,"If we continue to stand up for our rights, none of us alive today will ever have to pick up a weapon against our government. The bad news is that if those rights are watered down or taken away, the risk of tyranny will increase with each passing generation."
Glenn Beck,Conservative,"Unfortunately, many controllists suffer from magical thinking. They believe that banning guns will somehow make them safer, as though laws are all we need to stop criminals. But consider for a second that you feel threatened for some reason and then ask yourself this: 'would you feel safer with a sign on your front window saying 'This house is a gun-free zone' or with an armed guard on call whenever you were home? If you wouldn't put this sign on your home, why would anyone think it's okay to put them in places where young children gather nearly every day?"
Glenn Beck,Conservative,"Gun-free zones don't deter criminals-they help them by providing a guarantee that they will not face any armed resistance. But they do deter the law-abiding. A faculty member with a concealed-handgun permit who breaks the campus gun ban would be fired and likely find it impossible to get admitted to another school. Bringing a firearm into a gun-free zone can have serious adverse consequences for law-abiding people. But for someone like the Virginia Tech killer, the threat of expulsion is no deterrent at all."
Glenn Beck,Conservative,We have an issue with kids' having unfettered access to the worst the Internet has to offer instead of the best that our communities can provide.
Glenn Beck,Conservative,"For those that think men make progress collectively, I warn you, history teaches: You couldn’t be more wrong."
Glenn Beck,Conservative,"We must sober up and admit that too many of the Republicans and the Democrats have played us, lied to us and stolen from us, while the getaway car was driven by the media. A media that can no longer claim with a straight face the role of journalist. Journalists print the things the powerful don’t want printed. What they do is public relations. Those PR firms will not print the truth about the average American who finds himself concerned with the direction of our country today. So we must. We are not violent. We are not racist. We are not anti immigrant. We are not anti-government. And we will not be silent anymore."
Glenn Beck,Conservative,"I am a man, and I will be treated as such. I answer to only one king and His kingdom will come, His will be done. We have chosen sides and we choose God. America as a nation must do the same, as well."
Glenn Beck,Conservative,"Who will protect your rights better? A king, president or you? Who will protect the truth? A reporter, a labor union or you? Who will protect and teach your children to seek truth? A textbook committee, an education bureaucrat, or you? Did a commission of wise men stop the Holocaust? Did a committee of Congress end Jim Crow? No. In each case, the work was done by individuals who would not abide convenient lies. They saw injustice and they called it out. They saw their nation wage war against a single group and they said not in my name. They didn’t wait for the conventions of society to catch up to God’s laws. They pushed. They pressed. And they were victorious."
Glenn Beck,Conservative,"I know it's crazy, but I actually prefer to prepare for disaster and worst-case scenarios, rather than panic once they do occur."
Glenn Beck,Conservative,"Progressives have spent the better part of a hundred years pushing their agenda - and they've hijacked everything from our kindergartens to our colleges to do it. The more 'educated' we get, the dumber we become. And that has always been the goal. There's a reason that slave masters wanted to keep their slaves illiterate: they understood that true education makes makes people long for freedom and liberty. Today's slave masters are the professors and unions and bureaucrats in Washington who run our education system."
Glenn Beck,Conservative,"Most young people have rebellious, anti-authoritarian impulses. They don't like being told what, when, or how to do something. It's ironic, then, that many of these same people embrace a system in which there would be far more regulations, many more bureaucrats micromanaging their lives, and far more rules and restrictions on how things can be done."
Glenn Beck,Conservative,"If you don’t draw a line in the sand, you will just keep drifting. You have to know what you’re willing to do and not willing to do right now."
Glenn Beck,Conservative,"...progressives start small. They introduce 'commonsense' regulations and restrictions that will supposedly save lives. Then, each time the public's attention is captured, they push further."
Glenn Beck,Conservative,"Well, Nicholas said seriously, I think that all good gifts come ultimately from God. It wouldn’t do for the messenger to take credit for his master’s work."
Glenn Beck,Conservative,The entirety of his life to this point had merely been to prepare him for what he was to do next: bring hope to the hopeless and joy to the joyless. He would serve mankind by reminding them every year that a King had been born who had died for thier sins.
Glenn Beck,Conservative,"My heart broke a little at her unblemished view of life: She still believed in innocent secrets, the heady rush of a good mystery, and happily ever after... (I wasn't about to disabuse her of those sweet notions.)...Little girls should be allowed to dream."
Glenn Beck,Conservative,"Because even though I was afraid to admit I, I felt like a door had been cracked in my soul. It was a tiny opening, to be sure, but there was the hint of something new in the air, something unexpected."
Glenn Beck,Conservative,"Anyone who claims that weapons like semi-automatics are so modern and unique that the Second Amendment doesn't apply to them would also have to believe that the First Amendment protects only writing done with quill pens on parchment paper, since those were the norm back then. How could we expect the Founders to have ever imagined the world we live in today?"
Glenn Beck,Conservative,"I can't read Mason & Dixon, since my mind's so shitty, I can't process it!"
Glenn Beck,Conservative,"There is also a trilogy of books out. I started reading right after Christmas Divergent. I went to read Insurgent after, and now I’m on the third one. I don’t know, it’s Detergent or whatever. But it’s written by a 26-year-old girl. It’s brilliant. But I’m about halfway through now on book number three. Wait until you get to book number three. Hello, Google genome project.Technology is advancing at a rapid pace, and yet, morality and ethics are afterthoughts. We’re excited about discovery and advancement, you know? We’re in fact so excited that we don’t even take the time to discuss or debate the moral dilemmas and implications of new technology. Sure, we’re still in control of technology now, but does there come a time when we’re not? Who will be the one that says turn it off? When do things go wrong?I don’t see anyone at Google or in the government or anyone at the forefront of technology boom that is contemplating the ethics and morality issues. Now that is a truly scary thought that doesn’t come in a movie."
Glenn Beck,Conservative,...the last official act of any government is to loot their own treasury.
Glenn Beck,Conservative,"We spend more per pupil than any other country, but among industrialized nations, American students rank near the bottom in science and math. Only 13 percent of high school seniors know what high school seniors should know about American history."
Glenn Beck,Conservative,There's a difference between suspecting a thing and finally knowing it for certain.
Glenn Beck,Conservative,"Evil is evil, and no good comes of calling it by any other name."
Glenn Beck,Conservative,It's frequently said that there is 'no reason' for such 'military-style weapons' as the Bushmaster to be available to citizens. But isn't that a lot like saying there is no reason why any civilian should drive a military-style car like the Hummer?
Glenn Beck,Conservative,"If we are really going to debate how criminals might access, modify, convert or adapt guns to fit their needs, then we can put all of the other arguments behind us right now, because none of them make a difference. That said, it's pretty telling just how weak your argument is when you have to resort to a 'yeah, but criminals might...' stance to make your point."
Glenn Beck,Conservative,"It's clear to me that if we raise children with no moral compass, we are planting the seeds of our own destruction."
Glenn Beck,Conservative,"The time for politics and party loyalty is over. Do your own homework. If you just take the administration’s word for it (or John McCain or John Boehner or Lindsey Graham’s for that matter) that it’s ‘slam dunk’ case, I believe you are part of the problem. Likewise, if you are against it just because I said so but you really don’t know why – you are part of the problem too. You are stopping, dare I say it – progress. If we continue to allow others to dictate our thinking then we deserve what we reap. But the innocent people who will suffer in the Middle East do not."
Glenn Beck,Conservative,"America, tell the truth. Tell the truth, even if it means in the end it hurts you. America, don’t believe everything that your country and your government tells you. Because while many times, most times it’s true; in many critical times it’s an out‑and‑out lie. And it’s not an American problem. It is a government problem. It is a human problem. People want power, and they will do anything to keep that power or enhance that power. It’s incumbent upon you if you want to remain free, to do your own homework. And if you don’t, you will lose your freedom. And because of that, innocent people will suffer. Truth and justice is the American way. If this microphone could speak, it would tell you this: Your country told you lies. Iva Toguri was not a traitor. She was wrongly tried and wrongly imprisoned, and real justice for her is now beyond our grasp. But if this microphone could speak all that it had seen or heard, my guess is it would say, Listen to the voices of the past. Listen to the voices of the past that now cry out. You are the last bastion of freedom in the world. You are smart enough. You as an individual are capable. But if you don’t do it, no one else will. Question the things that everyone says. Question the things that are even coming now out of this microphone, just as people questioned it 70 years ago. Find the truth because it depends on you. It’s calling to you. Don’t follow the crowd. Don’t do the easy thing. Do the right thing. Because if you still ‑‑ if you still want to believe that you should be called an American, you do the right thing because everything else is beneath you."
Glenn Beck,Conservative,"If somebody comes and scoops up all of my neighbor’s information because they’re on Verizon and just gathers all of that information, it is a violation of my civil rights as well. I’m telling you, America, we are the civil rights leaders of this day. Accept your position. Accept your role. Square your shoulders. Stand up. Link arms. Some of us will not make it to the end, as they used to say because this is a long, long journey to the end of the road. But man will be free as long as people understand the Bill of Rights. It was given to us, yes, by man, and flawed men, but it was inspired by God. Those rights don’t belong to you. You are merely a guardian of those rights for our children and our grandchildren, of all color, of all races, of all theological backgrounds. You are a guardian and a steward. Recognize what time it is. Recognize why you have been born, where you have been born. You have been given much, and believe me, much is required, not just expected."
Glenn Beck,Conservative,"I believe in you. I believe that you are the people that will make the difference. I believe that we cannot conquer darkness with darkness. We cannot conquer evil with evil, we must fight darkness with light. We must not tear down, but buildup."
Glenn Beck,Conservative,"If you catch them in an early lie, they learn their lesson and so they don’t continue to do it. But if you don’t call them on early lies, they only get worse, bigger, and more dangerous."
Glenn Beck,Conservative,"Virtually everything we told you about the healthcare bill now has proven to be true, and nearly everything they told you was a lie."
Glenn Beck,Conservative,"[On Obama Administration] I've never heard any administration or any business or anybody ever claim incompetence more than this group of people,"
Glenn Beck,Conservative,"Look, if you don’t believe that Jesus Christ is the savior of the world, that’s fine. That’s fine. No biggie. Go your way. I’m going my way. I happen to believe it. And there is no doctorate that could ever be given to me that would actually prove otherwise. Because you learn that through faith. You learn that through an individual testimony. I got one. You don’t have one, you should find one. You don’t want one, that’s fine. I don’t really care."
Glenn Beck,Conservative,"To keep a man a slave you do much the same as the cruel circus masters did to the elephant around the turn of last century. Clamp heavy chains around their legs and stake them to the ground. Then beat and terrorize them. After a while you no longer even have to stake the chain; the elephant gives up and just the mere rattle of the chain convinces the elephant there is no hope, so they give up and do whatever it is the circus requires."
Glenn Beck,Conservative,"Our forbears came to these shores not for free stuff, but for freedom. The chance to make their own way, create a different life. They came here because they knew that God made them free to make their own way in life, take the risk, do their best and take responsibility for their own lives. They came here because they wanted to serve Him in the way they believed, not as they were told."
Glenn Beck,Conservative,"Whatever the reason, too many are no longer willing to call evil by its name. There is no vision. And when there is no vision, the people perish."
Glenn Beck,Conservative,"Hollywood, Woodstock, nor the hippie culture was the source of power of the 1960's freedom movement. God was."
Glenn Beck,Conservative,"He was leading those who risked their lives over that bridge in Selma, not Janice Joplin, Columbia University, or a labor union. It wasn’t John Lennon that taught people about love and peaceful resistance"
Glenn Beck,Conservative,"Men may make progress, but man never changes. Man loves power and money. No matter the skin color, religion or income level. These symbols of our nation make men drunk with power, who then justify their lust for more by claiming they are public servants."
Glenn Beck,Conservative,Anyone who speaks of punishing their political enemies in on the wrong side. It is clearly evil and we have a responsibility to say so.
Glenn Beck,Conservative,"My civil rights will not be trampled, and I say this not for me but for my children, and all those who yearn to breathe free. Those who make your Apple products at Foxxcon, those who languish in prisons in Cuba, North Korea and Venezuela. Those homosexuals who are stoned to death in the streets of Egypt or Iran, while our so-called civil rights leaders hold coffee klatches with third graders in the White House."
Glenn Beck,Conservative,"If we want to be endowed with rights – real human rights, we have to act with responsibility. We must not be comfortable with rights. We must be comfortable with responsibility."
Glenn Beck,Conservative,"What have you done with your knowledge and priesthood power that those without have not done this week? If you cannot answer that with power every day, what does that say about you?"
Glenn Beck,Conservative,It is no longer enough to just be a good person. We must work to be the next Abraham Lincoln or Martin Luther King. It is noble to strive to be the size of the bronze giant they dedicated this morning in the building behind me. Fredrick Douglas’ time was in the 1800; King’s time has passed. This is our time. This is the next long march toward civil rights and we shall overcome.
Glenn Beck,Conservative,"America comes with both rights and responsibilities. You have, for example, the right to free speech, but you have the responsibility to not yell 'fire' in a crowded theater. If you don't live up to that responsibility, you face certain consequences. It's a simple but effective formula. Unfortunately, tenured professors are completely insulated from it. They can scream fire in their classrooms all they want - and then hide behind their tenure if anyone questions them on it."
Glenn Beck,Conservative,"People came here for a reason, to follow their conscience, to be free!"
Glenn Beck,Conservative,"I know this might be breaking news to Nicholas Kristof, but guns being 'more lethal than anything else you have around' is sort of the whole point. The issue should not really be the lethality of the gun, but the but the psychology of the person holding it."
Glenn Beck,Conservative,"If you don’t know what side you’re on right now, if you don’t know who you’re actually fighting. I’ve told you before we are not fighting with the president of the United States. We are not fighting with the Democrats, we are fighting evil, and if you don’t believe me, yesterday in Austin the governor decided that he was going to call for a special session. So now all the protesters are there in front of Austin… standing there in front of the capitol building in Austin and people are singing Amazing Grace. The pro death people are chanting things like ‘Mary should have had an abortion,’ meaning Jesus should never have been born and Hail Satan. When you can have a group of people chanting around a state capitol Hail Satan’ and nobody seems to care about that, I don’t recognize my country anymore. I am a man determined to be free."
Glenn Beck,Conservative,"You tell me why the government needs this information on every Verizon customer but they don’t need to know who’s coming across our border? They don’t need to know where the 15,000 foreign nationals are that skipped out on their visa, just didn’t show up to school but they’re here in the United States. You tell me why they need my grandmother’s phone records but they don’t need to know where the Saudi nationals are. Why they don’t need"
Glenn Beck,Conservative,"Once a week, beginning at sunset on Friday and until sunset on Saturday, the family had to pause. A Jewish merchant had explained the Sabbath to Agios already, back in Egypt. No devout Hebrew could work or travel on that day. If they were near a temple, the family went there. If no temple was available, they prayed where they were. When"
Glenn Beck,Conservative,United States and abroad reject and condemn violent jihad. But it doesn’t follow
Glenn Beck,Conservative,"We have only one life. We may waste it, or we may use it to learn of God and what God wants for us. And we all make mistakes. Only one life."
Glenn Beck,Conservative,Apathy and arrogance: These are the real culprits that affect us all to one degree or another.
Glenn Beck,Conservative,"The seeming power of a unified minority in Washington with just enough votes to thwart Obama was also a source of strength and, arguably, arrogance and self-importance. Even after Brown's election, the Democrats held 59 percent of the U.S. Senate, 59 percent of the House of Representatives, and 100 percent of the White House. But the GOP's forty-one Senate votes"
Glenn Beck,Conservative,"Lou Kitchenmaster, a retired teacher from Michigan, wrote an editorial in 2012 that puts the progressive position in perfect perspective: None of us would expect our major auto makers to build a high-quality product given damaged or defective materials; however, too many unfairly expect our public schools to accomplish such, regardless of the inherent condition of the product they receive. So he considers poor kids to be damaged or defective materials"
Glenn Beck,Conservative,"(Economist Robert Higgs wrote a book about this phenomenon titled Crisis and Leviathan, in which he argues that government intervention inevitably creates future problems, which results in the government’s intervening even more in an attempt to correct them.)"
Glenn Beck,Conservative,"Our Founders explicitly designed our system so that all powers not delegated to the federal government (education included) fell to the states or the people; they believed that parents, not government officials, have the moral right to decide what their children are taught."
Glenn Beck,Conservative,The controllists sometimes get angry when critics suggest that state led is a bit of a fabrication.
Glenn Beck,Conservative,"The Common Core State Standards Initiative, as it’s officially known, is the product of three private organizations, two of which have official-sounding names: the National Governors Association (NGA) and the Council of Chief State School Officers (CCSSO). The third private group is Achieve Inc., which boasts on its Web page that it helped take the idea of nationalized learning standards from a radical proposal into a national agenda."
Glenn Beck,Conservative,Casus Belli. It means an incident that's used to justify a war...
Glenn Beck,Conservative,"In the Westerville, Ohio, school district, for example, a union contract provision stipulated that a coin flip would be used to determine seniority if two teachers were hired on the same day. One might be a great teacher, the other awful; it makes no difference. That is how much importance unions place on teacher quality."
Glenn Beck,Conservative,"The typical mentality among the leadership of less work for more money is far too prevalent. Outstanding efforts by individual employees are frowned upon, because they give management a reason to expect better results without an increase in compensation."
Glenn Beck,Conservative,Union leaders essentially want the public to believe that all teachers are equal and deserve to be paid and treated that way
Glenn Beck,Conservative,"It just goes to show you that the R and the D are meaningless - what really matters is whether someone believes in the spirit and unending compassion of the individual, or instead in the destructive power of the collective."
Glenn Beck,Conservative,"In the vacuum created by fear and ignorance and hunger and want, it's evil, not good, that rushes to fill the void."
Glenn Beck,Conservative,"The reason to have history is to be able to say, ‘This is where you came from. This is what it cost. This is what happened to us. This is what we fought against. This is what we did when we won. This is who we are."
Glenn Beck,Conservative,In 2012 the NEA spent $18.1 million on political contributions (95 percent of it going to Democratic candidates) and another $5.9 million on lobbying. Without these payments it’s very possible that politicians might finally stop pretending that ideas like tenure and seniority pay make sense for our kids.
Glenn Beck,Conservative,"If you love wealth greater than liberty, the tranquility of servitude greater than the animating contest for freedom, go home from us in peace. We seek not your counsel, nor your arms. Crouch down and lick the hand that feeds you; May your chains set lightly upon you, and may posterity forget that you were our countrymen."
Glenn Beck,Conservative,"As Graeme Wood, a scholar on the teachings and ideology of ISIS, wrote in the Atlantic, The Islamic State is no mere collection of psychopaths. It is a religious group with carefully considered beliefs, among them that it is a key agent of the coming apocalypse. . . . The reality is that the Islamic State is Islamic. Very Islamic."
Glenn Beck,Conservative,"They recognized that they had little as compared to those in the top 10 percent, but they remained Republicans until their death, believing that freedom and self-initiative is the best for them and the country."
Glenn Beck,Conservative,"Trust me: if you just pick up the really obvious bread crumbs, you will find that you have more than enough to find your path. It will transform your life. God isn’t trying to hide anything from you. He’s not being coy or playing games for His own amusement. He’s trying hard to show you the way."
Glenn Beck,Conservative,"Perhaps, in the end, the lesson is that it’s as important to say I tried as it is to say I succeeded."
Glenn Beck,Conservative,Nobody expects you to understand the mind of God or know why he would love us in the midst of our weaknesss and sin.
Glenn Beck,Conservative,God has accepted your repentance. He gives his forgiveness freely.
Glenn Beck,Conservative,"Oh no, no, a state that adopts Common Core must adopt in its totality the Common Core and can only add 15 percent. It was then that I realized that this initiative, which had been constantly portrayed as state led and voluntary, was really about control."
Glenn Beck,Conservative,"progressives wrote the Common Core standards, used money from the 2009 stimulus bill to bribe states into adopting them, and are now vetting the tests that will eventually shape the curriculum used by school districts all across the United States."
Glenn Beck,Conservative,Every child could be an artist. Every child is an artist until a grown-up tells them they’re not.
Glenn Beck,Conservative,"Roughly two-thirds of educators wholeheartedly reject the new Common Core standards, or have reservations about them, and it would be just as accurate as the way the NEA wrote it."
Glenn Beck,Conservative,"Imagine our kids begging and pleading, throwing tantrums to get you to buy more fruits, vegetables, and whole grains. Yes, this is possible. It is possible to create this world! And that’s what all of this is really about: creating a world that meets the approval of the Obamas and other controllists."
Glenn Beck,Conservative,"Sure, you can raise your speed limit to 80, but we’ll just hold on to that highway grant money next year. The states almost always cave; they can’t afford not to."
Glenn Beck,Conservative,"Of course, figuring out what actually works in reducing childhood obesity is not really the point of these programs. (If it were, then the government might finally stop categorizing french fries as vegetables.) The real point is the same thing it always is: conformity, control, and eventually fundamental transformation."
Glenn Beck,Conservative,"It must be frustrating for decent parents to watch their children fall under the influence of radical educators, and sometimes make foolish decisions based on the predominant cultures in their schools. But no one should be surprised it happens"
Glenn Beck,Conservative,"A 2008 study conducted by Specialty Research Associates shows that the rates of teen sex, pregnancy, and venereal disease, along with crime, illiteracy, drug use, and suicide, started going through the roof almost immediately following the 1962 Supreme Court decision that ended teacher-led prayer in public schools."
Glenn Beck,Conservative,"In fact, our government has been all too eager to encourage the continued deterioration of the family structure by assuming more and more responsibilities that should be dealt with at home. That’s particularly true when it comes to government schools."
Glenn Beck,Conservative,Critics of home-schooling hate the idea of home-schooling and the freedom from the government school monopoly that it represents. Their attacks on academic success are just a transparent attempt to divert attention from their own failings.
Glenn Beck,Conservative,"actually translates to peace, because in Arabic it is based on the same root word, salam. That word, salam, can be found in the traditional greeting assalamualaikum (Peace be upon you). But as"
Glenn Beck,Conservative,We allow poor teachers to hang around and plague our schools until they choose to retire. That
Glenn Beck,Conservative,"What has changed in modern times, however, is that the media, the so-called fourth estate made up of America's best and brightest journalists, are no longer trusted.Sadly that leaves the American people with no one to rely on: not the politicians; not the media.Nature may abhor a vacuum, but political systems abhor a vacuum of trust even more. If we don't find someone to fill it, someone who can unify the country behind the truth, then that vacuum will be filled for us."
Glenn Beck,Conservative,As the motion picture finished
Glenn Beck,Conservative,"And so this government of the United States was brilliantly designed to keep that weakness of human nature in check, but it required the people to participate daily, to be vigilant, and they have not. It demanded that they behave as though their government was their servant, but they have not. In their silence the people of the United States have spoken. While they slept the servant has become their master."
Glenn Beck,Conservative,"As Americans were debating bailouts, individual mandates, and Michelle Obama’s finely toned arms, progressives knew they had a golden opportunity to sneak Common Core through the back door. And that’s just what they did. Remember what Rahm Emanuel, Obama’s first chief of staff, said: You never want a serious crisis to go to waste. Common Core was that political philosophy in action. The controllists’ plan was almost perfect. They knew they didn’t have to sell Common Core to lawmakers in individual state legislatures, where citizens would find out about it and demand it be stopped. Instead, they could just go to the individual state boards of education"
Glenn Beck,Conservative,"When men ruled over men, time was wasted and misspent."
Glenn Beck,Conservative,Don’t you feel that your scarred heart was made whole the moment you gave your service to Christ?
Glenn Beck,Conservative,"A June 2015 poll of Muslims living in the United States by the Center for Security Policy showed that a shocking number (51 percent) seek to embrace sharia over the U.S. Constitution. In addition, nearly one in four of Muslims polled believed that it is legitimate to use violence to punish those who give offense to Islam by, for example, portraying the prophet Mohammed. One in five respondents agreed that the use of violence is justified in order to make shariah the law of the land in this country while only 39 percent believed that Muslims in the U.S. should be subjected to American courts. If, as the Pew Research Center estimates, there are approximately 3 million Muslims in America, that translates to roughly half a million U.S. Muslims who believe acts of terror and murder are legitimate tools in order to replace the U.S. Constitution with sharia law."
Glenn Beck,Conservative,"Why?Why indeed. It was a sticky, impossible question and I didn't know how to answer it. How far back did I have to go to find the place where our roads diverged? How could I explain that sometimes a thousand little things added up to something so big it had the power to crush a relationship."
Glenn Beck,Conservative,"You've been getting it. Big fat doses of the truth. it's ugly, isn't it? Sometimes.And you still want it?Always... I'm not afraid. Besides, God is my shield. You don't have to be."
Glenn Beck,Conservative,Marriage is sacred. And the Bible says that God hates divorce. He hates it because he wants better for you. He never intended for you to have a broken marriage of a broken home. He loves you.
Glenn Beck,Conservative,"It was like he handed me a new life, and I happily stepped out of the past and into a present that felt very much like a brand-new beginning."
Glenn Beck,Conservative,I believed that was the point of real forgiveness: It was freely given. Grace-filled. Unsolicited.
Glenn Beck,Conservative,... because it's perfect. Happy and new. Filled with possibility...Everyone needed a little reminder of something whole and full of promise. Everyone needed a bit of paradise.
Glenn Beck,Conservative,... and it broke my heart in so many pieces I wondered if it would ever be whole again.
Glenn Beck,Conservative,Life is a journey. As you walk along the road you can either look back or you can look ahead. ... Look ahead. Always look for the very next step.
Glenn Beck,Conservative,"I didn't even know I could feel that way, that I could be filled with a longing so raw ad unexpected that it brought tears to my eyes."
Glenn Beck,Conservative,The ability to read is a prerequisite of baking.
Glenn Beck,Conservative,Sometimes the best way to express what we feel is to put our thoughts down on paper.
Glenn Beck,Conservative,"You finally did it! I suppose so. Though I don't really know what 'it' is.It is life, sweetie. Rich, abundant, thrilling life! You've embraced it... What he did to you was evil. But it struck me the other day that if you turn evil around, you're actually left with a pretty clear directive: live. And that's exactly what you're doing. You going to live. Really live."
Glenn Beck,Conservative,Someone once told me that everyone deserved to be loved.Even the unlovable?Maybe especially them.
Glenn Beck,Conservative,"Ponzi had been in Brazil, and then Argentina, where he bought a boardinghouse populated by prostitutes, along with a hot dog stand. He had hoped it would be the start of a national chain."
Glenn Beck,Conservative,Roy G. Biv to remember the colors and she made up a rhyme: A rainbow is named Roy G. Biv To remember the colors and the joy they give.
Glenn Beck,Conservative,"Fight against those who (1) believe not in Allah, (2) nor in the Last Day, (3) nor forbid that which has been forbidden by Allah and His Messenger, (4) and those who acknowledge not the religion of truth (i.e., Islam) among the people of the Scripture (Jews and Christians), until they pay the Jizyah with willing submission, and feel themselves subdued.*"
Glenn Beck,Conservative,"late 2011, the U.S. Department of Education made a historic change to the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act to allow schools to release student records to third-party organizations without parental consent."
David Frum,Conservative,"But the thought leaders on talk radio and Fox do more than shape opinion. Backed by their own wing of the book-publishing industry and supported by think tanks that increasingly function as public-relations agencies, conservatives have built a whole alternative knowledge system, with its own facts, its own history, its own laws of economics."
David Frum,Conservative,Those who seem to despise half of America will never be trusted to govern any of it. Those who cherish only the country's past will not be entrusted with its future.
David Frum,Conservative,"Trump is the producer, writer, and star of an extravaganza performance of the theater of resentment."
David Frum,Conservative,"The government of the United States seems to have made common cause with the planet’s thugs, crooks, and dictators against its own ideals"
David Frum,Conservative,The one-third of America that identifies as conservative will be isolated even more profoundly within an information ghetto of deception and incitement.
David Frum,Conservative,Democracy is a work in progress. So is democracy's undoing.
David Frum,Conservative,"Power creates temptations, and that is true even for the smallest increments of power: the power of the building inspector, of the customs official, of the cop at the traffic stop. It took a lot of work by a lot of people over a long time to build even America's highly imperfect standards of public integrity. Undoing that work would be a far easier task. Corruption is the resting state of pubic affairs; integrity a painstaking, unceasing struggle against cultural inertia and political gravity."
David Frum,Conservative,"Maybe you do not care much about the future of the Republican Party. You should. Conservatives will always be with us. If conservatives become convinced that they can not win democratically, they will not abandon conservatism. The will reject democracy."
David Frum,Conservative,"What is spreading today is repressive kleptocracy, led by rulers motivated by greed rather than by the deranged idealism of Hitler or Stalin or Mao. Such rulers rely less on terror and more on rule twisting, the manipulation of information, and the co-option of elites. Their goal is self-enrichment; the corrosion of the rule of law is the necessary means. As a shrewd local observer explained to me on a visit to Hungary in early 2016, The main benefit of controlling a modern bureaucratic state is not the power to persecute the innocent. It is the power to protect the guilty.No president in history has burned more public money to sustain his personal lifestyle than Donald Trump. Three-quarters of the way through his first year in office, President Trump was on track to spend more on travel in one year of his presidency than Barack Obama in eight"
David Frum,Conservative,The Republican Party was built on a coalition of the nation’s biggest winners from globalization and its biggest losers. The winners wrote the policy; the losers provided the votes.
David Frum,Conservative,"Perhaps the very darkness of the Trump experience can summon the nation to its senses and jolt Americans to a new politics of commonality, a new politics in which the Trump experience is remembered as the end of something bad, and not the beginning of something worse."
David Frum,Conservative,"The financial and economic consequences of the stoppage of payments by the largest purchaser of goods and services on planet Earth could not be calculated, could barely even be imagined. It would be a nuclear event"
David Frum,Conservative,"The ceiling in the mess was very low, not even eight feet. You can feel the weight of the West Wing above your head, and with the the weight of American memory."
David Frum,Conservative,"The first decade of the twenty-first century was a crazy bookend to the twentieth, opening with a second Pearl Harbor and ending with a second Great Crash, with a second Vietnam wedged in between. Now we seem caught in the coils of a second Great Depression."
David Frum,Conservative,Anyone who can be cool about his first visit to the Oval Office has lost so much body heat that rigor mortis is probably about to set in.
David Frum,Conservative,"Somebody bugged Barry Goldwater's apartment during the 1964 election without it triggering a national trauma. The Johnson administration tapped the phones of Nixon supporters in 1968, and again nothing happened. John F. Kennedy regaled reporters with intimate details from the tax returns of wealthy Republican donors, and none of the reporters saw anything amiss. FDR used the Federal Bureau of Investigation to spy on opponents of intervention into World War II--and his targets howled without result. If Watergate could so transform the nation's sense of itself, why did those previous abuses, which were equally well known to the press, not do so? Americans did not lose their faith in institutions because of the Watergate scandal; Watergate became a scandal because Americans were losing faith in their institutions."
David Horowitz,Conservative,Dishonesty is fundamental to the progressive cause since the cause is always about an imagined future whose panaceas cannot pass the test of experience.
David Horowitz,Conservative,"America can win a war against any external foe. Consequently, it is the war at home that will ultimately decide America's fate,"
David Horowitz,Conservative,"for Communists, the future is more real than the present. The belief in this reality is why radicals discount the apparent freedoms and material benefits of the actual world they live in. Their eyes are fixed on a revolutionary future that is perfect and just."
David Horowitz,Conservative,"The effort to transform natural inequalities into social equality could only lead to greater, more brutal inequality; the socialist effort to transform individual diversity into social unity could only lead to the totalitarian state."
David Horowitz,Conservative,Black skin privilege guarantees not only exemptions from intellectual and political standards that others are required to meet but from moral standards as well.
David Horowitz,Conservative,"The only way to bring Democrats down to earth, where they might feel subject to the same standards as everyone else, is to attack them with the same moral force they use to prosecute their mission; the only way to do it is to turn their fire on them. To do this, Republicans need to direct their arrows at the Achilles’ heel of the Democratic Party: its monopoly control of the inner cities of America and its responsibility for the misery and suffering inside them."
David Horowitz,Conservative,"In this view, capitalism"
David Horowitz,Conservative,"Political correctness is actually a term coined by the Chinese dictator and mass murderer Mao Zedong. By politically correct, Mao meant adhering to the official position of the Communist Party, which the comrades referred to as the party line."
David Horowitz,Conservative,"The whole history of the radical past, from Trotsky on, warned that my individual truth would have little effect on the attitude of the left. Confronted by such a truth, the left would seek first to ignore and then to discredit it, because it was damaging to the progressive cause."
David Horowitz,Conservative,"What is ahead of us? Like Pascal, we don’t know. Believers and non-believers stand in the same darkness. Neither sees God. Therefore like Pascal we should wager on life. We should bear ourselves in this world as though we have seen God, be kind to each other, love wisely, and give to our children what we would have wished for ourselves."
David Horowitz,Conservative,"In a free society, composed of individuals who are unequal by nature, the highest government good is neutrality in the treatment of its citizens before the law. One standard and one justice for all. This is the only equality that is not at odds with individual freedom. It is the only equality that can make a diverse community one. A nation that respects individual rights and protects individual freedom cannot be sustained if there is one standard for black and another for white; one for rich and another for poor. It can only be sustained by a single standard -- one law and one justice for all."
David Horowitz,Conservative,The lesson I had learned for my pain turned out to be modest and simple: the best intentions can lead to the worst results. I had believed in the left because of the good it had promised. Now I learned to judge it by the evil it had done.
David Horowitz,Conservative,My own theological views are those of an agnostic
David Horowitz,Conservative,For two hundred years the radical left has believed in a religion promising a heaven on earth whose end justifies any means. That is why progressives like Lenin and Stalin and Pol Pot killed so many innocent people.
David Horowitz,Conservative,"Since ideologies of the left are commitments to an imagined future, to question them is to provoke a moral rather than an empirical response: Are you for or against the equality of human beings? To dissent from the progressive viewpoint is not a failure to assess relevant facts but an unwillingness to embrace a liberated future. It is, therefore, to will the imperfections and injustices of the present order. In the current cant of the left, it is to be racist, sexist, classist, a defender of the status quo. That is why not only radicals, but even those who call themselves liberals, are instinctively intolerant towards the conservative position."
David Horowitz,Conservative,"For progressives, the future is not a maze of human uncertainties and unintended consequences. It is a moral choice. To achieve the socially just future requires only that enough people decide to will it. Consequently, it is perfectly consistent for progressives to consider themselves morally and intellectually enlightened, while dismissing their opponents as morally repulsive reactionaries, unworthy of the community of other human beings."
David Horowitz,Conservative,"What makes an outlook conservative’ is that it is rooted in an attitude about the past rather than in expectations of the future. The first principles of conservatism are propositions about human nature and the way human beings behave in a social context; about limits, and what limits make possible. This practicality, this attention to experience, to workable arrangements, explains why the conservative community can be liberal and tolerant toward its members in ways that the progressive left cannot."
David Horowitz,Conservative,"The regime of social justice, of which the left dreams, is a regime that by its very nature must crush individual freedom."
David Horowitz,Conservative,"The radical wolves in sheep’s clothing fall into two categories. First are the Crypto-Marxists, calling themselves radical feminists, post-structuralists, post-modernists, or merely progressives, whose agendas remain totalitarian. Then come the Fellow-Travelling Liberals, who acknowledge the bankruptcy of socialism and make a grudging commitment to free markets, but who still do not want to give up the agenda of social justice"
David Horowitz,Conservative,about the possibilities of the Republicans and Democrats
David Horowitz,Conservative,"Tend your garden. Cherish friends and family. Our lives are enlarged and our sense of who we are is enhanced when our children turn out well, and when we can be of help to others. Find satisfaction in this and in completing the tasks you undertake and in fulfilling the responsibilities that are yours. Bear always in mind that only a religious faith can impart meaning to our existence. It does so through the vision of a life hereafter that repairs the irreparable flaws in ours and makes us whole."
David Horowitz,Conservative,"After having overcome fascism, Nazism, and Stalinism, the world now faces a new global totalitarian threat: Islamism ... ."
David Horowitz,Conservative,"97Blacks, Jews most likely victim of US hate crimes: FBI, Agence FrancePresse, November 22, 2010."
David Horowitz,Conservative,"If CAIR sincerely wanted to diminish the concerns that reasonable Americans may have about the Islamic jihad and the extent of its support in the Muslim community, they could do so effectively by condemning the jihad instead of attacking its opponents. They"
David Horowitz,Conservative,"promote the teaching in mosques and madrassas that Muslims must coexist peacefully as equals with infidels on a permanent basis. And they could oppose blasphemy laws, such as the anti-Islamophobia resolutions they are promoting, which are a direct assault on the American Bill of Rights."
David Horowitz,Conservative,"The rage of the enemy was directed at a nation that was in its very conception pluralistic and inclusive, a country founded by people who had imagined themselves building a city on a hill, a microcosm of all humanity-in its very inclusiveness an exemplar to the world. America was targeted for attack, its president explained in an address afterward, because we're the brightest beacon for freedom and opportunity in the world."
David Horowitz,Conservative,"Conservatism does not have a party line. It is possible for conservatives to question virtually any position held by other conservatives including, evidently, the notion that they are conservatives at all, without risking excommunication, expulsion, or even a raised eyebrow."
David Horowitz,Conservative,The only legitimate purpose of congressional investigations is to determine whether there should be legislation to deal with certain problems and how that legislation should be designed.
David Horowitz,Conservative,"Since the progressive doctrine of The Silent Spring was implemented, three million people have died of malaria every year for more than thirty years, adding up to a total now of nearly 100 million. Ninety-five percent of the victims have been black African children under the age of five. As a footnote to this tragedy, Carson’s claim that DDT was harmful to birds has since been discredited."
David Horowitz,Conservative,"To say that our universities now engage in systematic miseducation and indoctrination would be an understatement. All that matters from an academic point of view, as currently practiced, is that the analysis conforms to the progressive orthodoxy. The University of California, Santa Cruz, for example, features a seminar on how to make a revolution"
David Horowitz,Conservative,"The remedy is to terminate them after the founding generation dies out. Older foundations like Ford should be sunset immediately and its funds distributed to hospitals and other institutions that serve the needy and the poor, recipients for whom the word charity was invented. As the tax law is presently designed, the Ford Foundation will exist forever and will be accountable to no one except a self-perpetuating board, which is accountable to no one. This is undemocratic and unacceptable. Republicans have ignored the problems created by this system for far too long. Unless they are prepared to get serious about fighting the war the left has declared, unless the powers of this shadow political universe are checked, the progressives’ march toward a societal transformation cannot be arrested, let alone stopped."
David Horowitz,Conservative,"As Christopher Caldwell observed in a New York Times essay, The Democratic Party is the party to which elites belong. It is the party of Harvard (and most of the Ivy League), of Microsoft and Apple (and most of Silicon Valley), of Hollywood and Manhattan (and most of the media) and, although there is some evidence that numbers are evening out in this election cycle, of Goldman Sachs (and most of the investment banking profession). . . . The Democrats have the support of more, and more active, billionaires [than the Republicans]. Of the twenty richest ZIP codes in America, according to the Center for Responsive Politics, 19 gave the bulk of their money to the Democrats in the last election, in most cases the vast bulk"
David Horowitz,Conservative,"If Democrats call you a racist because you are a conservative or a Republican, that tells you that you are hated because you are a conservative or a Republican; you are irredeemable and belong in the basket of deplorables."
David Horowitz,Conservative,Trump burst a bubble that had protected Democrats from the consequences of their actions and opened the ranks of the Republican Party to people of color. Trump’s
David Horowitz,Conservative,"It was this rallying of the Republican troops, who turned out in record crowds during the campaign, that led Trump to call what he had created a movement. It is a movement, first of all, anchored in its opposition to the Democrats’ collectivism and in defense of individual liberty."
David Horowitz,Conservative,"Trump broke free of this constraint, and it is safe to say that political correctness will never have the stranglehold on public discourse that it once did."
David Horowitz,Conservative,"That theme is individual freedom. The economic redistribution that progressives demand is not fairness, as they maintain. Socialism is theft and a war on individual freedom."
David Horowitz,Conservative,"Once more, we will have a government of, by and for the people."
David Horowitz,Conservative,"Everything that is wrong with the inner cities of America that policy can affect, Democrats are responsible for: every killing field; every school that year in and year out fails to teach its children the basic skills they need to get ahead; every school that fails to graduate 30 to 40 percent of its charges while those who do get degrees are often functionally illiterate; every welfare system that promotes dependency, condemning its recipients to lifetimes of destitution; every gun-control law that disarms law-abiding citizens in high-crime areas and leaves them defenseless against predators; every catch-and-release policy that puts violent criminals back on the streets; every regulation that ties the hands of police; every material and moral support provided to antipolice agitators like Black Lives Matter, who incite violence against the only protection inner-city families have; every onerous regulation and corporate tax that drives businesses and jobs out of inner-city neighborhoods; every rhetorical assault that tars Democrats’ opponents as racists and race traitors, perpetuating a one-party system that denies inner-city inhabitants the leverage and influence of a two-party system. Democrats are responsible for every one of the shackles on inner-city communities, and they have been for 50 to 100 years. What"
David Horowitz,Conservative,"In an interview recorded by Mark Edmundson in Trotsky Without Orchids, Bloom described faculty politics as Stalinism without Stalin. . . . All of the traits of the Stalinists in the 1930s and 19408 are being repeated . . . in the universities in the 1990s."
David Horowitz,Conservative,"The administration’s denial was also egregiously manifest in its response to the massacre of 13 unarmed soldiers at Fort Hood by an Islamic fanatic, who three and a half years later still has not been brought to trial. The Fort Hood terrorist successfully infiltrated the American military and despite open expressions of hatred against the West was promoted to U.S. Army Major. The Obama administration’s Kafkaesque response to an obvious case of Islamist violence against the U.S. was to classify the terrorist attack as an incident of workplace violence, and thus to hide the fact that Hasan was a Muslim soldier in a war against the infidels of the West."
David Horowitz,Conservative,"The president and his administration then went into cover-up mode lying to Congress and the American people, pretending for weeks afterwards that the attack was the result of a spontaneous demonstration over an anti-Mohammed internet video, whose director they then threw in jail."
David Horowitz,Conservative,In other words there identifiable Islamists occupying positions of influence in the Obama Administration on matters regarding national security and Muslim affairs. At the same time Obama’s tenure had seen the dramatic rise of the previously outlawed Muslim Brotherhood in the Middle East.
David Horowitz,Conservative,"The use of force in Iraq had been authorized by both houses of Congress, including a majority of Democrats in the Senate. It was supported in eloquent speeches by John Kerry, John Edwards, Al Gore and other Democratic leaders. But just three months into the war, they turned against an action that they had authorized, and began a five-year campaign to delegitimize the war, casting America as its villain."
David Horowitz,Conservative,"With the support and protection of Democratic legislators, the New York Times, the Washington Post, and the major TV networks now undertook a relentless five-year propaganda campaign against the war, taking relatively minor incidents like the misbehavior of guards at the Abu Ghraib prison and blowing them up into international scandals damaging their country’s prestige and weakening its morale."
David Horowitz,Conservative,"Left-leaning news media leaked classified national security secrets, destroying three major national security programs designed to protect Americans from terrorist attacks.8 Every day of the war, the New York Times and other left-leaning media provided front-page coverage of America’s body counts in Iraq and Afghanistan, and helped to fuel a massive anti-war movement, which attacked America’s fundamental purposes along with its conduct of the war. The goal of these campaigns was to indict America and its leaders as war criminals who posed a threat to the world."
David Horowitz,Conservative,"The principal justification offered by the Democrats for their campaign against the Iraq War was that Bush lied in order to persuade them to support an invasion that was unnecessary, illegal and immoral. This claim was the only way Democrats could explain the otherwise inexplicable and unconscionable fact that they had turned against a war they had supported for domestic political reasons, when an anti-war primary candidate, Howard Dean appeared to be on his way to winning their presidential primary."
David Horowitz,Conservative,"The claim that Bush lied was false. Bush could not have lied to John Kerry or the congressional Democrats about WMD’s in Iraq because Kerry and other Democrats sat on the Senate and House Intelligence Committees and had access to the same intelligence data that Bush relied on to make his case for the war. When the Democrats authorized and supported the war, they knew everything that Bush knew. The claim that he lied to get their support was itself the biggest lie of the war. Its only purpose was to hide the Democrats’ own perfidy in abandoning the nation’s mission for partisan gain, and to discredit the president and turn the country against him, at whatever cost, in the hope of winning the 2004 election."
David Horowitz,Conservative,Republicans lost control of the narrative because they never held the Democrats accountable for their betrayal.
David Horowitz,Conservative,"The Republicans’ failure to defend their president and the war turned a good war into a bad one. It turned a disloyal opposition into a patriotic movement. It crippled America’s ability to protect other people’s freedom and defend its own. If the war against a dictator who had launched two wars, defied 17 UN Security Council resolutions, murdered 300,000 of his own people, and schemed to kill a U.S. President was illegitimate and immoral, then American resistance to any outlaw states could be portrayed -- and opposed -- as reckless and unjustifiable aggression."
David Horowitz,Conservative,"That is why three years later, when Obama surrendered Iraq to Iran no Republican dared accuse him of betraying the Americans who gave their lives to make Iraq independent, even though Iraq as a consequence fell under the sway of Iran and was providing a land conduit for Iranian weapons headed for Syria."
David Horowitz,Conservative,"The only way to reverse this trend is to mount a campaign to put Obama’s support for the Muslim Brotherhood at the forefront of the political debate, and to educate Americans about the real dangers we face. Americans need to become aware of the Islamic supremacist threat, of the malignant designs of the Muslim Brotherhood, and of the disasters that may lie ahead because of the Obama administration’s policies of appeasing and enabling their evil ambitions."
David Horowitz,Conservative,"With secular governments giving way to Islamist regimes in Turkey, Egypt and Iraq, with the Taliban on the rise in Afghanistan and an American withdrawal imminent, the global situation today has eerie parallels to the early Cold War, with implications equally dire. Yet instead of policies that put U.S. national security first and are pursued without hesitation or apology, Obama’s time in office has been marked by retreat and accommodation and even support of Islamist foes – most ominously of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, which swept aside an American ally, with Obama’s personal intervention, and is busily creating a totalitarian state."
David Horowitz,Conservative,"In the four years since Obama’s first inauguration, almost three times as many Americans have been killed in Afghanistan as in the eight years of the Bush administration."
David Horowitz,Conservative,"Yet, in the face of this bloody and intensifying Islamist offensive, Obama has tried to convince the American people that the war against al-Qaeda has been essentially won -- by him -- and the terrorist threat is subsiding.1 Denial of the war Islamists have declared on us and denial of the threat it represents is the heart of the Obama doctrine that has guided this nation’s policies for more than four years."
David Horowitz,Conservative,"When I was an undergraduate, the censors attacked the university from without. Now, they are entrenched in the faculties and administrations themselves. Then, the university defined itself as an institution dedicated to the disinterested pursuit of knowledge. Now, every term of that definition is under siege by postmodernists and deconstructionists who have become the new academic establishment and have redefined the university as an institution dedicated to social change. That is one reason why the academy, once perceived as a redoubt of intellectual freedom and cutting-edge discourse, has become the butt of snickering jokes about political correctness and the font of Kafkaesque tales about bureaucratic censorship and administrative obtuseness."
David Horowitz,Conservative,"The other panelists at my event were Maurice Zeitlin and Sara Davidson. A third leftist had failed to show. Davidson was the author of a 1960s memoir of sexual liaisons entitled Loose Change and the chief writer for the politically correct television series Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman. Her politics could be gleaned from her latest book, Cowboy, about her affair with a man who was intellectually her inferior and whom she had to support with her ample television earnings, but who gave great sex. The book celebrated this affair as a triumph of feminism."
David Horowitz,Conservative,"I focused my speech on the way in which 1960s leftists had betrayed their own ideals by doing an about-face on civil rights and supporting race preferences, by abandoning the Vietnamese when they were being murdered and oppressed by communists, and by helping to crush the island of Cuba under the heel of the Castroist dictatorship. I also described my experiences with the Black Panther Party, a gang led by murderers and rapists whom the left had anointed as its political vanguard and whose crimes leftists continue to ignore to this day."
David Horowitz,Conservative,"ELDRIDGE CLEAVER (1953-I998) was a man who made a a significant imprint on our times, and not for the best. But I mourn his passing nonetheless. I first met Eldridge when he was Ramparts magazine's most famous and most bloodthirsty ex-con. 'I'm perfectly aware that I'm in prison, that I'm a Negro, that I've been a rapist, he wrote in a notorious epistle that Ramparts published. My answer to all such thoughts lurking in their split-level heads, crouching behind their squinting bombardier eyes, is that the blood of Vietnamese peasants has paid off all my debts. This nihilism became an iconographic comment for the times, a ready excuse for all the destructive acts radicals like us went on to commit."
David Horowitz,Conservative,"Almost as remarkable as the hoax itself, and indicative of the enormous cultural power of its perpetrators, is the fact that the revelation of Rigoberta's mendacity has changed almost nothing. The Nobel committee has already refused to take back her prize, many of the thousands of college courses that make her book a required text for American college students will continue to do so, and the editorial writers of the major press institutions have already defended her falsehoods on the same grounds that supporters of Tawana Brawley's parallel hoax made famous: even if she's lying, she's telling the truth."
David Horowitz,Conservative,"The doctrine that only whites can be racist is, in fact, itself an instigation to hate crimes. It is a doctrine that has already spread to the secondary schools. The week after the Shepard killing, a Seattle father called a national radio talk show on which I was a guest and told the audience that his son's class in junior high school had been discussing the hate crime concept because of the killing. During the discussion, the teacher informed the class that only heterosexual whites could be racists."
David Horowitz,Conservative,"As a result of the communist victory (and our efforts to make America lose), more people"
David Horowitz,Conservative,"One indicator of the self-conscious dissociation of radicals like Gitlin and Hayden from reformers like King is that neither of them, nor any other white student activist, sos leader, or anti-war spokesman was in Memphis for the demonstrations King was organizing in 1968 at the time he was killed.. In fact, no one in the New Left (at least no one who mattered) could still be called a serious supporter of King in the year before he was assassinated."
David Horowitz,Conservative,"If you have to invoke a distant past to justify a present grievance, the case for the grievance is already undermined."
David Horowitz,Conservative,"Thus, the proclaimed goal of affirmative action advocates is to level the playing field. It is defined this way to highlight the left's claim that traditional civil rights solutions have failed to achieve real equality, by which is meant equality of results. Traditional civil rights solutions were focused on the fairness of the institutional process, the elimination of legal barriers to political power and individual opportunity."
David Horowitz,Conservative,"The call to level the playing field, pushed to its logical conclusion, is a call for the systematic subversion of American individualism and democracy. It is the kitsch marxism of our time."
David Horowitz,Conservative,"If the white majority is racist how can a government it dominates be counted on to redress racial grievances? The question is absurd because the premise is absurd. In fact it is America's white racial majority that ended slavery, outlawed discrimination, funded massive welfare programs for inner-city blacks, and created the very affirmative action policies that are allegedly necessary to force them to be fair."
David Horowitz,Conservative,"Civil rights is just one battlefield in the real war of the left, which is the war against America itself. The big guns of this war are directed from the centers of intellect on the high ground of the university culture, where tenured radicals have created an anti-American ideology and forced it on the nation's youth through the curriculum."
David Horowitz,Conservative,"Of course, the political history of the United States is exactly the reverse. It is in large measure the history of a nation that led the world in eliminating slavery, in accommodating peoples it had previously defeated, in elevating nonwhites to a position of dignity and respect, in promoting opportunities and rights to women, and in fostering a healthy skepticism towards unworthy leaders and towards the dangers inherent in government itself."
David Horowitz,Conservative,"This is not a small matter. According to a recent poll conducted by the Freedom Forum, a liberal foundation in Tennessee, 89 percent of American political journalists covering Washington politics voted for Bill Clinton, and only 7 percent identified themselves as conservatives. The journalism profession in America has undergone a sea change in recent years. Previously, beat reporters were just that, reporters. They often did not have undergraduate college degrees, not to mention degrees from journalism schools. But now they do, and notoriously they write editorial content into their reporting."
David Horowitz,Conservative,"If the 1970s had been the time of radical theories, then the 1980s were the time when politics began increasingly to replace professionalism in the universities. Government lent powerful reinforcement to the new concept of university regulations and funding that favored social justice over knowledge or merit."
David Horowitz,Conservative,"The following year Carmichael began a campaign to promote armed warfare in American cities and was briefly made prime minister of the Black Panther Party for his efforts. Ever the racist, Carmichael tried to persuade the Panthers to break off their alliances with whites, but failed. This led to his expulsion from the party and a ritual beating administered by his former comrades. Shortly thereafter, Carmichael left the United States for Africa. In Africa, he changed his name to Kwame Ture, thereby honoring two dictators (Kwame Nkrumah and Sekou Toure) who caused untold misery to their own peoples. He took up residence as the personal guest of the sadistic Toure, Guinea's paranoid dictator, whose reputation was built on the torture-murders of thousands of his African subjects. Some 250,000 Guineans were driven into exile during Carmichael's stay there, without a protest from this New Left leader."
David Horowitz,Conservative,"HIGHER EDUCATION TODAY is a good news-bad news story. The good news is that a university degree can provide a pass to all to the prodigious bounties of the American economy. The bad news is that the price of the pass can be the equivalent of a Ferrari, putting the average student into hock for a good chunk of his or her working life."
David Horowitz,Conservative,"The antecedents of Friedan's version of feminism also bear revisiting in light of the new information. Her infamous description of America's suburban family household as a comfortable concentration camp, in The Feminine Mystique, probably had more to do with her marxist hatred for America than for her own experience as a housewife and mother. Her husband, Carl, also a leftist, once complained to a reporter in 1970 that, far from being a homebody, his wife was in the world during the whole marriage, either full time or free lance, lived in an eleven-room mansion on the Hudson with a full-time maid, and seldom was a wife and a mother. Of course, no one paid much attention to the family patriarch when he supplied these interesting details, because as a male he was deemed guilty before the fact."
David Horowitz,Conservative,"The law of socialist economy is this: from each according to his exploitability, to the nomenklatura according to its greed."
David Horowitz,Conservative,"The left’s redemption, of course, comes not through the agency of a divine Messiah but through the actions of a political vanguard deploying its power through the socialist state."
David Horowitz,Conservative,"The founders were not democrats and socialists like Hertzberg. They were conservatives who had a healthy distrust of political passions and who devised a complex system designed to frustrate the schemes of social redeemers and others convinced of their own invincible virtue. If not for the immense, undemocratic power vested in the Supreme Court, schools might still be legally segregated. If not for states’ rights, slavery might have spread throughout the nation. If not for the opaque, complex, confusing American framework, the descendants of Africans who were dragged to this country in chains might not today be the freest and richest blacks in the world."
David Horowitz,Conservative,"As far back as 1922, Ludwig von Mises wrote a 500-page treatise predicting that socialism would not work. Socialist theorists, he wrote, had failed to recognize basic economic realities that would eventually bankrupt the future they were creating. These included the indispensability of markets for allocating resources, and of private property for providing the incentives that drive the engines of social wealth."
David Horowitz,Conservative,"the kingdom the first radical won, as Alinsky so thoughtlessly puts it, was hell."
David Horowitz,Conservative,"It needs to be borne in mind that there are always, and inevitably, two sides to the revolutionary coin. The first is negative and destructive, and leads to the drive to undermine the beliefs, values and institutions of the old order, which must be destroyed before a new one can be created. The second component of the revolutionary vision is positive and utopian"
David Horowitz,Conservative,"In the vast library of socialist theory, and in all of Marx’s compendious works, there is not a chapter devoted to the creation of wealth"
David Horowitz,Conservative,"In all the socialist literature I had read, there was hardly a chapter devoted to the creation of wealth, the problem of getting people to work or to behave in a civilized manner. Socialist theory was exclusively addressed to the conquest of power and the division of wealth that someone else had created. Was it any surprise that socialist societies had broken world records in making their inhabitants poor?"
David Horowitz,Conservative,Criticism of religion is the very measure of the guarantee of free speech
David Horowitz,Conservative,Islamophobia is the perfect totalitarian doctrine as it is the first step in outlawing freedom of speech
David Horowitz,Conservative,"A university is not a political party, and an education is not an indoctrination."
David Horowitz,Conservative,"Idealism kills, the philosopher Nietzsche had warned"
David Horowitz,Conservative,"As it happens, the term white skin privilege was first popularized in the 1970s by the SDS radicals of Weatherman, who were carrying on a terrorist war against Amerikkka, a spelling designed to stigmatize the United States as a nation of Klansmen. Led by presidential friends, Bill Ayers and his wife Bernardine Dohrn, the Weather terrorists called on other whites to renounce their privilege and join a global race war already in progress. Although their methods and style kept the Weather radicals on the political fringe, their views on race reflected those held by the broad ranks of the political left. In the following years, the concept of white skin privilege continued to spread until it became an article of faith among all progressives, a concept that accounted for everything that was racially wrong in America beginning with its constitutional founding. As Pax Christi USA, a Catholic organization, explained: Law in the U.S. protects white skin privilege because white male landowners created the laws to protect their rights, their culture and their wealth. This is the theme of Howard Zinn’s A People’s History of the United States, the most popular book ever written on the subject, and of university curricula across the nation. Eventually, the concept of white skin privilege was embraced even by liberals who had initially resisted it as slander against a nation that had just concluded a historically unprecedented civil rights revolution. This was because the concept of white skin privilege provided an explanation for the fact that the recent Civil Rights Acts had not led to an equality of results, and that racial disparities persisted even as overt racists and institutional barriers were vanishing from public life. The inconvenient triumph of American tolerance presented an existential problem for civil rights activists, whom it threatened to put out of work. White skin privilege offered a solution. As the Southern Poverty Law Center explained: white skin privilege is not something that white people necessarily do, create or enjoy on purpose, but is rather an unavoidable consequence of the transparent preference for whiteness that saturates our society. In other words, even if white Americans were no longer racists, they were."
David Horowitz,Conservative,Don’t telegraph your goals; infiltrate the Democratic Party and other liberal institutions and subvert them; treat moral principles as dispensable fictions; and never forget that your political agenda is not the achievement of this or that reform but political power to achieve the socialist goal. The issue is never the issue. The issue is always power
David Horowitz,Conservative,"In a free society composed of unequal individuals, the drive to level the playing field is a totalitarian desire and a threat to freedom because it empowers government to confiscate the talents and earnings of some for the benefits of those it favors."
David Horowitz,Conservative,"He has used this undeserved respect, in conjunction with other black demagogues, to transform a civil rights movement that once stood for race-neutrality in the law, into a vigilante posse seeking one law for people of color and another for the rest of America."
David Horowitz,Conservative,"Racial privilege does more than merely damage the unlucky individuals who are its victims. When enforced by government and backed by law, it tears at the very fabric of the social order, regardless of whom it benefits. The wounds that the principle of separate-and-unequal inflicts on the community are incomparably greater than the damages incurred by individuals or the benefits that accrue to them. Building racial bias into the framework of the nation compromises the neutrality of the law that governs us all. It corrupts the standards that make a diverse community possible, and creates a racial spoils system that is the antithesis of the American dream, which was Martin Luther King’s dream as well. By corrupting the principle of neutrality, racial privilege breaks the common bond between America’s diverse communities and undermines the trust that makes the nation whole."
David Horowitz,Conservative,"Now the Alinskyites had their hands on the federal money spigot. Ohlin and his colleagues directed the very first CAP grant into a program at Syracuse University through which Alinsky personally trained community activists.23 The federal government spent more than $300 billion on War on Poverty programs in the first five years. Much of this money went to street radicals such as Alinsky. During the Sixties, Alinsky’s under-the-radar influence was"
David Horowitz,Conservative,It is an archetypal Sixties case history
David Horowitz,Conservative,A daunting example of the impact that the loose talk and heavy rhetoric of the Sixties had on policy can be seen in the way the black family
David Horowitz,Conservative,"During the Sixties, we also became a culture of splinter-groups, of people who identified ourselves according to ethnicity, gender, special interests"
David Horowitz,Conservative,It was what I believed to be the humanity of the Marxist idea that made me what I was then; it is the inhumanity of what I have seen to be the Marxist reality that has made me what I am now.
David Horowitz,Conservative,Vietnam was a universal solvent
David Horowitz,Conservative,"As the Khmer Rouge were about to take over, Noam Chomsky wrote that their advent heralded a Cambodian liberation, a new era of economic development and social justice. The new era turned out to be the killing-fields that took the lives of two million Cambodians."
David Horowitz,Conservative,"As our opposition to the war grew more violent and our prophecies of impending fascism more intense, I took note of how we were actually being treated by the system we condemned. By the decade’s end we had deliberately crossed the line of legitimate dissent and abused every First Amendment privilege and right reserved to us as Americans. While American boys were dying overseas, we spat on the flag, broke the law, denigrated and disrupted the institutions of government and education, gave comfort and aid, even revealing classified secrets, to the enemy."
David Horowitz,Conservative,"Let me make this perfectly clear. Those of us who inspired and then led the antiwar movement did not want just to stop the killing, as so many veterans of those domestic battles now claim. We wanted the Communists to win."
David Horowitz,Conservative,"Like most of the left’s leaders, I was a Marxist and a socialist. I believed in the dialectic of history and therefore, even though I knew that the societies calling themselves Marxist were ruled by ruthless dictatorships, I believed they would soon evolve into socialist democracies. I attributed their negative features to under-development and to the capitalist pasts from which they had emerged."
David Horowitz,Conservative,"the forces I had identified with progress, once freed from the grip of U.S. imperialism, revealed themselves to be oppressive, unspeakably ruthless and predatory."
David Horowitz,Conservative,She understood instinctively that it was the very insignificance of her life up to that moment
David Horowitz,Conservative,"While most American unions supported the Marshall Plan as an economic boon for their members and a necessary defense measure for the West, Al Bernstein’s union did not. Along with all the other Communist-controlled unions in America, Al Bernstein’s United Public Workers attacked the Marshall Plan as a Cold War plot and launched an all-out campaign against it. On the political front, Al Bernstein and his comrades bolted the Democratic Party and organized the Progressive Party candidacy of Henry Wallace in the hope of unseating Truman and ending his anti-Communist program. Their actions were in fact a Soviet-orchestrated plot to sabotage the defense of Europe against Soviet aggression."
David Horowitz,Conservative,"This lack of second thoughts is the telltale heart of the American left. Why no reckoning? Because reckonings are conservative. They counsel against the heedless rush to redeem the ambiguous and mottled realities of the human condition. They prove that life is made better only incrementally and with great difficulty, but it is made worse"
David Horowitz,Conservative,"Life. I didn’t see it coming. That is a theme of this book. In fact none of us sees it coming when we start on our journeys. That is one of the paradoxes of our existence. We are all so different and unique. And yet in several crucial ways we are the same. And this is one of them: None of us sees life coming. Or as the Christian testament puts it: We see now through a glass darkly, not face to face."
David Horowitz,Conservative,Both Hillary Clinton and Bill Lann Lee began their political careers as law students at Yale by organizing demonstrations in 1970 to shut down the University and stop the trial of Panther leaders who had tortured and then executed a black youth named Alex Rackley.
David Horowitz,Conservative,"that is when I realized what our romance was about. It was not about a future that was socially just, or about a world redeemed. It was about averting our eyes from this ordinary fact. Our romance was a shield protecting us from the terror of our common human fate."
David Horowitz,Conservative,"It is the human wish to be told lies that keeps us as primitive morally and socially as we are. But stoic realism is, after all, what being a conservative is about."
David Horowitz,Conservative,"As a leftist I had developed habits of mind that caused me to look at classes rather than individuals, at social structures and general paradigms rather than at particular events or individual personalities that could be dismissed as incidental or unique."
David Horowitz,Conservative,My responsibility as a revolutionary was to hurt the United States.
David Horowitz,Conservative,"When Nixon resigned over Watergate, it provided all the leverage Hayden and his activists needed. The Democrats won the midterm elections, bringing to Washington a new group of legislators who were determined to undermine the settlement that Nixon and Kissinger had achieved. The aid was cut, the Saigon regime fell, and the Khmer Rouge marched into the Cambodian capital. In the two years that followed, the victorious Communists killed more Indochinese than had been killed on both sides in all 13 years of the anti-Communist war."
David Horowitz,Conservative,The 20th century is a graveyard in which millions of corpses were sacrificed to the illusion of an earthly salvation.
David Horowitz,Conservative,The personal dream of every radical is to be at the center of creation and the renewal of the world.
David Horowitz,Conservative,"If I had a mission to name, it was about wrestling with the most powerful and pernicious of all human follies, which is the desire to stifle truth in the name of hope."
David Horowitz,Conservative,"The future is a work of prejudice and malice inextricably bound with generosity and hope. Its fate is unalterably out of our control. Insofar as this work is manageable at all, it is carried out now and forever under the terrible anarchy of freedom that God has imposed on his children and will not take back."
David Horowitz,Conservative,"In fact, however, Kathy Boudin and her comrades were deliberately building an anti-personnel bomb filled with nails, intending to detonate it at a social dance at Fort Dix. The dance would be attended by 18-year-old draftees and their dates."
David Horowitz,Conservative,"The so-called liberal establishment today is a leftwing establishment. Unlike Buckley, I identify with 50s liberals like John F. Kennedy, whose politics in my view were identical to Ronald Reagan’s. My political enemies today"
David Horowitz,Conservative,"In 1971, when still a radical, I wrote a widely-read article in Ramparts attacking the Weather Underground for its terrorist ideas and practices."
David Horowitz,Conservative,"Although I raised money for a Black Panther school and attempted to help the Panthers develop a learning center, I never joined their organization or advocated that others should. The money I raised was to purchase and build a school. I became involved with the Panthers only after their leader, Huey Newton, had publicly proclaimed that it was time to put away the gun. In those days The New York Times was comparing Newton to Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther"
David Horowitz,Conservative,"Memoirs and historical monographs by New Left historians painted a virginal portrait of radical protesters, rewriting the history of the period on a scale that would have seemed impossible outside the Communist bloc. In his own memoir, Hayden includes pages of excerpts from his FBI file, interspersed with disingenuous presentations of his political career that keep his readers in the dark about many of the far-from-innocent activities in which he actual1y engaged."
David Horowitz,Conservative,"pushed for a Second Bill of Rights based upon Franklin D. Roosevelt’s Four Freedoms (freedom of speech, freedom of worship, freedom from want and freedom from fear). How any government would go about banishing want and fear from human life is not exactly clear, but the sheer magnitude of the project ensures that any government attempting it would require authoritarian powers beyond those available in a representative republic such as ours. We should hardly be surprised that Soros wishes to rewrite the Constitution, given the scope of his ambitions. Nor should we be surprised that the"
David Horowitz,Conservative,"The Motor-Voter bill eliminated many controls on voter fraud, making it easy to register but difficult to determine the validity of new registrations. Under the new law, states were required to provide opportunities for voter registration to any person who showed up at a government office to renew a driver’s license or apply for welfare or unemployment benefits. Examiners were under orders not to ask anyone for identification or proof of citizenship, notes Wall Street Journal columnist John Fund in his book, Stealing Elections. States also had to permit mail-in voter registrations, which allowed anyone to register without any personal contact with a registrar or election"
David Horowitz,Conservative,"Why should half the country fund institutions that regard them as racists, sexists, homophobes, Islamophobes, and xerophobes -- in a word, 'deplorables'? Republicans should use their leverage to represent the half of the population that academic ideologues have put into the basket of deplorables and restore intellectual diversity to institutions that have become one-party states."
David Horowitz,Conservative,"Professors should not be hired because they are Republicans, but they should not be excluded -- as they are now -- because they are Republicans. Universities should find a way to recruit scholars who happen to be Republicans until there is a reasonable balance, one that would reassure the public that the current discrimination against Republicans is ended. Universities should conduct inquiries as to how this state of affairs has come to pass and introduce procedural changes to make sure that there is no such political bias against Republicans and conservatives in the future."
David Horowitz,Conservative,Any effort to stop the left's plan for a societal transformation must begin with measures to restore universities to the institutions they once were -- to see to it that liberal arts faculties adhere to the same nonideological standards as the sciences and that faculties once again feature diverse political perspectives that reflect the diversity of society at large.
Charles Krauthammer,Conservative,IN DEFENSE OF THE F-WORD I am sure there is a special place in heaven reserved for those who have never used the F-word. I will never get near that place.
Charles Krauthammer,Conservative,"The essence of foreign policy, is deciding which son of a bitch to support -in 1941, Hitler or Stalin; in 1972, Brezhnev or Mao; in 1979, Somoza or Ortega. One has to choose. A blanket anti-son of a bitch policy, like a blanket anti-ethnic cleansing policy, is soothing, satisfying and empty. It is not a policy at all but righteous self-delusion."
Charles Krauthammer,Conservative,"The New York Times denounces America's dancing with dictators. Guilty as charged. Dance we do. And without apology. With no more apology than Franklin Roosevelt offered when he reportedly said of Nicaragua's Anastasio Somoza, He may be a son of a bitch. But he's our son of a bitch.Roosevelt was a grownup. He made choices. He slew his dragons one at a time. He understood that we do not live in the best of all possible worlds. He understood that in an international arena populated by sons of bitches, you make your distinctions, or you die."
Charles Krauthammer,Conservative,"Don't touch my junk, you airport security goon--my package belongs to no one but me, and do you really think I'm a Nigerian nut job preparing for my 72-virgin orgy by blowing my johnson to kingdom come?"
Charles Krauthammer,Conservative,"Highfalutin moral principles are impossible guides to foreign policy. At worst, they reflect hypocrisy; at best, extreme naivete."
Charles Krauthammer,Conservative,"Religion--invaluable in America's founding, forming and flowering--deserves a place in the schools. Indeed, it had that place for almost 200 years. A healthy country would teach its children evolution--and the Ten Commandments."
Charles Krauthammer,Conservative,America is daily attacked for cowboy interventionism and arrogant unilateralism--then simultaneously attacked for not acting unilaterally to cleanse the planet of all tyranny.
Charles Krauthammer,Conservative,"Know thyself' is a highly overrated piece of wisdom. As for knowing the self of others, forget it. Know what they do and judge them by their works."
Charles Krauthammer,Conservative,"In 1857, Chief Justice Roger B. Taney handed down the Dred Scott decision upholding and extending slavery. Taney’s opinion was, it is generally agreed, the worst constitutional decision of the 19th century (the words are Robert Bork’s). Yet there is a curious and little known fact about Judge Taney. More than 30 years earlier he had freed his own slaves. Today, therefore, we would say that while he was personally opposed to slavery he did not want to impose his views on others."
Charles Krauthammer,Conservative,"For the purposes of a pluralist society, the Bible is not about fact. It is about values. If we were a bit more tolerant about allowing the teaching of biblical values as ethics, we’d find far less pressure for the teaching of biblical fables as science."
Charles Krauthammer,Conservative,"To understand the workings of American politics, you have to understand this fundamental law: Conservatives think liberals are stupid. Liberals think conservatives are evil. For the first side of this equation, I need no sources. As a conservative, I can confidently attest that whatever else my colleagues might disagree about"
Charles Krauthammer,Conservative,"Some will protest that in a world with so much human suffering, it is something between eccentric and obscene to mourn a dog. I think not. After all, it is perfectly normal"
Charles Krauthammer,Conservative,"International stability is never a given. It is never the norm. When achieved, it is the product of self-conscious action by the great powers, and most particularly of the greatest power, which now and for the foreseeable future is the United States. If America wants stability, it will have to create it."
Charles Krauthammer,Conservative,"Obama doesn’t like this terror war. He particularly dislikes its unfortunate religious coloration, which is why Islamist is banished from his lexicon. But soothing words, soothing speeches in various Muslim capitals, soothing policies"
Charles Krauthammer,Conservative,Unilateralism simply means that one does not allow oneself to be held hostage to the will of others.
Charles Krauthammer,Conservative,"Two decades ago, however, socialism and communism died rudely, then were buried forever by the empirical demonstration of the superiority of market capitalism everywhere from Thatcher's England to Deng's Dhina, where just the partial abolition of socialism lifted more people out of poverty than ever in human history.Just as the ash heap of history beckoned, the intellectual left was handed the ultimate salvation: environmentalism. Now the experts will regular your life not in the name of the proletariat or Fabian socialism but--even better--in the name of Earth itself. Environmentalists are Gaia's priests, instructing us in her proper service and casting out those who refuse to genuflect. And having proclaimed the ultimate commandment--carbon chastity--they are preparing the supporting canonical legislation that will tell you how much you can travel, what kind of light you will read by and what temperature you may set your bedroom thermostat."
Charles Krauthammer,Conservative,"In a world of terrorists, terrorist states and weapons of mass destruction, the option of preemption is especially necessary. In the bipolar world of the Cold War, with a stable non-suicidal adversary, deterrence could work. Deterrence does not work against people who ache for heaven. It does not work against undeterrables. And it does not work against undetectables: non-suicidal enemy regimes that might attack through clandestine means"
Charles Krauthammer,Conservative,"The most basic parental bond is maternal. Equal parenting is great--it has forced men to get off their duffs--but women, from breast to cradle to cuddle, can nurture in ways that men cannot."
Charles Krauthammer,Conservative,"...every once in a while, a single person arises without whom everything would be different. Such a man was Churchill. After having single-handedly saved Western civilization from Nazi barbarism--Churchill was, of course, not sufficient in bringing victory, but he was uniquely necessary--he then immediately rose to warn prophetically against its sister barbarism, Soviet communism."
Charles Krauthammer,Conservative,"And who is the hero of that story? Who slew the dragon [totalitarianism]? Yes, it was the ordinary man, the taxpayer, the grunt who fought and won the wars. Yes, it was America and its allies. Yes, it was the great leaders: FDR, de Gaulle, Adenauer, Truman, John Paul II, Thatcher, Reagan. But above all, victory required one man without whom the fight would have been lost at the beginning. It required Winston Churchill."
Charles Krauthammer,Conservative,"To say that all individuals are embedded in and the product of society is banal. Obama rises above banality by means of fallacy: equating society with government, the collectivity with the state. Of course we are shaped by our milieu. But the most formative, most important influence on the individual is not government. It is civil society, those elements of the collectivity that lie outside government: family, neighborhood, church, Rotary club, PTA, the voluntary associations that Tocqueville understood to be the genius of America and the source of its energy and freedom."
Charles Krauthammer,Conservative,"History has blessed us with all the freedom and advantages of multiculturalism. But it has also blessed us, because of the accident of our origins, with the linguistic unity that brings a critically needed cohesion to a nation as diverse, multiracial and multiethnic as America. Why gratuitously throw away that priceless asset? How mindless to call the desire to retain it 'racist."
Charles Krauthammer,Conservative,"For the Europeans there really is a peace dividend, because we provide the peace. They can afford social democracy without the capacity to defend themselves because they can always depend on the United States.So why not us as well? Because what for Europe is decadence--decline, in both comfort and relative safety--is for us mere denial. Europe can eat, drink and be merry for America protects her. But for America it's different. If we choose the life of ease, who stands guard for us?"
Charles Krauthammer,Conservative,The more settled and ordered one's life - and in particular one's communal life - the easier it becomes for one's imagination to fail.
Charles Krauthammer,Conservative,"Therefore, good-bye Columbus? Balzac once suggested that all great fortunes are founded on a crime. So too all great civilizations. The European conquest of the Americas, like the conquest of other civilizations, was indeed accompanied by great cruelty. But that is to say nothing more than that the European conquest of America was, in this way, much like the rise of Islam, the Norman conquest of Britain and the widespread American Indian tradition of raiding, depopulating and appropriating neighboring lands. The real question is, What eventually grew on this bloodied soil? The answer is, The great modern civilizations"
Charles Krauthammer,Conservative,"Who else but that oracle of American liberalism, the New York Times, could run the puzzled headline: Crime Keeps On Falling, but Prisons Keep On Filling. But? How about this wild theory: If you lock up the criminals, crime declines."
Charles Krauthammer,Conservative,"The conscious deployment of a double standard directed at the Jewish state and at no other state in the world, the willingness systematically to condemn the Jewish state for things others are not condemned for"
Charles Krauthammer,Conservative,"Every week 10,000 tons of food, medicine, and other humanitarian supplies are sent by Israel to Gaza."
Charles Krauthammer,Conservative,"Indeed, the lesson of our history is that the task of merely maintaining strong and sturdy the structures of a constitutional order is unending, the continuing and ceaseless work of every generation."
Charles Krauthammer,Conservative,In modern times we suffer not for our sins - sin having been abolished - but for ideology.
Charles Krauthammer,Conservative,"Take away Churchill in 1940...Nazism would have prevailed. Hitler would have achieved what no other tyrant, not even Napoleon, had ever achieved: mastery of Europe. Civilization would have descended into a darkness the likes of which it had never known."
Charles Krauthammer,Conservative,"Americans abroad have long been accused of such blinging arrogance and display. I find the charge generally unfair. Arrogance is incorrectly ascribed to what is really the cultural clumsiness of an insular (if continental) people less exposed to foreign ways and languages than most other people on Earth.True, America as a nation is not very good at humility. But it would be completely unnatural for the dominant military, cultural and technological power on the plant to adopt the demeanor or, say, Liechtenstein. The ensuing criticism is particularly grating when it comes from the likes of the French, British, Spanish, Dutch (there are many others) who just yesterday claimed dominion over every land and people their Captain Cooks ever stumbled upon."
Charles Krauthammer,Conservative,I'm not a global warming believer. I'm not a global warming denier. I'm a global warming agnostic who believes instinctively that it can't be very good to pump lots of CO2 into the atmosphere but is equally convinced that those who presume to know exactly where that leads are talking through their hats.
Charles Krauthammer,Conservative,"Historically, multilateralism is a way for weak countries to multiply their power by attaching themselves to stronger ones. But multilateralism imposed on Great Powers, and particularly on a unipolar power, is intended to restrain that power. Which is precisely why France is an ardent multilateralist. But why should America be?"
Charles Krauthammer,Conservative,"Obama is learning very late that, for a superpower, inaction is a form of action. You can abdicate, but you really can't hide. History will find you. It has now found Obama."
Charles Krauthammer,Conservative,"It is part of the trivialization of politics that we give endless attention to the inner life of the politician - his private thoughts, his inner demons - at the expense of his outer life."
Charles Krauthammer,Conservative,"By what logical principle should the relief of death be granted only the terminally ill? Such a restriction is itself perverse. After all, the terminally ill face only a brief period of suffering. The chronically ill, or the healthy but bereft"
Charles Krauthammer,Conservative,"The process is taking place before our eyes and is already far advanced. Under present trends, the number of Jews in Europe by the year 2000 would then be not much more than 1 million"
Charles Krauthammer,Conservative,"We've had exactly five balanced budgets since Alan Shepherd rode Freedom 7 in 1961. If we had put off space exploration until these earthbound social and economic conundrums were solved, our rocketry would be about where North Korea's is today."
Charles Krauthammer,Conservative,"I must study politics and war, wrote John Adams, that my sons may have the liberty to study mathematics and philosophy, geography, natural history, and naval architecture, navigation, commerce, and agriculture, in order to give their children a right to study painting, poetry, music, architecture, statuary, tapestry and porcelain. Adams saw clearly that politics is the indispensable foundation for things elegant and beautiful. First and above all else, you must secure life, liberty and the right to pursue your own happiness. That’s politics done right, hard-earned, often by war. And yet the glories yielded by such a successful politics lie outside itself. Its deepest purpose is to create the conditions for the cultivation of the finer things, beginning with philosophy and science, and ascending to the ever more delicate and refined arts. Note Adams’ double reference to architecture: The second generation must study naval architecture"
Charles Krauthammer,Conservative,"During the last presidential campaign, candidate Barack Obama, asked why he was not wearing a flag pin, answered that it represented a substitute for true patriotism. Bad move. Months later, Obama quietly beat a retreat and began wearing the flag on his lapel. He does so still."
Charles Krauthammer,Conservative,"Terror attacks are now 'man-caused disasters.' And the 'global war on terror' is no more. It is an 'overseas contingency operation.' Nidal Hassan proudly tells a military court that he, a soldier of Allah, killed 13 American soldiers in the name of jihad. but the massacre remains officially classified as an act not of terrorism but of 'workplace violence."
Charles Krauthammer,Conservative,"Medicine--and particularly hospital medicine, which lives in a sea of human suffering--has a way of beating callowness out of even the most self-possessed youth."
Charles Krauthammer,Conservative,"There are things to be done. Resist retreat as a matter of strategy and principle. And provide the means to continue our dominant role in the world by keeping our economic house in order. And finally, we can follow the advice of Demosthenes when asked what was to be done about the decline of Athens. His reply? 'I will give what I believe is the fairest and truest answer: Don't do what you are doing now."
Charles Krauthammer,Conservative,"America is the most welcoming, religiously tolerant, philo-semitic country in the world. No nation since Cyrus the Great’s Persia has done more for the Jews."
Charles Krauthammer,Conservative,"Except for these unfathomable mass murders. But these are infinitely more difficult to prevent. While law deters the rational, it has far less effect on the psychotic."
Charles Krauthammer,Conservative,"Delta Airlines, you might have noticed, does not run negative TV ads about USAir. It does not show pictures of the crash of USAir Flight 427, with a voice-over saying: USAir, airline of death. Going to Pittsburgh? Fly Delta instead. And McDonald’s, you might also have noticed, does not run ads reminding viewers that Jack in the Box hamburgers once killed two customers. Why? Because Delta and McDonald’s know that if the airline and fast-food industries put on that kind of advertising, America would soon be riding trains and eating box-lunch tuna sandwiches. Yet every two years the American politics industry fills the airwaves with the most virulent, scurrilous, wall-to-wall character assassination of nearly every political practitioner in the country"
Charles Krauthammer,Conservative,will not occur overnight. But it will occur soon
Charles Krauthammer,Conservative,"Collective security is a mirage. It rests on the obvious fallacy that all countries perceive threats in the same way and therefore will take equal risks to meet those threats. Of course they don't. If North Korea invades South Korea, will the threat be perceived in the same way in the United States and China, in Iceland and Argentina?It is every country for itself. That does not mean that there cannot be, as in the Gulf, ad hoc coalitions in which particular countries at a particular time happen to perceive a particular threat as large and join together to do something about it. But there is nothing universal, permanent, or even reliable about such coalitions. They come and they go. And when they go, one either relies on one's own strength to meet the threat or one submits.Moreover, countries differ not just in threat perception but in the power to do something about it. All the collective goodwill in the world is useless without the power to back it up and only America has the power. Without the United States, what would collective security have done about Kuwait?Potential allies do not sign on to a losing proposition. One of the reasons so many countries joined the United States in the Gulf is that they had confidence in American power. Coalitions do not grow on trees. They grow on the backs of superpowers.Collective action is fine. But it cannot succeed, even exist, without a nucleus around which to organize. The critics offer collectivism as a substitute for American power. On the contrary, it is a complement to American power and, in the final analysis, its consequence."
Charles Krauthammer,Conservative,"The Russian Revolution and its imitators (Chinese, Cuban, Vietnamese, Cambodian) tried to atomize society so thoroughly--to war against the mediating structures that stand between the individual and the state--that the most basic bonds of family, faith, fellowship and conscience came to near dissolution."
Charles Krauthammer,Conservative,"[John Stuart] Mill held that truth emerges from an unfettered competition of ideas and that individual character is most improved when allowed to find its own way uncoerced. That vision was insufficient for 20th-century American liberalism...Modern liberalism's perfectionist ambitions--reflected in its progenitor (and current euphemism), progressivism--seeks to harness the power of government, the mystique of science and the rule of experts to shape both society and citizen and bring them both, willing or not, to a higher state of being."
Charles Krauthammer,Conservative,"Turns out we need to know one more thing on earth: politics--because of its capacity, when benign, to allow all around it to flourish, and its capacity, when malign, to make all around it wither."
Charles Krauthammer,Conservative,"...even God cannot match the cruelty of his creation. For every Santorini, there are a hundred massacres of innocents. And that is the work of man--more particularly, the work of politics, of groups of men organized to gain and exercise power."
Charles Krauthammer,Conservative,"The results of the Great Society experiments started coming in and began showing that, for all its good intentions, the War on Poverty was causing irreparable damage to the very communities it was designed to help."
Charles Krauthammer,Conservative,...my war on commas. They are a pestilence. They must be stopped.
Charles Krauthammer,Conservative,"irritatingly moralistic. Democratic globalism sees as the engine of history not the will to power but the will to freedom. And while it has been attacked as a dreamy, idealistic innovation, its inspiration comes from the Truman Doctrine of 1947, the Kennedy inaugural of 1961, and Reagan’s evil empire speech of 1983. They all sought to recast a struggle for power between two geopolitical titans into a struggle between freedom and unfreedom, and yes, good and evil. Which is why the Truman Doctrine was heavily criticized by realists like Hans Morgenthau and George Kennan"
Charles Krauthammer,Conservative,"Sovereignty with no reciprocal recognition of a Jewish state. Statehood without negotiations. An independent Palestine in a continued state of war with Israel. Israel gave up land without peace in South Lebanon in 2000 and, in return, received war"
Charles Krauthammer,Conservative,"Cultural blackmail has gone on for decades, with the artist loudly blaspheming everything his patrons hold dear-while suckling at their teats."
Charles Krauthammer,Conservative,"The yellow-tied patzer had come for beauty, but Ljubo had come for truth. In chess, that means finding not just a good move or even a harmonious move but the perfect move. God's move."
Charles Krauthammer,Conservative,Courage is not a quality one normally associates with mathematicians. Yet it should apply to people who work in their attics in secret for seven years without cease on a problem that has eluded the greatest mathematical minds since first proposed in 1637.
Charles Krauthammer,Conservative,"One might say that romance with revolution died with Solzhenitsyn. The line from Bastille to the gulag is not straight, but the connection is unmistakable. Modern totalitarianism has its roots in 1789. 'The spirit of the French Revolution has always been present in the social life of our country,' said Gorbachev during his visit to France last week. Few attempts at ingratiation have been more true or more damning."
Charles Krauthammer,Conservative,"In principle, there might be"
Charles Krauthammer,Conservative,Why in the age of feminism do we still use the phrase women and children?
Charles Krauthammer,Conservative,book is intended at least as much
Charles Krauthammer,Conservative,"Fermat’s last theorem,"
Charles Krauthammer,Conservative,"What matters? Lives of the good and the great, the innocence of dogs, the cunning of cats, the elegance of nature, the wonders of space, the perfectly thrown outfield assist, the difference between historical guilt and historical responsibility, homage and sacrilege in monumental architecture, fashions and follies and the finer uses of the F-word."
Charles Krauthammer,Conservative,"The Supreme Court decision upholding affirmative action is incoherent, disingenuous, intellectually muddled and morally confused. Yet it is welcome."
Charles Krauthammer,Conservative,The sight of these two vying for custody of that pathetic brood makes you wonder how a society that requires licenses for drivers manages without requiring them for parents.
Charles Krauthammer,Conservative,"WOMEN AND CHILDREN. STILL? You’re on the Titanic II. It has just hit an iceberg and is sinking. And, as last time, there are not enough lifeboats. The captain shouts, Women and children first! But this time, another voice is heard: Why women? Why, indeed? Part of the charm of the cosmically successful movie Titanic is the period costume, period extravagance, period class prejudice. An audience can enjoy these at a distance. Oddly, however, of all the period mores in the film, the old maritime tradition of women and children first enjoys total acceptance by modern audiences. Listen to the booing and hissing at the on-screen heavies who try to sneak on with"
Charles Krauthammer,Conservative,"The point of the superpower is not to invade, it's not to drop the bombs, it's to be so strong that when you issue a warning, secretly or publicly, the other guy who listens and doesn't do it."
Charles Krauthammer,Conservative,"I once had a friend at Oxford who drifted into the study of Hegel, that famously impenetrable German philosopher, and was never seen again. There are intellectual black holes, vortexes of endless regression, that mortals out to stay clear of."
Charles Krauthammer,Conservative,Science has thoroughly desacrilized the universe.
Charles Krauthammer,Conservative,"One price of demystifying the universe is that science, unlike religion, asks only how, not why. As to the purpose of things, science is silent. But if science cannot talk about meaning, it can talk about harmony."
Charles Krauthammer,Conservative,"Or as Chesterton put it, The trouble when people stop believing in God is not that they thereafter believe in nothing; it is that they thereafter believe in anything. In this century, anything has included Hitler, Stalin and Mao, authors of the great genocidal madnesses of our time."
Charles Krauthammer,Conservative,"When Social Security began making monthly distributions in 1940, there were 160 workers for every senior receiving benefits. In 1950, there were 16.5; today, 3; in 20 years, there will be but 2. Now, the average senior receives in Social Security about a third of what the average worker makes. Applying that ratio retroactively, this means that in 1940, the average worker had to pay only 0.2% of his salary to sustain the older folks of his time; in 1950, 2%; today, 11%; in 20 years, 17%."
Charles Krauthammer,Conservative,polygamists. But I’m not the one who put them
Charles Krauthammer,Conservative,America is the land mine between barbarism and civilization.
Charles Krauthammer,Conservative,Obama was left with but a single task: Negotiate a new status-of-forces agreement (SOFA) to reinforce these gains and create a strategic partnership with the Arab world’s only democracy. He blew it.
Charles Krauthammer,Conservative,"mass destruction are the only threat facing the post–Cold War world. They are only the most obvious. Other threats exist, but they are more speculative and can be seen today only in outline: the rise, for example, of intolerant aggressive nationalism in a disintegrating communist bloc (in one extreme"
Charles Krauthammer,Conservative,"Affairs, Winter"
Charles Krauthammer,Conservative,"Now that the campaign is over and the returns are in, analysis of the latest Albanian election begins. The facts are clear: Communist Party chief Enver Hoxha’s slate of candidates for Parliament won by the comfortable margin of 1,627,959 to 1. The message seems to be: Stay the course. The party ran well in all regions and among all classes"
Charles Krauthammer,Conservative,Sephardic Jewish tradition and home to
Charles Krauthammer,Conservative,"When you join the most monstrous of killing organizations, when you carry its seal, you become responsible for its crimes."
Charles Krauthammer,Conservative,If you’ve got a business
Charles Krauthammer,Conservative,"The playbook is well known. As Czech president (and economist) Vaclav Klaus once explained, environmentalism is the successor to failed socialism as justification for all-pervasive rule by a politburo of experts. Only now it acts in the name of not the proletariat but the planet."
Charles Krauthammer,Conservative,"The world is tired of these troublesome Jews, 6 million hard by the Mediterranean, refusing every invitation to national suicide. For which they are relentlessly demonized, ghettoized and constrained from defending themselves, even as the more committed anti-Zionists"
Charles Krauthammer,Conservative,"Israel is not just any small country. It is the only small country - the only country, period - whose neighbors publicly declare its very existence an affront to law, morality and religion and make its extinction an explicit , paramount national goal. Iran, Libya, and Iraq conduct foreign policies designed for the killing of Israelis and the destruction of their state. They choose their allies (Hamas, Hezbollah) and develop their weapons (suicide bombs, poison gas, anthrax, nuclear missiles) accordingly. Countries as far away as Malaysia will not allow a representative of Israel on their soil or even permit the showing of 'Schindler's List' lest it engender sympathy for Zion."
Charles Krauthammer,Conservative,"This is a president who to this day cannot bring himself to identify the enemy as radical Islam. Explaining the U.S. embassy closures across the Muslim world, he cited the threat from 'violent extremism.' The word 'extremism' is meaningless. People don't devote themselves to being extreme. Extremism has no content. The extreme of what? In this war, an extreme devotion to the supremacy of a radically fundamentalist vision of Islam and its murderous quest for dominion over all others. But for President Obama, the word 'Islamist' may not be uttered."
Charles Krauthammer,Conservative,"Modern satellite data . . . suggest that the number [of planets capable of supporting intelligent life] should be very high. So why the silence? Carl Sagan (among others) thought that the answer is to be found, tragically, in the final variable: the high probability that advanced civilizations destroy themselves.In other words, this silent universe is conveying not a flattering lesson about our uniqueness but a tragic story about our destiny. It is telling us that intelligence may be the most cursed faculty in the entire universe"
Charles Krauthammer,Conservative,"Ronald Reagan, I was once told, said he liked The Natural except that he didn't understand why the Dark Lady shoots Roy Hobbs. Reagan, the preternatural optimist, may have had difficulty fathoming tragedy, but no one knows why Hobbs is shot. It is fate, destiny, nemesis. Perhaps the dawning of knowledge, the coming of sin. Or more prosaically, the catastrophe that awaits everyone from a single false move, wrong turn, fatal encounter. Every life has such a moment. What distinguishes us is whether -- and how -- we ever come back."
Charles Krauthammer,Conservative,"Rather than despair, however, let’s put the most hopeful face on the cosmic silence and on humanity’s own short, already baleful history with its new Promethean powers: Intelligence is a capacity so godlike, so protean that it must be contained and disciplined. This is the work of politics"
Charles Krauthammer,Conservative,"Or Aron Nimzovich, author of perhaps the greatest book on chess theory ever written, who, upon being defeated in a game, threw the pieces to the floor and jumped on the table screaming, Why must I lose to this idiot?"
Charles Krauthammer,Conservative,"Pardon Index: the more lawless, capricious, and imperious a regime, the greater its propensity to make use of the pardon power.A pardon is a wonderful thing, particularly if you're the one being pardoned and particularly if, like the Sakharovs…, you are innocent....But as politics or justice, the pardon is a fraud. In all supremacy of power, said a 17th century philosopher, there is inherent a prerogative to pardon. The reverse is equally true: in all prerogative to pardon, there is inherent the supremacy of power. The logic of the pardon is that justice is a gift to be dispensed by power. It makes of freedom a grant, an indulgence, an act of serendipity. What is meant as a show of humanity is often a mere show of cynicism: a display of arbitrary power (why clemency for A and not B?) for political ends....In democracies, the pardon should be used as sparingly as possible. It is, after all, an admission of failure. It should be used not for dispensing clemency but for righting obvious miscarriages of justice that are otherwise unremediable (e.g., the 1913 Leo Frank case in Georgia). It might even be used, as was the Nixon pardon, to call an arbitrary halt to a national trauma. But only on these rarest of occasions should it supplant the workings of ordinary justice. Free countries have another mechanism for dealing with that. It is called law.The pardon is for tyrants. They like to declare pardons on holidays, such as the birthday of the dictator, or Christ, or the Revolution (interchangeable concepts in many of these countries). Dictators should be encouraged to keep it up. And we should be encouraged to remember that the promiscuous dispensation of clemency is not a sign of political liberality. It is instead one of those valuable, identifying marks of tyranny. Like winning an election with a perfect score."
Charles Krauthammer,Conservative,"The...deeply disillusioning truth about democracy is that it is designed at its core to be spiritually empty...the defining proposition of liberal democracy is that it mandates means (elections, parliaments, markets) but not ends. Democracy leaves the goals of life entirely up to the individual. Where the totalitarian state decrees life's purposes – Deng's Four Modernizations, Castro's Rectification Campaigns, and the generic exhortation about building socialism – democracy leaves a naked public square."
Charles Krauthammer,Conservative,"International law is useful in regulating fishery rights off Newfoundland but they have nothing to say about matters of war and peace, particularly between civilized states and terrorist states."
Charles Krauthammer,Conservative,"death by banana peel or pratfall or (my favorite, I confess) onstage, like the actor Harold Norman, killed in 1947 during an especially energetic sword fight in the last scene of Macbeth. There is also the particularly unwelcome death"
Charles Krauthammer,Conservative,"The wise man shows his wisdom in separation, in gradation, and his scale of creatures and of merits is as wide as nature, writes Emerson. The foolish have no range in their scale, but suppose every man is as every other man. Ultimately to say that people all share the same hopes and fears, are all born and love and suffer and die alike, is to say very little. For it is after commonalities are accounted for that politics becomes necessary. It is only when values, ideologies, cultures and interests clash that politics even begins. At only the most trivial level can it be said that people want the same things. Take peace. The North Vietnamese want it, but apparently they wanted to conquer all of Indochina first. The Salvadoran right and left both want it, but only after making a desert of the other. The Reagan administration wants it, but not if it has to pay for it with pieces of Central America."
Charles Krauthammer,Conservative,Third and most important: I don’t really care what a public figure thinks. I care about what he does. Let God probe his inner heart. Tell me about his outer acts.
Charles Krauthammer,Conservative,"Someone’s gotta do it. No one’s gonna do it. So I’ll do it. Your honor, I rise in defense of drunken astronauts. You’ve all heard the reports, delivered in scandalized tones on the evening news or as guaranteed punch lines for the late-night comics, that at least two astronauts had alcohol in their systems before flights. A stern and sober NASA has assured an anxious nation that this matter, uncovered by a NASA-commissioned study, will be thoroughly looked into and appropriately dealt with. To which I say: Come off it. I know NASA has to get grim and do the responsible thing, but as counsel for the defense"
Irving Kristol,Conservative,"If you believe that no one was ever corrupted by a book, you have also to believe that no one was ever improved by a book."
Irving Kristol,Conservative,An intellectual may be defined as a man who speaks with general authority about a subject on which he has no particular competence.
Irving Kristol,Conservative,"After 1789, politics ceased to be considered as the prudent management of men and circumstances, in order to become the 'realization of ideas'. Political thinking became irredeemably ideological: an imposition of ideas on political life rather than an emergence of policy from living experience."
Irving Kristol,Conservative,"What rules the world is ideas, because ideas define the way reality is perceived."
Irving Kristol,Conservative,"The three pillars of modern conservatism are religion, nationalism, and economic growth."
Irving Kristol,Conservative,"International law is a fiction abused callously, or ignored ruthlessly, by those nations that, unlike the Western democracies, never took it seriously in the first place."
Irving Kristol,Conservative,"That this modern, adversary culture"
Irving Kristol,Conservative,"Patriotism springs from love of the nation’s past; nationalism arises out of hope for the nation’s future, distinctive greatness. Nationalism in our time is probably the most powerful of political emotions."
Irving Kristol,Conservative,"[Liberalism] is an ethos that aims simultaneously at political and social collectivism on the one hand, and moral anarchy on the other"
Irving Kristol,Conservative,"I myself have accepted the term [neoconservative], perhaps, because, having been named Irving, I am relatively indifferent to baptismal caprice."
Irving Kristol,Conservative,"We in our secular, rationalist world are utterly unprepared for such existential-spiritual spasms. For one thing, we do not study the history of religion in any serious way, even for explanations of religious phenomena. Instead, we look for sociological explanations, or economic explanations, or even political explanations, and we do so precisely because we find it almost impossible to posit spiritual appetites and spiritual passions as independent, primary forces in human history."
Irving Kristol,Conservative,"The granddaddy of all countercultures, of course, was early Christianity itself. And in a polemic written in the 2nd century by the Greek philosopher Celsus, we have a marvelous document of the bewilderment and incomprehension with which Greco-Roman rationalists of the early Christian era viewed this counterculture."
Irving Kristol,Conservative,"For well over a hundred and fifty years now, social critics have been warning us that bourgeois society was living off the accumulated moral capital of traditional religion and traditional moral philosophy, and that once this capital was depleted, bourgeois society would find its legitimacy ever more questionable. These critics were never, in their lifetime, either popular or persuasive. The educated classes of liberal- bourgeois society simply could not bring themselves to believe that religion was that important to a polity. They could live with religion or morality as a purely private affair, and they could not see why everyone else"
Irving Kristol,Conservative,"The delicate task that faces our civilization today is not to reform the secular, rationalist orthodoxy, which has passed beyond the point of redemption. Rather, it is to breathe new life into the older, now largely comatose, religious orthodoxies"
Irving Kristol,Conservative,"The counterculture was not caused, it was born. What happened was internal to our culture and society, not external to it."
Irving Kristol,Conservative,"Both the counterculture and its younger twin, postmodernism, then, are a rebellion against culture and art seen as autonomous, secular human activities. It is now felt, quite correctly, that these activities have been emptied of all spiritual substance even while continuing to claim a quasi-sacred mission."
Irving Kristol,Conservative,"When we lack the will to see things as they really are, there is nothing so mystifying as the obvious."
W. Cleon Skousen,Conservative,"Here is my creed: I believe in one God, the Creator of the universe. That he governs it by his providence. That he ought to be worshipped. That the most acceptable service we render to him is in doing good to his other children. That the soul of man is immortal, and will be treated with justice in another life respecting its conduct in this. These I take to be the fundamental points in all sound religion. --Benjamin Franklin"
W. Cleon Skousen,Conservative,"I sought for the greatness and genius of America in her commodious harbors and her ample rivers, and it was not there; in her fiertile fields and boundless prairies, and it was not there; in her rich mines and her vast world commerce, and it was not there. Not until I went to the churches of America and heard her pulpits aflame with righteousness did I understand the secret of her genius and power. America is great because she is good, and if America ever ceases to be good, America will cease to be great. --Alexis de Tocqueville"
W. Cleon Skousen,Conservative,"Strictly enforce the scale of fixed responsibility. The first and foremost level of responsibility is with the individual himself; the second level is the family; then the church; next the community, finally the county, and, in a disaster or emergency, the state. Under no circumstances is the federal government to become involved in public welfare. The Founders felt it would corrupt the government and also the poor. No Constitutional authority exists for the federal government to participate in charity or welfare."
W. Cleon Skousen,Conservative,"discerning men have described Communism as reversing and negating history. It has turned man against himself. Instead of solving the many complex problems of modern life, Marxism’s negative approach has simply resurrected primitive problems which past generations of struggling humanity had already succeeding in solving."
W. Cleon Skousen,Conservative,"It is also interesting to observe that communal ownership violates every instinct of human nature. It destroys initiative, nullifies free agency, suppresses inventive exploration, minimizes the dignity of the individual and makes a god out of an abstract thing called The State- to which is delegated complete, unrestricted control over life, liberty and property. . . Like so many other weak systems of government, it can survive only in an atmosphere of a slave state, ruled by a king or a dictator."
W. Cleon Skousen,Conservative,A free people should be governed by law and not by the whims of men.
W. Cleon Skousen,Conservative,"When the righteous are in authority, the people rejoice; but when the wicked beareth rule, the people mourn."
W. Cleon Skousen,Conservative,"The object of the Founders was to discover the balanced center between these two extremes. They recognized that under the chaotic confusion of anarchy there is no law, whereas at the other extreme the law is totally dominated by the ruling power and is therefore Ruler's Law. What they wanted to establish was a system of People's Law, where the government is kept under the control of the people and political power is maintained at the balanced center with enough government to maintain security, justice, and good order, but not enough government to abuse the people.    The"
W. Cleon Skousen,Conservative,"Communist agitators have done everything in their power to fan the flame of artificial class-consciousness in the minds of the workers, but the basic struggle between labor and capital has not been to overthrow capitalism but to get the workers a more equitable share of the fruits of capitalism. For example, during the past twenty years labor has attained a higher status in the United States than ever before. The Communists tried to seize leadership in this reform trend, but the more the workers earned the more independent they became"
W. Cleon Skousen,Conservative,"The letters of Karl Marx make frequent reference to the violent quarrels between himself and his parents; the letters from Karl’s parents complain of his egoism, his lack of consideration for the family, his constant demands for money and his discourtesy in failing to answer most of their letters. MARX"
W. Cleon Skousen,Conservative,"There are well established and easily understood historical reasons why every legitimate influence should be brought to bear on the removal of this roadblock from the pathway of normal human advancement. This must be done for the sake of the Homo-Marxian as well as the rest of humanity. He is the victim of a man-made experiment, trapped in his own self-perpetuating cycle of human negation. As long as free men are the prevailing majority in the earth there is a very good chance of breaking this cycle. To do so, however, free men must achieve an intelligent and dynamic solidarity at least as strong as the illusory but firmly fixed purposes of Homo-Marxian."
W. Cleon Skousen,Conservative,"Marx and Engels thought all of these things could be traced to one root -- private property. If they used a final revolutionary class uprising to overthrow private property, it would mean that class struggle would become unnecessary because there would be nothing to fight over!"
W. Cleon Skousen,Conservative,"Engels could not prevent himself from occasionally unveiling the truth of what was in his mind: We therefore reject every attempt to impose on us any moral dogma what-ever....16 In other words, Communism undertakes to replace Judaic-Christian morals with a complete absence of morals."
W. Cleon Skousen,Conservative,"Just how difficult this task turned out to be is demonstrated in a number of problems which have arisen in our own day. The failure to use the checks and balances effectively has allowed the judiciary to create new laws (called judicial legislation) by pretending to be merely interpreting old ones. Failure to use the checks and balances has also allowed the President to make thousands of new laws, instead of Congress, by issuing executive orders. It has allowed the federal government to invade the reserved rights of the states on a massive scale. It has allowed the legislature to impose taxes on the people never contemplated by the Founders or the Constitution. The whole spectrum of checks and balances needs to be more thoroughly studied and more vigorously enforced."
W. Cleon Skousen,Conservative,"In 1885 a U.S. citizen, Andrew D. White, returned from a tour of duty as attaché in the American Embassy at St. Petersburg and described the Russian situation as follows: The whole governmental system is the most atrociously barbarous in the world. There is on earth no parallel example of a polite society so degraded, a people so crushed, an official system so unscrupulous."
W. Cleon Skousen,Conservative,"Jefferson felt it should be the goal of the whole nation to use education and every other means to stimulate and encourage those citizens who clearly exhibited a special talent for public service. He felt one of the greatest threats to the new government would be the day when the best qualified people refused to undertake the tedious, arduous, and sometimes unpleasant task of filling important public offices."
W. Cleon Skousen,Conservative,"Whittaker Chambers, who was an American Communist spy at the time, suspected that a horrible crime against humanity was being enacted in Russia. He later wrote: The great purge was in the most literal sense a massacre.... This great massacre, probably the greatest in history was deliberately planned and executed.... Those killed have been estimated from several hundred thousand to several million men and women. The process took about three years, 1935-1938."
W. Cleon Skousen,Conservative,"His Bolshevik revolution had not brought peace to Russia, but a terrible civil war in which 28 million Russians had lost their lives. The principles of socialism which Lenin had forced upon the people had not brought increased production as Marx had promised, but had reduced production to a point where even in normal times it would not adequately clothe nor feed half the people."
W. Cleon Skousen,Conservative,"He wanted a race of men who would no longer depend upon free will, ethics, morals or conscience for guidance. Perhaps, without quite realizing it, Marx was setting out to create a race of human beings conditioned to think like criminals."
W. Cleon Skousen,Conservative,"In March, 1918, the Bolsheviks changed their name to the Russian Communist Party."
W. Cleon Skousen,Conservative,"Take, for example, the problems of government. Marx and Engels would solve these problems by working for the day when they could eliminate government. Problems of morals would be solved by doing away with morals. Problems growing out of religion would be solved by doing away with religion. Problems of marriage, home and family would be eliminated by doing away with marriage, home and family. The problems arising out of property rights would be resolved by not allowing anyone to have any property rights."
W. Cleon Skousen,Conservative,FALLACY I
W. Cleon Skousen,Conservative,"Franklin noted that there is a natural inclination in mankind to kingly government. He said it gives people the illusion that somehow a king will establish equality among citizens; and that they like. Franklin’s great fear was that the states would succumb to this gravitational pull toward a strong central government symbolized by a royal establishment. He said: I am apprehensive, therefore"
W. Cleon Skousen,Conservative,Legislation in Violation of God’s Natural Law Is a Scourge To Humanity
W. Cleon Skousen,Conservative,"Only a virtuous people are capable of freedom. As nations become corrupt and vicious, they have more need of masters."
W. Cleon Skousen,Conservative,"According to Marx it was the property class who wanted their workers to be taught humility, patience and long-suffering; to endure the wrongs heaped upon them with the hope that justice would be meted out in the next life. He said religion was made to serve as an opiate for the oppressed. The workers were told to judge not but to remain passive and dutiful toward their masters. Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the sentiment of a heartless world, as it is the spirit of spiritless conditions. It is the opium of the people."
W. Cleon Skousen,Conservative,"In concluding this discussion of the basic fallacies in Communism we should perhaps make a summary comment on the most significant fallacy of them all. This is the Communist doctrine that problems can be solved by eliminating the institution from which the problems emanate. Even Marx and Engels may have been unaware that this was what they were doing, but the student will note how completely this approach dominates every problem they undertook to solve."
W. Cleon Skousen,Conservative,"Communist leaders ask humanity to endure the conflagration of revolutionary violence, the suppression and liquidation of resistance groups, the expropriation of property, the Dictatorship of the Proletariat which they themselves describe as based on force and unrestricted by any laws, the suspension of all civil liberties"
W. Cleon Skousen,Conservative,"   The necessity of reciprocal checks in the exercise of political power, by dividing and distributing it into different depositories and constituting each the guardian of the public weal against invasions by the others, has been evinced by experiments ancient and modern, some of them in our country and under our own eyes. To preserve them must be as necessary as to institute them. If, in the opinion of the people, the distribution or modification of the constitutional powers be in any particular wrong, let it be corrected by an amendment in the way which the Constitution designates. But let there be no change by usurpation; for though this, in one instance, may be the instrument of good, it is the customary weapon by which free governments are destroyed."
W. Cleon Skousen,Conservative,"The physical sciences capitalize on the lessons of the past, but the social sciences seldom do."
W. Cleon Skousen,Conservative,"When Karl Marx was asked what his objective in life was, he said, To dethrone God and destroy capitalism!"
W. Cleon Skousen,Conservative,One of the most important tasks of the Cultural Revolution affecting the wide masses is the task of systematically and unswervingly combating religion
W. Cleon Skousen,Conservative,"The Founders also warned that the only way for the nation to prosper was to have equal protection of rights, and not allow the government to get involved in trying to provide equal distribution of things."
W. Cleon Skousen,Conservative,"The key was using the government to protect equal rights, not to provide equal things. As previously mentioned, Samuel Adams said the ideas of a welfare state were made unconstitutional:    The utopian schemes of leveling [redistribution of the wealth], and a community of goods [central ownership of all the means of production and distribution], are as visionary and impracticable as those which vest all property in the Crown. [These ideas] are arbitrary, despotic, and, in our government, unconstitutional."
W. Cleon Skousen,Conservative,"Franklin wrote a whole essay on the subject and told one of his friends, I have long been of your opinion, that your legal provision for the poor [in England] is a very great evil, operating as it does to the encouragement of idleness. We have followed your example, and begin now to see our error, and, I hope, shall reform it. 119    A survey of Franklin's views on counter-productive compassion might be summarized as follows:    1. Compassion which gives a drunk the means to increase his drunkenness is counter-productive. 120    2. Compassion which breeds debilitating dependency and weakness is counter-productive. 121    3. Compassion which blunts the desire or necessity to work for a living is counter-productive. 122    4. Compassion which smothers the instinct"
W. Cleon Skousen,Conservative,"Stalin’s whole attitude toward life may be caught in a statement which he later made as he was rising to power: To choose one’s victim, to prepare one’s plans minutely, to stake an implacable vengeance, and then go to bed ... there is nothing sweeter in the world."
W. Cleon Skousen,Conservative,"Danger of Losing Constitutional Rights Furthermore, the Founders knew from experience that the loss of freedom through the gradual erosion of Constitutional principles is not always so obvious that the people can readily detect it. Madison stated: I believe there are more instances of the abridgement of the freedom of the people by gradual and silent encroachments of those in power, than by violent and sudden usurpations.... This danger ought to be wisely guarded against.5"
W. Cleon Skousen,Conservative,As Senator Robert A. Taft summed it up: The United Nations serves a very useful purpose as a town meeting of the world ... but it is an impossible weapon against forcible aggression.
W. Cleon Skousen,Conservative,"In October, 1957, Russia electrified the world with her first Sputnik. Built on plans stolen from the United States after World War II, Sputnik I, with a payload weighing 184 pounds, was successfully launched into orbit October 4th."
W. Cleon Skousen,Conservative,One of the forgotten lessons of U.S. history is the fact that the American Founding Fathers tried Communism before they tried capitalistic free enterprise.
W. Cleon Skousen,Conservative,"It is interesting that after the Pilgrim Fathers tried communism, they abandoned it in favor of a free enterprise type of Capitalism which, over the centuries, has become more highly developed in the United States than in any other nation."
W. Cleon Skousen,Conservative,"Lenin should return to Russia, rally the Marxists, and organize a national Communist political party patterned after the highly successful Social Democrats in Germany."
W. Cleon Skousen,Conservative,They said that everything men do
W. Cleon Skousen,Conservative,Marx and Engels accepted the fact that the remaking of the world will have to be a cruel and ruthless task and that it will involve the destruction of all who stand in the way.
W. Cleon Skousen,Conservative,Defected Russian Intelligence officers have revealed that World War II was fomented and used by the Russian leaders as an important part of the long-range strategy for the expansion of World Communism.
W. Cleon Skousen,Conservative,"To achieve his goal, Marx required two things: First, the total annihilation of all opposition, the downfall of all existing governments, all economies and all societies. Then, he wrote, I shall stride through the wreckage a creator! The second thing he needed was a new kind of human being."
W. Cleon Skousen,Conservative,"International Communism stood for: 1. the overthrow of capitalism, 2. the abolition of private property, 3. the elimination of the family as a social unit, 4. the abolition of all classes, 5. the overthrow of all governments, and 6. the establishment of a communist order with communal ownership of property in a classless, stateless society."
W. Cleon Skousen,Conservative,they promised to satisfy humanity’s two greatest needs: the need for universal peace and the need for universal prosperity.
W. Cleon Skousen,Conservative,"Marx and Engels visualized a day when there would be unity among men instead of opposition, peace instead of war. Such a hope, of course, violated their own theory of dialectics which says nothing in nature can be at rest"
W. Cleon Skousen,Conservative,a stateless society (a civilization without a government) which Marx and Engels vigorously advocated would be an unorganized mob. It would be no society at all.
Rush Limbaugh,Conservative,No nation has ever taxed itself into prosperity.
Rush Limbaugh,Conservative,Liberals measure compassion by how many people are given welfare. Conservatives measure compassion by how many people no longer need it.
Rush Limbaugh,Conservative,"Most of the reasons people think they can't do something are reasons they've created. Everything you do is up to you. Part of life is realizing that you have much more potential and ability than you'd ever know. However, it is up to you to reach inside, face the fears, and unleash that which really drives you."
Rush Limbaugh,Conservative,He's one fry short of a Happy Meal.
Rush Limbaugh,Conservative,You know why there's a Second Amendment? In case the government fails to follow the first one.
Rush Limbaugh,Conservative,None of what Barack Obama is doing or wants to do to this country is anything the rest of the world hasn't seen before and already failed at.
Rush Limbaugh,Conservative,Enraging liberals is simply one of the more enjoyable side effects of my wisdom.
Rush Limbaugh,Conservative,"The future is not Big Government. Self-serving politicians. Powerful bureaucrats. This has been tried, tested throughout history. The result has always been disaster. President Obama, your agenda is not new. It's not change, and it's not hope."
Rush Limbaugh,Conservative,Ronald Reagan was the greatest president of the twentieth century.
Rush Limbaugh,Conservative,Two things you need to remember:1. Don't sweat the small stuff.2. It's ALL small stuff.
Rush Limbaugh,Conservative,I must be honest. I can only read so many paragraphs of a New York Times story before I puke.
Rush Limbaugh,Conservative,"If we feel and learn nothing from the tragedies of the past, then we'll never know how to truly help avoid those same tragedies in the future. Certainly, we can't avoid all pain and suffering, but we can and should learn from it."
Rush Limbaugh,Conservative,"Each of us can be fearless and strong like this rock when we know, without a doubt, where we belong and what we should do. God helps us to know these things."
Roger Kimball,Conservative,The truth is that American universities are among the safest and most coddled environments ever devised by man. The idea that one should attend college to be protected from ideas one might find controversial or offensive could only occur to someone who had jettisoned any hope of acquiring an education.
Roger Kimball,Conservative,"The true democrat wishes to share the great works of culture with all who are able to appreciate them; the egalitarian, recognizing that genuine excellence is rare, declares greatness a fraud and sets about obliterating distinctions."
Roger Kimball,Conservative,"As with most revolutions, the counterculture's call for total freedom quickly turned into a demand for total control. The phenomenon of 'political correctness', with its speech codes and other efforts to enforce ideological conformity, was one predictable result of this transformation. What began at the University of California at Berkeley with the Free Speech Movement (called by some the 'Filthy Speech Movement'} soon degenerated into an effort to abridge freedom by dictating what could and could not be said about any number of politically sensitive issues."
Roger Kimball,Conservative,"Beauty is a fragile and vulnerable quality, and moreover one that is difficult to achieve; ugliness, by contrast, is unbreakable and invulnerable, and very easy to achieve."
Roger Kimball,Conservative,"In a remarkable book called Rites of Spring: The Great War and the Birth of the Modern Age, the historian Modris Eksteins anatomizes the metabolism of the sentimentality that underwrites Keynes’s embrace of guilt as an instrument of policy. Eksteins shows how sentimentality and a species of extravagant mythmaking mark the points of contact between avant-garde culture and burgeoning totalitarianism. This was especially true in Germany, the country that had advanced the radical program of the avant-garde most enthusiastically. England, by contrast, was a conservative power. Where Germany started the war to transform the world, England fought the war to preserve a world and the culture that defined it.A key difference lies in the aestheticization of life: treating life, that is to say, as if it were a work of art devoid of human reality. On the continent, as the historian Carl Schorske put it in his classic study offin-de-siècle Vienna, the usual moralistic culture of the European bourgeoisie was . . . both overlaid and undermined by an amoral Gef ühlskultur [sentimental culture]. This revolution in sensibility amounted to a crisis of morality"
Roger Kimball,Conservative,"The Beats are crucial to an understanding of America's cultural revolution not least because in their lives, their proclamations, and (for lack of a more accurate term) their 'work' they anticipated so many of the pathologies of the Sixties and Seventies. Their programmatic anti-Americanism, their avid celebration of drug abuse, their squalid, promiscuous sex lives, their pseudo-spirituality, their attack on rationality and their degradation of intellectual standards, their aggressive narcissism and juvenile political posturing: in all this and more, the Beats were every bit as 'advanced' as any Sixties radical."
Roger Kimball,Conservative,"Ginsberg turned out to be depressingly prescient when, after a heated argument with Norman Podhoretz in 1958, he yelled, 'We'll get you through your children!' For countless American families, that turned out to be only too true."
Roger Kimball,Conservative,"Civilization is an achievement not a gift; it is always besieged, must constantly be defended, and once lost, is immeasurably difficult to reclaim. We see the results of the assaults against freedom all around us."
Roger Kimball,Conservative,"(Some people regard the astonishing collapse of manners and civility in our society as a superficial event. They are wrong. The fate of decorum expresses the fate of a culture’s dignity, its attitude toward its animating values.)"
Roger Kimball,Conservative,"Kitsch is a sentimentalization of reality in response to cultural failure. The greater the failure, the more malignant the sentimentalization."
Roger Kimball,Conservative,"One dominant response to the Great War was disillusion and a repudiation of principles named by such lofty abstractions as Honor, Patriotism, Virtue, and Beauty. It is easy to find examples of that solvent at work. But in another sense, the response to the war, especially on the continent, and most particularly in Germany, was just the opposite: it was what we might call the re-enchantment, the re-illusioning, of the world by means of a wholesale embrace of empty abstractions. The re-enchantment was malign, to be sure, but it was also thoroughgoing. Nazism was the most poisonous effort.It was, as [Modris] Eksteins puts it, an attempt to lie beautifully to the German nation and to the world. This is where kitsch comes in."
Roger Kimball,Conservative,It is often said that great works of art are inexhaustible
Roger Kimball,Conservative,"We -- the industrialized, technologized world -- have never been richer. And yet to an extraordinary extent we in the West continue to inhabit a moral and cultural universe shaped by the hedonistic imperatives and radical ideals of the Sixties. Culturally, morally the world we inhabit is increasingly a trash world: addicted to sensation, besieged everywhere by the cacophonous, mind-numbing din of rock music, saturated with pornography, in thrall to the lowest common denominator wherever questions of taste, manners or intellectual delicacy are concerned. Marwick was right: 'The cultural revolution, in short, had continuous, uninterrupted, and lasting consequences'."
Roger Kimball,Conservative,"The very concept of ethnocentrism, which is used like a sledge-hammer to disparage the West, is a Western invention."
Roger Kimball,Conservative,"behind the many pseudo-sciences that have recently dominated literary criticism . . . you will find the same suspicion of literature, a desire to sever our relation to it by denuding it of meaning. The methods proposed are laughable caricatures of science; and the results delivered are useful to no one. But that was not the point. The methods of the new literary theorist are really weapons of subversion: an attempt to destroy humane education from within, to rupture the chain of sympathy that binds us to our culture. That is why the new schools of criticism have acquired a following: they promise to release us from the burden of study by showing that there is nothing after all to learn.*"
Roger Kimball,Conservative,"a meaningful politics must recognize other important values in human life. Indeed, politics makes no sense when it stands by itself. If the question who wields political power is not broadened to take account of what that power is to be used for-that is, what human values it will serve-then it reduces to a matter of who manages to subdue whom.*"
Roger Kimball,Conservative,"The notion that some works are better and more important than others; that some works exert a special claim on our attention; that being educated requires a thoughtful acquaintance with these works and an ability to discriminate between greater and lesser-all this is anathema to the forces arrayed against the traditional understanding of the humanities. The very idea that the works of Shakespeare (for example) might be indisputably greater than the collected cartoons of Bugs Bunny is often rejected as antidemocratic and elitist, an imposition on the freedom and political interests of various groups.*"
Roger Kimball,Conservative,"What is not possible is to combine the pursuit of pleasure and the enjoyment of comfort with the characteristic pleasures of a strong mind. If you wish for luxury, you must not nourish the inquisitive instinct."
Roger Kimball,Conservative,"Do not be proud of the fact that your grandmother was shocked at something which you are accustomed to seeing or hearing without being shocked.... It may be that your grandmother was an extremely lively and vital animal, and that you are a paralytic."
Roger Kimball,Conservative,"The institutionalization of the radical ethos in the academy has brought with it not only an increasing politicization of the humanities, but also an increasing ignorance of the humanistic legacy. Instead of reading the great works of the past, students watch movies, pronounce on the depredations of patriarchal society, or peruse second- or third-rate works dear to their ideological cohort; instead of reading widely among primary texts, they absorb abstruse commentaries on commentaries, resorting to primary texts only to furnish illustrations for their pet critical theory. Since many older professors have themselves been the beneficiaries of the kind of traditional education they have rejected and are denying their students, it is the students who are the real losers in this fiasco."
Roger Kimball,Conservative,"You cannot step a foot into the literature about the 1960s without being told how 'creative', 'idealistic', and 'loving' it was, especially in comparison to the 1950s. I fact, the counterculture of the Sixties represented the triumph of what the art critic Harold Rosenberg famously called the 'herd of the independent minds'. Its so-called creativity consisted in continually recirculating a small number of radical cliches; its idealism was little more than irresponsible utopianism; and its crusading for 'love' was largely a blind for hedonistic self-indulgence."
Roger Kimball,Conservative,"There is not much to say about Burrough's writing. It consists of semiliterate ravings by a very sick mind, a kaleidoscope or surrealistic depictions of drug-taking, violent, often misogynistic fantasy, and sexual depravity."
Roger Kimball,Conservative,"The Beats, like their successors in the Sixties, have often been described as 'idealists'. But fantasies of total gratification are not the product of idealism. They arise from a narcissism that, finding the world unequal to its desires, retreats into a realm of heedless self-absorption. Modesty, convention, and self-restraint then appear as the enemies rather than as the allies of humanity. In this sense, the Beat generation marks a step away from civilization."
Roger Kimball,Conservative,"Although aesthetically nugatory, Beat Culture and the New America was an exhibition of considerable significance -- but not in quite the way that Lisa Phillips, its curator, intended, Casting a retrospective glance at the sordid world of Allen Ginsberg, Jack Kerouac, William S. Burroughs, Lawrence, Ferlinghetti, and other Beat icons, the exhibition unwittingly furnished a kind of pathologist's report on one of the most toxic cultural movements in American history."
Roger Kimball,Conservative,"The romance that has surrounded the Beat generation since the mid-Sixties has acted as a kind of sentimental glaze, obscuring its fundamentally nihilistic impulse under a heap of bogus rhetoric about liberation, spontaneity, and 'startling oases of creativity', Notwithstanding their recent media media make-over, the Beats were not Promethean iconoclasts. They were drug-abusing sexual predators and infantilized narcissists whose shamelessness helped dupe a confused and gullible public into believing that their utterances were works of genius. We have to thank Lisa Phillips and the Whitney for inadvertently reminding us of this with such vividness. If nothing else, 'Beat Culture and the New America' showed that the Beats were not simply artistic charlatans; the were -- and, in the case of those who are still with us, they remain -- moral simpletons, whose destructive influence helped fuel the cultural catastrophe with which we are now living."
Roger Kimball,Conservative,"If the politicization of art and education represents one large part of the counterculture's legacy, the coarsening of feeling and sensibility is another. No phenomenon has done more to advance this coarsening than rock music. It is impossible to exaggerate the importance of rock music to the agenda of the cultural revolution. It is also impossible to overstate its soul-deadening destructiveness. The most reviled part of Allan Bloom's book The Closing of the American Mind was his chapter criticizing the effects of rock. But Bloom was right in insisting that rock music is a potent weapon in the arsenal of emotional anarchy. The triumph of rock was not only an aesthetic disaster of giant proportions: it was also a moral disaster whose effects are nearly impossible to calculate precisely because they are so pervasive."
Roger Kimball,Conservative,"The institutionalization of the Beat ethic has been a moral, aesthetic, and intellectual disaster of the first order. (It has also been a disaster for fashion and manners, but that is a separate subject.) We owe to the 1960s the ultimate institutionalization of immoralist radicalism: the institutionalization of drugs, pseudo-spirituality, promiscuous sex, virulent anti-Americanism, naive anti-capitalism, and the precipitous decline of artistic and intellectual standards. But the1960s and 1970s only codified and extended into the middle class the radical spirit of the Beats, who, in more normal times, would have remained what they were in the beginning; members of a fringe movement that provided stand-up comics with material."
Roger Kimball,Conservative,"In short order, the unconventional became the established convention; the perverse was embraced as normal; the unspeakable was broadcast everywhere; the outrageous was met with enthusiastic applause."
Roger Kimball,Conservative,"The Beats were tremendously significant, but chiefly in the way that they provided a preview in the 1950s of the cultural, intellectual, and moral disasters that would fully flower in the late 1960s. The ideas of the Beats, their sensibility, contained in ovo all the characteristics we think of as defining the cultural revolution of the Sixties and Seventies. The adolescent longing for liberation from conventional manners and intellectual standards; the polymorphous sexuality; the narcissism; the destructive absorption in drugs; the undercurrent of criminality; the irrationalism; the naive political radicalism and reflexive anti-Americanism; the adulation of pop music as a kind of spiritual weapon; the Romantic elevation of art as an alternative to rather than as an illumination of normal reality; the pseudo-spirituality, especially the spurious infatuation with Eastern religions: in all this and more the Beats provided a vivid glimpse of what was to come."
Roger Kimball,Conservative,The Beats inaugurated the long march through the moral territory of American culture. Who knows how many lives were blighted along the way as a result of their proselytizing on behalf of drugs and promiscuous sex?
Roger Kimball,Conservative,"Like the medieval heretics that Norm Cohn wrote about in The Pursuit of the Millennium, the Beats cultivated an extreme narcissism that bordered on self-deification and that 'liberated them from all restraints' and allowed them to experience every impulse as a 'divine command'. What Norman Podhoretz observed of Ginsberg was also true of the Beats generally: they 'conjured up a world of complete freedom from the limits imposed by [bourgeois] responsibilities'. Podhoretz added, 'It was a world that promised endless erotic possibility together with the excitements of an expanded consciousness constantly open to new dimensions of being: more adventure, more sex, more intensity, more life'. Alas, the promise was illusory. Instead of an 'expanded consciousness', the Beats purchased madness, ruination, and, for many, an early death. Their attack on bourgeois responsibility led not to greater freedom but to greater chaos. The erotic paradise they envisioned turned out to be rife with misery."
Roger Kimball,Conservative,"Ginsberg, Burroughs, and Kerouac were all on the side of the savage. That their penny-ante gnosticism was not only perpetuated but mythologized and spread abroad as a gospel of emancipation is something for which we have the Sixties to thank -- or to blame."
Roger Kimball,Conservative,"Incidentally, why is it that drug abuse is always described as an 'experiment', as if some important scientific enterprise were at stake instead of hedonistic self-indulgence?"
Roger Kimball,Conservative,"And let’s not forget Dane-Geld: It is always a temptation to a rich and lazy nation, To puff and look important and to say: Though we know we should defeat you, we have not the time to meet you. We will therefore pay you cash to go away. And that is called paying the Dane-geld; But we’ve proved it again and again, That if once you have paid him the Dane-geld You never get rid of the Dane."
Roger Kimball,Conservative,"History, Bagehot wrote, is strewn with the wrecks of nations which have gained a little progressiveness at the cost of a great deal of hard manliness, and have thus prepared themselves for destruction as soon as the movements of the world gave a chance for it."
Roger Kimball,Conservative,Kitsch lives with one foot in the realm of aesthetics and another foot in the realm of ethics.
Roger Kimball,Conservative,"The sentimentality of kitsch is a sign of its falseness. But it is also a sign of its extravagance. Unanchored to reality, sentimentality is naturally unbounded. Kitsch is a response to a failure or disintegration of cultural values. When the world no longer speaks meaningfully to us, we shout into the void and pretend the echoes come to us from on high.The grandiosity of kitsch is in proportion to the existential poverty out of which it arose. In this context, it is worth noting a limitation of that dictionary definition of kitsch. The sentimentality of kitsch can be sweet, but it can also be sour, malignant."
William F. Buckley Jr.,Conservative,It is not a sign of arrogance for the king to rule. That is what he is there for.
William F. Buckley Jr.,Conservative,"Liberals claim to want to give a hearing to other views, but then are shocked and offended to discover that there are other views."
William F. Buckley Jr.,Conservative,"Idealism is fine, but as it approaches reality, the costs become prohibitive."
William F. Buckley Jr.,Conservative,I would like to electrocute everyone who uses the word 'fair' in connection with income tax policies.
William F. Buckley Jr.,Conservative,A Conservative is a fellow who is standing athwart history yelling 'Stop!'
William F. Buckley Jr.,Conservative,"I would like to take you seriously, but to do so would affront your intelligence."
William F. Buckley Jr.,Conservative,"Even if one takes every reefer madness allegation of the prohibitionists at face value, marijuana prohibition has done far more harm to far more people than marijuana ever could."
William F. Buckley Jr.,Conservative,"Liberals, it has been said, are generous with other peoples' money, except when it comes to questions of national survival when they prefer to be generous with other people's freedom and security."
William F. Buckley Jr.,Conservative,Some of my instincts are reprehensible.
William F. Buckley Jr.,Conservative,"The majority of the senior class of Vassar does not desire my company and I must confess, having read specimens of their thought and sentiments, that I do not desire the company of the majority of the senior class of Vassar."
William F. Buckley Jr.,Conservative,Scientists are people who build the Brooklyn Bridge and then buy it.
William F. Buckley Jr.,Conservative,We love your adherence to democratic principles.
William F. Buckley Jr.,Conservative,To buy very good wine nowadays requires only money. To serve it to your guests is a sign of fatigue.
William F. Buckley Jr.,Conservative,One must bear in mind that the expansion of federal activity is a form of eating for politicians.
William F. Buckley Jr.,Conservative,All adventure is now reactionary.
William F. Buckley Jr.,Conservative,It had all the earmarks of a CIA operation; the bomb killed everybody in the room except the intended target!
George Will,Conservative,The pursuit of perfection often impedes improvement.
George Will,Conservative,"Baseball, it is said, is only a game. True. And the Grand Canyon is only a hole in Arizona. Not all holes, or games, are created equal."
George Will,Conservative,"Popularity makes no law invulnerable to invalidation. Americans accept judicial supervision of their democracy - judicial review of popular but possibly unconstitutional statutes - because they know that if the Constitution is truly to constitute the nation, it must trump some majority preferences."
George Will,Conservative,If those who wrote and ratified the 14th Amendment had imagined laws restricting immigration - and had anticipated huge waves of illegal immigration - is it reasonable to presume they would have wanted to provide the reward of citizenship to the children of the violators of those laws? Surely not.
George Will,Conservative,"Just as the common law derives from ancient precedents - judges' decisions - rather than statutes, baseball's codes are the game's distilled mores. Their unchanged purpose is to show respect for opponents and the game. In baseball, as in the remainder of life, the most important rules are unwritten. But not unenforced."
George Will,Conservative,Perhaps the soundest advice for parents is: Lighten up. People have been raising children for approximately as long as there have been people.
George Will,Conservative,"America is the only developed nation that has a 2,000-mile border with a developing nation, and the government's refusal to control that border is why there are an estimated 460,000 illegal immigrants in Arizona and why the nation, sensibly insisting on first things first, resists 'comprehensive' immigration reform."
George Will,Conservative,"Some calamities - the 1929 stock market crash, Pearl Harbor, 9/11 - have come like summer lightning, as bolts from the blue. The looming crisis of America's Ponzi entitlement structure is different. Driven by the demographics of an aging population, its causes, timing and scope are known."
George Will,Conservative,The nice part about being a pessimist is that you are constantly being either proven right or pleasantly surprised.
George Will,Conservative,"Voters don't decide issues, they decide who will decide issues."
George Will,Conservative,Modern parents want to nurture so skillfully that Mother Nature will gasp in admiration at the marvels their parenting produces from the soft clay of children.
George Will,Conservative,"Political ignorance helps explain Americans' perpetual disappointment with politicians generally, and presidents especially, to whom voters unrealistically attribute abilities to control events."
George Will,Conservative,"The 1935 Social Security Act established 65 as the age of eligibility for payouts. But welfare state politics quickly becomes a bidding war, enriching the menu of benefits, so in 1956 Congress entitled women to collect benefits at 62, extending the entitlement to men in 1961."
George Will,Conservative,A society that thinks the choice between ways of living is just a choice between equally eligible 'lifestyles' turns universities into academic cafeterias offering junk food for the mind.
George Will,Conservative,Americans are overreaching; overreaching is the most admirable and most American of the many American excesses.
George Will,Conservative,"Corporations do not pay taxes, they collect them, passing the burden to consumers as a cost of production. And corporate taxation is a feast of rent-seeking - a cornucopia of credits, exemptions and other subsidies conferred by the political class on favored, and grateful, corporations."
George Will,Conservative,Politicians fascinate because they constitute such a paradox; they are an elite that accomplishes mediocrity for the public good.
George Will,Conservative,"Big government is indeed big, and like another big creature, the sauropod dinosaur, government has a primitive nervous system: The fact of an injury to the tail could take nearly a minute to be communicated to the sauropod brain."
George Will,Conservative,"Big government inevitably drives an upward distribution of wealth to those whose wealth, confidence and sophistication enable them to manipulate government."
George Will,Conservative,"As advertising blather becomes the nation's normal idiom, language becomes printed noise."
George Will,Conservative,Children who open their lunchboxes and find mothers' handwritten notes telling them how amazingly bright they are tend to falter when they encounter academic difficulties.
George Will,Conservative,"Money is time made tangible - the time invested in the earning of it. Taxation is the confiscation of the earner's time. Although some taxation is necessary, all taxation diminishes freedom."
George Will,Conservative,"The average American expends more time becoming informed about choosing a car than choosing a candidate. But, then, the consequences of the former choice are immediate and discernible."
George Will,Conservative,Being elected to Congress is regarded as being sent on a looting raid for one's friends.
George Will,Conservative,"When liberals advocate a value-added tax, conservatives should respond: Taxing consumption has merits, so we will consider it - after the 16th Amendment is repealed."
George Will,Conservative,"In 1976, Jimmy Carter - peanut farmer; carried his own suitcase, imagine that - somewhat tapped America's durable but shallow reservoir of populism. By 1980, ordinariness in high office had lost its allure."
Barry Goldwater,Conservative,Extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice. And moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue.
Barry Goldwater,Conservative,"Nixon was the most dishonest individual I have ever met in my life. He lied to his wife, his family, his friends, his colleagues in the Congress, lifetime members of his own political party, the American people and the world."
Barry Goldwater,Conservative,The income tax created more criminals than any other single act of government.
Barry Goldwater,Conservative,"If you don't mind smelling like peanut butter for two or three days, peanut butter is darn good shaving cream."
Barry Goldwater,Conservative,I could have ended the war in a month. I could have made North Vietnam look like a mud puddle.
Barry Goldwater,Conservative,Where is the politician who has not promised to fight to the death for lower taxes- and who has not proceeded to vote for the very spending projects that make tax cuts impossible?
Barry Goldwater,Conservative,"I will offer a choice, not an echo."
Barry Goldwater,Conservative,"It's a great country, where anybody can grow up to be president... except me."
Barry Goldwater,Conservative,"I think any man in business would be foolish to fool around with his secretary. If it's somebody else's secretary, fine."
Barry Goldwater,Conservative,"You've got to forget about this civilian. Whenever you drop bombs, you're going to hit civilians."
Barry Goldwater,Conservative,"If everybody in this town connected with politics had to leave town because of chasing women and drinking, you would have no government."
Barry Goldwater,Conservative,Hubert Humphrey talks so fast that listening to him is like trying to read Playboy magazine with your wife turning the pages.
Barry Goldwater,Conservative,I think every good Christian ought to kick Falwell right in the ass.
Barry Goldwater,Conservative,"When I'm not a politician, I'll be dead."
Barry Goldwater,Conservative,You don't have to be straight to be in the military; you just have to be able to shoot straight.
Barry Goldwater,Conservative,I wouldn't trust Nixon from here to that phone.
Barry Goldwater,Conservative,The only summit meeting that can succeed is the one that does not take place.
Barry Goldwater,Conservative,American business has just forgotten the importance of selling.
Andrew Sullivan,Conservative,I've always been a pretty candid person. I'm not a very secretive person; I'm not a very discreet person. One of my best friends once described me as pathologically indiscreet.
Andrew Sullivan,Conservative,How can you tell when a political ideology has become the equivalent of a religion?
Andrew Sullivan,Conservative,"Well, in the past, the size of government was one of the more fundamental dividing lines between Right and Left. The Right was supposed to represent the small government philosophy - limited spending, low taxes. Obviously, things have shifted."
Andrew Sullivan,Conservative,"The dirty little secret of journalism is that it really isn't a profession, it's a craft. All you need is a telephone and a conscience and you're all set."
Andrew Sullivan,Conservative,"When I first started talking about gay marriage, most people in the gay community looked at me as if I was insane or possibly a fascist reactionary."
Andrew Sullivan,Conservative,"I can barely remember what I wrote yesterday, let alone 10 years ago."
Andrew Sullivan,Conservative,"The most successful marriages, gay or straight, even if they begin in romantic love, often become friendships. It's the ones that become the friendships that last."
Andrew Sullivan,Conservative,Homosexuality is like the weather. It just is.
Andrew Sullivan,Conservative,"When I was about eight, I asked my mother if it was true that God knows everything about you. When she answered yes, I said, 'Then there's no hope for me, Mum.'"
Andrew Sullivan,Conservative,The Dixiecrats meet again in New York. Now they're called Republicans.
Andrew Sullivan,Conservative,"When you put a tiny and despised minority up for a popular vote, the minority usually loses."
Andrew Sullivan,Conservative,I enjoy being around people who disagree with me; and I enjoy being in non-political contexts and activities.
Andrew Sullivan,Conservative,"In many ways, my attachment to human freedom was completely compatible with my right to live freely as a homosexual."
Andrew Sullivan,Conservative,"My own early crusade for same-sex marriage, for example, is now mainstream gay politics. It wasn't when I started."
Andrew Sullivan,Conservative,"We've got fuel prices coming down and good travel numbers coming out, so it's not surprising airline stocks are going up."
Andrew Sullivan,Conservative,"If you are a gay couple living in Alabama, you know one thing: your family has no standing under the law; and it can and will be violated by strangers."
Andrew Sullivan,Conservative,"Although I never publicly defended promiscuity, I never publicly attacked it. I attempted to avoid the subject, in part because I felt, and often still feel, unable to live up to the ideals I really hold."
Andrew Sullivan,Conservative,The relationship of black Americans to Obama is sociologically riveting.
Andrew Sullivan,Conservative,"Al Gore's problem, in my view, is that he never liked politics. He's actually deeply uncomfortable in it but felt he had to do it because of his father. He's much more comfortable in a private sector role and has, in fact, been much more successful in a private sector role, and I admire him for that."
Andrew Sullivan,Conservative,I purge compulsively. I'm constantly shedding things.
Andrew Sullivan,Conservative,There is something about hearing your president affirm your humanity that you don't know what effect it has until you hear it.
Andrew Sullivan,Conservative,Anything that raises any internal honesty about gay life is inherently suspect.
Andrew Sullivan,Conservative,"What gay culture is before it is anything else, before it is a culture of desire or a culture of subversion or a culture of pain, is a culture of friendship."
Andrew Sullivan,Conservative,I think if someone is writing continuously for 10 years and has not changed their mind about something - there's something wrong with them. They're not really thinking.
Andrew Sullivan,Conservative,"I actually bought the argument that if we democratized Iraq, we could create a space for venting some of the stuff that's going on in the Middle East in these autocratic regimes that is expressing itself through jihadism, because it has nowhere else to express itself."
Andrew Sullivan,Conservative,The good news about me is that my friends and social network is entirely independent of politics.
Roger Stone,Conservative,"Cold weather probably played a bigger role in bringing back the hat, but sadly, the hat common to New Jersey guidos, South Carolina rednecks, Idaho potato farmers and Los Angeles gang bangers is the ubiquitous 'tractor hat,' which is derived from the cheap baseball style cap with the adjustable plastic tab."
Roger Stone,Conservative,"Nothing ruins the lines of a suit or blazer and makes you look more like a doofus than when your pockets are crammed with stuff - a wallet, a cell phone, keys, a calculator, a calendar, pens, etc."
Roger Stone,Conservative,"Timberlake was once a boy-band idol with mismatched baggy attire and the curly, frosted locks of a Cabbage Patch Kid doll. His early fashion missteps included a full denim costume complete with rhinestones and a cowboy hat, and for a time, his hair was twisted in cornrows."
Roger Stone,Conservative,The general election is not an organizational exercise - it's a mass media exercise.
Roger Stone,Conservative,Every man's closet must contain a trench coat. It's hard for any gentleman not to look dashing when clad in this swashbuckling style.
Roger Stone,Conservative,A black or royal blue velvet blazer will look great with a pair of jeans and a black or navy turtleneck sweater - though it's a more casual look.
Roger Stone,Conservative,Plush velvet conjures up kings and opulence.
Roger Stone,Conservative,"The straps that suspend a man's trousers from his shoulders - known in the U.S. as 'suspenders' and in Britain as 'braces' - are always correct with a summer suit made of seersucker, linen, or silk."
Roger Stone,Conservative,Every well-dressed gentleman must have an all-cotton oxford cloth button-down shirt from Brooks Brothers.
Roger Stone,Conservative,"Socks must be at least an 18-percent synthetic blend to insure they don't droop, because droopy socks that show calf are worse than short socks that do the same."
Roger Stone,Conservative,"You can't wake up one day and say 'I'm for gay marriage,' and wake up the next day and say 'I'm against it.' Wake up one day and say, 'I'm pro-choice,' and the next day wake up and say, 'I'm pro-life.' There's no credibility there."
Roger Stone,Conservative,I believe the GOP should pitch its big-top tent around fiscal conservatism and a muscular foreign policy rather than carnival bark outside the sideshow tents of gay marriage and reproductive choice.
Roger Stone,Conservative,"There is something urbane, stylish, and worldly about owning a cocktail shaker."
