Lingua publica

The good and the bad...

web posted December 22, 2003

"The war on terror is a different kind of war, waged capture by capture, cell by cell, and victory by victory. Our security is assured by our perseverance and by our sure belief in the success of liberty. And the United States of America will not relent until this war is won." -- U.S. President George W. Bush

"The question of Saddam's trial, like the war itself, raises profound issues that divide America's parties. They are issues about the rights of nations, and the importance of defending them against the self-aggrandizement of international institutions of questionable competence, legitimacy and accountability." -- George F. Will

"In the end, Saddam will be convicted and his fellow travelers here and abroad embarrassed. The War on Terrorism won't be over, but the way to win it will have been conclusively demonstrated. Likewise, the vision, policy and steadfastness of George W. Bush will have been vindicated by both history and the electorate." -- Jay Bryant

"If he truly believes the capture of this evil man has not made America safer, then Howard Dean has put himself in his own spider hole of denial. I fear that the American people will wonder if they will be safer with him as president." -- Joe Lieberman

"President Bush sends his regards." -- Anonymous Special Forces soldier on taking Saddam Hussein prisoner

"Haggard, dirty, disoriented and eager for small mercies from his captors, the man who once bestrode the Tigris and the Euphrates like an angry pagan god suddenly looked small, helpless and even pitiful." -- Wesley Pruden

"Just when you thought the visuals in the war on terrorism could not get better than Khalid Sheik Mohammed being dragged out of his apartment in his underwear, we get shaggy, bearded Saddam Hussein being checked for lice by an American physician after emerging disoriented and babbling from his coffin-sized lair." -- James S. Robbins

"And it turns out that we didn't need France's help to capture Saddam after all." -- Heritage Foundation's Michael Franc

"So much for the quagmire." -- National Review

"None of the American servicemen who [captured Saddam] were injured or killed. There may, however, be some casualties on the home front. We wouldn't be surprised if Saddam's capture causes some members of the Angry Left to choke to death on their own bile." -- James Taranto

"Reaction coming in from all over the world to Saddam Hussein's capture. The British government praised the U.S. The Spanish government said it was a great day. And the French government praised Saddam for the way he surrendered. 'We couldn't have done it so quickly ourselves.'" -- Jay Leno

"Democrats were thrown off-stride Sunday when Saddam Hussein was nabbed. Their election strategy is narrowing. The economy is rebounding and Saddam Hussein is in handcuffs, but Democrats believe they can win just on their promise of a tax increase." -- Argus Hamilton

"The last thing we need is an international tribunal to try Saddam Hussein. Do we really want the Libyans or the Cubans playing international politics with this? Do we want some French judge to sentence Saddam to so many hours of community service? For that matter, do we even want American laws applied in a country with such wholly different traditions? Certainly we do not need some lawyer like Johnnie Cochran to obfuscate the issues or -- heaven help us -- a 5-4 decision by our Supreme Court, after years of innumerable appeals." -- Thomas Sowell

"What's more, the nature of his capture -- with Saddam giving himself up quietly after having basically buried himself alive -- could not have been better suited to the goal of quashing the terrorist attacks on American forces. His own 'resistance' came to an end in such a cowardly fashion that over the next few weeks it might call into question the value of continued resistance in the name of the Ba'ath Party he ran. After all, if Saddam wouldn't fight for his own cause, by what logic should anybody else blow himself up in his shameful name?" -- John Podhoretz

web posted December 15, 2003

"Did I expect George Bush to f--- it up as badly as he did? I don't think anybody did. ... They took that legitimacy and bastardized it. If I were president, we would not be in Iraq today." -- John Kerry in Rolling Stone and forgetting some of the resolutions he's voted for

"Had I been elected to a second term, with the prestige and influence and reputation I had in the region [of the Middle East], we could have moved to a final solution." -- Jimmy Carter. Someone already tried a final solution Mr. Carter

"The United States realizes that a citizen must be protected whether he wants to be or not -- controlled, regulated, and intimidated in every aspect of everything he does, for his own good. He must not be permitted to ride a bicycle without a helmet, smoke if he chooses, or go to a bar where smoking is permitted. He cannot be trusted to run his life." -- Fred Reed

