David Frum
18 quotes
Biography
"An American-led overthrow of Saddam Hussein - and the replacement of the radical Baathist dictatorship with a new government more closely aligned with the United States would put America more wholly in charge of the region than any power since the Ottomans, or maybe even the Romans."
"When you just look at the map of American elections, I mean, barring some truly extraordinary event that utterly destroys the credibility of the incumbent presidential party, it’s very hard to see that Donald Trump, who is so unacceptable to so many groups in American society, can beat Hillary Clinton."
"When liberals insist that only fascists will defend borders, then voters will hire fascists to do the job liberals won't do."
"As President Trump is cruel, vengeful, egoistic, ignorant, lazy, avaricious, and treacherous, so we must be kind, forgiving, responsible, informed, hardworking, generous, and patriotic."
"The thing to fear from the Trump presidency is not the bold overthrow of the Constitution, but the stealthy paralysis of governance; not the open defiance of law, but an accumulating subversion of norms; not the deployment of state power to intimidate dissidents, but the incitement of private violence to radicalize supporters. Trump operates not by strategy, but by instinct. His great skill is to sniff his opponents' vulnerabilities: "low energy", "little", "crooked", "fake". In the same way, Trump has intuited the weak points in the American political system and in American political culture. Trump gambled that Americans resent each other's differences more than they cherish their shared democracy. So far, that gamble has paid off."
"If conservatives become convinced that they cannot win democratically, they will not abandon conservatism. They will reject democracy."
"Anti-Semitism itself is a conspiracy theory... Anti-Semitism differs in this respect from racism, xenophobia, misogyny, and homophobia. Those other bigotries are founded on contempt. Anti-Semitism, like all forms of conspiracism, is founded on paranoia. Which is why people who start down any conspiracy-seeking path so often arrive at anti-Semitism. The pull is hard to resist, because the idea of Jews as arch-manipulators is such a powerful cultural resource."
"At the very beginning of the first Trump presidency, back in 2017, I posted on Twitter the following thought: “Regular reminder that Donald Trump’s core competency is not dealmaking with powerful counter-parties. It is duping gullible victims.”"
"We, as conservative intellectuals, should not be in the business of making excuses for bad parliamentary decisions by Republican leaders in Congress."
"Why should we not expect self-designated environmental leaders to practice what they preach?"
"I'm a latecomer to the environmental issue, which for years seemed to me like an excuse for more government regulation. But I can see that in rich societies, voters are paying less attention to economic issues and more to issues of the spirit, including the environment."
"So if I have two pieces of cake, do I have twice as good an experience as the first piece of cake? One of the things I've found in life is that the first piece of cake is the best."
"My mom was truly an iconic figure, a great journalist and a pioneering woman who died at 54 of cancer without ever having revealed to viewers that she was ill."
"To balance China, the democracies will need new friends - and India with its fast-growing economy, youthful population, and democratic politics seems the obvious candidate."
"Whenever you discuss politics, it is always better to use individual names rather then the term neocon."
"Look, the media are trapped by changes in the technology and business of their industry."
"But the thought leaders on talk radio and Fox do more than shape opinion. Backed by their own wing of the book-publishing industry and supported by think tanks that increasingly function as public-relations agencies, conservatives have built a whole alternative knowledge system, with its own facts, its own history, its own laws of economics."
"If right and left are competing to be the biggest victim, who is competing to be the government?"