Every murderous totalitarian government of the 20th century began with some insulated group of faux-intellectuals congratulating each other on how smart they are, and fantasizing about how, if they could just install a dictatorship-for-a-day, they could right all the wrongs in the world.

It is the ultimate fantasy of the narcissist. And we’ve got whole generations of them, in control of our media and our government, all intent on “remaking America.”

Elizabeth Scalia, May 24, 2010

Like every self-appointed messiah before them, these militant environmentalists view with chill contempt those others who cannot see their truth, who won’t bow to their self-assigned imperatives. It’s not just that they won’t abide those who differ from them. They want them actively punished.

Rex Murphy, National Post, April 17, 2010

On the heels of Ford’s better-than-expected third quarter profits and its promise of solid profitability by 2011, 68% of Americans adults hold a favorable opinion of the one company that passed on a government bailout. Ford continues to far outdistance public perceptions of General Motors and Chrysler.
The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that only 24% view Ford unfavorably.
But just 34% of Americans have a favorable opinion of GM, while 56% view the automaker unfavorably.
Chrysler’s ratings are even lower, with just 29% who view the company favorably. Sixty-three percent (63%) view Chrysler unfavorably.

Rasmussen Reports, November 4, 2009

We need government at root to protect us from other governments (and terrorists), and to administer impartial laws. Adam Smith’s other requisite category of minimal government activity was the provision of infrastructure. Governments have fallen down in all three. The Robert Dziekanski affair — and the efforts by our guardians to blacken the name of the victim and conceal evidence — makes one ashamed to be Canadian. Governments have become more concerned with extending the scope of their redistributional activities in the name of social justice, but in reality in pursuit of buying votes. In the process they have engaged in round after round of disruptive policy innovation, resulting in a huge barnacle accretion of bureaucratic inertia. This is not cynicism, it is reality.

Peter Foster, October 20, 2009

Things come down to choices: lower costs versus death panels; torture versus intelligence; equity versus growth. And politicians, ever eager to garner votes, never want to say this. They will always try to have it both ways. Even when politicians choose one road over the other, they take pains to suggest they are simultaneously proceeding down two paths. One can disagree with the choices Reich makes but he is right to say that choices are unavoidable.

Choices are unavoidable, but the alternatives are not fixed over the long term. Constraints are real, but the constraints change. The reason politicians survive is that human creativity often rides to their rescue. New knowledge, new resources and new worlds have turned many a hack into statesmen. But they are the beneficiaries, rather than the creators of productivity; what is irrational is to expect genuine creativity in a world dominated by politicians. The missing pairs of choices in Reich’s list are these: creativity versus certainty, risk versus return, bureaucracy versus innovation. We can live only if we take the risk. That is the most unsayable truth of all.

Richard Fernandez, October 14th, 2009

WASHINGTON/OSLO — Barack Obama won the Nobel Peace Prize on Friday in a stunning decision that honored the first-year U.S. president more for promise than achievement and drew both praise and skepticism around the world.

The bestowal of one of the world’s top accolades on a president less than nine months in office, who has yet to score a major foreign policy success, was greeted with gasps of astonishment from journalists at the announcement in Oslo.

Source.

What is the matter with Michael Ignatieff that this is so? What’s missing from the portrait? Why, with so fresh and unspotted a leader, do the Liberals lack energy, borrow what little drama they possess from the tired, sham outrages of Question Period? It’s difficult to pinpoint. It’s not because of the “just-visiting” ads. They speak more to the narrowness of his opponents than to the flaws of their target. Nor has he been seriously spattered by cherry-picked quotations from some of his writings – his musings on the torture debate, for example – or his inclination toward the first person plural, the “we” in his writings, while tenured in America. They’re predictable “hit points” but they don’t really resonate. It isn’t any perceptible difficulties (I leave the spat over Quebec nominations out of the mix for now) with his caucus.

What has he to say to Canadians? Why did he come home? How is a Canada with Michael Ignatieff as its leader a better, different Canada than one without him? What’s special, distinct and intrinsic to his personality and style that adds something to the country he proposes to lead? Mr. Ignatieff has not only not answered these most basic questions. He signals by style and statement that he hasn’t worked out the answers for himself, not to speak of his fellow citizens.

Rex Murphy, September 28, 2009

In this critique of Liberal leader Michael Ignatieff, Rex Murphy has identified the essence of what the Liberal Party in Canada has come to represent over the last few decades. They are a party without a clear vision for Canada, as I have written before. When in opposition they seem to have a grasp on what they don’t want to do: they would scrap the GST; they would withdraw from the free trade deal; etc. But when in power they promptly do the opposite. Perhaps then Ignatieff is the perfect leader for the Liberals. As his record indicates his is “flexible” in his ideology, ready to reverse his position as soon as it appears it might score some political points. And perhaps the Liberal Party is exactly where it belongs – sitting in the opposition benches – as it appears all they are capable of is opposing.

It would be a tragic mistake to fundamentally impair economic freedom in favor of state or supra-state regulation just now. The long-term experience tells us that it is thanks to the free markets and free entrepreneurship that we can enjoy the current material welfare and economic progress. Business cycles, accompanied by economic downturns, recessions and crises, did exist, do exist and will exist in the future. In spite of them, the world has been – at least in the last two centuries – characterized primarily by economic growth and growing prosperity.

When looking for an appropriate reaction to the problems connected with the current crisis, we should build on the idea that the crisis was basically a failure of governments, not markets. The manipulation of monetary policy in an attempt to artificially prolong the period of growth, the irrational subsidization of demand in the housing sector and the failures of financial market regulation contributed substantially to the crisis. Let us not delude ourselves that the economic cycle and its consequences can be prevented by the more extensive government regulation or by aiming at global governance of the world economy.

Václav Klaus, President of the Czech Republic, September 23, 2009

It is becoming increasingly clear that some in the Democratic Party need a serious history lesson. Slavery was racist, Jim Crow laws were racist, segregation was racist – opposing a radical political agenda is not. Americans of all races and political mindsets applauded the election of America’s first African American president; it was a proud moment for every American. But our pride in electing an African-American president does not override our right to disagree with President Obama’s policies. It is obvious certain politicians are attempting to exploit racial anger to make up for their own policy failings.

President Obama’s campaign promised to move America beyond the bitter divides of yesterday. But for leaders of the Democrat Party to characterize Americans’ disapproval of the president’s policies as being based on race is an outrage and troubling sign about the lengths Democrats will go to disparage all who disagree with them. Playing the race card shows that Democrats are willing to deal from the bottom of the deck. Our political system has no place for this. President Obama should join me in calling for an end to these attacks by members of his party and a renewal of honest debate.

Michael Steele, September 17, 2009

If Jimmy Carter believes that the “overwhelming” portion of criticism towards Barack Obama is due to racism, does he also believe that the overwhelming portion of criticism towards Israel is anti-Semitic? Wouldn’t that apply to a man who hangs out with people who target Israeli citizens for terrorist attacks? After all, Hamas regularly issues anti-Semitic harangues and smears, and yet Carter has no problem cozying up to them and claiming that their criticism of Israel is legitimate.

From now on, using Carter’s own logic, we should note each of his remarks on the Middle East by saying they come from “Jimmy Carter, known anti-Semite.” Two can play this game.

Ed Morrissey, September 16, 2009

You can see Carter making his comments in this video: