Lingua publicus
The good and the bad...
web posted June 20, 1999
"If the world of Washington, Jefferson, and Hamilton seems to us somehow both more liberal and more strict than our own, and our own world seems strangely disordered and violent compared to theirs, I think it is because we have slowly allowed moral relativism to dominate every aspect of our thought and speech." -- Rep. Dick Armey
"One ironic legacy of the Clinton administration is the rearming of the American citizenry. Each time Clinton and his friends in Congress threaten another round of anti-gun regulations, the American people respond by stocking up..." -- Llewellyn Rockwell
"In our current cultural wars, perhaps the most important of the virtues for conservatives is fortitude -- the courage to take stands that are not immediately popular, the courage to ignore the opinion polls. Otherwise, we will never change the polls. That is what true conservatism means, or it means nothing." -- Robert Bork
"In the five-year budget now being pasted together in Congress, the federal government will spend just a shade under $10 trillion -- of which about 90 percent will replenish nanny state social programs." -- Cato's Stephen Moore
"Al Gore: father of the Internet, inspiration for the movie 'Love Story.' He raised tobacco, cleared the land with a double-edged ax; plowed it with a team of mules. Built homesteads. There's only one man in America with more life experience -- Forrest Gump." -- RNC's Jim Nicholson
"The way things are going, we will probably soon hear that polls show most Americans think Mr. Bush would do a better job as Tipper's husband." -- Gail Collins
"President Clinton was on hand...when the nation's largest group of theater owners announced they're going to require young people now to show photo IDs before being allowed into R-rated movies. Clinton said if this photo ID thing works in movie theaters, he's thinking about trying it at some of our nuclear weapons labs." -- Jay Leno
"Forty-seven states profit from lotteries or other forms of gambling. Perhaps soon some trial lawyers will gather some 'addictive gamblers' and sue cities and states for the financial and other pain and suffering for which the cities and states are (the suits will charge) responsible because they make gambling available and aggressively advertise to encourage gambling." -- George Will
web posted June 13, 1999
"Well, certainly from the title itself, in terms of employment discrimination I am very much for ensuring that there is no discrimination. I'm not sure that I know the details of that piece of legislation. But I would support ... I'm against any sort of discrimination, of any sort. Um.... Okay, we're talking about legislation that would, ah, be supportive of, um, privileges for, uh, gays and lesbians in terms of, uh, as I ... I'm ... I'm not for, uh, .. I'm against discrimination in any form for any reason. I'm not for special privileges, though, because of one's sexual orientation." -- Elizabeth Dole when asked if she supported the Employment Non-Discrimination Act
"Character is the single most important ingredient of leadership. Proper leadership would have prevented the wars in Kosovo and Somalia." -- Norman Schwarzkopf on U.S. President Bill Clinton
"I have a son who is coming up on two, and he repeats absolutely everything we say. Parents don't want their kids to hear bad language." -- Grammy-winner Lauryn Hill admonishing other musicians who write foul lyrics
"...Why is it [Hollywood] thinks we can affect behavior in this country by doing a 30-second public announcement on diabetes or breast cancer or smoking yet we have two-hour movies that bombard our children that are contained of nothing but just hard violence and the president goes out to the people who produce that stuff last Saturday night to raise money from them and doesn't say a word." -- RNC's Jim Nicholson
"Right now in these cities 90 degree plus readings only happen ten to 15 times a year, but researchers warn in the next century global warming could make these dog days a lot more common." -- CBS's Randall Pinkston proving that the first days of summer brings two things, hot temperatures and hot hair
"Nonetheless, over the years it's clear that people of all colors do have a great overall high level of trust in the police -- and much greater than for other professions, like the media...." -- Jan Chaiken, director of the Justice Department's Bureau of Justice Statistics, briefing reporters on a recent survey of citizen perceptions of law enforcement
"These are people are, what I call 'victocrats,' people who go through life looking for slights... people who go through life with race-tinted glasses, looking for some sort of offensive statement, offensive image, offensive gesture. When in fact, maybe it's just a character." -- talk show host Larry Elders, commenting on the controversy around alleged racist stereotype Jar Jar Binks in Star Wars: Episode 1 - The Phantom Menace
web posted May 31, 1999
"If politicians want to send a moral message to American kids, let them start by stopping their own acts of violence. Then they could give us the gun control we need: background checks and waiting periods for politicians trying to buy bombers, and safety locks on Tomahawk missiles." -- Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr. in a May 6 WorldNetDaily column
"There's something dirty about the entire operation. In most direct terms, it is not geared to the safety of the population whose protection took us into the war." -- Wm. F. Buckley
"Draft dodgers don't understand basic concepts like code, honor, loyalty." -- Doug Thompson
"At last, Bill Clinton has a legacy beyond impeachment and contempt of court. He has re-ignited the Cold War." -- Donald Devine
"...[I]t is truly galling to have those who have been undermining both morality and parents for years now demand that parents be held legally responsible for the acts of their children." -- Thomas Sowell
"The average newspaper today has a music critic, food critic, movie critic, technology critic, even 'media' critics. Maybe it's time to admit that Bill Clinton has forced yet another cultural reassessment; the time has arrived to assign a knowledgeable critic to make more sense than we've got now of the 800-pound gorilla in the room -- the opinion polls." -- Wall Street Journal
"I would certainly be for a ban on automatic weapons. I don't think you need an AK-47 to defend your family." -- the ostensibly Republican Elizabeth Dole forgetting that unregulated ownership of automatic weapons ended in 1934
"I don't mind telling you I made the list.... Number 53. Fifty-three? I mean, what does a guy have to do to make the top 50 around here?" -- U.S. President Bill Clinton at the White House correspondents' dinner, on a recently published list of the century's top 100 stories
"This has nothing to do with the right to hunt or to engage in sporting contests." -- U.S. President Bill Clinton, claiming his omnibus "gun control" measures do not infringe upon the Second Amendment "right to hunt."
