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The story of the Western world since 1945 is that, invited to choose between freedom and government 'security,' large numbers of people vote to dump freedom every time - the freedom to make your own decisions about health care, education, property rights, and a ton of other stuff.

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
Stories
Security
Decisions
Care
Decision
Western
Government
Education
Property
Every
Since
Large
Make
Rights
Vote
Time
Story
Choose
World
Freedom
Health
Dump
People
Stuff
Numbers
Invited

More quotes by Mark Steyn

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Unchecked, government social programs are a security threat because they weaken the ultimate line of defense: the free-born citizen whose responsibilities are not subcontracted to the government.
Mark Steyn
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We are the source of our problems not mysterious sinister foreigners overseas.
Mark Steyn
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Once a fellow's enjoying the fruits of government health care and all the rest, he couldn't give a hoot about the general societal interest he's got his, and if it's going to bankrupt the state a generation hence, well, as long as they can keep the checks coming till he's dead, it's fine by him.
Mark Steyn
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But, once you get a taste for shutting people up, it's hard to stop. Why bother winning the debate when it's easier to close it down?
Mark Steyn
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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.
Mark Steyn
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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?
Mark Steyn
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In Europe, nothing is certain except death and welfare, and why let the former get in the way of the latter?
Mark Steyn
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Can't spell, can't spot fake Shakespeare, can't tell one wacky foreigner from another: it's increasingly obvious that Barbra is some deep sleeper planted by the Republicans to discredit the very concept of activist celebrities. Poor old Democrats, in thrall to her fundraising: people who need Barbra are the unluckiest people in the world.
Mark Steyn
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Appeasement is a vote to live in the present tense, to hold the comforts of the moment.
Mark Steyn
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CNN? Oh, that's that network with Larry King, who, like the Son of Sam, is a native of Brooklyn. Used to be owned by Ted Turner, who, like the Cincinnati Strangler, is a native of Cincinnati. Now part of Time Warner, founded by the Warner Brothers, the oldest of whom, Harry Warner, like many Auschwitz guards, was a native of Poland.
Mark Steyn
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Big Government is the small option: it's the guarantee of smaller freedom, smaller homes, smaller cars, smaller opportunities, smaller lives.
Mark Steyn
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The industrial powerhouse of 1950 [Detroit] is now a crime-ridden wasteland with a functioning literacy rate equivalent to West African basket-cases.
Mark Steyn
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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.
Mark Steyn
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But in reality the point of free speech is for the stuff that’s over the line, and strikingly unbalanced. If free speech is only for polite persons of mild temperament within government-policed parameters, it isn’t free at all. So screw that.
Mark Steyn
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The trouble with the social-democratic state is that, when government does too much, nobody else does much of anything.
Mark Steyn
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General Motors, like the other two geezers of the Old Three, is a vast retirement home with a small money-losing auto subsidiary.
Mark Steyn
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We immigrants can sometimes sound a little hysterical about this because we come from places that have tried this and we know where it leads. Anybody who's lived in countries with socialized health care knows that it becomes the dominant political issue.
Mark Steyn
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Our leadership class's real accomplishment is résumé padding.
Mark Steyn
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If you're 29, there has been no global warming for your entire adult life. If you're graduating high school, there has been no global warming since you entered first grade. There has been no global warming this century. None
Mark Steyn
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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.
Mark Steyn