Ben

“All political projects that neglect human nature and disregard the lessons drawn from centuries of political experience have to compensate for their lack of realism by a disproportionately high degree of intervention in both the social fabric and in human minds.”
― Ryszard Legutko, The Cunning of Freedom: Saving the Self in an Age of False Idols

“The truth is that no nation can be constantly prepared to undertake a full-scale war at any moment and still hope to maintain any of the other purposes in which people are interested and for which nations are founded.”
― Robert A. Taft, A Foreign Policy for Americans

“No foreign policy can be justified except a policy devoted without reservation or diversion to the protection of liberty of the American people, with war only as the last resort and only to preserve that liberty.”
― Robert A. Taft, A Foreign Policy for Americans

“To the extent we look to some distant government to tend to our character and needs, we lose the habits of face-to-face involvement, cooperation, and conflict in which we learn to respect ourselves and other people. We lose the essential, concrete communities in which we become something more than individuals: real persons participating in associations where we belong and have purpose.”
― Ted V. McAllister, Coming Home: Reclaiming America's Conservative Soul