Sublime
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Republican lawmakers want the process to be painful. “Taxes should hurt,” President Reagan famously said. If they don’t, we might come to see taxpaying as a normal and straightforward part of membership in society, instead of what happens that irksome time of year when the government takes our money.[33]
Matthew Desmond • Poverty, by America
... See moreAmerica cannot redistribute its way to prosperity. Aggressively raising taxes on the wealthy by 1.5% of GDP ($5 trillion over the decade) and redistributing those funds equally to every American would provide just $1,500 per person annually. Certainly helpful, but no substitute for the rising incomes produced by strong economic growth.
Thus, revenue
In his 1922 opus, Public Opinion, Lippmann poses a straightforward question: Can citizens achieve a basic knowledge of public affairs and then make reasonable choices about what to do? If the answer is no, then the entire democratic project is at best a folly.
Zac Gershberg • The Paradox of Democracy
Liberals suffer incurably from naïveté, the stupidity of the good heart.
Charles Krauthammer • Things That Matter: Three Decades of Passions, Pastimes and Politics
Here is what to say: American democracy is built on the ethic of citizens caring about other citizens. Its moral mission is to protect and empower everyone equally by the provision of public resources. The Public is the foundation for the Private—for decent private lives and for private enterprise that works. No one makes it on his or her own witho
... See moreGeorge Lakoff • The Little Blue Book: The Essential Guide to Thinking and Talking Democratic
“Back when I was getting into the business, all ‘being Republican’ meant really was a sort of principled greed. You arranged things so that you and your friends would come out nicely, you behaved professionally, above all you put in the work and took the money only after you’d earned it. Well, the party, I fear, has fallen on evil days.
Thomas Pynchon • Bleeding Edge
ANDREW J. BACEVICH,
Andrew J. Bacevich • American Conservatism: Reclaiming an Intellectual Tradition
If you put him a-horseback on politics, I warn you of the consequences. It was all very well to ride on sticks at home and call them ideas.’
Rosemary Ashton • Middlemarch
It was remarked by a man of genius that "ignorance lies at the two ends of knowledge.