WHO ISN'T ANTI-WAR? It is staggering that anyone could be so self-infatuated as to single out their own particular policy preferences as "anti-war." Anyone who is not a sadist or an idiot is anti-war. The only serious issue is how best to limit, deter or conclude war. But responsibility for confronting this issue is evaded by those preoccupied with the moral preening of being "anti-war." -- Thomas Sowell, townhall.com, 8/29/06

DIVERSITY SUCKS: 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 -- written in blood -- from Iraq to India, from Serbia to Sudan, from Fiji to thePhilippines. It is scary how easily so many people can be brainwashed by sheer repetition of a word. -- Thomas Sowell, townhall.com, 8/29/06

MEDIEVAL SUVs: Climate statistics show that, with all the "global warming" hysteria today, our temperatures are still not as high as they were back in medieval times. Those medieval folks must have been driving a lot of cars and SUVs. -- Thomas Sowell,townhall.com, 8/29/06

SCHOOLS NEED COMPETITION: Every economics textbook says monopolies are bad because they charge high prices for shoddy goods. But it's government that gives us monopolies. So why do we entrust something as important as our children's education to a government monopoly? -- John Stossel, townhall.com, 8/30/06

CLEANEST WAR IN HISTORY: From the first moment of the war, [the Iraqi civilian] death toll was lower than it had been under the rule of Saddam Hussein. . . . Our rules of engagement made it the cleanest war in history, in terms of civilian damage caused by an invading army. -- Orson Scott Card, "Lies and Catastrophes," ornery.org, 8/13/06

OUR LEFT BEHIND: Often we can see where the American left is headed by seeing where the European left has arrived. -- Thomas Sowell, townhall.com, 8/23/06

GOOD GUNS, BAD GUNS: Here's my credo. There are no good guns, there are no bad guns. A gun in the hands of a bad man is a bad thing. Any gun in the hands of a good man is no threat to anyone, except bad people. -- Charlton Heston

DEMOGRAPHIC DEATH SPIRAL: The most geriatric jurisdiction on the planet, Nippon's rising sun has now passed into the next phase of its long sunset: net population loss. 2005 was the first year since records began with more deaths than births. The world's other elderly societies have complicating factors: In Europe, the successor population is already in place -- Islam -- and the only question is how bloody the transfer of real estate will be. But Japan offers the chance to observe the demographic death spiral in its purest form. It's a country with no immigration, no significant minorities and no desire for any: just theJapanese, aging and dwindling. -- Mark Steyn

ALLOWING OUR HANDS TO BE TIED: Both domestic opposition and the international community, unhappily, are "defining torture down. The things they're calling 'torture' now have never been and have no business being considered torture. . . . It is an effort to disarm us that's succeeding to a frightening extent. No, it's worse than that. They're trying to make it impossible to fight terrorism. . . . Every weapon that's been developed to protect us from terrorism, and the Iraqis from internal terrorism, is under assault." -- Joseph Rago, quoting Norman Podhoretz, opinionjournal.com, 8/12/06

LOW COST WAR: We've paid an extraordinarily small price [in the war on terrorism and in Iraq] by any reasonable historical standard for a huge accomplishment. -- NormanPodhoretz, quoted by Joseph Rago, opinionjournal.com, 8/12/06

ISLAMIC DIPLOMACY? When will people realize that Islamic terrorists are not diplomats, nor can they conduct themselves diplomatically. They are warriors . . . -- Nicholas P. Giordano, opinioneditorials.com, 8/17/06

ENORMITY OF THIS WAR: The reality is peace will not exist within the Middle East for decades, and perhaps, centuries. It is important for the world to realize that we are on the cusp of an enormous war that can only be described as the Clash of Civilizations. It is incumbent upon us to realize, we are not only fighting to defend ourselves against death and destruction, but we are also fighting to perserve our way of life. -- Nicholas P. Giordano, opinioneditorials.com, 8/17/06