Roger Stone,Conservative,"Unless you can fake sincerity, you'll get nowhere in this business."
Roger Stone,Conservative,Big brother listening in on your phone calls - I got a problem with that.
Roger Stone,Conservative,"Nothing shows both polish and utility like the nattily tucked pocket handkerchief or 'pocket square' in the breast pocket of a man's blazer, sport coat, or suit jacket."
Roger Stone,Conservative,"In the 1930s, anyone of any sophisticated status owned a cocktail shaker. Distinctive ones are easy to find."
Roger Stone,Conservative,You can't be the candidate and the campaign manager.
Roger Stone,Conservative,Nobody ever built a statue to a committee.
Roger Stone,Conservative,"A 527 doesn't have a wife. It doesn't have a brother-in-law who knows a lot about politics, or a union president who calls and doesn't like the color of the suit, or bimbo eruptions. It's the perfect candidate, because it has no personal characteristics."
Roger Stone,Conservative,Cruz named Former Texas Senator Phil Gramm as his economic guru. This guy virtually crashed the U.S. economy. Gramm is largely responsible for two bills which led to the speculative bubble which popped in September 2008.
Roger Stone,Conservative,"A word about blue jeans, which, when I was growing up, were called dungarees, one of the more unfortunate marketing ideas of our time: Starting as a work garment for miners, the ubiquitous blue jeans became a staple of the counterculture starting when Brando wore them in 'On the Waterfront' and remained so through the anti-war protests of the '70s."
Roger Stone,Conservative,"In this business, if you don't pay your debts you're finished."
Roger Stone,Conservative,"I like the new, cool, swinging Justin Timberlake."
Roger Stone,Conservative,"The dress hat took a nosedive after the dashing JFK showed up at his inauguration bareheaded. Suddenly, a chapeau was no longer de rigueur for any man leaving the house."
Paul Manafort,Conservative,Securing the Republican nomination is an intricate series of steps that requires a comprehensive strategy.
Paul Manafort,Conservative,"Trump is not a fan of fundraising, but he's willing to do it."
Paul Manafort,Conservative,They get the faceless bureaucrats in Brussels and Strasbourg who have ruled and told the Brits how to live and making promises for them that their lives would get better and talking about a future based on globalism versus family and individual and local community. That's what Brexit was all about.
Paul Manafort,Conservative,"You can't change somebody's character, but you can change the way a person presents themselves."
Paul Manafort,Conservative,"Mr. Trump's position has been clear from the beginning: He's under audit. When the audit is completed, he'll release his returns."
Paul Manafort,Conservative,"Once again, the 'New York Times' has chosen to purposefully ignore facts and professional journalism to fit their political agenda, choosing to attack my character and reputation rather than present an honest report. The suggestion that I accepted cash payments is unfounded, silly, and nonsensical."
Paul Manafort,Conservative,Donald Trump is running this campaign. And I'm working directly for Donald Trump.
Paul Manafort,Conservative,What happened with Brexit was people taking back control.
Paul Manafort,Conservative,"As I've said many times, Yanukovych was a pro-Western, not pro-Putin, president."
Paul Manafort,Conservative,Where there is terrorist activity - Syria or Iraq - we will temporarily suspend immigration until we can establish a vetting system in which we can identify who people are who are coming in.
Paul Manafort,Conservative,We don't plan on winning in August - we plan on winning in November.
Paul Manafort,Conservative,"The conversation we should be having is, what does Russia have from Hillary Clinton's server?"
Paul Manafort,Conservative,Benghazi was a tragedy. Libya is a tragedy.
Paul Manafort,Conservative,You don't change Donald Trump. You don't 'manage' him.
Paul Manafort,Conservative,Many women feel they can't afford their lives; their husbands can't afford to be paying for the family bills. Hillary Clinton is guilty of being part of the establishment that created that problem.
Paul Manafort,Conservative,"Mr. Trump of course feels sorry for what the Khan family has gone through, just, frankly, as he felt sorry for the victims that spoke before the Republican Convention who lost loved ones from illegal immigrant criminals coming in and being able to travel the country freely."
Paul Manafort,Conservative,"The issue that Mr. Trump is talking about and which, really, frankly, I expect the media should be talking about is protecting the American homeland from national security risks and terrorists."
Paul Manafort,Conservative,Those are the two issues: Protecting the homeland and stopping the war and going after ISIS in a way that ends the terrorism.
Paul Manafort,Conservative,"There are some Senate candidates who aren't sure Trump is in their interest yet, but they'll come along."
Paul Manafort,Conservative,The 'Never Trump' movement was never going anywhere.
Paul Manafort,Conservative,"The national polls are distorted. To get a national sample, they rely too much on Hispanics from New York and California, which is where large populations are but also where most of the radical Hispanics are."
Paul Manafort,Conservative,"Trump was doing very well on a model that made sense, but now, as the campaign has gotten to the end stages, a more traditional campaign has to take place."
Paul Manafort,Conservative,"The reality is, Ted Cruz has seen his best day."
Paul Manafort,Conservative,It depends on who you talk to if I'm part of the establishment or part of the antiestablishment.
Paul Manafort,Conservative,I have run campaigns. That doesn't make you the establishment.
Milton Friedman,Conservative,"When government - in pursuit of good intentions - tries to rearrange the economy, legislate morality, or help special interests, the cost come in inefficiency, lack of motivation, and loss of freedom. Government should be a referee, not an active player."
Milton Friedman,Conservative,Many people want the government to protect the consumer. A much more urgent problem is to protect the consumer from the government.
Milton Friedman,Conservative,Government has three primary functions. It should provide for military defense of the nation. It should enforce contracts between individuals. It should protect citizens from crimes against themselves or their property.
Milton Friedman,Conservative,"The greatest advances of civilization, whether in architecture or painting, in science and literature, in industry or agriculture, have never come from centralized government."
Milton Friedman,Conservative,"If you put the federal government in charge of the Sahara Desert, in 5 years there'd be a shortage of sand."
Milton Friedman,Conservative,The most important single central fact about a free market is that no exchange takes place unless both parties benefit.
Milton Friedman,Conservative,Inflation is taxation without legislation.
Milton Friedman,Conservative,There's no such thing as a free lunch.
Milton Friedman,Conservative,Universities exist to transmit knowledge and understanding of ideas and values to students not to provide entertainment for spectators or employment for athletes.
Milton Friedman,Conservative,Concentrated power is not rendered harmless by the good intentions of those who create it.
Milton Friedman,Conservative,The only way that has ever been discovered to have a lot of people cooperate together voluntarily is through the free market. And that's why it's so essential to preserving individual freedom.
Milton Friedman,Conservative,Most of the energy of political work is devoted to correcting the effects of mismanagement of government.
Milton Friedman,Conservative,We have a system that increasingly taxes work and subsidizes nonwork.
Milton Friedman,Conservative,The only relevant test of the validity of a hypothesis is comparison of prediction with experience.
Milton Friedman,Conservative,"The problem of social organization is how to set up an arrangement under which greed will do the least harm, capitalism is that kind of a system."
Milton Friedman,Conservative,"I think that the Internet is going to be one of the major forces for reducing the role of government. The one thing that's missing, but that will soon be developed, is a reliable e-cash - a method whereby on the Internet you can transfer funds from A to B without A knowing B or B knowing A."
Thomas Sowell,Conservative,The word 'racism' is like ketchup. It can be put on practically anything - and demanding evidence makes you a 'racist.'
Thomas Sowell,Conservative,"The black family survived centuries of slavery and generations of Jim Crow, but it has disintegrated in the wake of the liberals' expansion of the welfare state."
Thomas Sowell,Conservative,"Capitalism knows only one color: that color is green; all else is necessarily subservient to it, hence, race, gender and ethnicity cannot be considered within it."
Thomas Sowell,Conservative,The most fundamental fact about the ideas of the political left is that they do not work. Therefore we should not be surprised to find the left concentrated in institutions where ideas do not have to work in order to survive.
Thomas Sowell,Conservative,"The old adage about giving a man a fish versus teaching him how to fish has been updated by a reader: Give a man a fish and he will ask for tartar sauce and French fries! Moreover, some politician who wants his vote will declare all these things to be among his 'basic rights.'"
Thomas Sowell,Conservative,"The next time some academics tell you how important diversity is, ask how many Republicans there are in their sociology department."
Thomas Sowell,Conservative,Too much of what is called 'education' is little more than an expensive isolation from reality.
Thomas Sowell,Conservative,"Would you bet your paycheck on a weather forecast for tomorrow? If not, then why should this country bet billions on global warming predictions that have even less foundation?"
Thomas Sowell,Conservative,"Talkers are usually more articulate than doers, since talk is their specialty."
Thomas Sowell,Conservative,"Sometimes it seems as if there are more solutions than problems. On closer scrutiny, it turns out that many of today's problems are a result of yesterday's solutions."
Thomas Sowell,Conservative,"As for gun control advocates, I have no hope whatever that any facts whatever will make the slightest dent in their thinking - or lack of thinking."
Thomas Sowell,Conservative,Stopping illegal immigration would mean that wages would have to rise to a level where Americans would want the jobs currently taken by illegal aliens.
Thomas Sowell,Conservative,Do countries with strong gun control laws have lower murder rates? Only if you cherry-pick the data.
Thomas Sowell,Conservative,The time is long overdue to stop looking for progress through racial or ethnic leaders. Such leaders have too many incentives to promote polarizing attitudes and actions that are counterproductive for minorities and disastrous for the country.
Thomas Sowell,Conservative,A moral monopoly is the antithesis of a marketplace of ideas.
Thomas Sowell,Conservative,"The more people who are dependent on government handouts, the more votes the left can depend on for an ever-expanding welfare state."
Thomas Sowell,Conservative,"The biggest and most deadly 'tax' rate on the poor comes from a loss of various welfare state benefits - food stamps, housing subsidies and the like - if their income goes up."
Thomas Sowell,Conservative,"Even if the government spends itself into bankruptcy and the economy still does not recover, Keynesians can always say that it would have worked if only the government had spent more."
Thomas Sowell,Conservative,Elections should be held on April 16th- the day after we pay our income taxes. That is one of the few things that might discourage politicians from being big spenders.
Bill Kristol,Conservative,First impressions matter. Most people don't change their political views radically from the ones they first hold.
Bill Kristol,Conservative,"A woman, like a man, should be treated with human decency, according to the rule of law, and free of the abusive, unjust exercise of power. And you don't need to have plumbed the depths of the female or male psyche to live in accord with these principles of civilized life and the maxims of a free society."
Bill Kristol,Conservative,"If cleverness has often been a sign of decadence throughout history, the attempt to be too clever by half is an even more reliable marker of cultural decline."
Bill Kristol,Conservative,"Power tends to corrupt - so we should, in both the public and the private spheres, be on guard against, and erect sturdy guardrails against, the corruptions of power."
Bill Kristol,Conservative,Patriotism is an indispensable weapon in the defense of civilization against barbarism.
Bill Kristol,Conservative,"Some discrimination is perfectly reasonable. The discrimination between trying to teach our kids what most of human history has thought was a desirable lifestyle that will contribute to their happiness, and trying to deter them - not to prohibit, and not to punish - but trying to steer them in a direction that will contribute to their happiness."
Bill Kristol,Conservative,"Many of Bush's defenders have praised him for keeping the country safe since Sept. 11, 2001. He deserves that praise, and I'm perfectly happy to defend most of his surveillance, interrogation and counterterrorism policies against his critics."
Bill Kristol,Conservative,"In any case, decisions on troop levels in the American system of government are not made by any general or set of generals but by the civilian leadership of the war effort."
Bill Kristol,Conservative,"All defense secretaries in wartime have, needless to say, made misjudgments."
Bill Kristol,Conservative,"Shouldn't Democrats insist that Sen. Durbin step down as their whip, the number two man in their leadership?"
Bill Kristol,Conservative,Surely our inaction with respect to Syria is a poor precedent if we're fighting a war on terror.
Bill Kristol,Conservative,Bush is no conservative.
Bill Kristol,Conservative,"If the American people really come to a settled belief that Bush lied us into war, his presidency will be over."
Bill Kristol,Conservative,"I personally - if I were designing the tax code - would have a tax code in which Mitt Romney paid more than 13 percent, given what I know about the kind of investments he made money from."
Bill Kristol,Conservative,"Since Ronald Reagan's election in 1980, conservatives of various sorts, and conservatisms of various stripes, have generally been in the ascendancy. And a good thing, too! Conservatives have been right more often than not - and more often than liberals - about most of the important issues of the day."
Bill Kristol,Conservative,Conservative policies have on the whole worked - insofar as any set of policies can be said to 'work' in the real world. Conservatives of the Reagan-Bush-Gingrich-Bush years have a fair amount to be proud of.
Bill Kristol,Conservative,"Lest conservatives be too proud, it's worth recalling that conservatism's rise was decisively enabled by liberalism's weakness."
Bill Kristol,Conservative,"There will be trying times during Obama's presidency, and liberty will need staunch defenders. Can Obama reshape liberalism to be, as it was under F.D.R., a fighting faith, unapologetically patriotic and strong in the defense of liberty? That would be a service to our country."
Bill Kristol,Conservative,"If terror groups are to be defeated, it is national governments that will have to do so. In nations like India, governments will have to call on the patriotism of citizens to fight the terrorists. In a nation like Pakistan, the government will have to be persuaded to deal with those in their midst who are complicit."
Bill Kristol,Conservative,"The average GOP presidential vote in these last five elections was 44.5 percent. In the last three, it was 48.1 percent. Give Romney an extra point for voter disillusionment with Obama, and a half-point for being better financed than his predecessors. It still strikes me as a path to narrow defeat."
Bill Kristol,Conservative,"Conservatives shouldn't count on the Supreme Court to do our work for us on Obamacare. The Court may rule as it should, and strike down the mandate. But it may not. And even if it does, the future of health care in America - and for that matter, the future of limited government - depends ultimately on the verdict of the American people."
Bill Kristol,Conservative,"While a defeat for Obamacare in the Court would be nice, the defeat of President Obama at the polls on November 6 is crucial. If electoral victory is achieved, Obamacare can and will be repealed - and more judges of a constitutionalist persuasion will be appointed by the next president."
Bill Kristol,Conservative,"Romney has to convince the American public that they need to do something they're not usually inclined to do - replace a sitting president with a challenger. And unlike in 1980 and 1992, when the public was persuaded to do just that, the incumbent president has not been weakened by a primary opponent."
Bill Kristol,Conservative,"If Romney explains why where we are with Obama is unacceptable, why whither we are tending is even worse - and why his own alternative path forward is superior - then we trust the American people to make the right choice in November."
Bill Kristol,Conservative,The rule of law is crucial to a civilized society - so we should go out of our way to uphold and strengthen it to the extent possible.
Bill Kristol,Conservative,Republican government presupposes decent and admirable qualities among its citizens - so we should be serious about strengthening character and inculcating virtue.
Ben Stein,Conservative,"Jump into the middle of things, get your hands dirty, fall flat on your face, and then reach for the stars."
Ben Stein,Conservative,"Screaming at children over their grades, especially to the point of the child's tears, is child abuse, pure and simple. It's not funny and it's not good parenting. It is a crushing, scarring, disastrous experience for the child. It isn't the least bit funny."
Ben Stein,Conservative,"If Iran and North Korea, by some horrible, devilish, nightmarish scenario, got together and went to war at the same time, one against Saudi Arabia and one against South Korea, I don't know what we would do about that. I don't know that we could stop them short of using nuclear weapons."
Ben Stein,Conservative,"I don't believe the most successful people are the ones who got the best grades, got into the best schools, or made the most money."
Ben Stein,Conservative,Darwinism doesn't explain where gravity comes from. It doesn't explain where thermodynamics comes from. It doesn't explain where the laws of physics come from. It doesn't explain where matter came from.
Ben Stein,Conservative,"My parents, products of the Great Depression, were successful people, but lived in a state of constant fear that my sister and I, and they, would sink into the kind of economic insecurity that their generation knew so well."
Ben Stein,Conservative,It is inevitable that some defeat will enter even the most victorious life. The human spirit is never finished when it is defeated... it is finished when it surrenders.
Ben Stein,Conservative,"Personal relationships are the fertile soil from which all advancement, all success, all achievement in real life grows."
Ben Stein,Conservative,"I do all of the grocery shopping in my little family. I buy cheese, of many different kinds, sliced packaged meats and poultry, bagels, immense quantities of eggs, pre-made fried chicken. Milk. Bacon. It is insane how much dairy, deli and bakery stuff I buy."
Ben Stein,Conservative,"You must take the first step. The first steps will take some effort, maybe pain. But after that, everything that has to be done is real-life movement."
Ben Stein,Conservative,"Every soul deserves a shot at a Cadillac, but not everyone should be guaranteed a Cadillac."
Ben Stein,Conservative,Faith is not believing that God can. It is knowing that God will.
Ben Stein,Conservative,"It's really amazing that in the age of unbelief, as a smart man called it, there isn't even more fraud. After all, with no God, there's no one to ever call you to account, and no accounting at all if you can get away with it."
Ben Stein,Conservative,Somewhere there is a map of how it can be done.
Ben Stein,Conservative,Greed is a basic part of animal nature. Being against it is like being against breathing or eating. It means nothing.
Ben Stein,Conservative,I am scared of getting old. I am scared of being ill.
Ben Stein,Conservative,"I think Darwinism as a theory explaining evolution within species is incredibly brilliant - just unbelievably, incredibly brilliant."
Ben Stein,Conservative,I don't like the sound of all the lists he's making.
Ben Stein,Conservative,"When I seemed to be irritable or sad, my father would quote the learned Dr. Knight, and then say, 'Just go to sleep.' Like all smart aleck kids, I thought the advice was silly. But as I've grown older, I've realized just how smart Knight was."
Ben Stein,Conservative,"We're a lazy, undisciplined generation. I don't exempt myself: I spend way too much, even though I make a good income."
Ben Stein,Conservative,"Wow, bad news. Mr. Obama now hates Israel because the Israelis want to build 1,600 apartments in their own capital city, Jerusalem. Russia hates Israel, too. So do the Europeans. So does Ban Ki-moon, a Korean who is secretary-general of the UN."
Ben Stein,Conservative,Men and women succeed because they find a field of endeavor that matches their interests and abilities.
Ben Stein,Conservative,I am so in love with just lying in bed listening to Mozart.
Ben Stein,Conservative,"I thought that all of the sacrifices and blessings of the whole history of mankind have devolved upon me. Thank you, God."
Ben Stein,Conservative,"I was a trial lawyer. At the same time, I was a teacher. I taught about the political and social content of film for American University. Then I left and became a teacher at the University of California at Santa Cruz. I taught about the political and social content of film, but I also taught a course in law for undergraduates."
Glenn Beck,Conservative,I can multitask like crazy. I'm riddled with ADD - a blessing and a curse.
Glenn Beck,Conservative,What is the point of competing for a trophy if everyone gets a trophy?
Glenn Beck,Conservative,"I wasn't just pro-choice, I was pro-everything, until I started taking everything off the table and began looking at things and asking if this view was consistent with that view."
Glenn Beck,Conservative,"I am going to take something I learned over in Israel. Their Independence Day is preceded the 24 hours before with Memorial Day, so it gives them a chance to serve and reflect and then celebrate. I am going to try to start that tradition here in America."
Glenn Beck,Conservative,"What does it mean to be a conservative? I don't even know anymore. I know what it means to me. It means to me, personal responsibility. That if I've done something wrong, its up to me to pay the price. It's up to me to make it right."
Glenn Beck,Conservative,"By the time I was 30, nobody would work with me. I was friendless, I was hopeless, I was suicidal, lost my family - I mean, it was bad. Bottomed out, didn't know what I was going to do. I actually thought I was going to be a chef - go to work in a kitchen someplace."
Glenn Beck,Conservative,I'm not interested in breaking news. I'm interested in telling the story of what's going on and then trying to figure it out.
Glenn Beck,Conservative,"Remember, beneath every cynic there lies a romantic, and probably an injured one."
Glenn Beck,Conservative,Without failure there is no sweetness in success. There's no understanding of it.
Glenn Beck,Conservative,"I believe that if we get out of people's way, the sky's the limit. The sky is the limit."
Glenn Beck,Conservative,"Political Correctness doesn't change us, it shuts us up."
Glenn Beck,Conservative,"No one is guaranteed happiness. You can pursue it, but if you happen to find success along the way on that road to happiness, Conservatives believe you should not be demonized or penalized for it."
Glenn Beck,Conservative,"Please stop teaching my children that everyone gets a trophy just for participating. What is this, the Nobel Prize? Not everybody gets a trophy."
Glenn Beck,Conservative,"We're giving our freedoms away. The American experiment was about freedom. Freedom to be stupid, freedom to fail, freedom to succeed."
Glenn Beck,Conservative,We should reject big government and look inside ourselves for all the things that built this country into what it was.
Glenn Beck,Conservative,You can get rich making fun of me. I know. I've made lots of money making fun of me.
Glenn Beck,Conservative,Timothy McVeigh was a coward. Violence is the stupid way out. It'll discredit any real legitmate movement.
Glenn Beck,Conservative,We just put General Motors in the hands of people who can't even run our own government.
Glenn Beck,Conservative,"I am like Howard Beale. When he came out of the rain and he was like, none of this makes any sense. I am that guy."
Glenn Beck,Conservative,"I am a conservative, but I am not a zombie."
Glenn Beck,Conservative,"It's a real blessing for me to tell you, sir, that calvary has arrived - Fox is here!"
David Frum,Conservative,Nobody ever won an election by spitting at his political opponents.
David Frum,Conservative,"Think tanks do have points of view, and they are absolutely entitled to defend them."
David Frum,Conservative,The elite isn't leading anymore. It's trapped.
David Frum,Conservative,I am really and truly frightened by the collapse of support for the Republican Party by the young and the educated.
David Frum,Conservative,"The great power the president has is that he is the most prominent person in the biggest media event on the planet. He has the attention of the nation and the world. When he speaks, everybody listens."
David Frum,Conservative,There are a lot of wonderful people in America who shouldn't be on the Supreme Court - and a lot who should be on the court who aren't such wonderful people.
David Frum,Conservative,"To balance China, the democracies will need new friends - and India with its fast-growing economy, youthful population, and democratic politics seems the obvious candidate."
David Frum,Conservative,Why should we not expect self-designated environmental leaders to practice what they preach?
David Frum,Conservative,"I'm a latecomer to the environmental issue, which for years seemed to me like an excuse for more government regulation. But I can see that in rich societies, voters are paying less attention to economic issues and more to issues of the spirit, including the environment."
David Frum,Conservative,My mother cared more about how you reasoned than about the conclusions you reached.
David Frum,Conservative,"My mom was truly an iconic figure, a great journalist and a pioneering woman who died at 54 of cancer without ever having revealed to viewers that she was ill."
David Frum,Conservative,"So if I have two pieces of cake, do I have twice as good an experience as the first piece of cake? One of the things I've found in life is that the first piece of cake is the best."
David Frum,Conservative,Republicans originally thought that Fox worked for us and now we're discovering we work for Fox.
David Frum,Conservative,The thing that sustains a strong Fox network is the thing that undermines a strong Republican party.
David Frum,Conservative,A presidential speech is always the work of many hands.
David Frum,Conservative,Speech writers are more vulnerable to vanity than any other group of people in Washington.
David Frum,Conservative,Events don't happen because I write a speech. I am allowed to write a speech because events are going to happen.
David Frum,Conservative,"Whenever you discuss politics, it is always better to use individual names rather then the term neocon."
David Frum,Conservative,"I always believed as a speechwriter that if you could persuade the president to commit himself to certain words, he would feel himself committed to the ideas that underlay those words."
David Frum,Conservative,"The big winners under the American fiscal system are the rich, who pay some of the lowest taxes anywhere in the world; the old, who are the main beneficiaries of the American social service state; farmers, rural people. These are Republican constituencies."
David Frum,Conservative,"Partly because of the desperate economic situation in the country, what were once the leading institutions of conservatism are constrained."
David Frum,Conservative,"People need to understand that in Washington, the process is the punishment."
David Frum,Conservative,"As thrilling as it was, speechwriting is ultimately frustrating for someone who wants to be a writer."
David Frum,Conservative,"In journalism I can only tell what happened. In fiction, I can show it."
David Frum,Conservative,Journalism can go right up to the door of the room in which the decisions are made. A novel can go inside the room - and inside the character's heads.
David Frum,Conservative,"A novel makes it possible to understand not just events, but the people who control the events; not only their choices, but also their motives."
David Horowitz,Conservative,Israel is the canary in the mine. What happens to Israel will eventually happen to America itself.
David Horowitz,Conservative,"In practice, socialism didn't work. But socialism could never have worked because it is based on false premises about human psychology and society, and gross ignorance of human economy."
David Horowitz,Conservative,"The issue here isn't whether every student is brainwashed, it's whether it is appropriate."
David Horowitz,Conservative,"A key to the mentality of the left is that it judges itself by its best intentions, and judges its opponents - America chief among them - by their worst deeds."
David Horowitz,Conservative,"Instead of educating students, these professors are trying to indoctrinate them."
David Horowitz,Conservative,You could mention my name in any hallway in any academic institution and you would have people foaming at the mouth.
David Horowitz,Conservative,"For thirty years, beginning with the invention of a privacy right in the Supreme Court decision Roe v. Wade, the Left has been waging a systematic assault on the constitutional foundation of the nation."
David Horowitz,Conservative,"We can trust our doctors to be professional, to minister equally to their patients without regard to their political or religious beliefs. But we can no longer trust our professors to do the same."
David Horowitz,Conservative,There can be no peace with someone who wants to kill you.
David Horowitz,Conservative,"As a result of America's efforts to realize the ideals of equality and freedom, blacks in America are now the freest and richest black people anywhere on the face of the earth including all of the nations that are ruled by blacks."
David Horowitz,Conservative,"What the left says sounds very good but, in practice, it works out very badly."
David Horowitz,Conservative,"When schools produce students who learned to think on the left or on the right, they're not thinking for themselves."
David Horowitz,Conservative,"If we celebrate Martin Luther King Jr.'s birthday at a time of presidential inaugurals, this is thanks to Ronald Reagan who created the holiday, and not to the Democratic Congress of the Carter years, which rejected it."
David Horowitz,Conservative,"Conservatives, please. Let's not duplicate the manias of the Left as we figure out how to deal with Mr. Obama. He is not exactly the anti-Christ, although a disturbing number of people on the Right are convinced he is."
Jeane Kirkpatrick,Conservative,A government is not legitimate merely because it exists.
Jeane Kirkpatrick,Conservative,I was a woman in a man's world. I was a Democrat in a Republican administration. I was an intellectual in a world of bureaucrats. I talked differently. This may have made me a bit like an ink blot.
Jeane Kirkpatrick,Conservative,"Democracy not only requires equality but also an unshakable conviction in the value of each person, who is then equal."
Jeane Kirkpatrick,Conservative,"I believe that detente was having almost the opposite effect of what was intended. What was intended was to sort of end the contest for power and to stop Soviet expansion, especially by military means and the military build-up, the military contest."
Jeane Kirkpatrick,Conservative,"I always assume that democracy is the only good form of government, quite frankly, and democracy is always to be preferred."
Jeane Kirkpatrick,Conservative,"Cross cultural experience teaches us not simply that people have different beliefs, but that people seek meaning and understand themselves in some sense as members of a cosmos ruled by God."
Jeane Kirkpatrick,Conservative,"I think that it's always appropriate for Americans and for American foreign policy to make clear why we feel that self-government is most compatible with peace, the well-being of people, and human dignity."
Jeane Kirkpatrick,Conservative,"Look, I don't even agree with myself at times."
Jeane Kirkpatrick,Conservative,"Solidarity was the movement that turned the direction of history, I think."
Jeane Kirkpatrick,Conservative,"And I think detente had manifestly failed, and that the pursuit of it was encouraging Soviet expansion and rendering the world more dangerous, and especially rendering the Western world in greater peril."
Jeane Kirkpatrick,Conservative,Democrats can't get elected unless things get worse - and things won't get worse unless they get elected.
Jeane Kirkpatrick,Conservative,We have war when at least one of the parties to a conflict wants something more than it wants peace.
Jeane Kirkpatrick,Conservative,"Truth, which is important to a scholar, has got to be concrete. And there is nothing more concrete than dealing with babies, burps and bottles, frogs and mud."
Jeane Kirkpatrick,Conservative,"The real point is that totalitarian regimes have claimed jurisdiction over the whole person, and the whole society, and they don't at all believe that we should give unto Caesar that which is Caesar's and unto God that which is God's."
Jeane Kirkpatrick,Conservative,There is an absolutely fundamental hostility on the part of totalitarian regimes toward religion.
Jeane Kirkpatrick,Conservative,A doctrine of class war seemed to provide a solution to the problem of poverty to people who know nothing about how wealth is created.
Jeane Kirkpatrick,Conservative,"That is simply that Marxism has been tremendously fashionable in our time, so it has infected a very large number of major institutions in many countries of the world. So I suppose that we shouldn't be too surprised that it should infect the church as well."
Jeane Kirkpatrick,Conservative,"Just as the Russians and the Soviets didn't manage to wipe out languages in Lithuania, neither have they managed to wipe out religion to the extent that we had feared."
Jeane Kirkpatrick,Conservative,I think that there is absolutely no free market in modern industrial states.
Jeane Kirkpatrick,Conservative,There is no pure free-market economy.
Jeane Kirkpatrick,Conservative,"I conclude that it is a fundamental mistake to think that salvation, justice, or virtue come through merely human institutions."
Jeane Kirkpatrick,Conservative,What takes place in the Security Council more closely resembles a mugging than either a political debate or an effort at problem-solving.
Jeane Kirkpatrick,Conservative,"In the years just before... during the Carter years, the Soviets regularly violated, if you will, both the spirit and theletter of arms control agreements, I think, that they had negotiated during the period of detente."
Jeane Kirkpatrick,Conservative,"I'm a political scientist and I study these things, and I know that economic problems, with the rising unemployment and inflation and low productivity and so forth, were a factor in that election, in that defeat of President Carter."
Jeane Kirkpatrick,Conservative,"And I have no doubt that the American people generally believe the world is safer, and that we are safer, when we are stronger."
Charles Krauthammer,Conservative,"Whenever you're faced with an explanation of what's going on in Washington, the choice between incompetence and conspiracy, always choose incompetence."
Charles Krauthammer,Conservative,"Life and consciousness are the two great mysteries. Actually, their substrates are the inanimate. And how do you get from neurons shooting around in the brain to the thought that pops up in your head and mine? There's something deeply mysterious about that. And if you're not struck by the mystery, I think you haven't thought about it."
Charles Krauthammer,Conservative,I am not religious. I do not believe that personhood is conferred upon conception. But I also do not believe that a human embryo is the moral equivalent of a hangnail and deserves no more respect than an appendix.
Charles Krauthammer,Conservative,You're betraying your whole life if you don't say what you think - and you don't say it honestly and bluntly.
Charles Krauthammer,Conservative,"Sometimes it's easy to go where the wind blows, but those that stand firmly planted are forces to be reckoned with."
Charles Krauthammer,Conservative,"Newt Gingrich had to work hard - getting Republican candidates to sign the Contract with America - to nationalize the election that swept Republicans to victory in 1994. A Democratic anti-Tea Party campaign would do that for the Republicans - nationalize the election, gratis - in 2010."
Charles Krauthammer,Conservative,"The Internet is a cauldron of anger every day, every year, election year or not, with unemployment at 10 percent or at two percent. It isn't exactly a good index of what's happening."
Charles Krauthammer,Conservative,"For every moment of triumph, there is an unequal and opposite feeling of despair. Take that iconic photograph of Muhammad Ali standing triumphantly over the prostrate, semiconscious wreckage of Sonny Liston. Great photo. Now think of Liston. Do the pleasure/pain calculus."
Charles Krauthammer,Conservative,"The international community lies at the center of the Obama foreign policy. Unfortunately, it is a fiction. There is no such thing. Different countries have different histories, geographies, necessities, and interests. There's no natural, inherent, or enduring international community."
Charles Krauthammer,Conservative,"The U.N. is worse than disaster. The U.N. creates conflicts. Look at the disgraceful U.N. Human Rights Council: It transmits norms which are harmful, anti-liberty and anti-Semitic, among other things. The world would be better off in its absence."
Charles Krauthammer,Conservative,"Every civilization is founded on sins - every single one. Dispossession, violence, appropriation. What distinguishes civilizations are the ones who rise above it."
Charles Krauthammer,Conservative,"Torture is an impermissible evil. Except under two circumstances. The first is the ticking time bomb. An innocent's life is at stake. The bad guy you have captured possesses information that could save this life. He refuses to divulge. In such a case, the choice is easy."
Charles Krauthammer,Conservative,"When the Cleveland Cavaliers lost the 2015 NBA Finals to Golden State, LeBron James sat motionless in the locker room, staring straight ahead, still wearing his game jersey, for 45 minutes after the final buzzer. Here was a guy immensely wealthy, widely admired, at the peak of his powers - yet stricken, inconsolable."
Charles Krauthammer,Conservative,"The joy of losing consists in this: Where there are no expectations, there is no disappointment."
Charles Krauthammer,Conservative,"I was a Great Society liberal on domestic issues. People ask me, 'How do you go from Walter Mondale to Fox News?' The answer is, 'I was young once.' End of answer."
Charles Krauthammer,Conservative,"If you believe that health care is a public good to be guaranteed by the state, then a single-payer system is the next best alternative. Unfortunately, it is fiscally unsustainable without rationing."
Charles Krauthammer,Conservative,"Chess: It's like alcohol. It's a drug. I have to control it, or it could overwhelm me. I have a regular Monday night game at my home, and I do play a little online."
Charles Krauthammer,Conservative,"In the liberal remake of 'Casablanca,' the police captain comes upon the scene of the shooting and orders his men to 'round up the usual weapons.' It's always the weapon and never the shooter."
Charles Krauthammer,Conservative,"I believe in what I believe, and I think after all these years I've heard a lot of arguments, and I'm convinced by the superiority of the arguments that are made on the conservative side. I think that's a better way to run a society."
Charles Krauthammer,Conservative,I began my journalistic career on the day Ronald Reagan was sworn in. That's the day I showed up for work at 'The New Republic' magazine.
Charles Krauthammer,Conservative,"There is a mystique about psychiatry that people think that you have some kind of a magical lens, you know, Superman's X-ray vision into the soul. One of the reasons I left psychiatry is that I didn't believe that."
Charles Krauthammer,Conservative,"A drone is a high-tech version of an old army and a musket. It ought to be used in Somalia to hunt bad guys, but not in America. I don't want to see it hovering over anybody's home."
Irving Kristol,Conservative,People need religion. It's a vehicle for a moral tradition. A crucial role. Nothing can take its place.
Irving Kristol,Conservative,You have to know one big thing and stick with it. The leaders who had one very big idea and one very big commitment. This permitted them to create something. Those are the ones who leave a legacy.
Rush Limbaugh,Conservative,"If you're healthy, if you don't get sick much, if you don't go to the doctor much or use your health insurance much, you are a genetic lottery winner. It has nothing to do with the way you live, nothing to do with doing the right things. It's just sheer luck, and you are gonna pay for that."
Rush Limbaugh,Conservative,"The message that President Obama delivered in his speech at Notre Dame was: morality is immoral. Pro-life is the extremist position, not a moral position. Yet we should compromise and work to reduce abortions. Where's the compromise between life and death - and why work to reduce the number of them occurring if there's nothing wrong with them?"
Rush Limbaugh,Conservative,"Sorry to interrupt myself, but it's the only way I stop talking."
Rush Limbaugh,Conservative,So what is so strange about saying I want Barack Obama to fail if his mission is to reconstruct and reform this nation so that capitalism and individual liberty are not its foundation? I want the country to survive. I want the country to succeed.
Rush Limbaugh,Conservative,Try to always stay focused on the objectives that are possible and the positive - and on having fun outside of the stuff that's going on in Washington.
Rush Limbaugh,Conservative,This is a frightening statistic. More people vote in 'American Idol' than in any US election.
Rush Limbaugh,Conservative,"I have to tell you, every day is a roller coaster."
Rush Limbaugh,Conservative,"The left has total control over the public education system, all the way up to the university level. It's something they own, and it's going to have to change."
Rush Limbaugh,Conservative,The public school system doesn't get everybody. Every generation has its rebels.
Rush Limbaugh,Conservative,"That's what liberalism is all about, is promoting incompetence on the basis it's fair, because people would be the best if they weren't discriminated against."
Rush Limbaugh,Conservative,"Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher did more to liberate people by defeating the Soviet Union and freeing eastern Europe than the Obamas, the Clintons, and Kerrys of this world ever have. They were all on the wrong side of that debate."
Rush Limbaugh,Conservative,"Life is busy. There are daily concerns and obligations that have to be met, and to take time to think about how precious and special a human life is that you only get one, and that every wasted minute is lost. You can't get it back."
Rush Limbaugh,Conservative,"Police and firefighters are great, but they don't create wealth. They protect it. That's crucial. Teaching is a wonderful profession. Teachers help educate people to become good citizens so that citizens can then go create wealth. But they don't create the wealth themselves."
Rush Limbaugh,Conservative,"Emotional roller coasters tend to emphasize the lows, tend to be more affected by the low, by the dip in an emotional roller coaster than when you are at the peak."
Rush Limbaugh,Conservative,"Events sometimes are the biggest teachers, as opposed to words, lectures, and that kind of thing."
Rush Limbaugh,Conservative,"One of the reasons MSNBC is plummeting is that I, not long ago, refused to play any content from them. I figured, why? I mean, it's genuine depraved partisan politics insanity, genuine extremist radical ignoramuses on that network."
Rush Limbaugh,Conservative,The last thing they want is a revitalized economy now. I'm not saying the Democrats don't want a strong economy. Don't misunderstand. They just don't want it now.
Rush Limbaugh,Conservative,"The American dream has now morphed into an expectation. And if it isn't provided, or if it doesn't happen, then people feel cheated."
Rush Limbaugh,Conservative,"Liberals are some of the most arrogant, condescending smart alecks, but they're just pure ignorant, and they fit the bill of people who have no love and no respect for the founding of this country."
Rush Limbaugh,Conservative,Character matters; leadership descends from character.
Rush Limbaugh,Conservative,"There's nobody who cares more about you than you, and there's nobody better equipped to take care of you than you."
Rush Limbaugh,Conservative,Charity is willingly given from the heart.
Rush Limbaugh,Conservative,"Canada has an immigration policy you might want to emulate. They want more skilled and educated immigrants. In fact, that's all they take. But, see, since nobody's watching them, and they're not a superpower, nobody really cares. So they are allowed to act in their best interests."
Rush Limbaugh,Conservative,"Everybody in life is pursuing money: left, right, charity, nonprofits, everybody's pursuing money. Everybody wants a raise. Everybody wants to improve their standard of living. Everybody wants to be rich, and especially those that go to Washington."
Rush Limbaugh,Conservative,"The polls are just being used as another tool of voter suppression. The polls are an attempt to not reflect public opinion, but to shape it. Yours. They want to depress the heck out of you."
Bill O'Really,Conservative,"All this is beyond me. I had trouble with Lincoln Logs. Remember Lincoln Logs? I mean, that was it for me."
Bill O'Really,Conservative,"Winston Churchill said that democracy was the worst possible form of government, except for all the others. Maybe we can say the same about capitalism. For all of its faults, it gives most hardworking people a chance to improve themselves economically, even as the deck is stacked in favor of the privileged few...  Here are the choices most of us face in such a system: Get bitter or get busy."
Bill O'Really,Conservative,I don't care about the Constitution!
Bill O'Really,Conservative,Saddam Hussein... I believe is involved with this World Trade Center and Pentagon bombing. I believe that you're going to find out that money from Iraq flowed in and helped this happen.
Bill O'Really,Conservative,"I want to quote this— ""On my honor, I will do my best to do my duty to God and to my country and obey Scout law"", on and on and on and on. I mean, God's in the first 10 words. So – why did you have to tell them you were an atheist if you didn't have any trouble reading the oath? Why didn't you just shut up?"
Bill O'Really,Conservative,"I wouldn't read the book, and I'll tell you why. I wouldna read Mein Kampf either. If I were going to UNC in 1941, and you, professor, said read Mein Kampf, I woulda said, ""Hey, professor, with all due respect, shove it. I ain't reading it."""
Bill O'Really,Conservative,"Paula Evan, Winston-Salem North Carolina: ""Bill, if you are so concerned about public figures being bad role models for children please stop rudely interrupting your guest and telling them to shut up!"" Well, the 'shut up' line has happened only once in six years, Miss Evans."
Bill O'Really,Conservative,Our military machine will crush Iraq in a matter of days and there's no question that it will.
Bill O'Really,Conservative,"[to guest saying the war is ""going to go on for months""] There's no way. There's absolutely no way. They may bomb for a matter of weeks, try to soften them up as they did in Afghanistan. But once the United States and Britain unleash, it's maybe hours. They're going to fold like that."
Bill O'Really,Conservative,"Once the war against Saddam Hussein begins, we expect every American to support our military, and if you can't do that, just shut up. Americans, and indeed our foreign allies, who actively work against our military once the war is underway, will be considered enemies of the state by me. Just fair warning to you, Barbara Streisand and others who see the world as you do. I don't want to demonize anyone, but anyone who hurts this country in a time like this, well — let's just say you will be spotlighted."
Bill O'Really,Conservative,"Think about this — some of us actively fighting to remove Saddam Hussein don't agree with the cause themselves, but they're doing their duty. And it is our duty as loyal Americans to shut up once the fighting begins, unless — unless facts prove the operation wrong, as was the case in Vietnam."
Bill O'Really,Conservative,"If the Americans go in and overthrow Saddam Hussein and it's clean, he has nothing, I will apologize to the nation, and I will not trust the Bush Administration again, all right?"
Bill O'Really,Conservative,"I was wrong. I am not pleased about it at all and I think all Americans should be concerned about this… What do you want me to do, go over and kiss the camera?"
Bill O'Really,Conservative,"I go on Good Morning America yesterday and say that I'm personally sorry my analysis on WMDs before the war was wrong and I'm angry about the CIA mistake. I mean, any honest commentator would say that, but the left-wing press sees my admission as some kind of liberal policy vindication and is using my words to hammer the president. Well, that's dishonest. I still believe removing Saddam was the right thing to do and that history will prove it. And there's also the possibility that WMDs will be found, so I might have to apologize for my apology. I don't mind. I still hope they find WMDs."
Bill O'Really,Conservative,"Like a brain surgeon who drinks a martini when he's not on call, the successful kids in your school may smoke pot on occasion, but they are not stoners."
Bill O'Really,Conservative,"And guys, if you exploit a girl, it will come back to get you. That's called ""karma."""
Bill O'Really,Conservative,"There is no question that Whoopi Goldberg's foolish comments at a John Kerry fundraiser hurt Kerry — who had no idea how to handle the situation. Chevy Chase should have learned from that. Even he has to know that calling the president of the United States an ""F"" is not going to be accepted by most Americans. Now you don't see this kind of thing on the right. You don't see prominent conservatives cursing out Democratic members of Congress, for example.  Now I know talk radio can get rough but nothing like what these Hollywood nitwits are throwing out there."
Bill O'Really,Conservative,"I'll tell you what. I've been in combat. I've seen it, I've been close to it... and if my unit is in danger, and I've got a captured guy, and the guy knows where the enemy is, and I'm looking him in the eye, the guy better tell me. That's all I'm gonna tell you. The guy better tell me. If it's life or death, he's going first."
Bill O'Really,Conservative,"Roger from Portland
You just said you've been in combat, but you've never been in the military, have you?
Bill O'Reilly
No, I have not.
Roger from Portland
Then why do you say you've been in combat?
Bill O'Reilly
Why do I say that, Roger? Because I was in the middle of a couple of firefights in South and Central America.
Roger from Portland
But you were a media guy.
Bill O'Reilly
Yeah. A media guy with a pen, not a gun. And people were shooting at me, Roger."
Bill O'Really,Conservative,"I just wish Katrina had only hit the United Nations building, nothing else, just had flooded them out, and I wouldn't have rescued them."
Bill O'Really,Conservative,"If I'm the president of the United States, I walk right into Union Square, I set up my little presidential podium, and I say, ""Listen, citizens of San Francisco, if you vote against military recruiting, you're not going to get another nickel in federal funds. Fine. You want to be your own country? Go right ahead. And if Al-Qaeda comes in here and blows you up, we're not going to do anything about it. We're going to say, look, every other place in America is off limits to you, except San Francisco. You want to blow up the Coit Tower? Go ahead."""
Bill O'Really,Conservative,"Most people showed up, and I think there were, like, 1,300 of them, to hear what the woman had to say. These far-left Nazis— and that's what they are, OK?— came in, not only insulted Ms. Coulter but violated the rights of the people who came to hear what she had to say. This is unacceptable on every level. And it's unacceptable to do what they do on their websites: to defame, to lie, to do whatever, you know, sleazy thing they can think of to people with whom they disagree."
Bill O'Really,Conservative,"David Letterman
How can you possibly take exception with the motivation and the position of someone like Cindy Sheehan?
Bill O'Reilly
Because I think she's run by far-left elements in this country. I feel bad for the woman.
David Letterman
Have you lost family members in armed conflict?
Bill O'Reilly
No, I have not.
David Letterman
Well, then you can hardly speak for her, can you?"
Bill O'Really,Conservative,"When I die, I don't want my demise to be used as a political rally, and that's what happened yesterday."
Bill O'Really,Conservative,"I'm not buying this.  If, if you're eleven years old, or twelve years old, thirteen, and you have a strong bond with your family, OK.  Even if the guy [kidnapper] threatens you - this and that. … If you can get away, you get away."
Bill O'Really,Conservative,"Bill O'Reilly
I'm effete. I'm not a tough guy. This is all an act.
Stephen Colbert
You're breaking my heart, Bill.
Bill O'Reilly
I'm sensitive, y'know, I'm a—
Stephen Colbert
If you're an act, then what am I?"
Bill O'Really,Conservative,"The Soros-Lewis mob despises Fox News because we have their number and report on them accurately. They use the MoveOn website to smear this network and others with whom they disagree. These people use propaganda techniques perfected by Dr. Joseph Goebbels, the Nazi minister of information. They lie, distort, defame all the time."
Bill O'Really,Conservative,"America today is a confused society, caught up in a terror war, a culture war, and a media war, where honesty and professional standards have vanished."
Bill O'Really,Conservative,"Bill O'Reilly
I think it takes more faith to be like you, an atheist, than like me, a believer, and it's because of nature. You know, I just don't think we could've lucked out to have the tides come in, the tides go out, sun go up, sun go down. Don't think it could've happened.
Richard Dawkins
We have a very full understanding of why the tides go in, the tides go out, of why the continents drift about, of why life is there. Science is ever more piling on the evidence, piling on the understanding.
Bill O'Reilly
But it had to get there, I understand that you, you know, the uh, physiology of it if you will, but it had to come from somewhere."
Bill O'Really,Conservative,"The hate websites on both the left and the right— I object to. You know I object to. Now, you're a little bit more a libertarian about this in our previous conversations. But I say this. There's no difference between the KKK and the Nazis, who have websites, than the Daily Kos. Because the Daily Kos is basically saying, ""We're allowing this kind of thing to come on."" It's good that Tony Snow has a recurrence of cancer; we hope he dies. We're sorry the assassination attempt against Dick Cheney failed; let them try again. And on and on and on and on."
Bill O'Really,Conservative,This is the worst stuff on the Internet. There isn't anything worse than this.
Bill O'Really,Conservative,"Chris Dodd
Talking about Al-Qaeda attacking San Francisco and blowing up San Francisco.
Bill O'Reilly
When did I say that, Senator?
Chris Dodd
That's not offensive?
Bill O'Reilly
When did I say that?
Chris Dodd
You said it in 2005, I think is correct?
Bill O'Reilly
When? Where? What forum? When?
Chris Dodd
Right here, I believe, on your own show.
Bill O'Reilly
No, you're wrong. I didn't say it here. You don't know what the hell I said, with all due respect."
Bill O'Really,Conservative,"Bill O'Reilly
You didn't hear it and you don't know what I did.
Chris Dodd
Focus on your legitimate criticism.
Bill O'Reilly
Look, you're a propagandist, Senator. You're a propagandist."
Bill O'Really,Conservative,"And I couldn't get over the fact that there was no difference between Sylvia's Restaurant and any other restaurant in New York City. I mean, it was exactly the same, even though it's run by blacks, primarily black patronship. It was the same."
Bill O'Really,Conservative,"There wasn't one person in Sylvia's who was screaming, ""MFer, I want more iced tea."" You know, I mean everybody was— it was like goin' into an Italian restaurant in an all-white suburb, in the sense of people were sitting there and they were ordering and having fun, and there wasn't any kinda craziness at all."
Bill O'Really,Conservative,CNN has gone to the dark side.
Bill O'Really,Conservative,"You know, look, if I could strangle these people and not go to hell and get executed, I would, but I can't."
Bill O'Really,Conservative,Many parents are worried in America about the gay agenda and indoctrination of their children to see homosexuality in a certain way.
Bill O'Really,Conservative,"It's all coming from the haters on the far left. Just throw it in the garbage. But the regular folks who really enjoy this program, what we want you to ask, Laurie, is why do we do things? Why do we do them?"
Bill O'Really,Conservative,"On the pinhead front, 16-year-old Jamie Lynn Spears is pregnant. The sister of Britney says she is shocked. I bet. Now most teens are pinheads in some ways. But here the blame falls primarily on the parents of the girl, who obviously have little control over her...."
Bill O'Really,Conservative,"Bill O'Reilly
You know, what's the difference between the Ku Klux Klan and Arianna Huffington? What's the difference?
Mary Katherine Ham
Well, I think there's a difference. Well, she actually— I think things have actually improved because people like you and like myself speak out about these things and say that, hey this is a—
Bill O'Reilly
I don't see any difference between Huffington and the Nazis.
Mary Katherine Ham
She actually—
Bill O'Reilly
What's the difference?"
Bill O'Really,Conservative,"Mary Katherine Ham
I still don't think she's a Nazi.
Bill O'Reilly
I didn't say she was a Nazi.
Mary Katherine Ham
[laughing] Alright.
Bill O'Reilly
I only said there's no difference between what the two do. I want everybody to know that."
Bill O'Really,Conservative,Millions of American families are dealing with teenage pregnancy...It is true that some Americans will judge Governor Palin and her family. There's nothing anyone can do about it.
Bill O'Really,Conservative,"Meantime, the anti-liberal Fox News Channel and The Wall Street Journal, whose editorial page is conservative, are both doing very well."
Bill O'Really,Conservative,"Well, you know, if Mr. Hawking wants to come on and tell us how the earth got here or why the sun comes up and goes down without interruption, why the tide goes in and goes out — no miscommunications ever, you know, if he wants to explain how all that happened, we're ready to receive him, but of course he can't."
Bill O'Really,Conservative,"If they wanna be nonbelievers, I don't care, that's up to them, but it's just as much of a stretch to be an atheist as it is to believe in God, because there's no explanation for how the planet got here, and Hawkings [sic] doesn't have it."
Bill O'Really,Conservative,"Every fair-minded person should support government safety nets for people who need assistance through no fault of their own. But guys like McDermott don't make distinctions like that. For them, the baby Jesus wants us to ""provide,"" no matter what the circumstance. But being a Christian, I know that while Jesus promoted charity at the highest level, he was not self-destructive."
Bill O'Really,Conservative,"I'll tell you why it's not a scam, in my opinion, all right? Tide goes in, tide goes out, never a miscommunication. You can't explain that."
Bill O'Really,Conservative,"It's not a traditional America anymore. And there are 50% of the voting public who want stuff. They want things, and who is going to give them things? President Obama. He knows it, and he ran on it. And whereby 20 years ago, President Obama would have be roundly defeated by an establishment candidate like Mitt Romney. The white establishment is now the minority. And the voters, many of them, feel that this economic system is stacked against them and they want stuff."
Bill O'Really,Conservative,Do the atheists in Wisconsin realize they're going to Hell? Did you ask them that?
Bill O'Really,Conservative,Bill O'Reilly: What religion is involved with Christmas? What religion?David Silverman: Christianity.O'Reilly:  That's not a religion. That's a philosophy.
Bill O'Really,Conservative,"O'Reilly: Mr. Silverman, it is a fact that Christianity is not a religion, it is a philosophy. If the government were saying that the Methodist religion, all right, deserves a special place in the public square, I will be on your side.Silverman: So you are going to actually tell me on live television that Christianity is not a religion?O'Reilly: Correct. It is a phil-o-so-phy."
Bill O'Really,Conservative,"John Stossel: That nun has something to complain about, but your ""war on Christianity"", you're just a 10-foot-tall crybaby.Bill O'Reilly: I'm crying.John Stossel: It's not so bad. I mean, no, Christians aren't being killed.Bill O'Reilly: No, not yet.John Stossel: And not in America, and they're not going to be.Bill O'Reilly: They're verbally being killed."
Bill O'Really,Conservative,"History will record that the two biggest deficits of the Obama administration were the failure to create a robust economy and the president's retreat from the terrorist battlefield. For years, Talking Points has been telling you the Obama administration has no strategy to defeat the ISIS threat. But President Obama somehow does not seem to understand that the civilized world is losing the fight against ISIS. Just hours before the Paris attack the president said 'we have contained' ISIS. Obviously that is not true. They are a threat worldwide, they continue to kill people with impunity. Nevertheless, the president is unrepentant and unwilling to admit that his strategy has failed. At a press conference today in Turkey he said, 'The strategy we're pursing is the right one.' The Republican Party is taking note. Senator Ted Cruz says 'Barack Obama does not wish to defend the country,' and Senator Lindsey Graham warns, 'There's a 9/11 coming, and it's coming from Syria if we don't disrupt their operations inside of Syria.' It is long past time that we the people demand ISIS be defeated, not contained."
Barry Goldwater,Conservative,I would remind you that extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice! And let me remind you also that moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue!
Barry Goldwater,Conservative,"Those who seek absolute power, even though they seek it to do what they regard as good, are simply demanding the right to enforce their own version of heaven on earth. And let me remind you, they are the very ones who always create the most hellish tyrannies. Absolute power does corrupt, and those who seek it must be suspect and must be opposed. Their mistaken course stems from false notions of equality, ladies and gentlemen. Equality, rightly understood, as our founding fathers understood it, leads to liberty and to the emancipation of creative differences. Wrongly understood, as it has been so tragically in our time, it leads first to conformity and then to despotism."
Barry Goldwater,Conservative,I'm the most underdog underdog there is.
Barry Goldwater,Conservative,"It is a fact that Lyndon Johnson and his curious crew seem to believe that progress in this country is best served simply and directly through the ever-expanding gift power of the everlastingly growing Federal Government. One thing we all know, and I assure you I do: that's a much easier way to get votes than my way. It always has been. It's political Daddyism, and it's as old as demagogues and despotism."
Barry Goldwater,Conservative,Most Americans have no real understanding of the operations of the international moneylenders... the accounts of the Federal Reserve have never been audited. It operates outside the control of Congress and... manipulates the credit of the United States
Barry Goldwater,Conservative,"My faith in the future rests squarely on the belief that man, if he doesn't first destroy himself, will find new answers in the universe, new technologies, new disciplines, which will contribute to a vastly different and better world in the twenty-first century. Recalling what has happened in my short lifetime in the fields of communication and transportation and the life sciences, I marvel at the pessimists who tell us that we have reached the end of our productive capacity, who project a future of primarily dividing up what we now have and making do with less. To my mind the single essential element on which all discoveries will be dependent is human freedom."
Barry Goldwater,Conservative,"I used to receive a hundred calls a year from people who wanted me to get into the Green Room at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, because that's where the Air Force stored all the material gathered on UFOs. I once asked Curtis LeMay if I could get in that room, and he just gave me holy hell. He said, ""Not only can't you get into it but don't you ever mention it to me again."" Now, with the millions of planets that we know are up there, it's hard for me to believe that ours is the only goddam one that has things that can think walking around on it. So when people tell me they've seen UFOs, I don't say they haven't. In fifteen thousand hours of flying, I've never seen one, but I've talked to pilots who have. I talked to an airline crew that swore up and down that an object came alongside of them one night, and before they could do anything it vanished. We lost a military pilot who went up to intercept strange lights and never came back. His airplane disappeared, too. I won't argue for or against."
Barry Goldwater,Conservative,You don't need to be 'straight' to fight and die for your country. You just need to shoot straight.
Barry Goldwater,Conservative,Everyone knows that gays have served honorably in the military since at least the time of Julius Caesar.
Barry Goldwater,Conservative,"I won't say the papers misquote me, but I sometimes wonder where Christianity would be today if some of those reporters had been Matthew. Mark. Luke, and John."
Barry Goldwater,Conservative,"Mark my word, if and when these preachers get control of the [Republican] party, and they're sure trying to do so, it's going to be a terrible damn problem. Frankly, these people frighten me. Politics and governing demand compromise. But these Christians believe they are acting in the name of God, so they can't and won't compromise. I know, I've tried to deal with them."
Barry Goldwater,Conservative,"Conservatism, we are told, is out-of-date. This charge is preposterous and we ought to boldly say so. The laws of God, and of nature, have no dateline. […] These principles are derived from the nature of man, and from the truths that God has revealed about His creation. […] To suggest that the Conservative philosophy is out of date is akin to saying that the Golden Rule, or the Ten Commandments or Aristotle’s Politics are out of date."
Barry Goldwater,Conservative,"I have little interest in streamlining government or in making it more efficient, for I mean to reduce its size. I do not undertake to promote welfare, for I propose to extend freedom. My aim is not to pass laws, but to repeal them. It is not to inaugurate new programs, but to cancel old ones that do violence to the Constitution, or that have failed their purpose, or that impose on the people an unwarranted financial burden. I will not attempt to discover whether legislation is ""needed"" before I have first determined whether it is constitutionally permissible. And if I should later be attacked for neglecting my constituents' ""interests,"" I shall reply that I was informed that their main interest is liberty and that in that cause I am doing the very best I can."
Barry Goldwater,Conservative,"It's a wonderful feeling to be a conservative these days. When I ran for President 17 years ago I was told I was behind the times. Now everybody tells me I was ahead of my time. All I can say is that time certainly is an elusive companion.  But those reactions illustrate how far the ideological pendulum has swung in recent years. The American people have expressed their desire for a new course in our public policy in this country, a conservative course.  Being a conservative in America traditionally has meant that one holds a deep, abiding respect for the Constitution. We conservatives believe sincerely in the integrity of the Constitution. We treasure the freedoms that document protects.  We believe, as the founding fathers did, that we ""are endowed by our Creator with certain unalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness."""
Barry Goldwater,Conservative,"The specter of single-issue religious groups is growing over our land. … One of the great strengths of our political system always has been our tendency to keep religious issues in the background. By maintaining the separation of church and state, the United States has avoided the intolerance which has so divided the rest of the world with religious wars."
Barry Goldwater,Conservative,"There is no position on which people are so immovable as their religious beliefs. There is no more powerful ally one can claim in a debate than Jesus Christ, or God, or Allah, or whatever one calls this supreme being. But like any powerful weapon, the use of God's name on one's behalf should be used sparingly. The religious factions that are growing throughout our land are not using their religious clout with wisdom. They are trying to force government leaders into following their position 100 percent. If you disagree with these religious groups on a particular moral issue, they complain, they threaten you with a loss of money or votes or both."
Barry Goldwater,Conservative,"In the past couple years, I have seen many news items that referred to the Moral Majority, prolife and other religious groups as ""the new right,"" and the ""new conservatism."" Well, I have spent quite a number of years carrying the flag of the old conservatism. And I can say with conviction that the religious issues of these groups have little or nothing to do with conservative or liberal politics.  The uncompromising position of these groups is a divisive element that could tear apart the very spirit of our representative system, if they gain sufficient strength.  As it is, they are diverting us away from the vital issues that our Government needs to address. Far too much of the time of members of Congress and officials in the Executive Branch is used up dealing with special-interest groups on issues like abortion, school busing, ERA, prayer in the schools and pornography. While these are important moral issues, they are secondary right now to our national security and economic survival."
Barry Goldwater,Conservative,"I must make it clear that I don't condemn these groups for what they believe. I happen to share many of the values emphasized by these organizations.  I'm frankly sick and tired of the political preachers across this country telling me as a citizen that if I want to be a moral person, I must believe in ""A,"" ""B,"" ""C"" and ""D."" Just who do they think they are? And from where do they presume to claim the right to dictate their moral beliefs to me? And I am even more angry as a legislator who must endure the threats of every religious group who thinks it has some God-granted right to control my vote on every roll call in the Senate. I am warning them today: I will fight them every step of the way if they try to dictate their moral convictions to all Americans in the name of ""conservatism.""  … This unrelenting obsession with a particular goal destroys the perspective of many decent people. They have become easy prey to manipulation and misjudgment."
Barry Goldwater,Conservative,"The religious factions will go on imposing their will on others unless the decent people connected to them recognize that religion has no place in public policy.  They must learn to make their views known without trying to make their views the only alternatives. The great decisions of Government cannot be dictated by the concerns of religious factions. This was true in the days of Madison, and it is just as true today. We have succeeded for 205 years in keeping the affairs of state separate from the uncompromising idealism of religious groups and we mustn't stop now.  To retreat from that separation would violate the principles of conservatism and the values upon which the framers built this democratic republic."
Barry Goldwater,Conservative,"Johnson was a dirty fighter. Any campaign with him in it would involve a lot of innuendo and lies. Johnson was a wheeler-dealer. Neither he nor anyone else could change that. That's what he was. And Johnson was a treacherous boot. He'd slap you on the back today and stab you in the back tomorrow. Moreover, LBJ was dull. He was a lousy public speaker. The man didn't believe half of what he said. He was a hypocrite, and it came through in the hollowness of his speech. LBJ made me sick."
Barry Goldwater,Conservative,"Vietnam is about halfway around the world from Washington. It's as large as the major European nations, with nearly 130,000 square miles... Its ancient recorded history goes back to 111 B.C... We entered (that country) with considerable ignorance."
Barry Goldwater,Conservative,"I told Johnson and old colleagues on Capitol Hill that we had two clear choices. Either win the [Vietnam] war in a relatively short time, say within a year, or pull out all our troops and come home."
Barry Goldwater,Conservative,"When you say ""radical right"" today, I think of these moneymaking ventures by fellows like Pat Robertson and others who are trying to take the Republican Party away from the Republican Party, and make a religious organization out of it. If that ever happens, kiss politics goodbye."
Barry Goldwater,Conservative,"I said one day that Dole had a temper, and he got madder than hell. He has one. He has a mean one."
Barry Goldwater,Conservative,"The best thing Clinton could do — I think I wrote him a letter about this, but I'm not sure — is to shut up.... He has no discipline."
Barry Goldwater,Conservative,"The big thing is to make this country, along with every other country in the world with a few exceptions, quit discriminating against people just because they're gay.  You don't have to agree with it, but they have a constitutional right to be gay. And that's what brings me into it."
Barry Goldwater,Conservative,"Having spent 37 years of my life in the military as a reservist, and never having met a gay in all of that time, and never having even talked about it in all those years, I just thought, why the hell shouldn't they serve? They're American citizens. As long as they're not doing things that are harmful to anyone else... So I came out for it."
Andrew Sullivan,Conservative,"Monsters remain human beings. In fact, to reduce them to a subhuman level is to exonerate them of their acts of terrorism and mass murder — just as animals are not deemed morally responsible for killing. Insisting on the humanity of terrorists is, in fact, critical to maintaining their profound responsibility for the evil they commit.And, if they are human, then they must necessarily not be treated in an inhuman fashion. You cannot lower the moral baseline of a terrorist to the subhuman without betraying a fundamental value. That is why the Geneva Conventions have a very basic ban on ""cruel treatment and torture,"" and ""outrages upon personal dignity, in particular humiliating and degrading treatment"" — even when dealing with illegal combatants like terrorists. That is why the Declaration of Independence did not restrict its endorsement of freedom merely to those lucky enough to find themselves on U.S. soil — but extended it to all human beings, wherever they are in the world, simply because they are human."
Andrew Sullivan,Conservative,Today's age of politicized and intolerant Christianism seems to me to be one of those moments when Christianity has estranged itself most thoroughly from the priorities and spirit of its founder. But this will pass. Christianity will survive Christianism. Some true followers of Jesus will recover their faith from Caesar's grip at some point.
Andrew Sullivan,Conservative,First silence. Then denial. Then support of the insupportable. Then vilification of the dissenters. The pattern is as old as time.
Andrew Sullivan,Conservative,Torture was necessary to maintain slavery. It was integral to slavery. You cannot have slavery without some torture or the threat of torture; and you cannot have torture without slavery. You cannot imprison a free man for ever unless you have broken him; and you can only forcibly break a man's soul by torturing it out of him. Slavery dehumanizes; torture dehumanizes in exactly the same way. The torture of human beings who have no freedom and no recourse to the courts is slavery.
Andrew Sullivan,Conservative,"In thinking about the costs of this war, and thinking about renewing it, we have to reconsider what it has done to America. It has turned the U.S. military into a force at ease with abuse of captives and civilians, occupying a Muslim nation. Some of this is surely due to the sheer hell of fighting an enemy you cannot see, surrounded by people you do not understand or trust, and being killed randomly in urban or desert insurgency conditions where friend and foe are close to indistinguishable, and where your buddies are killed on a regular basis by faceless cowards. You can certainly understand how soldiers grow completely numb in the face of abuse in those circumstances. Every ""hajji"" can seem like the enemy after a while. It requires men and women of almost saintly capabilities to keep their moral bearings among terrorists who massacre scores of innocents as a religious duty, among people whose differences are impossible for young troops to figure out in split-seconds. In such conditions, and as a consequences of grotesque under-manning, the breakdown in ethical discipline is no big surprise. But that doesn't make it any the less of a big deal."
Andrew Sullivan,Conservative,"At home, the public has come to accept torture as a legitimate instrument of government, something that the Founding Fathers would have been aghast at. We have come to accept that the president is not bound by habeas corpus, if he decides he isn't. He can sign laws and say they don't apply to him. We know that an American citizen can be detained for years without charges and tortured and abused — and then critical evidence of his torture will be ""lost."" We have come to accept our phones being tapped without a warrant and without our even knowing about it. These huge surrenders of liberty have occurred without much public outcry. When the next major terrorist attack comes, the question will simply be how much liberty Americans have left. That is a victory al Qaeda could not have achieved by force of arms. It is something they have achieved with our witting and conscious help."
Andrew Sullivan,Conservative,"There is no state more abject than the man broken on the waterboarding rack, or frozen to near death, or forced to stand for days on end, or hooded and strapped to shackles in a ceiling, or having his legs pulpified by repeated beating, or forced to eat pork and drink alcohol against religious strictures. Everything I have just described has been done by US forces under the command and direction of George W. Bush. They are all acts of absolute tyranny, conducted by people who at that moment are absolute tyrants."
Andrew Sullivan,Conservative,"A constitutional republic dedicated before everything to the protection of liberty cannot legalize torture and remain a constitutional republic. It imports into itself a tumor of pure tyranny. That tumor, we know from history, always always spreads, as it has spread in the US military these past shameful years. The fact that hefty proportions of US soldiers now support its use as a routine matter reveals how deep the rot has already gone. The fact that now a majority of Republican candidates proudly support such torture has rendered the GOP the party most inimical to liberty in America. When you combine torture's evil with the claims of the hard right that a president can ignore all laws and all treaties in wartime, and that ""wartime"" is now permanent, you have laid the ground for the abolition of the American experiment in self-government."
Andrew Sullivan,Conservative,"It is not an opinion that ""enhanced interrogation techniques"" are torture. It is a legal fact. And it is also a legal fact that the president is a war criminal."
Andrew Sullivan,Conservative,"What al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein did was an extreme form of sadistic torture, the kind that psychopaths enjoy and inflict. But that does not make, say, freezing someone to near-death, reviving him, re-freezing him again any less torture. Yes, we did that, carefully monitored by Rumsfeld. It does not make the Khmer Rouge waterboarding technique any less torture. It does not make contorting a prisoner into an excruciating stress position and then smashing his head against the wall any less torture. We should not forget that there have been more than a hundred deaths in U.S.-run torture chambers under George W. Bush either.So I really don't get the point. Unless it is the following: If we are not as evil as al Qaeda, we are not torturing. This is logically and legally and morally a complete non-sequitur. And it is truly mind-boggling to believe that the arbiters of our moral compass are now the men who murdered 3000 innocents on 9/11. I don't know about you, but that's not the standard against which I believe America should judge herself. Or ever, ever has."
Andrew Sullivan,Conservative,"Critics will no doubt say I am accusing the Bush administration of being Hitler. I'm not. There is no comparison between the political system in Germany in 1937 and the U.S. in 2007. What I am reporting is a simple empirical fact: the interrogation methods approved and defended by this president are not new. Many have been used in the past. The very phrase used by the president to describe torture-that-isn't-somehow-torture — ""enhanced interrogation techniques"" — is a term originally coined enhanced interrogation techniques by the Nazis. The techniques are indistinguishable. The methods were clearly understood in 1948 as war-crimes. The punishment for them was death."
Andrew Sullivan,Conservative,"The decent people in this administration — mainly career military brass and Condi's circle — are finally pushing back against the war crimes of Cheney and Rumsfeld. But the Bush mojo is the same. They don't actually care about the effectiveness of their policies, just how they can be used as wedge issues. Last summer, Karl Rove was determined to use torture and Gitmo as his electoral path to retaining the Congress. He thought he could portray the Democrats as weak on terror. Of course, only cowards and failures use torture. And how many Democrats or Republicans could have made us more vulnerable to more terror than Bush has these past five years?"
Andrew Sullivan,Conservative,"The occupation of Iraq is completely self-perpetuating: The worse things get the more we are obliged to stay. And the longer we stay the worse things get. Wonderful, no? Being trapped in Iraq, moreover, has clearly prevented us from tackling Iran with any traction. One argument commonly made for staying in Iraq makes no sense to me at all. It's McCain's ""if we leave, they will follow us home."" But if we stay, they can follow us home as well. And by staying, we have clearly created more of them to follow us. The second argument that fails to convince is that by leaving, we give al Qaeda a propaganda coup. Yes, we would, and it would be intellectually dishonest to deny that. Any argument for withdrawal needs to take that into account. But by staying and losing, we also give al Qaeda a propaganda coup. And by constantly giving al Qaeda an anti-imperial narrative, we also prevent Muslims and Arabs from recognizing them for what they are: not anti-imperial liberators but theo-fascists.It's becoming clearer and clearer to me that if we want to win this long war, we have to leave Iraq. Sooner rather than later."
Andrew Sullivan,Conservative,"We can and must deter terror; we can and must conduct surveillance; we can and must find terror cells and plotters; and we need to fight them aggressively in the battlefield abroad and prosecute them carefully under the law if they are citizens at home. But the zeal and arrogance of Bush and Cheney have done this at the expense of the heart and soul of Western jurisprudence and constitutional liberty. They must not get away with it. Our inheritance is too precious to squander in a fit of panic, sadism and hubris."
Andrew Sullivan,Conservative,"Previous war-presidents have gathered opponents into their cabinets, reached out to estranged former allies, engaged in aggressive diplomacy to maximize effectiveness and rallied the whole country for the fight. What does this one do? Gets a bunch of right-wing ""journalists"" into the White House to spread some partisan talking points. What a fucking disgrace this man and his journalistic lackeys are.Excuse my language. But I can't take this any longer. We're at war; and he's still playing Rove's game."
Andrew Sullivan,Conservative,"Any president can start a war, and use the chaos of disorder that such a war creates as an indefinite argument for prolonging it. It's a war that keeps on giving. Failure means it's even more necessary to keep failing."
Andrew Sullivan,Conservative,The one thing we know about torture is that it was never designed in the first place to get at the actual truth of anything; it was designed in the darkest days of human history to produce false confessions in order to annihilate political and religious dissidents. And that is how it always works: it gets confessions regardless of their accuracy.
Andrew Sullivan,Conservative,"Torture gives false information. And the worst scenarios that tortured detainees coughed up — many of them completely innocent, remember — may well have come to fuel US national security policy. And of course they also fueled more torture. Because once you hear of the existential plots confessed by one tortured prisoner, you need to torture more prisoners to get at the real truth. We do not know what actual intelligence they were getting, and Cheney has ensured that we will never know. But it is perfectly conceivable that the torture regime — combined with panic and paranoia — created an imaginationland of untruth and half-truth that has guided US policy for this entire war. It may well have led to the president being informed of any number of plots that never existed, and any number of threats that are pure imagination. And once torture has entered the system, you can never find out the real truth. You are lost in a vortex of lies and fears. In this vortex, the actual threats that we face may well be overlooked or ignored, as we chase false leads and pursue non-existent WMDs."
Andrew Sullivan,Conservative,"That's what torture does: it creates a miasma of unknowing, about as dangerous a situation in wartime as one can imagine. This hideous fate was made possible by an inexperienced president with a fundamentalist psyche and a paranoid and power-hungry vice-president who decided to embrace ""the dark side"" almost as soon as the second tower fell, and who is still trying to avenge Nixon. Until they are both gone from office, we are in grave danger — the kind of danger that only torturers and fantasists and a security strategy based on coerced evidence can conjure up."
Andrew Sullivan,Conservative,"When you fuse Christianity with power, it isn't long before Christians start imposing the cross on others rather than taking it up for themselves."
Andrew Sullivan,Conservative,"In the Cold War, I was pro-American. The world needed a counter-weight to the evils of expansionist, imperial communism. (But I was never an American utopian. There's nothing new in humanity in this country — just a better system and more freedom, which tends to be the best corrective against sustained error.) After the Cold War, I saw no reason to oppose a prudent American policy of selective interventionism to deter evil and advance good a little, but even in the Balkans, such a policy did not require large numbers of ground troops and was enabled by strong alliances. After 9/11, I was clearly blinded by fear of al Qaeda and deluded by the overwhelming military superiority of the US and the ease of democratic transitions in Eastern Europe into thinking we could simply fight our way to victory against Islamist terror. I wasn't alone. But I was surely wrong. Haven't the last few years been a sobering learning experience? Haven't we discovered that allies actually are important, that fear is no substitute for cold assessment of self-interest, that saying something will happen is not that same thing as it actually happening?  That someone could come out of the last few years believing that Teddy Roosevelt's American imperialism is a model for the future is a little hard for me to understand."
Andrew Sullivan,Conservative,"The United States has managed to go to war for two centuries without the president authorizing and monitoring the torture of prisoners. The Bush administration's legalization of torture and withdrawal from Geneva is unique in American history. Yes, wars will lead to individuals committing war crimes in the heat of battle. Yes, it carries a horrifying logic. But an advance, pre-meditated decision by the president to engage in war crimes is new and unprecedented. Bush really is uniquely awful as a president in this respect: an indefensible war criminal, who has permanently stained the country he represents and betrayed the soldiers who expect decency and lawfulness in their commander-in-chief."
Andrew Sullivan,Conservative,"When Bush says that Abu Ghraib was the work of a few, he forgot to mention that he was one of them."
Andrew Sullivan,Conservative,"If you suspend the Geneva Conventions, give the green light to anything that will get intelligence, round up thousands all over the globe with reckless disregard for guilt or innocence, you are effectively and knowingly issuing orders to seize innocent people and torture them. Any president who decides to do that and then says it was not his intention to do that is a fraud or a fool."
Andrew Sullivan,Conservative,"Is it not a rather fantastic historical irony that the torture techniques that the North Vietnamese used against McCain that forced him to offer a videotaped false confession... are now the techniques the Bush administration is using to gain ""intelligence"" about terror networks.How is it possible to know that everything John McCain once said on videotape for the enemy was false, because it was coerced, and yet assert that everything we torture out of terror suspects using exactly the same techniques, is true?"
Andrew Sullivan,Conservative,"If the enemy tortures, it defines their moral evil and all intelligence gleaned from such coercion is self-evidently false propaganda. If we do it, it isn't wrong, and it leads to good intelligence.Got that? And these people have the gall to describe their ideological opponents as moral relativists."
Andrew Sullivan,Conservative,"In the last few years, we have seen the executive branch declare itself outside the law — in prosecuting a war on terror. The law against torture has been suspended. The balance between the executive and legislative branch has been dismissed by signing statements and the theory of the unitary executive. The executive has declared its right to suspend habeas corpus indefinitely, to tap anyone's phones without court warrants and to detain and torture anyone it decides is an ""enemy combatant."" In that sense, we have already left the realm of constitutional government in favor of a protectorate outside the law promising to keep us safe (but never from itself).But this new move to create a de facto dictator for the financial markets, to invest a Treasury secretary with unprecedented powers to buy and sell at close to a trillion dollar level — with no oversight or accountability: this is a new collapse in democratic life and constitutional norms."
Andrew Sullivan,Conservative,"If religion is about truth, why is it so afraid of error?"
Andrew Sullivan,Conservative,"What modernity requires is not that you cease living according to your faith, but that you accept that others may differ and that therefore politics requires a form of discourse that is reasonable and accessible to believer and non-believer alike. This religious restraint in politics is critical to the maintenance of liberal democracy."
Andrew Sullivan,Conservative,"I like the pluralism of modernity; it doesn't threaten me or my faith. And if one's faith is dependent on being reinforced in every aspect of other people's lives, then it is a rather insecure faith, don't you think?"
Andrew Sullivan,Conservative,"I have long been baffled as to why people said my preference over Obama was some kind of shift to the ideological left. Nope. Against a radical right, reckless, populist insurgency, Obama is the conservative option, dealing with emergent problems with pragmatic calm and modest innovation. He seeks as a good Oakeshottian would to reform the country's policies in order to regain the country's past virtues. What could possibly be more conservative than that?"
Andrew Sullivan,Conservative,"A true conservative — who is, above all, an anti-ideologue — will often be attacked for alleged inconsistency, for changing positions, for promising change but not a radical break with the past, for pursuing two objectives — like liberty and authority, or change and continuity — that seem to all ideologues as completely contradictory."
Andrew Sullivan,Conservative,"Trump is not just a wacky politician of the far right, or a riveting television spectacle, or a Twitter phenom and bizarre working-class hero. He is not just another candidate to be parsed and analyzed by TV pundits in the same breath as all the others. In terms of our liberal democracy and constitutional order, Trump is an extinction-level event. It’s long past time we started treating him as such."
Andrew Sullivan,Conservative,The forces going on in the society are not things the media can prevent or change. But we can and should help understand this crisis and warn against false solutions. If feelings are trumping arguments — the pun is fully intended — it doesn’t mean that arguments don’t still have to be made. It may not win the news cycle. It may not even win this election cycle. But it’s a critical task.
Andrew Sullivan,Conservative,"Conservatism — from Burke and Hume to Hayek and Oakeshott — has always been, at its core, a critique of ideology in favor of reality. The world is as it is, the conservative argues. Any attempt to drastically overhaul it, to impose a utopian vision onto a messy, evolving human landscape will not just fail, it will likely make things worse. To pretend that the present exists for no good reason — and can be repealed or transformed in an instant — is a formula for ruin. The leftist vision of perfect “social justice” is therefore as illusory and as pernicious as the reactionary’s dream of restoring a mythical past. And the great virtue of America’s deeply conservative Constitution is that it throws so many obstacles in the way of radical, ideological change — to the left or right — that it limits the harm that humans can do to themselves in moments of passion or certainty or in search of ideological perfection."
Andrew Sullivan,Conservative,"But for me, the psychedelic experience is also deeply Christian. This, it seems to me, is how and who Jesus is and was: the incarnation of the love that these experiences reveal to you — and always suffused with it; not romantic love or friendship, but that universal agape that seems abstract to me at times, but that some small mushrooms have sometimes uncovered. My DMN knows, of course, that this is heresy, that there is only one sacrament that you can eat and enter into godness. The rest of me knows that the idea of heresy itself is the DMN’s work."
Andrew Sullivan,Conservative,"And that is all the Pope is saying to another human being. God made you the way you are, and loves you for it, and wants you to be happy as yourself. How much agony and pain has there been across so many centuries because we could not open our hearts to this truth? It is so strange to me how so many nonbelievers can see in this Pope’s interaction with others the spirit of Jesus, and how so many of the most devout seem terrified by it."
Andrew Sullivan,Conservative,"We are living in an era of populism and demagoguery. And yes, there’s racism and xenophobia mixed into it. But what we are also seeing, it seems to me, is the manifest return of a distinctive political and intellectual tendency with deep roots: reactionism. Reactionism is not the same thing as conservatism. It’s far more potent a brew. Reactionary thought begins, usually, with acute despair at the present moment and a memory of a previous golden age. It then posits a moment in the past when everything went to hell and proposes to turn things back to what they once were. It is not simply a conservative preference for things as they are, with a few nudges back, but a passionate loathing of the status quo and a desire to return to the past in one emotionally cathartic revolt. If conservatives are pessimistic, reactionaries are apocalyptic. If conservatives value elites, reactionaries seethe with contempt for them. If conservatives believe in institutions, reactionaries want to blow them up. If conservatives tend to resist too radical a change, reactionaries want a revolution. Though it took some time to reveal itself, today’s Republican Party — from Newt Gingrich’s Republican Revolution to today’s Age of Trump — is not a conservative party. It is a reactionary party that is now at the peak of its political power."
Andrew Sullivan,Conservative,"Great leaps forward in history are often, in fact, giant leaps back. The Reformation did initiate brutal sectarian warfare. The French Revolution did degenerate into barbarous tyranny. Communist utopias — allegedly the wave of an Elysian future — turned into murderous nightmares. Modern neoliberalism has, for its part, created a global capitalist machine that is seemingly beyond anyone’s control, fast destroying the planet’s climate, wiping out vast tracts of life on Earth while consigning millions of Americans to economic stagnation and cultural despair.  And at an even deeper level, the more we discover about human evolution, the more illusory certain ideas of progress become."
Andrew Sullivan,Conservative,"Certain truths about human beings have never changed. We are tribal creatures in our very DNA; we have an instinctive preference for our own over others, for “in-groups” over “out-groups”; for hunter-gatherers, recognizing strangers as threats was a matter of life and death. We also invent myths and stories to give meaning to our common lives. Among those myths is the nation — stretching from the past into the future, providing meaning to our common lives in a way nothing else can. Strip those narratives away, or transform them too quickly, and humans will become disoriented. Most of us respond to radical changes in our lives, especially changes we haven’t chosen, with more fear than hope. We can numb the pain with legal cannabis or opioids, but it is pain nonetheless. If we ignore these deeper facts about ourselves, we run the risk of fatal errors. It’s vital to remember that multicultural, multiracial, post-national societies are extremely new for the human species, and keeping them viable and stable is a massive challenge."
Andrew Sullivan,Conservative,"You will not arrest the reactionary momentum by ignoring it or dismissing it entirely as a function of bigotry or stupidity. You’ll only defuse it by appreciating its insights and co-opting its appeal.  Reaction can be clarifying if it helps us better understand the huge challenges we now face. But reaction by itself cannot help us manage the world we live in today — which is the only place that matters. You start with where you are, not where you were or where you want to be. There are no utopias in the future or Gardens of Eden in our past. There is just now — in all its incoherent, groaning, volatile messiness. Our job, like everyone before us, is to keep our nerve and make the best of it."
Robert P. George,Conservative,Bullies are cowards and if you stand up to them they back away.
Robert P. George,Conservative,"[W]hat is happening is what left-wing revolutions do tend to produce, whether they’re talking about the Russian Revolution or the French Revolution, and that is students – the next generation of revolutionaries – become not only more radical than their radical professors, but they turn on them so the revolution tends to consume its own. So now people who think of themselves of impeccably left-wing will say something that offends some group of radicalized students – perhaps students that they themselves helped to radicalize – and suddenly they are the ones under fire for not conforming sufficiently to the contemporary orthodoxy."
Robert P. George,Conservative,The phenomenon we know as political correctness thrives on people's permitting themselves to be intimidated by the people who are the enforcers of these norms and orthodoxies.
Robert P. George,Conservative,It takes 11 guys to change the world. It takes five to change a university. We can do this.
Robert P. George,Conservative,"Roe was a shock to me because even at 16 or 17 years old I understood that abortion was killing an unborn baby. I mean it was simple and straightforward and indeed it is simple and straightforward. We try to make this complicated, but it's simple and straightforward. You've got a new human life developing in the mother's womb and abortion is the business of killing that baby. Now, the Planned Parenthood videos have made that very graphic but you didn't actually need the videos, uh, at least I didn't need to the videos to know that. But even then we didn't think of abortion as something Democrats were for and Republicans were against. The division of the parties into a pro-abortion party and an anti-abortion party came a little later."
Robert P. George,Conservative,"My father had served with great honor and courage in the Second World War. He fought for a country that was not only great, but good. It had its flaws and had some imperfections. It was the original sin of slavery which you know which we hadn't completed extirpated because we still had racial injustice in the 50s and 60s and 70s. We had only recently abolished, formally abolished segregation. So I was aware that uh, America had its flaws and defects in its history. But I also believed in the country and believed in its principles. That's the way I was brought up and so I was shocked when I found people who were just openly, vociferously anti-American, condemning not only America's sins but America itself, condemning its principles and pointing in some cases to communist regimes like Cuba as being superior."
Robert P. George,Conservative,Things always seem impossible until people do them.
Robert P. George,Conservative,"It's the rich and powerful, by and large, who glamorize immorality, but it's the poor and vulnerable who pay the price."
Robert P. George,Conservative,"We have to do it for our children and for our grandchildren and so that this profound experiment in ordered liberty that was bequeathed to us by Madison and Washington and Hamilton and Adams and by Lincoln doesn't collapse. That republican government, which is ultimately what's at stake here, because a licentious people is not going to sustain republican government. We've got to make sure that republican government, government not only of the people as all government is but by and for the people doesn't perish from the Earth. If we lose it here, it's not as if it's going to be restarted somewhere else. People look to the United States to see if whether self-government can actually work and it's not going to work unless we as individual people and as members of small communities, institutions of civil society, are able to govern ourselves or are able to control our own passions and desires."
Robert P. George,Conservative,"I say to my students, I say to my own children, I say to myself, uh the most abject form of slavery there is, is slavery to one's own feelings or passions or desires. The goal, the project of living a human life, a truly human life, is all about self-mastering. Now, if people live in a culture that encourages them to be masters of themselves and if they become masters of themselves, if they're able to control their own passions, no one's going to be perfect, we're not going to eliminate sin from the world or from the human heart, but if we're able to be masters of ourselves, masters of our own passions, then we will be able as a people to govern ourselves, we can genuinely make the republican experiment in ordered liberty work. But if we, if we lose it at the personal level, there's no way it's going to work at the societal level."
Robert P. George,Conservative,Phony manliness is about vulgarity and bravado. Real manliness is about serving others sacrificially and protecting the weak and vulnerable.
Robert P. George,Conservative,"Real manliness is about self-possession, self-control, and self-sacrifice. A real man will never be a bully, he will stand up to bullies."
Robert P. George,Conservative,"If you're a father of sons, think of a man you'd like your boys to emulate, then be that man--exemplify his selflessness, fidelity, courage."
Robert P. George,Conservative,A man of honor is never predatory or unfaithful. He does not regard women as objects. He treats women with respect as his equal in dignity.
Robert P. George,Conservative,"There are no lebensunwertes leben--no ""lives unworthy of life."" Every member of the human family bears profound, inherent and equal dignity."
Robert P. George,Conservative,Stunning that liberals haven't noticed that Trump and Trumpians are happy to use for their own ends precedents liberals set when in power.
Robert P. George,Conservative,"We're now quickly losing our Korea heroes as well--veterans of ""the forgotten war."" Let's not forget them or fail to honor and cherish them."
Robert P. George,Conservative,"Al Franken deserves condemnation, but President Trump's intervention, given his own self-confessed misconduct, makes what should be bipartisan seem merely partisan. Not helpful. Pots and kettles, Mr. President, pots and kettles."
Robert P. George,Conservative,"I myself am not a Trump supporter, nor was I supporter of Obama or Clinton. But I had and have friends who supported all of them and who deeply disagree with me on profound moral questions. It wouldn't occur to me to banish them from my life. Argue? Yes. Banish? No."
Robert P. George,Conservative,"One needn't be a Christian to be pro-life. Many pro-life people aren't. But a fundamental tenet of Christian faith is the profound, inherent & equal dignity and right to life of every member of the human family. That, in the end, simply cannot be squared with the pro-choice view."
Robert P. George,Conservative,"Of course one could claim that the human embryo or fetus is not (yet) a human being, but that's just science-denial. Or one could claim that human beings in early developmental stages don't have dignity but that is a denial that dignity is inherent and that all humans are equal."
Robert P. George,Conservative,"My God! People! People!!! Do you not see where this goes??? Do the Dutch, who suffered under--and in many cases heroically resisted--Hitler's domination, forget that the ""final solution"" began with the dehumanization and eugenic killing of the handicapped?"
Robert P. George,Conservative,Anti-Semitism in Sweden (and more broadly in Europe) is no trivial matter: A 2013 study showed that 51 percent of anti-Semitic incidents in Sweden were attributed to Muslim extremists. 5 percent to right-wing extremists; 25 percent to left-wing extremists.
Robert P. George,Conservative,"Both views have had their glory moments, and both have had their moments of shame. Whether we’re conservatives or whether we’re liberals, it should remind us that we are human beings who are fallible."
Robert P. George,Conservative,"[T]his is truly a great country. When true to ourselves we are unmatched. In the words of Irving Berlin, God bless America!"
Robert P. George,Conservative,By this point in HIS first term President Obama already had a Nobel Prize. All President Trump has is a train station in a foreign country--not even a big country. Just a little one. Barely the size of Connecticut. Sad.
Robert P. George,Conservative,[P]rogressives are learning the hard way that their adversaries can play their game of vilifying and bullying opponents. Just desserts? I've heard some conservatives say so. But it is terrible for the country.
Robert P. George,Conservative,"[T]he struggle over slavery and racial injustice that did result in civil war. Here, too, the disputes were not merely about means, but about ends — about fundamental matters of right and wrong. And although the war, after consuming the lives of nearly three-quarters of a million people, ended after four years, the struggle went on for more than a hundred more, and we are still living with its aftershocks today."
Robert P. George,Conservative,"Despite our profound differences, Americans on both or all sides of the great cultural struggles of our day must recognize their opponents (or most, or at least many, of their opponents) as reasonable people of goodwill who, doing their best, have arrived at different conclusions about fundamental moral questions — including basic questions of justice and human rights. If that is to happen, political and intellectual leaders, as well as people in the media, are going to have to model treating their adversaries with respect — and not demonizing them."
Robert P. George,Conservative,"To say that I did not support the candidacy of Mr. Trump is the understatement of the year. I fiercely opposed it... I have criticized as unnecessary his policy on pausing immigration from certain countries, and I have criticized as weak to the point of meaningless his executive order on religious freedom. Indeed, I characterized it as a betrayal of his promise to reverse Obama era anti-religious-liberty policies. Donald Trump is not, and usually doesn't pretend to be, a man of strict or high principles... As a pragmatist, he doesn't have a governing philosophy — he's neither a conservative nor a liberal. On one day he'll give a speech to some evangelical pastors that makes him sound like a religious conservative, but the next day he'll lavishly praise Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, who is waging an all-out war on those who stand up for traditional moral values in Canada."
Robert P. George,Conservative,"Be not afraid... Have courage. Be bold. Do not let yourself be intimidated. Do not yield to the bullies. Stand up. Speak out. Fear God, not men. Be willing to bear the cost of discipleship. Be prepared to take up your cross and follow Jesus — even to Calvary."
Robert P. George,Conservative,"Speak the truth in love, leaving no one in doubt about where you stand. Bear faithful witness. Be gentle as doves, but wise — even cunning — as serpents. Do not compromise your principles — out of fear or even in the hope of advancing worthy goals. Do not fall into the error of believing that a good end justifies a bad means. But do work tirelessly for the best causes — especially life and marriage, but also, and relatedly, to lift up the poor, the downtrodden and the persecuted, both here in the United States and abroad."
Robert P. George,Conservative,"Praise God when we seem to be making progress; trust him when we seem not to be. Remember that it is ultimately God’s job, not ours, to bring the victories. They will come on his timetable and on his terms. Our job is to be faithful — to stand up, speak out, and bear witness. And by the way, no Christian is exempt from that duty. So no excuses."
Robert P. George,Conservative,"[T]ruth is the ground and condition of freedom. Unless it is true that human beings deserve to have fundamental liberties respected and protected, the tyrant does no wrong in violating them. Relativism, skepticism, and subjectivism about truth provide no secure basis for freedom. We should honor civil liberties because the  norms enjoining us to respect and protect them are valid, sound, in a word, true."
Robert P. George,Conservative,"I'm increasingly convinced that the principal moral errors of contemporary western societies, especially among elites, are rooted in the triumph of Hobbes' view of human beings as basically machines for having experiences. It's the anthropology underwriting the Age of Feeling."
Robert P. George,Conservative,"People of faith--all faiths--need to understand that everyone, including the unbeliever, has a basic human right to religious freedom."
Robert P. George,Conservative,"Republicans who are pleased by my calling out Dems on religious freedom should remember that religious freedom must be honored for everyone--including Muslims. Though some Repubs have been good on this, others (inc the President) have not been. There must be one standard for all."
Robert P. George,Conservative,"Social conservatives should be sober realists about DJT. His support for us, where he has given it (e.g. judges), is transactional. He does not share our principles nor has he lived (or aspired to live) by them. There is real danger of his  discrediting them among persuadables."
Robert P. George,Conservative,Canada is sinking deeper and deeper into illiberalism--in the name of liberal values
Robert P. George,Conservative,I'm learning that a lot of people--on the left as well as the right--have a problem with Jews. It is not that they object to Jews as people. It's that they object to Jews as Jews.
Robert P. George,Conservative,"If you hate Jews you do not love God. You may claim to be a Christian (or Muslim) but the God you worship is an idol, not the God of Israel."
Robert P. George,Conservative,"Others must do as their own consciences require, but I stand with @monacharenEPPC. She stands for true conservative, American, and Judaeo-Christian values."
Robert P. George,Conservative,I wish we conservatives could clone Mona Charen so that we could keep one for ourselves and give the other to the liberal movement which is equally badly in need of a truth-teller to call out the hypocrites and snollygosters.
Robert P. George,Conservative,"[C]onsider, humbly, that had we been there, few of us would have been among the heroes who, at great risk to themselves, sheltered Jews and other victims or joined the forces opposing Hitler and the Nazis. Very few of us indeed."
Robert P. George,Conservative,"[E]ugenic doctrine did not originate with the Nazis. It began with polite, urbane, well-educated, sophisticated people who saw ""social hygiene"" via, among other methods, euthanasia, as representing progress and modernity. They wanted to ditch the old Judaeo-Christian belief in the sanctity of all human life and replace it with what they regarded as a more advanced and rational philosophy."
Roger Stone,Conservative,"Hot, insatiable lady and her handsome body builder husband, experienced swingers, seek similar couples or exceptional muscular well-hung single men. She's 40DD-24-36; he's 195, trim, blonde, muscular and 8' +. Prefer military, bodybuilders, jocks. No smokers or fats please. Photo and phone required. R&N....We are interested in DC, VA. MD, NYC, Miami, and LA.'"
Roger Stone,Conservative,"An exhaustive investigation now indicates that a domestic employee who I discharged for substance abuse on the second time that we learned that he had a drug problem is the perpetrator who had access to my home, access to my computer, access to my password, access to my postage meter, access to my post-office box key."
Roger Stone,Conservative,"Hot Cuban Pussy. Miami Lady 40-24-36 has an insatiable hunger for huge hung black Cock. She is 5'4"", with huge tits, small waist, hot ass, shaved pussy with giant clit and big floppy pussy lips. She likes it hard, deep and nasty. Obidient husband shares her cunt. You must be 22-40, lean, muscular and hung like a horse. Hygiene and attitude count. 100% real. Contact me/us with a photo of face/body/meat."
Roger Stone,Conservative,"I met Donald in 1979 when I was sent to New York to organize Ronald Reagan's campaign for President. He and his father Fred Trump were members of the Reagan for President finance committee. We became good friends. I was invited to two of his weddings. He attended my wedding in Washington DC. He is very smart, very tough and can be very very funny. He is also very tall."
Roger Stone,Conservative,I strongly support Donald Trump for President. I think only Trump has the financial independence to take on the special interests. Trump doesn't need the lobbyists or the special interest money with the strings attached. He is the only one who can fix a broken system. Trump's pro-growth tax reform plan will supercharge the economy. Trump can actually cut waste because he is not beholden to the special pleaders. Trump will get in Hillary's face and confront her with her lies. Jeb gave Hillary a medal. The Bush and Clinton families profiteer off public service together. Is it civility or shared criminality? Only Trump can make America great again!
Roger Stone,Conservative,"The only thing worse in politics than being wrong is being boring, as Dick Nixon would say."
Roger Stone,Conservative,I launched the idea of Donald J. Trump for President.
Roger Stone,Conservative,"He who speaks first, loses."
Roger Stone,Conservative,"Admit nothing, deny everything, launch counterattack."
Roger Stone,Conservative,The point that the Democrats missed was that the people who weren’t rich wanted to be rich.
Roger Stone,Conservative,The Democrats are the party of slavery; the Republicans are the party of freedom.
Roger Stone,Conservative,"When that whole thing hit the fan in 1996, the reason I gave a blanket denial was that my grandparents were still alive,I’m not guilty of hypocrisy. I’m a libertarian and a libertine."
Roger Stone,Conservative,It's better to be infamous than never to be famous at all.
Roger Stone,Conservative,"I went to the cafeteria, and as each kid would go through the cafeteria line [in my elementary school] with their tray, I would tell them, ""You know, Nixon has proposed having school on Saturdays."" ...[T]he mock election [in my elementary school] was held and to the surprise of the local newspaper, Democrat John Kennedy swept this mock election. For the first time ever I understood the value of disinformation."
Roger Stone,Conservative,"Well, my attitude regarding those who criticize me for being friends with Roy Cohn or Richard Nixon is, ""F—'em."""
Roger Stone,Conservative,"After the Reform Party cost the Republicans the White House in '92, again in '96... Yeah, I may have played some role in derailing them as a party."
Roger Stone,Conservative,Corey is now openly telling people he's got the goods on me. ...He's telling reporters that he has something on Manafort that will blow him out of the campaign. ...We gotta take the little prick out.
Paul Manafort,Conservative,"Mr. Trump has said very clearly for months now a policy that's been ignored, which is that he believes that we need to have a temporary suspension to stop refugees from coming in from countries where terrorist activities are rampant or in a war. That's the issue, not the Khan family loss which we all regret, not the loss of many other American families which we all regret. The issue is how to protect the homeland. And the second part of the issue which is being ignored is the cause of these losses, because it forced our American military to go back into Iraq, to go into Syria and that cause was the policies that were put together in January of 2009 by President Clinton and Secretary Obama that caused ISIS to rise."
Paul Manafort,Conservative,"Frankly, what Secretary Clinton did in her speech on Thursday was totally ignoring it. She sees an America that, ""Morning in America,"" as she said. It's not morning in America. And if it's midnight in America, like she accused Mr. Clinton of, it's the policies of Obama and Clinton that caused it to be midnight. Mr. Trump has neither position."
Paul Manafort,Conservative,"This is not a temperament issue. The Clinton campaign needs to try to make it into a temperament issue for one reason because they know that over 70 percent of the American people don't believe a thing she says. And so, therefore, her putting up policies that she's going to do have no credibility."
Paul Manafort,Conservative,"Her talking about the Obama Administration has done a great job and deserves an A on the economy. I mean, please, let's talk to American families and sit around the dinner table at night figuring how to pay their bills. The American economy is not in good shape; productivity is failing."
Paul Manafort,Conservative,"The focus of NCPAC was to use all the tools of a campaign, but instead of having a candidate, to use it through a political action committee."
Paul Manafort,Conservative,"What we were doing was sort of trying to use our relationships that we had built up, first through Young Republicans and then through NCPAC, and to create a business that would focus on political consulting."
Paul Manafort,Conservative,"I will stipulate for the purpose of today that, you know, you could characterize this as influence peddling."
Milton Friedman,Conservative,"If we are to use effectively these abstract models and this descriptive material, we must have a comparable exploration of the criteria for determining what abstract model it is best to use for particular kinds of problems, what entities in the abstract model are to be identified with what observable entities, and what features of the problem or of the circumstances have the greatest effect on the accuracy of the predictions yielded by a particular model or theory."
Milton Friedman,Conservative,"The construction of hypotheses is a creative act of inspiration, intuition, invention; its essence is the vision of something new in familiar material. The process must be discussed in psychological, not logical, categories; studied in autobiographies and biographies, not treatises on scientific method; and promoted by maxim and example, not syllogism or theorem."
Milton Friedman,Conservative,"Over the period covered by these data, a drastic change has occurred in the responsibilities undertaken by the state to provide assistance to the aged, unemployed and otherwise dependent. This change has had divergent results on the particular data under discussion. The availability of assistance from the state would clearly tend to reduce the need for private reserves and so to reduce private saving—it is equivalent, in terms of our hypothesis, to a reduction in the variance of transitory components."
Milton Friedman,Conservative,"I have no right to coerce someone else, because I cannot be sure that I'm right and he is wrong."
Milton Friedman,Conservative,"I am convinced that the minimum-wage law is the most anti-Negro law on our statute books—in its effect, not its intent."
Milton Friedman,Conservative,Inflation is always and everywhere a monetary phenomenon in the sense that it is and can be produced only by a more rapid increase in the quantity of money than in output. … A steady rate of monetary growth at a moderate level can provide a framework under which a country can have little inflation and much growth. It will not produce perfect stability; it will not produce heaven on earth; but it can make an important contribution to a stable economic society.
Milton Friedman,Conservative,"On the level of political principle, the imposition of taxes and the expenditure of tax proceeds are governmental functions. We have established elaborate constitutional, parliamentary and judicial provisions to control these functions, to assure that taxes are imposed so far as possible in accordance with the preferences and desires of the public — after all, ""taxation without representation"" was one of the battle cries of the American Revolution. We have a system of checks and balances to separate the legislative function of imposing taxes and enacting expenditures from the executive function of collecting taxes and administering expenditure programs and from the judicial function of mediating disputes and interpreting the law.  Here the businessman — self-selected or appointed directly or indirectly by stockholders — is to be simultaneously legislator, executive and, jurist. He is to decide whom to tax by how much and for what purpose, and he is to spend the proceeds — all this guided only by general exhortations from on high to restrain inflation, improve the environment, fight poverty and so on and on."
Milton Friedman,Conservative,"The political principle that underlies the market mechanism is unanimity. In an ideal free market resting on private property, no individual can coerce any other, all cooperation is voluntary, all parties to such cooperation benefit or they need not participate. There are no values, no ""social"" responsibilities in any sense other than the shared values and responsibilities of individuals. Society is a collection of individuals and of the various groups they voluntarily form.  The political principle that underlies the political mechanism is conformity. The individual must serve a more general social interest — whether that be determined by a church or a dictator or a majority. The individual may have a vote and say in what is to be done, but if he is overruled, he must conform. It is appropriate for some to require others to contribute to a general social purpose whether they wish to or not.  Unfortunately, unanimity is not always feasible. There are some respects in which conformity appears unavoidable, so I do not see how one can avoid the use of the political mechanism altogether."
Milton Friedman,Conservative,"There was nothing in these views to repel a student; or to make Keynes attractive. Keynes had nothing to offer those of us who had sat at the feet of Simons, Mints, Knight, and Viner."
Milton Friedman,Conservative,"How much attention is paid to agreement between Galbraith and myself in opposing a draft and favoring an all-volunteer armed force, or in opposing tariffs and favoring free trade, or on a host of other issues? What is newsworthy is that Galbraith endorses wage and price controls, while I oppose them."
Milton Friedman,Conservative,"Although I wish the anarchists luck, since that’s the way we ought to be moving now. But I believe we need government to enforce the rules of the game. By prosecuting anti-trust violations, for instance. We need a government to maintain a system of courts that will uphold contracts and rule on compensation for damages. We need a government to ensure the safety of its citizens–to provide police protection. But government is failing at a lot of these things that it ought to be doing because it’s involved in so many things it shouldn’t be doing."
Milton Friedman,Conservative,"So the question is, do corporate executives, provided they stay within the law, have responsibilities in their business activities other than to make as much money for their stockholders as possible? And my answer to that is, no they do not."
Milton Friedman,Conservative,The problem in this world is to avoid concentration of power - we must have a dispersion of power.
Milton Friedman,Conservative,I think the government solution to a problem is usually as bad as the problem and very often makes the problem worse.
Milton Friedman,Conservative,"I want people to take thought about their condition and to recognize that the maintenance of a free society is a very difficult and complicated thing and it requires a self-denying ordinance of the most extreme kind. It requires a willingness to put up with temporary evils on the basis of the subtle and sophisticated understanding that if you step in to do something about them you not only may make them worse, you will spread your tentacles and get bad results elsewhere."
Milton Friedman,Conservative,"If we have system in which government is in a position to give large favor - it's human nature to try to get this favor - whether those people are large enterprises, or whether they're small businesses like farmers, or whether they're representatives of any other special group. The only way to prevent that is to force them to engage in competition one with the other."
Milton Friedman,Conservative,One of the great mistakes is to judge policies and programs by their intentions rather than their results.
Milton Friedman,Conservative,"In this day and age, we need to revise the old saying to read, ""Hell hath no fury like a bureaucrat scorned."""
Milton Friedman,Conservative,"Make politics an avocation, not a vocation."
Milton Friedman,Conservative,"[A] society which is socialist cannot also be democratic, in the sense of guaranteeing individual freedom."
Milton Friedman,Conservative,"There's a sense in which all taxes are antagonistic to free enterprise … and yet we need taxes. We have to recognize that we must not hope for a Utopia that is unattainable. I would like to see a great deal less government activity than we have now, but I do not believe that we can have a situation in which we don't need government at all. We do need to provide for certain essential government functions — the national defense function, the police function, preserving law and order, maintaining a judiciary. So the question is, which are the least bad taxes? In my opinion the least bad tax is the property tax on the unimproved value of land, the Henry George argument of many, many years ago."
Milton Friedman,Conservative,They think that the cure to big government is to have bigger government... the only effective cure is to reduce the scope of government - get government out of the business.
Milton Friedman,Conservative,"Is there some society you know that doesn't run on greed? You think Russia doesn't run on greed? You think China doesn't run on greed? What is greed? Of course, none of us are greedy, it's only the other fellow who's greedy. The world runs on individuals pursuing their separate interests. The great achievements of civilization have not come from government bureaus. Einstein didn't construct his theory under order from a bureaucrat. Henry Ford didn't revolutionize the automobile industry that way. In the only cases in which the masses have escaped from the kind of grinding poverty you're talking about, the only cases in recorded history, are where they have had capitalism and largely free trade. If you want to know where the masses are worse off, worst off, it's exactly in the kinds of societies that depart from that. So that the record of history is absolutely crystal clear that there is no alternative way, so far discovered, of improving the lot of the ordinary people that can hold a candle to the productive activities that are unleashed by the free-enterprise system."
Milton Friedman,Conservative,"Industrial progress, mechanical improvement, all of the great wonders of the modern era have meant little to the wealthy. The rich in ancient Greece would have benefited hardly at all from modern plumbing — running servants replaced running water. Television and radio — the patricians of Rome could enjoy the leading musicians and actors in their home, could have the leading artists as domestic retainers. Ready-to-wear clothing, supermarkets — all these and many other modern developments would have added little to their life. They would have welcomed the improvements in transportation and in medicine, but for the rest, the great achievements of western capitalism have rebounded primarily to the benefit of the ordinary person. These achievements have made available to the masses conveniences and amenities that were previously the exclusive prerogative of the rich and powerful."
Milton Friedman,Conservative,There is no place for government to prohibit consumers from buying products the effect of which will be to harm themselves.
Milton Friedman,Conservative,"""The strongest argument for free enterprise is that it prevents anybody from having too much power. Whether that person is a government official, a trade union official, or a business executive. If forces them to put up or shut up. They either have to deliver the goods, produce something that people are willing to pay for, are willing to buy, or else they have to go into a different business."""
Milton Friedman,Conservative,Governments never learn. Only people learn.
Milton Friedman,Conservative,The broader and more influential organisations of businessmen have acted to undermine the basic foundation of the free market system they purport to represent and defend.
Milton Friedman,Conservative,"Spending by government currently amounts to about 45 percent of national income. By that test, government owns 45 percent of the means of production that produce the national income. The U.S. is now 45 percent socialist."
Milton Friedman,Conservative,Society doesn't have values. People have values.
Milton Friedman,Conservative,The society that puts equality before freedom will end up with neither. The society that puts freedom before equality will end up with a great measure of both.
Milton Friedman,Conservative,"So far, twenty-two people have received the Nobel award in economics. Not one of them has been female—so, to judge only from the past, the most important thing to do if you want to be a Nobel laureate is to be male. I hasten to add that the absence of females is not, I believe, attributable to male chauvinist bias on the part of the Swedish Nobel Committee. I believe that the economics profession as a whole would have been nearly unanimous that, during the period in question, only one female candidate met the relevant standards—the English economist Joan Robinson, who has since died. The failure of the Nobel Committee to award her a prize may well have reflected bias but not sex bias. The economists here will understand what I am talking about. … A second requirement is to be a U.S. citizen. Twelve of the twenty-two recipients of the Nobel Prize were from the United States, four from the United Kingdom, two from Sweden, and one each from four other countries. … Of the twelve Americans who have won the Nobel Prize in economics, nine either studied or taught at the University of Chicago. So the next lesson is to go to the University of Chicago."
Milton Friedman,Conservative,The great virtue of a free market system is that it does not care what color people are; it does not care what their religion is; it only cares whether they can produce something you want to buy. It is the most effective system we have discovered to enable people who hate one another to deal with one another and help one another.
Milton Friedman,Conservative,"The stock of money, prices and output was decidedly more unstable after the establishment of the Reserve System than before. The most dramatic period of instability in output was, of course, the period between the two wars, which includes the severe (monetary) contractions of 1920-1, 1929-33, and 1937-8. No other 20 year period in American history contains as many as three such severe contractions. This evidence persuades me that at least a third of the price rise during and just after World War I is attributable to the establishment of the Federal Reserve System... and that the severity of each of the major contractions — 1920-1, 1929-33 and 1937-8 is directly attributable to acts of commission and omission by the Reserve authorities... Any system which gives so much power and so much discretion to a few men, [so] that mistakes — excusable or not — can have such far reaching effects, is a bad system. It is a bad system to believers in freedom just because it gives a few men such power without any effective check by the body politic — this is the key political argument against an independent central bank... To paraphrase Clemenceau, money is much too serious a matter to be left to the central bankers."
Milton Friedman,Conservative,"I know of no severe depression, in any country or any time, that was not accompanied by a sharp decline in the stock of money and equally of no sharp decline in the stock of money that was not accompanied by a severe depression."
Milton Friedman,Conservative,"Joan Robinson, a leading Keynesian and radical, produced a specimen for me to analyze. I said something like, ""This is obviously the writing of a foreigner, so it's difficult for me to analyze. But I would say it is written by someone who had considerable artistic but not much intellectual talent."" It turned out to be the handwriting of Lydia Lopokova, the world-famous Russian ballerina whom Keynes had married. That was surely my greatest triumph of the year at Cambridge!"
Milton Friedman,Conservative,"In the course of General Westmoreland's testimony, he made the statement that he did not want to command an army of mercenaries. I stopped him and said, 'General, would you rather command an army of slaves?' He drew himself up and said, 'I don't like to hear our patriotic draftees referred to as slaves.' I replied, 'I don't like to hear our patriotic volunteers referred to as mercenaries.' But I went on to say, 'If they are mercenaries, then I, sir, am a mercenary professor, and you, sir, are a mercenary general; we are served by mercenary physicians, we use a mercenary lawyer, and we get our meat from a mercenary butcher.' That was the last that we heard from the general about mercenaries."
Milton Friedman,Conservative,There's a smokestack on the back of every government program.
Milton Friedman,Conservative,"I think it is only because capitalism has proved so enormously more efficient than alternative methods that it has survived at all. (...) I'm not sure capitalism is the right word. There is a sense in which every society is capitalist. The Soviet Union was capitalist, but it was state capitalism. Latin American societies in the past have been capitalist, but it has been oligarchic capitalism. So what we really need to talk about is not capitalism but free market or competitive capitalism which is the system that we would like to have adopted, not just capitalism."
Milton Friedman,Conservative,The use of quantity of money as a target has not been a success. I'm not sure that I would as of today push it as hard as I once did.
Milton Friedman,Conservative,You must distinguish sharply between being pro free enterprise and being pro business.
Milton Friedman,Conservative,"I am in favor of cutting taxes under any circumstances and for any excuse, for any reason, whenever it's possible. … because I believe the big problem is not taxes, the big problem is spending. I believe our government is too large and intrusive, that we do not get our money's worth for the roughly 40 percent of our income that is spent by government … How can we ever cut government down to size? I believe there is one and only one way: the way parents control spendthrift children, cutting their allowance. For government, that means cutting taxes."
Milton Friedman,Conservative,"If a tax cut increases government revenues, you haven't cut taxes enough."
Milton Friedman,Conservative,"To the free man, the country is the collection of individuals who compose it, not something over and above them. He is proud of a common heritage and loyal to common traditions. But he regards government as a means, an instrumentality, neither a grantor of favors and gifts, nor a master or god to be blindly worshipped and served."
Milton Friedman,Conservative,"The free man will ask neither what his country can do for him nor what he can do for his country. He will ask rather ""What can I and my compatriots do through government"" to help us discharge our individual responsibilities, to achieve our several goals and purposes, and above all, to protect our freedom? And he will accompany this question with another: How can we keep the government we create from becoming a Frankenstein that will destroy the very freedom we establish it to protect? Freedom is a rare and delicate plant. Our minds tell us, and history confirms, that the great threat to freedom is the concentration of power. Government is necessary to preserve our freedom, it is an instrument through which we can exercise our freedom; yet by concentrating power in political hands, it is also a threat to freedom. Even though the men who wield this power initially be of good will and even though they be not corrupted by the power they exercise, the power will both attract and form men of a different stamp."
Milton Friedman,Conservative,"There is enormous inertia—a tyranny of the status quo—in private and especially governmental arrangements. Only a crisis—actual or perceived—produces real change. When that crisis occurs, the actions that are taken depend on the ideas that are lying around. That, I believe, is our basic function: to develop alternatives to existing policies, to keep them alive and available until the politically impossible becomes politically inevitable."
Milton Friedman,Conservative,"Because we live in a largely free society, we tend to forget how limited is the span of time and the part of the globe for which there has ever been anything like political freedom: the typical state of mankind is tyranny, servitude, and misery. The nineteenth century and early twentieth century in the Western world stand out as striking exceptions to the general trend of historical development. Political freedom in this instance clearly came along with the free market and the development of capitalist institutions. So also did political freedom in the golden age of Greece and in the early days of the Roman era.  History suggests only that capitalism is a necessary condition for political freedom. Clearly it is not a sufficient condition."
Milton Friedman,Conservative,"Political freedom means the absence of coercion of a man by his fellow men. The fundamental threat to freedom is power to coerce, be it in the hands of a monarch, a dictator, an oligarchy, or a momentary majority. The preservation of freedom requires the elimination of such concentration of power to the fullest possible extent and the dispersal and distribution of whatever power cannot be eliminated — a system of checks and balances."
Milton Friedman,Conservative,"As liberals, we take freedom of the individual, or perhaps the family, as our ultimate goal in judging social arrangements. Freedom as a value in this sense has to do with the interrelations among people"
Milton Friedman,Conservative,"The liberal conceives of men as imperfect beings. He regards the problem of social organization to be as much a negative problem of preventing ""bad"" people from doing harm as of enabling ""good"" people to do good; and, of course, ""bad"" and ""good""people may be the same people, depending on who is judging them."
Milton Friedman,Conservative,The basic problem of social organization is how to co-ordinate the economic activities of large numbers of people.
Milton Friedman,Conservative,"The widespread use of the market reduces the strain on the social fabric by rendering conformity unnecessary with respect to any activities it encompasses. The wider the range of activities covered by the market, the fewer are the issues on which explicitly political decisions are required and hence on which it is necessary to achieve agreement. In turn, the fewer the issues on which agreement is necessary, the greater is the likelihood of getting agreement while maintaining a free society."
Milton Friedman,Conservative,"The need for government in these respects arises because absolute freedom is impossible. However attractive anarchy may be as a philosophy, it is not feasible in a world of imperfect men."
Milton Friedman,Conservative,"The organization of economic activity through voluntary exchange presumes that we have provided, through government, for the maintenance of law and order to prevent coercion of one individual by another, the enforcement of contracts voluntarily entered into, the definition of the meaning of property rights, the interpretation and enforcement of such rights, and the provision of a monetary framework."
Milton Friedman,Conservative,"Freedom is a tenable objective only for responsible individuals. We do not believe in freedom for madmen or children. The necessity of drawing a line between responsible individuals and others is inescapable, yet it means that there is an essential ambiguity in our ultimate objective of freedom. Paternalism is inescapable for those whom we designate as not responsible."
Milton Friedman,Conservative,"A government which maintained law and order, defined property rights, served as a means whereby we could modify property rights and other rules of the economic game, adjudicated disputes about the interpretation of the rules, enforced contracts, promoted competition, provided a monetary framework, engaged in activities to counter technical monopolies and to overcome neighborhood effects widely regarded as sufficiently important to justify government intervention, and which supplemented private charity and the private family in protecting the irresponsible, whether madman or child—such a government would clearly have important functions to perform. The consistent liberal is not an anarchist."
Milton Friedman,Conservative,"A liberal is fundamentally fearful of concentrated power. His objective is to preserve the maximum degree of freedom for each individual separately that is compatible with one man's freedom not interfering with other men's freedom. He believes that this objective requires that power be dispersed. He is suspicious of assigning to government any functions that can be performed through the market, both because this substitutes coercion for voluntary co-operation in the area in question and because, by giving government an increased role, it threatens freedom in other areas."
Milton Friedman,Conservative,"The Great Depression in the United States, far from being a sign of the inherent instability of the private enterprise system, is a testament to how much harm can be done by mistakes on the part of a few men when they wield vast power over the monetary system of a country."
Milton Friedman,Conservative,"Few trends could so thoroughly undermine the very foundations of our free society as the acceptance by corporate officials of a social responsibility other than to make as much money for their stockholders as possible. This is a fundamentally subversive doctrine. If businessmen do have a social responsibility other than making maximum profits for stockholders, how are they to know what it is? Can self-selected private individuals decide what the social interest is? Can they decide how great a burden they are justified in placing on themselves or their stockholders to serve that social interest?"
Milton Friedman,Conservative,"The major disadvantage of the proposed negative income tax is its political implications. It establishes a system under which taxes are imposed on some to pay subsidies to others. And presumably, these others have a vote."
Milton Friedman,Conservative,"The heart of the liberal philosophy is a belief in the dignity of the individual, in his freedom to make  the most of his capacities and opportunities according to his own lights, subject only to the proviso  that he not interfere with the freedom of other individuals to do the same."
Milton Friedman,Conservative,"An income tax intended to reduce inequality and promote the diffusion of wealth has in practice fostered reinvestment of corporate earnings, thereby favoring the growth of large corporations, inhibiting the operation of the capital market, and discouraging the establishment of new enterprises."
Milton Friedman,Conservative,"As Adam Smith once said, ""There is much ruin in a nation"". Our basic structure of values and the interwoven network of free institutions will withstand much. I believe that we shall be able to preserve and extend freedom despite the size of the military programs and despite the economic powers already concentrated in Washington. But we shall be able to do so only if we awake to the threat that we face, only if we persuade our fellowmen that free institutions offer a surer, if perhaps at times a slower, route to the ends they seek than the coercive power of the state. The glimmerings of change that are already apparent in the intellectual climate are a hopeful augury."
Milton Friedman,Conservative,The contraction from 1929 to 1933 was by far the most severe business-cycle contraction during the near-century of U.S. history we cover and it may well have been the most severe in the whole of U.S. history.
Milton Friedman,Conservative,"The price system works so well, so efficiently, that we are not aware of it most of the time. We never realize how well it functions until it is prevented from functioning, and even then we seldom recognize the source of the trouble."
Milton Friedman,Conservative,"Prices perform three functions in organizing economic activity: first, they transmit information; second, they provide an incentive to adopt those methods of production that are least costly and thereby use available resources for the most highly valued pur poses; third, they determine who gets how much of the product—the distribution of income. These three functions are closely in terrelated."
Milton Friedman,Conservative,The price system transmits only the important information and only to the people who need to know.
Milton Friedman,Conservative,"Whether it is in the slums of New Delhi or in the affluence of Las Vegas, it simply isn't fair that there should be any losers. Life is unfair — there is nothing fair about one man being born blind and another man being born with sight. There is nothing fair about one man being born of a wealthy parent and one of an impecunious parent. There is nothing fair about Muhammad Ali having been born with a skill that enables him to make millions of dollars one night. There is nothing fair about Marlene Dietrich having great legs that we all want to watch. There is nothing fair about any of that. But on the other hand, don't you think a lot of people who like to look at Marlene Dietrich's legs benefited from nature's unfairness in producing a Marlene Dietrich. What kind of a world would it be if everybody was an absolute identical duplicate of anybody else. You might as well destroy the whole world and just keep one specimen left for a museum. In the same way, it's unfair that Muhammad Ali should be a great fighter and should be able to earn millions. But would it not be even more unfair to the people who like to watch him if you said that in the pursuit of some abstract idea of equality we're not going to let Muhammad Ali get more for one nights fight than the lowest man on the totem pole can get for a days unskilled work on the docks. You can do that but the result of that would be to deny people the opportunity to watch Muhammad Ali. I doubt very much he would be willing to subject himself to the kind of fights he's gone through if he were to get the pay of an unskilled docker."
Milton Friedman,Conservative,"The proper role of government is exactly what John Stuart Mill said in the middle of the 19th century in On Liberty. The proper role of government is to prevent other people from harming an individual. Government, he said, never has any right to interfere with an individual for that individual's own good.  The case for prohibiting drugs is exactly as strong and as weak as the case for prohibiting people from overeating. We all know that overeating causes more deaths than drugs do. If it's in principle OK for the government to say you must not consume drugs because they'll do you harm, why isn't it all right to say you must not eat too much because you'll do harm? Why isn't it all right to say you must not try to go in for skydiving because you're likely to die? Why isn't it all right to say, ""Oh, skiing, that's no good, that's a very dangerous sport, you'll hurt yourself""? Where do you draw the line?"
Milton Friedman,Conservative,"It does harm a great many other people, but primarily because it's prohibited. There are an enormous number of innocent victims now. You've got the people whose purses are stolen, who are bashed over the head by people trying to get enough money for their next fix. You've got the people killed in the random drug war. You've got the corruption of the legal establishment. You've got the innocent victims who are taxpayers who have to pay for more and more prisons, and more and more prisoners, and more and more police. You've got the rest of us who don't get decent law enforcement because all the law enforcement officials are busy trying to do the impossible.  And, last, but not least, you've got the people of Colombia and Peru and so on. What business do we have destroying and leading to the killing of thousands of people in Colombia because we cannot enforce our own laws? If we could enforce our laws against drugs, there would be no market for these drugs."
Milton Friedman,Conservative,"It's a moral problem that the government is making into criminals people, who may be doing something you and I don't approve of, but who are doing something that hurts nobody else. Most of the arrests for drugs are for possession by casual users.  Now here's somebody who wants to smoke a marijuana cigarette. If he's caught, he goes to jail. Now is that moral? Is that proper? I think it's absolutely disgraceful that our government, supposed to be our government, should be in the position of converting people who are not harming others into criminals, of destroying their lives, putting them in jail. That's the issue to me. The economic issue comes in only for explaining why it has those effects. But the economic reasons are not the reasons."
Milton Friedman,Conservative,"If you look at the drug war from a purely economic point of view, the role of the government is to protect the drug cartel. That's literally true."
Milton Friedman,Conservative,"The term money has two very different meanings in popular discourse. We often speak of someone ""making money,"" when we really mean that he or she is receiving an income. We do not mean that he or she has a printing press in the basement churning out greenbacked pieces of paper. In this use, money is a synonym for income or receipts; it refers to a flow, to income or receipts per week or per year. We also speak of someone's having money in his or her pocket or in a safe-deposit box or on deposit at a bank. In that use, money refers to an asset, a component of one's total wealth. Put differently, the first use refers to an item on a profit-and-loss statement, the second to an item on a balance sheet"
Milton Friedman,Conservative,One reason why money is a mystery to so many is the role of myth or fiction or convention.
Milton Friedman,Conservative,Why should they also be accepted by private persons in private transactions in exchange for goods and services?The short answer—and the right answer—is that private persons accept these pieces of paper because they are confident that others will. The pieces of green paper have value because everybody thinks they have value. Everybody thinks they have value because in everybody's experience they have had value...
Milton Friedman,Conservative,"Analysis of the supply of money, and in particular of changes in the supply of money, is simple in principle but extremely complex in practice, both in our hypothetical world and in the current real world. Simple in principle, because the supply of money is whatever the monetary authorities make if, complex in practice, because the decisions of the monetary authorities depend on numerous factors."
Milton Friedman,Conservative,"For both long and short periods there is a consistent though not precise relation between the rate of growth of the quantity of money and the rate of growth of nominal income. If the quantity of money grows rapidly, so will nominal income, and conversely. The relation is much closer for long than for short periods"
Milton Friedman,Conservative,"Over short periods, the relation between growth in money and growth in nominal income is often hard to see, partly because the relation is less close for short than for long periods, but mostly because it takes time for changes in monetary growth to affect income. And how long a time is itself variable. Today's income growth is not closely related to today's monetary growth; it depends on what has been happening to money in the past. What happens to money today affects what is going to happen to income in the future"
Thomas Sowell,Conservative,"What the welfare system and other kinds of governmental programs are doing is paying people to fail. In so far as they fail, they receive the money; in so far as they succeed, even to a moderate extent, the money is taken away."
Thomas Sowell,Conservative,"Too many Republicans treat English as a second language, with Beltway lingo being their native tongue."
Thomas Sowell,Conservative,"Ideas are everywhere, but knowledge is rare."
Thomas Sowell,Conservative,"Ideas, as the raw material from which knowledge is produced, exist in superabundance, but that makes the production of knowledge more difficult rather than easier."
Thomas Sowell,Conservative,Civilization is an enormous device for economizing on knowledge.
Thomas Sowell,Conservative,"Knowledge may be enjoyed as a speculative diversion, but it is needed for decision making."
Thomas Sowell,Conservative,"It is unnecessary to attempt any general rule as to where the overall balance lies in comparing the respective costs of knowledge in larger and smaller decision-making units. What is important is to understand that (1) the respective cost advantages of the large and small units differ according to the kind of knowledge involved (general versus specific), that (2) most decisions involve mixtures of the two kinds of knowledge, so that the net advantages of the larger and smaller units vary with the kind of decision, and (3) the effectiveness of hierarchical subordination varies with the extent to which the subordinate unit has knowledge advantages over the higher unit."
Thomas Sowell,Conservative,"While decisions are constrained by the kinds of organizations and the kinds of knowledge involved, the Impetus for decisions comes from the internal preferences and external incentives facing those who actually make the decisions."
Thomas Sowell,Conservative,Key indicators require some specified time span during which they are to be tabulated for purposes of reward or penalty. The time span can vary enormously according to the process and the indicator.
Thomas Sowell,Conservative,"Before attempting to determine the effect of institutions, it is necessary to consider the inherent circumstances, constraints, and impelling forces at work in the environment within which the institutional mechanisms function."
Thomas Sowell,Conservative,"Facts do not ""speak for themselves."" They speak for or against competing theories. Facts divorced from theory or visions are mere isolated curiosities."
Thomas Sowell,Conservative,One of the grand fallacies of our time is that something beneficial should be subsidized.
Thomas Sowell,Conservative,The case for the political left looks more plausible on the surface but is harder to keep believing in as you become more experienced.
Thomas Sowell,Conservative,Understanding the limitations of human beings is the beginning of wisdom.
Thomas Sowell,Conservative,The key feature of Communist propaganda has been the depiction of people who are more productive as mere exploiters of others.
Thomas Sowell,Conservative,"Much of the social history of the Western world over the past three decades has involved replacing what worked with what sounded good. In area after area - crime, education, housing, race relations - the situation has gotten worse after the bright new theories were put into operation. The amazing thing is that this history of failure and disaster has neither discouraged the social engineers nor discredited them."
Thomas Sowell,Conservative,"Both free speech rights and property rights belong legally to individuals, but their real function is social, to benefit vast numbers of people who do not themselves exercise these rights."
Thomas Sowell,Conservative,History shows that degeneracy can be turned around because it has been done in the past. But the real question today is: Will we turn it around-or is what we are doing likely to make matters worse?
Thomas Sowell,Conservative,"I have never understood why it is ""greed"" to want to keep the money you have earned but not greed to want to take somebody else's money."
Thomas Sowell,Conservative,"People who pride themselves on their ""complexity"" and deride others for being ""simplistic"" should realize that the truth is often not very complicated. What gets complex is evading the truth."
Thomas Sowell,Conservative,"Those who believe that ""basic necessities"" should belong to people as a matter of right ignore the implication -- that people are to work only for amenities, frivolities, and ego. Will that mean more work or less work?  And if less, where are all those ""basic necessities"" coming from that the government is supposed to hand out?"
Thomas Sowell,Conservative,"Many of the dangerous things that drivers do are not likely to save them even 10 seconds. When you bet your life against 10 seconds, that is giving bigger odds than you are ever likely to get in Las Vegas."
Thomas Sowell,Conservative,Most problems do not get solved. They get superseded by other concerns.
Thomas Sowell,Conservative,"People who talk incessantly about ""change"" are often dogmatically set in their ways. They want to change other people."
Thomas Sowell,Conservative,"Maturity is not a matter of age. You have matured when you are no longer concerned with showing how clever you are, and give your full attention to getting the job done right. Many never reach that stage, no matter how old they get."
Thomas Sowell,Conservative,"One of the most ridiculous defenses of foreign aid is that it is a very small part of our national income. If the average American set fire to a five-dollar bill, it would be an even smaller percentage of his annual income. But everyone would consider him foolish for doing it."
Thomas Sowell,Conservative,"Letters from teachers continue to confirm the incompetence which they deny. A teacher in Montana says that my criticisms of teachers are ""nieve."" No, that wasn't a typographical error. He spelled it that way twice."
Thomas Sowell,Conservative,"If I could offer one piece of advice to young people thinking about their future, it would be this:  Don't preconceive. Find out what the opportunities are."
Thomas Sowell,Conservative,Some of the people on death row today might not be there if the courts had not been so lenient on them when they were first offenders.
Thomas Sowell,Conservative,"If you don't believe in the innate unreasonableness of human beings, just try raising children."
Thomas Sowell,Conservative,Time was when people used to brag about how old they were -- and I am old enough to remember it.
Thomas Sowell,Conservative,"It is hard to imagine a more stupid or more dangerous way of making decisions than by putting those decisions in the hands of people who pay no price for being wrong. Know-it-alls in the school system do not lose one dime or one hour's sleep if their bright ideas turn out to be all wrong, or even disastrous, for the child."
Thomas Sowell,Conservative,"People who think that they are being ""exploited"" should ask themselves whether they would be missed if they left, or whether people would say: ""Good riddance""?"
Thomas Sowell,Conservative,"Intellectuals may like to think of themselves as people who ""speak truth to power"" but too often they are people who speak lies to gain power."
Thomas Sowell,Conservative,I'm always embarrassed when people say that I'm courageous. Soldiers are courageous. Policemen are courageous. Firemen are courageous. I just have a thick hide and disregard what silly people say.
Thomas Sowell,Conservative,"Before the Iraq war I was quite disturbed by some of the neoconservatives, who were saying things like, ""What is the point of being a superpower if you can't do such-and-such, take on these responsibilities?"" The point of being a superpower is that people will leave you alone."
Thomas Sowell,Conservative,"It is amazing how many people think that they can answer an argument by attributing bad motives to those who disagree with them. Using this kind of reasoning, you can believe or not believe anything about anything, without having to bother to deal with facts or logic."
Thomas Sowell,Conservative,"Some of the most vocal critics of the way things are being done are people who have done nothing themselves, and whose only contributions to society are their complaints and moral exhibitionism."
Thomas Sowell,Conservative,"When I see the worsening degeneracy in our politicians, our media, our educators, and our intelligentsia, I can’t help wondering if the day may yet come when the only thing that can save this country is a military coup."
Thomas Sowell,Conservative,"Too often what are called ""educated"" people are simply people who have been sheltered from reality for years in ivy-covered buildings. Those whose whole careers have been spent in ivy-covered buildings, insulated by tenure, can remain adolescents on into their golden retirement years."
Thomas Sowell,Conservative,"One of the painful signs of years of dumbed-down education is how many people are unable to make a coherent argument. They can vent their emotions, question other people's motives, make bold assertions, repeat slogans-- anything except reason."
Thomas Sowell,Conservative,"Although I am ready to defend what I have said, many people expect me to defend what others have attributed to me."
Thomas Sowell,Conservative,"""'Global warming' is just the latest in a long line of hysterical crusades to which we seem to be increasingly susceptible."""
Thomas Sowell,Conservative,"In a world where young blacks, especially, are bombarded with claims that they are being unfairly targeted by police, and where a general attitude of belligerence is being promoted literally in word and song, it is hard not to wonder whether some people's responses to policemen do not have something to do with the policemen's responses to them. Neither the police nor people in any other occupation always do what is right but automatic belligerence is not the answer."
Thomas Sowell,Conservative,"As far as party primaries are concerned, both Republican and Democratic Party primaries are dominated by the most zealous voters, whose views may not reflect the views of most members of their own respective parties, much less the views of those who are going to vote in the November general election.In recent times, each election year has seen each party's nominee selected - or at least subject to veto - by its most extreme wing and then forced to try to move back to the center before the general election.This can only undermine the public's confidence in the integrity of the candidates of both parties."
Thomas Sowell,Conservative,"Right after liberal Democrats, the most dangerous politicians are country club Republicans."
Thomas Sowell,Conservative,"Republicans won big, running as Republicans, in 2004. But once they took control of Congress, they started acting like Democrats and lost big. There is a lesson in that somewhere but whether Republicans will learn it is another story entirely."
Thomas Sowell,Conservative,"When we hear about rent control or gun control, we may think about rent or guns but the word that really matters is 'control.' That is what the political left is all about, as you can see by the incessant creation of new restrictions in places where they are strongly entrenched in power, such as San Francisco or New York."
Thomas Sowell,Conservative,"To find anything comparable to crowds' euphoric reactions to Obama, you would have to go back to old newsreels of German crowds in the 1930s, with their adulation of their fuehrer, Adolf Hitler. With hindsight, we can look back on those people with pity, knowing now how many of them would be led to their deaths by the man they idolized."
Thomas Sowell,Conservative,"“Anyone who has actually had to take responsibility for consequences by running any kind of enterprise — whether economic or academic, or even just managing a sports team — is likely at some point to be chastened by either the setbacks brought on by his own mistakes or by seeing his successes followed by negative consequences that he never anticipated.”"
Thomas Sowell,Conservative,"Racism has never done this country any good, and it needs to be fought against, not put under new management for different groups."
Thomas Sowell,Conservative,"In the summer of 1959, as in the summer of 1957, I worked as a clerk-typist in the headquarters of the U.S. Public Health Service in Washington. The people I worked for were very nice and I grew to like them. One day, a man had a heart attack at around 5 PM, on the sidewalk outside the Public Health Service. He was taken inside to the nurse's room, where he was asked if he was a government employee. If he were, he would have been eligible to be taken to a medical facility there. Unfortunately, he was not, so a phone call was made to a local hospital to send an ambulance. By the time this ambulance made its way through miles of Washington rush-hour traffic, the man was dead. He died waiting for a doctor, in a building full of doctors. Nothing so dramatized for me the nature of a bureaucracy and its emphasis on procedures, rather than results."
Thomas Sowell,Conservative,"It may be expecting too much to expect most intellectuals to have common sense, when their whole life is based on their being uncommon -- that is, saying things that are different from what everyone else is saying. There is only so much genuine originality in anyone. After that, being uncommon means indulging in pointless eccentricities or clever attempts to mock or shock."
Thomas Sowell,Conservative,"It is amazing that people who think we cannot afford to pay for doctors, hospitals, and medication somehow think that we can afford to pay for doctors, hospitals, medication and a government bureaucracy to administer ""universal health care."""
Thomas Sowell,Conservative,"""Both history and contemporary data show that countries prosper more when there are stable and dependable rules, under which people can make investments without having to fear unpredictable new government interventions before these investments can pay off."""
Thomas Sowell,Conservative,"What socialism, fascism and other ideologies of the left have in common is an assumption that some very wise people—like themselves—need to take decisions out of the hands of lesser people, like the rest of us, and impose those decisions by government fiat."
Thomas Sowell,Conservative,"If the battle for civilization comes down to the wimps versus the barbarians, the barbarians are going to win."
Thomas Sowell,Conservative,"In a country with more than 300 million people, it is remarkable how obsessed the media have become with just one—Donald Trump. What is even more remarkable is that, after seven years of repeated disasters, both domestically and internationally, under a glib egomaniac in the White House, so many potential voters are turning to another glib egomaniac to be his successor."
Thomas Sowell,Conservative,"What was special about America was not that it had slavery, which existed all over the world, but that Americans were among the very few peoples who began to question the morality of holding human beings in bondage. That was not yet a majority view among Americans in the 18th century, but it was not even a serious minority view."
Thomas Sowell,Conservative,"If there is one thing that is bipartisan in Washington, it is brazen hypocrisy."
Thomas Sowell,Conservative,"Socialism sounds great. It has always sounded great. And it will probably always continue to sound great. It is only when you go beyond rhetoric, and start looking at hard facts, that socialism turns out to be a big disappointment, if not a disaster."
Thomas Sowell,Conservative,"Some intellectuals’ downplaying of objective reality and enduring criteria extends beyond social, scientific, or economic phenomena into art, music, and philosophy. The one over-riding consistency across all these disparate venues is the self-exaltation of the intellectuals. Unlike great cultural achievements of the past, such as magnificent cathedrals, which were intended to inspire kings and peasants alike, the hallmark of self-consciously “modern” art and music is its inaccessibility to the masses and often even its deliberate offensiveness to, or mockery of, the masses.Just as a physical body can continue to live, despite containing a certain amount of microorganisms whose prevalence would destroy it, so a society can survive a certain amount of forces of disintegration within it. But that is very different from saying that there is no limit to the amount, audacity and ferocity of those disintegrative forces which a society can survive, without at least the will to resist."
Thomas Sowell,Conservative,"Neither in nature nor among human beings are either equal or randomly distributed outcomes automatic. On the contrary, grossly unequal distributions of outcomes are common, both in nature and among people, in circumstances where neither genes nor discrimination are involved... The idea that it would be a level playing field, if it were not for either genes or discrimination, is a preconception in defiance of both logic and facts."
Kevin D. Williamson,Conservative,"I am grateful to the men and women of our military for their service, but armies are only expedients, necessary evils. They should be kept out of sight for the same reason I keep the guns out of sight in my home. A military parade does not display greatness—it displays power. And that may be where I most part company with our new nationalists. To my eye, there is more American greatness in a New England town hall than in all of Washington, and more American greatness in an Oregon apple orchard or a Rotary meeting than there is in all the tanks and rockets that ever have been."
Kevin D. Williamson,Conservative,"In Sweden, diversity is not their strength. Homogeneity is."
Kevin D. Williamson,Conservative,Sweden’s more liberal policy toward immigrants may be judged in no small part by the Stockholm riots of 2013.
Kevin D. Williamson,Conservative,"In reality, economic xenophobia and ordinary xenophobia always end up colliding. The nastier of Europe’s anti-immigrant and ethno-nationalist movements argue that ethnic solidarity is necessary to preserve the welfare state. Among ordinary Swedes, the topic of immigrants’ — non-Nordic people’s — relatively high rates of unemployment and welfare dependency is politically charged."
Walter E. Williams,Conservative,"If FDA officials err on the side of under-caution in approving an unsafe drug, they are attacked by the media and patient groups, and investigated by Congress. Their victims, sick and dead people, are highly visible. If FDA officials err on the side of over-caution, keeping a safe and effective drug off the market, who's to know? The victims are invisible. For example, neither the Americans who get sick or die from meningitis C this year, nor their loved ones, will know that their illness or death could have been prevented had it not been for errors by FDA officials. It's a no-brainer to figure out which error FDA officials prefer to make."
Walter E. Williams,Conservative,"In 302, the Roman emperor Diocletian commanded ""there should be cheapness,"" declaring, ""Unprincipled greed appears wherever our armies … march. … Our law shall fix a measure and a limit to this greed."" The predictable result of Diocletian's food price controls were black markets, hunger and food confiscation by his soldiers. Despite the disastrous history of price controls, politicians never manage to resist tampering with prices -- that's not a flattering observation of their learning abilities."
Walter E. Williams,Conservative,"We're all grossly ignorant about most things that we use and encounter in our daily lives, but each of us is knowledgeable about tiny, relatively inconsequential things. For example, a baker might be the best baker in town, but he's grossly ignorant about virtually all the inputs that allow him to be the best baker. What is he likely to know about what goes into the processing of the natural gas that fuels his oven? For that matter, what does he know about oven manufacture? Then, there are all the ingredients he uses -- flour, sugar, yeast, vanilla and milk. Is he likely to know how to grow wheat and sugar and how to protect the crop from diseases and pests? What is he likely to know about vanilla extraction and yeast production? Just as important is the question of how all the people who produce and deliver all these items know what he needs and when he needs them. There are literally millions of people cooperating with one another to ensure that the baker has all the necessary inputs. It's the miracle of the market and prices that gets the job done so efficiently. What's called the market is simply a collection of millions upon millions of independent decision makers not only in America but around the world. Who or what coordinates the activities all of these people? Rest assuredly it's not a bakery czar."
Walter E. Williams,Conservative,"""You can never be too safe."" Yes, you can. How many of us bother to inspect the hydraulic brake lines in our cars before we start the engine and head off to work? Doing so would be safer than simply assuming that the lines were intact and driving off. After all, prior to launching a space vehicle, the people at NASA make no similar assumptions. They go through a countdown of all systems, taking nothing for granted. Erring on the side of over-caution is costly, and so is erring on the side of under-caution, though for a given choice, one might be costlier than the other."
Walter E. Williams,Conservative,"There are several methods of conflict resolution. First, there's the market mechanism -- let the highest bidder be the one who owns and decides how the land will be used. Then, there's government fiat, where the government dictates who gets to use the land for what purpose. Gifts might be the way where an owner arbitrarily chooses a recipient. Finally, violence is a way to resolve the question of who has the use rights to the coastline -- let people get weapons and physically fight it out. At this juncture, some might piously say, ""Violence is no way to resolve conflict!"" The heck it isn't. The decision of who had the right to use most of the Earth's surface was settled through violence (wars). Who has the right to the income I earn is partially settled through the threats of violence. In fact, violence is such an effective means of resolving conflict that most governments want a monopoly on its use."
Walter E. Williams,Conservative,"""It's wrong to profit from the misfortune of others."" I ask my students whether they'd support a law against doing so. But I caution them with some examples. An orthopedist profits from your misfortune of having broken your leg skiing. When there's news of a pending ice storm, I doubt whether it saddens the hearts of those in the collision repair business. I also tell my students that I profit from their misfortune — their ignorance of economic theory."
Walter E. Williams,Conservative,"How does something immoral, when done privately, become moral when it is done collectively? Furthermore, does legality establish morality? Slavery was legal; apartheid is legal; Stalinist, Nazi, and Maoist purges were legal. Clearly, the fact of legality does not justify these crimes. Legality, alone, cannot be the talisman of moral people."
