"Socialism, like the ancient ideas from which it springs, confuses the distinction between government and society. As a result of this, every time we object to a thing being done by government, the socialists conclude that we object to its being done at all." - Frederic Bastiat
"These extremists who are living in great affluence...are saying that poor people shouldn't have roads. I would like to see them not just go out in the bush backpacking for a week but be forced to spend the rest of their lives out there and have their children raised out there. Let's see whether they'd have the same point of view then." - Norman Borlaug
"The modern definition of 'racist' is someone who is winning an argument with a liberal." - Peter Brimelow
"I have been amazed by the level of conspiracy-mongering around neocons. I get it every day—the ‘evil Jewish conspiracy.’ The only distinction between ‘neoconservative’ and ‘conservative’ this way is circumcision. We actually started calling it the Axis of Circumcision." - David Brooks
"Conservatives say the government can't end poverty by force, but they believe it can use force to make people moral. Liberals say government can't make people be moral, but they believe it can end poverty. Neither group attempts to explain why government is so clumsy and destructive in one area but a paragon of efficiency and benevolence in the other." - Harry Browne
"What I don't understand is why leftists will acknowledge the meaning of IQ when it means exonerating retarded murderers ...yet deny the meaning of IQ when it comes time to put retarded children in mainstream classes! But it's a thought crime to bring up the contradiction, of course..." - Godless Capitalist
"Hippies! Hiiiippiiiies! Everywhere! They wanna save the earth, but all they do is smoke pot and smell bad! Help!" - Eric Cartman
"This distrust of police, or the government, seems overdone when coming from a hardcore libertarian. When coming from an aggressively liberal law professor who undoubtedly spends the rest of her time trying to expand the state, it is just stupid." - Oren Cass (Williams '05)
"That all depends on what 'is' is." - Bill Clinton
"Why is it that every Left-Green-Christian plan for Saving The Planet (TM) involves individuals spending less and having less, and governments taxing more and spending more? And is it any wonder so many of us think they're retarded for trying to squeeze the square peg of Less into the round hole of More?" - Steven Chapman
"Of course, almost every Democrat thinks the sovereign remedy for any of our ills is the appropriation of public money." - Calvin Coolidge
"Even the audience for the left's government-supported radio network, National Public Radio, has more conservative listeners than liberal listeners. According to a Pew Research Center study released last summer, conservatives consume far more news than liberals – including listening to NPR and watching PBS more than liberals. (As Mickey Kaus said, "No wonder conservatives are so pissed off.")" - Ann Coulter
"Liberals love erasing the truth. They call their lies 'legally accurate,' 'affirmative action,' 'saving the Constitution' -- and now, 'art.'" - Ann Coulter
"Liberals pretend to believe that when two random hoodlums kill a gay man in Oklahoma, it's evidence of a national trend, but when a million people buy a book, it proves absolutely nothing about the book-buying public." - Ann Coulter
"These days, the term ‘neoconservative’ is almost always used to insult someone. More recently, the term has become a liberal epithet to mean ‘Jew conservative.’" - Ann Coulter
"To be sure, conservative radio talk show hosts have a built-in audience unavailable to liberals: People driving cars to some sort of job." - Ann Coulter
"Facts are like Kryptonite to liberals." - Larry Elder
"A liberal is a man too broadminded to take his own side in a quarrel." - Robert Frost
"I'm not like George Bush. I'll do anything to win." - Al Gore, 2000.
