Border Economics

There have been suggestions that the border be sealed. But Mexico is the United States' third-largest customer, and the United States is Mexico's largest customer. This was the case well before NAFTA, and has nothing to do with treaties and everything to do with economics and geography. Cutting that trade would have catastrophic effects on both sides of the border, and would guarantee the failure of the Mexican state. It isn't going to happen. So long as vast quantities of goods flow across the border, the border cannot be sealed. -- George Friedman, Stratfor Geopolitical Weekly, 5/13/08

Selling Eden

A politician with good rhetorical skills can create a new Garden of Eden in people's minds, though only in their minds. However, that is sufficient, if that vision or illusion can be kept alive until election day, and its failure to materialize afterwards can be explained away by the obstruction of villains. . . . So long as the voters buy it, the politicians will keep selling it. -- Thomas Sowell, townhall.com, 5/14/08

The Course Not Taken

History is an elective few liberals choose to take these days... The lack of historical knowledge among journalists is merely appalling. But in a presidential candidate it's dangerous. As Sir Winston Churchill said: 'Those who fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it'. -- Jack Kelly

Old Professions

Politics is supposed to be the second oldest profession. I have come to realize that it bears a very close resemblance to the first. -- Ronald Reagan

Things I'd Say If I Was That Smart

There are seven reasons for anyone to support the eventual [Republican] nominee no matter who it is: The war and six Supreme Court justices over the age of 68. -- Hugh Hewitt

The American people will never knowingly adopt Socialism. But under the name of 'liberalism' they will adopt every fragment of the Socialist program, until one day America will be a Socialist nation, without knowing how it happened. -- Norman Thomas

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.

The way to get people's votes is to say that all their problems are caused by other people, and that you will stop those other people from giving them trouble. But if you really want to help, then you can tell them the truth and risk losing their votes... -- Thomas Sowell

Liberalism is so impressed with its own brilliance that results apparently don't matter. -- Brent Bozell

Liberals are always at their best chuckling at the ways of those they regard as hicks. That's because liberals place far more importance on sophistication than on character, decency and values. -- Burt Prelutsky

I would like to electrocute everyone who uses the word 'fair' in connection with income tax policies. -- William F. Buckley Jr.

To tax the community for the advantage of a class is not protection -- it is plunder. -- Benjamin Disraeli

A government which lays taxes on the people not required by urgent public necessity and sound public policy is not a protector of liberty, but an instrument of tyranny. -- Calvin Coolidge

The current tax code is a daily mugging. -- Ronald Reagan

I'm proud to pay taxes in the United States; the only thing is, I could be just as proud for half the money. -- Arthur Godfrey

Lord, the money we do spend on Government and it's not one bit better than the government we got for one-third the money twenty years ago. -- Will Rogers

We have the right, as individuals, to give away as much of our own money as we please in charity; but as members of Congress we have no right so to appropriate a dollar of the public money. -- Davy Crockett

Blunt-speaking and heroism does not a president make

The fact that McCain makes short, blunt statements does not make him a straight-talker. . . .

When confronted with any of his misdeeds, Senator McCain tends to fall back on his record as a war hero in Vietnam.

Let's talk sense. Benedict Arnold was a war hero but that did not exempt him from condemnation for his later betrayal.

Being a war hero is not a lifetime get-out-of-jail-free card. And becoming President of the United States is not a matter of rewarding an individual for past services.

The Presidency is a heavy responsibility for the future of the nation, including generations yet unborn. Character and integrity are major qualifications.

-- Thomas Sowell, townhall.com, 2/1/08

Plotting to cripple the American economy

We just have to slow down our economy and cut back our greenhouse-gas emissions 'cause we have to save the planet for our grandchildren. -- Bill Clinton

[In other words, Bill, global warming REALLY IS an anti-American, anti-capitalist ploy, right? -- Kirt]

The Republican candidate liberals want out of the race

Are you familiar with our 'no exchange/no return' policy on presidential candidates? Voting for McCain because he was a POW a quarter-century ago or Huckabee because he was a Baptist preacher is like buying a new car because you like the color. The candidate Republicans should be clamoring for is the one liberals are feverishly denouncing. That is Mitt Romney by a landslide. -- Ann Coulter

