The fear brokers themselves are frightened peole, people who have no real confidence in our nation’s strength and time-tested institutions because they understand neither. Thus we see the constant paradox of New Right leaders posing as sabre-rattling hyperpatriots at the same time they proclaim to the world how weak a nation we have become, weak morally, spiritually, economically and militarily.

….the intellectual disarray among progressives, election apathy that exaggerates the impact an the significance of each vote actually cast… the perception among Middle Americans that political progressives are insensitive to how social and cultural changes are threatening their value systems.

Former Democratic Senator Edmund Muskie,, 1979 in The Fear Brokers: Peddling the Hate Politics of the New Right, by Thomas McIntyre, 1979

 

The New Right is a serious threat to the American Way…we could become a nation as alien to our traditions as the New Right is alien to the political process.

Former Democratic Senator Edmund Muskie, 1979 in The Fear Brokers: Peddling the Hate Politics of the New Right, by Thomas McIntyre, 1979

During my opposition to the Vietnam War, the religious segment of the Radical Right attacked n ot only my patriotist, but the authenticity of my personal Christian faith. It is a tactic of the Radical Right to impugn the personality and character of its foes. And I can testify that these kinds of attacks are the most difficult for the politician to absorb.

Former Republican Senator Mark O. Hatfield in the Foreword to The Fear Brokers: Peddling the Hate Politics of the New Right, by Thomas McIntyre, 1979

From my own experience, I have observed three traits that seem most to typify the thinking of the extreme right wing, and that are much in evidence today in the ideology  of the New Right as it attempts to gain contemporary converts.

 First is a hypernationalism which is so accentuated that it can only be called idolatry. Loyalty to the nation becomes equated with the political agenda of the right wing—to be for escalating our productiobn of nuclear arms, to be against any SALT agreement, to oppose the ERA, and so forth. To take a different side on any of the issues means, in the eyes of the New Right, that you are against the nation, that you are unpatriotic, that you are a disloyal citizen. Historically, the more such a version of national righteousness gains political power, the greater is the extent of political repression that inevitably follows.

Second is the manipulation of religion to ordain the cause of the New Right. In essence, this frequently translates into meaning that opposition to their political agenda proves not only that you are un-american, but that you are ungodly. A civil religion is employed, which declares—in direct contradiction to biblical truths—that our nation carries a divine privelege, and that if we embrace the political dogma of the Right we will be turning to God’s true purposes for the nation. A national religious and political chauvinism is thus promulgated by the false purity of the New Right. They and a nation transformed in the New Right’s image are declared to possess divine sanction.

As a Christian, there is no other part of the New Right ideology that concerns me more that its self-serving misuse of religious faith. What is at stake here is the very integrity of biblical truth. The new Right, in many cases, is doing nothing less than placing a heretical claim on Christian faith that distorts, confuses and destroys the opportunity for a biblical understanding of Jesus Christ and his gospel for millions of people.

Finally, persistent threads of racism lie right below the surface of the new right’s ideology. From the earliest days of the nation onward, elements akin to the right wing have attempted to prey upon prejudice toward foreigners, toward Blacks, toward Jews, toward Native Americans, and toward other religious minorities or alien groups. These sentiments continue to be subtly seized upon and inflamed by the extreme right wing.

Our nation is in an era of political mistrust and uncertainty… it is always in such a time that people become vulnerable to having their legitimate questions manipulated into hysterical fears. That is the intention of the New Right today, in our country, in order to increase its political power.

The radical right…  people who profess to love America more  and understand it better than you or Id do, but whose words and deeds belie this claim. … political leaders who preach passionate certainties but whose chauvinism about America masks th eir own deep-seated reservations about the Grand American Experiment—about our basic values, traditions and institutions; about the Bill of Rights and the Constitution itself—and whose shrillness reveals th eir profound fears about our strength as a nation, our character as a people. ….a movement wh ich has no confidence that truthwill prevail in the open market of ideas, which chafes under the necessary disorderliness of democracy, and which neither understands nor tolerates diversity and dissent. …frightened would-be tyrants.. leaders whom Hanna Arendt characterized in another, but not so different context as “sheep in wolves clothing.”

….I know when you say you are for peace, they will say you are for appeasement.