"Political tags - such as royalist, communist, democrat, populist, fascist, liberal, conservative, and so forth - are never basic criteria. The human race divides politically into those who want people to be controlled and those who have no such desire. The former are idealists acting from highest motives for the greatest good of the greatest number. The latter are surely curmudgeons, suspicious and lacking in altruism. But they make better neighbors than the other sort." - Robert Heinlein
"Modern liberalism is not really liberal at all. It's about as far removed from what people of years past meant by "liberal" as it could possibly be. For one thing, the very word implies liberation, freedom, liberty. Nothing could be further from the modern liberal's true heart. The modern liberal considers himself iconoclastic and noncomformist, but he's every bit as conformist as any of the kids in those "Mr Bungle" filmstrips we've all seen and laughed at. True noncomformism frightens the modern liberal, makes him uncomfortable. He has no more capacity for seriously questioning his worldview than any snake-handling tent-revival preacher does. And as fond as he is of painting a romantic mental picture of himself as outside the mainstream of public opinion, bold and daring in his willingness to "question authority," relentlessly put upon by the forces of an oppressive mainstream status quo, the truth is that the modern liberal IS the status quo, and woe be unto anyone who dares to do the sort of outre questioning the modern liberal so loudly proclaims himself an admirer of." - Mike Hendrix
"One of the requirements of modern liberal thought is, as expressed vis-a-vis Israel, an absolute adherence to the idea that nothing is ever as simple as it appears, that every last question that faces us cannot be understood in terms of right and wrong. Because for the liberal, there simply is no right or wrong; to even consider the possibility of it is to expose yourself as a simple-minded moralist who wants to impose your primitive and unevolved beliefs on others. There are no absolutes, there are only opinions, and if you truly believe that then it must logically follow that no one person's beliefs are any more valid than any other's. This is how the liberal manages the incredible mental feat of routinely denouncing America as racist, imperialist, and sexist - and then coming down on the side of an obviously racist, sexist, imperialist dictator like Saddam Hussein. It's how we as a nation have arrived at the crippling presumption that there really are no bad people - even murderers must be considered not as predators with a screw loose but as victims themselves, and are deserving not of swift judgement and long-term or permanent removal from the ranks of civilized people, but of sympathy and "treatment" so that they can rejoin the human family at the earliest opportunity." - Mike Hendrix
"When I see liberal democrats, who are basically socialists, trying to make socialistic changes, I just wish these people had lived in socialism somewhere for 10 years. They'd realize there is no way it can work." - Bobby Holik, #16, Center, New Jersey Devils. Born in Plzen, Czech Republic.
"Pure, hard-core liberals believe in a superior race. They think they're it. They believe they're more intelligent than the general run of mankind, better suited than the little people are to manage the little people's lives. They think they have the one true vision, the ability to solve all the moral dilemmas of the century. They prefer big government because that is the first step to totalitarianism, toward unquestioned rule by the elite... and of course they see themselves as the elite." - Dean Koontz
"If the religious right has any effect, it’s prodding people like myself to stand up and get pissed instead of letting it roll over us without comment. And if I find common ground with them on nipple-piercing parental notification laws, then that’s how it works. If they’re on the other side of the barricade when it comes anti-sodomy laws, then that’s how it works." - James Lileks
"As for the “religious right,” they are utterly irrelevant to me. I’ve been told for 20 years that they will bring a miserable double-knit Pat Boone theocracy, but the evidence seems lacking. There is nothing I want to hear, read, or see that I cannot hear, read, or see. Now and again they get a book banned from a school, just as the Grievance-American community succeeds in banishing Twain because he uses the N word, but no one can look at the American popular culture in the last 20 years and tell me it’s been moving in a direction that gladdens the heart of Jerry Falwell." - James Lileks
"An old friend who still believes what we believed in college took me to task the last time we met, and wondered where Mr. Middle Ground had gone, why I no longer seemed interested in finding commonality. The simple answer is that there is no common ground with people who think you’re a political leper, a winged monkey in the service of a green-skinned Nancy Reagan in a witch’s hat. Respect works both ways, and if it’s not returned, then something changes. There’s a difference between thinking someone’s strategies are wrong, and thinking them a knave who acts from ignorance at best, and more likely acts from malice. If that’s what you think, I am not interested in changing your mind. I am not interested in working together. I am not interested in suffering your insults or your condescension or any other form your preconceptions take. I am interested in defeating you, and getting down to work with the people who come in your place, and grant me the respect I’ll give them. Unless they turn out to be florid Commie wankers, too. Then I’m just going to stay home and watch Sopranos reruns." - James Lileks