Walter E. Williams,Conservative,But let me offer you my definition of social justice: I keep what I earn and you keep what you earn. Do you disagree? Well then tell me how much of what I earn belongs to you - and why?
Walter E. Williams,Conservative,"Three-fifths to two-thirds of the federal budget consists of taking property from one American and giving it to another. Were a private person to do the same thing, we'd call it theft. When government does it, we euphemistically call it income redistribution, but that's exactly what thieves do -- redistribute income. Income redistribution not only betrays the founders' vision, it's a sin in the eyes of God."
Walter E. Williams,Conservative,"This is why socialism is evil. It employs evil means, coercion or taking the property of one person, to accomplish good ends, helping one's fellow man. Helping one's fellow man in need, by reaching into one's own pockets, is a laudable and praiseworthy goal. Doing the same through coercion and reaching into another's pockets has no redeeming features and is worthy of condemnation."
Walter E. Williams,Conservative,"But I think that the Democrats have been very successful in portraying themselves as the caring people, when if you look at the effects of the Democratic Party on Black people I think it’s horrible, it’s horrendous. For example, if you ask the question, “In what cities do Blacks live under the worst conditions—in terms of crime, rotten education, poor services,”—these are the very cities that have been run for decades by Democrats. I don’t care whether you are talking about Philadelphia, Washington D.C., Chicago, or Detroit, it’s all been Democrats. And then on top of it, it’s been Black Democrats! That is, again, if you look at where Blacks live under the most horrible conditions, its in cities where a Black is the mayor, a Black is the chief of police and a Black is the superintendent of schools."
Walter E. Williams,Conservative,"In August 2009, MSNBC's Contessa Brewer was discussing a tea party rally in Arizona, where it's legal to carry an unconcealed weapon. She said: ""A man at a pro-health care rally... wore a semiautomatic assault rifle on his shoulder and a pistol on his hip... There are questions about whether this has racial overtones, I mean, here you have a man of color in the presidency and white people showing up with guns."" All that her audience was shown were a rifle and pistol strapped to a man's back. MSNBC concealed the fact that the armed man was black and did not show the interview he gave to the reporter. Brewer knowingly deceived her audience because an armed black man didn't fit the racial narrative."
Walter E. Williams,Conservative,"First, weaken the black family, but don't blame it on individual choices. You have to preach that today's weak black family is a legacy of slavery, Jim Crow and racism. The truth is that black female-headed households were just 18 percent of households in 1950, as opposed to about 68 percent today. In fact, from 1890 to 1940, the black marriage rate was slightly higher than that of whites... In New York City, in 1925, 85 percent of black households were two-parent households... Disgustingly, black politicians, civil rights leaders, liberals and the president are talking nonsense about ""having a conversation about race."" That's beyond useless. Tell me how a conversation with white people is going to stop black predators from preying on blacks. How is such a conversation going to eliminate the 75 percent illegitimacy rate? What will such a conversation do about the breakdown of the black family... Only black people can solve our problems."
Walter E. Williams,Conservative,"What human motivation is responsible for getting the most wonderful things done?  I would say greed.  When I use the term greed, I do not mean cheating, stealing, fraud and other acts of dishonesty, I mean people seeking to get the most for themselves.  One might be tempted to use “enlightened self interest” but I like greed better.  Unfortunately, many people are naive enough to believe that it is compassion, concern, and ""feeling another's pain"" that's the superior human motivation.  As such we fall easy prey to charlatans, quacks and hustlers."
Walter E. Williams,Conservative,"Since it's not considered polite, and surely not politically-correct to come out and actually say that greed gets wonderful things done, let me go through a few of the millions of examples of the benefits of people trying to get more for themselves.  There's probably widespread agreement that it's a wonderful thing that most of us own cars.  Is there anyone who believes that the reason we have cars is because Detroit assembly line workers care about us?  It's also wonderful that Texas cattle ranchers make the sacrifices of time and effort caring for steer so that New Yorkers can have beef on their supermarket shelves.  It is also wonderful that Idaho potato growers arise early to do back-breaking work in the hot sun to ensure that New Yorkers also have potatoes on their supermarket shelves.  Again, is there anyone who believes that ranchers and potato growers, who make these sacrifices, do so because they care about New Yorkers?  They might hate New Yorkers.  New Yorkers have beef and potatoes because Texas cattle ranchers and Idaho potato growers care about themselves and they want more for themselves.  How much steak and potatoes would New Yorkers have if it all depended on human love and kindness?  I would feel sorry for New Yorkers.  Thinking this way bothers some people because they are more concerned with the motives behind a set of actions rather than the results. This is what Adam Smith, the father of economics, meant in The Wealth of Nations when he said, ""It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker, that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interests."""
Walter E. Williams,Conservative,"Market capitalism is the best thing that ever happened to the common man.  The rich have always had access to entertainment, often in the comfort of their palaces and mansions. The rich have never had to experience the drudgery of having to beat out carpets, iron their clothing or slave over a hot stove all day in order to have a decent dinner.  They could afford to hire people.  Capitalism's mass production and marketing have made radios and televisions, vacuum cleaners, wash-and-wear clothing and microwave ovens available and well within the means of the common man; thus, sparing him of the boredom and drudgery of the past.  Today, the common man has the power to enjoy much (and more) of what only the rich could afford yesteryear."
Walter E. Williams,Conservative,"Most people agree that slavery is immoral.  But what makes it so?  Slavery denies a person the right to use his property (body) and the fruits of his labor the way he sees fit.  Slavery forcibly uses one person to serve the purposes of another.  Tragically, most Americans, including blacks, whose ancestors have suffered from gross property right violations, think it quite proper that one person be forcibly used to serve the purposes of another."
Walter E. Williams,Conservative,"Despite the miracles of capitalism, it doesn't do well in popularity polls.  One of the reasons is that capitalism is always evaluated against the non-existent, non-realizable utopias of socialism or communism.  Any earthly system, when compared to a Utopia will pale in comparison.  But for the ordinary person, capitalism, with all of its warts, is superior to any system yet devised to deal with our everyday needs and desires."
Walter E. Williams,Conservative,"The Rev. Jesse Jackson once said, “There is nothing more painful for me at this stage in my life than to walk down the street and hear footsteps and start thinking about robbery—then look around and see somebody white and feel relieved."
Walter E. Williams,Conservative,French economist/philosopher Frederic Bastiat (1801–50) gave a test for immoral government acts: “See if the law benefits one citizen at the expense of another by doing what the citizen himself cannot do without committing a crime.
Walter E. Williams,Conservative,Philosopher Johann Wolfgang von Goethe explained that “no one is as hopelessly enslaved as the person who thinks he’s free.” That’s becoming an apt description for Americans who are oblivious to—or ignorant of—the liberties we’ve lost.
Walter E. Williams,Conservative,"Believing that presidents have taxing and spending powers leaves Congress less politically accountable for our deepening economic quagmire. Of course, if you’re a congressman, not being held accountable is what you want."
Walter E. Williams,Conservative,"The 2000 election of George W. Bush as president gave Republicans what the Democrats have now, total control of the legislative and executive branches of government. When Bush came to office, federal spending was $1.788 trillion. When he left office, federal spending was $2.982 trillion."
Walter E. Williams,Conservative,Do-gooders fail to realize that most good is not done in the name of good but done in the name of self-interest.
Walter E. Williams,Conservative,"Our founders, in the words of Thomas Paine, recognized that, “Government, even in its best state, is but a necessary evil; in its worst state, an intolerable one."
Walter E. Williams,Conservative,What our nation needs is a separation of “business and state” as it has a separation of “church and state.” That would mean crony capitalism and crony socialism could not survive.
Walter E. Williams,Conservative,"It’s government people, not rich people, who have the power to coerce and make our lives miserable. Coercive power goes a long way toward explaining political corruption."
William F. Buckley Jr.,Conservative,"A conservative is someone who stands athwart history, yelling Stop, at a time when no one is inclined to do so, or to have much patience with those who so urge it."
William F. Buckley Jr.,Conservative,"The largest cultural menace in America is the conformity of the intellectual cliques which, in education as well as the arts, are out to impose upon the nation their modish fads and fallacies, and have nearly succeeded in doing so. In this cultural issue, we are, without reservations, on the side of excellence (rather than ""newness"") and of honest intellectual combat (rather than conformity)."
William F. Buckley Jr.,Conservative,"I will not cede more power to the state. I will not willingly cede more power to anyone, not to the state, not to General Motors, not to the CIO. I will hoard my power like a miser, resisting every effort to drain it away from me. I will then use my power, as I see fit. I mean to live my life an obedient man, but obedient to God, subservient to the wisdom of my ancestors; never to the authority of political truths arrived at yesterday at the voting booth. That is a program of sorts, is it not? It is certainly program enough to keep conservatives busy, and liberals at bay. And the nation free."
William F. Buckley Jr.,Conservative,"The superstition that the hounds of truth will rout the vermin of error seems, like a fragment of Victorian lace, quaint, but too brittle to be lifted out of the showcase."
William F. Buckley Jr.,Conservative,"One must recently have lived on or close to a college campus to have a vivid intimation of what has happened. It is there that we see how a number of energetic social innovators, plugging their grand designs, succeeded over the years in capturing the liberal intellectual imagination. And since ideas rule the world, the ideologues, having won over the intellectual class, simply walked in and started to run things. Run just about everything. There never was an age of conformity quite like this one, or a camaraderie quite like the Liberals'."
William F. Buckley Jr.,Conservative,"Radical conservatives in this country have an interesting time of it, for when they are not being suppressed or mutilated by Liberals, they are being ignored or humiliated by a great many of those of the well-fed Right, whose ignorance and amorality have never been exaggerated for the same reason that one cannot exaggerate infinity.  There are, thank Heaven, the exceptions. There are those of generous impulse and a sincere desire to encourage a responsible dissent from the Liberal orthodoxy. And there are those who recognize that when all is said and done, the market place depends for a license to operate freely on the men who issue licenses — on the politicians. They recognize, therefore, that efficient getting and spending is itself impossible except in an atmosphere that encourages efficient getting and spending. And back of all political institutions there are moral and philosophical concepts, implicit or defined. Our political economy and our high-energy industry run on large, general principles, on ideas — not by day-to-day guess work, expedients and improvisations. Ideas have to go into exchange to become or remain operative; and the medium of such exchange is the printed word."
William F. Buckley Jr.,Conservative,"The central question that emerges—and it is not a parliamentary question or a question that is answered by merely consulting a catalog of the rights of American citizens, born Equal—is whether the White community in the South is entitled to take such measures as are necessary to prevail, politically and culturally, in areas in which it does not predominate numerically? The sobering answer is Yes—the White community is so entitled because, for the time being, it is the advanced race.National Review believes that the South's premises are correct. If the majority wills what is socially atavistic, then to thwart the majority may be, though undemocratic, enlightened. It is more important for any community, anywhere in the world, to affirm and live by civilized standards, than to bow to the demands of the numerical majority. Sometimes it becomes impossible to assert the will of a minority, in which case it must give way; and the society will regress; sometimes the numerical minority cannot prevail except by violence: then it must determine whether the prevalence of its will is worth the terrible price of violence."
William F. Buckley Jr.,Conservative,"Though liberals do a great deal of talking about hearing other points of view, it sometimes shocks them to learn that there are other points of view."
William F. Buckley Jr.,Conservative,"They are men and women who tend to believe that the human being is perfectible and social progress predictable, and that the instrument for effecting the two is reason; that truths are transitory and empirically determined; that equality is desirable and attainable through the action of state power; that social and individual differences, if they are not rational, are objectionable, and should be scientifically eliminated; that all people and societies strive to organize themselves upon a rationalist and scientific paradigm."
William F. Buckley Jr.,Conservative,Demand a recount.
William F. Buckley Jr.,Conservative,"I am, I fully grant, a phenomenon, but not because of any speed in composition. I asked myself the other day, ""Who else, on so many issues, has been so right so much of the time?"" I couldn't think of anyone."
William F. Buckley Jr.,Conservative,I've always subconsciously looked out for the total Christian and when I found him he turned out to be a non-practicing Jew.
William F. Buckley Jr.,Conservative,"Conservatives pride themselves on resisting change, which is as it should be. But intelligent deference to tradition and stability can evolve into intellectual sloth and moral fanaticism, as when conservatives simply decline to look up from dogma because the effort to raise their heads and reconsider is too great.  The laws concerning marijuana aren't exactly indefensible, because practically nothing is, and the thunderers who tell us to stay the course can always find one man or woman who, having taken marijuana, moved on to severe mental disorder.  But that argument, to quote myself, is on the order of saying that every rapist began by masturbating.  General rules based on individual victims are unwise.  And although there is a perfectly respectable case against using marijuana, the penalties imposed on those who reject that case, or who give way to weakness of resolution, are very difficult to defend."
William F. Buckley Jr.,Conservative,"Oh yes, I won’t cavil on that point. The magazine has been everything the speakers tonight have so kindly said it was–is. It is preposterous to suppose that this is so because of my chancellorship. How gifted do you need to be to publish Whittaker Chambers and Russell Kirk, James Burnham and Keith Mano? But, yes, the journal needed to function. Somehow the staff and the writers had to be paid–if an editorial note is reserved for me in the encyclopedias, it will appear under the heading “Alchemy.” But the deficits were met, mostly, by our readers: by you. And, yes, we did as much as anybody with the exception of–Himself–to shepherd into the White House the man I am confident will emerge as the principal political figure of the second half of the 20th century, and he will be cherished, in the nursery tales told in future generations, as the American president who showed the same innocent audacity as the little boy who insisted that the emperor wasn’t wearing any clothes, back when he said, at a critical moment in history, that the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics was an evil empire. It is my judgment that those words acted as a kind of harmonic resolution to the three frantic volumes of Solzhenitsyn. The Gulag Archipelago told us everything we needed to know about the pathology of Soviet Communism. We were missing only the galvanizing summation; and we got it from President Reagan: and I think that the countdown for Communism began then."
William F. Buckley Jr.,Conservative,"When in 1951 I was inducted into the CIA as a deep cover agent, the procedures for disguising my affiliation and my work were unsmilingly comprehensive. It was three months before I was formally permitted to inform my wife what the real reason was for going to Mexico City to live. If, a year later, I had been apprehended, dosed with sodium pentothal, and forced to give out the names of everyone I knew in the CIA, I could have come up with exactly one name, that of my immediate boss (E. Howard Hunt, as it happened). In the passage of time one can indulge in idle talk on spook life. In 1980 I found myself seated next to the former president of Mexico at a ski-area restaurant. What, he asked amiably, had I done when I lived in Mexico? ""I tried to undermine your regime, Mr. President."" He thought this amusing, and that is all that it was, under the aspect of the heavens.  We have noticed that Valerie Plame Wilson has lived in Washington since 1997. Where she was before that is not disclosed by research facilities at my disposal. But even if she was safe in Washington when the identity of her employer was given out, it does not mean that her outing was without consequence. We do not know what dealings she might have been engaging in which are now interrupted or even made impossible. ... In my case, it was 15 years after reentry into the secular world before my secret career in Mexico was blown, harming no one except perhaps some who might have been put off by my deception."
William F. Buckley Jr.,Conservative,"Skepticism about life and nature is most often expressed by those who take it for granted that belief is an indulgence of the superstitious — indeed their opiate, to quote a historical cosmologist most profoundly dead. Granted, that to look up at the stars comes close to compelling disbelief — how can such a chance arrangement be other than an elaboration — near infinite — of natural impulses? Yes, on the other hand, who is to say that the arrangement of the stars is more easily traceable to nature, than to nature's molder? What is the greater miracle: the raising of the dead man in Lazarus, or the mere existence of the man who died and of the witnesses who swore to his revival?"
William F. Buckley Jr.,Conservative,"One can't doubt that the American objective in Iraq has failed. ... Our mission has failed because Iraqi animosities have proved uncontainable by an invading army of 130,000 Americans. The great human reserves that call for civil life haven't proved strong enough. No doubt they are latently there, but they have not been able to contend against the ice men who move about in the shadows with bombs and grenades and pistols.  The Iraqis we hear about are first indignant, and then infuriated, that Americans aren't on the scene to protect them and to punish the aggressors. And so they join the clothing merchant who says that everything is the fault of the Americans."
William F. Buckley Jr.,Conservative,If you had a European prime minister who experienced what we've experienced it would be expected that he would retire or resign.
William F. Buckley Jr.,Conservative,"I think Mr. Bush faces a singular problem best defined, I think, as the absence of effective conservative ideology — with the result that he ended up being very extravagant in domestic spending, extremely tolerant of excesses by Congress, and in respect of foreign policy, incapable of bringing together such forces as apparently were necessary to conclude the Iraq challenge.  There will be no legacy for Mr. Bush. I don't believe his successor would re-enunciate the words he used in his second inaugural address because they were too ambitious. So therefore I think his legacy is indecipherable."
William F. Buckley Jr.,Conservative,Government can't do anything for you except in proportion as it can do something to you.
William F. Buckley Jr.,Conservative,"It was rumored, in 1946, that the hangman in Nuremberg adjusted the nooses of some of the condemned to magnify the pain of suffocation. Such sadism was not called for then and is not called for now. But if fornication is wrong, there is no denying that it can bring pleasure. The death of Saddam Hussein at rope's end brings a pleasure that is undeniable, and absolutely chaste in its provenance."
William F. Buckley Jr.,Conservative,"I get satisfaction of three kinds. One is creating something, one is being paid for it and one is the feeling that I haven’t just been sitting on my ass all afternoon."
William F. Buckley Jr.,Conservative,Everything I do and say and the way I do and say it annoys me.
William F. Buckley Jr.,Conservative,"Now listen, you queer, stop calling me a crypto-Nazi, or I'll nail you in the goddamn face and you'll stay plastered."
William F. Buckley Jr.,Conservative,"More people die every year as a result of the war against drugs than die from what we call, generically, overdosing. These fatalities include, perhaps most prominently, drug merchants who compete for commercial territory, but include also people who are robbed and killed by those desperate for money to buy the drug to which they have become addicted.  This is perhaps the moment to note that the pharmaceutical cost of cocaine and heroin is approximately 2 per cent of the street price of those drugs. Since a cocaine addict can spend as much as $1,000 per week to sustain his habit, he would need to come up with that $1,000. The approximate fencing cost of stolen goods is 80 per cent, so that to come up with $1,000 can require stealing $5,000 worth of jewels, cars, whatever. We can see that at free-market rates, $20 per week would provide the addict with the cocaine which, in this wartime drug situation, requires of him $1,000."
William F. Buckley Jr.,Conservative,"Treatment is not now available for almost half of those who would benefit from it. Yet we are willing to build more and more jails in which to isolate drug users even though at one-seventh the cost of building and maintaining jail space and pursuing, detaining, and prosecuting the drug user, we could subsidize commensurately effective medical care and psychological treatment."
William F. Buckley Jr.,Conservative,"The cost of the drug war is many times more painful, in all its manifestations, than would be the licensing of drugs combined with intensive education of non-users and intensive education designed to warn those who experiment with drugs."
William F. Buckley Jr.,Conservative,"Those who suffer from the abuse of drugs have themselves to blame for it. This does not mean that society is absolved from active concern for their plight. It does mean that their plight is subordinate to the plight of those citizens who do not experiment with drugs but whose life, liberty, and property are substantially affected by the illegalization of the drugs sought after by the minority."
William F. Buckley Jr.,Conservative,"It is outrageous to live in a society whose laws tolerate sending young people to life in prison because they grew, or distributed, a dozen ounces of marijuana. I would hope that the good offices of your vital profession would mobilize at least to protest such excesses of wartime zeal, the legal equivalent of a My Lai massacre. And perhaps proceed to recommend the legalization of the sale of most drugs, except to minors."
Bill Kristol,Conservative,"Well, Foley is responsible for it, and the voters in Florida, I guess, who elected him. Maybe they should have known better."
Bill Kristol,Conservative,It's not a serious document.
Bill Kristol,Conservative,I think Rumsfeld was not a good Defense Secretary. I'm glad he's gone.
Bill Kristol,Conservative,Barack Obama is not going to beat Hillary Clinton in a single democratic primary. I'll predict that right now.
Bill Kristol,Conservative,"The Obama years have been weighed in the balance and found wanting. Severely wanting. By the end of Obama's presidency, the U.S. standing in the world was weaker—clearly and appreciably weaker—than when he became president. The force of American power was diminished, and freedom was in retreat. By the end of Obama's presidency, was there a single part of the world where the United States was in a stronger position than when he took office? Was there an ally who was more confident or an adversary who was less so? By the end of Obama's presidency, were any important countries either friendlier or freer than they had been when he took over? The answer to all these questions: no."
Bill Kristol,Conservative,The present moment is not one to be proud of. The normal vulgarity of democratic politics has become the shameless demagoguery of democratic decadence. The routine operation of party politics has given way to the mindless polarization of partisan fanatics. The characteristic limitations of popular leaders have yielded to an abdication of leadership itself. A public life with occasional cringeworthy moments has been replaced by one that is on the whole cringeworthy.
Bill Kristol,Conservative,Donald Trump is an embarrassment. It would be better for the country if he were president for at most one term.
Bill Kristol,Conservative,"[T]he Islamic world is a source of danger and destruction is all too conceivable. Indeed, it’s been on display, in plain sight, for years... The jihadist threat is real, and it must, obviously, be fought and defeated. But that raises another problem—not a problem with Islam, but a problem with the West. We have lost our nerve. In recent years, the attitude of Barack Obama has prevailed over the spirit of Charlie Hebdo. The claims of sensitivity have trumped the attachment to freedom. Appeasement of jihad has supplanted the war on terror. Most fundamentally—let’s be honest—fear has overwhelmed courage. And so the American president has been happy to proclaim, as he did at the United Nations in September 2012, “The future must not belong to those who slander the prophet of Islam.” He has been less willing to say that the future must not belong to those who kill in the name of the prophet of Islam... We face a crisis of Islam. We need to be clear-eyed about that. But we also face a crisis of the West. Only if we come to grips with that second crisis will this period of consequences turn out to be an occasion for renewal rather than another marker on the path to decadence."
Bill Kristol,Conservative,The noble simplicity of sentiment in McCain’s tweets is a world removed from Trump’s gaudy and boastful displays. And McCain’s demonstration of character and courage is a far more reliable guide to American greatness than the pronouncements of a president who speaks of it nonstop and embodies it not at all.
Bill Kristol,Conservative,"So WE are to blame for the ""bad blood"" with Russia. Not what Putin has done in Ukraine, in Syria, in the UK, at home, or with respect to our elections. Amazing."
Bill Kristol,Conservative,"We're to blame for the ""bad blood."" Not Putin. The real meaning of America First is Blame America First."
Bill Kristol,Conservative,[I]nstitutions are strong; it turns out you don't need a lot of sensible or even sane leadership in the White House.
Bill Kristol,Conservative,"The town hall has the spirit of representative democracy, the rally of autocracy."
Bill Kristol,Conservative,I’d rather fight than switch. It’s worth fighting.
Bill Kristol,Conservative,"The rhetorical extremism, the winking at violence, the reveling in vulgarity, and the embrace of amoralism are not bugs but features of Trumpism. Intellectual and moral coarsening is both a condition and a consequence of the demagogue's success. Trumpism really does corrupt."
Bill Kristol,Conservative,"No disease any refugee might bring to America is as dangerous as the disease of fear, bigotry and hatred now being spread in America by Fox."
Bill Kristol,Conservative,Younger people actually understand how it works. They don't just take what they are fed according to their preferences; they go look at other things. So I've always been more anti-baby boomer and more pro-millennial.
Bill Kristol,Conservative,"Hasn't America really always been, at least since the middle of the 19th century, a majority-minority country? Lincoln, July 10, 1858: ""We have besides these men—descended by blood from our ancestors—among us perhaps half our people who are not descendants at all of these men..."""
Bill Kristol,Conservative,[T]here seem to be more CRIMINALS in the Trump Administration than in the Caravan.
Bill Kristol,Conservative,"Trump is the proximate, the efficient, cause of the collapse of the conservative movement. The principles of sound conservatism compel us to criticize him, to rebut him, to resist him, and to plan to overcome him."
Bill Kristol,Conservative,"Isn't conservatism in part about resisting so-called new realities when you sense they might be questionable, even as people lecture you that you’ve got to get with the times?"
William Happer,Conservative,"I, and many other scientists, think the warming will be small compared the natural fluctuations in the earth’s temperature, and that the warming and increased CO2 will be good for mankind."
William Happer,Conservative,"We know that carbon dioxide has been a much larger fraction of the earth's atmosphere than it is today, and the geological record shows that life flourished on land and in the oceans during those times. The incredible list of supposed horrors that increasing carbon dioxide will bring the world is pure belief disguised as science."
William Happer,Conservative,"Shut up...The demonisation of carbon dioxide is just like the demonisation of the poor Jews under Hitler. Carbon dioxide is actually a benefit to the world, and so were the Jews."
William Happer,Conservative,"I like to call this the CO2 anti-defamation league, because, there is the CO2 molecule, and it has undergone decade after decade of abuse, for no reason. We’re doing our best to try and counter this myth that CO2 is a dangerous pollutant. It’s not a pollutant at all. . . . We should be telling the scientific truth, that more CO2 is actually a benefit to the earth."
William Happer,Conservative,There’s a whole area of climate so-called science that is really more like a cult. It’s like Hare Krishna or something like that. They’re glassy-eyed and they chant. It will potentially harm the image of all science.
William Happer,Conservative,"I am trying to explain to my fellow Americans the serious damage that will be done to us, and indeed to the whole world, by cockamamie policies to ‘save the planet’ from CO2."
William Happer,Conservative,"Temperatures have not risen very much, and most of the temperature rise is probably completely natural, and has nothing to do with increasing CO2. Industrialization probably played a small role, but I think it's very hard to tell how much."
William Happer,Conservative,"...the public in general doesn't realize that from the point of view of geological history, we are in a CO2 famine....There is no problem from CO2. The world has lots and lots of problems, but increasing CO2 is not one of the problems. So [the accord] dignifies it by getting all these yahoos who don't know a damn thing about climate saying, 'This is a problem, and we're going to solve it.' All this virtue signaling. You can read about it in the Bible: Pharisees and hypocrites and phonies."
Ben Stein,Conservative,The indispensable first step to getting the things you want out of life is this: decide what you want.
Ben Stein,Conservative,"For any exam in history, here is the answer: all human history is the struggle between systems that attempt to shackle the human personality in the name of some intangible good on the one hand and systems that enable and expand the scope of human personality in the pursuit of extremely tangible aims. The American system is the most successful in the world because it harmonizes best with the aims and longings of human personality while allowing the best protection to other personalities."
Ben Stein,Conservative,"A few truths, for those who have ears and eyes and care to know the truth:1.) The hurricane that hit New Orleans and Mississippi and Alabama was an astonishing tragedy. The suffering and loss of life and peace of mind of the residents of those areas is acutely horrifying.2.) George Bush did not cause the hurricane. Hurricanes have been happening for eons. George Bush did not create them or unleash this one.3.) George Bush did not make this one worse than others. There have been far worse hurricanes than this before George Bush was born."
Ben Stein,Conservative,I hope it won’t come as a surprise to anyone that a big part of male homosexual behavior is interest in young boys.
Ben Stein,Conservative,"In today’s world, at least in America, an Einstein or a Newton or a Galileo would probably not be allowed to receive grants to study or to publish his research.  They cannot even mention the possibility that–as Newton or Galileo believed–these laws were created by God or a higher being. They could get fired, lose tenure, have their grants cut off. This can happen. It has happened."
Ben Stein,Conservative,"Darwinism is still very much alive, utterly dominating biology. Despite the fact that no one has ever been able to prove the creation of a single distinct species by Darwinist means, Darwinism dominates the academy and the media."
Ben Stein,Conservative,"[The] Third (problem with Darwinism), which I think is overwhelming, and just sort of blows the whole theory of Random Mutation out of the water, is, at least, let me say, raises big questions, that is. Assuming it all did happen by Random Mutation and Natural Selection, where did the laws of gravity come from. Where did the laws of thermodynamics come from? Where did the laws of motion and, of heat come from? Where, I guess that's the same as thermodynamics. Where did all these laws, that make it possible for the universe to function, where did they all come from? Why isn't all just chaos and everything collapsing in on itself and killing everything?"
Ben Stein,Conservative,"Neo-Darwinists ask us to believe in things not seen. We’re not supposed to have an established religion in America, but we do, and it’s called Darwinism."
Ben Stein,Conservative,"Evolutionism, as taught by Darwinism, has nothing - nothing - to say about how life originated. Has nothing to say about how the governing principles in the universe - gravity, thermodynamics, motion, fluid motion - how any of those originated. It's...it's got some gigantic missing pieces."
Ben Stein,Conservative,"We believe that Darwinism is the real Orthodox Church, because Darwinism asks you to believe in things unseen that are incredibly unlikely. Darwinism asks us to believe that out of pure random chance, we got a cell that is as complicated as a Boeing 777. Darwinism asks us to believe that one day there was nothing but mud and ooze, and the next day there was life, and very soon after there was intelligent life. Darwinism asks us to believe that you can destroy genetic material through random mutation and natural selection and yet end up with more genetic material. We don't really ask you to believe anything that difficult; it is sort of innate in mankind to believe that there is a God, a heavenly Father and we're asking you to just follow the consequences of that and see if possibly there could be some scientific validity to that."
Ben Stein,Conservative,"Humans are alive, therefore life must be complex."
Ben Stein,Conservative,"My feeling is that Darwinism is only at best a partial solution, and an extremely dangerous partial solution. I would say, based on the little I know, Darwinism explains microevolution within species quite well. As to its broader consequence and implications, I don't think it explains individual species evolution at all well."
Ben Stein,Conservative,"And for me, it's pretty clear-cut that until we learn some better explanation for how life began, there is a God who always existed and created the heavens and the earth. And until somebody gives me a better explanation, I'll go for it. And it doesn't scare me at all when scientists say, ""Oh, but that can't be proved,"" because neither can any of the Darwinian hypotheses about how life began be proved. Anyway, I couldn't give a [profanity] whether a person calls himself a scientist. It doesn't earn any extra respect from me, because it's not as if science has covered itself with glory, morally, in my time. Scientists were the people in Germany telling Hitler that it was a good idea to kill all the Jews. Scientists were telling Stalin it was a good idea to wipe out the middle-class peasants. Scientists were telling Mao Tse-Tung it was fine to kill 50 million people in order to further the revolution."
Ben Stein,Conservative,"I'm still not that familiar with it [Intelligent Design]. I'm more familiar with it than most people, but nowhere near as familiar with it as a genuine expert in the subject. I don't pretend to be a scientist. I'm the person who moderates the discussion between and among the scientists."
Ben Stein,Conservative,"[I did] Some [reading to prep for Expelled]. I read one book cover to cover, From Darwin to Hitler, and that was a very interesting book--one of these rare books I wish had been even longer. It's about how Darwin's theory--supposedly concocted by this mild-mannered saintly man, with a flowing white beard like Santa Claus--led to the murder of millions of innocent people."
Ben Stein,Conservative,"Yes, it [making Expelled] has made my belief in that [Intelligent Design] much stronger. It has pointed out something which haunted me ever since I learned about Darwinism, which is, Where did it all start? How did life start? Darwinism has nothing to say about that--nothing useful, anyway--but I think Intelligent Design has a great deal to say about it."
Ben Stein,Conservative,"I went in thinking: ""I'm not going to find out that Darwinism is a fraud. I'll probably find out these (intelligent design proponents) are frauds."" But I wound up knowing a lot more than when I started. I learned that Darwinism is being overhyped, and that it doesn't really convey what's going on. Sometimes if you follow a ""truth"" far enough, it becomes a lie."
Ben Stein,Conservative,And there hasn't been much progress in Darwinism since [the life of Darwin].
Ben Stein,Conservative,"Well, the first cause is not...it's lightning striking a mud puddle. See, and this is what the evolutionists say. And by the way, they may be right -- you know, I'm not a scientist, they could be right."
Ben Stein,Conservative,"But when I talk to people who are Darwinists or evolutionists and say, 'Well, how did life begin' -- they're...they don't have an answer. I mean, they have an answer, but it's a BS answer. It's an answer that wouldn't make sense to a small child."
Ben Stein,Conservative,"Yes, [I spent] two long years, traveling all over the United States, all over Europe, interviewing many, many, many people who had been thrown out of their academic jobs because they taught that there was a possibility of life coming from something other than Darwinism, who thought that possibly random selection and mutations didn't account for the universe, didn't account for gravity, didn't account for why nobody had ever seen an individual species evolve -- no one's ever seen an individual species evolve!"""
Ben Stein,Conservative,"The scientific community says that if you even mention God as causes of anything scientific, you're gone."
Ben Stein,Conservative,"You can only say Darwinian causes -- random mutation, natural selection -- even gravity is supposed to be done by that! And I would say to these people, well, how did life begin? We don't know, but it had to be by Darwinian means. Well, how did gravity begin? We don't know, but it had to be by Darwinian means. Why did it have to be that way? Why couldn't there have been an intelligent designer?"
Ben Stein,Conservative,Love of God and compassion and empathy leads you to a very glorious place-  science leads you to killing people.
Ben Stein,Conservative,"When we just saw that man, I think it was Mr. Myers, talking about how great scientists were, I was thinking to myself the last time any of my relatives saw scientists telling them what to do they were telling them to go to the showers to get gassed … that was horrifying beyond words, and that’s where science — in my opinion, this is just an opinion — that’s where science leads you."
Ben Stein,Conservative,There's no evidence whatsoever that Darwin had anything useful to say or anything to say period about how life began or how the universe began or how gravity began or how physics began or fluid motion or how thermodynamics began. He had nothing to say about that whatsoever.
Ben Stein,Conservative,God bless the devout Christians of this country. They are Israel's best friends on the earth.
Ben Stein,Conservative,"In life, events tend to follow patterns. People who commit crimes tend to be criminals, for example. Can anyone tell me any economists who have been convicted of violent sex crimes? Can anyone tell me of any heads of nonprofit international economic entities who have ever been charged and convicted of violent sexual crimes? Is it likely that just by chance this hotel maid found the only one in this category?"
Ben Stein,Conservative,"The prosecutors say that Mr. Strauss-Kahn ""forced"" the complainant to have oral and other sex with him. How? Did he have a gun? Did he have a knife? He's a short fat old man."
Glenn Beck,Conservative,"Hello, you sick twisted freak."
Glenn Beck,Conservative,Can you let your son's body become the same temperature as your son's head before you turn this into a political campaign against the president? Could you do that?
Glenn Beck,Conservative,"I find this guy [Michael Berg] despicable. Everything in me says that. The want to be a better person today than I was yesterday says he's a dad, he's grieving, but I don't buy that. I'm sorry, I don't buy it. I think he is grieving, but I think he's a scumbag as well. I don't like this guy at all."
Glenn Beck,Conservative,"Would you kill someone for that?...I'm thinking about killing Michael Moore...I could kill him myself, or if I would need to hire somebody to do it,...No, I think I could. I think he could be looking me in the eye, you know, and I could just be choking the life out. Is this wrong? I stopped wearing my What Would Jesus — band — Do, and I've lost all sense of right and wrong now. I used to be able to say, ""Yeah, I'd kill Michael Moore,"" and then I'd see the little band: What Would Jesus Do? And then I'd realize, ""Oh, you wouldn't kill Michael Moore. Or at least you wouldn't choke him to death."" And you know, well, I'm not sure."
Glenn Beck,Conservative,Cindy Sheehan is a tragedy slut.
Glenn Beck,Conservative,"See, when you take a little bit of truth and then you mix it with untruth, or your theory, that's where you get people to believe. You know? It's like Hitler. Hitler said a little bit of truth, and then he mixed in ""and it's the Jews' fault."" That's where things get a little troublesome, and that's exactly what's happening."
Glenn Beck,Conservative,"You know, we all have our inner demons. I, for one — I can't speak for you, but I'm on the verge of moral collapse at any time. It can happen by the end of the show."
Glenn Beck,Conservative,Whoa... don't go all Kramer on me!
Glenn Beck,Conservative,"Girl, you better check yourself before you wreck yourself!"
Glenn Beck,Conservative,"With that being said, you are a Democrat. You are saying, ""Let's cut and run."" And I have to tell you, I have been nervous about this interview with you, because what I feel like saying is, ""Sir, prove to me that you are not working with our enemies."" And I know you're not. I'm not accusing you of being an enemy, but that's the way I feel, and I think a lot of Americans will feel that way."
Glenn Beck,Conservative,It is really — one of the things in it that I heard yesterday in his testimony that I thought was disturbing was this — what did he call it? — a massive persuasion campaign. That sounded a little bit like Goebbels or Gore-bels.
Glenn Beck,Conservative,"Al Gore's not going to be rounding up Jews and exterminating them. It is the same tactic, however. The goal is different. The goal is globalization. The goal is global carbon tax.…You need to have fear. You needed to have the fear of starvation. You needed to have the fear of the whole place going to hell in a handbasket. Which — do we have that fear now with global warming?…Then you have to discredit the scientists that say ""That's not right."" And you must silence all dissenting voices. That's what Hitler did. That's what Al Gore, the U.N., and everybody on the global warming bandwagon [are doing]."
Glenn Beck,Conservative,The hottest year in global [sic] history was 1934.
Glenn Beck,Conservative,"You pinhead. You think we would actually be sitting here and saying ""well, look at the way she was dressed?"" If she were Joan McCain, stop it. You self-centered self-righteous socialist out of control dangerous man-hating bitch. Shut your mouth. We might have bought into this crap in the 1960s because too many people were doing LSD. We're not on LSD anymore — we need to start making sense."
Glenn Beck,Conservative,"The most used phrase in my administration if I were to be President would be ""What the hell you mean we're out of missiles?"""
Glenn Beck,Conservative,"It's a real blessing for me to tell you, sir, that cavalry has arrived — Fox is here!"
Glenn Beck,Conservative,"Hey, does anybody notice this crazy thing that we're on the road to socialism? I'm just saying. Wow. We got — we got the SCHIPs thing going for us. That's great. There is the change that we were all hoping for, really, seriously. Hey, I got an idea. If we're going down the road to socialism, I mean, why not really go for it, huh? Comrades, good news from the western front, our glorious revolution is starting to take hold. Oh, the revolution of change. Our fearless leader has just signed in SCHIPs, and earlier today, he spoke out against capitalism. Listen up."
Glenn Beck,Conservative,"And it was from America. Progressive movement in America. Eugenics. In case you don't know what Eugenics led us to: the Final Solution. A master race! A perfect person. …. The stuff that we are facing is absolutely frightening. So I guess I have to put my name on yes, I hope Barack Obama fails. But I just want his policies to fail; I want America to wake up."
Glenn Beck,Conservative,I'm a rodeo clown. It takes great skill.
Glenn Beck,Conservative,"I say on the air all time, ""if you take what I say as gospel, you're an idiot."""
Glenn Beck,Conservative,"I am not saying Barack Obama is a fascist. I am not saying the Democrats are a fascist. I am saying the government, under Bush and under Obama and under all of the presidents we've seen, or at least most of the presidents that we've seen for quite some time, are slowly but surely moving us away from our republic and into a system of fascism."
Glenn Beck,Conservative,"If I'm not mistaken, in the early days of Adolf Hitler, they were very happy to line up for help there as well. I mean, the companies were like, ""Hey, wait a minute. We can get, you know, we can get out of trouble here. They can help, et cetera, et cetera."""
Glenn Beck,Conservative,"This is not comparing these people to the people in Germany, but this is exactly what happened to the lead-up with Hitler. Hitler opened up the door and said, ""Hey, companies, I can help you."" They all ran through the door. And then in the end, they all saw, ""Uh-oh. I'm in bed with the devil."" They started to take their foot out, and Hitler said, ""Absolutely not. Sorry, gang. This is good for the country. We've gotta do these things."" And it was too late."
Glenn Beck,Conservative,"Use your voice while you still have it. I tell you with everything in me, I think they are going to silence voices like mine, and Bill O'Reilly, and Rush, and everybody else. They will silence us. They cannot continue to let us speak out."
Glenn Beck,Conservative,"Finally — well, he wasn't the president, he was the chancellor — Hitler, decided that it was the only empathetic thing to do, is to put this child down and put him out of his suffering. It was the beginning of the T4, which led to genocide everywhere. It was the beginning of it. Empathy leads you to very bad decisions many times."
Glenn Beck,Conservative,"I've always been fascinated with the one question: Did the Germans know? … The scariest book I ever bought was Mein Kampf. I bought it because I wanted to answer that question. The answer was ""Yes, they knew."" I think the Germans, however, were an awful lot like we are now. We're kind of living in a denial, ""no that can't really be happening, no that really—"" You don't want to believe some things, but you have to. You have to actually think about them."
Glenn Beck,Conservative,"But at some point, you know that— you know what poem keeps going through my mind is, ""first they came for the Jews."" People, all of us, are like, ""Well, this news doesn't really affect me."" ""Well, I'm not a bondholder."" ""Well, I'm not in the banking industry."" ""Well, I'm not a big CEO."" ""Well, I'm not on Wall Street."" ""Well, I'm not a car dealer."" ""I'm not an auto worker."" Gang, at some point, they're going to come for you!"
Glenn Beck,Conservative,"Let me tell you something, the end game, Paul, for Congress and this president — and I don't know how many members of Congress even realize the game that they are either being used in or a pawn in. But believe me, they'll take the universal health care coverage over what skin they do have in it. They're going to come out — this system is going to come out the other side dictorial [sic] — it is going to come out a fascist state."
Glenn Beck,Conservative,"The health care bill is reparations. It's the beginning of reparations. He's going to give — if you want to go into medical school, the medical schools will get more federal dollars if they have proven that they are putting minorities ahead."
Glenn Beck,Conservative,"This president, I think, has exposed himself as a guy, over and over and over again, who has a deep-seated hatred for white people, or the white culture, I don't know what it is."
Glenn Beck,Conservative,"...I said yesterday on Fox & Friends, I think the president is a racist, I think he has race issues. Don't know if he hates white people, but there's something going on with the president. Well, I stand by that. And I deem him a racist based on really his own standard of racism, the standard of the left."
Glenn Beck,Conservative,"You have three people in the White House that are in love with eugenics, or whatever it is you would call it today. Of course it's not ""eugenics"", because eugenics has been horribly maligned. How did the T4 program start in Germany? It started through compassion, and it started because we needed to get control of the costs."
Glenn Beck,Conservative,"Y'know, when I said SEIU and ACORN, these were the brownshirts, people said that's crazy and I hope to God it is. But you tell me what they are if they're not thugs, enforcing the will of the masters in Washington. Be very careful, because the things that I have told you on this program were coming are here. We are in the most dangerous point in our republic, I believe, since the Civil War. We may be in the most dangerous place ever, because our people are different, our people are not as connected to God as we once were."
Glenn Beck,Conservative,"The thing I can say about Ted Kennedy is, at least he never flinched on what he believed in, and that's the way America…the thing you need to take away from Ted Kennedy is, he stood up, and never flinched. Americans need to stand up and, without flinching, without fear, be a lion, and stand up for what they believe in. I didn't agree with anything he believed him, but I admired [him]. Absolutely. That's what this country is all about. Stand up for what you believe in."
Glenn Beck,Conservative,"I'm finding this — this is the hardest part to connect to. Because this is — I mean, look, you know, David, what you just said is, you said, ""I'm not comparing"" — but you are. I mean, this is what Hitler did with the SS. He had his own people. He had the brownshirts and then the SS. This is what Saddam Hussein — so — but you are comparing that. And I — I mean, I think America would have a really hard time getting their arms around that."
Glenn Beck,Conservative,"If I could just — if we could just be like Cuba. Let me give you the last piece of evidence that there is a revolution going on, and it is coming. It is — there is a revolution, and they think they can get away with it quietly. They think they — and they — they — you know what? At this point, gang, I'm not sure, they may be able to because they are so far ahead of us. They know what they're dealing against; most of America does not yet. Most of America doesn't have a clue as to what's going on. There is a coup going on. There is a stealing of America, and the way it is done, it has been done through the — the guise of an election, but they lied to us the entire time. Some of us knew! Some of us we're shouting out, you were: ""this guy's a Marxist!"" ""No, no, no, no, no, no."" And they're gonna say, ""we did it democratically,"" and they are going to grab power every way they can. And God help us in an emergency."
Glenn Beck,Conservative,"I'm telling you, they have their hands around the neck of the republic. They are much farther ahead, we're just figuring it out. They have their hands around the neck of this republic and they are about to snap it, if we don't wake up."
Glenn Beck,Conservative,"You are a guardian and protector of liberty. You may be the only thing that stands between freedom and slavery. And if you can, join those who are willing to take a stand in Washington, DC on 9-12. If not, stand together somewhere in your community on 9-12. Get involved. They're very well organized in their communities, and I didn't realize how many socialist communities there were."
Glenn Beck,Conservative,"You can try to put the lid on this group of people, but you will never silence us. You will never — you can shoot me in the head, you can shoot the next guy in the head, but there will be 10 others that line up. And it may not happen today, it may not happen next week, but freedom will be restored in this land. Period. And no matter what you want to call it, it is a totalitarian state that you're headed towards."
Glenn Beck,Conservative,"When it comes to the FCC, the Bush administration helped lay the foundation. But now, that foundation is being turned on. And I fear an event. I fear a Reichstag moment. God forbid, another 9/11. Something that will turn this machine on, and power will be seized and voices will be silenced. God help us all."
Glenn Beck,Conservative,"I know, I know, I'm going to be called a hatemonger for this, you know, conversation that we have, whatever, that's fine. They also called people like Benjamin Franklin a hatemonger. They said that he was crazy. I wonder if they've said that about me yet. Yeah, Benjamin Franklin was crazy, he was the first real abolitionist. Boy that man stood up every single time. And in our modern-day slavery, I will be happy to be called crazy right along with Benjamin Franklin."
Glenn Beck,Conservative,"""If you believe in the... War in Heaven where a third of the angels were cast out... it was about man's choice and he would provide a saviour and Satan's plan was... I'll save everybody... just take away their choice and give me the credit...that plan was rejected... because God knew that...failure was important ...the progressives have... replaced God... they are taking.... rights are not given to us by our creator, they created by congress, they are taking the role of God, and so they are taking away our suffering, they are taking away all of our pain, all of the opportunity to fail..."""
Glenn Beck,Conservative,The progressive movement is the lunatic fringe of the left. It is the home of everything that you despise. It is the home of income tax. It is the home of prohibition. It is the home of the Fed.
Glenn Beck,Conservative,"So it's the same thing over and over and over and over again with these people, and we cannot allow them to crawl under another rock and subvert the Constitution through evolution anymore. It is time to expose them. And either agree with them and say, yes, that's what America needs to be, a socialist progressive state. Or expose it and exterminate. Exterminate the thought of the progressive movement. Don't allow it to fester anymore."
Glenn Beck,Conservative,"He chose to use his name, Barack, for a reason. To identify, not with America — you don't take the name Barack to identify with America. You take the name Barack to identify with what? Your heritage? The heritage, maybe, of your father in Kenya, who is a radical?"
Glenn Beck,Conservative,"Thomas Paine was kind of the — oh, I don't know. My apologies to Thomas Paine, but kind of the me of the genera— I mean, I can't think of anybody else. A guy just saying, ""Hey, really, stand up. Come on. We can do it."" He was kind of the — he was the media guy, really. He just did pamphlets, the rest of us just do TV."
Glenn Beck,Conservative,"[writes Progressivism on chalkboard] This is the disease. This is the disease in America. It's not just spending, it's not just taxes, it's not just corruption. It is progressivism. And it is in both parties."
Glenn Beck,Conservative,Progressivism is the cancer in America and it is eating our Constitution. And it was designed to eat the Constitution. To progress past the Constitution.
Glenn Beck,Conservative,"It is big government – it's a socialist utopia. And we need to address it as if it is a cancer. It must be cut out of the system because they cannot co-exist. And you don't cure cancer by – well, I'm just going to give you a little bit of cancer. You must eradicate it. It cannot co-exist. And we need big thinkers, and brave people with spines who can make the case – that can actually say to Americans: look it’s going to be hard – it’s going to be hard but it’s going to be okay. We’re going to make it."
Glenn Beck,Conservative,"Health care, yesterday was one of the more incredible things I have ever seen, this health care speech with the doctors behind him. I don't think I've ever seen anything quite like it. I don't understand how the rest of the nation doesn't see this. Or how they don't understand our nation, as we know it, is in peril. Today is the first day that I actually feel like Paul Revere. The British are coming. The British are coming."
Glenn Beck,Conservative,"I'm begging you, your right to religion and freedom to exercise religion and read all of the passages of the Bible as you want to read them and as your church wants to preach them... are going to come under the ropes in the next year. If it lasts that long it will be the next year. I beg you, look for the words ""social justice"" or ""economic justice"" on your church Web site. If you find it, run as fast as you can. Social justice and economic justice, they are code words. Now, am I advising people to leave their church? Yes!"
Glenn Beck,Conservative,"America, I'm gonna shoot straight with you, I think I've wasted your time. I think this is the first time I have wasted an hour of your time. I apologize for that."
Glenn Beck,Conservative,"For those of you in the administration, who are coming after me … remember, you've broken three [of the 10 Commandments], let's not make it four; thou shalt not kill."
Glenn Beck,Conservative,"That is not the dream. That is a perversion of the dream. We are the people of the civil rights movement. We are the ones that must stand for civil and equal rights. Equal rights. Justice. Equal justice. Not special justice, not social justice, but equal justice. We are the inheritors and the protectors of the civil rights movement. They are perverting it. They're perverting it, and they're doing it intentionally. And they're selling us a line of global nonsense."
Glenn Beck,Conservative,"There's equal stuff in Venezuela. There's equal stuff in Cuba. It's a lie. It's a lie. Only God can equalize. Only God, and I got news for you, gang, he's about to. And we are gonna be first on the receiving end."
Glenn Beck,Conservative,"I wouldn't be surprised if in our lifetime dogs and firehoses are released or opened on us. I wouldn't be surprised if a few of us get a billy club to the head. I wouldn't be surprised if, you know, some of us go to jail just like Martin Luther King did on trumped up charges. Tough times are coming."
Glenn Beck,Conservative,I could give a flying crap about the political process.... We're an entertainment company.
Glenn Beck,Conservative,"Let me tell you this: They shut me down on radio, that's fine, I'll do TV. They shut me down on TV, that's fine, I'll do Internet. They shut me down on the Internet, that's fine, I'll do stage shows. They shut me down on stage shows, that's fine, I'll go door to door. You will have to shoot me in the head. We are not stopping."
Glenn Beck,Conservative,"This is a moment, quite honestly, that I think we reclaim the civil rights movement. It has been so distorted and so turned upside down because we must repair honor and integrity first, I tell you right now. We are on the right side of history. We are on the side of individual freedoms and liberties, and damn it, we will reclaim the civil rights moment. We will take that movement, because we were the people that did it in the first place."
Glenn Beck,Conservative,"This is going to be an image for the history books. If you come, I believe this may, and it may be in 100 years from now or 200 years from now, I believe this will be remembered as the moment America turned the corner. I don't know how it works out. I don't know if it even works out in my lifetime. But I believe this is the pivot point. Be there, with your children."
Glenn Beck,Conservative,"Just because you in Washington and you who are so out of touch with life in the media, just because you don't believe in anything doesn't mean nobody else does. We do. You know why you're confused by this show? It's because I believe in something. You don't.  Tea parties believe in small government. We believe in returning to the principles of our founding fathers. We respect them, we revere them. Shoot me in the head before I stop talking about the founders.  Shoot me in the head if you try to change our government — I will stand against you. And so will millions of others. We believe in something. You in the media and most in Washington don't. The radicals that you and Washington have co-opted and brought in wearing sheep's clothing — change the pose. You will get the ends. You've been using them? They believe in Communism. They believe and have called for revolutionar — a revolution. You're going to have to shoot them in the head. But warning: they may shoot you. They are dangerous because they believe. Karl Marx is their George Washington. You will never change their mind. And if they feel you have lied to them — they're revolutionaries. Nancy Pelosi, those are the people you should be worried about.  Here is my advice when you're dealing with people who believe in something that strongly — you take them seriously. You listen to their words and you believe that they will follow up with what they say."
Glenn Beck,Conservative,"It is the anniversary of the 'I Have a Dream' speech from Martin Luther King. And what an appropriate day. At first we picked that date, we didn't know and I thought, ""oh jeez."" But now I think it was almost divine providence. I do. His dream has been so corrupted. Judge a man by the content of his character. Character doesn't even matter anymore in this country. It's time we picked that dream back up and finished the job."
Glenn Beck,Conservative,"He also helped start the Tides Foundation, which among its many super, super classics are the anti-capitalist Story of Stuff, indoctrination video. Yes, George Soros money. Isn't that great? Shown in schools all across America to warp your children's brains and make sure they know how evil capitalism is."
Glenn Beck,Conservative,"They want a race war. We must be peaceful people. They are gonna poke and poke and poke, and our government is going to stand by and let them do it. We must be — we must take the role of Martin Luther King, because I do not believe that Martin Luther King believed in, ""Kill all white babies."""
Glenn Beck,Conservative,"But people have been acting as though no white man can mention or praise or support the mission of Martin Luther King. I'm sorry, African Americans don't own Martin Luther King; it's a human idea, just like white people don't own George Washington or Abraham Lincoln. These are American icons and ideas, and we are all Americans."
Glenn Beck,Conservative,"This is kind of complex, because Jesus did identify with the victims. But Jesus was not a victim. He was a conqueror…Jesus conquered death. He wasn’t victimized. He chose to give his life….If he was a victim, and this theology was true, then Jesus would’ve come back from the dead and made the Jews pay for what they did. That’s an abomination."
Glenn Beck,Conservative,"Well, they have the education system. They have the media. They have the capitalist system. What do you think the Tides Foundation was? They infiltrate and they saw under Ronald Reagan that capitalists were not for all of this nonsense, so they infiltrated. Now, they are using failing capitalism to destroy it."
Glenn Beck,Conservative,"You believe that America is the last best hope for the free world. Boy, was I a moron for believing that. Nope, there are a lot of people that believe that we are the oppressor. This man states it. He states in this book ""The purpose is to create mass organizations to seize power."" Wow! That almost sounds like the Tides Foundation."
Glenn Beck,Conservative,"No Peace without Hope, No Hope without Liberty, No Liberty without Integrity, No Integrity without Virtue, No Virtue without Enlightenment, No Enlightenment without Truth."
Glenn Beck,Conservative,"Be who you really are, not who you allowed yourself to become."
Glenn Beck,Conservative,"The Tides Foundation is made specifically to launder the money. It's made specifically so you can, you can be anybody, give to them, and they will give to the lefty organizations without your name on it. So you specifically do not know who's giving to these organizations."
Glenn Beck,Conservative,"Free Press is a Marxist organization, and it— the FCC is now riddled with Free Press people. The White House, riddled with people that are taking phone calls from Free Press."
Glenn Beck,Conservative,"The Lord will always send a people wake-up calls. And he has been sending us wake-up call, after wake-up call, after a wake-up call. … He has been sending us wake-up calls, and you can send two kinds of wake-up calls. One through fear, like 9/11. 9/11 woke us up, and we stood shoulder-to-shoulder for a very short period of time."
Glenn Beck,Conservative,We must go to God Boot Camp and straighten our own lives up so we can help people out in the rest of the world and guide them down the stairs and out of the building into safety.
Glenn Beck,Conservative,"Soros and the Tides Foundation have been trying to indoctrinate our kids. Do you remember that stupid— what was the name of that film that they did? [clip comes up on monitor] There it is, The Story of Stuff."
Glenn Beck,Conservative,"So who makes the choice then for you, Homer? Once again, progressives know better than you, and you are now paying to have Cass Sunstein, a guy who I say is the most dangerous man in America, because first it's nudge, then it's shove, then it becomes shoot. Some will argue, ""Aw come on, it's only about school lunches, what's the big deal, it's school lunches."" Really? I don't know about you, but I don't want the federal government in my schools- in my kid's lunch bag."
Glenn Beck,Conservative,I don't think we came from monkeys. I think that's ridiculous. I haven't seen a half-monkey/half-person yet.
Glenn Beck,Conservative,"They have to make you care. They have to force it down your throat. When anyone has to force it, it's a problem. You didn't have to force that the world was round. You didn't have to."
Glenn Beck,Conservative,"If you go to Cass Sunstein, what net neutrality means is now if you go to FoxNews.com, you will have Arianna Huffington, a little box pop up with her showing that ""Bill O'Reilly is wrong on this"" or ""here's an opposing view of Bill O'Reilly""."
Glenn Beck,Conservative,"I know the progressives are using progressive tactics. They're not using Nazi tactics. They're— they're— they're— The real answer is the Nazis were using early American progressive tactics. And that's not my opinion, that's historic fact."
Glenn Beck,Conservative,"One, a caliphate is a global government, and you know that's where we're headed. Everybody is headed now towards a global government. Well, so are the Islamic extremists, except theirs is Sharia law and infidels will be beheaded. The Shiite Muslims, the ones in Iran, believe in — and not all of them, not the people necessarily on the street — but the real radicals, the revolutionaries and the people at the very top are called Twelvers. They believe in the Twelfth Imam. And that will — that Twelfth Imam, when he returns, he will set up a global caliphate in ancient Babylon. This one should gravely concern you because he has all of the earmarks — in their own writings — of an antichrist, or the Antichrist. I don't know if he is or not. But there are those who will just claim, you know, he's the Twelfth Imam, et cetera et cetera. And the way to get there is global chaos."
Glenn Beck,Conservative,"Reformed rabbis are generally political in nature. It's almost like Islam, radicalized Islam in a way, to where it is just — radicalized Islam is less about religion than it is about politics. When you look at the Reform Judaism, it is more about politics."
Glenn Beck,Conservative,"May I recommend, if you're doing your own homework, don't do a Google search. Seems to me that Google is pretty deeply in bed with the government. Maybe this is explaining why Google is being kicked out of all the other countries? Are they just a shill now for the United States government? Who is Jared Cohen? Is he private citizen or government operative? And isn't this the second Google guy we've found? This is the second Google executive now being exposed as an instigator of a revolution."
Glenn Beck,Conservative,"We have the State Department working together with Google, MTV, MSNBC, Facebook, all of these— all of these giant corporations. Google now has two executives that we know of that were charged to help this revolution."
Glenn Beck,Conservative,"Is there anything more powerful than Google? And our government is in bed with them, as we will show you tomorrow, in unbelievable ways. Unbelievable ways. We have, um, and have had for a while, people inside of Google who have alerted this program to things. There are people inside of Google who are terrified of some of the things that Google is doing and is involved in."
Glenn Beck,Conservative,"It is difficult to deny at this point, isn't it? Isn't it? Is it a little hard to deny that radicals, Islamicists, Communists, socialists will work together against Israel, against capitalism, and they'll try to work together to overturn stability? Who in the media is telling you this? Who? NAME THEM! Where are they? How can they possibly deny it at this point? And why wouldn't they tell you these things? Why?"
Glenn Beck,Conservative,"We have a president who apparently loves instability and revolution, and that is the antithesis [pointing at blackboard] of those two words, ""Social Security""."
Glenn Beck,Conservative,"[Tyler Perry] has the luxury of not doing the political stuff, which is really where I want to be as a company."
Glenn Beck,Conservative,"Now look, I'm not saying God is, you know, causing earthquakes. Well—I'm not saying that he—I'm not not saying that either. God — what God does is God's business, I have no idea. But I'll tell you this: whether you call it Gaia or whether you call it Jesus — there's a message being sent. And that is, ""Hey, you know that stuff we're doing? Not really working out real well. Maybe we should stop doing some of it."" I'm just sayin'."
Glenn Beck,Conservative,"We are living in times that I believe God will judge each of us for what we do and do not do. And if it's not God, it will at least be historians. I will go back to say what I said at the beginning of the year: There is great and powerful evil but there is great and powerful light as well. Get into the light and stand in it because evil is growing rapidly."
Glenn Beck,Conservative,"But I'm telling you, it's going to change lives. I don't know how—I don't know what's going to happen, quite honestly — but it's going to change lives. It is a life-changing, and I think, a planet course-altering event and I would invite you to join us either physically or virtually."
Glenn Beck,Conservative,"It's either going to be something that everybody ignores, or I swear to you, and I mean this sincerely, there's a possibility a pillar of fire appears. I mean, I think this could be miraculous. Or y'know, something in between that option, there."
Glenn Beck,Conservative,"If you have money in the stock market, if you have... may I just recommend you have some cash handy, that you have your food and everything else ready. I hope to God that none of this stuff happens, but you have people who are anarchist revolutionaries who are intent on collapsing the system, they are trying to break the system."
Glenn Beck,Conservative,"These people are not interested in creative destruction, they are only interested in destruction. That leads to gas chambers. That leads to, uh, guillotines. That leads to millions dead. That leads to Mao. That leads to totalitarianism. Every. Single. Time."
Glenn Beck,Conservative,"Hate is on a scale, and is growing on a planetary scale of unprecedented size. The violent left is coming to our streets, all of our streets, to smash, to tear down, to kill, to bankrupt, to destroy. It is will be global in its nature and global in its scope."
Glenn Beck,Conservative,"There is a race war that is going on in our country, declared by the Black Panthers and Louis Farrakhan and anybody else who says that America somehow or another stole the land from Mexico. There is a race war. It wasn't started by us, but they have declared it, and we must end it. There is a war between the political parties, both of them, and the American people. We did not start it, but we must end it. There is a war between the media and the truth. And it must end."
Glenn Beck,Conservative,"Capitalists, if you think that you can play footsies with these people, you're wrong. They will come for you and drag you into the streets and kill you."
Glenn Beck,Conservative,"These guys are worse than Robespierre from the French Revolution. Remember, Robespierre wasn't talking about just beheading everybody. That came later. These guys don't even have power. They don't even have power. They'll kill everybody."
Glenn Beck,Conservative,"But I believe in the American people. I believe that we are not too far gone. I believe that people can watch and see the difference. They can feel the difference. When you watch Barack Obama, you can just see he is angry. When you watch Mitt Romney, you can see he is not. We are not an angry nation. We don't listen to demagogues like that. It doesn’t work. No matter how much power he has amassed, no matter how many friends in the media he has, Americans know. And if they reject it this time, if they're so dead inside - that's a possibility - if they're so dead inside that they can no longer see the difference between good and evil, we have to be destroyed because we will be a remarkable evil on this planet."
Glenn Beck,Conservative,"We are Germany 1930. And if people don't speak out, you have no choice of changing course later. You can deny it all you want, but the socialist revolution is here."
Glenn Beck,Conservative,"""Shut up, sit down, zip your mouth. Know that I am God."" Okay. When we have the chance, if this stuff all falls into place, that The Blaze is going through right now, I'm telling you — miracles, absolute miracles."
Glenn Beck,Conservative,"You want to talk about rape? That's— that's media rape right there. You said you would not do that! Since when does your no mean yes? Do you know the definition of no, sir? You've just raped Bill Cosby. You said you wouldn't do it. You just did it. And then you blamed it on him. My gosh, maybe we should have a lesson on rape."
Glenn Beck,Conservative,"I beg you not to listen to the experts in this country anymore. The fools disguised in tweed jackets or ascots of the Ivy League campuses. The scholars and the experts and those who have been around in the State Department forever, blahdy blahdy blahdy. They couldn't find their way through an unlocked door at a locksmith shop. They come on TV and they lecture you about how everything is fine and everything is in a box. I have news for you: I believe it was the great philosopher Depeche Mode that said ""nothing is impossible."" Life is outside of the box now and if you're inside of the box, you'll suffocate."
Glenn Beck,Conservative,"Donald Trump I really truly believe is a very dangerous man. If you listen to the things he said this weekend... ‍'‍I could go onto Fifth Avenue and shoot people and I wouldn't lose a vote‍'‍. He has joked about killing reporters — and 'not' killing reporters like Putin does... We don't change with the mood of the country. That is the problem with our country right now. The Constitution is to anchor us in principles that help temper the mood of the country... The mood of the country is very angry, but you never make a good decision when you are angry... The worst thing we can do is to now start looking at, who is going to get revenge? One of the things that Donald Trump does, when you have a guy who is angry and then has an enemies list and starts to just take people down over and over and over again — if you disagree with him, he destroys you. If that is the mood of the country, we are in more trouble than I thought."
Mona Charen,Conservative,"I am disappointed in people on our side for being hypocrites about sexual harassers and abusers of women, who are in our party, who are sitting in the White House, who brag about their extramarital affairs, who brag about mistreating women—and because he happens to have an ""R"" next to his name we look the other way...This is a party that endorsed Roy Moore for the Senate in the State of Alabama even though he was a credibly accused child molester. You cannot claim that you stand for women and put up with that...Speaking of bad guys, there was quite an interesting person who was on this stage the other day. Her name is Marion Le Pen. Now, why was she here? Why was she here? She’s a young, no-longer-in-office politician from France. I think the only reason she was here is because she’s named Le Pen. And the Le Pen name is a disgrace. Her grandfather (Jean-Marie Le Pen) is a racist and a Nazi. She claims that she stands for him. And the fact that CPAC invited her is a disgrace."
Mona Charen,Conservative,"Let me put it this way, I think he [Donald Trump] is very eager not to upset the racists who like him. Too eager."
Mona Charen,Conservative,"I’ve been a conservative my entire life. ... So you’d think that the Conservative Political Action Conference, or CPAC, would be a natural fit. It once was. But on Saturday, after speaking to this year’s gathering, I had to be escorted from the premises by several guards who seemed genuinely concerned for my safety. What happened to me at CPAC is the perfect illustration of the collective experience of a whole swath of conservatives since Donald Trump became the Republican nominee. We built and organized this party — but now we’re made to feel like interlopers."
Mona Charen,Conservative,I know how encouraged I feel whenever someone simply states the truth.
Mona Charen,Conservative,"Like the Republican Party, CPAC has become heavily Trumpified. ... So it has come to this: a conservative group whose worst fault in years past may have been excessive flat tax enthusiasm now opens its doors to the blood and soil nationalists of Europe."
Mona Charen,Conservative,"But this time, and particularly in front of this crowd, it felt far more urgent to point out the hypocrisy of our side. How can conservative women hope to have any credibility on the subject of sexual harassment or relations between the sexes when they excuse the behavior of President Trump? And how can we participate in any conversation about sexual ethics when the Republican president and the Republican Party backed a man (Roy Moore) credibly accused of child molestation for the United States Senate? I watched my fellow panelists’ eyes widen. And then the booing began. I’d been dreading it for days, but when it came, I almost welcomed it. There is nothing more freeing than telling the truth. And it must be done, again and again, by those of us who refuse to be absorbed into this brainless, sinister, clownish thing called Trumpism, by those of us who refuse to overlook the fools, frauds and fascists attempting to glide along in his slipstream into respectability. I spoke to a hostile audience for the sake of every person who has watched this spectacle of mendacity in disbelief and misery for the past two years. Just hearing the words you know are true can serve as ballast, steadying your mind when so much seems unreal."
Mona Charen,Conservative,"Politicians, activists and intellectuals have succumbed with numbing regularity, betraying every principle they once claimed to uphold. But there remains a vigorous remnant of dissenters. I hear from them."
David Frum,Conservative,"When liberals insist that only fascists will defend borders, then voters will hire fascists to do the job liberals won't do."
David Frum,Conservative,"The thing to fear from the Trump presidency is not the bold overthrow of the Constitution, but the stealthy paralysis of governance; not the open defiance of law, but an accumulating subversion of norms; not the deployment of state power to intimidate dissidents, but the incitement of private violence to radicalize supporters.  Trump operates not by strategy, but by instinct.  His great skill is to sniff his opponents' vulnerabilities: ""low energy"", ""little"", ""crooked"", ""fake"".  In the same way, Trump has intuited the weak points in the American political system and in American political culture.  Trump gambled that Americans resent each other's differences more than they cherish their shared democracy.  So far, that gamble has paid off."
David Frum,Conservative,"An American-led overthrow of Saddam Hussein - and the replacement of the radical Baathist dictatorship with a new government more closely aligned with the United States would put America more wholly in charge of the region than any power since the Ottomans, or maybe even the Romans."
David Frum,Conservative,"When you just look at the map of American elections, I mean, barring some truly extraordinary event that utterly destroys the credibility of the incumbent presidential party, it’s very hard to see that Donald Trump, who is so unacceptable to so many groups in American society, can beat Hillary Clinton."
David Horowitz,Conservative,The black middle-class in America is a prosperous community that is now larger in absolute terms than the black underclass. Does its existence not suggest that economic adversity is the result of failures of individual character rather than the lingering after-effects of racial discrimination and a slave system that ceased to exist well over a century ago?
David Horowitz,Conservative,"On campuses across this country, embedded in the leadership of every radical ""anti-war"" protest group, are organizations that promote the culture of Islamic terrorism and its anti-Western, anti-Israeli and anti-American agendas. One that will serve as an example for the others is the radical Muslim Student Association (MSA). The Muslim Student Association is an organization financed by the Saudis and also by student funds at every university where it operates. The ideas and enthusiasms that it promotes among impressionable college students should give every American cause for concern."
David Horowitz,Conservative,"They are radical groups who identify with the violent jihad of Islamacist terror organizations like al-Qaeda, Hizbollah, Islamic Jihad and Hamas. And they have the support of a radical culture that regards America as the Great Satan, and Muslims and Arabs as the people whom America oppresses."
David Horowitz,Conservative,"Baghdad is liberated. In the days to come let us not forget that if it was not for one man, and one man alone — George Bush — the people of Iraq would not be celebrating in the streets and pulling down Saddam's statues today... We have entered the era of a new civil war between the forces of freedom and the powers of Islamo-fascist and communist darkness, and once again the left is clearly determined to take its stand on the other side. The good news is that America is back. Our military has performed superlatively. Our leadership has stood tall. We ourselves can celebrate over this and look confidently towards what lies ahead."
David Horowitz,Conservative,"Politics is about winning. If you don’t win, you don’t get to put your principles into practice. Therefore, find a way to win, or sit the battle out."
David Horowitz,Conservative,"Until the arrival of Arafat and the Palestinian terrorists, Lebanon was a Christian democracy. But Islamic radicalism could not tolerate either Christianity or democracy. This — not the presence of tiny Israel (one hundred times smaller than its current antagonists) is the root cause of the violence in the Middle East. The cause is Arab intolerance and Islamic hate. One Jewish state among 22 Arab states was one too many. Six million Jews among 300 million Arabs was too much to bear. A sliver of land, less than one percent of the Arab land mass, which belonged to first to the Turks and then to the British was an imperialist outrage."
David Horowitz,Conservative,The source of the terror in Lebanon as in Iraq is to be found in the Koran and in the despotisms of the Arab Middle East.
David Horowitz,Conservative,"We are divided not only about political facts and social values, but also about what the Constitution itself means. The crusaders on this issue choose to ignore these problems and are proposing to deny the will of 64 million voters by appealing to five Supreme Court Justices (since no one is delusional enough to think that the four liberal justices are going to take the presidency away from Obama). What kind of conservatism is this?"
David Horowitz,Conservative,"I have written a book with Jacob Laksin about universities called One Party Classroom. Among other things, the title highlights the fact that so-called liberals have purged American faculties of conservative voices. It has been the most successful witch-hunt in American history."
David Horowitz,Conservative,"I'm an agnostic, but I understand that a book like the Bible that has been around as long as it has, because there is wisdom in it. People don't read over two thousand years, four thousand years, a book that doesn't have wisdom. Think of the story of Genesis. Adam and Eve were given paradise. It's better than anything that Nanci Pelosi promises, the garden of Eden, they didn't have to work, there was no pain, they lived forever, plucked fruit from the trees, but, there was one rule, which was: ""Do not eat of the tree of Knowledge of good and evil"", don't eat from that tree. Well, our foreparents were too ornery to obey that law and so they were expelled from the garden, and God put an angel with a flaming sword in the entrance to Eden. This is a very important parable for understanding where we are. An angel with a flaming sword to prevent human beings from returning to Eden, only by a divine hand, could we return. The whole agenda of the left, is to return us to Eden."
Jeane Kirkpatrick,Conservative,"Russia is playing chess, while we are playing Monopoly. The only question is whether they will checkmate us before we bankrupt them."
Jeane Kirkpatrick,Conservative,"Traditional autocrats leave in place existing allocations of wealth, power, status, and other re- sources which in most traditional societies favor an affluent few and maintain masses in poverty. But they worship traditional gods and observe traditional taboos. They do not disturb the habitual rhythms of work and leisure, habitual places of residence, habitual patterns of family and personal relations. Because the miseries of traditional life are familiar, they are bearable to ordinary people who, growing up in the society, learn to cope, as children born to untouchables in India acquire the skills and attitudes necessary for survival in the miserable roles they are destined to fill."
Jeane Kirkpatrick,Conservative,"And now, the American people, proud of our country, proud of our freedom, proud of ourselves, will reject the San Francisco Democrats and send Ronald Reagan back to the White House."
Jeane Kirkpatrick,Conservative,"When our Marines, sent to Lebanon on a multinational peacekeeping mission with the consent of the United States Congress, were murdered in their sleep, the ""blame America first crowd"" didn't blame the terrorists who murdered the Marines, they blamed the United States.  But then, they always blame America first. . . .  The American people know better."
Jeane Kirkpatrick,Conservative,"When Marxist dictators shoot their way into power in Central America, the San Francisco Democrats don't blame the guerrillas and their Soviet allies. They blame United States policies of 100 years ago. But then they always blame America first."
Jeane Kirkpatrick,Conservative,"Neither nature, experience, nor probability informs these lists of 'entitlements', which are subject to no constraints except those of the mind and appetite of their authors."
Jeane Kirkpatrick,Conservative,Vietnam presumably taught us that the United States could not serve as the world’s policeman; it should also have taught us the dangers of trying to be the world’s midwife to democracy when the birth is scheduled to take place under conditions of guerrilla war.
Jeane Kirkpatrick,Conservative,No idea holds greater sway in the minds of educated Americans that the belief that it is possible to democratize governments anytime and anywhere under any circumstances .
Jeane Kirkpatrick,Conservative,"The speed with which armies collapse, bureaucracies abdicate, and social structures dissolve once the autocrat is removed frequently surprises American Policy makers."
Jeane Kirkpatrick,Conservative,"Decades, if not centuries are normally required for people to acquire the necessary disciplines and habits. (for democracy) In Britain, the road to (democratic government) took seven centuries to traverse ."
Jeane Kirkpatrick,Conservative,"Americans need to face the truth about themselves, no matter how pleasant it is."
Charles Krauthammer,Conservative,There is no comparing the brutality and cynicism of today’s pop culture with that of forty years ago: from High Noon to Robocop is a long descent.
Charles Krauthammer,Conservative,"In science, modesty and genius do not coexist well together. (In Washington, modesty and cleverness don’t.) Einstein is perhaps the most famous exception to the rule."
Charles Krauthammer,Conservative,"Communism always had sympathetic Westerners who amounted to a fifth column, including communist parties and intellectuals. Its appeal made it a double threat, internal and external. In the old days, communist parties were on the verge of getting parliamentary majorities in some European countries. That threat doesn't exist with Islam. The fundamentalists have nothing like that demographic or political import, even in Europe. The Muslim population in America is not much fundamentalist, nor radicalized. Rather, it accepts American religious pluralism and lives, like other religions, in a quite harmonious and pluralistic way. Of all the ideologies remaining in the world in the debris of the collapsed Soviet empire, fundamentalist Islam is the only one that, at least in our lifetime, appears to pose a serious problem to the West. It's the only expressly anti-Western ideology of any importance in the world and it means to destroy the Western position, Western institutions, Western culture, wherever it can. This occurred in Iran, and will happen again in Algeria. Should fundamentalists take power in Egypt, there will be profound geopolitical consequences. A region very important to us will be destabilized, with many problems resulting. Once that happens, we'll be asking ourselves why we weren't worrying about this years ago."
Charles Krauthammer,Conservative,"There's something in the Western psyche, especially the Western liberal, pluralistic psyche, that finds it impossible to believe that radical ideologues mean what they say. We didn't believe communists or fascists, and in the early days we found it impossible to believe the Khomeinists. Yet these are people who do believe what they say. Attempts to moderate their behavior invariably fail; these are exercises in our heads. We need a policy of strong opposition to the fundamentalists and of strong support for those Muslims who stand up to them."
Charles Krauthammer,Conservative,"In the Middle Ages people took potions for their ailments. In the 19th century they took snake oil. Citizens of today’s shiny, technological age are too modern for that. They take antioxidants and extract of cactus instead."
Charles Krauthammer,Conservative,"Israel is different. In Israel the great temptation of modernity — assimilation — simply does not exist. Israel is the very embodiment of Jewish continuity. It is the only nation on earth that inhabits the same land, bears the same name, speaks the same language, and worships the same God that it did 3,000 years ago. You dig the soil and you find pottery from Davidic times, coins from Bar Kokhba, and 2,000-year-old scrolls written in a script remarkably like the one that today advertises ice cream at the corner candy store."
Charles Krauthammer,Conservative,Obsession with self is the motif of our time.
Charles Krauthammer,Conservative,"Reading conventional notions of class struggle and anti-colonialism into bin Laden, the Taliban, and radical Islam is not just solipsistic. It is nonsense. If poverty and destitution, colonialism and capitalism are animating radical Islam, explain this: In March, the Taliban went to the Afghan desert where stood great monuments of human culture, two massive Buddhas carved out of a cliff. At first, Taliban soldiers tried artillery. The 1,500-year-old masterpieces proved too hardy. The Taliban had to resort to dynamite. They blew the statues to bits, then slaughtered 100 cows in atonement-for having taken so long to finish the job. Buddhism is hardly a representative of the West. It is hardly a cause of poverty and destitution. It is hardly a symbol of colonialism. No. The statues represented two things: an alternative faith and a great work of civilization. To the Taliban, the presence of both was intolerable."
Charles Krauthammer,Conservative,"[R]adical Islam is heir, above all, to Nazism. The destruction of the World Trade Center was meant not only to wreak terror. Like the smashing of the Bamiyan Buddhas, it was meant to obliterate greatness and beauty, elegance and grace. These artifacts represented civilization embodied in stone or steel. They had to be destroyed. This worship of death and destruction is a nihilism of a ferocity unlike any since the Nazis burned books, then art, then whole peoples. Goebbels would have marvelled at the recruitment tape for al Qaeda, a two-hour orgy of blood and death: image after image of brutalized Muslims shown in various poses of victimization, followed by glorious images of desecration of the infidel-mutilated American soldiers in Somalia, the destruction of the USS Cole, mangled bodies at the American embassies in Kenya and Tanzania."
Charles Krauthammer,Conservative,"Once again, the world is faced with a transcendent conflict between those who love life and those who love death both for themselves and their enemies. Which is why we tremble. Upon witnessing the first atomic bomb explode at the Trinity site at Alamogordo, J. Robert Oppenheimer recited a verse from the Hindu scripture ""Bhagavad Gita"": ""Now I am become death, the destroyer of worlds."" We tremble because for the first time in history, nihilism will soon be armed with the ultimate weapons of annihilation. For the first time in history, the nihilist will have the means to match his ends. Which is why the war declared upon us on September 11 is the most urgent not only of our lives, but in the life of civilization itself."
Charles Krauthammer,Conservative,"When under attack, no country is obligated to collect permission slips from allies to strike back."
Charles Krauthammer,Conservative,"The way I see it, dogs had this big meeting, oh, maybe 20,000 years ago. A huge meeting — an international convention with delegates from everywhere. And that's when they decided that humans were the up-and-coming species and dogs were going to throw their lot in with them. The decision was obviously not unanimous. The wolves and dingoes walked out in protest."
Charles Krauthammer,Conservative,'Optimism' is the perfect way to trivialize everything that Reagan was or did. […] Optimism? Every other person on the No. 6 bus is an optimist. What distinguished Reagan was what he did and said. Reagan was optimistic about America amid the cynicism and general retreat of the post-Vietnam era because he believed unfashionably that America was both great and good.
Charles Krauthammer,Conservative,"My proposition is this: A vast number of Americans who oppose legalization and fear new waves of immigration would change their minds if we could radically reduce new — i.e., future — illegal immigration. Forget employer sanctions. Build a barrier. It is simply ridiculous to say it cannot be done. If one fence won't do it, then build a second 100 yards behind it. And then build a road for patrols in between. Put in cameras. Put in sensors. Put out lots of patrols."
Charles Krauthammer,Conservative,"In an essay 10 years ago, I pointed out that it is utterly logical for polygamy rights to follow gay rights. After all, if traditional marriage is defined as the union of (1) two people of (2) opposite gender, and if, as advocates of gay marriage insist, the gender requirement is nothing but prejudice, exclusion and an arbitrary denial of one's autonomous choices in love, then the first requirement — the  number restriction (two and only two) — is a similarly arbitrary, discriminatory and indefensible denial of individual choice."
Charles Krauthammer,Conservative,The new Detroit churning out Schumer-mobiles will make the steel mills of the Soviet Union look the model of efficiency.
Charles Krauthammer,Conservative,"Obama was quite serious when he said he was going to change the world. And now he has a national crisis, a personal mandate, a pliant Congress, a desperate public -- and, at his disposal, the greatest pot of money in galactic history."
Charles Krauthammer,Conservative,"If you’re very very rich, you can buy your Senate seat by spending as much of your money as you want. Meanwhile, your poor plebian opponent is running around groveling for the small contributions allowed by law. Hence the Corzines and the Kohls, who parachute into Congress seemingly out of nowhere. Having given this leg up to the rich, we should resist packing our legislatures with yet more privileged parachutists, the well-born. True, the Brits did it that way for centuries, but with characteristic honesty. They established a house of  Parliament exclusively for high-born twits and ensconced them there for life. There they chatter away in supreme irrelevance deep into their dotage. Problem is that the U.S. Senate retains House of Commons powers even as it develops a House of Lords membership."
Charles Krauthammer,Conservative,"Some geopolitical conflicts are morally complicated. The Israel-Gaza war is not. It possesses a moral clarity not only rare but excruciating. […] For Hamas, the only thing more prized than dead Jews are dead Palestinians."
Charles Krauthammer,Conservative,"In these most recent 20 years -- the alleged winter of our disrespect of the Islamic world -- America did not just respect Muslims, it bled for them. It engaged in five military campaigns, every one of which involved -- and resulted in -- the liberation of a Muslim people: Bosnia, Kosovo, Kuwait, Afghanistan and Iraq. The two Balkan interventions -- as well as the failed 1992-93 Somalia intervention to feed starving African Muslims (43 Americans were killed) -- were humanitarian exercises of the highest order, there being no significant U.S. strategic interest at stake. In these 20 years, this nation has done more for suffering and oppressed Muslims than any nation, Muslim or non-Muslim, anywhere on Earth. Why are we apologizing?"
Charles Krauthammer,Conservative,"With our financial house on fire, Obama makes clear both in in his speech and his budget that the essence of his presidency will be the transformation of health care, education and energy."
Charles Krauthammer,Conservative,Science has everything to say about what is possible. Science has nothing to say about what is permissible.
Charles Krauthammer,Conservative,Fairness through leveling is the essence of Obamaism.
Charles Krauthammer,Conservative,"If Obama has his way, the change that is coming is a new America: ""fair,"" leveled and social democratic. Obama didn't get elected to warranty your muffler. He's here to warranty your life."
Charles Krauthammer,Conservative,"Obama offered Muslims a careful admonition about women's rights, noting how denying women education impoverishes a country — balanced, of course, with this: ""Issues of women's equality are by no means simply an issue for Islam."" Example? ""The struggle for women's equality continues in many aspects of American life."" Well, yes. On the one hand, there certainly is some American university where the women's softball team has received insufficient Title IX funds — while, on the other hand, Saudi women showing ankle are beaten in the street, Afghan school girls have acid thrown in their faces, and Iranian women are publicly stoned to death for adultery. (Gays as well — but then again we have Prop 8.) We all have our shortcomings, our national foibles. Who's to judge?"
Charles Krauthammer,Conservative,"Look up from your BlackBerry one night. That is the moon. On it are exactly 12 sets of human footprints -- untouched, unchanged, abandoned. For the first time in history, the moon is not just a mystery and a muse, but a nightly rebuke. A vigorous young president once summoned us to this new frontier, calling the voyage ""the most hazardous and dangerous and greatest adventure on which man has ever embarked."" And so we did it. We came. We saw. Then we retreated. How could we?"
Charles Krauthammer,Conservative,"Except for the demented orphan, the living will is quite beside the point. The one time it really is essential is if you think your fractious family will be only too happy to hasten your demise to get your money. That’s what the law is good at — protecting you from murder and theft. But that is a far cry from assuring a peaceful and  willed death, which is what most people imagine living wills are about."
Charles Krauthammer,Conservative,"Affluent enviros are all for wind farms, until one is proposed that might mar the serenity of a sail from the crew-necked precincts near Nantucket Sound. Then it's clean energy for thee, not for me."
Charles Krauthammer,Conservative,"The question of whether America is in decline cannot be answered yes or no. There is no yes or no. Both answers are wrong, because the assumption that somehow there exists some predetermined inevitable trajectory, the result of uncontrollable forces, is wrong. Nothing is inevitable. Nothing is written. For America today, decline is not a condition. Decline is a choice. Two decades into the unipolar world that came about with the fall of the Soviet Union, America is in the position of deciding whether to abdicate or retain its dominance. Decline — or continued ascendancy — is in our hands."
Charles Krauthammer,Conservative,"In the course of his presidency, Obama has gone from an almost magical charismatic figure to an ordinary politician. Ordinary. Average. His approval ratings are roughly equal to what the last five presidents' were at the same time in their first term. […] He will not be the great transformer he imagines himself to be. A president like others -- with successes and failures."
Charles Krauthammer,Conservative,"What made Obama unique was that he was the ultimate charismatic politician -- the most unknown stranger ever to achieve the presidency in the United States. No one knew who he was, he came out of nowhere, he had this incredible persona that floated him above the fray, destroyed Hillary, took over the Democratic Party and became president. This is truly unprecedented: A young unknown with no history, no paper trail, no well-known associates, self-created."
Charles Krauthammer,Conservative,"Longevity for a columnist is a simple proposition: once you start, you don't stop. You do it until you die, or can no longer put a sentence together. It has always been my intention to die at my desk, although my most cherished ambition is to outlive the estate tax."
Charles Krauthammer,Conservative,"From the very beginning, President Obama has relentlessly tried to play down and deny the nature of the terrorist threat we continue to face. […] Hence, Guantanamo will close, CIA interrogators will face a special prosecutor, and Khalid Sheik Mohammed will bask in a civilian trial in New York — a trifecta of political correctness and image management. And just to make sure even the dimmest understand, Obama banishes the term ""war on terror."" […] Obama may have declared the war over. Unfortunately, al-Qaeda has not. Which gives new meaning to the term ""asymmetric warfare."""
Charles Krauthammer,Conservative,"Obama’s NASA budget perfectly captures the difference between Kennedy's liberalism and Obama's. Kennedy's was an expansive, bold, outward-looking summons, Obama's is a constricted inward-looking call to retreat. Fifty years ago, Kennedy opened the New Frontier. Obama has just shut it."
Charles Krauthammer,Conservative,"Ideas matter. Legislative proposals matter. Slick campaigns and dazzling speeches can work for a while, but the magic always wears off."
Charles Krauthammer,Conservative,"To his credit, Obama didn't just come to Washington to be someone. Like Reagan, he came to Washington to do something -- to introduce a powerful social democratic stream into America's deeply and historically individualist polity."
Charles Krauthammer,Conservative,"It is an old liberal theme that conservative ideas, being red in tooth and claw, cannot possibly emerge from any notion of the public good."
Charles Krauthammer,Conservative,"For liberals, the observation that 'the peasants are revolting' is a pun. For conservatives, it is cause for uncharacteristic optimism. No matter how far the ideological pendulum swings in the short term, in the end the bedrock common sense of the American people will prevail."
Charles Krauthammer,Conservative,"Baseball is a slow, boring, complex, cerebral game that doesn't lend itself to histrionics. You ""take in"" a baseball game, something odd to say about a football or basketball game, with the clock running and the bodies flying."
Charles Krauthammer,Conservative,"For all the sublimity of art, physics, music, mathematics, and other manifestations of human genius, everything depends on the mundane, frustrating, often debased vocation known as politics (and its most exacting subspecialty — statecraft). Because if we don't get politics right, everything else risks extinction."
Charles Krauthammer,Conservative,"We grow justly weary of our politics. But we must remember this: Politics – in all its grubby, grasping, corrupt, contemptible manifestations – is sovereign in human affairs. Everything ultimately rests upon it. Fairly or not, politics is the driver of history."
Charles Krauthammer,Conservative,"An oil crisis looms, prices are spiking — and our president is extolling algae. After Solyndra, Keystone and promises of seaweed in their gas tanks, Americans sense a president so ideologically antipathetic to fossil fuels — which we possess in staggering abundance — that he is utterly unserious about the real world of oil in which the rest of us live."
Charles Krauthammer,Conservative,"This administration came out opposing military tribunals, wanting to try Khalid Sheik Mohammed in New York, reading the Christmas Day bomber his Miranda rights and trying mightily […] to close Guantanamo. Yet alongside this exquisite delicacy about the rights of terrorists is the campaign to kill them in their beds.  You festoon your prisoners with rights — but you take no prisoners. The morality is perverse. Which is why the results are so mixed."
Charles Krauthammer,Conservative,"The greatest threat to a robust, autonomous civil society is the ever-growing Leviathan state and those like Obama who see it as the ultimate expression of the collective. Obama compounds the fallacy by declaring the state to be the font of entrepreneurial success. How so? It created the infrastructure — roads, bridges, schools, Internet — off which we all thrive. Absurd. We don't credit the Swiss postal service with the Special Theory of Relativity because it transmitted Einstein’s manuscript to the Annalen der Physik."
Charles Krauthammer,Conservative,"We live in an entertainment culture soaked in graphic, often sadistic, violence. Older folks find themselves stunned by what a desensitized youth finds routine, often amusing. It’s not just movies. Young men sit for hours pulling video-game triggers, mowing down human beings en masse without pain or consequence. And we profess shock when a small cadre of unstable, deeply deranged, dangerously isolated young men go out and enact the overlearned narrative."
Charles Krauthammer,Conservative,"It’s the jihadists who decided to make the world a battlefield and to wage war in perpetuity. Until they abandon the field, what choice do we have but to carry the fight to them?"
Charles Krauthammer,Conservative,"I’m not against a global pact to reduce CO2. Indeed, I favor it. But in the absence of one — and there is no chance of getting one in the foreseeable future — there is no point in America committing economic suicide to no effect on climate change, the reversing of which, after all, is the alleged point of the exercise. For a president to propose this with such aggressive certainty is incomprehensible. It is the starkest of examples of belief that is impervious to evidence. And the word for that is faith, not science."
Charles Krauthammer,Conservative,"It doesn’t take a genius to see what happens when the entitlement state outgrows the economy upon which it rests. The time of Greece, Cyprus, Portugal, Spain, the rest of insolvent social-democratic Europe — and now Detroit — is the time for conservatives to raise the banner of Stein's Law and yell, ‘Stop.’ You can kick the can down the road, but at some point it disappears over a cliff."
Charles Krauthammer,Conservative,The free lunch is the essence of modern liberalism.
Charles Krauthammer,Conservative,"If a bare majority can change the fundamental rules that govern an institution, then there are no rules. Senate rules today are whatever the majority decides they are that morning. What distinguishes an institution from a flash mob is that its rules endure. They can be changed, of course. But only by significant supermajorities. That’s why constitutional changes require two-thirds of both houses plus three-quarters of the states. If we could make constitutional changes by majority vote, there would be no Constitution. As of today, the Senate effectively has no rules. Congratulations, Harry Reid. Finally, something you will be remembered for."
Charles Krauthammer,Conservative,"Politics, the crooked timber of our communal lives, dominates everything because, in the end, everything — high and low and, most especially, high — lives or dies by politics. You can have the most advanced and efflorescent of cultures. Get your politics wrong, however, and everything stands to be swept away. This is not ancient history. This is Germany 1933. […] Politics is the moat, the walls, beyond which lie the barbarians. Fail to keep them at bay, and everything burns."
Charles Krauthammer,Conservative,"We no longer have to search for a name for the post-Cold War era. It will henceforth be known as the age of terrorism. Organized terror has shown what it can do; execute the single greatest massacre in American history, shut down the greatest power on the globe and send its leaders into underground shelters. All this, without even resorting to chemical, biological or nuclear weapons of mass destruction. This is a formidable enemy. To dismiss it as a bunch of cowards perpetrating senseless acts of violence is complacent nonsense. People willing to kill thousands of innocents while they kill themselves are not cowards. They are deadly, vicious warriors and need to be treated as such. Nor are their acts of violence senseless. They have a very specific aim: to avenge alleged historical wrongs and to bring the great American satan to its knees."
Charles Krauthammer,Conservative,"Remember how Democrats were complaining that Republicans were trying to overturn Obamacare, it was somehow unpatriotic, because it was an attack on the law of the land. This law of the land doesn’t even exist. It exists in Obama’s head. It’s whatever he thinks. He wakes up in the morning and decides what the law is gonna be."
Charles Krauthammer,Conservative,"The left is entering a new phase of ideological agitation — no longer trying to win the debate but stopping debate altogether, banishing from public discourse any and all opposition. The proper word for that attitude is totalitarian. It declares certain controversies over and visits serious consequences — from social ostracism to vocational defenestration — upon those who refuse to be silenced."
Charles Krauthammer,Conservative,"I never had a Marxist phase. If I did it lasted a weekend, and it must have been a hell of a weekend because I don’t remember it..."
Charles Krauthammer,Conservative,"There’s a reason why the French are on their fifth republic, and we are on our first, and that’s because we did not have a worship of reason at the beginning of the Founding as the French did, and then discovered that the purity, the Rousseauian idea is simply not one for the real world, or not one that avoids the guillotine..."
Charles Krauthammer,Conservative,"[P]eople misunderstand Israel, and see it now in colonial, imperialist terms is because it’s a unique event in human history. The British colonization of North America, New Zealand, Australia, the Dutch in South Africa, they came to places that they had never been to. That’s colonialism. You put your people in there. You takeover. You marginalize the natives if you can. You may not succeed. In South Africa, that’s colonialism. So they see the Jews arriving in what’s called Palestine, and that’s the parallel, the only one they understand. They can’t put their heads around the fact that this is a people returning to their home. That they never gave up title to. They never gave up their longing for. It was repeated in their rituals three times a day, it wasn’t like once a year, let’s remember the homeland."
Charles Krauthammer,Conservative,"Donald Trump, the man who defied every political rule and prevailed to win his party’s nomination, last week took on perhaps the most sacred political rule of all: Never attack a Gold Star family. Not just because it alienates a vital constituency but because it reveals a shocking absence of elementary decency and of natural empathy for the most profound of human sorrows — parental grief.  Why did Trump do it? It wasn’t a mistake. It was a revelation. It’s that he can’t help himself. His governing rule in life is to strike back when attacked, disrespected or even slighted. To understand Trump, you have to grasp the General Theory: He judges every action, every pronouncement, every person by a single criterion — whether or not it/he is “nice” to Trump."
Charles Krauthammer,Conservative,"Of course we all try to protect our own dignity and command respect. But Trump’s hypersensitivity and unedited, untempered Pavlovian responses are, shall we say, unusual in both ferocity and predictability.  This is beyond narcissism. I used to think Trump was an 11-year-old, an undeveloped schoolyard bully. I was off by about 10 years. His needs are more primitive, an infantile hunger for approval and praise, a craving that can never be satisfied. He lives in a cocoon of solipsism where the world outside himself has value — indeed exists — only insofar as it sustains and inflates him."
Charles Krauthammer,Conservative,"A gaffe in Washington is when a politician inadvertently reveals the truth, especially about himself."
Charles Krauthammer,Conservative,"In 1980, Reagan had to do just one thing: pass the threshold test for acceptability. He won that election because he did, especially in the debate with Jimmy Carter in which Reagan showed himself to be genial, self-assured and, above all, nonthreatening. You may not like all his policies, but you could safely entrust the nation to him. Trump badly needs to pass that threshold. If character is destiny, he won’t."
Charles Krauthammer,Conservative,"I believe that the pursuit of truth and right ideas through honest debate and rigorous argument is a noble undertaking. I am grateful to have played a small role in the conversations that have helped guide this extraordinary nation’s destiny. I leave this life with no regrets. It was a wonderful life — full and complete with the great loves and great endeavors that make it worth living. I am sad to leave, but I leave with the knowledge that I lived the life that I intended."
Irving Kristol,Conservative,Capitalism is the least romantic conception of a public order that the human mind has ever conceived.
Irving Kristol,Conservative,It requires strength of character to act upon one's ideas; it requires no less strength of character to resist being seduced by them.
Irving Kristol,Conservative,"Nostalgia is one of the legitimate and certainly one of the most enduring of human emotions; but the politics of nostalgia is at best distracting, at worst pernicious."
Irving Kristol,Conservative,"Power breeds responsibilities, in international affairs as in domestic -- or even private. To dodge or disclaim these responsibilities is one form of the abuse of power."
Irving Kristol,Conservative,"After all, if you believe that no one was ever corrupted by a book, you also have to believe that no one was ever improved by a book (or a play or a movie).  You have to believe, in other words, that all art is morally trivial and that, consequently, all education is morally irrelevant.  No one, not even a university professor, really believes that."
Irving Kristol,Conservative,"I have observed over the years that the unanticipated consequences of social action are always more important, and usually less agreeable, than the intended consequences."
Irving Kristol,Conservative,The enemy of liberal capitalism today is not so much socialism as nihilism.
Irving Kristol,Conservative,"Senator McGovern is very sincere when he says that he will try to cut the military budget by 30%. And this is to drive a knife in the heart of Israel... Jews don't like big military budgets. But it is now an interest of the Jews to have a large and powerful military establishment in the United States... American Jews who care about the survival of the state of Israel have to say, no, we don't want to cut the military budget, it is important to keep that military budget big, so that we can defend Israel."
Irving Kristol,Conservative,"What rules the world is idea, because ideas define the way reality is perceived."
Irving Kristol,Conservative,The liberal paradigm of regulation and license has led to a society where an 18-year-old girl has the right to public fornication in a pornographic movie -- but only if she is paid the minimum wage.
Irving Kristol,Conservative,"[T]he United States is unique among nations in being founded not on race, not on kinship, not on language, not on religion, but on political values. To be an American is to subscribe to these values. We are uniquely a political community, as distinct from an ethnic community, a religious community, a racial community, or any other kind."
Irving Kristol,Conservative,"[T]hough affluence is a good thing, and the spirit of compassionate reform is a good thing, in the end a nation survives only to the extent that the spirit of self-discipline and self-sacrifice is strong and vital."
Irving Kristol,Conservative,"Are we in danger of becoming a nation of cry-babies? Are we becoming a people who panic at the least sign at adversity? Are we becoming a people with a faith not in God or in ourselves, but in a paternalistic government to shelter us from all of life's hardships and misfortunes?"
Irving Kristol,Conservative,[Conservatism:] Our revolutionary message … is that a self-disciplined people can create a political community in which an ordered liberty will promote both economic prosperity and political participation.
Irving Kristol,Conservative,"If you have standards, moral standards, you have to want to make them prevail, and at the very least you have to argue in their favor. Now, show me where libertarians have argued in some comprehensive way for a set of moral standards. … I don't think morality can be decided on the private level. I think you need public guidance and public support for a moral consensus. The average person has to know instinctively, without thinking too much about it, how he should raise his children."
Irving Kristol,Conservative,It was a new kind of class war — the people as citizens versus the politicians and their clients in the public sector.
Irving Kristol,Conservative,"Democratic socialism turns out to be an inherently unstable compound, a contradiction in terms. Every social-democratic party, once in power, soon finds itself choosing, at one point after another, between the socialist society it aspires to and the liberal society that lathered [sic] it... [S]ocialist movements end up [in] a society where liberty is the property of the state, and is (or is not) doled out to its citizens along with other contingent ""benefits""."
Irving Kristol,Conservative,"Joining a radical movement when one is young is very much like falling in love when one is young. The girl may turn out to be rotten, but the the experience of love is so valuable it can never be entirely undone by the ultimate disenchantment."
Irving Kristol,Conservative,"Young people, especially, are looking for religion so desperately that they are inventing new ones. They should not have to invent new ones; the old religions are pretty good."
Irving Kristol,Conservative,Democracy does not guarantee equality of conditions — it only guarantees equality of opportunity.
Irving Kristol,Conservative,"Today there is a new class hostile to business in general, and especially to large corporations. As a group, you find them mainly in the very large and growing public sector and in the media. They share a disinterest in personal wealth, a dislike for the free-market economy, and a conviction that society may best be improved through greater governmental participation in the country's economic life. They are the media. They are the educational system. Their dislike for the free-market economy originates in their inability to exercise much influence over it so as to produce change. In its place they would prefer a system in which there is a very large political component. This is because the new class has a great deal of influence in politics. Thus, through politics, they can exercise a direct and immediate influence on the shape of our society and the direction of national affairs."
Irving Kristol,Conservative,A liberal is one who says that it's all right for an 18-year-old girl to perform in a pornographic movie as long as she gets paid the minimum wage.
Irving Kristol,Conservative,"Neo-conservatives are unlike old conservatives because they are utilitarians, not moralists, and because their aim is the prosperity of post-industrial society, not the recovery of a golden age."
Irving Kristol,Conservative,"A welfare state, properly conceived, can be an integral part of a conservative society."
Irving Kristol,Conservative,[A neoconservative is] a liberal who has been mugged by reality. A neoliberal is a liberal who got mugged by reality but has not pressed charges.
Irving Kristol,Conservative,"The trouble with traditional American conservatism is that it lacks a naturally cheerful, optimistic disposition.  Not only does it lack one, it regards signs of one as evidence of unsoundness, irresponsibility."
Irving Kristol,Conservative,"Doing good isn't [that] hard. It's just doing a lot of good that is very hard. If your aims are modest, you can accomplish an awful lot. When your aims become elevated beyond a reasonable level, you not only don't accomplish much, you can cause a great deal of damage."
Irving Kristol,Conservative,The danger facing American Jews today is not that Christians want to persecute them but that Christians want to marry them.
Irving Kristol,Conservative,"It is ironic to watch the churches, including large sections of my own religion, surrendering to the spirit of modernity at the very moment when modernity itself is undergoing a kind of spiritual collapse..."
Irving Kristol,Conservative,The major political event of the twentieth century is the death of socialism.
Irving Kristol,Conservative,"If you care for the quality of life in our American democracy, then you have to be for censorship."
Irving Kristol,Conservative,There is nothing like a parade to elicit the proper respect for the military from the populace.
Irving Kristol,Conservative,"There are different kinds of truths for different kinds of people. There are truths appropriate for children; truths that are appropriate for students; truths that are appropriate for educated adults; and truths that are appropriate for highly educated adults, and the notion that there should be one set of truths available to everyone is a modern democratic fallacy. It doesn't work."
W. Cleon Skousen,Conservative,"It is a terrible and awesome thing when a man sets out to create all other men in his own image. Such became the goal and all consuming ambition of Karl Marx. Not that he would have made each man equal to himself; in fact, it was quite the contrary. The image he hoped to construct was a great human colossus with Karl Marx as the brain and builder and all other men serving him as the ears and eyes, feet and hands, mouth and gullet. In other words, Marx surveyed the world and dreamed of the day when the whole body of humanity could be forced into a gigantic social image which conformed completely to Marx's dream of a perfect society."
W. Cleon Skousen,Conservative,"Homo-Marxian puzzles all those who try to work with him because he seems irrational and therefore unpredictable. In reality, however, the Marxist Man has reduced his thinking to the lowest common denominator of values taken from nature in the raw. He lives exclusively by the jungle law of selfish survival. In terms of these values he is rational almost to the point of mathematical precision. Through calm or crisis his responses are consistently elemental and therefore highly predictable. Because Homo-Marxian considers himself to be made entirely of the dust of the earth, he pretends to no other role. He denies himself the possibility of a soul and repudiates his capacity for immortality. He believes he had no creator and has no purpose or reason for existing except as an incidental accumulation of accidental forces in nature. Being without morals, he approaches all problems in a direct, uncomplicated manner. Self-preservation is given as the sole justification for his own behavior, and ""selfish motives"" or ""stupidity"" are his only explanations for the behavior of others. With Homo-Marxian the signing of fifty-three treaties and subsequent violation of fifty-one of them is not hypocrisy but strategy. The subordination of other men's minds to the obscuring of truth is not deceit but a necessary governmental tool. Marxist Man has convinced himself that nothing is evil which answers the call of expediency. He has released himself from all the confining restraints of honor and ethics which mankind has previously tried to use as a basis for harmonious human relations."
W. Cleon Skousen,Conservative,"Marxist Man could not have come upon the earth at a more illogical time. In an age when technological advances have finally made it feasible to adequately feed, clothe and house the entire human race, Marxist Man stands as a military threat to this peaceful achievement. His sense of insecurity drives him to demand exclusive control of human affairs in a day when nearly all other peoples would like to create a genuine United Nations dedicated to world peace and world-wide prosperity. Although man can travel faster than sound and potentially provide frequent, intimate contacts between all cultures and all peoples, Marxist Man insists on creating iron barriers behind which he can secretly work."
W. Cleon Skousen,Conservative,"From experience it has been observed that a newly converted Communist frequently acquires a feeling of omniscient superiority over his unconverted fellow men. He feels that at last the universe is laid out before him in a simple, comprehensible manner. If he has never wrestled with philosophical problems before he is likely to be overwhelmed by the infatuating possibility that through Dialectical Materialism man has finally solved all of the basic problems necessary to understand the universe. In this state of mind the student will often drop his attitude of critical inquiry. He will invite indoctrination in heavy doses because of his complete assurance that he has at last discovered Truth in its ultimate form."
W. Cleon Skousen,Conservative,"It is significant that Communist theory treats the proletariat as though it were a unique branch of the human race. The proletariat is assumed to be a special breed which would almost automatically blossom into pleasant, efficient social-economic living if it could just be liberated from oppressive government. The government is presumed to be nothing more than the tool of an oppressive class of capitalists and consequently, if the capitalist class were destroyed, the need for any kind of government would be obliterated. The Communist leaders have always felt confident that when the proletariat takes over it will not want to oppress anyone and therefore the need for government will be nonexistent."
W. Cleon Skousen,Conservative,"The first fallacy of Communism is its attempt to over-simplify history. Marx and Engels attempted to change history from a fluid stream, fed by human activities from millions of tributaries, into a fixed, undeviating, pre-determined course of progress which could be charted in the past and predicted for the future on the basis of a single, simple criterion - economics. Obviously economics have played a vital and powerful role in human history but so have climate, topography, access to oceans and inland waterways, mechanical inventions, scientific discoveries, national and racial affinities, filial affection, religion, desire for explanatory adventure, sentiments of loyalty, patriotism and a multitude of other factors."
W. Cleon Skousen,Conservative,"Communism further alleges that religion is not of divine origin but is simply a man-made tool used by the dominant class to suppress the exploited class. Marx and Engels described religion as the opiate of the people which is designed to lull them into humble submission and an acceptance of the prevailing mode of production which the dominant class desires to perpetuate. Any student of history would agree that there have been times in history when unscrupulous individuals and even misdirected religious organizations have abused the power of religion, just as all other institutions of society have been abused at various times. But it was not the abuse of religion which Marx and Engels deplored as much as the very existence of religion. They considered it a creation of the dominant class, a tool and a weapon in the hands of the oppressors. They pointed out the three-fold function of religion from their point of view: first, it teaches respect for property rights; second, it teaches the poor their duties towards the property and prerogatives of the ruling class; and third, it instills a spirit of acquiescence among the exploited poor so as to destroy their revolutionary spirit. The fallacy of these allegations is obvious to any student of Judaic-Christian teachings. The Biblical teaching of respect for property applies to rich and poor alike; it admonishes the rich to give the laborer his proper wages and to share their riches with the needy."
W. Cleon Skousen,Conservative,"As to the allegation of the Communist that religion makes men passive, we have only to observe that the dynamic power of religious convictions is precisely what prevents a soundly religious person from accepting Communist oppression and Communist mandates. A person practicing the teachings of the Judaic-Christian philosophy will not lie or steal on command. He will not shed innocent blood. He will not participate in the diabolical Communist practice of genocide - the systematic extermination of entire nations or classes. It is clearly evident from the numerous Communist writings that what they fear in religion is not that it makes religious people passive to the dominant class but that it prevents them from becoming passive to Communist discipline. Deep spiritual convictions stand like a wall of resistance to challenge the teachings and practices of Communism. Furthermore, the Communist sees in the dynamic ideology of Judaic-Christian teachings a force for peace which cuts through the vitals of Communism's campaign for world-wide revolution."
W. Cleon Skousen,Conservative,"Communist writers likewise maintain that the Judaic-Christian code of ethics is ""class"" morality. By this they mean that the Ten Commandments and the ethics of Christianity were created to protect private property and the property class. To show the lengths to which Communist writers have gone to defend this view we will mention several of their favorite interpretations of the Ten Commandments. They believe that ""Honor thy Father and thy Mother"" was created by the early Hebrews to emphasize to their children the fact that they were the private property of their parents. ""Thou shalt not kill"" was attributed to the belief of the dominant class that their bodies were private property and therefore they should be protected along with other property rights. ""Thou shalt not commit adultery"" and ""Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's wife"" were said to have been created to implement the idea that a husband was the master of the home and the wife was strictly private property belonging to him. This last line of reasoning led to some catastrophic consequences when the Communists came into power in Russia. In their anxiety to make women ""equal with men"" and prevent them from becoming private property, they degraded womankind to the lowest and most primitive level. Some Communist leaders advocated complete libertinism and promiscuity to replace marriage and the family."
W. Cleon Skousen,Conservative,"Communist morals follow a simple formula. Anything which Promotes the communist cause is good; anything which hinders it is bad. Upon examination, that philosophy turns out to be a code of opportunism and expediency, or a code of no morals at all. Anyone who does not conform to the dictates of the Party as to what is good for Communism and what is not, is subjected to the most severe penalties under Articles 131 and 133 of the Soviet Constitution. Thus, the perfect example of ""class"" morality, which the Marxists attribute to the Judaic-Christian code, is to be found right in the Communist plan of action itself."
W. Cleon Skousen,Conservative,"Today, in the highly-developed capitalistic nation of the United States, the only people who could be classed as proletariat under Marx's definition would be those who own no land, have no savings deposits, no social security, no retirement benefits, no life insurance, no corporate securities and no government bonds, for all these represent the ownership of productive wealth or of money, funds over and beyond the immediate needs of consumption. Such a class of propertyless proletariat does exist in the United States just as there has been one in all nations and in all ages, but the significant thing is that the proletariat in the United States is such a small minority that Marx would scarcely want to claim it. Under American capitalism wealth has been more widely distributed among the people than in any large nation in secular history. This has reduced the property-less class which Marx had in mind to little more than a fringe of the population."
W. Cleon Skousen,Conservative,"It was ironical that Communism (at least the Dictatorship of the proletariat) should first come to Russia - a nation which in economic matters was one of the least developed among all the countries in Europe. Furthermore, Communism came as a coup in Russia, not through any class struggle on the part of the workers. It came through the conspiratorial intrigue of V.I. Lenin, who was encouraged by the German High Command to go into Russia during the closing months of World War I and use a small, hard core of revolutionaries to seize the provisional government which had but recently forced the Tzar to abdicate and was at the moment representing the working class, as much as anyone else, in setting up a democratic constitution. Communism therefore did not come to Russia as the natural outcome of class struggle but like any other dictatorship - by the military might of a small minority."
W. Cleon Skousen,Conservative,"This proposed monopoly of political and economic power [in the form of the Dictatorship of the proletariat] was designed to do many things for the good of humanity, but experience has proven them to be false dreams. For example, the Dictatorship of the Proletariat was designed to spread the enjoyment of wealth among the people by abolishing private property and putting all means of production in the hands of the government. Why did they want to do this? They said it was to prevent all property and wealth from falling into the hands of private capitalists. But what happened when the Communists attempted to do this in Russia? It destroyed what little division of wealth there was and sent the economy hurtling back in the direction of feudalism - an economic system under which a few privileged persons dispense the necessities of life by arbitrary determination while at the same time dictating the way in which all important phases of life shall be lived by the citizens."
W. Cleon Skousen,Conservative,"The Communist dream of a great new ""one world"" of the future is based on the belief that a regime of violence and coercion under the Dictatorship of the Proletariat would permit the establishment of a society which would produce a new order of men who would acquire the habit of observing what Lenin called the ""simple fundamental rules of every-day social life in common."" The fallacy of this hope lies in Communism's perverted interpretation of human behavior. It assumes, on the basis of Dialectical Materialism, that if you change things outside of a man this automatically compels a change on the inside of the man. The inter-relation between environment on the outside and the internal make-up of man is not to be disputed, but environment only conditions man, it does not change his very nature. For example, just as men will always laugh, eat, propagate, gravitate into groups and explore the unknown, so likewise they will always enjoy the pleasure of possessing things (which alone gives pleasure to sharing); they will always possess the desire for individual expression or self-determination, the ambition to improve their circumstances and the motive to excel above others. These qualities are inherent in each generation and cannot be legislated away nor ignored."
W. Cleon Skousen,Conservative,"The Communist leaders seem to have misunderstood the universal lesson of life that man's greatest enemy is inertia and that the mainspring of action to combat inertia is not force but the opportunity for self- improvement. Marx and Engels insisted that such an attitude is selfish and ""non-social,"" but the plain fact is that a worker finds it difficult to work harder in order to fill the stomachs of ""society"" when the fruits of his labor do not first take care of himself and his family."
W. Cleon Skousen,Conservative,"While pretending to liberate mankind from the alleged oppression of capitalism Marxist Man has defied the warm, white light of Twentieth Century civilization to introduce slavery on a scale unprecedented in the history of the race. While claiming to foster the ""rights of the common man"" the Marxist has butchered his fellow citizens from Kulaks to aristocrats in numbers that baffle rational comprehension. And while describing himself as the epitome of the best in nature - the creature of science, the supreme intelligence of the universe -Homo-Marxian has exploited his cunning to compound crimes which scarcely would be duplicated by the most predatory tribes of pre-historic times."
W. Cleon Skousen,Conservative,"The people of the United States came out of the Korean War sadder and wiser than when they went in. Authorities have stated that two things happened in the Korean War which may yet brand it as the greatest blunder the Communist strategists ever made. First, it awakened the United States to the necessity of vigorously rearming and staying armed so long as the Communist threat exists. Second, it demonstrated to the people of the United States the inherent weaknesses of the United Nations."
W. Cleon Skousen,Conservative,"Everything Lumumba would have done in the Congo, Castro actually accomplished in Cuba: drumhead justice, mass executions, confiscation of industry, collectivization of the land, suspension of civil rights, suspension of democratic processes, alliances with the Iron Curtain. All these became the trade marks of the Castro regime."
W. Cleon Skousen,Conservative,"The Communists have created the illusion in free men's minds that ""the way to peace is through disarmament."" We must not forget that this originated as a Communist slogan. Now free men have adopted it as their own and are even setting up special commissions to explore ways and means to carry it out. In this action we are deliberately closing our eyes to everything we promised ourselves at the close of World War II and again at the end of the Korean War. Experts tell us that to disarm in the face of an obvious and present danger is an immoral act. It is an act of self-destruction."
W. Cleon Skousen,Conservative,"The real alternative to co-EXistence is co-REsistance. Experts in the field have been saying for years that Communism does not have to be tolerated. It has no moral, economic or political excuse for existing. Furthermore, it is extremely vulnerable to many types of peaceful pressures which free men have not yet used. We will discuss these in a later section. At this point it is important simply to emphasize that Communism can be beaten - and it can be done without atomic war. Therefore the whole basis for arguing coexistence collapses. Coexistence is a contradiction of terms because it means trying to coexist with world conquest, which is impossible. One must resist or be conquered. It also means accepting the status quo of one-third of the human race in bondage as a permanent working arrangement. It means accepting Communism in spite of its deceit, subversion and broken covenants. It means tolerating Communism without resistance."
W. Cleon Skousen,Conservative,"What then can be done with Red aggression, with its worldwide program of insurrection, riots, civil war and conquest? And what should be done with the U.N.? Because the United States is the most wealthy and powerful nation in the world, she is expected to provide an answer. And because practically every other imaginable suggestion has been presented, it is time to come up with the simple, direct answer which we should have adopted long ago: ""Turn back to the original intent of the Charter. Restrict U.N. membership to peace-loving nations""."
W. Cleon Skousen,Conservative,"Political groups solve their problems by entering into negotiations, attending conferences, and working out their differences with bona fide compromises which all parties are expected to perform. This has never worked with the Communists because they use deceit, disregard of laws, violation of treaties, intimidation, subversion and open insurrection as basic tools of conquest. This makes it a criminal conspiracy."
W. Cleon Skousen,Conservative,"Probably the greatest single weakness of the Sino-Soviet bloc is her shaky economy. Here is a soft spot where peaceful pressures could be devastating. No amount of Soviet propaganda can cover up the obvious collapse of the Chinese communes and the sluggish inefficiency of the Soviet collectivized farms. Every single Soviet satellite is languishing in a depression. Even Pravda has openly criticized the lack of bare essentials and the shoddy quality of Russian-made goods. These factors of austerity and deprivation add to the hatred and misery of the people which constantly feed the flames of potential revolt. Terrorist tactics have been used by the Red leaders to suppress uprisings. In spite of the virtual ""state of siege"" which exists throughout the Soviet empire, there are many outbreaks of violent protest. All of this explains why the Soviet leaders are constantly pleading for ""free trade,"" ""long-term loans,"" ""increased availability of material goods from the West."" Economically, Communism is collapsing but the West has not had the good sense to exploit it. Instead, the United States, Great Britain and 37 other Western powers are shipping vast quantities of goods to the Sino-Soviet bloc. Some business leaders have had the temerity to suggest that trade with the Reds helps the cause of peace. They suggest that ""you never fight the people you trade with."" Apparently they cannot even remember as far back as the late Thirties when this exact type of thinking resulted in the sale of scrap iron and oil to the Japanese just before World War II. After the attack on Pearl Harbor it became tragically clear that while trade with friends may promote peace, trade with a threatening enemy is an act of self-destruction. Have we forgotten that fatal lesson so soon?"
W. Cleon Skousen,Conservative,"The war between freedom and slavery is not just a fight to be waged by Congressmen, the President, soldiers and diplomats. Fighting Communism, Socialism and the subversion of constitutional government is everybody's job. And working for the expansion of freedom is everybody's job. It is a basic American principle that each individual knows better than anyone else what he can do to help once he has become informed. No citizen will have to go far from his own home to find a faltering battle line which needs his aid. Communist influences are gnawing away everywhere and thousands of confused citizens often aid and abet them by operating in a vacuum of their own ignorance. The task is therefore to become informed and then move out for action!"
W. Cleon Skousen,Conservative,"Stay close to your children to make sure they are being trained to think like Washington and Lincoln, not like Marx and Lenin."
W. Cleon Skousen,Conservative,"In providing physical needs for your family, don't forget their spiritual needs. We are in an ideological war. From a Marxist viewpoint an atheistic mind is already three-fourths conquered."
W. Cleon Skousen,Conservative,"Take your children to church, don't send them. Be sure they are getting true religious values, not modernistic debunking."
W. Cleon Skousen,Conservative,Help your children grow up. Don't fall for the current Socialist-Communist line that parents are a detriment to their children. They are only a detriment when they don't do their job.
W. Cleon Skousen,Conservative,Children require a formula of 90% love and discipline.
W. Cleon Skousen,Conservative,"Do not fall for the ""permissive"" school of psychology which says discipline will harm human development. Such thinking produces hoodlums with maladjusted personalities who are likely to fall for every ""ism"" that comes along. A child needs to know that he lives in an orderly world. Discipline is part of it- not extreme harshness but a reasonable and consistent enforcement of the rules."
W. Cleon Skousen,Conservative,"Where you have older children, make current events part of the dinner table talk. Be quick to point out left-wing slanting of news, TV or radio broadcasts. There is far more of this slanting than most people realize."
W. Cleon Skousen,Conservative,Beware of those who come pretending to help education when they are trying to seize control of education. Socialist and Communist planners have ambitions to eliminate all local control - which means the teachers themselves would lose control.
W. Cleon Skousen,Conservative,Watch for slanted passages in text books. Socialist authors have invaded the textbook field. So have some with even more radical views.
W. Cleon Skousen,Conservative,"Don't be misled by the current atheistic drive to take God out of the classroom. ""Separation of church and state"" was to keep creeds out of the curriculum, but not God. It would be as unconstitutional to teach irreligion in the classroom as it would be to emphasize some particular religion. As teachers we are not to teach a particular faith, but parents are within their rights when they insist that the classroom is not be used by those few teachers who seek to destroy faith. Teachers who believe that teaching atheism is a necessary part of a good education are not really qualified to teach in a Judaic-Christian culture. They are entitled to be atheists but, as public employees, they are not entitled to teach it. If they do, they are violating an important constitutional principle."
W. Cleon Skousen,Conservative,"When you run across dedicated Socialists, remember that the only difference between a Socialist and a Communist is in the method of takeover. The desire to seize monolithic control of society is the same in both. Sometimes people forget that USSR stands for the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. Some people count Socialism ""good"" and Communism ""bad."" In reality the two are twins."
W. Cleon Skousen,Conservative,"Resist the radical element on campus who advocates ""mass action"" and violent demonstrations. These are usually the tools of Communist agitators. They get students to demonstrate, and this usually provokes a fight. When the police try to restore order, the Communists slip away in an effort to let the students take the blame. When Communist agitators got the students to wreck the Congressional hearings at San Francisco during May of 1960, the judge decided to release them because he felt the students could already see how they had been duped into fronting for professional anti-Americans."
W. Cleon Skousen,Conservative,"In fulfilling the task of exposing crime, corruption and inefficiency in the American culture, be careful not to destroy confidence in American institutions. Because the negative forces in our society are more likely to be ""news"" than the positive accomplishments, it is easy to over-emphasize the negative side and provide extremely damaging propaganda to the enemy."
W. Cleon Skousen,Conservative,The churches became a major target for Communist-Socialist infiltration many years ago. These people were successful in capturing many key positions in a number of important religious organizations. Some religious leaders openly advocate and defend Communist principles. They are apologists for the Soviet Union and even advocate capitulation under threat of atomic war.
W. Cleon Skousen,Conservative,"Be alert to detect those who use ""Social Christianity"" to cover up the fact that they are not Christians at all."
W. Cleon Skousen,Conservative,"Watch for those who would use the principles of peace, brotherhood, tolerance, and Christian charity to obscure the conspiratorial aspects of Communist ""peace."" The peace of Communism partakes of the prison and the grave. Remind professional pacifists who have accepted the paralyzing peace propaganda of the Communists that the same Jesus who taught ""love thy enemy"" never advocated surrendering to him. The same Jesus who said, ""Turn the other cheek"" to avoid quarreling and bickering in the ordinary course of life, also said to take a sword to preserve life.— The Jesus of Nazareth who cleansed the temple was demonstrating that Right deserves to be defended."
W. Cleon Skousen,Conservative,"Because of the counseling which ministers do, there are strenuous efforts to make inroads into the ministry. Be alert to the drive by certain analytical psychiatrists to have ministers accept their amoral philosophy. They opine those feelings of guilt and a sense of right and wrong cause mental illnesses. This entire concept is being discredited. There is far more mental health in the Judaic-Christian concept of resisting temptation and overcoming mistakes than ever emanated from the Freudian couch."
W. Cleon Skousen,Conservative,Be careful to read books before you recommend them. Recently some church groups have been induced to recommend books which turned out to be filled with obscenity. This is an important part of the Socialist-Communist campaign to discredit religious culture. What technique could better serve their purpose than to have the churches themselves sponsor degenerate literature!
W. Cleon Skousen,Conservative,"With every citizen watching for an opportunity to strike a blow for freedom, the force of Communism can be halted, smothered, and then eliminated. This is our task. Without our tolerance and help the Communist empire would never have become the second strongest power in the earth. Now we have the job of dismantling it."
W. Cleon Skousen,Conservative,Every boy should know that masturbation may be the first step to homosexuality.
W. Cleon Skousen,Conservative,"Studies of American boys who were captured in Korea showed that we had raised a soft, pampered generation. Many were easily discouraged and easily brain-washed."
W. Cleon Skousen,Conservative,"We've combined youth, music, sex, drugs, and rebellion with treason!"
W. Cleon Skousen,Conservative,"Americans are well aware that there has been a revolution. In morals. In manners. In speech. In crime rates. In riots. In violence. In drugs. In sex. In pornography. In politics. In movies. In education. In music. What most of us failed to realize at the moment was how important the music revolution would become. It turned out to be the catalyst for all the rest. It became the prod to promote drugs, the advertiser of sex in the hedonism manner, the mind-conditioner for four-letter gutter speech, and eventually the blatant propaganda funnel for political subversion. It also became the seductive Jezebel for a modern philosophy of no God, of Man as merely a graduate beast of the jungle, of Jesus Christ as a phoney actor--a superstar, of peace and prosperity being possible only under communism, of America as the enemy of the world, of Russia as the hope of the world."
W. Cleon Skousen,Conservative,"Measuring people and issues in terms of political parties has turned out to be philosophically fallacious if not totally misleading. This is because the platforms or positions of political parties are often superficial and structured on shifting sand. The platform of a political party of one generation can hardly be recognized by the next. Furthermore, Communism and Fascism turned out to be different names for approximately the same thing ~ the police state. They are not opposite extremes but, for all practical purposes, are virtually identical."
W. Cleon Skousen,Conservative,"Since the genius of the American system is maintaining the eagle in the balanced center of the spectrum, the Founders warned against a number of temptations which might lure subsequent generations to abandon their freedoms and their rights by subjecting themselves to a strong federal administration operating on the collectivist Left. They warned against the ""welfare state"" where the government endeavors to take care of everyone from the cradle to the grave."
W. Cleon Skousen,Conservative,"Virtue has to be earned and it has to be learned. Neither is virtue a permanent quality in human nature. It has to be cultivated continually and exercised from hour to hour and from day to day. The Founders looked to the home, the school, and the churches to fuel the fires of virtue from generation to generation."
W. Cleon Skousen,Conservative,Americans of the twentieth century often fail to realize the supreme importance which the Founding Fathers originally attached to the role of religion in the structure of the unique civilization which they hoped would emerge as the first free people in modern times. Many Americans also fail to realize that the Founders felt the role of religion would be as important in our own day as it was in theirs.
W. Cleon Skousen,Conservative,The Founders considered the whole foundation of a just society to be structured on the basis of God's revealed law. These laws constituted a moral code clearly distinguishing right from wrong. This concept was not new with the Founders. This was the entire foundation of all religious cultures world-wide.
W. Cleon Skousen,Conservative,"The Founders wrote in the Declaration of Independence that some truths are self-evident, and one of these is the fact that all men are created equal. Yet everyone knows that no two human beings are exactly alike in any respect. They are different when they are born. They plainly exhibit different natural skills. They acquire different tastes. They develop along different lines. They vary in physical strength, mental capacity, emotional stability, inherited social status, in their opportunities for self-fulfillment, and in scores of other ways. Then how can they be equal? The answer is, they can't, except in three ways. They can only be treated as equals in the sight of God, in the sight of the law, and in the protection of their rights. In these three ways all men are created equal. It is the task of society, as it is with God, to accept people in all their vast array of individual differences, but treat them as equals when it comes to their role as human beings. As members of society, all persons should have their equality guaranteed in two areas."
W. Cleon Skousen,Conservative,"... of all the minorities in America, the blacks have undertaken assimilation as first-class citizens under the greatest number of handicaps. Many early political leaders of the United States, including Abraham Lincoln, were fearful the blacks might never achieve complete adjustment because of the slavery culture in which the first few generations were raised. Nevertheless, freedom and education brought a whole new horizon of hope to the blacks within three generations. Tens of thousands of them hurdled the culture gap, and soon the blacks in other countries saw their ethnic cousins in the United States enjoying a higher standard of living than blacks in any part of the world. In fact, by 1970 a black high school student in Alabama or Mississippi had a better opportunity to get a college education than a white student in England."
W. Cleon Skousen,Conservative,"suppose the kind-hearted man decided to ask the mayor and city council to force the man with two cars to give one to his pedestrian neighbor. Does that make it any more legitimate? Obviously, this makes it even worse because if the mayor and city council do it in the name of the law, the man who has lost his car has not only lost the rights to his property, but (since it is the ""law"") he has lost all right to appeal for help in protecting his property. The American Founders recognized that the moment the government is authorized to start leveling the material possessions of the rich in order to have an ""equal distribution of goods,"" the government thereafter has the power to deprive any of the people of their ""equal"" rights to enjoy their lives, liberties, and property."
W. Cleon Skousen,Conservative,"In some states, the victims of criminal activities may apply to the state for damages. This most unfortunate policy is a counter-productive procedure which encourages crime rather than deters it. It encourages a bandit to say to his victim, ""Don't worry, mister. You'll get it all back from the state."""
W. Cleon Skousen,Conservative,"And that is what the Constitution is all about -- providing freedom from abuse by those in authority. Anyone who says the American Constitution is obsolete just because social and economic conditions have changed does not understand the real genius of the Constitution. It was designed to control something which has not changed and will not change - namely, human nature."
W. Cleon Skousen,Conservative,"If it corrupts a society for the government to take care of the poor by violating the principle of property rights, who will take care of the poor? The answer of those who built America seems to be: ""Anybody but the federal government."""
W. Cleon Skousen,Conservative,"Political power automatically gravitates toward the center, and the purpose of the Constitution is to prevent that from happening. The centralization of political power always destroys liberty by removing the decision-making function from the people on the local level and transferring it to the officers of the central government. This process gradually benumbs the spirit of ""voluntarism"" among the people, and they lose the will to solve their own problems. They also cease to be involved in community affairs. They seek the anonymity of oblivion in the seething crowds of the city and often degenerate into faceless automatons who have neither a voice nor a vote."
W. Cleon Skousen,Conservative,"The tendency was to sell families as units, if for no other reason [than] to keep the slaves contented. The gangs in transit were usually a cheerful lot, though the presence of a number of the more vicious type sometimes made it necessary for them all to go in chains. At the other extreme, when the Central of Georgia railroad company in 1858 equipped a Negro sleeping car to assist in the slave trade it set a standard not always maintained in a later generation. When on the block, the slave was as likely to hinder as to help in his sale. Some, out of a vain conceit in bringing a high price, would boast of their physical prowess, in which case an unwary purchaser would likely be cheated. Others would malinger, because of a grudge against owners or traders or in order to bring a low price and be put at less tiring labor. Dealers, also, adopted the tricks of horse traders to make their merchants more attractive -- the greasiest Negro was generally considered the healthiest."
W. Cleon Skousen,Conservative,"Negro weddings were attended by white people who joined in the celebration. If the marriages were of a rather impermanent nature, that fact was frequently considered as 'one of the blessings of slavery.' At church and camp meetings the Negroes, in their own section of the building or tabernacle, enjoyed the experiences immensely. They could shout without restraint, while the masters, in order to preserve their dignity, had to repress their emotions. It made little difference if religion was thrown off soon after the camp meeting dissolved -- backsliding was pleasant, and there was always a chance to get intoxicatingly converted again."
W. Cleon Skousen,Conservative,"The free Negro had rather more opportunity for economic advancement in the South than in the North. The Southerner was bothered by the race problem but knew how to handle the individual Negro, while the Northerner professed a benign interest in the race so long as its members were as remote as possible. Neither section was willing to grant equal rights in education, suffrage, or legal standing, while many states of all sections had laws prohibiting the immigration of free Negroes. Abraham Lincoln could not have maintained his standing in the Republican party had he not been a staunch supporter of the Illinois exclusion law and a firm opponent of political and social equality. It was most difficult for a Negro to get a job in the North, except at the most loathsome of tasks. Some Negroes, having been freed and sent to any Northern state which would receive them, became so miserable as to solicit a return to slavery."
W. Cleon Skousen,Conservative,"The worst offenses of slaves against the white men's code were rebellion and running away. Drunkenness, stealing, hiding out from work, personal filthiness, carelessness of property, fighting, and general brutality had various positions in the scale of misdemeanors. Negro preachers often bred discontent by their unnecessary restraint upon pleasure, and, if itinerants, had to be watched closely for abolitionist or seditious doctrines."
W. Cleon Skousen,Conservative,"The constant fear of slave rebellion made life in the South a nightmare, especially in regions where conspiracies were of frequent occurrence. The extermination of white civilization in Santo Domingo was followed in the nineteenth century by several other bloody outbursts in the West Indies, which never failed to cause ominous forebodings in America."
W. Cleon Skousen,Conservative,"In the management of slave labor the gang system predominated. The great majority of owners, having at the most only one or two families of Negroes, had to work alongside their slaves and set the pace for them. Slavery did not make white labor unrespectable, but merely inefficient. The slave had a deliberateness of motion which no amount of supervision could quicken. If the owner got ahead of the gang they all would shirk behind his back."
W. Cleon Skousen,Conservative,"Slave food, even if monotonous, was plentiful. Corn bread and bacon were the mainstays, with plenty of fruit and vegetables in season. In hog-killing time, countenances were unusually greasy. Clothing also was on the par with that of the poorer white people and no less adequate in proportion to the climate than that of Northern laborers. If [negro children] ran naked it was generally from choice, and when the white boys had to put on shoes and go away to school they were likely to envy the freedom of their colored playmates. The color line began to appear at about that time."
W. Cleon Skousen,Conservative,"Excessive toil occurred only where the masters or overseers were feeble witted as well as brutal. A persistent rumor among abolitionists was that sugar planters followed a policy of working slaves to death in seven years as a matter of economy. The persons spreading such reports were as ignorant of Negro nature as they were of conditions in the sugar mills. Furthermore, they overrated the ability of the masters to know how to kill a slave in the given time instead of leaving him a broken-down burden to the plantation. When they set out to prove the accusation they returned with no evidence, but convinced that the practice existed in some obscure region which they had not succeeded in ferreting out. Harriet Martineau, after watching slaves go through the motions of work without tiring themselves, considered the planters as models of patience and observed that new slave owners from Europe or the North were prone to be the most severe. Numerous observers, of various shades of opinion on slavery, agreed that brutality was no more common in the black belt than among free labor elsewhere, and that the slave owners were the worst victims of the system."
Rush Limbaugh,Conservative,Take that bone out of your nose and call me back.
Rush Limbaugh,Conservative,Feminism was established so as to allow unattractive women access to the mainstream of society.
Rush Limbaugh,Conservative,Styrofoam and plastic milk jugs are biodegradable! Do you know what isn't biodegradable? Paper!
Rush Limbaugh,Conservative,The NAACP should have riot rehearsal. They should get a liquor store and practice robberies.
Rush Limbaugh,Conservative,"Militant feminists are pro-choice because it's their ultimate avenue of power over men. And believe me, to them it is a question of power. It is their attempt to impose their will on the rest of society, particularly on men."
Rush Limbaugh,Conservative,"The worst of all of this is the lie that condoms really protect against AIDS. The condom failure rate can be as high as 20 percent. Would you get on a plane — or put your children on a plane — if one of five passengers would be killed on the flight? Well, the statistic holds for condoms, folks."
Rush Limbaugh,Conservative,"I prefer to call the most obnoxious feminists what they really are: feminazis. Tom Hazlett, a good friend who is an esteemed and highly regarded professor of economics at the University of California at Davis, coined the term to describe any female who is intolerant of any point of view that challenges militant feminism. I often use it to describe women who are obsessed with perpetuating a modern-day holocaust: abortion. There are 1.5 million abortions a year, and some feminists almost seem to celebrate that figure. There are not many of them, but they deserve to be called feminazis.A feminazi is a woman to whom the most important thing in life is seeing to it that as many abortions as possible are performed. Their unspoken reasoning is quite simple. Abortion is the single greatest avenue for militant women to exercise their quest for power and advance their belief that men aren't necessary. They don't need men in order to be happy. They certainly don't want males to be able to exercise any control over them. Abortion is the ultimate symbol of women's emancipation from the power and influence of men.  With men being precluded from the ultimate decision-making process regarding the future of life in the womb, they are reduced to their proper, inferior role. Nothing matters but me, says the feminazi. My concerns prevail over all else. The fetus doesn't matter, it's an unviable tissue mass."
Rush Limbaugh,Conservative,"Can't take sides? — — —! These were American journalists, and they can't take sides? That attitude illustrates the haughty arrogance of people in the news business."
Rush Limbaugh,Conservative,The way liberals are interpreting the First Amendment today is that it prevents anyone who is religious from being in government. They say that violates the prohibition against church and state.
Rush Limbaugh,Conservative,There are more American Indians alive today than there were when Columbus arrived or at any other time in history. Does this sound like a record of genocide?
Rush Limbaugh,Conservative,There are more acres of forest land in America today than when Columbus discovered the continent in 1492.
Rush Limbaugh,Conservative,Let me tell you something. They say he lied to Congress. I can think of no better bunch of people to lie to than Congress.
Rush Limbaugh,Conservative,"Too many whites are getting away with drug use...Too many whites are getting away with drug sales...The answer is to go out and find the ones who are getting away with it, convict them and send them up the river, too."
Rush Limbaugh,Conservative,"It's beyond me how anybody can look at these protestors and call them anything other than what they are: anti-American, anticapitalist, pro-Marxist communists."
Rush Limbaugh,Conservative,I don't think he's been that good from the get-go. I think what we've had here is a little social concern in the NFL. I think the media has been very desirous that a black quarterback do well. They're interested in black coaches and black quarterbacks doing well. I think there's a little hope invested in McNabb and he got a lot of credit for the performance of his team that he really didn't deserve.
Rush Limbaugh,Conservative,"The feminazis gathered in Washington on Sunday, about a half-million of them, it says here, and it was the first big pro-abortion rally in 12 years."
Rush Limbaugh,Conservative,"You know I have always tried to be honest with you and open about my life, so I need to tell you that part of what you have heard and read is correct. I am addicted to prescription pain medication."
Rush Limbaugh,Conservative,"It's sort of like hazing, a fraternity prank. Sort of like that kind of fun."
Rush Limbaugh,Conservative,"I'm talking about people having a good time, these people, you ever heard of emotional release? You ever heard of need to blow some steam off?"
Rush Limbaugh,Conservative,"We need to shut down this Gitmo prison? Well, don't shut it down - we just need to start an advertising campaign. We need to call it, 'Gitmo, the Muslim resort.' Any resort that treated people like this would have ads all over the New York Times trying to get people to come down and visit for some R&R, for some rest and relaxation."
Rush Limbaugh,Conservative,"If the word of how they're being treated keeps getting out, we're going to have al-Qaeda people surrendering all over the world trying to get in place."
Rush Limbaugh,Conservative,"Look it, let me put it to you this way: the NFL all too often looks like a game between the Bloods and the Crips without any weapons. There, I said it."
Rush Limbaugh,Conservative,"The dream end of this is that this keeps up to the convention and we have a replay of Chicago 1968 with burning cars, protests, fires, literal riots, and all of that. That's that's the objective here."
Rush Limbaugh,Conservative,"He discusses his service in Iraq, the wounds he suffered there, and he says to me in this ad, ""Until you have the guts to call me a 'phony soldier' to my face, stop telling lies about my service."" You know, this is such a blatant use of a valiant combat veteran, lying to him about what I said, then strapping those lies to his belt, sending him out via the media in a TV ad to walk into as many people as he can walk into."
Rush Limbaugh,Conservative,"What [Obama] is talking about is the absorption of as much of the private sector by the US government as possible, from the banking business, to the mortgage industry, the automobile business, to health care. I do not want the government in charge of all of these things. I don't want this to work. So I'm thinking of replying to the guy, ""Okay, I'll send you a response, but I don't need 400 words, I need four: I hope he fails."""
Rush Limbaugh,Conservative,"So I shamelessly say, no, I want him to fail, if his agenda is a far-left collectivism, some people say socialism, as a conservative heartfelt, deeply, why would I want socialism to succeed?"
Rush Limbaugh,Conservative,"You know, this is all BS, as far as I'm concerned. Cross species evolution, I don't think anybody's ever proven that. They're going out of their way now to establish evolution as a mechanism for creation, which, of course, you can't do."
Rush Limbaugh,Conservative,"Let's remember one thing, folks, while we go forward. Not one Republican voted for this bailout. Remember way back in the fall, not one Republican voted for the TARP bailout, and this was why."
Rush Limbaugh,Conservative,You've got enough in here that people who get hold of this — like AP or any of the state-controlled media — they're going to focus on the soap opera aspects of your book and they're going to ignore what is truly one of the most substantive policy books I've read.
Rush Limbaugh,Conservative,"Black unemployment is terrible. The black frame of mind is terrible, they're depressed, they're down — Obama's not doing anything for 'em. How is that hoax and change workin' for ya? They're all livid. I mean, they thought there were gonna be an exact 180-degree economic reversal and it's done nothing but get bad for everybody, but they're especially upset about it because they look at him as one of them, and now they feel abandoned. And I'm sure Tiger Woods' choice of females not helping 'em out with their attitudes there either."
Rush Limbaugh,Conservative,"And I'm not going to apologize for it, I'm just quoting Emanuel. It's in the news. I think the news is that he's out there calling Obama's number one supporters effing retards. So now there's going to be a meeting. There's going to be a retard summit at the White House, much like the beer summit between Obama and Gates and that cop in Cambridge."
Rush Limbaugh,Conservative,Net neutrality would require that every search engine produce an equal number of results that satisfy every disagreement about [every] issue... Just think of it as Fairness Doctrine for the Internet. I'm not making this up.
Rush Limbaugh,Conservative,"From this day forward, somebody propose it, liberals should not be allowed to buy guns. It's just that simple. Liberals should have their speech controlled and not be allowed to buy guns. I mean if we want to get serious about this, if we want to face this head on, we’re gonna have to openly admit, liberals should not be allowed to buy guns, nor should they be allowed to use computer keyboards or typewriters, word processors or e-mails, and they should have their speech controlled. If we did those three or four things, I can’t tell you what a sane, calm, civil, fun-loving society we would have. Take guns out of the possession, out of the hands of liberals, take their typewriters and their keyboards away from ‘em, don’t let ‘em anywhere near a gun, and control their speech. You would wipe out 90% of the crime, 85 to 95% of the hate, and a hundred percent of the lies from society."
Rush Limbaugh,Conservative,The people we see protesting in Madison are the equivalent of Hosni Mubarak apparatchiks who are trying to hold onto their privileges despite the will of the people who are being exploited to pay for them.
Rush Limbaugh,Conservative,"Lord's Resistance Army are Christians. It means God. I was only kidding. Lord's Resistance Army are Christians. They are fighting the Muslims in Sudan. And Obama has sent troops, United States troops to remove them from the battlefield, which means kill them."
Rush Limbaugh,Conservative,"The Republican establishment has decided they don't want any part of conservatism, and this is really not new. People surprise to hear this. But the republican party formative event of conservativism is Goldwater's landslide defeat. That's what they think of when they think ""conservative"". They don't think Reagan. They think Goldwater. They believe what the inside-the-Beltway philosophy is about conservatives: they're racist, sexist, bigot, homophobe, Southern hayseed hicks. They're pro-lifers, they're embarrassing to have to go to convention with them, and they're just embarrassed to have those kind of people in the party."
Rush Limbaugh,Conservative,"What does it say about the college co-ed Sandra Fluke, who goes before a congressional committee and essentially says that she must be paid to have sex, what does that make her? It makes her a slut, right? It makes her a prostitute. She wants to be paid to have sex. She's having so much sex she can't afford the contraception. She wants you and me and the taxpayers to pay her to have sex. What does that make us? We're the pimps. (interruption) The johns? We would be the johns? No! We're not the johns. (interruption) Yeah, that's right. Pimp's not the right word. Okay, so she's not a slut. She's ""round heeled"". I take it back."