"Under dictatorships, government schools are overtly used to train students to be good citizens -- that is, slaves of the state. Our own public schools serve the same kind of purpose, only in a more subtle and hypocritical way. Students learn not so much how to achieve, reason and think for themselves, but rather how to be politically correct and serve others." -- Dr. Michael Hurd
"If we have a moral responsibility to fight every evil in the world, you'd better kiss your children goodbye and prepare for wars in Rwanda, Zaire, China, Russia, Croatia, Northern Ireland, South Africa, Turkey, the Sudan, Algeria, Kashmir, Angola, Sierra Leone and many other countries." --Harry Browne
"The fact is Clinton's legacy will probably consist of these things: He presided over the most corrupt administration in American history. ... He didn't hurt the economy or rather, the economy was so robust it survived him. He had not the slightest idea of America's proper role in the world." -- Lyn Nofziger
"In the grim light of Kosovo, it is time to ask the obvious question: Should President Clinton's national security team be replaced by a ham and cheese sandwich?" -- Michael Kelly
An extract of a National Public Radio (NPR) interview between a female broadcaster and US Army Lieutenant General Reinwald about sponsoring a Boy Scout Troop on his military installation:
Interviewer: "So, LTG Reinwald, what are you going to do with these young boys on their adventure holiday?"
LTG Reinwald: "We're going to teach them climbing, canoeing, archery and shooting."
Interviewer: "Shooting! That's a bit irresponsible, isn't it?"
LTG Reinwald: "I don't see why, they'll be properly supervised on the range."
Interviewer: "Don't you admit that this is a terribly dangerous activity to be teaching children?"
LTG Reinwald: "I don't see how, we will be teaching them proper range discipline before they even touch a firearm."
Interviewer: "But you're equipping them to become violent killers."
LTG Reinwald: "Well, you're equipped to be a prostitute, but you're not one, are you?"
"Now let's see if I understand this correctly. President Clinton has ordered our forces to engage an entrenched, politically motivated enemy, backed by the Russians, on their home ground, in a foreign civil war, in difficult terrain, with limited military objectives, with bombing restrictions, boundary and operational restrictions, queasy allies, far across an ocean, with uncertain goals, without prior consultation with Congress, having the potential for escalation, while limiting the forces at his disposal, and while the majority of Americans are opposed to, or are at best uncertain about, the value of the action being worth American lives. So, what was it that Clinton was opposed to during Vietnam?" -- Lt.Gen. Tom Griffin USA (ret.)
"If the Republican Party wants to rally truly effective support for its agenda of limiting government and enabling economic enterprise -- and it certainly should and must -- then it must turn with courage and confidence to the task of reminding the citizens of this nation of the moral foundations of responsible self-government." -- Alan Keyes
"This country is crying for leadership. It is not getting it from Bomber Bill. But then, neither is it getting it from the Republicans, most of whom would rather sit on their hands than stand on principle." -- Lyn Nofziger
"The view is taking hold that the American people have scrapped their Constitution, abandoned their founding principles, and put themselves in the heavy hands of an elite band of liberal globalists." -- Linda Bowles
"At last, Bill Clinton has a legacy beyond impeachment and contempt of court. He has re-ignited the Cold War." -- Donald Devine
"Here's the class of '99, and y'all are just starting out. Wouldn't it be terrible to have nuclear war in the next week or two and mess up y'alls careers before they have gotten started? ... If we drop a bomb on the Russian Embassy, we could be at war with Russia and China tomorrow, and they both got lots of nuclear weapons." -- Media mogul Ted Turner with deep thoughts for the University of Georgia graduating class
"My view is it will have an infinitesimal impact on crime in America." -- Senator Jeff Sessions (R-Alabama), during debate on proposed regulations to tighten sales of weapons at gun shows
"As you know, without countries there would be no International Court of Justice, nor would there be any International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia because NATO countries are in the forefront of those who have established these two tribunals, who fund these tribunals and who support on a daily basis their activities. We are the upholders, not the violators, of international law." -- Jamie Shea, NATO spokesman, on being asked what would happen if NATO was investigated for war crimes.
"Does the requirement to cover the president's slippery prevarications corrupt everyone loyal to him?" -- William Safire on Energy Secretary Bill Richardson's claim that Mr. Clinton's denial of any knowledge concerning Chinese espionage was "technically correct" because of the way his denial was phrased.
"The lawyers, flacks, hacks and good Democrats who assured us that it didn't really matter that the president was a pathologically dedicated liar -- because, you will recall, he only lied about that which gentlemen should lie about -- might now wish, in light of the Cox Report on Chinese espionage, to revisit their position." -- Michael Kelly
"When will people in the media realize that government is not about the careers of politicians or the maneuvers of special interest groups -- which is all that many of them seem to want to talk about? Is it so hard for media people to inform themselves on the substance of the issues themselves and the impact of policies on a quarter of a billion Americans who live outside the Beltway?" -- Thomas Sowell
"It's sitting right on my bed stand." -- White House spokesman Joe Lockhart, responding to a reporter's question about a controversial research report in the journal of the American Psychological Association, which suggests that sex between adults and children may not always be harmful. When asked when he would comment on the report, Mr. Lockhart said, "I would expect it to be early winter 2001."