APPEASERS HURT ALL: To those who want to appease the barbarians of the east? You lack conviction, and your cowardice gets painted onto the rest of us by the media fools. Quit wearing your ignorance like a badge of honor! -- R. A. Hawkins, opinioneditorials.com, 8/18/06

RELYING ON THE ARM OF MAN: Those who hold out their hope to the politicians to fix our problems are mostly ignorant of how the real world works so we in our ignorance always pick the wrong ones. It's all about personal responsibility. There was a lesson given to each of us in the US last year. That lesson was Hurricane Katrina. How did the people do during that lesson? Yes. It's that simple and that obvious. -- R. A. Hawkins, opinioneditorials.com, 8/18/06

ISRAEL: The Arabs can fight, and lose, and return to fight another day. Israel can only lose once. -- Golda Meir

WISING UP: Example is the school of mankind, and our enemy has an ambitious lesson plan. -- Jonah Goldberg, townhall.com, 8/18/06

IT'S NOT OVER: Within the memory of most people over 40, the free world could distinguish between good and evil. But today, fewer make such judgments and "one man's terrorist is another's freedom fighter." Instead of the World War I lyric "we won't come back till it's over, over there," we - or in this case Israel - comes back before it's over. As a result, it isn't over and it won't be over until Israel and the West get over moral equivalency and political correctness and fight to win. The evil guys are fighting to win. -- Cal Thomas, townhall.com, 8/15/06

WHAT WE FIGHT FOR: The hour is fast approaching, on which the Honor and Success of this army, and the safety of our bleeding Country depend. Remember officers and Soldiers, that you are Freemen, fighting for the blessings of Liberty -- that slavery will be your portion, and that of your posterity, if you do not acquit yourselves like men. -- George Washington (General Orders, 23 August 1776)

UNBIASED JUDGES: Judges . . . rule on the basis of law, not public opinion, and they should be totally indifferent to pressures of the times. -- former Chief Justice Warren E. Burger

UNENFORCIBLE LAW: Nothing is more destructive of respect for the government and the law of the land than passing laws which cannot be enforced. -- Albert Einstein

WORLD OPINION: It is vital to understand that while world opinion may be just the random collective judgment of mankind -- it is usually not random, but rather, in part at least, a propaganda-manipulated opinion. -- Tony Blankley

WORLD OPINION: If you are ever morally confused about a major world issue, here is a rule that is almost never violated: Whenever you hear that 'world opinion' holds a view, assume it is morally wrong. -- Dennis Prager

NO PEACE WITH PALESTINE: Islam does not want peace. Most of Islam wants the destruction of Israel. Palestinians could have had a state in 1948 but they rejected it. They could have had a state eventually by adhering to the Oslo accords but they prefered terrorism. They could have had most of what they pretend to be asking for with the generous offer at Camp David in 1999 but they rejected that. They don't want a state as long as there is also an Israel. There is no such thing as Palestine except for the British Mandate. There are no Palestinians except those who made themselves up and they don't want peace so the Road Map and talk of a comprehensive peace treaty is malarky. -- ProfGene, townhall.com, 8/5/06

GOVERNMENT: It is not the business of government to make men virtuous or religious, or to preserve the fool from the consequences of his own folly. Government should be repressive no further than is necessary to secure liberty by protecting the equal rights of each from aggression on the part of others, and the moment governmental prohibitions extend beyond this line they are in danger of defeating the very ends they are intended to serve. -- Henry George

PEACE IN LEBANON: Simply delivering a cease-fire won't deliver peace. Peace isn't the absence of fighting -- it's what exists when people would rather co-exist than fight. Hezbollah wants to fight and kill non-Muslims, and especially Americans. Unless we want to see the terrorist group succeed, we'd better get serious about stopping it. First we have to allow Israel to finish off Hezbollah. Then we can talk about a cease-fire and maybe even build peace with people who want it. -- Rich Tucker, townhall.com, 8/7/06

