Quote-a-palooza
“It is an equally awful truth that four and four makes eight, whether you reckon the thing out in eight onions or eight angels, eight bricks or eight bishops, eight minor poets or eight pigs.” —G.K. Chesterton
“Debates rage over the redefining of what marriage is despite centuries of the norm that it constitutes the bonding of a man and a woman. Communities try to eliminate the word Christmas or Easter from the celebration of holidays that reach back hundreds of years. The killing of the unborn, decades after a Supreme Court ruling, still enrages those for whom the sanctity of life lies at the heart of their beliefs. I submit that the day this nation abandons these debates and eliminates the prohibitions that represent our common definition of moral behavior is the day this nation will truly begin to lose its hold on our own and the world’s respect. So, Americans must continue to grapple with issues of moral decline and must decry the soft decay of our mutually held values. It is a good thing we debate these things. A completely secular society is one in which ‘everything goes’ and, when that occurs, the first thing to go will be the United States of America.” —Alan Caruba
“It has been said that a child who is made to earn a toy most often takes better care of it than a child who was simply given the toy. Well, our nation has become a nation of children who have been given, not a toy, but the gifts of freedom and a Constitutional Republic with which to safeguard that freedom and we are abusing these gifts with our relentless apathy and ignorance. Because it is impossible to understand the value of something without knowing its worth, our society has become estranged from the value of freedom. We toss around the saying ‘freedom isn’t free’ but we hardly understand the price of attaining and maintaining that freedom. The majority of us have never actually fought for our liberties and we most assuredly have never lived under the tyranny of oppression, although the delusional Progressive-Left would argue otherwise. We have become soft, self-centered and egotistical and our country is a worse place for it.” —Frank Salvato
“A number of years ago a President of this country declared that we have a rendezvous with destiny. In a world where terrorism spreads and the innocent die we must fulfill our destiny. If not us, who? If not now, when?” —Ronald Reagan
“Most debates about proposed amendments concern whether the amendments are necessary or would be beneficial. Debate about the [Equal Rights Amendment] has always concerned what it might mean. For example, would it forbid treating the sexes differently in pension and insurance plans because of actuarial data about sex-related differences regarding health problems and life expectancy? Presumably, judges would, over time, tell the nation what it had ratified. All amendments generate litigation, but the ERA’s purpose is to generate litigation. It is a device to get courts to impose social policies that supporters of the policies cannot convince legislatures to enact. ERA... supporters, being politically lazy, prefer the shortcut of litigation to the patient politics necessary to pass legislation. If [Ted] Kennedy and like-minded legislators think the condition of American women needs improvements, they should try to legislate them. Instead, they prefer to hope that liberal judges will regard the ERA’s language as a license to legislate. But, then, support for the amendment testifies to the supporters’ lack of confidence in their ability to persuade people to support such policies.” —George Will
“The jump in ethanol use certainly didn’t come about because of a groundswell of popular demand; it came about, like so many bad ideas, because of a government mandate. The Energy Policy Act of 2005 required that 4 billion gallons of renewable fuel (mostly ethanol) be added to the gasoline supply last year. It goes up to 4.7 billion this year and to 7.5 billion in 2012. But ethanol lowers fuel economy—according to the Department of Energy, a gallon of ethanol contains only two-thirds the energy content of a gallon of gasoline. And you’re actually paying more for less performance. It’s difficult... to transport ethanol from its Midwestern home base to far-off markets, and that adds to the price you pay at the pump. Ethanol can’t be sent in an energy-efficient way through pipelines like gasoline can, because it would be contaminated by moisture along the way. Ethanol must be shipped instead by trucks, barges and railroads. And that brings us to ethanol’s environmental impact. After all, shipping by truck, barge or rail uses... well, fossil fuels. So the more ethanol we move, the more fossil fuel we use—which, Al Gore and Company tell us repeatedly, spews the greenhouse gases that contribute to global warming. In addition, all that extra corn farming means more fertilizer and pesticide use, along with increased irrigation. More diesel fuel will be needed to run the tractors and the harvesters. In the end... ethanol may wind up putting about as much carbon dioxide into the air as it takes out. So, from an environmental perspective, we’ll be paying more to more or less maintain the status quo.” —Rebecca Hagelin