Lingua publica

The good and the bad...

web posted July 23, 2001

"Every problem in America, every need and every threat, whether real or conjured, is used as an excuse for the confiscation of private wealth, the suppression of individual freedom and the expansion of an overbearing government bureaucracy. An imperial government is taking charge of our lives in the name of what's good for us, telling us what to eat, how to raise our children, what cars to drive, when to buckle up, where to set our thermostats, who can play professional golf, how often to flush the toilet, what to believe and what to think. Where will Nanny Government look next? Will it be toward those responsible for second-hand exhaust fumes from oversized autos and trucks? Will it be toward parents who smoke in homes where children are present? And how about those filthy meat packers, greedy pharmaceutical houses and evil liquor barons? How about Ronald McDonald as a target?" -- Linda Bowles

"As long as Republicans allow their political opponents to frame the terms of the debate they'll not only lose the debate, but the battle over policy. It's time the GOP quit acting ashamed of its platform and afraid of its shadow and resurrected its dedication to freedom." -- David Limbaugh

"As the global government trend intensifies, the conflicts between internationalism and sovereign constitutional government will only increase. ...UN supporters like to ridicule the notion that the UN represents the beginning of one-world government, but what other label can be applied to an organization that seeks global laws, global courts, centralized legislative power, and a worldwide army?" -- Rep. Ron Paul

"Despite strong opposition from a number of concerned parties, including the U.S. government, the UN appears to be moving forward with a program of action that is both seriously defective and unacceptable in a number of areas [including] greatly expanded record keeping by the federal government, far beyond that allowed or required under current U.S. domestic law." -- Rep. Bob Barr

"While labor's support of Democrats is well known, the documents show labor leaders had veto power over Democratic Party plans in 1996 by virtue of their large donations and seats on the steering committees in each state." -- AP reporter Larry Margasak on a report that U.S. District Judge Gladys Kessler issued an injunction to block the release of. The Federal Election Commission report details its investigation of financial shenanigans between the Democratic National Committee and the AFL-CIO

"...[T]he trick to achieving funding immortality is, first, to get the country used to paying. In politics, the customary is indistinguishable from the reasonable." -- Fred Reed

"A whisper of truth can have a surprising resonance." -- Jay Nordlinger

"The hypocrite recognizes the honest man as his deadly enemy." -- Joseph Sobran

"Words are powerful tools. They can be used as a shield or a weapon." -- C. Ben Mitchell

"Memory is critical, both to individuals and to nations." -- Steve Farrell

"Although you may be unpopular with some by speaking out for freedom, it is not wise to seek popularity with those who would be slaves." -- David Dieteman

"[T]he most dangerous lechers and creeps are not drunks wearing rags on the street, but respectable men wearing hairspray, pinstripes, and wedding rings who lurk in the halls of power." -- Michelle Malkin

"After just six months in office, President Bush seems to have given up on his campaign promise to America's children. After making education reform a pillar of his campaign, and launching his presidency with his 'No Child Left Behind' proposal, he has watched the Democrats parse and splice the package until the legislation passed by the House and the Senate is not even a shadow of its former self. Now he just wants the end to come quickly. 'This Congress needs to get an education reform bill on my desk before the summer recess,' he said last week. 'There is no need for further delay.' Unless, of course, he desires any of the pillars of his education package to be revived: school choice, flexibility and accountability." -- Washington Times

"Everybody should be calling for him to resign, whether he had anything to do with her disappearance or not. In a real serious matter, he was not straight-forward." -- Newsweek's Jonathan Alter on why Gary Condit should resign

"I have said that I am not running. I'm having a great time being pres...being a senator from New York." -- Sen. Hillary Rodham-Clinton, when asked if she was going to run for President in '04

"I still find him very cute and likable.... He is my hero." -- Mira Markovich, wife of former Yugoslav leader Slobodan Milosevic

"Only if our society realize that there are so many factors contributing to a student's test score, then teachers will be willing to take the blam game. Who is to blam when students don't do homeworks? who is to blam when pareants don't care to come to the teacher pareant conference?" -- Letter from a New York City "socail studies" teacher to the New York Post arguing for higher teacher salaries

"The amazing thing [is that] we'll have our birthday on the same day again next year." -- George Bush to an Associated Press reporter after noting they have the same birthday

"If they get the 2008 Olympics the Chinese could consider making suicide an Olympic sport, since only they have perfected the techniques of suicide by self-beating." -- Wesley Pruden

"He started screaming, 'Let me out, let me out.' That's when I shot at him." -- Mollie Johnson, a 79-year-old grandmother on a burglar's response to seeing her with a handgun

"I don't know why the Navy thinks it has to use the island of Vieques near Puerto Rico as a bombing range. Protests against it have been going on for more than 30 years. During that period the Navy surely could have found some place else. I keep thinking of Cuba." -- Lyn Nofziger

