Tag: QotD

Quote of the Day

KevinLeave a comment

Quote of the Day

The victorious radicals had proclaimed a theology of Reason in which equality of condition was the natural and true order of creation. In their Genesis, the loss of equality was the ultimate source of mankind’s suffering and evil, just as the arrogant pride of the primal couple had provoked their Fall in the religious myths now discarded. The ownership of private property became a secular version of original sin. Through property, society re-imposed on every generation of human innocence the travails of inequality and injustice. Redemption from worldly suffering was possible only through the Revolution that would abolish property and open the gates to the socialist Eden — to Paradise regained.

The ideas embodied in this theology of liberation became the inspiration for the new political Left, and have remained so ever since. It was half a century later that Marx first articulated the idea of a historical redemption, in the way that became resonant for us:

Communism is the positive abolition of private property, of human self-alienation, and thus the real appropriation of human nature through and for man. It is therefore the return of man himself as a social, i.e., really human, being… – Marx, Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts

This was our revolutionary vision. By a historical coup we would create the conditions for a return to the state of true humanity whose realization had been blocked by the alienating hierarchies of private property. All the unjust institutions of class history that had distorted, divided, and oppressed mankind would be abolished and human innocence reborn. In the service of this cause, no burden seemed too onerous, no sacrifice too great. We were the Christopher Columbuses of the human future, the avatars of a new world struggling to emerge from the womb of the old. – David Horowitz, The Politics Of Bad Faith: The Radical Assault on America’s Future

(h/t to PhilB)

That’s the first time I’ve ever seen a Leftist (former or otherwise) put in print why there is such an assault on private property rights today. The Endangered Species Act, the Americans with Disabilities Act, the multiple various and sundry EPA regulations about “wetlands” and pollution, Eminent Domain abuse, etc., etc. I mean, I’d come to that conclusion myself, given the evidence, but to have it admitted in print. . .

In fact, the entire piece is full of quotable excerpts. Expect the remainder of the Quotes of the Day this week to be from this one link.

Quote of the Day

KevinLeave a comment

Quote of the Day

Ideas that have been tried and found wanting; tried and found to be disastrous: the totalitarian temptation in all its many guises; the multifarious utopian schemes for universal beatitude; efforts to curtail freedom in the name of an abstract republic of virtue–all these ideas were thoroughly discredited only yesterday but, like some strange villain out of a science fiction movie, they have suddenly changed shape and are poised to attack again. We have yet to learn–even now, even at this late date–that promises of liberation often turn out to conceal new enchantments and novel forms of bondage. – Roger Kimball, Ideas in Battle, The Weekly Standard, 7/21/08

RTWT. (h/t: Empire of Dirt)

Quote of the Day

KevinLeave a comment

Quote of the Day

For Deyan:

“Common values” and “universal values” are not all that common and universal, and the willingness to defend those values is even rarer. They’ve been sustained over the long haul by a very small group of countries. In the years ahead, America has to take the American moment seriously — in part, to ensure that the allies of tomorrow don’t make the mistakes Western Europe did. That means at the very minimum something beyond cheeseburger imperialism. In the end, the world can do without American rap and American cheeseburgers. American ideas on individual liberty, federalism, capitalism, and freedom of speech would be far more helpful.

In 2004, Goh Chok Tong, the prime minister of Singapore and a man who talks a lot more sense than most Continental prime ministers, visited Washington at the height of the Democrats’ headless-chicken quagmire frenzy. He put it in a nutshell: “The key issue is no longer WMD or even the role of the UN. The central issue is America’s credibility and will to prevail.”

The prime minister of Singapore apparently understands that more clearly than many Americans. – Mark Steyn, America Alone: The End of the World As We Know It

And one Bulgarian.

Quote of the Day

KevinLeave a comment

Quote of the Day

In the months after the Afghan campaign, France’s foreign minister, Hubert Védrine, was deploring American “simplisme” on a daily basis, and Saddam understood from the get-go that the French veto was his best shot at torpedoing any meaningful UN action on Iraq. Yet the jihadists still blew up a French oil tanker. If you were to pick only one Western nation not to blow up the oil tankers of, the French would surely be it.

But they got blown up anyway. And afterwards a spokesman for the Islamic Army of Aden said, “We would have preferred to hit a U.S. frigate, but no problem because they are all infidels.”

No problem. They are all infidels.

When people make certain statements and their acts conform to those statements I tend to take them at their word. As Hussein Massawi, former leader of Hezbollah, neatly put it, “We are not fighting so that you will offer us something. We are fighting to eliminate you.” – Mark Steyn, America Alone: The End of the World As We Know It

Something I think far too many people deliberately refuse to acknowledge, much less accept.

Quote of the Day

KevinLeave a comment

Quote of the Day

For over 80 years, teacher education in America has been in the grip of an immutable dogma, responsible for endless educational nonsense. That dogma may be summed up in the phrase: Anything But Knowledge. Schools are about many things, teacher educators say (depending on the decade)—self-actualization, following one’s joy, social adjustment, or multicultural sensitivity—but the one thing they are not about is knowledge. Oh sure, educators will occasionally allow the word to pass their lips, but it is always in a compromised position, as in “constructing one’s own knowledge,” or “contextualized knowledge.” Plain old knowledge, the kind passed down in books, the kind for which Faust sold his soul, that is out. – Heather Mac Donald, Why Johnny’s Teacher Can’t Teach, The Burden of Bad Ideas

Go READ

KevinLeave a comment

Go READ

I realize that in the great scheme of things this blog is a couple of rungs down from Tam’s on people’s “Daily Reads” list, but if you haven’t seen it yet, go read Further ruminating on South Ossetia… I can’t take a pullquote from it. The whole damned piece is quotable.

And ought to be on the front page of every damned newspaper in America.

Keith Olbermann should be held at gunpoint and forced to read it, repeatedly, on his show.

Quote of the Day

KevinLeave a comment

The trouble with the social-democratic state is that, when government does too much, nobody else does much of anything.

After September 11, I wondered rhetorically midway through a column what we in the West are prepared to die for, and got a convoluted e-mail back from a French professor explaining that the fact that Europeans weren’t prepared to die for anything was the best evidence of their superiority: they were building a post-historical utopia — a Europe it would not be necessary to die for.

But sometimes you die anyway.

Mark Steyn, America Alone: The End of the World as We Know It, concluding the chapter “The Four Horsemen of the Eupocalypse.”

I called Michael Crichton’s recent Next one of the most disturbing novels I’ve read recently. America Alone is the most disturbing non-fiction work I’ve read in quite a while. If you haven’t read it, I recommend you pick up a copy. If Steyn is even half right, the future looks bleak indeed, and it’s a hell of a lot closer than we think.

If you want further evidence of this, look at what the Brits did in Basra. And they’re our closest ally. The Fadhil brothers nailed it in one sentence:

In our opinion, although the deal was made last year, Britain made the decision to offer basically the same deal unilaterally years before that by watching the monster grow under their noses without doing anything serious to stop it.

Quote of the Day

KevinLeave a comment

Quote of the Day

I came here from the former USSR as a child of eight. I attended first and second grades in the Ukraine. In those two years, I studied a foreign language (French), could write compositions in cursive and did algebra. When I came to the United States, I came to third grade. We were cutting out shapes from construction paper and learning how to tell time by looking at little drawings of clocks. I didn’t start learning a foreign language until seventh grade! In other words, education today and yesterday sucks dog schlong! – Nicki Fellenzer, It’s About Choices, at The Liberty Zone

I wonder what she’d have to say about The George Orwell Daycare Center?