“It is vitally important that we recognize that there is a law higher than that of the state or the will of the majority. There is a higher law than that which springs from the fallible minds of men. This law, insofar as it has been revealed to us and can be ascertained through reason, is the basis of our natural rights. While many people look at the long and horrific history of religious wars and the lethal violence of religious fanaticism, so woefully evident in our own age, and see religion as a threat to liberty, the Founders of our republic understood that God was the ultimate source of our liberty.

“…By the standards of those who file lawsuits to remove Christmas displays from government buildings–or to remove the phrase ‘under God’ from the Pledge of Allegiance–the very people who framed and ratified the First Amendment they appeal to were guilty of creating some kind of theocracy. Of course, the constitutional republic of our Founders was nothing of the sort. A system based on God-given rights does not inherently deny the rights of an unbeliever anymore than we deny the rights of a socialist to own private property or profit from the free-market economy.

“The acknowledgement that human beings and the institutions they create are imperfect acknowledges the imperfections of professing Christians and members of other religious traditions. The idea that government powers should be limited, defined and divided acts as a check against all potential tyrants and offers protection to all potential victims. Forgetting the link between faith and freedom leaves all our liberty less secure.” —W. James Antle III

“We were hoping for a big and bold tax cut from President Bush and, by George, we got one. Yesterday Mr. Bush drew a bead on the twin shibboleths of bad tax policy–the fear of budget deficits and of benefiting middle- and upper-income workers–and pulled the trigger.”

[…]

“The President deserves credit for ignoring all of the Beltway trimmers and risking the political capital he won in November in pursuit of a large policy ambition. His proposal is one worth fighting for.”

[…]

“Mr. Bush’s proposal would reduce tax revenue over the next decade, though far less if the growth effects are figured in. And the possibility has already brought out the flock of self-styled ‘deficit hawks.’ Pay no attention. Currently the budget deficit is 1.5% of GDP and projections for the next year or so are around 2%. These figures amount to a whole lot of nothing both in historical terms and when compared with the potential growth of the economy.”

[…]

“The notion put forward by the deficit hawks that this will send interest rates to the sky and the economy six feet under is deeply silly. Deficits are the result of weak or negative economic growth, not the other way around. The best way to close a deficit is through strong economic growth.”

[…]

“Mr. Bush is offering, on balance, an excellent program to prevent the economy from weakening amid the short-term uncertainties of war and expensive oil. And by wringing out some of the tax barriers to economic efficiency, he is also creating the conditions for better long-term growth. A bull’s-eye, for sure.”

—The Wall Street Journal

"There is no safety for honest men except by believing all possible evil of evil men." —Edmund Burke

“But a Constitution of Government once changed from Freedom, can never be restored. Liberty, once lost, is lost forever.” —John Adams

“A group of people may have rights, but it is their responsibility, and theirs alone, to defend or safeguard such rights.” —Murray N. Rothbard

“The expectations in the reformed-terrorist category are not high–Jomo Kenyatta, Robert Mugabe–but [Yasser] Arafat has failed to make even this minimal grade. His Palestinian Authority is a swamp of corruption and organized crime presided over by trigger-happy goon squads from the Chairman’s dozen competing state security agencies. If you gave this guy Switzerland to run, he’d turn it into a sewer.

“…Today, the only tattered remnant of the pan-Arab cause is Palestinian nationalism, and very helpful it is, too. Why, only the other day a wealthy Saudi assisted by Egyptian lieutenants and Iraqi intelligence blew a hole in the middle of New York and the world rushed forward to insist that this proved the need for a Palestinian state.” —Mark Steyn

“A liberal is a man who will give away everything he doesn’t own.” —Frank Dane

“Every day you meet a delegation going to some convention to try and change the way of somebody else’s life.” —Will Rogers

For all of you who think the federal government doesn’t focus enough on domestic issues:

"[T]he States can best govern our home concerns and the general government our foreign ones. I wish, therefore...never to see all offices transferred to Washington, where, further withdrawn from the eyes of the people, they may more secretly be bought and sold at market." --Thomas Jefferson

“Are liberals incapable of the kind of practical moral reasoning that foreign policy requires? It seems that they are. Most liberals are content with slogans that cannot survive the slightest scrutiny. ‘Violence never solves problems.’ This is manifestly not true.

