 To be successful, a rat requires cunning, not genius.
Steve Wolfer
Corporate Bailout
The larger the mob, the harder the test. In small areas, before small electorates, a first-rate man occasionally fights his way through, carrying even the mob with him by force of his personality. But when the field is nationwide, and the fight must be waged chiefly at second and third hand, and the force of personality cannot so readily make itself felt, then all the odds are on the man who is, intrinsically, the most devious and mediocre - the man who can most easily adeptly disperse the notion that his mind is a virtual vacuum. The Presidency tends, year by year, to go to such men. As democracy is perfected, the office represents, more and more closely, the inner soul of the people. We move toward a lofty ideal. On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart's desire at last, and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron.
H. L. Mencken
Baltimore Evening Sun, July 26, 1920
You're right [Congressman Frank], I'm a dumb guy, and you... you are the brilliant guy that presided over the biggest financial collapse in history!
Bill O'Reilly
Fox News - O'Reilly Factor
Furthermore, the very speech we must be most careful to protect is that which is most onerous to us. Our natural inclination is to shut up the Other Side. The problem is, many days we are the other side.
Anonymous
"Editorial," The Free Lance-Star
(I)f libertarianism could account for children and foreign policy, it would be the ideal political philosophy.
Jonah Goldberg
Liberal Fascism
We could keep arguing about when America should go to war, but something happened this week. We went broke. Now, war is just one of the things we will shortly no longer be able to afford.
Steve Wolfer
Your economic security has been put at risk by the greed of Wall Street. ... My opponent's only solutions are talk and taxes. I'll reform Wall Street and fix Washington.
Senator John McCain, R-Arizona
John McCain, 2008 Campaign Ad (from: http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/09/17/campaign.wrap/index.html?iref=mpstoryview)
It is terrible to contemplate how few politicians are hanged.
Gilbert Keith Chesterton
The Cleveland Press, 3/1/21
A human group transforms itself into a crowd when it suddenly responds to a suggestion rather than to reasoning, to an image rather than to an idea, to an affirmation rather than to proof, to the repetition of a phrase rather than to arguments, to prestige rather than to competence.
Jean-François Revel
There is no advantage to putting out a mistruth.
Bob Schieffer
http://minnesota.publicradio.org/display/web/2008/09/16/midmorning2/
I certainly don't fault Senator McCain for these problems, but I do fault the economic philosophy he subscribes to.
Barack H. Obama
Obama explaining collapse of Lehman Brothers and Merrill Lynch; in news article: "Obama says McCain is running dishonest campaign"
Democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for lunch. Liberty is a well-armed lamb contesting the vote.
Benjamin Franklin
Erik
Only if democracy eventually prevails in Pyongyang and Tehran can the West breathe easy.
Max Boot
http://www.csmonitor.com/specials/neocon/boot.html
So Bob Barr's claim to fame now is that he barely beat an anarchist who defended the legality of child pornography. Barr may have lent the Libertarian Party his credibility, but the Libertarian Party has lent Barr its insanity.
FreeCololrado.com
http://www.freecolorado.com/2008/06/barr-beats-anarchist.html
I can just see [Ariana Huffington], face knotted up in anger and determination, busily duct-taping McCain and Bush together like some three-legged potato sack racer. "Stand still, damn it! You are staying fastened together till Obama gets a chance to win this race!" But Bush isn't running we say, and she says, "He is now! What do you think I'm doing with this tape?"
Steve Wolfer
http://rebirthofreason.com/Forum/GeneralForum/1283.shtml#11
Watching [Sarah Palin], everyone can say to himself, somewhere in his subconscious, "The best within me is like her (even if not as successful, or powerful, or whatever) and as long as I'm being honest and standing up for my values I too am a hero (even if on a smaller scale)."
Steve Wolfer
http://rebirthofreason.com/Forum/NewsDiscussions/2137_4.shtml#96
What I think is going on, at least in part, with the Palin phenomenon is that a large portion of the population is fed up to the teeth with political correctness and Nanny regulations. These go from helmet laws to trans-fat bans to global warming hysteria and spotted owl environmentalists and everything in between. So when it is said that her goal in life is to kill caribou it's a throw-it-in-your-face cry of 'enough already' to the latte-sipping solipsistic city-dwelling sissies who don't know how to do anything practical. Many of rural Americans do know how to change their own oil, shoot varmints, cook an apple pie and build a fence and they're finally having their say.