"With economic growth and name recognition of the average Democratic presidential candidate both running at about 7 percent, the Democrats are in trouble. Unable to rouse more than the Saddam-supporting left with their kooky foreign-policy ideas, the Democrats had been counting on a lousy economy." -- Ann Coulter

"Democrats and liberals are beginning to sound like a beleaguered minority." -- James Taranto

"Let's see what's going on with Senator John 'F' Kerry. .... In an interview with Rolling Stone, Senator John Kerry said when he voted for the war in Iraq he didn't expect President Bush to 'F*** it up as badly as he did.' Of course Kerry is not the first presidential candidate to use the F-word. Clinton used it, too. Of course, the difference is Clinton always used it as a verb." -- Jay Leno

"Wesley Clark expressed his pride in his Jewish heritage at a temple in Palm Beach.... He was born Jewish and raised Protestant then converted to Roman Catholicism. As a result, no country club in America can turn him down for membership." -- Argus Hamilton

"The advance of freedom is the calling of our time; it is the calling of our country.... America has put our power at the service of principle. We believe that liberty is the design of nature; we believe that liberty is the direction of history. We believe that human fulfillment and excellence come in the responsible exercise of liberty. And we believe that freedom -- the freedom we prize -- is not for us alone, it is the right and the capacity of all mankind." -- U.S. President George W. Bush

"America's search for the security against terrorism and rogue states goes hand in hand with liberating their oppressed peoples. From the Evil Empire to an Empire for Liberty is a giant step, a contrast as great as the appalling images of the wasted twentieth century and the brightening dawn of the twenty-first. But America has the musculature and the will to take giant steps, as it has shown in the past. ...The empire for liberty is the dynamic of change." -- Paul Johnson

"Which leaves us with the usual questions for the secretary of state and his henchmen who are supposed to design an effective Iran policy: Why are you still negotiating with this evil regime? How many Iranians, Iraqis, Americans, and Englishmen have to be murdered by the mullahs before you accept the plain facts about the Iranian regime, and commit this country to the liberation of the Iranian people? Or do we have to await even greater catastrophes, and then have to confront religious fanatics armed with atomic bombs?" -- Michael Ledeen

web posted December 8, 2003

"The presumption in America today -- first for the poor, but increasingly for all of us -- is that our children belong to the state. The state allows those children to remain 'out on loan' to their natural birth parents only so long as you meet all the government's requirements: Every vaccination recommended by the major pharmaceutical firms, no matter how dangerous or statistically useless. No guns in the house; no strange faith-healing religious beliefs. And you'd better make sure your kid reports to the local government youth propaganda camp from the age of 6 ... or is it 5 now? ... so the local educrats get their subsidies based on a full complement of little butts to warm the seats." -- Vin Suprynowicz

"How to understand the failure of the conservative movement in America? And it most certainly is a failure.... We can look at the symptoms of our defeat: our constitution has been overthrown, our public schools are government propaganda centers, our colleges are bastions of political correctness and no longer teach logical thought processes, we are constantly waging aggressive war, we have presided over the destruction of the black community, and the complete degradation of our moral framework. Have we not failed? What remains? Yeah, those are some pretty scary symptoms all right. So how are conservatives to blame? Aren't we the ones who believe in truth, justice and the American way? Yet here we are, living in a country that murders its own children and where the morals and beliefs of our fathers have been throw into the gutter of history. Were we asleep? How did we allow this?" -- Michael Peirce

"To put blind faith in government is as stupid as putting blind faith in what a used-car salesman tells you. It is also un-American. In our great country, sovereignty rests with the people, and the proper attitude of a citizen toward government at all levels is courteous skepticism. Elected officials and bureaucrats are your servants, not your masters." -- Charley Reese

"But all war is local at the point of the blast or the gun barrel. The side that best understands this reality will prevail in the turmoil of the gulf and its surrounding areas." -- Jim Hoagland

"If you believe in the right to life, then you must believe in the right to have the means to defend that life." -- Charley Reese

