This Week In Quotes (Double Edition): Jan 4 – Jan 17

It occurred to me, after the Sandy Hook murders, that blaming guns is a secular substitute for blaming the devil. People find it too challenging to figure out why a human being would do this terrible thing and they latch on to the idea that the gun made it happen. Suicide presents a similar challenge, and one way to fathom it is to say: It was the gun. Isn’t it like saying the devil made him do it? The gun/the devil is a great go-to answer, freeing you from wracking your brain about the workings of the human mind. — Ann Althouse

The…truth is that the current tax rates cannot support the promises made to middle-class Americans. The most unaffordable items in fiscal projections are Social Security for everyone and government-sponsored health care for the middle class. You cannot preserve these even with Draconian slashing of military, infrastructure, welfare, education, and other expenditures.

The second truth is that you cannot pay for the Life of Julia, or any vision of a cradle-to-grave welfare state, without massive and increasingly regressive middle-class taxes. The poor don’t have the money to pay for a European-style welfare state, and the rich, rich as they are, don’t have anywhere near enough. — Cliff Asness

I believe that women — and the country — would be far better off if all Americans married before having children, stayed married wherever possible, and if at least one parent held down a job. — Mona Charen

To me, the movie had a purpose. If a black man came out of that movie thinking like Django and white people came out of that movie seeing the slaughter of white people and they are armed to the teeth, it’s preparation for a race war. — Louis Farrakhan

Our Bill of Rights isn’t a bill of needs. — Scottie Hughes

I’m not into imperial presidents who act imperial and speak imperial and Obama forgets there’s a Constitution. Yes, he keeps telling us he won reelection. Congratulations, but guess what? The Constitution wasn’t up for election, it’s not up for a referendum or a plebiscite. He has to comply with it, too. — Mark Levin

The imbroglio over Louie Giglio is the clearest evidence of the new Moral McCarthyism of our sexually “tolerant” age. During the infamous McCarthy hearings, witnesses would be asked, “Are you now or have you ever been a member of the Communist Party?” In the version now to be employed by the Presidential Inaugural Committee, the question will be: “Are you now or have you ever been one who believes that homosexuality (or bisexuality, or transsexualism, etc.) is anything less than morally acceptable and worthy of celebration?” — Albert Mohler

Israel doesn’t know what its own best interests are. — Barack Obama

The good thing about Newtown is, it was so horrific that I think it galvanized Americans to a point where the intensity on our side is going to match the intensity on their side. — Ed Rendell

I am the father of the destruction of Western civilization. — Jerry Springer

Not to be too pedantic, but for there to be a “future of conservatism in America” there first has to be a future in America. And that’s a more open question than my more optimistic comrades like to admit. The Brokest Nation in History has just told the rest of the world that it is incapable of serious course correction—and around the planet prudent friends and enemies will begin planning for a post-American order. So at some point reality will intervene—either in the form of total societal collapse or, one hopes, something marginally less convulsive. The first responsibility of conservatives between now and 2016 is to have an adult conversation with the citizenry—the one that Mitt Romney chose to eschew in favor of vague jobs promises punctuated by bold assertions that “I believe in America.” So what? What matters is whether reality still believes in America. — Mark Steyn

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