Monday Quotes

THE FOUNDATION
“Let us therefore animate and encourage each other, and shew the whole world, that a Freeman contending for Liberty on his own ground is superior to any slavish mercenary on earth.” —George Washington

INSIGHT
“A nation can survive its fools, and even the ambitious. But it cannot survive treason from within. An enemy at the gates is less formidable, for he is known and carries his banner openly. But the traitor moves amongst those within the gate freely, his sly whispers rustling through all the alleys, heard in the very halls of government itself. For the traitor appears not a traitor; he speaks in accents familiar to his victims, and he wears their face and their arguments, he appeals to the baseness that lies deep in the hearts of all men. He rots the soul of a nation, he works secretly and unknown in the night to undermine the pillars of the city, he infects the body politic so that it can no longer resist. A murderer is less to fear.” —Marcus Tullius Cicero


ICHTHUS IMPRIMIS
“Now godliness with contentment is great gain. For we brought nothing into this world, and it is certain we can carry nothing out. And having food and clothing, with these we shall be content. But those who desire to be rich fall into temptation and a snare, and into many foolish and harmful lusts which drown men in destruction and perdition. For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil, for which some have strayed from the faith in their greediness, and pierced themselves through with many sorrows.” —Paul of Tarsus

FAMILY
“Why is marriage considered to be any of the law’s business in the first place? Because the state asserts an interest in the outcomes of certain unions, separate from and independent of the interests of the parties themselves. In the absence of the institution of marriage, the individuals could arrange their relationship whatever way they wanted to, making it temporary or permanent, and sharing their worldly belongings in whatever way they chose. Marriage means that the government steps in, limiting or even prescribing various aspects of their relations with each other—and still more their relationship with whatever children may result from their union. In other words, marriage imposes legal restrictions, taking away rights that individuals might otherwise have. Yet ‘gay marriage’ advocates depict marriage as an expansion of rights to which they are entitled. They argue against a ‘ban on gay marriage’ but marriage has for centuries meant a union of a man and a woman. There is no gay marriage to ban.” —Thomas Sowell

LIBERTY
“[T]he default assumption of our covert enemies is that in any conflict between the West and the Rest, the West is wrong. That assumption can be rebutted by overwhelming fact: Few argued for the Taliban after Sept. 11. But in our continuing struggles, our covert enemies portray our work in Iraq through the lens of Abu Ghraib and consider Israel’s self-defense against Hezbollah as the oppression of virtuous victims by evil men. In World War II, our elites understood that we were the forces of good and that victory was essential. Today, many of our elites subject our military and intelligence actions to fine-tooth-comb analysis and find that they are morally repugnant. We have always had our covert enemies, but their numbers were few until the 1960s. But then the elite young men who declined to serve in the military during the Vietnam War set out to write a narrative in which they, rather than those who obeyed the call to duty, were the heroes. They have propagated their ideas through the universities, the schools and mainstream media to the point that they are the default assumptions of millions. Our covert enemies don’t want the Islamo-fascists to win. But in some corner of their hearts, they would like us to lose.” —Michael Barone

THE GIPPER
“We’ve come to a moment in our history when party labels are unimportant. Philosophy is all important. Little men with loud voices cry doom, saying little is good in America. They create fear and uncertainty among us. Millions of Americans, especially our own sons and daughters, are seeking a cause they can believe in. There is a hunger in this country today—a hunger for spiritual guidance. People yearn once again to be proud of their country and proud of themselves, and to have confidence in themselves. And there’s every reason why they should be proud. Some may have failed America, but America has never failed us, and there is so much to be proud of in this land.” —Ronald Reagan

OPINION IN BRIEF
“For more than three decades abortion has been primarily a legal fight centered on the Supreme Court’s idiosyncratic interpretation of the Constitution. Political action has invariably been shaped by the prospect of judicial review... The pro-life lobby has been forthright in its position: abortion is wrong and should be banned. The other side, however, often has obscured its views. Those leading the fight against abortion regulation like to style themselves as pro-choice, but many of them really are pro-abortion... We can quibble about when life begins. We can argue about the moral status of an embryo before implantation. We can discuss special justifications: life of the mother and rape, for instance. And we can respond compassionately to women caught in difficult circumstances who feel they have inadequate alternatives. But once we’ve entered the continuum of life there’s no obvious moral difference between a fetus at one month or eight months, or a child at one year or eight years. Surely an abortion is not something to celebrate... True, there are few more intimate decisions than that to bear a child. Having government intervene is a second best for anyone committed to individual liberty and limited government. But there is no liberty if the right to life is not respected.” —Doug Bandow




GOVERNMENT
“I must admit that I am angry. The story about 31-year old Elvira Arellano—a woman who came here illegally from Mexico—has infuriated me. Although Arellano was deported, she returned to the United States, had a son here, and is now facing deportation once again. But she has holed herself up at the Aldaberto United Methodist Church, where the pastor and many parishioners have vowed to feed and clothe her and her son—in perpetuity if necessary—to avoid her deportation. She defiantly has told the federal authorities in so many words, ‘I dare you to come and get me.’ Well—go get her!” —Paul Weyrich

