Ultimately, however, as the Austrian economist Joseph Schumpeter pointed out, a powerful bureaucratic class is in the same relation to commerce as was the scorpion in Aesop to the dog on whose back he crossed the river. They will destroy commerce and establish socialism, even if it kills them, because that is their nature.
John DerbyshireWhat does the Right have to show for eight years of a Republican presidency? I supported George W. Bush in 2000 because I thought he had a conservative bone in his body somewhere. I supported him in 2004 because I thought him the lesser of two evils. At this point, I wouldn't let the fool park his car in my driveway. Bruce Bartlett was right, every damn word.
John DerbyshireConservatism is pessimistic, with a negative tendency - which we mostly resist - towards despair. Liberals are optimists, with a negative tendency, rarely resisted, towards utopianism.
John DerbyshireI preach that odd defiant melancholy that sees the dreadful loneliness of the human soul and the pitiful disaster of human life as ever redeemable and redeemed by compassion, friendship and love.
John DerbyshireEducation is a vast sea of lies, waste, corruption, crackpot theorizing, and careerist log-rolling.
John DerbyshireNonmathematical people sometimes ask me, โYou know math, huh? Tell me something Iโve always wondered, What is infinity divided by infinity?โ I can only reply, โThe words you just uttered do not make sense. That was not a mathematical sentence. You spoke of โinfinityโ as if it were a number. Itโs not. You may as well ask, 'What is truth divided by beauty?โ I have no clue. I only know how to divide numbers. โInfinity,โ โtruth,โ โbeautyโโthose are not numbers.
John Derbyshire