Political Authors From The United States

"In this century the idea of vertical race is dead. We can now view race only in horizontal terms — the race one feels in oneself is everything, the anatomic-geographic group to which one belongs means nothing. In this stage of our Cultural development, the principle of individuality reasserts itself, as it asserted itself in the earliest days of the Gothic. During the dark age of Materialism, it was believed that heredity and environment were everything; with the decline of Materialism the human Soul regains its former dignity. Everyone must now openly admit that the engrafting of the outworn nonsense of the vertical race notion onto the glorious European Resurgence of Authority brought about by the European Revolution of 1933 was an enormous tragedy — all the more so since the coupling of these two ideas was in no way necessary or even logical. In the Classical Culture, any man who was ethically equal to the Inner Imperative of Roman spirituality could rightly say: "Civis Romanus sum." In this, our Western Culture is somewhat akin to the Classical. Our touchstone of comradeship and belonging is spiritual-ethical not the old one of birth-place, cephalic-index, eye-color. In the 20th century, the century of elective affinities, materialistic tests are pure stupidity."

"The nationality of an army is that of its political leadership, not of its common soldiers or its officer corps."

"A nation shows that it is dying when it ceases to believe in its Mission and its superiority."

"Europe is equal to its historical task. Against the anti-spiritual, anti-heroic 'ideals' of America-Jewry, Europe pits its metaphysical ideas, its faith in its Destiny, its ethical principles, its heroism. Fearlessly, Europe falls in for battle, knowing it is armed with the mightiest weapon ever forged by History: the superpersonal Destiny of the European organism. Our European Mission is to create the Culture-State-Nation-Imperium of the West, and thereby we shall perform such deeds, accomplish such works, and so transform our world that our distant posterity, when they behold the remains of our buildings and ramparts, will tell their grandchildren that on the soil of Europe once dwelt a tribe of gods."

"Today Pravda says "Zionism is a tool of American imperialism". Tomorrow it will say: "American imperialism is the tool of Zionism"."

"What matters in politics above all, is not what one says, but what one does."

"The crude power structures of Washington and Moscow have no Past, and therefore no Future. They are without Tradition, without a World-Mission, without a Nation-Idea, without a Destiny, without organic unity, without a State, and without Imperial possibilities. Both of these formless things are mere pale caricatures of the one, true, World-Mission, which inheres in Europe alone. This Mission does not arise from human will, but is a direct emanation of God."

"The soul of Europe cannot be occupied, ruled, or dominated by Culture-aliens. Only a materialist could think that the possession of the tangible appurtenances of power guarantees the eternal continuance of power. If that had been so, a few castes and States would have always ruled the world, from its beginning. But, in the ultimate test, power is the reflection of inner qualities, and these qualities are not possessed by any of the outer enemies of Europe. Their transitory empires are built on sand, because underlying them there is no superpersonal soul, no World-Mission, no World-Idea, no Destiny. Even in our short lives we have seen empires come and go, and the temporary power-agglomerations of Moscow and Washington will go the same way."

"Before the First World War, Russia had figured as a Western State. Its ruling strata, its ruling outlook, were Western. The tension which existed between the Western elements of Russia and the Asiatic will-to-destruction underneath was however strained to the breaking point by the First World War, and the Asiatic elements, in conjunction with and assisted by the Culture-State-Nation-Race People-Society of the Jew all over the world, gained the upper hand and re-oriented Russia against Europe. From then onward, and also today, 1950, Russia figures as one of the leaders of the coloured revolt against the European race. But European possibilities still exist within Russia, because in certain strata of the population adherence to the great organism of the Western Culture is an instinct, an Idea, and no material force can ever wipe it out, even though it may be temporarily repressed and driven under."

"History is the continuous reinterpretation of the Past. History is thus continually "true," because, in each Age, the ruling historical outlook and values are the expression of the proper soul. The alternatives for History are not true or false, but effective or ineffective. Truth in the religio-philosophical mathematical sense, meaning timelessly, eternally valid, dissociated from the conditions of Life, does not pertain to History. History that is true is History that is effective in the minds of significant men."