…. If you speak of protecting the environment, they will say you want to destroy free enterprise; when you defend the first amendment, they will say you favor the spread of pornography; if you argue that all our liberties depend on preserving due process of law, they will say you are for coddling criminals; and if you support carefully circumscribed handgun legislation to protect citizens who live in high-density crime areas, they will say you are part of a Communist plot to take away the rifles and shotguns of law-abiding persons who shoot for sport.

The Radical right has no more toleration for mainstream political thought than it has for the liberal left. To be a moderate these days—to address issues on their merits, to support what you believe to be  practical and sensible policies—is to invite not only disagreement but the most relentless harassment. It is that simple and alarming.

Sinclair Lewis wrote It Can’t Happen Here to show clearly that, in truth, it can happen here—there is no cosmic law forbidding the triumph of extremism in America.

Thomas McIntyre, 1979 The Fear Brokers: Peddling the Hate Politics of the New Right

The fear brokers themselves are frightened peole, people who have no real confidence in our nation’s strength and time-tested institutions because they understand neither. Thus we see the constant paradox of New Right leaders posing as sabre-rattling hyperpatriots at the same time they proclaim to the world how weak a nation we have become, weak morally, spiritually, economically and militarily.

….the intellectual disarray among progressives, election apathy that exaggerates the impact an the significance of each vote actually cast… the perception among Middle Americans that political progressives are insensitive to how social and cultural changes are threatening their value systems.

Edmund Muskie, 1979 in The Fear Brokers: Peddling the Hate Politics of the New Right, by Thomas McIntyre, 1979

The New Right is a serious threat to the American Way…we could become a nation as alien to our traditions as the New Right is alien to the political process.

Former Democratic Senator Edmund Muskie, 1979 in The Fear Brokers: Peddling the Hate Politics of the New Right, by Thomas McIntyre, 1979

During my opposition to the Vietnam War, the religious segment of the Radical Right attacked n ot only my patriotist, but the authenticity of my personal Christian faith. It is a tactic of the Radical Right to impugn the personality and character of its foes. And I can testify that these kinds of attacks are the most difficult for the politician to absorb.

Former Republican Senator Mark O. Hatfield in the Foreword to The Fear Brokers: Peddling the Hate Politics of the New Right, by Thomas McIntyre, 1979

From my own experience, I have observed three traits that seem most to typify the thinking of the extreme right wing, and that are much in evidence today in the ideology  of the New Right as it attempts to gain contemporary converts.

First is a hypernationalism which is so accentuated that it can only be called idolatry. Loyalty to the nation becomes equated with the political agenda of the right wing—to be for escalating our productiobn of nuclear arms, to be against any SALT agreement, to oppose the ERA, and so forth. To take a different side on any of the issues means, in the eyes of the New Right, that you are against the nation, that you are unpatriotic, that you are a disloyal citizen. Historically, the more such a version of national righteousness gains political power, the greater is the extent of political repression that inevitably follows.

Second is the manipulation of religion to ordain the cause of the New Right. In essence, this frequently translates into meaning that opposition to their political agenda proves not only that you are un-american, but that you are ungodly. A civil religion is employed, which declares—in direct contradiction to biblical truths—that our nation carries a divine privelege, and that if we embrace the political dogma of the Right we will be turning to God’s true purposes for the nation. A national religious and political chauvinism is thus promulgated by the false purity of the New Right. They and a nation transformed in the New Right’s image are declared to possess divine sanction.

As a Christian, t here is not other part of the New Right idiologogy that concerns me more that its self-serving misuse of religious faith. What is at stake here is the very integrity of biblical truth. The new Right, in many cases, is doing nothing less than placing a heretical claim on Christian faith that distorts, confuses and destroys the opportunity for a biblical understanding of Jesus Christ and his gospel for millions of people.

Finally, persistent threads of racism lie right below the surface of the new right’s ideology. From the earliest days of the nation onward, elements akin to the right wing have attempted to prey upon prejudice toward foreigners, toward Blacks, toward Jews, toward Native Americans, and toward other religious minorities or alien groups. These sentiments continue to be subtly seized upon and inflamed by the extreme right wing.

Our nation is in an era of political mistrust and uncertainty… it is always in such a time that people become vulnerable to having their legitimate questions manipulated into hysterical fears. That is the intention of the New Right today, in our country, in order to increase its political power.

"Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us...As we are liberated from our own fears, our presence automatically liberates others."

Marianne WIlliamson

 

"The great enemy of truth is very often not the lie - deliberate, contrived, and dishonest - but the myth - persistent, persuasive and realistic. Too often we hold fast to the clichés of our forebears."

John F. Kennedy, 1962

 

Democracy, the modern world's holy cow, is in crisis. And the crisis is a profound one. Every kind of outrage is being committed in the name of democracy. It has become little more than a hollow word, a pretty shell, emptied of all content or meaning. It can be whatever you want it to be. Democracy is the Free World's whore, willing to dress up, dress down, willing to satisfy a whole range of taste, available to be used and abused at will. .....Democracy has become Empire's euphemism for neo-liberal capitalism

Arundhati Roy, May 13, 2003

 

Clear Channel Worldwide Incorporated is the largest radio station owner in the country. It runs more than 1,200 channels, which together account for 9 percent of the market. Its CEO contributed hundreds of thousands of dollars to Bush's election campaign. When hundreds of thousands of American citizens took to the streets to protest against the war on Iraq, Clear Channel organized pro-war patriotic "Rallies for America" across the country. It used its radio stations to advertise the events and then sent correspondents to cover them as though they were breaking news. The era of manufacturing consent has given way to the era of manufacturing news. Soon media newsrooms will drop the pretense, and start hiring theatre directors instead of journalists.

Arundhati Roy, May 13, 2003

 

 

Hundreds of thousands of you have survived the relentless propaganda you have been subjected to, and are actively fighting your own government. In the ultra-patriotic climate that prevails in the United States, that's as brave as any Iraqi or Afghan or Palestinian fighting for his or her homeland.

If you join the battle, not in your hundreds of thousands, but in your millions, you will be greeted joyously by the rest of the world. And you will see how beautiful it is to be gentle instead of brutal, safe instead of scared. Befriended instead of isolated. Loved instead of hated.

I hate to disagree with your president. Yours is by no means a great nation. But you could be a great people.

History is giving you the chance.

Seize the time.

Arundhati Roy, May 13, 2003

 

"Anyone who trades liberty for security deserves neither liberty nor security"

Benjamin Franklin

 

Writers, like teeth, are divided into incisors and grinders.

           -Walter Bagehot, economist and journalist (1826-1877)

 

"You should set goals beyond your reach so you always have something to live for."

Ted Turner

 

"Rupert Murdoch is the most dangerous man in the world."

Ted Turner

 

"I see what keeps people young: work!"

Ted Turner

 

"Politics hates a vacuum. If it isn't filled with hope, someone will fill it with fear."

Naomi Klein

 

I think George Bush is the most corrupt president since Harding in the twenties. He is not the legitimate president. The U.S. Administration really is a completely unsupportable government and I look forward to it being overthrown as much as I looked forward to Saddam Hussein being overthrown.

-- Ken Livingstone, Mayor of London

 

"I can assure you from first-hand experience that a President acting secretly usually does not have the best interest of Americans in mind. It is his own personal interest that is on his mind instead."
     John Dean, of Watergate ilk     

 

There have always been stories of the superhero, dating back to the most ancient mythologies. We continue to project the archetype hero story onto real people whenever we can -- the latest being Pvt. Jessica Lynch, the POW who kept fighting the ambushing Iraqi soldiers until she ran out of ammunition. The hero story makes us, in the midst of so much depressing news of war, murder, joblessness and fraud, remember the capacity of human beings to persevere.

             The best hero stories are never about facing and vanquishing an enemy, though that might be the narrative. The real showdown is always with one's self.

Joan Ryan, OpEd in San Francisco Chronicle, May 6, 2003

 

"We need to err on the side of being strong," Mr. Kristol said last week on Fox News. "And if people want to say we're an imperial power, fine."

William Kristol, Editor, The Weekly Standard, cited in NY Times

 

 

Everybody stay tuned. You're going to see a lot of good things happening. The cavalry is coming.

Sheldon Drobny, founder of Anschell Alternative Radio Syndicate, on the Thom Hartmann Radio Talk Show.