Rush Limbaugh,Conservative,"So, Ms. Fluke and the rest of you feminazis, here's the deal: If we are going to pay for you to have sex, we want something for it, and I'll tell you what it is — we want you to post the videos online so we can all watch."
Rush Limbaugh,Conservative,God may have replied
Rush Limbaugh,Conservative,"The study's leaders claim to have bona fide research — I say ""bonified"" probably here — bonified research that says the average size of a penis is roughly 10% smaller than it was 50 years ago, and the researchers say air pollution is why. Air pollution, global warming has been shown to negatively impact penis size, Italian researchers. I don't buy this, I think it's feminism. If it's tied to the last 50 years — the average size of a member is 10 percent smaller than 50 years — it has to be the feminazis, the chickification and everything else. Give 'em time and they'll blame Bush. Give 'em time. But air pollution vs. feminazis? Ha!"
Rush Limbaugh,Conservative,You know how to stop abortion? Require that each one occur with a gun.
Rush Limbaugh,Conservative,"If one of the main reasons for passing the Gang of Eight immigration bill is so Republicans can prove that they don't hate Hispanics, then what's next? Are the Republicans going to have to support gay marriage to prove that they don't hate gays? Are the Republicans then going to have to support affirmative action to prove they don't hate blacks?"
Rush Limbaugh,Conservative,What do we have to do to make the women realize we don't hate 'em? Change our attitude on abortion? Where does this stuff stop?
Rush Limbaugh,Conservative,"You find yourself staring, looking at, casually glancing at a woman, but you know that it's now socially taboo. You shouldn't be doing it. And you think everybody is noticing you doing it and condemning you in their minds. You shouldn't — so you walk up to the woman and say, ""Will you please ask your breasts to stop staring at my eyes?"""
Rush Limbaugh,Conservative,"You know what the magic word, the only thing that matters in American sexual mores today is? One thing. You can do anything, the Left will promote and understand and tolerate anything, so long as there is one element. Do you know what it is? Consent. If there is consent on both or all three or all four, however many are involved in the sex act, it's perfectly fine. Whatever it is. But if the left ever senses and smells that there's no consent in part of the equation then here come the rape police. But consent is the magic key to the left."
Rush Limbaugh,Conservative,Great comedy is great comedy only if it has an element of truth in it.
Rush Limbaugh,Conservative,More people have died at Chappaquiddick than have died at nuclear plants.
Robert Lucas Jr.,Conservative,"The observation that money changes induce output changes in the same direction receives confirmation in some data sets but is hard to see in others. Large-scale reductions in money growth can be associated with large-scale depressions or, if carried out in the form of a credible reform, with no depression at all."
Robert Lucas Jr.,Conservative,"The central predictions of the quantity theory are that, in the long run, money growth should be neutral in its effects on the growth rate of production and should affect the inflation rate on a one-for-one basis."
Robert Lucas Jr.,Conservative,"I was born in 1937, in Yakima, Washington, the oldest child of Robert Emerson Lucas and Jane Templeton Lucas. My sister Jenepher was born in 1939 and my brother Peter in 1940. My parents had moved to Yakima from Seattle to open a small restaurant, The Lucas Ice Creamery."
Robert Lucas Jr.,Conservative,"My parents were admirers of President Roosevelt and the New Deal. Their parents and most of our relatives and neighbors were Republicans, so they were self-conscious in their liberalism and took it as emblematic of their ability to think for themselves."
Robert Lucas Jr.,Conservative,"I was good at math and science, and it was expected that I would attend the University of Washington in Seattle and become an engineer. But by the time I was seventeen, I was ready to leave home, a decision my parents agreed to support if I could obtain a scholarship. MIT did not grant me one, but the University of Chicago did."
Robert Lucas Jr.,Conservative,"I obtained a Woodrow Wilson Doctoral Fellowship and entered the graduate program in History at the University of California. With no Greek or French and minimal Latin and German, I was in no position to pursue my classical interests, so I began work at Berkeley with little more than an open mind."
Robert Lucas Jr.,Conservative,"From the beginnings of modern monetary theory, in David Hume's marvelous essays of 1752, 'Of Money and Of Interest,' conclusions about the effect of changes in money have seemed to depend critically on the way in which the change is effected."
Robert Lucas Jr.,Conservative,"Monetary contractions are attractive as the key shocks in the 1929-1933 years, and in other severe depressions, because there do not seem to be any other candidates."
Andrew Breitbart,Conservative,I love fighting for what I believe in. I love having fun while doing it.
Andrew Breitbart,Conservative,"Political correctness - the rigging of politics using different rules for different groups, and buttressed by the media - ensures that Democrats always have the upper hand."
Andrew Breitbart,Conservative,"The sad fact is that actual artistic oppression - book banning in its many modern forms - is a matter of course in the entertainment industry, especially when the underlying product is declared politically incorrect or runs contrary to the interests of Hollywood's political altar, the Democratic Party."
Andrew Breitbart,Conservative,Much of Mr. Bush's 28 percent approval rating is born not of 'failed policies' - of which there are many - but of the ill-gotten gains pilfered from a pre-Bush inauguration strategy to send the message to Republicans that the Democrats play politics harder and better.
Andrew Breitbart,Conservative,Liberalism has never been about establishing a universal standard. Liberalism is simply intellectual cover for those wanting to gain political power and increase the size of the state.
Andrew Breitbart,Conservative,"In the public eye, being a victim of past injustices does not win the right to propagate current and future ones, and that's intolerable to those in charge of the race industry today, whose power relies on maintaining forever a latent rage that can be turned on and off at the will of the nation's elites."
Andrew Breitbart,Conservative,My entire business model is to go on offense.
Andrew Breitbart,Conservative,"I recognized... very, very early on that ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN and Fox News were dependent on The Associated Press and Reuters. So my daily intake of information is from watching the newswires."
Andrew Breitbart,Conservative,"My long-held fear is that Mr. Obama is hiding something about his education. During the endless 2008 campaign, Mr. Obama would not release his college grades. Given that President George W. Bush and Sens. Al Gore and John Kerry all had proved mediocre grades were no impediment to a presidential bid, Mr. Obama likely had other concerns."
Andrew Breitbart,Conservative,"There isn't a day when I don't look in the mirror and think, 'How in the hell did I become a conservative Republican?' It's still a weird reckoning, because it shouldn't have happened."
Andrew Breitbart,Conservative,"I am righteous and righteously indignant, the Tea Party is righteously indignant, and our goal is to not just save the country, but quite frankly, if America goes, so goes the world, so in our desire to save the country, we are trying to save the world."
Andrew Breitbart,Conservative,I'm fighting back against years and years and years of the cultural and the political left telling people to sit down and shut up.
Andrew Breitbart,Conservative,'Exculpatory' is in the eye of the beholder.
Andrew Breitbart,Conservative,"From its skillful editing to its out-of-control budget and its relentless marketing, Mr. Obama's team played a different game at a different level than Sen. John McCain and his traditionalist staff."
Andrew Breitbart,Conservative,"Much of America is petrified to bring up race, especially in public forums - the media, in particular."
Andrew Breitbart,Conservative,"There's nothing in this country that is a worse accusation - in America, if you accuse somebody of racism, that person has to disprove that."
Andrew Breitbart,Conservative,"The Democratic Media Complex, in its pursuit of Orwellian hate-crime legislation, reparations, and sundry non-ameliorative resolutions to America's troubled racial past, pursues its victims with blood lust."
Andrew Breitbart,Conservative,"The center-right alternative media has been playing a passable prevent defense, constantly saying 'That's not right' for consistently biased reporting."
Andrew Breitbart,Conservative,I love Whole Foods. I love the Austin-based boutique supermarket chain so much I find ways to go there almost every day.
Andrew Breitbart,Conservative,"The downside to the Whole Foods experience is that its success is driven by one of our era's more grotesque phenomena: the upwardly-mobile urban dweller, the one who wants to indulge class-conscious epicurean yearnings and save the world, too."
Andrew Breitbart,Conservative,"In a media instant, Sarah Palin went from an unknown moose hunter to a mass phenomenon on the precipice of becoming the vice president of the United States."
Andrew Breitbart,Conservative,"For free-speech principles to be reinforced and free-market ideas to win the day, more people are going to have to stand up and be heard."
Andrew Breitbart,Conservative,"While I have no desire to see Mr. Obama's birth certificate, I do want to see his college transcripts."
Andrew Breitbart,Conservative,"Women's Studies, Queer Studies, African-American Studies, and Chicano Studies all produce culturally acceptable separatist and supremacy mind-sets and countenance movements that resemble those of white supremacists."
Andrew Breitbart,Conservative,"Let me tell you this: if Marco Rubio - even though he's only been in the Senate for a very short period of time, that man has a huge, huge opportunity in this country, and I think he could be the president."
Andrew Breitbart,Conservative,It's almost embarrassing to go back into my liberal background because it was about as shallow a belief system as humanly possible.
David Friedman,Conservative,I think of my songs as there to be something to move people emotionally.
Tucker Carlson,Conservative,"People often refer to Dubai as the Hong Kong of the Gulf, but it's really more like Vegas."
Tucker Carlson,Conservative,"Speaking fluent English - like doing long division or successfully rewiring a 220-volt electrical outlet - is not a skill you're born with. It's something you learn, occasionally even by opening some old dictionary."
Tucker Carlson,Conservative,"Children with Down Syndrome are not monsters, but uncommonly gentle human beings who can and do lead full lives."
Tucker Carlson,Conservative,One area of liberal phenomenon I support is female bi-sexuality.
Tucker Carlson,Conservative,"It's easy to mock a man who has founded a religion based on John Coltrane, who considers 'A Love Supreme,' whatever its merits as a jazz album, to be holy scripture."
Tucker Carlson,Conservative,There's no law of nature that says America must remain the most powerful country in the world.
Tucker Carlson,Conservative,The rapid growth of prenatal testing has had some undeniably positive effects: A woman who knows she will bear a child with a handicap can plan to deliver in a hospital equipped for risky births. And many couples prefer the opportunity to prepare psychologically for the work of raising a disabled child.
Tucker Carlson,Conservative,"Some white people are privileged, some aren't. Some black people are, some aren't. It's strikes me as, by definition, a racist attack in that it's making a generalization - a negative one - based on skin color."
Tucker Carlson,Conservative,"The second you think that all your good fortune is a product of your virtue, you become highly judgmental, lacking empathy, totally without self-awareness, arrogant, stupid - I mean, all the stuff that our ruling class is."
Tucker Carlson,Conservative,Who laughs less than feminists?
Tucker Carlson,Conservative,I'm so pathetically eager for people to love D.C. It's so sad. It's like I work for the chamber of commerce or something.
Tucker Carlson,Conservative,"Apart from its dangers, much of Iraq isn't very interesting to look at. The landscape is flat and dun colored. The dirt just beyond the highway is littered with hunks of twisted and mangled metal, some of it the detritus of wars, some of it just unclaimed junk. The countryside looks muddy and broken."
Tucker Carlson,Conservative,"America is secure because we can afford the strongest military in history. Once the U.S. economy is no longer dominant, we are no longer safe, and the world becomes chaotic."
Tucker Carlson,Conservative,The two things I was positive about in life were that I was going to be a teacher at a boarding school or an operative with the CIA posted abroad. I could write a book about all the things I was sure about.
Tucker Carlson,Conservative,You can look different but have the same values. That's not diversity; it's conformity.
Tucker Carlson,Conservative,I'm Christian. I've made mistakes. I believe fervently in second chances.
Tucker Carlson,Conservative,"There will always be some who, for whatever reason, find themselves dependent on the charity of others. But when half the population is along for the ride, the system becomes dangerously out of balance. Things fall apart."
Tucker Carlson,Conservative,I do think - I'm sure I'm the lone voice in saying this - that Iran deserves to be annihilated. I think they're lunatics. I think they're evil.
Tucker Carlson,Conservative,Carrying an automatic weapon in a Third World country beyond the easy reach of higher authority? The job description is like a bug light to borderline personalities.
Tucker Carlson,Conservative,"Certain Arabs love Dubai because it's not at all like where they live. Certain others hate it for the same reason. When you hear an Osama bin Laden sympathizer rant about the decadence and hypocrisy of the Arab ruling class, you can be certain he's picturing a nightclub in Dubai."
Tucker Carlson,Conservative,"It's hard to be ambitious if you're content, isn't it?"
Tucker Carlson,Conservative,"To be a feminist, you could cut your hair really short. You have to be really angry about something."
Tucker Carlson,Conservative,I was up late last night yapping about the elections on CNN and up early this morning doing the same thing in my daughter's kindergarten class.
Tucker Carlson,Conservative,It is one of the triumphs of modern society that the life of the average person with Down Syndrome has become strikingly normal.
Tucker Carlson,Conservative,I don't care what anybody thinks.
Robert Lucas Jr.,Conservative,"The main development I want to discuss has already occurred: Keynesian economics is dead [maybe ‘disappeared’ is a better term]. I don’t know exactly when this happened but it is true today and it wasn’t true two years ago. This is a sociological not an economic observation, so the evidence for it is sociological. For example, you cannot find a good, under 40 economist who identifies himself and his work as ‘Keynesian’. Indeed, people even take offense if referred to in this way. At research seminars, people don’t take Keynesian theorizing seriously any more—the audience starts to whisper and giggle to one another. Leading journals aren’t getting Keynesian papers submitted any more."
Robert Lucas Jr.,Conservative,"I do not see how one can look at figures like these without seeing them representing possibilities. Is there some action a government of India could take that would lead the Indian economy to grow like Indonesia's or Egypt's? If so, what exactly? If not, what is it about the ""nature of India"" that makes it so? The consequences for human welfare involved in questions like these are simply staggering: once one starts to think about them, it is hard to think about anything else."
Robert Lucas Jr.,Conservative,"So I am skeptical about the argument that the subprime mortgage problem will contaminate the whole mortgage market, that housing construction will come to a halt, and that the economy will slip into a recession. Every step in this chain is questionable and none has been quantified. If we have learned anything from the past 20 years it is that there is a lot of stability built into the real economy."
Robert Lucas Jr.,Conservative,I guess everyone is a Keynesian in a foxhole.
Robert Lucas Jr.,Conservative,"For policy, the central fact is that Keynesian policy recommendations have no sounder basis, in a scientific sense, than recommendations of non-Keynesian economists or, for that matter, non-economists."
Robert Lucas Jr.,Conservative,"In the present decade, the U.S. economy has undergone its first major depression since the 1930’s, to the accompaniment of inflation rates in excess of 10 percent per annum. These events have been transmitted [...] to other advanced countries and in many cases have been amplified. These events did not arise from a reactionary reversion to outmoded, 'classical' principles of tight money and balanced budgets. On the contrary, they were accompanied by massive government budget deficits and high rates of monetary expansion, policies which, although bearing an admitted risk of inflation, promised according to modern Keynesian doctrine rapid real growth and low rates of unemployment. That these predictions were wildly incorrect and that the doctrine on which they were fundamentally flawed are now simple matters of fact, involving no novelties of economic theory. The task now [...] is to sort through the wreckage, determining which features of that remarkable intellectual event called the Keynesian Revolution can be salvaged and put to use and which others must be discarded.”"
Robert Lucas Jr.,Conservative,"The Keynesian Revolution was, in the form in which it succeeded in the United States, a revolution in method. This was not Keynes’s intent, nor is it the view of all of his most eminent followers. Yet if one does not view the revolution in this way, it is impossible to account for some of its most important features."
Robert Lucas Jr.,Conservative,"A key element in all Keynesian models is a ‘trade-off between inflation and real output: the higher is the inflation rate; the higher is output (or equivalently, the lower is the rate of unemployment)."
Andrew Breitbart,Conservative,"Celebrity is everything in this country. And if these guys don't learn how to play the media the way that Barack Obama played the media last election cycle and the way that Donald Trump is playing the election cycle, we're going to probably get a celebrity candidate."
Andrew Breitbart,Conservative,"I must say, in my non-strategic… ‘cuz I’m under attack all the time, if you see it on Twitter. The [unclear] call me gay, it’s just, they’re vicious, there are death threats, and everything. And so, there are times where I’m not thinking as clearly as I should, and in those unclear moments, I always think to myself, ‘Fire the first shot.’Bring it on. Because I know who’s on our side. They can only win a rhetorical and propaganda war. They cannot win. We outnumber them in this country, and we have the guns. [laughter] I’m not kidding. They talk a mean game, but they will not cross that line because they know what they’re dealing with.And I have people who come up to me in the military, major named people in the military, who grab me and they go, ‘Thank you for what you’re doing, we’ve got your back.’They understand that. These are the unspoken things we know, they know. They know who’s on their side, they’ve got Janeane Garofalo, we are freaked out by that. When push comes to shove, they know who’s on our side. They are the bullies on the playground, and they’re starting to realize, what if we were to fight back, what if we were to slap back?"
Andrew Breitbart,Conservative,"You send your kids off to college. They love you. You walk away with a Cornell mom T-shirt. You are walking away going this is great, and come Thanksgiving, your kid tells you that you are an imperialist and a racist and a homophobe. That is not worth $120,000."
Andrew Breitbart,Conservative,Politics is downstream of culture.
David Friedman,Conservative,The direct use of physical force is so poor a solution to the problem of limited resources that it is commonly employed only by small children and great nations. (p.4)
David Friedman,Conservative,"If we want to be honest, we can ship the Statue of Liberty back to France or replace the outdated verse with new lines, ""America the closed preserve/ That dirty foreigners don't deserve"". (p.71)"
David Friedman,Conservative,"In the ideal socialist state, power will not attract power freaks. People who make decisions will show no slightest bias towards their own interests. There will be no way for a clever man to bend the institutions to serve his own ends. And the rivers will run uphill. (p.108)"
David Friedman,Conservative,"Perhaps the best way to see why anarcho-capitalism would be much more peaceful than our present system is by analogy. Consider our world as it would be if the cost of moving from one country to another were zero. Everyone lives in a housetrailer and speaks the same language. One day, the president of France announces that because of troubles with neighboring countries, new military taxes are being levied and conscription will begin shortly. The next morning the president of France finds himself ruling a peaceful but empty landscape, the population having been reduced to himself, three generals, and twenty-seven war correspondents. (p.123)"
David Friedman,Conservative,"We must ask, not whether an anarcho-capitalist society would be safe from a power grab by the men with the guns (safety is not an available option), but whether it would be safer than our society is from a comparable seizure of power by the men with the guns. I think the answer is yes. In our society, the men who must engineer such a coup are politicians, military officers, and policemen, men selected precisely for the characteristic of desiring power and being good at using it. They are men who already believe that they have a right to push other men around - that is their job. They are particularly well qualified for the job of seizing power. Under anarcho-capitalism the men in control of protection agencies are selected for their ability to run an efficient business and please their customers. It is always possible that some will turn out to be secret power freaks as well, but it is surely less likely than under our system where the corresponding jobs are labeled 'non-power freaks need not apply'. (pp. 123-124)"
David Friedman,Conservative,"I predict that, if anarcho-capitalist institutions appeared in this country tomorrow, heroin would be legal in New York and illegal in most other places. (p.128)"
David Friedman,Conservative,An ideal objectivist society with a limited government is superior to an anarcho-capitalist society in precisely the same way that an ideal socialist society is superior to a capitalist society. Socialism does better with perfect people than anarcho-capitalism with imperfect. And it is better to wear a bikini with the sun shining than a raincoat when it is raining. That is no argument against carrying an umbrella. (p.134)
David Friedman,Conservative,Economics is that way of understanding behavior that starts from the assumption that people have objectives and tend to choose the correct way to achieve them.
David Friedman,Conservative,The tendency to be rational is the consistent and hence predictable element in human behavior. (p.4)
David Friedman,Conservative,"[T]he assumption describes our actions, not our thoughts. If you had to understand something intellectually in order to do it, none of us would be able to walk.Economics is based on the assumption that people have reasonably simple objectives and choose means to achieve them. Both assumptions are false-but useful.Suppose someone is rational only half the time. Since there is generally one right way of doing things and many wrong ways, the rational behavior can be predicted but the irrational cannot. If we assume he is rational, we predict his behavior correctly about half of the tie - far from perfect, but a lot better then nothing. If I could do well at the racetrack I would be a very rich man.[R]ationality is an assumption I make about other people. I know myself.[R]ationality is an assumption I make about other people. I know myself well enough to allow for the consequences of my own irrationality. But for the vast mass of my fellow humans, about whom I know very little, rationality is the best predictive assumption available. (pp.3-5)"
David Friedman,Conservative,Legal rules are to be judged by the structure of incentives they establish and the consequences of people altering their behavior in response to those incentives (p.11)
Ben Shapiro,Right,Facts don't care about your feelings.
Ben Shapiro,Right,"Without a clear moral vision, we devolve into moral relativism, and from there, into oblivion."
Ben Shapiro,Right,There is no such thing as 'your truth'. There is the truth and your opinion.
Ben Shapiro,Right,"Tolerance fails as a virtue, first of all, because it is in some ways demeaning to people. It is much better to speak of respect or empathy. But that is precisely the problem"
Ben Shapiro,Right,A man may be judged by his standard of entertainment as easily as by the standard of his work.
Ben Shapiro,Right,"Never in our country’s history has a generation been so empowered, so wealthy, so privileged"
Ben Shapiro,Right,"And the leftist bullies use that nonconstitutional phrase as a baton with which to club their opponents into submission. Jefferson’s wall of separation between Church & State, a phrase from his 1802 letter to the Danbury Baptists, was meant not to prevent people from expressing religion in the public square but to prevent government from infringing on religious freedom."
Ben Shapiro,Right,is not right that children be dunked headfirst into the vat of garbage we call popular culture.
Ben Shapiro,Right,The left no longer makes arguments about policies’ effectiveness. Their only argument is character assassination.
Ben Shapiro,Right,"Nihilism, narcissism, and hedonism are natural results of the chaotic existential subjectivism popularized by the Left. If the hallmark of the baby boomers was rebellion, the hallmark of my generation is jadedness. Nothing really matters"
Ben Shapiro,Right,"The race bullies win by relying on racial guilt. But collective racial guilt can only separate Americans. We are individuals, not homogenous members of racial subsets. Only when we learn to cherish the words of Martin Luther King, judging people as individuals, will we truly have the guts to stand up to the race bullies. After all, to paraphrase a man who once stood for unification rather than division, we're not black America or white America. We're the United States of America. We're brothers and sisters.If we don't begin to recognize that simple truth -- and recognize the inherent goodness of America, and our ability to look beyond skin color and ethnic heritage -- the race bullies will continue to tear American down for their own political gain, brick by brick."
Ben Shapiro,Right,"No wonder the left seeks to avoid political debate at all costs. Why bother? Members of the left are not interested in having a debate about policy. They are not interested in debating what is right or wrong for the country. They are interested in debating you personally. They are interested in castigating you as a nasty human being because you happen to disagree. This is what makes leftists leftists: an unearned sense of moral superiority over you. And if they can instill that sense of moral superiority in others by making you the bad guy, they will."
Ben Shapiro,Right,"Okay, forget about the disrespect, facts don’t care about your feelings. It, turns out that every chromosome, every cell in Caitlyn Jenner’s body, is male, with the exception of some of his sperm cells. … It turns out that he still has all of his male appendages. How he feels on the inside is irrelevant to the question of his biological self."
Ben Shapiro,Right,"The Constitution designed the separation of church and state to prevent people from imposing their particular religions on others, not to stop people from allowing their religious beliefs to influence their views on public policy."
Ben Shapiro,Right,It’s far more common for leftists to routinely pick up weapons and try to kill those with whom they disagree than it is for those on the other side of the ideological spectrum.
Ben Shapiro,Right,The leftist philosophy of violence is simple: It’s good when it’s being used for leftist causes. It’s bad when it’s being used for any other purpose.
Ben Shapiro,Right,"In place of moral absolutes, they promote moral relativism and sometimes even question the very existence of truth and reality. To them truth and reality are what we subjectively perceive them to be."
Ben Shapiro,Right,"The left is expert at framing debates. They have buzzwords they use to direct the debate toward unwinnable positions for you. They are tolerant, diverse, fighters for social justice; if you oppose them, by contrast, you are intolerant, xenophobic, and in favor of injustice. Now, all these terms are – to be polite – a crock, if considered as absolute moral values. The left is wildly intolerant of religious people and conservatives; that’s why they’re interested in forcing Christian bakers to cater to same-sex weddings. They are anti-intellectual diversity, particularly in areas of American life in which they predominate; that’s why they stifle conservatism on campus and in the media. And as for social justice, if social is supposed to be opposed to individual, then social justice is by definition unjust. The left’s use of magical buzzwords places you in a corner, against supposed universal values that aren’t universal or universally held."
Ben Shapiro,Right,"It is the left that uses the clubs of race and class to attack those on the right; it is the left that labels religious people and traditional values people rubes and simpletons,"
Ben Shapiro,Right,"There will be no conversation in which you call me a racist, and I explain why I’m not a racist. That’s a conversation for idiots."
Ben Shapiro,Right,"greatest films ever made originate largely in the 1930s, 1940s, 1950s, and early 1960s"
Ben Shapiro,Right,The combination of parental abdication and social liberalism in our schools means that kids are easy targets for nihilism and moral subjectivism.
Ben Shapiro,Right,"All this was lies. It was nasty, baseless, and ridiculous"
Ben Shapiro,Right,"Their latest label for religious people is American Taliban. The left loves it. It’s meant to denigrate Christians as potential threats to world peace (although the greatest threats of the last century, Nazism and communism, were both secular)."
Ben Shapiro,Right,No picture should lower the moral standards of those who see it.
Ben Shapiro,Right,"As L. Brent Bozell pointed out at the time, just because society is in decay doesn’t mean that Hollywood should be exacerbating that decay."
Ben Shapiro,Right,"Black culture has contributed hugely to American society: The civil rights movement brought meaning to American notions of equality and freedom; black contributions to politics, science, music, and art have helped enrich all of us. To demean these accomplishments and contributions by listing rap among them is to demean black culture as a whole."
Ben Shapiro,Right,Baby boomers and their music rebelled against parents because they were parents
Ben Shapiro,Right,But straw men are easier to knock down than real arguments.
Ben Shapiro,Right,"Calling you a racist and sexist, a bigot and a homophobe, gives them a sense of satisfaction with their status in the universe, even if they never help a single individual human being. This is a bully tactic. When someone calls you a racist, sexist, bigot, homophobe because you happen to disagree with them about tax policy or same-sex marriage or abortion, that’s bullying. When someone slanders you because you happen to disagree with them about global warming or the government shutdown, that’s bullying. When someone labels you a bad human being because they disagree with you, they are bullying you. They are attacking your character without justification. That’s nasty. In fact, it makes them nasty."
Ben Shapiro,Right,"College students’ sense of moral righteousness doesn’t come from achievement – it comes from believing that you are a bad person. You are a racist and sexist; they are not. That makes them good, even if they don’t give charity, have never met a black person, stand for policies that impoverish minority communities across the United States, and enable America-haters around the globe. It"
Ben Shapiro,Right,"A 1992 survey by the Center for Media and Public Affairs revealed that while 81 percent of the country as a whole felt that adultery was wrong, only 49 percent of Hollywood did. While only 4 percent of the country outside of Hollywood had no religious affiliation, 45 percent of Hollywood was areligious. While 76 percent of Americans believed that homosexual acts were wrong, only 20 percent of Hollywood did; while 59 percent of the American public was pro-choice, 97 percent of Hollywood was. As Schiffer stated, We’re talking about those who by self-selection and ambition run the institutions of popular culture"
Ben Shapiro,Right,"This type of rhetoric is all too common among secularists on the left. They paint a false dichotomy between religion and science. They say that religious people are anti-science, because science makes God irrelevant"
Ben Shapiro,Right,"This sort of bullying isn’t just present at the universities. It has taken over the media wholesale. For the media, all arguments are character arguments. If you disagree with the members of the media about something, you are a fundamentally bad human being. The same is eminently true in Hollywood, where moral narrative is the heart of the business."
Ben Shapiro,Right,"The truth is that your opponent, who labels you a racist without evidence, is the actual racist: it is he who waters down the term racism until it is meaningless by labeling any argument with which he disagrees racist."
Ben Shapiro,Right,The best countries
Ben Shapiro,Right,"The new authority figures of the porn generation are many, and nearly all are members of a coarsened pop culture"
Ben Shapiro,Right,"Here’s what presidential candidate Mitt Romney said about Barack Obama: Barack Obama is not a very good President. He said Barack Obama doesn’t do a very good job on the economy; he said that Obama’s foreign policy has a lot of holes in it; he said Obama has done a pretty poor job across the board of working in bipartisan fashion. But, Romney added, Obama’s a good guy. He’s a good family man, a good husband, a man who believes in the basic principles espoused by the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. He is not someone you should be afraid of in any way. Essentially, Romney’s campaign slogan was this: Obama: Good Guy, Bad President."
Ben Shapiro,Right,"The Hays Code stated: When right standards are consistently presented, the motion picture exercises the most powerful influences. It builds character, develops right ideals, inculcates correct principles, and all this in attractive story form. If motion pictures consistently hold up for admiration high types of characters and present stories that will affect lives for the better, they can become the most powerful force for the improvement of mankind."
Ben Shapiro,Right,"Real-life teens wish they could live like the teens Hollywood promotes. Everyone has sex, and relationships are deep and meaningful, even if they only last a couple episodes. There are never any consequences to any action, except for experiencing the angst of teenage life alongside the characters. When a generation becomes desensitized to the ramifications of the culture around them, it’s natural to seek out any sort of feeling, even angst."
Ben Shapiro,Right,the Supreme Court of the United States is supposed to be free of politics. That’s why these legalistic doofuses in silly-looking robes get a lifetime appointment and a free supply of arrogance to go with it. They’re not supposed to be susceptible to bullying
Ben Shapiro,Right,"At my own beloved UCLA the numbers are just as frightening. There are thirty-one English professors with registered party affiliation. Twenty-nine of them are affiliated with the Democratic party, the Green party, or another leftist political party. Out of thirteen journalism professors with registered affiliation, twelve are affiliated with leftist parties. Fifty-three out of fifty-six history professors are affiliated with leftist parties. Sixteen out of seventeen political science professors are affiliated with leftist parties. Thirty-one of thirty-three women’s studies professors are affiliated with leftist parties."
Ben Shapiro,Right,"According to the 2010 census, just 24 percent of the American population is under age 18, compared with 39.4 percent that is 45 and older. America is aging, and aging quickly. And what of the young? Their chief concerns these days are legalization of marijuana, state-sponsored same-sex marriage and provision of birth control. If we think the demographics and economics of the country look bad now, wait until America relies on a generation of overprivileged, underachieving Americans convinced of their own moral rectitude based on a puerile libertarianism freed of libertarianism’s consequences. Sex and drugs have replaced building for the future; abortion and the welfare state have replaced consequences."
Ben Shapiro,Right,"Over the latter half of the twentieth century, the forces of moral relativism, radical feminism, and generational nihilism have gradually destroyed the foundation of our own greatness. Instead of adopting stronger moral standards, our society has embraced the lure of personal fulfillment."
Ben Shapiro,Right,"To take another example, with regard to healthcare, the left suggests that their entire goal is to make healthcare available to everyone. But they don’t mandate that a certain percentage of the population go to medical school. That’s because in order for government to guarantee a product’s availability, the government must either hire workers or force workers to get into a given industry. The government hiring workers would require paying money for doctors – and the left argues that doctors already make too much money. And the left won’t argue openly for what they would prefer: forcing people to practice medicine for patients deemed worthy by the government. Unless you are willing to force people using the law to go to medical school, you cannot have a successful universal healthcare system. That’s what they’re finding out in Britain, Canada, and Israel – all countries in which private medicine is on the rise, legally or illegally, outside government auspices."
Ben Shapiro,Right,The secular bullies believe they have an exclusive patent on scientific knowledge.
Ben Shapiro,Right,The left’s anti-bullying stance is an enormous lie. It is a purposeful lie. It is a lie designed to disguise the fact that leftists are the greatest group of bullies in American history.
Ben Shapiro,Right,Lasting happiness can only be achieved through cultivation of soul and mind. And cultivating our souls and minds requires us to live with moral purpose.
Ben Shapiro,Right,"Evil may so shape events that Caesar will occupy a palace and Christ a cross, but that same Christ will rise up and split history into A.D. and B.C., so that even the life of Caesar must be dated by his name. Yes, ‘the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice."
Ben Shapiro,Right,You have to look like you’re a nice person in order for people to believe that you are a nice person. Scientific studies show that people will judge you literally within milliseconds of seeing you. Make them see what you want them to see.
Ben Shapiro,Right,"We don’t live in a perfect world, but we do live in the best world that has ever existed."
Ben Shapiro,Right,"Happiness, then, comprises four elements: individual moral purpose, individual capacity, collective moral purpose, and collective capacity."
Ben Shapiro,Right,1. Why do you think today’s young people are so jaded? Do you feel that the live and let live culture has corrupted our moral system? Why do you think American society rejected traditional moral values
Ben Shapiro,Right,That’s the way it will go because that’s how the left wins: through intimidation and cruelty. You
Ben Shapiro,Right,left’s favorite three lines of attack are (1) you’re stupid; (2) you’re mean; (3) you’re corrupt. Sarah
Ben Shapiro,Right,But it’s because conservatives don’t think about how to win that they constantly lose.
Ben Shapiro,Right,"And here’s what Barack Obama and his surrogates said about Mitt Romney: Mitt Romney is the worst guy since Mussolini. Mitt Romney is the guy who straps dogs to the top of cars. Mitt Romney is the kind of guy who wants to put y’all back in chains. Mitt Romney is leading a war on women and, in fact, has compiled a binder full of women that he can then use to prosecute his war. Mitt Romney is the type of guy who would specifically fire an employee so that five years later his wife would die of cancer thanks to lack of health insurance. Mitt Romney would take his money and put it in an overseas bank account specifically to deprive the American people of money. The Obama campaign slogan: Romney: Rich, Sexist, Racist Jackass."
Ben Shapiro,Right,"The fact that no military was deployed to the hot zone during the seven-hour attack was unthinkable. Military assets were just hours away in Italy. Nordstrom testified, The ferocity and intensity of the attack was nothing that we had seen in Libya, or that I had seen in my time in the Diplomatic Security Service.87 Yet aside from that one team from Tripoli, which included Glenn Doherty, there was no show of force from outside Benghazi. A special ops whistle-blower told Fox News that the military had a team ready to scramble from Croatia. That would have taken some four to six hours. The attack lasted for seven hours.88"
Ben Shapiro,Right,"Now, twenty years later, Candice Bergen, who played Murphy Brown, admitted Quayle was right – but at the time, Quayle was running for re-election, and so he had to be wrong."
Ben Shapiro,Right,"For leftists, the answer to domestic violence isn’t to deal with any of the issues that could lead boys to become abusing men. The answer, instead, is to lecture Americans about the use of the word sissy"
Ben Shapiro,Right,"Since the legally and morally despicable decision of the Supreme Court in Roe v. Wade in 1973, American women have aborted some 56 million children. The vast majority of these children have been aborted for reasons that have nothing to do with rape, incest or the health of the mother. We have destroyed an entire generation of children purely for self-worship. Children are difficult; therefore, they can be done away with. Children are burdensome; therefore, they don’t exist in the womb."
Ben Shapiro,Right,"The goal: to convince young people that while they aren’t overtly racist, they hold secret racist beliefs that can only be cleansed by embracing the leftist agenda."
Ben Shapiro,Right,"The attempt [by the far-left] to boil down fascism to 'anything I don't like' is simply idiotic. Which is more fascist: Christina Hoff Sommers coming to speak about the lies of the feminist movement, or the people who are suggesting that they should actually be able to shut down her lecture by use of force?That seems a little more fascist to me."
Ben Shapiro,Right,"If Obama learned one thing from FDR, it was that every socialist needs his foot soldiers. And what better place to get them than the unions?"
Ben Shapiro,Right,"After nearly half a century, it’s easy to forget that the Hays Code was not some outside limitation imposed by the government. It was a content standard imposed by motion picture companies voluntarily."
Ben Shapiro,Right,"SHAPIRO: This is astonishing. MORGAN: What’s astonishing? SHAPIRO: What’s astonishing about it is for weeks now, you have been saying that anybody who disagrees with your position is absurd, idiotic, and doesn’t care about the dead kids in Sandy Hook. And then when I say that it’s a bullying tactic, you turn around and that say I’m bullying you for saying that. It’s absurd. It’s ridiculous."
Ben Shapiro,Right,"When facts become secondary to emotion, truth dies. And a society that doesn’t value truth cannot survive."
Ben Shapiro,Right,"The Institutional Takeover The leftist bullies have taken over the major institutions of the United States. The university system has been monopolized by a group of folks who believe that it’s no longer worthwhile debating the evidence on tax rates, or whether the Laffer curve is right, or whether Keynesian policies actually promote economic growth. They don’t want to debate those issues. What they want to teach instead is that is you are personally ignorant, bigoted, corrupt, and mean if you disagree with them. Their opinions are not opinions; they are fact. This is the hallmark of being stuck inside a bubble. The people who occupy the professoriate have not had to work a real job – a job with real-world consequences -- in over 30 years. They’ve lived on a campus where everyone agrees with them, convincing them that their beliefs are universally-held. Anyone who disagrees is a flat earther. Anyone who disagrees is a monster. You are a monster."
Ben Shapiro,Right,"That’s how social standards work for the left: If you have the right politics, you can get away with anything. If you have the wrong ones, it’ll ignore its own hypocrisy to nail you to the wall."
Ben Shapiro,Right,There are almost invariably unbridgeable inconsistencies in the left’s publicly stated positions that are at war with their actual fundamental principles. Your goal is to make the left admit once and for all what they believe about policy by exposing those inconsistencies.
Ben Shapiro,Right,The left consistently bullies those who disagree with them by claiming they’re sexist and heteronormative.
Ben Shapiro,Right,Concerned about the societal fallout from sexual promiscuity? Mind your own business. Worried about the rise of single motherhood? Mind your own business. Upset about an epidemic of young people seemingly willing to trade the responsibilities of adulthood for an infantilized freedom? Mind your own business.
Ben Shapiro,Right,Hypocrisy as humor pushes destruction of standards.
Ben Shapiro,Right,"We’re damned if we do stay home and we’re damned if we don’t. We’re damned because we conservative moms drive the Left and its feminist shills mad with our mere existence, our exercise of free will, our fierce belief in protecting our families from the Nanny State, our embrace of free-market principles, and our rejection of the perpetual victim/grievance mentality."
Ben Shapiro,Right,"Abortion is a real moral issue with real lives at stake, and no amount of leftist badgering could back conservative Americans off their attempts to protect the unborn."
Ben Shapiro,Right,"The Founding Fathers were devotees of Cicero and Locke, of the Bible and Aristotle."
Ben Shapiro,Right,Don’t get caught in the trap of believing you have to know everything about everything
Ben Shapiro,Right,"Turning a blind eye to evil, however, doesn’t make it disappear. It allows it to grow. And those who allow evil to grow in order to protect their own convenience will be held accountable for the end results of the evil they facilitate."
Ben Shapiro,Right,"Okay guys, this is epic!"
Ben Shapiro,Right,"The Passions of men, Hobbes writes, are commonly more potent than their Reason. Reason cannot bring happiness, nor can it be used as the goal of a philosophical life. There is no happiness. There is only striving and security and passion. Reason cannot save us from the war of all against all; only the Leviathan, the power of the state, can.21"
Ben Shapiro,Right,"Conservatives understand that politics simply reflect underlying values. That’s why they are passionate. They don’t vote their pocketbooks. They vote their guts, and their guts tell them that leftism is immoral on the most basic level."
Ben Shapiro,Right,Let It Go' is the most popular song for kids in America and it has the Lady GaGa message.
Ben Shapiro,Right,Rule #2: Hit First. Don’t take the punch first. Hit first. Hit hard. Hit where it counts. Mike
Ben Shapiro,Right,"I would have said, Why do you have to use victims to illustrate your point? Why can’t you just convince me on the basis of the evidence that what you’re proposing is the right solution for America?"
Ben Shapiro,Right,"The creation story itself is designed to demonstrate how the first man, Adam, used his innate power of choice wrongly"
Ben Shapiro,Right,"You know what's fun? Christmas lights. They are twinkly an pretty and they make me happy, because they are twinkly and pretty."
Ben Shapiro,Right,"As a society, we have robbed men of their protective missions. Men who seek to protect women and children are called anti-feminist, gender normative. Men have abandoned their responsibilities to the state. As for building things"
Ben Shapiro,Right,"We believe freedom is built upon the twin notions that God created every human in His image, and that human beings are capable of investigating and exploring God’s world. Those notions were born in Jerusalem and Athens, respectively."
Ben Shapiro,Right,"What does this mean for human beings? What makes a man virtuous is his capacity to engage in the activities that make him a man, not an animal"
Ben Shapiro,Right,"Instead, morality must be boiled down to mere competition of interests, and the desire of human beings to avoid suffering and untimely death. In a state of nature, nothing can be Unjust. The notions of Right and Wrong, Justice and Injustice have there no place. Where there is no common Power, there is no Law; where no Law, no Injustice.5 If moral relativism began anywhere, it began in Hobbes."
Ben Shapiro,Right,"Rule #6: Force Leftists to Answer Questions. This is really just a corollary of Rule #4. Leftists are only comfortable when they are forcing you to answer questions. If they have to answer questions, they begin to scratch their heads. The questions they prefer to ask are about your character; the questions they prefer not to answer are all of them. Instead, they like to dodge issues in favor of those character arguments. If you force a leftist to answer whether he or she would prefer to give up mom or dad in the name of political correctness – after all, all families are equal, so what difference does it make? – they will avoid. If you force a leftist to answer whether they would force churches to perform same-sex marriages, they will avoid. If you force a leftist to answer why we should all give up our nice cars while the Chinese and Russians continue to dump toxic waste into the atmosphere, they will avoid."
Ben Shapiro,Right,"There are truly only three situations in which debating someone on the left is worthwhile. First, you must: your grade depends on it, or your waiter threatens to spit in your food unless you tell him why same-sex marriage is a detriment to Western civilization. Second, you found an honest leftist actually willing to be convinced by solid argumentation. Congratulations! You found him. He actually wants to sit down and have an evidence-based conversation with you; you want to have an evidenced based conversation with him. Everything is just hunky dory! Then you ride off on your separate unicorns. Third, you should debate a leftist if there is an audience. The goal of the debate will not be to win over the leftist, or to convince him or her, or to be friends with him or her. That person already disagrees with you, and they’re not going to be convinced by your words of wisdom and your sparkling rhetorical flourishes. The goal will be to destroy the leftist in as public a way as is humanly possible."
Ben Shapiro,Right,"The Left had to go searching for a new civil-rights struggle with which to cram conservatives back into their victimizer cubbyhole. The Left now pushes against civil rights in its ignorant search for the new struggle. There was, however, one problem: All the good civil-rights issues have been dealt with already. And so the Left, which focuses all of its efforts on social issues, was relegated to pushing crime-increasing myths about the evils of cops; the celebrities were forced to pretend that men peeing next to women was the next great Martin Luther King, Jr.–style struggle."
Ben Shapiro,Right,"In preparation for the Days of Rage, the Weathermen met with representatives of North Vietnam in Cuba to train them in tactics. The North Vietnamese promptly asked them to start a war on U.S. soil. The Weathermen would be only too happy to oblige."
Ben Shapiro,Right,"The Weathermen eventually became the Weathermen Underground, bombing police stations, the Pentagon, the homes of private citizens"
Ben Shapiro,Right,"So instead of telling the truth about Oswald, LBJ twisted it, standing on JFK’s coffin to ram through his legislative agenda."
Ben Shapiro,Right,"Within a few years, the entire automobile workforce was unionized"
Ben Shapiro,Right,"We were willing to stay quiet if we could have our E Pluribus Unum. But it hasn’t worked. We haven’t been left in peace. For every inch we’ve given to the left, they’ve sought to bully us into handing over a mile. That must end now."
Ben Shapiro,Right,There was no question about that. Bullies can’t deal with those who stand up to them.
Ben Shapiro,Right,"Conservatives have allowed liberals to win the culture war because we’re generally civil people. When the left says we’re uncivil, we tend to shy away from the fight rather than, as Andrew put it, walking toward the fire."
Ben Shapiro,Right,"So she called in. After first convincing several producers that she was, in fact, Soledad Ramirez, and had no intention of screaming bababooey live on air, they let"
Ben Shapiro,Right,"Andrew used to say you have to embrace the fight, walk toward the fire. He would explain that you are going to get hit with the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune no matter which way you turn. You can try to hide from the attacks of the left; you can run away from them, attempt to ignore them, pretend that the left has reached some sort of quasi-consensus in which they live and let live. That will last until the protesters are outside your business, the government regulators are outside your house, or the administrators are inside your child’s classroom. Then you’ll realize that while you were willing to let live, the left simply wasn’t."
Ben Shapiro,Right,"There is no way to convince someone that you don’t hate him or her. You can convince him or her, however, that your opposition is a liar and a hater. When"
Ben Shapiro,Right,"This is why it’s so comfortable to be on the left: that unearned sense of moral superiority. Unearned,"
Ben Shapiro,Right,"The reason that conservatives lost the 2012 election was garishly simple: most people in America don’t follow politics that closely. What they see about the various candidates are what the candidates say about each other, and what the media say about the candidates."
Ben Shapiro,Right,"So, let’s assume for a moment that you’re a typical American voter: you care more about Miley Cyrus twerking on the Video Music Awards than you do about the vagaries of Obamacare. Let’s assume all you’ve really seen about the elections is the coverage in the mainstream press and what the candidates said about each other during the debates."
Ben Shapiro,Right,"Now, back to the American voter. Let’s assume you’ve been watching this messaging battle, and now you have two choices: Barack Obama, Not a Very Good President vs. Mitt Romney, The Worst Guy Ever. Who are you going to vote for? Most people would pick nice guy, bad politician over Mussolini. And they did."
Ben Shapiro,Right,"Now, that’s not because Barack Obama is a warm and fuzzy guy. Even those who surround Barack Obama all day describe him as a cold fish. Obama is not someone who will bring over a bowl of chicken soup when you have the flu; he’s not even the guy who will drive you to the airport when it inconveniences him. Yet, somehow, he was considered the more empathetic of the two candidates. Why? Because Romney was perceived as so darn mean."
Ben Shapiro,Right,"Rule #3: Frame Your Opponent. I have argued that the left’s entire playbook consists of a single play: characterizing the opposition. It’s incredibly effective. And the only way to get beyond character arguments is to frame your opponent – make it toxic for your opponent to slur you. Then, hopefully, you can move the debate to more substantive territory. This is the vital first step. It is the only first step. It is the reason that the right consistently loses the black and Hispanic vote – not because the right’s policies are so abhorrent to blacks and Hispanics, but because blacks and Hispanics have been told for generations that conservatives hate them."
Ben Shapiro,Right,"On same-sex marriage, the question is not how same-sex marriage hurts your marriage – that’s a nonsensical and stupid question, like asking how enslavement of others hurts you personally. The question is whether a child needs a mother and a father. The question is not whether two people who love each other should be given state sanction – even the left recognizes that such a definition is too broad, given that it would include incestuous relationships. The question is why marriage should be redefined, and how same-sex marriage will strengthen the institution."
Ben Shapiro,Right,"The left’s arguments are chock full of inconsistencies. Internal inconsistencies – inconsistencies that are inherent to the left’s general worldview. That’s because very few people on the left will acknowledge their actual agenda, which is quite extreme. Leftists prefer to argue half-measures in which they don’t truly believe. For example, they say they want to ban assault weapons to stop gun murders. But that argument is silly, because handguns are used to kill far more people than so-called assault weapons. And yet the left won’t argue in favor of a blanket gun ban, because they know they will lose."
Ben Shapiro,Right,"You may notice when arguing with someone on the left that every time you begin to make a point, that leftist begins shouting about George W. Bush. It’s like Leftist Tourette’s Syndrome. Why did Obama blow out the budget? BUUUUUUUSHHHH!!!!!"
Ben Shapiro,Right,"Conservatives get trapped in this gambit routinely, because they figure that the enemy of their enemy is their friend: if the left is attacking someone, he must be worth defending. But that’s not true. I liked George W. Bush, but his second term was a disaster area. So was much of his first term. I don’t feel the necessity to defend his Iran policy, because it was terrible. Period."
Ben Shapiro,Right,"According to Scientific American, people watching TV reported feeling relaxed and passive. The EEG studies similarly show less mental stimulation, as measured by alpha brain-wave production, during viewing than during reading. . . . Habit-forming drugs work in similar ways. In short, scientists conclude that TV does seem to meet the criteria for substance dependence.1"
Ben Shapiro,Right,"As Gelbart told me about four months before he passed away, William S. Paley said television was the best cigarette vending machine that anybody ever thought of, and that’s still pretty much what it is. I’d just like to see it grow up, and really be the best thing it can be.7"
Ben Shapiro,Right,from nonprofit organizations to push Obamacare
Ben Shapiro,Right,"In 2009, Obama surrogate Jim Messina told Democratic Senators that they could defend Obamacare as stridently as possible – because, after all, If you get hit, Messina said, we will punch back twice as hard."
Ben Shapiro,Right,"young go into the profession with dread, the old can scarcely wait for retirement, and those of the middle years yearn for sabbaticals."
Ben Shapiro,Right,"And chances are that if you wanted to do well in that final, citing Ayn Rand probably wasn’t the best strategy."
Ben Shapiro,Right,"Only the left sees terms like flag-waver, jingoist, and super-patriot as insults. Patriotism, in their view, is bad. They don’t believe this, because they’re globalists."
Ben Shapiro,Right,It was one thing to suggest that Bush had lied America into a war for oil. It was another to speak while Obama was speaking.
Ben Shapiro,Right,"Young liberals call for tolerance because they want to promulgate a lifestyle, in other words; young conservatives call for tolerance because they actually believe in tolerance, even of lifestyle choices with which they disagree. In return, young conservatives demand that their opponents mind their own business.Tolerance is a moral touchstone, then, for young Americans on both the left and the right, but for different reasons."
Ben Shapiro,Right,"In reality, the Democratic vision of the world centers on the notion that work itself is a great evil to be avoided, and that any program allowing people to free themselves of work"
Ben Shapiro,Right,So what is the moral case for capitalism? It lies in recognition that socialism isn’t a great idea gone wrong
Ben Shapiro,Right,"This is why conservatives lose. They lose because while they proclaim that Obama’s signature legislation fails on the merits, raising costs and lowering access to vital services, the left surges forth with a different message: Conservatives are rotten to the core."
Ben Shapiro,Right,"Feelings matter more than action. Words matter more than harming others. That sets a radically dangerous precedent for freedom of thought and speech, particularly for those whose thought and speech we hate. Freedom of speech and thought matters especially when it is speech and thought with which we disagree. The moment the majority decides to destroy people for engaging in thought it dislikes, thoughtcrime becomes a reality."
Ben Shapiro,Right,"It’s because black, Hispanic and Native-American children are disproportionately likely to live with single mothers. And children living with single mothers misbehave more often than those living with fathers. A study from Great Britain of 14,000 children showed that children were twice as likely to manifest behavioral problems by the age of 7 than those raised by their natural parents. Those numbers continue to diverge as children grow older."
Ben Shapiro,Right,"those who suffer from gender dysphoria may not be suffering from societal bigotry, but from something far deeper and more dangerous, and that physical mutilation and stumping for tolerance will not solve their problems."
Ben Shapiro,Right,Raising awareness is praiseworthy
Ben Shapiro,Right,"The real solution to domestic abuse is twofold: punishing it to the greatest possible extent, and yes, raising young men differently. But to state that the greatest risk factor for future domestic violence is insulting other boys as throwing like girls is pure idiocy. No man has ever hit a woman because she throws like a girl. But plenty of young men have hit women because they had no moral compass and did not believe in basic concepts of virtue"
Ben Shapiro,Right,he did it by bringing on folks from the right and then suggesting that they were evil for disagreeing with him.
Ben Shapiro,Right,Bullies: How the Left’s Culture of Fear and Intimidation Silences Americans.
Ben Shapiro,Right,"I think we can have a rational, political conversation about balancing rights and risks and rewards of all of these different policies, but I don’t think that what we need to do is demonize people on the other side as being unfeeling about what happened at Sandy Hook."
Ben Shapiro,Right,"MORGAN: I’m not the one who came in here and accused you of standing on the graves of dead children -- SHAPIRO: Because you’re the one who is doing that. I’m punching back twice as hard. MORGAN: That’s what I call bullying. SHAPIRO: You know what I call it? Punching back twice as hard, in the words of President Obama."
Ben Shapiro,Right,"I would really like to hear your policy prescriptions for what we should do about guns because you say you respect the second amendment. You know, I brought this here for you so you can read it. It’s the Constitution,"
Ben Shapiro,Right,"Morgan would later slam down that copy of the Constitution and call it your little book – rejecting a universally-accepted framework for discussing gun control, and throwing it in the American people’s faces. Just over a year later, Piers was off the air."
Ben Shapiro,Right,"global warming, for example, the proper question is not whether man is causing global warming. The question is whether man can fix global warming"
Ben Shapiro,Right,point out that throwing around accusations without evidence makes your opponent a piece of garbage
Ben Shapiro,Right,"In fact, if your opponent thinks you’re not worthy of debating, he isn’t worthy of debating."
Ben Shapiro,Right,"You know he’s going to call you a racist, because he always calls his opponents racist."
Ben Shapiro,Right,The left knows this is war. And they know you are the enemy. You will be castigated. You will get punched. That’s the way it will go because that’s how the left wins: through intimidation and cruelty.
Ben Shapiro,Right,There’s a reason that major Democratic candidates work with Hollywood.
Ben Shapiro,Right,"But you don’t have to hate it. In fact, it can be an absolute blast. The moment you don’t give a damn what they say about you because you realize they’re lying is the moment you have the upper hand."
Ben Shapiro,Right,"For decades, conservatives have been hit by bullies. And there’s only one way to deal with bullies. In the words of the White House, punch back twice as hard."
Ben Shapiro,Right,"On abortion, the left says it is for choice, but ignores that the baby has no choice."
Ben Shapiro,Right,"Let The Other Side Have Meaningless Victories. This is a parlor trick you can use to great effect with your leftist friends. Leftists prize faux moderation above all else; by granting them a point or two, you can convince them that you aren’t a radical right-winger at all."
Ben Shapiro,Right,"The left is expert at imagistics. The right is not, because the right falsely believes that shallow imagistics can be beaten with substance. Which has worked out fabulously for every great actress who is 300 lbs. in Hollywood – all two of them who are working."
Ben Shapiro,Right,"So the next time they mention Bush, your reply should be, WILLIAM MCKINLEY. Bush has nothing to do with anything."
Ben Shapiro,Right,"This is the Hollywood argument same-sex marriage: you like certain characters, so if you don’t like their behavior, it’s because you’re mean and nasty. This is what Hollywood does best."
Ben Shapiro,Right,"At the university level, this perspective is commonplace – and that leads to ideological discrimination."
Ben Shapiro,Right,Ronald Reagan always said that freedom was one generation away from extinction. It looks like we’ve finally found that generation.
Ben Shapiro,Right,Do not call the Boss Baby at 3am
Ben Shapiro,Right,"thanks to the lack of moral clarity on the right. It’s not enough to be good on policy. Americans must think of you as good. By neglecting that deeper battle, conservatives sow the seeds of their own destruction"
Ben Shapiro,Right,Facts have been buried to make way for feelings; a society of essential oils and self-esteem has replaced a society of logic.
Ben Shapiro,Right,"Avowed Marxist and tenured professor at the University of Texas, David Michael Smith, called capitalism a system based on exploitation and oppression and domination and racism and war"
Ben Shapiro,Right,"Professors make profit into a curse word. If something is bad, it must be because people are doing it purely for profit. Providing a service is only worthy if it is done altruistically. Professors ignore the fact that man is a reward-driven being and that profit is the surest incentive for hard work."
Ben Shapiro,Right,"Christianity universalized the message of Judaism. The Gospels were deliberately written in Greek, not the Aramaic used by the Jews of the period. Jesus’s story was meant to extend to the entire world. Because Jesus was no longer a Jewish figure in the Christian view, but the material incarnation of the divine, that meant that Jewish law could be abandoned in favor of universalism"
Ben Shapiro,Right,Christianity’s focus on grace rather than works makes it a far more accessible religion than Judaism in a practical sense. The commandments of Judaism are intricate and difficult. Christianity dispensed with the need for them. Faith is paramount.
Ben Shapiro,Right,That virtue took the form of courage
Ben Shapiro,Right,"The USSR rejected Judeo-Christian values and Greek natural law, substituting the values of the collective and a new utopian vision of social justice"
Ben Shapiro,Right,"Voltaire, Kant, Bentham"
Ben Shapiro,Right,"The first man who, having enclosed a piece of ground, bethought himself of saying This is mine, and found people simple enough to believe him, was the real founder of civil society, Rousseau wrote."
Ben Shapiro,Right,"It was left to Hume, once again, to completely circumscribe reason. Reason is, and ought only to be, the slave of the passions, Hume famously wrote, taking to its logical extreme the thought of his predecessors. [Reason] cannot be the source of moral good or evil, which are found to have that influence.24"
Ben Shapiro,Right,"Finally, we must believe that we are pursuing true goals"
Ben Shapiro,Right,"The plethora of gods were created to explain a world without rules. In that way, polytheism is more pessimistic and more cynical than Judeo-Christian monotheism."
Ben Shapiro,Right,We receive our notions of Divine meaning from a three-millennia-old lineage stretching back to the ancient Jews; we receive our notions of reason from a twenty-five-hundred-year-old lineage stretching back to the ancient Greeks. In rejecting those lineages
Ben Shapiro,Right,"As historian Richard Tarnas writes, As the means by which human intelligence could attain universal understanding, the Logos was a divine revelatory principle, simultaneously operative within the human mind and the natural world. And philosophers were tasked with uncovering this Logos; by doing so, they would be fulfilling both their own telos and discovering the telos of mankind more broadly.14"
Ben Shapiro,Right,"Both Bacon and Descartes, while discarding the teleology of the ancients, maintained faith in the Bible and in God. But they also laid the groundwork for the rise of Deism"
Ben Shapiro,Right,"The French Revolution, then, led not only to the rise of the nation-state and nationalism more broadly, it also opened the door to total war"
Ben Shapiro,Right,"The universities have instituted a new right: the right not to be offended. When tolerance of every sort of behavior reigns, those who believe in standards and rules are destined for castigation."
Ben Shapiro,Right,"During the FDR administration, economic policy was set from the top; ignoring the injunction by economically laissez-faire thinkers that no set of individuals can know more than the entire market at large, FDR and his cadre of geniuses lengthened the Great Depression by nearly a decade by manipulating the currency, setting wages and prices, and bullying those who objected into silence."
Ben Shapiro,Right,"Holmes, a Supreme Court Justice, was a philosophical pragmatist and devotee of Dewey. His 1927 decision in Buck v. Bell resonates down the ages for its evil embrace of state sterilization of supposedly unfit populations: We have seen more than once that the public welfare may call upon the best citizens for their lives. It would be strange if it could not call upon those who already sap the strength of the State for these lesser sacrifices, often not felt to be such by those concerned, in order to prevent our being swamped with incompetence.66 Fully sixteen states embraced eugenic sterilization during the 1920s and 1930s; over the coming decades, the states would sterilize sixty thousand people.67"
Ben Shapiro,Right,"Hitler claimed ideological forebears in Kant, Hegel, and Nietzsche;1 Stalin took his cues from Marx; the eugenicists took their ideas from Darwin and Comte."
Ben Shapiro,Right,"Nazism didn’t arise from consumerism. It arose from communal purpose overriding individual purpose, and individual capacity abandoned in favor of worship of the communal capacity of the state. Nazism, in other words, lay a lot closer to Marxism than capitalism did."
Ben Shapiro,Right,"Okay, this is epic."
Ben Shapiro,Right,"Politics is about working to build the framework for the pursuit of happiness, not the achievement of it; politics helps us establish the preconditions necessary for happiness, but can’t provide happiness in and of itself."
Jared Taylor,Right,sectarian violence occurs most easily when one ethnic group is large enough to impose cultural norms in public areas but not large enough to make sure everyone abides by them.
Jared Taylor,Right,"Whites impose these rules on themselves because they know blacks, in particular, are so quick to take offense."
Jared Taylor,Right,The effort whites put into observing racial etiquette has been demonstrated in the laboratory.
Jared Taylor,Right,Nor is there the same pressure on blacks when they talk insultingly about whites.
Jared Taylor,Right,"the Pew Hispanic Center found that the closer blacks lived to Hispanics and the more contact they had with them, the more they favored cutting immigration."
Jared Taylor,Right,The alleged benefits of diversity seem illusory to the people who actually experience it.
Jared Taylor,Right,"If immigration and diversity bring cultural enrichment, why do whites move out of those very parts of the country that are being enriched?"
Jared Taylor,Right,whites called in from around the country to say they were afraid to disagree with a black person for fear of being thought racist.
Jared Taylor,Right,"This result is fascinating because it shows that children as young as 10 feel the need to try to avoid appearing prejudiced, even if doing so leads them to perform poorly on a basic cognitive test,"
Jared Taylor,Right,The only occasion on which it is acceptable for whites to speak collectively as whites is to apologize.
Jared Taylor,Right,Black and Hispanic men are at least twice as likely as whites to batter their wives and girlfriends.195* One 2005 study found that Hispanic women were nine times more likely than white women to report domestic violence.196 Blacks are 8.4 times more likely than whites to kill their spouses.197
Jared Taylor,Right,"The study therefore concluded that if illegal immigrants were legalized, their increased welfare use would nearly triple the net federal outflow per family from $2,700 a year to $7,700 a year."
Jared Taylor,Right,"By 12th grade, the average black or Hispanic is reading and doing math at the level of the average white 8th-grader. 38"
Jared Taylor,Right,"of us want to acknowledge, he wrote. His conclusion? [T]o all the friends"
Jared Taylor,Right,"She interpreted this to mean that white subjects were struggling with the awkwardness or exhaustion of dealing with a black man, and that this interfered with their ability to take the mental test."
Jared Taylor,Right,"The degree of cooperation between organisms can be expected to be a direct function of the proportion of the genes they share; conversely, the degree of conflict between them is an inverse function of the proportion of shared genes."
Jared Taylor,Right,"People with Williams Syndrome are hypersocial, and do not see danger in the faces of people who may be threats.43 They also tend to be mildly retarded and to suffer from other physical complications."
Jared Taylor,Right,It is only a matter of time before this gives rise to an increasingly explicit white racial consciousness.
Jared Taylor,Right,"In 2009, after more than 20 years of legal wrangling, 75 white Chicago firefighters shared a $6 million discrimination award. They had scored higher than blacks on a 1986 lieutenants’ exam but the city cooked the scores and promoted blacks. The city fought the case all the way to the US Supreme Court.43"
Jared Taylor,Right,"The county had reduced high-school transportation, eliminated all middle school sports, and was seeking $77 million more from the state for the year’s English Language Learners instruction."
Jared Taylor,Right,"Although immigration is likely to reduce whites to a minority in just a few decades, racial etiquette requires that whites must not think of this as anything but an exciting prospect."
Jared Taylor,Right,Non-whites promote diversity because they profit from it. It increases their opportunities at the expense of whites.
Jared Taylor,Right,"Because whites have tried very hard to dismantle their own bonds of racial solidarity and to keep racial considerations out of their decision-making, they assume blacks are"
Jared Taylor,Right,"Today, the best-selling titles for blacks are in a genre most whites have never even heard of: ghetto lit. This is the pulp-novel equivalent of rap music"
Jared Taylor,Right,"When they are beyond the reach of the law, Americans revert to the patterns of segregation the law forbids. Why is this?"
Jared Taylor,Right,"If non-white groups continue to advance race-based interests, is it wise for whites to continue to act as if they have none?"
Jared Taylor,Right,"This book is about racial identity, something most people who are not white take for granted. They come to it early, feel it strongly, and make no apologies for it."
Jared Taylor,Right,Charges of racism are not a form of debate; they are meant to silence debate. Accusations of racism are often transparent attempts to choke off honest discussion.
Jared Taylor,Right,"We insist that diversity is a great strength, but for most Americans this is mere lip service. They rarely seek diversity in their personal lives, living instead in homogeneous islands that look nothing like the racial and cultural mix this country has become."
Jared Taylor,Right,"Across the political spectrum, Americans assert that any form of white racial consciousness or solidarity is despicable. Whites, therefore, have tried to keep their end of the civil rights bargain. They have dismantled and condemned their own racial identity in the expectation that others will do the same."
Jared Taylor,Right,"The study, entitled Lashes"
Jared Taylor,Right,"The reason blacks and whites do not enjoy similar outcomes despite similar treatment by society is that the black and white populations are not equivalent. Although I expressed myself as gently and sympathetically as possible, my conclusion was that black outcomes reflect black behavior rather than oppression by whites. A"
Jared Taylor,Right,"In 1995, on the strength of the book, the famously conservative Hillsdale College invited me to participate in a series of lectures on welfare. My subject was to be Race Relations and Welfare. Bell Curve author Charles Murray was also a speaker, and the evening before my talk he and I participated in a long private conversation with several others about race and IQ, and the implications of racial differences for American society. Lissa Roche, daughter-in-law of Hillsdale president George Roche and one of the conference organizers, was present and joined actively in the conversation. The next day, in my talk, I spoke in some detail about black-white IQ differences, which I offered as one of the reasons blacks are more likely than whites to be on welfare."
Jared Taylor,Right,"One in four black men in their twenties is either in jail, on parole, or on probation.4 This is approximately ten times the rate for whites of the same age.5 Though they are only 12 percent of the population, blacks commit more than half of all rapes and robberies and 60 percent of the murders in America.6 Other measures are just as grim. From 1985 to 1990, while syphilis rates for whites continued their long-running decline, they rose 126 percent for black men and 231 percent for black women. Blacks are now fifty times more likely to have syphilis than whites.7 Blacks have the highest infant mortality rates for any American racial group and are twice as likely as whites to die in their first year.8 Black children are four times as likely as whites to be living in poverty,9 and less than half as likely to be living with two parents.10 Illegitimacy rates for blacks have climbed steadily, and now more than 66 percent of all black children are born out of wedlock. The rate for whites is 19 percent.11 Young"
Jared Taylor,Right,"am called Zebedee, and these are my two sons, James and John. We are in need of a new fishing boat. One of ours was severely damaged in a recent storm. I was told to ask for a man named Jared. His reputation is well known."
Jared Taylor,Right,"Nietzsche: I call an animal, a species, an individual corrupt, when it loses its instincts, when it prefers what is injurious to it."
Jared Taylor,Right,"I think it would be more correct to say that mass movements are powerful, and therefore have the potential to do great damage or good. The United States mobilized in a way that could be called a mass movement to fight the Second World War–and so did the Japanese. Were those mass movements good or bad? Both nations felt justified in what they did, and the rights and wrongs depend on which side you are on."
Jared Taylor,Right,"Americans still say integration is important, but very few do anything to bring it about."
Jared Taylor,Right,"Another Harvard research project concluded bluntly that by 2004, American schools were just as segregated as they were in 1969, the year after Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated."
Jared Taylor,Right,"As the researchers noted, single people are more willing to live in mixed neighborhoods, but people with children seek homogeneity.84"
Jared Taylor,Right,"[A]s I stepped over the curb, I became excruciatingly aware of my skin color, and my heart pounded with social anxiety. In going around a single block, I got stares. Mine was the only white face around, and for five minutes, five blocks from my home, I was a stranger in a strange land. . . ."
Jared Taylor,Right,Scholars are beginning to understand that segregation does not reflect the preferences of whites alone.
Jared Taylor,Right,researchers should realize that many people
Jared Taylor,Right,Race is not a barrier; it is a choice.
Jared Taylor,Right,"This is a historically black community, said Lynn Hendy, president of the property owners association. I’d like it to stay that way.127"
Jared Taylor,Right,Let’s be honest about the fact that many of us from all races are racist. . . . We’ve lied about progress.132
Jared Taylor,Right,"Blacks are particularly loyal to funeral homes, and the rumor that a black home has been bought by white interests can wreck the business."
Jared Taylor,Right,It is difficult to think of diversity as a strength when Old Glory is treated as gang colors.
Jared Taylor,Right,What whites are now expected to think about race can be summarized as follows: Race is an insignificant matter and not a valid criterion for any purpose
Jared Taylor,Right,"Virtually all observers agree that it is a terrible disadvantage for a child to come into the world without a father. Fatherless children are much more likely than those from two-parent homes to be poor, fail in school, commit crime, and, in turn, have fatherless children."
Jared Taylor,Right,"By 2008, illegitimacy had reached extraordinary levels: 72 percent for blacks, 66 percent for American Indians, 53 percent for Hispanics, 29 percent for whites, and 17 percent for Asians.185 A majority of black, Hispanic, and Indian children are therefore coming into the world without the support of a married couple."
Jared Taylor,Right,"Many studies have also found that blacks and Hispanics save less than whites for future goals like retirement. How do they spend their money? Blacks are more likely than whites to buy lottery tickets and to spend disproportionately more money doing so.288 Prof Roussanov says the biggest difference, however, is that blacks and Hispanics spend 30 percent more than whites with the same income on what he calls visible goods meant to convey status, such as clothing, cars, and jewelry.289"
Jared Taylor,Right,blacks are suffering more from the invasion [of Spanish] than whites because they have fewer resources with which to run away from immigration.
Jared Taylor,Right,"Prof. Nikolai Roussanov of the Wharton School has found that both blacks and Hispanics spend 50 percent less on medical care than do whites with similar incomes, and that blacks and Hispanics spend 16 percent and 30 percent less, respectively, on education than do whites with similar incomes."
Jared Taylor,Right,"Zita Wilensky, a 16-year veteran, was the only white employee of Miami-Dade County Domestic Violence Unit. Her co-workers made fun of her and called her gringa and Americana. Miss Wilensky says her boss gave her 60 days to learn Spanish, and fired her when she failed to do so.271"
Jared Taylor,Right,"Different groups have different priorities. Because Hispanics tend to have low incomes, they support increases in government services, even at the cost of more taxes for others. Most Hispanics supported all five spending initiatives on the May, 2005 California ballot; most whites opposed all five."
Jared Taylor,Right,"American eating habits are changing. An estimated 15,000 pounds of bushmeat"
Peter Hitchens,Right,"Is there any point in public debate in a society where hardly anyone has been taught how to think, while millions have been taught what to think?"
Peter Hitchens,Right,"Americans may say they love our accents (I have been accused of sounding 'like Princess Di') but the more thoughtful ones resent and rather dislike us as a nation and people, as friends of mine have found out by being on the edge of conversations where Americans assumed no Englishmen were listening.And it is the English, specifically, who are the targets of this. Few Americans have heard of Wales. All of them have heard of Ireland and many of them think they are Irish. Scotland gets a sort of free pass, especially since Braveheart re-established the Scots' anti-English credentials among the ignorant millions who get their history off the TV."
Peter Hitchens,Right,"The problem of utopia is that it can only be approached across a sea of blood, and you never arrive."
Peter Hitchens,Right,Far too many people
Peter Hitchens,Right,I think it is important for our society to wonder why it has lately become so ready to accept that human woe can be cured or soothed by chemicals. These chemicals do not alter or reform the ills of our civilisation. They adapt the human being to them.
Peter Hitchens,Right,"It did not then cross my mind that they, like religious apologists, might have any personal reasons for holding to this disbelief. It certainly did not cross my mind that I had any low motives for it. Unlike Christians, atheists have a high opinion of their own virtue."
Peter Hitchens,Right,"In my early teens, [my grandfather] would sometimes stomp around his living room, where he used to shave towards mid-day with bowl, brush and open razor, deriding my ignorance and mocking the made-up discipline of sociology, which I at one stage claimed to be studying. 'What is sociology?' he roared derisively, twisting and rolling the silly word on his Hampshire tongue. I knew, alas, that he was quite right."
Peter Hitchens,Right,If you drive God out the world then you create a howling wilderness. (Copyright:www.changinglives.au.com)
Peter Hitchens,Right,"Only one reliable force stands in the way of the power of the strong over the weak. Only one reliable force forms the foundation of the concept of the rule of law. Only one reliable force restrains the hand of the man of power. And, in an age of power-worship, the Christian religion has become the principal obstacle to the desire of earthly utopians for absolute power."
Peter Hitchens,Right,"We welcome into our homes the machines that vacuum the thoughts out of our heads and pump in someone else's. John Berger in Ways of Seeing said that television advertisers succeeded by persuading viewers to envy themselves as they would be if they bought the product. These programmes do something similar, by persuading the viewer to envy himself as he would be if his life were that little bit more exciting and melodramatic than it actually is. They can make things seem normal that are not."
Peter Hitchens,Right,"the balance of power between the sexes had been destabilized, and relations between mothers and their children transformed from a natural and accepted one to a mere option."
Peter Hitchens,Right,"I happen to think Israel is in many ways a noble enterprise, worth defending and supporting, and that Israel's fashionable enemies in the West have allied themselves with some of the nastiest and most bigoted forces now loose in the world."
Peter Hitchens,Right,"We must decide whether to act as if the universe is a cosmic car-crash, in which our actions have no significance beyond their observable effects, or an ordered and purposeful whole, in which our actions continue to echo and reverberate down all eternity."
Peter Hitchens,Right,"Like the pagans of old, unaffected by climate, the British were now dancing around a giant phallus. Unlike the pagans theirs was a sterile phallus, disarmed by condoms and pills - the first heathen sexual cult to be based around sterility rather than fertility."
Peter Hitchens,Right,"Globalisation is all about wealth. It knows the price of everything and the value of nothing. Without borders the world will become – is visibly becoming – a howling desert of traffic fumes, plastic and concrete, where nowhere is home and the only language is money."
Peter Hitchens,Right,"I concede to my atheist opponents that belief or unbelief is a choice. As a choice, it is based upon desire. I desire, and therefore choose to believe in, one kind of universe, one that has laws and purpose with justice woven into its very fabric. The unbeliever desires, and therefore chooses to believe in, a chaotic universe where the dead remain dead and actions have no effect beyond their immediately observable consequences."
Peter Hitchens,Right,"Believers are supposed to hold that the pope is the vicar of Christ on earth, and the keeper of the keys of Saint Peter. They are of course free to believe this, and to believe that god decides when to end the tenure of one pope or (more important) to inaugurate the tenure of another. This would involve believing in the death of an anti-Nazi pope, and the accession of a pro-Nazi one, as a matter of divine will, a few months before Hitler’s invasion of Poland and the opening of the Second World War. Studying that war, one can perhaps accept that 25 percent of the SS were practicing Catholics and that no Catholic was ever even threatened with excommunication for participating in war crimes. (Joseph Goebbels was excommunicated, but that was earlier on, and he had after all brought it on himself for the offense of marrying a Protestant.) Human beings and institutions are imperfect, to be sure. But there could be no clearer or more vivid proof that holy institutions are man-made."
Peter Hitchens,Right,"This society, promoted by its leaders as an egalitarian utopia, was in truth one of the most unequal societies on earth."
Peter Hitchens,Right,"In the same essay, Said (who is reviewing Peter Stansky and William Abrams, co-authors obsessed with the Blair/Orwell distinction) congratulates them on their forceful use of tautology:‘Orwell belonged to the category of writers who write.’ And could afford to write, they might have added. In contrast they speak of George Garrett, whom Orwell met in Liverpool, a gifted writer, seaman, dockworker, Communist militant, ‘the plain facts of [whose] situation"
Peter Hitchens,Right,"In the immortal children's Christmas pantomime Peter Pan, there comes a climactic moment when the little angel Tinkerbell seems to be dying. The glowing light that represents her on the stage begins to dim, and there is only one possible way to save the dire situation. An actor steps up to the front of the house and asks all the children, Do you believe in fairies? If they keep confidently answering YES! then the tiny light will start to brighten again. Who can object to this ? One wants not to spoil children's belief in magic"
Peter Hitchens,Right,"The truth is that modern atheists have constructed their position very carefully so that they can never be asked why they hold it. Like the annoying Christian who declares he’s had a special religious experience that has wholly persuaded him of the Gospel’s absolute truth, the New Atheist declares that his entire life and education is an anti religious experience, which proves, without further discussion, that there is no God. Any evidence the believer suggests that there might be a God is dismissed by the New Atheists as not being evidence at all."
Peter Hitchens,Right,"In a Godless universe, what is the difference between doing unto others that we would wish them to do unto us, and merely appearing to do unto others that we would wish them to do unto us? The answer, alas, is that if there is no God who knows the secrets of our hearts, it is all too easy to appear to be good, and even to do formally good deeds, all of which are empty of real goodness."
Peter Hitchens,Right,"The conservative society accepts that rebellion and bad behaviour are natural and must be curbed. The liberal society requires all its citizens to be perfectly balanced, conforming to its ideals and aims with a happy heart and a willing mind"
Peter Hitchens,Right,I likewise thought
Peter Hitchens,Right,"The Bolsheviks killed their own most loyal supporters at Kronstadt in 1921, because they failed to understand that the revolution no longer required revolutionaries, but obedient servants."
Peter Hitchens,Right,"The freer a society is, the more it leaves the family alone."
Peter Hitchens,Right,"The centre of politics is simply where those who are currently in office and in power, in politics and in the media, want it to be."
Peter Hitchens,Right,The EU is the continuation of Germany by other means
Peter Hitchens,Right,"The modern world is the hideous love-child of Margaret Thatcher and Deng Xiaoping. Wallets are free, minds are policed."
Peter Hitchens,Right,A country where the media attack the Opposition rather than the government is a country where freedom is under threat.
Peter Hitchens,Right,"Abortion is the only event that modern liberals think too violent and obscene to portray on TV. This is not because they are squeamish or prudish. It is because if people knew what Abortion really looked like, it would destroy their pretence that it is a civilized answer to the problem of what to do about unwanted babies."
Peter Hitchens,Right,"Mind-altering drugs have from the beginning been an important feature of this new post-Christian way of life. They are at the heart of the new belief in undeferred gratification. They were the shared pleasure, the unholy communion and the initiation rite, of the post-1968 cultural and moral revolutionaries. Those who accept the way of life can seldom see any reason why drug taking might be wrong or even unwise. It is part of the power of drugs that they make it easier to enjoy cultural mediocrity and to endure decline of all kinds - moral, educational, cultural, political and material. A generation began by thinking itself revolutionary has adopted drugs which spread passivity and contentment."
Peter Hitchens,Right,"Some believe the taking of drugs creates no victims, and therefore cannot be a crime. Some actually assert that liberty to damage one's own brain and confuse one's senses is a freedom to be defended alongside the freedom of speech and thought. It is perhaps hard to see how anyone who valued either speech or thought should wish to spread the use of a drug that fuddles thought and makes speech halting and incoherent, but it is so."
David Irving,Right,"By early 1937, the Nazi state could be likened to an atomic structure. The nucleus was Hitler, surrounded by successive rings of henchmen. The innermost ring was Göring, Himmler and Goebbels, privy to his less secret ambitions and the means he was proposing to employ to realize them. In the outer rings were the ministers, commanders-in-chief and diplomats, each aware of only a small sector of the plans radiating from the nucleus. Beyond them was the German people. The whole structure was bound by the forces of the police state – by the fear of the wiretap, the letter censors, the Gestapo and ultimately the short, sharp corrective spells provided by Himmler's renowned establishments at Dachau and elsewhere."
David Irving,Right,"There is an aphorism about Prussian militarism, coined by Mirabeau, which aptly fits the pre-Hitler Reichswehr: ‘Prussia isn't a country with an army – it's an army with a country!"
David Irving,Right,"At the conference, Hitler mapped out plans for a vote to be held throughout Germany and Austria on April 10, to confirm the Anschluss. The question on the ballot paper was: ‘Do you accept Adolf Hitler as our Führer, and do you thus accept the reunification of Austria with the German Reich as effected on March 13, 1938?’ Unlike Schuschnigg's phoney plebiscite, it was a genuinely secret ballot. The result staggered even Hitler: of 49,493,028 entitled to vote, 49,279,104 had cast votes, and of these 99.08 percent had voted ‘Yes’ – altogether 48,751,587 adults had stated their support of Hitler's action. This was a unanimity of almost embarrassing dimensions. His"
David Irving,Right,"Many a Hitler decision – decisions that infuriated his generals by their seeming lack of logic at the time – can probably be explained by the work of Göring's Forschungsamt, Ribbentrop's ministry and the naval staff's cryptanalysis branch."
David Irving,Right,NBC News reporter David Gregory was on a tear. Lecturing the NRA president
David Irving,Right,"Nobody can now watch Leni Riefenstahl's chilling film of this festival, Triumph of the Will, without shuddering at the sight of the SS troops breaking into the parade-step as they stomped into sight of the Führer."
David Irving,Right,"SS uniform was black and elegant,"
David Irving,Right,"Here at the palace, Hitler encountered suffocating palace etiquette for the first time. The noble Italian chief of protocol bowed before him and then led his guests up the long, shallow flight of stairs, striking every plush red-carpeted tread solemnly with a gold-encrusted staff. He was accustomed to this measured tread, but Hitler was not: the nervous foreign visitor fell out of step, found himself gaining on the uniformed nobleman ahead, stopped abruptly, causing confusion and clatter on the steps behind, then started again, walking more quickly until he was soon alongside the Italian again. The latter affected not to notice, but perceptibly quickened his own pace, his lacquered slippers and silken stockings flashing, until the whole throng was trotting up the last few stairs in an undignified Charlie Chaplin gallop. There"
David Irving,Right,"Hitler dourly remarked to Wiedemann – as the adjutant recorded a few months later – ‘I'm not here to ensure peace in Europe; I'm here to make Germany great again. If that can be done peacefully, well and good. If not, we'll have to do it differently.’ He"
David Irving,Right,"To put the military factors in their proper perspective when deciding the political objective is a task for the statesman alone. Were he to wait until his armed forces were completely ready for war, then he would never act because armed forces are never ready – nor are they ever to be considered ready."
David Irving,Right,There is to be no possibility whatever that anybody at all can even think that there is some institution or other in Germany that has a different opinion from the one expressed by the Führer.’ Schacht
David Irving,Right,"The brave will fight whatever the odds,’ Hitler said on January 18. ‘But give the craven whatever weapons you will, they will always find reason enough to lay them down!"
David Irving,Right,"True soldiers are not recognized by their victories, but after their defeats.’ His"
David Irving,Right,"Hitler had built the National Socialist movement in Germany not on capricious electoral votes, but on people, and they gave him – in the vast majority – their unconditional support to the end."
David Irving,Right,West in Buffalo Bayou. Why don’t they like that? Because it casts reasonable doubt on David West’s story! It is unreasonable to believe that a woman was
David Irving,Right,Schmidt growled back: You’ll find there are always two possible decisions open to you. Take the bolder one
David Irving,Right,It is a basic principle of Third Reich foreign policy only to tackle one thing at a time.
David Irving,Right,"(As Hitler quipped to his staff, Beck was only ever able to make up his mind when his decision was against doing something!)"
David Irving,Right,"a massive and intimidating publicity campaign launched after some successful Nazi fait accompli, followed by a (genuinely secret) ballot to confirm the Führer's actions. It was a logical extension of Hitler's method of dictatorship by consent."
David Irving,Right,"On April 23, therefore, he signed a secret decree confirming Göring as his deputy in Berlin, while Hess continued to manage the Party in his absence. On May 2, 1938, Hitler wrote out a private testament and handed it in a sealed envelope to Dr Lammers, head of the Reich Chancellery – a rare documentary glimpse of Hitler as a human being, putting his affairs in order, arranging his own funeral and disposing of his personal effects to his family and private staff. The"
David Irving,Right,"As Robespierre once said of Marat, ‘The man was dangerous: he believed in what he said.’ Hitler"
David Irving,Right,Shed sweat
David Irving,Right,"It is impossible for me to write books just by reading other people’s books. I gather as complete a set of the related documents as possible. This is my metier. Unfortunately, the Hitler biography is a rather larger subject than I had thought. I have thirteen linear feet of diaries, reports, interrogations, etc.; 2,100 pages of Trevor-Roper’s Papers; the private papers of Canaris, Keitel, Koller, Jodl, Milch, von Waldau, Himmler, Assmann, Morell, Goebbels, Hitler (Reichskanzlei), Hewel, Linge, Bormann, Speer (2,000 pages), Hoepner, von Weichs, von Bock, Beck, etc., etc. I went to Washington and read the German Naval Staff War Diary from 1939–1945, over 70 volumes, each containing 400 pages. I have typed 150,000 words onto 600 filing cards."
David Irving,Right,"Language like that went down well. Hitler had laced his earlier speeches with more abstract topics like the relationship between national strength and international justice, but he soon found that was not the language the mobs wanted to hear. In"
David Irving,Right,"In successive speeches in 1920 he called for the hanging of war profiteers and racketeers; he identified them as the Jews; and then he began to concentrate his venom on the Jews as a whole, on the Ostjuden from Russia, and on the ‘Polish-Jewish vermin’ who had flooded into Vienna and Germany."
David Irving,Right,"That is why I set up my fighting manifesto and tailored it deliberately to attract only the toughest and most determined minority of the German people at first. When we were quite small and unimportant I often told my followers that if this manifesto is preached year after year, in thousands of speeches across the nation, it is bound to act like a magnet: gradually one steel filing after another will detach itself from the public and cling to this magnet, and then the moment will come when there'll be this minority on the one side and the majority on the other – but this minority will be the one that makes history, because the majority will always follow where there's a tough minority to lead the way."
David Irving,Right,"It ended with the extraordinary words, ‘The entire attitude of the Gestapo throughout this affair has proven that its sole concern was to brand me as the guilty party,’ and, ‘I therefore challenge you to a duel with pistols."
David Irving,Right,"in an act of ironic magnanimity that he was to repeat in 1944 after the failed Bomb Plot, Hitler ordered state pensions provided for the next-of-kin of the people murdered in the Night of the Long Knives, as June 30, 1934 came to be known."
David Irving,Right,Hitler saw the random bickering of the newspapers of the democratic countries as an inexcusable frittering-away of a vital national resource. He considered that the press could become a powerful instrument of national policy.
David Irving,Right,"Jews and Marxists were forbidden in any case to practise journalism in Nazi Germany. In October 1933, Hitler enacted an editors’ law modelled on the regimentation of journalists in fascist Italy. From mid-1935 the Catholic-owned press was also purged of all divisive religious trends. Sinning newspapers were sniffed out and closed down. As Goebbels publicly emphasized: ‘I reject the standpoint that there is in Germany a Catholic and a Protestant press; or a workers’ press; or a farmers’ press; or a city press or a proletariat press. There exists only a German press.’ To Goebbels's new monolithic organization Hitler assigned three tasks: to illuminate to the world the urgency of the problems he was about to tackle; to warn that he would not be trifled with; and to show the world the solidarity of the German people."
David Irving,Right,"Hitler thought highly of Himmler. He readily accepted that Himmler's ‘concentration camps’ were indispensable for the political re-education of the dissident – and indeed of the dissolute as well, because by 1935 the camps contained more than one hapless inmate whom Hitler had ordered incarcerated as a drastic cure for alcoholism or some other less savoury human failing. (‘The punishment was not ordered by the Führer to hurt you,’ Himmler wrote to one alcoholic in Dachau on May 18, 1937, ‘but to retrieve you from a path that has clearly led you and your family to ruin.’)"
David Irving,Right,"With his rearmament programme already under way, Hitler's logical next step was to disrupt the League of Nations. He told Hindenburg that it was so firmly anchored in the Diktat of Versailles that it resembled nothing if not a ganging-up by the victors to ensure that the spoils and booty of the World War were exacted from the vanquished. He would have cooperated with the League if they had accepted Germany as an equal; but as they would not, he proposed to withdraw on October 14, 1933."
David Irving,Right,"But for all this Fritsch was a fervent nationalist, and he shared with Hitler a hatred of the Jews, the ‘Jewish press,’ and a belief that ‘the pacifists, Jews, democrats, black-red-and-gold and the French are all one and the same, namely people bent on Germany's perdition."
David Irving,Right,"They must learn to respect each other and be respected again – the intellectual must respect the manual labourer and vice versa. Neither can exist without the other. From them both will emerge the new man: the man of the coming German Reich! Adolf Hitler,Landsberg, December 18, 1924"
David Irving,Right,"With all the generals, however, Hitler had a powerful argument: he was going to put them back in business – he was going to restore to Germany her striking power, regardless of the restrictions of Versailles."
David Irving,Right,Democracy is the worst of all possible evils. Only one man can and should give the orders.
David Irving,Right,"Marxism must be eliminated root and branch. . . What matters above all is our defence policy, as one thing's certain: that our last battles will have to be fought by force. The [Nazi Party] organization was not created by me to bear arms, but for the moral education of the individual; this I achieve by combatting Marxism. . . National Socialism will not emulate Fascism: in Italy a militia had to be created as they were on the very threshold of a Bolshevik menace. My organization will solely confine itself to the ideological education of the masses, in order to satisfy the army's domestic and foreign policy needs. I am committed to the introduction of conscription"
David Irving,Right,"One of the most important weapons in Hitler's police state was controlled however by Hermann Göring, not Himmler. This was the Forschungsamt, or ‘Research Office,’ set up in 1933 with a monopoly on all wiretapping operations."
David Irving,Right,"In Hitler's view, Germany's present statesmen had put domestic strength too low in their priorities. He would reverse that: a process of national consolidation would come before any ambitious foreign policies. And so indeed he acted as chancellor, from 1933 to about 1937, adhering closely to the theories that he had laid down in the 1920s in his writings and speeches, whether to mass audiences or private groups of wealthy industrialists. First he restored Germany's psychological unity; on this stable foundation he rebuilt her economic strength; and on that base in turn he built up the military might with which to enforce an active foreign policy."
David Irving,Right,"First Germany must ‘create a powerful land force,’ so that foreigners took her seriously. Then, he wrote in 1928, there must be an alliance with Britain and her empire, so that ‘together we may dictate the rest of world history."
David Irving,Right,"Hitler had certainly nailed some of his secret military ambitions to the mast: Germany must be ‘capable of waging a worthwhile war against the Soviet Union,’ because ‘a victory over Germany by Bolshevism would lead not to a new Versailles Treaty but to the final annihilation, indeed the extermination, of the German nation.’ Hitler announced that he as Führer had to resolve once and for all Germany's economic problems by enlarging her Lebensraum and thus her sources of raw materials and food."
David Irving,Right,"Himmler was an ambitious, sinister, idealistic creature of devious ways. His ideas on human behaviour had been gleaned from animal breeding lectures at agricultural college years before. The SS had certain affinities to the Jesuit monastic orders, an enforced mysticism which even Hitler found slightly ludicrous: in 1940, witnessing the pagan Yule celebration of the SS Leibstandarte at Christmas, he quietly commented to an adjutant that this would never take the place of ‘Silent Night."
David Irving,Right,"Today,’ he wrote to the Führer, ‘I no longer believe in a rapprochement. Britain does not want a Germany of superior strength in the offing as a permanent threat to her islands. That is why she will fight."
David Irving,Right,"In 1941, Ribbentrop explained to the Turkish diplomat Acikalin: ‘I know I'm regarded in many quarters as the Führer's evil genius’ in regard to foreign affairs. But the fact is I always advised the Führer to do his utmost to bring about Britain's friendship. . . . I warned the Führer in 1935 that in my view Britain was steering toward war.’ Now, as ambassador in London, Ribbentrop secretly offered Baldwin an ‘offensive and defensive alliance’: he told his staff two years later it had been refused."
David Irving,Right,"In September 1936, Britain's former prime minister, David Lloyd George, spent two weeks in Germany as his guest. He admiringly wrote in the Daily Express how Hitler had united Catholic and Protestant, employer and artisan, rich and poor into one people – Ein Volk, in fact. (The British press magnate Cecil King wrote in his diary four years later, ‘Lloyd George mentioned meeting Hitler and spoke of him as the greatest figure in Europe since Napoleon and possibly greater than him. He said we had not had to deal with an austere ascetic like Hitler since the days of Attila and his Huns.’)"
David Irving,Right,"After showing them the blast furnaces, rolling mills and armour-plate works, Hitler and Ribbentrop took Mussolini alone into a hall where Krupp engineers took the tarpaulins off Hitler's proudest possession – a gun barrel so huge that it had to be transported on two parallel railroad tracks. Mussolini stroked it and congratulated the Führer, clearly astonished at the weapon's size."
David Irving,Right,"Hitler wanted new environs, new men and new methods. He began appointing special plenipotentiaries to perform certain tasks parallel to the fossilizing government agencies – it was less exhausting than trying to revive the latter. The Ribbentrop bureau was one example. Cabinet meetings as such virtually ceased late in 1937. Instead Hitler dealt directly – through Lammers – with affairs of state, while he transmitted his will directly to the ministers and generals without discussion."
David Irving,Right,"In these outpourings Hitler's envy of Britain became plain – his envy of the national spirit, master-race qualities and genius whereby the British had won their colonial empire. Other themes emerged in these early, beerhall speeches. He demanded that Germany become a nation without class differences, in which manual labourer and intellectual each respected the contribution of the other."
David Irving,Right,"Excerpts from unpublished records like these show that Hitler was inspired by purely Darwinian beliefs – the survival of the fittest, with no use for the moral comfort that sound religious teaching can purvey. ‘Liberty, equality and fraternity are the grandest nonsense,’ he had said that evening. ‘Because liberty automatically precludes equality – as liberty leads automatically to the advancement of the healthier, the better, and the more proficient, and thus there is no more equality."
David Irving,Right,"He authorized Goebbels to deliver a powerful and provocative speech in Danzig on June 17, denouncing Polish ‘ill treatment’ and demanding the city's return to the Reich. Nazi editors were confidentially briefed: ‘This is to be a first trial balloon to test the international atmosphere on the settlement of the Danzig question."
David Irving,Right,"Baron von Weizsäcker assessed in his private diary, ‘The Führer has no desire to pick a fight with the western powers but – so I'm assured – he cannot yet be sure if a war can be confined to Poland. So my own bet is unchanged, that we'll settle for a peaceful general approach."
David Irving,Right,"In their second conversation Henderson argued that it was proof of Chamberlain's good intentions that he still refused to take Churchill into his cabinet: the anti-German faction was not representative of the British public – it was mainly Jews and anti-Nazis, said Henderson. Henderson later told the Italian ambassador that his talk with Hitler had been ‘absolutely unfavourable’: the Führer seemed dead set on war – even a general war."
David Irving,Right,"It was the Lutheran and Reformed churches in Germany that gave Hitler his biggest headaches. His early years of power were marked by futile attempts to reconcile the thirty warring Protestant factions and bring them under one overriding authority, some loosely constituted council of churches that would unquestioningly accept the primacy of the state and the Nazi policies it enforced."
David Irving,Right,"In private, he justified his stiffer attitude to Britain by the secret documents now found in Prague archives. ‘One day we'll publish them to all the world, to prove Britain's dishonesty,’ Bodenschatz told a French diplomat. ‘All we're asking for is our right to live, and we're not going to let a country that owns three-fifths of the earth deny us this elementary right."
David Irving,Right,"The Führer used to tell anecdotes of the World War – though less often in my presence – and of his own childhood and youth experiences, and he revealed a lot of whatever he happened to be mulling over at the time. So those lunching with him before a big speech had a pretty fair idea of what he was going to say. In earlier years I was astounded and often shocked at his unbridled remarks about the Jews, the Church, the bourgeoisie, the civil service, monarchists, et cetera. Later on it left me stone cold, as it was always the same thing."
David Irving,Right,"This was the beginning of Hitler's new-style diplomacy. His victories in Central Europe were won without the sword – they were won by power politics and opportunism, by bluff, by coercion, by psychological operations and by nerve-war. On each occasion he carefully gauged his potential enemies. He satisfied himself that the western powers would not fight, provided he made each claim sound reasonable enough. The west was weak and unready, and he was not."
David Irving,Right,"A thirty-man SS guard of honour formed up on the terraces outside the Berghof toward five P.M. Hess sent cars down into the valley to meet Chamberlain's train, and at six the English party arrived. Chamberlain was in the familiar dark suit and stiff wing collar, with a light-coloured necktie and a watchchain across his waistcoat. Upstairs in his study Hitler began his usual tirade about the mounting Czech terror campaign. He claimed that three hundred Sudeten Germans had been killed already, and threatened that if Britain continued to talk of war he would revoke the naval agreement. But Chamberlain had not come to talk of war – far from it. ‘If Herr Hitler really wants nothing more than the Sudeten German regions,’ he said in effect, ‘then he can have them!’ Hitler, taken aback, assured him he had no interest whatever in non-Germans. He told his adjutants afterward that he had taken quite a liking to the old gentleman. Chamberlain, wearied by his first-ever aeroplane ride, returned to London."
David Irving,Right,"Telephone calls began coming from private citizens reporting fresh outbreaks of fire and the looting of Jewish businesses all over Munich. Hitler angrily sent for SS General Friedrich Karl von Eberstein, the city's police chief, and told him to restore order at once. He telephoned Goebbels and furiously demanded: ‘What's the game?’ He sent out Schaub and other members of his staff to stop the looting and arson. He ordered special protection for the famous antique dealers, Bernheimer's. At 2:56 A.M. a telex was issued by Rudolf Hess's staff as deputy of the Führer – and was repeated to all gauleiters as Party Ordinance No. 174 – forbidding all such demonstrations: ‘On express orders issued at the highest level of all there is to be no arson or the like, whatever, under any circumstances, against Jewish businesses.’ The Gestapo followed suit – thus at 3:45 A.M. the Berlin Gestapo repeated this prohibition."
David Irving,Right,"Himmler's personal chief of staff, Karl Wolff, arrived with an indignant message from Heydrich at the Hotel Vier Jahreszeiten: the local Gestapo HQ had just telephoned that Goebbels's district offices everywhere were whipping up anti-Jewish demonstrations and ordering the police not to intervene. Himmler turned to Hitler for guidance. Hitler replied that the Gestapo were to protect Jewish property and lives, and that SS units were not to be called in unless things got out of hand."
David Irving,Right,"Today, after the Holocaust, it is seldom recalled how anti-Semitic the Europe of 1938 tended to be. When Ribbentrop journeyed to Paris with much pomp in December to sign the joint declaration first suggested by Hitler to François-Poncet, Bonnet begged him not to flood France with more German Jews as they already had enough of their own. (‘In fact,’ Ribbentrop informed Hitler, ‘they are considering Madagascar for this purpose.’)"
David Irving,Right,"Poland's attitude was hardly more sympathetic. Hitler had confided to ambassador Josef Lipski on September 20 that he was toying with the idea of solving the Jewish problem in unison with Poland, Hungary and perhaps Romania too by emigration ‘to the colonies."
David Irving,Right,"What business do the British have, poking their noses in?’ exclaimed Hitler. ‘They ought to be looking after their Jews in Palestine!’ He told Bürger the British were just playing for time to rearm. If Britain interfered when ‘Green’ began, then the Luftwaffe would deal with her."
David Irving,Right,"Chamberlain was goaded into announcing major British rearmament. Now at Saarbrücken, Hitler bellowed that he did not intend to drop his guard since, in democracies, statesmen who worked sincerely for peace could always be replaced overnight by warmongers: ‘It only needs for Mr. Duff Cooper or Mr. Eden or Mr. Churchill to come to power in place of Chamberlain, and you can be quite sure that their aim would be to start a new world war. They make no bones about it, they admit it quite openly."
David Irving,Right,"Encouraged by these ugly means, the mass exodus grew throughout 1939: 78,000 German and Austrian Jews (compared with 40,000 in 1938) left during 1939, and 38,000 Czech Jews too. With the outbreak of war the exodus still briefly continued, to stop only in October 1940, by which time Heydrich had successfully evicted about two-thirds of the Jews from the Reich – about 300,000 from Germany, 130,000 from Austria, 30,000 from Bohemia and Moravia. Some 70,000 of them reached Palestine, through the unholy alliance of aims that had briefly existed between Heydrich's SD and the Zionists."
David Irving,Right,"In their beaver-like work to enforce the Reich's emigration policies on the Jewish community, the SS had hitherto tried hard to keep a low profile, and to avoid any kind of spectacular outrage to international opinion. Göring thus found himself on the side of the SS, in alliance against the radical Goebbels, and on January 24 he formally instructed the ministry of the interior to set up a central emigration office under Heydrich to regulate and organize the deportation of the Jews. Hitler's personal part in this anti-Jewish programme was one of passive observation. Talking with Colonel Jósef Beck, the Polish foreign minister, on January 5 he rather speciously regretted that the western powers had not entertained Germany's colonial demands: ‘If they had, I might have helped solve the Jewish problem by making a territory available in Africa for resettlement of not only the German but the Polish Jews as well.’ On the twenty-first, he uttered to the Czech foreign minister Chvalkovský these ominous words: ‘The Jews here are going to be destroyed.’ The Czech replied sympathetically, and Hitler continued: ‘Help can only come from the others, like Britain and the United States, who have unlimited areas that they could make available for the Jews.’ And in a major speech to the Reichstag on January 30, 1939, Hitler uttered an unmistakable threat to any Jews who did choose to remain behind in his Germany: I have very often been a prophet in my lifetime and I have usually been laughed at for it. During my struggle for power, it was primarily the Jewish people who just laughed when they heard me prophesy that one day I would become head of state and thereby assume the leadership of the entire people, and that I would then among other things subject the Jewish problem to a solution. I expect that the howls of laughter that rose then from the throats of German Jewry have by now died to a croak. Today I'm going to turn prophet yet again: if international finance Jewry inside and outside Europe should succeed once more in plunging our peoples into a world war, then the outcome will not be a Bolshevization of the world and therewith the victory of Jewry, but the destruction of the Jewish race in Europe!"
David Irving,Right,"As his special train hauled into Rome's suburbs the next afternoon, May 3, he marshalled his private staff and warned them sternly not to burst out laughing at the sight of a diminutive figure kneeling on the platform, weighed down with gold braid: for that was the King of Italy, and he was not kneeling – that was his full height."
David Irving,Right,"He took no delight in the death of an enemy soldier. A Montgomery would order: Kill the Germans wherever you find them! An Eisenhower would proclaim: As far as I am concerned, any soldier that is killing a German is somebody for whom I have a tremendous affection, and if I can give him something so he can kill two instead of one, by golly I am going to do it. Rommel never descended to such remarks. He outwitted, bluffed, deceived, cheated the enemy. It was said that his greatest pleasure was to trick his opponents into premature and often quite needless surrender."
David Irving,Right,"IN 1944 ROMMEL was already a living legend. He was known as a great commander in the field, distinguished by that rare quality, a feeling for the battle. Bold, dashing and handsome, he was relentless in combat, magnanimous in victory and gracious to his vanquished enemies. He seemed invincible. Where he was, there was victory: he attacked like a tornado, and even when he withdrew, his enemies followed very gingerly indeed."
David Irving,Right,For more than two years he stayed on the slaughterhouse battlefields of France. In September at Varennes he was wounded by a ricocheting rifle bullet in his left thigh
David Irving,Right,"The prisoner was Driver A. J. Hayes, chauffeur of the commander of one of the crack field batteries attached to the Fourth Indian Division. He says Hitler has on several occasions offered Britain good peace terms. But Churchill, inspired by malice and ruthlessness, is leading the British people toward the abyss. The prisoner’s manner of speaking makes his testimony seem trustworthy."
David Irving,Right,"Churchill is the very archetype of a corrupt journalist, sneered the Führer. He himself has written that it’s incredible how far you can get in war with the help of the common lie. He’s an utterly amoral, repulsive creature. I’m convinced he has a refuge prepared for himself across the Atlantic. . . He’ll go to his friends, the Yanks."
David Irving,Right,"the Rommel diary records an edict that was typical of him: While the overflowing POW cage on the airfield is being set up, South African officers demand to be segregated from the blacks. This request is turned down by the C in C. He points out that the blacks are South African soldiers too"
David Irving,Right,"Almost at once the telephone call came, ordering him to stand by. That evening, the phone rang again in the railroad station waiting room where he had set up his office. The invasion begins tomorrow, 4:50 A.M. Thus the Second World War began. Nobody, least of all Erwin Rommel, could foresee that the military operations that began on September 1, heralded by a ranting and self-justificatory Reichstag speech by the Führer, would inexorably involve one country after another; would last six years; would leave 40 million dead and all Europe and half Asia ravaged by fire and explosives; would destroy Hitler’s Reich, ruin the British Empire and end with the creation of new weapons, new world powers and a new lawlessness in international affairs."
David Irving,Right,"Despite everything, she wrote to Erwin on September 4 from Wiener Neustadt, we were all hoping to the very end that a second world war could be avoided"
David Irving,Right,"Next day Hitler again made a fabulous speech to the Reichstag, this time formally offering peace to Britain and France (now that Poland no longer existed"
David Irving,Right,"History judges you by your success or failure, he pontificated. That’s what counts. Nobody asks the victor whether he was in the right or wrong."
David Irving,Right,"Rommel reached the wood at Cerfontaine on May 16, 1940. He wanted to get through it fast, so as to reach the bunkers themselves before dark"
Ann Coulter,Right,"We've finally given liberals a war against fundamentalism, and they don't want to fight it. They would, except it would put them on the same side as the United States."
Ann Coulter,Right,As the saying goes: God made man and woman; Colonel Colt made them equal.
Ann Coulter,Right,"The idea that making an activity legal would reduce its incidence is preposterous. This is exactly like the Clintonian statement about wanting to make abortion 'safe, legal and rare.' The most effective way to make something 'rare' is to make it illegal."
Ann Coulter,Right,I am the illegal alien of commentary. I will do the jokes that no one else will do.
Ann Coulter,Right,"Usually the nonsense liberals spout is kind of cute, but in wartime their instinctive idiocy is life-threatening. "
Ann Coulter,Right,"The New York Times editorial page is like a Ouija board that has only three answers, no matter what the question. The answers are: higher taxes, more restrictions on political speech and stricter gun control."
Ann Coulter,Right,A word to those of you out there who have yet to be offended by something I have said: Please be patient. I am working as fast as I can.
Ann Coulter,Right,"From the people who brought you zero tolerance, I present the Gun-Free Zone! Yippee! Problem solved! Bam! Bam! Everybody down! Hey, how did that deranged loner get a gun into this Gun-Free Zone?"
Ann Coulter,Right,I love to engage in repartee with people who are stupider than I am. 
Ann Coulter,Right,"Democrats couldn't care less if people in Indiana hate them. But if Europeans curl their lips, liberals can't look at themselves in the mirror."
Ann Coulter,Right,"Already liberals are trying to rewrite the history of the Cold War to remove Reagan from its core, to make him a doddering B-movie actor who happened to be standing there when the Soviet Union imploded. They have the media, the universities, the textbooks. We have ourselves. We are the witnesses. "
Ann Coulter,Right,"Once man's connection to the divine is denied, you can reason yourself from here to anywhere."
Ann Coulter,Right,The New York Times and the rest of the mainstream media will only refer to partial birth abortion as 'what its opponents refer to as partial birth abortions.' What do its supporters call it? Casual Fridays? Bean-with-bacon potato chip dip? Uh . . . Steve?
Ann Coulter,Right,Even Obama's staunchest supporters are starting to leave him. Last week Michelle Obama demanded to see a copy of his birth certificate.
Ann Coulter,Right,I think there should be a literacy test and a poll tax for people to vote.
Ann Coulter,Right,Throw in never read books and you have the dictionary definition of a liberal. Being completely uninformed is precisely how most liberals stay liberal.
Ann Coulter,Right,"Fox News’s Bill O’Reilly refuses to show the Muslim cartoons on The O’Reilly Factor, saying he doesn’t want to offend anyone’s religion. Someone should tell him those endless interviews with prostitutes from the Bunny Ranch and porn stars aren’t high on Christians’ list of enjoyable viewing either."
Ann Coulter,Right,"Where there's smoke around a conservative, there are journalists furiously rubbing two sticks together."
Ann Coulter,Right,It’s often said that those who are unduly bothered by gays are latent homosexuals. Isn’t it possible that people obsessed with racism are themselves racist.
Ann Coulter,Right,"Democrats always assure us that deterrence will work, but when the time comes to deter, they're against it."
Ann Coulter,Right,"Four years of Jimmy Carter gave us two titanic Reagan landslides, peace and prosperity for eight blessed years - and even a third term for his feckless vice president, George H.W. Bush."
Ann Coulter,Right,"Even if evolution were true, it wouldn't disprove God. God has performed more spectacular feats than evolution. It's not even a daunting challenge to a belief in God. If you want something that complicates a belief in God, try coming to terms with Michael Moore being one of God's special creatures."
Ann Coulter,Right,"Long before there was discrimination against blacks, there was discrimination against white southerners. When large numbers of these country people moved north during World War II, they were aggressively excluded from neighborhoods, jobs, and homes - not because of their skin color, but their accents."
Ann Coulter,Right,"A favorite liberal taunt is to accuse conservatives of clinging to an idealized past. Poor, right-wing Americans vaguely sense the world is changing and now they’re lashing out. What about the idealized past liberals cling to? They all act as if they were civil rights foot soldiers constantly getting beat up by 500-pound southern sheriffs, while every twenty-year-old Republican today is treated as if he is on Team Bull Connor. At best, the struggle for civil rights was an intra-Democratic Party fight. More accurately, it was Republicans and blacks fighting Democrat segregationists and enablers."
Ann Coulter,Right,"The theories of the French revolutionaries, as summarized by historian Roger Hancock, were founded on respect for no humanity except that which they proposed to create.In order to liberate mankind from tradition, the revolutionaries were ready to make him altogether the creature of a new society, to reconstruct his very humanity to meet the demands of the general will."
Ann Coulter,Right,"Democrats see our voluntary military supported by taxpayer dollars as their personal Salvation Army. Self-interested behavior, such as deploying troops to serve the nation, is considered boorish in Manhattan salons."
Ann Coulter,Right,But liberals love to drape themselves in decades-old glories they had nothing to do with.
Ann Coulter,Right,"Every single American knows about the Third Reich, a more recent and more efficient barbarism than the French Revolution. But Hitler got his playbook from Robespierre, as did all the great liberal reformers of the twentieth century, from Lenin to Hugo Chávez. It was the Rousseauian idea of a few select individuals exercising the general will that gave the world the gulag, the concentration camp, the killing fields, the reeducation camps, and corpse upon corpse, without end."
Ann Coulter,Right,"Americans are under no moral obligation to grant amnesty to people who have broken our laws. The moral thing to do is usually defined as following the law. The fact that Democrats want 30 million new voters is not a good enough reason to ignore the law and screw over American workers, as well as legal immigrants already here."
Ann Coulter,Right,Proposing an immigration policy that serves America’s interests should not require an apology.
Ann Coulter,Right,The Klan sees the world in terms of race and ethnicity. So do Liberals
Milo Yiannopoulos,Right,"Hatred has engulfed the politics of the Left. Socialists hate the financially successful. LGBT activists hate fundamentalist Christians. Black Lives Matter hate police officers. Fat people hate skinny people, like me and Ann Coulter. But none of these groups hate with the PMS-fueled pettiness of feminism."
Milo Yiannopoulos,Right,"If the quality of my Christianity lies in my ability to be more inclusive than the next pastor, things get tricky because I will always, always encounter people"
Milo Yiannopoulos,Right,"Pilate was required to release one of the prisoners, so he gave the mob the choice of Jesus or Barabbas, a notorious murderer and insurrectionist-in otherwords, someone who incites mobs. Again, the mob spoke with one voice demanding with loud shouts that Jesus be crucified."
Milo Yiannopoulos,Right,"Even with a Democratic president behind the Civil Rights Act of 1964, a far larger percentage of Republicans than Democrats voted for it. Eminent Democratic luminaries voted against it, including Senators Ernest Hollings, Richard Russell, Sam Ervin, Albert Gore Sr., J. William Fulbright (Bill Clinton’s mentor) and of course, Robert Byrd. Overall, 82 percent of Senate Republicans supported the Civil Rights Act of 1964, compared to only 66 percent of Democrats. In the House, 80 percent of Republicans voted for it, while only 63 percent of Democrats did.Crediting Democrats for finally coming on board with Republicans civil rights policies by supporting the 1964 act would be nearly as absurd as giving the Democrats all the glory for Regan’s 1981 tax cuts - which passed with the support of 99 percent of Republicans but only 29 percent of Democrats."
Milo Yiannopoulos,Right,"You know you're doing something right when you've reduced hordes of liberals to blind, sputtering rage."
Milo Yiannopoulos,Right,"WITH IMMIGRATION, THE MOST POWERFUL FORCES IN OUR CULTURE ARE ALL on the same page"
Milo Yiannopoulos,Right,"By the time the girls’ corpses were found four days later, their bodies were so badly decomposed that dental records were required for identification. The decomposition was especially pronounced in the head, neck, and genital areas.8 Jennifer’s father, tipped off that bodies had been found, rushed to the scene, but the police held him back, as he shouted, Does she have blond hair? Does she have blond hair? Activist Ralph Reed tells the New York Times that Republicans should take a more charitable view of immigration.9 When he’s a fourteen-year-old American girl being raped and murdered by Mexicans, we’ll be more interested in his ideas on charity."
Milo Yiannopoulos,Right,"In just a few decades, Minnesota has gone from being approximately 99 percent German, Dutch, Finnish, Danish, and Polish to 20 percent African immigrant,7 including at least one hundred thousand Somalis.8 And that’s not counting the Somalis who have recently left the country to fight with al Qaeda and ISIS. One hundred thousand is just an estimate. We don’t know precisely how many Somalis the federal government has brought in as refugees because the government won’t tell us. The public can’t be trusted with the truth. Since becoming more multicultural, Minnesota has turned into a hotbed of credit card skimming, human trafficking, and smash-and-grab robberies.9 Mosques have popped up all over the state"
Milo Yiannopoulos,Right,"The actual history of interracial rape - according to FBI statistics - is that, since the 70's, approximately 15,000 to 36,000 white women have been raped by black men every year, while, on average, zero black women are raped by black men. (The Department of Justice uses 0 to denote fewer than ten victims."
Milo Yiannopoulos,Right,"Again in Russia, we find a tiny group of zealots"
Milo Yiannopoulos,Right,"There's nothing good about diversity, other than the food, and we don't need 128 million Mexicans for the restaurants."
Milo Yiannopoulos,Right,Vietnam is the Liberals' favorite was because America lost
Milo Yiannopoulos,Right,"Everyone seems to agree that it is Minnesotans’ responsibility to assimilate to Somali culture, not the other way around.11 The Catholic University of St. Thomas has installed Islamic prayer rooms and footbaths in order to demonstrate, according to Dean of Students Karen Lange, that the school is diverse. Minneapolis’s mayor, Betsy Hodges, has shown up wearing a full hijab to meetings with Somalis. (In fairness, it was Forbid Your Daughter to Work Outside the Home Day.)"
Milo Yiannopoulos,Right,"These are sentiments generally associated with women, children, and savages, according to Le Bon. It’s not an accident that when Republicans of all stripes"
Milo Yiannopoulos,Right,"Since when do the media care about the disabled? I don’t remember a lot of gnashing of teeth when Fox’s Family Guy made fun of Sarah Palin’s Down syndrome child, Trig. They"
Milo Yiannopoulos,Right,"Here’s a little thought experiment. Imagine that, on September 11, 2001, when the Twin Towers came down, the President of the United States was not George W. Bush, but Ann Coulter. What would have happened then? On September 12, President Coulter would have ordered the US military forces to drop 35 nuclear bombs throughout the Middle East, killing all of our actual and potential enemy combatants, and their wives and children. On September 13, the war would have been over and won, without a single American life lost."
Milo Yiannopoulos,Right,"Other countries must be laughing their heads off at us. Our family reunification policies mean that being related to a recent immigrant from Pakistan trumps being a surgeon from Denmark. That’s how we got gems like the Octomom, the unemployed single mother on welfare who had fourteen children in the United States via in vitro fertilization; Dzhokhar and Tamerlan Tsarnaev, who bombed the Boston Marathon, killing three and injuring hundreds, a few years after slitting the throats of three American Jews; and all those homegrown terrorists flying from Minnesota to fight with ISIS. Family reunification isn’t about admitting the spouses and minor children of immigrants we’re dying to get. We’re bringing in grandparents, second cousins, and brothers-in-law of Afghan pushcart operators"
Milo Yiannopoulos,Right,"Anchor babies are citizens only because of a phony constitutional principle cooked up by Justice William Brennan in 1982. Just like abortion, sodomy, gay marriage, and unicorns"
Milo Yiannopoulos,Right,"The media’s weird obsession with billing immigrant terrorists as apple-pie Americans leads to comical results, such as the panelists on MSNBC’s The Cycle puzzling over how Aafia Siddiqui, a U.S.-trained scientist could have become radicalized.56 Here’s a tip for MSNBC: When you can’t pronounce the terrorist’s name, the rest of America isn’t sitting in slack-jawed amazement. Siddiqui wasn’t an American by any definition. She wasn’t even an anchor baby. Rather, Siddiqui was born and raised in Pakistan and came to the United States as an adult via our seditious universities. After an arranged marriage over the phone with another Pakistani, who"
Milo Yiannopoulos,Right,"For most Americans, our most precious possession is citizenship in this amazing country."
Ann Coulter,Right,"Only the Democratic Party could produce a string of presidential candidates who oppose school choice and vouchers while sending their own children to lily-white private schools. Only the Democratic Party could hysterically denounce a Supreme Court nominee for allegedly making unwanted sexual advances in the workplace and then applaud a president who was receiving oral sex from a White House intern while discussing deploying American troops with a congressman on the phone. Indeed, only the Democrats could oppose Clarence Thomas, actually block Supreme Court nominee Douglas Ginsburg (for marijuana use), and then run Bill Clinton for president."
Ann Coulter,Right,"So more than a century ago, everyone agreed: No more indentured servitude. But today’s employers have conspired to bring it back with H-1B visas, then they strut around like they’re Martin Luther King by invoking the magical word immigration. Immigration covers a multitude of sins because we have all agreed to pretend mass immigration from the Third World is the same thing as black civil rights. In the 1960s, leftists were at least self-destructive: They wanted to damage the country in ways that would hurt them, their parents, and their kids. The New Left has found a way to be self-righteous only after checking to make sure they’ve completely exempted themselves from the destruction they’re wreaking. Liberals will pull every string imaginable to prevent their own kids from having to compete with immigrants"
Ann Coulter,Right,"Somebody’s noticing the immigrant crime wave: Google illegal alien crime and you’ll get more than 2 million hits. Google immigrant crime and you’ll get 40 million. Only our government and media refuse to notice. Then they turn around and denounce anyone else’s estimate, saying: You don’t know that. So tell us! We don’t know that only because the people in a position to know have decided to keep it secret."
Ann Coulter,Right,"China built a thirteen-thousand-mile wall several centuries before Christ, and it’s still working."
Ann Coulter,Right,"defiance of law and tone, and everybody’s disbelieving looks, the president seemed intent on surrounding himself in the White House with his family. The Trumps, all of them"
Ann Coulter,Right,"Hispanics are half as likely to enlist in the military as either whites or blacks. The recruit-to-population ratio for whites is 1.06. For blacks it is 1.08. For Hispanics, it’s only 0.65. The media not only neglect to highlight this particular underrepresentation, they lie about it. An article published by the Population Reference Bureau"
Ann Coulter,Right,"By the most basic definition of the law, Mohammed was not eligible, but he was allowed to stay in the United States and obtain a work visa"
Ann Coulter,Right,"immigrants today are immediately sunk into the warm bath of food stamps, housing assistance, Social Security disability payments, and multilingual ballots and street signs."
Ann Coulter,Right,"The surge of ninety thousand poor Central Americans across the border in 2014 proved that. Obama pretended his hands were tied. It’s the law! It wasn’t the law. So either Obama is stupid or he was deliberately lying, and the smart money is on deliberately lying."
Ann Coulter,Right,"The mass migration of the poorest of the poor to America is bad for the whole country, but it’s fantastic for Democrats. Ask yourself: Which party benefits from illiterate non-English speakers who have absolutely no idea what they’re voting for, but can be instructed to learn certain symbols?"
Ann Coulter,Right,"Moreover, poor people are never opposed to big government because they’re exempt from all the annoying things that government does. They’re not worried about taxes: The government is not going to raise any taxes that they pay. They drive unlicensed cars, have no insurance, flee accidents, and couldn’t pay a court judgment anyway. The government doesn’t want to get in touch with the poor for any reason other than to give them things."
Ann Coulter,Right,"If America could get a timeout on endless immigration from the Third World, we’d have a chance to reform ourselves and drain these deep sewers of depravity, racism, and xenophobia that liberals keep finding around every corner. They’ll be happier. We’ll be happier. After a half century of taking in the hardest cases in the world, America needs a little me time."
Ann Coulter,Right,The immigrant is not Americanized unless his interests and affections have become deeply rooted here. And we properly demand of the immigrant even more than this. He must be brought into complete harmony with our ideals and aspirations and cooperate with us for their attainment. Only when this has been done will he possess the national consciousness of an American.
Ann Coulter,Right,"The media lie about everything, but immigration constitutes their finest hour of collective lying. They know their ideas on the topic are not popular."
Ann Coulter,Right,"Democrats could never accept the fact that civil rights was about correcting specific and severe injustices done to American blacks, principally because they were the ones who had perpetrated the injustices."
Ann Coulter,Right,"As governor of Florida he aggressively pushed a bill that would allow illegal aliens to obtain driver’s licenses, less than three years after thirteen of nineteen terrorists in the September 11 attack had used Florida driver’s licenses to board the planes."
Ann Coulter,Right,"In government, effectiveness is measured not by results, but by how much money is spent. How effective is it? Why, we’ve tripled the budget! That’s what Republican Senator Bob Corker of Tennessee actually said about Rubio’s Gang of Eight amnesty bill, formally titled The Border Security, Economic Opportunity, and Immigration Modernization Act of 2013"
Ann Coulter,Right,"I don’t mean to be obtuse, but why is it a crisis that illegal aliens are living in the shadows? I forget. We need to bring in more people who will drive down the wages of our fellow Americans because"
Ann Coulter,Right,"According to voluminous Twitter postings the day of the shooting by Caitie Parker, one of Loughner’s friends since high school, he was left wing, a political radical, quite liberal, and a pot head.2 If any public figure influenced this guy, my money’s on Bill Maher."
Ann Coulter,Right,"In 2003, 70 percent of the 2,300 babies born in Stockton’s San Joaquin General Hospital’s maternity ward were anchor babies.14 By 2013, Stockton was bankrupt. Any politician who opposed our insane anchor baby policy would be smugly denounced by the New York Times"
Ann Coulter,Right,"Hispanics will never vote for Republicans unless they pass amnesty. First of all, moron Republicans: If they can’t vote, they can’t vote against you."
Ann Coulter,Right,"Amnesty will be fantastic for the economy. Unless we’re talking about the Mexican economy, this is patently ridiculous. Adding another 30 million poor, unskilled, non-taxpaying, welfare-receiving people to America is good only for government workers and employers who refuse to mechanize their operations or pay Americans one dollar more."
Ann Coulter,Right,"I take it that liberals would be dismayed if Mexicans began beheading people in America, based on their relentless mocking of Arizona Governor Jan Brewer’s claim, in July 2010, that there had been beheadings in the Arizona desert. The Washington Post’s Dana Milbank sneered: Ay, caramba! Those dark-skinned foreigners are now severing the heads of fair-haired Americans? Maybe they’re also scalping them or shrinking them or putting them on a spike.57 Salon.com cited Brewer’s remark to sneer that as you can see, Jan Brewer is crazy.58 Apparently, liberals considered it pretty far-fetched that Mexican cartel violence would ever, in a million years, cross into America. So if it ever did, that would be a big deal, right? Three months after Brewer’s claim, Mexicans beheaded a man in Arizona."
Ann Coulter,Right,"On the rare occasions when a reporter asks if a criminal is an immigrant, government officials summarily dismiss the question as if it would be racist to discuss the defendant’s nation of birth. Ricardo DeLeon Flores killed a teenaged girl in Kansas after speeding through a stop sign and crashing into two cars. When asked whether Flores was a U.S. citizen, the local Kansas newspaper reported, Deborah Owens of the Leavenworth County Attorney’s Office said she had no knowledge of his citizenship status.33 Was the Spanish translator a hint? The ICE officials showing up in court? His Oakland Raiders T-shirt? Two families’ lives were forever changed by the reckless behavior of someone who should not have been in this country, but the prosecutor refused to tell a reporter that Flores was an illegal immigrant. Owens must have felt a warm rush of self-righteousness, thinking how much better she is than all those blood-and-soil types who want to know when foreigners kill Americans."
Ann Coulter,Right,Just ask the woman who told me about the gang rape of her college roommate at a fraternity party in 1972 on the University of Virginia campus. Excellent counterexample! A non-disprovable story from forty years ago.
Ann Coulter,Right,"As for Ms. Banks’s claim that she didn’t even notice that the gang rapists were Mexican and their victim white, YOU HAVE GOT TO BE KIDDING ME. The media always notice race. It is the first thing they look for in any crime"
Ann Coulter,Right,A sixteen-year-old girl at her homecoming dance was gang-raped and left for dead because the Democrats need more voters. We could save a lot of soul-searching about our violent culture if journalists didn’t hide the fact that gang rapes are generally committed by people who are not from our culture.
Ann Coulter,Right,"With dozens of course offerings, UCLA’s history department doesn’t have a single course on the French Revolution, or even a course that would seem to cover Western Europe during that period. There are courses on European history in the fifteenth and nineteenth centuries, as well as from 1450 to 1660. And there’s a Western Civilization class covering the period up to 1715. But if you want to know what was happening outside of the United States circa 1750 to 1800,"
Ann Coulter,Right,About a third of pre-1965 immigrants went home
Ann Coulter,Right,"When it comes to immigration, the journalist’s motto is: The public can’t be trusted with the truth."
Ann Coulter,Right,"The mob characteristic most gustily exhibited by liberals is the tendency to idolize their political leaders, while considering as enemies all by whom [their beliefs] are not accepted."
Ann Coulter,Right,"The creation of an idol is textbook mob behavior. Crowds, Le Bon says, can only grasp the very simple and very exaggerated.2 They respond to images that assume a very absolute, uncompromising, and simple shape.3 And so, just as Clinton and Obama, for example, represented everything good to the mob, Reagan and Bush represented everything loathsome."
Ann Coulter,Right,"In a 1986 Time magazine cover story on Reagan, reporter Lance Morrow droned on about the sainted FDR, saying he explored the upper limits of what government could do for the individual"
Ann Coulter,Right,"In a YouTube video made by actor Ashton Kutcher just after Obama’s inauguration, dozens of Hollywood celebrities pledged to be a servant to our president and all mankind.28 It was like something out of an Aztec festival of the gods"
Ann Coulter,Right,The Left’s passionate adoration of President Obama
Ann Coulter,Right,"NPR’s Nina Totenberg famously said of Republican senator Jesse Helms, If there is retributive justice, he’ll get AIDS from a transfusion, or one of his grandchildren will get it.66"
Ann Coulter,Right,"The behavior anchor baby refers to is the fraud of illegal aliens giving birth at U.S. hospitals, thus anchoring an entire extended family to the United States by virtue of the child’s auto-citizenship. There’s no logical reason for the whole family to come here, but we get wails of You’re trying to separate us from our American citizen child! No one ever considers the possibility that the family could also stay together by going back to their own country. This is the way immigration law is abused with family reunification policies, also known as chain migration"
Ann Coulter,Right,"The country will have the economy of Uganda, but Democrats will be in total control."
Ann Coulter,Right,"Hollywood High School was flipping from the storied institute of legend to the high school of the barrio. Or, as CNN put it in a series of rave reviews for the predominantly Latino school: Hollywood High Now a Diverse High School. Hollywood High alumni include Cher, Carol Burnett, Lon Chaney, James Garner, Linda Evans, John Huston, Judy Garland, Ricky Nelson, Sarah Jessica Parker, John Ritter, Mickey Rooney, Lana Turner, and Fay Wray, among many others. By the mid-2000s, Hollywood High was more than 70 percent Hispanic,5 and students were less likely to be getting publicity shots than mug shots. Today the school is mostly famous for its stabbings, shootings, child molestations, thefts, and graffiti.6 Around 1990, a California TV producer trying to enroll a German exchange student in a Los Angeles high school asked the principal at Fairfax High if a foreign exchange student would be better served by Fairfax or Hollywood High. Without looking up, the principal replied, Well, 90% of my students can speak English, and we haven’t had a shooting here in 5 years."
Ann Coulter,Right,"In fact, if we could find one hundred distinguished people who died fifty years ago, bring them back through the fog of history to present-day America, set them loose, and tell them there’s been a revival of Nazism someplace in America, please find it and report back, one hundred out of a hundred would find parallels to Kristallnacht in cheerful Trump supporters being set upon and beaten up as they walked to their cars after a rally, with the full encouragement of the media and the San Jose mayor and police chief. This is how ABC’s George Stephanopoulos reported on Trump supporters being chased and beaten by Mexican flag-waving mobs: This week, fists flew in the streets of San Jose, and Donald Trump combative as ever. The fists weren’t attached to human beings; these were just atmospheric conditions. The"
Ann Coulter,Right,The two parts cannot be done simultaneously. A border fence must be started first
Ann Coulter,Right,WHAT DO YOU THINK ISRAELI PRIME MINISTER BENJAMIN NETANYAHU WOULD do if tens of thousands of Israelis were being murdered by Palestinians? If heroin deaths in Israel suddenly tripled and 90 percent of the heroin was coming into Israel through the Palestinian territories
Ann Coulter,Right,"In 2012, the U.S. government estimated that 660,000 Americans were using heroin and more than 3,000 dying of it every year because Mexico was boosting the supply.22 About a quarter of all people who try heroin will become dependent on it, according to government estimates,23 and the precise appeal of methamphetamine to Mexico’s Sinaloa drug cartel was that it was ragingly addictive, according to the New York Times.24 Forbes reports that there is little doubt that the heroin that killed Philip Seymour Hoffman came from Mexico.25 These aren’t big city problems: They’re Mexico-is-on-our-border problems. Missouri had 18 heroin overdose deaths in 2001; ten years later, there were 245.26 Heroin deaths in Minnesota shot from 3 to 98 between 1999 and 2013.27 Michigan saw fatal heroin overdoses surge from a few dozen a year in 2002 to more than 100 a year starting in 2009.28 In just one year, heroin-related fatalities in Connecticut nearly doubled, to 257 in 2013.29 Between 2007 and 2012, heroin use in the United States is estimated to have increased by almost 80 percent.30 And that’s just heroin. More than 40,000 Americans were killed from all illegal drug use in 2010, surpassing car accidents and shootings as a cause of death.31 The addicts who die may be the lucky ones. In 2001, a seventeen-year-old boy in New Jersey who scored 700 on the math SAT took a heroin overdose that left him unable to stand, walk, or bathe himself. His mother, a globetrotting executive with Citibank, was forced to quit her job and become his full-time caretaker. After a year of hospitalization and more than a decade of therapy, he still needs his mother to carry him to the toilet. He has no recollection of taking an overdose, but packets of heroin and marijuana were found stored in a secret compartment in his bedroom.32"
Ann Coulter,Right,"In 2014, the American media exploded with news of ISIS beheadings in Syria"
Ann Coulter,Right,"Is an American citizen more likely to be murdered by a Muslim terrorist or by a Mexican? According to CNN, twenty-nine Americans have been killed in Islamic terrorist attacks in the United States since 9/11.67 I don’t know why they excluded 9/11, so by my count, it’s 3,029. In fact, let’s round it up to four thousand to cover the last several decades. According to the GAO’s extremely conservative figures, Mexicans alone"
Ann Coulter,Right,"The Democrats never particularly cared for Americans, so they needed to bring in new people. Immigration is the advance wave of left-wing, Third World colonization of America. Democratic vice presidential candidate John Edwards used to claim that there are two Americas, the rich and the poor. If Democrats have their way, there will be two Latin Americas, both of them poor. You’re living in one of them right now."
Ann Coulter,Right,"Most Americans have no idea of the scale of Third World immigration pouring into the country. This is where numbers can make a difference. Sometimes quantity is quality. So it’s significant that Americans are being so aggressively lied to about the number of illegal immigrants in the country. Has it ever seemed strange that there have been exactly 11 million illegals here for the past decade? Did they stop coming? That’s hard to believe. President Bush prosecuted border guards for getting too rough with illegals. President Obama encouraged one hundred thousand illegals to surge across the border, then put them on buses to their new homes in the United States, courtesy of the taxpayer. The reason we are angrily told there are 11 million illegals and you’re a racist if you say there is one more than that is that if Americans ever suspected there were 30 million illegal immigrants in the United States, our elected officials would find out what a crisis really is."
Ann Coulter,Right,"Although we’ve been authoritatively informed that a majority of Americans support a pathway to citizenship, approximately five hundred times in the last two years alone, according to a quick Nexis search,18 that is a lie. This is part of the media’s campaign to convince Americans they’re nuts for preferring not to turn America into Mexico. Polls are irrelevant if you lie to the people being polled.           Poll: Do you support commonsense gun safety or are you against it?           Headline: MAJORITY OF AMERICANS SUPPORT GUN CONTROL.           But I hate gun control!           Too late! You agreed to commonsense gun safety"
Ann Coulter,Right,"The seven people murdered by Chechen immigrants Dzhokhar and Tamerlan Tsarnaev, who planted a bomb at the finish line of the Boston Marathon in 2013. In addition to the three people killed in the blast, including an eight-year-old boy, dozens of Americans suffered severe injuries in the marathon bombing and are still learning to live with prosthetics and other artificial devices to replace lost legs, feet, eyes, and hearing"
Ann Coulter,Right,"Contrary to everything you’ve heard, the only options are not: Amnesty or deporting 11 million people. There’s also the option of letting them stay in the shadows"
Ann Coulter,Right,"Liberals had tried convincing Americans to vote for them, but that kept ending badly. Except for Lyndon Johnson’s aberrational 1964 landslide, Democrats have not been able to get a majority of white people to vote for them in any presidential election since 1948.13 Their only hope was to bring in new voters. Okay, fine. You won’t vote for us, America? We tried this the easy way, but you give us no choice. We’re going to overwhelm you with new voters from the Third World. As Democratic consultant Patrick Reddy wrote for the Roper Center in 1998: The 1965 Immigration Reform Act promoted by President Kennedy, drafted by Attorney General Robert Kennedy, and pushed through the Senate by Ted Kennedy has resulted in a wave of immigration from the Third World that should shift the nation in a more liberal direction within a generation. It will go down as the Kennedy family’s greatest gift to the Democratic Party.14"
Ann Coulter,Right,"Kennedy’s immigration law was enacted during the magical post-1964 period, when Congress had free rein to push through the craziest left-wing legislation since the New Deal. It was the most destructive period in American history."
Ann Coulter,Right,"It’s striking how so many immigration activists don’t seem to particularly like this country. They tell us that America is a teeming mass of racist, sexist, homophobic bigots. But then they insist on bringing the rest of the world to live here."
Ann Coulter,Right,"If U.S. schools still taught U.S. history, this would not come as an exciting surprise, but America is not a nation of immigrants. It’s a nation of British and Dutch settlers. We all have a stake in preserving what they created"
Ann Coulter,Right,"Every single president, except Kennedy, was a Protestant."
Ann Coulter,Right,"Peru has had a Japanese president (Alberto Fujimori). Britain had a Jewish prime minister, all of whose grandparents were born in Italy (Benjamin Disraeli). No one calls these countries nations of immigrants. America has never had a president who wasn’t, at least in part, of British ancestry, but people still babble that we’re a nation of immigrants."
Ann Coulter,Right,"Diversity is a strength. It’s like the shrieking radios permanently attached to bright people’s ears in the Kurt Vonnegut story Harrison Bergeron, to prevent them from using their superior intelligence. Contrary to everything you’ve heard, never in recorded history has diversity been anything but a disaster."
Ann Coulter,Right,"Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell needs to get business lobbyists in a car and drive them around with a gun to their heads for an hour, explaining: We can give you regulatory reform, OSHA reform, tax relief, tort reform. But if we give you immigration, we won’t be in a position to give you anything else, ever again, and you’ll have to take your chances with Nancy Pelosi. The Chamber of Commerce has got to learn: You can’t have it all."
Ann Coulter,Right,"Then, Republicans should ask Democrats: Why is it so vitally important to keep bringing in new workers to compete with low-skilled Americans and drive down their wages?"
Ann Coulter,Right,"Time magazine tried to cover up the Founding Fathers’ crime of non-diversity by making them look less WASPy.7 A photo display of eleven descendants of the Founders included Yukiko Irwin, born and raised in Japan,8 and an African American probation officer, Elmer Roberts, allegedly descended from Thomas Jefferson’s nonexistent sexual relationship with slave Sally Hemings. Time wanted to make absolutely clear that the United States was not the product of a bunch of Protestant, Anglo-Saxon men, if that’s what you were thinking. Except, the problem is, it was. And the country remained overwhelmingly Anglo-Saxon and Protestant right up until Teddy Kennedy decided to change it."
Ann Coulter,Right,"Even if the press were dying to report on the Hmong gang-rape spree, the police won’t tell them about it. A year before the Hmong gang rape that reminded the Times of a rape in Glen Ridge, New Jersey, the police in St. Paul issued a warning about gang rapists using telephone chat lines to lure girls out of their homes. Although the warning was issued only in Hmong, St. Paul’s police department refused to confirm to the St. Paul Pioneer Press that the suspects were Hmong, finally coughing up only the information that they were Asian.20 And the gang rapes continue. The Star Tribune counted nearly one hundred Hmong males charged with rape or forced prostitution from 2000 to June 30, 2005. More than 80 percent of the victims were fifteen or younger. A quarter of their victims were not Hmong.21 The police say many more Hmong rapists have gone unpunished"
Ann Coulter,Right,INTERNATIONAL LAW WAS CREATED DURING THE BUSH ADMINISTRATION BECAUSE a group of Mexicans
Ann Coulter,Right,"EUROS SIDE WITH MEXICAN GANG RAPIST Mexico, President Bush’s dearest international ally, brought a lawsuit against the United States in the International Court of Justice on behalf of its native son, Jose Ernesto Medellin, arguing that Texas failed to inform him of his right to confer with the Mexican consulate. It probably didn’t occur to the police to ask Medellin if he was Mexican, with the media referring to the suspects exclusively as: five Houston teens, five youths, the youths, young men, members of ‘a social club,’ a bunch of guys, six young men, six teen-agers, and these guys23 (and, oddly, America’s hottest boy band). The World Court agreed with Mexico, confirming my suspicion that any organization with world in its title"
Ann Coulter,Right,"BUYING OFF THE ENVIRONMENTALISTS Where are the environmentalists? For fifty years, they’ve been carrying on about overpopulation; promoting family planning, birth control, abortion; and saying old people have a duty to die and get out of the way"
Ann Coulter,Right,"CAN WE TRUST ANYTHING THE NEW YORK TIMES SAYS ABOUT IMMIGRATION? In 2008, the world’s richest man, Carlos Slim Helu, saved the Times from bankruptcy. When that guy saves your company, you dance to his tune. So it’s worth mentioning that Slim’s fortune depends on tens of millions of Mexicans living in the United States, preferably illegally. That is, unless the Times is some bizarre exception to the normal pattern of corruption"
Ann Coulter,Right,"Look at Ireland with its Protestant and Catholic populations, Canada with its French and English populations, Israel with its Jewish and Palestinian populations. Or consider the warring factions in India, Sri Lanka, China, Iraq, Czechoslovakia (until it happily split up), the Balkans, and Chechnya. Also review the festering hotbeds of tribal warfare"
Ann Coulter,Right,"In the case of a blindingly false allegation of rape against Duke lacrosse players, reporters pursued details about the accused men like starved bloodhounds. We were told the men’s grades, their classes, their professors’ impressions of them, the value of their parents’ homes, their private e-mails, their every encounter with the police"
Ann Coulter,Right,"At a swearing-in ceremony for new immigrants in the summer of 2014, the Harvard-educated First Lady Michelle Obama said: It’s amazing that just a few feet from here where I’m standing are the signatures of the fifty-six Founders who put their names on a Declaration that changed the course of history. And like the fifty of you, none of them were born American"
Ann Coulter,Right,"Robert Putnam, Harvard professor and author of Bowling Alone, has spent years studying the effects of ethnic diversity on a community’s well-being. It turns out diversity is a train wreck. Contrary to his expectation"
Ann Coulter,Right,America would still be an unnamed continent full of migratory tribes chasing the rear end of a buffalo every time their stomachs growled.
Ann Coulter,Right,"Days after setting off the bomb, the duo murdered a young MIT police officer during their attempted escape, and two years earlier Tamerlan and another Muslim immigrant slit the throats of three Jewish men on the tenth anniversary of the 9/11 attack"
Ann Coulter,Right,"America has already taken in more than one-quarter of Mexico’s entire population, according to the Pew Research Center’s analysis of census data."
Ann Coulter,Right,"for most Americans, our most precious possession is citizenship in this amazing country. That endowment is being bartered away by our elites in exchange for votes, for profits, or for campaign dollars."
Ann Coulter,Right,only 40 percent of liberals told Pew Research they were proud to be American
Ann Coulter,Right,Only the Democratic Party could lyingly claim credit for the Civil Rights Act
Ann Coulter,Right,"In all, nearly 60 percent of immigrants"
Ann Coulter,Right,"With the amount of money an immigration moratorium would save U.S. taxpayers on court interpreters alone, we could build three border fences and revive NASA."
Ann Coulter,Right,"Jennifer’s father, Randy Ertman, summarized our feelings toward Medellin in his statement to the court when the last three defendants were sentenced to death: I hope you rot in hell. I honest to God mean that. I hope they rot in hell, sir. I hope to be there when you die, you sick pieces of (censored). Thank you, Your Honor, for allowing me to speak. I appreciate it, sir.15 That doesn’t move the story along; I just admired his eloquence."
Ann Coulter,Right,"The LA Times was practically lactating with cultural understanding about the Hmong’s canine murder, titling the article: Hmong’s Sacrifice of Puppy Reopens Cultural Wounds. It seems that Americans were creating cultural wounds by complaining about the Hmong clubbing Fido to death. How about the puppy’s wounds? Could we get an article on that? Hello, PETA? Stop hassling that kid for eating a hamburger"
Ann Coulter,Right,"After Minnesota experienced a rash of Hmong gang rapes, animal sacrifices, and one child murder, as well as a particularly shocking mass slaying of Minnesota hunters, a local talk radio host suggested that the Hmong either assimilate or hit the road. The Baltimore Sun somberly reported his hateful words, adding with sadness that no one had ever dared to blurt out [such sentiments] publicly."
Ann Coulter,Right,"THE ONLY THING THAT STANDS BETWEEN AMERICA AND OBLIVION IS A TOTAL immigration moratorium. There’s no possibility of quick fixes. The entire immigration bureaucracy has to be shut down. It’s evident that the government can’t be trusted to use three brain cells in admitting immigrants, so its discretion has to be completely revoked. No matter how clearly laws are written, government bureaucrats connive to confer citizenship on people that a majority of Americans would not want to let in as tourists, much less as our fellow citizens. Instead of trying to do the Sorcerer’s Apprentice thing, mopping the floor while the water is still pouring in, we need to stop the inflow, then take time to assimilate the immigrants already here. No other fix will work. Congress could just insist that immigrants pay taxes, learn English, not collect welfare, and have good moral character, except the problem is: It already has. All those laws were swept away by INS officials, judges, and Democratic administrations. Doing it again won’t produce a different result. We trusted the government, and it screwed up."