Romney for real

Romney's very public migration rightward over the last few years is a different kind of act, one intended not to hide his real views but to liberate them. In 1994, Romney struck me as an extraordinarily bright, talented, and decent man -- and a political neophyte who fell for the canard that the only way a conservative could win in Massachusetts was by passing for a liberal. [Now,] Romney is where he should have been all along. -- Jeff Jacoby

Straight Talk is not the same as Straight Walk

I seek the nomination of our Party because I am as confident today as I was when I first entered public life as a foot soldier in the Reagan Revolution that the principles of the Republican Party – our confidence in the good sense and resourcefulness of free people – are always in America’s best interests. In war and peace, in good times and challenging ones, we have always known that the first responsibility of government is to keep this country safe from its enemies, and the American people free of a heavy-handed government that spends too much of their money, and tries to do for them what they are better able to do for themselves. We want government to do its job, not your job; to do it better and to do it with less of your money; to defend our nation’s security wisely and effectively, because the cost of our defense is so dear to us; to respect our values because they are the true source of our strength; to enforce the rule of law that is the first defense of freedom; to keep the promises it makes to us and not make promises it will not keep. We believe government should do only those things we cannot do individually, and then get out of the way so that the most industrious, ingenious, and enterprising people in the world can do what they have always done: build an even greater country than the one they inherited.

-- John McCain, 1/18/08

[So, given all the "straight talk", how much do past misdeeds -- Keating savings and loan scandal, McCain-Kennedy amnesty bill, McCain-Feingold 1st Amendment sell-out, and judicial nomination side deals -- count towards walking the walk? -- Kirt]

A Good Government

I will venture to assert that no combination of designing men under heaven will be capable of making a government unpopular which is in its principles a wise and good one, and vigorous in its operations. -- Alexander Hamilton (speech to the New York Ratifying Convention, June 1788)

[I think it is only in "its operations" that our government has earned our dismay. -- Kirt ]

The Jihadist War in Review

After the 2001 invasion of Afghanistan, the United States realized it lacked the military wherewithal to simultaneously deal with the four powers that made al Qaeda possible: Saudi Arabia, Syria, Iran and Pakistan. The first phase of the Bush solution was to procure an anchor against Afghanistan by forcing Pakistan into an alliance. The second was to invade the state that bordered the other three-- Iraq -- in order to intimidate the remaining trio into cooperating against al Qaeda. The final stage was to press both wars until al Qaeda -- the core organization that launched the 9/11 attack and sought the creation of a pan-Islamic caliphate, not the myriad local extremists who later adopted its name -- broke.

As 2008 dawns, it has become apparent that though this strategy engendered many unforeseen costs, it has proven successful at grinding al Qaeda into nonfunctionality. Put simply, the jihadist war is all but over; the United States not only is winning but also has an alliance with the entire constellation of Sunni powers that made al Qaeda possible in the first place. The United States will attempt to use this alliance to pressure the remnants of al Qaeda and its allies, as well as those in the region who are not in the alliance.

This leaves Iran, the region's only non-Sunni power, in the uncomfortable position of needing to seek an arrangement with the United States.

-- George Friedman, stratfor.com, 1/8/08

Government needs a short leash

Freedom was given to humanity by God. But, governments, if they can help it, never give freedom. They just hand out slavery with slogans. -- Taylor Caldwell

Essential Virtue

Is there no virtue among us? If there be not, we are in a wretched situation. No theoretical checks -- no form of government can render us secure. To suppose that any form of government will secure liberty or happiness without any virtue in the people, is a chimerical idea, if there be sufficient virtue and intelligence in the community, it will be exercised in the selection of these men. So that we do not depend on their virtue, or put confidence in our rulers, but in the people who are to choose them."

-- James Madison (speech at the Virginia Ratifying Convention, 20 June 1788)

Of Multicultural Patriots

A man who thinks of himself as belonging to a particular national group in America has not yet become an American. And the man who goes among you to trade upon your nationality is no worthy son to live under the Stars and Stripes.

-- Woodrow Wilson

Canadian free speech at risk

Canadians who do not like their hate-speech policy, it turns out, are not free to call censors unflattering things.

Let me rephrase. Canadians are not free to call censors "enemies of free speech." Even if, by the clear meaning of the English language (as well as by American standards) that's what hate-speech censors are, just because they're censors: Enemies of free speech.

