Max Boot

“The crisis of the old order in Europe produced nearly 80 years of often bloody conflict between democracy and its foes from 1914 to 1991.”

“Mexico attacked United States troops in 1846 because they had moved into disputed border territory; President James Polk used this as a convenient casus belli, but he was preparing a war message for Congress even before the attack.”

“The history of the modern Republican Party is the story of moderates being driven out and conservatives taking over - and then of those conservatives in turn being ousted by those even further to the right.”

“My allegiance to the GOP was cemented during the 1980s, when I was in high school and college and Ronald Reagan was in the White House. For me, Reagan was what John F. Kennedy had been to an earlier generation: an inspirational figure who shaped my worldview.”

“At Mom's funeral, mourner after mourner spoke about what a wonderful teacher she was. She was certainly devoted to her students.”

“As someone who has spent much of my life identifying as a conservative, I can't stand what American conservatism has become.”

“You can debate when the conservative movement became a racket - I nominate 1996, the year Rupert Murdoch and Roger Ailes created Fox News Channel to monetize right-wing outrage - but there is no doubt it has long since passed that point.”

“I have not given up my faith in democracy - it remains the worst form of government except for all the others - but I have given up my youthful expectation that it would inevitably triumph.”

“On both sides of the Atlantic, politics has come to be dominated by vitriolic name-calling and pervasive dishonesty.”

“Political paralysis and partisanship are sabotaging American power.”

“Some people, such as the unemployed coal miners and steelworkers of the Rust Belt, have been left behind by growing prosperity.”

“It is, in fact, precisely to defend the right to free speech that countless patriots have given the last full measure of devotion.”

“Increasingly I feel like a Jew, an immigrant, a Russian - anything but a normal, mainstream American.”

“What's true for New York is true for most of the country: We are a long way removed from the double-digit interest rates and unemployment rates, and the soaring crime rates, of the early 1980s.”

“Growing up in the 1980s, I remember when the GOP was the party of ideas. Now it's brain dead.”

“For years, as a seller of real estate and star of reality TV, Donald Trump made a living wooing customers and viewers. His selling skills were good enough that he even convinced voters to elect him as president in spite of his near-total lack of qualifications.”

“History education in schools is so poor that students often enter college ignorant of the past - and leave just as unenlightened.”

“Before Donald Trump, the Republican Party was a majority conservative party with a white nationalist fringe. Now it's a white nationalist party with a conservative fringe.”

“The 60th anniversary of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima on Aug. 6, 1945, has not so far provoked the kind of anguished debate that accompanied the 50th anniversary. The lack of controversy is fitting because there wasn't much soul-searching at the time.”

“When Democrats aren't being fiscally reckless, they are economically irresponsible. Democrats bemoan corporate greed and have not a positive word to say about the entrepreneurs that have made our economy the envy of the world.”