Ann Coulter,Right,"We can’t even expect our immigration officials not to make citizens of convicted felons.1 Tens of thousands of immigrants have been granted citizenship after being convicted of crimes in the United States. And, no, you can’t see their names or read about their crimes. A year before the 1996 presidential election, the Clinton White House worked feverishly to naturalize 1 million immigrants in time for Clinton’s reelection. Criminal background checks were jettisoned for 200,000 applicants, so that citizenship was granted to at least 70,000 people with FBI criminal records and 10,000 with felony records.2 Murderers, robbers, and rapists were all made our fellow Americans so the Democrats would have a million new voters by the 1996 election. In 2013 alone, the Obama administration released 36,007 convicted criminal aliens with about 88,000 convictions among them"
Ann Coulter,Right,"Piecing together state and federal reports, it appears that half the correctional population in California consists of illegal aliens. According to a state report, there were fewer than two hundred thousand inmates in the entire California prison population, including mental hospitals, in 2009.15 That year, 102,795 illegal aliens were incarcerated in California, costing the state more than $1 billion a year."
Ann Coulter,Right,THE VAST MAJORITY OF ALL LEGAL IMMIGRANTS
Ann Coulter,Right,"Among the fraudulent farmworker amnesties approved by the INS was one from Egyptian Mahmud Abouhalima,7 or"
Ann Coulter,Right,"Microsoft’s Bill Gates pleaded with Congress to give him more cheap foreign workers, claiming computer giants like Microsoft were just trying to bring in smart people, and that H-1B visa holders were so immensely qualified that their salaries started at $100,000 a year.28 Then it turned out that only 12.4 percent of Microsoft’s H-1B holders were paid as much as $100,000"
Ann Coulter,Right,"Except then a local high school journalism class decided to investigate the story. Not having attended Columbia Journalism School, the young scribes were unaware of the prohibition on committing journalism that reflects poorly on Third World immigrants. Thanks to the teenagers’ reporting, it was discovered that Reddy had become a multimillionaire by using H-1B visas to bring in slave labor from his native India. Dozens of Indian slaves were working in his buildings and at his restaurant. Apparently, some of those brainy high-tech workers America so desperately needs include busboys and janitors. And concubines. The pubescent girls Reddy brought in on H-1B visas were not his nieces: They were his concubines, purchased from their parents in India when they were twelve years old. The sixty-four-year-old Reddy flew the girls to America so he could have sex with them"
Ann Coulter,Right,"A good-for-America immigration policy would not accept people with no job skills. It would not accept immigrants’ elderly relatives, arriving in wheelchairs. It would not accept people accused of terrorism by their own countries. It would not accept pregnant women whose premature babies will cost taxpayers $50,000 a pop,1 before even embarking on a lifetime of government support. It would not accept Somalis who spent their adult lives in a Kenyan refugee camp and then showed up with five children in a Minnesota homeless shelter."
Ann Coulter,Right,McGovern’s revenge also represents the Democrats’ switch from a party of blue-collar workers to a party of urban elites
Ann Coulter,Right,"Immigration is how the Left decided to punish America. The anti-American crowd used to dash off to fight with Communist insurgencies in Third World jungles. But the fun of being self-righteous was sometimes cut short when they ended up in prison, like Lori Berenson, who was arrested for her activities with the Túpac Amaru Revolutionary Movement in Peru. Rather than hating America from abroad, today’s radicals can hate it right here at home by bringing the Third World to America! Google immigrant rights group files suit and you’ll get 20 million hits."
Ann Coulter,Right,"Everyone who supports our current immigration policies does so for his own reason:           Democrats for the votes;           Employers for the cheap labor;           Rich people for the nannies, maids, and gardeners;           Republicans for the campaign cash; and           Churches for the taxpayer money.31 You will notice that none of these reasons has anything to do with what’s good for the country."
Ann Coulter,Right,Flash to 2014: The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit upholds a California school’s ban on wearing American flag T-shirts so as not to upset Mexican immigrants celebrating Cinco de Mayo.35
Ann Coulter,Right,"Each month was given a crackpot name that was supposed to sound like a Greek or Latin word for seasonal attributes: Vendémiaire (harvest); Brumaire (mist); Frimaire (cold); Nivôse (snow); Pluviôse (rain); Ventôse (wind); Germinal (seeding); Floréal (flowering); Prairial (meadow); Messidor (summer harvest); Thermidor (heat); and Fructidor (fruit). (The new calendar also included an observance known as Kwanzaa, which to this day no one has ever been able to explain.) The British recast the new French months as Slippy, Nippy, Drippy; Freezy, Wheezy, Sneezy; Showery, Flowery, Bowery; Heaty, Wheaty, and Sweety. Napoleon mercifully abolished the French Revolutionary Calendar on January 1, 1806, twelve years after its creation. Only the strong arm of a military dictatorship could save the French from themselves. Even"
Ann Coulter,Right,"With a lock on the racist mob vote, Democratic politicians won elections and promptly resegregated the entire South with Jim Crow laws. In 1913, Progressive Democrat president Woodrow Wilson even instituted segregation in Washington, D.C., bringing Jim Crow to the federal workforce."
Ann Coulter,Right,This is why idiots like Bill Maher can make jokes like this (about the 2010 Republican sweep of Congress)
Ann Coulter,Right,It’s not just that your average liberal is more likely than a conservative to believe in laughable conspiracies
Ann Coulter,Right,"After a Chicago Democratic official, Richard Elrod, became paralyzed for life while fighting with a privileged looter during the Weathermen’s Days of Rage, Obama adviser Bernardine Dohrn led the Weathermen in a song sung to the tune of Bob Dylan’s Lay Lady, Lay: Lay, Elrod, Lay, Lay in the street for a while Stay, Elrod, stay Stay in your bed for a while You thought you could stop the Weatherman But up-front people put you on your can, Stay, Elrod, stay Stay in your iron lung, Play, Elrod, play Play with your toes for a while The"
Ann Coulter,Right,"The French Revolution was a revolt of the mob. It was the primogenitor of the horrors of the Bolshevik Revolution, Hitler’s Nazi Party, Mao’s Cultural Revolution, Pol Pot’s slaughter, and America’s periodic mob uprisings, from Shays’ Rebellion to today’s dirty waifs smashing Starbucks windows whenever bankers come to town. The French Revolution is the godless antithesis to the founding of America. And"
Ann Coulter,Right,"Evidence, if it be very plain, may be accepted by an educated person, but the convert will quickly be brought back by his unconscious self to his original conceptions. See him again after the lapse of a few days and he will put forward afresh his old argument in exactly the same terms. He is in reality under the influence of anterior ideas, that have become sentiments, and it is such ideas alone that influence the more recondite motives of our acts and utterances. It cannot be otherwise in the case of crowds.53"
Ann Coulter,Right,"To protect France against a beaten, half-starved, prematurely gray, tuberculosis-ridden, hemorrhaging widow, the full cavalry was called out and the streets and bridges throughout Paris were lined with cannon and bayonet-toting soldiers. Shackled to a rope held by the executioner and surrounded by armed guards, Antoinette rode to the guillotine on a rough cart used to transport hardened criminals. The drive was long and slow, the better to allow the mob to taunt her. Her face was placid, as she continued to pray quietly, showing neither fear nor defiance. On the scaffold, Marie Antoinette uttered her last words after accidentally stepping on the executioner’s foot: Monsieur, I beg your pardon.47"
Ann Coulter,Right,"The Demons was as prescient a warning regarding the disaster about to befall Russia as Edmund Burke’s Reflections on the Revolution in France was about that cataclysm. On the eve of the French Revolution, Burke cautioned that criminal means, once tolerated, are soon preferred. He said the moment one capitulates to the idea that mayhem and murder are justified for the greater good, the greater good is forgotten and mayhem and murder become ends in themselves, until only violence can satiate their insatiable appetites.50"
Ann Coulter,Right,"Great scientists and mathematicians were sent to the guillotine, too, on the grounds that the republic does not need scientists.52"
Ann Coulter,Right,"A woman proved to the court that she had been arrested in a case of mistaken identity, but was executed because since she’s already here we might as well execute her too.54"
Ann Coulter,Right,The Republican Party was founded for the express purpose of opposing slavery. After
Ann Coulter,Right,"Republican senator Charles Potter stood on crutches in the well of the Senate, having lost both legs in World War II, to denounce LBJ’s killer amendments, saying, I fought beside Negroes in the war. I saw them die for us. For the Senate of the United States to repay these valiant men … by a watered-down version of this legislation would make a mockery of the democratic concept we hold so dear.16 Even in its watered-down form"
Ann Coulter,Right,advocates unfettered scientific research and debate
Ann Coulter,Right,You also remember delegates and cops at the 2004 and 2008 Republican National Conventions being beaten and sprayed with foul substances by liberal protesters.54
Ann Coulter,Right,The only purpose of government
Ann Coulter,Right,"Strikingly, with every mob uprising we see the recrudescence of hatred toward religious morality"
Ann Coulter,Right,Politics for liberals is: Our mass against their mass. Except conservatives don’t have a mass; liberals do. (But enough about Michael Moore.) This
Ann Coulter,Right,"The key to understanding liberals is that It is the need not of liberty, but of servitude that is always predominant in the soul of crowds.16"
Ann Coulter,Right,"For being found guilty of a savage attack on a female jogger that only by the grace of God didn’t kill her, the defendants were each sentenced to five to ten years in prison, except Richardson, who got five to fifteen years. Former congressman Tom DeLay was sentenced to three years in prison for putting campaign money in the wrong account. All"
Ann Coulter,Right,"Liberals defend criminal mobs to boost their own power and prestige. In a world of courts and rules, everyone is equal before the law. That’s no good. Liberals need to be above the rest of society in order to impose the Rousseauian general will on us."
Ann Coulter,Right,reason Democrats support immigration is because of how
Ann Coulter,Right,"Today’s environmentalists turn a blind eye as 25 million people tramp through delicate ecosystems, set fire to national parks, kill livestock, dump tons of soiled diapers and Pepsi bottles in the desert, and deface ancient Native American sites. Political correctness"
Ann Coulter,Right,I’m beginning to suspect the wall is popular. Although
Ann Coulter,Right,Barry Soetoro’s declaration of martial law stunned the nation. His reason
Ann Coulter,Right,EARLIER IMMIGRANTS WERE CHAMPS AT ASSIMILATION
Ann Coulter,Right,"the Times ran an article titled The Jihadist Next Door. The article noted with alarm that [i]n the last year, at least two dozen men in the United States have been charged with terrorism-related offenses, leaving intelligence operatives scurrying for answers.55 The Americans who left government officials scurrying for answers, were:           Najibullah Zazi, Afghan           Daood Sayed Gilani, Pakistani           Umer Farooq, Pakistani           Waqar Khan, Pakistani           Ramy Zamzam, Egyptian           Ahmed Abdullah Minni, Eritrean           Aman Hassan Yemer, Ethiopian It makes no sense"
Ann Coulter,Right,The New York State Department of Corrections has collected information about the top ten nationalities in its prisons for years
Ann Coulter,Right,lowered
Ann Coulter,Right,healthcare
Ann Coulter,Right,"In 2008, the Obama yard sign/bumper sticker became a status symbol accessory like a Prius, solar panels on your house, or an adopted Malawian baby."
Ann Coulter,Right,I think everyone would recognize that we were in the middle of a fascist uprising.
Ann Coulter,Right,Trump-era rules: violence is speech and speech is violence.
Ann Coulter,Right,"In addition to honorable, it is apparently part of Mueller’s contract with the media that he must always be described as a lifelong Republican."
Ann Coulter,Right,"If the Russians were trying to swing the election to Trump, their message was a little confused. They sponsored groups supporting Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio, Jill Stein, Black Lives Matter, Muslims, Christians, and Heart of Texas, among others. Some were even supportive of Hillary. Again, this is according to Mueller’s own indictment. Is he holding the good stuff back?"
Ann Coulter,Right,She joined a Communist youth group
Ann Coulter,Right,"To go from Obama to the crudest kind of parvenu, bragging about his wealth and IQ, with gold-plated everything, was too much. It would be like having Fred Astaire as your president and then getting Rodney Dangerfield."
Ann Coulter,Right,"For the Resistance, the only organizing principle is: Which position will be worse for Trump? Is Russia a colorful country with a noble history of giving socialism a try"
Ann Coulter,Right,"necessary to discuss the phenomenon. Quoting a California nurse who told the Times she had delivered hundreds of anchor babies, the New York Times quickly added that she was using a derisive term to describe children whose parents did not hold citizenship."
Ann Coulter,Right,"As is evident from the previous 216 pages, for any progress to be made in this country, the media has to be destroyed. A vital part of immigration reform, health care reform, federal court reform"
Ann Coulter,Right,"Asking NeverTrumpers about the Trump administration is like interviewing Neville Chamberlain on the D-Day Invasion: Katy Tur: Mr. Chamberlain, why a second world war at all? Chamberlain: Well, that’s precisely the point! This is a failure of diplomacy. As I said when I returned from Munich . . ."
Pamela Geller,Right,"Universities have disinvited Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Nonie Darwish, Ann Coulter, Yiannopoulos, and legions of conservative thinkers and voices in defense of freedom, but a pro-sharia and anti-Israel activist they will defend to the death."
Pamela Geller,Right,"Everything the FBI earnestly claims about the black ops against Trump was true in the case of King: Russia actually was inserting moles into a great movement in order to sow discord and undermine our democracy. In King’s day, Russia was a totalitarian regime bent on world domination, and the spies weren’t imaginary. A powerful populist leader had come under Soviet control. But, curiously, the FBI’s surveillance of King is not enthusiastically defended by the left. To the contrary, Garrow says the authorization of wiretaps on King is widely viewed as one of the most ignominious acts in modern American history. He calls the King wiretaps notorious, leaving stains on the reputations of everyone involved."
Milo Yiannopoulos,Right,"Like much of the identitarian Left, feminists want to replace old etiquette rules with a new system of politically-driven language policing, controlled by them and predicated on nebulous hurt feelings and speculative harm. Having long overturned the hectoring, socially-conservative establishment, they now want to assume its place."
Milo Yiannopoulos,Right,"Virtue signaling can best be explained as the devotion of a person’s entire existence to explaining how wonderful they (and their friends) are, and how terribly wrong everyone else is. The point of virtue signaling is to demonstrate superiority, for the purpose of consolidating power, prestige and financial reward. The culture of social justice is set up to reward the loudest and best complainers and to punish anyone that stands against them."
Milo Yiannopoulos,Right,"I want people to be allowed to make jokes about, and discuss, anything they want. I don’t think people should be ostracized for doing so."
Milo Yiannopoulos,Right,aggressive public displays of virtue are where the morally deplorable hide.
Milo Yiannopoulos,Right,"I’d prefer a world with no identity politics. I’d prefer we judged people according to reason, logic and evidence instead of barmy left-wing theories about oppression."
Milo Yiannopoulos,Right,"Trolling has many elements. It’s often about telling truths that others don’t want to hear. It’s about tricking, pranking, and generally riling up your targets. And it’s about creating a hilarious, entertaining public spectacle. The best part is, most left-wingers refuse to accept that they’re being trolled. Is"
Milo Yiannopoulos,Right,"...I’m sometimes called a reactionary. People say I want to go back to the 50s. And they’re right – but it’s the 650s BC I want to return to, because Sparta had the right idea about male love. You can spend all day wrestling and wanking each other off if you want to, chaps, but you still have to get married, have kids and go off to fight wars."
Milo Yiannopoulos,Right,"the Wall Street Journal brilliantly quoted President Eisenhower: Don’t join the book burners. Don’t think you are going to conceal thoughts by concealing the fact that they ever existed. Even if they think ideas that are contrary to ours, their right to say them, their right to record them, and their right to have them at places where they are accessible to others is unquestioned, or it isn’t American.160"
Milo Yiannopoulos,Right,"In politics, victory goes to those with cunning, mettle and deviousness, not those who have facts and principles on their side."
Milo Yiannopoulos,Right,Jane Austen did not become one of the most renowned authors in the English language by having her characters dye their armpit hair and join a lesbian commune.
Milo Yiannopoulos,Right,"The pretext needed to ban me turned out to be the all-female reboot of Ghostbusters, a remarkably bad film that flopped at the box office and contributed to Sony’s decision to take a near $1 billion write-down on its movie business."
Milo Yiannopoulos,Right,"The Schola, unlike the rest of the city, was no shining tower of crystal. It was, instead, a low, squat building, made of rock the exact color of a muddy sheep. Anders had seen more than a few muddy sheep in his life, and supposed that the Schola found them a creature worthy of emulation. They were certainly useful creatures, although Anders thought they were perhaps more appealing to the eye when they were clean"
Milo Yiannopoulos,Right,I studied the Quran a great deal. I came away from that study with the conviction there have been few religions in the world as deadly to men as that of Muhammad.
Milo Yiannopoulos,Right,"Islam is not like other religions. It’s more inherently prescriptive and it’s much more political. That’s why I, a free speech fundamentalist, still support banning the burka and restricting Islamic immigration. Walter"
Milo Yiannopoulos,Right,"When colleges start to take intellectual and political diversity as seriously as they take the more superficial forms of diversity,"
Milo Yiannopoulos,Right,"Bill Maher, Sam Harris, Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens have all been frustrated by this question: Why is the Left refusing to lift a finger against the most radical, dangerous, socially conservative and oppressive religion on earth? Author"
Milo Yiannopoulos,Right,"To the typical actor, threatening to leave the United States over the election was just another set of lines to read."
Milo Yiannopoulos,Right,"Politics isn’t won by commanding the facts, but by connecting with people’s experiences."
Milo Yiannopoulos,Right,"It’s weird how obsessed the media is with calling everyone racist, isn’t it? It’s almost like they want everyone to be racist or something, for some reason."
Milo Yiannopoulos,Right,"The new brand of political correctness, popular on college campuses and social media, is the idea that no speech should exist that directly challenges politically correct ideas."
Milo Yiannopoulos,Right,"Charlie Hebdo is a rare example of a leftist newspaper that understood radical Islam to be akin to the radical religious Right. Actually, that’s too mild, it’s really closer to the radical medieval religious Right. I know members of the radical Christian Right in the United States, and they are scary. But nowhere near as scary as Islamic terrorists. They’re the Westboro Baptist Church with machetes."
Milo Yiannopoulos,Right,There’s nothing contradictory about appreciating Wagner’s Der Ring des Nibelungen and also getting a kick out of calling Amy Schumer a boring cunt.
Milo Yiannopoulos,Right,Well-educated people are generally unshockable.
Milo Yiannopoulos,Right,"Unwilling to be as blatant in their pro-Clinton bias as Huffington Post, VICE instead opted to fire Tracey after he pointed out that Lena Dunham could not have participated in the close Democratic primary in New York because she was not registered with the party."
Milo Yiannopoulos,Right,"We’re supposed to pretend it’s totally believable that Rey could pilot the Millenium Falcon with greater skill than Han Solo. Never mind the fact that she learns the Force in like, half a day."
Milo Yiannopoulos,Right,"Facebook had be caught in a lie: its ‘Trending News’ feature, ostensibly designed to provide users with a list of the most popular topics being discussed on the platform that day, was being manipulated."
Milo Yiannopoulos,Right,"If I were to put the current state of the science fiction genre into SF terms, it would be a space ship under attack. I won’t say which ship I’m thinking of, because this introduction would quickly dissolve into insufferable megafans arguing about whether or not the Enterprise could take down an Imperial Star Destroyer (no way in hell)."
Milo Yiannopoulos,Right,Donald Trump appeals to people who have had it up to their eyeballs with being told what they can and cannot say.
Milo Yiannopoulos,Right,"Progressive identity politics ignores basic human realities. If you live authentically as yourself there will be repercussions. Not everyone will like you. Some people may even want you dead. As Friedrich Nietzsche said, Man is the cruelest animal. This is a fact of life and it is not changed by all the abuse and harassment policies in all of Silicon Valley. Progressives will never understand this. Identity"
Milo Yiannopoulos,Right,"Identity politics is universally attractive because it enables failures and weaknesses to be spun as the products of oppression and historical injustice. Personal responsibility is removed from the equation. Primary victims of identity politics in reality are the designated oppressor class, for whom it can be humiliating and deeply unfair. The"
Milo Yiannopoulos,Right,"We should give thanks to NPR, CNN and the Southern Poverty Law Center for identifying the real causes of racial tension in America. It isn’t terrible schools, or black fatherlessness, or constant race-baiting from hucksters like Al Sharpton. No. It’s a cartoon frog. If"
Milo Yiannopoulos,Right,"Intersectionalists are the ones responsible for dreaming up new, ever more bizarre categories of oppression."
Milo Yiannopoulos,Right,"Instead of asking themselves why they lost people’s trust, the media instead asked why the people had lost trust in them. A subtle, but important difference. The"
Milo Yiannopoulos,Right,"If I could tell my colleagues in the media four things, they would be: 1.Everyone hates you. 2.No one is afraid of you. 3.No one believes what you say. 4.Nobody owes you anything. If every journalist in America realized those four things, their behavior would transform overnight, immeasurably for the better, and the US might finally get the fourth estate it deserves."
Milo Yiannopoulos,Right,"This is the subject of books like Therapy Culture by Frank Furedi and One Nation Under Therapy by Christina Hoff Sommers, which charts the rising trend to treat feelings and emotions as things to be protected rather than challenged."
Milo Yiannopoulos,Right,"Mitt Romney’s loss in 2012 could easily have been avoided by nominating a candidate that conjured up a compelling vision of America, rather than a compelling vision of your high school principal."
Milo Yiannopoulos,Right,"Just as leftist’s old base abandoned them to become conservative-voting Reagan Democrats in the U.S. and Essex Men in the U.K., so too will a new wave of dissident women and minorities break apart their coalition. The"
Milo Yiannopoulos,Right,"King claims to be half-black, born to a black father and white mother. However, a closer examination of King’s family tree by blogger Vicki Pate revealed a shocking truth in King’s birth certificate: it identified Jeffrey Wayne King, a white man, as Shaun King’s father. It"
Milo Yiannopoulos,Right,proof that free speech and the truth wrapped in a good joke will always be more persuasive and more powerful than identity politics. I
Milo Yiannopoulos,Right,"Many of the basic luxuries we take for granted today like two-day weekends, eight-hour workdays, and basic occupational health and safety, were won by leftist worker’s rights movements."
Milo Yiannopoulos,Right,"Puritanism, wrote H.L. Mencken, whose lifetime spanned the first progressive era, is the haunting fear that someone, somewhere, might be happy. Who"
Milo Yiannopoulos,Right,"Morally authoritarian movements are attractive to ugly, miserable, talentless people."
Milo Yiannopoulos,Right,"Between 1980 and 2008, blacks made up 52.5% of homicide offenders, despite making up just 12.2% of the population. In the same survey, it was found that 93% of black homicide victims were killed by other black people.108 Black Lives Matter focuses exclusively on deaths caused by the police, yet these are far eclipsed by the black deaths caused by other black people. In"
Milo Yiannopoulos,Right,"You now know, for instance, that black gang violence eclipses police violence as a threat to black lives. You will now know that the fabled rape culture on college campuses doesn’t exist, and the gender pay gap is a myth. You will know that being fat isn’t healthy, although quite frankly, I think most of you are smart enough to have figured that last one out on your own."
Milo Yiannopoulos,Right,"I don’t agree that you, when you become students at colleges, have to be coddled and protected from different points of view, he said. Anybody who comes to speak to you and you disagree with, you should have an argument with ‘em. But you shouldn’t silence them by saying, ‘You can’t come because I’m too sensitive to hear what you have to say.’ That’s not the way we learn either. The man in question was Barack Obama, then still president of the United States. It"
Milo Yiannopoulos,Right,Chicago told its 2016 intake of students point-blank not to expect any trigger warnings or safe spaces at their educational establishment. Fostering a free exchange of ideas reinforces a related University priority
Milo Yiannopoulos,Right,"Its lack of enrollments forced it to shutter two residence halls, which were ironically called Respect and Excellence.243 The lesson? Stand up to political bullies, or lose Respect and Excellence. There"
Milo Yiannopoulos,Right,"what happens when you tell everyone that their worth, their ability, their right to speak on certain subjects and"
Milo Yiannopoulos,Right,"To the victims of homophobia, patriarchy, street harassment and intolerance: don’t worry, we’ll put a lid on Muslim immigration. There"
Milo Yiannopoulos,Right,"A Gallup poll of Muslims in the UK found that not a single Muslim in the 1,001 people polled thought that homosexuality was morally acceptable. The same poll found that 35% of French Muslims and 19% of German Muslims thought homosexuals were morally acceptable. These polls were taken before Europe’s importation of hordes of young Muslim rapefugees. As"
Milo Yiannopoulos,Right,52% believe homosexuality should be illegal 23% would like to see Sharia law in England 39% believe a woman should always obey her husband 31% consider it acceptable for a man to have multiple wives. When
Milo Yiannopoulos,Right,"People love getting into spats on the internet. Some people spend their whole lives doing it. The only people who object to ridicule and criticism are touchy, fragile celebrities and journalists with brittle egos who can’t cope with readers pointing out how biased and stupid they are."
Milo Yiannopoulos,Right,"we are living in an era when much of the feminism on display to the public is petty, mean-spirited, obsessed with trivialities, man-hating and implacably opposed to free expression."
Milo Yiannopoulos,Right,"Welcome to the era of Minority Wars. If you’re gay, they’ll ask what your skin color is. If you’re black, they’ll ask if you’re a woman. If you’re a woman, they’ll ask you to stop worrying about Muslim rapists, you racist. If you happen to fit into every conceivable minority group, heaven help you if your opinions do not precisely follow political orthodoxy. Donald"
Milo Yiannopoulos,Right,There were 1.6 billion Muslims in the world as of 2010
Milo Yiannopoulos,Right,"Instead of drawing attention to problems with the Islamic way of life, our leaders seek to present the increasing violence of the religion’s followers as the actions of a tiny minority who will soon be defeated. But they won’t be defeated."
Milo Yiannopoulos,Right,"Mainstream society finds it impossible to reconcile this language with the reality that most gamers are actually left-wing, not to mention completely comfortable with diverse, tolerant societies. To leftists, rejecting their language codes is the same as being racist, sexist, or homophobic. Gamers know it isn’t. And that made them the perfect enemies for an increasingly progressive movement hell-bent on shaming ordinary people for violations of their dreary, stultifying language codes. S"
Milo Yiannopoulos,Right,The aim of totalitarian education has never been to instill convictions but to destroy the capacity to form any.
Milo Yiannopoulos,Right,Libertarians and conservatives are the new counter-culture. Liberals
Milo Yiannopoulos,Right,"There is nothing else which better exposes the modern Left’s rank hypocrisy, their disregard for the facts, and their hatred for the West and all it stands for than their attitude to Islam. Every noble principle the Left claims to uphold, from rights for women to gay liberation, even diversity itself, dies on the altar of its sycophantic defense of Islam. Karl"
Milo Yiannopoulos,Right,"As most of the civilized world adopted the slogan Je Suis Charlie, The New Yorker published an essay entitled, Unmournable Bodies, attacking Charlie Hebdo for racist and Islamophobic provocations.169 Before the month was out, a number of British student unions, including the University of Manchester, banned Charlie Hebdo under their safe space policies, arguing that it made Muslim students uncomfortable.170 It made Muslim students uncomfortable? Well, I’m not sure that’s quite in the same league as making non-Muslim cartoonists dead. That, in a nutshell, is the modern Left for you. There"
Milo Yiannopoulos,Right,"I’m a fire-starter and troublemaker who started out as an obscure British tech blogger and rose to infamy as one of America’s most in demand speakers on college campuses. The appearance of my expensive shoes and frosted tips and the sound of my laughter ringing across university quads has forced professors, journalists, directors, activists and musicians to realize something no liberal in America has understood for a long time: emotions do not trump facts."
Milo Yiannopoulos,Right,"I am: a critical voice in the pushback against political correctness, and a free-speech fundamentalist defending the public’s right to express themselves however they please. Young conservatives and libertarians respond to me because I say the things they wish they could."
Milo Yiannopoulos,Right,Researchers can find no evidence that games make anyone violent or sexist.201 The studies that leftists and moral crusaders frequently cite are those that show a link between violent video games and aggression
Milo Yiannopoulos,Right,"Be twice as funny as you are outrageous, because no one can resist the truth wrapped in a good joke."
Milo Yiannopoulos,Right,Journalists regard him as a heroic left-winger who says all the right things about Muslims and immigrants.
Milo Yiannopoulos,Right,"There is now a consensus that Pope Francis messed up, and that he must answer the questions posed by Viganò.24 Did he know about the allegations swirling around McCarrick and rehabilitate him anyway?"
Milo Yiannopoulos,Right,There is a type of churchman that Francis seems to favor: the morally compromised and the doctrinally suspect.
Milo Yiannopoulos,Right,"Sadiq Khan, the Mayor of London, had conservatives frothing at the mouth when he suggested that a few acts of terrorism now and again were basically part and parcel of living in a big cosmopolitan city. I don’t think he meant to make excuses for the terrorists’ actions"
Milo Yiannopoulos,Right,"Much of the Catholic hierarchy has pandered to Islam. With the exception of Benedict XVI, popes have, for generations, appealed to Muslims for no discernible reason, while Muslims persecute and murder Christians all over the Middle East. They murder gays, too, of course"
Milo Yiannopoulos,Right,"if you were on the way home late at night and you heard footsteps behind you, would you be more or less concerned if you knew they belonged to someone coming from Bible Study? You don’t have to be a Catholic, or even a Christian, to see that Judeo-Christian societies are fairer, happier, healthier, and more tolerant than others. If you’re disabled, female, black, gay, or any other disadvantaged group you care to mention, there’s nowhere better to be than in a rich Western liberal democracy whose society is underpinned by Judeo-Christian principles. Yet the progressive Left in America seems determined to tear down everything that has made the West a nice place to live for people who aren’t rich straight white males."
Milo Yiannopoulos,Right,The path to scandal is indulgence. The path through scandal is repentance. And the path to renewal is obedience. Distraught Christians shouldn’t look to the world for inspiration. It has nothing to offer but the very misery we presently endure.
Milo Yiannopoulos,Right,"The Guardian’s Paul Vallely has given a decent account of how Cardinal George Pell, appointed by Francis, began a review of the bank’s operations. Pell had successfully overhauled the Church’s finances in Sydney and Melbourne. The Australian son of a former heavyweight boxer, Pell is a political and doctrinal conservative who speaks aggressively and does not believe in man-made climate change. He is a cult hero among conservative Catholics. You can imagine what the Lavender Mafia think of him. Vallely notes grudgingly that, For all his conservatism, Pell had for years been a vocal critic of the Roman Catholic bureaucracy and its corruption. Pell moved quickly, and made enemies. A straight dealer to the point of unbearable bluntness, especially in the delicately perfumed and gold-embroidered world of the Holy See, Pell probably didn’t anticipate getting tripped up by dirty tactics: in this case, stories leaked to the media about"
Vox Day,Right,"And finally, regarding Progress, you must ask yourself the question: Progress towards what? Since the true SJW answer is towards more socialism, more speech policing, more thought control, and more SJW control of society and its institutions, then the rational response must always be no, hell no, not at any price!"
Vox Day,Right,"Never forget that the word that best describes reliable science is not consensus, but engineering."
Vox Day,Right,"It is perhaps helpful to remember that war is a form of politics. Or, to put it as one of the great strategists of history, Carl von Clausewitz, phrased it, War is merely the continuation of politics by other means. This is not a metaphor, for as Clausewitz also wrote, War therefore is an act of violence to compel our opponent to fulfill our will. Cultural war of the sort in which the SJWs are engaged is an act of social pressure to compel their opponents to fulfill their will. So, while the means are different, the same strategies, and in some cases, even the same tactics, will apply to both war and cultural war alike."
Vox Day,Right,"even if you're speaking dialectic, the rhetoric-speaker hears it as rhetoric. Or, not infrequently, as complete gibberish."
Vox Day,Right,"The most important thing to accept here is the complete impossibility of compromise or even meaningful communication with your attackers. SJWs do not engage in rational debate because they are not rational, and they do not engage in honest discourse because they do not believe in objective truth. They do not compromise because the pure spirit of enlightened progressive social justice dare not sully itself with the evil of the outdated Endarkenment. They are the emotion-driven rhetoric-speakers of whom Aristotle wrote: Before some audiences not even the possession of the exactest knowledge will make it easy for what we say to produce conviction. For argument based on knowledge implies instruction, and there are people whom one cannot instruct."
Vox Day,Right,"It's not hard. No one but an SJW has ever used more than one of the following words in a sentence: problematic, offensive, inclusive, triggered trigger warning, privilege, platforming, silencing, equitable, welcoming, safe space, code of conduct, cisgender, diversity, vibrant. No one but an SJW makes quasi-religious fetishes of Equality, Diversity, Tolerance, and Progress."
Vox Day,Right,"How can you identify a moderate? He is the man who only shoots at his own side and never at the enemy. Moderates merit friendly civility, but no respect. They are often useful, if irritating allies, but do not permit them any input into strategy and tactics or decision-making. And do not accept them as leaders except of their own moderate faction. They are considerably worse than useless in that regard because they are constantly trying to find a middle ground that quite often does not exist."
Vox Day,Right,"There are very few SJWs who would be willing to give up indoor plumbing or their iPhones for their ideals. The fact that they cannot see the contradiction now does not mean they will always be unable to do so, particularly given the way in which their corrupted institutions are falling into rapid decline, one after the other, and being replaced by radical new institutions. The public schools can no longer educate, so people are turning to homeschooling. The universities can no longer provide liberal arts educations, so people are becoming technology-assisted autodidacts. The banks no longer loan, the state and local governments no longer provide basic public services, the military does not defend the borders, the newspapers no longer provide news, the television networks no longer entertain, and the corporations are increasingly unable to provide employment."
Vox Day,Right,The days of sitting on the fence and not opposing social justice warrior censorship because you don't agree with everything that (insert controversial figure) says are gone. It's shit or bust. It's free speech or no speech and it's time to pick a side.
Vox Day,Right,"But even in Mill's very early formulation, both the totalitarian nature of social justice as well as its orientation towards entryism were apparent. Note that Mill declares that the efforts of the entire virtuous citizenry should be made to converge to that goal and that all institutions should be directed toward it as well."
Vox Day,Right,"If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it. The lie can be maintained only for such time as the State can shield the people from the political, economic and/or military consequences of the lie. It thus becomes vitally important for the State to use all of its powers to repress dissent, for the truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension, the truth is the greatest enemy of the State."
Vox Day,Right,Submit or be destroyed. That's the real message underlying the superficial one. Conform to their demands or be cast out.
Vox Day,Right,"To the left, civil rights are like a subway: When you reach your stop, you get off. Meanwhile, I’ll just repeat what I said yesterday: For the New Yorker’s target audience, the equivalence of free speech advocates to gun nuts is a clear signal of where they’re supposed to fall on the argument. But all I can say is that if the speech nuts do as well as the gun nuts have done over the past couple of decades, we’ll be in pretty good shape. And the lesson from the gun nuts is: Don’t compromise, don’t admit that there’s such a thing as a reasonable restriction, don’t back down, and keep pointing out that your opponents are liars and hypocrites. And punish the hell out of politicians who vote with the other side."
Vox Day,Right,"The Social Justice Warrior is best regarded as a sort of unpaid amateur propagandist. SJWs are clearly not insane, as their observable discomfort with the more troubling and problematic aspects of reality suffices to demonstrate that they are able to distinguish between that which is real and that which is not. They are also not sociopathic because they are herd animals who are often willing to lie in the perceived interest of the herd-defined narrative, not only in their own immediate interest. Also unlike sociopaths, they are seldom inclined to deny previous statements when caught out but instead tend to respond by moving the goalposts, abruptly falling silent, or otherwise ending the conversation."
Vox Day,Right,"I believe that 'social justice' will ultimately be recognized as a will-o'-the-wisp which has lured men to abandon many of the values which in the past have inspired the development of civilization- an attempt to satisfy a craving inherited from the traditions of the small group but which is meaningless in the Great Society of free men. Unfortunately, this vague desire which has become one of the strongest bonds spurring people of good will to action, not only is bound to be disappointed. This would be sad enough. But, like most attempts to pursue an unattainable goal, the striving for it will also produce highly undesirable consequences, and in particular lead to the destruction of the indispensable environment in which the traditional moral values alone can flourish, namely personal freedom."
Vox Day,Right,"Consider the four primary ideals of social justice: Equality, Diversity, Tolerance, and Progress. They are not even remotely complementary, as Equality and Diversity are mutually exclusive as well as standing directly in the way of Progress."
Vox Day,Right,"But although this 8-stage attack sequence applies to most SJW attacks, the real problem with them doesn't have anything to do with those of us who are sufficiently well known to draw hostile media attention. The real problem is how many people suffer the malicious attention of the thought police without anyone knowing about it at all. We don't know how many Americans lose their jobs every year due to SJW attacks, but we do know that there are an average of 25,000 criminal charges being laid every year in Britain for speech offences and that over 12,000 of those judicial proceedings result in convictions. The SJWs are an army of self-appointed militants who see themselves as the guardians of correct thinking, and their culture of thuggish speech-policing is on the verge of taking over society, if it has not already. Fortunately for both free speech and society, after 20 years of rampaging freely from one victory to the next, the SJWs have finally met with an implacable and ruthless enemy against whom their social pressure is impotent and their media dominance has proven meaningless."
Vox Day,Right,"Social justice does not belong to the category of error but to that of nonsense, like the term 'a moral stone'."
Vox Day,Right,"They're not just looking to be offended. They are hunting for opportunities to vilify people. These opportunistic attacks are impossible to anticipate because in many cases the target doesn't even know the SJW who complained to Human Resources or contacted the media, and even in the case of a public accusation on Twitter or a blog, he probably won't be aware of the attack until it has already blown up on social media because he doesn't follow his accuser. Sir Tim Hunt had probably made similar jokes about female scientists in laboratories before, but he had not made them in front of a status-seeking SJW like Connie St. Louis. Sensing an opportunity to make a name for herself by vilifying a Nobel Prize winner, she struck, and in doing so promptly put herself in front of the charge."
Vox Day,Right,"Ken MacLeod, a Scottish science fiction author, describes the Singularity as the Rapture for nerds and in the same way Christians are divided into preterist, premillennialist, and postmillennialist camps regarding the timing of the Parousia,39 Apocalyptic Techno-Heretics can be divided into three sects, renunciationist, apotheosan, and posthumanist. Whereas renunciationists foresee a dark future wherein humanity is enslaved or even eliminated by its machine masters and await the Singularity with the same sort of resignation that Christians who don’t buy into Rapture doctrine anticipate the Tribulation and the Antichrist, apotheosans anticipate a happy and peaceful amalgamation into a glorious, godlike hive mind of the sort envisioned by Isaac Asimov in his Foundation novels. Posthumanists, meanwhile, envision a detente between Man and Machine, wherein artificial intelligence will be wedded to intelligence amplification and other forms of technobiological modification to transform humanity and allow it to survive and perhaps even thrive in the Posthuman Era .40 Although it is rooted entirely in science and technology,41 there are some undeniable religious parallels between the more optimistic visions of the Singularity and conventional religious faith. Not only is there a strong orthogenetic element inherent in the concept itself, but the transhuman dream of achieving immortality through uploading one’s consciousness into machine storage and interacting with the world through electronic avatars sounds suspiciously like shedding one’s physical body in order to walk the streets of gold with a halo and a harp. Furthermore, the predictions of when this watershed event is expected to occur rather remind one of Sir Isaac Newton’s tireless attempts to determine the precise date of the Eschaton, which he finally concluded would take place sometime after 2065, only thirty years after Kurzweil expects the Singularity. So, if they’re both correct, at least Mankind can console itself that the Machine Age will be a short one."
Vox Day,Right,"But before proceeding, it is intriguing to at least consider the possibility that it is not the threat to science as process that so offends scientists, but rather the potential threat to science as profession that"
Vox Day,Right,"SJWs don't like to be seen as the vicious attack dogs they are because that flies in the face of their determination to present themselves as victims holding the moral high ground. This presents somewhat of a challenge for them, of course, since it is difficult to be proactive about your thought-policing if you need to stand around waiting for someone to victimize you first. SJWs have solved this problem by adopting three standard tactics: self-appointed public defense, virtual victimhood, and creative offense-taking."
Vox Day,Right,"Game devs actually owe a tremendous debt to GamerGate, in my humble opinion. If GamerGate had not risen up, our creative freedom would be severely limited now. It's true. Gamers are the only ones who stopped SJWs and their crazy culture assault. Gamers conquer Dragons and fight Gods for a hobby."
Vox Day,Right,"as van Creveld noted, there are few things that demoralize a successful enemy more than the evidence that his hard-won victory has accomplished nothing. Although it may sound counterintuitive, there are few things that demoralize an organization more than meeting with futile success after futile success."
Vox Day,Right,"While it might be satisfying to imagine the face of the SJW of your acquaintance when he learns what his ideal society actually looks like, the fact that you would have to live in that post-apocalyptic environment too should be enough to motivate you to deny yourself the potential pleasure."
Vox Day,Right,SJWs care so much about the institutions they control that they will destroy them rather than relinquish control over them.
Vox Day,Right,this conception of social justice leads inexorably and invariably towards full-fledged socialism. It
Vox Day,Right,Strategic Principle #5: Build strategic alliances You
Vox Day,Right,Strategic Principle #6: Select your targets and stick to them. Perhaps
Vox Day,Right,Strategic Principle #7: Keep the moderates in check. Moderates
Vox Day,Right,Strategic Principle #1: Know the SJW and Know Yourself It
Vox Day,Right,Strategic Principle #2: Secure Your Base The
Vox Day,Right,Strategic Principle #3: Focus primarily on morale. Two
Vox Day,Right,"Strategic Principle #4: Research, dig, and document. Remember"
Vox Day,Right,Remember the First Law: SJWs always lie!
Vox Day,Right,Strategy 8: Punch back twice as hard. This
Vox Day,Right,"The perfect Queen of the SJWs – and she would be a queen, never a king – would be a mixed-race lesbian Swedish immigrant who was abused as a child by a conservative white Republican politician and kept as a sex slave by neo-Nazis with Confederate-flag tattoos prior to writing a bestselling novel about a fictionalized version of her terrible experiences, appearing on Oprah, and starring on a science fiction TV show popular with white nerds. The"
Vox Day,Right,"Emanuel Celler, one of the named co-sponsors of the bill, was a lifelong left-wing internationalist and enemy of traditional American positions ranging from isolationism to gun rights. A congressman since 1923 and a vocal opponent of the 1924 law, he saw victory and vindication in the new bill."
Vox Day,Right,"Out of deference to the critics, I want to comment on … what the bill will not do. First, our cities will not be flooded with a million immigrants annually. Under the proposed bill, the present level of immigration remains substantially the same … Secondly, the ethnic mix of this country will not be upset … Contrary to the charges in some quarters, S.500 will not inundate America with immigrants from any one country or area, or the most populated and economically deprived nations of Africa and Asia."
Vox Day,Right,"This bill is not designed to increase or accelerate the number of newcomers permitted to come to America. This bill would retain all the present security and health safeguards of the present law. The overall effect of this bill on employment would, first of all, be negligible, and second, that such effect as might be felt would not be harmful, but beneficial. The actual net increase in total immigration under this bill would be about 60,000. Those immigrants who seek employment are estimated at a maximum of 24,000. Our present labor force, however, is 77 million. Statistically or practically, we are talking about an infinitesimal amount."
Vox Day,Right,"…while the national origins rule will be eliminated in establishing quotas for foreign countries, this does not mean that the bill would permit a flood tide of new immigrants into this country. As a matter of fact, the total number of potential immigrants would not be changed very much."
Vox Day,Right,"Only Senator Sam Ervin of North Carolina, a Democrat not part of the conservative movement, had the courage to argue against the bill at length, and on unashamed nationalist and historical grounds: Mr. Secretary . . . do you know of any people in the world that have contributed more to making America than those particular groups? . . . In other words, you take the English-speaking people, they gave us our language, they gave us our common law, they gave us a large part of our political philosophy. . . . The reason I say this bill is discriminatory against those people is because it puts them on exactly the same plane as the people of Ethiopia are put, where the people of Ethiopia have the same right to come to the United States under this bill as the people from England, the people of France, the people of Germany, the people of Holland, and I don’t think . . . I don’t know of any contributions that Ethiopia has made to the making of America. In"
Vox Day,Right,"In reply to claims that the old laws were discriminatory, but the new law would not be, he elaborated: I do not think you could draft an immigration bill in which you do not discriminate. I think discrimination is ordinarily the exercise of intelligence to make conscious choices. . . . we always discriminate, only the basis of it is different, each of us think[s] our own way is wise and right. . . . I think there is a rational basis and a reasonable basis to give a preference to Holland over Afghanistan For"
Vox Day,Right,This bill we sign today is not a revolutionary bill. It does not affect the lives of millions. It will not restructure the shape of our daily lives.
Vox Day,Right,That change was the Hart-Celler Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965. Even left-leaning Wikipedia says of the act The 1965 act marked a radical break from the immigration policies of the past. But
Vox Day,Right,"When we sincerely apologize to those we have inadvertently offended, this process actually strengthens the relationship and often leads to improved mutual understanding. None of that applies to SJWs. They don't care how you feel, they don't care about your future behavior, they don't expect to have a future relationship with you, and there is absolutely no chance they are going to forgive you for anything. You are, after all, a dangerous thought-criminal."
Vox Day,Right,"Life is easier once you realize nobody cares, except family and friends, if you're lucky."
Vox Day,Right,"The truth is that there is no such thing as equality. It does not exist in any physical, material, legal, philosophical, or spiritual sense. One might as usefully attempt to direct the entire efforts of a society's people and institutions towards the well-being of unicorns and fairies."
Vox Day,Right,"Notice in particular her claim that this behavior is quickly becoming the industry norm. The worst part about this presumably recent development is the way it demonstrates that you may well have been the victim of SJW job-policing without even realizing it. What normal white man is ever going to apply for a job, fail to receive an interview request, and conclude on that basis that there is a conspiracy dedicated to keeping him from working at major corporations? Yet such SJW conspiracies observably exist."
Vox Day,Right,"Another reason these SJW ambushes are so often surprising is that as the repentant ex-SJW Ian Miles Cheong admitted in an interview with Nerdland, some of them have nothing to do with any animus for the target, but are launched in order for the SJW to obtain status within the social justice movement."
Vox Day,Right,"Thanks to their enthusiastic support, one or two were soon invited to join the board of elders, which they gradually packed with their co-conspirators. They then tried to modify the church bylaws to place the pastor, who had started the church, under the direction of the board. The pastor managed to rally enough support to defeat their efforts and force them to resign from the board, but when the defeated infiltrators left the church, they took nearly a third of the membership with them. Later, he learned that the same group of individuals had previously tried to pull the same stunt at two other churches, and were actively engaged in their fourth attempt."
Vox Day,Right,"He shoulders past me, pours himself a glass of milk from the fridge, and downs it. Of course you don’t just get them, Mom. You have to earn them. I see. And how does that happen? Another glass of milk disappears down Steven’s gullet. Save some for cereal tomorrow, I say. You’re not the only human in this house. Maybe you should go out and get another carton, then. It’s your job, right? My hand flies with a will of its own, makes contact; and a bright palm print blooms on the right side of Steven’s face. He doesn’t flinch, doesn’t raise his own hand, doesn’t react at all, except to say, Nice, Mom. Real nice. One day, that’s gonna be a crime. You little shit. He’s smug now, which makes everything worse. I’ll tell you how I earned the pin. I got recruited. Recruited, Mom. They needed volunteers from the boys’ school to make the rounds to the girls’ schools and explain a few things. I accepted. And for the past three days, I’ve been going out in the field and demonstrating how the bracelets work. Look. He pushes up one sleeve and brandishes the burn mark around his wrist. We go in pairs, and we take turns. All so girls like Sonia know what will happen. As if to defy me once more, he drains his glass of milk and licks his lips. By the way, I wouldn’t encourage her to pick the sign language back up. Why the hell not? I’m still trying to absorb the fact that my son has purposefully shocked himself so girls like Sonia know what will happen. Mom. Honestly. You of all people should get it. His voice has taken on the timbre of someone much older, someone tired of explaining how things are. Signing defeats the purpose of what we’re trying to do here."
Vox Day,Right,He is a line of coke masquerading as the Eucharist.
Stefan Molyneux,Right,"There is nothing that is going to make people hate you more, and love you more, than telling the truth."
Stefan Molyneux,Right,Mental anguish always results from the avoidance of legitimate suffering.
Stefan Molyneux,Right,"Those who make conversations impossible, make escalation inevitable."
Stefan Molyneux,Right,I refuse to let the standards of evil people chip away at my capacity for integrity.
Stefan Molyneux,Right,"If you spend time with crazy and dangerous people, remember – their personalities are socially transmitted diseases; like water poured into a container, most of us eventually turn into – or remain – whoever we surround ourselves with. We can choose our tribe, but we cannot change that our tribe is our destiny."
Stefan Molyneux,Right,The law is an opinion with a gun.
Stefan Molyneux,Right,The only part of you that hurts when you're given the truth is the part that lives on lies.
Stefan Molyneux,Right,Social anxiety results from being around people who are resolutely opposed to who you are.
Stefan Molyneux,Right,Deep connection is the antidote to madness.
Stefan Molyneux,Right,"Political correctness is anti-empathetic because it has correctness in it. We all have biases, we all have prejudices and if we cant talk about them openly - if we get attacked for it then this is an anti-empathetic movement and therefore it cannot complain about a lack of empathy."
Stefan Molyneux,Right,Forgiveness is created by the restitution of the abuser; of the wrongdoer. It is not something to be squeeeeeezed out of the victim in a further act of conscience-corrupting abuse.
Stefan Molyneux,Right,"If the sound of happy children is grating on your ears, I don't think it's the children who need to be adjusted."
Stefan Molyneux,Right,"Imagining that you are deep and complex, but others are simple, is one of the primary signs of malignant selfishness."
Stefan Molyneux,Right,The only relationships that exist are based on truth. Everything else is just a mutual and isolating delusion.
Stefan Molyneux,Right,Asshole Proximity Disorder
Stefan Molyneux,Right,"Dear Hunger Games :Screw you for helping cowards pretend you have to be great with a bow to fight evil.You don't need to be drafted into a monkey-infested jungle to fight evil.You don't need your father's light sabre, or to be bitten by a radioactive spider.You don't need to be stalked by a creepy ancient vampire who is basically a pedophile if you're younger than a redwood.Screw you mainstream media for making it look like moral courage requires hair gel, thousands of sit ups and millions of dollars of fake ass CGI.Moral courage is the gritty, scary and mostly anonymous process of challenging friends, co-workers and family on issues like spanking, taxation, debt, circumcision and war.Moral courage is standing up to bullies when the audience is not cheering, but jeering. It is helping broken people out of abusive relationships, and promoting the inner peace of self knowledge in a shallow and empty pseudo-culture.Moral courage does not ask for - or receive - permission or the praise of the masses. If the masses praise you, it is because you are helping distract them from their own moral cowardice and conformity. Those who provoke discomfort create change - no one else.So forget your politics and vampires and magic wands and photon torpedoes. Forget passively waiting for the world to provoke and corner you into being virtuous. It never will.Stop watching fictional courage and go live some; it is harder and better than anything you will ever see on a screen.Let's make the world change the classification of courage from 'fantasy' to 'documentary.'You know there are people in your life who are doing wrong. Go talk to them, and encourage them to pursue philosophy, self-knowledge and virtue.Be your own hero; you are the One that your world has been waiting for."
Stefan Molyneux,Right,"SCREW CHILDREN! That's the mantra of the world. Instead of burying them with a national debt, shoving them in shitty schools, drugging them if they don't comply, hitting them, yelling at them, indoctrinating them with religion and statism and patriotism and military worship, what if we just did what was right for them? The whole world is built on screw children, and if we changed that, this would be an alien planet to us."
Stefan Molyneux,Right,The acknowledgement of having suffered evil is the greatest step forward in mental health.
Stefan Molyneux,Right,"If there is no honesty, there is no relationship. The only degree to which there is a relationship is the degree to which you are honest. Expressing your clear desires does not make you a dictator and you telling what you think, feel, and what you want or don’t want, is just called being honest. It doesn't control him at all. You’re trying to control others by withholding information by not getting involved and by not being honest. Withholding information is a form of manipulation. It is dishonest and it’s destructive to a relationship."
Stefan Molyneux,Right,Awkward silences rule the world. People are so terrified of awkward silences that they will literally go to war rather than face an awkward silence.
Stefan Molyneux,Right,I try not to be around people who want me to be somebody else. Fundamentally you can't be somebody else. You can only be less of who you are.
Stefan Molyneux,Right,Distraction serves evil more than any other mental state.
Stefan Molyneux,Right,"The world, viewed philosophically, remains a series of slave camps, where citizens – tax livestock – labor under the chains of illusion in the service of their masters."
Stefan Molyneux,Right,There's no weakness as great as false strength.
Stefan Molyneux,Right,"When people have invested their identities into clichés, the only counter argument they have is 'being offended'."
Stefan Molyneux,Right,"Corporations are legal fictions created by the State to shield executives from liability… It’s like if I had a little hand-puppet, and I went to rob a bank, and the hand-puppet held the little gun and told people to hand over all the money, and then the hand-puppet grabbed the money and ran out, and then I got caught and I handed the hand-puppet over the police and then the police tried the hand-puppet, put the hand-puppet in jail, and I get to keep all the money."
Stefan Molyneux,Right,"The manic relief that comes from the fantasy that we can with one savage slash cut the chains of the past and rise like a phoenix, free of all history, is generally a tipping point into insanity, akin to believing that we can escape the endless constraints of gravity, and fly off a tall building. I’m freeeee… SPLAT!."
Stefan Molyneux,Right,You cannot connect with anyone except through reality.
Stefan Molyneux,Right,"The whole purpose of propaganda is to make the obvious seem obscure, or offensive"
Stefan Molyneux,Right,"If you can convince people that freedom is injustice, they will then believe that slavery is freedom."
Stefan Molyneux,Right,"The greater the gap between self perception and reality, the more aggression is unleashed on those who point out the discrepancy."
Stefan Molyneux,Right,"There’s nothing lonelier than empty relationships. At least when you’re alone you can be yourself, but when you’re in empty relationships you can’t even be yourself.You can be real alone, or you can be a ghost with false friends.Pulse proximity is not intimacy, and it’s worse than no friends at all."
Stefan Molyneux,Right,"If you are for gun control, then you are not against guns, because the guns will be needed to disarm people. So it’s not that you are anti-gun. You’ll need the police’s guns to take away other people’s guns. So you’re very pro-gun; you just believe that only the Government (which is, of course, so reliable, honest, moral and virtuous…) should be allowed to have guns. There is no such thing as gun control. There is only centralizing gun ownership in the hands of a small political elite and their minions."
Stefan Molyneux,Right,"(To the haters) You are not extinguishing the bright lights of mankind, you're simply burying yourself in an unmarked grave."
Stefan Molyneux,Right,Deep pockets and empty hearts rule the world. We unleash them at our peril.
Stefan Molyneux,Right,We are supposed to call poison medicine and we wonder why we're always sick.
Stefan Molyneux,Right,"Knowledge is responsibility, which is why people resist knowledge."
Stefan Molyneux,Right,The major abscess in the mind is a lack of acknowledgement of evil.
Stefan Molyneux,Right,"What is so often said about the solders of the 20th century is that they fought to make us free. Which is a wonderful sentiment and one witch should evoke tremendous gratitude if in fact there was a shred of truth in that statement but, it's not true. It's not even close to true in fact it's the opposite of truth. There's this myth around that people believe that the way to honor deaths of so many of millions of people; that the way to honor is to say that we achieved some tangible, positive, good, out of their death's. That's how we are supposed to honor their deaths. We can try and rescue some positive and forward momentum of human progress, of human virtue from these hundreds of millions of death's but we don't do it by pretending that they'd died to set us free because we are less free; far less free now then we were before these slaughters began. These people did not die to set us free. They did not die fighting any enemy other than the ones that the previous deaths created. The beginning of wisdom is to call things by their proper names. Solders are paid killers, and I say this with a great degree of sympathy to young men and women who are suckered into a life of evil through propaganda and the labeling of heroic to a man in costume who kills for money and the life of honor is accepting ordered killings for money, prestige, and pensions. We create the possibility of moral choice by communicating truth about ethics to people. That to me is where real heroism and real respect for the dead lies. Real respect for the dead lies in exhuming the corpses and hearing what they would say if they could speak out; and they would say: If any ask us why we died tell it's because our fathers lied, tell them it's because we were told that charging up a hill and slaughtering our fellow man was heroic, noble, and honorable. But these hundreds of millions of ghosts encircled the world in agony, remorse will not be released from our collective unconscious until we lay the truth of their murders on the table and look at the horror that is the lie; that murder for money can be moral, that murder for prestige can be moral.  These poor young men and woman propagandized into an undead ethical status lied to about what is noble, virtuous, courageous, honorable, decent, and good to the point that they're rolling hand grenades into children's rooms and the illusion that, that is going to make the world a better place. We have to stare this in the face if we want to remember why these people died. They did not die to set us free. They did not die to make the world a better place. They died because we are ruled by sociopaths. The only thing that can create a better world is the truth is the virtue is the honor and courage of standing up to the genocidal lies of mankind and calling them lies and ultimate corruptions.  The trauma and horrors of this century of staggering bloodshed of the brief respite of the 19th century. This addiction to blood and the idea that if we pour more bodies into the hole of the mass graves of the 20th century, if we pour more bodies and more blood we can build some sort of cathedral to a better place but it doesn't happen. We can throw as many young men and woman as we want into this pit of slaughter and it will never be full. It will never do anything other than sink and recede further into the depths of hell. We can’t build a better world on bodies. We can’t build peace on blood. If we don't look back and see the army of the dead of the 20th century calling out for us to see that they died to enslave us. That whenever there was a war the government grew and grew.  We are so addicted to this lie. What we need to do is remember that these bodies bury us. This ocean of blood that we create through the fantasy that violence brings virtue. It drowns us, drowns our children, our future, and the world. When we pour these endless young bodies into this pit of death; we follow it."
Stefan Molyneux,Right,"Theres nothing more efficient than honesty and nothing more powerful than vulnerability because, vulnerability reveals everyone in your life who will abuse power immediately and almost irrevocably. Theres nothing weaker than hiding your vulnerability because, it means a refusal to stare at those who abuse power and see them for who they are which means they still have power and control over you. Nothing is stronger than vulnerability. Nothing more clarifying. Nothing is clearer than vulnerability, and if you hide who you are you are just making a tombstone of your everyday actions because you dont exist in hiding and you're letting the past rob you. Exercise the power of vulnerability. When you are vulnerable you are signaling to your system that the past is over and done! That you're no longer a victim! That you're no longer trapped in a destructive and abusive environment! vulnerability means it's over, it's done. The war is over but, if you continue to use the same defenses that you had in the past all you're telling your whole body is that the past is not over. Be vulnerable. Be honest. Be open and show your heart. That's the best way of telling your heart that the tigers are no longer in the grass. I'm telling you, just take it for a spin. Vulnerability and openness will get you what you want in your life and hiding will only get you the feeling of being prey from here until the end of your life."
Stefan Molyneux,Right,One of the best ways of repressing emotions is artificial certainty.
Stefan Molyneux,Right,I don't think it is a good mental health practice to fantasize that you know the infinite thoughts of imaginary entities.
Stefan Molyneux,Right,The vast majority of people are unthinking prejudice machines.
Stefan Molyneux,Right,"Yes I pay taxes... There are no ethics in the face of coercion, that is blaming the victim. Focus on the man with the gun, not the man in the crosshairs trying to survive."
Stefan Molyneux,Right,There is no key to open the heart of another - except curiosity.
Stefan Molyneux,Right,"It’s been easier to convince people to hand over half their income, their children to war, and their freedoms in perpetuity, than to engage them in seriously considering how roads might function in the absence of taxation."
Stefan Molyneux,Right,"We may not yet know the right way to go, but we should at least stop going in the wrong direction."
Stefan Molyneux,Right,"It is really exhausting to live in a dictatorship of 'Me', which is basically a tyranny of others."
Stefan Molyneux,Right,Conformity to the present is invisibility to the future.
Stefan Molyneux,Right,"If you have people who treat you badly in your life, they will be a human shield against people who will treat you well. If that’s not true then we should apply it to marriage and start saying to woman who are being put down or beaten, you gotta stay with him because he needs you and he has been your husband for 20 years for heaven sakes. You just have to work to love him more and so on. This is the advice they gave to woman like 200 fucking years ago and it was abusive advice.  I view the parent child relationship (This just not my made up perspective.) it is the least voluntary relationship. At least the woman who got married chose to get married. We don’t choose our parents. The highest standards of behavior are required for parents and no one else. There is no one else whose standards of behavior need be higher than parents and so often parents get away with the lowest possible standards of behavior with regards to their children."
Stefan Molyneux,Right,"Politicians are propaganda, the people with guns are the enforcers and the media is the enthusiastic lapdog who enables the entire behavior and acts as the verbal abuser against those who deviate from nodding their heads at the vast statues of evil that we inherited."
Stefan Molyneux,Right,"Thus we can see that – at least at the level of economics – democracy is a sort of slow-motion suicide, in which you are told that it is the highest civic virtue to approve of thosewho want to rob you."
Stefan Molyneux,Right,"The cult of friendship disturbs me. It's like our quality is supposed to be measured by the number of friends we have. For me, it's quite the inverse. When somebody says I'm friends with everyone I just assume they have the spine of your average jellyfish and the integrity of your average soap dish. I have tons of close friends! Ok, then you obviously have no standards. I've slept with lots of people! Good, I will shake your hand from inside this Hazmat suit. It's like you have to have friends or you're nothing, and you gotta have lots of friends, and the more friends you have the more value you have. This Is a way of lowering our standards to fit in. I'm a big fan of quality over quantity. Everyone wants to look at their life like it's a beer commercial they can just climb into. The larger the circle of friends the more alcohol is involved to blind yourself to the fact that you cant stand most of these assholes."
Stefan Molyneux,Right,We raise predators by treating children as prey.
Stefan Molyneux,Right,"Successful relationships are those relationships were conflicts are successfully resolved and in fact peoples intimacy, closeness, and love are enhanced through the resolution of conflicts. I have always become closer to my wife and to my friends when we have conflicts and work through them successfully because conflicts will always arise. They are an opportunity for intimacy, self-knowledge, and a greater connection."
Stefan Molyneux,Right,"Truth has nothing to do with the conclusion, and everything to do with the methodology."
Stefan Molyneux,Right,"There's a huge swath of humanity that has developed verbal abilities to extract resources from guilt-ridden people.They used to be priests, and now they're leftists."
Stefan Molyneux,Right,Accepting necessary conflicts for the sake of improving the lives of children is the only fundamental moral crusade that matters.
Stefan Molyneux,Right,"When poverty declines, the need for government declines, which is why expecting government to solve poverty is like expecting a tobacco company to mount an aggressive anti-smoking campaign."
Stefan Molyneux,Right,"What we do not confront, we inhabit.What we do not reject, we accept.What we do not fight, we become."
Stefan Molyneux,Right,"Improving the world can be a nasty and ugly and difficult and dangerous business...because when you improve the world, you threaten the entrenched interests of evil people."
Stefan Molyneux,Right,Baseless victimhood is usually the last stage before outright aggression.
Stefan Molyneux,Right,The ones who are insane enough to think that they can rule the world are always the ones who do.
Stefan Molyneux,Right,"The degree to which the psychiatric community is complicit with abusive parents in drugging non-compliant children is a war crime across the generations, and there will be a Nuremberg at some point in the future"
Stefan Molyneux,Right,The ruling classes use broken and smashed up childhoods as weaponised instruments of domination around the world. This is why the government has no incentive to end child abuse; because the government needs abuse victims as enforcers.
Stefan Molyneux,Right,"The genuine values in America arose from rational thought and breaking with tradition, not from blind allegiance to dirt and cloth."
Stefan Molyneux,Right,The paralysis of potential is essential to the manufacturing of victims.
Stefan Molyneux,Right,"You cannot have an agency that defends your property, which also has the right to violate your property rights at will. That's like hiring a bodyguard that you pay to beat you up randomly."
Stefan Molyneux,Right,Irrational expectations are at the root of most human suffering.
Stefan Molyneux,Right,I will feel no guilt on shutting my door to those who didn't listen.
Stefan Molyneux,Right,"Sanity is not about confrontation. It's about filtering. Having a stable and happy life is about saying no to crazy people, not about inviting them in and then hoping that confrontations are going to make them sane."
Stefan Molyneux,Right,Lies don't make you happy. They just make you lie about being happy.
Stefan Molyneux,Right,"The move towards the extension of personhood to children is already underway, and is utterly, completely and totally unstoppable!"
Stefan Molyneux,Right,People's expectations of us are almost always who we become.
Stefan Molyneux,Right,"Fundamentally, you can never be someone else. You can only be less of who you are."
Stefan Molyneux,Right,"If you want kids, choose your girlfriend like your future child has the deciding vote."
Stefan Molyneux,Right,- Government -Free Shit for Idiots
Stefan Molyneux,Right,Excuses are a promise of repetition.
Stefan Molyneux,Right,Guilt is a feeling that you owe a debt that you're not paying.
Stefan Molyneux,Right,"So I'm explaining intrinsic value to my 4 year old daughter - who loves toy cats - and ask her, if she was really thirsty in the desert, whether she would like a bottle of water, or a toy cat, and she tells me that she would like a bottle of water in the shape of a toy cat.Unarguable."
Stefan Molyneux,Right,The continual manufacture of enemies is essential to the growth of the fascist state.
Stefan Molyneux,Right,"For the most part, people strenuously resist any redefinition of morality, because it shakes them to the very core of their being to think that in pursuing virtue they may have been feeding vice, or in fighting vice they may have in fact been fighting virtue."
Stefan Molyneux,Right,Vengeance against predators is meals on wheels.
Stefan Molyneux,Right,"Because the state uses violence to achieve its ends, and there is no rational end to the use of violence, states grow until they destroy civilized interactions through the corruption of money, contracts, honesty, family and self-reliance.No state in history has ever been contained.It’s only taken a little more than a century for the US – founded on the idea of limited government, to break the bonds of the constitution, institute the income tax, take control of the money supply and the educational system and begin its catastrophic expansion."
Stefan Molyneux,Right,"In the same way Marxism robs workers of ambition, Feminism robs men and women of love."
Stefan Molyneux,Right,Tyranny is the wolf cast by the shadows of sheep.
Stefan Molyneux,Right,To see the farm is to leave it.
Stefan Molyneux,Right,"The three most important words in a relationship are not, 'I love you,' but, 'Tell me more."
Stefan Molyneux,Right,Anger is the immune system of the soul.
Stefan Molyneux,Right,Love is an involuntary response to virtue.
Stefan Molyneux,Right,Empathy is the sunlight to the vampire of culture.
Stefan Molyneux,Right,Statism ends with an eye roll.
Stefan Molyneux,Right,"Socialism, or communism as it is sometimes called, is merely a secular religion, where the State becomes a god."
Stefan Molyneux,Right,"It takes a huge amount of culture to normalize crazy, and of course that's its main focus"
Stefan Molyneux,Right,"Anybody who tries to change society without first examining the family, is trying to push a shadow without moving a statue."
Stefan Molyneux,Right,All money does with an empty heart is allow you to be miserable in style.
Stefan Molyneux,Right,"The war is against children, and all the other wars are just a shadow of the war on children."
Stefan Molyneux,Right,"If there's more that you can do, then do it. If there's not more that you can do, then be content with what you're doing. But if there is despair, the despair can only be that you can do more. Because when you're doing as much as you can do, you will not feel despair. Because despair is the gap between what you could be doing and what you are doing."
Stefan Molyneux,Right,Rights are something made up by governments to make you feel like you're buying something with your taxes.
Stefan Molyneux,Right,"Nationalism is pimped-out bigotry, designed to provoke a Stockholm Syndrome in the livestock."
Stefan Molyneux,Right,Democracy is a suggestion box for slaves.
Stefan Molyneux,Right,"July 4, the day we celebrate giving our political masters independence from conscience, morality, consequences for evil doing, and basic social and economic reality.The fireworks are the glowing tears of your children's incinerated futures.Cheer happy slaves - your only chains are your deluded joys. Cheer and sing, because for you, songs of death are easier than questions of life."
Stefan Molyneux,Right,"The principals are quite simple. We can love people who treat us well. We cannot love people who treat us badly because, treating someone badly is not a virtue and we can only love virtue. I don’t think that’s controversial. I mean, there is no marriage therapist that I can imagine in the world who would say to a woman being beaten, humiliated, verbally abused, or completely ignored by her husband, You just need to love him more. You need to work at making him happier. That would be sadistic in the extreme to say to someone. So, in the same way I say, if anyone, I don’t care if they are your priest, god, father, mother, or your Siamese twin cousin coming out of your elbow or ass. I don’t care. If someone is treating you badly, that is not good for you. The solution is not you being so great that you both become better. That’s not a realistic solution."
Stefan Molyneux,Right,To connect is to dissolve the imaginary pyramids of artificial privilege.
Stefan Molyneux,Right,Compassion without discipline is egregious self-sabotage.
Stefan Molyneux,Right,Ideology is the opposite of philosophy. Philosophy is the curiosity which guides its inquiry according to universal principles. Ideology is a prior prejudice that seeks out an echo-chamber of reaffirming information.
Stefan Molyneux,Right,No rules for the rulers is tyranny for the subjects. Freedom for politicians is enslavement for citizens.
Stefan Molyneux,Right,"The idea that the State is capable of solving social problems is now viewed with great skepticism - which foretells a coming change.As soon as skepticism is applied to the State, the State falls, since it fails at everything except increasing its power, and so can only survive on propaganda, which relies on unquestioning faith."
Stefan Molyneux,Right,Using coercion to drive charity is like using kidnapping to create love.
Stefan Molyneux,Right,"All we think about in the cycle of violence is men. If we miss the oestrogen factor we cannot solve the cycle of violence. We cannot bring peace to the world unless we hold women accountable and morally responsible, particularly for their attacks upon children."
Stefan Molyneux,Right,"Historical definition of a country's borders... ...here's where my murder geography ends and your murder geography begins, at least until I get more murderers to expand my murder-fest."
Stefan Molyneux,Right,There is no external solution to the problem of insecurity.
Stefan Molyneux,Right,Pulse proximity is not intimacy.
Stefan Molyneux,Right,Government is a gun that shoots money at your enemy and blows up in your face.
Stefan Molyneux,Right,"We can very easily see how parents in other cultures simply repeat cultural norms to their children as if those cultural norms were objective truth. Japanese parents teach their children obedience and filial piety; Catholic parents teach their children to drink the blood of their god; Muslim parents teach their children that a man who married a six-year-old girl – and consummated that marriage when she was nine – is the paragon of moral virtue; Western parents teach their children that democracy is the highest ideal; North Korean parents teach their children that the dictator who rules their lives is a sort of secular deity who loves them. The list goes on and on. Virtually every parent in the world believes that she is teaching her child the truth, when she is merely inflicting what may be politely called cultural mythologies on her child. We lie to our children, all the while telling them that lying is wrong. We command our children to think for themselves, all the while repeating the most prejudicial absurdities as if they were objective facts. We tell our children to be good, but we have no idea what goodness really is. We tell our children that conformity is wrong (If everyone jumped off the Empire State building, would you jump too?) but at the same time we are complete slaves to the historical inertia of prior prejudices."
Stefan Molyneux,Right,Spiritual: religion without any rules. All the comfort of fictitious friends with none of their demands.
Stefan Molyneux,Right,Ever wonder why the media never refers to 18 or 19 year old American soldiers as armed teens?
Stefan Molyneux,Right,"Honesty requires that we communicate our thoughts and feelings, not our conclusions."
Stefan Molyneux,Right,The government is ethics rape in perpetuity
Stefan Molyneux,Right,And this is what we called our childhoods. Little more than a dress rehearsal for adding our digits to the butcher's bill of war.
Stefan Molyneux,Right,"States will invent obscure constructs like white privilege and male privilege because they are convenient to further the state's ends. They are untestable, unmeasurable, and unprovable, but they sound legitimate to those who consider themselves a casualty of society. Despite the lack of evidence, they put the burden on the white male to disprove the accuser. Since no such constructs exist, no method of defense is possible."
Stefan Molyneux,Right,"When people encounter the free market and they recoil or react negatively to it, they're merely confessing that voluntaryism, trade and negotiation are foreign and threatening to them, which tells you everything about how tragically they were raised."
Stefan Molyneux,Right,We've got this weird dysgenic situation where we're basically just paying idiots to breed and taxing intelligent people to stay away from each other with anything remotely resembling fertility.
Stefan Molyneux,Right,The word anarchy does not mean no rules. It does not mean kill others for fun. It does not mean no organization. It simply means: without a political leader.
Stefan Molyneux,Right,The true self is that which is in touch with reality. The false self is the aspects of your personality that are adapted to threats and no longer consciously recognizes either the adaptation or the threat.
Stefan Molyneux,Right,"The idea that there is are all these people who are going to make all these great and wise decisions with guns. Because you know all the people who can make the best decisions in the world always want to be armed; because they are really smart, really wise, know exactly what should be done in society so naturally they want lots of guns. You get how insane that is right? The only people who want to force you to do stuff are people who know their ideas are shit to begin with. It's a basic fact of life that anyone who wants to force you to do something means their ideas are shit to begin with. Not a lot of rapists are very good lovers because they don't have to sell quality; they got violence. Everyone is mad at Barack Obama's website from hell but they [the government] don't care because if you don't pay them they will throw you in jail. The people with the best ideas are the most voluntary. The best parents don't beat their children. In fact if you beat your children you are saying 'I'm a shitty parent; I don't know what I'm doing and I'm pretty sadistic.' A rapist is saying I'm not a good boyfriend. Why do we even need to say this? People with guns are saying to your face, 'My ideas suck, I'm a bully, I get a thrill out of power so fucking do what I say or I'll shoot you in the ass."
Stefan Molyneux,Right,Good philosophy is always hate speech to evil doers.
Stefan Molyneux,Right,Statism is an unnatural disaster.
Stefan Molyneux,Right,Can social progress be made without government?It's like saying 'can happiness be achieved without the initiation of violence? Can romance be achieved without rape? Can profitability be achieved without theft? Can economic growth be achieved without the mass indebted enslavement and counterfeiting of the federal reserve?'.
Stefan Molyneux,Right,"The moment I realised that my history was an excuse for nothing, was the moment I was freed from my history. The great danger of history is that we use it as an excuse and remain trapped in it. I cannot blame my history for anything, and therefore I have to have high standards for myself."
Stefan Molyneux,Right,"Being loved means; are disagreements welcome in my relationships? If you cant disagree with someone then you live in a tyranny and if you live in a tyranny then you are only loved to the degree that you erase yourself and conform to the irrational expectations of bullies. That isn't love obviously. Now if somebody in you life demands that you not disagree with them and gets angry, offended, or outraged should you disagree with them then, that person is not a good person. It's pretty narcissistic. It's somebody who does not have the maturity, wisdom, and ego strength to handle, and in fact welcome disagreements.  When people disagree with me as a whole I think it's a great opportunity for learning. People don't want to expose topics that might cause disagreement because, if the disagreement is punished then the illusion of being loved by good people is shattered."
Stefan Molyneux,Right,Eye-rolling is not exactly the pinnacle of socratic investigation.
Stefan Molyneux,Right,"We already live on the planet of war, we already live on the red planet, and it's a war against children. All the other wars are just the shadows of the war on children."
Stefan Molyneux,Right,"Bullying is an attack upon the runts of the litter - the weak of the species, and it is predicated on a lack of bond with the parents. If a child has a secure bond with the parents, that forms a force-field around the child in terms of bullying. If the child does not have a strong bond with the parents, then it's like being separated from the herd - those are the ones who get picked off by the human predators in childhood and adulthood. So keep your contacts as close as you can, they provide an amazing shield against bullies and users."
Stefan Molyneux,Right,"Culture makes lies plausible through exposure to time. It makes prejudice seem like physics intergenerationally. It is therefore the most dangerous opponent of philosophy, because it feels the most credible to the average person."
Stefan Molyneux,Right,No mean person is mean all the time. The whole point of being mean is to fluctuate so that you can hold out the hope for someone. So someone will hold out the hope that they're gonna catch you on the sunny side or that you're gonna be nice this time. The tyranny is inconsistency. Somebody thats consistently mean is something that is pretty easy to sort out. The reality is that the meanest people can be wonderful sometimes. That's the whole point of meanness because otherwise it's too obvious. It's the niceness that gets you trapped in the dysfunction. That is the problem and so the fact that you have this belief that there is hope in the relationship is foundational to the dysfunction.
Stefan Molyneux,Right,The tombstone over the grave of the conscience always reads: Human Nature.
Stefan Molyneux,Right,"People have this belief that what we believe is the effect of the facts that we’re exposed to, and therefore, if we expose people to different and newer facts, they will change their beliefs. This is not true. […]The contents of people’s minds, the belief systems that they hold, are in no way, shape or form a result of any objective evaluation of information. The prejudices are inherited. They are socially inflicted. They are propagandized in school, in church, in communities, in families. They are reinforced by endless bouts of patriotic media and other sorts of nonsense. People are just an emotional Gordian knot, kaleidoscopic clusterfrack of prior prejudices [which have been] stuffed into their heads and held aloft by the spears of social approval or ostracism. Everybody is prejudiced, almost, and everybody maintains those prejudices for fear of social attack, ostracism, or disapproval.Because people haven’t been reasoned into their beliefs, they can’t be reasoned out of their beliefs, [and] when people have existing prejudices, showing them facts that run counter to those prejudices does not dislodge them. In fact, statistically, it is more likely to make those prejudices stronger."
Stefan Molyneux,Right,"I don’t fundamentally understand why people give a shit about what other people put up their noses or what other people put in their veins or what other people breathe into their lungs. I mean I sort of care like if somebodies an addict it’s very destructive to people around that addict. It’s destructive to themselves. I’d like to get them help. I certainly support that which is to get that person help but, I don’t understand how people wake up and say I have to eradicate drug use across the land. I gotta stick my nose into the business of what other people stick up their nose.  I just find that incomprehensible. I mean, is your life so vacant and so hysterical, so empty, so void of love, care and affection? I can go play with my daughter or I can go and obsessively try and get politicians to throw people in jail for doing things I don’t like. I can’t imagine why people would be choosing option B but, only because they don’t have anyone who loves them or, anyone they care about. They don’t have any rich, significant, important, hobbies, relationships, artistic pursuits or anything rich enough to keep them from obsessing about what other people do or bossing and bulling what other people do. This stick your nose in other people’s business Is so compulsive and epidemic to human society."
Stefan Molyneux,Right,Evil is a confession of inadequacy
Stefan Molyneux,Right,We have won the time lottery of the last 4 billion years.
Stefan Molyneux,Right,Facts do not fall in the face of discomfort.
Stefan Molyneux,Right,"When you go with first principles, a giant light goes off in what you think is a city and turns out to be an insane asylum."
Stefan Molyneux,Right,"You are constantly being trained to be heroic only in the service of your masters - only in slaughter and sacrifice and subjugation. But there is no heroism in serving your masters. Real heroism is questioning why you have masters at all.All these stories, all these fantasies, all these superpowers - are designed to steal heroism from you, to make it impossible, fantastical, remote, and unachievable - and make you useful to your masters (as a hit man, if needed). What is the opposite of this?The opposite of fantasy is philosophy. The opposite of mythology is integrity. And integrity is truth in action."
Stefan Molyneux,Right,"Evil ethicists are the holocaust of humanity; if philosophy can be the instant sunlight to their endless vampirism, it will save more lives than all the doctors who have ever lived."
Stefan Molyneux,Right,You look back in time to when there was slavery and you think 'how did people even remotely believe that this was a good idea?'.It's incomprehensible for us to think of what the mindset was 100 or 200 years ago. I hope to make the present as incomprehensible to the future as the past is to us.
Stefan Molyneux,Right,"Trying to solve complex social problems using the state, is like trying to create a beautiful painting with a machine gun: all you get is holes in the canvas, recoil aches, and a smell of cordite in the air."
Stefan Molyneux,Right,There's great peace in surrendering to principles
Stefan Molyneux,Right,The unconscious is the true accumulation of your history. It can be accepted or rejected but it can't fundamentally be altered.
Stefan Molyneux,Right,The government is a giant logjam in the eternal river of human potential.
Stefan Molyneux,Right,The expression of preferences is the essence of love.
Stefan Molyneux,Right,"To be yourself is in many ways, is to be inconvenient to others. Only placaters and appeasers get along with other people all the time and that's not really getting along with anyone. That's just self erasure.To be alive, to be in a relationship is to constantly court inconvenience to others and out of that inconvenience can come enormous growth. I simply work as an imperasist. Empiricism comes first. So, I speak things that are inconvenient to others but, true for me. I observe their response. It's incredibly easy to find out the truth in your relationships. All you do is speak the truth. You speak the truth about what's on your mind to those around you and their true natures will be revealed in about 5 seconds.You have honesty in your relationships. You speak the truth about your experience, thought's, and feelings in your relationships and then you do not control how other people respond. Your as honest as can be and you simply observe how they respond. It's like that spray you use to see the lasers in the room. Honesty reveals everything.OK So, if these people constantly sacrifice my happiness, security, and mental health for the sake of their petty emotional selfish needs then I could choose to stay in those relationships if I want. I mean, I could choose to continue to hire an employee who steals from me everyday. I just have to be aware that he's stealing from me everyday."
Stefan Molyneux,Right,Excessive praise arises from the same bigotry matrix as excessive criticism.
Stefan Molyneux,Right,"A big rock can handle a hammer blow, it just gets chipped a little, what it can't handle is erosion"
Stefan Molyneux,Right,"Dr. Peter Boghossian’s A Manual for Creating Atheists is a precise, passionate, compassionate and brilliantly reasoned work that will illuminate any and all minds capable of openness and curiosity. This is not a bedtime story to help you fall asleep, but a wakeup call that has the best chance of bringing your rational mind back to life.(Review of Dr. Peter Boghossian's book, 'A Manual for Creating Atheists')"
Stefan Molyneux,Right,"Children are rarely taught critical thinking anymore, and society has become so antirational that basic reason and evidence are the new counterculture: thought is the new punk."
Stefan Molyneux,Right,"The essence of wisdom is learning the value of staying in the conversation, even when it makes you uncomfortable. Especially when it makes you uncomfortable."
Stefan Molyneux,Right,I never really grew up until I had kids.
Stefan Molyneux,Right,"In reality, it is not so much a stateless society that we fear, but rather a family-less and friendless society where we rock gently, hugging our useless truths to our chests; solitary, ostracized, alone, rejected, scorned, derided. The truth is a desert island, we fear, and so, as evolutionarily social animals, we join our corrupt circles in mocking and attacking the truth and resent those who tell the truth for revealing the corruption that formerly was only visible unconsciously – which is to say, largely invisible."
Stefan Molyneux,Right,"The woman who left abusive husbands in the 60's and 70's improved the institution of marriage because men now know that women can leave their husbands and the women or men who stay in abusive relationships are a massive advertisement to non- consequentiality of abuse.So, if you stay in a abusive relationship you are signaling to everyone who ever comes in contact with you or hears about you that abusers face no consequences to their abuse therefore by staying in an abusive relationship you are encouraging and subsidizing abuse.By getting out of abusive relationships you are saying the whole world over that abusers can't get away with it. That there are negative consequences to child, adult, or spousal abuse. You name it. It just doesn't have consequences for you, it has consequences for other people.When you break out and reject abusive and irredeemable relationships you are sending a clear signal which all abusers are listening for at all times. Can I get away with it? That's all they're thinking. It is my hope that abusers hear this and say Oh shit. The game is up."
Stefan Molyneux,Right,All atheists must examine the Non Aggression Principle.
Stefan Molyneux,Right,"The existence of evil can never justify the existence of the State. If there is no evil, the State is unnecessary. If evil exists, the State is far too dangerous to be allowed to exist."
Stefan Molyneux,Right,"Our victimization in a way, can turn us into bullies because, the other person isn't doing something that we want and we get hurt. That way we get to bully that person and tell them basically you're a bad person for hurting me but, if you're burned all over and I give you a gentle hug and I dont know it, I'm not hurting you so to speak. It's the burns that are hurting you."
Stefan Molyneux,Right,"Applying parents values back to them allot of the time is like trying to pay back a guy who is a counterfeiter with his own counterfeit bills. No, your supposed to think this is real money. I know it's not. I'm only pretending this is real money to get away with something. I don't actually want to receive it because I know it's fake money."
Stefan Molyneux,Right,"Blessed are the peacemakers? Billed are the warmongers, and then you shall have peace."
Stefan Molyneux,Right,"Appeasers will always try to get the least dangerous person to bend to the most dangerous person. This is one of the main problems in dysfunctional relationships. The more mature and rational you are the more you are victimized because, they are aware that you're not going to be as aggressive, destructive, or possibly as abusive and so you are the one who has to bend. You're the one who has to change and this constant rapping of rational people's souls around the prickly irrationalities of other people are what appeasers are constantly doing."
Stefan Molyneux,Right,History is the same story with different costumes.
Stefan Molyneux,Right,All mental unhappiness is the avoidance of legitimate suffering.
Stefan Molyneux,Right,An atheist who is a statist is just another theist.
Stefan Molyneux,Right,We are haunted houses of history. Nobody that we meet ever dies while we are alive.
Stefan Molyneux,Right,Tribalism is an addiction that is driven by false beliefs that need to be reflected back to be perceived as true.
Stefan Molyneux,Right,We are creatures built on a house of cards of language.
Stefan Molyneux,Right,Almost all heroism is designed to make you inert by placing it in a context that you can't possibly act on.
Stefan Molyneux,Right,"Promote the voluntary family; voluntarism is the only known cure for abuses of power - in politics, the economy or the family."
Stefan Molyneux,Right,"Be big enough to offer the truth to people and if it short circuits them I think that's tragic. I think that's sad but, I will not strike no unholy bargains to self erase. I wont do it. I don't care how many people fucked up their lives. I don't care how many bad choices people have made. I don't care how much pettiness they've consumed and spat out. I don't care how much viciousness , rage, abuse, spanking they've dealt out. I am gonna tell the truth as I see it and I'm going to be who I fucking am and if that causes the world to shift in it's orbit and half the evil people get thrown off the planet and up into space well, you shouldn't of been standing in evil to begin with because, there is gravity in goodness.So, sorry; I have to be who I am. Everyone ells is taken. There is no other place I can go than in my own head. I can't jump from skull to skull until I find one that suits bad people around me better. I don't have that choice. So, be your fucking self. Speak your truth and if there are people around you who tempt you with nonexistence , blast through that and give them the full glory of who you are. Do not withhold yourself from the world. Do not piss on the incandescent gift of your existence. Don't drown yourself in the petty fog and dustiness of other peoples ancient superstitions, beliefs, aggressions, culture, and crap. No, be a flare.We're all born self expressive. We are all born perfectly comfortable with being incredibly inconvenient to our parents. We shit, piss, wake up at night, throw up on their shoulders, scream, and cry. We are in our essence, in our humanity, perfectly comfortable with inconveniencing others. That's how we are born. That's how we grow. That's how we develop.Well, I choose to retain the ability to inconvenience the irrational. You know I had a cancer in me last year and I'm very glad that the surgeons knife and the related medicines that I took proved extremely inconvenient to my cancer and I bet you my cancer was like Aw shit. I hate this stuff man. Good. I'm only alive because medicine and surgery was highly inconvenient to the cancer within me. That's the only reason I'm alive.So, be who you are. If that's inconvenient to other people that's their goddamn business, not yours. Do not kill yourself because other people are dead. Do not follow people into the grave. Do not atomize yourself because, others have shredded themselves into dust for the sake of their fears and their desire to conform with the history of the dead."
Stefan Molyneux,Right,"To be exploited fundamentally means to be confused. When you're not confused you can't be exploited because you have clarity about the situation. To confuse people you must provide contradictory information. People who really want to do you harm will provide you confusing measures of good and bad feedback because that keeps you disorientated. Evil always want to camouflage itself as virtue witch means all the bad things that evil does is called justice against immorality. So they camouflage their brutality as a mask of virtue. Camouflage is so fundamentally an aspect of the predator-prey relationships. The mugger does not camouflage himself but, that's because he can leave. He is gonna run off and you'll never find him or catch him or at least that's the goal or plan right? The relationships were you're supposed to stay and continue to provide resources are the ones were camouflage is the most essential because you're constantly looking at somebody who is a predator and that have to continually camouflage themselves as somebody who is not a predator. The most fundamental thing is the camouflage of non-empathy with empathy. This is why people who lack empathy always use the language of empathy and that's whats so confusing.There are a lot of great antidotes to this. I mean, you just ask that person questions about yourself that they dont have any self interest in knowing and find out whether they know the answers. All the things personal to you that dont have any direct impact on the other person. It's a great way to find out whether they have empathy or curiosity about you or not."
Stefan Molyneux,Right,"The entire Nazi war machine was only possible because of past, present and future violations of the non aggression principle (achievable only through government)."
Stefan Molyneux,Right,"A man goes to a foreign country and kills somebody who's not aggressing against him; in a Hawaiian shirt he's a criminal, in a green costume he's a hero who gets a parade and a pension. So that, as a culture, we remain in a state of moral insanity. To point out these contradictions to people in society is to be labeled insane. This is how insane society remains, that anybody who points out logical opposites in the most essential human topic of ethics, is considered to be insane."
Stefan Molyneux,Right,The goal of parenting is to create self-sufficient virtues in children. Applying external pressure and punishments tends to teach them fear-based compliance rather than the internalization of moral standards.
Stefan Molyneux,Right,History has been stolen from us and replaced with guilt inducing lies.
Stefan Molyneux,Right,"You are born into this world without choice, into a familial, social, educational, political and geographical environment that is merely accidental. And for the rest of your life, everyone will try to convince you that you are responsible for this accident."
Stefan Molyneux,Right,"If you cannot escape your prison, then you might as well imagine that you’re free."
Stefan Molyneux,Right,Service to the country is considered a virtue – although the net beneficiaries of that service are always those who rule citizens by force. In
Stefan Molyneux,Right,The avoidance of pain is the avoidance of life.
Stefan Molyneux,Right,"Countries adopting free-market capitalism have increased output 70-fold, halved work days and doubled lifespans."
Stefan Molyneux,Right,The processing of universals is the job of the unconscious. If we feed it the opposite it breaks; when it breaks we break and the people around us break.
Stefan Molyneux,Right,"We have to HIDE from each other because we think that we are the only ones BROKEN. We think we're the only ones whose original selves we ground up and smashed under the jack-booted heel of cultural lies and superstition, patriotism, war lust, war hunger, and a denial of AGGRESSION AGAINST CHILDREN THAT IS THE FOUNDATION OF CULTURE. Culture is everything that is NOT TRUE. If it's true, it's called 'math' or 'science' or 'facts'. Culture is the Stockholm syndrome we have with the historical lies that are convenient to the rules. We love the lies, because we don't think we can be loved if we don't."
Stefan Molyneux,Right,"If we value human life – as any reasonable and moral person must – then fearing anarchists rather than political leaders is like fearing spontaneous combustion rather than heart disease. In the category of causing deaths, a single government leader outranks all anarchists tens of thousands of times."
Stefan Molyneux,Right,To create a State and give it the power of life and death does not solve the problem of human evil. It merely transforms the shallow desire for easy property to the bottomless lust for political power.
Stefan Molyneux,Right,"M ost of us are raised as slaves. Our opinions are rarely sought, rules are rarely explained – and moral rules never are – we are shipped off to schools where we are treated disrespectfully; our subservience is bought with rewards, and our independence is punished with detentions. Scepticism and curiosity are scorned and belittled, while empty abilities like throwing balls, learning dates, sitting still and being pretty are praised and elevated."
Stefan Molyneux,Right,"The reason that philosophy is so essential is that if we don’t use it, it is used against us in the service of evil to enable the murder and enslavement – literally – of billions."
Stefan Molyneux,Right,"However, DROs as a whole really need to keep track of people who have opted out of the entire DRO system, since those people have clearly signaled their intention to go rogue and live off the grid. Thus if you cancel your DRO insurance, your name goes into a database available to all DROs. If you sign up with another DRO, no problem, your name is taken out. However, if you do not sign up with any other DRO, red flags pop up all over the system. What happens then? Remember – there is no public property in a stateless society. If you’ve gone rogue, where are you going to go? You can’t take a bus – bus companies will not take rogues, because their DRO will require that they take only DRO-covered passengers, in case of injury or altercation. Want to fill up on gas? No luck, for the same reason. You can try hitchhiking, of course, which might work, but what happens when you get to your destination and try to rent a motel room? No DRO card, no luck. Want to sleep in the park? Parks are privately owned, so keep moving. Getting hungry? No groceries, no restaurants – no food! What are you going to do?"
Stefan Molyneux,Right,"However, to believe that some ancient and fantastical Jewish zombie died for their sins, and that they are trailed and judged by an omnipresent and invisible ghost, and that they need to eat and drink symbolic flesh and blood to commune with some universal and incorporeal mind – well, that takes an enormous amount of propaganda, bribery, and bullying. Religion is an entirely artificial oppositional solution to the question of existence and ethics. It must be repetitively and aggressively inflicted on children, because it scarcely comes naturally to them at all."
Stefan Molyneux,Right,"However, prejudice against anarchists – much like prejudice against atheists – is one of the last remaining acceptable bigotries in the world. We cannot judge any group negatively – except a group that relies on reason, evidence, and non-violence."
Stefan Molyneux,Right,The entire point of a new theory is that it is unprecedented; the first man to invent a jet aircraft could scarcely submit examples of jet aircraft flying in the past.
Stefan Molyneux,Right,"As a philosophy, utilitarianism is the argument you can objectively determine what is the greatest good for the greatest number of people and we need the state to achieve that end."
Stefan Molyneux,Right,"Because taxes are so high - in part to pay for state-serving science experiments, a lot of parents feel they both need to work and so the mum can't breastfeed her kid. These fucking scientists, these fucking fascist corporations, these fucking warmongers, these military industrial clusterfucks, these arsehole academics are literally profiting from the ripping of mothers milk out of the mouths of babes."
Stefan Molyneux,Right,"If you can't share what's important to you with the people around you, then you have no relationships. It's all just proximity, and turkey, and sports, and weather, and bullshit."
Stefan Molyneux,Right,"Invading a statist society is like grabbing the cages of a large number of trapped chickens – you get all of the eggs in perpetuity. Invading a stateless society is like taking a sprint at a flock of seagulls – all they do is scatter, and you get nothing, except perhaps some crap on your forehead."
Stefan Molyneux,Right,"The act of war is itself an attempt to achieve political ends through the use of violence – the annexation of property, the capturing of a new tax base, or the overthrow of a foreign government – and it always requires a government that is willing and able to increase the use of violence against its own citizens, through tax increases and/or the military draft."
Stefan Molyneux,Right,"It is impossible to maintain fantasy in the face of true emotional intimacy. Fantasy alienates, disconnects, and isolates people. Fantasy and cults isolate people. Fantasy is a cult. Weather that fantasy is nationalism, racism, or religiosity. It isolates people because there is so much you can't talk about. Once you make an ideal, the possible intimacy becomes impossible. The whole world recoils from depth because in depth is common humanity. In depth we are all one. We all shit, fart, fuck, die, think fear, love, and hate. All hierarchy must alienate people from connecting with each other from speaking openly and honestly about thoughts and feelings. To connect is to dislodge the imaginary pyramids of artificial privilege."
Stefan Molyneux,Right,"Those suffering from terminal falsehood seek out each other, like a drunk seeks out a wall so that he doesn't fall down."
Stefan Molyneux,Right,"A philosopher is someone who promotes moral excellence, argues for moral excellence, and gets other people to behave morally and excellently based on those arguments."
Stefan Molyneux,Right,which is another way of saying that people will pay good money to avoid the demands of virtue
Stefan Molyneux,Right,"They did the best they could with the knowledge they had. How the fuck did people know that? They didn't have no way of knowing that. Even if they did the best they could with the knowledge they had, why the hell didn't they have better knowledge? I mean, then nobody should ever fail an exam because everyone who Wright's an exam is doing the best they can with the knowledge they have. If I don't study for geography exam then I flunk out. Can I then say wait, just like the people who get a A I was doing the best I could with the knowledge I had. That's not an excuse for a 6 year old with a goddamn spelling B. How the hell is it an excuse for parents in full control of a developing human mind?If you don't study for the exam you fucking fail and if you don't study for parenting you fucking fail. You don't get to say that you did the best you could with the knowledge you had. Fuck that. That's a bullshit cop-out. You goddamn will study. It's a little more important raising a child than passing a spelling B when you're 6 goddamn years old. You goddamn will study and if you don't study youre more culpable."
Stefan Molyneux,Right,"A theoretical social state in which there is no governing person or body of persons, but each individual has absolute liberty (without implication of disorder)."
Stefan Molyneux,Right,"We can't leave the past in the past because, the past is who we are. It's like saying I wish I could forget English. So, there is no leaving the past in the past. It doesn't mean the past has to define and dominate everything in the future. The fact that I had a temper in my teens doesn't mean I have to be an angry person for the rest of my life. It just means that I had allot to be angry about but, didn't have the language and the understanding to know what it was and how big it was. I thought my anger was disproportionate to the environment which is what is called having a bad temper but, it just means that I underestimated the environment and my anger was telling me how wide and deep child abuse is in society but, I didn't understand that consciously so I thought my anger was disproportionate to the environment but, it wasn't. There is almost no amount of anger that's proportionate to the degree of child abuse in the world. The fantasy that you can not be somebody that lived through what you lived through is damaging to yourself and to your capacity to relate to others. People who care about you, people who are going to grow to love you need to know who you are and that you were shaped by what you've experienced for better and for worse. There is a great deal of challenge in talking about these issues. Lots of people in this world have been hurt as children. Most people have been hurt in this world as children and when you talk honestly and openly it's very difficult for people. This is why it continues and continues.If you can get to the truth of what happened if you can understand why people made the decisions they've made even if you dont agree with the reason for those decisions knowing the reasons for those decisions is enormously important in my opinion. The more we know the truth of history the more confidently we can face the future without self blame."
Stefan Molyneux,Right,"I would respect feminist who said Single moms, are you kidding me? Stop taking government benefits because, the government is the patriarchy. So, you are taking things from the patriarchy so you dont have to be responsible. Any woman who takes money from the government using cops who usually extract it from men by force is not a feminist. Is a exceedingly bad bride of the state. I would admire that but, of course feminism doesn't have anything to do with any of that stuff.Look, it's fine. Have your fun. Make fun of men. Go for it. Yea, we're all idiots, we're all selfish, greedy bastards. Ok, it's fine because the government is going to run out of money soon and then all these woman are going to try to find some guy to latch onto when the benefits stop flowing and I mean, you saw this happening with the soviet union. Now we need you! You guys are great! We missed you so much! Give me some money!It's just a bunch of noise from a bunch of people who are stealing from the productive."
Stefan Molyneux,Right,Self-manipulation is our medication. Mythology is our drug. The only cure is honesty.
Stefan Molyneux,Right,"Any time a system that justifies power can be conceived of running without that power, all those who profit from the manipulation of that power cry out that without them, all is lost."
Stefan Molyneux,Right,"If I say that I need the government to protect my property, but that the government is by definition a group of people who can violate my property rights at will, then I am caught in an insurmountable contradiction. I am saying that my property rights must be defended – and then I create an agency to defend them that can violate them at any time. This"
Stefan Molyneux,Right,"Clearly, there exists an entire class of people who gain immense profit, prestige and power from the existence of the government. It is equally true that, as a collective, these people have enormous control and influence over the minds of children, since it is that same government that educates virtually every child for six or more hours a day, five days a week, for almost a decade and a half of their formative years. To analogize this situation, can we imagine that we would be at all surprised that children who came out of 14 years of religious indoctrination would in general believe in the existence and virtue of God? Would we be at all surprised if the strong arguments for atheism were left off a curriculum expressly designed by the priests, who directly profit from the maintenance of religious belief? In fact, we would fully expect such children to be actively trained in the rejection of arguments for atheism – inoculated against it, so to speak, so that they would react with scorn or hostility to such arguments."
Stefan Molyneux,Right,"The statist looks at a population and sees an irrational and selfish horde that needs to be endlessly herded around at gunpoint – and yet looks at those who run the government as selfless, benevolent and saintly. Yet these same statists always look at this irrational and dangerous population and say: You must have the right to choose your political leaders! It is truly an unsustainable and irrational set of positions."
Stefan Molyneux,Right,"if human beings are in general too irrational and selfish to work out the challenges of social organization in a productive and positive manner, then they are far too irrational and selfish to be given the monopolistic violence of state power, or vote for their leaders."
Stefan Molyneux,Right,"One simple and basic fact of life is that no individual – or group of individuals – can ever be wise or knowledgeable enough to run society. Our core fantasy of government is that in some remote and sunlit chamber, with lacquered mahogany tables, deep leather chairs and sleepless men and women, there exists a group who are so wise, so benevolent, so omniscient and so incorruptible that we should turn over to them the education of our children, the preservation of our elderly, the salvation of the poor, the provision of vital services, the healing of the sick, the defense of the realm and of property, the administration of justice, the punishment of criminals, and the regulation of virtually every aspect of a massive, infinitely complex and ever-changing social and economic system. These living man-gods have such perfect knowledge and perfect wisdom that we should hand them weapons of mass destruction, and the endless power to tax, imprison and print money – and nothing but good, plenty and virtue will result."
Stefan Molyneux,Right,"We can never be closer to others than we are to ourselves, and we can never be closer to ourselves than we are to the truth – the truth leads us to personal authenticity; authenticity leads us to intimacy, which is the greatest joy in human relations."
Stefan Molyneux,Right,"Since human beings do in fact have equal rights of property, any social system which rejects this right is doomed to utter failure – just as any bridge planner who rejects the reality of gravity will never be able to build a bridge that stands."
Stefan Molyneux,Right,"When we speak of gods, we are really talking about the opinions of priests. When we speak of the government, we really mean the violence of a tiny minority."
Stefan Molyneux,Right,"When it comes to government as it is – and all that government ever could be – we are never really talking about two sides of the table. You get a letter in the mail informing you that your property taxes are going to increase 5% – there is no negotiation; no one offers you an alternative; your opinion is not consulted beforehand, and your approval is not required afterwards, because if you do not pay the increased tax, you will, after a fairly lengthy sequence of letters and phone calls, end up without a house. It is certainly true that your local cable company may also send you a notice that they’re going to increase their charges by 5%, but that is still a negotiation! You can switch to satellite, or give up on cable and rent DVDs of movies or television shows, or reduce some of the extra features that you have, or just decide to get rid of your television and read and talk instead. None of these options are available with the government – with the government, you either pay them, give up your house, go to jail, or move to some other country, where the exact same process will start all over again."
Stefan Molyneux,Right,"Dear Valued Customer: Your cable bill is now increasing 5% per month. You cannot cancel your cable. Ever. You cannot reduce your bill in any way. If you turn off your cable, your bill will remain exactly the same. If you rip your cable out of the wall, your bill will remain exactly the same, with the exception that we will charge you for the damage. Your children will be unable to cancel your cable contract. Also, please note that we will be reducing our delivery of channels by approximately 1 every month. As we deliver fewer channels, you can anticipate that your bill will sharply increase. If you do not pay your bill on time, the ownership of your house will revert to us, and we will lock you in an undisclosed location, where you will be forced to do tech support, and where we will be unable to protect you from assault and rape. If you attempt to defend yourself when we come to take your house, we are fully authorized to gun you down. Sincerely, The Statist Cable Company"
Stefan Molyneux,Right,"is a truism – and I for one think a valid one – that the simple mind sees everything in black or white. Wisdom, on the other hand, involves being willing to suffer the doubts and complexities of ambivalence. The dark-minded bigot says that all blacks are perfidious; the light-minded bigot says that all blacks are victims. The misogynist says that all women are corrupt; the feminist often says that all women are saints."
Stefan Molyneux,Right,"If a democratic government must force a selfish and unwilling populace to help the poor, then government programs do not reflect the will of the people, and democracy is a lie, and we must get rid of it – or at least stop pretending to vote."
Stefan Molyneux,Right,"Given the degree of feedback available to the average citizen of a democracy, it makes little sense to agitate for changing the system as a whole. Since the system is so flexible and responsive, it is impossible to imagine that it can be replaced with any system that is more flexible – thus the practical ideal for anyone interested in social change is to bring his ideas to the marketplace of democracy, see who he can get on board, and implement his vision within the system – peacefully, politically, democratically. This is a truly wonderful fairy tale, which has only the slight disadvantage of having nothing to do with democracy whatsoever."
Stefan Molyneux,Right,"It is very hard to understand the logic and intelligence of the argument that, in order to protect us from a group that might overpower us, we should support a group that already has overpowered us. It"
Stefan Molyneux,Right,"Society is really an ecosystem of agreed-upon premises or arguments, usually based on tradition. Those who accept the truth of these arguments find their practical course through the existing social infrastructure enormously eased; they do not ask people to really think, they do not discomfort others with uncomfortable truths, and thus what passes for discourse in the world resembles more two mirrors facing each other – a narrow infinity of empty reflection, if you will pardon the metaphor."
Stefan Molyneux,Right,"The finger-wagging admonition, Rape more gently, is oxymoronic. Rape is the opposite of gentle, the opposite of moral. This is how many anarchists view the proposition that the existing system of political violence should be reformed somehow from within, rather than fundamentally opposed on moral terms, as an absolute evil, based on coercion and brutality, particularly towards children – with the inevitable consequence that its only salvation can come from being utterly abolished."
Stefan Molyneux,Right,"Since theft is the forcible removal of somebody else’s property without consent, then taxation is always, universally and forever a moral evil. Taxation"
Stefan Molyneux,Right,The best way to destroy the decrepit is to build the glorious.
Stefan Molyneux,Right,"If you have a really good ideas, one thing you dont need is a fucking gun. An iPad is a kind of a cool thing. They don't need to threaten you with fines to get you to buy one do they? The moment the government says they're gonna force you to do something, you know its a bad idea. If someone invites you on a date with chloroform, an old sofa, and a windowless van, it's not a date.So, the fact that ObamaCare, welfare state, military industrial complex, public schools - you name it. The fact that it has to be imposed at gunpoint is a clue that it's shit. Recognize that when there is a gun to your face, there is not a very advantageous human being on the other end."
Stefan Molyneux,Right,"Most people, if philosophy touches them, they shatter, they atomize, they turn to dust. It is win/lose between philosophy and delusion, and most people are almost entirely composed of delusion. They're only allowed as much reality as serves the masters. But they're not allowed any reality which disturbs their masters..."
Stefan Molyneux,Right,The star-shreds that aggregated into the most improbable and miraculous explosion of your consciousness should be appreciated with more noble sentiments than resentment and depression.
Stefan Molyneux,Right,"The price of getting men to fight is giving them respect. Men will fight to protect women they love, men will fight to protect children they have fathered, for obvious reasons, both moral and biological, but where a man is not respected, where men are 'cucked' . . . if men utilized and turned into a form of captive livestock, if men are enslaved to female vanity, protectiveness, emotional self-defense, what happens is men don't love their societies anymore because society is not giving them respect. The men are in the same relationship to society as an abused woman is to an abusive man. There may be attachment, an unwillingness or lack of capacity to escape, but there's no love."
Stefan Molyneux,Right,"Record what you can, pursue your passions, connect with the world, fight the good fight, defy evil, shine incandescently as best you can. And it doesn't matter what field it's in but, it does matter that we leave something that accumulates over time."
Stefan Molyneux,Right,"The word rights, is something that governments need to provide you and protect you from but, the governments are the basic violators of all human rights."
Stefan Molyneux,Right,Civilization is the general agreement to refrain from resorting to violence if negotiations fail.
Stefan Molyneux,Right," What do woman say to little boys?  Stop fighting. Stop being so rough. Stop rough housing. They're boys you know, that's kinda what they're sapossed to do. So, men are sapossed to overcome all these biological drives and I'm just really interested in helping women overcome theirs caus' I think the spotlight of  Outgrow your bestial nature. has been pointed just a little bit too long at men and I think it's time to swivel that motherfucker around and point it at woman and say stop making yourself look like fucking sex clowns to milk money out of men's dicks. Stop lying about who you are and what you're about. Stop being flirty, manipulative, and trying to be sexy. Just stop doing it. It's time for women to outgrow biology just as men have been instructed to for about the last 20,000 years to outgrow their biology. Stop slamming doors. Stop yelling. Stop climbing trees. Stop being rude. Stop farting. Stop enjoying fart jokes. Just stop being men. Ok, Well; women stop being women. Be people. Be people who have sex, absolutely but, don't be caricatures. Don't aim to be like a woman who looks like the outline of some playboy mudflap on a trucker's rig. Just be people. Be sexual. Enjoy your sexuality and bodies but, stop trying to bury us in tits so that we pass out and you can rifle through our bank accounts. Just stop doing that shit. I won't enable it anymore. Why does your face have to look like some half rained on Picasso water color? I don't need rainbows on the face of a woman. I don't need these weird butterfly wing goth eyebrows and shit like that. Male sexuality is demonized and female sexuality is elevated. That's bullshit. Then women wonder why men prefer porn to them. It's caus' porn doesn't nag you for wanting stuff that's defined as kinky or weird. Male sexuality is demonized and held in low esteem. Woman's sexuality is always beautiful. Woman's sexuality is unremitting shallow. I'm not saying men's isn't but, we know that about men, right? What turns women on? Women say confidence. Do you know what that means? Money. Do women say  He is really confident about his sidewalk art. He is really confident about his subway busking. That's such a turn on! Why do men like looking at naked women and women get turned on looking at clothed men? Because if a man's clothes aren't on you don't know how expensive his wardrobe is. This is what Mohammad Ali said. I'm going to throw on some old jeans and a old t-shirt and I'm just gonna walk down into some little town and find some woman who doesn't know who the hell I am and then when she's fallen in love with me and we get married, I'm going to take her to my million dollar mansion and my yacht. This is the reality. Once you start having money, once you start having power, then the true nature of massive swaths of female sexuality becomes clear."
Stefan Molyneux,Right,"As the old saying went in the Soviet Union, They pretend to pay us, and we pretend to work."
Stefan Molyneux,Right,Human beings have a deeply seated desire to correct others. We can be noble and say that this is for the cause of moral instruction and the improvement of the minds and choices of others across the globe – and on occasion this may actually be the case. But the reality is that human beings like to correct other human beings because it is a non-violent way to control them.
Stefan Molyneux,Right,"we must remember to compare a stateless society not to some perfect utopia, but rather to existing statist societies. Are people currently unjustly sent to prison? You bet. Are non-violent drug users jailed? Yes, by the millions. Do some people pretend to confess to less grievous crimes because they are threatened with terrifying sentences if they do not? Of course. Do the police manufacture evidence? Yes. Are policemen rewarded for preventing crimes, or obtaining convictions? The latter."
Stefan Molyneux,Right,"Deductive reasoning goes from the general to the specific – Socrates is mortal – because that is what predators do. If you were to program a lion with syllogisms, it might come out something like this: I am hungry. My hunger is satisfied with meat. All zebras are made of meat. The slowest zebras are the easiest to catch. I will stalk and chase the slowest zebra. This zebra is the slowest zebra; I will stalk and chase this one. You see how this works? The lion is going from the general to the specific – from all zebras to one particular zebra that satisfies the criterion for appeasing the lion’s hunger."
Stefan Molyneux,Right,"If society gave everything that a poor person could possibly require in order to live comfortably, that would scarcely reduce the numbers of poor people, but would rather increase them considerably."
Stefan Molyneux,Right,Anarchists understand that the only valid and proven way to oppose human corruption is through voluntarism and competition – statists believe that the only way to oppose human corruption is to create a monopoly of violent power.
Stefan Molyneux,Right,The story of the progress of human morals is almost entirely populated by people who did not live to see the world that they loved in their minds.
Stefan Molyneux,Right,"In the statist paradigm, we listen only to God and obey His commandments. In the anarchist paradigm, God also listens to us, and we negotiate as equals."
Stefan Molyneux,Right,"The world will be free of the State when we finally see that the State is inferior to all of our personal and professional relationships. When we are completely used to thinking in terms of mutual advantage, the violent exploitation of the State will finally become clear to us, and it will fall away."
Stefan Molyneux,Right,Perfection is invented by evil people to paralyze you.
Stefan Molyneux,Right,The answer to violence is the improvement of childhood.
Stefan Molyneux,Right,"Frédéric Bastiat wrote in 1850: Socialism, like the ancient ideas from which it springs, confuses the distinction between government and society. As a result of this, every time we object to a thing being done by government, the socialists conclude that we object to its being done at all. We disapprove of state education. Then the socialists say that we are opposed to any education. We object to a state religion. Then the socialists say that we want no religion at all. We object to a state-enforced equality. Then they say that we are against equality. And so on, and so on. It is as if the socialists were to accuse us of not wanting persons to eat because we do not want the state to raise grain."
Stefan Molyneux,Right,"Should the welfare state stop, single mothers would find a way to survive, and indeed would most likely flourish."
Stefan Molyneux,Right,There is a sickly market for selling helpless people the idea that they are poor because the ambitious and wealthy people have stolen resources from them. This creates a dangerous hatred for the productive that sets society on the path to self-destruction.
Stefan Molyneux,Right,"Particularly in politics, once an argument for transferring resources to a particular group is established, those resources become both the figurative and literal lifeblood of many in that group."
Stefan Molyneux,Right,"Single mothers have children largely because the welfare state and other government mechanisms transfer hundreds of billions of dollars to single mothers. (We know this because, as the welfare state has grown, so has the prevalence of single motherhood – and, on the rare times that benefits are curtailed, additional births decline as well.)"
Stefan Molyneux,Right,"If a business executive uses political connections to get a government subsidy, taxpayers will almost certainly disagree with that subsidy, which is why it needs to come from the government, rather than from voluntary investors. His competitors will also oppose it as well, and try to get a similar subsidy, which provokes even more competitors to do the same, provoking more resentment among taxpayers, and more sophistry from politicians and the media."
Stefan Molyneux,Right,"When we feel anxious, the most honest statement we can make is that we feel anxious. Making the anxiety go away by inventing some anti-rational magic to dispel the uncomfortable feeling brought about by an assertive argument is dishonest and destructive."
John Derbyshire,Right,"Wherever there is a jackboot stomping on a human face there will be a well-heeled Western liberal to explain that the face does, after all, enjoy free health care and 100 percent literacy."
John Derbyshire,Right,"The more depressed and maladjusted you are, the more likely it is that you are seeing things right, with minimal bias"
John Derbyshire,Right,"I preach that odd defiant melancholy that sees the dreadful loneliness of the human soul and the pitiful disaster of human life as ever redeemable and redeemed by compassion, friendship and love."
John Derbyshire,Right,"The ordinary modes of human thinking are magical, religious, social, and personal. We want our wishes to come true; we want the universe to care about us; we want the approval of those around us; we want to get even with that s.o.b. who insulted us at the last tribal council. For most people, wanting to know the cold truth about the world is way, way down the list."
John Derbyshire,Right,Ninety percent of paid work is time-wasting crap. The world gets by on the other ten.
John Derbyshire,Right,"I tell you, with complex numbers you can do anything."
John Derbyshire,Right,"The problem is hedonism. The problem is the preening vanity and selfishness of 'coming out,' of parading private inclinations, of a kind that repel normal people, as if those inclinations were, all by themselves, marks of authenticity and virtue, of suffering and oppression."
John Derbyshire,Right,"The arts and humanities are not mere entertainment, to be turned to for relaxation after a busy day spent solving differential equations; they are our templates for living, for governing ourselves and our societies. Nor can science offer any help with the knottier problems besetting the human race. It can remedy bad smells, bad pains, and bad roads, but not bad behavior, bad government, or bad ideas."
John Derbyshire,Right,"Books, in the plural lose their solidity of substance and become a gas, filling all available space."
John Derbyshire,Right,"As a result of these news stories, millions of people must have become aware of niggardly, who otherwise would never have heard it, let alone thought to use it. If this is right, and the word has a new currency, it is probably not the currency I would wish for. The word's new lease of life is probably among manufacturers and retailers of sophomoric humor. I bet that even as I write, some adolescent boys, in the stairwell of some high school somewhere in America, are accusing each other of being niggardly, and sniggering at their own outrageous wit. I bet … Wait a minute. Sniggering? Oh, my God …"
John Derbyshire,Right,"Our political system is now run by the Big People for their own interests. If they ever deign to notice the Little People, it is with disdain and contempt."
John Derbyshire,Right,"Mathematicians call it the arithmetic of congruences. You can think of it as clock arithmetic. Temporarily replace the 12 on a clock face with 0. The 12 hours of the clock now read 0, 1, 2, 3, … up to 11. If the time is eight o’clock, and you add 9 hours, what do you get? Well, you get five o’clock. So in this arithmetic, 8 + 9 = 5; or, as mathematicians say, 8 + 9 ≡ 5 (mod 12), pronounced eight plus nine is congruent to five, modulo twelve."
John Derbyshire,Right,"A very civilized thing, glass"
John Derbyshire,Right,"If you're not thinking about numbers, you're probably not thinking."
John Derbyshire,Right,It was in 1742 that Christian Goldbach put forward his famous conjecture that every even number greater than 2 can be expressed as the sum of two primes.
John Derbyshire,Right,"(which has inspired at least one novel, Apostolos Doxiadis's Uncle Petros and Goldbach's Conjecture29)."
John Derbyshire,Right,A few decades back one could get a pretty good idea of someone’s overall political stance by finding out how much he hates rich people; the equivalent today is finding out how much he hates white people.
John Derbyshire,Right,"Published mathematical papers often have irritating assertions of the type: It now follows that…, or: It is now obvious that…, when it doesn't follow, and isn't obvious at all, unless you put in the six hours the author did to supply the missing steps and checking them. There is a story about the English mathematician G.H. Hardy, whom we shall meet later. In the middle of delivering a lecture, Hardy arrived at a point in his argument where he said, It is now obvious that…. Here he stopped, fell silent, and stood motionless with furrowed brow for a few seconds. Then he walked out of the lecture hall. Twenty minutes later he returned, smiling, and began, Yes, it is obvious that…. If he"
Mike Cernovich,Right,Those who have an abundance mindset are far more likely to be happy with their lives and to achieve their goals than are those who have a scarcity mindset.
Mike Cernovich,Right,Imagine your consciousness is the judge or jury or parent or friend you must persuade. You want your conscious mind to believe in you. Framing is how your mind perceives whatever situation you are in. Framing is how you choose to think about and thus perceive a challenge in your life. Frame
Mike Cernovich,Right,"When you feel distracted, engage in self-talk. Ask yourself: What am I focusing on? Return to the present moment. What do you need to accomplish? Check into what you need and check out of what you do not need. Talk"
Mike Cernovich,Right,Writing is a physical act that engages your body and mind. Putting your words to paper makes your ideas real and concrete. It unites body and mind into one (and they are one). Take ownership of your life. Start by taking ownership of your words.
Mike Cernovich,Right,Remind yourself that how you feel is a choice you
Mike Cernovich,Right,"Am I choosing, in this moment, to be the type of person I want to become? Ask"
Mike Cernovich,Right,The only easy day was yesterday. [Navy SEAL motto.] I
Mike Cernovich,Right,"By being forced to memorize the Creed, Rangers begin to live the creed. It includes some affirmations as, Never shall I fail my comrades. I will always keep myself mentally alert, physically strong, and morally straight and I will shoulder more than my share of the task whatever it may be, one-hundred percent and then some. That’s"
Mike Cernovich,Right,perception rather than judgment.
Mike Cernovich,Right,"On a grander scale, the New York Public library"
Mike Cernovich,Right,How you ask a question and what facts you include when asking your question often influences the answer. This is framing your question. There
Mike Cernovich,Right,"We all started off as children with an abundance mindset and genuine fascination and curiosity about life. Somewhere along the way, it was lost. Mindset is a choice. We can choose to view the world as one of scarcity or one of abundance. Change"
Mike Cernovich,Right,"Imagine that you start with the assumption that we live in a world of limited possibilities. You have a fixed mindset, a belief you cannot change. You’re limiting yourself. Nothing you do ultimately matters. You will never be good enough. If you begin with that scarcity mindset, why even get out of bed? Life would feel pointless. Nothing you do would matter. Life would be gray and empty. Many depressed people have a scarcity mindset, believing nothing matters and the world is one of limited possibilities. Now, imagine you believe that the world is abundant. The world is one of endless resources and unlimited potential. What you do matters. Your choices matter. You matter. Each day is a new day full of infinite possibilities. How would you act if you knew that anything you wanted to do was possible? Would you live differently if you believed that you were abundant and full of potential? Why"
Mike Cernovich,Right,"Imagine a computer. The monitor, keyboard, and processor are the hardware. Without any software to run it, your computer would be worthless. Your body is your hardware and your mindset is your operating system. It gives you access to the power of the hardware, and determines what software you can run. It lets you get the most out of your computer, allowing you to balance your checkbook and even create 3-D designs. Your mindset determines how you perceive and interact with the world."
Mike Cernovich,Right,"Audacity is an insolent form of boldness, especially when imprudent or unconventional. It implies a degree of impudence, but also fearlessness and intrepid daring."
Mike Cernovich,Right,"Newtown observed, An object at rest stays at rest, and an object in motion stays in motion."
Mike Cernovich,Right,Mindset seems obtuse for good reason. We aren’t taught to think about mindset. We are taught to follow rules.
Mike Cernovich,Right,"Word is actually very busy and strikes me as poorly designed. It’s cluttered. There are four different rows, each filled with icons and butters I never use. This reminds me why I dislike Word. I almost always type in WordPress as it’s much less cluttered. I’m on an airplane without WiFi."
Mike Cernovich,Right,"When some tech or design issues comes up, it annoys me but I recognize that tech and design are part of being a professional writer, so I embrace the suck for the greater good."
Pamela Geller,Right,"Freedom of speech doesn’t apply only if you like the message; it applies to everyone. And if it is gone, so is a free society."
Pamela Geller,Right,"President Obama, inciter-in-chief, regularly used violent rhetoric to gin up the Democrats: ‘If they bring a knife to the fight, we bring a gun.’ He supported the most violent, seditious movements of 21st-century America (Black Lives Matter, Occupy Wall Street, Muslim Brotherhood groups, to name a few), while directing the Department of Homeland Security to track ‘right-wing extremists’"
Pamela Geller,Right,"Internationally, we took the monies raised, and are planting the Aqsa Parvez Grove in American Independence Park in Jerusalem, Israel, where the plaque will read, In Loving Memory of Aqsa Parvez and All Victims of Honor Killings Worldwide. The memorials in Pelham and Jerusalem are the first indication that we are not going to stand by silently in the Free World while the Islamic world brutalizes women and treats them as worthless trash. These are two small steps toward widespread resistance against honor killing in the West and elsewhere."
Pamela Geller,Right,"the New York Times gave clitorectomies its tacit approval. In January 2008, it painted a rosy picture of the ritual in a piece that never mentioned the pain, bleeding, and infections that often result from it. Female genital mutilation is not the only horrific Islamic custom that is coming West; the number of honor killings is skyrocketing in Europe and America. But genital mutilation is spreading at an alarming rate. It has been reported that thousands of girls in the United Kingdom have been mutilated and the authorities can’t (or won’t)"
Pamela Geller,Right,"we need to do about this barbaric practice is raise awareness of it among Americans who have no idea that it is happening. The Aqsa Parvez memorial was the very first occasion on which non-Muslims began to take note of the victims of Islamic honor killing, and to serve notice to their killers that the victims would not be forgotten or their murders ignored. Memorials to Aqsa Parvez were planned in the Canadian town of Pelham, Ontario, and in Jerusalem. Aqsa Parvez was brutally murdered by her father and brother in December 2007 for refusing to wear the Islamic headscarf. But that was only the beginning; the abuse of this girl continued. She was buried in an unmarked grave. Her family refused to acknowledge her life, as she had dishonored them. In defiance of her devout father and brother, she had refused to live under the suffocating dictates of Islamic law. The eleventh grade student began taking off her hijab, a traditional Islamic headscarf, when she went to school, and would put it back on when she returned home. Her dad would go to her school during school hours and walk around trying to find her, trying to catch her not wearing Islamic garb, talking to boys, or hanging out with non-muslims. She wanted to dress like us, said one friend of Aqsa. To be normal. For this, her family prefers that she be forgotten"
Pamela Geller,Right,"Studies have shown that 91 percent of honor killings worldwide, as well as 84 percent of honor killings in the United States, are done by Muslims. Such misogyny was unheard of in this country thirty years ago"
Pamela Geller,Right,"It called the Oklahoma amendment anti-Islam, admitting that the brutal, oppressive, and radical Sharia, with its stonings and amputations and oppression of women, is Islam. Why call the amendment anti-Islam? It was anti-Sharia. Oklahoma meant to ban stonings, amputations for theft, death for apostates, and the other elements of Sharia that contradict the rights and freedoms guaranteed to American citizens by the U.S. Constitution. And now CAIR was admitting that all such practices go back to Islam itself. By their fruits we shall know them, and so once again, we knew Islamic supremacist CAIR."
Pamela Geller,Right,"It denies the freedom of speech, the freedom of conscience, and legal equality for women and non-Muslims."
Pamela Geller,Right,"Instead, our cultural warlords in the mainstream media, academia, and entertainment strictly enforce the blasphemy laws of Islam, which command that one must not insult or slander Islam. In Muslim countries, blasphemy is punishable by death; in the West, it is your character that is assassinated if you dare to speak out against the Islamic supremacist agenda. Our last line of defense was always the rule of law. So it was particularly jarring and deeply disturbing to come upon this latest initiative from the ABA, one of America’s last lines of defense against the litigation jihad and creeping Sharia in this country. Furthermore, the ABA’s Middle East Law committee has promoted Sharia finance, the implementation of Islamic laws regarding financial transactions (including its prohibition of interest-based transactions) for some time with the same warmly positive slant. Sharia is being imposed across state lines, across the country, by way of these varying initiatives."
Pamela Geller,Right,"When I wrote about their pro-Sharia initiatives in an article called The ABA’s Jihad in The American Thinker, the ABA on the same day issued a statement in response to my article, claiming that the American Bar Association has taken no action in support of, or in opposition to, judges considering Islamic law or Sharia.193 How dishonest and disingenuous."
Pamela Geller,Right,"In its report, the local news station KXAN stated the case succinctly: The State Board of Education is sending a message to textbook publishers: Don’t promote one religion at the expense of others.142 Texas activist Randy Reeves, who drafted the resolution, understated his case when he commented, I think our documentation clearly shows that the bias is there. And we feel that it was not done on accident.143 All this was happening according to the Islamic supremacists’ predetermined plan. And even where Islamic supremacists are not employing such subterfuge, they’re working to gain special accommodation for Muslims in public schools. They have a playbook for how to impose Islam in the public schools. In Islam, there is no separation of mosque and state"
Pamela Geller,Right,"This is, of course, an outrage. None of this should be introduced into the public school. If this is what Muslim parents want, they should send their children to madrassah."
Pamela Geller,Right,"America is not the only good thing in the world, but it is the best thing in the world."
Pamela Geller,Right,"In any war between the civilized man and the savage, support the civilized man."
Pamela Geller,Right,"The media operate under the narcissistic assumption that if they don’t report it, it didn’t happen."
Pamela Geller,Right,The United States of America is the most charitable nation on earth.
Pamela Geller,Right,FBI statistics showed that Jews were significantly more likely to be targets of hate crimes than Muslims.
Pamela Geller,Right,Muslims serve in the Israeli Knesset and have more rights in Israel than they do in Muslim countries.
Pamela Geller,Right,"Love Thy Neighbor.’ Gotta love it. There is no golden rule in Islam, clowns. This moral equivocation completely ignored the facts on the ground. Jews and Christians simply were not murdering people and justifying the murders by quoting their Scriptures. The violence in the Bible is descriptive, while the Koran’s violence is prescriptive. The fantasy these quislings advanced was at odds with reality and the rivers of bloodshed in the cause of Islam. Never do we see Jews slaughtering in the name of HaShem or Christians in the name of Jesus Christ."
Pamela Geller,Right,"While Islamic Spain is held up today as a proto-multiculturalist paradise, in reality non-Muslims there suffered under the discrimination prescribed in Islamic law for dhimmis, non-believers who were subjugated as inferiors and denied equality of rights"
Pamela Geller,Right,"History shows that wherever Islam becomes dominant, democratic institutions perish, all pre-Islamic remnants are destroyed, and non-Islamic people cease to be safe."
Pamela Geller,Right,"Moderate Islam is a Western fantasy. As Turkey’s then-Prime Minister and current President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said in 2007: ‘These descriptions are very ugly, it is offensive and an insult to our religion. There is no moderate or immoderate Islam. Islam is Islam and that’s it.’ And while there are moderate and more secular Muslims, I am hardly concerned with them. Nor am I compelled to applaud them. I do not have to pat on the back every Muslim who does not want to kill me. I expect that. That is my bar. The idea that one should praise them speaks to the soft bigotry of low expectations when it comes to Western dealings with Muslims. It’s just absurd."
Pamela Geller,Right,"These mega-mosques are making a supremacist statement. Most people assume they’re just like synagogues or churches. They don’t realize that Islam has political goals that are expressed through the mosques, and that the mosques often symbolize that Muslims are claiming a particular territory as their own. For the Muslim Brotherhood, mosques aren’t just houses of worship. They’re centers of political power, from which plans are made to increase that power in various ways."
Pamela Geller,Right,"In June 2013, Obama’s Justice Department warned against using social media to spread information considered offensive to Muslims, threatening that it could constitute a violation of civil rights. I had warned of such consequences of an Obama presidency in my first book, The Post-American Presidency: The Obama Administration’s War on America."
Pamela Geller,Right,"Elite politicians in Europe have no problem with participating in demonstrations where Muslims openly shout ‘Death to the Jews.’ Seventy years after Auschwitz, they have no shame."
Pamela Geller,Right,"The ‘Palestinian’ myth is the ‘Palestinian’ nationality itself. On March 31, 1977, the Dutch newspaper Trouw interviewed Zahir Muhsein of the Palestine Liberation Organization. Muhsein said: The Palestinian people does not exist. The creation of a Palestinian state is only a means for continuing our struggle against the state of Israel for our Arab unity. In reality today there is no difference between Jordanians, Palestinians, Syrians and Lebanese. Only for political and tactical reasons do we speak today about the existence of a Palestinian people, since Arab national interests demand that we posit the existence of a distinct ‘Palestinian people’ to oppose Zionism. These Jewish educators are promoting this century’s annihilationists before they, too, get their heads lopped off."
Pamela Geller,Right,"Free speech is the soul of our nation and the foundation of all our other freedoms. If we can’t speak out against injustice and evil, those forces will prevail. Freedom of speech is the foundation of a free society. Without it, a tyrant can wreak havoc unopposed, while his opponents are silenced."
Pamela Geller,Right,"When it came out in court that this Norwegian madman was inspired to violence by al-Qaeda and Hamas, that was not widely reported."
Pamela Geller,Right,"Another shooter in Portland, also in June 2017, was likewise a Bernie supporter; he ranted against Christians, Jews, and Muslims but the enemedia reported his shooting of two people as an Islamophobic... hate crime.51"
Pamela Geller,Right,We saw this same kind of violent thuggery in the 1930s in Germany. And we have seen what happens when good people do nothing.
Robert Spencer,Right,"The Muslim Brotherhood’s infiltration of the Washington establishment is remarkable by any standard. Former FBI Special Agent John Guandolo noted in October 2011: What we’re seeing not just inside the White House, but inside the government entities, the national security entities, the State Department – is a strong push by the Muslim Brotherhood to get their people not just into operational positions, but policy positions – deeper, long term, bureaucratic positions.67"
Robert Spencer,Right,"It is no coincidence that all these varied efforts to silence voices critical of Islamic supremacism recall one of the most important laws by which dhimmis must abide within the Islamic state: according to traditional Islamic law, non-Muslims must not speak about Islam in a manner that Muslims consider offensive."
Robert Spencer,Right,"Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you. Jesus (Matthew 5:44) Against them make ready your strength to the utmost of your power, including steeds of war, to strike terror into the hearts of the enemies, of Allah and your enemies, and others besides, whom ye may not know, but whom Allah doth know. Qur’an 8:60"
Robert Spencer,Right,"Consequently, it is almost impossible to prove rape in lands that follow the dictates of the Sharia. Men can commit rape with impunity: As long as they deny the charge and there are no witnesses, they will get off scot-free, because the victim’s testimony is inadmissible. Even worse, if a woman accuses a man of rape, she may end up incriminating herself. If the required male witnesses can’t be found, the victim’s charge of rape becomes an admission of adultery. That accounts for the grim fact that as many as 75 percent of the imprisoned women in Pakistan are, in fact, behind bars for the crime of being a victim of rape.34"
Robert Spencer,Right,"John Quincy Adams on Islam: In the seventh century of the Christian era, a wandering Arab of the lineage of Hagar [i.e., Muhammad], the Egyptian, combining the powers of transcendent genius, with the preternatural energy of a fanatic, and the fraudulent spirit of an impostor, proclaimed himself as a messenger from Heaven, and spread desolation and delusion over an extensive portion of the earth. Adopting from the sublime conception of the Mosaic law, the doctrine of one omnipotent God; he connected indissolubly with it, the audacious falsehood, that he was himself his prophet and apostle. Adopting from the new Revelation of Jesus, the faith and hope of immortal life, and of future retribution, he humbled it to the dust by adapting all the rewards and sanctions of his religion to the gratification of the sexual passion. He poisoned the sources of human felicity at the fountain, by degrading the condition of the female sex, and the allowance of polygamy; and he declared undistinguishing and exterminating war, as a part of his religion, against all the rest of mankind. THE ESSENCE OF HIS DOCTRINE WAS VIOLENCE AND LUST: TO EXALT THE BRUTAL OVER THE SPIRITUAL PART OF HUMAN NATURE…. Between these two religions, thus contrasted in their characters, a war of twelve hundred years has already raged. The war is yet flagrant…While the merciless and dissolute dogmas of the false prophet shall furnish motives to human action, there can never be peace upon earth, and good will towards men. (Emphasis in the original)"
Robert Spencer,Right,"But Paradise would not be a bore for Muslims with different proclivities. Allah also promised his blessed that in Paradise, round about them will serve, devoted to them, young male servants handsome as pearls well-guarded (Qur’an 52:24), youths of perpetual freshness (Qur’an 56:17): if thou seest them, thou wouldst think them scattered pearls (Qur’an 76:19). But surely the Qur’an isn’t condoning homosexuality, is it? After all, it depicts Lot telling the people of Sodom: For ye practise your lusts on men in preference to women: ye are indeed a people transgressing beyond bounds (7:81) and of all the creatures in the world, will ye approach males, and leave those whom Allah has created for you to be your mates? Nay, ye are a people transgressing all limits! (26:165). A hadith commands that if a man who is not married is seized committing sodomy, he will be stoned to death.6 Another hadith has Muhammad saying: Kill the one who sodomizes and the one who lets it be done to him.7 These strictures have worked their way into Islamic legal codes, such that two Saudis were so anxious to avoid a flogging or prison term that they murdered a Pakistani who witnessed their shameful acts by running over him with a car, smashing his head in with a rock, and setting him on fire.8 But the pearl-like youths of Paradise have given rise to a strange double-mindedness about homosexuality in Islam. The great poet Abu Nuwas openly glorified homosexuality in his notorious poem the Perfumed Garden:"
Robert Spencer,Right,"Muhammad vs. Jesus Blessed are you when men revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account. Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven. Jesus (Matthew 5:11) And slay them wherever ye find them, and drive them out of the places whence they drove you out, for persecution is worse than slaughter. Qur’an 2:191"
Robert Spencer,Right,"a surprisingly large number of those who identify themselves as Muslims have scant acquaintance with what it actually says. Although the media establishment continues to interchange the words Muslim and Arab, most Muslims worldwide today are not Arabs. Even modern Arabic, much less classical Qur’anic Arabic, is foreign to them. They often memorize the Qur’an by rote without any clear idea of what it actually says. A Pakistani Muslim once proudly told me that he had memorized large sections of the Qur’an, and planned to buy a translation one day so that he could find out exactly what it was saying. Such instances are common to a degree that may surprise most non-Muslims."
Robert Spencer,Right,"The choices for unbelievers are: Accept Islam. Pay the jizya, the poll-tax on non-Muslims, which (as we shall see) is the cornerstone of an entire system of humiliating regulations that institutionalize inferior status for non-Muslims in Islamic law. War with Muslims. Always remember, peaceful coexistence as equals in a pluralistic society isn’t one of the choices."
Robert Spencer,Right,"a Greek monk and theologian (today revered as a saint by the Orthodox Church) who was imprisoned for a time by the Turks, remarked trenchantly about Muslims: These infamous people, hated by God and infamous, boast of having got the better of the Romans [i.e., Byzantines] by their love of God…They live by the bow, the sword, and debauchery, finding pleasure in taking slaves, devoting themselves to murder, pillage, spoil…and not only do they commit these crimes, but even"
Robert Spencer,Right,We love death more than you love life.' This is civilization's ultimate challenge. Will the lovers of death and destruction overwhelm and defeat those who love life and have created great civilizations that celebrate human creativity and achievement? Will all that is left of three thousand years of human civilization be reduced to rubble and a mindless religio-ideological lockstep? The Islamic State is not just a challenge to Judeo-Christian Western civilization. It is a challenge to civilization itself--to the very idea of civilization. And that is why it is doomed to fail. Life will always conquer death in the end. The human spirit will always prevail against the forces that would subjugate and enslave it.
Robert Spencer,Right,"After all, if Satan could put words into Muhammad’s mouth once, and make him think they were revelations from Allah, who is to say that Satan did not use Muhammad as his mouthpiece on other occasions?"
Robert Spencer,Right,"The Life of Muhammad: A Translation of Ibn Ishaq’s Sirat Rasul Allah, Oxford University Press, 1955. An English translation of the earliest biography of Muhammad"
Robert Spencer,Right,"This is not a small matter. It is from Christian Europe, after all, no matter how reluctant the PC establishment is to acknowledge it, that most philosophical and scientific exploration, as well as technological advancement, have sprung. We have already seen one key reason why science developed in the Christian world rather than the Muslim world: Christians believed in a coherent and consistent universe governed by a good God; Muslims believed in a universe governed by a God whose will was so absolute as to preclude coherence and consistency. But the implications of this all-important philosophical difference could not have worked themselves out without freedom. That freedom was not available to Christians or any other non-Muslims who had the misfortune to live under Muslim rule. In fact, any people who came under Muslim rule throughout history were ultimately reduced"
Robert Spencer,Right,"Of course, few conquered peoples have ever escaped this fate. The only people who have escaped Muslim dhimmitude have been those who were successful in resisting Islamic jihad: the Christians of Europe and the Hindus of India. Others were not so fortunate."
Robert Spencer,Right,"Case study: The Zoroastrians Would it really have been so bad if the Muslims had conquered Europe? After all, the Christians would still have been able to practice their religion. They would just have had to put up with a little discrimination, right? Although a little discrimination is all that most Islamic apologists will acknowledge about dhimmitude, the long-term effects of the dhimma were much more damaging for non-Muslims. Even centuries after the Muslim conquest of Egypt, the Coptic Christians maintained an overwhelming majority there. Yet today the Copts amount to just 10 percent, or less, of the Egyptian population. It’s the same story with every non-Muslim group that has fallen completely under Islamic rule. The Zoroastrians, or Parsis, are followers of the Persian priest and prophet Zoroaster, or Zarathustra (628–551 B.C.). Before the advent of Islam, Zoroastrianism was for a long period the official religion of Persia (modern-day Iran), and was the dominant religion when the Persian Empire spanned from the Aegean Sea to the Indus River. Zoroastrians were commonly found from Persia to China. But after the Muslim conquest of Persia, Zoroastrians were given dhimmi status and subjected to cruel persecutions, which often included forced conversions. Many fled to India to escape Muslim rule, only to fall prey to the warriors of jihad again when the Muslims started to advance into India. The suffering of the Zoroastrians under Islam was strikingly similar to that of Christians and Jews under Islam farther to the West, and it continued well into modern times (even to this very day under the Iranian mullahocracy)."
Robert Spencer,Right,"What is the effect of being made to live this way over a long period? The answer is in the numbers: After nearly 1,400 years of living as dhimmis and experiencing the true nature of Islamic tolerance, Zoroastrians today make up less than 2 percent of the population of Iran (and even less than that in India, where they fled for refuge). In Afghanistan, where Zoroastrianism also once thrived, Zoroastrians today are virtually nonexistent. This is no surprise: Conversion to Islam was often the only way these persecuted people could have any hope of living a decent life. If the Crusaders had not held off the Muslims, and Islamic jihads had ultimately finished off Christendom, would Christians in Europe have become a tiny minority, like their coreligionists in the Middle East (where Christianity was once the dominant religion) and the Zoroastrians? Would the achievements of European Christian civilization be treated no better than trash, as Islamic societies generally tend to regard the pre-Islamic period of ignorance in their histories?"
Robert Spencer,Right,"But the worst came from the Mongol Tamerlane, a dedicated Muslim who conducted furious jihad campaigns against the Nestorians and devastated their cities and churches. It was full-blown war against the Assyrian Christians: Tamerlane offered them conversion to Islam, dhimmitude, or death. By 1400, the vast Nestorian domains were no more; Christianity had almost completely died out in Persia, Central Asia, and China.7 After this, virtually all Nestorians lived as dhimmis under Muslim rule. And like the Zoroastrians, their community dwindled down to a tiny remnant under the relentless weight of this institutionalized injustice. If the Christians in Europe had been subjected to the same fate, it is distinctly possible that the world might never have known the works of Dante Alighieri, or Michelangelo, or Leonardo da Vinci, or Mozart, or Bach. It is likely that there would never have been an El Greco, or a Giotto, or an Olivier Messaien. A community that must expend all its energy just to survive does not easily pursue art and music. The Crusades may have made the full flowering of European civilization possible."
Robert Spencer,Right,"The whitewash of Kingdom of Heaven Kingdom of Heaven is a classic cowboys-and-Indians story in which the Muslims are noble and heroic and the Christians are venal and violent. The script is heavy on modern-day PC clichés and fantasies of Islamic tolerance; brushing aside dhimmi laws and attitudes (of which Ridley Scott has most likely never heard), it invents a peace-and-tolerance group called the Brotherhood of Muslims, Jews and Christians. But of course, the Christians spoiled everything. A publicist for the film explained, They were working together. It was a strong bond until the Knights Templar caused friction between them. Ah yes, those nasty Christian extremists. Kingdom of Heaven was made for those who believe that all the trouble between the Islamic world and the West has been caused by Western imperialism, racism, and colonialism, and that the glorious paradigm of Islamic tolerance, which was once a beacon to the world, could be reestablished if only the wicked white men of America and Europe would be more tolerant. Ridley Scott and his team arranged advance screenings for groups like the Council on American-Islamic Relations, making sure that sensitive Muslim feelings were not hurt. It is a dream movie for the PC establishment in every way except one: It isn’t true. Professor Jonathan Riley-Smith, author of A Short History of the Crusades and one of the world’s leading historians of the period, called the movie rubbish, explaining that it’s not historically accurate at all as it depicts the Muslims as sophisticated and civilised, and the Crusaders are all brutes and barbarians. It has nothing to do with reality. Oh, and there was never a confraternity of Muslims, Jews and Christians. That is utter nonsense."