. . . [A Canadian] judge ruled that a government official working from duly enacted government policy cannot be an enemy of free speech. That's just unthinkable!

Yes, in Canada you may not speak the truth about free speech to its official enemies. In Canada, the reason why we [Americans] must defend even the most vile speech and writing becomes clear: because suppression of it eventually leads to the inability to criticize government.

You know you've lost your freedom when you cannot call a censor a censor.

-- Paul Jacob, townhall.com, 12/9/07

Military Minds

I've attended several conferences sponsored by the military. They bring in a bunch of civilian experts (and one sci-fi author who is an expert in nothing, but he wrote Ender's Game) and seat them at a table and each of them gives a presentation. Then they question each other in sharp-witted conversation,proving and testing each other's ideas.

During all of this, the walls of the room are lined with soldiers. Officers young and old, who listen.

Just listen.

Not that they don't have opinions. On the contrary -- when I've met these same officers in other contexts, I have been deeply impressed by the level of intellectual rigor among our military.

I daresay that if you're looking for the sharpest thinking in America, you'll find more of it in the military than in the university -- because the military know that a lot of lives depend on their getting right answers, whereas is many academic departments absolutely nothing is at stake and they can teach and write any amount of nonsense without any effect in the real world.

But in those conferences, the soldiers sit silently against the wall, saying nothing; not even their faces show what they're thinking.

-- Orson Scott Card, meridianmagazine.com, 11/27/07

Who started the crusade, anyway?

Somehow, my worthy, lifelong profession, the mass media -- following the lead of the cultural establishment -- have made up their collective mind that the evangelicals, the religious-righters, the preachers, the shouters, call them what you will, launched in the '60s some cockeyed crusade to put the Holy Bible in the center of our affairs. Putting it there might not be such a bad thing, but assuredly, that's not what the preachers, etc., undertook.

The preachers didn't start this business; the secularists did. Out of the celestial blue came the news from the U.S. Supreme Court, in the '60s, that the public schools enjoyed no right to allow prayer of any kind or the reading of the Bible.

-- Bill Murchison, townhall.com, 12/11/07

Vice President McCain

[There are] five iron-clad and important Running Mate Rules.

1. FAMILIAR AND REASSURING. Most successful running mates of recent years were well-known, highly respected senior statesmen -- not newcomers or rookies.
2. OLDER. . . . there's something vastly reassuring about an older Vice Presidential nominee whose only interest is service and support, rather than plotting his own future races for the top job.
3. INSIDER. . . . We all want a Vice President who knows Washington well enough to step into the job at a moment's notice.
4. FORMER CANDIDATE. . . . The big advantage in choosing a Vice Presidential nominee who's run before for President is that the candidate has already been vetted -- whatever skeletons he (or she) may have kept stashed in the closet has already been discussed and digested by the press.
5. With mainstream media fixated on various "firsts" in the Presidential race(first woman, black, Hispanic, Mormon, and Italian American double-divorcee as serious candidates) there's a natural tendency to look at other "breakthrough"possibilities in a running mate. Any smart nominee will resist this temptation: whenever it's been tried in the past, it's always failed.

With these commons sense, unassailable rules in mind, one potential choice for the Vice Presidential nomination should emerge as an apparent Veep frontrunner-- and his name is John McCain.

-- Michael Medved, townhall.com, 12/12/07

Bigotry Revealed

When Mike Huckabee asked a New York Times' reporter, "Don't Mormons believe that Jesus and the devil are brothers," he crossed a line he cannot uncross. . . .

Huckabee's obvious attempt to salt the mine and get the reporter to carry anti-Mormon rhetoric into the paper without Huckabee's fingerprints on it backfired, and the transparent attempt to use the MSM to further the anti-Mormon message was repulsive. . . .

He went to CNN immediately thereafter and asked for forgiveness.

Will that put Huckabee's anti-Mormon genie back in its bottle. I don't think so. "That which is said while drunk has been thought out beforehand," goes the old saying. In the modern media world, candidates for the presidency don't say careless things to the New York Times. It was a premeditated aside, an attempt to get a virus into circulation. It didn't work, but it did tell us a lot about Mike Huckabee.

-- Hugh Hewitt, townhall.com, 12/13/07