"Anti-Semitism is precisely analogous in Culture pathology to the formation of anti-bodies in the bloodstream in human pathology. In both cases, the organism is resisting the alien life. Both are inevitable, organically necessary, expressions of Destiny. In fulfilling the proper, Destiny combats the alien. It cannot be said too often that hatred and malice, tolerance and goodwill, have nothing whatever to do with this fundamental process. A Culture is an organism, an organism of a different class from man, just as man is an organism of a different class from animals. But the fundamental regularities of organic life are present in all organisms, of whatever class, plant, animal, man, Culture. This hierarchy of organisms is obviously part of the divine plan, and it cannot be changed by a process of propaganda, no matter how continuous, "tolerance," no matter how self-renouncing, or self-deception, no matter how complete."

"Alliance does not mean love, any more than war means hate."

"Feminism liberated women from the natural dignity of their sex and turned them into inferior men."

"The question of who strikes first in a war is on the same level as who strikes first in a boxing contest."

"We have been born into a certain Culture, at a certain phase of its organic development, we have certain gifts. These condition the earthly task which we must perform. The metaphysical task is beyond any conditioning, for it would have been the same in any age anywhere. The earthly task is merely the form of the higher task, its organic vehicle."

"The explanation Marxism offered of the significance of History was ludicrously simple, and in this very simplicity lay its charm, and its strength. The whole history of the world was merely the record of the struggle of classes. Religion, philosophy, science, technics, music, painting, poetry, nobility, priesthood, Emperor and Pope State, war, and politics — all are simply reflections of economics. Not economics generally, but the "struggle" of "classes." The most amazing thing about this ideological picture is that it was ever put forward seriously, or taken seriously."

"Between Capitalism and Socialism there is no relationship of true and false. Both are instincts, and have the same historical rank, but one of them belongs to the Past, and one to the Future. Capitalism is a product of Rationalism and Materialism, and was the ruling force of the 19th century. Socialism is the form of an age of political Imperialism, of Authority, of historical philosophy, of superpersonal political imperative."

"Three of us — Bill Styron, he and I — suffered depression simultaneously, so we walked around in the rain together on Martha's Vineyard and consoled each other... He did the best to make life palatable, to help you be optimistic, to let you know he believed you would beat it. We both did, and so did Bill. We named ourselves the 'Blues Brothers.'"

"The joy of his column was not that it was side-splitting humor, but that he made you smile."

"Art was the Mark Twain of our time. For decades there was no better way to start the day than to open the morning paper to Art's column, laugh out loud and learn all over again to take the issues seriously in the world of politics, but not take yourself too seriously. The special art of Art Buchwald was to make even the worst of times better."

"What Art had was the gift of laughter — that's a rarity today. He could take simple ordinary things and make you laugh. God knows all of us need that. I've been with him in all kinds of situations, good and bad, triumph and tragedy but Art always was able to see a little wisp of humor in everything."

"The American arrives in Paris with a few French phrases he has culled from a conversational guide or picked up from a friend who owns a beret."

"I just don't want to die the same day Castro dies."

"Whether it's the best of times or the worst of times, it's the only time we've got."

"Don't commit suicide, because you might change your mind two weeks later."

"People ask what I am really trying to do with humor. The answer is, "I'm getting even." … For me, being funny is the best revenge."

"If you attack the establishment long enough and hard enough, they will make you a member of it."

"Just when you think there's nothing to write about, Nixon says, "I am not a crook." Jimmy Carter says, "I have lusted after women in my heart." President Reagan says, "I have just taken a urinalysis test, and I am not on dope.""

"You can't make up anything anymore. The world itself is a satire. All you're doing is recording it."

"People are broad-minded. They'll accept the fact that a person can be an alcoholic, a dope fiend, a wife beater and even a newspaperman, but if a man doesn't drive, there's something wrong with him."

"Every time you think television has hit its lowest ebb, a new...program comes along to make you wonder where you thought the ebb was."

"The powder is mixed with water and tastes exactly like powder mixed with water."

"A bad liver is to a Frenchman what a nervous breakdown is to an American. Everyone has had one and everyone wants to talk about it."

"I like champagne—because it always tastes like my foot's asleep."

"I always wanted to get into politics, but I was never light enough to make the team."

"National sovereignty is an obligation as well as an entitlement. A government that will not perform the role of a government forfeits the rights of a government."