"If you can't bring your faith into public life, what's the use of having it? It's embarrassing to read consistently of Catholic senators all proclaiming their support for abortion. It's not able to be explained by me how Catholics can do that, particularly if they go unrebuked." -- Most Rev. Fabian Bruskewitz, Roman Catholic bishop of Lincoln, Nebraska

"Secular nations have one thing in common -- mass graves, and the reason is that they believe the government is the final arbiter of right and wrong and good and evil." -- Rob Schenk

"Bulletin: The President's surprise Thanksgiving visit to U.S. troops in Iraq isn't going to change the outcome of the war! That keen analysis, delivered by any number of instant commentators in the hours after the news of the visit broke, must have come as something of a surprise to U.S. audiences paying attention -- even those accustomed both to the steady flow of irrelevancies and to the solemn warnings about assumptions it would have occurred to no one to make that we can always depend on hearing on occasions of this kind. Just how many people watching that Thanksgiving mess-hall scene would have been struck by the thought that this would -- aha! -- change the outcome of the war, most of us know. The answer is of course no one -- no one in his right mind." -- Dorothy Rabinowitz

"This is a battle to stop al-Qa'ida, Saddam Hussein and every other enemy of freedom and modernity from turning the beginning of the 21st century into what is truly unbelievable, which would be a global religious war. We can't let that happen, and this is where we're going to stop it." -- Sen. Joe Lieberman

"If [the Massachussetts Supreme Judicial] can find a right to 'gay marriage' in the Massachusetts constitution -- never before detected by any human being -- we need to get them looking for Osama bin Laden. These guys can find anything!" -- Ann Coulter

"You might think that Mrs. Clinton would be the last person in America to accuse anyone of making bad decisions about what to do about Saddam Hussein, since her husband -- to whom she was chief adviser on everything but his selection of mistresses and party girls to stock the Oval Office pantry -- took a pass on the opportunities he had to terminate Osama bin Laden with extreme prejudice." -- Wesley Pruden

"We have a species of parasites in America -- some call them Democrats, who think that America's greatness comes from government." -- Neil Boortz

"This is going to sound impolitic, but I think a lot more of us should be impolitic. We should be less concerned with saving face, and more in your face. I think men, in particular, suffer from this malady. I call it being emotionally constipated..." -- Neil Cavuto

"The liberal is continually angry, as only a self-important man can be, with his civilization, his culture, his country and his folks back home. His is an infantile world view. At the core of a liberal is the spoiled child -- miserable, as all spoiled children are, unsatisfied, demanding, ill-disciplined, despotic and useless. Liberalism is a philosophy of sniveling brats." -- P.J. O'Rourke

"Academic Freedom: freedom of students or teachers to hold or express views without fear of arbitrary interference, except when such ideas are deemed racist, bigoted, homophobic, insensitive, chauvinistic, jingoistic, imperialistic, religious, conservative, or politically incorrect... .... Declaration of Independence: a historical document that should not be read or displayed in public schools because of its overt religious nature... .... prayer: the only kind of speech the First Amendment doesn't protect.." -- Rush Limbaugh on academics

"The New York Times is reporting that back in the '60s, presidential candidate Howard Dean used a letter from a doctor about a back condition to keep himself out of the draft in Vietnam and then spent 10 months skiing. Well, it sounds like he's done the impossible. He actually made Bill Clinton and George Bush look like war heroes." -- Jay Leno

web posted December 1, 2003

"Today's kids desperately need moral guidance. They need to know right from wrong. And sadly, too many adults have abdicated their responsibility to teach kids values that respect life. In public schools, students are taught to 'construct' their own truths. And teachers are trained not to offer direction, lest they hamper a child's autonomy. The results of such thinking have been explosive." -- Charles Colson

"The GOP Congress seems...resigned to grit its collective teeth and swallow a massive Medicare prescription drug benefit. Deep down, Republican lawmakers surely lack the appetite for this fat-drenched legislative entree. Yet they look obligated to finish it, as if leaving their meal untouched would be impolite. Instead, they should send this pricey dish back to the kitchen and order a snack instead." -- Deroy Murdock

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