Paul Hibbert
http://rebirthofreason.com/Forum/NewsDiscussions/2137_4.shtml#95
So remember, the only way to waste your vote is to vote!
Penn Jillette
http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/09/02/jillette.presidency/index.html
This is a man who can give an entire speech about the wars America is fighting, and never use the word 'victory' except when he's talking about his own campaign.
Sarah Palin
RNC Acceptance Speech
Without liberty, all we have are the leeches and looters fighting over the spoils that the victims are required to produce. This rotten system of redistribution must end. And it will, because victims of authoritarian rule eventually quit being victimized. War and domestic violence always complicate matters once the moral defense of individual rights is rejected.
Ron Paul
http://www.campaignforliberty.com/blog/?p=432
Every four years, we suddenly discover that the only people worth noticing or mentioning in the United States are those who are ill, or unemployed, or uninsured, or underpaid, or homeless, or some combination of the above. Bill and Hillary Clinton went on about these unprotected and wretched millions on two successive nights last week, apparently never reflecting that some of them at least must have been alive and suffering under the two Clinton administrations. How can a thinking person sit still and listen to such piffle, let alone get up and wave their arms about when they hear it again and again?
Christopher Hitchens
Fighting Words
For over two decades, [McCain has] subscribed to that old, discredited Republican philosophy — give more and more to those with the most and hope that prosperity trickles down to everyone else.
Barack H. Obama
http://news.yahoo.com/s/politico/20080830/pl_politico/12964
... the fundamental belief that I am my brother's keeper; I am my sister's keeper. That's the promise we need to keep.
Barack H. Obama
Nomination Speech at the 2008 DNC
So much of left-wing thought is a kind of playing with fire by people who don't even know that fire is hot.
George Orwell
http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/g/george_orwell.html
"As cruel geography and the selfish designs of the American Founding Fathers would have it, Europeans don't get to choose the US president."
Gerard Baker
London Times
Q. What do you think of the Libertarian Party? AR: I’d rather vote for Bob Hope, the Marx Brothers, or Jerry Lewis. I don’t think they’re as funny as Professor Hospers and the Libertarian Party. If, at a time like this, John Hospers takes ten votes away from Nixon (which I doubt he’ll do), it would be a moral crime. I don’t care about Nixon, and I care even less about Hospers. But this is no time to engage in publicity seeking, which all these crank political parties are doing. If you want to spread your ideas, do it through education. But don’t run for President—or even dogcatcher—if you’re going to help McGovern.
Ayn Rand
http://rebirthofreason.com/Forum/NewsDiscussions/2126_2.shtml#52
There are a thousand hacking at the branches of evil to one who is striking at the root.
Henry David Thoreau
http://www.strike-the-root.com/
A recurring head-in-the-sandism of isolationists is the premise that every threat is best dealt with by ‘leaving it alone in its cage.’ The unstated premise is that the dog can’t or won’t get out, and the only way to get hurt is by mucking in his business. Of course, the dog can get out. The only question is: Should we let him see us picking up a big stick, or stringing up our sneakers?
Jon Letendre
http://rebirthofreason.com/Forum/NewsDiscussions/2128.shtml#12
If McCain has appeared "presidential" in this crisis, by contrast, it is because he has provided real moral leadership when no one else was doing it—and his statements of encouragement to Georgia may well have changed the course of events for the better. I am no fan of McCain, and I fought vigorously against his nomination by the Republican Party. But if anything can make me vote for the bastard, this will be it.
Robert Tracinski
TIA Daily
When Obama says he will only tax the rich, it's like saying he won't shut down the entire ship, just the engine room.
Dick Morris
foxnews.com
On everything Obama is 'unerring'...If you think he's changed his mind you're mistaken...As befits a man who's treated by the press as not presidential but papal he believes himself infallible. I wouldn't be surprised if in Berlin he holds not a rally, but a mass.
Charles Krauthammer
Special Report with Brit Hume, July 23, 2008
I wasn't born in America - but I got here as fast as I could.
