“I’ve long believed in what I call “the Jimmy Carter test.” The process consists simply in discovering Carter’s opinions on politics and foreign policy and taking the opposite position. Carter was one of our worst Chief Executives, and he surely ranks as the worst ex-president in our history. He has an uncanny ability to say […]
Archive for the 'Foreign Policy' Category
Aug10th2007
Gary Becker, Nobel Laureate in economics, writes:
Incidentally, since I believe private security usually performs very well, I never was convinced by the arguments to federalize employees who search baggage at airports. Private companies would do the job better than a single (monopoly) government employer if the standards of performance were clearly set by the government […]
May16th2007
Bernard Lewis, Professor of Near Eastern Studies at Princeton University, writes:
Was Osama Right?
Islamists always believed the U.S. was weak. Recent political trends won’t change their view.
BY BERNARD LEWIS
Wednesday, May 16, 2007 12:01 a.m. EDT
During the Cold War, two things came to be known and generally recognized in the Middle East concerning the two rival […]
Feb22nd2007
“Let’s spend a moment or two defining what we mean by freedom and democracy. There is a view sometimes expressed that “democracy” means the system of government evolved by the English-speaking peoples. Any departure from that is either a crime to be punished or a disease to be cured. I beg to differ from that […]
Jan12th2007
Was this:
The challenge playing out across the broader Middle East is more than a military conflict. It is the decisive ideological struggle of our time. On one side are those who believe in freedom and moderation. On the other side are extremists who kill the innocent, and have declared their intention to […]
Dec16th2006
“American prestige is no small thing. Loss of American prestige as a result of Vietnam, the Iran hostage crisis, Somalia and the bombing of the US Embassy in Lebanon emboldened Osama bin Laden to bomb the World Trade Center. Loss of American prestige gives Kim Jong Il the idea that he can test his nukes […]
Dec9th2006
“If the Japanese had never attacked Pearl Harbor it is likely that America might have never entered WWII or might have done so bitterly divided. The events of December 7th 1941 so united the country that ever afterward we forgot just how viciously divided we truly were. We Americans like to think that we heroically […]
Dec2nd2006
“How odd that today we admire Ronald Reagan whose coattails never could translate into a House majority, who was nearly destroyed by Iran-Contra, and who left office in uncertainty over whether he had really changed much the Cold War calculus. Harry Truman finished with about a 25% approval rating, winning no credit for the birth […]
Nov10th2006
Quote Of The Day
Published by in Foreign Policy, General, Hispanics (Minority Issues) and Immigration. 7 Comments“Open immigration to America worked well during the 19th century because the government did very little for immigrants and their families. How immigrants voted after becoming citizens also mattered little because government decisions were not so important. With the growth of government during the past half century, neither of these conditions continues to hold, so […]
Nov3rd2006
Quote Of The Day
Published by in Foreign Policy, General, Hispanics (Minority Issues) and affirmative action. 5 Comments“Despite much gushing about how we should “celebrate diversity,” America’s great achievement has not been in having diversity but in taming its dangers that have run amok in many other countries. Americans have by no means escaped diversity’s oppressions and violence, but we have reined them in”.–Thomas Sowell, in a WSJ editorial explaining that diversity […]
Oct30th2006
“The American system of government is based on spreading out power so that nobody can mess things up too badly. I’m not sure it does the job as well as it should, but it’s founded on the right idea, and we should be using all our cultural influence to spread that idea all over the […]
Oct23rd2006
“Is there any reason for the United Nations to stay in New York? The combination of its affluence and celebrity-driven culture draws in an odious international cadre, one that hates the United States (witness the applause for Chavez) as much as it enjoys living here. Surely it could move to Nigeria, Dafur, Cuba, or Venezuela, […]
Oct20th2006
“On foreign policy, Democrats continue to argue as if talking with our enemies is the magic formula. We should keep talking with Iran while they keep building a nuclear bomb, just as the western democracies kept negotiating with Hitler while he kept building up his war machine in preparation for starting World War II. […]
Oct19th2006
“Weak-kneed members of both parties have been calling for a timetable to be announced for withdrawal from Iraq. No other war in thousands of years of history has ever had such a timetable announced to their enemies. Even if we intended to get out by a given date, there is not the slightest reason to […]
Oct13th2006
Quote Of The Day
Published by in (modern day) Liberalism, Academia, Foreign Policy and General. 3 Comments“The voices of appeasement are familiar to historians, for we have heard them loudly, especially within the twentieth century. Intellectuals have done more than their share to convince others that standing up to aggression is a practical and moral mistake. Be nice, thoughtful, and considerate, the argument goes, and the murderers, thugs, and bullies will […]
Oct4th2006
“Clinton told Wallace, “There is not a living soul in the world who thought that Osama bin Laden had anything to do with Black Hawk Down.” Nobody said there was. The point of citing Somalia in the run up to 9-11 is that bin Laden told Fortune Magazine in a 1999 interview that the precipitous […]