 

It is not conquest that claims the warrior to be a hero, but the goodness of his cause, and the use he makes of victory. ...it is not power, nor triumphs, nor extended empire, that entitle him to the name of Great, but themoderation, magnanimity, and justice of his reign.

Jane Porter, in the 1807 book,  Aphorisms of Sir Philip Sidney,

 

 

"The shoe that fits one person pinches another; there is no recipe for living that suits all cases."
Carl Jung

 

 I used to think (it) was just useless, now I think (it)  is harmful.

William Kristol , commenting on the UN

 

"I don't really worry about being paranoid any more. I just want to be sure I'm paranoid enough."

Jim Caddell

 

"Freedom of the press is guaranteed only to those who own one."

A.J. Liebling

Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired, signifies in the final sense a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed."

President Dwight D. Eisenhower April 16, 1953

 

George Bush is a born-again Christian and a recovering alcoholic. I see in him the uncontrollable anger of the alcoholic, once directed at himself, sluiced away every night into his bloodstream and out into the gutter, now, tragically, directed, via his amazingly aggressive, amazingly triumphant body language, on to whatever poor soul comes into his sights.

David Hare Published on Saturday, April 12, 2003 by the Guardian/UK, found in Commondreams.org

 

Free people are free to make mistakes and commit crimes and do bad things

    —Donald Rumsfeld, Secretary of Defense, amid the Baghdad sacking on April 11

 

"To announce that there must be no criticism of the president, or that we are to stand by the president, right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public."
Theodore Roosevelt

 

That there are men in all countries who get their living by war, and by keeping up the quarrels of nations, is as shocking as it is true; but when those who are concerned in the government of a country, make it their study to sow discord, and cultivate prejudices between nations, it becomes the more unpardonable.

Thomas Paine, "The Rights of Man" circa 1792

Our government has kept us in a perpetual state of fear - kept us in a continuous stampede of patriotic fervor - with the cry of grave national emergency. Always there has been some terrible evil at home or some monstrous foreign power that was going to gobble us up if we did not blindly rally behind it.

General Douglas Macarthur, 1957

left1 (lµft) .... --left n. ... 2. Often Left. The people and groups who advocate liberal, often radical measures to effect change in the established order, especially in politics, usually TO ACHIEVE THE EQUALITY, FREEDOM, AND WELL-BEING OF THE COMMON CITIZENS OF A STATE. Also called left wing.
American Heritage dictionary #2 definition of "Left" (thanks to Lenny Gray)

in the Yuk pile:

"All things equal, I would prefer to have a child in a school that has a strong appreciation for the values of the Christian community, where a child is taught to have a strong faith...The reason that Christian schools and Christian universities are growing is a result of a strong value system. In a religious environment the value system is set. That's not the case in a public school where there are so many different kids with different kinds of values."

Rod Paige- U.S. Education Secretary  [Washington Post, 4/9/03] (Thanks to Laurie Manis)

 

"Now, it should be incandescently clear that no one who has any concern for the integrity and life of America today can ignore the present war. If America's soul becomes totally poisoned, part of the autopsy must read Vietnam."

Martin Luther King,  April 4, 1967, speaking against Viet Nam war.

 

 

"the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today -- my own government."

Martin Luther King,  April 4, 1967, speaking against Viet Nam war.

 

 

"match actions with words by seeking out every creative means of protest possible."

           Martin Luther King,  April 4, 1967, speaking against Viet Nam war.

 

"It's a little sobering,"  "When you're training for this, you joke about it, you can't wait for the real thing. Then when you see it, when you see the real thing, you never want to see it again."

Capt. Sal Aguilar, standing in a field with dead Iraqis all around him--in NY Times

 

I'm addicted to placebos. I could quit, but it wouldn't make any difference".
Steve Wright

 

It's all a question of story. We are in trouble just now because we are in-between stories. The Old Story - the account of how the world came to be and how we fit into it - sustained us for a long time. It shaped our emotional attitudes, provided us with life purpose, energized action, consecrated suffering, integrated knowledge, and guided education. We awoke in the morning and knew where we were. We could answer the questions of our children.

But now it is no longer functioning properly, and we have not yet learned the New Story.

Thomas Berry, 1978

 

Each man must for himself alone decide what is right and  what is wrong, which course is patriotic and which isn't. You cannot shirk this and be a man. To decide against your  conviction is to be an unqualified and excusable traitor,  both to yourself and to your country, let them label you as  they may.

