Civility
Page 9
- All political movements are like this: we are in the right, everyone else is in the wrong. The people on our own side who disagree with us are heretics, and they start becoming enemies. With it comes an absolute conviction of your own moral superiority. There's oversimplification in everything, and a terror of flexibility.
- At the moment, the U.S. is talking loudly and carrying a small stick. Economic sanctions and visa denials won’t impact Russia in serious ways, nor will they make Ukraine an economically viable and democratic country. Furthermore, Americans have no desire and no reason to go to war with Russia over Crimea.
- Far too often, the Ukrainian issue is posed as a showdown: whether Ukraine joins the East or the West. But if Ukraine is to survive and thrive, it must not be either side’s outpost against the other – it should function as a bridge between them.
- You can't treat Russia like a guilty schoolboy who has to put a cross on a piece of paper to show he has done his homework. That kind of language is unacceptable.
- My mother saved our home with a minimum wage job. But in the 1960s, a minimum wage job would support a family of three above the poverty line. Not today. Not even close. I understood right then that people can work hard, they can play by the rules, and they can still take a hard smack.
- If I had to take my family to court and convict them of being followers of Christ, I am not sure where I would find the evidence.
- I'm just a guy who got asked to do something for his country by people at the highest level of government, and I did the best that I could.
- I’ve got to admit, I don’t get it. Why are folks working so hard for people not to have health insurance? …Many of the tall tales that have been told about this law have been debunked. There are still no death panels. Armageddon has not arrived. Instead, this law is helping millions of Americans, and in the coming years it will help millions more.
- Please, please tell me I’m not the only one who thinks it doesn’t matter how people are dressed or how they move their bodies - we should still treat them with respect and decency. And enough with the slut shaming. Please. Goddamn, I’m not responsible for some perverted 45 year-old dad lusting after me because I have a sparkly dress on and a big ass for a teenager. And if you think I am, then maybe you’re part of the problem.
- We all accuse Vladimir Putin of Cold War nostalgia, but Washington’s elites — politicians and intellectuals — miss the old days as well. They wish for the world in which the United States was utterly dominant over its friends, its foes were to be shunned entirely, and the challenges were stark, moral, and vital. Today’s world is messy and complicated. China is one of our biggest trading partners and our looming geopolitical rival. Russia is a surly spoiler, but it has a globalized middle class and has created ties in Europe.
- L.A. Clippers owner Donald Sterling was recorded on tape making racist comments. He now has been banned from the league for life. Great, just where Sterling wanted to end up – the blacklist.
- If you come to me and say, ‘Hey look I'm a racist,’ or ‘I discriminate against blacks,’ or ‘I don't like you because you're African American,’ I respect that. I can respect you more by doing that. But don't smile in my face, shake my hand, and then you don't really respect me, or want me to be around, or come to your games as the owner of the Clippers.