RE: THE LEFT
“This year’s Democratic plan for the future is another inane sound bite designed to trick American voters into trusting them with national security. To wit, they’re claiming there is no connection between the war on terror and the war in Iraq, and while they’re all for the war against terror—absolutely in favor of that war—they are adamantly opposed to the Iraq war. You know, the war where the U.S. military is killing thousands upon thousands of terrorists (described in the media as ‘Iraqi civilians,’ even if they are from Jordan, like the now-dead leader of al-Qaida in Iraq, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi). That war. As Howard Dean put it this week, ‘The occupation in Iraq is costing American lives and hampering our ability to fight the real global war on terror.’ This would be like complaining that Roosevelt’s war in Germany was hampering our ability to fight the real global war on fascism. Or anti-discrimination laws were hampering our ability to fight the real war on racism. Or dusting is hampering our ability to fight the real war on dust... Assuming against all logic and reason that the Democrats have some serious objection to the war in Iraq, perhaps they could tell us which part of the war on terrorism they do support. That would be easier than rattling off the long list of counterterrorism measures they vehemently oppose. They oppose the National Security Agency listening to people who are calling specific phone numbers found on al-Qaida cell phones and computers. Spying on al-Qaida terrorists is hampering our ability to fight the global war on terror!... They oppose profiling Muslims at airports. They oppose every bust of a terrorist cell, sneering that the cells in Lackawanna, New York City, Miami, Chicago and London weren’t a real threat like, say, a nondenominational prayer before a high school football game. Now that’s a threat.” —Ann Coulter

POLITICAL FUTURES
“As Spiderman is wont to muse, with power goes responsibility (an immemorial truth that even politicians sometimes acknowledge). So why the gaudy rhetoric about problems people like [Delaware Demo Sen. Joe] Biden know for a fact they can’t solve? Because, no doubt, demagoguery is such fun when elections are a ways off and nobody can hold you fully to account for saying and wishing and promising the most awful nonsense. At least until after the elections.” —William Murchison


FOR THE RECORD
“Criminologists will tell you that the reason street crime is down in the U.S. is because of proactive policing methods such as were instituted in New York by Rudy Giuliani and William Bratton. A reactive police force by definition lets crime happen and investigates afterward. Our bitter, give-no-quarter politics is going to leave us with a reactive, uncertain national security apparatus. Even allowing for election needs, why is it not possible for the congressional Democratic Party and its Amen corner in the punditocracy and blogosphere to overcome their George Bush phobia here? They should allow the creation of a civil-liberties regime that will genuinely (not hopefully) reduce our exposure to the risks now being rolled up by the surveillance and arrests in London. The foiling of the plot in Britain was a kind of public-policy miracle, a rare chance to rethink. The U.S. could have spent the past week with 4,000 funerals. We would have had calls for measures so stringent and draconian they would make the Bush program look like pattycake. We have none of that. But unless our politics changes, we will.” —Daniel Henninger
THE LAST WORD
“Today, in the conflict between the West and Islamists, a cultural discrepancy between the rulebooks of the two sides exists that is far greater than any that existed in World War II. Indeed, the West cannot even decide what acts by our adversaries are war, and which are crimes or ‘isolated incidents.’ The greatest discord between the two playbooks centers around the concept of group guilt and the fairness of the targeting of civilians. The cultures of our enemies have a sweeping concept of both group guilt and group honor, with some groups believing, for example, that if one Israeli harms one Muslim, then every Muslim should be angry at every Israeli, and their allies the Americans, and the United Nations, and all Christianity and all Jews and even all the West... This same cultural tradition of group honor, group guilt, and group retribution is what leads a group of non-government directed Arab expatriates to believe that killing thousands of secretaries and stock brokers in Manhattan is a logical direct reaction to military defeat of Arab armies by Israel, and that they should personally take it upon themselves to accomplish that endeavor... To be blunt, this means we will need to extract a price not just from those that form the tip of the Islamist spear, but from the entire populations that produce them in such numbers. To win, we may have to make certain cultures regret such support and we may need to temporarily accept our enemy’s rules of war, rather than just whine that they are not ours.” —Mac Johnson

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A sample of The Patriot Post,nee The Federalist Patriot, like Townhall they have revamped their site, a conservative slump, I don't think so, grin. The GOP is on message and the DNC has three factions, the true and dininishing JFK, side, the socialists and the anarchist, anti-war/America ie, Cindy Sheehan/Michael Moore crowd. They hate war except when it kills Israelis indiscriminately or Americans for that matter. Does the fact the Fox news journalists were released only after "converting" to islam at gunpoint and on camera for the media not raise an alarm?!?