Mark Twain

 

He's my father, he's my president. We didn't understand him properly. We grew up with him around so we don't know anyone else but him."

Captured Iraqi soldier, in his twenties, on Saddam Hussein

 

 

As far as I can tell from watching the Arab satellite networks there's only a one-word, actually just a one-letter, difference in how they report the war and how U.S. networks report it. CNN calls it "America's war in Iraq," and Arab television calls it "America's war on Iraq."

Thomas L. Friedman, NY Times Column, April 6, 2003

 

Like hyenas who watch from afar as lions eat their kill, and then help themselves to the leftovers, humanitarian agencies, including the UN, have the unenviable task of waiting on the sidelines and going in only after the catastrophe is over. Their relationship with war is paradoxical: on the one hand, they advocate peace and development; on the other, it is this chaotic and impoverished world that provides them with their raison d'etre and gives them legitimacy.

Rasna Warah, March 31, 2003, allafrica.com

 

"What an immense mass of evil must result...from allowing men to assume the right of anticipating what may happen."

Tolstoy, Quoted by George McGovern

 

For war, when we confront it truthfully, exposes the darkness within all of us. This darkness shatters the illusions many of us hold not only about the human race but about ourselves. Few of us confront our own capacity for evil, but this is especially true in wartime.

Chris Hedges, The Press and the Myths of War,  April 3, 2003, The Nation.

 

Giap maxim: "War without politics is like a a tree without a root."

 

Dissent is the highest form of patriotism

Thomas Jefferson

 

 

It seems this quote is directly addressing George Bush.

Some men talk sensibly and act foolishly, some talk foolishly and act sensibly; the first laugh at the last, the last cheat the first.     

Fulke Greville, Lord Brooke (1524-1628,)  from a book from webmaster Rob Kall's quotation book library,  printed in 1756, titled, Maxims, Characters and Reflections, Critical, Satyrical, and Moral, by F. Greville, Esq.

 

"One of the illusions [of life] is that the present hour is not the critical, decisive hour."

Emerson, quoted by Thom Hartmann

 

“I don't want to abolish government.  I simply want to reduce it to the size where I can drag it into the bathroom and drown it in the bathtub.” 

Grover Norquist, to National Public Radio’s Mara Liasson in a May 25, 2001 Morning Edition interview, quoted by Thom Hartmann

 

You can force people to go out and welcome a foreign leader, but you can't force them to smile.'

Richard Nixon, in Egypt, in 1975, when crowds were forced out to greet him.

 

We have a president for whom English is a second language. He's like 'We have to get rid of dictators,' but he's pretty much one himself.

"In America, we have orange alert, but what the hell does that mean? We're supposed to be afraid of Krishna? Of orange sorbet? Then it's like, 'You can't go out and shop, it's too dangerous out there,' but if that happens then the economy falls.

"The message is so mixed: 'Be afraid, but not too afraid.'"

Robin Williams

 

"This was the world's first $100 billion television commercial," says a business executive I know. "President Bush and his team couldn't get the message across on al-Jazeera or Egyptian television. This is Uncle Sam's way of buying airtime to tell Iraq that change in an iron fist is coming."

Jim Hoagland Washington Post Editorial, Thursday, March 27, 2003; Page A21

 

..time itself is a different, more erratic and more highly compressed commodity when war rages.

Jim Hoagland Washington Post Editorial, Thursday, March 27, 2003; Page A21

 

"When voters are given a choice between voting for a Republican, or a Democrat who acts like a Republican, they'll vote for the Republican every time."

Harry Truman Democratic President

 

“We let them go for a walk in the desert, but all our towns will resist,”

Taha Yassin Ramadan the Iraqi Vice-President

 

"We are against this war, Mr. Bush. Shame on you." We like nonfiction and we live in fictitious times. We live in a time where we have fictitious election results, that elect a fictitious president. We live in a time where we have a man sending us to war for fictitious reasons,"

...Anytime you've got the Pope and the Dixie Chicks against you, your time is up."

