Quotations

Quotes of the Day

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America must get to work producing more energy. The Republican program for solving economic problems is based on growth and productivity.
 
Large amounts of oil and natural gas lay beneath our land and off our shores, untouched, because the present administration seems to believe the American people would rather see more regulation, more taxes and more controls than more energy.
 
Coal offers great potential. So does nuclear energy produced under rigorous safety standards. It could supply electricity for thousands of industries and millions of jobs and homes. It must not be thwarted by a tiny minority opposed to economic growth which often finds friendly ears in regulatory agencies for its obstructionist campaigns.
 
Make no mistake. We will not permit the safety of our people or our environment heritage to be jeopardized, but we are going to reaffirm that the economic prosperity of our people is a fundamental part of our environment.

Ronald Reagan, via Larry Kudlow. I miss Reagan. How come no one talks like this? How the Hell hard is it?

And I have to ask lawmakers in Washington, DC, who have prohibited this drilling in ANWR if they’re doing all they can to secure the United States. When you consider, too, the geology that we’re talking about here, and the physical space that’s even needed to drill now, about a 2,000 acre plot, because of directional drilling and new technology, allowing such a small footprint to even be placed upon the tundra up north, it’s about 2,000 acres, which is smaller than the size of LAX and other big-city airports, that we would need to drill, and allow these resources to finally be tapped and to flow into hungry markets, and make us more secure. I think it’s so short-sighted.

Sarah Palin, quoted here.

I like Palin. I hope we see her as McCain’s VP. We need something to arrest the downward trend, though I really see no way McCain can win. But Palin for VP would help, and would position the GOP to have a conservative woman run in 2112. That might be enough to drive BHO out after one term.

UPDATE: Instapundit links to a Gallup poll supposedly showing McCain and Obama tied at 45%. But Intrade shows them 31 points apart. Hmmm, indeed. Which is more reliable, a crowd of people with money on the table, or a bunch of people answering a pollster’s questions?

Quote of the Day, a/k/a Interesting Times

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Muslim leaders are well-advised to remain on good terms with Benedict XVI. Worse things await them. There are 100 million new Chinese Christians, and some of them speak of marching to Jerusalem – from the East. A website entitled Back to Jerusalem proclaims, “From the Great Wall of China through Central Asia along the silk roads, the Chinese house churches are called to preach the Gospel of Jesus Christ all the way back to Jerusalem.”

Spengler, The Pope, the President and Politics of Faith. As always with Spengler: RTWT.

Interesting if true. Spengler’s link to “Back to Jerusalem” does not work. Does anyone know about it?

UPDATE: Thanks to Eric Anondson for the correct link to the Back to Jerusalem site.

Quote of the Day

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Americans have had it so good, for so long, that they seem to have forgotten what government’s heavy hand does to living standards and economic growth. But the same technological innovation that is causing all this dislocation and anxiety has also created an information network that is as near to real-time as the world has ever experienced.
 
For example, President Bush put steel tariffs in place in March 2002. Less than two years later, in December 2003, he rescinded them. This is something most politicians don’t do. But because the tariffs caused such a sharp rise in the price of steel, small and mid-size businesses complained loudly. The unintended consequences became visible to most Americans very quickly.
 
Decades ago the feedback mechanism was slow. The unintended consequences of the New Deal took too long to show up in the economy. As a result, by the time the pain was publicized, the connection to misguided government policy could not be made. Today, in the midst of Internet Time, this is no longer a problem. So, despite protestations from staff at the White House, most people understand that food riots in foreign lands and higher prices at U.S. grocery stores are linked to ethanol subsidies in the U.S., which have sent shock waves through the global system.
 
This is the good news. Policy mistakes will be ferreted out very quickly. As a result, any politician who attempts to change things will be blamed for the unintended consequences right away.
 
Both Mr. McCain and Mr. Obama view the world from a legislative perspective. Like the populists before them, they seem to believe that government can fix problems in the economy. They seem to believe that what the world needs is a change in the way government attacks problems and fixes the anxiety of voters. This command-and-control approach, however, forces a misallocation of resources. And in Internet Time this will become visible in almost real-time, creating real political pain for the new president.
 
In contrast to what some people seem to believe, having the government take over the health-care system is not change. It’s just a culmination of previous moves by government. And the areas with the worst problems today are areas that have the most government interference education, health care and energy.
 
The best course of action is to allow a free-market economy to reallocate resources to the place of highest returns. In the midst of all the natural change, the last thing the U.S. economy needs is more government involvement, whether it’s called change or not.

–Brian Wesbury

Kissinger: Establishing Priorities, Tolerating Our SOBs

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“Kissinger … was above all a revolutionary.” … [T]his may come as something of a surprise. Kissinger a revolutionary? The man who told the Argentine junta’s Foreign Minister, Cesar Guzzetti: “We wish [your] government well”? The man who promised his South African counterpart to “curb any missionary zeal of my officers in the State Department to harass you”? The man who told the Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet: “We are sympathetic with what you are trying to do here”? Yet Suri has a case to make, even if he does not make it more than obliquely. An integral part of Kissinger’s grand strategy was always to establish priorities. In order to check Soviet ambitions in the Third World the full extent of which we have only recently come to appreciate some unpleasant regimes had to be tolerated, and indeed supported. Besides the various Latin American caudillos, the Saudi royal family, the Shah of Iran and the Pakistani military, these unpleasant regimes also included (though the Left seldom acknowledged it) the Maoist regime in Beijing, which was already guilty of many more violations of human rights than all the right-wing dictators put together when Kissinger flew there for the first time in July 1971.

Niall Ferguson, reviewing Henry Kissinger and the American Century in the TLS.

The book sounds good. The review is worth reading.

The Cold War was a bad time. It was a dangerous time. Victory was not assured. When Kissinger was in office, defeat seemed possible. When Nixon came to power in 1969, the country was in terrible shape, with only 1933 and 1861 being worse for a new president. American leaders made decisions under what they considered to be desperate conditions which we now question, or challenge, or repudiate. America allied itself with regimes which behaved very badly. Opposing and defeating the Soviet Union had many costs. We are too close to fully assess them.

Of the many books I have read about the Cold War, or events during the Cold War, the single best book covering the whole period which I have read is Norman Friedman, The Fifty-Year War: Conflict and Strategy in the Cold War.

Suggested favorite books about the Cold War would be appreciated, in the comments.

UPDATE: Good Zenpundit post about, inter alia, the Nixon White House. Zen suggests some Nixonian literature in the comments.

UPDATE II: Zen provides a Cold War reading list, in the comments. Check it out.

Quote of the Day

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The Russians, Chinese and Indians aren’t just a new collections of fools. They will no more drive humanity off a cliff than we did. With 3 billion new capitalists come 3 billion new answers.
 
Many will only see needs and demands. Some will see innovation and vision.
 
One point history makes clear: when markets are allowed to operate, efficiencies emerge. When markets are prevented or perverted (like in the socialist bloc), disaster triumphs.

Thomas P.M. Barnett