Tag: QotD

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Happy Thanksgiving.

And a link. Marko the Munchkin Wrangler expresses his beliefs. Hear, hear! Excerpt:

I believe that you cannot have a right to anything that necessitates a financial obligation on the part of someone else. You have a right to life, liberty, and honestly acquired property, not to any sort of monetary or material thing. The former merely requires your fellow citizens to leave you alone; the latter requires them to work for you free of charge.

Why is it that immigrants so often have a better handle on what being an American means than so many of our neighbors who were born here?

KevinLeave a comment

Quote of the Day III.

I find he makes a lot more sense if you think of it as him switching between narratives, not being internally inconsistent. On the one hand, we’ve got the story of the Evil Empire of big government that will be (should be) brought low by the plucky heroes with hearts of gold, and then on the other hand, we’ve got the story of the benevolent rulers who used their infinite wealth and power to bring peace and prosperity to all.

In essence, he’s proposing we fire Emperor Palpatine and replace him with King Arthur. – LabRat in the comment thread of this post.

KevinLeave a comment

Quote of the Day.

Americans should be thankful they have one of the last functioning nation-states. Europeans, because they’ve been so inept at exercising it, no longer believe in national sovereignty, whereas it would never occur to Americans not to. This profoundly different attitude to the nation-state underpins, in turn, Euro-American attitudes to transnational institutions such as the United Nations.

But on this Thanksgiving the rest of the world ought to give thanks to American national sovereignty, too. When something terrible and destructive happens – a tsunami hits Indonesia, an earthquake devastates Pakistan – the United States can project itself anywhere on the planet within hours and start saving lives, setting up hospitals and restoring the water supply.

Aside from Britain and France, the Europeans cannot project power in any meaningful way anywhere. When they sign on to an enterprise they claim to believe in – shoring up Afghanistan’s fledgling post-Taliban democracy – most of them send token forces under constrained rules of engagement that prevent them doing anything more than manning the photocopier back at the base. – Mark Steyn World should give thanks for America

RTWT – it’s worth every minute of your time.

Mark Steyn may argue that he’s “a misfit unassimilated foreigner,” but he’s wrong. He was born an American. It just took him a few years to come home.

KevinLeave a comment

Quote of the YEAR!.

From IraqPundit:

I know those who are wedded to the idea of a failed Iraq are calling me a deluded idiot and worse. But things are improving slowly. My relatives in Baghdad say there’s no comparison; things are much better than they were six months ago. They can visit friends in different areas and walk about the neighbourhood in the evening.

Frankly, I don’t understand why so many mock us for wanting a future for Iraq. Is your hatred for George Bush so great that you prefer to see millions of civilians suffer just to prove him wrong?

It really comes down to this: you are determined to see Iraq become a permanent hellhole because you hate Bush. And we are determined to see Iraq become a success, because we want to live.

And read the comments.

KevinLeave a comment

Why the Left Believes the Media is “Right-Wing”.

From TalkLeft:

I am a Centrist. I believe the Democratic Party is a centrist Party. I wish the Democratic Party would fight for its centrist ideals. Like ending the the war in Iraq. Like not going to war in Iran. Like bringing balance to our tax system by reversing the extreme and radical Bush tax cuts. Like doing something about global warming. Like protecting equal rights for all Americans. Like protecting the right to choose. Like offering health care to all Americans. And so on. These Democratic principles stand in the center of American public opinion, held by a strong majority of Americans.

The Republican Party is an extreme party whose views are completely out of the mainstream of American thought. The views espoused by the GOP must be marginalized and beaten at every turn.

They’re “middle of the road,” we’re “extremists.”

And they really believe that.

The divide widens and deepens.

KevinLeave a comment

Quote of the Day.

I for one plan to avoid death when offered the option. I’ve looked into this “aging” thing you kids seem so crazy about these days. Turns out, there isn’t really much to recommend it. So I’ve given it a pass.

I have “top people” working on a full-body android prosthesis.

An abomination you say?

Well, I shall feel the sting of your moral outrage…for thousands of years…from the deck of my own personal starship…whilst getting wicked sick at Halo 3.

Immortality loses it’s Twilight Zonish sting in the face of modern gaming technology. – Hunter Cressall

I wish.

KevinLeave a comment

Quote of the Day.

No, ye card-carrying members of the Hollywood left: All your “explanations” are dead wrong. You just don’t want to come to grips with the fact that you hate America but your audience doesn’t.

And they aren’t willing to pay you to insult them.

From The Bidinotto Blog‘s post, Anti-war movies tank at the box office. RTWT.

I believe I said much the same thing after seeing only the movie trailers a while back.

UPDATE: The commenters to this Breitbart piece on the commercial failure of these films all seem to agree with me. It isn’t that “They don’t want to be reminded about the mental toll that the Iraq War is having on us,” it’s that they’re sick and tired of Hollywood shitting on the military, “flyover country,” and America in general.

Sample comment:

Hallelujah! Thank you, to all the responders so far. It does my heart good to see that so many people (all of you?) feel the same way that I do about these movies, and Hollywood in general.

I have an idea for Hollywood: Let’s get some great actors, some great directors, some great producers, and some great screenwriters, and let’s make a movie that edifies America, edifies our troops, and captures on the big screen the true bravery and gallantry that are being exhibited every day over in Iraq. Make a movie like that, and THEN let’s see how movie-goers respond!

Hollywood makes a sucky product that doesn’t sell, and the only reason they can come up with is, “People go to the movies to escape. We just need to make our anti-American military films more entertaining” … *groan* What a bunch of self-righteous dullards.

God bless America.

Read ’em all.

KevinLeave a comment

LabRat’s on a Roll.

Another Quote of the Day from the first of two posts on faith, religion, and Western society:

What is killing Western civilization is not the death of God, it is the death of meaning.

Go read.

KevinLeave a comment

Quote of the Day.

But to a person who has not already taken a number of things on faith, that story does not make God look loving! The story looks, to eyes that have not already been prepared with several heartfelt acceptances, like this:

“For God so loved humanity, he sent His only son to die, and removed all conditions from their acceptance into His company in the afterlife except an acceptance of the Savior after hearing the Word. Except for everybody who did not hear the Word for geographic or linguistic reasons. They were just out of luck, until hundreds of years later when the faithful came to them to spread the Word. And smallpox. More smallpox than Word, really.”

By LabRat from the comments to this post.