This Week in Quotes (Double Edition!)

by John Hawkins | September 18, 2015 6:09 am

Maybe it’s time the world gets used to life without the United States. If our current immigration policies aren’t stopped, this country will soon be nothing more than another failed Latin American state. — Ann Coulter[1]

How many f—ing Jews do these people think there are in the United States? — Ann Coulter[2]

There are two men in Washington, D.C., who can defeat this (Iran) deal. Their names are Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and Speaker John Boehner. — Ted Cruz[3]

Based on recent election results, Republicans shouldn’t fear addressing immigration head-on. A large percentage of Hispanic voters are more receptive to the GOP’s message of economic opportunity and traditional values than they are in favor of open borders. In 2014, Georgia senator David Perdue and governor Nathan Deal each won more than 40 percent of the Hispanic vote while holding tough positions on illegal immigration. Arizona governor Doug Ducey and Texas governor Greg Abbott did more than 5 points better than their GOP predecessors with Hispanics. It helps that Republicans have also elected impressive Hispanic pols, such as Marco Rubio, Ted Cruz, Susana Martinez, and Brian Sandoval. — Mark Hemingway[4]

Indeed, Jeb Bush is the very embodiment of insider privilege. Nobody else’s camp can raise more than $100 million in half a year, merely by trading on a last name and twisting arms. Nobody else sits on his throne and dismisses illegal immigration as “acts of love,” while intimating that those who object to it are less than loving. Nobody so frequently looks peevish when confronted with the actual necessities of campaigning among “ordinary” people. — Quin Hillyer[5]

Deciding who is eligible to complain about microaggressions is itself an act by which the majority imposes its will, and it is felt as alienating by the minorities who are effectively told that they don’t have the same right to ask for decent treatment as other groups. — Megan McArdle[6]

Rules on immigration and refugees are made by safe people. These are the people who help run countries, who have nice homes in nice neighborhoods and are protected by their status. Those who live with the effects of immigration and asylum law are those who are less safe, who see a less beautiful face in it because they are daily confronted with a less beautiful reality—normal human roughness, human tensions. Decision-makers fear things like harsh words from the writers of editorials; normal human beings fear things like street crime. Decision-makers have the luxury of seeing life in the abstract. Normal people feel the implications of their decisions in the particular.

The decision-makers feel disdain for the anxieties of normal people, and ascribe them to small-minded bigotries, often religious and racial, and ignorant antagonisms. But normal people prize order because they can’t buy their way out of disorder.

People in gated communities of the mind, who glide by in Ubers, have bought their way out and are safe. Not to mention those in government-maintained mansions who glide by in SUVs followed by security details. Rulers can afford to see national-security threats as an abstraction—yes, yes, we must better integrate our new populations. But the unprotected, the vulnerable, have a right and a reason to worry. — Peggy Noonan[7]

Here is the challenge for people in politics: The better you do, the higher you go, the more detached you become from real life. — Peggy Noonan[7]

The biggest thing leaders don’t do now is listen. They no longer hear the voices of common people. Or they imitate what they think it is and it sounds backward and embarrassing. In this age we will see political leaders, and institutions, rock, shatter and fall due to that deafness. — Peggy Noonan[7]

If you understand that feminism is, in part, a leveling mechanism used by less-attractive women against more-attractive women, it will make sense. — Glenn Reynolds[8]

Two thoughts: First, when you tell people from poor countries that the doors are open to rich countries, a lot more will show up than you expect. Second, when your foreign policy is dominated by virtue-signaling and conspicuous displays of “compassion,” it will end badly. — Glen Reynolds[9]

If you want to fulfill your duty as a citizen, then you need to become an informed voter. And if you are not informed, then the most patriotic thing you can do on election day is stay home. — Thomas Sowell[10]

Modern journalism is all about deciding which facts the public shouldn’t know because they might reflect badly on Democrats. — Jim Treacher[11]

We will have so much winning if I get elected that you may get bored with winning. — Donald Trump[12]