Elon Musk
http://www.tcsdaily.com/article.aspx?id=061808B
We will never be safe in this country if we continue to kill three thousand babies a day. We can never expect God's protection.
Gregg Jackson
Book TV Interview
The problem with elections is that anybody who wants an office badly enough to run for it probably shouldn't have it. And anybody who does not want an office badly enought to run for it probably shouldn't have it, either. Government office should be received like a child's Christmas present, with surprise and delight. Instead it is usually received like a diploma, an anticlimax that never seems worth the struggle to earn it.
Orson Scott Card
Empire
I want them to feel that they are somebody and their congressman is somebody. And when they say, 'This is nice,' it feels good.
Rep. Charles Rangel (D-NY)
US News & World Report (http://www.usnews.com/blogs/washington-whispers/2008/05/02/out-loud-may-2-2008.html)
Here at home, our State Department is advising its officials to avoid perfectly descriptive terms for our enemies like "jihadist" and "Islamo-fascist" in favor of vague terms like "violent extremist" or "terrorist" -- as if we could just as easily be fighting Basque separatists.
Victor Davis Hanson
The Half-Won, Half-Lost War
Republicans who vote for tax increases are rat's heads in coke bottles.
Grover Norquist
Leave Us Alone
Sen. Barack Obama of Illinois is the current beneficiary of a tsunami of drool.
Christopher Hitchens
http://www.slate.com/id/2181460/
In the case of murder, the death penalty - issued by way of putting the culprit to sleep to then apply the lethal injection - is the time delayed procedure of self-defense as carried out by the representatives of the victim(s) who, at the time of the incident and due to the then existing circumstance, was/were unable to defend itself/themselves from the wilful murderous attack.
Manfred F. Schieder (1937 - )
From Chapter 6 of "Ayn Rand, I and the Universe" (http://rebirthofreason.com/Articles/Schieder/The_Logically_Resulting_Type_of_Society.shtml)
"Public relations was invented in the United States, yet we are miserable at communicating to the rest of the world what we are about as a society and a culture, about freedom and democracy, about our policies and our goals,"
Robert Gates (US Sec'y Def)
CNN: "... enemies 'eating our lunch' online"
Big government is a national security threat: it increases your vulnerability to threats like Islamism, and makes it less likely you'll be able to summon the will to rebuff it. We should have learned that lesson on Sept. 11, 2001, when big government flopped big-time and the only good news of the day came from the ad hoc citizen militia of Flight 93.
Mark Steyn
"The Future Belongs to Islam," MacCleans, Oct. 20, 2006
The big mystery is why so many otherwise sensible people have faith in the wondrous influence of governments. Whatever has lead them to this myth that people with guns -- such as those in the vice squads, the IRS, the government regulators and the rest -- will bring peace and justice to us all?
Tibor R. Machan
Problems with Egalitarianism
I am in favor of fearmongering. As much, as and as fast as we can monger it.
Jeff Perren
Giuliani versus Paul
"If he advocates the right political principles for the wrong metaphysical reasons, the contradiction is his problem, not ours."
Ayn Rand
When you think how fantastically successful the Jewish lobby has been...they more or less monopolize American foreign policy, as far as many people can see."
Richard Dawkins
Daniel, Johnson, NY Sun, 4 October 2007
You need to study ten years of primary sources and textbooks for every one year of studying philosophy actually to understand reality beyond a floating abstraction.
Ted Keer
http://rebirthofreason.com/Forum/Banter/0220_4.shtml#84
The subject who is truly loyal to the Chief Magistrate will neither advise nor consent to arbitrary measures.
Junius
If Objectivism wants to make any headway in redirecting culture, I believe that it needs to focus on how to make people want to be good rather than on having to be good.
C. Jeffery Small
Rebirth of Reason
I cannot say that our country could have no secret police without becoming totalitarian, but I can say with great conviction that it cannot become totalitarian without a centralized national police.
Robert H. Jackson
Wilcox, L. and George J. (1994). Be Reasonable. Buffalo: Prometheus Books. p 17.
Moreover, any man more right than his neighbors constitutes a majority of one already.
Henry David Thoreau
"Resistance to Civil Government"
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