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The most basic of conservative principles is that if you reward bad behavior you get more of it.

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
Principles
Reward
Rewards
Basic
Conservative
Behavior

More quotes by Mark Steyn

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How do you 'invest in the future'? By borrowing $188 million every hour. That's what the Government of the United States is doing. It's spending one-fifth of a billion dollars it doesn't have every hour of every day of every week - all for your future!
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If the IMF is correct (a big if), China will be the planet's No.1 economy by 2016. That means whoever's elected in November next year will be the last president of the United States to preside over the world's dominant economic power.
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Long before they slump into poverty, great powers succumb to a poverty of ambition.
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[To] the progressive mind, the very concept of the enemy is obsolescent: there are no enemies, just friends whose grievances we haven't yet accommodated.
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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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Jesse Jackson's living depends on the maintenance of an African-American victim culture
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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[We] assume that social progress is like technological progress: one cannot uninvent the internal combustion engine, so how could one uninvent liberty?
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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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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The law functions as formal embodiment of a moral code, not as free-standing substitute for it.
Mark Steyn
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I believe Western culture - rule of law, universal suffrage, etc. - is preferable to Arab culture: that's why there are millions of Muslims in Scandinavia, and four Scandinavians in Syria. Follow the traffic. I support immigration, but with assimilation.
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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For Americans, the quickest way to understand modern Britain is to look at what LBJ's Great Society did to the black family and imagine it applied to the general population.
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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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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We are the source of our problems not mysterious sinister foreigners overseas.
Mark Steyn
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Our leadership class's real accomplishment is résumé padding.
Mark Steyn
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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