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There are few genuine conservatives within the U.S. political system, and it is a sign of the intellectual corruption of the age that the honorable term 'conservatism' can be appropriated to disguise the advocacy of a powerful, lawless, aggressive and violent state, a welfare state for the rich dedicated to a lunatic form of Keynesian economic intervention that enhances state and private power while mortgaging the country's future.
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violence
politics
keynesianism
welfare-states
conservatism
united-states
politics-of-the-united-states
economics
law
intellectuals
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Noam Chomsky |
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337c8ab
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"I wish it were different. I wish that we privileged knowledge in politicians, that the ones who know things didn't have to hide it behind brown pants, and that the know-not-enoughs were laughed all the way to the Maine border on their first New Hampshire meet and greet. I wish that in order to secure his party's nomination, a presidential candidate would be required to point at the sky and name all the stars; have the periodic table of the elements memorized; rattle off the kings and queens of Spain; define the significance of the Gatling gun; joke around in Latin; interpret the symbolism in seventeenth-century Dutch painting; explain photosynthesis to a six-year-old; recite Emily Dickinson; bake a perfect popover; build a shortwave radio out of a coconut; and know all the words to Hoagy Carmichael's "Two Sleepy People," Johnny Cash's "Five Feet High and Rising," and "You Got the Silver" by the Rolling Stones. After all, the United States is the greatest country on earth dealing with the most complicated problems in the history of the world--poverty, pollution, justice, Jerusalem. What we need is a president who is at least twelve kinds of nerd, a nerd messiah to come along every four years, acquire the Secret Service code name Poindexter, install a Revenge of the Nerds screen saver on the Oval Office computer, and one by one decrypt our woes."
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politics
patriotic
nerdiness
politics-of-the-united-states
opinion
patriotism
nerds
nerd
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Sarah Vowell |
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The problem with the Tea Party is they're all ignorant hillbillies who drink moonshine and ride around on mules. And they believe in stereotypes too.
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politics-of-the-united-states
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Jon Stewart |
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cd71e21
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"They took it for more than it was, or anyhow for more than it said; the container was greater than the thing contained, and Lincoln became at once what he would remain for them, "the man who freed the slaves." He would go down to posterity, not primarily as the Preserver of the Republic-which he was-but as the Great Emancipator, which he was not."
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slavery
politics
politics-of-the-united-states
slavery-in-america
slavery-in-the-united-states
american-civil-war
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Shelby Foote |
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Plato argued that good people do not need laws to tell them to act responsibly, while bad people will always find a way around law. By pretending that procedure will get rid of corruption, we have succeeded only in humiliating honest people and provided a cover of darkness and complexity for the bad people. There is a scandal here, but it's not the result of venal bureaucrats. (1994) p. 99
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politics
policy
bureaucrats
plato
conservative
corruption
politics-of-the-united-states
government
process
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Philip K. Howard |
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Periclean Greeks employed the term , without any connotation of stupidity or subnormality, to mean simply 'a person indifferent to public affairs.' Obviously, there is something wanting in the apolitical personality. But we have also come to suspect the idiocy of politicization--of the professional pol and power broker. The two idiocies make a perfect match, with the apathy of the first permitting the depredations of the second.
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politics
apolitical
athens
pericles
politics-of-the-united-states
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Christopher Hitchens |
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A large segment of the public willingly resigns itself to political passivity in a world in which it cannot expect to make well-founded judgments.
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politics
politics-of-the-united-states
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Richard Hofstadter |
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All this is the more maddening, as Edward Shils has pointed out, in a populistic culture which has always set a premium on government by the common man and through the common judgement and which believes deeply in the sacred character of publicity. Here the politician expresses what a large part of the public feels. The citizen cannot cease to need or to be at the mercy of experts, but he can achieve a kind of revenge by ridiculing the wild-eyed professor, the irresponsible brain truster, or the mad scientist, and by applauding the politicians as the pursue the subversive teacher, the suspect scientist, or the allegedly treacherous foreign-policy adviser. There has always been in our national experience a type of mind which elevates hatred to a kind of creed; for this mind, group hatreds take a place in politics similar to the class struggle in some other modern societies. Filled with obscure and ill-directed grievances and frustrations, with elaborate hallucinations about secrets and conspiracies, groups of malcontents have found scapegoats at various times in Masons or abolitionists, Catholics, Mormons, or Jews, Negroes, or immigrants, the liquor interests or the international bankers. In the succession of scapegoats chosen by the followers of this tradition of Know-Nothingism, the intelligentsia have at last in our time found a place.
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politics
intellectual
intellectualism
politics-of-the-united-states
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Richard Hofstadter |
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512cc6a
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The only people truly bound by campaign promises are the voters who believe them.
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politics
elections
politics-of-the-united-states
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Christopher Hitchens |
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2dcff76
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Launching a nice little war to divert national attention was a gambit no less appealing to nineteenth-century politicians than it is to their present-day counterparts.
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war
politics-of-the-united-states
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Jon Krakauer |
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c098209
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And this, of course, is the central problem with conspiracy theorists -- once you inflexibly accept that something is a conspiracy, any contrary evidence has the paradoxical effect of making your case stronger. Every contradiction deepens the conspiracy.
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politics-of-the-united-states
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Chuck Klosterman |
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"The American craving for illegal, mind-altering, addictive chemicals provides a steady flow of American capital through the Texas border into Mexico and South America. Basically, the drug traffic is uncontainable as long as its U.S. market exists, but newspapers and other media virtuously trumpet feel-good headlines about "record drug busts" and arrests while the drug trade continues unabated."
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politics-of-the-united-states
crime
drugs
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William Earl Maxwell |
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In my opinion, what the country needs, first and foremost, is a good, sound, business-like conduct of its affairs. What we need is--a business administration !
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politics-of-the-united-states
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Sinclair Lewis |
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cd0e5ca
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The Constitution is awesome, but still overrated; it's like Pet Sounds. The wide-scale adoption of political correctness was silly, but not unreasonable. The freedom that was lost was mostly theoretical and rarely necessary. No one is significantly worse off.
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politics-of-the-united-states
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Chuck Klosterman |
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Moralistic culture views government as a positive force, one that values the individual but functions to the benefit of the general public. Discussion of public issues and voting are not only rights but also opportunities to better the individual and society alike. Furthermore, politicians should not profit from their public service.
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politics
politics-of-the-united-states
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William Earl Maxwell |