UNITED NATIONS IMPOTENCE: Going to the U.N. [for help in securing a cease-fire in Lebanon] is pointless. The U.N. Security Council already demanded, in 2004, that Hezbollah disarm. And while there are U.N. troops in Lebanon, they've never taken steps to enforce that resolution. So there's no reason to believe the U.N. can accomplish anything. . . . The real problem is that Iran and Syria are supporting terrorists, and these terrorists are heavily armed and eager to kill. The only way to stop them is to kill them or force them to disarm. The U.N. isn't going to do that; only a powerful military can. -- Rich Tucker, townhall.com, 8/7/06

IRAN: With al-Qaeda in decline, Iran is on the march. It is intervening through proxies throughout the Arab world -- Hezbollah in Lebanon, Hamas in Palestine, Moqtada al-Sadr's Mahdi Army in Iraq -- to subvert modernizing, Western-oriented Arab governments and bring these territories under Iranian hegemony. Its nuclear ambitions would secure these advances, give it an overwhelming preponderance of power over the Arabs and an absolute deterrent against serious counteractions by the United States, Israel or any other rival.

The moderate pro-Western Arabs understand this very clearly. Which is why Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Jordan immediately came out against Hezbollah and privately urged the U.S. to let Israel take down Hezbollah. They know that Hezbollah is fighting Iran's proxy war not only against Israel but against them and, more generally, against the United States and the West. -- Charles Krauthammer, townhall.com, 8/4/06

DEMOCRATS: When Democrats form a firing squad, they tend to form it in a circle and end up shooting each other. -- Mo Udall

THE PRESIDENT: It's time for Democrats who distrust President Bush to acknowledge [that he is our] commander-in-chief. We undermine the President's credibility at our nation's peril. -- Senator Joe Lieberman

PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATES: [Rudy] Giuliani and [Newt] Gingrich are on their third marriages, and [George]Allen and [John] McCain are on their second, while [Mitt] Romney's been married to the same woman for 30-plus years. Thus, the candidate in the race with the fewest wives is the Mormon.

JUDGING A PARTY BY ITS WEB SITE: A quick review of the Democratic Party's web site exposes a party so consumed by its loathing of President Bush and the GOP that it fails to offer voters any substantive information on where it stands on the issues of the day. . . . Every issue area on the Democrat's web site begins with such nonspecific statements followed by attacks on the President and the Republicans in Congress. In fact, more web space is devoted to attacking Republicans than to advancing Democratic positions. . . . Out of curiosity, I also navigated my web browser to the Republican Party's web site in search of the GOP's agenda for America. Remarkably, I found a party that laid out clear positions on every political issue imaginable, while devoting almost no space at all to attacking the Democratic Party, its positions, or its members. . . . There are virtually no attacks and no hateful rhetoric, just clear, detailed positions on where Republicans stand. -- Greg C. Reeson, opinioneditorials.com, 8/3/06

POLITICAL CORRECTNESS: The . . . diabolically crafted corrective idea [intended to address the "mental illness" of social conservativism] is political correctness. The strong suggestion here is that in order for one not to be thought of as racist or fascist, then one must not only be nonjudgmental but must also embrace the 'new' moral absolutes: diversity, choice, sensitivity, sexual orientation, and tolerance. Political correctness is a Machiavellian psychological 'command and control' device. Its purpose is the imposition of uniformity in thought, speech, and behavior. -- Linda Kimball, opinioneditorials.com, 8/2/06

COMMUNISM: Both communism and the New Left are alive and thriving here in America. Code words by which they can be recognized are: tolerance, social justice, economic justice, peace, reproductive rights, sex education and safe sex, safe schools, inclusion, diversity, and sensitivity. All together, this is Cultural Marxism disguised as multiculturalism. -- Linda Kimball, opinioneditorials.com, 8/2/06