Michael Moore, at 2003 Academy Awards, upon winning for Bowling for Columbine

 

The people who have demanded that Bush refrain from action should now demand that the action be more thorough. The danger now is that we will go in and go out too quickly and leave the job half-done. The position of the antiwar movement and of liberals should be that the United States fulfill entirely its obligations to replace Saddam with a decent or even admirable system. We've done this in Afghanistan but only in most halfhearted way. We should now do more in Afghanistan and do a lot in Iraq. The people who've opposed the war should now demand that Bush do more.

Paul Berman, Salon Interview Bush is an idiot, but he was right about Saddam

 

I can say that there was something truly pathetic in seeing antiwar demonstrations denounce the war at one moment and then in another moment seeing grateful Iraqis welcome their British and American liberators. If I were a member of the antiwar movement, I would have felt a moral shudder at that experience.

Paul Berman, Salon Interview Bush is an idiot, but he was right about Saddam

 

The whole point of using artists, he explains, is to open doors in the mainstream media that have so far been closed to the antiwar point of view. "I've been turned down trying to book ex-ambassadors and national security professionals [by producers] who are clamoring for Janeane Garofalo and Mike Farrell. If we need celebrities to get people to listen to [liberal national security expert] Mort Halperin, so be it. That's the craziness of the media we're trying to open up. It's also the only way to reach lots of young people, who, believe it or not, don't read The Nation."

David Fenton PR expert Behind Musicians United to Win Without War, quoted by and commented on By Eric Alterman, in March 23, 2003 The Nation

 

"When I first moved to Nashville," she recalled, "the first record exec I met said, 'Well now, we just have to make this girl fuckable.'"

Rosanne Cash, quoted By Eric Alterman, in March 23, 2003 The Nation

 

"Politics are not good for art...  few musicians mix the two with much success. Too much politics in art comes out of self-righteousness or bitterness. Too often, you lose the art, and then it is just politics that rhyme. And who gives a shit about that?  ...Steve Earle, Springsteen and my dad are among the few artists who can mix the two without affecting the integrity of their work. It's organic. They tend to step into character rather than rail against the system. And if it resonates on a soul level, it can change the world."

Rosanne Cash, quoted By Eric Alterman, in March 23, 2003 The Nation

 

you can kill some of the people all of the time and you can kill all of the people some of the time but you can't kill all of the people all of the time. When a whole population hates you, and hates you fanatically, it's difficult to rule.
Margaret Atwood, March 16, 2003 LA Times Editorial

 

When a door swings open, you never know what will come through it.

Margaret Atwood, March 16, 2003 LA Times Editorial

it's very hard to defeat an enemy who never turns up.
Margaret Atwood, March 16, 2003 LA Times Editorial

"The military is always more confident than circumstances show they should be,"

Walter Cronkite, on military's confidence they will oust Saddam Hussein, 3/19/03

"You're all going over to report. Truth. Honesty. The real story. But that is going to be difficult because once you get into a unit, you are going to be co-opted. It is not a purposeful thing, it will just happen. It's a little like the Stockholm Syndrome.

"You will fall in with a bunch of grunts, experience and share their hardships and fears and then you will feel for them and care about them. You will wind up loving them and hating their officers and commanders and the administration that put them (and you) in harm's way. Ernie Pyle loved his grunts; Jack Laurance and Michael Herr loved theirs; and I loved mine. And as we all know, love blinds and in blinding it will alter the reporting you thought you were going to do. Trust me. It happens, and it will happen no matter how much you guard against it.

"Remember also, you are not being embedded because that sweet old Pentagon wants to be nice. You are being embedded so you can be controlled and in a way isolated. Once you're in the field, all those officers and commanders you now hate, because you love your grunts, you will hate even more because they will have total control over where you can go, what you can see and what you can do."  Former network executive Jeff Gralnick, who did a tour in Vietnam, offers Iraq-bound journalists this advice in Television Week:

 

Americans won't know for a while whether President Bush, by choosing to wage war against Saddam Hussein, will be stamping out a brushfire or dousing it with gasoline.

Philadelphia Inquirer

 

America as a beacon of optimism -- America as the world’s chief carpenter, not just cop -- is gone. We need a little less John Wayne and a little more JFK. Once we get this Iraq crisis behind us, we need to get back to exporting our hopes, not just our fears.

