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Jokes are one of the things that bind the culture. If you can't have jokes about everybody in society and if one group is hedged off and protected then that group can never truly be integrated.

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
Jokes
Group
Truly
Everybody
Hedged
Society
Bind
Culture
Integrated
Things
Never
Protected

More quotes by 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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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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But a society that has nothing to die for has nothing to live for . . .
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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I like Mitch Daniels on the fiscal conservative issues. You disagree with him on this idea that social issues, you takeoff the table. I do that for two reasons. I think the fiscal issues in a sense are a symptom of a lot of the deeper cultural issues in America. I don't think they are as disconnected as he thinks.
Mark Steyn
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Once you accept you're a child in the government nursery, why shouldn't Nanny tell you what to do?
Mark Steyn
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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.
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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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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The long-term cost of a welfare society is the infantilization of the population.
Mark Steyn
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Absolute welfare corrupts absolutely.
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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The president has borrowed more money to spend to less effect than anybody on the planet.
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
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Welfare culture is bad not just because, as in Europe, it's bankrupting the state, but because it enfeebles the citizenry, it erodes self-reliance and resourcefulness.
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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The progressive Left can be in favor of Big Government or population control but not both. The mutual incompatibility is about to plunge Europe into societal collapse. There is no precedent in human history for economic growth on declining human capital - and that's before anyone invented unsustainable welfare systems.
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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Like most people, I have no wish to live in a community organized by community organizers.
Mark Steyn
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No family of an American hostage has ever been prosecuted for paying a ransom for the return of their loved ones. The last thing we should ever do is to add to a family's pain.
Mark Steyn