Did You Hear What They Said?

Hello True-Believers!

That's right, it's time for another fascinating edition of:

Did You Hear What They Said?

This is where we actually quote people in the know IN CONTEXT to illustrate profundity as well as .......uh.....ok, I'll say it: stupidity.

And now, with out further ado.......

Iran
"All the totalitarian regimes of the last century staged elections, and they were all meaningless, because the structure of the state concentrated power in the two hands of the dictator, and exercised through the single party. Perhaps the editorialists at the New York Times and the Washington Post could tear themselves away from the imagined horrors of Guantanamo and denounce the systematic oppression of nearly 70 million Iranians."--Michael Ledeen


GOVERNMENT
"The natural progress of things is for liberty to yield and government to gain ground." --Thomas Jefferson

"If you're not wearing a seatbelt, and don't do us the favor of dying in an accident and become an incapacitated vegetable, society will have to bear the expense of taking care of you.' That's not a problem of liberty and self-ownership. It's a problem of socialism. There's no moral case for forcing anyone to care for me for any reason. When we buy into socialism, we buy into paternalistic government." --Walter Williams

"There is nothing indispensable about a state role in education. Parents don't expect the government to provide their children's food or clothing or medical care; there is no reason why it must provide their schooling. An educated citizenry is a vital public good, of course. But like most such goods, a competitive and responsive private sector could do a much better job of supplying it than the public sector can. Imagine how diverse and vital American education could be if it were liberated from government control. There would be schools of every description -- just as there are restaurants, websites, and clothing styles of every description. ... With separation of school and state, the roiling education battles would come to a peaceful end. Robust competition and innovation would dramatically lower costs. Teachers, released from their one-size-fits-all straitjacket, would be happier in their chosen profession. Children would be happier, too -- and, perhaps best of all, better-educated to boot." --Jeff Jacoby

"the best way of doing good to the poor, is not making them easy in poverty, but leading or driving them out of it."--Ben Franklin


TRUTH

"Truth itself is the one enemy against which liberalism cannot prevail."--Chris Adamo


"We have a strange illusion that mere time cancels sin. I have heard others, and I have heard myself, recounting cruelties and falsehoods committed in boyhood as if they were not concern of the present speaker's, and even with laughter. But mere time does nothing either to the fact or to the guilt of a sin. The guilt is washed out not by time but by repentance and the blood of Christ." --C. S. Lewis

"In the 1980s, some people rejected the notion of universal standards, asking, 'Who are you to impose your morality on me?' The question became moot as the immoral have now imposed their immorality on the rest of us." --Cal Thomas

"The smallest good deed is better than the grandest good intention." --Duguet


"The Senate wants you to know how terribly, sincerely sorry they are even though not a single member of today's Senate was even in office the last time America saw a lynching. Some were not even born. But that's the way we prefer our apologies in American politics. We don't apologize for our own sins." --Mona Charen

"Democrats apparently think it's incredibly unfair that reporters actually report what a politician has said. Here's some free advice to Democrats: Stop saying stupid things." --The Washington Times

"In a slide-show presentation at the DNC conference last weekend, polltaker Cornell Belcher focused on why those voters aren't responding to the Democrats' economic message. One reason, he said, is that too many of them see the Democrats as 'anti-religion'." --Newsweek's Howard Fineman

"One of the best ways to get yourself a reputation as a dangerous citizen these days is to go about repeating the very phrases which our Founding Fathers used in the great struggle for independence." --Charles Beard

"It continues to defy explanation why liberals, who theoretically love liberty, equality, tolerance and moderation, should find so much to despise in their own country, which represents the fullest expression of those virtues anywhere on the globe." --Mona Charen

"Only an elitist who lives in a cocoon could survey the decline of morality over the past four decades (and the corresponding rise of social angst), and say the Great Divorce that the Supreme Court presided over -- the separation of faith from our public life -- has served us well." --Don Feder



ABORTION
" Karl Marx taught that if women desired to free themselves from the shackles of patriarchy, they first had to wrest control over the means of reproduction. Now birth rates in Europe have plummeted, choking off the inflow of young workers and imperiling the financial viability of the social welfare state."--Carey Roberts


TAXES
We need true tax reform that will at least make a start toward restoring for our children the American dream that wealth is denied to no one, that each individual has the right to fly as high as his strength and ability will take him." --Ronald Reagan

"In a society that constitutionally limits the powers of government and maximizes individual liberty, there is no justification for the forcible transfer of money from taxpayers to artists, scholars, and broadcasters." --David Boaz and Sheldon Richman