“Violence helped to end the regimes of Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini. The atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, however controversial their use, did solve the big problem of an unyielding Japan. Violence proved equally effective against the Taliban. ‘But you can’t impose democracy at the point of a bayonet.’ This is another liberal shibboleth.

“In reality, at the end of World War II, America imposed democracy at the point of a bayonet on Japan and Germany, and it has proved a resounding success in both countries. The problem with liberals is that they never give bayonets a chance.” —Dinesh D’Souza

“The Congress of the United States has now given President George W. Bush the authority to enter into preemptive war against Saddam Hussein, which Mr. Bush says is justified. Others have argued strenuously that preemptive war is unjustified and even un-American.

“… It might surprise some that justification for preemptive war is found in the Declaration of Independence. Thomas Jefferson, the principal author of the Declaration, got his ideas on preemptive war from John Locke’s ‘Second Treatise on Civil Government’ and used them in the Declaration to justify the American Revolution. … In his work, Locke argued against despotic power or ‘Absolute, Arbitrary Power’ because being absolute and arbitrary it can be used to ‘take away’ the lives of those subject to it. This makes despotic power opposed to self-preservation or ‘the preservation of Mankind,’ which Locke maintained was ‘the fundamental Law of Nature.’ Because this Law was the ‘will of God,’ Locke argued that each human being was duty ‘bound to preserve himself, and not to quit his Station willfully.’

“… Therefore everyone has the obligation to avoid subjecting themselves to despotic or ‘Absolute, Arbitrary Power’ since it renders their own limited individual power to preserve themselves ineffective. … Some argue that even if there is a preemptive war against Saddam, it should not be used to install an American-type democracy. Locke and Jefferson would have disagreed, because American democracy does not allow despotic power or the ‘Absolute, Arbitrary Power’ that Saddam enjoys, which makes him a threat to world security. He can do anything he wants.

“Not so with George W. Bush. His executive power is severely limited by the Constitution, under which power is shared with the two other co-equal branches of government — Congress and the Supreme Court. … Therefore, it is time to place Saddam, or his successor, under the same political power limitations in Iraq as Mr. Bush is under in the United States. This will provide greater security for mankind in this era of weapons of mass destruction — provided it happens before Saddam gets the bomb.” —Allen Jayne

"The House of Representatives packed up and went home for elections, and we can't say we're sorry to see the Members go. Senators are lingering for a while longer, but it'd be better if they left too and didn't return until they're at least prepared to fulfill constitutional duties, like confirming judges. The best that can be said about the 107th Congress is that it managed to do less damage than usual." —The Wall Street Journal

“Of course, it’s a tragedy that the peace prize was awarded to Carter and not Reagan. I mean, who did more for world peace? Who did a great deal to end the Cold War? Who did a great deal to disarm and dismantle the Soviet Union, that mortal threat to world peace? Who removed the shadow of global annihilation from us, if only temporarily? Who envisioned a shield, not a sword?

“National Review once opined, many years ago, that, every year, the Nobel peace prize should go to the U.S. secretary of defense: The American military is the number-one guarantor of peace in the world. But maybe something like a Nobel freedom prize would be a more appropriate award for Reagan than a peace prize.” —Jay Nordlinger

There has been a lot of gnashing of teeth over Bush admininstration foreign policy, that the United States is "forcing" its will on the rest of the world, and rather we should just go along with what other countries have to say and just forget about our sovereignty and national security (read: Daschle). After all, what has America accomplished with force that successful negotiation could not top?

"Name, in the past hundred years, a single important triumph for peace and for liberal democracy that was purchased by the jaw-jawing the Nobellians so admire. No rush, take your time. Now, look at what American war-war (and the threat of American war-war) won: the defeat of the fascist attempt to rule the world; the defeat of the Communist attempt to rule the world; the consequent rebuilding of a Europe protected by American arms into a democratic and peaceful continent for the first time in history; the rebuilding of an American-protected Japan into a democratic and peaceful nation for the first time in history; the emergence of a world in which, for the first time in history, the peaceful values of liberal democracy are the ascendant norm. No, no, it remains unthinkable. To imagine American force was a force for good, one would have to imagine America was a force for good. And this, the Bourbons of Oslo will never, never do." --Michael Kelly