"They said by moving the Olympics to China that it may force the Chinese to examine their human rights violations. Yeah, it sure worked in Germany in 1936!" -- Jay Leno

"Over the weekend Gary Condit gave himself a lie detector test and he announced that he did tell the truth. Today he cross-examined himself and tomorrow I hear he is going to not pick himself out of a lineup. Tomorrow he's going to beat a confession out of himself. The he will put himself on trial and found he was not guilty!" -- David Letterman

web posted July 16, 2001

"This isn't democracy; it's a procrustean egalitarianism. And one suspects it's driven less by a desire for justice than by plain old envy. You can see the same dog-in-the-manger instinct at work in politics across the board: It's not enough that we are given a fair chance in life; others must be held back. It's not enough that the disadvantaged are helped; the advantaged must be punished. It's not enough that poor students be given the extra help they need; the gifted and talented should be denied special music and art studios. The result is to leave people embittered and less willing to help their public institutions, including their neighborhood schools. Given a choice between equal misery and unequal progress, our modern Procrusteans will always file a brief for misery." -- Paul Greenberg

"It's often said that there are two kinds of Republicans: Yale Republicans and (University of) Chicago Republicans. The latter believe, correctly, that government should stay out of business to the greatest extent possible -- but at the same time, business should stay out of government's pocket. But the Yalies want it both ways: Government should shovel largesse at companies and then step aside and let them do anything they want, as long as they are lining the pockets of politicians. This is NOT free-market economics. Adam Smith is spinning in his crypt." -- Don Bauder

"We can hardly blame the market for our current healthcare woes. As with all goods and services, medical care is best delivered by the free market, with competition and patient responsibility keeping costs down. Government has neither the constitutional authority nor the wisdom to determine appropriate contract terms between individuals and health insurers." -- Rep. Ron Paul

"The only thing they changed is now we're supposed to pay taxes." -- Naomi, a 23-year-old former grade-school teacher on new Dutch rules that make Amsterdam's hookers officially regulated workers

"Ninety percent of what Congress does, conservatively speaking, it does not have constitutional authority to do." -- Ann Coulter

"[New Jersey gubernatorial candidate Bret] Schundler is living proof that articulate conservatives can build big tents even in liberal states without abandoning their principles. Just think of the national implications." -- David Limbaugh

"Yet history demonstrates that respecting the sovereignty of individual nations does far more to promote peace than military intervention, even when such intervention is undertaken for humanitarian reasons." -- Rep. Ron Paul

"Hysteria sells -- and accuracy takes time, which could make the news stale by the time the statisticians check it out." -- Thomas Sowell

"...[L]iberals are all for scaring kids senseless if it leads to the right political result." -- Brent Bozell

"Environmental alarmists are loathe to admit it, but we're a lot closer to creating the perfect missile defense than we are to creating the perfect climate model. And that's a scientific fact." -- Edwin J. Feulner

"Science has become politics in disguise. Global controls will be hurtful to both our ecology and our economy." -- Phyllis Schlafly

"Generals fight the last war, and so do those who make foreign policy." -- Robert Novak

"Some pleasures are contemptible because they are coarsening. They are not merely private vices, they have public consequences in driving the culture's downward spiral." -- George Will

"The cause of violence is not guns but people who grow up in a culture that knows no right or wrong." -- Paul Craig Roberts

"Recently we watched the final episode of 'Xena, Warrior Princess.' Xena is called upon to battle a huge, ravenous evil spirit that has been roaming the countryside, consuming its victims by inhaling them. This devouring evil spirit vaguely reminded us of something, but though we cudgeled our brains, we couldn't quite make the connection. Then we heard reports that the federal budget surplus was disappearing, rapidly being devoured in part by Congress's unappeasable appetite for spending. (I)f Congress can't discover the courage of Xena, then President Bush can. He has the sword; it's called the Presidential veto. He should use it." -- Wall Street Journal

"I don't think that there's a bias in the media now the way there used to be. I think that our newsroom at Time and the people who write there are open minded and are not Democrats and liberals as the popular perception is." -- Walter Isaacson, new head of CNN and former Time Inc. editorial director

"The American people want to get the most from the taxes we collect. They want us to plan ahead and to invest in our country. They want us to do the basics that feed the economy, to allow for future growth and anticipate future change. We fail them if we don't do these things. We have failed them if we say: Here, just take your money back. The people can't repair highways. They can't build sewers and clean up water systems. They can't build new airports. They can't inspect the food supply. Government exists to take care of things that people cannot do on their own." -- Sen. Robert Byrd

"Bush doesn't have a clue. We are all living in a global village. [He is] ignorant." -- Robert Redford