GITMO
"According to the Encyclopaedia Britannica, some 15 million to 30 million prisoners died in the Soviet gulags. By comparison, Guantanamo at its peak held 750 prisoners; currently, there are 520; none have died in captivity, and, as I wrote 3-1/2 years ago, it has the distinction of being 'a camp where the medical staff outnumber the prisoners.' You'll get swifter, cleaner and more efficient treatment than most Canadians do under socialized health care. It's the only gulag in history where the detainees leave in better health and weighing more than when they arrive. This means they're in much better shape when they get back to their hectic schedule of killing infidels: Of the more than 200 who've been released, around 5 percent -- that's to say, 12 -- have since been recaptured on the battlefield." --Mark Steyn


"Bill Clinton said Sunday it's time to shut down Guantanamo prison or clean it up. He said it's an embarrassment to the United States. His voice carries a lot of weight, because who knows more about embarrassing the United States than Bill Clinton." --Argus Hamilton

DOWNING STREET MEMOS
"The outrage about the nondisclosures in the Downing Street memos has led Congressman Walter Jones of North Carolina to demand that we tell the al-Qaida forces in Iraq exactly when we intend to give up."--Christopher Hitchens



FILIBUSTERS
"We owe it to the president to give Mr. Bolton an up-or-down vote on the floor of the U.S. Senate." --Sen. George Voinovich

(Oh.....NOW he tells us.....)


5TH AMENDMENT
The moment the idea is admitted into society that property is not as sacred as the laws of God, and that there is not a force of law and public justice to protect it, anarchy and tyranny commence." --John Adams


"A just security to property is not afforded by that government,
under which unequal taxes oppress one species of property and
reward another species." --James Madison

WAR
"our enemy would be no less committed to our destruction if we immediately withdrew from Iraq or gave every Gitmo prisoner daily bubble baths."--David Limbaugh

"If the U.S. walks away from this war and leaves it to Europe to hold back Islamic extremists, we might as well just accept right now that the terrorists will topple more of our skyscrapers--or worse.” --BRENDAN MINITER


http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=18633

The following exchange happened on the Michael Medved show between the host and Daniel Lazare of The Nation magazine:

Michael Medved: Daniel Lazare, would you like to see the elections scheduled for January 30 in Iraq fail?


Daniel Lazare: I'm totally opposed to what the U.S. is doing in Iraq. Therefore, I would no more support U.S. elections than I would support German elections in France during World War II.


Michael Medved: So you're sticking with this comparison of the United States to Nazi Germany?

David Horowitz: He is, because he believes it in his soul.


Daniel Lazare: I believe it. I believe it entirely.
---------------------

"They have to hope Iraq fails because for it to succeed means that the liberal approach will forever be rendered meaningless and impotent."--Lee P Butler

“Until a radical Muslim can lay hands on a nuclear weapon, the Left will remain al-Qaeda’s most potent weapon.” --Ben Johnson

"Some Democrats are simply uncomfortable about America having a strong and unapologetic role in the world. This isn't treason; it's weakness. And weakness in the dangerous world we face is an invitation for more terror. Be warned." --James Taranto

"The terrorists believe Iraq is the central battlefield in the war on terror, even if some in the West still don't. Perhaps the London bombings will inspire a new shared determination." --The Wall Street Journal


SOCIAL SECURITY
"Harry Reid needs to tell the American people what he plans to do about the looming Social Security crisis. If Reid plans to raise taxes to prop up Social Security, or cut benefits, he should tell us so. If he has another idea, he should share it with us. But fearmongering is not a Social Security plan." --Michael Tanner

JUDICIAL NOMINATIONS
"[The Senate's] role in advice and consent consists of determining intellect, experience, and judicial temperament. It is not up to [them] to select Justices based upon their ideology. That is the president's Constitutional role. [Their] job is to make sure that the person the president nominates is qualified to do the job, not to determine if the nominee will do the job [their] way." --Duane Patterson


"Justice Sandra Day O'Connor took sadistic glee in refusing to overturn Roe v. Wade in the face of the unending strife it has caused the nation. (And it hasn't been easy on 30 million aborted babies either.)--Ann Coulter


"[I]t will be the office of the president to nominate, and with the advice and consent of the senate to appoint. There will of course be no exertion of choice on the part of the senate. They may defeat one choice of the executive...but they cannot themselves choose -- they can only ratify or reject the choice, of the president."--Alexander Hamiltion

"In accord with a longstanding norm, every Member of this Court declined to furnish such information to the Senate. ... When a [nominee] promises to rule a certain way on an issue that may later reach the courts, the potential for due process violations is grave and manifest."--Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg


" I think that we're at a time in the history of this country where we've had enough discussion, debate, and contention on judges Senator Frist and I want to avoid that as the two leaders of the Senate"--Sen. Harry Reid