. . . And A Friend of Angelo, Too!
“We’re not going to mince words. Chris Dodd is a lying weasel.”—The New Haven Register, in an editorial enumerating numerous Dodd falsehoods the Democrat Connecticut Senator has told about his sweetheart mortgage deal from Countrywide, and his involvement in the AIG bonus scandal. (March, 2009)
“I eat at Mickey D’s (McDonald’s) three times a day and will sue when I get sick. It’s the American Way.”—Choatso, the screen name of a blog reader commenting on an article at an MSN.com blog, about America’s ten best and worst restaurants. (March 31, 2009)
Jimbo Had No Idea How Bad It Would Be . . .
“. . .enlightened statesmen will not always be at the helm.”—James Madison, writing in Federalist 10 a couple of centuries ago.
“ . . . when bad men combine, the good must associate; else they will fall one by one, an unpitied sacrifice in a contemptible struggle.”—Edmund Burke
“It should attend to national defense, safeguard the individual in his civil rights, maintain outward order and decency, enforce the obligations of contract, punish crimes belonging in the order of malum in se (evil in itself), and make justice cheap and easily available.”—Albert Jay Nock, describing his view of limited government, quoted by Jonah Goldberg in an article about Nock’s life in the May 4, 2009, issue of The National Review. Nock lived from 1870-1945, was a college professor, an Episcopal minister for a dozen years, then became an author (he wrote a biography of Thomas Jefferson; his best-known works were Our Enemy, The State and Memoirs of a Superfluous Man) and a journalist and editor, and once played minor-league baseball. (April 25, 2009)
A. J. Deciphers The Code . . .
“The simple truth is that our businessmen do not want a government that will let business alone. They want a government they can use.”—Albert Jay Nock, quoted by Jonah Goldberg in The National Review. Nock, wrote Goldberg, had deep “contempt for businessmen claiming the language of free enterprise even as they petitioned and cajoled the state into rigging the system in their favor.” (April 25, 2009)
“How we saw it, we couldn’t afford not to come by and sack every now and then.”—Harald, a sarcastic, sensitive (and fictional) Viking, quoted in one of nine collected short stories by Wells Tower, called Everything Ravaged, Everything Burned. Harald, in this instance, is setting off with a few of his Viking friends on a “pillage-and-consternation tour,” and as narrator is trying to explain why they were such surly marauders. (From a book review printed in Financial Times, spring, 2009)
“ . . . the road to multiculturalism. . .is a downhill path for the functioning, genuine democracies into the abyss of tribal chaos.” –Angelo Codevilla, scholar, college professor, author, in his new book Advice to War Presidents: A Remedial Course in Statecraft, reviewed in the April 2009 issue of The American Spectator.
The Answer To All Will’s Questions Is Yes
“I shared in that revolt. I do not regret it: it is the function of youth to defend liberty and innovation, of the old to defend order and tradition, and of the middle age to find a middle way. But now that I am too old, I wonder whether the battle I fought was not too completely won . . . Have we too much freedom? Have we so long ridiculed authority in the family, discipline in education, rules in art, decency in conduct, and law in the State that our liberation has brought us close to chaos in the family and the school, in morals, arts, ideas, and Government? We forgot to make ourselves intelligent when we made ourselves free.”—Will Durant, author of The Story of Civilization, philosopher, teacher, commenting on the consequences for our country of the “anti-everything” revolt of (mostly) young people in the 1960s and 1970s. (October, 2009)
“Bellowing on the Senate floor about the meanness, duplicity, cruelty, power-hunger, hypocrisy, and general indecency of Republicans, he was simultaneously understood by the public to be a negligent husband, a serial adulterer, a liar, and a drunk. Maybe the moral exhibitionism in his political life was compensation for the rapacity of his private life. It certainly saved him with the many Democrats who continued to lionize him.”—Andrew Ferguson, a senior editor at The Weekly Standard, in an essay on the late Democrat Senator from Chappaquiddick, Edward Kennedy, in the magazine’s September 28, 2009, issue. (October, 2009)
“ . . . sector after sector of American life has been ruthlessly corrupted by the liberal ethos. It is an ethos that aims simultaneously at political and social collectivism on the one hand, and moral anarchy on the other.”—Irving Kristol, writing about American liberalism in 1993, quoted in the Spring, 2009 issue of Claremont Review of Books.Too Transparent For Comfort
“There are 237 millionaires in the U. S. Senate and House of Representatives. That’s 44 per cent of all members of Congress. One percent of the public at large are millionaires” –The Week magazine, November 20, 2009.
Our Dear Friend, The Penumbra. . .“Science is a lighted clearing in the forest. Beyond the well-lit central area is a penumbra of more or less shadowed ground. Beyond that is the infinite dark domain of our ignorance. Scientists toil to enlarge the lighted area—the zone of settled science. This is the science Paul Johnson wants us to trust. This is the science that we do trust. Beyond it, though, in the penumbra, there is dimness enough for all kinds of malarkey. This is the preferred playground of ideologues, politicians, and crooks. This is where the climate-change battles are being fought.”--John Derbyshire, quoting Paul Johnson from the latter’s 1977 book, Enemies of Society, in a Derbyshire essay on the global warming controversy printed in the December 21, 2009, issue of National Review.
Congress And The White House Excepted, Of Course
“ . . . three generations of imbeciles are enough.”—Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., U.S. Supreme Court Judge, writing in the majority opinion (8-1) in Buck v. Bell (1927). Holmes was in the majority upholding a compulsory sterilization law in Virginia.
Who Can Argue That Turnabout Is Not Fair Play?
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“For now, we have a new president-elect. In the spirit of reaching across the aisle, we owe it to the Democrats to show their president the exact same kind of respect and loyalty that they have shown our recent Republican president. Starting tomorrow, if not sooner.”—Ann Coulter, in her post-election analysis column. (November 6, 2008)
And Don’t Forget Eight Years of Dubya In Between!
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“In 1996 it was Bob Dole’s turn to run for President, and. . .(he) ran the worst campaign in memory. In 2008, it was John McCain’s turn. . .(and his) campaign was no better than Dole’s.”—Jed Babbin, writing in the November 10 issue of Human Events.