Max Boot > Quotes

“Putin is smart enough not to believe his own propaganda. Trump isn’t.”
― Max Boot, The Corrosion of Conservatism: Why I Left the Right

“Here was an American president adopting the language used by Adolf Hitler (the Nazis referred to the Lügenpresse, or “lying press”) and Josef Stalin, who called the press “vrag naroda” (enemy of the people).”
― Max Boot, The Corrosion of Conservatism: Why I Left the Right

“I know there are some “decent” Republicans who are inwardly cringing at what their party has become. But the key word is “inwardly”: few Republican officeholders or media personalities are willing to oppose Trumpism publicly because to do so would likely be ruinous to them personally. So these invertebrates become accomplices to misdoing on a scale that would have revolted the Founding Fathers. For the time being, I echo the thirteenth-century French abbot who, when asked by Crusaders how to tell devout Catholics from apostates, reportedly advised them to kill them all and let God sort them out.”
― Max Boot, The Corrosion of Conservatism: Why I Left the Right

“I swilled a Scotch and took some sleeping pills—something I don’t normally do—and tried to sleep. And, yes, I know you’re not supposed to combine sedatives with alcohol, but you’re also not supposed to elect a bigoted bully as president of the United States.”
― Max Boot, The Corrosion of Conservatism: Why I Left the Right

“The key American shortcoming, in the early twenty-first century as in the 1960s, was the inability to constructively guide the leaders of allied states in the direction desired by Washington”
― Max Boot, The Road Not Taken: Edward Lansdale and the American Tragedy in Vietnam

“I have always had an intolerance of orthodoxy, even when I agreed with it, and I was interested in producing a lively page full of unexpected insights rather than simply rote repetitions of the party line.”
― Max Boot, The Corrosion of Conservatism: Why I Left the Right

“he did not start the trend—and it won’t end when he is gone. Indeed, if the modern history of conservatism is any guide, Trump’s successors might actually be worse than he is. If Trump has a saving grace, it is that he is so ignorant and impetuous. He is incapable of effectively implementing his worst impulses in the face of entrenched resistance from government professionals, the judiciary, and the press corps. A future Trump might be smarter and more disciplined, and thus more dangerous. That’s a frightening thought, given how much damage even the scattershot Trump has done.”
― Max Boot, The Corrosion of Conservatism: Why I Left the Right

“2018 the debt was more than $21 trillion—and climbing, largely because of the spending increases and tax cuts passed by Republicans like Ryan. In 2017 Republicans in Congress approved, on a party-line vote, a tax bill that is projected to add $1.9 trillion to the debt. This was a far cry from the 1986 tax reform act, passed under Ronald Reagan, which was revenue neutral.”
― Max Boot, The Corrosion of Conservatism: Why I Left the Right

“Bartley wasn’t interested in seeing a lot of contrary viewpoints beyond that. His reasoning was that other newspapers such as the New York Times provided plenty of space for the liberal orthodoxy; he wanted the Journal’s editorial pages to be a forum for the right. I barely managed to avoid losing my job over the Krugman debacle; Bartley apparently thought about removing me but decided to give the tyro another chance. This was an early indication to me that groupthink could be just as tenacious on the right as on the left.”
― Max Boot, The Corrosion of Conservatism: Why I Left the Right

“(one study found that 88 percent of the loss of US manufacturing jobs between 2006 and 2013 was due to automation and related factors),69 it is easy to blame trade with other countries for hollowing out industrial towns and throwing workers onto the unemployment line.”
― Max Boot, The Corrosion of Conservatism: Why I Left the Right

“while Trump was conducting trade negotiations with China, a Chinese state-owned bank provided $500 million in financing for a project in Indonesia that includes “Trump-branded residences, hotels and golf course.”53 China also provided seven new trademarks for products sold by Ivanka Trump.54 Within days, Trump shocked national security professionals by announcing that he would lift sanctions on the Chinese telecom giant ZTE.”
― Max Boot, The Corrosion of Conservatism: Why I Left the Right

“The Goldwater precedent would prove especially important when it came to civil rights. In 1964, the GOP ceased to be the party of Lincoln and became the party of southern whites. All of the Republican presidential nominees in the future would harvest racist votes, whether consciously or not, because from then on the GOP would be the party of white privilege, and the Democrats, of minority rights. “States’ rights”—a euphemism for segregation—became the new Republican rallying cry.”
― Max Boot, The Corrosion of Conservatism: Why I Left the Right

“Ralph Peters, a conservative uber-hawk and former army intelligence officer who in early 2018 resigned in disgust as a Fox commentator. In a scorching letter of resignation leaked to BuzzFeed, he wrote, “Fox has degenerated from providing a legitimate and much-needed outlet for conservative voices to a mere propaganda machine for a destructive and ethically ruinous administration.”
― Max Boot, The Corrosion of Conservatism: Why I Left the Right

“following the playbook of strongmen such as Viktor Orban, Vladimir Putin, and Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who silenced the press not by imposing censorship but by imposing financial pressure on independent news organizations to either force them out of business or into the hands of friendly owners.47”
― Max Boot, The Corrosion of Conservatism: Why I Left the Right

