A Conservative is a fellow who is standing athwart history yelling 'Stop!'
William F. Buckley, Jr.Read
One can't doubt that the American objective in Iraq has failed - different plans have to be made. And the kernel here is the acknowledgement of defeat.
Interpretation
The United States' goals in Iraq have not been achieved, and new strategies must be developed that accept this reality.
William F. Buckley, Jr. points out that the American efforts in Iraq have not met their intended objectives, highlighting the need for a reassessment and new plans moving forward that recognize the current situation as a defeat. This admission is critical for learning from past mistakes and adjusting future actions to better align with reality.
In practice
This quote could be used in a discussion about foreign policy during a political debate.
A Conservative is a fellow who is standing athwart history yelling 'Stop!'
Even if one takes every reefer madness allegation of the prohibitionists at face value, marijuana prohibition has done far more harm to far more people than marijuana ever could.
I'd rather entrust the government of the United States to the first 400 people listed in the Boston telephone directory than to the faculty of Harvard University.
One must bear in mind that the expansion of federal activity is a form of eating for politicians.
I would like to take you seriously, but to do so would affront your intelligence.
You cannot paint the Mona Lisa by assigning one dab each to a thousand painters.
Economic libertarians and Christian evangelicals, united by their common enemy, are strange bedfellows in today's Republican party, just as the two Georges - the archconservative Wallace and the uberliberal McGovern - found themselves in the same Democratic Party in 1972.
In the lexicon of the political class, the word 'sacrifice' means that the citizens are supposed to mail even more of their income to Washington so that the political class will not have to sacrifice the pleasure of spending it.
I think, at the end of the day, especially for municipal elections, we see relatively low voter turnout. So the goal is to expand who sees themselves reflected in government, who's empowered to take the lead in politics.
If experience teaches us anything at all, it teaches us this: that a good politician, under democracy, is quite as unthinkable as an honest burglar.
Nations do not distrust each other because they are armed. They are armed because they distrust each other.
If we want people to vote, we need to make it a larger part of their self-image.
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