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One lesson of Sept. 11 is that a government that tries to do everything is likely to do most of it badly.

Mark Steyn

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Mark Steyn
Age: 64
Born: 1959
Born: December 8
Film Critic
Journalist
Music Critic
Pundit
Writer
City of Toronto
Trying
Sept
Tries
Badly
Lesson
Likely
Lessons
Government
Everything

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Long before they slump into poverty, great powers succumb to a poverty of ambition.
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The state of our civilization manifests itself both in the non-problems that terrify us beyond all reason - rising sea levels - and in the real problems we pay no heed to [population decline]...In reality, much of the planet will be uninhabited long before it's uninhabitable
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Government health care changes the relationship between the citizen and the state, and, in fact, I think it's an assault on citizenship.
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The Western front is the important one in this war - the intersection between Islam and a liberal democratic tradition so mired in self-loathing it would rather destroy our civilization just to demonstrate its multicultural bona fides.
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The law functions as formal embodiment of a moral code, not as free-standing substitute for it.
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Last month, 80,000 Americans signed on to new jobs, but 85,000 Americas signed on for Social Security disability checks. Most of these people are not 'disabled' as that term is generally understood. Rather, it's the U.S. economy that's disabled, and thus Obama incentivizes dependency.
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LBJ held up Detroit as a model of what the Great Society could accomplish. He was right.
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Byrd, the former Klu [sic] Klux Klan Kleagle, is taking a stand over states' rights, or his rights over State, or some such. Whatever the reason, the sight of an old Klansman blocking a little colored girl from Birmingham from getting into her office contributed to the general retro vibe that hangs around the Democratic Party these days.
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We're on the brink of a world in which the wealthiest nations, from Canada to Norway to Japan, can barely project meaningful force to their own borders while the nickel 'n' dime basket-cases go nuclear.
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The essence of a government health care system - for people who have never lived under it and don't know - is waiting, waiting, waiting. You wait for everything. You wait for years for operations that are routine in America.
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In Britain, everything is policed except crime.
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A big chunk of Western civilization, consciously or otherwise, has given the impression that it's dying to surrender to somebody, anybody. Reasonably enough, Islam figures: Hey, why not us?
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When a man doesn't know the meaning of the word 'fear', that might just be a deficiency in his education.
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The first victims of poseur environmentalism will always be developing countries. In order for you to put biofuel in your Prius and feel good about yourself for no reason, real actual people in faraway places have to starve to death.
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How do you get to Carnegie Hall? Practice. How do you get away from it? Improvise.
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Sometimes societies become too stupid to survive. A nation that takes Barack Obama's current rhetorical flourishes seriously is certainly well advanced along that dismal path.
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It's not that I place less value on Palestinian lives, but that Chairman Arafat and his chums in Hamas do.
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Our leadership class's real accomplishment is résumé padding.
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The most basic of conservative principles is that if you reward bad behavior you get more of it.
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Every power grab is the new base camp for the next power grab.
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