Joseph Sobran is an American journalist who has written extensively on American politics and culture. His columns have been nationally syndicated since 1979, beginning with the Los Angeles Times, then Universal Press, and now Griffin Internet. He also writes for The Wanderer, a weekly Catholic newspaper.

Attributed

• After tens of millions of [abortion] 'procedures', has America lost anything? Another Edison, perhaps? A Gershwin? A Babe Ruth? A Duke Ellington? ...As it is, we will never know what abortion has cost us all.

• Altering the Constitution has become the daily business of the Federal Government which the document is supposed to guide and limit. Both Congress and the judiciary assume, and exercise, countless powers they aren't entitled to.

• Anything called a "program" is unconstitutional.

• Democracy has proved only that the best way to gain power over people is to assure the people that they are ruling themselves. Once they believe that, they make wonderfully submissive slaves.

• Freedom is coming to mean little more than the right to ask permission.

• If you want government to intervene domestically, you're a liberal. If you want government to intervene overseas, you're a conservative. If you want government to intervene everywhere, you're a moderate. If you don't want government to intervene anywhere, you're an extremist.

• In one century we went from teaching Latin and Greek in high school to offering remedial English in college.

• Most Americans aren't the sort of citizens the Founding Fathers expected; they are contented serfs. Far from being active critics of government, they assume that its might makes it right.

• "Need" now means wanting someone else's money. "Greed" means wanting to keep your own. "Compassion" is when a politician arranges the transfer.

• People who create things nowadays can expect to be prosecuted by highly moralistic people who are incapable of creating anything. There is no way to measure the chilling effect on innovation that results from the threats of taxation, regulation and prosecution against anything that succeeds. We'll never know how many ideas our government has aborted in the name protecting us.

• Politicians never accuse you of 'greed' for wanting other people's money --- only for wanting to keep your own money.

• Politics is the conspiracy of the unproductive but organized against the productive but unorganized.

• President Bush says Islam is a “religion of peace” that has been “hijacked” by a few nuts. He would know.

• Since outright slavery has been discredited, "democracy" is the only remaining rationale for state compulsion that most people will accept.

• ...[T]he Constitution conferred only a few specific powers on the federal government, all others being denied to it (as the Tenth Amendment would make plain). Unfortunately, only a tiny fraction of the U.S. population today -- [according to liberals] -- can grasp such nuances. Too bad. The Constitution wasn't meant to be a brain-twister.

• The Constitution poses no threat to our current form of government.

• The prospect of a government that treats all its citizens as criminal suspects is more terrifying than any terrorist. And even more frightening is a citizenry that can accept the surrender of its freedoms as the price of "freedom".

• Voters who live off taxpayers are the Democrats' ace in the hole. The Democrats created big programs and never let the recipients forget it. This gives them an initial advantage of tens of millions of votes in any presidential election.

• War has all the characteristics of socialism most conservatives hate: Centralized power, state planning, false rationalism, restricted liberties, foolish optimism about intended results, and blindness to unintended secondary results.

• War is just one more big government program.

• War nearly always serves as an occasion for serious expansions of state power and the destruction of legal protections.

• Yes, government is far too big. But that's not to say that it has much control. It makes a million laws and can't enforce most of them. So many laws, so little order.

• When a politician wrestles with his conscience, he usually wins.