"He can sit at the table to discuss the redrawing of ward boundaries, but would not be welcome when other issues involving the city's black populace are involved." -- The Chicago City Council's black caucus on its decision to disallow the participation of re-elected member Thomas Murphy, a white man who won 57 per cent of the vote in an 85 per cent black district

"I'm told it's already an energy-efficient device." -- Dick Cheney on his pacemaker

"In a nation where millions of people fall in love and raise children without regard to the color line, isn't it time the government stopped counting by race altogether? Close to 7 million Americans identified themselves as multiracial on last year's census, proof, if any were needed, that love doesn't stop at the color line." -- Jeff Jacoby

"If Congress really was serious about saving energy it would go home July 1 and not come back until January. You say that wouldn't allow Congress to get its work done? I say that's an added benefit." -- Lyn Nofziger

"Today George W. Bush visited New York City. He said the first thing he wanted to do when he got here was to meet the guy who voted for him." -- David Letterman

web posted July 2, 2001

"If we're ignorant of the historical sacrifices that made our liberties possible, we will be less likely to make the sacrifices again so that those liberties are preserved for future generations. And, if we're ignorant, we won't even know when government infringes on our liberties. Moreover, we'll happily cast our votes for those who'd destroy our liberties." -- Walter Williams

"Let us, for a moment, take the sex-education pushers at their word: If you teach a child how to use a condom, you're promoting safety -- not usage. ...Why, then, doesn't the same logic apply to guns?" -- Michelle Malkin

"Bret Schundler is a ray of hope in a sea of mediocrity and moderation. ...Conservatism is alive and well!" -- John LeBoutillier

"Thomas Jefferson once said federal courts represented the greatest threat to American liberty, and, by golly, he was right." -- Charley Reese

"[T]here are words that can transform the most big-spending liberal in Congress, who has for decades been blithely adding to the soaring national debt, into someone who proclaims the need to reduce that debt at all costs. Those magic words are 'tax cut'. ... Silly talk about how much people will 'receive' from a tax cut ignores the fact that they are receiving nothing. They are simply keeping money that they earned." -- Thomas Sowell

"One of Washington's myths is that politicians love to cut taxes, and only the bravest can resist. What they really love to do is spend money, which is why a major tax cut happens only once a generation." -- Paul Gigot

"...[M]ere permission isn't freedom." -- Joseph Sobran

"The biggest need now is the same one we confront in every age: there are never enough who have the moral courage to oppose the enemy, the state." -- Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr.

"Mechanism rules, and the politically correct mean to pull the levers. They brook no competition. Why should they? Are they not the measure of all things?" -- Fred Reed

"It's hard to imagine now, but before the official government religion was liberalism -- devoted to class warfare, ethnic hatred and intolerance -- Americans were kind to one another. They managed to get along even without ACLU lawsuits." -- Ann Coulter

"The series starring Archie Bunker was the most devastating ideological scam in the cultural history of television." -- Wm. F. Buckley

"We launder our views through, quote, 'objective critics.' And certainly the press is pretty green, the press is pretty pro-environment and I don't think there's any question that they, as a body, feel that Bush is wrong on the environment. I'm excluding the conservative press -- the Weekly Standard and so forth -- but generally the press is pretty green and they're going to use the Europeans to take the Bushies to task." -- Newsweek Assistant Managing Editor Evan Thomas on the liberal media bias

"The media love explaining why Rudy and Donna dislike each other. But not why Senator Tom Daschle wants more tax money for education, despite the fact that the Department of Education flunked its last three audits and perhaps a billion tax dollars have gone missing." -- Bill O'Reilly

"I'm a colossal failure, and you made me one." -- Bill Clinton to Yasser Arafat expressing his dismay over failing to garner a legacy on Middle East foreign policy

"I didn't wake up in the morning like it was Christmas morning and say, 'Oh, my gosh, did I get my pardon?' [But,] I went three or four weeks where I didn't talk to him. I was very hurt." -- Roger Clinton on his reaction to brother Bill Clinton's inaction on the pardons Roger sold to his friends

"Republicans have stronger leg muscles than Olympic sprinters. And why not? They get lots of exercise, marching up the hill and then marching down again." -- Wesley Pruden

"The Democrats are for big government. I experienced that, and I didn't like it." -- Carolina Hurricanes goalie Arturs Irbe (born and raised in Latvia) on why he is a Republican

"New York state has become the first state to ban cell phones. But you can still shave, put on makeup, comb your hair, drink coffee and read a book while driving." -- Jay Leno

"Today was Puerto Rican Day here in New York City. They had a big parade. This gave Hillary time off from pretending to be Jewish to pretend to be Puerto Rican." -- David Letterman

Current Issue

Archive Main | 2001

E-mail ESR

Home