"That war in the early 1990s changed a lot for me. I never thought I would see, in Europe, a full-dress reprise of internment camps, the mass murder of civilians, the reinstitution of torture and rape as acts of policy. And I didn't expect so many of my comrades to be indifferent – or even take the side of the fascists. It was a time when many people on the left were saying 'Don't intervene, we'll only make things worse' or, 'Don't intervene, it might destabilise the region. And I thought – destabilisation of fascist regimes is a good thing. Why should the left care about the stability of undemocratic regimes? Wasn't it a good thing to destabilise the regime of General Franco? It was a time when the left was mostly taking the conservative, status quo position – leave the Balkans alone, leave Milosevic alone, do nothing. And that kind of conservatism can easily mutate into actual support for the aggressors. Weimar-style conservatism can easily mutate into National Socialism. So you had people like Noam Chomsky's co-author Ed Herman go from saying 'Do nothing in the Balkans', to actually supporting Milosevic, the most reactionary force in the region. That's when I began to first find myself on the same side as the neocons. I was signing petitions in favour of action in Bosnia, and I would look down the list of names and I kept finding, there's Richard Perle. There's Paul Wolfowitz. That seemed interesting to me. These people were saying that we had to act. Before, I had avoided them like the plague, especially because of what they said about General Sharon and about Nicaragua. But nobody could say they were interested in oil in the Balkans, or in strategic needs, and the people who tried to say that – like Chomsky – looked ridiculous. So now I was interested."

"At the same time, Kissinger, Carter and détente were condemned as weakening the West by a group of conservative Democrats led by Henry (Scoop) Jackson, a critic of SALT, as well as by key Republicans who were influential in the Ford administration (1974–7), notably his Chief of Staff, Richard (Dick) Cheney, and the Secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld. They drew on advice from commentators such as Richard Perle, Richard Pipes and Paul Wolfowitz who warned about Soviet intentions. The continuity of this group, through 1990s’ opposition to Clintonian liberal internationalism, to the neo-conservative activism of the early 2000s, especially against Iraq, is notable."

"About George W. Bush: "He came ill-equipped for the job and has failed to master it.""

"The programme of the British Labour Party under Neil Kinnock is so wildly irresponsible, so separate and apart from the historic NATO strategy, that I think a Labour government that stood by its present policies—and I rather doubt that they would—would, if it didn't destroy the Alliance, at least diminish its effective ability to do the task for which it was created."

"Well, you’re going to find a disproportionate number of Jews in any sort of intellectual undertaking."

"I think there is a potential civic culture in Arab countries that can lead to democratic institutions and I think Iraq is probably the best place to put that proposition to the test"

"I really don't have a solution. Except to say that a precondition for any solution must be a recognition on the part of all parties on the legitimacy of all parties. That is you cannot build a political agreement on the premise that a Jewish state in Palestine is illegitimate."

"Dictators must have enemies. They must have internal enemies to justify their secret police and external enemies to justify their military forces."

"I’ve never thought much of Joe Nye’s writings on soft power."

"Sometimes the things we have to do are objectionable in the eyes of others."

"And a year from now, I'll be very surprised if there is not some grand square in Baghdad that is named after President Bush. There is no doubt that, with the exception of a very small number of people close to a vicious regime, the people of Iraq have been liberated and they understand that they've been liberated. And it is getting easier every day for Iraqis to express that sense of liberation."

""I think in this case international law stood in the way of doing the right thing." (2003)"

"I wonder how many of the people who profess to believe in the leveling ideas of collectivism and egalitarianism really just believe that they themselves are good for nothing. I mean, how many leftists are animated by a quite reasonable self-loathing? In their hearts they know that they are not going to become scholars or inventors or industrialists or even ordinary good kind people. So they need a way to achieve that smugness for which the left is so justifiably famous. They need a way to achieve self-esteem without merit. Well, there is politics. In an egalitarian world everything will be controlled by politics, and politics requires no merit."

"There is no virtue in compulsory government charity, and there is no virtue in advocating it. A politician who portrays himself as caring and sensitive because he wants to expand the government's charitable programs is merely saying that he is willing to do good with other people's money. Well, who isn't? And a voter who takes pride in supporting such programs is telling us that he will do good with his own money — if a gun is held to his head."