Quotes of the Morning

“The central weakness of the liberal case is that it is morally thin. Once you say that it is up to individuals or families to draw their own lines separating life from existence, and reasonable people will differ, then you are taking a fundamental issue out of the realm of morality and into the realm of relativism and mere taste . . .
What begins as an appealing notion -- that life and death are joined by a continuum -- becomes vapid mush, because we are all invited to punt when it comes time to do the hard job of standing up for common principles, arguing right and wrong, and judging those who make bad decisions.”
-David Brooks, Morality and Reality, March 26, 2005

“And now.. for some more of those ‘common principles’.”
-Skippy

“DAVID BROOKS: But the interrogation process and how we react at Gitmo, how we react in Iraq, these are issues that I think we should have memos about. You know, every week we sit here and we watch on Fridays the soldiers that have been killed in Iraq and . . .
JIM LEHRER: We have some more tonight.
DAVID BROOKS: And we know very little about the insurgents. And we have got to somehow do a better job in knowing about the people who are killing the faces we see every Friday night. And this is part of that process. And I think his [Gonzales] role has been utterly appropriate.”
-David Brooks, NewsHour with Jim Lehrer, January 7, 2005

"I don't know anybody on the right who would say, 'I'm in favor of innocent people being tortured.' But that said, I think a lot of people on the right are skeptical of hype: That the allegations are not nearly as horrendous or as widespread a matter of policy as the media portrays’ . . .
‘There are lots of things that are ugly and terrible about war,’ Goldberg adds. ‘I think that people on the right are more comfortable allowing for that.’"
-Jonah Goldberg, Interview with Salon, February 28, 2005

“There is a valuable lesson to learn here.. Apparently (and I was previously unaware of this) allowing a woman to die, no matter what the circumstances, is evil and wrong and will lead to atheism, godless Communism and tooth decay. Meanwhile allowing torture is good, moral and will bring us peace and help save baby seals. You see, this all goes back to a basic truth of the universe.. Americans, being God’s chosen people, are simply more important than them thar foreigners (especially the non-white ones). As soon as the rest of the world realizes that we’ll all lead happy, productive lives filled with joy and satisfaction. I can hardly wait. By the way, how are things going with that ethnic cleansing going on in Darfur going?”
-Skippy

“Darfur's genocide has been in the news for about a year now. There's a temptation to say, okay, we failed on that, but that was last year's failure; move on. But Darfur will be this year's story even more than last year's. The number of deaths will likely be more appalling, not less so. Yet the diplomacy on Darfur spins pointlessly around irrelevant side questions. Within the Bush administration, panic is nowhere.”
-Washington Post, March 27, 2005

“A tragic story of 300,000 deaths (so far) in an African nation. Millions of people displaced in an ongoing military insurrection.. OOoo! Terri babbled something! Plug in the feeding tube!!”
-Skippy