Top 30 Bill Kristol Quotes

Power tends to corrupt – so we should, in both the public and the private spheres, be on guard against, and erect sturdy guardrails against, the corruptions of power.

Lest conservatives be too proud, it’s worth recalling that conservatism’s rise was decisively enabled by liberalism’s weakness.

In many cases, it’s a choice. There are many, many human beings through history – millions and millions and millions – who have been both homosexual at times in their lives and then heterosexual, or vice-versa, or bisexual. How can it be a biological imperative if people can change?

If terror groups are to be defeated, it is national governments that will have to do so. In nations like India, governments will have to call on the patriotism of citizens to fight the terrorists. In a nation like Pakistan, the government will have to be persuaded to deal with those in their midst who are complicit.

Many of Bush’s defenders have praised him for keeping the country safe since Sept. 11, 2001. He deserves that praise, and I’m perfectly happy to defend most of his surveillance, interrogation and counterterrorism policies against his critics.

In terms of the conservative movement, I do think it would be foolish to deny that Trump has exposed certain aspects of that movement as less healthy than I thought or hoped.

I personally – if I were designing the tax code – would have a tax code in which Mitt Romney paid more than 13 percent, given what I know about the kind of investments he made money from.

The average GOP presidential vote in these last five elections was 44.5 percent. In the last three, it was 48.1 percent. Give Romney an extra point for voter disillusionment with Obama, and a half-point for being better financed than his predecessors. It still strikes me as a path to narrow defeat.

Reagan was the most important American political figure of the latter half of the 20th century. No one was more central to his emergence and success than Bill Buckley.

Conservative policies have on the whole worked – insofar as any set of policies can be said to ‘work’ in the real world. Conservatives of the Reagan-Bush-Gingrich-Bush years have a fair amount to be proud of.

Immigration policy is a complicated issue. Or perhaps one should say immigration policies are complicated, since we have many different immigration laws and practices which interact in complex ways.

First impressions matter. Most people don’t change their political views radically from the ones they first hold.

I was involved in the ‘reformicon’ effort in 2013-2014, which was explicitly, ‘We can’t just Xerox Reagan.’ In the spirit of Reagan, actually, we could rethink things – maybe we need to think more about job-training programs, earned income tax credit, adjust the tax code.

The rule of law is crucial to a civilized society – so we should go out of our way to uphold and strengthen it to the extent possible.

I think the failures of Republican governance led to a distrust of Republican elites, which is fair enough.

I’m trying to uphold what was true about conservatism. I consider myself a Reagan conservative.

In any case, decisions on troop levels in the American system of government are not made by any general or set of generals but by the civilian leadership of the war effort.

I’m choosing not to accept the Trumpification of the GOP as an irreversible fact.

There will be trying times during Obama’s presidency, and liberty will need staunch defenders. Can Obama reshape liberalism to be, as it was under F.D.R., a fighting faith, unapologetically patriotic and strong in the defense of liberty? That would be a service to our country.

All defense secretaries in wartime have, needless to say, made misjudgments.

I had a great ten years at Fox, but it’s also been fun being a free agent.

American history has always had elements of what we now think of as Trumpism – Joe McCarthy, George Wallace, Father Coughlin. It’s not as if these things haven’t always existed, and they were powerful. The big difference is Trump is president.

If Romney explains why where we are with Obama is unacceptable, why whither we are tending is even worse – and why his own alternative path forward is superior – then we trust the American people to make the right choice in November.

To the credit of the Republican Party and the conservative movement, people have been expelled or marginalized. Pat Buchanan in the ’90s. Ron Paul, Rand Paul in the first decade of this century. Bill Buckley famously expelled the Birchers in 1964. It’s been a movement that’s tried to maintain its boundaries.

Surely our inaction with respect to Syria is a poor precedent if we’re fighting a war on terror.

The Republican ticket in 2012 was Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan. Whatever again you think of them, that’s not a dumbed-down ticket.

Republican government presupposes decent and admirable qualities among its citizens – so we should be serious about strengthening character and inculcating virtue.

Here’s one measure of the man and the scope of his achievement: No serious historian will be able to write about 20th-century America without discussing Bill Buckley. Before Buckley, there was no conservative movement. After Buckley, there was Ronald Reagan.

Since Ronald Reagan’s election in 1980, conservatives of various sorts, and conservatisms of various stripes, have generally been in the ascendancy. And a good thing, too! Conservatives have been right more often than not – and more often than liberals – about most of the important issues of the day.

Shouldn’t Democrats insist that Sen. Durbin step down as their whip, the number two man in their leadership?