"Saying 'My party right or wrong' is like saying 'My Kennedy drunk or sober.'" - James Lileks
"Bleeding-heart liberals... I find them very insincere, especially in Hollywood. Those are the people I would like to punch in the face the most." - Marilyn Manson, USA Today
"Leftists are those for whom politics is not an intellectual process; rather, their opinions are based upon emotional objections... Dissenting opinions are not just wrong to a leftist, they are heresy - dissenters become morally vacuous enemies in a political holy war." - Joshua Martino
"I began to go off liberal America when they insisted to me that Rudy Giuliani was a bad guy...they always like tinged on the Nazi reference. ‘He’s a storm-trooper! He’s a bad guy!’ Every time I’d go to New York it was cleaner and safer and I’d think, 'Wait a second how bad a guy can this guy be?’ And now you don’t hearing anybody saying that because it’s been proven out that Rudy Giuliani is a good man." - Dennis Miller
"Now, while I myself happen to loathe Hillary Clinton more than practically any other human on the planet, I'm always amazed at the resentment she elicits. Especially from other women. After all this is a former First Lady who raised a magnificent daughter, kept a reckless husband in tow, and then went on to take her rightful place in the senate. Yet there is a indefatigable groundswell of Americans who despise the core of her very being. It makes no sense. Except maybe for the fact that she also happens to be an overly ambitious, double-dealing, unscrupulously grasping harpy who would gladly gnaw off her own right arm if it would further her left. But other than that, her upopularity is really a complete mystery to me." - Dennis Miller
"The radical right is so homophobic that they're blaming global warming on the AIDS quilt." - Dennis Miller
"What are the Democrats really offering? You know I consider both sides in an election before I vote. I looked at what the Democrats are saying. They’re saying, 'Listen we want more of your money and we’re not really keen on preemptively protecting you from bad guys.' You know what folks? I don’t want the bad guys to have the next move. I don’t want to see two more big buildings blown up."- Dennis Miller
"I voted for the Democrats because I didn't like the way the Republicans were running the country. Which is turning out to be like shooting yourself in the head to stop your headache." - Jake Mayberry
"Republicans support the jailing of harmless prostitutes and drug sellers out of pragmatism in order to win votes, while conservatives support the jailing of harmless prostitutes and drug sellers out of principle in order to make everyone adopt their moral code." - Bob Murphy
"If you're not a liberal at 20, your college friends won't think you're an 'intellectual'. If you're still a liberal at 40, you probably smoked too much dope with your college friends." - Lewis Napper
"Bush is no prize. But he's the devil we know, and a devil who, for all his flaws, takes seriously the threat facing our nation and appears to be trying to do something about it. With Bush, I expect I will have four more years to quibble with and argue about his tactics in the conduct of this war. With Kerry, once the campaign was over, I fear I'd have a difficult time convincing him there was a war at all" - NZ Bear
"I used to think Reagan was a simplistic, vengeful, jingoistic cowboy. Now, I'm starting to think he was just ahead of his time." - The Onion, 10/2/01
"The Democrats are the party that says government will make you smarter, taller, richer, and remove the crabgrass on your lawn. The Republicans are the party that says government doesn't work and then they get elected and prove it." - P.J. O'Rourke
"The career of Ronald Reagan as compared to the career of Bill and Hillary Clinton showed that a conservative with half a brain is smarter than a liberal with two." - P.J. O'Rourke
"Political thought, especially on the left, is a sort of masturbation fantasy in which the world of fact hardly matters." - George Orwell
"Government has become a fat, lazy behemoth, spawning parasitic bureaucracies resistant to reform. Democrats seem addicted to the dole." - Camille Paglia
"pain: n. a condition also caused by the reading of left wing nonsense." - John Phillips
"Leftists do not ask, "Who is right and who is wrong?" but rather, "Who is strong and who is weak?" in determining their positions on world and national issues. The substitution of power criteria for moral criteria is one of the reasons the left so often takes immoral positions." - Dennis Prager
"A liberal is someone who gives away things he doesn't own." - Ronald Reagan, 1984
"Republicans believe every day is the Fourth of July, but Democrats believe every day is April 15." - Ronald Wilson Reagan
"Having decreed egalitarianism, having discarded religion and morality, modern liberalism's only answer to Nature's obvious inequality is to lower standards on everything and to declare everything is permissible." - Charley Reese
"Thomas Jefferson wanted to replace an aristocracy of birth with an aristocracy of merit. Today's liberal wants an aristocracy of mediocrity." - Charley Reese
"The left practices the politics of envy and the economics of failure. They may have their hearts in the right place but their heads are usually in an awkward place." - M. Simon
