Gay people exist. There's nothing we can do in public policy that makes more of us exist, or less of us exist. And you guys have been arguing for a generation that public policy ought to essentially demean gay people as a way of expressing disapproval of the fact that we exist, but you don't make any less of us exist. You just are arguing in favor of more discrimination, and more discrimination doesn't make straight people's lives any better.
Rachel MaddowHere in the United States, when the term "fascist" gets used, it`s either talking about other countries, ancient history or it`s used as a sort of insult, right, a sort of generic right wing epithet that people use to criticize politicians who are at most on the edge of mainstream American political thought.
Rachel MaddowRidding Iraq of weapons of mass destruction. That was the whole idea, right? Thatโs why we went. I am reluctant to let that fact disappear down the memory hole, because if โ as the war ends, or at least starts to end โ if, at this time, the history of the war is written as us going there to topple the regime of a bad man when that frankly isnโt why were told that we were going there โ Arenโt we still at risk of making this horrific mistake again? And, arenโt we letting the people who foisted the WMD idea on us, not many years ago, arenโt we sort of letting them get away with it?
Rachel MaddowI'm undoubtedly a liberal, which means that I'm in almost total agreement with the Eisenhower-era Republican party platform.
Rachel MaddowIf the colonists hadn't rejected British militarism and the massive financial burden of maintaining the British military, America wouldn't exist.
Rachel MaddowMy idea of what was going on in politics was driven by activism. I came out when I was 17, and right away I started working in the AIDS activist movement. For me, politics was about getting drugs approved and getting prisoners access to the same kind of drugs that you could get on the outside. It was about getting needle exchanges approved. That was politics. These were policy problems that were killing people, and we were trying to get them changed.
Rachel Maddow