Thomas Friedman, OpEd piece March 17, 2003

 

"In this century, when evil men plot chemical, biological and nuclear terror, a policy of appeasement could bring destruction of a kind never before seen on this earth. Terrorists and terrorist states do not reveal these threats with fair notice in formal declarations. And responding to such enemies only after they have struck first is not self defense. It is suicide. The security of the world requires disarming Saddam Hussein now."

George W. Bush, March 17, 2003 Address to nation on eve of Iraq

 

 Democracy, I would repeat, is the noblest form of government we have yet evolved, and we may as well begin to ask ourselves whether we are ready to suffer, even perish for it, rather than readying ourselves to live in the lower existence of a monumental banana republic with a government always eager to cater to mega-corporations as they do their best to appropriate our thwarted dreams with their elephantiastical conceits.

Norman Mailer, Feb 20, 2003

 

In the 1930s, you could be respected if you earned a living. In the Nineties, you had to demonstrate that you were a promising figure in the ranks of greed. It may be that empire depends on an obscenely wealthy upper-upper class who, given the in-built, never-ending threat to their wealth, are bound to feel no great allegiance in the pit of their heart for democracy. If this insight is true, then it can also be said that the disproportionate wealth which collected through the Nineties may have created an all-but-irresistible pressure at the top to move from democracy to empire. That would safeguard those great and quickly acquired gains.

Norman Mailer, Feb 20, 2003

 

 

This war, should it come, is intended to mark the official emergence of the United States as a full-fledged global empire, seizing sole responsibility and authority as planetary policeman. It would be the culmination of a plan 10 years or more in the making, carried out by those who believe the United States must seize the opportunity for global domination, even if it means becoming the "American imperialists" that our enemies always claimed we were.

Jay Bookman of The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.  September 29, 2002

 

war is also mighty TV entertainment.

Norman Mailer, Feb 20, 2003

He understood that the longer one could delay powerful statesmen, the more they might weary of the soul-deadening boredom of dealing with a consummate liar who was artfully free of all the bonds of obligation and cooperation. It is no small gift to be an absolute liar. If you never tell the truth, you are virtually as safe as an honest man who never utters an untruth. When informed that you just swore to the opposite today of what you avowed yesterday, you remark, "I never said that," or should the words be on record, you declare that you are grossly misinterpreted. Confusion is sown rich in permutations.
Norman Mailer, Feb 20, 2003

Political leaders and statesmen are serious men even when they appear to be fools, and it is rare to find them acting without some deeper reason they can offer to themselves.

Norman Mailer, Feb 20, 2003

 

To be a mainstream American is to live as an oxymoron. You are a good Christian, but you strain to remain dynamically competitive.

Norman Mailer, Feb 20, 2003

 

America had learned all over again that Republicans had fine skills for dirty legal fighting. They were able to call, after all, on a powerful gene stream. The Republicans who led the campaign to seize Florida in the year 2000 are descended from 125 years of lawyers and bankers with the cold nerve and fired-up greed to foreclose on many a widow's home or farm. Nor did these lawyers and bankers walk about suffused with guilt. They had the moral equivalent of teflon on their soul. Church on Sunday, foreclose on Monday. Of course, their descendants won in Florida. The Democrats still believed there were cherished rules to the game. They did not understand that rules no longer apply when the stakes are large enough.

Norman Mailer, Feb 20, 2003

 

Because democracy is noble, it is always endangered. Nobility, indeed, is always in danger. Democracy is perishable. I think the natural government for most people, given the uglier depths of human nature, is fascism. Fascism is more of a natural state than democracy. To assume blithely that we can export democracy into any country we choose can serve paradoxically to encourage more fascism at home and abroad. Democracy is a state of grace that is attained only by those countries who have a host of individuals not only ready to enjoy freedom but to undergo the heavy labor of maintaining it.

Norman Mailer, Feb 20, 2003

 

 "America has entered one of its periods of historic madness, but this is the worst I can remember."

John le Carré  The Times of London:

 

...The American administration is now a bloodthirsty wild animal. Bombs are its only vocabulary. Many Americans, we know, are horrified by the posture of their government, but seem to be helpless.Unless Europe finds the solidarity, intelligence, courage and will to challenge and resist American power, Europe itself will deserve Alexander Herzen's declaration —"We are not the doctors. We are the disease."

