A proper criminal justice system exacts justice - that is, punishes criminals for their crimes. Rehabilitation and deterrence are worthy goals, but they are secondary to retribution.
Michael J. Knowles
For the Left, Thanksgiving is about politics; for the Right, politics is about thanksgiving. The different approaches to holiday conversation come from opposing views of politics.
What is the purpose of the electoral college? It has a few purposes. One, it's to restrain pure democracy. Very good, very important, that's a wonderful thing.
For Christians, Advent reminds us why we need Christmas in the first place. It relies not only the grace of God but also the assent of Mary to the divine will.
While liberal, coastal white girls may constitute the most conspicuous purveyors of pumpkin spice, the flavor's cultural connotations and the strong opinions they elicit reveal the drink's profound conservatism.
Media elites, particularly those on the Left, love to hate the pumpkin spice latte.
Civil society begins with the family.
People go into debt when they judge it beneficial to borrow money against their future earnings. Few can afford to buy a house outright, but many consider it worthwhile to take out a loan, which they will service and pay off over time, for the immediate privilege of living and investing in a house.
The purpose of language is to communicate. That's the most basic definition of language. I have my own subjective experience going on in my head, and you have your own subjective experience going on in your head. The only way we can bridge that unbridgeable gap is through language.
According to the politics of fantasy, mankind is on the verge of perfectibility, if only we give the government just a little bit more money and power.
There are a lot of people who were born into immense privilege who pretend that they weren't.
Everyone suffers. Rain falls on the just and the unjust alike. It falls on both the rich and the poor too. Leftist materialists imagine suffering to be a factor of economic circumstance.
In more tangible terms, the pumpkin spice latte shares many of the qualities that endear conservative politicians to their supporters and arouse disgust in their opponents. It's blunt, common, and unapologetically American.
Our national future does not demand we revise and malign our past.
All political debates, from tax policy to abortion, draw on moral arguments that rest on religious premises.
Beauty is not generic, bland, and clinical. It isn't all things to all people. The Cathedral of Notre Dame in its endlessly intricate detail was beautiful. Modern office buildings are not.
President Trump's greatest political liabilities revolve around questions of personality and character.
The people's love of pumpkin spice and snobbish elites' derision of it suggest a subtle political reality: the pumpkin spice latte is America's most conservative drink.
Conservatives have always been forthright about our views, whether they brought defeat in 1964 or victory in 1980.
The Left, however, resists anglicizing Spanish terms because its political agenda relies on encouraging illegal immigration from Latin America and discouraging the assimilation of Hispanics into American society.
For the Left, victimhood has long carried social currency.
Ronald Reagan was the best Ronald Reagan ever, and Ronald Reagan was a cool guy. You're not Ronald Reagan. You can't run as him; you can't relive his career. You can't just have somebody else's career. You have to be you.
The leftist vision of politics as a matter of rights begets an attitude of grievance and entitlement.
Wealthy parents have long relied on a properly timed donation to improve their children's chances at admission to college.
Donald Trump is certainly an American original. Barack Obama, he's an American original. Where else but in America could that man become president? George W. Bush, a very different man from his father. These guys, they have their distinct voice and their distinct agenda.
All of the American presidents, certainly all of the notable ones, have been pretty original.
No social policy can ever eradicate evil or perfect human nature.
American universities have never considered academic merit the sole criterion for admittance.
The way to achieve a higher birthrate, which is a noble goal and I am glad conservatives are serious about addressing it, is to radically change the culture.
Even relatively tolerant countries fine and jail people for expressing heterodox views. America uniquely protects speech.
The Right has focused on expanding economic liberty through tax cuts, free trade, and deregulation.
We do not gain or surrender our personhood as we age. We live one life from conception to death.
The Left relies upon the politics of fantasy to tempt voters.
Legacies, athletes, and favored racial minorities all receive preferential treatment from admissions committees to the exclusion of academically better-qualified students.
Ronald Reagan was very successful.
For the Left, when ideology and reality conflict, ideology must win.
While the leading environmental alarmists burn fossil fuels like they're going out of style, the United States under President Trump has led the world in reducing carbon emissions.
If debtors can reasonably expect that the government will swoop in from time to time to bail them out, no one has any incentive to pay his debts.
The people participate in votes in their states to choose electors to elect the president, but the people don't elect the president. We are not a democracy; we are a democratic republic. We have a representation system of government.
Capital punishment is neither cruel nor unusual.
A miserable politics awaits us when the irreligious rot flows downstream.
Every theistic religion, including Catholicism, Mainline Protestantism, Judaism, Mormonism, and Islam, has traditionally held homosexual congress in moral opprobrium.
Speech is not violence. The Left conflates the two in order to justify its own violent reactions to differing points of view.
Criticism does not constitute violence.
In democratic republics such as ours, citizens rely on public criticism of ideas and people to determine national policy.
Liberation from meaning leaves us skeptical of truth itself, comfortable only to acknowledge 'your truth' and 'my truth,' confident only in the reality of subjective feeling rather than objective fact.
Liberation tolerates no limits, be they political, cultural, religious, or even natural.
Democrats in sanctuary states support amnesty for illegal aliens, just so long as those illegal aliens don't wind up in sanctuary states.
President Trump committed obstruction. From the moment he defeated Hillary Clinton, Democrats have tried to overturn the 2016 election, and President Trump has obstructed their efforts every step of the way.
Even leftists can appreciate the beauty of traditional religion and culture. Unfortunately they tend to reject the spirit that animates that beauty.
