Cicero versus Catilina

You can see them about, lovely young men with elegantly combed hair, either beardless or bearded to excess, wearing tunics that reach down to the wrists and ankles, and togas which look more like veils. Their entire interest in life and all the alertness they can muster are squandered on parties that last all night long. In these gangs are to be found every gambler, adulterer, debauchee and sensualist who exists. These soft and pretty boys are experts at making love and having love made to them, and they know how to dance and sing; but they have also learnt to wave daggers about and sprinkle poisons.

Michael Grant, translator

Doctor Burke

I reprobate no form of government merely upon abstract principles. There may be situations in which the purely democratic form will become necessary. There may be some (very few and very particularly circumstanced) where it would clearly be desirable. This I do not take to be the case of France, or of any other great country. Until now, we have seen no examples of considerable democracies. The antients were better acquainted with them. Not being wholly unread in the authors, who had seen the most of those constitutions, and who best understood them, I cannot help concurring with their opinion, that an absolute democracy, no more than absolute monarchy, is to be reckoned among the legitimate forms of government.
Edmund Burke
Reflections on the Revolution in France
p. 228 (Penguin Edition)

Suicide is Painless

Is our intelligence service idiotic or not? The liberals have hated the intelligence service since the 1980s when Daniel Patrick Moynihan wanted to get rid of the CIA. The liberals next sought to make the CIA responsible for the September eleven attacks. The newest thing is that liberals are now claiming the "all of the intelligence experts say the war in Iraq is making us less safe." First of all, who are "all the intelligence experts"? Second, if they had no inklings about Al-Qaeda, why are they so smart now? Third, the only way to test this claim is to pull out of Iraq and then see what happens. Sorry Dems, nice try. Dick Durbin would be smart enough to see the outcome of that. Hmm. . . we leave the Middle East as a playground and training center for Al-Qaeda, and then we'll be safer in North America. Or. . . the Al-Qaeda people will see their jihad worked, that the infidel is powerless, and then take over everything south of Vienna. The world will surely see that Islam is blessed by God when they see the only superpower existing was rolled over with some car bombs. Yeah, the way to lasting peace is to stick our tails between our legs and run.

Force of Numbers

The will of the many, and their interest, must very often differ; and great will be the difference when they make an evil choice.
Edmund Burke
Reflections on the Revolution in France
p. 141 (Penguin Edition)

Opposition of Interests

They render deliberation a matter not of choice, but of necessity; they make all changes a subject of compromise, which naturally begets moderation; they produce temperments, preventing the sore evil of harsh, crude, unqualified reformations; and rendering all the headlong exertions of arbitrary power, in the few or in the many, for ever impracticable.
Edmund Burke

Maoist Baby Killer

If there is to be choice, there must be a party of choice. Without a pro-choice party, without a party built on the Planned Parenthood theory, and in the Liberal style it is impossible to lead the working class and the broad masses of the people in defeating conservatism and its running dogs.

Doesn't that sound just like Bela Pelosi and her half-rabid coterie of liberal extremists? Whose writing is this? Mao Tse-Tung said this, only he used communist terms instead of liberal-pro abortion ones. Oh, and why am I comparing communism to the "pro-choice" position? A high school classmate of mine went to Yale, and then came back to Illinois to start his political career. Mike Frerichs started his political life as a pro-life Democrat. Estase is glad to see pro-lifers of any stripe, but he was unclear why anyone who really found abortion repugnant would support a party so infected with baby killers. Estase was, sadly, right. For Chicago political cash, Mike Frerichs sold his soul, and declared himself pro-abortion. Mike, if you're reading this, I hope you can look yourself in the mirror and not recoil at the Judas you have become.