Potent Quotables (updated periodically)

  • "If you like sausages and laws, you should never watch either one of them being made." -- Otto von Bismarck
  • "God who gave us life, gave us liberty. Can the liberties of a nation be secure when we have removed a conviction that these liberties are the gift of God? Indeed I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just, that his justice cannot sleep forever." -- Thomas Jefferson
  • "The best way to prove a stick is crooked is to lay a straight one beside it" -- FW Boreham
  • "There are two kinds of people in the world. Those who walk into a room and say, 'There you are' and those who say, 'Here I am'" -- Abigail Van Buren
  • "It was not political rhetoric, mass rallies or poses of moral indignation that gave the people a better life. It was capitalism." -- Thomas Sowell

Friday, May 08, 2009

This is not what we signed up for

Our old friend Victor Davis Hanson on why Republicans lost their appeal:
The real cause of unhappiness with the Republicans was simply that they could not make a convincing case for conservatism to a changing electorate because so many of them were not acting as conservatives.
...
Conservatism is the political belief that best mirrors human nature across time and space; but because its precepts are sometimes tragic and demand responsibility rather than ever-expanding rights, it requires adept communicators — not triangulators and appeasers whose pleasure is only for the moment.

In summary, it's not conservatism that's out of political favor. It's that Republicans couldn't/wouldn't/didn't hold to those conservative and classical liberal precepts. Therefore, they were not good spokesmen for conservatism. When a charismatic figure speaking for the Left arises, it's not hard to understand why Republicans lost. Now, we'll see if the status quo holds in 2010 (and 2012).
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