Robert Spencer,Right,"Islamophobia as a weapon of jihad The charge of Islamophobia is routinely used to shift attention away from jihad terrorists. After a rise in jihadist militancy and the arrest of eight people in Switzerland on suspicion of aiding suicide bombers in Saudi Arabia, some Muslims in Switzerland were in no mood to clean house: As far as we’re concerned, said Nadia Karmous, leader of a Muslim women’s group in Switzerland, there is no rise in Islamism, but rather an increase in Islamophobia.5 This pattern has recurred in recent years all over the world as Islamophobia has passed into the larger lexicon and become a self-perpetuating industry. In Western countries, Islamophobia has taken a place beside racism, sexism, and homophobia. The absurdity of all this was well illustrated by a recent incident in Britain: While a crew was filming the harassment of a Muslim for a movie about Islamophobia, two passing Brits, who didn’t realize the cameras were rolling, stopped to defend the person being assaulted. Yet neither the filmmakers nor the reporters covering these events seemed to realize that this was evidence that the British were not as violent and xenophobic as the film they were creating suggested.6 Historian Victor Davis Hanson has ably explained the dangerous shift of focus that Islamophobia entails: There really isn’t a phenomenon like Islamophobia"
Robert Spencer,Right,"But according to Islamic law, Muslims may only conclude truces during jihad warfare with non-Muslims when they are in a position of weakness and need time to gather strength to fight again. Those who concluded agreements with the Crusaders did not lose sight of this principle and never entered into a pact that ultimately weakened the Muslims’ position."
Robert Spencer,Right,"Guess what? Although the Crusades failed in their primary objective, they played a key role in staving off the jihad conquest of Europe. The peoples who lived in the tolerant, pluralistic Islamic societies of old dwindled down to tiny, harassed, despised minorities. Islamic distaste for unbelievers is a constant of Islamic history and persists today. Or would the world be different in other, quite unexpected ways? Do the words St. Peter’s Mosque in Rome mean anything to you?"
Robert Spencer,Right,So what did the Crusades accomplish? They bought Europe time
Robert Spencer,Right,"With religious vilification laws now coming to Britain and undoubtedly elsewhere in the West, Scot’s question rings out with global implications and must be answered. If it is inciting hatred against Muslims when non-Muslims simply explore what Islam and the Qur’an actually teach, then there cannot be a reasonable public discussion of Islam. Such legal protections actually make Muslims a separate class, beyond criticism, precisely at the moment when the West needs to examine the implications of having admitted people with greater allegiance to Islamic law than to pluralism, freedom, and democracy."
Robert Spencer,Right,"This was a momentous incident, for it would set a pattern: good became identified with anything that redounded to the benefit of Muslims, and evil with anything that harmed them, without reference to any larger moral standard. Moral absolutes were swept aside in favor of the overarching principle of expediency."
Robert Spencer,Right,Allah warns the Muslims not to consider booty won at Badr to belong to anyone but Muhammad:
Robert Spencer,Right,precedents as a guide to Muslims living in countries
Robert Spencer,Right,"Although Saudi authorities promised after the September 11 attacks to revise textbooks that taught hatred against Jews and Christians, as late as 2006 Saudi texts still referred to Jews as apes and Christians as swine.27 And in April 2008 a British employment tribunal awarded 70,000 pounds ($115,000) to a teacher who had been fired from a Saudi-funded Islamic school for exposing that the school’s textbooks spoke of the repugnant characteristics of the Jews and asserted, Those whom God has cursed and with whom he is angry, he has turned into monkeys and pigs. They worship Satan.28 There is an endless parade of similar examples. In March 2004 Sheikh Ibrahim Mudayris, speaking on official Palestinian Authority television, railed against the Jews today taking revenge for their grandfathers and ancestors, the sons of apes and pigs.29 And during the swine flu scare in May 2009, Sheikh Ahmad ‘Ali ‘Othman, the superintendent of da’wa [Islamic proselytizing] affairs at the Egyptian Ministry of Religious Endowments, declared that all pigs are descended from the Jews whom Allah transformed into apes, swine and worshippers of Satan, and must therefore be slaughtered. Othman based his argument on Koran 5:60, one of the Koran’s notorious apes and pigs passages.30 In his televised sermon denouncing the Jews regardless of their actions in Israel or elsewhere, Muhammad Hussein Ya’qoub also invoked this theme: As for you Jews"
Robert Spencer,Right,"Bible vs. Koran Therefore, when ye meet the unbelievers in fight, smite at their necks; at length, when ye have thoroughly subdued them, bind a bond firmly on them: thereafter is the time for either generosity or ransom, until the war lays down its burdens. . . . But those who are slain in the Way of Allah, He will never let their deeds be lost."
Robert Spencer,Right,"Consequently, when Muslims today say they revere Jesus and even that they recognize Christianity as a legitimate faith, they are being disingenuous. For the Christianity that the Koran recognizes is not Christianity as millions practice it around the world today. This is a key source of much of the enduring suspicion and mistrust between Muslims and Christians. The Saudi Sheikh Abd Al-Muhsin Al-Qadhi expatiated on the Koranic view of mainstream Christianity in a recent sermon, in which he also elaborated a contemptuous view of Christian charity:            Today we will talk about one of the distorted religions, about a faith that deviates from the path of righteousness . . . about Christianity, this false faith, and about the people whom Allah described in his book as deviating from the path of righteousness. We will examine their faith, and we will review their history, full of hate, abomination, and wars against Islam and the Muslims. In this distorted and deformed religion, to which many of the inhabitants of the earth belong, we can see how the Christians deviate greatly from the path of righteousness by talking about the concept of the Trinity. As far as they are concerned, God is the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost: three who are one.                   . . . They see Jesus, peace be upon him, as the son of Allah. . . . It is the Christians who believe Jesus was crucified. According to them, he was hanged on the cross with nails pounded through his hands, and he cried, My God, why have you forsaken me? According to them, this was so that he would atone for the sins of mankind. . . . Regardless of all these deviations from the path of righteousness, it is possible to see many Muslims . . . who know about Christianity only what the Christians claim about love, tolerance, devoting life to serving the needy, and other distorted slogans. . . . After all this, we still find people who promote the idea of bringing our religion and theirs closer, as if the differences were miniscule and could be eliminated by arranging all those [interfaith] conferences, whose goal is political.18 The idea that Christianity is a distorted, deformed religion created by people who were bent on rejecting the prophet Muhammad fuels a great deal of Muslim hatred for Christianity, Christians, and the West to this day."
Robert Spencer,Right,"Nigeria is not alone, either in the prevalence of child marriage or in attempts to end the practice. In September 2008, Moroccan officials closed sixty Koranic schools operated by Sheikh Mohamed Ben Abderrahman Al-Maghraoui, because he issued a decree justifying marriage to girls as young as nine. The sheikh, according to Agence France-Presse, said his decree was based on the fact that the Prophet Mohammed consummated his marriage to his favourite wife when she was that age.23 It should come as no surprise, then, given the words of the Koran about divorcing prepubescent women and Muhammad’s example in marrying Aisha, that in some areas of the Islamic world the practice of child marriage enjoys the blessing of the law. Time magazine reported in 2001 that in Iran the legal age for marriage is nine for girls, fourteen for boys, and notes that the law has occasionally been exploited by pedophiles, who marry poor young girls from the provinces, use and then abandon them. In 2000 the Iranian Parliament voted to raise the minimum age for girls to fourteen, but this year, a legislative oversight body dominated by traditional clerics vetoed the move.24 Likewise, the New York Times reported in 2008 that in Yemen, despite a rising tide of outrage, the fight against the practice is not easy. Hard-line Islamic conservatives, whose influence has grown enormously in the past two decades, defend it, pointing to the Prophet Muhammad’s marriage to a 9-year-old.25 (The characterization of proponents of Islamic law as conservatives is notable"
Robert Spencer,Right,"Koranic polygamy has also come to the United States. In November 2007, a Muslim woman sent a letter to Board of Directors of the Islamic Center of New England complaining that her husband was able to marry illegally and secretly and without my knowledge three [A]merican [M]uslim women, and because of that my self and my children have suffered and still suffering tremendously. She laid some of the responsibility at the feet of the leaders of the Islamic Center: Because of the failure of the Islamic center as well the Imams to prevent such misconduct, I had no choice but to file for divorce. She threatened to expose this misconduct to the court and media if I have to, I also hope through this letter that you will make sure that this victimizations [sic] doesn’t happen to any other sisters.38 This was no isolated case. According to researcher David Rusin, estimates for the United States typically run into the tens of thousands of polygamous unions.39 In May 2008 researchers estimated that between 50,000 and 100,000 Muslims were living in polygamous arrangements in the United States.40 And Muslim imams don’t seem concerned about U.S. laws forbidding the practice: Ibrahim Hooper of the Council on American-Islamic Relations asserted that a minority of Muslims in America were polygamous, and that Islamic scholars would differ on whether one could do so while living in the United States.41 He didn’t say anything about the necessity of obeying U.S. laws in this regard. Toronto imam Aly Hindy explained that such laws would have no force for Muslims: This is in our religion and nobody can force us to do anything against our religion. If the laws of the country conflict with Islamic law, if one goes against the other, then I am going to follow Islamic law, simple as that.42 The Koran has further gifts for men as well. As we have seen, it stipulates that if a man cannot deal justly with multiples wives, then he should marry only one, or resort to the captives that your right hands possess"
Robert Spencer,Right,"Divinely sanctioned wife-beating There is no basis in Islamic theology to support domestic abuse of any kind, declared Qanta A. Ahmed, author of In the Land of Invisible Women: A Female Doctor’s Journey in the Saudi Kingdom, in May 2009.43 But it all depends on one’s definition of abuse: wife-beating exists in all cultures, but only in Islam does it enjoy divine sanction. The Koran tells men to beat their disobedient wives after first warning them and then sending them to sleep in separate beds (4:34)"
Robert Spencer,Right,"The historic importance of the Khidr story is unfortunate, given another lesson that emerges from it in Islamic tradition: don’t kill children, unless you know they’re going to grow up to be unbelievers. One early Muslim, Najda, recalled, The Messenger of Allah (may peace be upon him) used not to kill the children, so thou shouldst not kill them unless you could know what Khadir had known about the child he killed, or you could distinguish between a child who would grow up to be a believer (and a child who would grow up to be a non-believer), so that you killed the (prospective) non-believer and left the (prospective) believer aside.26 This interpretation may help to explain the persistent phenomenon of honor killing in Islamic countries and even among Muslims in the West, in which a Muslim kills a daughter or other relative who has shamed him by engaging in allegedly un-Islamic activity, such as dating a non-Muslim boy or adopting Western clothing. Muslims who take the Koran literally can find a justification in this passage for such acts by claiming his victim was turning into an unbeliever."
Robert Spencer,Right,"Besides Jewish and Christian traditions, Islam also contains some traces of pagan traditions. In fact, the Ka’aba, the Meccan shrine to which every Muslim, if able, is obligated to make at least one pilgrimage, was a pagan Arab shrine and a center of pilgrimage long before Muhammad began preaching Islam."
Robert Spencer,Right,"There is only one speaker throughout: Allah himself (although there are a few exceptions that bedevil Koranic commentators to this day). Because it is without doubt, and because it is entirely Allah’s word, without any human element whatsoever, and because he guarantees its preservation, it cannot be questioned. Historically this has made the words of the Koran"
Robert Spencer,Right,"However, not all Muslims have always believed that the Koran is eternal and uncreated"
Robert Spencer,Right,"The debate over whether the sacred book was created or existed eternally had enormous practical implications. The Mu’tazilites developed a method of Koranic interpretation that was freer from the literal meaning of the text than most Muslim divines dared to venture. For example, they reinterpreted the injunction that Allah leads the wrongdoers astray (14:27) so as to reject predestination; they simply denied that Allah would lead people astray and condemn them to Hell. The caliph (Islamic emperor) Ja’far al-Mutawakkil (847–861), however, crushed the Mu’tazilite movement and branded it a heresy. Asserting that the Koran was created became a crime punishable by death. And to this day, the marginalization and discrediting of the Mu’tazilites casts a long shadow over moderate Islam. If today’s moderates stray too far from a literal reading of the Koran (including its ferocity toward unbelievers), they risk being accused of advocating long-discredited heresies. The Mu’tazilite experience provides ample historical precedent and a ready methodology that literalists use to cast suspicion on any reading of the Koran that doesn’t take all its words at face value."
Robert Spencer,Right,"Sadiq al-Mahdi, former prime minister of Sudan, would agree. On March 24, 1999, he wrote to the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, Mary Robinson, that the traditional concept of JIHAD does allow slavery as a by-product.11 And so slavery persists to this day in some areas of the Islamic world. The BBC reported in December 2008 that strong evidence has emerged of children and adults being used as slaves in Sudan’s Darfur region"
Robert Spencer,Right,"was a watershed event, establishing a utilitarian morality that runs through Islamic theology: anything that benefits Muslims and Islam is good, and anything that harms them is evil. The twentieth century jihad theorist Sayyid Qutb accordingly explained that Islam is a practical and realistic way of life which is not based on rigid idealistic dogma. Islam maintains its own high moral principles, but only when justice is established and wrongdoing is contained"
Robert Spencer,Right,"What about Jerusalem? When discussing the Israeli–Palestinian conflict, pundits and politicians often tell us that Jerusalem is one of the holy cities of Islam"
Robert Spencer,Right,Women are inherently crooked? Certainly some Muslim clerics think so
Robert Spencer,Right,"as in the Islamic Republic of Iran, where large numbers of women turned out during the June 2009 post-election demonstrations. Clearly, these women’s grievances went far beyond a single rigged election. One explained, I see lots of girls and women in these demonstrations. They are all angry, ready to explode, scream out and let the world hear their voice. I want the world to know that as a woman in this country, I have no freedom. This was not surprising, since Iranian law was formulated in scrupulous adherence to the Koran and Islamic tradition and law. Even the Ayatollah Khomeini’s granddaughter, Zahra Eshraghi, declared that under Islamic law, a woman is there to fill her husband’s stomach and raise children. And just weeks after President Barack Obama defended the right of women in non-Muslim countries to cover their heads, brave Iranian women were throwing off their head coverings as a sign of protest against the Islamic regime"
Robert Spencer,Right,"Now that we have seen what is in the Koran, let’s consider what is not in the Muslim holy book. Islam, being one of the world’s great religions, as well as one of the three great Abrahamic faiths, enjoys the benefit of certain assumptions on the part of uninformed Americans and Europeans. Many people believe that since Islam is a religion, it must teach universal love and brotherhood"
Robert Spencer,Right,"You killed a Christian? Fine. But if the victim had been a Muslim. . . The rules for restitution for wrongful death are also illuminating for Infidels. The Koran (2:178) establishes a law of retaliation (qisas) for murder: equal recompense must be given for the life of the victim, which can take the form of blood money (diyah): a payment to compensate for the loss suffered. In Islamic law (Sharia), the amount of compensation varies depending on the identity of the victim. ‘Umdat al-Salik (Reliance of the Traveller), a Sharia manual that Cairo’s prestigious Al-Azhar University certifies as conforming to the practice and faith of the orthodox Sunni community, says that the payment for killing a woman is half that to be paid for killing a man. Likewise, the penalty for killing a Jew or Christian is one-third that paid for killing a male Muslim.1 The Iranian Sufi Sheikh Sultanhussein Tabandeh, one of the architects of the legal codes of the Islamic Republic of Iran, explains that punishments in Iran for other crimes differ as well, depending on whether the perpetrator is a Muslim. If a Muslim commits adultery, Tabandeh explains, his punishment is 100 lashes, the shaving of his head, and one year of banishment. (He is referring, of course, to a Muslim male; a Muslim female would in all likelihood be sentenced to be stoned to death.) But if the man is not a Muslim, Tabandeh continues, and commits adultery with a Muslim woman his penalty is execution.   Bible vs. Koran Muhammad is the messenger of Allah. And those with him are hard against the disbelievers and merciful among themselves."
Robert Spencer,Right,"It is futile to pretend the problem doesn’t exist and hope that it will go away. Yet, absurdly, this has been American policy since the September 11 attacks. U.S. officials seem to believe that if they act as if Islam is a religion of peace and the Koran a book of peace, Muslims will feel themselves compelled to behave accordingly. An extreme example of this bizarre assumption came in President Obama’s heralded speech to the Islamic world in Cairo on June 4, 2009.16 Obama was extremely anxious to appear sympathetic and accommodating to Muslim grievances"
Robert Spencer,Right,"No Christian friends, please, we’re Muslims The Koran warns Muslims that the Jews and pagans will be their worst enemies, but nearest among them in love to the believers wilt thou find those who say, ‘We are Christians,’ because amongst these are men devoted to learning and men who have renounced the world, and they are not arrogant (5:82). One Muslim interpretation of this passage holds that it refers not to all Christians, but only to those who accept Islam; this is made clear by the following two verses, in which those Christians accept Muhammad’s message. But even if one takes the text at face value, the totality of the Koranic record suggests that while Christians may themselves feel nearest in love to the Muslims, Muslims are not to return the favor. For Allah commands them, O ye who believe! Take not the Jews and the Christians for your friends and protectors: they are but friends and protectors to each other. And he amongst you that turns to them (for friendship) is of them. Verily Allah guideth not a people unjust (5:51)."
Robert Spencer,Right,"And mind you, Muslims would still regard this onslaught as essentially defensive"
Robert Spencer,Right,"Islamic apologists in the West today commonly assert that verse 9:29 commands warfare only against the Jews and Christians who fought against Muhammad. It would be comforting if every Muslim believed that, but unfortunately that has never been the mainstream Islamic understanding of this verse. Indeed, if it had been, the regulations delineated in the Pact of Umar would never have been formulated"
Robert Spencer,Right,"But . . . but . . . my Muslim friends tell me Islam is peaceful! Your Muslim friends may indeed be peaceful and reject these teachings. Or they may not know about them, because their teachers did not emphasize them. Or, they may be lying. It’s unfortunate, but true: Islam is the only major religion with a developed doctrine of deception. Many believe this doctrine, called taqiyya, is exclusively Shi’ite, but actually it is founded upon Koranic passages. Chief among these is this one: Let not the believers take for friends or helpers unbelievers rather than believers. If any do that, in nothing will there be help from Allah; except by way of precaution, that ye may guard yourselves from them (3:28). Ibn Kathir explains that in this verse, Allah prohibited His believing servants from becoming supporters of the disbelievers, or to take them as comrades with whom they develop friendships, rather than the believers. However, exempted from this rule were            those believers who in some areas or times fear for their safety from the disbelievers. In this case, such believers are allowed to show friendship to the disbelievers outwardly, but never inwardly. For instance, Al-Bukhari recorded that Abu Ad-Darda’ said, We smile in the face of some people although our hearts curse them. Al-Bukhari said that Al-Hasan said, The Tuqyah [taqiyyah] is allowed until the Day of Resurrection."
Robert Spencer,Right,"Quite so: the choice, as laid out by Muhammad himself, is conversion, subjugation as dhimmis, or the sword.49 Qutb accordingly denies any contradiction between the injunction that there is no compulsion in religion and the imperative to fight until religion is for Allah (2:193). He says that Islam has not used force to impose its beliefs. Rather, jihad’s main objective has been the establishment of a stable society in which all citizens, including followers of other religious creeds, may live in peace and security"
Robert Spencer,Right,"veteran Turkish smuggler claimed in November 2014 that he had sent more than ten Islamic State jihadis into Europe. His claim couldn’t be proven, but it was eminently plausible: he said he charged $2,500 for every person he brought out of the Islamic State and into Europe through Turkey, and that the jihadis he had helped get to Europe were pretending to be refugees. But according to the smuggler they are actually jihadis biding their time: They are waiting for their orders. Just wait. You will see. . . . The Western world thinks there is no ISIS in their countries"
Robert Spencer,Right,"In March 2008, the Al-Arabiya news channel denounced my book The Truth about Muhammad, claiming that it contained lies and hate. Its article quoted the Islamic apologist Karen Armstrong as saying that the book was written in hatred and contains basic and bad mistakes of fact.8 The jihad terror group Hamas soon joined in the denunciation, thundering that my book was not just full of lies, but was actually part of a campaign by Western extremists against the religion of Islam and values that are sacred to Moslems, and was another in a series of actions designed to distort the image of Islam in the public eye.9"
Robert Spencer,Right,"The stealth jihadists employ this kind of obfuscation to great effect. Their immediate goal is not to overpower America directly through combat, but rather to convince Americans that there is nothing at all to fear from Islamic theology, and that anyone who argues otherwise is an Islamophobe motivated solely by hate. With the population lulled into complacency, they can go about their work of forcing Western accommodation to Islamic practices. This is meant to set the stage for Islam eventually to emerge supreme."
Robert Spencer,Right,"In the past, the Bush administration has shown undue respect for U.S.-based stealth jihadist organizations, feting them, currying favor with them, and listening closely to their advice on Islam-related issues. One would have thought that President Bush’s embarrassment at posing for a photograph in 2000 with Sami Al-Arian, who cofounded the World Islamic Study Enterprise and other jihadist front organizations and was later imprisoned for his activities in support of the terror organization Palestinian Islamic Jihad, would have been enough to dissuade the administration from maintaining connections with such groups. If not that, surely federal prosecutors’ naming of CAIR, the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA), and the North American Islamic Trust as unindicted co-conspirators in a terrorism funding trial should have done the trick. But no, somehow CAIR and Co.’s advice keeps finding its way into official U.S. policies."
Robert Spencer,Right,"The Jews have earned Allah’s anger by rejecting Muhammad (2:90), and the Christians have gone astray by holding to the divinity of Christ (5:72)."
Robert Spencer,Right,"While Islamic apologists commonly claim that the Koran does not refer to Jews or Christians as Infidels, in fact it asserts that they indeed have disbelieved who say: Lo! Allah is the Messiah, son of Mary (5:17)"
Robert Spencer,Right,"The last hour would not come unless the Muslims will fight against the Jews and the Muslims would kill them until the Jews would hide themselves behind a stone or a tree and a stone or a tree would say: Muslim, or the servant of Allah, there is a Jew behind me; come and kill him; but the tree Gharqad would not say, for it is the tree of the Jews."
Robert Spencer,Right,"the Koran really curses Jews and Christians (9:30) and calls for warfare against them in order to bring about their subjugation (9:29),"
Robert Spencer,Right,"Zarqawi insisted that his group was behaving in a strictly Islamic manner: the Mujahideen carry out their operations under strict adherence to the rules of engagement as set forth by Allah, His messenger, our prophet Muhammad, and his companions. His followers’ Islam-approved methods followed from their overall goal as jihad warriors: And why not? After all, the Mujahideen took to the battle fields only to establish the Deen [religion] of Allah (Islam), to make the word of Allah high above any others, and to gain the pleasure of Allah. This statement is noteworthy in light of the fact that Western analysts universally ascribe the roots of jihad terror to poverty, lack of educational or economic opportunity"
Robert Spencer,Right,"Ultimately, the justification for the cartoon contest in Garland, as well as for the quixotic idea of writing a breezy book about a group devoted to mass murder, rape, slavery, and other far-from-light-hearted topics, is this: in the face of evil, especially evil that demands respect and obeisance at the point of a gun, mockery is not only justified, but required. Thomas More said, The devil . . . the proud spirit . . . cannot endure to be mocked. But the lovers of life, and of humanity, and of freedom must mock humorless evil"
Robert Spencer,Right,"This claim to constitute a new caliphate became the basis of the Islamic State’s appeal to Muslims worldwide, the inspiration for them to travel in unprecedented numbers to Iraq, Syria, and Libya to join ISIS. Once the Islamic State declared itself the new caliphate, it swiftly began to consolidate control over the large expanses of Iraq and Syria that it had taken by military force"
Robert Spencer,Right,"Yet despite all this and more, most Americans know very little about ISIS. And that’s not just Americans who know what they know about world affairs from watching network news shows. Even the nation’s highest authorities and our intelligence apparatus have shown that they know very little about the Islamic State."
Robert Spencer,Right,In this book I explain the roots of its success
Robert Spencer,Right,"Ayman al-Zawahiri, a scholarly Egyptian eye surgeon who had served as bin Laden’s personal physician."
Robert Spencer,Right,"On April 16, 2015, Abdirahman Sheik Mohamud, a Muslim who lived in Columbus, Ohio, was indicted for plotting to carry out a jihad terror attack in the United States"
Robert Spencer,Right,"Camp Bucca was the model U.S. prison camp to which inmates from the notorious Abu Ghraib prison were transferred after the scandal there.34 Unfortunately, while the crimes at Abu Ghraib provided a huge propaganda coup for the jihadis, the relatively relaxed conditions at Camp Bucca seem to have provided networking opportunities that would be at least as valuable in advancing the cause of jihad. Apparently al-Baghdadi was a natural leader who seemed to his American guards like a model prisoner. He was respected very much by the US army, a man who claims to have been one of his prison associates and colleagues in ISIS has said. If he wanted to visit people in another camp he could, but we couldn’t. And all the while, a new strategy, which he was leading, was rising under their noses, and that was to build the Islamic State. If there was no American prison in Iraq, there would be no IS now. Bucca was a factory. It made us all."
Robert Spencer,Right,"December 2014, ISIS issued a list of rules for Christians living in the Islamic State’s de facto capital of Raqqa, Syria. Those who dare disobey risk calling down on themselves the full force of the Islamic State’s brutal enforcement mechanisms"
Robert Spencer,Right,"One more thing is absolutely forbidden in the capital of the Islamic State: mocking Muslims or Islam. And on May 3, 2015, jihadis loyal to ISIS attempted to impose the death penalty on offenders against that rule"
Robert Spencer,Right,"Fortunately, thanks to the clear-headed and courageous actions of the security team, the only people killed were the jihad attackers."
Hans-Hermann Hoppe,Right,"Democracy has nothing to do with freedom. Democracy is a soft variant of communism, and rarely in the history of ideas has it been taken for anything else."
Hans-Hermann Hoppe,Right,"If the right to vote were expanded to seven year olds … its policies would most definitely reflect the ‘legitimate concerns’ of children to have ‘adequate’ and ‘equal’ access to ‘free’ french fries, lemonade and videos."
Hans-Hermann Hoppe,Right,"There can be no socialism without a state, and as long as there is a state there is socialism. The state, then, is the very institution that puts socialism into action; and as socialism rests on aggressive violence directed against innocent victims, aggressive violence is the nature of any state."
Hans-Hermann Hoppe,Right,"However, not only external expansion of state power is brought about by the ideology of nationalism. War as the natural outgrowth of nationalism is also the means of strengthening the state’s internal powers of exploitation and expropriation. Each war is also an internal emergency situation, and an emergency requires and seems to justify the acceptance of the state’s increasing its control over its own population. Such increased control gained through the creation of emergencies is reduced during peacetime, but it never sinks back to its pre-war levels. Rather, each successfully ended war (and only successful governments can survive) is used by the government and its intellectuals to propagate the idea that it was only because of nationalistic vigilance and expanded governmental powers that the foreign aggressors were crushed and one’s own country saved, and that this successful recipe must then be retained in order to be prepared for the next emergency. Led by the just proven dominant nationalism, each successful war ends with the attainment of a new peacetime high of governmental controls and thereby further strengthens a government’s appetite for implementing the next winnable international emergency."
Hans-Hermann Hoppe,Right,"No, the state is anything but the result of a contract! No one with even just an ounce of common sense would agree to such a contract. I have a lot of contracts in my files, but nowhere is there one like this. The state is the result of aggressive force and subjugation. It has evolved without contractual foundation, just like a gang of protection racketeers. And concerning the struggle of all against all: that is a myth."
Hans-Hermann Hoppe,Right,"First, with the establishment of a state and territorially defined state borders, immigration takes on an entirely new meaning. In a natural order, immigration is a person’s migration from one neighborhood-community into a different one (micro-migration). In contrast, under statist conditions immigration is immigration by foreigners from across state borders, and the decision whom to exclude or include, and under what conditions, rests not with a multitude of independent private property owners or neighborhoods of owners but with a single central (and centralizing) state-government as the ultimate sovereign of all domestic residents and their properties (macro-migration). If a domestic resident-owner invites a person and arranges for his access onto the resident-owner’s property but the government excludes this person from the state territory, it is a case of forced exclusion (a phenomenon that does not exist in a natural order). On the other hand, if the government admits a person while there is no domestic resident-owner who has invited this person onto his property, it is a case of forced integration (also nonexistent in a natural order, where all movement is invited)."
Hans-Hermann Hoppe,Right,"But Empire building also bears the seeds of its own destruction. The closer a state comes to the ultimate goal of world domination and one-world government, the less reason is there to maintain its internal liberalism and do instead what all states are inclined to do anyway, i.e., to crack down and increase their exploitation of whatever productive people are still left. Consequently, with no additional tributaries available and domestic productivity stagnating or falling, the Empire’s internal policies of bread and circuses can no longer be maintained. Economic crisis hits, and an impending economic meltdown will stimulate decentralizing tendencies, separatist and secessionist movements, and lead to the break-up of Empire. We have seen this happen with Great Britain, and we are seeing it now, with the US and its Empire apparently on its last leg."
Hans-Hermann Hoppe,Right,"Contrary to any claim of a systematically neutral effect of taxation on production, the consequence of any such shortening of roundabout methods of production is a lower output produced. The price that invariably must be paid for taxation, and for every increase in taxation, is a coercively lowered productivity that in turn reduces the standard of living in terms of valuable assets provided for future consumption. Every act of taxation necessarily exerts a push away from more highly capitalized, more productive production processes in the direction of a hand-to-mouth-existence."
Hans-Hermann Hoppe,Right,"Egalitarian and relativistic sentiments find steady support among ever new generations of adolescents. Owing to their still incomplete mental development, juveniles, especially of the male variety, are always susceptible to both ideas."
Hans-Hermann Hoppe,Right,"The state must answer these questions, too, but whatever it does, it does it without being subject to the profit-and-loss criterion. Hence, its action is arbitrary and necessarily involves countless wasteful misallocations from the consumer’s viewpoint. Independent to a large degree of consumer wants, the state-employed security producers instead do what they like. They hang around instead of doing anything, and if they do work they prefer doing what is easiest or work where they can wield power rather than serving consumers. Police officers drive around a lot, hassle petty traffic violators, spend huge amounts of money investigating victimless crimes that many people (i.e., nonparticipants) do not like but that few would be willing to spend their money on to fight, as they are not immediately affected by them. Yet with respect to what consumers want most urgently"
Hans-Hermann Hoppe,Right,"Conflict is not unavoidable. However, it is nonsensical to consider the institution of a state as a solution to the problem of possible conflict, because it is precisely the institution of a state which first makes conflict unavoidable and permanent."
Hans-Hermann Hoppe,Right,"In accordance with his high time preference, he may want to be a vagabond, a drifter, a drunkard, a junkie, a daydreamer, or simply a happy go-lucky kind of guy who likes to work as little as possible in order to enjoy each and every day to the fullest."
Hans-Hermann Hoppe,Right,"Incidentally, the same logic that would force one to accept the idea of the production of security by private business as economically the best solution to the problem of consumer satisfaction also forces one, so far as moral-ideological positions are concerned, to abandon the political theory of classical liberalism and take the small but nevertheless decisive step (from there) to the theory of libertarianism, or private property anarchism. Classical liberalism, with Ludwig von Mises as its foremost representative in the twentieth century, advocates a social system based on the nonaggression principle. And this is also what libertarianism advocates. But classical liberalism then wants to have this principle enforced by a monopolistic agency (the government, the state)"
Hans-Hermann Hoppe,Right,"Experience cannot beat logic, and interpretations of observational evidence which are not in line with the laws of logical reasoning are no refutation of these but the sign of a muddled mind (or would one accept someone’s observational report that he had seen a bird that was red and non-red all over at the same time as a refutation of the law of contradiction rather than the pronouncement of an idiot?)."
Hans-Hermann Hoppe,Right,"In a covenant...among proprietor and community tenants for the purpose of protecting their private property, no such thing as a right to free (unlimited) speech exists, not even to unlimited speech on one’s own tenant-property. One may say innumerable things and promote almost any idea under the sun, but naturally no one is permitted to advocate ideas contrary to the very covenant of preserving and protecting private property, such as democracy and communism. There can be no tolerance toward democrats and communists in a libertarian social order. They will have to be physically separated and removed from society."
Hans-Hermann Hoppe,Right,"So what? Why should an a priori proof of the libertarian property theory make any difference? Why not engage in aggression anyway? Why indeed?! But then, why should the proof that 1+1=2 make any difference? One certainly can still act on the belief that 1+1=3. The obvious answer is because a propositional justification exists for doing one thing, but not for doing another. But why should we be reasonable, is the next come-back. Again, the answer is obvious. For one, because it would be impossible to argue against it; and further, because the proponent raising this question would already affirm the use of reason in his act of questioning it. This still might not suffice and everyone knows that it would not, for even if the libertarian ethic and argumentative reasoning must be regarded as ultimately justified, this still does not preclude that people will act on the basis of unjustified beliefs either because they don’t know, they don’t care, or they prefer not to know. I fail to see why this should be surprising or make the proof somehow defective."
Hans-Hermann Hoppe,Right,"A government is a compulsory territorial monopolist of ultimate decision-making (jurisdiction) and, implied in this, a compulsory territorial monopolist of taxation. That is, a government is the ultimate arbiter, for the inhabitants of a given territory, regarding what is just and what is not, and it can determine unilaterally, i.e., without requiring the consent of those seeking justice or arbitration, the price that justice-seekers must pay to the government for providing this service."
Hans-Hermann Hoppe,Right,"Since money or other resources must be withdrawn from possible alternative uses to finance the supposedly desirable public goods, the only relevant and appropriate question is whether or not these alternative uses to which the money could be put (that is, the private goods which could have been acquired but now cannot be bought because the money is being spent on public goods instead) are more valuable"
Hans-Hermann Hoppe,Right,"Hence, contrary to the conclusion arrived at by the public goods theorists, logic forces one to accept the result that only a pure market system can safeguard the rationality, from the point of view of the consumers, of a decision to produce a public good. And only under a pure capitalist order could it be ensured that the decision about how much of a public good to produce (provided it should be produced at all) would be rational as well. 17 No less than a semantic revolution of truly Orwellian dimensions would be required to come up with a different result. Only if one were willing to interpret someone’s no as really meaning yes, the nonbuying of something as meaning that it is really preferred over that which the nonbuying person does instead of nonbuying, of force really meaning freedom, of noncontracting really meaning making a contract and so on, could the public goods theorists’ point be proven."
Hans-Hermann Hoppe,Right,"The traditional, correct pre-Marxist view on exploitation was that of radical laissez-faire liberalism as espoused by, for instance, Charles Comte and Charles Dunoyer. According to them, antagonistic interests do not exist between capitalists, as owners of factors of production, and laborers, but between, on the one hand, the producers in society, i.e., homesteaders, producers and contractors, including businessmen as well as workers, and on the other hand, those who acquire wealth non-productively and/or non-contractually, i.e., the state and state-privileged groups, such as feudal landlords."
Hans-Hermann Hoppe,Right,"Men do not live in perfect harmony with each other. Rather, again and again conflicts arise between them. And the source of these conflicts is always the same: the scarcity of goods. I want to do X with a given good G and you want to do simultaneously Y with the very same good. Because it is impossible for you and me to do simultaneously X and Y with G, you and I must clash. If a superabundance of goods existed, i.e., if, for instance, G were available in unlimited supply, our conflict could be avoided. We could both simultaneously do ‘our thing’ with G. But most goods do not exist in superabundance. Ever since mankind left the Garden of Eden, there has been and always will be scarcity all-around us."
Hans-Hermann Hoppe,Right,"As a matter of fact, states everywhere are highly intent on outlawing or at least controlling even the mere possession of arms by private citizens"
Hans-Hermann Hoppe,Right,"I am an aristocrat: I love liberty, I hate equality."
Hans-Hermann Hoppe,Right,"A government is a territorial monopolist of compulsion-an agency which may engage in continual, institutionalized property rights violations and the expropriation, taxation and regulation-of private property owners."
Hans-Hermann Hoppe,Right,"if the power of government rests on the widespread acceptance of false indeed absurd and foolish ideas, then the only genuine protection is the systematic attack of these ideas and the propagation and proliferation of true ones."
Hans-Hermann Hoppe,Right,"Without the continued existence of the democratic system and of publicly funded education and research, however, most current teachers and intellectuals would be unemployed or their income would fall to a small fraction of its present level. Instead of researching the syntax of Ebonics, the love life of mosquitoes, or the relationship between poverty and crime for $100 grand a year, they would research the science of potato growing or the technology of gas pump operation for $20 grand."
Hans-Hermann Hoppe,Right,"With a [democratic] government anyone in principle can become a member of the ruling class or even the supreme power. The distinction between the rulers and the ruled as well as the class consciousness of the ruled become blurred. The illusion even arises that the distinction no longer exists: that with a public government no one is ruled by anyone, but everyone instead rules himself. Accordingly, public resistance against government power is systematically weakened. While exploitation and expropriation before might have appeared plainly oppressive and evil to the public, they seem much less so, mankind being what it is, once anyone may freely enter the ranks of those who are at the receiving end. Consequently, [exploitation will increase], whether openly in the form of higher taxes or discretely as increased governmental money creation (inflation) or legislative regulation."
Hans-Hermann Hoppe,Right,"Under democracy, the incentive structure is systematically changed. Egalitarian sentiments and envy are given free reign. Everyone, not just the king, is now allowed to participate in the exploitation"
Hans-Hermann Hoppe,Right,"Rich men still exist today, but more frequently than not they owe their fortune now directly or indirectly to the state. Hence, they are often more dependent on the state's continued favors more than people of far lesser wealth. They are typically no longer the heads of long established leading families but nouveaux riches. Their conduct is not marked by special virtue, dignity, or taste but is a reflection of the same proletarian mass-culture of present-orientedness, opportunism, and hedonism that the rich now share with everyone else; consequently, their opinions carry no more weight in public opinion than anyone else's."
Dinesh D'Souza,Right,"In my view, the pro-life movement at this point should focus on seeking to reduce the number of abortions. At times it will require political education and legal fights, at times it will require education and the establishment of alternatives to abortion, such as adoption centers. Unfortunately, such measures are sometimes opposed by so-called hard-liners in the pro-life movement. These hard-liners are fools. Because they want to outlaw all abortions, they refuse to settle for stopping some abortions; the consequence is that they end up preventing no abortions."
Dinesh D'Souza,Right,"America is the greatest, freest and most decent society in existence. It is an oasis of goodness in a desert of cynicism and barbarism. This country, once an experiment unique in the world, is now the last best hope for the world."
Dinesh D'Souza,Right,"There is a legitimate argument over whether the death penalty effectively deters violent crime, although my personal observation is that not one of the criminals who have been executed over the years has ever killed again."
Dinesh D'Souza,Right,"In philosophy seminars, the choice is usually between good and evil. In the real world, however, the choice is often between a bad guy and a worse guy."
Dinesh D'Souza,Right,"Christianity enhanced the notion of political and social accountability by providing a new model: that of servant leadership. In ancient Greece and Rome no one would have dreamed of considering political leaders anyone's servants. The job of the leader was to lead. But Christ invented the notion that the way to lead is by serving the needs of others, especially those who are the most needy."
Dinesh D'Souza,Right,"The life of West, Nietzsche said, is based on Christianity. The values of the West are based on Christianity. Some of these values seem to have taken a life of their own, and this gives us the illusion that we can get rid of Christianity and keep the values. This, Nietzsche says, is an illusion...Remove the Christian foundation, and the values must go too."
Dinesh D'Souza,Right,C.S. Lewis said that conscience is nothing more than the voice of God within our souls; the bridge that links the creature to the creator
Dinesh D'Souza,Right,"...capitalism satisfied the Christian demand for an institution that channels selfish human desire toward the betterment of society. Some critics accuse capitalism of being a selfish system, but the selfishness is not in capitalism - it is in human nature."
Dinesh D'Souza,Right,"Classical liberalism . . . does not wholly define modern American conservatism. There is an added element: a concern with social and civic virtue. The term virtue has become a bad word in some quarters of American life. (It is especially unpopular with the chronically wicked and depraved.) Young people, especially, tend to associate it with finger-wagging and with people who tell you how to live your life. This is a very narrow view of virtue: It applies only to what it is good to do, rather than what it is good to be and what it is good to love. . . .Conservatives recognize, of course, that people frequently fall short of these standards. In their personal conduct, conservatives do not claim to be better than anyone else. . . . But for conservatives, these lapses do not provide an excuse to get rid of the standards. Even hypocrisy--professing one thing but doing another--is in the conservative view preferable to a denial of standards because such denial leads to moral chaos or nihilism."
Dinesh D'Souza,Right,"Today courts wrongly interpret separation of church and state to mean that religion has no place in the public arena, or that morality derived from religion should not be permitted to shape our laws. Somehow freedom for religious expression has become freedom from religious expression. Secularists want to empty the public square of religion and religious-based morality so they can monopolize the shared space of society with their own views. In the process they have made religious believers into second-class citizens."
Dinesh D'Souza,Right,"I now want to examine a second major feature of Western civilization that derives from Christianity. This is what philosopher Charles Taylor calls the 'affirmation of ordinary life.' It is the simple idea that ordinary people are fallible, and yet these fallible people matter. In this view, society should organize itself in order to meet their everyday concerns, which are elevated into a kind of spiritual framework. The nuclear family, the idea of limited government, the Western concept of the rule of law, and our culture's high emphasis on the relief of suffering all derive from this basic Christian understanding of the dignity of fallible human beings."
Dinesh D'Souza,Right,"Contrary to what we hear, the great American divide is not a clash between conservatives who advocate liberty versus progressives who oppose liberty. Rather, the two sides each affirm a certain type of liberty. One side, for example, cherishes economic liberty while the other champions liberty in the sexual and social domain. Nor is it a clash between patriots and anti-patriots. Both sides love America, but they love a different type of America. One side loves the America of Columbus and the Fourth of July, of innovation and work and the animal spirit of capitalism, of the Boy Scouts and parochial schools, of traditional families and flag-saluting veterans. The other side loves the America of tolerance and social entitlements, of income and wealth redistribution, of affirmative action and abortion, of feminism and gay marriage."
Dinesh D'Souza,Right,"The empiricist assumes without any evidence or proof that his experiences somehow give him a magical access to reality. So completely does he identify experience and reality that he cannot liberate himself from thinking of the two as one and the same. In equating experience and reality, he is making a huge and unwarranted leap. But this breakdown of reason is not easy for him or us to recognize because our human minds have a built-in disposition toward illusion – the illusion that reality must be exactly the way we experience it. The irony is that many of the people who proceed in this irrational way think of themselves as following strictly along the pathways of reason."
Dinesh D'Souza,Right,"Today, there are probably more Marxists on the faculty of our elite colleges than there are in all of Russia and Eastern Europe."
Dinesh D'Souza,Right,"Visiting America in the early nineteenth century, Alexis de Tocqueville observd that 'the sects that exist in the United States are innumerable,' and yet 'all sects preach the same moral law in the name of God.' Tocqueville termed religion the first of America's political institutions, which means that it had a profoundly public effect in regulating morality and mores throughout the society. And he saw Christianity as countering the powerful human instincts of selfishness and ambition by holding out an ideal of charity and devotion to the welfare of others."
Dinesh D'Souza,Right,"Not only is religion thriving, but it is thriving because it helps people to adapt and survive in the world. In his book Darwin's Cathedral, evolutionary biologist David Sloan Wilson argues that religion provides something that secular society doesn't: a vision of transcendent purpose. Consequently, religious people have a zest for life that is, in a sense, unnatural. They exhibit a hopefulness about the future that may exceed what is warranted by how the world is going. And they forge principles of morality and charity that simply make them more cohesive, adaptive, and successful than groups whose members lack this binding and elevating force."
Dinesh D'Souza,Right,The allegation of some progressives that America is an evil empire is not simply wrong
Dinesh D'Souza,Right,"In this chapter, I want to focus on the really big crimes that have been committed by atheist groups and governments. In the past hundred years or so, the most powerful atheist regimes"
Dinesh D'Souza,Right,"Progressive racism is dedicated to uplifting poor blacks to a certain point and then keeping them there. The proof is that poor blacks today are about as poorly off as they were a half-century ago, when the progressive schemes of black uplift went into place. Every other ethnic group in America has dramatically improved its life except this one. Blacks have delivered for progressives, but they haven’t progressed very much themselves. This, I suggest, is by design."
Dinesh D'Souza,Right,Did you know about the Democratic president who is the founder of modern progressivism
Dinesh D'Souza,Right,A great deal of intelligence can be invested in ignorance when the need for illusion is deep.
Dinesh D'Souza,Right,"Bill Ayers, Frank Marshall Davis, Edward Said, Roberto Mangabeira Unger, and Jeremiah Wright. This is a group I’ve previously called Obama’s founding fathers."
Dinesh D'Souza,Right,"Whenever the government is involved, there is an element of coercion."
Dinesh D'Souza,Right,"The author urges taking the pulse of the church outside our own neighborhood. More church attending Presbyterians in Ghana than Scotland, and while Western pastors beg to fill seats, some African pastors are asking people only to attend every second or third week to give room for others in packed churches."
Dinesh D'Souza,Right,Freedom is a school of responsibility for human beings.
Dinesh D'Souza,Right,"It is easy to forget the cohesiveness of a free people in times of peace and prosperity. New York is an extreme example of the great pandemonium that results when countless individuals and groups pursue their diverse interests in the normal course of life. In a crisis, however, a national tribe comes together...despite the centrifugal forces that pull us in different directions, there is a deep national unity that holds us together.Unity, however, is not sufficient for the challenges ahead. America also needs the moral self-confidence to meet its adversary...Americans cannot succeed unless they are convinced of fighting on behalf of the good."
Dinesh D'Souza,Right,"If we step back from the progressive argument and put it in any other context, its absurdity immediately becomes apparent. Imagine if I were to say to my daughter, who got a high score on the SAT, You don’t deserve your scores at all. You didn’t build that. After all, young lady, you had teachers who helped you with vocabulary and math. Moreover, you took the public roads to the test. Had your car been held up along the way or caught fire, you would count on the services of the police and the fire department. So society deserves a large part of the credit for those scores. They don’t reflect your accomplishment but society’s accomplishment. If I said this I am sure my daughter would think I was talking like an insane person. In fact, of course, I would be talking like a progressive."
Dinesh D'Souza,Right,"When Kenya became independent in the early 1960s, it was at the same economic level as South Korea. But Kenya took the socialist road and South Korea took the capitalist road. Today South Korea is many times richer than Kenya. Sure, there are important cultural differences between the two countries. But we can also verify the superiority of capitalism to socialism by comparing South Korea with North Korea. Same people, same culture. Yet North Korea remains desperately poor while South Korea is a comparatively rich country. India suffered the same fate as other socialist nations"
Dinesh D'Souza,Right,"We are paying for and even submitting to the dictates of an ever-increasing, unceasingly-spawning class of human beings who should never have been born at all.1"
Dinesh D'Souza,Right,"Christianity holds that man, no matter how hard he tries, cannot reach God. Man cannot ascend to God’s level because God’s level is too high. Therefore there is only one remedy: God must come down to man’s level. Scandalous though it may seem, God must, quite literally, become man and assume the burden of man’s sins. Christians believe that this was the great sacrifice performed by Christ. If we accept Christ’s sacrifice on the basis of faith, we will inherit God’s gift of salvation. That’s it. That is the essence of Christianity. To some it may seem ridiculously simple. In this simplicity, however, there is considerable depth and richness."
Dinesh D'Souza,Right,"The scheme works like this. Progressives supply the basic needs of poor blacks, creating for them a new plantation called the inner city. There blacks are provided with food, subsidized housing, medical care, and so on. In this regard, the new plantation functions pretty much like the old one, with a few modifications. Under slavery, this was rural paternalism; now it is urban paternalism. The slave master is replaced by the government; i.e. the Big House of slavery is now replaced by the White House."
Dinesh D'Souza,Right,"Progressives today are quick to fault America for slavery and a host of other outrages. America did this, America did that. As we will see in this book, America didn’t do those things, the Democrats did. So the Democrats have cleverly foisted their sins on America, and then presented themselves as the messiahs offering redemption for those sins. It’s crazy, but it’s also ingenious. We have to give them credit for ingenuity. The second whitewash is to portray the Civil War entirely in terms of the North versus the South. The North is supposedly the anti-slavery side and the South is the pro-slavery side. A recent example is Ta-Nehisi Coates’s article about the Confederate battle flag in The Atlantic.3 Now of course there is an element of truth in this, in that the Civil War was fought between northern states and southern states. But this neat and convenient division ignores several important details. First, the defenders of the Confederate cause were, almost without exception, Democrats. Coates cites many malefactors from Senator Jefferson Davis to Senator James Henry Hammond to Georgia Governor Joseph Brown. Yet while identifying these men as southerners and Confederates, Coates omits to identify them as Democrats. Second, Coates and other progressives conveniently ignore the fact that northern Democrats were also protectors of slavery. We will see in this chapter how Stephen Douglas and other northern Democrats fought to protect slavery in the South and in the new territories. Moreover, the southerners who fought for the Confederacy cannot be said to have fought merely to protect slavery on their plantations. Indeed, fewer than one-third of white families in the South on the eve of the Civil War had slaves. Thus the rigid North-South interpretation of the Civil War conceals"
Dinesh D'Souza,Right,"Lack of accomplishment is one thing; deceit is quite another. Everyone who has followed her career knows that Hillary is dishonest to the core, a congenital liar as columnist William Safire once put it. The writer Christopher Hitchens titled his book about the Clintons No One Left to Lie To. Even Hollywood mogul David Geffen, an avid progressive, said a few years ago of the Clintons, Everybody in politics lies but they do it with such ease, it’s troubling.3"
Dinesh D'Souza,Right,"This is how Hillary conducts government policy. She is ruthless, she is grasping, she appears to have little empathy or concern for people. She is old, and mean, and even her laugh is a witch’s cackle. There is almost nothing appealing about her. How, then, could she be the first choice of progressive Democrats and the apparent frontrunner for winning the presidency in November 2016?"
Dinesh D'Souza,Right,"I show in a subsequent chapter how the Democrats were the party of slavery, and how the slave-owner mentality continues to shape the policies of Democratic leaders today."
Dinesh D'Souza,Right,The bad guys
Dinesh D'Souza,Right,"So what if people disagree about values? People also disagree about facts. . . .In my view, the great intellectual challenge facing conservatives is to make the case for morality at a time when many in the West have ceased to believe in an external moral order. The decline of belief in such an order is the most important political development of the past two centuries. Indeed, this decline has created the crisis of the West."
Dinesh D'Souza,Right,"Second, America is drowning in debt. While China is the world’s largest creditor nation, America is the world’s largest debtor nation. At $17 trillion, the national debt is now bigger than the annual gross domestic product"
Dinesh D'Souza,Right,"Frank Marshall Davis, the former Communist who was Obama’s mentor in Hawaii, was so radical that he opposed President Truman’s Marshall Plan as a device for maintaining white imperialism. Truman and Marshall, he wrote, were using billions of U.S. dollars to bolster the tottering empires of England, France, Belgium, Holland and the other western exploiters of teeming millions. Indeed the objective of America after World War II was to re-enslave the yellow and brown and black peoples of the world. While Davis spurned America he praised Red Russia as my friend.3 Young Obama"
Dinesh D'Souza,Right,"Progressives want to take over all the major industries, from education to health care to energy to automobiles to investment banking to real estate. From Wall Street to Silicon Valley, they want, as my fellow inmates like to say, the whole enchilada. This is not to say that progressives intend to seize all that wealth, but they do want to control it. Progressives generally can’t create wealth, so they seek to take it over once it has been created by someone else. They do this through the various agencies of government, such as the IRS, the FBI, the EPA, the FCC, the FDA, the BLM, and HHS. Certainly progressive leaders intend to become fantastically rich while pretending to serve the public good"
Dinesh D'Souza,Right,"Hillary rode her husband’s success to become first lady of Arkansas, then first lady of the United States. Then she won an easy race in liberal New York to become its junior senator. As a senator she accomplished, well, nothing. Then she ran for the Democratic presidential nomination, losing to Barack Obama, who appointed her secretary of state. Despite extensive travels, Hillary’s achievements as secretary of state are essentially nil. As with Benghazi, most of her notable actions are screwups. In an apparent confirmation of the Peter Principle, however, Hillary is now back as the leading candidate for the Democratic nomination for president in 2016. Hillary is fortunate, not merely in her career path, but also in being the surprise recipient of hundreds of millions of dollars that have been rained on her and her husband both directly and through the Clinton Foundation. The Clinton Foundation has raised more than $2 billion in contributions. A substantial portion of that came from foreign governments. Some sixteen nations together have given $130 million. In addition, through speeches and consulting fees, more than $100 million has ended up in the pockets of the Clintons themselves. The foundation, although ostensibly a charitable enterprise, gives only one dollar out of ten to charity. It has also been disclosed that the Clintons have developed a penchant for traveling in high style, and use a substantial amount of donation money on private planes and penthouse suites. The rest of the loot seems to have been accumulated into a war chest that is at the behest of the Clintons and the Hillary presidential campaign."
Dinesh D'Souza,Right,"The godfather’s name is Saul Alinsky. His most famous students are Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton. Hardly anyone recognizes this, but Alinsky and the Alinsky method is the hidden force behind the 2008 economic meltdown. The meltdown was the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression; it was the main cause of median wealth in the United States in the subsequent three years declining nearly 40 percent. While the meltdown is routinely attributed to Wall Street greed, its real cause was government and activist pressure on banks and banking agencies"
Dinesh D'Souza,Right,"Hitler and Mussolini were indeed authoritarians, but it doesn’t follow that authoritarianism equals fascism or Nazism. Lenin and Stalin were authoritarian, but neither was a fascist. Many dictators"
Dinesh D'Souza,Right,"The American Revolution was characterized by three basic freedoms: economic freedom or capitalism, political freedom or constitutional democracy, and freedom of speech and religion. These are the freedoms that, in their original form, American conservatives seek to conserve."
Dinesh D'Souza,Right,"Publicly inconsolable about the fact that racism continues, these activists seem privately terrified that it has abated."
Dinesh D'Souza,Right,"My conclusion is that contrary to popular belief, atheism is not primarily an intellectual revolt, it is a moral revolt. Atheists don’t find God invisible so much as objectionable. They aren’t adjusting their desires to the truth, but rather the truth to fit their desires. This is something we can all identify with. It is a temptation even for believers. We want to be saved as long as we are not saved from our sins. We are quite willing to be saved from a whole host of social evils, from poverty to disease to war. But we want to leave untouched the personal evils, such as selfishness and lechery and pride. We need spiritual healing, but we do not want it. Like a supervisory parent, God gets in our way. This is the perennial appeal of atheism: it gets rid of the stern fellow with the long beard and liberates us for the pleasures of sin and depravity. The atheist seeks to get rid of moral judgment by getting rid of the judge."
Dinesh D'Souza,Right,"Imagine the horror of Obama and his aides, therefore, when one of the leading academic champions of Obamacare, economist Jonathan Gruber of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, decided to reveal the con, even to the point of confessing it was a con. Gruber himself received $2 million in consulting fees related to Obamacare."
Dinesh D'Souza,Right,"Gruber had none of these motives. Gruber’s candor about Obamacare was not caused by the desire to be a whistle-blower nor by a drinking spree nor by the prospect of gain. Rather, it was caused by Gruber’s arrogance. The man is a smug self-promoter who wanted to take credit for his participation in a clever racket. Speaking to fellow academics and liberal political activists, Gruber apparently thought he was in a room of thieves cackling about the latest heist they had pulled off. He thought he was swapping notes with others who were in on the con."
Dinesh D'Souza,Right,"Gruber said that Obamacare was sold based on lies. He said the lies only worked because of the stupidity of the American people. Of one key Obamacare provision, Gruber said it was a very clever exploitation of the lack of economic understanding of the American voter. He said that while the administration promised transparency, lack of transparency was the key to getting the legislation through. Basically Gruber’s message to his fellow con men was, we fooled the rubes, and we got away with it."
Dinesh D'Souza,Right,"At first the left tried to dismiss Gruber by saying he wasn’t an important architect of Obamacare. But earlier this same Gruber had been hailed by Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi, and others as the Oracle of Obamacare."
Dinesh D'Souza,Right,"Hitler was a racist in a way that Mussolini wasn’t, with FDR occupying a position somewhere between the two of them. FDR was not an anti-Semite, as Hitler was, but he did share Hitler’s low view of Asians and blacks. During World War II, FDR ordered that many Japanese Americans, under suspicion of disloyalty, be interned in camps. There is, of course, an argument in wartime for holding captive those who pose a security risk. My point, however, is that FDR made no similar arrangements for Italians and Germans in the United States. So there was a clear racial element in FDR’s approach to security. FDR was culpable for doing exactly what progressive Democrats accuse Donald Trump of doing when he threatens to target violent Islamists. Yet Trump doesn’t single out radical Muslims while exonerating other groups who act like them. FDR, by contrast, treated Japanese Americans in a way he didn’t treat German Americans or Italian Americans. That, I’m suggesting, is because FDR, even during World War II, retained a soft spot for German and Italian fascism. Also FDR wasn’t turned off by the fascist idea of a racial hierarchy; indeed, here was FDR implementing one himself. Incidentally Japanese internment is another crime that Democrats blame on America when their own hero, FDR, is the one who ordered it. FDR, Mussolini, and Hitler all denounced the free market and blamed the problems of their society on private business. All vowed to use the state to combat the power of business, and offered themselves as the true manifestation of the collective good. If one ended as the enemy of the other two, it shouldn’t blind us to their earlier mutual admiration."
Dinesh D'Souza,Right,"She is more than just a liar; she and her husband Bill are corrupt and known to be corrupt, going back to their Arkansas days. Just prior to leaving the White House, the Clintons pardoned a notorious fugitive who had fled the country to escape prosecution on racketeering and tax fraud. Pardons don’t come free"
Dinesh D'Souza,Right,"If religion is so bad, what should be done about it? It should be eradicated. According to Sam Harris, belief in Christianity is like belief in slavery. I would be the first to admit that the prospects for eradicating religion in our time do not seem good. Still the same could have been said about efforts to abolish slavery at the end of the eighteenth century.6 But"
Dinesh D'Souza,Right,"I read Tom Brokaw’s book The Greatest Generation. This book celebrates the virtues of the generation that grew up between the two world wars.9 As I read Brokaw’s book, I asked myself: What made the greatest generation so great? The answer is twofold: the Depression and World War II. The virtues of that generation were the product of scarcity and war. Hardship and need forged the admirable qualities of courage, sacrifice, and solidarity. But the greatest generation failed in one important respect: it could not produce another great generation. Why not? The obvious answer is affluence. The parents of the greatest generation wanted their children to have the advantages they never had. And in giving their children everything they wanted, the frugal, self-disciplined, sacrificial generation of World War II produced the spoiled children of the 1960s"
Dinesh D'Souza,Right,"Obama’s claims about teachers and CEOs gets to a broader puzzle about how a capitalist society assigns rewards. At first glance, it seems that there is no relationship between merit and reward. Athletes and entertainers, who provide services much less indispensable than teachers and doctors, earn vastly more than either of those two professions. Earlier I mentioned the example of the parking lot guy who parks all the cars and makes money for the resort, yet he gets a pittance of that money. From his point of view, there is no relationship between work and reward. He does the work, and they get the profits. This is pretty much how workers feel in a variety of occupations. They are the makers and their bosses are the takers. In a truly fair and merit-based society, they should get more and the bosses should get less. These arguments are, whether their proponents recognize it or not, anchored in Karl Marx’s notion of surplus value. Marx is largely discredited today, because Communism proved a failure, and Marx’s prophecies proved dead wrong."
Dinesh D'Souza,Right,"The Sioux position, conveyed by White Face, is that the land needs to be returned; it needs to become tribal land again. White Face showed me what used to be several ancient sacred sites where the Great Spirits dwell and she wants those sites restored, so Sioux people can once again commune with the spirits. I reminded White Face that before the Sioux, there were Cheyenne Indians and other tribes on that land. So if America stole the land from the Sioux, didn’t the Sioux steal the land from the Cheyenne and other tribes? If the land is returned to the Sioux, shouldn’t the Sioux turn around and give it back to those who had it before? White Face looked flustered."
Dinesh D'Souza,Right,"In this respect, Obama is fairly typical of progressives more generally. The evidence for this claim is in Arthur Brooks’s study, Who Really Cares. Brooks bases his conclusions on data drawn from a wide range of sources that keep track of philanthropy. Brooks divides America into four groups: religious conservatives, religious liberals, secular conservatives, and secular liberals. He finds that religious conservatives are the most generous people in America, and secular liberals are the least generous. (Secular conservatives and religious liberals fall in the middle.)"
Dinesh D'Souza,Right,"The free society does not guarantee virtue any more than it guarantees happiness. But it allows for the pursuit of both, a pursuit rendered all the more meaningful and profound because success is not guaranteed: it has to be won through personal striving."
Dinesh D'Souza,Right,"Let’s begin with this notion that society, not entrepreneurs, is primarily responsible for the success of an enterprise. What is the evidence for that? Actually there is very little. Consider the great inventions and innovations of the nineteenth century that made possible the Industrial Revolution and the rising standard of living that propelled America into the front ranks of the world by the mid-twentieth century. Who built the telegraph, and the great shipping lines, and the railroads, and the airplanes? Who produced the tractors and the machinery that made America the manufacturing capital of the world? Who built and then made available home appliances like the vacuum cleaner, the automatic dishwasher, and the microwave oven? More recent, who built the personal computer, the iPhone, and the software and search engines that power the electronic revolution? Entrepreneurs, that’s who. Government played a role, but that role was extremely modest. In the nineteenth century, the government did little more than grant licenses to companies to operate on the high seas or to go ahead and build railroads. As is often the case when there are government favors to be had, such licenses and contracts were attended with the usual lobbying, cajoling, and corruption. In the twentieth century, the government refused to help the Wright brothers because it had its own cockamamie idea about how airplanes should be built; the Wright brothers, on their own, actually went ahead and built one that could fly, and the government was so angry that for a long time it simply ignored this stunning new invention."
Dinesh D'Souza,Right,"Sometimes reparations is used to justify a feeding frenzy in which minority claimants simply raid the U.S. Treasury en masse while government bureaucrats facilitate a large transfer of wealth from the taxpayer to these so-called historical victims. A scandalous example of this is the Pigford case. Some ninety-one black farmers had sued the U.S. government alleging a legacy of bias against African Americans. Rather than settle the suit and pay the farmers a reasonable compensation, the Obama administration used the lawsuit to make an absurdly expensive settlement. It agreed to pay out $1.33 billion to compensate not only the ninety-one plaintiffs but also thousands of Hispanic and female farmers who had never claimed bias in court. Encouraged by this largesse, law firms began to conjure up new claimants. Later reviews showed that some of these claimants were nursery-school-age children and even urban dwellers who had no connection to farming. In some towns, the number of people being paid was many times greater than the total number of farms. According to the New York Times, one family in Little Rock, Arkansas, had ten members each submit a claim for $50,000, netting $500,000 for the family without any proof of discrimination. Then the Native Americans got in on the racket, and the Obama administration settled with them, agreeing to fork over an additional $760 million. The government also reimbursed hundreds of millions of dollars in legal fees, a cornucopia for trial lawyers who also happen to be large contributors to Obama and the Democratic Party. Altogether the Pigford payout is estimated to have cost taxpayers a staggering $4.4 billion.3"
Dinesh D'Souza,Right,"When I hear such arguments, I find my sympathies moving toward Obama; we should at least credit him with being smarter than this. I think his critics sometimes forget how much of his domestic and foreign agenda he has realized in a single term. The anti-colonial theory gives Obama the benefit of presuming him to be at least modestly intelligent. Of course Obama understands the consequences of his actions"
Dinesh D'Souza,Right,"Another way to put it is that the majority must not use its power to trample on minority rights. The Founders were very concerned about this. What if the majority decides, for instance, to confiscate the property of the minority? The Founders insisted that tyranny of the majority is just as dangerous as having a one-man tyrant. In some ways, it’s more dangerous. It’s bad enough to be oppressed by one man"
Dinesh D'Souza,Right,Fascism is an Italian term that means groupism or collectivism. The fasci in Italy were groups of political activists who got their name from the fasces of ancient Rome
Dinesh D'Souza,Right,"This is not my view of the matter; it is the Nazi eugenicists’ view of the matter. In the early twentieth century, eugenics and social Darwinism were far more prevalent in America than they were in Germany. Margaret Sanger and her fellow progressive eugenicists didn’t get their ideas for killing off undesirables"
Dinesh D'Souza,Right,"Businesses call this profit. Marx called it surplus value. For Marx, the crucial question is: Who gets this surplus value? Who is entitled to the profit that businesses accumulate? Marx insisted that this profit belongs wholly to the workers. They earned it, so they deserve to share it. In reality, however, the entrepreneur or the capitalist gets it. If he has investors, they too share it. Marx regarded this as the most scandalous form of exploitation. He insisted that workers spend only part of their day working to benefit themselves; the rest of the time they spend working to benefit the capitalists. Basically the capitalists are stealing from the workers. Yet Marx recognized that this was the essence of capitalism. Only a workers’ revolution, Marx believed, would end this unjust arrangement. Notice that Marx isn’t condemning the capitalist for taking excessive profits; he is condemning the capitalist for taking any profits. Marx, I want to emphasize, was not a progressive con man. He passionately believed that capitalists were greedy, corrupt exploiters. The reason he felt that way was that he was a complete ignoramus about business. He simply had no idea how businesses actually operate. Marx never ran a business. He never even balanced his checkbook. He was a lifelong leech. He had all his expenses paid for by his partner, Friedrich Engels, who inherited his father’s textile companies. Progressives like to portray Engels as a businessman but in fact he too didn’t actually operate the family business. He had people to do that for him. Freed from the need to work, Engels was a man of leisure and a part-time intellectual. Ironically Marx and Engels were both dependent on the very capitalism they scorned."
Dinesh D'Souza,Right,"Hundreds of leading socialists, initially in Italy but subsequently in Germany, France, and other countries, also became fascists."
Dinesh D'Souza,Right,"In fact, I will go further to say that all the leading figures in the founding of fascism were men of the Left."
Dinesh D'Souza,Right,"The first fascists, Anthony James Gregor tells us, were almost all Marxists."
Dinesh D'Souza,Right,"Progressivism simply cannot account for the easy traffic from socialism to fascism. Consequently, progressives typically maintain complete silence about this whole historical relationship which is deeply embarrassing to them."
Dinesh D'Souza,Right,"When Mussolini sold out he became an outcast. He had neither money nor power. Nor did any of the first fascists embrace fascism for this reason. Rather, they became fascists because they saw fascism as the only way to rescue socialism and make it viable. In other words, their defection was within socialism"
Dinesh D'Souza,Right,"Here is Democrat Robert Byrd, conscience of the Senate, lionized by Obama, Hillary, and Bill when he died in 2010, speaking during the war about his reluctance to fight in a racially integrated military: I am loyal to my country and know but reverence to her flag BUT I shall never submit to fight beneath that banner with a negro by my side. Rather I should die a thousand times, and see this old glory trampled in the dirt never to rise again, than to see this beloved land of ours become degraded by race mongrels, a throwback to the blackest specimens from the wilds.20"
Dinesh D'Souza,Right,"And here are simply the titles of a few books published by progressive Democrats in the early twentieth century: Charles Carroll’s The Negro a Beast (1900), Robert Shufeldt’s The Negro: A Menace to American Civilization (1907), Charles McCord’s The American Negro as a Dependent, Defective and Delinquent (1914), and again Shufeldt’s America’s Greatest Problem: The Negro (1915)."
Dinesh D'Souza,Right,"Consider the proof that progressives typically give to prove Thomas Jefferson’s racism. Here is the smoking gun from Jefferson’s Notes on the State of Virginia: I advance it therefore as a suspicion only that the blacks, whether originally a distinct race, or made distinct by time and circumstance, are inferior to the whites in the endowments of body and mind.22"
Dinesh D'Souza,Right,"Yet while lying about the Jews and plotting their destruction, Hitler accuses the Jews of lying and of plotting the destruction of Germany. Hitler employs the big lie even as he disavows its use. He portrays himself as a truth-teller and attributes lying to those he is lying about"
Dinesh D'Souza,Right,"The big lie is now back, and this time it is about the role of fascism and Nazism in American politics. The political Left"
Dinesh D'Souza,Right,"In this book, I turn the tables on the Democratic Left and show that they"
Dinesh D'Souza,Right,"Who can deny that blacks are still living with the effects of what the Democrats did to them? Today blacks have an illegitimacy rate approaching 80 percent. I am not saying it’s all due to slavery, but who can say that it’s not partly due to the legacy of slavery? Black crime rates are vastly higher, with high rates of black-on-black homicide. Who can say that this is not at least partly the consequence of the Democratic planters’ devaluation of black life? The progressive scholar W. E. B. Du Bois certainly did."
Dinesh D'Souza,Right,"In this chapter I will trace the development of fascism by showing precisely how it grew out of a doctrinal division within the community of Marxian socialists. In short, I will prove that fascism is exclusively a product of the Left. This is not a case of leftists who moved right. On the contrary, the fascists were on the left end of the socialist movement. They saw themselves not as jettisoning Marxism but as saving it from obsolescence. From their perspective, Marxism and socialism were too inert and needed to be adjusted leftward. In other words, they viewed fascism as more revolutionary than traditional socialism."
Dinesh D'Souza,Right,"This is significant because every segregation law in the South was passed by a Democratic legislature, signed into power by a Democratic governor, and enforced by Democratic sheriffs and Democratic city and state officials. Most anti-miscegenation laws were passed in Democratic states. Progressives passed the racist Immigration Law of 1924 and celebrated it as a victory of progressive science and progressive planning. The Ku Klux Klan was a creation of the Democrats and served for thirty years, in the words of progressive scholar Eric Foner, as the domestic terrorist arm of the Democratic Party."
Dinesh D'Souza,Right,"Practitioners of the big lie, like Whitman and Nelson, have a second objective. Incredibly, this is the objective of turning the villains of their story into its heroes. By clearing the Democrats and the progressives of blame, they intend to pave the way for these same Democrats to offer themselves as the solution for racism. As the big lie unfolds, somehow the very people who have poisoned the water reappear dressed as the water commissioner. It’s an unbelievable scam."
Dinesh D'Souza,Right,"In this case, the story that we had accepted, like suckers, was the idea that fascism and Nazism are inherently right wing."
Dinesh D'Souza,Right,"In my previous book and film, Hillary’s America, I challenged another powerful leftist paradigm. This is the paradigm that the progressives and the Democrats are the party of emancipation, equality, and civil rights. I showed instead that they are the party of slavery and Indian removal, of segregation and Jim Crow, of racial terrorism and the Ku Klux Klan, and of opposition to the civil rights movement of the 1960s."
Dinesh D'Souza,Right,My goal was to strip away the race card from the Democrats
Dinesh D'Souza,Right,"Incredibly the Democrats had taken full credit for the civil rights movement, even though Republicans are the ones who got it passed, and even though the opposition to it came almost entirely from the Democratic Party. Democrats accused Republicans"
Dinesh D'Souza,Right,Talk about transference. This was my introduction to the Left’s political strategy of shifting the blame for racism onto the party that had historically opposed racism in all its forms.
Dinesh D'Souza,Right,"So successful were the Democrats in this con that in 2005 a head of the Republican National Committee, Ken Mehlman, went around apologizing to black groups for sins that had actually been committed, not by the Republicans, but by the Democrats."
Dinesh D'Souza,Right,"Equally astonishing, the Democrats have never admitted their racist history, never taken responsibility for what they did, never apologized for it, never paid one penny of restitution for their crimes."
Dinesh D'Souza,Right,"What intrigued me most was how one can get away with such a big lie. The answer is you have to dominate all the large megaphones of the culture, from academia to the movies to the major media."
Dinesh D'Souza,Right,"With this cultural arsenal at their disposal, big liars can spin out falsehoods with the confidence that no one else has a large enough megaphone to challenge them. They can have their lies taught in classrooms, made into movies and TV shows, and reported in the everyday media as the unvarnished truth. This is how big lies come to be widely believed, sometimes even by the people who are being lied about."
Dinesh D'Souza,Right,"My objective, now as before, is to do to the new Nazi paradigm what my previous book did to the old race narrative, namely, blow it out of the water. Here I refute their bogus narrative, expose their big lie, and pin the Nazi tail precisely where it belongs"
Dinesh D'Souza,Right,Later a group called Project Veritas released videotaped evidence that the Hillary campaign and leftist groups had paid protesters to provoke violence at Trump rallies.
Dinesh D'Souza,Right,"The problem began when the central prophecies of Marxism failed to occur. This created a massive crisis within the Left, and essentially Marxism split into two camps: the first became Leninism and Bolshevism, and the other became fascism and Nazism."
Dinesh D'Souza,Right,"In some ways the progressive Democrats are even closer to the German Nazis than to the Italian fascists. The Italian fascists, for example, were much less racist than the Democratic Party in the United States. There are no parallels for the costumed racial terrorism of the Democratic Party-backed Ku Klux Klan in Italy, although one can find such parallels in Nazi Germany. Democratic policies of white supremacy, racial segregation, and state-sponsored discrimination were also alien to Italian fascism but right at home in the Third Reich."
Dinesh D'Souza,Right,"In the German camps and on the Democrat-run plantations, forced labor was employed with human tools solely with regard to productivity and with little if any regard for the lives of the workers who were, in both cases, considered inferior and even subhuman. The analogy between two of the worst compulsory confinement and forced labor systems in human history is not merely legitimate; it is overdue."
Dinesh D'Souza,Right,"Hitler, for instance, specifically said he intended to displace and exterminate the Russians, the Poles, and the Slavs in precisely the way Americans in the Jacksonian era had displaced and exterminated the native Indians. The Nazi Nuremberg Laws were directly modeled on the segregation and anti-miscegenation laws that had been implemented decades earlier in the Democratic South."
Dinesh D'Souza,Right,Forced sterilization and euthanasia aimed at eliminating racial defectives and producing a superior Nordic race were two additional schemes the Nazis got from American progressives.
Dinesh D'Souza,Right,"JFK toured Nazi Germany in the 1930s and came back effusive with praise of Hitler and his theory of Nordic superiority. I have come to the conclusion, JFK wrote in his diary, that fascism is right for Germany and Italy. Touring the Rhineland, JFK echoed Nazi propaganda at the time. The Nordic races appear to be definitely superior to the Romans. Hostility toward Hitler, JFK insisted, stems largely from jealousy. The Germans really are too good"
Dinesh D'Souza,Right,"Around the same time, however, and beaten by the fascists by only a hair, a closely related ideology developed in America that also called for a powerful centralized state. That ideology was, of course, progressivism. The fascists, like the progressives, sought a radical transformation of society that is the very antithesis of classical liberalism or modern American conservatism."
Dinesh D'Souza,Right,"In addition, the fascists adopted an economic policy that is closely parallel to, and in many respects identical with, today’s progressivism. Mussolini called this policy corporatism, but a more descriptive term would be state-run capitalism."
Dinesh D'Souza,Right,"Mussolini envisioned a powerful centralized state directing the institutions of the private sector, forcing their private welfare into line with the national welfare. Isn’t this precisely how progressives view the federal government’s control of banks, finance companies, insurance companies, health care, energy, and education?"
Dinesh D'Souza,Right,"Although today’s American Left dares not invoke Mussolini’s name, the honest among them will have to admit that it was he and his fellow fascists who were their pioneers and paved their way."
Dinesh D'Souza,Right,"The central issue, therefore, is which is the party of racism and which is the party of civil rights? This question cannot be answered simply by invoking the Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s and 1960s. That movement was itself parasitic on an earlier civil rights movement that took place a century earlier. Didn’t know there were two civil rights movements? That’s because the progressives don’t say much about it. They focus on the later movement and pass over the earlier one. The earlier civil rights revolution is downplayed today because it has become politically problematic. It disrupts the progressive party line. Even in the second civil rights revolution, however, the roots of the first one are clearly apparent."
Dinesh D'Souza,Right,"WHERE THESE RIGHTS COME FROM Yet what was the constitutional basis for these actions? Desegregation and anti-discrimination laws both relied on the notion that blacks weren’t slaves any longer; rather, they were free and could make their own choices. This freedom, however, had been secured for blacks by the Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution which permanently abolished slavery. Thus, the Thirteenth Amendment was the original freedom charter for African Americans. The desegregation court rulings and the anti-discrimination provisions of the Civil Rights Act and the Fair Housing Bill were also based on the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. This Amendment granted citizenship to blacks and established equal rights under the law. It was the original social justice manifesto for blacks, women, and other minorities. Finally, the Voting Rights Act attempted to secure for blacks full enfranchisement, the right to vote. But blacks already had the right to vote. That right was specified in the Fifteenth Amendment to the Constitution. This amendment declared that, as citizens, blacks had the same prerogative to cast their ballots as whites and all others. The 1965 Voting Rights Act merely sought to enforce an equality provision that had been constitutionally affirmed much earlier."
Dinesh D'Souza,Right,"The Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth amendments were passed in the aftermath of the Civil War. They were passed by the Republican Party. The Republicans enacted these measures then to secure the freedom, equality, and social justice that Democrats keep harping on today. To further promote these goals, Republicans also implemented a series of Civil Rights laws: the Civil Rights Act of 1866, the Reconstruction Act of 1867, and the Ku Klux Klan Act of 1871."
Dinesh D'Souza,Right,"The Republican ethos underlying these landmark provisions was aptly framed by the great abolitionist Republican, Frederick Douglass. Douglass said, It is evident that white and black must fall or flourish together. In light of this great truth, laws ought to be enacted, and institutions established"
Dinesh D'Souza,Right,This was the clarion cry taken up by the GOP in the aftermath of the Civil War. Virtually all the black leaders who emerged from that era were Republicans who supported the GOP’s call to remove race as the basis of government policy and social action. Historian Eric Foner writes that black activists of the antebellum era embraced an affirmation of Americanism that insisted blacks were entitled to the same rights and opportunities that white citizens enjoyed.3
Dinesh D'Souza,Right,Notice that the GOP program
Dinesh D'Souza,Right,"How interesting that the Democrat, Martin Luther King, is identified with a principle that the Republican, Frederick Douglass, expressed even more eloquently so much earlier. How bizarre that the Democrats are presumed to be the party of civil rights when the very content of civil rights was formulated and developed by the GOP."
Dinesh D'Souza,Right,"Very few young people know this history. Most of them haven’t even heard about Douglass; who hasn’t heard of Martin Luther King? Am I suggesting that the scandalous neglect of Douglass and the excessive praise heaped on King is part of the progressive whitewash? You bet I am. But, say the Democratic and progressive historians, wait a minute! While King’s program moved forward and was enacted into law, Douglass’s program was halted in its tracks. We cannot forget about the backlash! Yes, indeed. The Democratic storytellers are right that there was a powerful backlash against blacks in the South, so that the constitutional provisions of freedom, equality, and social justice became a dead letter. The Civil Rights laws were stymied, and even the provisions that passed were ignored. Blacks were reduced to new forms of subjugation not identical with, but reminiscent of, slavery. This re-enslavement of blacks was enforced by a juggernaut of violence epitomized by that institution of domestic terrorism, the Ku Klux Klan."
Dinesh D'Souza,Right,"This part of the story is true enough. What the storytellers omit, however, is that the Democrats are the ones who caused the backlash! They are the ones who from the beginning opposed black freedom and black equality, undermining voting rights and equal treatment under the law. They were the true enemies of racial and social justice. Moreover, the Democrats did those things not just through political and legal measures but also through domestic terrorism. Indeed, the Ku Klux Klan was a licensed instrument of terror and intimidation unleashed by Democrats and operating for the benefit of the Democratic Party."
Dinesh D'Souza,Right,"Consequently, it was Democrats who, from the 1860s through the 1960s, prevented blacks as a group from enjoying their rights through political opposition and violent acts of terror. Democrats now claim credit for allowing blacks to have the civil rights that they themselves violently prevented for a hundred years."
Dinesh D'Souza,Right,"BLAMING THE SOUTH Today’s Democrats try to shift blame from themselves by blaming the South. The South is supposedly responsible for espousing racist views and implementing racist practices. Yet the detractors of the South neglect to point out that after Reconstruction, the Democratic Party was the dominant, almost the sole, political party in the South."
Dinesh D'Souza,Right,"One prominent Democrat, South Carolina governor (and later senator) Ben Tillman, explained how this came about. Republicanism means Negro equality, while the Democratic Party means that the white man is superior. That’s why we Southerners are all Democrats.4"
Dinesh D'Souza,Right,"How did the South become so uniformly Democratic? Basically the Democrats used racist ideas and practices to establish a lasting political hegemony there. So racism wasn’t incidental; it was an essential part of the Democratic Party’s strategy. The Democrats won the South by appealing not just to the former planter class but also to poor whites. How did they do this? The great postbellum invention of the Democratic Party was the institution of white supremacy. After the war, writes historian George Fredrickson, The one thing that held the Democratic Party together was a commitment to maintaining white supremacy.5 White supremacy is an elaborate ideological structure for justifying racism, in the same way that the positive good school was an elaborate ideological justification for slavery."
Dinesh D'Souza,Right,"The institutions of black enslavement and white supremacy did not exist before Democrats in the South created them. The very same institutions then became the mechanisms that Democrats used to build their power, and also to repel and defeat attempts by Republicans to extend rights and opportunities to black Americans."
Dinesh D'Souza,Right,"A RACIAL CASTE SYSTEM Here we see beautifully enumerated the social and psychological benefits that poor whites derived from white supremacy. White supremacy created a racial caste system in which the poorest, meanest, and stupidest white guy belonged to an aristocracy of color that elevated him above the most intelligent, decent, and productive black man."
Dinesh D'Souza,Right,"Precisely the same benefit that the British government offered to its white expatriates, the Democratic Party in the United States offered to its poor white supporters. From the 1870s through the 1960s, the Democrats established their political hegemony in the South by granting whites the full social and psychological enjoyments of white supremacy. Blacks paid a costly price for this, because the Democrats unleashed a fury of violence against them. In fact, had the Democrats been the only political party in America, it’s hard to image what would have become of the black population of the South. Blacks, however, had during most of this difficult period a single ally. That ally was the Republican Party."
Dinesh D'Souza,Right,"For nearly a century following the Civil War, the Republican Party made valiant efforts, often against near-impossible odds, to protect blacks from the Democratic onslaught and to secure their basic rights. At times these measures worked; at other times, they proved far too feeble to control the vicious racists in the Democratic Party."
Dinesh D'Souza,Right,"Nevertheless, in the long run the GOP succeeded. Just as the Founders’ constitutional principles eventually supplied the necessary foundation for America to realize the principle that all men are created equal, so too the GOP-sponsored amendments of the 1860s supplied the indispensable basis for blacks in the 1950s and 1960s to overcome white supremacy and actually exercise their rights. Blacks today owe their basic rights of liberty, equality, and justice to the GOP"
Dinesh D'Souza,Right,THE ORIGINAL CIVIL RIGHTS REVOLUTION Let’s begin by examining the first civil rights revolution in America
Dinesh D'Souza,Right,"The very idea that people might work for those wages, and take pride in their work, is incomprehensible to Hillary. The country no longer has slaves to do the dirty work, and so America needs illegal immigrants. The applause attending Hillary’s remarks shows that she was not merely speaking for herself. Other Democratic fine-diners that evening were very much on board with Hillary’s position. Listening to Hillary that evening, I felt I was at a campaign rally for a Democratic presidential candidate in the mid-nineteenth century. The feel was the same, and most important, the argument was the same. A century and a half ago, the issue wasn’t illegal immigration; it was slavery. Democrats then justified slavery on the grounds that there was dirty work to be done and someone had to do it."
Dinesh D'Souza,Right,"No, what interests me most here is the familiar attitude of superiority, condescension, and disdain. That was evident in the pro-slavery blather of the nineteenth century, and it was on full display at the Mandarin Oriental in November 2014. Democrats, it seems, never change their stripes."
Dinesh D'Souza,Right,"in the politics of the Democratic Party, race trumps gender. Blacks"
Dinesh D'Souza,Right,"When possession is legitimized by force, where does the issue of theft arise? I’m"
Dinesh D'Souza,Right,"Moreover, the way the Jackson Democrats treated the Indians was not an aberration. Rather, it was only the beginning of a long subsequent Democratic Party history of dispossession, cruelty, bigotry, and theft."
Dinesh D'Souza,Right,"In all ages of the world, some have labored, and others have, without labor, enjoyed a large proportion of the fruits. This is wrong, and should not continue.1"
Dinesh D'Souza,Right,"In November 2014 Hillary Clinton made some revealing comments about illegal immigrants while receiving a History Maker award from the New York Historical Society at the city’s Mandarin Oriental Hotel. President Obama had just issued an executive order curbing the ability of law enforcement officials to deport illegal immigrants. Obama’s action circumvented the law, provoking a firestorm of criticism from many Republicans."
Dinesh D'Souza,Right,"Buffett has become the entrepreneur whom progressives endlessly flatter, because he flatters their prejudices and"
Dinesh D'Souza,Right,This is a white man’s country
Dinesh D'Souza,Right,"Some of them even insisted that slavery benefited both the master and the slave, because slavery gave full employment to people who were incapable of doing anything better than menial work. And here is Hillary Clinton making essentially the same case, not in defense of slavery, but in defense of illegal immigration."
Dinesh D'Souza,Right,"Hillary’s plan, I argue in this book, is the enslavement of America. Enslavement is not slavery, but it’s related to slavery. Slavery is a condition while enslavement is a process. Enslavement is the process of converting free into unfree citizens, by confiscating their earnings, their resources, and their property in the form of taxes or fines. The ultimate end is the same: our lives and even our hopes and dreams are now in someone else’s control. We have become serfs not of a plantation owner, but serfs of the progressive state."
Dinesh D'Souza,Right,"These attacks on slavery provoked the defense of slavery that formed the cornerstone of the Democratic Party. The Democratic Party in the South invented the positive good school that argued slavery was good not only for the master but also for the slave. The champion of this school was the Democratic Senator John C. Calhoun. Northern Democrats, led by Senator Stephen Douglas, produced a subtler but no less invidious apologia for slavery: popular sovereignty, a doctrine that allowed each state and territory to decide for itself whether it wanted slavery."
Dinesh D'Souza,Right,Democrats on the Supreme Court also forged the majority in the notorious Dred Scott decision that upheld slavery and insisted that blacks have no rights that a white man needs to respect. Democratic presidents after Jackson
Dinesh D'Souza,Right,"Finally, even after Lee surrendered at Appomattox, a small group of Democrats made a last-ditch attempt to save their cherished institution by assassinating Lincoln."
Dinesh D'Souza,Right,"WHITEWASHING HISTORY Whoa! you might say. We’ve never heard this story about the Democrats. Are you making this stuff up? Actually, no. Nothing I write in this chapter is controversial in terms of whether it happened or not. I am relying on the mainstream historians of slavery: David Brion Davis, Kenneth Stampp, Eugene Genovese, Orlando Patterson. How, then, can my arguments sound so outrageous? The reason is that progressive Democrats have whitewashed the party’s history. They have cleaned up the record."
Dinesh D'Souza,Right,The real divide was between the Democratic Party as the upholder of slavery and the Republican Party as the adversary of slavery.
Dinesh D'Souza,Right,All the figures who upheld and defended American slavery
Dinesh D'Souza,Right,All the heroes of black emancipation
Dinesh D'Souza,Right,"In the progressive narrative, America is to blame, and the first offenders were the Founders themselves. The progressive conclusion is that the founding was defective, setting up the progressive agenda to replace and move away from founding principles, what Obama called the remaking of America."
Dinesh D'Souza,Right,"Far from championing the cause of women, blacks, and other minorities, Democrats have historically brutalized, segregated, exploited, and murdered the most vulnerable members of our society."
Dinesh D'Souza,Right,Jackson established the Democratic Party as the party of theft. He mastered the art of stealing land from the Indians and then selling it at giveaway prices to white settlers. Jackson
Dinesh D'Souza,Right,"DEFENDING A RAPIST What is the character of a person who becomes a sexual enabler? We get an early glimpse into this question from 1975, when Hillary Clinton defended a man, Thomas Alfred Taylor, who was accused of beating and raping a twelve-year-old girl. A virgin prior to the attack, she spent five days in a coma, several months recovering from her injuries, and years in therapy. Even people who are accused of heinous crimes deserve criminal representation. Hillary’s strategy in defending Taylor, however, was to blame the teenage victim. According to an affidavit filed by Hillary, children who come from disorganized families such as the complainant sometimes exaggerate or romanticize sexual experiences. Hillary suggested the girl was emotionally unstable with a tendency to seek out older men and engage in fantasizing. Here Hillary seems to be echoing what Bernie Sanders wrote in his rape fantasy essay. In this case, however, the girl certainly didn’t dream up the assault and rape. There was physical evidence that showed she had been violated, and she was beaten so badly she was in a coma. Prosecutors had in their possession a bloodied pair of Taylor’s underwear. But fortunately for Hillary and her client, the forensic lab mishandled the way that evidence was preserved. At the time of trial, the state merely had a pair of Taylor’s underwear with a hole cut in it. Hillary plea bargained on behalf of Taylor and got him released without having to do any additional time. A tape unearthed by the Washington Free Beacon has Hillary celebrating the outcome. Got him off with time served in the county jail, she says. Did Hillary believe that, in this case, justice was done? Certainly not. On the tape, Hillary admits she never trusted her client. Course he claimed he didn’t, and all this stuff. So she decided to verify his story. I had him take a polygraph, which he passed"
Dinesh D'Souza,Right,"In the political realm, Republicans could never get away with what Bill Clinton did. South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford was widely castigated within his party for having a love affair with a woman from Argentina. Sanford, unlike Clinton, wasn’t just exercising his sex organs; he was genuinely smitten by the woman. The affair was consensual, and the two of them got engaged, although they subsequently parted ways and never married. Republicans, however, promptly initiated impeachment proceedings against Sanford. Contrast Republican intolerance for sexual harassment with Democratic approval for it. Democrats ferociously resisted Republican attempts to impeach Bill Clinton. Not only did Democrats pooh-pooh Bill’s conduct but they even excused his lying under oath, insisting that lying about sex should not be counted in this category. Throughout Bill’s career, Democrats have turned a blind eye to his history of sordid behavior toward women."
Dinesh D'Souza,Right,"Let’s explore this by considering two related themes that arise from the same Christian root. The first is Paul’s statement above. Here Paul in a single phrase repudiates an entire tradition of classical philosophy founded in Plato. For Plato, the problem of evil is a problem of knowledge. People do wrong because they do not know what is right. If they knew what was right, obviously, they would do it. But Paul denies that this is so. His claim is that even though he knows something is wrong, he still does it. Why? Because the human will is corrupt. The problem of evil is not a problem of knowledge but a problem of will."
Dinesh D'Souza,Right,"Slavery and enslavement are two distinct, though related, things. Slavery represents a specific condition: the slave is quite literally owned by his master. Enslavement is a process: people are enslaved to the degree that they are deprived of their rights and the fruit of their labor. The ultimate endpoint of enslavement is slavery, but there are many points of serfdom and servitude in between. In this book I will show how Democrats went from slavery for blacks to enslavement for the whole population. Even"
Dinesh D'Souza,Right,"She intends, in other words, to relocate you to the progressive plantation. There is only one way to do this: convert all of America into a plantation. This means reducing the whole country to the miserable condition that we now see only in inner cities and on native Indian reservations. For"
Dinesh D'Souza,Right,"Suddenly I had an epiphany: this system of larceny, corruption, and terror that I encountered firsthand in the confinement center is exactly the same system that has been adopted and perfected by modern progressivism and the Democratic Party. This"
Dinesh D'Souza,Right,"At some point, whether it be Jimmy Carter in 1980 or Obama in 2008, the Democratic Party lost its moorings and became radicalized."
Dinesh D'Souza,Right,"Corruption in American politics is hardly new, of course, but previously, for the most part, it was conducted mainly on the local level. It was also conducted by Democrats. There were exceptions, of course, especially during Reconstruction, and in the administration of President Grant, and in the Teapot Dome scandal of the Harding administration. But generally, when we think of political corruption, we think of the Democratic Party machines in America’s big cities, of the city bosses using the political system to rig votes, install cronies in office, extort favors from businesses, collect bribes for the assignment of city contracts, and generally rip off the local taxpayer and loot the treasury. Just as slavery and white supremacy were the tools of Democratic exploitation in the South, the boss system was the party’s tool of corruption and theft in cities throughout the country. The most famous Democratic bosses were Edward Crump, mayor of Memphis from 1910 to 1916; Tom Pendergast, who ran the Jackson County Democratic Club and controlled local politics in Kansas City, Missouri, from 1911 until his conviction for tax fraud in 1939; Frank Hague, mayor of Jersey City from 1917 to 1947; and Richard Daley, who was mayor of Chicago from 1955 to 1976."
Dinesh D'Souza,Right,PARTNERS IN CRIME HOW THE CLINTONS WENT FROM DEAD BROKE TO FILTHY RICH And the money kept rolling in from every side.
Dinesh D'Souza,Right,"Once we understand Hillary as single-mindedly pursuing her own interest and financial gain, we can for the first time make sense of recent Clinton scandals. Consider the email scandal. What we know is that Hillary created and maintained an entirely private email server, insulated from her State Department requirements. This took great effort and required the collaboration of a whole team of aides as well as State Department bureaucrats. Why did Hillary do this? Her official explanation is convenience. Hillary simply wanted to get things done, and she was a little careless about how she went about doing them. She claims she got into all this trouble because she didn’t want to have to carry two phones.1 But setting up a parallel email system is actually very inconvenient. Far from being careless, Hillary was careful to do it in a manner that would allow her to carry on private communications that would not show up on an official network, rendering the Freedom of Information Act useless. By doing this, in essence she stole the people’s property. Sending classified and secret information through a private network is not merely harmful to the national security; it is also illegal. Former CIA director John Deutch, former National Security Adviser Sandy Berger, and General David Petraeus were all punished for doing it. Their offenses pale before Hillary’s. Moreover, Hillary, in the middle of a government investigation, went through her private emails, deleting thousands of them that she didn’t want the government or the public to see. Normal people who do such things end up in prison. Hillary, clearly, sees herself as politically protected by the Obama gang. She acts like she’s above the law, and so far she has been proven correct."
Dinesh D'Souza,Right,It may seem heretical to link the three great progressive champions of the twentieth century
Dinesh D'Souza,Right,"So traumatic is the idea of jumping out of a window [of a burning building] that it is easier to pretend the fire will never reach us. It is the same with death: we know it is approaching, but we act as if it is never going to come. The vast majority of us, especially here in the west, construct our lives based on the denial of death."
Dinesh D'Souza,Right,"There is the story of the English vicar who was asked whether he expected to go to heaven, and what he thought he would find there. Well, I suppose I believe in eternal bliss, if it comes to that, he replied, but I wish you wouldn't bring up such depressing subjects."
Dinesh D'Souza,Right,Unequal prosperity is better than shared poverty.
Dinesh D'Souza,Right,"Inequality of outcomes is not seen as a necessary evil that government should seek to remedy; rather, the government itself exists to guard citizens’ right to accumulate unequal fortunes and property."
Dinesh D'Souza,Right,"In order to give man freedom and enable human choices to have consequences, God creates for man an independent, lawful universe. The freedom of man requires, it turns out, the self-limitation of God as well as the independence of the world."
Dinesh D'Souza,Right,"America is founded on the understanding that wealth can be created through innovation and enterprise. Through the system of technological capitalism, we can go from ten marbles to twenty marbles without taking anyone’s marbles."
Dinesh D'Souza,Right,"American era is ending in part because a powerful group of Americans wants it to end. The American dream is shrinking because some of our leaders want it to shrink. Decline, in other words, has become a policy objective. And if this decline continues at the current pace, America as we know it will cease to exist. In effect, we will have committed national suicide."
Dinesh D'Souza,Right,"Why would Obama, of all"
Dinesh D'Souza,Right,effectively you have
Dinesh D'Souza,Right,"Most recently, in order to quell dissent, the progressives are implementing a chilling policy of national surveillance and selective prosecution"
Dinesh D'Souza,Right,"Recall that this is the first time that America truly had a generation gap, a chasm between parents and children. In previous generations, children wanted to be like their parents. They wanted, as quickly as possible, to grow up and become adults. In the 1960s, however, children regarded themselves as morally superior to their parents, even while indulging in irresponsible behaviors like lawlessness and drug-taking that their parents had never even considered. In short order, the children became incomprehensible to their parents, not only in their music, but also in their values. And while the parents grew older, the children, in a sense, never grew up. They remained, as it were, perpetual adolescents. Now they are graying and grayed adolescents, a breed the world has never seen before."
Dinesh D'Souza,Right,"Katznelson shows how the Nazis were aware of, and excited about, bigotry across the Atlantic that they believed paralleled and reinforced their own bigotry. Even so, notice how just as Whitman blames America, Katznelson blames the South. Never does either of them once say, the Democrats. No fingers of blame ever identify the progressives. Never do they point to the Left."
Dinesh D'Souza,Right,This was a key condition the racists put before FDR. They said they would not support FDR’s New Deal programs unless FDR supported their effort to block Republican anti-lynching bills. So FDR convinced even northern Democrats and progressives to back their southern counterparts in keeping these bills from coming to the floor for a vote.40 This is one of the most disgraceful legacies of the FDR presidency and it goes virtually unmentioned in progressive FDR biographies. In
Dinesh D'Souza,Right,Leftists in the universities insist that conservatives lack commitment to diversity. So diversity becomes the pretext for progressives to root out the little intellectual and ideological diversity that remains on campus.3
Dinesh D'Souza,Right,"FDR is the canonized hero of American progressivism. Subsequent Democratic presidents, from Lyndon Johnson to Obama, have all sought to expand the power of the state by invoking the FDR model. Johnson"
Dinesh D'Souza,Right,"Seven months after the notorious Nazi book burning in 1933, Columbia University invited the German ambassador to speak on campus where"
Dinesh D'Souza,Right,Vicious fights among socialist and leftist factions are a recognized feature of the history of socialism.
Dinesh D'Souza,Right,"Through a process of transference, leftists blame their victims for being and doing what they themselves are and do. In a sick inversion, the real fascists in American politics masquerade as anti-fascists and accuse the real anti-fascists of being fascists."
Dinesh D'Souza,Right,"I am glad that the horrid Democrat, Jackson, will be replaced with a Republican heroine, Harriet Tubman, on the twenty-dollar bill in 2020. Trump, like Reagan, is a former Democrat, and I imagine his enthusiasm for Jackson is partly driven by the Democratic Party’s earlier hagiography of Jackson and partly by Jackson’s current vilification at the hands of many left-wing progressives. Yet even progressives can occasionally be correct, and in this case I think they are. Slave"
Dinesh D'Souza,Right,"While Margaret Sanger was an avid eugenicist, today Planned Parenthood celebrates her as a champion of choice. One is hard pressed to find references to eugenics in Planned Parenthood brochures featuring Sanger’s pioneering role in the organization. This is all part of the big lie; the real Sanger opposed choice. As we have seen, she demanded that rich, educated, and fit populations must have more children and poor, uneducated, and unfit populations must have fewer children. Sanger, like Hitler, believed that reproductive choices must serve the larger interests of society and the species. If"
Dinesh D'Souza,Right,"Hitler’s concept of concentration camps as well as the practicality of genocide owed much, so he claimed, to his studies of English and United States history. He admired the camps for Boer prisoners in South Africa and for the Indians in the Wild West, and often praised to his inner circle the efficiency of America’s extermination"
Dinesh D'Souza,Right,"Actually, we do have our Mengele, and his name is Kermit Gosnell. Since 1979, Gosnell ran an abortion clinic called the Women’s Medical Society in West Philadelphia. There he performed late-term abortions and partial-birth abortions, mostly on poor women. If by some mistake children were born alive, Gosnell killed them in a process he termed ensuring fetal demise. Gosnell’s preferred technique for abortion was to heavily drug the premature infants and then stick scissors into their necks and cut the spinal cord. Over a period of three decades, Gosnell killed hundreds if not thousands of children in this way, far more than Mengele killed during his two-year stint at Auschwitz.4 If Gosnell is our Mengele, we also have our Kaiser Wilhelm Institute, and its name is Planned Parenthood."
Dinesh D'Souza,Right,John Locke says that whatever other tasks a government undertakes
Dinesh D'Souza,Right,"The only difference is that Mengele didn’t get away with it while Soros’s explanation seems fully satisfactory to the political Left. In a profile of Soros in the New Yorker, Jane Mayer notes that Soros once described"
Dinesh D'Souza,Right,"A Rationale for Violence At first, I thought I was merely witnessing the shocked aftermath of a shocking election. The Left did not expect Trump to win. As late as October 20, 2016, the American Prospect published an article, Trump No Longer Really Running for President, the theme of which was that Trump’s real political goal is to make it impossible for Hillary Clinton to govern. The election result was, in the words of columnist David Brooks, the greatest shock of our lifetimes.25 Trump won against virtually insurmountable odds, which included the mainstream media openly campaigning for Hillary and a civil war within the GOP with the entire intellectual wing of the conservative movement refusing to support him. Initially I interpreted the Left’s violent upheaval as a stunned, heat-of-the-moment response to the biggest come-from-behind victory in U.S. political history. Then I saw two things that made me realize I was wrong. First, the violence did not go away. There were the violent Not My President’s Day rallies across the country in February; the violent March 4 disruptions of Trump rallies in California, Minnesota, Tennessee, and Florida; the April anti-Trump tax rallies, supposedly aimed at forcing Trump to release his tax returns; the July impeachment rallies, seeking to build momentum for Trump’s removal from office; and the multiple eruptions at Berkeley.26 In Portland, leftists threw rocks, lead balls, soda cans, glass bottles, and incendiary devices until police dispersed them with the announcement, May Day is now considered a riot. Earlier, at the Minnesota State Capitol, leftists threw smoke bombs into the pro-Trump crowd while others set off fireworks in the building, sending people scrambling in fear of a bomb attack. Among those arrested was Linwood Kaine, the son of Hillary’s vice presidential candidate Tim Kaine.27 More of this, undoubtedly, is in store from the Left over the next four years. What this showed is that the Left was engaging in premeditated violence, violence not as outbreak of passion but violence as a political strategy."
Dinesh D'Souza,Right,"Hillary’s America was met with outrage on the Left, but no one could rebut a single fact in the book or movie. Even my most incriminating allegations proved invulnerable. I noted that, in 1860, the year before the Civil War, no Republican owned a slave; all the four million slaves at the time were owned by Democrats. Now this generalization could easily be refuted by someone providing a list of Republicans who owned slaves. The Left couldn’t do it. One assiduous researcher finally sought to dispute me with a single counterexample. Ulysses S. Grant, he pointed out, once inherited a slave from his wife’s family. I conceded the point but reminded him that, at the time, Ulysses S. Grant was not a Republican. Fearful that they had no substantive answer to Hillary’s America, the mainstream media went into complete denial. If you watched the major networks or public television, or listened to National Public Radio, you would have no idea that Hillary’s America even existed. The book was Number One on the New York Times bestseller list and the movie was the top-grossing documentary of the year. Both were dense with material directly relevant to the ongoing election debate. Yet they were completely ignored by a press that was squarely in the Hillary camp. Despite the failed fulminations and widespread denial, however, the book and movie had an effect. Many people credit it with motivating Republicans and persuading undecideds and thus helping Trump get to the White House. I have no idea how to measure this effect. I do know my book and film helped shape the election narrative. They helped expose Hillary as a gangster and the Democrats as her accomplices with a long history of bigotry and exploitation to account for. In the 2016 election, for the first time the Democrats could not drop the race bomb and get away with it."
Dinesh D'Souza,Right,"Now it must be said that when a major political party basically rejects the outcome of a free election, we are in uncharted territory. This happened in the United States once before, of course, in 1860, when the same party, the Democrats, refused to accept the election of Abraham Lincoln. The result was a bloody civil war."
Dinesh D'Souza,Right,"In other words, the atheist bloodbath is the product of a hubristic modern ideology that sees man, not God, as the creator of values. In rejecting God, man becomes scornful of the doctrine of human sinfulness and convinced of the perfectibility of his nature. Man now seeks to displace God and create a secular utopia here on earth. In order to achieve this, the atheist rulers establish total control of society. They invent a form of totalitarianism far more comprehensive than anything that previous rulers attempted: every aspect of life comes under political supervision. Of course if some people"
Dinesh D'Souza,Right,"Copernicus, who was a canon in the cathedral of Krakow, celebrated astronomy as a science more divine than human and viewed his heliocentric theory as revealing God’s grand scheme for the cosmos. Boyle was a pious Anglican who declared scientists to be on a divinely appointed mission to serve as priests of the book of nature. Boyle’s work includes both scientific studies and theological treatises. In his will he left money to fund a series of lectures combating atheism. Newton was virtually a Christian mystic who wrote long commentaries on biblical prophecy from both the book of Daniel and the book of Revelation. Perhaps the greatest scientist of all time, Newton viewed his discoveries as showing the creative genius of God’s handiwork in nature. This most beautiful system of sun, planets, and comets, he wrote, could only proceed from the counsel and dominion of an intelligent and powerful being.16 Newton’s God was not a divine watchmaker who wound up the universe and then withdrew from it. Rather, God was an active agent sustaining the heavenly bodies in their positions and solicitous of His special creation, man."
Dinesh D'Souza,Right,"On another occasion, Alinsky was working in his home base of Chicago to force Chicago’s department stores to give jobs to black activists who were Alinsky’s cronies. On this issue of course Alinsky was competing"
Dinesh D'Souza,Right,"In the sixteenth century the Reformation introduced a new idea. This was the notion that knowledge is not simply the province of ecclesiastical institutions but that, especially when it comes to matters of conscience, each man should decide for himself. The priesthood of the individual believer was an immensely powerful notion because it rejected the papal hierarchy, and by implication all institutional hierarchy as well. Ultimately it was a charter of independent thought, carried out not by institutions but by individuals. The early Protestants didn’t know it, but they were introducing new theological concepts that would give new vitality to the emerging scientific culture of Europe. Here is a partial list of leading scientists who were Christian: Copernicus, Kepler, Galileo, Brahe, Descartes, Boyle, Newton, Leibniz, Gassendi, Pascal, Mersenne, Cuvier, Harvey, Dalton, Faraday, Herschel, Joule, Lyell, Lavoisier, Priestley, Kelvin, Ohm, Ampere, Steno, Pasteur, Maxwell, Planck, Mendel. A good number of these scientists were clergymen. Gassendi and Mersenne were priests. So was Georges Lemaitre, the Belgian astronomer who first proposed the big bang theory for the origin of the universe. Mendel, whose discovery of the principles of heredity would provide vital support for the theory of evolution, spent his entire adult life as a monk in an Augustinian monastery. Where would modern science be without these men? Some were Protestant and some were Catholic, but all saw their scientific vocation in distinctively Christian terms."
Dinesh D'Souza,Right,"It seems at this point that we have established the existence of a creator, but nothing can be known about the nature of that creator. I submit that this is not so. Many attributes of the creator remain unknown or hidden, but there are some conclusions that we can reasonably draw from what we know. As the universe was produced by a creative act, it is reasonable to infer that it was produced by some sort of mind. Mind is the origin of matter, and it is mind that produced matter, rather than the other way around. As the universe comprises the totality of nature, containing everything that is natural, its creator must necessarily be outside nature. As the creator used no natural laws or forces to create the universe, the creator is clearly supernatural. As space and time are within the universe, the creator is also outside space and time, which is to say, eternal. As the universe is material, the creator is immaterial, which is to say, spiritual. As the universe was created from nothing, the creator is incomprehensibly powerful or, as best as we can tell, omnipotent."
Dinesh D'Souza,Right,"Is the cosmos all there is, or was, or ever will be? Of course not. That idea is complete nonsense, and from a man who should have known better. The laws of nature give no hint of a divine plan or creator? How could Steven Weinberg have made an assertion as foolish as that? To the dogmatic atheist, it seems like science fiction, or a recurrent nightmare. But there’s no getting around the scientific fact. The finding of modern physics that the universe has a beginning in space and in time meets E. O. Wilson’s litmus test for one of the most important scientific discoveries ever made. It provides, for all who take the trouble to understand and reflect upon it, powerful and convincing evidence of the existence of an eternal, supernatural being that created our world and everything in it."
Dinesh D'Souza,Right,"Yet an IDB auditor, Mariela Antiga, complained that the contracts were padded with excessive costs to build roads no one needed. Antiga also alleged that IDB funds were going to a construction project on private land owned by former Haitian president Rene Preval"
Dinesh D'Souza,Right,"In 2011, the Clinton Foundation brokered a deal with Digicel, a cell phone service provider seeking to gain access to the Haitian market. The Clintons arranged to have Digicel receive millions in U.S. taxpayer money to provide mobile phones. The USAID Food for Peace program, which the State Department administered through Hillary aide Cheryl Mills, distributed Digicel phones free to Haitians. Digicel didn’t just make money off the U.S. taxpayer; it also made money off the Haitians. When Haitians used the phones, either to make calls or transfer money, they paid Digicel for the service. Haitians using Digicel’s phones also became automatically enrolled in Digicel’s mobile program. By 2012, Digicel had taken over three-quarters of the cell phone market in Haiti. Digicel is owned by Denis O’Brien, a close friend of the Clintons."
Dinesh D'Souza,Right,"In 1818, Jackson spied a real estate opportunity in Florida. The opportunity was created by marauding Indians conducting raids from Spanish Florida. The Monroe administration sent Jackson to Florida to stop the raids. Jackson declared his purpose to chastise the Indians, which in his parlance meant to kill them. Although he had been specifically instructed to deal with the Indians and not occupy Spanish land, Jackson entered West Florida, captured Pensacola, appointed a governor there, and started collecting taxes."
Dinesh D'Souza,Right,"Jackson’s illicit action caused a stir in Washington, but many ordinary people cheered Jackson. By now they knew the routine. Jackson takes land, chases off the Indians, and then we get to buy it at fire-sale prices. This was the American Dream, in the version created by the founder of the Democratic Party. The Monroe administration backed down, and once again Jackson found himself in a position to win the allegiance of future voters while amply lining his own pockets."
Dinesh D'Souza,Right,"Jackson’s real estate shenanigans became a hot topic in his 1828 presidential campaign. Even earlier, in 1824, his opponents suspected him of profiting from political office but they were unable to produce convincing evidence. By 1828, however, Jackson’s critics had gotten smarter and more determined. Jackson, however, was ready for them. On December 4, 1827, a fire broke out in the building containing Jackson’s financial papers. Conveniently, all the original records of his earlier land dealings were destroyed.32 Jackson professed his innocence, and again, no one could prove he was behind the fire. The whole situation, however, bears an uncanny resemblance to Hillary Clinton deleting her emails. Oops! They’re gone! And now we will never have full information about why she set up her private email account and what she wanted to keep out of the official State Department email system. Hillary might have thought she was being original, but Jackson got there first. Just like his twenty-first-century counterpart, Jackson deleted the evidence that his critics might have used to incriminate him."
Dinesh D'Souza,Right,"An indignant Jackson and his supporters formed the Democratic Party, while his opponents coalesced into a rival Whig Party. These were the two parties that dominated American politics for the next few decades, until the Whig Party collapsed and the Republican Party was founded. The Whigs, led by the stalwart Henry Clay, provided modest though largely ineffective resistance to Jackson. Until the founding of the Republican Party, however, there was no party in America strong enough to stop the thieving Democrats."
Dinesh D'Souza,Right,"Lincoln is nowhere saying that blacks are inferior. He is not saying he rejects the idea of blacks marrying whites. He is simply refusing to go there. He is keeping the debate where it ought to be, on the simple question of whether people should be permitted to steal other people’s life and labor by enslaving them. Of the black woman he says, In her natural right to eat the bread she earns with her own hands without asking leave of anyone else, she is my equal and the equal of all others.20"
Dinesh D'Souza,Right,"THE SCHOOLS THEY NEVER BUILT The Clintons claim to have built schools in Haiti. But the New York Times discovered that when it comes to the Clintons, built is a term with a very loose interpretation."
Dinesh D'Souza,Right,"For example, the newspaper located a school featured in the Clinton Foundation annual report as built through a Clinton Global Initiative Commitment to Action. In reality, The Clinton Foundation’s sole direct contribution to the school was a grant for an Earth Day celebration and tree-building activity.5"
Dinesh D'Souza,Right,"Is this too harsh a verdict? I wouldn’t go so far as to say the Clintons don’t care about Haiti. Yet it seems clear that Haitian welfare is not their priority. Their priority is, well, themselves. The Clintons seem to believe in Haitian reconstruction and Haitian investment as long as these projects match their own private economic interests. They have steered the rebuilding of Haiti in a way that provides maximum benefit to themselves. No wonder the Clintons refused to meet with the Haitian protesters. Each time the protesters showed up, the Clintons were nowhere to be seen. They have never directly addressed the Haitians’ claims. Strangely enough, they have never been required to do so. The progressive media scarcely covered the Haitian protest. Somehow the idea of Haitian black people calling out the Clintons as aid money thieves did not appeal to the grand pooh-bahs at CBS News, the New York Times, and NPR."
Dinesh D'Souza,Right,"For most Democrats, the topic is both touchy and distasteful. It’s one thing to rob from the rich but quite another to rob from the poorest of the poor. Some of the Democratic primary support for Bernie Sanders was undoubtedly due to Democrats’ distaste over the financial shenanigans of the Clintons. Probably these Democrats considered the Clintons to be unduly grasping and opportunistic, an embarrassment to the great traditions of the Democratic Party."
Dinesh D'Souza,Right,"Similarly, when Lincoln insisted the Civil War was about the union, not about slavery, this is understood by competent historians to reflect Lincoln’s determination to keep border states"
Dinesh D'Souza,Right,"Jackson had been a slave owner since his early days as a young lawyer in Tennessee. His first slave was a woman named Nancy. The record of the sale notes that Andrew Jackson Esquire took ownership of a Negro Woman about Eighteen or Twenty Years of Age.33 Later, as Jackson grew rich and his real estate multiplied, he bought slaves to work that land. Altogether, Jackson owned some three hundred slaves over the course of his life. The most he owned at any one time was 150 slaves. This made him a large slave owner by American standards. By contrast with the South American plantations, American plantations were typically quite small, employing fewer than twenty slaves. Jackson was also a slave trader, a practice disparaged by most slave owners. In one telling incident, Jackson purchased an ad in a local paper offering a bounty for one of his runaway slaves. Jackson offered a $50 reward for the return of the slave and ten dollars extra for every hundred lashes any person will give him to the amount of three hundred.34"
Dinesh D'Souza,Right,"This is one reason progressives love this peculiar duo, and especially Marx. They too have little understanding of what entrepreneurs do. Nor do they really care. They have no aspiration to become entrepreneurs themselves. Rather, they prefer occupations like community activist or professor of romance languages at Bowdoin College. And they aspire to be, like Marx, lifelong leeches. They would like to rip off the gains of capitalism and agitate against the system that subsidizes their rip-off and agitation."
Dinesh D'Souza,Right,"We can see this quite clearly if we follow the fortunes of Hillary Clinton. She is a woman who has clearly had fortuna on her side, and in addition, she and her husband have ingeniously and ruthlessly manipulated their circumstances for personal gain. Hillary"
Dinesh D'Souza,Right,"In 2008, the Swedish telecom company Ericsson found itself under investigation by the U.S. State Department for selling telecom equipment to the regimes of Iran, Sudan, and Syria, all considered state sponsors of terrorism. In 2011, Ericsson was named in a State Department report proposing to include telecom restrictions as part of its new sanctions against terrorist regimes. That year, Ericsson sponsored a speech by Bill Clinton and paid him a whopping $750,000, around three times Clinton’s fee at the time. Ericsson had never previously sponsored a Clinton speech. Ericsson’s timing could not have been more fortuitous, since later that year the State Department unveiled its new sanctions list for Iran. Telecom sanctions were not on it. Douglas"
Dinesh D'Souza,Right,"Jeffrey Epstein gave $3.5 million to the Clinton Foundation in 2006, shortly after the FBI began investigating him for participating in the exploitation of underage girls as sex slaves. Flight logs show that in 2002–2003, Bill Clinton made more than a dozen trips on Epstein’s jet"
Dinesh D'Souza,Right,"Somewhat more blatant was President Clinton’s pardon of Marc Rich, a wealthy financier and oil trader who faced life in prison for illegally trading with the government of Iran and for evading $48 million in taxes. These crimes got him on the FBI’s Most Wanted List. Rich’s ex-wife, Denise, had been pressing Clinton for a pardon, but Clinton reportedly said he was having difficulties, even though he was doing all possible to turn around the White House counsel on the subject. Rich got his pardon, finally, after Denise Rich gave $100,000 to Hillary Clinton’s 2000 New York Senate campaign, $400,000 to the Clinton Library, and another $1 million to the Democratic Party. The"
Dinesh D'Souza,Right,"The Clintons came to Washington poor and are now extremely rich. One may say that they came professing to do good and left making out very well. The Clintons now have a net worth exceeding $100 million and they control assets exceeding a billion dollars. What did the Clintons have to do to earn this largesse? According to the Clintons, nothing. There were no bribes involved or deals made. People just happened to give them money, and then favorable things just happened for those people. Neither Hillary nor Bill caused those things to happen, or if they did, it was not because of the money flowing into their pockets. In other words, the Clintons have had better luck than Lucky Luciano, with a much bigger take than Luciano ever got. Luck,"
Dinesh D'Souza,Right,"So how do my election law offenses compare to those of leading progressives? Well, let’s see. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid took $31,000 in late 2013 from his campaign funds to buy jewelry for his granddaughter Ryan Elisabeth Reid’s wedding. In his campaign year-end report, Reid tried to hide his granddaughter’s relationship to him by simply listing the transaction as a holiday gift to one Ryan Elisabeth. The impression Reid sought to convey was that he was buying gifts for his supporters. When it came to light that Reid had funneled campaign money to his granddaughter, Reid agreed to repay the money, but waxed indignant at continuing questions from reporters. As a grandparent, he fumed, I say enough is enough. Although Reid’s case involves obvious corruption, the Obama administration has neither investigated nor prosecuted a case against this stalwart Obama ally.6 Bill Clinton, you may recall, had his own campaign finance controversy. Following the 1996 election, the Democratic National Committee was forced to return $2.8 million in illegal and improper donations, most of it from foreign sources. Most of that money was raised by a shady Clinton fundraiser named John Huang. Huang, who used to work for the Lippo Group, an Indonesian conglomerate, set up a fundraising scheme for foreign businessmen seeking special favors from the U.S. government to meet with Clinton, in exchange for large sums of money. A South Korean businessman had dinner with President Clinton in return for a $250,000 donation. Yogesh Gandhi, an Indian businessman who claimed to be related to Mahatma Gandhi, arranged to meet Clinton in the White House and be photographed receiving an award in exchange for a $325,000 contribution. Both donations were returned, but again, no official investigation, no prosecutions.7"
Dinesh D'Souza,Right,"In 2013, Barack Obama’s presidential campaign was fined $375,000 by the Federal Election Commission for violating federal disclosure laws. An FEC audit of the 2008 records of Obama for America found the group failed to disclose millions of dollars in contributions and delayed refunding millions more in excess contributions.8 Excess contributions"
Dinesh D'Souza,Right,"Later, as banks began to improve their balance sheets, several attempted to pay back their government loans. The Obama administration refused to accept the money, on the grounds that banks would first have to pass a stress test. Of course the stress test was simply a way for the government to maintain control of those banks. So if banks gained by getting free money, and the government gained by extending control over the financial sector, who lost? The taxpayer! The taxpayer was the sucker in this whole transaction. His money stood guarantee for the depositors and investors and bank officials who had taken risks and made bad loans and were now facing crippling losses. Instead of them suffering, the taxpayer suffered. And who raided the Treasury and stuck the taxpayer with this bill that was not the taxpayer’s bill to pay? The very federal government that is responsible for managing the Treasury and protecting the revenues provided by the taxpayer."
Dinesh D'Souza,Right,"Progressive government seeks to make citizens dependent on the state, and then to ensure that progressives are elected to run the state. Social Security advances both objectives."
Dinesh D'Souza,Right,Progressives run for office as the champions of Social Security. Progressives viciously attack any politician who exposes the financial irresponsibility or speaks out against the Ponzi scheme as being against Social Security and against seniors.
Dinesh D'Souza,Right,"The Republican abolitionist Frederick Douglass, who had once denounced the founding as a hideous compromise with slavery, came to understand the accomplishment of the framers. Abolish slavery tomorrow, he said, and not a sentence or syllable of the Constitution needs to be altered."
Dinesh D'Souza,Right,"Summing up, we can see that the progressive pitches about greed, selfishness, and inequality are basically diversions. They seek to deflect us away from the core issue, which is that the creators of the wealth are the ones who deserve the wealth they have created. To put it in primitive terms, the farmer who grew the crops gets to keep the crops and the hunters who killed the deer get to eat the deer."
Dinesh D'Souza,Right,"Progressives, however, have always had their eye on those crops and that deer. Through an elaborate flimflam"
Dinesh D'Souza,Right,"THE FIRST DEMOCRAT The real founder of the modern Democratic Party was Andrew Jackson. Jackson, an orphan from Appalachia, rose from obscurity to become America’s most celebrated general and military hero after George Washington. He won the presidency by a landslide in 1828 and an even bigger one in 1832. His proteges dominated the Democratic Party for half a century, until the Civil War. During his lifetime Jackson was immensely popular with ordinary people, earning him the reputation of being the common man’s president. One might expect the Democrats"
Dinesh D'Souza,Right,"FROM JACKSON TO HILLARY The full story, however, is told in Steve Inskeep’s recent book Jacksonland, which I will rely on for my subsequent account. Jackson managed national security affairs in a way that matched his interest in land development, Inskeep notes. He shaped his real estate investments to complement his official duties, and performed his official duties in a way that benefited his real estate interests.16 As Inskeep shows, typically Jackson would set his eye on a large tract of Indian territory. Then, even before chasing the Indians off that territory, Jackson would send surveyors in to assess the land in terms of its real estate value. Jackson would then alert his cronies, and together they would make a bid to purchase that real estate. In this way Jackson became a Tennessee plantation magnate and one of the largest slave owners in his home state. Jackson was a ruthless con artist who became fabulously wealthy by trading on his political office. Sound familiar? His career illustrates the familiar Democratic story of leaders making sure that when there are spoils to be distributed, the lion’s share goes to them. Obviously not all Democrats use their political positions to get rich, but a number of them, from Jackson himself to Lyndon Johnson to Bill Clinton, certainly did. Jackson’s true modern counterpart"
Dinesh D'Souza,Right,"Anti-slavery activism, of course, preceded the Republican Party, although it finally found its most effective expression in that party. The earliest opponents of slavery in America were Christians, mostly Quakers and evangelical Christians. They took seriously the biblical idea that we are all equal in the eyes of God, and interpreted it to mean that no person has the right to rule another person without his consent. Remarkably, Christians discovered political equality through a theological interpretation of the Bible. For them, human equality is based not on an equality of human characteristics or achievements but on how we are equally loved by God. Moreover, the argument against slavery and the argument for democracy both rested on the same foundation, a foundation based on human equality and individual consent. The American Anti-Slavery Society was founded in 1833. A few years later, the Liberty Party was founded to pursue emancipation. In 1848, the Liberty Party, anti-slavery Whigs, and Democrats who opposed the extension of slavery merged to form the Free Soil Party. Abolitionism, which sought the immediate end of slavery, had been present since the founding but grew in political strength during the middle part of the nineteenth century. With the passage of the Kansas Nebraska Act"
Dinesh D'Souza,Right,"In both cases, it’s a meager living. But there is an important difference. Under slavery, blacks had to work; today’s blacks don’t have to work to inhabit the progressive plantation. In fact, they must not work, because if they become self-reliant, then the progressives have no future use for them. Consequently, many young blacks have productivity, creativity, even human dignity sapped out of them. This is the core of today’s progressive racism."
Dinesh D'Souza,Right,"In this chapter, I will show that Jackson has become persona non grata precisely because of how he delivered for the common man. He did so by stealing land from the native Indians and then making it available for cheap purchase by white people, thus making those people beholden to Jackson and his Democratic Party. Now it is shameful enough to use military power, political intimidation, and trickery to seize and occupy other people’s land. It is even more disgraceful to do so while pretending to be the friends of those you are stealing from, giving them the impression you are helping them. Jackson mastered the art of posing as the ally of Native Americans while robbing them blind."
Dinesh D'Souza,Right,"Jackson started this racket by seizing Indian land and then using it to make white settlers a bargain they could not refuse. He was, in a sense, a merchant trading in stolen goods. In this respect he exposes the low, disgraceful origins of Democratic success with the common man. No wonder Democrats are eager to bury this record, or at least foist it on someone else."
Dinesh D'Souza,Right,"Indeed, several leading figures of the founding period, such as Patrick Henry, John Marshall, and Thomas Jefferson, proposed intermarriage between whites and Indians as a way to integrate the natives into the American mainstream. What they thought impossible with respect to blacks, political scientist Ralph Lerner writes, was seen as highly desirable with respect to Indians.19"
Dinesh D'Souza,Right,"But many southern whites were not under the racist hold of the Democrats. As they became more prosperous, these whites came to see the GOP reflect their beliefs in economic opportunity and upward mobility. They also found Republicans more in tune with their patriotism as well as their socially conservative views. Quite naturally, they moved over to a party that better reflected their interests and aspirations."
Dinesh D'Souza,Right,"Blacks clearly didn’t switch for reasons of race because the Democratic Party was, in the 1930s, the undisputed home of racism. It remained so until at least the early 1960s. (I say at least because I believe that modern progressive Democratic ideology remains infused with racism, although this racism manifests itself in a new way.) So many blacks switched reluctantly, because they knew they were leaving the party of Lincoln for the party of segregation, lynching, and the Ku Klux Klan."
Dinesh D'Souza,Right,Why did they do it? They did it because the Democrats promised them economic benefits. These benefits meant a great deal to blacks then living through the hardships of segregation and the Great Depression. Democrats offered blacks some of the same security that blacks had during slavery
Dinesh D'Souza,Right,"This was one of the most significant political transformations in American history. Long-term, it has proven to be a terrible bargain for blacks. They have remained the worst-off group in America, surpassed even by poverty-stricken immigrants who came to this country much later with nothing. The inner city remains a kind of Third World enclave in America, and whether or not blacks realize it, the Democrats intend to keep it that way."
Dinesh D'Souza,Right,"Yet counterproductive though the black shift of political allegiance has proven over the past seventy-five years, I cannot entirely blame black Americans for making it. They were under extreme economic stress. And they were conned by the artful pitch men of the Democratic Party. These pitch men said to blacks: you have had it hard enough in the past; now you deserve to be taken care of by the federal government. And many blacks figured: after all we’ve been through, this is our due."
Dinesh D'Souza,Right,"A NEW SCAM So progressive Democrats realized they needed a new and bigger scam. For two centuries they had oppressed and stolen from blacks and other minorities; now they had an idea for how to do it to the country as a whole. The new Democratic scam was progressivism, not the old progressivism of forced sterilization and support for fascism, but a new progressivism that turned blacks and other minorities into pawns in a grand larceny scheme."
Dinesh D'Souza,Right,"Lincoln never defended rich people. His Republican Party was not the party of the 1 percent. Rather, Lincoln defended upward mobility"
Dinesh D'Souza,Right,"Today’s Democrats in this sense are heirs of Jackson. They too appropriate resources from others and distribute them among Democratic constituencies, trading favors for votes. They too pose as the friends of those they are stealing from, justifying their confiscations as good for the victims and good for the country."
Dinesh D'Souza,Right,"For Alinsky, morality is a scam. Morality is the cloak of power. Activists appeal to the language of morality but recognize that it is a mere disguise. As Alinsky puts it, Ethical standards must be elastic to stretch with the times. . . . In action, one does not always enjoy the luxury of a decision that is consistent with one’s individual conscience. . . . You do what you can with what you have, and then clothe it with moral garments.13 In"
Dinesh D'Souza,Right,"Alinsky’s contempt for traditional morality can also be seen in the figure to whom he dedicated his book Rules for Radicals. That figure is the devil. Alinsky calls Lucifer the first radical known to man who rebelled against the establishment and did it so effectively that he at least won his own kingdom. He goes on to say, If there’s an afterlife, and I have anything to say about it, I will unreservedly go to hell. Hell would be heaven for me.15"
Dinesh D'Souza,Right,"In order to pressure the government to change its approach, however, Alinsky urged black activists to dress in African tribal costumes and greet government officials flying into Chicago from Washington, D.C. This action, he said, would dramatize the colonial mentality of the antipoverty establishment. I learned about this particular Alinsky caper from Hillary Clinton’s Wellesley College thesis.18 Alinsky"
Dinesh D'Souza,Right,"In the case of Obamacare, leading members of the intellectual class produced the appropriately rigged studies to promote the racket. Then members of the Obama administration and liberal Democrats in Congress took up these studies as an irrefutable demonstration of the wonders of Obamacare. Finally anchorpeople and reporters lined up to amplify the falsehoods and complete the sale to the American people. Despite all this, the American people remained unconvinced. Even so, the con men generated enough support that Democratic legislators, on a straight-party vote, got Obamacare through."
Dinesh D'Souza,Right,"Gruber’s confession came too late to stop Obamacare, but it has permanently damaged its reputation. Now the left hates Gruber, not because he lied, but because he told the truth. Telling the truth is a cardinal sin among thieves."
Dinesh D'Souza,Right,"Alinsky remained, as he put it, an outside agitator. He firmly believed that activists should not become part of the government. Yet ironically, Alinsky became the mentor to two figures, Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, who would learn from his techniques and then take them into the innermost corridors of power. Their"
Dinesh D'Souza,Right,"Their expertise would not be as outside agitators but as inside power brokers. If Alinsky had survived, he could have taken justified pride for his role in being their guiding star, their Godfather. To a considerable degree, he was the one who taught them how to steal America."
Dinesh D'Souza,Right,"Many years ago a college professor told me the story about the lion tamer and the lion. So here’s the clever lion tamer, with his little twirling stick, and there is the lion, prancing obediently to the machinations of the lion tamer. Clearly the lion tamer is in charge. But, asked my professor, who is actually more powerful, the lion tamer or the lion? Obviously it is the lion. Why then does the lion do the bidding of the lion tamer? Because the lion doesn’t know its own power. We, the American people, have been exploited and stolen from and we have put up with it at least in part because we are awed by the power of the progressive lion tamers. I admit they do have power, but I am also saying we do not appreciate our own strength."
Dinesh D'Souza,Right,"Obama may be pretty good, but no one beats Bill and Hillary Clinton when it comes to omertà. Bill has to be literally caught with his pants down before he will confess that he got it on with Monica. To get a straight answer under oath from Bill, you need extreme linguistic precision, even to the point of having to define the word is. We are now getting the same evasions regarding inquiries about conflicts of interest involving Hillary and the Clinton Foundation. And to this day the Clintons maintain that their foundation is purely philanthropic and that they have not received millions of dollars of personal benefit out of it. The Clintons are experts at covering up the con."
Dinesh D'Souza,Right,"In sum, progressives have set up a triangular alliance of envy"
Dinesh D'Souza,Right,Resistance to usurpation is possible provided the citizens understand their rights and are disposed to defend them.1
Dinesh D'Souza,Right,"Progressive thievery is thievery of a special sort, thievery that marches behind the banner of justice. In one of his other books, Thus Spoke Zarathustra, Nietzsche writes that for the avengers, justice is a camouflage for envy and revenge; these are tyrants who shroud themselves in words of virtue."
Dinesh D'Souza,Right,"Progressives may privately consider themselves superior, but they know they cannot include that claim in their pitch. Consequently they claim superiority by default. In a society where government controls things and distributes wealth, the power of the bureaucrat becomes predominant."
Dinesh D'Souza,Right,"Here’s how that works. First, progressives develop their pitch. They take all the virtues of the wealth creators, such as creativity, frugality, hard work, self-discipline, self-reliance, innovation, and the aspiration to success, and redefine them as vices. Creativity and frugality, for instance, become greed. Hard work and self-discipline become materialism. Self-reliance becomes arrogance. Innovation and the aspiration to success become proof of a lack of compassion as well as engines of inequality. In sum, the capitalists are now the exploiters, the expropriators, the bad guys. In the progressive view, their wealth is not earned but rather stolen."
Dinesh D'Souza,Right,"The progressive pretense is that these people, who have created virtually nothing, are actually the real creators of the nation’s wealth."
Dinesh D'Souza,Right,"No wonder that Obama, Hillary, and other progressive crime bosses have no compunction about living high on the hog while continuing their dishonest pitches about fair shares, injustice, and inequality."
Dinesh D'Souza,Right,"By 2008, the entire banking and home mortgage lending industry had been corrupted by the left. It was hardly a commercial industry anymore; rather, it was a kind of progressive racket. And the racket came to an end when, first by the thousands, and eventually by the millions, the people who lacked the ability to pay back their loans stopped making their loan payments. This caused the panic of 2008, followed by the crash of 2008."
Dinesh D'Souza,Right,"So why does American health care cost so much? The main reason is that the person receiving the service is not the one paying for the service. Imagine if you could go to Safeway or Giant, fill your cart with food, and then have someone else pay for it. Obviously you would get all kinds of stuff you don’t really need. Obviously the food chain would charge whatever it felt like, and you wouldn’t care, because you would not be the one paying. Now imagine further that the third party paying for the food was itself relatively indifferent to what it was charged. It raised its money through premiums paid for by millions of customers, and it could simply pass the cost to those customers in the form of higher premiums. This would be a scenario virtually set up to ensure runaway food costs. We don’t have it for food, but we do have it for health care."
Dinesh D'Souza,Right,"Now envision the same scenario as above, but this time Obama shows up on a white horse, dismounts, points a gun to my head, and compels me to share my sandwich. Now I have not done a good deed, since I only shared my sandwich under duress. I gave not out of charity but out of fear. The receiver is not grateful to me; why should he be? He knows that I didn’t give voluntarily. So the free sandwich does not provoke a feeling of appreciation; indeed, it is more likely to instill a feeling of entitlement. I’m still hungry. Why am I getting only half a sandwich? So even though the result is the same"
Dinesh D'Souza,Right,"Alinsky profited handsomely from his rackets. Even Hillary Clinton notes in her thesis that while Alinsky spoke endlessly about poverty and disadvantage, he himself lived very comfortably, far removed from the people on whose behalf he allegedly fought.21"
Dinesh D'Souza,Right,"Obamacare is a program designed to shift control of the health care industry from the private sector to the public sector, from doctors, hospitals, and insurance companies to the federal government. The program was sold by Obama feigning outrage over insurance companies refusing to grant insurance to people with preexisting conditions. But this is the same as an insurance company not granting fire insurance to a guy whose house has already burned down. The whole point of insurance is to share the risk before the catastrophe occurs, not to have a catastrophe and then get other people to pay for your losses."
Dinesh D'Souza,Right,"I find it amusing that progressives go on about greed and selfishness when they are the greediest, most selfish people of all. From the progressive viewpoint, Gates is a greedy, selfish guy because he has more than $50 billion and what can a man possibly want with that much money? (I’m reminded here of Obama’s 2010 comment, made in the context of the financial reform debate, I do think at a certain point you’ve made enough money.)12 The progressive solution is to force Gates to part with some, or most, of that money so that they can deploy it as they see fit. This is the progressive equivalent of Amartya Sen’s who gets the flute."
Dinesh D'Souza,Right,The progressives are right that there is no way Gates can spend $50 billion on himself. He can only eat three meals a day and wear one set of clothes at a time. Even his heirs can be provided for with a fraction of that amount. Gates actually knows this. He has vowed to give away most of his fortune to charity. Nor is he waiting for death to do this. He has already given away billions. He buys mosquito nets for people in poor countries so that they don’t get malaria. He invests in medical research. He funds educational projects in America and abroad.
Dinesh D'Souza,Right,What kind of generosity is it that forcibly seizes and then disburses other people’s money? This is not generosity; it’s larceny.
Dinesh D'Souza,Right,"Yet Obama is able to get away with it because, for years prior to the theft, he has been convincing people that he is the great apostle of social justice. I am supposed to be greedy and selfish for possessing a sandwich and he is wonderfully compassionate for taking half my sandwich and giving it to someone else. Notice that, through this process, the recipient of the sandwich is grateful not to me but to him. He becomes the provider even though it is my sandwich that he is sharing."
Dinesh D'Souza,Right,"In fact, Obama is the one who gains the most from the outcome. His gain is not the mere half sandwich he took; rather, it is the allegiance of the fellow he is supposedly helping. That guy is now indebted to Obama, and more likely to vote for him. While the other man gains a meal, Obama gains power. So now we must reconsider the assumption that Obama’s actions are motivated by altruism. It’s far more likely they are motivated by a will to power. He is the greediest, most selfish one of all because he is the only person among the three of us taking something that does not belong to him. Obama’s talk about greed and selfishness is a fraud; it is simply part of his con man’s pitch."
Dinesh D'Souza,Right,"One can see here that for Alinsky, democratic politics is basically a mechanism of legal extortion, justified by appeals to justice and equality. Alinsky"
Dinesh D'Souza,Right,"Horwitt describes an occasion in the spring of 1972 when Alinsky organized a student protest at Tulane University’s annual lecture week. A group of anti–Vietnam War protesters wanted to disrupt a scheduled speech by George H. W. Bush, then U.S. representative to the United Nations, and an advocate for President Nixon’s Vietnam policies. While the students planned to picket the speech and shout antiwar slogans, Alinsky told them that their approach was wrong because it might get them punished or expelled. Besides, it lacked creativity and imagination. Alinsky advised the students to go hear the speech dressed up as members of the Ku Klux Klan"
Dinesh D'Souza,Right,"All the criminals do their work on the screen, which people can see. Politicians work behind the screen, which the public can’t see.1"
Dinesh D'Souza,Right,"Jackson’s conduct in this respect echoes the Obama administration’s refusal to comply with laws and court rulings that Obama finds uncongenial. From the Defense of Marriage Act to welfare reform to Obamacare to immigration, today’s progressives seem willing to bend the law to their own purposes. This tradition of Democratic lawlessness has its true forefather in Andrew Jackson. The Cherokee continued to protest. The tribe owned a printing press which put out a newspaper, The Cherokee Phoenix. Acting on the advice of Jackson’s former attorney general, John Berrien, Jackson’s people raided the printing house and destroyed the press, shattering it to pieces and silencing the voice of the Cherokee people."
Dinesh D'Souza,Right,"Today when Republicans who are black, Hispanic, or Native American expose Democratic chicanery, they are routinely denounced"
Dinesh D'Souza,Right,"For example, political scientist Manning Marable said of conservative Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, Ethnically, Thomas has ceased to be an African American. Columnist Carl Rowan of the Washington Post wrote of black economist Thomas Sowell, Vidkun Quisling in his collaboration with the Nazis surely did not do as much damage as Sowell is doing. And Spike Lee said that Michael Williams, a black appointee in the Bush administration, was such a traitor to his race that he deserved to be dragged into an alley and beaten with a Louisville slugger.39"
Dinesh D'Souza,Right,"The Trail of Tears has gone down in American history as cruel and infamous. It certainly was, although its actual perpetrator was not America but rather the Jackson Democrats."
Dinesh D'Souza,Right,But even after the surrender of the Confederacy
Dinesh D'Souza,Right,"The coup failed. Booth did kill Lincoln, who became the first president in American history to be assassinated. But the co-conspirators did not kill Vice President Johnson or Secretary of State Seward"
Dinesh D'Souza,Right,"But starting in the seventeenth century and continuing through the nineteenth century, slavery came under attack. The attack was two-pronged. The first prong of the attack was the American founding, which had no power to end slavery but which established a framework for reducing, corralling, and ultimately placing slavery on a path to extinction. The second force, which emerged almost a century later, was the Republican Party, a party explicitly founded to block and then eliminate slavery, healing the crisis of the house divided and creating a single union of free citizens."
Dinesh D'Souza,Right,"In the grim aftermath of World War II and the Stalinist purges, the term totalitarianism has become a bad word. But for progressives before the war, Jonah Goldberg points out, it was a good word. Totalitarianism was a term used by Mussolini in a positive, descriptive sense. It meant giving total allegiance to the state; it meant a state that took care of people’s physical, emotional, and aspirational needs. Totalitarianism implied an exhilarating unity of thought and action. 19 Totalitarianism, in this sense, was the shared aspiration of fascists, Nazis, and progressives. Schivelbusch writes, The New Deal Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany all profited from the illusion of the nation as an egalitarian community whose members looked out for one another’s welfare under the watchful eyes of a strong leader.20 Progressives across Europe and America in the 1930s relished the idea of the totalitarian society in which they could impose this unity, in other words, to supervise and control people’s lives. Does totalitarianism in this sense seem unfamiliar? It shouldn’t be. Recall President Obama’s propagandistic Julia videos. Essentially the Obama administration promised this hypothetical young woman cradle-to-grave protection. Absurdly, the package of benefits offered by the government under Obama would be worth more than the wages of a typical forty-hour work week. Under President Obama Julia would get education subsidies, minimum wage, food stamps, and free health care. Under President Obama Julia even decides to bear a child. To me, it’s a bit unnerving. But this is progressive utopia: citizens are all brought into complete subordination and submission to an all-powerful state."
Dinesh D'Souza,Right,"Huck is initially taken in by these two rogues, in the same manner that many Americans have been conned by progressives. The progressive scams, however, have endured for a while. Huck, however, is a quick learner. He soon figures out what his high-titled compatriots are up to. It didn’t take me long to make up my mind that these liars warn’t no kings or dukes either, but just low-down humbugs and frauds.10 Assessing the pitches that progressives have been putting forward for at least the past seven years, from the reparations pitch to the inequality pitch to the you didn’t build that pitch to the Lucky Luciano pitch, it is difficult to come to a different conclusion."
Dinesh D'Souza,Right,I feel confident that I could persuade a millionaire on Friday to subsidize a revolution for Saturday out of which he would make a huge profit on Sunday even though he was certain to be executed on Monday.1
Dinesh D'Souza,Right,"Basically the Alinskyites were trying to steal money from the banks and, in the process, force the banks to make loans to people that they had no intention of making loans to. The banks acquiesced, and eventually the whole scheme came crashing down. It was toppled not by greed but by the sober reality that when you loan money to millions of people who cannot afford to pay, those people are very likely to default on those loans. That’s how Alinskyites almost destroyed the U.S. economy a few years ago. If Alinsky had never lived, none of this would have happened."
Dinesh D'Souza,Right,"So what changed? What changed is an aggressive campaign, conducted by progressive politicians and community activists, to force banks and financial institutions to lower their lending standards. This goes back to the early 1970s.3 Before that, progressives had focused their political energies in getting government money to build large housing projects for the poor. These projects, however, soon became dens of dilapidation, decay, and criminal activity. They symbolized the failure of the liberal welfare state."
Dinesh D'Souza,Right,"Hillary saw that Bill also enjoyed the attention of the ladies. Satisfying these appetites seemed for Bill to be the height of his aspirations. In exchange for tolerating his affairs, he would be her lifelong pitchman, and she could accompany him as his roadie until he made it big"
Dinesh D'Souza,Right,"In fact, there is nothing just or fair about it. Aristotle says that justice is equality but not for everyone, only for those who are equal.9 What Aristotle means is that justice is giving people their due. Obama, however, inverts this Aristotelian principle. Obama’s position is that justice requires that the unequal be treated as though they were equal. This is the progressive definition of fairness."
Dinesh D'Souza,Right,"In Obama’s America, the wealth creators are greedy, selfish, and materialistic while the wealth stealers are the most morally wonderful people in the country."
Dinesh D'Souza,Right,"All this talk of criminals brings me to the main subject of this book, which is Hillary Clinton. So far it may seem like this has been all about progressivism and the Democratic Party, but Hillary is there from the beginning, she is present in every chapter, her spirit haunts the history of her party because all the evil schemes of her party have, in a sense, become consolidated into her own career and life. Hillary is, in this respect, the dark id of the Democratic Party."
Dinesh D'Souza,Right,"For Hillary, gangsterism is not merely a matter of means; it is also her end. Hillary wants to be the crime boss of America. That is the only way to satisfy her unquenchable desire for money, power, and social control. As we will see in this book, Hillary is a criminal who found the criminal practices of Saul Alinsky to be too weak-kneed for her taste, and Alinsky was a gangster who found the criminal practices of the Al Capone gang to be a tad sentimental. In short, Hillary is the true Democrat, the gangster par excellence. I suspect this is why the Democratic establishment lined up so quickly behind her. While the Republicans had a real primary, hotly contested, the Democrats had a primary in which Bernie seemed to win again and again but never seemed to make a dent in Hillary’s lead. That’s because the Democratic super-delegates were uniformly in her camp, even though there was throughout the campaign the risk that she would be indicted."
