Where we are & how we got here--quotes from the other side

By Lee Russ

Monday, April 17, 2006 at 04:29 PM

It's crazy these days, and I don't mean that in the sloppy, vernacular way.  It's crazy these days.

In making sense of where we are and how we came to be here, try these quotes from people that absolutely fit right into a time characterized by craziness:

 "Emotional appeals about working families trying to get by on $4.25 an hour [the minimum wage in 1996. when this statement was made]  are hard to resist. Fortunately, such families do not exist."
          Tom  Delay, quoted in Congressional Record, H3706 4-23-96.
[Certainly not within the DeLay household, anyway; and of course, if they didn't exist, it would probably be because a family can't live on $4.25 an hour, or $5.15 an hour, or even on Vermont's $7 per hour]

 "We are different from previous generations of conservatives. We are no longer working to preserve the status quo. We are radicals, working to overturn the present power structure of this country."
        Paul Weyrich, Free Congress Foundation

"Our movement will be entirely destructive, and entirely constructive. We will not try to reform existing institutions. We only intend to weaken them, and eventually destroy them. We will endeavor to knock our opponents off-balance and unsettle them at every opportunity....We will maintain a constant barrage of criticism against the Left.  We will attack the very legitimacy of the Left . We will not give them a moment's rest.  We will endeavor to prove that the Left does not deserve to hold sway over the heart and mind of a single American."
         Eric Heubeck, Paul Weyrich protege and author of "The Integration of Theory and Practice: A Program for the New Traditionalist Movement," (from Weyrich's Free Congress Foundation).

"You cannot cripple an opponent by outwitting him in a political debate. You can only do it by following Lenin's injunction: 'In political conflicts, the goal is not to refute your opponent's argument, but to wipe him from the face of the earth.'"
        David Horowitz, in The Art of Political War: How Republicans can Fight to Win.
[At least you now know why Horowitz's arguments are so bizarre and why he feels no need to refute reality and logic that oppose him]

"I'm the commander. See, I don't need to explain -- I do not need to explain why I say things. That's the interesting thing about being the president. Maybe somebody needs to explain to me why they say something, but I don't feel like I owe anybody an explanation."
        George W. Bush, to journalist Bob Woodward for the book, Bush at War.
[And you wondered why Rumsfeld was still on the job?]

"The United States needs to go to war with Iraq because it needs to go to war with someone in the region and Iraq makes the most sense."
        Jonah Goldberg, National Review article
[Unless, of course, that doesn't go well and Iran starts mouthing off....or Syria has Saddam's WMD....or Hamas starts to really piss us off; but in any case, Jonah doesn't plan on donning a uniform any time soon, I'd reckon]

"God has chosen, through his son Jesus Christ, this time and this place for all Christians... to save our country and save our courts."
        William Pryor, 6/13/2003, recess appointee to Federal Court of Appeals, renominated by Bush

"Oh, come on. People are fungible. You can have them here or there."
        Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, Spring 2004, about why U.S. troops had to stay longer in Iraq
[Unfortunately, sometimes "here" means above the earth, walking around & breathing, and "there" means under the ground, dead, and certainly not breathing]