Harold Pinter

 

it is the actions of men and not their sentiments that make history. Our sentiments can be loaded with love within, but our actions can turn into the opposite. Perversity is always ready to consort with human nature.

Norman Mailer, Feb 20, 2003

 

we can never know for certain where our prayers are likely to go, nor from whom the answers will come. Just when we think we are at our nearest to God, we could be assisting the Devil.

Norman Mailer, Feb 20, 2003

 

 

"Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter?"
A: Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

 

When a democracy votes against us, we shouldn't ask them to do it again until they get it right.

Bill Maher (on Turkey rejecting US troops)

 

This is your president, and this is your president on bullshit.

D.L Hughley on Bill Maher's HBO show.

 

This is like a third world dictatorship press conference.

Ted Rall on Bill Maher's HBO show.

When you want to make it clear to the rest of the world that you are not an imperialist, the best countries to have with you are Britain and Spain. (then laughter.)

Bill Maher

"You know, the worst person to elect as president is a state governor. They've inflicted capital punishment so they're not afraid of death, They've sent out the National Guard. Clinton ran the presidency as though it was a governorship, and so did Jimmy Carter. Former vice-presidents are almost as bad, because they've been destroyed by their old job. I'd only elect senators and college professors. And newspaper men."

Eugene McCarthy, former presidential candidate

 

"When the leaders speak of peace
The common folk know
That war is coming.
When the leaders curse war
The mobilization order is already written out."
--Bertolt Brecht

 

"Of course the people don't want war. But after all, it's the leaders of the country who determine the policy, and it's always a simple matter to drag the people along whether it's a democracy, a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship. Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism, and exposing the country to greater danger."
-- Herman Goering at the Nuremberg trials

 

"Never again will the Democrats go into a race without defining who we are," Pelosi responded. "Never again will the Democrats have to answer to the charge, 'We didn't know what you stood for or what you were willing to fight for.'

Nancy Pelosi. March 7, 2003, in a speech to the Council on Foreign Relations.

 

"North Korea has vividly illustrated that power is not an absolute concept and a smaller state can challenge a superpower, if it knows how and when to use its limited capabilities and exploit the regional and international setting to its favor – another lesson for the Arab and Muslim world."

excerpted from Islam Online Kareem M. Kamel is an Egyptian freelance writer based in Cairo, Egypt. He has an MA in International Relations and is specialized in security studies, decision-making, nuclear politics, Middle East politics and the politics of Islam. He is currently assistant to the Political Science Department at the American University in Cairo.

 

The relationship is spoiled. The Americans dictated to us. It became a business negotiation, not something between friends. It disgusted me

--Murat Mercan, Turkish ruling party MP, on US-Turkish diplomacy before the recent vote

 

"I could never be the president. Think about it. I've abused cocaine,
  I've been arrested, I'm not a very smart guy. It's a big joke to think
  people would want someone like me ...just because my dad was president."
   -- Charlie Sheen, on SNL when asked if he'd ever be president

 

The concern I have is that our single-minded and, unfortunately, rather demagogic fixation on Iraq is undermining the credibility as well as the legitimacy of US leadership Zbigniew Brzezinski, National Security Adviser to President Carter

 

I did tell the President that we need a lot of Colin Powell and very little of Rumsfeld

 José María Aznar, Spanish Prime Minister

 

"When I left here, I didn't have much in the way of a life plan. I knew some people who thought they did. But it turned out that we were all in for ups and downs, most of them unexpected. Life takes its own turns, makes its own demands, writes its own story. And along the way, we start to realize we are not the author."
President George W. Bush commencement address at Yale University in May 2001

 

"I have a mixed marriage. My wife opposes this war, but something in Mr. Bush's audacious shake of the dice appeals to me.

...I feel as if the president is presenting us with a beautiful carved mahogany table — a big, bold, gutsy vision. But if you look underneath, you discover that this table has only one leg. His bold vision on Iraq is not supported by boldness in other areas. And so I am terribly worried that Mr. Bush has told us the right thing to do, but won't be able to do it right."

Thomas Friedman

 

If Will Rogers were alive today, he'd be saying, "I only know what I don't read in the papers." 

Swami Beyonananda, in response to news of the new OpEdNews.com web site.