Quote of the day - C.S. Lewis

Experience: that most brutal of teachers. But you learn, my God do you learn.

C. S. Lewis

Quote of the day - Jeff Tobin

How did an Islamic world that was prostrate only a generation ago come to threaten the citadels of European culture?

Jeff Tobin - commenting on Bat Ye'or's book, Eurabia.

Quote of the day - Joe Sobran

No federal official is punished for usurping power in violation of the Constitution. Does this mean that power is never usurped, or that it is being usurped so constantly that we don't even notice?

Joe Sobran

Thomas Sowell, Chris Muir, firing range humor

Friday's Day-by-Day cartoon -



- reminded me of some anecdotes from Thomas Sowell in Dr. Sowell's autobiography, "A Personal Odyssey." See Chapter 4 (particularly pages 102-104) for Sowell's personal stories from the firing range of the U.S. Marines during the Korean War. He includes stories of civilian employees and women handling military weapons. [Although the stories, being true, aren't quite as interesting as Muir's imaginative cartoons.]



I also enjoyed an interview with Dr. Sowell reported in the Wall Street Journal on Saturday. The interview discussed education, Dr. Sowell's experiences with writing over the years and his objectives for new projects. Sowell's (approximately) 30th (and latest) book was recently published by Yale University:



I haven't read the book, but the interview provides fresh insight:

Free-market economics, a legacy of the classical school, is thought of as an old conservative doctrine. But Mr. Sowell explains that it was in fact one of the most revolutionary concepts to emerge in the history of ideas. Moreover, "the thinking of the classical economist was not only a radical break from landmark intellectual figures like Plato and Machiavelli but also from mainstream thinking to this day." The notion of a self-equilibrating system--the market economy--meant a reduced role for intellectuals and politicians, he says. "And even today many still haven't accepted that their superior wisdom might be superfluous, if not damaging."

Quote of the day - Thomas Sowell

It is hard to see how people who are opposed to faith-based organizations can support the dogmas of the schools of education or the multiculturalists.

Thomas Sowell

Quote of the day - Ann Coulter

Usually the nonsense liberals spout is kind of cute, but in wartime their instinctive idiocy is life-threatening.

Ann Coulter

Kathleen McFarland's spying charges against Hillary Clinton

Conservatives are apparently rushing to distance themselves from Katherine McFarland's charges that Hillary Clinton has sent people to spy on her. No one likes to be made fun of or ridiculed, and the easy path is for all of us to join the "pile-on" and make fun of McFarland, lest we appear to be crazy also.

But before we do that, remember who we are talking about. There is very little that is beyond the capabilities of the Clintons when it comes to using dirty tricks against opponents. Mark Steyn's January 2, 1999 column is repeated today in Steyn's "Greatest Hits" feature:

Yes, but who's behind `the politics of personal destruction'? Who sent out presidential aides James Carville and Sid Blumenthal to smear Paula Jones as trailerpark trash and Monica as a stalker? The Christian Coalition isn't leaking revelations about gay Democrats. Instead, Larry Flynt, distinguished pornographer and loyal Democrat, is reducing Hustler from a respectable periodical for aficionados of graphic sadism and bestiality - into a pitiful house organ of the Clinton administration: having lowered the boom on Bob Livingston, Larry now says he's got the goods on another 11 congressmen - ten Republicans and one Democrat - but he's only going to out the Republicans.

If you'll forgive a touch of humbug, there's something almost tragic about the corruption of liberal idealism. Bill Clinton's tainted seed has seeped into the party's core and infected its soul. As in the final stage of syphilis, an appalling pustular madness has set in, as gibbering feminists, blacks, artists and intellectuals froth ever more wildly in defence of their leader.

Read the whole thing.

Remember also that people who are capable of this are capable of anything.

Think of this episode in the context of the Schumer staffers who broke federal law to uncover information about a Republican Senate candidate in Maryland.

And finally, remember Terry Lenzner.

Quote of the day - Mark Steyn

In the current issue of City Journal, Theodore Dalrymple concludes a piece on British suicide bombers with this grim summation of the new Europe: ''The sweet dream of universal cultural compatibility has been replaced by the nightmare of permanent conflict.'' Which sounds an awful lot like a new Dark Ages.

Mark Steyn

Quote of the day - Pope Benedict XVI

"The West reveals . . . a hatred of itself, which is strange and can only be considered pathological; the West . . . no longer loves itself; in its own history, it now sees only what is deplorable and destructive, while it is no longer able to perceive what is great and pure."

