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PTBC Quote(s) of the Week(s) Award(s) — June 5 2009

I haven’t awarded a weekly PTBC Quote of the Week Award (or any of my vastly un-prized awards) for a few weeks now, so I thought I better catch up a bit by awarding some awards to more than one person this week.  That’ll fix it. 

All of the awards go to Townhall columnists, not that the columns appearing at PTBC aren’t worthy — they always are — that’s just so obvious. 

image I liked this passage from Cliff May’s column today:

image …But the terms used by the new [Obama] administration are worse. We’re fighting “overseas contingency operations” to prevent “man-created disasters”? This is the kind of slovenly language that, as George Orwell once observed, “makes it easier for us to have foolish thoughts.”

And foolish thoughts lead to foolish policies. …

Cliff May, Townhall column, June 5 2009

And this extended excerpt from David Limbaugh’s column helps in one of my main goals here at the PTBC school of wisdom and common sense (as David’s brother might put it), which is to help explain the difference between liberals and conservatives thereby allowing people to more clearly see the fallacy of liberalism and the fruits of conservatism.

image Mainstream conservatives are routinely mischaracterized as extreme by liberals and squishy Republicans, when it is America’s liberals who are, by any fair measure, more extreme.

Conservatives are not the ones who sermonize about tolerance yet demonstrate intolerance toward conservative and Christian thought; support exterminating babies in the womb; apologize the world over for America; or gut the military and missile defense because of some dangerously egotistical notion that they have the magic to turn evil into goodness with their charisma and eloquence or, even worse, because they refuse to recognize evil in the world, except as emanating from the United States.

Conservatives aren’t the ones who have so little faith in their fellow human beings that they diminish their dignity by expanding the welfare state and increasing man’s learned dependency on government; judge people by the color of their skin instead of the content of their character; pit economic groups against one another, stoking the flames of envy and greed; punish success, reward failure and promote mediocrity; side with the world’s tyrants and dictators; slavishly attach themselves to leftist propaganda about impending environmental catastrophes; promote a secular humanist worldview that considers government a quasi-deity that can perfect the human condition; or morally equate the practice of enhanced interrogation techniques to save innocent lives with that of beheading innocent people.

[… and many other great examples…]

David Limbaugh, Townhall column, June 5 2009

The brilliant author of the excellent Liberal Fascism, Jonah Goldberg, fairly dissected President Obama’s overseas hypocrisy.  The H in President Barack H Obama stands for Hussein, a matter of some considerable consternation to Obama and the Obamatons during the campaign when they bashed conservatives like me for using it, but which they now wear like a badge of honor — more honor than even “American”, apparently, as judged by his world apology tour, Part Deux, in which “American” is a moniker which seems to make him feel and exhibit considerable consternation, embarrassment, and of course all that apology.  The H can now credibly be replaced with the word “Hypocrisy”. 

image …Obama was reliably Obamaesque again when he disparaged the Iraq war as a “war of choice.” But wait, he also thinks Iraq is better without Saddam, so maybe it was a good choice? Apparently not: “So let me be clear: no system of government can or should be imposed upon one nation by any other.”

Now this is a real problem. Putting aside the “should” question for a moment, it is simply a fact of history that a system of government can be imposed upon one nation by another. Sometimes for the worse, sometimes not. The Soviets imposed systems of government across Eastern Europe. America imposed systems of government—thank goodness—in Germany, Japan and South Korea. And we imposed a system of government in Iraq and are trying to do likewise in Afghanistan.

Which brings us back to that pesky “should” part. As ever, Obama’s positions on Iraq cannot be reconciled. Just as he often celebrates our troops’ success but can’t say we succeeded, he celebrates Iraq’s democratic progress but—hamstrung by his own ideology and pride—won’t fully acknowledge that such progress is even possible, given that it began at the point of an American gun. In short, President Obama is straddling Iraq just as candidate Obama did. …

Jonah Goldberg, Townhall column, June 5 2009

And finally there’s this from Charles Krauthammer, for whom I could issue an award for nearly every column he writes:

image … Obama says he came to Cairo to tell the truth. But he uttered not a word of that. Instead, among all the bromides and lofty sentiments, he issued but one concrete declaration of new American policy: “The United States does not accept the legitimacy of continued Israeli settlements,” thus reinforcing the myth that Palestinian misery and statelessness are the fault of Israel and the settlements.

Blaming Israel and picking a fight over “natural growth” may curry favor with the Muslim “street.” But it will only induce the Arab states to do like Abbas: sit and wait for America to deliver Israel on a platter. Which makes the Obama strategy not just dishonorable but self-defeating.  …

Charles Krauthammer, Townhall column, June 5 2009

 

Joel Johannesen
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