“Margaret Chase Smith of Maine, the only female member of the Senate. She rose on the Senate floor in 1950 to denounce Republicans for their “selfish political exploitation of fear, bigotry, ignorance and intolerance.” She did not name McCarthy, but everyone knew who she had in mind when she spoke about those “who shout loudest about Americanism” while they “by their own words and acts, ignore some of the basic principles of Americanism—the right to criticize; the right to hold unpopular beliefs; the right to protest; the right of independent thought.”
― Max Boot, The Corrosion of Conservatism: Why I Left the Right

“This is how all social, ideological, or religious movements police their members-by making clear that agreement will be rewarded with greater social standing and support, and dis-agreement punished with ostracism.”
― Max Boot, The Corrosion of Conservatism: Why I Left the Right

“This is the kind of education that Donald Trump never bothered to get before becoming president. Although he lived and worked for decades only a few blocks from the Council’s headquarters in an elegant Upper East Side townhouse, he never showed any interest in its work or in US foreign policy more broadly. Even as president he has never once visited a war zone. He loves military symbols—hence his desire for a military parade in Washington—but shows no understanding of how the armed forces actually operate.”
― Max Boot, The Corrosion of Conservatism: Why I Left the Right

“Republicans can continue to win elections nationally for a few more years by relying on a base of older, less educated white voters, but that strategy will prove less and less successful as the number of people of color continues to grow. By 2044, whites are expected to be a minority in America—very bad news for a party that has alienated everyone who isn’t white.”
― Max Boot, The Corrosion of Conservatism: Why I Left the Right

“It’s hard to argue with Senator Rand Paul, who, during a lonely protest on the Senate floor, said, “If you were against President Obama’s deficits, and now you’re for the Republican deficits, isn’t that the very definition of hypocrisy?”63 But, of course, he’s a hypocrite too, having voted for the massive tax cut.”
― Max Boot, The Corrosion of Conservatism: Why I Left the Right

“May 11, Trump admitted to Lester Holt of NBC News that he was determined to fire Comey “regardless” of the recommendation from Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein in order to stop the investigation of the “Russia thing.” Trump isn’t the first president to attempt to obstruct justice. But he is the first to admit what he was doing on national TV, and his admissions led to the appointment of former FBI director Robert S. Mueller as a special counsel.”
― Max Boot, The Corrosion of Conservatism: Why I Left the Right

“The modern conservative movement was inspired by Barry Goldwater’s canonical text from 1960, The Conscience of a Conservative.”
― Max Boot, The Corrosion of Conservatism: Why I Left the Right

“The blitzkrieg is one of the best-known examples of a “military technical revolution”—and one of the most misunderstood by the general public. It is commonly assumed, based on the ease with which German armies overran Poland, Norway, Denmark, the Low Countries, and France, that they possessed a big technological and numerical edge over their adversaries. Nothing could be further from the truth; Hitler actually fielded fewer tanks and aircraft than the British and French, and the quality of the Allied weapons was in many cases higher than the Germans’. The German edge lay in their superior ability to coordinate their forces, and in their high quality of leadership, training, and morale. They figured out how to make the best use of the technology of the day; the Allies did not.”
― Max Boot, War Made New: Technology, Warfare, and the Course of History, 1500 to Today

“This is how all social, ideological, or religious movements police their members—by making clear that agreement will be rewarded with greater social standing and support, and disagreement punished with ostracism. This pressure is so amorphous and pervasive that, like oxygen, you are only aware of it when it is gone.”
― Max Boot, The Corrosion of Conservatism: Why I Left the Right

“It was not always the case, of course, that navies paid for themselves. In wartime, costs often exceeded revenues, and those deficits grew over time as fleets and armies got bigger. But this was hardly an insurmountable obstacle for the most dynamic economies in the world. The United Provinces and England were able to borrow all they needed to underwrite their defense budgets. The pressures of war gave a powerful impetus to the growth of stocks, bonds, loans, and paper currencies during the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries and helped to turn Amsterdam and then London into international financial centers. To take one example, the Bank of England was established in 1694 to raise funds to allow England to wage war against France.”
― Max Boot, War Made New: Technology, Warfare, and the Course of History, 1500 to Today

“Max Boot theorem: Don't invade without planning for a long occupation.”
― Max Boot

“Some lasting terms of military organization owe their origin to Spain: colonel comes from cabo de colunela, or head of a column; infantry most likely comes from infante, the name for a Spanish prince, who often led these formations of foot soldiers.”
― Max Boot, War Made New: Technology, Warfare, and the Course of History, 1500 to Today

“even the conservative “best and brightest”—Cheney, Powell, Rumsfeld, Rice, and all the rest—can make mistakes that are every bit as dumb as those that their more liberal counterparts made in Vietnam.”
― Max Boot, The Corrosion of Conservatism: Why I Left the Right

“Trump’s economic adviser Peter Navarro updates this refrain when he says: “My function, really, as an economist is to try to provide the underlying analytics that confirm his intuition. And his intuition is always right in these matters.”
― Max Boot, The Corrosion of Conservatism: Why I Left the Right

“IT IS NOT QUITE FAIR to say that all Republicans have become Trump toadies. Only most of them.”
― Max Boot, The Corrosion of Conservatism: Why I Left the Right

“Trump even relies on Fox talking heads as trusted advisers. Sean Hannity, the Washington Post reports, “is so close to Trump that some White House aides have dubbed him the unofficial chief of staff.”
― Max Boot, The Corrosion of Conservatism: Why I Left the Right