Conservatism In The Us Quotes

“Conservatism is progressivism driving the speed limit.”
― Michael Malice

“The media are desperately afraid of being accused of bias. And that's partly because there's a whole machine out there, an organized attempt to accuse them of bias whenever they say anything that the Right doesn't like. So rather than really try to report things objectively, they settle for being even-handed, which is not the same thing. One of my lines in a column—in which a number of people thought I was insulting them personally—was that if Bush said the Earth was flat, the mainstream media would have stories with the headline: 'Shape of Earth—Views Differ.' Then they'd quote some Democrats saying that it was round.”
― Paul Krugman

“Gore Vidal, for instance, once languidly told me that one should never miss a chance either to have sex or to appear on television. My efforts to live up to this maxim have mainly resulted in my passing many unglamorous hours on off-peak cable TV. It was actually Vidal's great foe William F. Buckley who launched my part-time television career, by inviting me on to Firing Line when I was still quite young, and giving me one of the American Right's less towering intellects as my foil. The response to the show made my day, and then my week. Yet almost every time I go to a TV studio, I feel faintly guilty. This is pre-eminently the 'soft' world of dream and illusion and 'perception': it has only a surrogate relationship to the 'hard' world of printed words and written-down concepts to which I've tried to dedicate my life, and that surrogate relationship, while it, too, may be 'verbal,' consists of being glib rather than fluent, fast rather than quick, sharp rather than pointed. It means reveling in the fact that I have a meretricious, want-it-both-ways side. My only excuse is to say that at least I do not pretend that this is not so.”
― Christopher Hitchens, Hitch 22: A Memoir

“Of all the dangerous ideas that health officials could have embraced while trying to understand why we get fat, they would have been hard-pressed to find one ultimately more damaging than calories-in/calories-out. That it reinforces what appears to be so obvious - obesity as the penalty for gluttony and sloth - is what makes it so alluring. But it's misleading and misconceived on so many levels that it's hard to imagine how it survived unscathed and virtually unchallenged for the last fifty years.

It has done incalculable harm. Not only is this thinking at least partly responsible for the ever-growing numbers of obese and overweight in the world - while directing attention away from the real reasons we get fat - but it has served to reinforce the perception that those who get fat have no one to blame but themselves. That eating less invariably fails as a cure for obesity is rarely perceived as the single most important reason to make us question our assumptions, as Hilde Bruch suggested half a century ago. Rather, it is taken as still more evidence that the overweight and obese are incapable of following a diet and eating in moderation. And it put the blame for their physical condition squarely on their behavior, which couldn't be further from the truth.”
― Gary Taubes, Why We Get Fat: And What to Do About It

“But if we get our souls saved, we go to Heaven, and Heaven is for eternity. We’ll never have to worry about the environment from then on. That’s the most important thing. I’m thinking long-term.”
― Arlie Russell Hochschild, Strangers in Their Own Land: Anger and Mourning on the American Right

“I think that stupidity is like a wild fire burning through the social fabric of an intrinsically reasonable existence.”
― Travis Culliton, Why I love My Prozac

“American conservatism has always been a collection of varied groups and schools of thought united, in broad terms, by a general view of the world. That view usually involves a low opinion of man’s character and rationality, combined with a high opinion of his dignity and rights; a resulting skepticism about power that tends to point toward greater confidence in mediating institutions and decentralized decision-making than in consolidated expertise and social engineering; and an overarching belief that the world is a dangerous place and maintaining order takes real work. These general views explain the attachment con­servatives have to the American Constitution—which is rooted in some similar premises—and to the Western tradition beyond.”
― Yuval Levin

“Companies made money and were beholden to stockholders; it was understandable if they tried to “cover their ass,” people told me. But the government was paid to protect people, so one could expect much more of them.”
― Arlie Russell Hochschild

“Enlightenment philosophers claimed the future is in front of us and that every man is free to choose any point on the horizon and run toward it as fast as he can. Where he finally arrives depends entirely on his own preference. For this reason, the rate of cultural change has dramatically accelerated since the French Revolution. Beliefs about political right were no longer staked in nature, which does not change, but in our own wills, which are endlessly fickle. Before the Enlightenment, man understood that nature imposed limits on his will— the desire to grow swan wings was senseless, say— and that fighting these limitations would always prove a losing battle. After the Enlightenment, though, man came to believe his will had the power to coerce his nature into whatever he wanted.”
― Joshua Gibbs, Love What Lasts: How to Save Your Soul From Mediocrity