Pope Benedict XVI

Quote of the day - Ayn Rand

I don't build in order to have clients. I have clients in order to build.

Ayn Rand (quoting Howard Roark)

Quote of the day - C.S. Lewis

Eros will have naked bodies; Friendship naked personalities.

C. S. Lewis

Quote of the day - Mark Steyn

For the House of Saud, oil wealth is a global jizya: an enormous wealth transfer from the economically productive world -- Europe, North America -- to Islam.

Mark Steyn

Quote of the day - Joe Sobran

The demand for government subsidies of art comes not from those who enjoy art, but from an "artistic community" that produces art nobody enjoys.

Joe Sobran

Quote of the day - Thomas Sowell

What is more frightening than any particular policy or ideology is the widespread habit of disregarding facts. Former House Majority Leader Dick Armey put it this way: "Demagoguery beats data."

Thomas Sowell

Quote of the day - Ann Coulter

During the entire time this talented, intelligent, magnificently conservative black man [Claude Allen] held high positions in the Bush administration, he was mentioned in only 11 articles in The New York Times. (A small part of Times Executive Editor Bill Keller dies every time the paper is forced to mention any black top officials in the Bush administration. It might remind people that the most highly placed black in the Clinton administration was his secretary, Betty Currie.)

But since Allen was accused of stealing from department stores a few weeks ago, the Times has mentioned him in seven articles — including a major front page article on Monday, coverage more appropriate to the first moon landing. This makes Allen the first black alleged thief whose photo has ever appeared in The New York Times.

Ann Coulter

Quote of the day - Will Durant

The family is the nucleus of civilization.

Will Durant

Quote of the day - Oriana Fallaci

"I feel less alone when I read the books of Ratzinger [Pope Benedict XVI] . . . I am an atheist, and if an atheist and a pope think the same things, there must be something true. It's that simple! There must be some human truth here that is beyond religion."

Quote of the day - Ann Coulter

My only regret with Timothy McVeigh is he did not go to the New York Times Building.

Ann Coulter

Quote of the day - C.S. Lewis

Don't use words too big for the subject. Don't say "infinitely" when you mean "very"; otherwise you'll have no word left when you want to talk about something really infinite.

C. S. Lewis

Quote of the day - Ayn Rand

I swear, by my life and my love of it, that I will never live for the sake of another man, nor ask another man to live for mine.

Ayn Rand

Quote of the day - Joe Sobran

Most liberals don’t like to be called socialists; they think it’s some sort of “McCarthyism.” Then again, half of them think Joseph Stalin was a victim of McCarthyism.

Joe Sobran

Quote of the day - Ronald Reagan

You and I have a rendezvous with destiny. We will preserve for our children this, the last best hope of man on earth, or we will sentence them to take the first step into a thousand years of darkness. If we fail, at least let our children and our children's children say of us we justified our brief moment here. We did all that could be done.

Ronald Reagan

Quote of the day - Thomas Sowell

Everybody is for "fairness" -- because we all use the same word to mean very different things. Some of the most confused and counterproductive policies -- "fair trade" laws and the Fair Labor Standards Act, for example -- have been built upon the shifting sands of fairness.

Thomas Sowell

Quotes of the day - Mark Steyn

Indeed, “Transamerica” would make a good name for Hollywood’s view of its domestic market – a bizarro United States run by racists and homophobes and a poodle media in thrall to the Administration.

. . . . .


Hollywood’s “bravery” is an almost pathological retreat: it’s against segregated drinking fountains in Alabama and blacklisting writers on 1950s variety shows.

Mark Steyn

Quote of the day - Jean Baptiste Say

Alas, how many have been persecuted for the wrong of having been right?

--Jean-Baptiste Say

H/T Thomas Sowell

Quote of the day - Will Durant

Education is the transmission of civilization.

Will Durant

Quote of the day - Ann Coulter

"Democrats are on the precipice of securing their reputation as the Chamberlains of our time. In fact, today's appeasers are worse than Neville Chamberlain : Chamberlain didn't have himself as an example." -- Ann Coulter, P. 13 - Treason

Excellent 60 second video

click here

Quote of the day - C.S. Lewis

Don't say it was "delightful"; make us say "delightful" when we've read the description. You see, all those words (horrifying, wonderful, hideous, exquisite) are only like saying to your readers "Please will you do the job for me."

C. S. Lewis