"Moderate" Republicans such as Arnold Schwarzenegger like to boast that they're fiscal conservatives and social liberals. But the social liberalism always ends up burying the fiscal conservatism.

The industrial powerhouse of 1950 [Detroit] is now a crime-ridden wasteland with a functioning literacy rate equivalent to West African basket-cases.

The long-term cost of a welfare society is the infantilization of the population.

The president has borrowed more money to spend to less effect than anybody on the planet.

But a society that has nothing to die for has nothing to live for . . .

Once a fellow's enjoying the fruits of government health care and all the rest, he couldn't give a hoot about the general societal interest; he's got his, and if it's going to bankrupt the state a generation hence, well, as long as they can keep the checks coming till he's dead, it's fine by him.

What happened to those men and women at Fort Hood had a horrible symbolism: Members of the best trained, best equipped fighting force on the planet gunned down by a guy who said a few goofy things no one took seriously. And that's the problem: America has the best troops and fiercest firepower, but no strategy for throttling the ideology that drives the enemy — in Afghanistan and in Texas.