Dinesh D'Souza,Right,"Never before has anyone figured out how to rent out American foreign policy, how to convert the position of secretary of state into a personal money machine. Hillary, with Bill’s help, figured out not only how to shake down Russian oligarchs and Canadian billionaires by offering them control of America’s uranium assets; she also figured out how to rob the island nation of Haiti in the wake of the 2010 earthquake. It’s one thing to rip off the world’s rich; it takes a special kind of chutzpah to steal from the poorest of the poor."
Dinesh D'Souza,Right,"Imagine what Hillary would do with her power if she went from secretary of state to president of the United States! Previously she at least had to answer to Obama; now she would be a power unto herself. Hillary has already shown how indifferent she is to the interests of the United States, selling American influence to the highest bidder. I dread to think how much havoc"
Dinesh D'Souza,Right,"This is an election about Hillary. She is the one who embodies the debased soul of the Democratic Party. And she is the corrupt, exasperating, tenacious, malign spirit looming over the United States in the fateful year of 2016. It’s time"
Dinesh D'Souza,Right,"In a classic case of nepotism, Hillary was appointed to head the Task Force on National Health Care Reform during Clinton’s first term. The plan was so half-baked, and presented so poorly, that even Democrats shunned it, and the whole scheme collapsed and had to be withdrawn."
Dinesh D'Souza,Right,"Hillary served as a U.S. senator from New York but did not propose a single important piece of legislation; her record is literally a blank slate. Liberal blogger Markos Moulitsas admits that she doesn’t have a single memorable policy or legislative accomplishment to her name.2 Despite traveling millions of miles as secretary of state, Hillary negotiated no treaties, secured no agreements, prevented no conflicts"
Dinesh D'Souza,Right,"Humans have natural rights in the state of nature but they do not have civil rights. Civil rights are derived from membership in a society. The Republicans who controlled both houses of Congress after the Civil War knew this. They also knew that, before conferring civil rights, they had to once and for all abolish slavery. The Thirteenth Amendment ending slavery was passed by the Senate on April 8, 1864, and by the House on January 31, 1865. Republican support for the amendment: 100 percent. Democratic support: 23 percent. Even after the Civil War, only a tiny percentage of Democrats were willing to sign up to permanently end slavery. Most Democrats wanted it to continue. In the following year, on June 13, 1866, the Republican Congress passed the Fourteenth Amendment overturning the Dred Scott decision and granting full citizenship and equal rights under the law to blacks. This amendment prohibited states from abridging the privileges and immunities of all citizens, from depriving them of due process of law or denying them equal protection of the law. The Fourteenth Amendment passed the House and Senate with exclusive Republican support. Not a single Democrat either in the House or the Senate voted for it. Two years later, in 1868, Congress with the support of newly-elected Republican president Ulysses Grant passed the Fifteenth Amendment granting suffrage to blacks. The right to vote, it said, cannot be denied or abridged by the United States or any state on account of race, color or previous condition of servitude. In the Senate, the Fifteenth Amendment passed by a vote of 39 to 13. Every one of the 39 yes votes came from Republicans. (Some Republicans like Charles Sumner abstained because they wanted the measure to go even further than it did.) All the 13 no votes came from Democrats. In the House, every yes vote came from a Republican and every Democrat voted no. It is surely a matter of the greatest significance that the constitutional provisions that made possible the Civil Rights Act, the Voting Rights Act, and the Fair Housing Bill only entered the Constitution thanks to the Republican Party. Beyond this, the GOP put forward a series of Civil Rights laws to further reinforce black people’s rights to freedom, equality, and social justice. When Republicans passed the Civil Rights Act of 1866"
Dinesh D'Souza,Right,It bears repeating that Republicans provided the margin of victory that extended civil rights protection both to minorities and to women.
Dinesh D'Souza,Right,"As first lady, she claimed to know nothing about the Travelgate firings when the evidence showed she ordered them herself. Later, on the 2008 campaign trail, she repeatedly told a story about how she had been under sniper fire and ran for cover when her plane landed in Tuzla, Bosnia. Video footage, however, showed there was no sniper fire and in fact Hillary was greeted on the tarmac by a child who read her a poem. She blamed the Benghazi attacks on an Internet video when she knew that was a fable. This is a highly abbreviated list."
Dinesh D'Souza,Right,"In other words, progressives who are forced to acknowledge the Democratic Party’s pro-slavery history promptly respond, We admit to being the party of slavery, and we did uphold the institution for more than a century, but slavery ended in 1865, so all of this was such a long time ago. You can’t blame us now for the antebellum crimes of the Democratic Party."
Dinesh D'Souza,Right,Democrats in the 1880s invented segregation and Jim Crow laws that lasted through the 1960s. Democrats also came up with the separate but equal rationale that justified segregation and pretended that it was for the benefit of African Americans.
Dinesh D'Souza,Right,The roots of the Clinton Foundation can be found in the land-stealing policies of Andrew Jackson.
Dinesh D'Souza,Right,"Second, the Democrats pretend to have no connection with the thievery of Jackson and his fellow Democrats. They might acknowledge that Jackson cleared the Indians out of several states in order to build constituencies of grateful whites who then settled those states. Faced with facts, they may also concede that Jackson enriched himself and his cronies through his land stealing."
Dinesh D'Souza,Right,"Even so, today’s Democrats profess to be shocked, shocked to see their fellow Democrats engaged in such behavior. That was then, they suggest, and this is now. What does this have to do with us today? What does it have to do with Hillary? No resemblance to the current frontrunner of the Democratic Party is even suspected. Yet as we saw with the Clintons in Haiti, the tradition of Jacksonian piracy is alive and well in today’s Democratic Party. Bernie Sanders may have the same Jacksonian objectives as Hillary, but only Hillary seems capable of pulling them off. Part of the reason Democrats prefer Hillary over Bernie is that she is a more effective Jacksonian, which is to say, a more ruthless and successful thief."
Dinesh D'Souza,Right,"Of course many southern whites did switch from voting Democrat to voting Republican, helping the GOP become the majority party in the South, as the Democrats once were. But remember that racism declined sharply in the South during the second half of the twentieth century. There is quite literally a mountain of scholarly data that documents this. And this was the very period of GOP ascendancy. So as the South became less racist, it became more Republican. I provide evidence in this book to show that southern whites became Republican not for racist motives but for economic ones. The most racist poor whites never left the Democratic Party; they remained loyal to the party of racism until they died. In this sense, the data show that racism slowed the movement of whites toward the Republicans."
Dinesh D'Souza,Right,"Back to the Big Switch: the basic idea is that starting with the Civil Rights Movement, Democrats saw the light and became the good guys, while Republicans became the bad guys. What happened to all the racist southern Democrats? Look, say the progressives, they all became Republicans! That’s why the South today is largely Republican.13 This would seem to support the progressive story line. The narrative of the Big Switch has one more thing going for it: blacks, who once voted overwhelmingly Republican, now vote overwhelmingly Democratic. This is a switch, and it would seem to go along with the idea that Republicans used to be friendly to black interests but now Democrats are. Why else would 90 percent of blacks today support the Democratic Party?"
Dinesh D'Souza,Right,"Remarkably, southern whites made the journey from Democratic to Republican for the same reason that southern blacks switched parties from Republican to Democratic. In both cases, the switch occurred for economic"
Dinesh D'Souza,Right,"To understand Hillary, we must solve the Hillary enigma. The Hillary enigma is why anyone"
Dinesh D'Souza,Right,"During the 1920s, progressives developed a fascination with and admiration for Italian and German fascism, and the fascists, for their part, praised American progressives. These were likeminded people who spoke the same language, and progressives and fascists worked together to implement programs to sterilize so-called mental defectives and unfit people, resulting subsequently in tens of thousands of forced sterilizations in America and hundreds of thousands in Nazi Germany."
Dinesh D'Souza,Right,The canard about the Civil Rights Movement is embedded within a larger deception that progressives uniformly put forward. This deception is intended to defuse the sordid history of the Democratic Party’s two-century involvement in a parade of evils from slavery to segregation to lynching to forced sterilization to support for fascism to the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II. All these horrors are the work of the Democratic Party.
Dinesh D'Souza,Right,"The Hillary enigma is very different than the Obama enigma. The enigma of Obama was: Who is this guy? In 2008, Obama came out of nowhere. Very little was known about his past. What little was known was mostly camouflage. So there was an understandable appetite to learn about him. Moreover, Obama was intriguing; his story generated obvious interest. As an immigrant, I was fascinated by Obama’s background, his charisma, his objectives. I wrote two books, The Roots of Obama’s Rage and Obama’s America, trying to explain Obama and predict what he would do. I predicted he was an anti-colonialist, in his father’s image, and that he would seek to remake America by reducing its wealth and power. Many people, even many conservatives, were initially baffled by my interpretation of this strange man. Only now"
Dinesh D'Souza,Right,EXPOSING THE LIE In this book I expose this progressive narrative as a lie. In reality the Democratic Party is now what it has been from the beginning
Dinesh D'Souza,Right,"Even after slavery, Republicans fought vigorously though not always successfully to defeat Democratic schemes of segregation and racial terrorism."
Dinesh D'Souza,Right,"In the end, of course, Republicans ended slavery and permanently outlawed it through the Thirteenth Amendment. Democrats responded by opposing the amendment and a group of them assassinated the man they held responsible for emancipation, Abraham Lincoln."
Dinesh D'Souza,Right,The Democrats did play a role in Reconstruction
Dinesh D'Souza,Right,"There is no one else. The GOP has, from the beginning, been the team"
Dinesh D'Souza,Right,"During the 1930s, President Franklin D. Roosevelt sent members of his brain trust to Europe to study fascist economic programs, which he considered more advanced than anything his New Deal had implemented to date. FDR was enamored with Mussolini, whom he called the admirable Italian gentleman. Some Democrats even had a soft spot for Hitler: young JFK went to Germany before World War II and praised Hitler as a legend and blamed hostility to the Nazis as jealousy resulting from how much the Nazis had accomplished. Yes, I know. Very little of this is understood by people today because progressives have done such a good job of sweeping it all under the rug."
Dinesh D'Souza,Right,So progressives have been working hard to come up with lies that can be passed off as facts. Progressives have a whole cultural contingent
Dinesh D'Souza,Right,The only problem is that Republicans were instrumental
Dinesh D'Souza,Right,"Most people know the Nineteenth Amendment granting women’s suffrage was passed in 1919 and ratified by the states the following year. What few people know is there was a forty-year struggle over that amendment, with Republicans pushing for it and Democrats opposing it, until the Republicans finally had the votes to get it through. Republicans proposed women’s suffrage as early as 1878, but it was voted down by a Democrat-controlled Congress. Republicans re-introduced the issue each year, but for many years the Democrats tied it up in committees. It only got to the floor in 1887 when the Democrats again defeated it."
Dinesh D'Souza,Right,"The Wall Street Journal reports that during Hillary’s tenure as secretary of state, some sixty companies that lobbied the State Department donated more than $26 million to the Clinton Foundation. At least 44 of those 60 companies also participated in philanthropic projects valued at $3.2 billion that were set up through a wing of the foundation called the Clinton Global Initiative. In some cases, the Journal reports, donations came after Mrs. Clinton took action that helped a company. In other cases, the donation came first. In some instances, donations came before and after. In 2012, for example, Hillary lobbied the Algerian government to let GE build power plants in that country. A month later, GE gave between $500,000 and $1 million to the Foundation. The following September, GE got the contract.6"
Dinesh D'Souza,Right,This was too much even for Hamilton Jordan
Dinesh D'Souza,Right,"During all this time, the main opposition to these horrors on the part of the Democratic Party came from Republicans. This book makes an astonishing claim: of all Americans, Republicans are the ones who have the least reason to feel guilty about slavery or racism. This claim comes as a surprise because Republicans are the ones who are regularly chastised by progressives for their alleged bigotry. Let’s see who the real bigots are."
Dinesh D'Souza,Right,"Hillary places herself in this progressive tradition, and in a sense she belongs there. She’s just as bad"
Dinesh D'Souza,Right,"The cover-up is the work of progressives in education and the media. The progressives are part of the Democratic team; they are, in fact, the ideologues of the party. They have been given a very specific assignment: to bury the truth and spin a lie to sell their team’s political merchandise. This they have assiduously and effectively carried out. Progressives can be counted on to respond with outrage to this book, not because what I say is false, but rather because it is true."
Dinesh D'Souza,Right,"Republicans, meanwhile, to one degree or another, all opposed slavery. The party itself was founded to stop slavery."
Dinesh D'Souza,Right,"Over the Democrats’ opposition, Republicans passed the Fourteenth Amendment securing for blacks equal rights under the law, and the Fifteenth Amendment giving blacks the right to vote."
Dinesh D'Souza,Right,"The Democrats, of course, tell a different story. This story has two separate versions, both of which I deal with in this book. The first version is that the Democrats have always been the good guys. This story is the equivalent of the defense lawyer who says, My client is not guilty and has always been, as he is now, an upstanding citizen. This is the portrait of the Democratic Party that will be on full display at the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia. In a sense, this entire book is a refutation of what will be presented there that week. There we’ll hear about how the Democrats are the party of racial equality, social justice, and economic opportunity. This is the moral basis for the party’s claim to rule."
Dinesh D'Souza,Right,"Hillary marched inexorably toward the nomination even while shunting aside the risks of an FBI investigation. While some Republicans have long suspected the FBI would recommend an indictment that would end her candidacy, Hillary has operated on the premise that the Obama Justice Department won’t indict her"
Dinesh D'Souza,Right,"Yet when is the last time a major political party nominated someone who has been investigated for corruption so many times, and with an ongoing FBI inquiry? Nixon of course was impeached and resigned in disgrace, but there was no investigation and no impeachment prior to his 1972 reelection. Nixon up to that point had a spotless record, while Hillary’s record could only be described as very, very spotty. Yet she has a whole team rooting for her."
Dinesh D'Souza,Right,"My conclusion is that technological capitalism is by far the best system for giving entrepreneurs and workers their fair share. This fair share, whether measured in terms of profits or wages, is precisely what people are entitled to as a result of the value they create for their fellow citizens. While short-term inequality frequently results from the dynamic energy of a capitalist economy, that energy also produces mass affluence that ultimately raises life expectancy and living standards for everyone."
Dinesh D'Souza,Right,How did we get the 1960s? One is tempted to locate the ideological roots of this era in the 1930s. The expansion of the welfare state that President Lyndon Johnson termed the Great Society seems to have originated in President Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal three decades earlier. It is true that FDR made some radical speeches that repudiate the principles of the founding. While the Founders considered the government to be the enemy of rights
Dinesh D'Souza,Right,"If Jefferson and the Founders knew that all men are created equal, why not outlaw slavery from the outset? The simple answer is that had they done so, there would never have been a union. Historian Eugene Genovese states the obvious, If the Constitution had not recognized slavery, the Southern states would never have entered the union. So the choice facing the Founders in Philadelphia was not whether to have slavery or not. Rather, it was whether to have a union that temporarily tolerated slavery, or to have no union at all."
Dinesh D'Souza,Right,"It is a fact that today steel can be made more cheaply outside America. This is also true of many other products: shoes, shirts, toys, and so on. Cars are different"
Dinesh D'Souza,Right,"More recently, the department has embarked on an invidious felony prosecution against Dinesh D’Souza for allegedly illegal contributions to a Senate campaign."
Dinesh D'Souza,Right,"This is a book unlike any other on Barack Obama. It is not the typical effusive book of apostolic praise, but neither is it a crude bashing of Obama. Rather, it is an effort to understand Obama, to discover what motivates him, and to formulate a theory that explains his actions in the White House. It offers a completely original theory for what drives Obama, and yet remarkably the theory is derived from Obama’s own autobiography and Obama’s own self-description. If you read this book, it will not only help you to understand Obama, it will also help you to predict what he is going to do next. I make three specific predictions in the last chapter, and in the twelve months following the book’s original hardcover publication, all three have already come to pass."
Dinesh D'Souza,Right,coercive government policies strip the virtue out of every transaction.
Dinesh D'Souza,Right,We remain the custodians of the idea that wealth should be obtained through
Dinesh D'Souza,Right,"the morality of capitalism, just like the morality of democracy, is rooted in consent."
Dinesh D'Souza,Right,"Tocqueville writes that, for Americans, religion must be regarded as the first of their political institutions."
Dinesh D'Souza,Right,"As a nation of freemen, we must live through all time, or die by suicide."
Dinesh D'Souza,Right,"we now have a Leviathan state, far from the limited government the Founders envisioned."
Dinesh D'Souza,Right,"the Declaration of Independence does not mean we are equal in endowments, only in rights."
Dinesh D'Souza,Right,"I thought of myself as a revolutionary, committed to overturning the whole system of empire.1 BILL AYERS, PUBLIC ENEMY"
Dinesh D'Souza,Right,"Pragmatist William James put the matter with characteristic realism: Atheists are like people who live on a frozen lake surrounded by cliffs that offer no means of escape. They know that the ice is melting and the inevitable day is coming when they must plunge ignominiously into the water. This prospect is as meaningless as it is horrifying. The Christian too must endure the chill and the inevitability of death, but his faith enables him to endure them much better. When it comes to suffering, James writes, Religion makes easy and felicitous what is in any case necessary. When it comes to death, he adds, Christianity offers at least the prospect of the afterlife and the chance of salvation. No fact in human nature is more characteristic than its willingness to live on a chance. The existence of chance makes the difference . . . between a life of which the keynote is resignation and a life of which the keynote is hope.7"
Dinesh D'Souza,Right,"The Clintons’ last act before leaving the White House was to take stuff that didn’t belong to them. The Clintons took china, furniture, electronics, and art worth around $360,000. Hillary literally went through the rooms of the White House with an aide, pointing to things that she wanted taken down from shelves or out of cabinets or off the wall. By Clinton theft standards $360,000 is not a big sum, but it certainly underlines the couple’s insatiable greed"
Dinesh D'Souza,Right,"Now it is customary for presidents to invite friends and donors to the White House. The Clintons, however, took this practice way beyond acceptable boundaries. Commerce Secretary Ron Brown frequently complained that he had become a m*th*rf*ck*ng tour guide for Hillary because foreign trade missions had become nothing more than payback trips for Clinton donors. The Clintons arranged for one fat-cat donor without any war experience to be buried at Arlington National Cemetery.12 They essentially converted White House hospitality into a product that was for sale. They had unofficial tags on each perk, and essentially donors could decide how much to give by perusing the Clinton price list. In a revealing statement, Bill Clinton said on March 7, 1997, I don’t believe you can find any evidence of the fact that I changed government policy solely because of a contribution.13 Here we see the business ethic of the man; he seems to think it perfectly acceptable to change policy as long as it is only partly because of a contribution. Remember Travelgate? In May 1993, the entire Travel Office of the White House was fired. The move came as a surprise because these people had been handling travel matters for a long time. The official word was that they were incompetent. But a General Accounting Office inquiry showed that the Clintons wanted to turn over the travel business to her friends the Thomasons. Once the scandal erupted, Hillary, in typical Clinton evasive style, claimed to know nothing about it. She said she had no role in the decision to terminate the employments, that she did not know of the origin of the decision, and that she did not direct that any action be taken by anyone with regard to the travel office. But then a memo surfaced that showed Hillary was telling her usual lies. Written by Clinton aide David Watkins to chief of staff Mack McClarty, the memo noted that five days before the firings, Hillary had told Watkins, We need those people out"
Dinesh D'Souza,Right,"Of these, the Creek were known to be the most recalcitrant. Jackson proved his mettle by showing he could mow them down and massacre them into submission, earning his subsequent reputation as an Indian killer. Today we may wince at the title, but it was considered a compliment among Jackson’s Democratic supporters."
Dinesh D'Souza,Right,Jackson read the Indian treaties in much the same way that Democrats and progressives today read the U.S. Constitution. They care little about what it says; they interpret it to mean what they want it to mean. Jackson
Dinesh D'Souza,Right,"But it’s worth noting, because successive generations of Democrats have continued Jackson’s practice of trying to discredit nonwhite opponents by portraying them as inauthentic. Today"
Dinesh D'Souza,Right,"Even so, the proposal is interesting because Jackson was a Democrat"
Dinesh D'Souza,Right,The progressive media is not comfortable with a female black abolitionist representing the Republican Party while a white male slave owner represents the Democratic Party.
Dinesh D'Souza,Right,"On March 23, 1919, one of the most famous socialists in Italy founded a new party, the Fasci di Combattimento, a term that means fascist combat squad. This was the first official fascist party and thus its founding represents the true birth of fascism. By the same token, this man was the first fascist. The term fascism can be traced back to 1914, when he founded the Fasci Rivoluzionari d’Azione Internazionalista, a political movement whose members called themselves fascisti or fascists. In 1914, this founding father of fascism was, together with Vladimir Lenin of Russia, Rosa Luxemburg of Germany, and Antonio Gramsci of Italy, one of the best known Marxists in the world. His fellow Marxists and socialists recognized him as a great leader of socialism. His decision to become a fascist was controversial, yet he received congratulations from Lenin who continued to regard him as a faithful revolutionary socialist. And this is how he saw himself. That same year, because of his support for Italian involvement in World War I, he would be expelled from the Italian Socialist Party for heresy, but this does not mean he ceased to be a socialist. It was common practice for socialist parties to expel dissenting fellow socialists for breaking on some fine point with the party line. This party reject insisted that he had been kicked out for making a revision of socialism from the revolutionary point of view.2 For the rest of his life"
Dinesh D'Souza,Right,"So what did Mussolini do? He founded, as he put it, the only genuinely socialist government in the world, with the possible exception of the Soviet Union.35 Mussolini attempted to put into effect what he termed the true socialism that he said plutocratic elements and sections of the clergy had prevented him from implementing in Italy. At Salo, Mussolini outlined a socialist program that went beyond anything he attempted in Italy. The new program of November 1943 called for the state to take over all the critical sections of the economy"
Dinesh D'Souza,Right,"Both the fascists and the progressives viewed the centralized state as the logical outgrowth of everything they stood for. It’s all very well to talk about the nation of producers and the interests of the nation, but who decides what its true interests are? Socialists claim to be in favor of equitable redistribution of income and wealth, but who determines what is equitable and does the actual redistribution? To these questions, the fascists answered: we do, through the instrument of the powerful centralized state. And this is also, in America, the answer that today’s progressives give."
Dinesh D'Souza,Right,"For Obama, however, it is good for America to have less influence. In tune with his progressive and anti-colonial ideology, Obama regards the American empire as the only remaining empire in the world. While America exalts democratic and universalistic ideals, in reality its foreign policy has been based on self-interest and plunder. America has used its power irresponsibly, to dominate others and to control their oil and other resources. Consequently Obama seeks to end America’s neocolonialism, its large-scale global theft. To do this, he has to end America’s tenure as the sole global superpower. Obama wants America to be a normal country, and to play a shrunken, more modest role in the world."
Dinesh D'Souza,Right,"A third entrepreneurial contribution is risk. While labor gets paid its fixed wage, the entrepreneurs take all the risk. Entrepreneurs might do well, but they might also lose money, ending up worse than they were before they started. The worker’s risk is much lower: at worst, he’s out of a job and doesn’t get additional wages. No one, however, asks the worker to receive wages only if the company does well, or to give back wages to help the company meet its obligations. So these distinctive entrepreneurial contributions"
Dinesh D'Souza,Right,"Earlier generations of Americans had to strive to provide food, clothing, and shelter for themselves and their children. This task could prove laborious, unending, backbreaking, but it also provided a goal and a horizon for life. It conferred dignity and a genuine sense of meaning and accomplishment. By contrast, the children of the 1960s had nothing comparable to live for. As far as they could see, the struggle against necessity no longer existed. Nor did they appreciate what their parents went through; rather, they regarded their parents as soulless conformists who lacked true openness and idealism."
Dinesh D'Souza,Right,"Roberto Mangabeira Unger, Obama’s teacher at Harvard Law School and friend since then, has sought to hide his association with Obama. I am a leftist, he later told an Obama biographer, and by conviction as well as temperament, a revolutionary. Any association of mine with Barack Obama . . . could only do harm. Unger advocates what he terms world revolution, a basic takeover of financial institutions and their reshaping to serve global economic equity. For instance, Unger calls for the dismembership of the traditional property right in favor of what he calls social endowments. Most remarkably, Unger calls for a global coalition of countries"
Dinesh D'Souza,Right,The 1960s was motivated by repudiation of the old way and the quest for a new way. Liberation now came to mean liberation from old values
Dinesh D'Souza,Right,"But there is also a rival view, which we can call the mainstream progressive or Obama view. This view agrees with the diagnosis of America but provides a different remedy. The mainstream progressive remedy is guilt and atonement. Americans, in this view, should feel guilty about what they have done and continue to do. Moreover, Americans"
Dinesh D'Souza,Right,"Obama is the first president whose ideology was shaped by the radical 1960s. Bill Clinton was the first president who grew up in the 1960s, yet Clinton was also shaped by older influences, including Southern patriotism and Bible Belt conservatism. Clinton came of age in the era of the sexual revolution, and his personal behavior displayed the self-indulgence of the 1960s, yet Clinton’s policies showed nothing of the animus toward America that we find in Davis, Said, Unger, Ayers, and Wright. I am sure if you asked Clinton, even today, whether he would like to see America remain number one, he would emphatically say yes and be astonished that he was even being asked the question. With Obama, however, who knows what he would say, and whatever he said, it would probably be quite different from what he actually felt. The reason Obama has evaded and lied about his associations is that he doesn’t want people to know what he learned from them, and the degree to which their views of America are also his. Born in 1961, Obama was too young to have participated in the radicalism of the 1960s, but he is our first president who has learned, from the ideologues of that era, to think of his own country as America the Inexcusable."
Dinesh D'Souza,Right,bulls and even royal edicts were largely ignored thousands of miles
Dinesh D'Souza,Right,the higher-ups at the
Dinesh D'Souza,Right,"The progressives pose as the champions not only of fairness and social justice but also of compassion. They are the ones who insist on our obligation to those from whom we have allegedly stolen. Let’s leave aside for the moment whether they are right about the theft. What we do know for sure is that progressives assert there has been a theft. They further acknowledge that they are among the beneficiaries of it. Based on this, they would seem to have a clear obligation to return the stolen goods that they are currently enjoying. We might expect, from this analysis, to discover that progressives are the most generous people in America. We can anticipate that they contribute the highest portion of their incomes and time to help their wronged and less fortunate fellow men and women. The truth, however, is that progressives are the least generous people in America. I saw this personally with Obama, who unceasingly declares that we are our brother’s keeper even as he refuses to help his own half brother, George, who lives in a hut in the Huruma slum of Nairobi. I met George in early 2012 when I interviewed him for my film 2016: Obama’s America. A few months after that, when I was back in America, George called me from Kenya to ask me to give him $1,000 because his baby son was sick. Surprised, I asked him, Why are you calling me? Isn’t there someone else you can call? He said, No. So I sent him the money. I guess on that occasion it was I, not Obama, who proved to be his brother’s keeper. And besides George, the president has other relatives in dire need"
Dinesh D'Souza,Right,"Let’s look at the amounts involved.5 When George W. Bush left office, the federal debt was $9 trillion. That’s a huge amount, and Bush added nearly $4 trillion to the total, a disgraceful legacy caused primarily by profligate domestic spending and foreign wars. Bush’s second term deficits averaged around $500 billion. But still, the $9 trillion represented America’s entire debt accumulated from the founding through 2008. Now, under Obama, the federal debt is $18.5 trillion. It’s larger than America’s gross domestic product which is around $17 trillion. The debt will be over $19 trillion when Obama leaves office. While progressives professed to be scandalized by Bush’s $500 billion deficits, they have remained silent while Obama racks up trillion-dollar deficits. During the Reagan years the left fretted about two hundred billion dollar deficits as far as the eye can see. What were annual deficits under Reagan became monthly deficits under Obama. In less than eight years, Obama has doubled the national debt."
Dinesh D'Souza,Right,"Progressives needed a new idea, and Alinsky came up with one: force banks and financial institutions to loan money to unqualified applicants so that they can buy homes. Alinsky’s own idea was to terrorize the banks by having thousands of activists walk into banks and open up accounts of one dollar each, in effect paralyzing the bank’s normal operations. This became the model for a number of leftist groups that took up the cause of bank intimidation, notably an Alinskyite organization called ACORN. The ideological justification for this tactic was social justice. Starting in the 1970s, ACORN and other leftist groups protested that banks were discriminating against poor and minority home loan applicants. Even though such applicants had less wealth, less income, and less reliable credit histories, these groups insisted that banks should lower their lending standards to accommodate them. According to these activists, home ownership was a right and getting a mortgage to buy a home was a matter of fairness. In 1977, a liberal Democratic Congress obligingly passed, and President Jimmy Carter signed into law, the Community Reinvestment Act (CRA). This law, aggressively promoted by liberal icons like Senator Ted Kennedy and Senator William Proxmire, imposed on banks an affirmative obligation to make loans in their own neighborhoods, even if those neighborhoods were poor credit risks."
Dinesh D'Souza,Right,"Starting in the Clinton era and continuing through George W. Bush’s two terms, progressive activists mounted direct pressure"
Dinesh D'Souza,Right,"Rules for Radicals contains several Luciferian principles strewn throughout, such as Life is a corrupting process from the time a child learns to play his mother off against his father; he who fears corruption fears life. On another occasion, Alinsky admiringly cites Lenin. Lenin was a pragmatist, he writes. When he returned to what was then Petrograd from exile, he said that the Bolsheviks stood for getting power through the ballot but would reconsider after they got the guns.16 What Alinsky meant by this is that activists should invoke principles like free speech and equality under the law in order to protect themselves, but once they come to power they can ignore those principles and not extend them to their opponents. Modern progressives in the Alinsky mode seem to have taken this lesson to heart."
Dinesh D'Souza,Right,"How valid, then, is the progressive critique that you didn’t build that? The pitch itself has two parts. The first is that society did it, not business; the second is that workers did most of it, not CEOs and entrepreneurs. Both these arrows strike at the same target: entrepreneurs. Consequently an exposé of the progressive pitch requires a refutation of this dual attack and also a defense of the entrepreneur, an explanation of what it is that entrepreneurs actually do. This explanation is, oddly enough, lacking. Adam Smith didn’t provide it in his Wealth of Nations, and most entrepreneurs, for reasons we will explore, don’t provide it today. One of the few writers to celebrate entrepreneurs was Ayn Rand; she unapologetically defends capitalism, the system, and also capitalists, the people! In my view, the most insightful defender of entrepreneurs was the economist Joseph Schumpeter, and we will be learning a lot from him in this chapter. Ultimately, we will see the progressive pitch for what it is, an ingenious scam aimed at depriving wealth creators of the wealth they have created. Rand calls them the looters, and this is basically a clinically accurate term for a group that is very much with us today."
Dinesh D'Souza,Right,"This rip-off relied on a series of blatant lies. If you like your health care plan, you can keep your plan. If you like your doctor, you can keep your doctor. The average family will save more than $2,400 per year. Health care costs will decline. Health care premiums will go down. Everyone in this country will now have health insurance. Even though Obama kept saying these things, none of them was true. These statements were simply part of the con man’s pitch. For progressives, Obamacare was a prize. The prize was control of the huge American health care system, representing virtually one-sixth of the whole economy. Obamacare put progressives in charge of more than 10 million doctors, dentists, pharmacists, nurses, and technicians and support staff. Obamacare gave progressives control of more than five thousand hospitals and almost a million hospital beds. The system included hospitals and also drug companies, insurance companies, and the producers of hospital equipment, not to mention research and educational institutions. Obamacare was a heist with a very big payoff."
Dinesh D'Souza,Right,"What really matters is that never before in history has America had a con artist as its chief executive and commander in chief. And we may be getting ready to anoint another in immediate succession. One is bad enough; two con artists in a row may be our undoing. These con artists are, just like their Boston counterparts, part of a crime network. This crime network is the Democratic Party, and its leaders are the progressives. For decades now the progressives have assailed theft in America, blaming it on the greedy capitalists. They have claimed a virtual monopoly on political virtue, declaring themselves the champions of justice and equality. Not only is that wrong, but the truth is the very opposite. The progressives are the real thieves, masquerading as opponents of theft. They are the criminals posing as the Justice Department. And they have, for the past seven years, actually controlled the Justice Department, turning it into an accessory of their crimes and an agency for going after whistle-blowers and crime fighters. Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi, Eric Holder, and Lois Lerner are all part of this crime organization, but so are hundreds of thousands of ordinary people, the envious, the resentful, the hateful, the entitled. These are the people who still have the Obama-Biden signs on their vehicles and are now eagerly anticipating Hillary. Together, they are the criminals next door."
Dinesh D'Souza,Right,"Obama’s only connection with phones was to label them Obamaphones and hand them out for free through his community organizer network. Now millions of Americans and illegal immigrants have cell phones paid for by the U.S. government and funded through one of those obscure charges that appear on your phone bill, the lifeline tax. Obama undoubtedly hopes you never notice the charge, or ask about it. It’s so much better to rip people off when they don’t even know they are being ripped off. Obama has no experience in starting a business or running a business; the only business he has ever run"
Dinesh D'Souza,Right,"Obama likes to portray himself as the savior of the younger generation. In reality, however, college costs are so high in large part because the government subsidizes education with Pell Grants and a whole host of other scholarships and loans. Colleges continually raise tuition because they know that a large portion of the tab is paid for by the taxpayer, not the student. That’s how colleges can afford to pay professors six-figure salaries for teaching two days a week and working only nine months out of the year."
Dinesh D'Souza,Right,"one of the central claims of modern progressivism, that wealth is created not by entrepreneurs and workers but rather by society, and therefore the proceeds can be allocated by the state according to its perceived benefits to society. Of course, if the premise is not true, then the conclusion doesn’t follow, and the progressive redistributive project is built on a fallacy. Therefore progressives like Obama are very keen to inform entrepreneurs, You didn’t build that. Obama’s explicit claim is that society did it and the implicit suggestion is that society could have done it without you. Interestingly there is a confinement center corollary to the idea that society did it. It is the idea, sometimes heard among the criminal class, that society did it to me. Or, to put it a bit differently, society made me do it. These two ideas"
Dinesh D'Souza,Right,"To see how cavalier progressives can be with taxpayers’ money, consider the case of Leroy Fick. In 2011, the fifty-nine-year-old Fick won a $2 million lottery jackpot. Still, the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services ruled he could continue receiving food stamps. The Obama administration agreed. The Detroit News explained the government’s rationale: If Fick had chosen to accept monthly payments of his jackpot, the winnings would be considered income. But by choosing to accept a lump sum payment, the winnings were considered ‘assets’ and aren’t counted in determining food stamp eligibility."
Dinesh D'Souza,Right,"the case of Hispanics and Native Americans, it’s not even clear that there was an offense. Consider: Texas legitimately revolted against Mexico and established an independent republic. Mexico can’t exactly complain about that, because Mexico had just recently revolted against Spain. Then Texas chose to join the United States. Texas has a disputed border with Mexico, and the Mexican War erupted over that disputed territory. Mexico lost the war, and American troops were in Mexico City. America could have kept all of Mexico; instead, America returned half of Mexico and paid $15 million to settle Mexico’s debts. Arguably there is a theft in here somewhere, but it’s hardly clear. Moreover, a treaty was signed between the two countries establishing the new borders."
Dinesh D'Souza,Right,"The black abolitionist Frederick Douglass once wrote that the founders permitted slavery as a scaffolding to the magnificent structure, to be removed as soon as the building is completed. In that sense the building was completed in 1865, when the Civil War ended and slavery was abolished nationwide. But how was it abolished? It was abolished because Abraham Lincoln and the Republicans took a firm stance against theft and against the Democratic principle of popular sovereignty. Had America gone with the Democrats, slavery would have endured and might still be around in some form today. History proves the Republicans to have been the antislavery, anti-theft party and the Democrats to have been the proslavery, pro-theft party."
Dinesh D'Souza,Right,"In July 2010, reports surfaced in the British press that the Obama administration favored the release of Abdel Baset al-Megrahi, the Lockerbie bomber. This was an eye-opener, because when Scotland released Megrahi from prison and sent him home to Libya in August 2009, the Obama administration publicly protested the decision. Obama reaffirmed his position on Megrahi’s release when British prime minister David Cameron came to visit in July 2010. The president’s public sentiments seemed entirely appropriate: Megrahi, after all, had been convicted in connection with the 1988 bombing of a Pan Am Jet over Lockerbie, Scotland, killing 270 people, most of them American. But a few days after Cameron departed, the British press obtained a letter that the Obama administration had sent a year earlier to the Scottish government. The letter seems to show that Obama’s public outrage was contrived. In fact, the Obama administration took the position that releasing Megrahi on compassionate grounds was acceptable as long as he was kept in Scotland. This option, Obama said, would be far preferable to sending him back to Libya. Scottish government officials interpreted the letter to mean that U.S. objections to Megrahi’s release were half-hearted. So they let Megrahi go back to his own country, where he lives today as a free man. While the American press has downplayed the story, the families of the Lockerbie victims now know about the Obama letter and want to see it. Yet the Obama administration refuses to make the letter public, probably because of its incriminating content. Now why would a U.S. president take such a benign view of a terrorist striking out against America?"
Dinesh D'Souza,Right,"At Columbia, Obama wrote an article in a student weekly, Sundial, calling for an end to the U.S. military industrial complex. Obama’s article was a response to the so-called nuclear freeze movement that was sweeping American campuses at the time. As an undergraduate at Dartmouth in the early 1980s, I remember well the paranoia of the freeze activists, who seemed convinced that the world was about to end unless their nuclear freeze solution was immediately implemented. Calling as it did for a reciprocal freeze in U.S. and Soviet nuclear arsenals, the freeze was a liberal cause, but apparently not liberal enough for Obama. For him the issue came down to the big, bad military industrial complex and its irrational, insatiable desire for more costly weapons. Generally the narrow focus of the freeze movement as well as academic discussions of first versus second strike capabilities suit the military-industrial interests, as they continue adding to their billion dollar erector sets.21"
Dinesh D'Souza,Right,"Obama’s father had studied in a missionary school and was working as a clerk in Nairobi. He was encouraged to come to America for further study by two missionary women, Helen Roberts and Elizabeth Mooney, who were living at the time in Kenya. In Obama’s Selma narrative, this was made possible by the Kennedy family. What happened in Selma, Alabama, and Birmingham also, stirred the conscience of the nation. It worried folks in the White House, he said. The Kennedys decided we’re going to do an airlift. We’re going to go to Africa and start bringing young Africans over to this country and give them scholarships to study so they can learn what a wonderful country America is. This young man named Barack Obama got one of those tickets and came over to this country. Soon after that Obama got married and Barack Obama Jr. was born.... So I’m here because somebody marched. I’m here because you all sacrificed for me. Except that the Kennedys had nothing to do with Obama’s father coming to America. As Obama’s staff eventually acknowledged, Obama Sr. arrived here in 1959. John F. Kennedy was elected president the following year.1 The two American teachers who had encouraged Obama Sr. to make the trip paid his travel costs and the bulk of his expenses. There was an airlift, organized by the Kenyan labor leader Tom Mboya with financial support from a number of American philanthropists. It brought several dozen African students to America to study, but Barack Obama Sr. did not come on that plane. Rather, he came on his own and enrolled at the University of Hawaii at Manoa.2 Moreover, the march in Selma occurred in March 1965, while Obama Jr. was born in August 1961; Selma had nothing to do with the circumstances of Obama’s birth."
Dinesh D'Souza,Right,"Obama’s narrative culminates in his month-long journey to Africa, where he talks to various relatives about who his dad really was, and then weeps at the man’s grave. It’s powerful stuff. But at first glance it’s a little hard for the reader to understand Obama’s depth of allegiance. His dad was, after all, a complete jerk. He married Kezia in Kenya and had two children with her. Before the second child was born, he abandoned his family to come to America. There he met Obama’s mother Ann, got her pregnant, and then married her, but without telling her he was already married. When Obama was two, his father abandoned him and his mother to go to Harvard; there he moved in with a teacher, Ruth Nidesand. Eventually he took Nidesand back to Africa, married her, and had two children with her. But he also rejoined his African wife, Kezia, and had two more children with her. Later in life he took up with still another woman, Jael Otieno, and impregnated her. The two of them planned to get married after the child was born, but the marriage never took place. By the time he was done, Barack Sr. managed a grand total of three wives, one wife-to-be, and eight children. He was a terrible husband and a worse father; he neglected virtually all his offspring, and one of his sons has accused him of domestic violence. In the words of Mark Ndesandjo, who is the son of Obama Sr. and Nidesand, I remember situations when I was growing up, and there would be a light coming from our living room, and I could hear thuds and screams, and my father’s voice and my mother shouting. I remember one night when she ran out into the street and she didn’t know where to go.11"
Dinesh D'Souza,Right,"Obama is also directing the U.S. government to invest billions of dollars in solar and wind energy. In addition, he is using bailout leverage to compel the Detroit auto companies to build small, green cars, even though no one in the government has investigated whether consumers are interested in buying small, green cars"
Dinesh D'Souza,Right,"As I was completing this book, I saw news reports quoting NASA chief Charles Bolden announcing that from now on the primary mission of America’s space agency would be to improve relations with the Muslim world. Come again? Bolden said he got the word directly from the president. He wanted me to find a way to reach out to the Muslim world and engage much more with dominantly Muslim nations to help them feel good about their historic contribution to science and math and engineering. Bolden added that the International Space Station was a kind of model for NASA’s future, since it was not just a U.S. operation but included the Russians and the Chinese. Bolden, who made these remarks in an interview with Al-Jazeera, timed them to coincide with the one-year anniversary of Obama’s own Cairo address to the Muslim world.3 Bolden’s remarks provoked consternation not only among conservatives but also among famous former astronauts Neil Armstrong and John Glenn and others involved in America’s space programs. No surprise: most people think of NASA’s job as one of landing on the moon and Mars and exploring other faraway destinations. Even some of Obama’s supporters expressed puzzlement. Sure, we are all for Islamic self-esteem, and seven or eight hundred years ago the Muslims did make a couple of important discoveries, but what on earth was Obama up to here?"
Dinesh D'Souza,Right,"Rather, the issue is whether it is right to have a mosque and Islamic center in virtually the exact spot where so many Americans were killed in the name of Islamic holy war. I don’t think it is right, any more than I would support the idea of a neo-Nazi recruiting center at Auschwitz. My sympathies in this case are not with religiously deprived Muslims, but rather with Debra Burlingame, a spokesperson for a 9/11 victims group. Barack Obama has abandoned America at the place where America’s heart was broken nine years ago, she said.5 Some supporters of the mosque, such as New York mayor Michael Bloomberg, clearly missed the distinction being made here between the right to worship and how and where that right is exercised. Fareed Zakaria, writer and CNN host, recognizes the distinction; even so, he argues in favor of the mosque on the grounds that the folks building it are traditional Muslims who have condemned terrorism.6 Still, it’s not clear why these moderate Muslims disregarded the sentiments of the 9/11 victims’ families and decided on a site so close to Ground Zero. Undoubtedly radical Muslims around the world will view the mosque as a kind of triumphal monument. There is historical precedent for this. Muslims have a long tradition of building monuments to commemorate triumphs over adversaries, as when they built the Dome of the Rock on the site of Solomon’s Temple, or when Mehmet the Conqueror rode his horse into the Byzantine church Hagia Sophia and declared that it would be turned into a mosque. Many Americans may not know this history, but the radical Muslims do, and Obama does as well. The radical Muslims would like the Ground Zero mosque built so it can stand as an enduring symbol of resistance to American power, and President Obama evidently agrees with them."
Dinesh D'Souza,Right,"Obama benefited from Saul Alinsky’s transracial strategy to assemble an effective coalition. Alinsky’s goal was for the activist to reach America’s white middle class because, as he put it, that is where the power is. Alinsky had nothing but contempt for left-wing activists who treated the white middle class as a bunch of square, sexually uptight, gun-toting, small-minded racists. Yes, Alinsky wrote, the middle class is mighty screwed up. But it has become that way because it’s desperate; its economic condition is deteriorating and so people turn to guns and religion to give them consolation. (Sound familiar?) Alinsky advocated that a successful activist must not disdain the middle class but rather join it. Certainly he wasn’t calling for an embrace of the provincial values of the middle class. Rather, he urged that activists adopt the style and attitude of the middle class. If the middle class is square, then be square. Don’t wear the black leather jacket and the hippie bandana; wear a suit and tie. Don’t come across as an angry misfit; come across as a nice young man who is only upset because of manifest injustice. Smile a lot; smiles are a great way to disguise rage and contempt. In this way, Alinsky argued, the activist could build a rapport with ordinary Americans and mobilize them on behalf of radical causes.10"
Dinesh D'Souza,Right,"Author Shelby Steele, one of America’s most insightful commentators on race relations, notes that whites have been looking for some time for a black leader who has credibility within the black community and yet can offer whites racial absolution. This should not be taken too cynically. Many whites genuinely espouse an idealism that seeks to move beyond race, and they recognize that it’s going to take a black spokesman to make this case on a national level and help to get us there. Steele notes bluntly that this idealism cannot be divorced from a powerful sense of white racial guilt. We have to get beyond race because America’s past racial history has become such an embarrassment. Now the black leader that whites are looking for does not actually have to issue indulgences in the manner of the medieval papacy; rather, by his words and deeds, he can signal to white America that whites are no longer on the hook for past racism. In Steele’s view, whites have been eagerly, hungrily awaiting the black leader who would give them a chance, through their support of his leadership, not merely to say to others but to feel, in their innermost being, Whew, I am not a racist. Steele speculated that whites may be willing to pay heavily both in money and in political support if such a candidate appeared on the horizon. He would truly be the anointed one.11 Obama’s ingenuity was to recognize that this unique opportunity required a black man of a kind not seen in American politics before. Such a man would have to look black but act white."
Dinesh D'Souza,Right,"assessing Ronald Reagan. There are so many basic questions that even his friends cannot quite figure out, such as (to start with the most basic one): Was he smart? From the brilliant-versus-clueless question flows even more complex ones. Was he a visionary who clung to a few verities, or an amiable dunce who floated obliviously above facts and nuances? Was he a stubborn ideological coot or a clever negotiator able to change course when dealing with Congress and the Soviets and movie moguls? Was he a historic figure who stemmed the tide of government expansion and stared down Moscow, or an out-of-touch actor who bloated the deficit and deserves less credit than Gorbachev for ending the cold war? The most solidly reported biography of Reagan so far"
Dinesh D'Souza,Right,"Certainly there is no limit to taxation if the benefits derived from public services by society measure up to the cost in taxation.2 As cited in the quotation at the beginning of this chapter, Obama Sr. is even willing to consider tax rates up to 100 percent! It’s remarkable that this paper by Obama Sr. has gotten so little media coverage. One would expect it to be on the front page of every newspaper and a lead item on the evening news, especially during public debates in America over taxes and massive government intervention in the health care and financial sectors. Notice the two-part economic strategy proposed by Obama Sr.: forced state control over private enterprise, and confiscatory tax rates with no upper limit. We will find it instructive to compare this to President Obama’s economic policies. For example, President Obama frequently talks about people being forced to pay their fair share in taxes, but he never specifies what that share is. Here, we have a document that explicitly states his father’s thoughts on the subject and may provide some guidance to the son’s own thinking. Yet for many in the media, these father-son comparisons are completely taboo. For them, it seems, the ghost of Barack Obama Sr. must be quietly ignored, so it cannot be seen haunting the corridors of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue."
Dinesh D'Souza,Right,"The Genealogy of Morals,"
Dinesh D'Souza,Right,Obama will view free market capitalism as a selfish and exploitative ideology. He will relentlessly attack its champions
Dinesh D'Souza,Right,"Therefore we have to watch carefully to see if Obama is actually doing these things. Of course, those who have no clue about his ideology will always seek to explain his actions another way. Liberals in general view Obama as toeing the liberal line, or compromising away from it, even when many of Obama’s actions fit neither characterization. Conservatives in general view Obama as a bungler: he doesn’t understand that tax hikes don’t promote economic growth; he misses the fact that government control over banking, health care, energy, and other industries makes them less efficient; he is blind to the reality that Syria and Iran are not our friends; he cannot see how his actions are isolating Israel in the world; he is dangerously naive in reducing our nuclear weapons in the expectation that this will inspire Iran and North Korea to reduce theirs; and so on."
Dinesh D'Souza,Right,autobiographical novel. He fancied himself
Dinesh D'Souza,Right,"The New Left in the 1960s was obsessed with consciousness raising. Saul Alinsky, a mentor to Obama and Hillary, devoted a large part of his training seminars to consciousness raising. Today Black Lives Matter and other left-wing groups routinely conduct consciousness-raising workshops as part of their protest training. All of this is a replacement of Marx’s notion of historical inevitability with the recognition that people don’t agitate of their own accord; their grievances have to be created or at least interpreted for them, and they have to be stirred up to get off their butts and take action."
Dinesh D'Souza,Right,"As he thought about these problems, Hitler’s attention was turned to America. Hitler didn’t know a lot about America. He had never been to America. And he despised America. My feelings against Americanism, he later said in 1942, are feelings of hatred and deep repugnance. Why? He claimed, Everything about the behavior of American society reveals that it’s half Judaised and the other half negrified. Moreover, America is a country where everything is built on the dollar. For Hitler, America represented the worst case of unrestricted Jewish capitalism.3"
Dinesh D'Souza,Right,"With Hitler, too, we see a dedicated socialist who, shortly after assuming the leadership of the German Workers’ Party, changed its name to the National Socialist German Workers’ Party (NSDAP). In statement after statement, Hitler could not be clearer about his socialist commitments. He said, for example, in a 1927 speech, We are socialists. We are the enemies of today’s capitalist system of exploitation . . . and we are determined to destroy this system under all conditions.36 The Nazi Party at the outset offered a twenty-five point program that included nationalization of large corporations and trusts, government control of banking and credit, the seizure of land without compensation for public use, the splitting of large landholdings into smaller units, confiscation of war profits, prosecution of bankers and other lenders on grounds of usury, abolition of incomes unearned by work, profit sharing for workers in all large companies, a broader pension system paying higher benefits, and universal free health care and education. If you read the Nazi platform without knowing its source, you could easily be forgiven for thinking you were reading the 2016 platform of the Democratic Party. Or at least a Democratic platform drafted jointly by Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren. Sure, some of the language is out of date. The Democrats can’t talk about usury these days; they’d have to substitute Wall Street greed. But otherwise, it’s all there. All you have to do is cross out the word Nazi and write in the word Democrat."
Dinesh D'Souza,Right,"These incriminating facts are known to many progressive scholars. But after World War II, as this group came increasingly to dominate the academy"
Dinesh D'Souza,Right,"So progressives decided to tell a new story, and this is the story that has now become our conventional wisdom. In this story, the very fascism and Nazism that were, from the outset, on both sides of the Atlantic, recognized as left-wing phenomena now got moved into the right-wing column. Suddenly Mussolini and Hitler became right-wingers, and the people who supposedly brought them to power became conservatives. The Left, then, became the glorious resisters of fascism and Nazism."
Dinesh D'Souza,Right,"Perhaps, but Trump’s promised restoration is concerned with bringing back jobs. It is also about making government smaller and less bureaucratic. It is not about repealing progress in America on civil rights or women going to work. It is not about sending gays back into the closet. So, too, modern conservatism is about restoring the ideals of the founders, not the actual agrarian, undeveloped world in which the founders lived. So the Right seeks to apply old principles"
Dinesh D'Souza,Right,"Even so, for people who know how to recognize it, today’s Left is still the party of fascism and National Socialism, old ideologies now marching on a different continent under new colors, a fascism for the twenty-first century."
Dinesh D'Souza,Right,"Today we think of fascism’s most famous representative as Adolf Hitler. Yet as I mentioned earlier, Hitler didn’t consider himself a fascist. Rather, he saw himself as a National Socialist. The two ideologies are related in that they are both based on collectivism and centralized state power. They emerge, one might say, from a common point of origin. Yet they are also distinct; fascism, for instance, had no intrinsic connection with anti-Semitism in the way that National Socialism did."
Dinesh D'Souza,Right,"Hitler greatly admired Mussolini and aspired to become like him. Mussolini, Hitler said, was the leading statesman in the world, to whom none may even remotely compare himself.3 Hitler modeled his failed Munich Putsch in November 1923 on Mussolini’s successful March on Rome."
Dinesh D'Souza,Right,"Nearly seventy Democratic lawmakers refused to attend Trump’s inauguration, an unprecedented violation of democratic etiquette that would have provoked massive media outrage had Republicans done it to, say, Bill Clinton or Barack Obama."
Dinesh D'Souza,Right,"And just weeks into his presidency, even before Trump had done anything that could remotely be considered unconstitutional, Democratic Congresswomen Maxine Waters and Tulsi Gabbard raised the issue of impeachment."
Dinesh D'Souza,Right,"Jonah Goldberg received pretty much the same treatment for his important book Liberal Fascism. Goldberg argues, What we call liberalism"
Dinesh D'Souza,Right,"Goldberg argues that fascism and communism, far from being opposites, are closely related historical competitors for the same constituents."
Dinesh D'Souza,Right,"The racism of the Democratic Party in America not only preceded the racism of the Nazis, it lasted far longer"
Dinesh D'Souza,Right,"We think of concepts like genocide and concentration camps as unique to Nazism, but what term other than genocide can we use to describe Democratic president Andrew Jackson’s mass relocation of the Indians? Didn’t Jackson and his allies systematically seek to dispossess, disinherit, and dismember the Indians as a people? Using the official United Nations definition of genocide, I show that he did."
Dinesh D'Souza,Right,"Moreover, this whole issue has been raised to a completely new level since the publication of historian Stanley Elkins’s path-breaking book Slavery. Elkins not only drew an elaborate comparison of the plantation as a closed system akin to a concentration camp, he also showed that slavery produced personality types eerily similar to those described by Nazi camp survivors. So the point is that even on some of the institutions and practices uniquely associated with the Nazis"
Dinesh D'Souza,Right,"As we will see, Franklin D. Roosevelt was an avid admirer of Mussolini who sought to import Italian fascist schemes to America. FDR also collaborated with the worst racist elements in America, working with them to block anti-lynching laws and exclude blacks from New Deal programs and name a former Klansman to the Supreme Court."
Dinesh D'Souza,Right,"But the rule itself required 100 percent whiteness in order to qualify for attending a white school, or drinking from a white water fountain, or frequenting the white section of a public beach. This as we saw earlier is the rule that even the Nazis found a bit too extreme and repellent."
Dinesh D'Souza,Right,"Interestingly while the Nuremberg Laws are now history, the one drop rule is very much with us, not only as a matter of law but also as a matter of personal identity. Think about Obama: he’s half white and half black, yet he identifies as black. Many African Americans have white ancestry, yet they consider themselves black. Why? Because of the one-drop rule. If any of these people tried to self-identify as white"
Dinesh D'Souza,Right,"In 1935, seven years before the Nazis fully implemented the Final Solution, Hitler advocated emigration and ghettoization as interim solutions to the Jewish problem. The Jews, Hitler said, must be removed from all professions, ghettoized, restricted to a particular territory, where they can wander about, in accordance with their character, while the German people looks in, as one looks at animals in the wild.30"
Dinesh D'Souza,Right,"Starting in 1933, the first year of the Third Reich, the Nazis also began the systematic exclusion of Jews from public office. Hitler added an Aryan clause to the civil service law which effectively banned Jews from government employment."
Dinesh D'Souza,Right,"Soon Jews were also removed and excluded from journalism, farming, teaching, and the theater. By 1938, Jews could not practice investment banking or the professions of law and medicine. This combination of segregation and state-sponsored discrimination against Jews mirrors what the Democrats did to African Americans."
Dinesh D'Souza,Right,"Mussolini, for his part, praised FDR’s book Looking Forward and basically declared FDR to be a fellow fascist. Hitler too saw FDR as a kindred spirit and the New Deal was widely praised as an American form of fascism in the Nazi Party’s official newspaper Volkischer Beobachter and other Nazi publications."
Dinesh D'Souza,Right,"The Census Bureau, even today, counts blacks and whites according to the one-drop rule and uses it to implement a host of affirmative action and other race-based programs."
Dinesh D'Souza,Right,"Think about this: while black culture is a vibrant presence in America today, Indian culture is ignored, forgotten, virtually nonexistent. Even after the Holocaust, Jewish culture thrives, in Israel, America, and around the world. By contrast, American Indians seem still to bear the original shock of their displacement and virtual obliteration as a people."
Dinesh D'Souza,Right,"Stannard begins with a stunning statistic: of the ten to twelve million native Indians who once populated the American continent, between 90 and 95 percent perished as a consequence of exposure to the white man. This is a catastrophic event, by any measure, but even so Stannard admits that most of these deaths were due to plagues and epidemics unwittingly transmitted from Europeans to the Indians. Whatever we call this, we cannot call it genocide because genocide involves the intent to exterminate a population."
Dinesh D'Souza,Right,Jackson’s men cut off the noses of dead Indians as they counted the bodies. Afterwards there were few regrets; one of Jackson’s soldiers chuckled that he had killed a boy five or six years of age for the reason that he would have become an Indian someday.22
Dinesh D'Souza,Right,"When you fuse the two ideas of nation and socialism, what you get is National Socialism."
Dinesh D'Souza,Right,"Mussolini created the first National Socialism, stripped of its German racial connotations. His was a vision of a nation organized along socialist lines in which everyone would share in the benefits and all would contribute their due portion. This language of course has Obama overtones, and we see an obvious congruence between the fascist unification and the modern progressive insistence that America is a single community and that everyone should come together and each one contribute his fair share."
Dinesh D'Souza,Right,"The roots of fascism fully expose the connection between fascism and America’s political Left, and the antithesis between fascism and America’s political Right."
Dinesh D'Souza,Right,"Historian Ira Katznelson tells us, Hitler denigrated blacks, admired American racism, and regretted the South’s defeat in 1865."
Dinesh D'Souza,Right,"Does it seem far-fetched, and wrong, to compare the core institution of Nazi eugenics to Planned Parenthood? Not at all. In some respects, Planned Parenthood’s conduct is worse. While the organization poses as a benign promoter of birth control, its modus operandi was confirmed by a series of undercover videos showing officials willing to sell fetal body parts resulting from the organization’s nationwide abortion industry. The officials represented in the videos showed no moral revulsion or compunction about the practice."
Dinesh D'Souza,Right,"May 2017, the undercover group released a new video featuring ghoulish admissions by Planned-Parenthood-affiliated abortion providers. One spoke of ensuring death by using a second set of forceps to hold the body at the cervix and pull off a leg or two. Another confessed, to laughter from the crowd, that during a recent abortion procedure an eyeball just fell into my lap, and that is gross. A third confessed that when stem cell companies want to purchase brains, we’ll leave the calvarium in till last, and then try to basically take it, or actually, you know, catch everything and keep it separate from the tissue so it doesn’t get lost.5 The Kaiser Wilhelm Institute, which regarded itself as a topnotch research organization, never did anything remotely like this."
Dinesh D'Souza,Right,"The Democrats admittedly have replaced their old rural plantations with new urban plantations called ghettos for blacks, barrios for Latinos, and reservations for American Indians."
Dinesh D'Souza,Right,"They have turned millions of minorities into disposable people, whose lives don’t matter to them and whose primarily utility is their fruitful dependency on the Democrats. As long as the Democrats get their votes, they are happy with them and done with them."
Dinesh D'Souza,Right,"Under a program called T4, the Nazis between 1939 and 1941 rounded up 200,000 Germans who had been diagnosed as insane or incurably ill. Those people were then euthanized in gas chambers.8"
Dinesh D'Souza,Right,"In reference to four of the most notorious death camps, Snyder notes, The 1.6 million or so Jews killed at Treblinka, Chelmni, Belzec and Sobibor were asphyxiated by carbon monoxide. At Auschwitz, the Nazis used Zyklon B hydrogen cyanide gas to kill an additional one million Jews."
Dinesh D'Souza,Right,"Who, then, is responsible for these horrific crimes, the crimes that opened the door to the even greater horrors of the Holocaust? The Nazis are, of course. But where did they get the idea to do this? The answer is that they got it from American progressives. Not Democrats this time, but specifically progressives. By progressivism, I refer to the early twentieth-century, left-wing movement that sought to reform labor laws and working conditions but was also obsessively concerned with social improvement through race-based immigration restriction and the elimination of so-called inferior, unfit, and disposable people."
Dinesh D'Souza,Right,"America led the way in legalizing and promoting coerced eugenic sterilizations, historian Angela Franks writes.11 Progressives had their first success in 1907 when Indiana passed a law requiring sterilization of confirmed criminals, idiots, imbeciles and rapists. Over the next thirty years, twenty-six other states passed similar laws. In the early 1930s, when the Nazis came to power, American states were sterilizing 2,000 to 4,000 people a year. In all, around 65,000 people were sterilized against their will as a consequence of progressive eugenic legislation in the United States. Around the same time, progressives persuaded states across the country to pass marriage restriction laws that prohibited whites and blacks from intermarrying."
Dinesh D'Souza,Right,"These laws were based on an acknowledged principle of black inferiority. They were supported by social pressures that discouraged all minorities, including Native Americans and Hispanics, from marrying whites. For progressives, these anti-miscegenation laws and customs had the same purpose as forced sterilization laws: to protect the racial stock from being swamped and contaminated by useless and unfit people."
Dinesh D'Souza,Right,"The third prong of this same project was immigration restriction. Progressives understood that if you kept these supposedly degraded people out in the first place, it would not be necessary to segregate them, sterilize them or restrict their marriage prospects. In 1924, progressives won a huge victory with the passage of the Immigration Act that sharply curtailed immigration by preferring northern Europeans or Nordics and discriminating against immigrants from Asia, Africa, South America, and even southern and central Europe."
Dinesh D'Souza,Right,Progressives today charge Trump with supporting racist immigration policies while they are the ones who actually implemented such policies and to this date have never acknowledged or apologized for this record.
Dinesh D'Souza,Right,"Moreover, neither the founders nor their successors implemented racist schemes like comprehensive state-sponsored segregation or created institutions like the Ku Klux Klan for the purpose of terrorizing and exterminating blacks. These were inventions of a later era and of a new party founded in the 1820s, the Democratic Party."
Dinesh D'Souza,Right,"Racism, of course, preceded the Democratic Party but the Democrats, in a sense, invented political racism in the early nineteenth century in order to defend slavery against Republican and abolitionist attack."
Dinesh D'Souza,Right,"Progressive Democrats in the twentieth century would in fact attack the founding fathers as misguided or their ideas as out of date. But in the nineteenth century, Democrats took a different line. They denied that blacks were men, which is to say, they denied the full humanity of black people."
Dinesh D'Souza,Right,"So the Democratic defense went like this: all men are created equal, blacks are subhuman, which is to say, not fully men, therefore, we are justified in enslaving them."
Dinesh D'Souza,Right,"Despite Gentile’s disagreement with Marx about historical inevitability, he has at this point clearly broken with modern conservatism and classical liberalism and revealed himself to be a man of the Left. Gentile was, in fact, a lifelong socialist. Like Marx, he viewed socialism as the sine qua non of social justice, the ultimate formula for everyone paying their fair share. For Gentile, fascism is nothing more than a modified form of socialism, a socialism arising not merely from material deprivation but also from an aroused national consciousness, a socialism that unites rather than divides communities. Gentile also perceived fascism emerging out of revolutionary struggle, what the media today terms protest or activism. Unlike Marx, he conceived the struggle not between the working class and the capitalists, but between the selfish individual trying to live for himself and the fully actualized individual who willingly puts himself at the behest of society and the state. Gentile seems to be the unacknowledged ancestor of the street activism of Antifa and other leftist groups. One of the major virtues of fascism, he writes, is that it obliged those who watched from their windows to come down into the street."
Dinesh D'Souza,Right,"academic chair the following year. In his account of what happened, Lessing acknowledged he could do nothing to prevent being shouted down, threatened and denigrated by student activists. He was helpless, he said, against the murderous bellowing of youngsters who accept no individual responsibilities but pose as spokesman for a group or an impersonal ideal, always talking in the royal ‘we’ while hurling personal insults . . . and claiming that everything is happening in the name of what’s true, good and beautiful.11 This was fascism, German style, in the 1920s. In March 2017, the eminent political scientist Charles Murray"
Dinesh D'Souza,Right,"Goldwater objected to the Civil Rights Act of 1964 on libertarian grounds; he did not believe the federal government was constitutionally authorized to regulate discrimination in the private sector. Sadly, Goldwater’s principled stand was misunderstood by many African Americans, who saw Goldwater as a racist and his party, the GOP, as the party of racism."
Dinesh D'Souza,Right,"It was Gentile, Mussolini confessed, who prepared the road for those like me who wished to take it.30 Gentile served as a member of the Fascist Grand Council, a senator in the Upper House of the Italian Parliament, and also as Mussolini’s minister of education. Later, after Mussolini was deposed and established himself at Salo, Gentile became at Il Duce’s request the president of the Italian Academy."
Dinesh D'Souza,Right,From the point of view of the progressive narrative
Dinesh D'Souza,Right,"In a free market, Fitzhugh notes, the interest of masters is opposed to that of the wage slaves. When the slaves lose, the masters gain. The masters are always contriving to pay their workers less"
Dinesh D'Souza,Right,Fascism is state-directed capitalism.
Dinesh D'Souza,Right,Basically Heidegger’s thought emerges out of a distinction between tribal society or Gemeinschaft and commercial society or Gesellschaft.
Dinesh D'Souza,Right,The classic document in this regard is Adorno’s famous F-Scale. The F stands for fascism. Adorno outlined the scale in his 1950 book The Authoritarian Personality. The basic argument was that fascism is a form of authoritarianism and that the worst manifestation of authoritarianism is self-imposed repression.
Dinesh D'Souza,Right,"So Adorno’s F-Scale had no power to explain why fascism came to power in Germany and Italy but not elsewhere. Most real fascists, historian Anthony James Gregor dryly observes in The Ideology of Fascism, would not have made notably high scores."
Dinesh D'Souza,Right,"The maxim, every man for himself, he writes, embraces the whole moral code of a free society. The harsh competition of capitalism, Fitzhugh says, benefits the few and the strong while crushing the many and the weak. As a consequence of freedom, the rich are continually growing richer and the poor poorer."
Dinesh D'Souza,Right,"This enforced subordination, according to the progressive black sociologist W. E. B. Du Bois, was the true meaning of slavery. But there was . . . a real meaning to slavery different from that we may apply to the laborer today, Du Bois wrote. It was in part psychological, the enforced personal feeling of inferiority, the calling of another Master; the standing with hat in hand. It was the helplessness. It was the defenselessness of family life. It was the submergence below the arbitrary will of any sort of individual."
Dinesh D'Souza,Right,"Greenberg cites the example of a planter who was challenged to a duel because he told a fellow planter that he smelled bad. When the man of honor is told that he smells, Greenberg writes, he does not draw a bath"
Dinesh D'Souza,Right,"This is not the profile of a man; it is the profile of a dog. Duels required the presence of witnesses, and large numbers of people participated in duels as principals, seconds, adjudicators, physicians, timekeepers or general audience.20"
Dinesh D'Souza,Right,"I cannot overstress the importance of the fact that, once gravity is included in our considerations of nature, one is no longer free to define the total energy of a system arbitrarily, nor the fact that there are both positive and negative contributions to this energy…I say this because it have been argued that the statement that the average total Newtonian gravitational energy in a flat, expanding universe is arbitrary, and that any other balue would be just as good, but that scientists ‘define’ the zero point to argue against God. So claimed Dinesh D’Souza, anyway, in his debates with Christopher Hitchens on the existence of God."
Dinesh D'Souza,Right,"The fascist synthesis did not view Italy as a society divided by class but rather as a unified country in which all sectors of society could come together. The fascists replaced the old Marxist divide between unproductive capitalists and productive labor with the single category of the productive nation. Mussolini called this a Fascio nazionale, a national union."
Dinesh D'Souza,Right,"Southern Democrats struck exactly the same note, deploring lynching and the Klan and institutionalizing instead, just as the Nazis did, the organized repression of state-sponsored segregation and discrimination."
Dinesh D'Souza,Right,"Majorities, no less than minorities, need the assurance that they are being treated fairly, otherwise they are sure to mobilize through democratic channels to affirm their interests. By not only tolerating but enshrining it in law, proportional representation is rapidly balkanizing the country along racial lines, destroying the confidence of citizens that the law will treat them equally and provoking a strong and largely justified backlash."
Dinesh D'Souza,Right,"Finally, proportional representation assures an unceasing racialization of American society. By seeking to fight discrimination by practicing it, proportional representation multiplies the wounds inflicted by race-based decisions. Far from compensating old victims, it creates new ones. Proportional representation seeks to institutionalize race and make it a permanent feature of American public life. It has normalized and legitimized a neurotic obsession with race that maims our souls. If Americans acquiesce in this prescription, it will set them on a perpetual treadmill of racial recrimination and conflict. At least the old discrimination existed anomalously with the American creed; the new discrimination, embedded in law and policy, corrupts the nation's institutions and makes them purveyors of injustice."
Dinesh D'Souza,Right,Obama’s generosity is a fraud: he is bestowing on young people money that is actually their own.
Ben Shapiro,Right,"During the Cold War, America undertook serious military cuts only once: after the election of Richard Nixon, during the Vietnam War. The result: Vietnam fell to the Communists, the Russians moved into Afghanistan, and American influence around the globe waned dramatically."
Ben Shapiro,Right,"Socialism states that you owe me something simply because I exist. Capitalism, by contrast, results in a sort of reality-forced altruism: I may not want to help you, I may dislike you, but if I don't give you a product or service you want, I will starve. Voluntary exchange is more moral than forced redistribution."
Ben Shapiro,Right,"The story of Detroit's bankruptcy was simple enough: Allow capitalism to grow the city, campaign against income inequality, tax the job creators until they flee, increase government spending in order to boost employment, promise generous pension plans to keep people voting for failure. Rinse, wash and repeat."
Ben Shapiro,Right,"During the Great Depression, levels of crime actually dropped. During the 1920s, when life was free and easy, so was crime. During the 1930s, when the entire American economy fell into a government-owned alligator moat, crime was nearly non-existent. During the 1950s and 1960s, when the economy was excellent, crime rose again."
Ben Shapiro,Right,"Socialism violates at least three of the Ten Commandments: It turns government into God, it legalizes thievery and it elevates covetousness. Discussions of income inequality, after all, aren't about prosperity but about petty spite. Why should you care how much money I make, so long as you are happy?"
Ben Shapiro,Right,"Socialism has no moral justification whatsoever; poor people are not morally superior to rich people, nor are they owed anything by rich people simply because of their lack of success. Charity is not a socialist concept - it is a religious one, an acknowledgment of God's sovereignty over property, a sovereignty the Left utterly rejects."
Ben Shapiro,Right,It took capitalism half a century to come back from the Great Depression.
Ben Shapiro,Right,"The Left despises Texas, with its stellar record of job growth; Texas, with its strong support for traditional marriage and the sanctity of life; Texas, the root of the conservative tree. Should the Left succeed in its attempt to turn Texas purple, America could turn permanently blue."
Ben Shapiro,Right,The argument that gay marriage doesn't affect straight marriages is a ridiculous red herring: Gay marriage affects society and law in dramatic ways. Religious groups will come under direct assault as federal and state governments move to strip them of their non-profit statuses if they refuse to perform gay marriages.
Ben Shapiro,Right,"Every so often, we all gaze into the abyss. It's a depressing fact of life that eventually the clock expires; eventually the sand in the hourglass runs out. It's the leaving behind of everything that matters to us that hurts the most."
Ben Shapiro,Right,"While the West tries to turn its civilization into cultural variety hour, Islam tries to turn Muslim lands into a cultural monolith. The same West that justifies the rap culture thinks that every Muslim terrorist bombing is an expression of economic angst or social alienation."
Ben Shapiro,Right,"Capitalism requires individual responsibility and accountability. People are seen as atomized units in a capitalist system - they are either useful, or they are not. They are not seen racially or ethnically or religiously. They consume and they produce, and those are their only relevant characteristics."
Ben Shapiro,Right,"When people are desperate or wealthy, they turn to socialism; only when they have no other alternative do they embrace the free market. After all, lies about guaranteed security are far more seductive than lectures about personal responsibility."
Ben Shapiro,Right,The separation of church and state was meant to protect church from state; a state that declares religion off limits in public life is a state that declares itself supreme over all religious values.
Ben Shapiro,Right,"It is possible to take the story of Noah figuratively, although virtually every Near East ancient civilization has its own version of the flood story (including the amoral epic of Gilgamesh)."
Ben Shapiro,Right,Google has long been a leftist company.
Ben Shapiro,Right,"Why should Congresspeople have to visit D.C.? Thanks to Skype, meetings are possible across the country. Thanks to email, communications are simple. And we've had the technology to vote from afar for decades. Why should we have backroom deals made over cigars thousands of miles distant from those who are affected by those deals?"
Ben Shapiro,Right,"Same-sex marriage is not the final nail in the coffin for traditional marriage. It is just another road sign toward the substitution of government for God. Every moral discussion now pits the wisest moral arbiters among us - the Supreme Court, President Obama - against traditional religion."
Ben Shapiro,Right,"Putin himself is a character out of fiction, an uber-macho former Soviet thug running a massive, expansionist kleptocracy. The man stages photographs riding horses barechested and hunting tigers. His enemies find themselves on the wrong end of radioactive poisoning."
Ben Shapiro,Right,Having children truly ends adolescence. We are all either parents or children: responsibility-takers or those who demand from others.
Ben Shapiro,Right,President Obama and members of his administration constantly express rage and anger over events totally within their control. It's an odd and unsettling fact of American life that so many Americans seem to think that such expressions of frustration should substitute for actual competence.
Ben Shapiro,Right,"The Muslim world just doesn't believe that skin color is all that important. Obama may be half-black, but he's still all-Western, according to them. It doesn't matter whether you're black, white or green - if you're not a devotee of Muhammad, you don't matter."
Ben Shapiro,Right,"Vaccinations absolutely work, and have dramatically decreased rates of childhood diseases."
Ben Shapiro,Right,Obama wants to raise the issue of immigration reform so that he can demonize Republicans as anti-Hispanic. That's why Obama ignores the broad support for an immigration plan that would provide border security once and for all and then deal with the illegal immigrants who live here.
Ben Shapiro,Right,"When Americans are faced with the prospect that they can never earn their way to wealth, they have two choices: to rebel against the system, or to settle into depressed complacency."
David Irving,Right,I made a mistake when I said there were no gas chambers at Auschwitz.
David Irving,Right,"Without Hitler, the State of Israel probably would not exist today. To that extent he was probably the Jews' greatest friend."
David Irving,Right,History is like a constantly changing tree.
David Irving,Right,I have no academic qualifications whatsoever.
Pat Buchanan,Right,"For Americans of the Greatest Generation that fought World War II and of the Silent Generation that came of age in the 1950s, the great moral and ideological cause was the Cold War. It gave purpose and clarity to our politics and foreign policy, and our lives."
Pat Buchanan,Right,"If the Islamic world is so suffused with rage and hatred of us - for our wars, occupations, drone attacks, support of Israel, decadent culture, and tolerance of insults to Islam and the Prophet - why should we call for free elections, when the people will use those elections to vote into power rulers hostile to the United States?"
Pat Buchanan,Right,Many Muslims put their Islamic faith ahead of their national identity and forbid preachers from other religions from coming into their countries to convert their young. Apostasy is treason to Allah. Heresy has no rights.
Pat Buchanan,Right,"From America's schools, religion has been relentlessly purged. No prayers, no Bibles, no Christian symbols, no Ten Commandments."
Pat Buchanan,Right,"Bullying is something every kid in public, parochial, or private school has witnessed by graduation. While unfortunate, it is part of growing up."
Pat Buchanan,Right,"Russia and China, which have embraced autocratic capitalism, have attracted admirers and emulators by the seeming success of their strongman rule."
Pat Buchanan,Right,"As the culture war is about irreconcilable beliefs about God and man, right and wrong, good and evil, and is at root a religious war, it will be with us so long as men are free to act on their beliefs."
Pat Buchanan,Right,"Lyndon Johnson, his 44-state landslide in 1964 and Great Society notwithstanding, was by 1968 a failed president being repudiated in the primaries of his own party."
Pat Buchanan,Right,"Preach or proselytize for Christianity in much of the Islamic world, and you are a candidate for martyrdom. Practice freedom of speech in Xi Jinping's China, and you can wind up in a cell."
Pat Buchanan,Right,"Our own CIA has a storied history of interfering in elections. In the late '40s, we shoveled cash into France and Italy after World War II to defeat the Communists who had been part of the wartime resistance to the Nazis and Fascists."
Pat Buchanan,Right,"In 2013, a great national coalition came together to compel Congress to deny Barack Obama authority to take us to war in Syria."
Pat Buchanan,Right,"What would be the political benefits to Obama of an amnesty? It could weld Hispanics to the Democratic Party, would be wildly popular with the ideological and Christian Left, and quietly welcomed by those Chamber-of-Commerce Republicans who have silently supported amnesty and secretly want immigration off the table in 2016."
Pat Buchanan,Right,"As the numbers of native-born Europeans begin to fall, with their anemic fertility rates, will the aging Europeans become more magnanimous toward destitute newcomers who do not speak the national language or assimilate into the national culture but consume its benefits?"
Pat Buchanan,Right,"Herbert Hoover failed through no fault of his own. The Crash of 1929 and the Great Depression were beyond his control, and every remedy he tried failed adequately to work."
Pat Buchanan,Right,Defeat has its lessons as well as victory.
Pat Buchanan,Right,"As polarized as we have been, we Americans are locked in a cultural war for the soul of our country."
Pat Buchanan,Right,"Whatever they did for democracy, the U.S. interventions in the Middle East and the vaunted Arab Spring have proved to be pure hell for Arab Christians."
Pat Buchanan,Right,"Turkey, a powerful and reliable ally of the U.S. through the Cold War, appears to be coming unmoored from Europe and the West and is becoming increasingly sectarian, autocratic, and nationalistic."
Pat Buchanan,Right,"How does one leave Social Security and Medicare untouched, grow defense by more than $50 billion, slash taxes, launch a $1 trillion infrastructure program - and not explode the deficit and national debt?"
Pat Buchanan,Right,Saying the Washington Post is just a newspaper is like saying Rasputin was just a country priest.
Pat Buchanan,Right,"Once an entitlement program has been created with millions of beneficiaries, it becomes almost impossible to repeal."
Pat Buchanan,Right,"Beijing cannot sit by and let her North Korean ally be bombed, nor can it allow U.S. and South Korean forces to defeat the North, bring down the regime, and unite the peninsula, with U.S. and South Korean soldiers sitting on the Yalu, as they did in 1950 before Mao ordered his Chinese army into Korea."
Pat Buchanan,Right,"When politicians don black robes and seize powers they do not have, they should be called out for what they are - usurpers and petty tyrants."
Pat Buchanan,Right,I've just come back from Mississippi and over there when you talk about the West Bank they think you mean Arkansas.
Pat Buchanan,Right,"The Democrats' drive to defeat Neil Gorsuch is the latest battle in a 50-year war for control of the Supreme Court - a war that began with a conspiracy against Richard Nixon by Chief Justice Earl Warren, Justice Abe Fortas and Lyndon Johnson."
Ann Coulter,Right,"It would be a much better country if women did not vote. That is simply a fact. In fact, in every presidential election since 1950 - except Goldwater in '64 - the Republican would have won, if only the men had voted."
Ann Coulter,Right,"Why do we let blind people and people in wheelchairs become citizens? I feel sorry for cripples, but that doesn't mean I want them in my country."
Ann Coulter,Right,"If only we could get Muslims to boycott all airlines, we could dispense with airport security altogether."
Ann Coulter,Right,"'Moderate Republican' is simply how the blabocracy flatters Republicans who vote with the Democrats. If it weren't so conspicuous, the 'New York Times' would start referring to 'nice Republicans' and 'mean Republicans'"
Ann Coulter,Right,"If we took away women's right to vote, we'd never have to worry about another Democrat president."
Ann Coulter,Right,"Americans don't want immigration. They don't want any more. Why can't we have a home? You see on 'National Geographic,' 'Oh, the indigenous people, they have a home.' Everyone else can have a home. We are the only people on Earth not allowed to have a home."
Ann Coulter,Right,The lefties are on the side of the thugs. They've taken over the universities. I don't think anyone learns anything at college anymore. It's a four-year vacation.
Ann Coulter,Right,"Swing voters are more appropriately known as the 'idiot voters' because they have no set of philosophical principles. By the age of fourteen, you're either a Conservative or a Liberal if you have an IQ above a toaster."
Ann Coulter,Right,Any Republican who says he can work with Hillary Clinton is a traitor to the nation.
Ann Coulter,Right,"If we're so cruel to minorities, why do they keep coming here? Why aren't they sneaking across the Mexican border to make their way to the Taliban?"
Ann Coulter,Right,The Republican Party's typical position is to preemptively surrender whenever liberals start yelling 'Oh that's mean. You can't use that word': 'Oh I did not realize that 'The New York Times' made a finding that the term 'anchor baby' is offensive. Henceforth I shall not use it.'
Ann Coulter,Right,"Taxes are like abortion, and not just because both are grotesque procedures supported by Democrats. You're for them or against them. Taxes go up or down; government raises taxes or lowers them. But Democrats will not let the words 'abortion' or 'tax hikes' pass their lips."
Ann Coulter,Right,Half-brights consider it comedy gold to congratulate anyone they dislike for 'winning the Kentucky Derby!' The only thing more bracingly original to not-smart people is: 'Stay classy!'
Ann Coulter,Right,"I'm happy every day. You know, that moment when you first wake up in the morning, and you're just finishing your dream, like you're a dog chasing a post truck - and then you realize, 'Oh no, I'm a human, and I'm awake, and it's Trump's America!"
Ann Coulter,Right,I didn't get the gene that makes me care about what other people think. I'm much like Trump that way. I don't really care. They're just words.
Ann Coulter,Right,We know gang members are pouring across the border and filling up our prisons. We have a huge drug problem in this country now in places that never had an opiate problem. Why is that? Because this is brought in - because we do not have a border.
Ann Coulter,Right,First step: Build the wall. Second step: Let ICE do its job. Third step: Stop importing jihadists and welfare recipients. Fourth step: enforce e-verify to protect American jobs. Fifth step: prosecute social security card/ID theft/voting fraud.
Ann Coulter,Right,"Go to a Cubs game and see how many people are in the stands, because when you can't win, nobody cares anymore."
Ann Coulter,Right,"What happens is, illegal immigrants can run across the border, drop a baby, and say, 'Ha-ha, there's nothing you can do now. My kid's an American citizen.' Well, that wasn't the intent of the 14th Amendment. Americans would not agree with that. It creates a horrible incentive."
Ann Coulter,Right,"We just want Jews to be perfected, as they say. That is what Christianity is. We believe the Old Testament, but ours is more like Federal Express."
Ann Coulter,Right,"Whether they are defending the Soviet Union or bleating for Saddam Hussein, liberals are always against America. They are either traitors or idiots, and on the matter of America's self-preservation, the difference is irrelevant."
Milo Yiannopoulos,Right,"Muslims know that Islam clashes with Western Civilization. They make no bones about choosing Islam over their new home country, like the Syrians in Germany, or the Somali at Ohio State University. They are very open and honest on polls, because they know they have nothing to fear from the governments that welcomed them with open arms."
Milo Yiannopoulos,Right,"I have ridiculously bad eyesight, but I have learned to live with an impressionistic view. Life is a Monet painting. I wander around enjoying myopia."
Milo Yiannopoulos,Right,"You see, feminists don't really like to define the Patriarchy. They prefer to keep it nebulous and amorphous so they can conveniently blame it for everything that goes wrong in their lives. Not being paid enough? Patriarchy! Not getting a promotion? Patriarchy! Too many catcalls? Patriarchy! Too few catcalls? Patriarchy!"
Milo Yiannopoulos,Right,"Donald Trump can take his message directly to the people via rallies and addresses carried over social media. I'd call them updated versions of Roosevelt's fireside chats, but a portion of my younger readership doesn't even know what a radio is thanks to a Democrat-run education system."
Milo Yiannopoulos,Right,"What Trump means for us is that we've won the first battle. At a minimum, he's a necessary course correction from the excesses of the social justice Left. At most, he's the saviour of the First and Second Amendments, protector of the Supreme Court, and champion of the little guy. In other words, just what America needed."
Milo Yiannopoulos,Right,"What's revolting is the body-positivity movement. What's revolting is this idea now that you can tell women they'll be happy and healthy at any size. Why? Because it tells women that you can be fat, and you can be unattractive, and you can be happy anyway. That's a lie."
Milo Yiannopoulos,Right,"Abortion is wrong. I think everyone knows that, which is why abortion activists are so angry all the time. It's a bit like when you catch someone out in a lie, and they get really mad at you really quickly, and you can't work out why until later. It's guilt."
Milo Yiannopoulos,Right,"Shallow emotions. An incapacity to feel genuine love. A need for stimulation. Frequent verbal outbursts. Poor behavioural controls. These are just some of the things that social media are encouraging in all of us. They're also a pretty comprehensive diagnostic checklist for sociopathy - in fact, that's where I got the list."
Milo Yiannopoulos,Right,"You should always take what I say about religion with a grain of salt, because the 7 deadly sins are more like my seven daily activities. I try to check them all off at least once a day. All of them except gluttony; my trainer keeps that under control."
Milo Yiannopoulos,Right,One of the remarkable things about Donald Trump is that he didn't just beat the Progressive establishment - he also beat the Conservative establishment. Two political tribes that dominated Washington for half a century were defeated in the space of one election campaign.
Milo Yiannopoulos,Right,I care about facts. I don't care about your feelings.
Milo Yiannopoulos,Right,"In modern society, there are fewer and fewer opportunities for men to be men. For masculinity to flourish in all its glory. For daring and risk-taking to live free, or at least relatively free. Fraternities are one of those places. They deserve to be protected."
Milo Yiannopoulos,Right,"Just telling the facts are no longer enough. You now have to be persuasive, charismatic, interesting, and funny. Just telling people things isn't enough anymore."
Milo Yiannopoulos,Right,"As a foreigner, I used to think all of Michigan was a post-apocalyptic wasteland of burning buildings, trashed cars, abandoned factories and broken dreams. But now I know that's just Detroit. It's only the Democrat-controlled areas that are a disaster."
Milo Yiannopoulos,Right,"Every voice on the Left bleated about how they feared protests and riots by angry Donald Trump supporters if and when he lost the election, yet it is the Leftists themselves destroying property and blocking roads. Everyone can see where the hate is coming from. Everyone."
Milo Yiannopoulos,Right,"What I want is a sort of new political realignment on libertarian/authoritarian lines, and I want a new consensus to emerge of disaffected liberals, classical liberals, dissident minorities like gays, small-state conservatives, libertarians, people who basically want to be left alone."
Milo Yiannopoulos,Right,"I'm not in the business of being 'friendly.' First and foremost, I'm a journalist. My business is the truth. Now, I happen to be other things, too - a pop-culture phenomenon, the most in-demand speaker on the campus lecture circuit, whatever. But I believe in facts."
Milo Yiannopoulos,Right,"One of the favorite things I've learned about Michigan State is that they set up a 'Women's course' in 1896. It sounds like the first gender studies department! But when I looked into it, they taught women home economics, liberal arts, and science. So the women's course was actually a useful degree! It actually teaches something productive!"
Milo Yiannopoulos,Right,"To be honest, I'm shocked the University of Washington's sports teams are called the Huskies. Why haven't the Leftists that run this entire state demanded they be renamed the 'Athletes of Size' so as to not fat shame anyone?"
Milo Yiannopoulos,Right,"Twitter could save a lot of money by writing its executives' names on their doors with pencil instead of fancy placards. Like an episode of 'Suits,' Twitter execs come, go, change jobs and disappear under black clouds every few minutes. Office administration costs must be astronomical!"
Milo Yiannopoulos,Right,"Black Lives Matter is the ultimate divisive movement. They aren't shy about what they don't like, which is western civilization, capitalism, and the rule of law. They really dislike the police, and certainly get the credit for the war between black men and police."
Milo Yiannopoulos,Right,"Cyberbullying isn't real. But bullying and harassment certainly are real. Trust me, friends, I went to school in England. They've got bullying down to a fine art. I know, because I was one of its chief architects. I was awful to my fellow schoolboys."
Milo Yiannopoulos,Right,"Back before our civilization despised itself, we applauded tough men. But you can't produce tough men - or honorable women - without tough love. If you want to keep civilization, you better start by insisting that boys grow up, instead of trying to infantilize them so they're afraid to stop sucking their thumbs."
Milo Yiannopoulos,Right,"Let's be clear: no one is forced into hazing. If you don't want to be hazed, don't join a fraternity."
Milo Yiannopoulos,Right,The white working class wants jobs. They don't want to be stuck trying to make ends meet with part-time work and government assistance. They want a good paying job that they can take pride in. The type of job that has fled America thanks to the Left.
Milo Yiannopoulos,Right,It's not okay to lie about people and particularly not okay to hurl the worst imaginable names at people just because you think you might not like their politics.
Stefan Molyneux,Right,"Trust is everything. If I didn't have trust, there would be no downloads, no show, and no business."
Stefan Molyneux,Right,"If you don't want to be a slave, stop acting like a slave."
Stefan Molyneux,Right,"If you look at America, which was the experiment of the smallest conceivable government, what grows out of that is the largest government the world has ever seen."
Stefan Molyneux,Right,"Since we own our bodies, we also inevitably own the effects of our actions, be they good or bad. If we own the effects of our actions, then clearly we own that which we produce, whether what we produce is a bow, or a book - or a murder."
Stefan Molyneux,Right,"Deep down, I do not believe that there are any really good parents out there - the same way that I do not believe there were any really good doctors in the 10th century."
Stefan Molyneux,Right,"Even if we did achieve what we wanted with a very small state, we'd just be resetting the clock back to 1776, and it would roll forward exactly the same way again."
Stefan Molyneux,Right,I'm sure a few marriages broke up because of feminism; it doesn't make feminism a cult.
Stefan Molyneux,Right,"What I'm talking about, what I strongly suggest to people, is that they should get closer to the people they're with."
Alex Jones,Right,"We're going to merge with machines and become gods, but first, we've got to reduce the world population 90 percent."
Alex Jones,Right,"The Muslims are, as a group, attacking people because under the Quran, there is the house of Islam, and outside of it, there's the house of war."
Alex Jones,Right,"When I called Clinton a Wall Street puppet, they called me a right-wing extremist. When I said the same about George W. Bush, they called me an anti-war communist. Now that I'm against Obama for the same reasons, mainline conservatives embrace me. When I attack the next right-wing 'savior,' they're gonna call me a communist again."
Alex Jones,Right,"The globalists are smart and tell us sin is fun, sin is a red-devil cheerleader."
Alex Jones,Right,You are not going to silence me. You are not going to silence America. You are literally like a little gangster thug. Rubio just threatened to silence me.
Alex Jones,Right,"It is every American's right to question any big event, especially when it's seized on to take the basic liberties of Americans."
Alex Jones,Right,Humanity will be obsolete by 2050. This is the consensus at Google and Facebook and Twitter.
Alex Jones,Right,"Supplements are popular. They're good. They're a fast-growing market. I use it to fund the operation. Other revolutionaries rob banks and kidnap people, O.K.? I don't do that."
Alex Jones,Right,Mainstream media is the enemy... but now it's time to act on the enemy before they do a false flag.
Alex Jones,Right,"My life is a love letter to humanity. What the globalists do is a hate letter, a curse."
Alex Jones,Right,"Madison Avenue makes us addicts of consumerism, using glass wampum to steal our capacity to direct our own lives."
Alex Jones,Right,The Emanuels are Jewish mafia. It's not that Jews are bad. It's just that they are the head of the Jewish mafia in the United States.
Alex Jones,Right,"The more I'm persecuted, the stronger I get."
Alex Jones,Right,"They're always trying to claim that if I talk about world government and corruption, I'm anti-Semitic."
Alex Jones,Right,The real election meddling is by Facebook and Google and others that are shadow-banning people.
Mike Cernovich,Right,"The blockchain is a distributed network that solves all the problems that we have of finance, but more broadly, it's like a philosophy. It's a way of life."
Mike Cernovich,Right,We're moving from a centralized understanding of the world to a decentralized understanding of the world.
Mike Cernovich,Right,"We're not alt-right, and we're not old-school, National-Review-boring Right - we're aggressive. We're in a meme world - we're in a world where you have to be catchy, punchy."
Mike Cernovich,Right,"Gawker started out speaking the truth to power, and then it became about bullying anyone who didn't conform to their social justice orthodoxy. They wanted to inflict pain on people with no platform simply for the sake of inflicting pain."
Mike Cernovich,Right,"Everything I do is alchemy. That's why I believe in magic. Not black magic, not the satanic magic that they practice in Hollywood and that the deep state practices and that the media practice. I believe in good magic, light magic, alchametic magic."
Mike Cernovich,Right,Antifa are the left-wing version of Nazis. They are very violent; they are terrible people. They cause a ruckus and property damage.
Mike Cernovich,Right,"It takes a great deal of courage to give me a public shout out, that's for sure."
Mike Cernovich,Right,"I believe in strong borders, including keeping out Islamic terrorists. If people think that's inherently racist, fine - but I'm an American nationalist, not a white nationalist."
Mike Cernovich,Right,I'm not alt-right.
Mike Cernovich,Right,I never disavow things I've said.
Mike Cernovich,Right,My first marriage was ruined by feminist indoctrination.
Mike Cernovich,Right,Logic is pointless.
Mike Cernovich,Right,"If a girl you're on a date with expresses ideals similar to those expressed by social justice bullies, end the date."
Mike Cernovich,Right,"People bring up tweets that I don't even remember, and my general response is, 'I don't know if I said it. I probably said it.' It's just part of what I do."
Mike Cernovich,Right,The Harvey Weinstein case showed us that Hollywood is rotten to the core.
Mike Cernovich,Right,I enjoy just the raw human visceral reaction of jumping into the arena and just swinging the hammer and seeing what is left over afterwards. Twitter is just modern-day gladiatorial combat.
Mike Cernovich,Right,"With social media, I can say to the people, 'Here's me live on video for an hour. The full thing, raw and uncut.' So it bring the message directly to the people. It bypasses intermediaries in the media."
Mike Cernovich,Right,The only tweets I feel bad about are the fat-chick ones.
Mike Cernovich,Right,I use trolling tactics to build my brand.
Mike Cernovich,Right,"Until the Right wins for once, I have no interest in arguing with the alt-right or disavowing anyone."
Mike Cernovich,Right,I'm doing real journalism.
Mike Cernovich,Right,Nobody tells you how to be famous.
Mike Cernovich,Right,"When you get things wrong in life, it is important to talk about them."
Mike Cernovich,Right,"The alt right is a disinfo group designed to discredit Trump and to frustrate his agenda, which is why David Duke and all those guys go around saying they're pro Trump."
Mike Cernovich,Right,"There's no books out there articulating what the alt-right is. If they're such great philosophers, and they have such good ideas, and they're on the vanguard of intellectualism, where are their books? They don't have any."
Mike Cernovich,Right,My view of the alt-right was that it was a big tent.
Peter Brimelow,Right,I think good teachers are underpaid.
Peter Brimelow,Right,"If you're going to have a public subsidy to education, vouchers are clearly a better way of delivering it. They should result in some loosening up and privatization of the government school system."
Peter Brimelow,Right,The problem with K-12 education is socialism and the solution is capitalism.
Peter Brimelow,Right,"There's no particular relationship between spending and educational results. Most education spending is actually on salaries, and that's allocated according to political muscle."
Peter Brimelow,Right,Textbook publishers don't even bother to advertise at their conventions.
Peter Brimelow,Right,"Teacher unions are an interest group that acts in defense of their own interests, which means the union bosses' interests, not the members."
Peter Brimelow,Right,"Why can't teachers end up owning schools, the way waiters can open their own restaurants?"
Peter Brimelow,Right,I think we spend too much on K-12 education a.k.a. teachers' salaries. It's the only industry where you never see any productivity increases.
Peter Brimelow,Right,"I think the Republicans are subverted by the fact that so many of their leaders send their kids to private schools, they don't really have the stomach for the fight."
Peter Brimelow,Right,"I suppose the White House thinks it's doing what Big Business wants, but it will lead to vastly increased taxes, because all these guest workers are to be allowed to bring their children."
Peter Brimelow,Right,I've been a financial journalist for 30 years.
Peter Brimelow,Right,A nation is an organic thing.
Peter Brimelow,Right,This type of mass influx is simply too much to handle. What we've had since the disaster of the 1965 Immigration Act will take 100 years or more to absorb.
Peter Brimelow,Right,Immigration enthusiasts are so hysterical.
Peter Brimelow,Right,I think Bush's immigration proposal is treason and he should be impeached.
Peter Brimelow,Right,I think the Iraq War is not particularly tailored to American interests.
Peter Brimelow,Right,"I think Bush has capitulated on affirmative action and government spending. Apart from that, he's OK, I guess. About the same as Howard Dean."
Peter Brimelow,Right,"Hey, nothing grows to the sky. There will be a successor movement. Right now it's nascent."
Peter Brimelow,Right,The real boneheads are the libertarians.
Peter Brimelow,Right,"I regard many of the neoconservatives as personal friends, but that's not stopped them from behaving with extraordinary viciousness towards those of us who raised the immigration issue."
Jerome Corsi,Right,I apologize if anybody was offended by anything I said.
Jerome Corsi,Right,"Put simply, the Bush administration policy in the Middle East is continuing to fail."
Jerome Corsi,Right,Howard Phillips of the Constitution Party asked me to consider seriously running for president in 2008 and I am doing so.
Jerome Corsi,Right,"If the Republican Party continues to ignore its conservative base, then the Party is headed to oblivion."
Jerome Corsi,Right,I don't believe in the moon landing conspiracy theory. I don't believe in Big Foot.
Lou Dobbs,Right,"When we become immobilized by our own inability to deal directly with what is a commonly perceived truth and reality, we are in trouble as a nation."
Lou Dobbs,Right,"I'm saying to you that one of the great characteristics of the great American, the American people, is our historic ability to be straightforward, plainspoken, say what we mean, and mean what we say."
Lou Dobbs,Right,"I just can't imagine anyone in the United States military who would not understand the distinction between a jihadist and a radical Islamist and Muslims. I think that is snobbery from elitists. It goes to the issue, it seems to me, of an orthodoxy, a political correctness that has infiltrated the U.S. Army."
Lou Dobbs,Right,The United States appears to be a debtor nation in perpetuity.
Matt Drudge,Right,"I do most of my business on that dirty Internet that you were just talking about, where I find there is a lot of freedom to report exactly what I want."
Matt Drudge,Right,"With a modem, anyone can follow the world and report on the world-no middle man, no big brother. I guess this changes everything."
Matt Drudge,Right,"Not everything I do is gossip or bedroom. To the contrary, I think that's just an easy label to dismiss me and to dismiss the new medium."
Matt Drudge,Right,I don't necessarily think anything on a Web site can have a result.
Matt Drudge,Right,It seems to me we are losing our way in an effort to get the ratings.
Matt Drudge,Right,I'm not mean.
Matt Drudge,Right,You would be amazed what the ordinary guy knows.
Matt Drudge,Right,The first step in good reporting is good snooping.
Matt Drudge,Right,I cover media people the way they cover politicians.
Matt Drudge,Right,"All truths begin as hearsay, as far as I'm concerned."
Matt Drudge,Right,Television saved the movies. The Internet is going to save the news business.
Matt Drudge,Right,"There won't be editors in the future with the Internet world, with citizen reporting. That doesn't scare me."
Matt Drudge,Right,I never think too far into the future. I'm too busy thinking about tomorrow's news.
Matt Drudge,Right,"I've written thousands of stories, started hundreds of news cycles."
Matt Drudge,Right,"The Internet feeds off the main press, and the main press feeds off the Internet. They're working in tandem."
Matt Drudge,Right,"I want one place I can go that is not going to be lewd, and I'm not sure there is anything left."
Matt Drudge,Right,The media is comparable to government-probably passes government in raw power.
Matt Drudge,Right,"Because I have success, it doesn't mean I'm part of the mainstream. I'm still an outsider."
Matt Drudge,Right,"There's a danger of the Internet just becoming loud, ugly and boring with a thousand voices screaming for attention."
Matt Drudge,Right,"There's nothing more exciting than to watch a story break and grow, and to be the first one to present it to the world."
Matt Drudge,Right,"We have entered an era vibrating with the din of small voices. Every citizen can be a reporter, can take on the powers that be."
Matt Drudge,Right,I was first to break the news about the death of Lady Diana. The CNN team couldn't get into makeup fast enough.
Matt Drudge,Right,"If technology has finally caught up with individual liberty, why would anyone who loves freedom want to rethink that?"
Matt Drudge,Right,Some of the best news stories start in gossip. Monica Lewinsky certainly was gossip in the beginning. I had heard it months before I printed it.
Matt Drudge,Right,"I envision a future where there'll be 300 million reporters, where anyone from anywhere can report for any reason. It's freedom of participation absolutely realized."
Matt Drudge,Right,"Meet them once and you're innocent; meet them twice and you're not. So if you see me having drinks again with Harvey Weinstein then, okay, you've got me."
David Irving,Right,"I don't think there was any overall Reich policy to kill the Jews. If there was, they would have been killed and there would not be now so many millions of survivors. And believe me, I am glad for every survivor that there was."
David Irving,Right,"“There is no doubt at all that the Nazis in their twelve-year rule inflicted nameless horrors on large segments of their population, including the Jews, and other people whom they disliked. There's no doubt about that at all. What I do question are the methods...”"
David Irving,Right,"“If the Jews were killed at Auschwitz or Treblinka or anywhere else...it wasn't a crime because they were Jews, it was a crime because they were innocent Jews who were being killed. It was their innocence that made...it a crime and not their Jewishness that made it a crime.”"
David Irving,Right,“I'm not going to say it was 'only' a hundred thousand Jews that were killed in Auschwitzs because even if one Jew is murdered that's a crime. ”
David Irving,Right,"What you're saying is 'Has a historian the right to offend?' and the answer is very definitely, yes."
David Irving,Right,The Nazis quite clearly killed millions of Jews...
David Irving,Right,"The interesting questions are what did Hitler know, did Himmler conceal it, did he keep it from Hitler, where was the killing done, was it Auschwitz, was it the Reinhard camps and that's what people are frightened to research, because they go to prison for it."
David Irving,Right,"I am not anti-coloured, take it from me; nothing pleases me more than when I arrive at an airport, or a station, or a seaport, and I see a coloured family there — the black father, the black wife and the black children… When I see these families arriving at the airport I am happy, and when I see them leaving at London airport I am happy.  But if there is one thing that gets up my nose, I must admit, it is this — the way… the thing is when I am down in Torquay and I switch on my television and I see one of them reading our news to us. It is our news and they’re reading it to me. If I was a chauvinist I would say I object even to seeing women reading our news to us. But now we have women reading our news to us. If they could perhaps have their own news which they were reading to us, I suppose [laughter], it would be very interesting.  For the time being, for a transitional period I'd be prepared to accept that the BBC should have a dinner-jacketed gentleman reading the important news to us, following by a lady reading all the less important news, followed by Trevor McDonald giving us all the latest news about the muggings and the drug busts…"
David Irving,Right,"When I get to Australia in January I know what is going to happen. They are going to wheel out all the so-called eyewitnesses. One in particular, Mrs. Altman, I've clashed with once or twice. She is very convincing. They can be very convincing. Because they have to do it so often over the years. They've had a free run. We're going to meet because she has that tattoo. I am going to say,'You have that tattoo, we all have the utmost sympathy for you. But how much money have you made on it! In the last 45 years! Can I estimate! Quarter of a million! Half million! Certainly not less. That's how much you've made from the German taxpayers and the American taxpayers.' Ladies and gentlemen, you're paying $3 billion a year to the State of Israel. Compensation to people like Mrs. Altman. She'll say,'Why not, I suffered.' I'll say you didn't. You survived. By definition you didn't suffer. Not half as much as those who died.... They suffered. You didn't. You're the one making the money. Explain to me this. Why have you people made all the money, but Australian soldiers who suffered for five years in Japanese prison camps haven't got a bent nickel out of it!"
Jason Kessler,Right,"white people are being denied the ability to organize in political organizations the way other groups do, free of harassment, to face the issues important to us"
Jason Kessler,Right,"I'm not a white supremacist. I'm not even a white nationalist. I consider myself a civil and human rights advocate focusing on the underrepresented Caucasian demographic.I've publicly stated numerous times that I do not want neo-Nazis at my rally, and they're not welcome."
Jason Kessler,Right,I think the alt-right thinks I am a cuck and not extreme enough and [liberals] think I am a white supremacist. None are true.
Sebastian Gorka,Right,"Whatever your opinion of the post-9/11 wars, the need to invade Afghanistan or Iraq, none of that changes the decades old strategy and ideology of Global Jihad. Long before there was a Bush in the White House, Muslims with a fundamentalist interpretation of Islam declared war on all that is Un-Islamic, be it located in the Middle East, Europe or the US. Theirs is a totalitarian ideology, as universalist and absolute as anything Hitler or Stalin came up with, albeit with a holy sanction and promise of salvation. We are in their crosshairs as much as Assad, Maliki, or Sisi. Either everyone must live under Islamic law in a Caliphate, or they must die. Whether they live in a Christian enclave in Norther Iraq, or Washington, New York, or Houston."
Sebastian Gorka,Right,The NRA is the most important organization protecting our rights to defend ourselves and our democracy in America.
Tomislav Sunić,Right,"Multiculturalism is a false euphemism. The real word is ""multiracialism"", but the word ""race"" has been recently erased from French legislature, because supposedly there are no races. Here we can observe a new illogicality of the System. There are supposedly no races, but the media are increasingly talking about the rise of racism. How then racists can exist, if there are no races? Nevertheless, we have all too much empirical data showing precisely that multi-ethnic and multicultural countries are prone to ethnic and racial conflicts. What former Yugoslavia went through is in store for the EU - of course, in a different form. One of the additional reasons I left American academia is that I could no longer tolerate giving undeserved passing grades to my American students of African and Hispanic origin, whose IQ and speed of symbolic reasoning were much lower than that of my white American students. It is a form of tyranny of political correctness, much like the former Soviet Union."
Pat Buchanan,Right,"Though Hitler was indeed racist and anti-Semitic to the core, a man who without compunction could commit murder and genocide, he was also an individual of great courage, a soldier's soldier in the Great War, a political organizer of the first rank, a leader steeped in the history of Europe, who possessed oratorical powers that could awe even those who despised him... Hitler's success was not based on his extraordinary gifts alone. His genius was an intuitive sense of the mushiness, the character flaws, the weakness masquerading as morality that was in the hearts of the statesmen who stood in his path."
Pat Buchanan,Right,There is nothing wrong with us sitting down and arguing that issue that we are a European country.
Pat Buchanan,Right,"The War Between the States was about independence, about self-determination, about the right of a people to break free of a government to which they could no longer give allegiance... How long is this endless groveling before every cry of 'racism' going to continue before the whole country collectively throws up?"
Pat Buchanan,Right,"As you may have heard in my last campaign, I am called by many names. “Protectionist” is one of the nicer ones; but it is inexact. I am an economic nationalist. To me, the country comes before the economy; and the economy exists for the people. I believe in free markets, but I do not worship them. In the proper hierarchy of things, it is the market that must be harnessed to work for man – and not the other way around."
Pat Buchanan,Right,"To its neocon architects, Iraq was always about empire, hegemony, Pax Americana, global democracy – about getting hold of America’s power to make the Middle East safe for Sharon and themselves glorious and famous."
Pat Buchanan,Right,"If Americans are the most efficient workers on earth and work longer hours than almost any other advanced nation, why are we getting our clocks cleaned? Answer: While American workers are world-class, our elites are mentally challenged. So rhapsodic are they about the Global Economy they have forgotten their own country. Europeans, Japanese, Canadians and Chinese sell us so much more than they buy from us because they have rigged the rules of world trade."
Pat Buchanan,Right,"Israeli and U.S. interests often run parallel, but they are not the same. Israel is concerned with a neighborhood. We are concerned with a world of 300 million Arabs and a billion Muslims. Our policies cannot be the same. If they are, we will end up with all of Israel’s enemies, who are legion, and only Israel’s friends, who are few."
Pat Buchanan,Right,"Though blacks are outnumbered 5-to-1 in the population by whites, they commit eight times as many crimes against whites as the reverse. By those 2007 numbers, a black male was 40 times as likely to assault a white person as the reverse. If interracial crime is the ugliest manifestation of racism, what does this tell us about where racism really resides — in America?"
Pat Buchanan,Right,"Like materialism, consumerism and socialism, transnationalism suffers from the same fatal flaw. It feeds the body and starves the soul. And eventually bored people hear the old calls again."
Pat Buchanan,Right,"Americans are already deep in a culture war over morality—marijuana, abortion, same-sex marriage. We are already racially polarized over affirmative action and income inequality. And when we have ceased to be an English-speaking, Christian country and become instead an Asian-Hispanic-African-American-white nation, with large Jewish, Christian, Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist, agnostic and atheist minorities, and no defined borders, or common faith and culture, what holds us together?"
Pat Buchanan,Right,"Today, no great Western nation has a birthrate that will prevent the extinction of its native-born. By century's end, other peoples and other cultures will have largely repopulated the Old Continent. European Man seems destined to end like the 10 lost tribes of Israel—overrun, assimilated and disappeared."
Pat Buchanan,Right,"Given the shrinking populations inside Europe and the waves of immigrants rolling in from Africa and the Middle and Near East, an Islamic Europe seems to be in the cards before the end of the century."
Pat Buchanan,Right,"Military intervention for reasons of ideology or nation building is not an Eisenhower or Nixon or Reagan tradition. It is not a Republican tradition. It is a Bush II-neocon deformity, an aberration that proved disastrous for the United States and the Middle East."
Pat Buchanan,Right,"What is the moral argument for an affirmative action that justifies unending race discrimination against a declining white working class, who have become the expendables of our multicultural regime?"
Pat Buchanan,Right,"“Angry white male” is now an acceptable slur in culture and politics. So it is that people of that derided ethnicity, race, and gender see in Donald Trump someone who unapologetically berates and mocks the elites who have dispossessed them, and who despise them. Is it any surprise that militant anti-government groups attract white males? Is it so surprising that the Donald today, like Jess Willard a century ago, is seen by millions as “The Great White Hope”?"
Pat Buchanan,Right,"The 1960s and early 1970s were a time of social revolution in America, and President Nixon, by ending the draft and ending the Vietnam war, presided over what one columnist called the “cooling of America.” But if Hillary Clinton takes power, and continues America on her present course, which a majority of Americans rejected in the primaries, there is going to a bad moon rising."
Pat Buchanan,Right,"What America has in Hillary Clinton is a potential president with the charisma but not the competence of Angela Merkel, and the ethics of Dilma Rousseff."
Pat Buchanan,Right,"... the folks Obama and Clinton detest, disparage, and pity are the white working- and middle-class folks Richard Nixon celebrated as Middle Americans and the Silent Majority. They are the folks who brought America through the Depression, won World War II, and carried us through the Cold War from Truman in 1945 to victory with Ronald Reagan in 1989. These are the Trump supporters. They reside mostly in red states like West Virginia, Kentucky and Middle Pennsylvania, and Southern, Plains and Mountain states that have provided a disproportionate share of the soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines who fought and died to guarantee the freedom of plutocratic LGBT lovers to laugh at and mock them at $2,400-a-plate dinners."
Pat Buchanan,Right,America’s media seem utterly lacking in introspection. Do they understand why so many people hate them so? Do they care? Are they so smugly self-righteous and self-regarding they cannot see?
Pat Buchanan,Right,"Trump did not create the forces that propelled his candidacy. But he recognized them, tapped into them, and unleashed a gusher of nationalism and populism that will not soon dissipate."
Pat Buchanan,Right,"Middle America believes the establishment is not looking out for the nation but for retention of its power. And in attacking Trump it is not upholding some objective moral standard but seeking to destroy a leader who represents a grave threat to that power. Trump’s followers see an American Spring as crucial, and they are not going to let past boorish behavior cause them to abandon the last best chance to preserve the country they grew up in."
Pat Buchanan,Right,"In 1960, only sixteen million Americans did not trace their ancestors to Europe. Today, the number is eighty million. No nation has ever undergone so rapid and radical a transformation."
Pat Buchanan,Right,"Uncontrolled immigration threatens to deconstruct the nation we grew up in and convert America into a conglomeration of peoples with almost nothing in common — not history, heroes, language, culture, faith, or ancestors. Balkanization beckons."
Pat Buchanan,Right,"In half a lifetime, many Americans have seen their God dethroned, their heroes defiled, their culture polluted, their values assaulted, their country invaded, and themselves demonized as extremists and bigots for holding on to beliefs Americans have held for generations."
Pat Buchanan,Right,"What was right and true yesterday is wrong and false today. What was immoral and shameful — promiscuity, abortion, euthanasia, suicide — has become progressive and praiseworthy. Nietzsche called it the transvaluation of all values; the old virtues become sins, and the old sins become virtues."
Pat Buchanan,Right,"The West is dying. Its nations have ceased to reproduce, and their populations have stopped growing and begun to shrink. Not since the Black Death carried off a third of Europe in the fourteenth century has there been a graver threat to the survival of Western civilization."
Pat Buchanan,Right,"This struggle to preserve the old creeds, cultures, and countries of the West is the new divide between Left and Right; this struggle will define what it means to be a conservative. This is the cause of the twenty-first century and the agenda of conservatism for the remainder of our lives."
Pat Buchanan,Right,"Why do predictions of the Death of the West not belong on the same shelf as the predictions of 'nuclear winter' and 'global warming'? Answer: the Death of the West is not a prediction of what is going to happen, it is a depiction of what is happening now."
Pat Buchanan,Right,"The new hedonism seems unable to give people a reason to go on living. Its earliest fruits appear to be poisonous. Will this new ""liberating"" culture that our young have so enthusiastically embraced prove the deadliest carcinogen of them all? And if the West is in the grip of a ""culture of death,"" as the pope contends and the statistics seem to show, is Western civilization about to follow Lenin's empire to the same inglorious end?"
Pat Buchanan,Right,"For it is this cultural revolution that has led to just such a ""profound modification in the ideas"" of peoples. And those ideas have made Western elites apparently indifferent to the death of their civilization. They do not seem to care if the end of the West comes by depopulation, by a surrender of nationhood, or by drowning in waves of Third World immigration."
Pat Buchanan,Right,"The prognosis is grim. Between 2000 and 2050, world population will grow by more than three billion to over nine billion people, but this 50 percent increase in global population will come entirely in Asia, Africa, and Latin America, as one hundred million people of European stock vanish from the earth."
Pat Buchanan,Right,There is no conservative party left in Washington. Conservative thinkers and writers who were to be the watchdogs of orthodoxy have been as vigilant in policing party deviations from principle as was Cardinal Law in collaring the predator-priests of the Boston archdiocese.
Pat Buchanan,Right,The Beltway Right has entered into a civil union with Big Brother.
Pat Buchanan,Right,"Under the rubric of conservatism, the Republican party of Bush I and II has been reinventing itself into what conservatives would have once recognized as a Rockefeller party reciting Reaganite rhetoric."
Pat Buchanan,Right,"A civil war is going to break out inside the Republican Party along the old trench lines of the Goldwater-Rockefeller wars of the 1960s, a war for the heart and soul and future of the party."
Pat Buchanan,Right,Neoconservatives are the boat people of the McGovern revolution.
Pat Buchanan,Right,Kristol's warning that neoconservatives could go to Kerry was an admission of what many have long recognized. The neoconservatives are not really conservatives at all. They are impostors and opportunists.
Pat Buchanan,Right,"Nine days after an attack on the United States, this tiny clique of intellectuals [Neocons] was telling the President of the United States...that if he did not follow their war plans, he would be charged publicly with a ""decisive surrender"" to terrorism."
Pat Buchanan,Right,"The Bush Doctrine is a prescription for permanent war for permanent peace, though wars are the death of republics."
Pat Buchanan,Right,The Bush National Security Strategy is the imperial edict of a superpower out to exploit its present supremacy to make itself permanent Lord Protector of the universe.
Pat Buchanan,Right,"The Bush Doctrine is democratic imperialism. This will bleed, bankrupt and isolate this republic. This overthrows the wisdom of the Founding Fathers about what America should be all about."
Pat Buchanan,Right,"Listening to the neoconservatives, Bush invaded Iraq, united the Arab world against us, isolated us from Europe, and fulfilled to the letter bin Laden's prophecy as to what we were about."
Pat Buchanan,Right,"If Iraq collapses in chaos and civil war, there will be a ferocious fight in this country over who misled us and who may have lied us, into war. Into the dock will go the neoconservatives whose class project this was."
Pat Buchanan,Right,"Terrorism is the price of empire. If we do not wish to pay it, we must give up the empire."
Pat Buchanan,Right,We are not hated for who we are. We are hated for what we do. It is not our principles that have spawned pandemic hatred of America in the Islamic world. It is our policies.
Pat Buchanan,Right,"If war is the continuation of politics by other means, terrorism is the continuation of war by other means."
Pat Buchanan,Right,"America's enemy in the Islamic world is not a state we can crush with sanctions or an enemy we can defeat with force of arms. The enemy is a cause, a movement, an idea."
Pat Buchanan,Right,"U.S. dominance of the Middle East is not the corrective to terror. It is a cause of terror. Were we not over there, the 9/11 terrorists would not have been over here."
Pat Buchanan,Right,The Sharon Plan is not a peace plan. It is a unilateral solution to be imposed by Israel.... A Palestinian leader who signs on to this surrender of land and rights would be signing his death warrant.
Pat Buchanan,Right,"As China is the one nation with the size, population, ideology and power to contest the United States for hegemony in Asia, is war inevitable? Answer: No more inevitable than was war between Germany and Great Britain in 1914."
Pat Buchanan,Right,"It is false to say President Bush presided over a ""jobless recovery."" His trade deficits have created many millions of jobs in China."
Pat Buchanan,Right,Free trade is the serial killer of American manufacturing and the Trojan Horse of World Government. It is the primrose path to the loss of economic independence and national sovereignty. Free trade is a bright shining lie.
Pat Buchanan,Right,Globalization is the economic treason that dare not speak it name.
Pat Buchanan,Right,"On Bush ""Free Trade"" policies, the Republican Party has signed off on economic treason."
Pat Buchanan,Right,Bush has compiled a fiscal record of startling recklessness.
Pat Buchanan,Right,"There is no conservative party in Washington. There is a Democratic Party of tax-and-spend and a Republican Party of guns and butter and tax cuts, too. Washington is all accelerator, the brakes are gone."
Pat Buchanan,Right,"Like Thelma and Louise, Medicare and Social Security are headed for the cliff. And we are in the back seat."
Pat Buchanan,Right,The dirty little secret is that Congress no longer wants the accountability that goes with the wielding of power.
Pat Buchanan,Right,How did it happen that a republic born of a rebellion against a king and parliament we did not elect has fallen under a tyranny of judges we did not elect?
Pat Buchanan,Right,The Left has found the Ho Chi Minh Trail around democracy...to impose its views and values upon our society without having to win elections or persuade elected legislators.
Pat Buchanan,Right,"In July 1944, at the Mount Washington Hotel in the resort town of Bretton Woods in the White Mountains of New Hampshire, John Maynard Keynes and Harry Dexter White created the New World Order."
Pat Buchanan,Right,"Ten years after NAFTA, Mexico's leading export to America is still — Mexicans. America is becoming Mexamerica."
Pat Buchanan,Right,"If the success of the Bush presidency hinges on the outcome of the war in Iraq, that war is even more critical to the cabal that exploited 9/11 to maneuver us into it... All the neocon eggs are in the Baghdad basket."
Pat Buchanan,Right,"If America is about anything, she is about freedom. We have seen in the burgeoning Department of Homeland Security and at our airports and in the color-coded alerts the beginning of the erosion of that freedom."
Pat Buchanan,Right,"What can be said for a man who would allow his home to be invaded by strangers who demanded they be fed, clothed, housed and granted the rights of the first-born? What can be said for a ruling elite that permits this to be done to the nation, and who celebrate it as a milestone of moral progress?"
Pat Buchanan,Right,Chicano chauvinists and Mexican agents have made clear their intent to take back through demography and culture what their ancestors lost through war.
Pat Buchanan,Right,"Will the American Southwest become a giant Kosovo, a part of the nation separated from the rest by language, ethnicity, history and culture, to be reabsorbed in all but name by Mexico from whom we took these lands in the time of Jackson and Polk?"
Pat Buchanan,Right,"With perhaps 4 million illegal aliens having broken in in Bush's five-and-a-half years in office, and our border states being daily breached by thousands more, can anyone say President Bush has protected the states of this Union against that invasion? In an earlier America, this dereliction of constitutional duty would have called forth articles of impeachment."
Pat Buchanan,Right,"High among the costs of immigration is the appearance among us of diseases that never before afflicted us and the sudden reappearance of contagious diseases that researchers and doctors had eradicated long ago. Malaria, polio, hepatitis, tuberculosis and such rarities of the Third World as dengue fever, Chagas' Disease and leprosy are surfacing here..."
Pat Buchanan,Right,"By 2050 there will be almost 2.5 times as many people here as in 1960: 420 million. The share of the population of European descent will be a minority as it is today in California, Texas and New Mexico. And that minority will be aging, shrinking and dying. There will be as many Hispanics here, 102 million, as there are Mexicans today in Mexico..."
Pat Buchanan,Right,"By nation of origin of our people, by 2050, America will be a Third World country. Our great cities will all look like Los Angeles today. Los Angeles and the cities of the Southwest will look like Juarez and Tijuana..."
Pat Buchanan,Right,"As Rome passed away, so, the West is passing away, from the same causes and in much the same way. What the Danube and Rhine were to Rome, the Rio Grande and Mediterranean are to America and Europe, the frontiers of a civilization no longer defended."
Pat Buchanan,Right,"Mass immigration is swamping the GOP base. Tens of millions of immigrants who vote Democratic, once they are naturalized and registered, have come and are coming to America. History may yet record that the Immigration Act of 1965 act converted 'The Emerging Republican Majority' of Kevin Phillips' classic work into the Lost Colony of the 21st century."
Pat Buchanan,Right,"In 1960, the U.S. population was 89% white. By 1990, it was 76%. Today, it is under 70%. By 2050, white Americans, the most loyal voting bloc the Republican Party has, that provides 90% of all GOP votes, will be just another minority because of an immigration policy championed by Republicans. When John Stuart Mill called the Tories ""the Stupid Party,"" he was not entirely wrong."
Pat Buchanan,Right,"With the Constitution, the law, and the politics on the side of doing his duty and securing our broken border, why does President Bush not act? What is paralyzing the White House? Answer: Political correctness, political cowardice, political opportunism, a sense of guilt for America's sins, and twin ideologies that have a grip on our elites not unlike a religious cult. The proud old boast, ""Here, sir, the people rule!"" no longer applies. We no longer live in a truly democratic republic."
Pat Buchanan,Right,"The Bush plan is economic treason against the American worker. That ""civil rights leaders"" are silent about the dispossession of the black working class, that unions are not marching to denounce this sellout of blue-collar and white-collar America, only tells us that the amorality of the transnational corporation has infected both. Solidarity be damned, it is all about money now."
Pat Buchanan,Right,"The MEChA slogan is ""Por la Raza todo. Fuera de La Raza nada,"" which translates, ""For the race, everything. Outside of the race, nothing."" The MEChA slogan seems a conscious echo of the Fascist slogan of Mussolini: ""Everything for the state, nothing outside the state, nothing above the state."""
Pat Buchanan,Right,"What makes the Pastor-CFR [Council on Foreign Relations] plan remarkable is that those who would abolish America are out of the closet. The penultimate step to world government, a North American Union built on the model of the European Union, to one day merge with it in a World Union of Nations and Peoples, is before us on the table."
Pat Buchanan,Right,"The temptation is to think that Vicente Fox, who heads a country 46% of whose people would like to live in the United States, is but another failed Third World visionary prattling on for the benefit of globalists who have been beavering away on their impossible dream for generations..."
Pat Buchanan,Right,...The reality is otherwise. [Vicente] Fox & friends are far closer than all but a few realize to making inevitable a North American Union where American sovereignty is dissipated and the republic is no more.
Pat Buchanan,Right,"This strategy aims directly at a reannexation of the Southwest, not militarily, but ethnically, linguistically and culturally through transfer of millions of Mexicans into the United States and a migration of ""Anglos"" out of the lands Mexico lost in 1848. In California, the project is well advanced."
Pat Buchanan,Right,"Stated bluntly, the Aztlan Strategy entails the end of the United States as a sovereign, self-sufficient, independent republic, the passing away of the American nation. They are coming to conquer us."
Pat Buchanan,Right,"Democracy is not enough. If the culture dies, the country dies."
Pat Buchanan,Right,"Who would lay down his life for the UN, EU or a ""North American Union?""… Every true nation is the creation of a unique people, separate from all others. Indeed, if America is an ideological nation grounded no deeper than in the sandy soil of abstract ideas, she will not survive the storms of this century any more than the Soviet Union survived the storms of the last..."
Pat Buchanan,Right,"A true nation is held together not by any political creed but by patriotism.... For two centuries, men have died for America."
Pat Buchanan,Right,The seething racial resentment in the Third World against the West — decades after independence and trillions in foreign aid — should cause second thoughts about opening our borders to mass immigration from that world. Not everyone coming here brings in his heart the passionate attachment to America we attribute to the peoples of Ellis Island.
Pat Buchanan,Right,"Young Asian males are nine times as likely as white youth to belong to a gang and Hispanic youth are 19 times more likely. A disproportionate share of Hispanic young and poor are thus assimilating into a misogynistic, rebellious, youth sub-culture of drugs, gangs, crime, contempt for formal education, and hostility to police."
Pat Buchanan,Right,"Like the Paris riots, the struggle over French history raises grave questions for Europe. How does the presence of 20 million Muslims who come from nations where men believe their grandfathers were exploited and persecuted by Europeans advance the unity and security of Europe? How is Europe made stronger by such ""diversity""?"
Pat Buchanan,Right,"Islamization of Europe is an unavoidable consequence, indeed, an inevitability, once Europe ceased to reproduce itself. The descendants of the men who went out from Europe to conquer and Christianize the world have decided to leave the world. The culture of death triumphs, as the poor but fecund Muslims, expelled centuries ago, return to inherit the estate."
Pat Buchanan,Right,"In his litany of famous immigrants who have contributed mightily to America, JFK does not mention a single woman, African or Asian. All are males and all were from Europe, except one West Indian: Alexander Hamilton. And JFK assures the nation, ""Immigrants would still be given tests for health, intelligence, morality and security..."""
Pat Buchanan,Right,"Our illegal population alone exceeds the all the Irish, Jewish and British immigrants who came. Each year, we catch more people breaking in at the border than all the Swedes and Norwegians who came to America in 200 years. Half a million illegal aliens succeed in breaking in every year, more than all the Greeks or Poles who came legally from the Revolution to 1960."
Pat Buchanan,Right,"The crisis of the West is a collapsing culture and vanishing peoples, as a Third World that grows by 100 million people, the equivalent of a new Mexico, every 18 months, mounts the greatest invasion in history of the world. If we do not shake off our paralysis, the West comes to an end."
Pat Buchanan,Right,"Concerned about his legacy, George W. Bush may yet live to see his name entered into the history of his country as the president who lost the American Southwest that James K. Polk won for the United States."
Pat Buchanan,Right,"If we do not solve our civilizational crisis -- a disintegrating culture, dying populations, and invasions unresisted -- the children born in 2006 will witness in their lifetimes the death of the West. In our hearts we know what must be done. We must stop the invasion. But do our leaders have the vision and will to do it?"
Pat Buchanan,Right,"The last consequence of a dying Christianity is a dying people. Not one post-Christian nation has a birth rate sufficient to keep it alive….The death of European Christianity means the disappearance of the European tribe, a prospect visible in the demographic statistics of every Western nation."
Pat Buchanan,Right,"White America is an endangered species. By 2020, whites over 65 will out-number those 17 and under. Deaths will exceed births. The white population will begin to shrink and, should present birth rates persist, slowly disappear."
Pat Buchanan,Right,"Peoples of European descent are not only in a relative but a real decline. They are aging, dying, disappearing. This is the existential crisis of the West."
Pat Buchanan,Right,Historians will look back in stupor at 20th and 21st century Americans who believed the magnificent republic they inherited would be enriched by bringing in scores of millions from the failed states of the Third World.
Pat Buchanan,Right,"We may deny the existence of ethnonationalism, detest it, condemn it. But this creator and destroyer of empires and nations is a force infinitely more powerful than globalism, for it engages the heart. Men will die for it. Religion, race, culture and tribe are the four horsemen of the coming apocalypse."
Pat Buchanan,Right,We borrow from Europe to defend Europe. We borrow from the Gulf states to defend the Gulf states. We borrow from Japan to defend Japan. Is it not a symptom of senility to be borrowing from the world so we can defend the world?
Pat Buchanan,Right,"Are vital U.S. interests more imperiled by what happens in Iraq where were have 50,000 troops, or Afghanistan where we have 100,000, or South Korea where we have 28,000 — or by what is happening on our border with Mexico? … What does it profit America if we save Anbar and lose Arizona?"
Pat Buchanan,Right,"We are trying to create a nation that has never before existed, of all the races, tribes, cultures and creeds of Earth, where all are equal. In this utopian drive for the perfect society of our dreams we are killing the real country we inherited — the best and greatest country on earth."
Pat Buchanan,Right,"Where equality is enthroned, freedom is extinguished. The rise of the egalitarian society means the death of the free society."
Pat Buchanan,Right,"Through its support of mass immigration, its paralysis in power to prevent 12-20 million illegal aliens from entering and staying, its failure to address the “anchor-baby” issue, the Republican Party has birthed a new electorate that will send it the way of the Whigs."
Pat Buchanan,Right,"Mexico is moving north. Ethnically, linguistically and culturally, the verdict of 1848 is being over-turned. Will this Mexican nation within a nation advance the goals of the Constitution — to “insure domestic tranquility” and ‘make us a more perfect union’? Or have we imperiled our union?"
Pat Buchanan,Right,"We have accepted today the existence in perpetuity of a permanent underclass of scores of millions who cannot cope and must be carried by society — fed, clothed, housed, tutored, medicated at taxpayer’s expense their entire lives. We have a dependent nation the size of Spain in our independent America. We have a new division in our country, those who pay a double or triple fare, and those who ride forever free."
Ann Coulter,Right,"Conservatives have a problem with women. For that matter, all men do."
Ann Coulter,Right,My libertarian friends are probably getting a little upset now but I think that's because they never appreciate the benefits of local fascism.
Ann Coulter,Right,"I have to say I'm all for public flogging. One type of criminal that a public humiliation might work particularly well with are the juvenile delinquents, a lot of whom consider it a badge of honor to be sent to juvenile detention. And it might not be such a cool thing in the 'hood' to be flogged publicly."
Ann Coulter,Right,I am emboldened by my looks to say things Republican men wouldn't.
Ann Coulter,Right,"As quoted in ""Ann Slanders"" by Steve Rendall in Extra! (November/December 2002)."
Ann Coulter,Right,"Her children knew she's sleeping with all these men. That just seems to me, it's the definition of ""not a good mother."" … Is everyone just saying here that it's okay to ostentatiously have premarital sex in front of your children? … [Diana is] an ordinary and pathetic and confessional — I've never had bulimia! I've never had an affair! I've never had a divorce! So I don't think she's better than I am."
Ann Coulter,Right,If those kids had been carrying guns they would have gunned down this one gunman. … Don't pray. Learn to use guns.
Ann Coulter,Right,We were terrified that Jones would settle. It was contrary to our purpose of bringing down the president.
Ann Coulter,Right,Southerners are truly our warrior class.
Ann Coulter,Right,That was the theme of the Million Mom March: I don't need a brain — I've got a womb.
Ann Coulter,Right,"The New York Times is cheering the decision of Mount Holyoke College to stop requiring that students submit their SAT scores for admission, ending what the Times calls ""the tyranny of the big test."" While conceding that the SAT measures ""mental dexterity,"" the editorial complains that the test does not capture qualities such as ""motivation"" or what the student ""learned in high school.""  The SAT also doesn't measure compassion, speed or good looks. It does, however, measure something more than the ability to suck up to your high school teachers and guidance counselors."
Ann Coulter,Right,"It is true that some percentage of bright people really do not test well, but most of the time the only thing about ""common man's intelligence"" that is indubitably true is that it is common. The concept of some ephemeral, elusive nonverbal intelligence simply allows one to impute intelligence to anyone who strikes your fancy. … Eliminating standardized tests allows the cognitive elite to manipulate the soft stuff in ways the less-often-washed cannot. Mount Holyoke has accomplished nothing more than replacing a tyranny of merit with a tyranny of privilege."
Ann Coulter,Right,"In his fawning hagiography of Teddy Kennedy, Clymer wrote that Kennedy's liberal voting record made up for his killing that girl at Chappaquiddick. I didn't believe it either, but Clymer actually wrote: Kennedy's ""achievements as a senator have towered over his time, changing the lives of far more Americans than remember the name Mary Jo Kopechne."" (A review in The Washington Monthly said Clymer's Chappaquiddick section did ""not sugarcoat his subject's flaws."")  This is the way addled liberals really think. Even as they champion sucking the brains out of little babies, they think of themselves as indelibly compassionate because they favor an overweening, behemoth federal government."
Ann Coulter,Right,"The ethic of conservation is the explicit abnegation of man's dominion over the Earth. The lower species are here for our use. God said so: Go forth, be fruitful, multiply, and rape the planet — it's yours. That's our job: drilling, mining and stripping. Sweaters are the anti-Biblical view. Big gas-guzzling cars with phones and CD players and wet bars — that's the Biblical view."
Ann Coulter,Right,"Liberals are always frightened by diversity of opinion. They think a fair way to decide passionately contested issues is for the federal government to issue uncompromising edicts giving liberals everything they want, and then to suppress all criticism of the edicts. The fascistic order, completely supplanting all democratic processes, is then known as a victory for ""choice."" As the Grand Inquisitor said in  The Brothers Karamazov: ""They have vanquished freedom and have done so to make men happy.""  That's what the Supreme Court did in Roe vs. Wade, and has repeatedly done in periodic codicils to its original edict. Just this past term, in Stenberg vs. Carhart, the court expanded the apocryphal abortion right to an all-new right to stick a fork in the head of a half-born baby. The first lunacy keeps being rewritten to give abortion enthusiasts everything they could possibly want."
Ann Coulter,Right,"You remember what a fabulous success court-ordered ""desegregation"" plans have been. Few failures have been more spectacular. Illiterate students knifing one another between acts of sodomy in the stairwell is just one of the many eggs that had to be broken to make the left's omelette of transferring power from states to the federal government."
Ann Coulter,Right,"I think [women] should be armed but should not vote … women have no capacity to understand how money is earned. They have a lot of ideas on how to spend it … it's always more money on education, more money on child care, more money on day care."
Ann Coulter,Right,"God gave us the earth. We have dominion over the plants, the animals, the trees. God said, ""Earth is yours. Take it. Rape it. It's yours."""
Ann Coulter,Right,The presumption of innocence only means you don't go right to jail.
Ann Coulter,Right,"Airports scrupulously apply the same laughably ineffective airport harassment to Suzy Chapstick as to Muslim hijackers. It is preposterous to assume every passenger is a potential crazed homicidal maniac. We know who the homicidal maniacs are. They are the ones cheering and dancing right now.  We should invade their countries, kill their leaders and convert them to Christianity. We weren't punctilious about locating and punishing only Hitler and his top officers. We carpet-bombed German cities; we killed civilians. That's war. And this is war."
Ann Coulter,Right,"After the World Trade Center was bombed by Islamic fundamentalists in 1993, the country quickly chalked it up to a zany one-time attack and five minutes later decided we were all safe again. We weren't. We aren't now. They will strike again. Perhaps they will wait another eight years. But perhaps not.  The enemy is in this country right now. And any terrorists who are not already here are free to immigrate."
Ann Coulter,Right,"Not all Muslims may be terrorists, but all terrorists are Muslims — at least all terrorists capable of assembling a murderous plot against America that leaves 7,000 people dead in under two hours.  How are we to distinguish the peaceful Muslims from the fanatical, homicidal Muslims about to murder thousands of our fellow citizens?"
Ann Coulter,Right,A cruise missile is more important than Head Start.
Ann Coulter,Right,"When contemplating college liberals, you really regret once again that John Walker is not getting the death penalty. We need to execute people like John Walker in order to physically intimidate liberals, by making them realize that they can be killed, too. Otherwise, they will turn out to be outright traitors."
Ann Coulter,Right,"Point one and point two by the end of the week had become official government policy. As for converting them to Christianity, I think it might be a good idea to get them on some sort of hobby other than slaughtering infidels. I mean perhaps that's the Peace Corps, perhaps it's working for Planned Parenthood, but I've never seen the transforming effect of anything like that of Christianity."
Ann Coulter,Right,There are a lot of bad Republicans; there are no good Democrats.
Ann Coulter,Right,My only regret with Timothy McVeigh is he did not go to the New York Times building.
Milo Yiannopoulos,Right,"It’s easy to mock video gamers as dorky loners in yellowing underpants. Indeed, in previous columns, I’ve done it myself. Occasionally at length. But, the more you learn about the latest scandal in the games industry, the more you start to sympathise with the frustrated male stereotype. Because an army of sociopathic feminist programmers and campaigners, abetted by achingly politically correct American tech bloggers, are terrorising the entire community – lying, bullying and manipulating their way around the internet for profit and attention."
Milo Yiannopoulos,Right,"It was perfectly consensual. When I was the 14, I was the predator"
Milo Yiannopoulos,Right,"I would say, that situation I am describing on Joe Rogan show I was very definitely a predator on both occasions. As offensive as some people would find that I don’t much care. That was certainly my experience.The law is probably about right, that’s probably roughly the right age. I think it’s probably about okay, but there are certainly people who are capable of giving consent at a younger age, I certainly consider myself to be one of them You’re misunderstanding what pedophilia means. Pedophilia is not a sexual attraction to somebody 13-years-old who is sexually mature. Pedophilia is attraction to children who have not reached puberty. Pedophilia is attraction to people who don’t have functioning sex organs yet. Who have not gone through puberty.Some of those relationships between younger boys and older men, the sort of coming of age relationships, the relationships in which those older men help those young boys to discover who they are, and give them security and safety and provide them with love and a reliable and sort of a rock where they can’t speak to their parents. You don’t understand what pedophilia is if you are saying I’m defending it because I’m certainly not."
Milo Yiannopoulos,Right,"In the course of my Dangerous Faggot tour, I’ve had my fair share of bans… but here’s one I didn’t see coming. I’ve been banned from San Francisco! Me, the gayest person on the planet. Banned. From San Francisco, the queerest city in America. Apparently I’m just too dangerous of a faggot, even for a city that pumps AZT directly into the water."
Milo Yiannopoulos,Right,"I call myself a Trump-sexual. I have a very antiwhite bedroom policy, but Trump is kind of like the exception to that rule."
Milo Yiannopoulos,Right,"Muslims are allowed to get away with almost anything. They can shut down and intimidate prominent ex-Muslims. They’re allowed to engage in the most brazen anti-semitism, even as they run for office in European left-wing political parties. And, of course, politicians and the media routinely turn a blind eye to the kind of sexism and homophobia that would instantly end the career of a non-Muslim conservative — and perhaps get the latter arrested for hate speech when he dared to object."
Milo Yiannopoulos,Right,"With a little effort, we can help fat people help themselves. But first we have to make sure that ""fat acceptance"", perhaps the most alarming and irresponsible idea to come out of leftist victimhood and grievancean politics, is given the heart attack it deserves."
Milo Yiannopoulos,Right,"One-hundred percent of British Muslims, polled by Gallup... believe that homosexuality is an unacceptable lifestyle choice... and fifty-two percent of those Muslims believe that homosexuality, or homosexual sex rather should be made illegal; that I should go to prison, for my love life."
Milo Yiannopoulos,Right,"I do not support pedophilia. Period. It is a vile and disgusting crime, perhaps the very worst. 6. I did say that there are relationships between younger men and older men that can help a young gay man escape from a lack of support or understanding at home. That's perfectly true and every gay man knows it. But I was not talking about anything illegal and I was not referring to pre-pubescent boys. 7. I said in the same ""Drunken Peasants"" podcast from which the footage is taken that I agree with the current age of consent. 8. I shouldn't have used the word ""boy"" when I talked about those relationships between older men and younger gay men. (I was talking about my own relationship when I was 17 with a man who was 29. The age of consent in the UK is 16.) That was a mistake. Gay men often use the word ""boy"" when they refer to consenting adults. I understand that heterosexual people might not know that, so it was a sloppy choice of words that I regret."
Milo Yiannopoulos,Right,"Stephanie Zvan, ""Nazis, No Platforming, and the Failure of Free Speech."""
Vox Day,Right,"A one-world government is an absolutely terrible concept, because it sets up a system of an ultimate prize to be claimed by the most ruthless, most determined, and most power-hungry individuals. The hypothetical process of getting to that point is bad enough, but if the global governance enthusiasts ever succeed in establishing it, it's going to make the historical institutions of slavery and medieval serfdom look like freedom in comparison. The only peace it will bring to Mankind is the peace of the grave. The most effective way for individual Americans to respond is to continue to insist on the restoration of their Constitution and to remain steadfast in refusing demands that they give up their national sovereignty."
Vox Day,Right,"I am a Christian who wrote a novel in a specific literary tradition. I did not approach the process as a representative of modern evangelical culture, hoping to collect a few crumbs fallen from the medieval feast described in excruciatingly painstaking detail on the secular table, but as one of the legitimate heirs to the literary kingdom who is castigating the usurpers."
Richard Bertrand Spencer,Right,"need to start thinking about a new ethno-state that we would want to be a part of. This is not going to happen in the next election or in the next 10 years probably, but something in the future that would be for our great grandchildren"
Richard Bertrand Spencer,Right,"Martin Luther King Jr., a fraud and degenerate in his life, has become the symbol and cynosure of White Dispossession and the deconstruction of Occidental civilization."
Richard Bertrand Spencer,Right,"Ours, too, should be a declaration of difference and distance—""We hold these truths to be self-evident; that all men are created unequal."" In the wake of the old world, this will be our proposition."
Richard Bertrand Spencer,Right,Identity is the most important question to answer. Who are we racially? Who are we historically? Who are we in terms of our experience? Who are we in terms of our community?
Richard Bertrand Spencer,Right,anime porn—has done more to advance European civilization than the Republican Party.
Richard Bertrand Spencer,Right,A nation based on freedom is just another place to go shopping.
Richard Bertrand Spencer,Right,"Leftists (who sometimes understand us better than we understand ourselves) have always sensed this; they know that when we talk about immigration, we’re not really talking about immigration.For us “immigration” is a proxy for race. In that way, immigration can be good or bad: it can be a conquest (as it seems now) . . . or a European in-gathering, something like White Zionism.  It all depends on the immigrants. And we should open our minds to the positive possibilities of mass immigration from the White world.And when White men talks about “restoring the Constitution”—or, more so, “Taking Our Country Back”— leftists and non-Whites are right to view this as threatening and racialist: it implies a return to origins and that the White man once owned America.Today, in the public imagination, “ethnic-cleansing” has been associated with civil war and mass murder (understandably so).  But this need not be the case.  1919 is a real example of successful ethnic redistribution—done by fiat, we should remember, but done peacefully.The ideal I advocate is the creation of a White Ethno-State on the North American continent.We must give up the false dreams of equality and democracy—not so that we could “wake up"" to reality; reality is boring—but so that we can take up the new dreams of channelling our energies and labor towards the exploration of our universe, towards the fostering of a new people, who are healthier, stronger, more intelligent, more beautiful, more athletic."