"Typically, however, the liberals show themselves to favor censorship when it suits them, - that is to censor opposing views. They claim to be tolerant, but in fact they are only tolerant of opinions that match with their own - those that agree, for instance, that sodomy is aceeptable behavior, or that we should countenance massive criminal activity because the poor dears were mistreated as children. As ever, we find the true face of the liberal revealed - cowardly and snakelike, favoring censorship, but doing so by malevolent underhand means - attempting to flood people promulgating their legitimate views with much garbage. I really think it's time that these people were exposed for the cowards they are." - Dan Hayes, Slashdot talkback
"Having very little sympathy for either left or right, it appears that in general intellectual level of leftist is rather inferior. And so with their lack of capabilities to reason, they prefer direct action, such as smashing windows." - porky_pig_jr, Slashdot talkback
"... but Hilary Clinton's ass just keeps getting bigger." - South Park
"Liberals can be very "understanding" about violence -- provided it is violence from the left. On the very day when terrorist planes were crashing into the World Trade Center and into the Pentagon, The New York Times was running a sympathetic story about one of our own home-grown terrorists from the 1970s who had been caught up with by the law." - Thomas Sowell
"The double standard is blatant when you compare political reactions to the Oklahoma City bombing and the Unabomber. The Oklahoma City bombing was immediately blamed on conservative talk show hosts, even before the perpetrators were known. But when the murderous Unabomber was captured and a copy of Al Gore's environmental cult book was found in his cabin, dog-eared and with many passages marked up, that was passed over in silence by most of the liberal media." - Thomas Sowell
"Someone like [Maureen] Dowd spouts her silliness, and no one ever challenges her. The elite liberal media is an echo chamber, where anyone who parrots the party line (Bush bad, democrats good) gets a pat on the head and a Scooby snack. Anyone criticizing what every clever person knows is right is obviously a stupid right-wing knuckledragger, and not to be taken the least bit seriously. Whereas on the right, we are constantly criticized, and constantly forced to defend what we believe. So, we have to back up our opinions with thought, with statistics, with arguments. It's made us tougher. We on the right have to spend 2 hours a day in the intellectual Gold's Gym, whereas the left have become flaccid couch potatoes." - Spunky
"If I had a left wing, I'd cut it off." - Alina Stefanescu
"The President has kept all of the promises he intended to keep." - former Clinton aide George Stephanopolous
"American conservatism is much more populist than British conservatism or what passes for conservatism on the Continent. There are simply no equivalents to, say, the gun nuts or the religious right in Britain or Europe. You can imagine what American conservatism would be like without those big grass-roots forces, and in Britain it is." - Mark Steyn
"When it comes to foreign policy, Democrats have a reputation as credulous stooges whose reflexive anti-war leanings make them willing dupes for murderous dictators." - Chris Suellentrop, Slate.com
"As anyone who's attended an "antiglobalization" protest knows, the only thing uniting the left is its hatreds--of capitalism, America and Israel. You find at these events a menagerie of special interests promoting their own little causes. But the far left today, though it styles itself "progressive," has no coherent vision of how to make the world better--in sharp contrast with today's conservative internationalists, who favor the vigorous use of U.S. diplomatic and military force to expand democracy." - James Taranto
"Right from the beginning, Ronald Reagan set out to challenge everything that the liberal political elite of America accepted and sought to propagate. They believed that America was doomed to decline: He believed it was destined for further greatness. They imagined that sooner or later there would be convergence between the free Western system and the socialist Eastern system, and that some kind of social democratic outcome was inevitable. He, by contrast, considered that socialism was a patent failure, which should be cast onto the trash heap of history. They thought that the problem with America was the American people, though they didn't quite put it like that. He thought that the problem with America was the American government, and he did put it just like that. ... Ronald Reagan has changed America and the world, but the changes he made were to restore historic conservative values, not to impose artificially constructed ones." - Margaret Thatcher
"[Far-right conservatives] understand Lenin perfectly well. It’s the Democrats they don’t understand. A hyper awareness of threats leads to hallucinations of banshees in the bushes. Joseph McCarthy had a deep understanding of Communism. And he did find some Communist spies. But he saw the tentacles of Communism everywhere, whether there were adequate grounds for it or not." - Michael Totten
"Radical leftists think the Bush Administration is like the Nazi Party for one specific reason. They haven’t studied the rise of the Nazis. They truly believe the comparison is apt not because they misunderstand Republicans, but because they misunderstand Hitler." - Michael Totten
"Clinton's most dislikable quality is his egocentric ambition; he's the classic careerist, alternately brown-nosing and back-stabbing as he ascends a hierarchy." - Jesse Walker
"Typically, my debates with liberals start when they say something stupid, like, 'I’m a liberal' " - Don Watkins
"Sheesh, you wouldn't be a liberal if you couldn't whine properly." - Chris Welsch
"Conservative isolationism -- America is too good for the world -- is long dead. Liberal isolationism -- the world is too good for America -- is flourishing." - George Will