Charlie Kirk Quotes

If the left sometimes show their hypocrisy and indifference to the masses on the energy and climate issue by doing things like flying private jets all the time or living right next to oceans they claim will rise to kill us all any minute, we should not become complacent about hypocrisy on the right, either.

When you cut through it, political correctness is nothing more than self-censorship. It is forcing people to voluntarily stop behaving or speaking in certain ways. The driver for this becomes two base emotions: guilt and fear. Political correctness causes people to self-censor because they feel guilty about what they are about to say or do and they are afraid that they will “lose” something if they say or do it. The emotions of guilt and fear are such powerful drivers of behavior that people will stop themselves without even asking the question, “Who am I actually offending?

It’s not that everything America does in the name of defense is evil or imperialist, but this is a system that has taken on a life of its own. If Making America Great Again means asking whether government spending is benefiting our nation, even the military defense of that nation must be open to critical scrutiny. At some point, waste becomes as toxic as hostile outside forces, and potentially provocative in itself. Military excursions that ought to make us think twice seem deceptively simple if the war planners have a trillion dollars to blow and the lives ended are not their own.

If old Democrat was something like civil liberties/welfare/internationalism and new Democrat is something like censorship/socialism/internationalism, while old Republican was something like theocratic/corporate/warlike, then the new Republican formula is roughly free speech/entrepreneurial/pro-peace.

No More Accepting Decline Trump’s critics may not see in the MAGA Doctrine principles that span beyond Trump’s own lifetime and beyond our own shores — but some people overseas do. Just as the United States was an inspiration to people resisting monarchies around the world at the time of the American Revolution and an inspiration to people resisting communist tyranny during the Cold War, the distinctive red Make America Great Again hats of Trump supporters have found their way to Hong Kong, during the 2019 protests there against some of the ways Beijing, back on the Chinese mainland, rules its less-communist “special administrative region.” Brave protestors wear Make Hong Kong Great Again hats — and borrow other American symbols, including the American flag.

The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.” — EDMUND BURKE

The belief that the bad conditions are “inevitable” and unchangeable is a dangerous, self-fulfilling prophecy. We’d been told ISIS and the Paris Climate Agreement were inevitable — just as pre-Reagan America was told by Jimmy Carter that America needed to get over its “inordinate fear of communism” and accept the permanence of the Soviet Union. But these things aren’t unchangeable. Believing that they are beatable can help make them so. One must dare to believe greatness can come again.

The willingness of, for example, generations of the elite to fight those devastating wars over oil-rich regions is a perverse side effect of the mingling of private interests and public power. Just as government subsidies for pharmaceutical purchases start looking like a great idea if your family is in the pharmaceutical industry (or, like Medicare Part D architect and former senate majority leader Bill Frist, the hospital management industry), your family being in the oil business just might make you more willing, on a subconscious level, to tolerate great sacrifices (on the part of others, including taxpayers) in the name of keeping the black lifeblood of industry flowing.

Most of Washington can’t comprehend how this could have happened. They’re as perplexed by his achievements as they are by his giant crowds. They think they know what competence looks like: a four-hundred-dollar haircut and consultants telling you how not to make news. Never be funny. Take yourself too seriously for that. Meet as often as possible with other leaders who also have spent their careers trying not to generate headlines. Where average Americans see in Trump an effort to restore greatness through opportunity and prosperity, the elite see someone alarming. If you can succeed in politics without the help of hundreds of lawyers, lobbyists, and reporters propping you up, an awful lot of members of the elite could be on the verge of losing their jobs.

Harris flip-flops as well, sometimes making it difficult to determine what her position is on a given law. She at times opposed California’s three-strikes-you’re-out (for life) laws — but then again, she wanted to jail parents if their kids skipped school. She’s not shy about coming down on people with the hammer of government.

If he often sounds dismissive or impatient, it is not because he can brook no opposition but because, just like many of us, he is tired of seeing American ideals torn down. Unlike so many of his foes on the left, he’s very grateful to this country for making possible all of his success. He’s not a barbarian at the gates, to be fended off by the New York Times or the Ivy League. Trump is a man already comfortably at home in America, at home with its people and its institutions. And the people sense that. They know he is one of them, not just another Washingtonian like all the ones he defeated and defied to become president.

There’s no reason an activity that could be run like any other free-market business — with competition to provide better service and lower prices — should be forced to operate like this. Even if we conclude that the government must subsidize poorer customers, let everyone make their healthcare purchases as individuals on the open market as they please. Then we can help pick up the tab for the very poorest among us, whether through charity or, if absolutely necessary, government.

Despite all the efforts to terrify us about global warming, by the way, the fact remains that the Earth’s temperature, to the extent it can even be reliably measured, has gone up only about one degree Celsius over the past hundred years, and sea levels have risen about three inches, which appears to be about the same amount they rose the previous century despite increasing industrial activity since then — and in any case, leaving people plenty of time to move a few inches farther away from the shore if necessary.

Cicero came from a wealthy family, and through his oratory became what we might now dub a major media star in ancient Rome. He could have enjoyed a life of luxury and avoided conflict but regarded his foray into politics, necessitated by his sense of civic duty, as his greatest achievement. He spent much of that political career combating conspiracies to overthrow the republic, in a fashion that might well be dismissed as paranoid by the complacent elitists of our own day. His fears were proven tragically correct, though, as Julius Caesar (sometimes talked about now as if he were the very pinnacle of Roman achievement but in truth a dictator who was the death knell of the Republic) pushed Rome in the direction of empire. Cicero himself ended up executed by government soldiers, his head and hands later displayed on Rome’s central public speaking platform, a final taunt to Mark Antony — one of Caesar’s allies, and after Caesar’s assassination, part of Rome’s ruling triumvirate.

Obviously and thankfully, Hillary Clinton never became president, but all of the achievements described above are real — and are the handiwork of the person who became president on January 20, 2017: Donald J. Trump. (Many of these items come from the Washington Examiner’s tally of Trump successes.)