Richard Bertrand Spencer,Right,"I wouldn’t want to go back to the old white nationalism when no one was listening to us,” he said recently. “I want to be in a place where our ideas are entering the mainstream.”"
Richard Bertrand Spencer,Right,"Hail Trump! Hail our people! Hail victory!America was, until this last generation, a white country designed for ourselves and our posterity.  It is our creation, it is our inheritance, and it belongs to us.The white race is ""a race that travels forever on an upward path.""To be white is to be a creator, an explorer, a conqueror.""We don’t exploit other groups, we don’t gain anything from their presence. They need us, and not the other way around.I do think we have a psychic connection, or you can say a deeper connection, with Donald Trump in a way that we simply do not have with most Republicans.I think we can be the ones out in front, thinking about those things he hasn't quite grasped yet, who are putting forward policies [that] have a realistic chance of being implemented."
Richard Bertrand Spencer,Right,"As Europeans, we are, uniquely, at the center of history.Think of the concepts that are now designated “problematic” and associated with whiteness -- power, strength, beauty, agency, accomplishment. Whites do and other groups don’t.For us, it is conquer or die. This is a unique burden for the white man, that our fate is entirely in our hands."
Richard Bertrand Spencer,Right,"German National Socialism is a historic movement of the past. It arose at a very particular time and had particular motives and ideas and policies and styles, and those aren’t mine"
Richard Bertrand Spencer,Right,You could say that I am a white Zionist in the sense that I care about my people. I want us to have a secure homeland for us and ourselves. Just like you want a secure homeland in Israel
Richard Bertrand Spencer,Right,"I've been critical of the American founding throughout my career.No individual has a right outside of a collective community. You have rights, not eternally or given by God, or by nature.Ultimately the state gives those right[s] to you. The state is the source of rights, not the individual."
Richard Bertrand Spencer,Right,"Automation...the White Death...deindustrilization. Trump throws bombast and bluster at the problem. Andrew Yang sees the problem for what it is and offers understanding, sympathy, and solutions. Everyone should take this man and his ideas seriously."
Steve Sailer,Right,"Lenin, Stalin, and Mao slaughtered even more tens of millions in the name of equality than Hitler murdered in the name of inequality."
Steve Sailer,Right,"The typical white intellectual considers himself superior to ordinary white people for two contradictory reasons: a] he constantly proclaims belief in human equality, but they don't; b] he has a high IQ, but they don't."
Steve Sailer,Right,"""Racism"" is to the current era what ""unAmericanism"" was to the Fifties: a curse word that provides a handy substitute for logical thought."
Steve Sailer,Right,"America`s perpetual trouble has been a less-productive black minority. Black-white economic inequality is not a problem that America is going to be able to solve any time soon. But, due to our market-dominant majority, our country is rich enough to live with it. In contrast, if our current mass immigration system is allowed to continue, America will become just another country with a market dominant minority. Through government policy, we will have inflicted upon ourselves the kind of ugly society seen in most of the rest of the world."
Steve Sailer,Right,"America`s relatively brief experiment with a generous welfare state was doomed by our African-American population. America tried to import the two fundamentals of the Swedish welfare state—high welfare payments and an end to social disapproval of illegitimacy—beginning about 1961. In parts of the U.S., such as heavily Scandinavian Minnesota, this worked reasonably well. But American voters were confronted with stunning speed with the realization that African-Americans responded differently than Swedes did to the new incentive structures. Welfare allowed much of African-American society to revert to African-style family structures."
Steve Sailer,Right,"Darwin seems to lose out with the public primarily when his supporters force him into a mano-a-mano Thunderdome death match against the Almighty. Most people seem willing to accept Darwinism as long as they don't have to believe in nothing but Darwinism. Thus, the strident tub-thumping for absolute atheism by evolutionary biologists like Richard Dawkins, whom the new issue of Discover Magazine rightly criticizes as ""Darwin's Rottweiler,"" is self-defeating."
Steve Sailer,Right,"What you won't hear, except from me, is that 'Let the good times roll' is an especially risky message for African-Americans. The plain fact is that they tend to possess poorer native judgment than members of better-educated groups. Thus they need stricter moral guidance from society. … In contrast to New Orleans, there was only minimal looting after the horrendous 1995 earthquake in Kobe, Japan — because, when you get down to it, [the] Japanese aren't blacks."
Steve Sailer,Right,"Immigration policy, by its very nature, is about discriminating, about selecting whom we should admit and whom we should keep out. It is one of the fundamental responsibilities of our elected representatives because if they don’t decide, inevitably some private interest is going to decide who gets in."
Steve Sailer,Right,"Just as the managers of a public company have a responsibility to the existing stockholders not to diminish the value of their shares by selling new ones too cheaply to outsiders, our politicians have a moral obligation to the current citizens and their descendents to preserve the scarcity value of their right to live in America."
Steve Sailer,Right,Perhaps the most quoted social philosopher of our time famously asked:
Steve Sailer,Right,"It becoming ever more clear that the combination of racial gaps in IQ and the IQ taboo acts as a black hole that sucks all the intelligence out of an institution. Racial gaps in achievement are the overwhelmingly dominant fact driving school performance, for instance, but nobody is allowed to mention the IQ gap among the races, so misbegotten nonsense rushes in."
Steve Sailer,Right,"Besides the multiculturalist and the assimilationist, there`s a third position that isn`t often invited to the immigration debate: the skeptical realist. On the rare occasions when they are mentioned in polite society, immigration skeptics are dismissed as “extremists“."
Steve Sailer,Right,"As the empirical case for mass immigration has become less plausible, its advocates have increasingly switched to emphasizing their moral superiority: they don`t look out for the general welfare of their fellow citizens, so that makes them better than their fellow citizens."
Steve Sailer,Right,"In the West, we have easier ways now to make a killing than killing. If Sir Francis Drake, the great admiral-pirate of Elizabethan England, were a young man today, would he emigrate to Somalia to get a start in the piracy industry? Of course not. He’d apply for a job at Goldman Sachs."
Steve Sailer,Right,"If somebody invented a magic bullet tomorrow that would somehow eliminate racial IQ disparities among all babies born from now on, measurable (though diminishing) gaps in the total population would still exist until everybody alive today is dead in the 22nd century."
Steve Sailer,Right,"If you analyze a host of real world outcomes using adoption studies, fraternal v. identical twin studies, twins-raised-apart studies, the history of early childhood intervention research, naturally-occurring experiments, differences between societies, changes over history, and so forth, you tend to come up with nature and nurture as being about equally important: maybe fifty-fifty. The glass is roughly half-full and half-empty."
Steve Sailer,Right,Political correctness is a war on noticing.
Steve Sailer,Right,"Privilege is basically a form of property, and as John Locke pointed out, property is what makes a civilization rather than a Libyan war zone of Hobbesian anarchy. The world is a better place when people can work constructively to earn privileges, individual and collective, and pass some of them on to their heirs."
Steve Sailer,Right,To be preyed upon by those stronger than you is bad enough; but to allow your artists and children to be slaughtered and defiled by barely organized foreigners who could be kept out by simple acts of national self-respect is far more shameful.
Steve Sailer,Right,"The governments of Europe are confronting an epochal choice in the Mediterranean. Do they allow Europe to remain on course toward inundation by the African population explosion, inevitably turning Florence into Ferguson and Barcelona into Baltimore?"
Steve Sailer,Right,"Now, you might think that when the old majority becomes a minority, it would then get minority rights. But that’s not how it works. Whites can’t become a certified minority; they will always be the legacy majority. The closer we get to the future when whites are a minority, the more we hear about their ancestors’ sins, their ineradicable hereditary guilt, their corruption of blood."
Steve Sailer,Right,One lesson of Irish history might be that it’s better to tolerate your annoying neighbors rather than bring in people from beyond the seas to help you win your petty domestic disputes.
Stefan Molyneux,Right,"If we could just get people to be nice to their babies for five years straight, that would be it for war, drug abuse, addiction, promiscuity, sexually transmitted diseases, ... Almost all would be completely eliminated, because they all arise from dysfunctional early childhood experiences, which are all run by women"
Alex Jones,Right,There's a war on for your mind!
Alex Jones,Right,"If you are receiving this transmission, you are the resistance."
Alex Jones,Right,"THAT'S THEIR PLEASURE MuHAA, THEIR PLEASURE! Well I'm not gonna give them their pleasure. I'M GONNA CRAM A GUN IN THEIR MOUTH TO SEE HOW THEY LIKE IT! CAUSE I'M FREE! And it's been in my family history to fight! And I'm not your slave, so get it straight and we're ready. YOU CAN NERVE GAS US ALL DAY, WE'RE READY TO ROCK!"
Alex Jones,Right,"I grew up in Dallas, Texas, drinking sodium fluoridated water. All the scientific studies show my IQ has been reduced by at least 20 points. The shadow of who I would have been calls out from the grave."
Alex Jones,Right,"Just men in black uniforms grabbing a fifty five-year-old uh you know woman just choking ah you're gonna learn who we are you're gonna learn to submit the foreign bankers have given us unlimited power and we're gonna rule you this is our country your here and WE'RE GONNA FEED ON YOUR ASS!,  AND THE COPS JUST DRINK FLUORIDE WATER, AHHH THEY TAKE THEIR KIDS AND JUST SHOOT 'EM UP WITH MERCURY and the kids become autistic the cops don't care they're I'm GOING TO THE TIT BAR I don't care if my kids brain-damaged they drink whiskey and wreck and kill everybody in Austin and then when they wreck and kill themselves the cops then go and SWAT team the bar owners that sold them too much whiskey it's your fault you sold too much whiskey to a god. YOU DON'T SELL TOO MUCH WHISKEY TO A GOD! We're God! You understand we roll America; we'll shoot you in the face, we'll bloody your face, and we'll laugh about it because we're weak gang members."
Alex Jones,Right,"And now they love it, they can abuse and beat up everybody and nobody can stop 'em. Nobody can stop 'em! They're having their way with America! They want our guns! And if you're not with 'em cops and military, then you will declare that you are with the Republic now. And don't tell me that I'm a weirdo 'cause I'm upset about this, and I should only go get upset about my favorite football team winning or losing. Listen, I know what tyranny means, I know the bankers are putting poison in our food and water. I know the bankers have stolen 8.5 trillion. I know we're under the War Powers Act. I know they're hurting us, I know they're carrying out New Word Order, I know they staged those terror attacks. You know what it's like to gut up to this and go out every day and go past the peer pressure and come out day one and say 9/11 was an inside job and lose most of the radio stations I was on? You know what it's like to go to sleep every night knowing you work for a bunch of psychotic killers, and you bastards are probably gonna end up killing me one day?! You know what it's like knowing you've ruined my life?! You know what it's like, you sons of bitches?! I'm tired of your crap! You commit evil, you're part of an evil system, and we're standing up against you! And the Republic is going to defeat you in the end! Some of us won't make it personally through this, but a lot of us are. And in the end you are gonna be brought to justice for all the kids you kidnapped for CPS, all you CPS workers, all you corrupt bureaucrats, all of you that've had your way with innocent children over and over again, who think your evil is invincible, you're not invincible and God is gonna deal with you, and you are cursed to hell!"
Alex Jones,Right,I see through your lies Barack Obama you WICKED WICKED DEVIL!
Alex Jones,Right,"I'm like a chimpanzee, in a tree, jumping up and down, warning other chimpanzees when I see a big cat coming through the woods... I'm the weirdo? Because I'm sitting in a tree going ""OOH OOH AAH AAH AAH OOH AAH AAH OOH OOH OOH AAH AAH AAH AAH AAH!""?"
Alex Jones,Right,The reason there are so many gay people now is because it's a chemical warfare operation. I have the government documents where they said they're going to encourage homosexuality with chemicals so people don't have children.
Alex Jones,Right,"Look, when you realize how fake it all is; the football, the basketball, the Lady Gaga, the Justin Bieber—you know, who gives you these carbon tax messages. They tell your kids they gotta love Justin Biebler [sic], and then Biebler [sic] says ""hand in your guns"", ""pass the Cyber Security Act"", and ""the police state is good"", and then your children are turned into a mindless vassals—who now, they look up to some twit, instead of looking up to Thomas Jefferson, or looking up to Nikola Tesla, or looking up to Magellan; I mean, kids, Magellan is a lot cooler than Justin Bieber! He circumnavigated with one ship the entire planet! He was killed by wild natives before they got back to Portugal! And when they got back there was only like eleven people alive of the two hundred and something crew and the entire ship was rotting down to the waterline! That's destiny! That's will! That's striving! That's being a trailblazer and explore! Going into space! Mathematics! Quantum mechanics! The secrets of the universe! It's all there! Life is fiery with its beauty! Its incredible detail! Tuning into it! They wanna shutter your mind, talking about Justin Bieber! It's pure evil! They're taking your intellect, your soul, and giving you Michael Jordan and Bieber. Unlock your human potential! Defeat the globalists who wanna shutter your mind!—Your doorways to perception!—I wanna see you truly live! I wanna see you truly be who you are!"
Alex Jones,Right,"Stop feeling like you don't have power. Stop feeling pathetic and weak. Break out of your television-induced trance. It starts with a war growl. It starts with getting fired up, staring at yourself in the mirror, and showing some teeth, and saying ""I'm a human being. I have dignity. I'm gonna resist. I'm gonna start recognizing the propaganda. I'm gonna break free from it. I'm not gonna fight with my family. I'm gonna organize with my family, and realize we're under attack by the social engineers. And I'm not gonna fight with my neighbors. We're gonna organize. Humanity's gonna come together."" AAAHHH! YAAAHHH! We know we're under attack! We know it! We're breaking the conditioning! YAAAHHH! RAAAHH! We're coming for ya globalist. Coming for ya! Coming for ya! We know what you're doing! I'm sorry. I just get fired up when I think about what they're doing to us and how I wanna resist them, and how easy they are to defeat. Excuse me. I think my testosterone's going up. This happens every time I start working out a lot again. And I, uh, swam two miles this morning pretty hard, and uh, ate a big fat steak steak last night full of horomones, testosterone, on its own right. So I'm going a little bit wild today, excuse me."
Alex Jones,Right,"Scum, nazi, filth, trash, garbage, maggots. We're all ruled by little chicken-neck nellies, going ""Kill everybody! I get off when I talk about cutting people's power off! I'm a nelly!"" RAARGH! Just simpering control freaks, in big nerd packs, taking everything over, ruling everything. Becoming police officers with weapons, tasering us for fun. I've had it with control freaks and scum! You people are cancer! Ugh! Alright, I'm not in a good mood now. I start thinking about Bill Gates, that little chicken-neck, hopping around, little murdering eugenicist. You know how he walks, like a demonic elf. ""I'm Bill Gates! I'm gonna shoot you up with something that's gonna kill you deader than a hammer. How's a 30 year death from gut disease sound, African children? Roll up the sleeves! I'm a little chicken-neck bastard, and nobody's got the will to see what I am!"""
Alex Jones,Right,"I believe from history and my own gut, instinct, that if I go ahead and lay it all out here, what we're really facing, you've got courage and you've got will, and you're gonna get angry and stop caring. It begins with not caring about what your slack-jawed knuckle-dragging cowardly pseudo tough-guy football-watching neighbor thinks. Okay? That's where it begins. It begins with not caring what happens to your individual person. And when you have that attitude, when you have that attitude, then the enemy doesn't have anything over you anymore. Stop being gelded domesticated garbage. Stop being weak! And when you see a threat coming down on you, deal with it! Become a human again! Stop being weak! We have a bunch of criminals coming down on us. God, ugh! Murdering scum. I wanna get humanity awake. I wanna get our forces up. And I wanna bring these people to justice. And you know what I mean. You know what I mean! I wanna unleash humanity, not have a bunch of con artist pot-bellied chicken-neck pieces of garbage running our world! More importantly they act like effeminate cowardly chicken necks cuz they want to train you to act like that they want to train you to be weak they want to train you. That's a nasty taste coming up in my mouth. Tastin' those globalists. I can taste their fear and their weakness. I taste metal, I taste blood."
Alex Jones,Right,"I tell you we're gonna get people awake to you you bastards and we're coming for ya we're coming straight for ya and you know it that's why you're so scared that's why you're moving so fast now, and you just better keep doing that dance, cuz you can feel that flame of rebellion starting to lap up and lick right up there oh yeah oh boy."
Alex Jones,Right,"All the average feds care about is dressing up in black uniforms and having mustaches and starring at people... I know your mustache is cool! You got little gold-framed glasses! You scare me so bad! Ugh... you scum! Scum! ... What's driving me crazy is that photo right there, zoom in on that, it's one of those cops with a black uniform with a mustache. You know that guy is a coward! You know he's a piece of garbage! You know he's weak! Oh! ... Oh, you got a mustache, I'll just worship you. Oh, you got a mustache, it's okay! Ugh, your demonic little mustaches!"
Alex Jones,Right,"Chicken-neck weakness is like a god now. And being totally passive, and being a huge jellyfish slacker who looks like a fried egg in a chair. That is the culture of this, okay? The worship of being destroyed. Literally, I've now discovered the secrets of it. ... And everyone's wearing like pink and little green non-threatening, you know, colors, and this is what we face. This is what men look like now, on average. In fact, I used to bash men who were all into being big and muscular with tattoos and black on and going ""raagh"", now I get it! You don't wanna be like these people! Okay? I used to get mad at guys trying to act tough—no, no! That's good! Do that! In fact, I think I'm gonna just go all out with cut-off sleeves and drive a big fast car and be like ""graagh"", 'cause I mean I'm starting to get it! Men are running to that, because they see the armies... literally men in pastels... Now there's men everywhere wearing dresses, I'm telling you! It's like, they're just like ""New World Order, slaughter me, please!"" And the New World Order is like ""Act like a jellyfish coward and giggle at all reality"", and they're like ""Yes, yes!"""
Alex Jones,Right,"I'm telling you folks, nerds are one of the most dangerous groups in this country, because they end up running things. But they still hate everybody, because they weren't the jocks in high school. So they play little dirty games on everybody. They use their brains to hurt people. And I'm aware of them. OK? I see you, you little rats!"
Alex Jones,Right,How about Prozac? ... The U.S. number one cause of [unnatural] death is suicide now because they give people suicide mass murder pills. ... I want to get people off pills that the insert says will make you commit suicide and kill people! I want to blame the real culprit—suicide pills! Mass murder pills!
Alex Jones,Right,"Hey listen, I'm here to warn people, you keep telling me to shut up! This isn't a game! Okay? Our government, the US, is building FEMA camps. We have an NDAA where they disappear people now. You have this ""arrest for public safety"", life in prison. It's basically off with their heads, disappear 'em, take 'em away. Infowars dot com. Liberty is rising. Liberty is rising! Freedom will not stop! You will not stop freedom! You will not stop the Republic! Humanity is awakening! Infowars dot com! No, you guys are crazy, thinking that the public's too stupid! You're crazy, thinking the public doesn't know! You're crazy, thinking the public isn't waking up!"
Alex Jones,Right,"If I'm in, you know, especially in a poor area, and I see guys walking like they're thugs down the street, I don't care what color they are, I go ""That guy looks like they're a thug, and looks like they're tough, okay... If they try to shake me down I'm gonna ignore them and keep walking, and if they come up to me and try to put a hand on me, I'm gonna punch 'em right in the throat. 'Cause I don't wanna jump on top on of 'em and hurt my knees and stuff, when I slam their head in the ground. Plus, I don't wanna kill 'em. 'Cause then I'd have to go to jail and stuff, and they'd have to find that it was done in self defense. Been down that road."" So, I'm sitting there and I'm thinking, ""Alright. I'm gonna punch this guy in the throat."" I'm thinking how hard am I gonna punch him. And I'm not thinking he's a black guy. I'm thinking the guy's walking like a thug, thinks they're tough, and I'm thinking about how I'm going to defend myself. Just like when I've been at the Coast, a few years ago, and walk out of a restaurant in South Padre and they're having a biker rally—and it wasn't like a nice biker rally, most rallies are nice people—it was like thug wannabes, rode up with a motorcycle...and were looking at me, and I was thinking ""Okay. Alright. That guy is taking his helmet off. I'm gonna punch him in the throat the minute he tries to get up and do something, and then I'm gonna assault those next three guys. Then they'll probably pull a weapon. I need to take that."" I mean, that's what I'm thinking whenever something like that is going on. I can't help it. I'm thinking, ""Alright, I'm ready to kill."" That's just how I am. And I'm thinking, ""Alright. Okay. Instantly assess these guys. These are probably ex-con, real criminals. I've got my three kids here. That gives me, you know, just turbo dinosaur power. And I'm thinking, ""Control yourself. Don't have a fight, unless you absolutely got to."" You know, the man in me is ready to take all on! and... you know what I'm talking about, don't you? ARGH, you scum! I hate gang members and filth! And it has nothing to do with black people. But I will stump your head in if you start a fight with me, you thug scum! Anyways, excuse me ladies and gentlemen."
Alex Jones,Right,"Do you know what goes on at Skull & Bones? I have a family audience, so I can’t say it. They have sexual rituals– some of the most ancient Egyptian rituals– where they believe they are possessed by entities. Basically, space aliens."
Alex Jones,Right,Parasites will be crushed I can taste your weakness crushing crushing crushing.
Alex Jones,Right,"It took me about a year with Sandy Hook to come to grips with the fact that the whole thing was fake. I mean, I couldn't believe it. I knew they jumped on it, used the crisis, hyped it up. But then I did deep research and my gosh, it just pretty much didn't happen."
Alex Jones,Right,"What do you think tap water is? It's a gay bomb, baby. And I'm not saying people didn't naturally have homosexual feelings. I'm not even getting into it, quite frankly. I mean, give me a break. Do you think I'm like, oh, shocked by it, so I'm up here bashing it because I don't like gay people? I don't like 'em putting chemicals in the water that turn the freakin' frogs gay! Do you understand that? I'm sick of being social engineered, it's not funny!"
Alex Jones,Right,"Bernie wants us to live under the heavenly socialist–communist system like China. We never hear the left criticize that Mao Tse-Tung killed over 80 million people—the Chinese government admits—biggest mass murder in history. That's why there's so many liberal trendy places in Austin, in Denver, in New York, in LA, and San Francisco named after Mao. And people go and love play on their iPhones and the free market and their Chinese slave goods, and they drink beer and expensive wine and giggle about how fun it is to wear red stars. You couldn't put more bad luck on you, you couldn't trash your mojo better. Wearing swastika armbands, you stupid snot-nosed crud! That live off the backs of everybody that fought Nazism and Communism. You need to have your jaws broken! Don't you worry, reality is gonna crash in on you, trash! Who lowered our defenses and brought the Republic down; oh, we're already gone! And you celebrate it like you've joined the globalists mounting America's head on the wall, your great victory! A mass rape of women across Europe. The national draft coming in for women! The families falling apart! Women degraded into nothing but sexual objects! ALL in the name of Gloria Steinem and the Central Intelligence Agency program! And a Bernie Sanders with his fake Einstein hair, and his 'I'm a man of the people!' We go out and talk to Bernie Sanders' supporters, they can hardly talk—they're like him—'Free! Free! I want free stuff!' As if the New World Order is gonna give you anything free! Oh, it's free like a piece of cheese. And a little mouse comes out and it smells it and goes to bite it and, WA BAM! Breaks your neck. But your stupider than the little mouse. You can see all the countries and all the people caught in the mouse traps, caught in the big bear traps. You know what you do? You go into a trendy shop. On some capitalist strip. And you go in and you snuggle in with that credit card that daddy put money in for the trust fund. And you put on that little fur-rimmed coat and you're all sexy with your hammer and sickle on, and your Che Guevara and, you know, shirt from Rage Against the Machine, and the whole capitalist record company system selling it to you, and you go out on the street and you walk into McDonald's and you have yourself a double latte, oh yeah. Pathetic! Scum! Oh, how you'll burn in the camps, later. Wishing you had done something; I mean, you are the ultimate chumps, the ultimate buffoons, the ultimate schmucks! ... But the public had so much freedom! They were so wealthy, even our poorest, they had no idea that what they were replacing it with was abject slavery."
Alex Jones,Right,"Imagine you live in a world that's totally plastic. Who are your enemies, if you're evil? The Patriots. We are the future. We are the leaders. WE ARE 1776! We are those that were given the mantle and the birthright by George freakin Washington and Thomas Jefferson. They've taught you to not know who they are, or hate them. No, they were renowned around the world. George Washington for weeks had dysentery and lost about a third of his weight and climbed around in freezing ice with his men where they would go on marches at night and they'd lose 10-15 people just in one battalion freezing to death to at dawn battle the Germans three to one in places like Trenton, in 30 below temperatures and 20+ mile marches, in the dark, with men dying all around them, and George Washington, with diarrhea running out of his pants, on top of that horse, MARCHING TO KICK ASS! MARCHING NOT TO GIVE UP! TAKING ACTION! THAT'S WHO WE COME FROM! And we let all these HUNCHBACK SCUM rule us - I WILL NEVER SUBMIT TO YOU! AND THE HUMAN SPIRIT IS RISING! YOU WILL NOT TURN US INTO ANIMALS! YOU WILL NOT POISON US ANYMORE! - You will NOT kill us! OUR SPIRIT TRANSCENDS ALL YOU'VE DONE TO US!"
Alex Jones,Right,"It’s the Devil. The churches aren’t going to tell you. It is an alien force, not of this world, attacking humanity like the Bible and every ancient text says, and you can read the Bible, it’s hiding in plain view. It’s not of this world. And I don’t know exactly what it is or what it’s doing, but this is not human intelligence, OK? IT'S NOT HUMAN INTELLIGENCE WE""RE FACING! I REFUSE TO FIGHT WITH EVERYBODY. ALL THE STUPID RACIST WHITE PEOPLE, ALL THE STUPID RACIST BLACK PEOPLE, ALL THE STUPID RACIST MEXICANS. ALL OF YOU. I CAN'T STAND YOU, YOU'RE IDIOTS. WE'RE UNDER ATTACK. EVERYBODY'S UNDER ATTACK. The elite hate Trump. Let me tell you, if he is a psy-op, he is the most sophisticated one I ever saw. And even if he is, he is a revelation of the awakening and they have to pull this trick to try to divert us. It doesn’t matter, it’s part of the awakening. Humanity has got to get off-world. We need access to the life-extension technologies. Talk about discrimination, forget skin color. I want the advanced life-extension! I want to go to space! I want to see interdimensional travel! I want what God promised us and I won’t sit here and watch Satan steal it! That’s the fight! That’s the key! That’s everything!"
Alex Jones,Right,"What do I do lord? [in a demonic voice] *""Destroy the child, corrupt them all.""* This is their plan people. These are demons. Just like the Bible says. Basically an intergalactic invasion into this space through people. I...I...I'm telling you it's what the ancients said. It's what they warned of. It's what we're dealing with. They're demons. They're freaking inter dimensional invaders. Okay, i'll just say it. Make fun of me all you want on CNN or whatever but everyone already intimately knows this. These people are not freaking humans, okay. Hillary Clinton is a god damn demon."
Alex Jones,Right,"All I know is, whether they're interdimensional demons, whatever they are-... Let's just say that's an allegory, all I know is it's the same thing. Psychopaths operate, they're not human, I don't like them. Okay?! And my very humanity is like *RAAAAAAA LET'S TAKE THEM ON, WANNA FIGHT? YOU'RE GONNA GET ONE-* .. You.. You inhuman soulless pieces of trash. I see you real good. And I know our species is stronger than you and better than you, we're gonna beat your ass. Get that through your head."
Alex Jones,Right,You're a big fat bully scumbag! And i don't like you!
Alex Jones,Right,"I'm a pioneer, I'm an explorer, I'm a human, and I'm coming. I'm animated, I'm alive, my heart's big, it's got hot blood going through it fast. I like to fight, too! I like to eat! I like to have children! I'm here! I've got a life force: This is a human, this is what we look like, this is what we act like, this what everybody was like before us, this is what I am, I'm a throwback. I'm here! I've got the fire of human liberty! I'm setting fires everywhere, and humans are turning on everywhere."
Alex Jones,Right,"It is surreal to talk about issues, here on air, and then word-for-word hear Trump say it two days later."
Alex Jones,Right,"The West is only a destabilization program right now. We aren’t to that point yet, but in Sweden and Germany and France they’re putting ads on saying, “You are demoralized. You are dead. You are over. Give up to the hijab. Give up to Muhammad and Allah! Allah Akbar! We’re gonna stab your daughter at the mall! We’re gonna to stab your wife, your son, we’re gonna stab you with a butcher knife!” And then the police chief is going to get up and say, “We love our Somalis. We love our Muslims. Oh they’re so good. Oh they’re so sweet.”"
Alex Jones,Right,"I will go to hell before I sit here and watch this country and the world turned over to these savages! I'm done, I'm pissed, and I'm not putting up with it anymore! Let me tell you something, you filthy traitors in the government, you pieces of crap.You are the most degenerate, twisted, mentally ill people I've ever seen, wanting to gang-rape this Republic and this country and the West that has been the literal cornerstone, the absolute jewel in the crown of free Western Renaissance societies and the very best literature, music, technology, science, medicine, culture the world's ever seen!You Satanists wanna to sacrifice the West! You wanna to kill the beautiful goddess that is the West! You people are enemies, and we're going to get your asses, and we know what you're up to, and we're coming for you!"
Alex Jones,Right,"Let me tell all the scum and all the leftists: you’re going to lose all of your jobs soon. The whole mainstream media is dying. We’re going to be in a huge Depression. You’re going to be living in your mothers’ basements. And I hope your little fake liberal culture you’ve got that’s totally fascist and Satanic — I hope it keeps you warm at night because that’s all you’re going to have, and it’s all you’re ever going to have. Okay? I just hope you understand that."
Alex Jones,Right,"Sometimes the VULGOTH, the VULGAR, the BARBARIAN WAY is the way to say it... I want to say something, I'm a lover. And that's why I'm a fighter. And I love my family and I love justice so much I'm willing to do whatever it takes to stop you. And I hate your stinking guts, I can smell you from a thousand miles away, and you smell like failure, you smell like hell, and I want to thank the God of the Universe that I'm not with these people I, oh, I get tears in my eyes to GOD that I'm thankful everyday that I don't come from filth like you that want to trample on humanity, thank God I'm not a degenerate filthy vampire like you. And I guess in the final equation, as upset as I get watching you hurt the innocent; that's what matters is that you'll NEVER, DEFEAT THE HUMAN SPIRIT!  YOU'LL NEVER DEFEAT GOD! YOU'LL NEVER WIN! NEVER! NEVER EVER! NEVER! And the spirit of humanity is rising and it is gonna defeat you. You think you're strong? You think you're scary? You try to mimic what you can only imagine in your mind is God's Wrath and God's Wrath coming for you and you deserve EVERYTHING that happens to you trash... ...the reason the enemy's so mad is he knows he's a loser... ...And this is where we get tested, SO REJOICE TO GOD ALMIGHTY FOR THIS ANIMATING CONTEST OF LIBERTY! AAAAAAGGNNNGGHHHUUUGGHHH."
Alex Jones,Right,"We have scored a direct STAB in those sons of bitches' hearts! We gotta 'er keep runnin' the knife in though folks, gotta keep runnin' it in there, not worrying if they're doing dodges just Raarrrgghh!. You want the fight!? You're getting it! YOU WANTED TO OVERRUN US, AND POISON US, AND TAKE OUR FAMILIES, AND KILL US!?!? YOOOOUUUU WILL DIE, NOT US! YOU ANTI-HUMAN CRAP!"
Alex Jones,Right,THE AGE OF COWARDICE IS COMING TO AN END. THE AGE OF MEN WILL RETURN.
Alex Jones,Right,"I'm never a lesser of two evils person, but with Hillary, there's not even the same universe. She is an abject, psychopathic, demon from Hell that as soon as she gets into power is going to try to destroy the planet. I'm sure of that, and people around her say she's so dark now, and so evil, and so possessed that they are having nightmares, they're freaking out. Folks let me just tell you something, and if media wants to go with this, that's fine. There are dozens of videos and photos of Obama having flies land on him, indoors, at all times of year, and he'll be next to a hundred people and no one has flies on them. Hillary, reportedly, I mean, I was told by people around her that they think she's demon-possessed, okay? I'm just going to go ahead and say it, okay? They said that they're scared. That's why when I see her when kids are by her, I actually get scared myself, with a child -- with that big rubber face and that -- I mean this woman is dangerous, ladies and gentleman. I'm telling you, she is a demon. This is Biblical. She's going to launch a nuclear war. The Russians are scared of her."
Alex Jones,Right,"""She sleeps in the same room with that creepy weirdo woman, Huma Abedin who's mother wears a hood over her head and writes top articles in the world, promoting cutting women's genitals off what the hell? That woman, number ones ugly, and evil, but but imagine if your like ""Oh what does your mom do?"" ""Oh shes a top genital mutilation pusher, I'd be like Ewwww, get the hell away from me, yeah but Hillarys into like  creepy weird sick stuff man, just disgusting with flies all over her big fat stinking. Imagine how bad she smells, man? I'm told her and Obama, just stink, stink, stink, stink. You can't wash that evil off, man. Told there's a rotten smell around Hillary. I'm not kidding, people say, they say -- folks, I've been told this by high up folks. They say listen, Obama and Hillary both smell like sulfur. I never said this because the media will go crazy with it, but I've talked to people that are in protective details, they're scared of her. And they say listen, she's a frickin' demon and she stinks and so does Obama. I go, like what? Sulfur. They smell like Hell."
Alex Jones,Right,"The animated contest of liberty is waiting for you, but you’ve got to take it in your hands. You’ve got to have a will to accept the truth and buck the system and the group collective. Do that and you’ll earn your way to the next level. This is the info war."
Alex Jones,Right,"Aaaeeh aaah MURDER THE CHRISTIANS reeeeuhhhh DESTROY EVERYTHING just rughhh... I mean you know this drunk is bleeeugh but still stumbling forwards, MORE BLOOD loeooaoohh as she falls down, they go our God must be lifted back up guuagh aeeeeeghehhah MORE BLOOD OF THE INNOCENT hahahaha sell the baby parts, arrest the reporters that expose we're keeping babies alive, heat the hospitals with their bodies, have the Pepsi taste testing systems be based on fetal tissue ALL DEMONIC SYSTEMS, GENETICALLY ENGINEER ALL THE CROPS, OVERTHROW CREATION, MORE BLOOD, oaohhgahgh loeooogh. That's Hillary."
Alex Jones,Right,"A coup de grâce. a götterdämmerung battle. oh its a twilight of the gods alright, these would-be gods of the new world order. they're no gods at all. ragnarök."
Alex Jones,Right,"I came knocking on your door a million times, and you laughed at me. You've been in love with something else your whole life, and this is a love-affair. And so, I'm not gonna get in bed with you. Because you don't love the spirit of justice. You loved your father, the Devil. You loved death. More than life. So you go with your father forever. And that's hell - separation from god. You go."
Alex Jones,Right,"Sandy Hook is a synthetic completely fake with actors, in my view, manufactured. I couldn't believe it at first. I knew they had actors there, clearly, but I thought they killed some real kids. And it just shows how bold they are, that they clearly used actors."
Alex Jones,Right,"When I think about all the children Hillary Clinton has personally murdered and chopped up and raped, I have zero fear standing up against her. Yeah, you heard me right. Hillary Clinton has personally murdered children. I just can't hold back the truth anymore. Hillary Clinton is one of the most vicious serial killers the planet's ever seen."
Alex Jones,Right,"In fact, let me say this right now. Let me tell -- I’m not against gay people. OK. I love them, they’re great folks. But Schiff looks like the archetypal cocksucker with those little deer-in-the-headlight eyes and all his stuff. And there’s something about this fairy, hopping around, bossing everybody around, trying to intimidate people like me and you, I want to tell Congressman Schiff and all the rest of them, “Hey listen asshole, quit saying Roger and I” -- and I’ve never used cussing in 22 years but the gloves are off -- “listen you son of a bitch, what the fuck’s your problem? You want to sit here and say that I’m a goddamn, fucking Russian. You get in my face with that I’ll beat your goddamn ass, you son of a bitch. You piece of shit. You fucking goddamn fucker. Listen fuckhead, you have fucking crossed a line. Get that through your goddamn fucking head. Stop pushing your shit. You’re the people that have fucked this country over and gangraped the shit out of it and lost an election. So stop shooting your mouth off claiming I’m the enemy. You got that you goddamn son of a bitch? Fill your hand.” I’m sorry, but I’m done. You start calling me a foreign agent, those are fucking fighting words. Excuse me."
Alex Jones,Right,He’s sucking globalist dick.
Alex Jones,Right,JUST TAKE THE RED PILL PEOPLE!
Alex Jones,Right,It's over for the globalists. BREAK THE CONDITIONING NOW!
Alex Jones,Right,"Whatever they do to me, I'm a man. I'm not sittin' up here like I'm the biggest badass around, but you punch me and I'ma punch back (subdued snarling). And I can sit back and tell you my family name is secured, and I've done the job I'm supposed to do. It's not some power trip, it's just who I am. I look at Stephanopoulos and all these sacks of shit, sittin' there telling us they're gonna leave the country. Listen you son of a bitch. You're scared this country's gon' throw your carpetbaggin' ass out. I see you, you little bloodthirsty maggot. Whatever happens to me I just pray to God you get brought real low. Real low. For what you've done you little son of a bitch. So you understand one thing. There's a real world out there. There's a real God there's a real Devil. For every action there's an equal and opposite reaction. And I want all the little men to know somethin'. You were brought up as pieces of shit. And you thought you could dominate everybody 'cause you were so insecure. And you thought people that were better than you were bad because they were better than you, and they were building a stairway to heaven for you. And so now you've started fights with people, that are gonna break every bone in your body. So when you have metaphysically have had you sternum broken and your ribs broken, and your little neck... Strung up. You remember. You ran into real men. And we kicked your ass."
Alex Jones,Right,"God! These people are so evil! Why can’t America wake up and beat ‘em! Donald Trump’s not perfect but he doesn’t wanna hurt you and your family. “Hillary and Obama want to make you poor and pathetic! We have all their white papers! “They hate you! They hate prosperity! They hate God! They hate children! And god damn them to hell! We’re going to find the lever to beat these people, and they’re gonna be beat! Look at her shark face! Having to look at her with her demon face! [shouts] That’s a freakin’ demon! [shouting] “We’re gonna have President Linda Blair people! [screams] And I’m not gonna go along with it!”"
Alex Jones,Right,"I never expected Trump charging into a goblin’s nest to not get some goblin vomit and schlop and blood on him. I just don’t want to catch him in bed with a goblin. But if he’s in there rolling around hacking ‘em up and he’s got a goblin guide, y’know, taking him into the cave, I’m not expecting him to not get dirty, especially up to his ankles. I don't want to see him kissing goblins, having political succubus with goblins, I don't want to see him ingratiating goblins..."""
Alex Jones,Right,"I CAN'T GO TO HOUSTON WITHOUT THEM COME AFTER MY GENITALS, EH THE TSA PERV"
Alex Jones,Right,"I'm civilized, I don't take a crap in the pool."
Alex Jones,Right,"As giant third world hordes just pour in, raping everyone just Reaghhhhhh, reaghhhh! Just sexualizing our children, ruling everything, debasing the currency, drugging the food and water giving everyone cancer and just dancing to their god of death, selling body parts, chopping up babies that battle the scalpel. I mean it's just... it's just on HELL ON EARTH, THE GATES ARE OPENING. And out will flood the armies..."
Alex Jones,Right,"It's the same story, over and over again! The same dependency, the same slugism, that we see mirrored all around us. Hated by the people, WE BUILD! HATED BY THE PEOPLE WE EMPOWER! HATED BY THE PEOPLE WE'VE GIVEN LIFE TO! HOW DO YOU THINK GOD FEELS!?...they they think they're all in competition with me and all this crap. I'm not in competition with any of you people! I'M IN COMPETITION WITH THE DEVIL. I'M IN A DEATH BATTLE! AND NOW YOU SEE THE ENEMY SAY THEY'RE IN A DEATH BATTLE, THEY KNOW THEY'RE IN A DEATH BATTLE, ONLY THE SPIRIT, OF KNOWING YOU'RE IN A DEATH BATTLE WILL HAVE YOU WIN! I don't know how all this is gonna end, but like I've told 'em a thousand times, YOU WANTED A FIGHT, BETTER BELIEVE YOU'VE GOT ONE. YOU WANT TO ENSLAVE MY SPIRIT, NO! AND I'LL CALL ON GOD TO PROTECT ME, AND USE ME HOWEVER GOD SEES FIT. AND IF I'M DESTROYED AND MY WHOLE FAMILY WITH IT, I DON'T BLAME GOD. I BLAME THE STINKIN' TRASH. WHO WILL PAY. Now. And the devil that deceived them was cast into the lake of fire and brimstone where the beast and the false prophet are, and shall be tormented day and night forever and ever. Tormented by their own spirit."
Alex Jones,Right,"We're turning into a bunch of self-centered walking dead TRASH ,,, and we're such ZOMBIES! We're such self-centered crap that we don't even notice Hell itself rising up against us."
Alex Jones,Right,WHERE IS THE ANIMATED CONTEST OF LIBERTY?
Alex Jones,Right,"Listen bitches, you may force feed Eddie Bravo a bunch of CNN - Fox News shit every morning, but you're fucking getting The Joe Rogan experience up your fucking ass."
Alex Jones,Right,"There are real people. There are people that ain't out to get you and your family. There's real people ready to fight! And all you scumbag pedophiles the rest of ya, you wanna fight!? Get ready, you're gonna get it assholes!...TURNING LOOSE ON 'EM!"
Alex Jones,Right,"All across the world, humanity knows you’re the enemy. We’re going to get you assholes, just know that. It doesn’t mean we’re perfect but we’re not out to screw women and children and hurt people. You understand that, assholes? You hate humanity because you project your own hatred of yourself on us, assholes. You want to kill us, how about you die? Kill your fucking selves you fucking globalists!"
Alex Jones,Right,"Alec Baldwin thinks he is a tough guy, I challenge him a million dollars to the charity he wants to get in the ring with me, bare knuckle. I will, I'll do it right now. I'll get in the ring with you and I will break your jaw, I will knock your teeth out, I will break your nose, and I will break your neck. You coward, you think you're tough guy, messing with little cameramen people. You want to sit there and defame me and the president? Get in the ring with me, I will break your jaw in seconds. I will smash your nose into a bloody pulp, and I will whack your teeth out. My fists are going to bleeding with your teeth marks all over em. You frickin' bully, you coward. I hate you, my listeners hate you and remember that, scumbag, forever. Heh heh heh heh. We're going to defeat this anti-human scum, we're going to wreck their world."
Alex Jones,Right,"Out of the sewer, literal vampire pot bellied goblins are hobbling around coming after us!"
Alex Jones,Right,"You're supposed to get on your knees at midnight or in the early morning and tell God you repent on things you've done. You don't tell in a football stadium, “Mainstream media: you're my God, I am bad, tell me what to do.” That is sick.They're kneeling to political correctness and hating white people. They're kneeling to white genocide --- and then I don't want anybody to be genocided (sic). But everywhere it's: “Kill the whites, kill the whites.” The universities: “No whites can come on campus.” It's a bunch of weird white people going, “We need to kill all the white people.” Just everywhere. Hillary: “We lost because of white people.” It's the most racist, weird, anti-Martin Luther King crap I've ever heard. Martin Luther King  would say, “You people are crazy.”"
Alex Jones,Right,"​​Most of the so-called liberal lesbians and all these groups, they just want to have the guy with the duck's ass haircut and the James Dean outfit. The truth is, James Dean wasn't slapping girls around, but they want to be the ones slapping the girls around. And statistically, it shows it. I'm not blaming all lesbians, but it shows that most of these butch lesbians, they want to be the guy smacking the hot chick around. They think that's manly. And a lot of the chicks, they like it. See, because no man will do that to them. And I'm not saying it's good if a man does that, but some women like it. And if they can't find a man to smack them around, well they found them a girl going to do it real good. Knock them upside their head, and have 50 Shades of Gray about the sexy rich guy that's going to chain you up. Of course, you're going to get chained up one time. They're going to put that devil mask or that piggy mask on. They're going to say, ""Now I'm going to torture you for about six weeks, so start begging for your mommy and your daddy."" That's the liberals. They want to get you in a dungeon. They want to strap you down and take a buzzsaw and cut the top of your head off like a pumpkin and pull it off and get a little spoon and go -- when you're looking in the mirror, this is one thing I know they like to do -- and they go, I'm going to eat your brain now. Let's start -- let's start at the side areas here, because we don't want to take away your sight at the back or your thinking in the front. I'm going to eat your cerebral cortex last, because I've got power. I love Satan, and I'm going to suck you dry, and I'm going to torture you to death."
Alex Jones,Right,What is that joke? What is that? What IS that? What is Hitler? What is Stalin? What is Mao? What is ALL this stuff? What is Venezuela?
Alex Jones,Right,"But just look at [Brian] Stelter again. Put him on screen. I think that's all the broadcast should be, is just a photo of Stelter smiling. Ugh. Ugh. Oh my gosh. Oh, hell on earth. He wants to run your life. He wants to control every aspect of your life because he knows he is a cowardly degenerate sack of anti-human trash. I pledge before my heavenly father that I will resist them every way I can. These people are the literal demon spawn of the pit of hell. Look at him. And you know what, he is better than you if you keep letting him run your life. He runs your kids, he runs the schools, he runs the banks. This guy, this spirit, this smiling, leering devil that thinks you can’t see what he is. He is your enemy. Period. All the narcissistic devil-worshiping filth. I see you enemy. I see you enemy. Enemy. Enemy. You are my enemy. And I swear total resistance to you with everything I’ve got. Disingenuous, fake, false, brokeback, twisted, a defiler, a betrayer, a back stabber, a devil. You will pay. Yeah, you don’t think I see your face, scum? You don’t think I don’t see you, Stelter? I see you, you understand me? I know what you think of me and my family. I see you right back. You understand that? You understand that, Stelter? [Grunting noises] Stelter. You will fall. You will not bring humanity down. God is going to destroy you. Get him off the screen. [Crying] Oh, God, they’re so evil. Just please God, free us from them. They’re drunk on our children's blood for God's sake."
Alex Jones,Right,"Hitler took the guns. Stalin took the guns. Mao took the guns. You know, 'political power grows out of the barrel of a gun.' And then if another crazy person everybody knew was going to attack goes and kills some people and then I'm to blame and all gun owners are to blame? Well, if somebody runs somebody with a car are they all to blame? Or somebody with a baseball bat? This is common sense and you've got a young high school senior teenager cussing to get attention to pull a stunt but none of use are supposed to talk about it because if you respond to him calling you a piece of this or a piece of that or his cohorts calling Dana Loesch a murderer and people are chanting 'burn her', well then you're a bully. That's why CNN wants to use this to kill the First Amendment, not just the Second Amendment! You have YouTube banning videos with guns, with citizens having guns or showing guns, but Hollywood and the video game makers can show all the guns they want. This is an incredibly discriminatory system!"
Alex Jones,Right,Donald Trump shit his fucking pants at the fucking moment of truth and shit all over everybody. That’s my first approximation. I’m not in a fucking cult for Donald Trump. Fuck him. Fuck his family. Fuck all these people.
Alex Jones,Right,"God fucking damn it, man. What the fuck? Is there nobody fucking pure in this goddamn fucking world? See, I’m fucking pissed right now. Syria fought Al Qaeda, they fought ISIS, they fought it all, and now you’ve got [James] Mattis and fucking all these people shitting all over us."
Alex Jones,Right,"They said if you just turn against Trump it would be better, but he was doing good, and that's what makes it so bad... If he had been a piece a crap from the beginning, it wouldn't be so bad. But we made so many sacrifices. And now he's crapping all over us."
Alex Jones,Right,"""There's no video of president Trump sucking a ding dong. And so what if there was, that's a lot better than World War III Owen. I never sucked any ding dongs, but I'll tell ya if they were going to black mail me to start World War III about one, I'd say hey, I sucked a ball golf ball through a frickin garden hose!"
Alex Jones,Right,"I like women, not men! And if I liked men, I’d be proud of it and have a lot of em. But I ain’t never been in bed with no man. I’ve been in bed with probably 300 women."
Alex Jones,Right,"I mean, how do I get a fair trial with stuff like this? I’ve never said this guy’s name. Never said his name, until now. And obviously first it’s ""we don’t know, he’s got gunshot wounds or whatever."" Now it’s, well, apparent suicide.I mean, is there going to be a police investigation? Are they going to look at the surveillance cameras? I mean, what happened to this guy? This whole Sandy Hook thing is, like, really getting even crazier.We have no idea whether he was even murdered at this point. Why would some anti-gun guy do this? This is really sad. My prayers go out to him and his family and we wish for the truth of whatever really happened here to come out. We don’t know yet. And we’ll see the corporate media say outrageous lies, but it’s what they do. And look, the good news of no collusion, the good news that I’m not a Russian agent comes out, and now this happens right on time. Just amazing."
John Derbyshire,Right,"I have never read the Koran and at this point I most likely never shall. It looks really boring. I can’t offer an informed opinion about Islam, any more than 99.9 percent of other Americans can. I certainly don’t wish any harm to Muslims in general. Jolly good luck to them all. Hate? Not here. But it is surely obvious that if you let masses of Muslims settle in your non-Muslim country, you’ve gotten yourself some frictions and problems you didn’t have before. Why bring such troubles on yourself?"
John Derbyshire,Right,"The real menace, the disease eating away at the heart of Western society, is white ethnomasochism: hatred of one’s own type, one’s own race, one’s own ancestors, one’s own parents, one’s own fellow citizens who do not share a bizarrely unreal and idealistic view of human nature."
John Derbyshire,Right,"Starting with the Minnesota twin study thirty-five years ago, and now with a mountain of data from twin, sibling, and adoption studies, we know that pretty much anything you can quantify about human personality, behavior, and intelligence is to some degree heritable, average-average at around the fifty percent level but sometimes much higher. We now in fact have a busy and exciting field of study called “behavioral genetics.” Given that all these traits are heritable, it follows from the ordinary laws of biology that different races will exhibit different statistical profiles on them. That’s not astonishing, mysterious, or horrible: It’s just first-floor-level science."
John Derbyshire,Right,"Universal-suffrage democracy may have been a good idea 120 years ago, when most adults did productive work into their sixties, then died. In today’s top-heavy welfare states, it just empowers tax-eaters to loot the national wealth."
John Derbyshire,Right,"Our universities, after a few aberrant decades of experimenting with open inquiry and the advance of knowledge, have reverted to their medieval purpose (the purpose that Chinese higher education always had): to train an intellectual elite for the propagation and defense of the state ideology. Then it was Christianity (in China, Confucianism); now it is utopian egalitarianism—“political correctness,” the Narrative."
John Derbyshire,Right,"Historians of the future will amuse themselves by coming up with theories to explain why European civilization, at the height of its powers, rich with unparalleled achievements in science, music, art, literature, mathematics, and technology, gave up its lands and its treasures to people for whom those achievements were mere hated tokens of oppression or the impious and superfluous productions of infidels."
John Derbyshire,Right,"These post-Soviet rulers of Russia are certainly very wicked people. They have sucked their country’s precious natural resources out of the ground, sold them on world markets, and pocketed the proceeds, leaving Ivan and Katya to trudge through freezing mud for a lousy wage or starvation-level pension. Are they, though, more wicked than the rulers of the Anglosphere, who have swamped their own people with millions of hesperophobic welfare-dependent foreigners from regions of low mean IQ and high mean criminality — mullahs, muggers, and moochers — just for the satisfaction of humiliating their own domestic enemies? Will they, in the long run, have done more to destroy their nation, than our rulers have done to destroy ours? History will tell."
John Derbyshire,Right,Most people are not intellectuals — a fact that intellectuals have terrible trouble coming to terms with.
John Derbyshire,Right,"Nonmathematical people sometimes ask me, “You know math, huh? Tell me something I’ve always wondered, What is infinity divided by infinity?” I can only reply, “The words you just uttered do not make sense. That was not a mathematical sentence. You spoke of ‘infinity’ as if it were a number. It’s not. You may as well ask, 'What is truth divided by beauty?’ I have no clue. I only know how to divide numbers. ‘Infinity,’ ‘truth,’ ‘beauty’—those are not numbers.”"
John Derbyshire,Right,"Pop culture is filth. It is now completely degenerate. Why do you never hear anyone humming a current pop song any more? Because none of them is hummable, or even worth bothering to remember. What is the main topic on TV sitcoms and ""dramedies""? You know what. Why do you stand in the aisle in Blockbuster muttering to yourself: ""There isn't a single damn movie in here I want to watch""? Because Hollywood produces nothing but crap, crap, crap."
John Derbyshire,Right,"Western culture is in its twilight; there is a dark age ahead; and while college-humanities fads and ""secular-progressive values"" have certainly done much damage, they are symptoms, not causes - fragments of junk sucked into a vacuum. The fundamental reason why so much of our culture is shit - either literally, like Signor Manzoni's masterwork, or figuratively - is exhaustion, cultural exhaustion."
John Derbyshire,Right,"Once this was a nation of farmers, builders, inventors, creators, explorers, and thinkers. Now we are a nation of bubblehead academic poseurs, race-guilt hucksters, and keening middle-class ""victims"" of imaginary wrongs."
John Derbyshire,Right,"The remarkable thing about the Diversity cult is that all the circumstances of the actual human world refute its tenets, wherever we look. I don't think it is an exaggeration to say that there has never been an ideology so heartily and jealously embraced by all the main institutions of a society, that was at the same time so obviously at odds with the evidence of our senses. It is as if the entire Western world had committed itself to the belief that human beings can fly by flapping their arms."
John Derbyshire,Right,"By holding firmly to a pessimistic, realistic view of what is and is not possible in a society of different ethnicities, we might have maintained the principles of a free republic, and saved ourselves much trouble and expense. In the world at large, diversity causes nothing but problems."
John Derbyshire,Right,"The happy talkers tell us that diversity is a boon, making our society stronger and better. Our own lying eyes tell us that it is the source of continual trouble; not merely the solitary ""hunkering down"" that Robert Putnam discovered, but rancor, disorder, litigation, and violence."
John Derbyshire,Right,"After the many hundreds of generations that Australian, East Asian, African, European and indigenous American populations of Homo sapians developed in isolation from each other, in different environments, there ought to be divergence aplenty, though nowhere near to speciation. And so there is. That is why a roomful of Australian aborigines looks nothing like a roomful of Hungarians, and neither looks anything like a roomful of Quechua-speaking South American indigenes."
John Derbyshire,Right,"Human beings are religious. We don't all have to be, any more than we all have to be musical, or athletic, or humorous; but as long as there are human beings, there will be religion to offer warmth to those who can believe its stories and its metaphysics, while those who can't will be left with a paler, colder flame."
John Derbyshire,Right,"All religions look wacky to an unbeliever, even to one who does not, like the celebrity atheists, consider religion a menace. Islam, in its present frustrated state, is doing more harm than most, but that's historically contingent."
John Derbyshire,Right,"Unbelievers may think - all right, we do think - Christianity is only slightly less nutty than Islam; but Christianity is ours. We've got along with it for several centuries; and the relationship between Western unbelievers and Western Christians, if not always polite, is stable and comfortable. Can we fit Islam in like that?"
Mike Cernovich,Right,"I have my disagreements with the alt-right, but let’s get a win for the right in America before hashing it all out. The current attitude on the right is to fight with your own side rather than to give leftists hell. Under that model of politics, men are losing due process rights, the suicide of whites is at a record high, and there are several Islamic terrorist attacks on American soil. Until the right wins for once, I have no interest in arguing with the alt-right or disavowing anyone. Once the right has some actual power, then it will be time to have an ideological civil war. Until then, nah."
Mike Cernovich,Right,"When I said Trump, then given a 1% change of winning the GOP primary, would win the entire election, people called me crazy. Even friends told me to keep my opinions to myself, as clearly I wasn’t smart enough to talk policy. Today those friends are quiet when they need to issue apologies."
Peter Brimelow,Right,Trudeauism: The Highest Form of Liberalism
Peter Brimelow,Right,"Pierre Trudeau was too much of a professional politician to be described as a good man, nor, it can be argued despite much pubilicity to the contrary, was he a particularly clever or even wise one. But he was a great man, perhaps the gratest Canada has produced in this century."
Peter Brimelow,Right,The modern definition of 'racist' is someone who's winning an argument with a liberal.
Arthur Kemp,Right,Those people who occupy a territory determine the nature of the society in that region.
Arthur Kemp,Right,apartheid–to which Afrikaners clung for decades as their only hope and salvation from Third World domination–was in fact an impracticable and unworkable system which led directly to the Afrikaners’ demise as a political force in that country.
Arthur Kemp,Right,"It is said, in fact, that the definition of a white South African is “someone who would rather be murdered in their bed than make it.”"
Arthur Kemp,Right,"Apartheid was based on a fallacy: the fallacy that nonwhites could be used as labor to drive society; that nonwhites could physically form a majority inside South Africa, but that they could not determine the nature of South African society."
Arthur Kemp,Right,"Somehow, white South Africans believed that black labor was like a lawn mower: you could have it around, and when you didn’t need it, you could hide it in its little shed where it would be good and quiet-until you needed it again."
Arthur Kemp,Right,"There are four ways through which a nation's population can vanish: 1. Through obliteration in war; 2. Through their lands being swamped by labor-driven immigration; 3. Through physical mixing with newcomers; and 4. The second and third factors above combined with a decreasing birth rate amongst the original population. Ancient Rome vanished because of the last three factors: now exactly the same scenario is being played out in Western Europe, North America and Australia. Unless checked, the demographic trends show conclusively that Whites will be a minority in all three of these continents by the year 2100. After that, it is only then a question of time and Whites as a racial group will vanish completely."
Arthur Kemp,Right,[History]... is nothing else but the rise and disappearance of races.
Arthur Kemp,Right,...immigration today is a racial issue. It is one which sees masses of non-whites from around the globe immigrating to white countries.
Arthur Kemp,Right,"Unless legal and illegal immigration is halted and reversed, European First World nations across all of Europe from Spain to Russia, North America, Australia and New Zealand — will be destroyed and have their very culture and civilisation changed to that of the Third World. Immigration is now the single most important issue facing all First World nations, and will determine whether Western Civilisation continues to exist or not."
Arthur Kemp,Right,"Afrikaners: The time for white supremacism is gone. You cannot hope to survive while you are so intrinsically entwined with black labour. You used them for everything, even to murdering you and then digging your grave. You cannot survive while every single thing you do, every enterprise, every interaction, every aspect of your lives, is determined by your reliance on black labour. Because, whether you like it or not, black people also have rights, and they have claimed them. You cannot think that you have a right to rule over black people — you do not."
Tommy Robinson,Right,"Every single Muslim watching this... on 7/7 you got away with killing and maiming British citizens... you had better understand that we have built a network from one end of the country to the other end... and the Islamic community will feel the full force of the English Defence League if we see any of our British citizens killed, maimed, or hurt on British soil ever again."
Tommy Robinson,Right,"Islam is not a religion of peace. Islam is fascist and it's violent and we've had enough! They're chopping our soldiers' heads off. This is Islam. That's what we've seen today. They've cut off one of our army's heads off on the streets of London. Our next generation are being taught through schools that Islam is a religion of peace. It's not. It never has been. What you saw today is Islam. Everyone's had enough. There has to be a reaction, for the government to listen, for the police to listen, to understand how angry this British public are."
Tommy Robinson,Right,Since last night I've had countless threats to cut my head off. I have [contacted] police over 200 death threats. No arrests.
Tommy Robinson,Right,"We need strong leadership, not cowards who are begging petrol dollars and wanting a block Islamic vote. We need a leader not an appeaser. I'd rather die on my feet than live on my knees. Stand up for what u believe. Never be intimidated by anyone #english #nosurrender."
Tommy Robinson,Right,Nazism and Islamism are on the opposite sides of the same coin – we oppose both. Nazism has been defeated and Islamism is spreading across the country.
Tommy Robinson,Right,Islam is not a religion of peace; it never has been and never will be.
Tommy Robinson,Right,We need a new England where all religions and colours feel proud of our flag and recognise how important our identity and culture is.
Tommy Robinson,Right,"If Islam is this ""religion of peace"", why is everyone so scared?"
Tommy Robinson,Right,"We are offered silence, free speech is all but dead in Europe. We live in a post free speech era, the attacks on Charlie Hebdo have proven that to the whole world."
Tommy Robinson,Right,"I had some left wing fella ask me this, he started asking me my views on most things. I'm liberal in many senses, like when it comes to (probably not when I was younger) when it comes to gay people's rights I fight for a gay man's rights – so on all of these issues, as I've grown up, I said,... when people say that I'm far right, well what makes me right wing? Am I right wing just because I don't like Islam? Does that make me right wing just because I don't like a fascist ideology? If I didn't like scientology, does that make me right wing? No, it's an ideology. So I said like, ""most of  my views, they're very liberal – many of them would be left-wing""."
Tommy Robinson,Right,Islam is not up for reform or negotiation – so we have no other choice than to fight it.
Tommy Robinson,Right,"The reality is this is a war. These people are waging war on us. This has gone on for 1,400 years. This is nothing new. And the whole time while this goes on, the police leaders or political leaders want to invite more! They want to invite more!"
Tommy Robinson,Right,"No matter how [haram terrorists'] life has been, if they wanna get to heaven, they just have to kill non-Muslims in a holy jihad. That's all they have to do, then they get to heaven. It's like an easy ""card out"" for Muslims who've behaved badly their whole life. And we've seen this time and time again with the terrorists that we find. They say, ""He wasn't a practicing Muslim"". No, but because of the scripture in Islam, he genuinely believes he is going to eternal hell fire for the life that he's lived. He sees going and running down 20 or 40 people, and killing coppers, and killing innocent people, he sees that as a ""get out"" because of the scripture in Islam. That's why."
Tommy Robinson,Right,"The last thing we want is a war in this country, but it is the inevitable outcome for the way the country is going. Now, the British people are not going to sit back and take much more."
Tommy Robinson,Right,"Previous prime ministers, be it William Gladstone who said, 'There will never be peace on this earth as long as we have the Koran, it's an accursed and violent book.' Then we have Winston Churchill who said, 'Islam in a man is like rabies in a dog.' And then we have David Cameron, who says Islam is a religion of peace. What's changed? Because the [Koran] hasn't changed."
Tommy Robinson,Right,"As a father, I have serious concerns about what life will be like for my kids, if I'm even here. Am I scared of the death threats, and people who want to kill me and the attacks against me, etc? Yeah, I am. Of course, I am. I wouldn't be human if I wasn't. But I am terrified for the entire next generation of this country, and its history, its culture, its identity – it's all under attack."
Raheem Kassam,Right,"Insulting the hijab is also hardly Islamophobic. Indeed many in the West see the hijab as a symbol of oppression against women, and in opposing it are simply standing up for classical liberal, Western values."
Raheem Kassam,Right,"All across the continent of Europe, and more recently in the United States, we have seen acts of the most heinous depravity and barbarity committed in the name of this religion. All the while, the reformist and moderating voices are shut down by hard-line Sunnis and their useful idiot, fellow travellers. Groups like the Soros-funded Hope not Hate demonise even practising Muslims for daring to oppose Shariah law."
Raheem Kassam,Right,"Mrs. May knows that with her current, slim majority in Parliament, she is at the behest of the hard Brexiteers who could easily mount a coup against her, defying the party whip, and may be even worse, if she demurs from her short-lived mantra of “Brexit means Brexit”. And you don’t need to fall for it or worry about it either. Look at the mathematics of a parliamentary election, before you head down into the comments and start screaming, “But Corbyn doesn’t want ANY Brexit! She’s our only hope!” The fact is you’re going to end up with her anyway. There’s no chance Corbyn and this fantasy “coalition of chaos” comes to pass, given the situation up and down the country. It’s a magnificent, though somewhat predictable, piece of Tory electioneering. But that’s all it is."
Raheem Kassam,Right,"UKIP’s manifesto was a rehash of its 2015 offering. Which was good, but there was barely anything for us to sink our teeth into. Burka ban? Great. I had it in my leadership manifesto last year. But let’s face it, the people keen on such a thing would have probably voted UKIP anyway. Where were the new, flatter tax plans? Where was the digital strategy? Where were the “wedge issue” moments that drew a distinction between the political establishment and the insurgent populist party? I didn’t see any."
Raheem Kassam,Right,"The Brazilians have already elected a Trumpian nationalist. So too the Hungarians, Poles, Austrians, and Italians. If the world is indeed watching America, it looks like they’re learning from Trump rather than staring wide-eyed into a concocted vacuum of leadership."
Ted Malloch,Right,Profit doesn’t appear as the goal but as a side effect of pursuing motivating principles.
Ted Malloch,Right,An exercise of moral imagination helps companies further goals of its members.
Ted Malloch,Right,The free economy is not the enemy but the friend of social capital.
Ted Malloch,Right,Long-term success depends upon trust.
Ted Malloch,Right,Myth: There’s conflict between selfish free markets and a benevolent world of human sympathy.
Ted Malloch,Right,The moral sentiments that constrain economic life also promote it.
Ted Malloch,Right,There’s such a thing as spiritual capital that has economic function and potential.
Ted Malloch,Right,Business is the real test of the moral life.
Ted Malloch,Right,We prepare for success by acquiring virtues.
Ted Malloch,Right,The business virtue par excellence is honesty—without it markets can’t long survive.
Ted Malloch,Right,"When all benefits are promised by the state, nobody need feel grateful for them."
Ted Malloch,Right,Capitalism is about the mutual creation of wealth rather than the pillaging of it.
Ted Malloch,Right,Attempts to secure an equal outcome always require unequal treatment of individuals.
Ted Malloch,Right,Discipline is the virtue that begins in obedience and flowers in self-control.
Ted Malloch,Right,Caring for God’s endowment in a thrifty fashion is a form of biblical obedience.
Ted Malloch,Right,"Three cardinal virtues of business: creativity, building community, practical realism."
Ted Malloch,Right,The laws of economic life are subject to the eternal laws of spiritual capital.
Ted Malloch,Right,Spiritual entrepreneurship is the unsung route to growth in the modern economy.
Ted Malloch,Right,"When people freely identify with their work and find themselves through it, excellence follows."
Ted Malloch,Right,"Profitability is the consequence of doing business in the right way, to honor God."
Ted Malloch,Right,"And the first question for a leader is: ""Who do we intend to be?"" not “What are we going to do?”"
Ted Malloch,Right,"Leadership, in other words, is a matter of character, not goals."
Ted Malloch,Right,"Perhaps the most eloquent of the hard virtues is courage, the disposition to encounter adversity head-on and strive to overcome it."
Ted Malloch,Right,Courage… is not a selfish attribute: it is only possible if you are pursuing a wider and more worthy goal.
Ted Malloch,Right,Faith engenders courage; and also requires it.
Ted Malloch,Right,Success comes because you have found your ecological niche and can flourish by doing your own valuable thing.
Ted Malloch,Right,"The humble person who confesses his faults and duly atones for them is the one best equipped to manage defeat, accept his own losses, and to overcome the setbacks that are the routine cost of doing business."
Ted Malloch,Right,"But we should see gratitude in the whole context of life, and ask ourselves that life is changed and empowered by it."
Ted Malloch,Right,Taking faith seriously leads to the utility of altruistic behavior.
Ted Malloch,Right,One runs a business ultimately to do well so you can do good for everyone.
Ted Malloch,Right,"Adam Smith’s image of competition in the marketplace was intended as an adjunct to his detailed description of human motivation in The Theory of Moral Sentiments, in which the pursuit of profit is tempered at every juncture by sympathy and benevolence, and by the posture of the “impartial spectator” which is forced on us by our moral nature."
Ted Malloch,Right,"In the new conditions created by the global economy, the information revolution and the growth of smart technologies, it is more necessary than ever for all companies to be guided by their rich spiritual inheritance, as spiritual enterprises."
Ted Malloch,Right,Europe is full of ‘Last men’
Ted Malloch,Right,"what can only be termed, a self-imposed European death wish."
Ted Malloch,Right,"Make no mistake this is nothing less than the utter and complete transformation of Europe into Eurabia, a cultural and political appendage of the Arab and Afro/Muslim world. This Eurabia is fundamentally anti-Christian, anti-Western, anti-American, and anti-Semitic."
Ted Malloch,Right,"And with every passing day, we see the further demise of the West, the onslaught of Eurabia (which could not be won at the gates of Vienna in 1683) and the nihilism — of the Last man."
Jerome Corsi,Right,"After he married TerRAHsa[sic], didn't John Kerry begin practicing Judiasm[sic]? He also has paternal grandparents that were Jewish. What religion is John Kerry?"
Jerome Corsi,Right,"Isn't the Democratic Party the official SODOMIZER PROTECTION ASSOCIATION of AMERICA -- oh, I forgot, it was just an accident that Clintoon's[sic] first act in office was to promote ""gays in the military."" RAGHEADS are Boy-Bumpers as clearly as they are Women-Haters -- it all goes together."
Jerome Corsi,Right,When is this guy going to admit he's simply an anti-American communist? Won't he and his leftist wife simply go away???? Enough already.
Jerome Corsi,Right,An atomic Iran is imminent … mullahs may have bomb by June.
Jerome Corsi,Right,"Secretly, the Bush administration is pursuing a policy to expand NAFTA politically, setting the stage for a North American Union designed to encompass the U.S., Canada, and Mexico. What the Bush administration truly wants is the free, unimpeded movement of people across open borders with Mexico and Canada."
Jerome Corsi,Right,This was the first time WND had found a major intellectual leader behind the push to integrate North America suggesting that a crisis of 9-11 proportions might be just what was needed to advance the process toward establishing a North American Union and the amero.
Jerome Corsi,Right,"Our founding fathers knew that if we went this direction, there was no more moral compass and you won’t be able to explain to your children — you’ll have to face the fact that we lost holding the line on one of the most principle issues in the Bible, and that is sex is not about fun. If you want to have fun, read a book, go see a movie. Sex is about the procreation of children. It’s a sacred responsibility that is meant by God to have men and women commit their lifetime to children."
Daniel Drezner,Right,"Paul Krugman is a very smart and very annoying person. Over the past few years he's been hammering away at political and economic advocates for austerity policies with unmitigated glee and derision. He does so with a brio and condescension that some people can find off-putting -- but that doesn't mean that he's wrong. …  Look, I think Paul Krugman has a few policy blind spots. His method of argumentation alienates as many people as it attracts. But he's not wrong when he's talking about austerity. In his response, Michael Kinsley has managed to embody the conventional wisdom in Washington -- and in doing so, embody every policy caricature of Paul Krugman's worldview."
Daniel Drezner,Right,"As we ambled along, the sheer professionalism of our tour guide struck me. Her task was not an easy one. She had to provide a veritable font of Elvis knowledge to all of the intense devotees. At the same time, she also had to acknowledge the absurdist nature of the experience for of the rest of the tour group.With subtle changes in her facial expressions and slight adjustments in her tone of voice, our guide accomplished her task brilliantly. At no point in time did she diminish Elvis in the eyes of his devout followers. Still, I believe everyone left Graceland that day thoroughly satisfied with their visit."
Lou Dobbs,Right,"While the president pleased few of his supporters, if any, Nancy Pelosi, Chuck Schumer and the radical Dems [are] taking victory laps within minutes of the president’s 18-minute announcementAnd the illegal immigrants are surely pleased at the prospect they may soon jump to the front of the line while legal immigrants aren't even part of the discussion in the nation's capital"
Lou Dobbs,Right,"This is nothing but a political persecution. It`s not even an investigation.  This is purely and straightforwardly an assault. I want to talk about what these lazy, indolent, passive son of a guns can do on a declaration of war against the radical dems against the president and the American republic."
Lou Dobbs,Right,"What I fear is a new direction for the president and his administration and what could very likely be a catastrophe for the working men and women, small business and entrepreneurs, our middle class, the American family, the very people this president has represented from the moment he announced he would run for the presidency.That Mr. Trump would advance the interest of the globalist elites ahead of our citizens would be a tragic reversal on any day,But today, on the same day the Commerce Department reported the United States had the largest trade deficit in our history ... it all means the White House has simply lost its way.The nation’s heart will be, after all, broken by the very same people who brought 50 years of consecutive trade deficit and the export of millions of middle-class jobs and who have fed the swamp for decades"
Pamela Geller,Right,"I will say that the Muslim terrorists were practicing pure Islam, original Islam."
Pamela Geller,Right,"Islam is the most antisemitic, genocidal ideology in the world."
Pamela Geller,Right,I believe most Muslims are secular. I don't believe that most Muslims subscribe to devout fundamentalist Islam by any stretch of the imagination. And we need the secular Muslims to win the battle for the reformation of Islam.
Pamela Geller,Right,"Never, ever retract. The smell of weakness is like blood to sharks."
Pamela Geller,Right,"Do not think for one second that what you do is not important. Do not believe one second that individual can't change the course of human events, because individual can and does and will change the course of human events."
Robert Spencer,Right,"I have never said that the terrorists' interpretation of Islam is the accurate or correct one. But I have pointed out that the terrorists portray themselves quite successfully among Muslims as the exponents of true and pure Islam, and moderates have mounted no successful response as yet."
Robert Spencer,Right,"I was surprised to see that there was indeed religiously sanctioned violence in it, as well as some others things which I found disturbing. But it was all intriguing, because I was entranced by the shorter, poetic chapters. I thought it very striking that this beauty could co-exist with clear mandates for warfare and violence against unbelievers."
Robert Spencer,Right,"Here’s why the life of Muhammad [and Jesus] matters: Contrary to what many secularists would have us believe, religions are not entirely determined (or distorted) by the faithful over time. The lives and words of the founders remain central, no matter how long ago they lived. The idea that believers shape religion is derived, instead, from the fashionable 1960s philosophy of deconstructionism, which teaches that written words have no meaning other than that given to them by the reader. Equally important, it follows that if the reader alone finds meaning, there can be no truth (and certainly no religious truth); one person’s meaning is equal to another’s. Ultimately, according to deconstructionism, we all create our own set of “truths,” none better, or worse than any other. Yet for the religious man or woman on the streets of Chicago, Rome, Jerusalem, Damascus, Calcutta, and Bangkok, the words of Jesus, Moses, Muhammad, Krishna, and Buddha mean something far greater than any individual’s rendering of them. And even to the less-than-devout reader, the words of these great religious leaders are clearly not equal in their meaning."
Robert Spencer,Right,"Europe could be Islamic by the end of the twenty-first century. … Will tourists in Paris in the year 2015 take a moment to visit the ""mosque of Notre Dame"" and the ""Eiffel Minaret?"" Through massive immigration and official dhimmitude from European leaders, Muslims are accomplishing today what they have failed to do at the time of the Crusaders: conquer Europe. If demographic trends continue, France, Holland, and other Western European nations could have Muslim majorities by middle of this century. … What Europe has long sown it is now reaping. In her book Eurabia, Bat Ye'or, the pioneering historian of dhimmitude, chronicles how this has come to pass. Europe, she explains, began thirty years ago to travel down a path of appeasement, accommodation, and cultural abdication in pursuit of shortsighted political and economic benefits. She observes that today, ""Europe has evolved from a Judeo-Christian civilization, with important post-Enlightenment/secular elements, to a 'civilization of dhimmitude,' i.e., Eurabia: a secular-Muslim transitional society with its traditional Judeo-Christian mores rapidly disappearing."" … France and Germany have pursued a different strategy, attempting to establish the European Union as a global counterweight of the United States—a strategy that involves close cooperation with the Arab League."
Robert Spencer,Right,"I have long contended that Islam is unique among the major world religions in having a developed doctrine, theology, and legal system mandating warfare against and the subjugation of unbelievers. There is no orthodox sect or school of Islam that teaches that Muslims must coexist peacefully as equals with non-Muslims on an indefinite basis. I use the term “radical Islam” merely to distinguish those Muslims who are actively working to advance this subjugation from the many millions who are not, as well as to emphasize that the stealth jihad program is truly radical: it aims at nothing less than the transformation of American society and the imposition of Islamic law here, subjugating women and non-Muslims to the status of legal inferiors."
Robert Spencer,Right,They [Americans] have something worth defending...they need to defend it properly from the foe that most people are afraid even to name.  How can you possibly fight an enemy when you're afraid to identify him?
Robert Spencer,Right,"The name Muhammad actually appears in the Qur'an only four times, and in three of those instances it could be used as a title – the ""praised one"" or ""chosen one"" – rather than as a proper name."
Robert Spencer,Right,"Islamic apologists in the West argue furiously that child marriage has nothing to do with Islam, and that the idea that Muhammad married a child is the invention of greasy Islamophobes. In reality, few things are more abundantly attested in Islamic law than the permissibility of child marriage."
Robert Spencer,Right,"We are truly in a battle for our very lives not just in the sense that they will kill us if they can, but in the sense that life itself is being challenged, that it's life versus death, you either love life or you love death, creation versus destruction, love versus hatred, that's what this is about. And so, when we see the Islamic State (ISIS), we see not only that they embody Islam as I have explained here in this, that's all in the Quran what they do, but also that they embody what may be, the foremost evil force that the world has ever seen."
Robert Spencer,Right,"Most local imams in Dagestan shun radical views, but they have found it hard to counter the appeal of radical ideas promoted by the Islamic State. Some imams who spoke against radical Islam have been killed.” Why have they “found it hard to counter the appeal of radical ideas promoted by the Islamic State”? To Western leaders such as David Cameron, John Kerry, Joe Biden, Pope Francis, the U.S. Catholic bishops, and a host of others, it is patently obvious that the Qur’an teaches peace and that Islam is a religion of peace. So it ought to be child’s play for these imams in Dagestan to refute the twisted, hijacked version of Islam presented by the Islamic State. Here’s an idea: why doesn’t Barack Obama send Kerry to Dagestan to explain to young Muslims how the Islamic State is misunderstanding and misrepresenting Islam? Or maybe Pope Francis could go there, or he could send some Arabic-speaking Eastern Catholic bishop — say, one who knows that Islam is at its core a peaceful religion and who moves actively to silence and ostracize those who say otherwise — to the Islamic State, straight to Raqqa, to explain to the caliph how he is misunderstanding Islam. That would clear up this problem in a hurry. I volunteer to pay the bishop’s airfare."
Robert Spencer,Right,"The myth that poverty causes terrorism. In reality, study after study has shown that jihadists are not poor and bereft of economic opportunities, but generally wealthier and better educated than their peers. CNS noted that “according to a Rand Corporation report on counterterrorism, prepared for the Office of the Secretary of Defense in 2009, ‘Terrorists are not particularly impoverished, uneducated, or afflicted by mental disease. Demographically, their most important characteristic is normalcy (within their environment). Terrorist leaders actually tend to come from relatively privileged backgrounds.’ One of the authors of the RAND report, Darcy Noricks, also found that according to a number of academic studies, ‘Terrorists turn out to be more rather than less educated than the general population.’”"
Robert Spencer,Right,"It is no surprise that the Washington Post is thrilled about Khizr Khan’s “brutal repudiation of Donald Trump,” even though Khan, not quite accurately, claims that Trump wants to “ban us from this country.” Trump has said nothing about banning Muslim citizens of the U.S. from the country, only about a temporary moratorium on immigration from terror states. In any case, all the effusive praise being showered on Khizr Khan today overlooks one central point: he is one man. His family is one family. There are no doubt many others like his, but this fact does not mean that there is no jihad, or that all Muslims in the U.S. are loyal citizens."
Robert Spencer,Right,"It isn’t surprising that Trump would be reading Jihad Watch. ... What makes this striking is that Trump made no secret of reading this site, unlike numerous others who are so afraid of the politically correct thought police that they read it in secret — even back when I was giving seminars for the U.S. military on the terrorist mindset, one colonel urged me not to say that I had been there, so afraid was he of Hamas-linked CAIR. It’s long past time to stop that kind of kowtowing. Those of us who are defending human rights against jihad terror and Sharia oppression have nothing to feel guilty about or ashamed of, and must not accept the enemy characterization of us, as that characterization itself is just a weapon in their arsenal and an attempt to clear away opposition to jihad and Sharia. It’s good news that the corrupt media is being passed over in favor of the truth tellers. Kudos to Trump for not bowing to the self-appointed arbiters of acceptable opinion."
Robert Spencer,Right,"This book represents the crown and summit of everything I have to say that anyone who doesn’t know me personally may care to listen to. I’ve written a guide to the Qur’an and a biography of Muhammad, and with this book, the case is complete—that is, the case that there are elements within Islam that pose a challenge to free societies, and that free people need to pay attention to this fact before it is, quite literally, too late. It is necessary for me to repeat yet again that this does not mean that every individual Muslim, or any given Muslim, embodies that challenge and is posing it individually, but as this book makes clear, the Islamic jihad imperative remains regardless of whether or not any Muslim individual decides to take it up."
Robert Spencer,Right,"The government of Myanmar denied committing any atrocities against the Rohingyas, asserting that many widely reported incidents had been fabricated, but the media generally brushed aside these denials. Few news outlets reported that the conflict had intensified in the summer and fall of 2017 because of an August 2017 jihad attack on Myanmar police and border posts. And hardly any news reports informed the public about the roots of the conflict: the Rohingya Muslims had actually been waging jihad against the Buddhists of Myanmar for nearly two centuries... In 1942, the British armed the Rohingyas to fight the Japanese, but the Rohingyas instead turned their weapons on the Buddhists, destroying whole villages, as well as Buddhist monasteries. When the British withdrew that same year in the face of the Japanese advance, the Rohingyas set upon the Buddhists of Arakan in force, killing at least 20,000... But for the media, the crisis in Myanmar was simply a matter of “anti-Muslim bigotry”..."
Stephen Miller,Right,Am I the only one who is sick and tired of being told to pick up my trash when we have plenty of janitors who are paid to do it for us.
Stephen Miller,Right,"One way in which feminists try to remedy the disparity is to legally mandate paid leave for female employees who give birth, even if a company is struggling to stay afloat. Such laws provide powerful incentives for bosses-male or female-not to hire women to begin with. Of course, it's easy to support such legislation until you end up getting laid off because your boss was losing too much money by paying absent employees."
Stephen Miller,Right,"Shows like Queer As Folk, The ""L"" Word, Will & Grace and Sex and the City, all do their part to promote alternative lifestyles and erode traditional values."
Karl Hess,Right,I would remind you that extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice.And let me remind you also that moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue.
Karl Hess,Right,"We have the illusion of freedom only because so few ever try to exercise it. Try it sometime. Try to save your home from the highway crowd, or to work a trade without the approval of the goons, or to open a little business without a permit, or to grow a crop without a quota, or to educate your child the way you want to, or to not have a child. We all have the freedom of a balloon floating in a pin factory."
Karl Hess,Right,"Laissez-faire capitalism, or anarchocapitalism, is simply the economic form of the libertarian ethic.  Laissez-faire capitalism encompasses the notion that men should exchange goods and services, without regulation, solely on the basis of value for value.  It recognizes charity and communal enterprises as voluntary versions of this same ethic.  Such a system would be straight barter, except for the widely felt need for a division of labor in which men, voluntarily, accept value tokens such as cash and credit.  Economically, this system is anarchy, and proudly so."
Karl Hess,Right,"Whenever you put your faith in big government for any reason, sooner or later you wind up an apologist for mass murder."
Karl Hess,Right,Radical and revolutionary movements seek not to revise but to revoke. The target of revocation should be obvious. The target is politics itself.”
Karl Hess,Right,"Big business in America today and for some years has been openly at war with competition and, thus, at war with laissez-faire capitalism. ... The left's attack on corporate capitalism is, when examined, an attack on economic forms possible only in collusion between authoritarian government and bureaucratized, nonentrepreneurial business. It is unfortunate that many New Leftists are so uncritical as to accept this premise as indicating that all forms of capitalism are bad..."
Karl Hess,Right,Libertarianism is rejected by the modern left — which preaches individualism but practices collectivism. Capitalism is rejected by the modern right-which preaches enterprise but practices protectionism.
Karl Hess,Right,"Libertarianism is clearly the most, perhaps the only truly radical movement in America.  It grasps the problems of society by the roots.  It is not reformist in any sense.  It is revolutionary in every sense."
Karl Hess,Right,"The truth, of course, is that libertarianism wants to advance principles of property but that it in no way wishes to defend, willy nilly, all property which now is called private.Much of that property is stolen.  Much is of dubious title.  All of it is deeply intertwined with an immoral, coercive state system which has condoned, built on, and profited from slavery; has expanded through and exploited a brutal and aggressive imperial and colonial foreign policy, and continues to hold the people in a roughly serf–master relationship to political–economic power concentrations."
Karl Hess,Right,"Libertarians are concerned, first and foremost, with that most valuable of properties, the life of each individual.  …  Property rights pertaining to material objects are seen by libertarians as stemming from and…secondary to the right to own, direct, and enjoy one’s own life and those appurtenances thereto which may be acquired without coercion."
Karl Hess,Right,"Libertarians, in short, simply do not believe that theft is proper whether it is committed in the name of a state, a class, a crises, a credo, or a cliche.This is a far cry from sharing common ground with those who want to create a society in which super capitalists are free to amass vast holdings and who say that that is ultimately the most important purpose of freedom."
Karl Hess,Right,"Libertarianism is a people's movement and a liberation movement.  It seeks the sort of open, non-coercive society in which the people, the living, free, distinct people may voluntarily associate, dis-associate, and, as they see fit, participate in the decisions affecting their lives.  This means a truly free market in everything from ideas to idiosyncrasies.  It means people free collectively to organize the resources of their immediate community or individualistically to organize them; it means the freedom to have a community-based and supported judiciary where wanted, none where not, or private arbitration services where that is seen as most desirable.  The same with police.  The same with schools, hospitals, factories, farms, laboratories, parks, and pensions.  Liberty means the right to shape your own institutions.  It opposes the right of those institutions to shape you simply because of accreted power or gerontological status."
Karl Hess,Right,"There is scarcely anything radical about, for instance, those who say that the poor should have a larger share of the Federal budget.  That is reactionary, asking that the institution of state theft be made merely more palatable by distributing its loot to more sympathetic persons."
Karl Hess,Right,"Well, it's hard to tell on the basis of the Party's rhetoric, after all they're running for state office, but my experience is that most people who are in the Libertarian Party have pretty decent anarchist impulses, even if they do not say they are anarchists—most of them will say they are libertarians, at any rate.And one thing that is useful is that they have a fairly well-refined analysis of why they aren't conservative.  It took the New Left to do a proper analysis on American liberals, it seems to me, and I suspect that the libertarians are doing the best analysis of American conservatives.I think that they are quite good people, and that the Party contains within it probably more people of an anarchist tendency than any other organisation in the country."
Karl Hess,Right,"[A]fter I got evicted from the Republican Party, I began reading considerably more of the works of American anarchists, thanks largely to Murray Rothbard…and I was just amazed.When I read Emma Goldman, it was as though everything I had hoped that the Republican Party would stand for suddenly came out crystallised.  It was a magnificently clear statement.  And another interesting things about reading Emma Goldman is that you immediately see that, consciously or not, she's the source of the best in Ayn Rand.  She has the essential points that the Ayn Rand philosophy thinks, but without any of this sort of crazy solipsism that Rand is so fond of, the notion that people accomplish everything all in isolation.  Emma Goldman understands that there’s a social element to even science, but she also writes that all history is a struggle of the individual against the institutions, which of course is what I’d always thought Republicans were saying, and so it goes.In other words, in the Old Right, there were a lot of statements that seemed correct, and they appeal to you emotionally, as well; it was why I was a Republican—isolationist, anti-authoritarian positions, but they’re not illuminated by anything more than statement.  They just are good statements.  But in the writings of the anarchists the same statements are made, but with this long illumination out of experience, analysis, comparison…it's rock-solid, and so I immediately realised that I'd been stumbling around inventing parts of a tradition that was old and thoughtful and already existed, and that's very nice to discover that—I don't think it's necessary to invent everything."
Karl Hess,Right,"The most interesting political questions throughout history have been whether or not humans will be ruled or free, whether they will be responsible for their actions as individuals or left irresponsible as members of society, and whether they can live in peace by volitional agreements alone.The fundamental question of politics has always been whether there should be politics."
Karl Hess,Right,"Without the state there would be anarchy for that is, despite all the perfervid ravings of the Marxist Left and statist Right, all that anarchy means—the absence of the state, the opportunity for liberty."
Karl Hess,Right,"The nation state has never been associated with peace on earth.  Its most powerful recommendation and record is, as a matter of fact, as a wager of war.  The history of nation states is written around the dates of war, not peace, around arms and not arts.  The organization of warfare without the coercive power of the nation state is simply unimaginable at the scale with which we have become familiar."
Hans-Hermann Hoppe,Right,"According to the pronouncements of our state rulers and their intellectual bodyguards (of whom there are more than ever before), we are better protected and more secure than ever. We are supposedly protected from global warming and cooling, from the extinction of animals and plants, from the abuses of husbands and wives, parents and employers, from poverty, disease, disaster, ignorance, prejudice, racism, sexism, homophobia, and countless other public enemies and dangers. In fact, however, matters are strikingly different. In order to provide us with all this protection, the state managers expropriate more than 40 percent of the incomes of private producers year in and year out. Government debt and liabilities have increased without interruption, thus increasing the need for future expropriations. Owing to the substitution of government paper money for gold, financial insecurity has increased sharply, and we are continually robbed through currency depreciation. Every detail of private life, property, trade, and contract is regulated by ever higher mountains of laws  legislation), thereby creating permanent legal uncertainty and moral hazard. In particular, we have been gradually stripped of the right to exclusion implied in the very concept of private property. … In short, the more the state has increased its expenditures on social security and public safety, the more our private property rights have been eroded, the more our property has been expropriated, confiscated, destroyed, or depreciated, and the more we have been deprived of the very foundation of all protection: economic independence, financial strength, and personal wealth."
Hans-Hermann Hoppe,Right,"If no one can appeal to justice except to government, justice will be perverted in favor of the government, constitutions and supreme courts notwithstanding. Constitutions and supreme courts are state constitutions and agencies, and whatever limitations to state action they might contain or find is invariably decided by agents of the very institution under consideration. Predictably, the definition of property and protection will continually be altered and the range of jurisdiction expanded to the government’s advantage until, ultimately, the notion of universal and immutable human rights – and in particular property rights – will disappear and be replaced by that of law as government-made legislation and rights as government-given grants."
Hans-Hermann Hoppe,Right,"We must promote the idea of secession. Or more specifically, we must promote the idea of a world composed of tens of thousands of distinct districts, regions, and cantons, and hundred of thousands of independent free cities such as the present day oddities of Monaco, Andorra, San Marino, Liechtenstein, Hong Kong, and Singapore. Greatly increased opportunities for economically motivated migration would thus result, and the world would be one of small [classically] liberal governments economically integrated through free trade and an international commodity money such as gold."
Hans-Hermann Hoppe,Right,"The monopolization of money and banking is the ultimate pillar on which the modern state rests. In fact, it is probably become the most cherished instrument for increasing state income. For nowhere else can the state make the connection between redistribution-expenditure and exploitation-return more directly, quickly, and securely than by monopolizing money and banking. And nowhere else are the state's schemes less clearly understood than here."
Hans-Hermann Hoppe,Right,"History is ultimately determined by ideas, and ideas can, at least in principle, change almost instantly. But in order for ideas to change it is not sufficient for people to see that something is wrong. At least a significant number must also be intelligent enough to recognize what it is that is wrong. That is, they must understand the basic principles upon which society — human cooperation — rests … And they must have sufficient will power to act according to this insight."
Hans-Hermann Hoppe,Right,"In every society, a few individuals acquire the status of an elite through talent. Due to superior achievements of wealth, wisdom, and bravery, these individuals come to possess natural authority, and their opinions and judgments enjoy wide-spread respect. Moreover, because of selective mating, marriage, and the laws of civil and genetic inheritance, positions of natural authority are likely to be passed on within a few noble families. It is to the heads of these families with long-established records of superior achievement, farsightedness, and exemplary personal conduct that men turn to with their conflicts and complaints against each other. These leaders of the natural elite act as judges and peacemakers, often free of charge out of a sense of duty expected of a person of authority or out of concern for civil justice as a privately produced ""public good."""
Hans-Hermann Hoppe,Right,"As soon as a crisis breaks out, within the given institutional framework, the same mistake will be made over and over again, on a larger and larger scale. Every future crisis will be bigger than the crisis that we had before."
Hans-Hermann Hoppe,Right,"Predictably, under democratic conditions the tendency of every monopoly - to increase prices and decrease quality - will be only more pronounced. Instead of a prince who regards the country as his private property, a temporary caretaker is put in charge of the country. He does not own the country, but as long as he is in office he is permitted to use it to his and his proteges’ advantage. He owns its current use - usufruct - but not its capital stock. This will not eliminate exploitation. To the contrary, it will make exploitation less calculating and carried out with little or no regard to the capital stock, i.e., short-sighted. Moreover, the perversion of justice will proceed even faster now. Instead of protecting pre-existing private property rights, democratic government becomes a machine for the redistribution of existing property rights in the name of illusory `social security.’"
Hans-Hermann Hoppe,Right,"The American model – democracy – must be regarded as a historical error, economically as well as morally. Democracy promotes shortsightedness, capital waste, irresponsibility, and moral relativism. It leads to permanent compulsory income and wealth redistribution and legal uncertainty. It is counterproductive. It promotes demagoguery and egalitarianism. It is aggressive and potentially totalitarian internally, vis-à-vis its own population, as well as externally. In sum, it leads to a dramatic growth of state power, as manifested by the amount of parasitically – by means of taxation and expropriation – appropriated government income and wealth in relation to the amount of productively – through market exchange – acquired private income and wealth, and by the range and invasiveness of state legislation. Democracy is doomed to collapse, just as Soviet communism was doomed to collapse."
Hans-Hermann Hoppe,Right,"Essentially, economic analysis consists of: (1) an understanding of the categories of action and an understanding of the meaning of a change in values, costs, technological knowledge, etc.; (2) a description of a situation in which these categories assume concrete meaning, where definite people are identified as actors with definite objects specified as their means of action, with definite goals identified as values and definite things specified as costs; and (3) a deduction of the consequences that result from the performance of some specified action in this situation, or of the consequences that result for an actor if this situation is changed in a specified way. And this deduction must yield a priori-valid conclusions, provided there is no flaw in the very process of deduction and the situation and the change introduced into it being given, and a priori—valid conclusions about reality if the situation and situation—change, as described, can themselves be identified as real, because then their validity would ultimately go back to the indisputable validity of the categories of action."
Hans-Hermann Hoppe,Right,"As for the moral status of majority rule, it must be pointed out that it allows for A and B to band together to rip off C, C and A in turn joining to rip off B, and then B and C conspiring against A, and so on."
Hans-Hermann Hoppe,Right,"...bums and inferior people will likely support his egalitarian policies, whereas geniuses and superior people will not. For [this] reason...a democratic ruler undertakes little to actively expel those people whose presence within the country constitutes a negative externality (human trash which drives individual property values down)."
Hans-Hermann Hoppe,Right,"A member of the human race who is completely incapable of understanding the higher productivity of labor performed under a division of labor based on private property is not properly speaking a person… but falls instead into the same moral category as an animal – of either the harmless sort (to be domesticated and employed as a producer or consumer good, or to be enjoyed as a “free good”) or the wild and dangerous one (to be fought as a pest). On the other hand, there are members of the human species who are capable of understanding the [value of the division of labor] but...who knowingly act wrongly… [B]esides having to be tamed or even physically defeated [they] must also be punished… to make them understand the nature of their wrongdoings and hopefully teach them a lesson for the future."
Hans-Hermann Hoppe,Right,"Families, authority, communities, and social ranks are the empirical-sociological concretization of the abstract philosophical-praxeological categories and concepts of property, production, exchange, and contract. Property and property relations do not exist apart from families and kinship relations."
Hans-Hermann Hoppe,Right,"Private property capitalism and egalitarian multiculturalism are as unlikely a combination as socialism and cultural conservatism. And in trying to combine what cannot be combined, much of the modern libertarian movement actually contributed to the further erosion of private property rights (just as much of contemporary conservatism contributed to the erosion of families and traditional morals). What the countercultural libertarians failed to recognize, and what true libertarians cannot emphasize enough, is that the restoration of private property rights and laissez-faire economics implies a sharp and drastic increase in social “discrimination” and will swiftly eliminate most if not all of the multicultural-egalitarian life style experiments so close to the heart of left libertarians. In other words, libertarians must be radical and uncompromising conservatives."
Hans-Hermann Hoppe,Right,"Egalitarianism, in every form and shape, is incompatible with the idea of private property. Private property implies exclusivity, inequality, and difference. And cultural relativism is incompatible with the fundamental----indeed foundational----fact of families and intergenerational kinship relations. Families and kinship relations imply cultural absolutism."
Hans-Hermann Hoppe,Right,"[O]ur existence is due to the fact that we do not, indeed cannot accept a norm outlawing property in other scarce resources next to and in addition to that of one's physical body. Hence, the right to acquire such goods must be assumed to exist."
Hans-Hermann Hoppe,Right,"[The] property right in one's own body must be said to be justified a priori, for anyone who would try to justify any norm whatsoever would already have to presuppose the exclusive right to control over his body as a valid norm simply in order to say ""I propose such in such."""
William Luther Pierce,Right,"We must reach out to our people. We must alert them. We must educate them. We must encourage them. We must inspire them. And here's a beautiful, wonderful thing: when you reach out to other people to encourage them and inspire them, you yourself will be encouraged and inspired. When you find out how many other people there are who share our concerns, our feelings, our values, our sense of responsibility, you cannot help but be encouraged. Even the hatred that you encounter from some people -- especially from people in the controlled media -- will be encouraging. For you will understand that they would not hate us so much if they did not fear us. And the reason that they fear us is that deep inside them they know that what we say is true. So let's get out there -- all of us -- and start looking for encouragement!"
William Luther Pierce,Right,"You who are reading this are at least partially awake. You are a cut above Joe and Jill Sixpack. So I say to you: think about what you are doing with your life. Think about the responsibility you have to your children and grandchildren and great grandchildren. Think about the responsibility you have to all of those who came before you and whose sacrifices made your life possible. And think about your responsibility to yourself, your responsibility to be the best person, the most righteous person, that you can be. Think about all of these things, and then let me hear from you."
William Luther Pierce,Right,"The people are being kept in line at the moment, because there are still lots of shiny new things for them to buy. But more and more Americans are beginning to look beyond their immediate material comfort and to worry about the long-term moral slide of their country. If the economy slips badly, there will be hell to pay. More and more people will listen to the dissidents. A big problem for the Jews is how to silence the dissidents now, how to stifle the people who are asking inconvenient questions and thinking dangerous thoughts, before these thoughts spread to other people. They've tried to do it with legislation, but the country isn't yet in a mood to be told what it can think. What the Jews need is a nice, big war. Then they can crack down on the dissidents. Then they can call us ""subversives."" Then they can call us ""unpatriotic,"" because we will be against their war... That's why I am convinced that there will be a strong effort to involve America in another major war during the next four years. This effort will be disguised, of course. It will be cloaked in deceit, as such efforts always are. While the warmongers are scheming for war, they will tell us how much they want peace. They're good at that sort of thing. They've had a lot of practice. But they will be scheming for war, believe me, no matter what they say. And when that war comes, remember what you have read today."
William Luther Pierce,Right,"The New World Order schemers are absolutely determined to have their way. They have been able to go a long way toward their goal by using subterfuge and deceit. But ultimately the transformation of a world of independent nations into the global plantation they are aiming at will involve changes so profound and so traumatic that subterfuge and deceit will not be enough to keep the serfs under control. They will need raw police power, applied KGB style. They want to begin developing that power now. They're a pretty bold and arrogant bunch of schemers, but they understand that according to the old way of looking at things -- according to our way -- they are traitors. They understand that if the general public ever gets a real inkling of what they are up to, if they ever lose their grip on the situation, they'll all end up hanging from lampposts. What they are planning is so monstrous, so evil, that the thought of being brought to account for it frightens them. They want to use every means at their disposal to make sure their plan succeeds. And, my friends, we will resort to every means at our disposal to insure that their scheme does not succeed and that they do indeed end up hanging from lampposts."
William Luther Pierce,Right,"You know, the media and the politicians would have us believe that there's something inherently immoral about terrorism. That is, they would have us believe that it's not immoral for us to destroy a pharmaceutical factory in Sudan with cruise missiles, but it is immoral for someone like Bin Laden to blow up a government building in Washington with a truck bomb. It's okay for us to take out an air-raid shelter full of women and children in Baghdad with a smart bomb, but it's cowardly and immoral for an Iraqi or Iranian agent to pop a vial of sarin in a New York subway tunnel. Really, what should we expect? They don't have aircraft carriers and cruise missiles and stealth bombers. So should we expect them to just sit there and take their punishment when we wage war on them? I think that it is the most reasonable thing in the world for them to hit back at us in the only way they can. It actually takes more courage to be a terrorist behind enemy lines than it does to push the firing button for a cruise missile a hundred miles away from your target. And yet we certainly will see Bill Clinton and every other Jew-serving politician in our government on television denouncing as a ""cowardly act"" the first terrorist bomb which goes off in the United States as a result of a war against Iraq. And don't be surprised when the FBI and the CIA announce that they have studied the evidence carefully and have determined that it was Iranian terrorists who built the bomb, so that the Jews will have an excuse for expanding the war to take out Iran as well as Iraq."
William Luther Pierce,Right,"If we're going to consider failure to comply with UN directives a good reason for wrecking a country with cruise missiles, hey, I can think of a country in the Middle East which is in violation of a lot more UN directives than Iraq is. Israel has consistently thumbed its nose at UN directives, and no one in Washington has ever told Israel, ""Comply or get hit."" Let's understand one fundamental fact. This crusade against Iraq isn't about the United Nations or international security or stopping the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction. It's about making the Middle East safe for Israel to continue bullying its neighbors and stealing from them. Every other explanation is lies and hypocrisy. And we really can expect a bigger dose of lies and hypocrisy than usual as the warmongers work to get this war against Iraq started. The media bosses will trot more generals and politicians in front of the TV cameras and have them bluster patriotically about how we're not going to let Saddam Hussein get away with it any longer, by god, and they'll show groups of military personnel cheering when they're told that they're being shipped out to the Persian Gulf to kick Saddam Hussein's behind and keep him from getting away with whatever it is he's getting away with, which mainly seems to be running his country the way he wants to instead of the way the United Nations tells him. They will work overtime at convincing the couch potatoes and the mindless yahoos who like to wave flags and shout patriotic slogans that destroying Iraq really is an act of American patriotism. And as long as the number of Americans killed in a Jewish war against Iraq remains small, the flag-waving yahoos and the bought politicians ought to be able to drown out any dissent from Americans like me who believe that we don't have any reasonable justification for waging such a war. And keeping casualties small ought to be easy, so long as it remains strictly a high-tech war, with us launching missiles against defenseless targets from many miles away. Of course, sometimes wars get out of hand, and unexpected things happen. If the Jews manage to get Iran involved in the war also -- and that's what they really want to do, what they really need to do -- then I think we stand a pretty good chance of seeing some major terrorist activity in the United States. I know that if I were Osama bin Laden, I'd have been spending my time getting ready for just such a development ever since Bill Clinton blew up that pharmaceutical factory in Sudan. I'd be putting my teams into place in the United States, assembling materials, choosing targets, and waiting for the Jews to provide justification for me to begin killing Americans on a significant scale. Of course, whether Osama bin Laden is as resourceful and as capable as he's said to be remains to be seen. Personally, I have very little faith in the ability of these flea-bitten Muslims to get things done. But we'll see."
William Luther Pierce,Right,"Did you ever wonder why the Jews are such great proponents of democracy? Whether in Indonesia or Pakistan or Serbia or you name it, whenever there is some threat to universal suffrage, the Jews are ready to send the U.S. armed forces in to bomb and kill until everyone is permitted to vote. Why is that? Why can't the Indonesians have an Islamic theocracy if they want? Why can't the Pakistanis have a military dictatorship? Why can't the Serbs run their own country the way they prefer? What is the appeal in making sure that people whose minds have been wasted by Alzheimer's Disease vote? Well, let's not beat around the bush: the appeal of mass democracy lies in the fact that in essentially every country in the world today, the number of persons unable to think for themselves is substantially larger than the number able to make independent decisions. Those unable to think for themselves have their thinking done for them by the people who control the mass media. Which is to say, democracy is the preferred system because it gives the political power to those who own or control the mass media and at the same time allows them to remain behind the scenes and evade responsibility for the way in which they use that power. And the more inclusive the democracy is -- that is, the more Alzheimer's sufferers and Mongoloid cretinsand paranoid schizophrenics and people who live in empty packing cases in alley ways and Jamaican immigrants and football fans are able to vote -- the more certain is the grip of the media masters on the political process. Those voters who buy astrology magazines at the checkout stand and spend their time watching soap operas, game shows, and Oprah absorb their general attitudes on things through the television screen. They learn which ideas are fashionable and which are not by noticing the facial expression and tone of voice of Tom Brokaw and Dan Rather when the news is announced each day. Their opinions on specific issues are formed as they view televised sidewalk surveys taken by reporters. The only uncertainty about these people is whether or not they'll be able to pryt hemselves loose from their couches long enough to vote for the designated candidates. That's why it's important to have lots of them. And wherever there are lots of them, the men who control the mass media also will control the outcome of elections. It's a much surer way of controlling governments than bribing corrupt dictators or slipping seductive whores into the king's bedroom a la Esther and Ahasuerus -- or Monica and Bill. Believe me, one day soon the Jews on both sides of the great water will institute a web-TV voting system that allows the couch potatoes and the ball game fans to vote without having to getup from their couches, just by clicking their remote controls at their TV screens to select the next President or prime minister. That will be real democracy."
William Luther Pierce,Right,"This trendy, new crowd, which likes to do everything with committees, really believes that all it takes to make anything legal and OK is a majority. I guess they call that democracy. When the majority is what it has become in the United States today, a better name is mobocracy. But really, it's much worse than mob rule. It is rule by a self-appointed elite of utterly evil and destructive people who have in their hands the tools for controlling and guiding the mob. They're pretty cocky now -- so cocky, in fact, that they're making statements of the sort I've quoted today. They're cocky because they believe that no one can take away from them their tools for controlling the mob, and that as time passes and America becomes darker and more degenerate, their grip on the mob will only become firmer. Our job is to prove them wrong. It's a big job, and we'd better get started."
William Luther Pierce,Right,"Other people tell me that whatever solution we seek to the problems our people are facing today must be a solution without violence. And my response to that is that I am a peaceful man. All my adult life I have been a scholar and a teacher, never a man of violence. But look at the behavior of our opponents! All they know is violence and coercion and murder. I do not want violence, and I am determined to avoid it as long as I can."
William Luther Pierce,Right,"People tell me, ""Oh, you must not advocate doing anything illegal."" My answer to them is that I have been a law-abiding man all my life. I believe in law and order. I believe that we must have a society governed strictly by laws, not by mobs or by any tyrant's whims of the moment -- or by any clever tribe of alien manipulators who have gained control of our mass media. But does anyone really believe that we have a society governed by laws today? Let us remember that we are living now in the era of O.J. Simpson and Bill Clinton. We have laws on the books, and we have police and courts which have the theoretical responsibility for enforcing those laws. And when it is Politically Correct to do so, they will."
William Luther Pierce,Right,"From my viewpoint it's the Clinton gang who are the outlaws, the violators of our Constitution and of all of our old-fashioned legal and moral principles, and anything that we do to oppose them is legal and is morally justified. Anyone who goes along with them is a traitor, in the strict, old-fashioned sense of the word, and anyone who sits on his hands now and refuses to oppose the Clinton gang is not much better."
William Luther Pierce,Right,"The only reason that a rabble of feminists and queers and Jews and Blacks and mestizos and liberals and Clinton supporters are running America into the ground today is that decent people are sitting on their hands. If the decent people in America would get off their hands and accept personal responsibility for what is being done to their world, and if they would make a commitment and begin working together, we could sweep the whole Clinton coalition into the dustbin of history. It doesn't matter that the Clinton rabble outnumber us. We will whip them in a minute. We will have the media bosses jumping into the ocean all along the East Coast and swimming toward Israel as fast as they can go. But first we must be willing to accept personal responsibility. And so my message today to every decent person who is listening is this: Don't be a shirker. Don't try to be a smart guy by continuing to cheer from the sidelines but refusing to join the team and get out on the field. Stand up and become a participant in life. Make of your life a model that people will remember and talk about long after you're gone. - Thoughts on Accepting Responsibility, 1999"
William Luther Pierce,Right,"Bill Clinton said in his Portland State University speech that anyone who doesn't want America to become darker is ""un-American."" Isn't that something? This jerk who used to organize anti-American demonstrations during the Vietnam war and chant, ""Ho, Ho, Ho Chih Minh, the Viet Cong's gonna win,"" is now telling us that we're ""un-American""!"
William Luther Pierce,Right,"In 1918 Hitler was in a military hospital blinded from a British poison gas attack. He was just a corporal, he had no family, a limited education, no friends, no connections, no political status, nothing. He decides that he will lead Germany in redressing the grievous wrongs that had been done to it after the First World War and straightening out some of the mistakes that were being made in German society. And fifteen years later he is Chancellor of Germany and he did what he said he was going to do. A wounded war veteran with nobody to help him, and he pulled it up just through his own willpower. That is an amazing story. - The Fame of a Dead Man's deeds, 2001"
William Luther Pierce,Right,"These days, to be ""patriotic"" means to wave the flag and shout slogans whenever the mass media deem it appropriate. It means to cheer the government whenever the government decides to use its cruise missiles or its smart bombs to kill a bunch of people in some other country, regardless of the reason. Instead of blood-based patriotism, today we have government-based patriotism. If you wave the flag and support the government, you're a patriot. If you don't like what the government is doing and you say so, then all of the flag-waving, slogan-shouting yahoos look at you as if you were the enemy."
William Luther Pierce,Right,"Griffin, Robert S. (2001). The Fame of a Dead Man's Deeds. National Vanguard Books. ISBN 0-7596-0933-0.  (self-published)"
Joel Pollak,Right,"Ideologically, Pelosi is a far-left talking points machine. Tactically, she knows nothing else other than how to attack. Her worldview admits of no compromise and there seems to be no space in her imagination for new ideas. She has refashioned her dwindling caucus in her image, as the moderate, red-state Democrats have been steadily decimated, leaving nothing but the bicoastal liberals representing the inner city poor and the elite suburban gentry. She feels no pressure to change or to improve."
Joel Pollak,Right,"Trump is arguing that through a stronger and more assertive negotiating posture, using all the tools of persuasion theoretically at our disposal, the U.S. should be able to capture more of the gains from free trade. It is quite possible that the free trade regime that results from this approach will be more efficient, more equitable, and more legitimate than what we currently have. Free trade enthusiasts who support President Trump are simply saying that his new approach deserves a chance. No one has abandoned free trade, and if the veterans of NeverTrump would put aside their wounded pride, they might see that there is less distance between them and the administration than they may care to admit."
Matt Drudge,Right,"I am a conservative. I'm very much pro-life. If you go down the list of what makes up a conservative, I'm there almost all the way."
Matt Drudge,Right,"In every state and nearly every civilized nation in the developed world, readers know where to go for action and reaction of news – at least one day ahead... Free from any corporate concerns, there are simply too many to thank since the site's inception in 1994. This new attempt at the old American experiment of full freedom in reporting is ever exciting. Those in power have everything to lose by individuals who march to their own rules."
Nicholas Wade,Right,"I think the subject of race has been so difficult and so polluted by malign ideas that most people have just left it alone, including geneticists. … Most genetic variation is neutral – it doesn't do anything for or against the phenotype, and evolution ignores it – so most previous attempts to look at race have concluded that there's little difference between races. I think this position is the one on which the social scientists are basing their position. … If you look at the genes that do make a difference, selected genes, which are a tiny handful of the whole, you do find a number of differences, not very many, but a number of interesting differences between races as to which genes have been selected. This, of course, makes a lot of sense, because once the human family dispersed from its homeland in Africa, people faced different environments on each continent, different climates, different evolutionary challenges, and each group adapted to its environment in its own way."
Nicholas Wade,Right,"The geneticists, if you read their papers, have long been using code words. They sort of dropped the term ""race"" about 1980 or earlier, and instead you see code words like ""population"" or ""population structure."" Now that they're able to define race in genetic terms they tend to use other words, like ""continental groups"" or ""continent of origin,"" which does, indeed, correspond to the everyday conception of race. When I'm writing I prefer to use the word race because that's the word that everyone understands. It's a word with baggage, but it's not necessarily a malign word."
Nicholas Wade,Right,"The recent discoveries that human evolution has been recent, copious and regional severely undercut the social scientists' official view of the world because they establish that genetics may have played a possible substantial role alongside culture in shaping the differences between human populations."
Nicholas Wade,Right,"From an evolutionary perspective, the human races are all very similar variations of the same gene pool. The question that looms over all the social sciences, unanswered and largely unaddressed, is how to explain the paradox that people as individuals are so similar yet human societies differ so conspicuously in their cultural and economic attainments."
Nicholas Wade,Right,"There are two important factors to consider in the emergence of social change. One is that a society develops through changes in its institutions, which are blends of culture and genetically shaped social behavior. The other is that the genes and culture interact. This may seem paradoxical to anyone who considers genes and culture to be entirely separate realms. But it is scarcely surprising from an evolutionary perspective, given that the genome is designed to respond to the environment, and a major component of the human environment is society and its cultural practices."
Nicholas Wade,Right,"Over the last 50,000 years, modern humans have been subjected to enormous evolutionary pressures, in part from the consequences of their own social culture. They explored new ranges and climates and developed new social structures. Fast adaption, particularly to new social structures, was required as each population strove to exploit its own ecological niche and to avoid conquest by its neighbors. The genetic mechanism that made possible this rapid evolutionary change was the soft sweep, the reshaping of existing traits by quick minor adjustments in the sets of alleles that controlled them. But what began as a single experiment with the ancestral human population became a set of parallel experiments once the ancestral population had spread throughout the world. These independent evolutionary paths led inevitably to the different human populations or races that inhabit each continent."
Nicholas Wade,Right,"The classification of humans into five continental based races is perfectly reasonable and is supported by genome clustering studies. In addition, classification into the three major races of African, East Asian and European is supported by the physical anthropology of human skull types and dentition."
Nicholas Wade,Right,"Each of the major civilizations has developed the institutions appropriate for its circumstances and survival. But these institutions, though heavily imbued with cultural traditions, rest of a bedrock of genetically shaped human behavior."
Nicholas Wade,Right,"If running a productive, Western-style economy were simply a matter of culture, it should be possible for African and Middle Eastern countries to import Western institutions and business methods, just as East Asian countries have done. But this is evidently not a straightforward task. Though it was justifiable at first to blame the evils of colonialism, two generations or more have now passed since most foreign powers withdrew from Africa and the Middle East, and the strength of this explanation has to some extent faded."
Nicholas Wade,Right,"Tribal behavior is more deeply ingrained than are mere cultural prescriptions. Its longevity and stability point strongly to a genetic basis. This is hardly surprising, given that tribes are the default human social institution. The inbuilt nature of tribalism explains why it took so many thousands of years for East Asians and later Europeans to break free of its deadening embrace."
Nicholas Wade,Right,"The various races and ethnicities into which humans have evolved represent a grand experiment in which nature has tested out some of the variations inherent in the human genome. The experiment is not being conducted in our interests - it has no purpose or goal - yet it offers considerable benefits. Instead of there being a single type of human society, there are many, creating a rich diversity of cultures whose more promising features can be adopted and improved on by others."
Nicholas Wade,Right,The idea that human populations are genetically different from one another has been actively ignored by academics and policy makers for fear that such inquiry might promote racism. The argument offered here is that people the world over are highly similar as individuals but that societies differ widely because of evolutionary differences in social behavior. It would be better to take account of evolutionary differences than to continue to ignore them.
Nicholas Wade,Right,"Many forms of new knowledge are potentially dangerous, the energy of the atom being a preeminent example. But instead of curtailing inquiry Western societies have in general assumed that the better policy is to continue exploration in confidence that the rewards can be reaped and the risks managed. It is hard to see why exploration of the human genome and its racial variations should be made an exception to this principle, even though researchers and their audience must first develop the words and concepts to discuss a dangerous subject objectively."
John R. Bolton,Right,The only thing that will stop Iran from getting nuclear weapons is regime change in Tehran.
John R. Bolton,Right,The critical oil and natural gas producing region that we fought so many wars to try and protect our economy from the adverse impact of losing that supply or having it available only at very high prices.
John R. Bolton,Right,"Individual liberty is the whole purpose of political life, and I thought it was threatened then [in 1964 becoming politically engaged at age 15] and I think it's threatened now."
John R. Bolton,Right,"There were a lot of people who were Reaganauts going in, as there are always people who are conservatives going in. But they don't act like conservatives after they get there. There is skill to maneuvering the bureaucracy. And I think one argument I could make would be, I've never run for office, I'm not a conventional politician, that's for sure, but I have been in government, and I know how it works. I have actually gotten things done in the government."
John R. Bolton,Right,"...as I followed his [candidate Obama] obsession with restructuring our entire domestic way of life, it became completely clear to me that our willful ignoring of national-security policy was going to cost us...I was watching what was happening in 2008, and I thought, How can this be?"
John R. Bolton,Right,"People have said to me, 'Well, if you ran you might get more speaking appearances, and you could sell another book.' Frankly, that's the last thing on my mind. If I get in, I'll get in to win."
John R. Bolton,Right,"[Recalling Bill Clinton, a Yale University classmate:] I remember him as very gregarious, never in class, always talking to someone out in the hallway or in the dining room or something like that. I remember her (Hillary Rodham Clinton) as very rigid, unfriendly, hard-core left-winger."
John R. Bolton,Right,"[Recalling George H. W. Bush's Secretary of State James Baker:]...the best secretary of state since Dean Acheson. I say that because he and Bush 41 had an incredibly tempestuous period in history, and they navigated through it with great success."
John R. Bolton,Right,...it's absolutely critical that we have a more informed debate on foreign and national-security policy than we've had the last two years.[regarding first half of Obama term]
John R. Bolton,Right,"Obama will be very good at that point at pretending to be the commander-in-chief. We have to have a Republican who will be able to look him in the eye and beat him in that debate. You can have lots of people writing talking points for you, and you can have lots of people writing posts on your website, but, out there, it's one on one. And if we're not prepared to win that debate-we're gonna be in trouble."
John R. Bolton,Right,I've heard over and over that people don't vote on the basis of foreign policy.
John R. Bolton,Right,"[On the Tea Party:] I like it because their view of government is essentially the same as mine, and I like it because they're regular people who, but for the shock of Obama's radicalism, probably would not have gotten active in politics."
John R. Bolton,Right,"What's needed in this next campaign is to say, with clarity, why a pro-individual-liberty, small-government perspective is what most Americans really want."
John R. Bolton,Right,"I'm against abortion as a form of birth control, and I basically hold to the Reagan position."
John R. Bolton,Right,"[On entitlements:] I think we've got to go after them root and branch...if we're ever gonna do it, this is the time to do it."
John R. Bolton,Right,"I think this [Obama] administration, if its policies were pursued for an extended period of time, would take us into decline, but there's nothing wrong with this country that a real president couldn't cure."
Dinesh D'Souza,Right,"Consistent with Martin Luther King's vision, the government should stop color-coding its citizens."
Dinesh D'Souza,Right,"Colonial possessions added to the prestige, and to a much lesser degree to the wealth, of Europe. But the primary cause of Western affluence and power is internal – the institutions of science, democracy, and capitalism acting in concert."
Dinesh D'Souza,Right,America is the most magnanimous of all imperial powers that have ever existed.
Dinesh D'Souza,Right,"Virtue has great power, but not if it is imposed – only when it is chosen."
Dinesh D'Souza,Right,"Atheism, not religion, is the real force behind the mass murders of history."
Dinesh D'Souza,Right,"I've been studying radical Islamic thought—specifically, the thinkers who have influenced contemporary radical Muslims. When you read their work, you find that there are no denunciations of modernity, no condemnations of science, no condemnations of freedom. In fact, their whole argument seems to be that the United States—through our support of secular dictators in the region—is denying Muslims freedom and control over their own destiny."
Dinesh D'Souza,Right,"If the televangelists are guilty of producing some simple-minded, self-righteous Christians, then the atheist authors are guilty of producing self-congratulatory buffoons like Condell."
Dinesh D'Souza,Right,"The ideas that define Western civilization, Nietzsche said, are based on Christianity. Because some of these ideas seem to have taken on a life of their own, we might have the illusion that we can abandon Christianity while retaining them. This illusion, Nietzsche warns us, is just that. Remove Christianity and the ideas fall too."
Dinesh D'Souza,Right,"Our President is trapped in his father's time machine. Incredibly, the U.S. is being ruled according to the dreams of a Luo tribesman of the 1950s. This philandering, inebriated African socialist, who raged against the world for denying him the realization of his anticolonial ambitions, is now setting the nation's agenda through the reincarnation of his dreams in his son. The son makes it happen, but he candidly admits he is only living out his father's dream. The invisible father provides the inspiration, and the son dutifully gets the job done. America today is governed by a ghost."
Dinesh D'Souza,Right,"The American Indians sold Manhattan to the Dutch for $700 in today's money. My point is, that's what Manhattan was worth then. It was useless, it was just a piece of land, like any other piece of land which you can buy today for $700 in many places in the world. Manhattan today is the result of the people who built it, not the original inhabitants who occupied or sold it."
Dinesh D'Souza,Right,"The American idea of wealth creation is being embraced in India, in China, all over the world. It's lifting hundreds of millions of people out of poverty. So ironically this American formula that we are moving away from at home under Obama is being enthusiastically embraced all around the world."
Dinesh D'Souza,Right,"Scaring the children: for Halloween last night, I dressed as a Democrat and when kids came to my door, I took half of their candy!"
Dinesh D'Souza,Right,"Anti-Americanism from abroad would not be such a problem if Americans were united in standing up for their own country. But in this country itself, there are those who blame America for most of the evils in the world. On the political left, many fault the United States for a history of slavery, and for continuing inequality and racism. Even on the right, traditionally the home of patriotism, we hear influential figures say that America has become so decadent... If these critics are right, then America should be destroyed. And who can dispute some of their particulars? This country did have a history of slavery and racism continues to exist. There is much in our culture that is vulgar and decadent. But the critics are wrong about America, because they are missing the big picture. In their indignation over the sins of America, they ignore what is unique and good about American civilization."
Dinesh D'Souza,Right,"In the American view, there is nothing vile or degraded about serving your customers either as a CEO or as a waiter. The ordinary life of production and supporting a family is more highly valued in the United States than in any other country. America is the only country in the world where we call the waiter 'sir', as if he were a knight. America has achieved greater social equality than any other society. True, there are large inequalities of income and wealth in America. In purely economic terms, Europe is more egalitarian. But Americans are socially more equal than any other people, and this is unaffected by economic disparities. Alexis de Tocqueville noticed this egalitarianism a century and a half ago and it is, if anything, more prevalent today. For all his riches, Bill Gates could not approach the typical American and say, 'Here's a $100 bill. I'll give it to you if you kiss my feet'. Most likely, the person would tell Gates to go to hell! The American view is that the rich guy may have more money, but he isn't in any fundamental sense better than anyone else."
Dinesh D'Souza,Right,"Visitors to places like New York are amazed to see the way in which Serbs and Croatians, Sikhs and Hindus, Irish Catholics and Irish Protestants, Jews and Palestinians, all seem to work and live together in harmony. How is this possible when these same groups are spearing each other and burning each other's homes in so many places in the world?"
Dinesh D'Souza,Right,"America, the freest nation on Earth, is also the most virtuous nation on Earth. This point seems counter-intuitive, given the amount of conspicuous vulgarity, vice and immorality in America. Some Islamic fundamentalists argue that their regimes are morally superior to the United States because they seek to foster virtue among the citizens. Virtue, these fundamentalists argue, is a higher principle than liberty. Indeed it is. And let us admit that in a free society, freedom will frequently be used badly. Freedom, by definition, includes the freedom to do good or evil, to act nobly or basely. But if freedom brings out the worst in people, it also brings out the best. The millions of Americans who live decent, praiseworthy lives desire our highest admiration because they have opted for the good when the good is not the only available option. Even amid the temptations of a rich and free society, they have remained on the straight path. Their virtue has special luster because it is freely chosen. By contrast, the societies that many Islamic fundamentalists seek would eliminate the possibility of virtue. If the supply of virtue is insufficient in a free society like America, it is almost nonexistent in an unfree society like Iran's. The reason is that coerced virtues are not virtues at all. Consider the woman who is required to wear a veil. There is no modesty in this, because she is being compelled. Compulsion cannot produce virtue, it can only produce the outward semblance of virtue. Thus a free society like America's is not merely more prosperous, more varied, more peaceful, and more tolerant; it is also morally superior to the theocratic and authoritarian regimes that America's enemies advocate."
Dinesh D'Souza,Right,"We should love our country not just because it is ours, but also because it is good. America is far from perfect, and there is lots of room for improvement. In spite of its flaws, however, American life as it is lived today is the best life that our world has to offer. Ultimately America is worthy of our love and sacrifice because, more than any other society, it makes possible the good life, and the life that is good."
Dinesh D'Souza,Right,"If I had remained in India, I would probably have lived my whole life within a five-mile radius of where I was born. I would undoubtedly have married a woman of my identical religious and socioeconomic background. I would almost certainly have become a medical doctor, or an engineer, or a computer programmer. I would have socialized entirely within my ethnic community. I would have a whole set of opinions that could be predicted in advance; indeed, they would not be very different from what my father believed, or his father before him. In sum, my destiny would to a large degree have been given to me... The typical American could come to India, live for 40 years, and take Indian citizenship. But he could not 'become Indian'. He wouldn't see himself that way, nor would most Indians see him that way. In America, by contrast, hundreds of millions have come from far-flung shores and over time they, or at least their children, have in a profound and full sense 'become American'."
Dinesh D'Souza,Right,"If racism is not the main problem for blacks, what is? Liberal antiracism."
Dinesh D'Souza,Right,Racism originated not in ignorance and fear but as part of an enlightened enterprise of intellectual discovery.
Dinesh D'Souza,Right,"The main contemporary obstacle facing African Americans is neither white racism, as many liberals claim, nor black genetic deficiency, as Charles Murray and others imply. Rather it involves destructive and pathological cultural patterns of behavior: excessive reliance on government, conspiratorial paranoia about racism, a resistance to academic achievement as ""acting white,"" a celebration of the criminal and outlaw as authentically black, and the normalization of illegitimacy and dependency."
Dinesh D'Souza,Right,"The American slave was treated like property, which is to say, pretty well."
Dinesh D'Souza,Right,"Strictly speaking, relativism does not permit social progress, because the new culture is by definition no better than the one it replaced."
Dinesh D'Souza,Right,It is understandable but implausible...to insist upon prominent media accounts about law-abiding citizens and quotidian virtue; this is a bit like the airline industry complaining that the press does not write stories about airplanes that land safely.
Dinesh D'Souza,Right,Black rage is largely a response not to white racism but to black failure.
Dinesh D'Souza,Right,"If biological differences do exist, they cannot be wished away. However unpopular the investigation, we have to take the possibility of natural differences seriously. What is at stake is nothing less than the foundation of contemporary liberalism."
Paul Weyrich,Right,"For one, the Qur'an is considered by Muslims to consist entirely of words spoken by Allah himself."
Paul Weyrich,Right,"It is commonly agreed that children spend more hours per year watching television than in the classroom, and far less in actual conversation with their parents."
Paul Weyrich,Right,"Politics aside, it will be hard for any new liberal radio network to outdo the professionalism of NPR."
Paul Weyrich,Right,"Absent scandal, a federal judge can serve for decades on the bench, underscoring the importance of appointing judges who have a proper understanding of their constitutional role."
Paul Weyrich,Right,Advertisers are very wary of ideological media.
Paul Weyrich,Right,Both Christians and religious Jews are finding it increasingly difficult to practice their faiths through college groups on so-called mainline campuses in the United States.
Paul Weyrich,Right,"But the threat posed by the radical Islamists represents an unusual conflict, unlike any experienced by our nation before: we face an enemy that is not a state."
Paul Weyrich,Right,CAIR officials or former officials have been arrested on charges related to terrorism yet all it offers is silence and stonewalling in discussing what are its real motives.
Paul Weyrich,Right,Cameras in classrooms are no substitute for greater authority by parents and teachers.
Paul Weyrich,Right,Conservative talk radio works because there are lots of conservatives who are convinced that they are not getting the whole story from the regular media.
Paul Weyrich,Right,Conservative voters increasingly understand that the one legacy a president can leave is his judicial appointments.
Paul Weyrich,Right,"Despite being able to demonstrate a very large audience, major advertisers at first wouldn't touch Limbaugh."
Paul Weyrich,Right,Every Arab nation votes against us at least two thirds of the time.
Paul Weyrich,Right,"How it is that within 60 days of a general election issue, groups can no longer tell voters that a Member of Congress votes pro-abortion, against guns, against the environment or whatever else is beyond me."
Paul Weyrich,Right,If a liberal News channel were launched it would fall flat on its face.
Paul Weyrich,Right,"If liberals want to send tens of millions of dollars down the drain, I have no problem with that."
Paul Weyrich,Right,"In the past, children learned their values at home, reinforced by organizations such as the Boy Scouts and, of course, their church or synagogue, but in all too many families that is no longer the case."
Paul Weyrich,Right,Judges were not the biggest issue for most voters in Georgia in 2002.
Paul Weyrich,Right,Many Muslims honor people of other faiths and do not kill.
Paul Weyrich,Right,Many nations are like rebellious teenagers who try to figure out just how many times they can kick us in the teeth while still taking our money.
Paul Weyrich,Right,"Now the truth is, a president really can't control the economy, although his policies do have some effect on it."
Paul Weyrich,Right,Policy makers still think that if we just hand out more money the world's problems will be solved.
Paul Weyrich,Right,Politicians often lie.
Paul Weyrich,Right,"Radical Islamic fundamentalists harbor contempt for our democratic way of life and, given the opportunity, will stop at nothing to accomplish their goal of bringing our country to its knees."
Paul Weyrich,Right,"Second, a quarter to a third of those who listen to Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity are liberals."
Paul Weyrich,Right,Self-professed conservatives comprise about 40% to 45% of the electorate.
Steve Bannon,Right,Islam is not a religion of peace. Islam is a religion of submission. Islam means submit.
Steve Bannon,Right,"The baby boomers are the most spoiled, most self-centered, most narcissistic generation the country's ever produced."
Steve Bannon,Right,Birth control makes women unattractive and crazy.
Steve Bannon,Right,"What I find shocking is that there's this thought process that Hillary Clinton is going to be president of the United States, and to even think of Donald Trump is a joke."
Steve Bannon,Right,I became a huge Reagan admirer.
Steve Bannon,Right,Darkness is good. Dick Cheney. Darth Vader. Satan. That's power.
Steve Bannon,Right,"Remember Circuit City? Bear Stearns? Lehman Brothers? Sports Authority? Once, all were billion-dollar companies - then gone in a moment. The fatal problem might be fraud or corruption, but more often, it's simply that management didn't see 'over the other side of the hill.'"
Steve Bannon,Right,"I'm a Leninist. Lenin wanted to destroy the state, and that's my goal, too."
Steve Bannon,Right,I've got a cure for mental health issue. Spank your children more.
Steve Bannon,Right,"George Clooney, who is a moron, came here to Cannes and gave a press conference saying, 'Under no circumstances will Trump ever be president. Hillary Clinton will be the next president.' Well, we can't wait to make George Clooney eat his words."
Steve Bannon,Right,The swamp is a business model. It's a successful business model.
Steve Bannon,Right,"I'm not a white nationalist, I'm a nationalist. I'm an economic nationalist."
Steve Bannon,Right,"My old firm, Goldman Sachs - traditionally, the best banks are leveraged 8:1. When we had the financial crisis in 2008, the investment banks were leveraged 35:1. Those rules had specifically been changed by a guy named Hank Paulson. He was secretary of Treasury."
Steve Bannon,Right,"There is a growing global anti-establishment revolt against the permanent political class at home and the global elites that influence them, which impacts everyone from Lubbock, Texas, to London, England."
Steve Bannon,Right,Trump is a product of a seething populism and nationalism that is the driving political force.
Steve Bannon,Right,"The longer they talk about identity politics, I got 'em. I want them to talk about racism every day. If the Left is focused on race and identity, and we go with economic nationalism, we can crush the Democrats."
Steve Bannon,Right,I think anger is a good thing.
Steve Bannon,Right,"Ethno-nationalism - it's losers. It's a fringe element. I think the media plays it up too much, and we gotta help crush it, you know, eh, help crush it more."
Steve Bannon,Right,Planned Parenthood has amassed a Third Reich-style death count completely legally and while pocketing half a billion dollars a year to do so.
Steve Bannon,Right,"This accumulated debt at all levels of our society poses an immediate existential threat to America. Now unlike the manufactured crises of global warming and healthcare, this is a true crisis. This crisis threatens the very sovereignty of our country."
Steve Bannon,Right,There is voter fraud. I know there is voter fraud.
Steve Bannon,Right,Fear is a good thing. Fear is going to lead you to take action.
Steve Bannon,Right,"This country is in a crisis. And if you're fighting to save this country, if you're fighting to take this country back, it's not going to be sunshine and patriots. It's going to be people who want to fight. I mean, Andrew Breitbart was all about the fight."
Steve Bannon,Right,"Technology not only allows grassroots conservatives like Palin to get their message across without the mainstream media's filter and become a 'force multiplier,' it also helps them topple candidates financially backed by the establishment."
Steve Bannon,Right,"Our definition of the alt-right is younger people who are anti-globalists, very nationalist, terribly anti-establishment."
Paul Weyrich,Right,"So many of our Christians have what I call the goo-goo syndrome: good government. They want everybody to vote. I don't want everybody to vote. Elections are not won by a majority of people, they never have been from the beginning of our country and they are not now. As a matter of fact, our leverage in the elections quite candidly goes up as the voting populace goes down."
Paul Weyrich,Right,"I believe that we probably have lost the culture war. That doesn't mean the war is not going to continue, and that it isn't going to be fought on other fronts. But in terms of society in general, we have lost. This is why, even when we win in politics, our victories fail to translate into the kind of policies we believe are important.Therefore, what seems to me a legitimate strategy for us to follow is to look at ways to separate ourselves from the institutions that have been captured by the ideology of Political Correctness, or by other enemies of our traditional culture. I would point out to you that the word ""holy"" means ""set apart,"" and that it is not against our tradition to be, in fact, ""set apart."" You can look in the Old Testament, you can look at Christian history. You will see that there were times when those who had our beliefs were definitely in the minority and it was a band of hardy monks who preserved the culture while the surrounding society disintegrated.What I mean by separation is, for example, what the homeschoolers have done. Faced with public school systems that no longer educate but instead ""condition"" students with the attitudes demanded by Political Correctness, they have seceded. They have separated themselves from public schools and have created new institutions, new schools, in their homes."
David Duke,Right,The greatest American who ever lived has been shot down and killed.
David Duke,Right,"White people don't need a law against rape, but if you fill this room up with your normal black bucks, you would, because niggers are basically primitive animals."
David Duke,Right,Our clear goal must be the advancement of the white race and separation of the white and black races. This goal must include freeing of the American media and government from subservient Jewish interests.
David Duke,Right,"What we really want to do is to be left alone. We don't want Negroes around. We don't need Negroes around. We're not asking— you know, we don't want to have them, you know, for our culture. We simply want our own country and our own society. That's in no way exploitive at all. We want our own society, our own nation…."
David Duke,Right,"Did you ever notice how many survivors they have? Did you ever notice that? Everybody — every time you turn around, 15,000 survivors meet here; 400 survivors convention there. I mean, did you ever notice? Nazis sure were inefficient, weren't they? Boy, boy, boy!...You almost have no survivors that ever say they saw a gas chamber or saw the workings of a gas chamber.... they'll say these preposterous stories that anybody can check out to be a lie, an absolute lie."
David Duke,Right,I won my constituency. I won 55% of the white vote.
David Duke,Right,"As for America and the rest of European world, I want to live in a nation that reflects my traditions and values, and I do not want my people to become a minority in the nations my own forefathers built. Interestingly, that is same goal that most Israelis and most Jews who support Israel endorse for the Jewish state."
David Duke,Right,"I don’t want to see this country resemble or look like or become like Mexico. Mexico is great to visit, I’ve been there a few times. I respect all peoples of the world."
David Duke,Right,"I’m often called, so often called in the media, it’s like a part of my name “white supremacist” or whatever. I’m not one. I don’t want white people to be supreme. I don’t believe, in fact, that we should even have bases in 65 countries of the world I don’t think we should be in Iraq. I don’t believe we should try to control politics of the South American countries or the Southeast Asia or in Africa, or anywhere else in the world. But I do think we have a right to preserve our own culture, own heritage in our own country."
David Duke,Right,"I don’t see any moral difference between a suicide bomber and somebody in a F-16 fighter jet who fires a missile into an apartment complex and then kills 10 or 15 little girls and boys. I don’t see much difference there. In fact, I think the pilot is a greater offender, you know, he’s getting medals, while the suicide bomber is sacrificing his life for what he believes in. But I don’t agree with either approach. I’m absolutely opposed to any sort of terrorism. (…) But if you call Hezbollah a terrorist organization, then you must call Israel a terrorist organization."
David Duke,Right,"I am opposed to globalism, I am opposed to colonialism, I am opposed to any sort of complusion of one nation over another. (...) I also deeply believe in human rights."
David Duke,Right,"I don't consider myself a racist, I don't hate other peoples, but I certainly want to preserve my own. And I think that's true of all people."
David Duke,Right,"I am not opposed to all Jews. That's how they do with me, they distort everything I say, but I'm certainly opposed to Jewish extremism. Just as I am opposed to certain Islamic fundamentalism. I'm opposed to terrorism, I'm opposed to oppression of individuals. But the media, because of the incredible Jewish extremist domination in the media, especially American media and the Hollywood media, we seldom hear about Jewish fundamentalism, we seldom hear about Jewish extremism. (...) We don't hear this in the media, because they in fact dominate the media."
David Duke,Right,"Terrorism does not happen in a vacuum. And we would not be subject to and endangered by so-called terrorism within our own countries if we in fact kept our countries as our own heritage, our own value system. The recent terror plot in Britain, for instance was launched mostly, almost entirely by Muslims of non-European descent, who were born in Britain. Born in Britain, because of the immigration policies of our countries."
David Duke,Right,"I have spoken all over the world and I have great respect for Muslims, I have great respect for the African people, I have respect for the other races. Even back home in Lousiana, I'm called a racist, but I have respect for the Black people of my country and I want them to have their own life, too, and I want them to be able to pursue their own destiny and not be controlled, and not be damaged."
David Duke,Right,Ilhan Omar is NOW the most important Member of the US Congress!
Steve Bannon,Right,"There is a growing global anti-establishment revolt against the permanent political class at home, and the global elites that influence them, which impacts everyone from Lubbock, Tex., to London, England...We look at London and Texas as two fronts in our current cultural and political war."
Steve Bannon,Right,We should just go buck wild...Let the grassroots turn on the hate because that’s the ONLY thing that will make them do their duty.
Steve Bannon,Right,"We don’t like to try to guess what’s going to happen in the future, but I’ve got to tell you, I think people were very engaged in this election, and I think will be very engaged as time goes forward. The key is to hold people accountable. The hobbits, or the deplorables, had a great run in ’16. Everybody mocked them and ridiculed them, and now they’ve spoken. I think ’17 is going to be a very exciting year,"
Steve Bannon,Right,"The media should be embarrassed and humiliated and keep its mouth shut and just listen for a while...I want you to quote this, the media here is the opposition party. They don't understand this country. They still do not understand why Donald Trump is the president of the United States... The elite media got it dead wrong, 100 percent dead wrong. [The 2016 election was] a humiliating defeat that they will never wash away, that will always be there...You’re the opposition party. Not the Democratic Party. You’re the opposition party. The media’s the opposition party."
Steve Bannon,Right,"[Re Spicer loss of credibility] Are you kidding me? We think that's a badge of honor. 'Questioning his integrity' are you kidding me? The media has zero integrity, zero intelligence, and no hard work."
Steve Bannon,Right,"We call ourselves ‘the Fight Club.’ You don’t come to us for warm and fuzzy. We think of ourselves as virulently anti-establishment, particularly ‘anti-’ the permanent political class. We say Paul Ryan was grown in a petri dish at the Heritage Foundation. We hire people who are freaks. They don’t have social lives. They’re junkies about news and information."
Steve Bannon,Right,"When two-thirds or three-quarters of the C.E.O.s in Silicon Valley are from South Asia or from Asia, I think . . . A country is more than an economy. We’re a civic society."
Steve Bannon,Right,"And we’re at the very beginning stages of a very brutal and bloody conflict, of which if the people in this room, the people in the church, do not bind together and really form what I feel is an aspect of the church militant, to really be able to not just stand with our beliefs, but to fight for our beliefs against this new barbarity that’s starting, that will completely eradicate everything that we’ve been bequeathed over the last 2,000, 2,500 years. ... Now that call converges with something we have to face, and it’s a very unpleasant topic, but we are in an outright war against jihadist Islamic fascism. And this war is, I think, metastasizing far quicker than governments can handle it."
Steve Bannon,Right,"Until we have the black working class and the Hispanic working class getting high-value-added jobs, we've failed as a society. To me: citizens first. And we don't need a million immigrants in this country. Particularly, we don't need a million immigrants that don't come with a real set of skills."
Steve Bannon,Right,"If Bernie Sanders had an ounce of [Michael] Avenatti’s fearlessness, he would’ve been the Democratic nominee, and we would have had a much tougher time beating him. Now, I don’t believe a professional politician is going to be there at the end of the day. I’ve always said it’s going to be someone like Oprah, or Avenatti, or somebody that’s more media-savvy that’s going to be there."
Augustus Sol Invictus,Right,"I have prophesied for years that I was born for a Great War; that if I did not witness the coming of the Second American Civil War, I would begin it myself."
Augustus Sol Invictus,Right,I did sacrifice a goat. I know that's probably a quibble in the mind of most Americans.
Augustus Sol Invictus,Right,I totally understand I'm an eccentric person; I'm not going to claim to be a normal person.
Augustus Sol Invictus,Right,To circumscribe our freedom of thought because of the delicate sensibilities of suburban paper pushers is the most despicable type of totalitarian tyranny imaginable.
Augustus Sol Invictus,Right,"I think it's disingenuous for people to talk in their living rooms about government collapsing, the possibility of total anarchy, but when someone says it in public, it's so terrifying they have to persecute that person."
Augustus Sol Invictus,Right,"We now enter a new age of American history, and the question to be answered is this: Will we restore the republic our forefathers created, or will we allow it to be annihilated by those who hate America, its history, and all it stands for?"
Augustus Sol Invictus,Right,"It has been said that I am not a 'real' Libertarian. A certain faction of the Party has come to believe that the writings of Ayn Rand and Milton Friedman are the holy texts of Libertarianism, and I disagree. I believe that the Libertarian movement is and should be more encompassing than the narrow-minded advocacy of economic anarchy."
Augustus Sol Invictus,Right,"I don't think I'm the only person who sees a cataclysm coming, but I think I'm the only person saying it, and I think that scares people."
Augustus Sol Invictus,Right,My accent really comes out when I'm speaking in public or when I'm passionate about something.
Augustus Sol Invictus,Right,Ninety-nine percent of the things that seem weird in my life can be answered with my religion. Paganism is mostly about nature-worship. It's about being in harmony with your environment and bringing the world of spirit and world of man together. It's about balance.