Best of Steyn

John Hawkins has compiled an awesome list of best Steyn quotes from 2008. Here are a few of my faves from the past year:

9/04/08

I would like to thank the US media for doing such a grand job this last week of lowering expectations by portraying Governor Palin - whoops, I mean Hick-Burg Mayor Palin - as a hillbilly know-nothing permapregnant ditz, half of whose 27 kids are the spawn of a stump-toothed uncle who hasn't worked since he was an extra in Deliverance.

10/30/08

And tonight Chris Matthews' doctors announced that his leg tingle has metastasized leaving his entire body like a vibrating cellphone whose ringtone is locked on "I'm In Love, I'm In Love, I'm In Love, I'm In Love, I'm In Love With A Wonderful Guy."

11/21/08

If it bleeds, it leads

I didn't think I could like Sarah Palin more than I do, but the nancy boys at MSNBC bleating all over the screen about the Great Turkey Carnage is hilarious. This is a great caption:

TURKEYS DIE AS GOVERNOR PALIN TAKES QUESTIONS FROM MEDIA

Or was it: MEDIA DIE AS GOVERNOR PALIN TAKES QUESTIONS FROM TURKEYS.

12/18/08

Poor fellows. It's six weeks since the end of the election campaign, and they're still capitalizing abstract nouns.

12/26/08

To live is messy but liberating: free societies enable the citizenry to fulfill their potential – to innovate, to create, to accumulate – while recognizing that some of their number will fail. But to attempt to insulate free peoples from moral hazard is debilitating and ultimately fatal.

1/05/09:

Liberalism is the default mode of the culture — to the point where the left-of-center position is so pervasive it's no longer a position at all, but rather something uncontentious, received wisdom, part of the air we breathe.

1/10/09:

Hamas is a mental illness masquerading as a nationalist movement.

01/30/09:

"If the Democratic Party wants it, it's 'stimulus.' If the Republican Party opposes it, it's "politics . . .'"

Re the stimulus:

And by then we’ll probably need a new round number. What’s the name for the avalanche of dough that comes after a trillion? I asked Senator-designate Caroline Kennedy, and she said: “Cotillion?” Close enough. By 2011, we’ll need a cotillion-dollar stimulus package to . . . um, “create jobs” and, er, “help middle-class families.”

2/11/09:

"To discard “the West” with nary a thought is to reject not race but the civilization that built the modern world, and the even smaller group of countries within it that have demonstrated any sustained tradition of liberty.

2/12/09:

When a society loses its memory, it descends inevitably into dementia.

02/13/09

"President Obama chose to nominate Tim "Indispensable" Geithner and Tom "Home, James!" Daschle, men whose enthusiasm for the size of the federal budget is in inverse proportion to their own urge to contribute to it."

3/19/09:

"A land without the law of contract is a banana republic. That's heavy on the change, not so much on the hope."

3/27/09

In their first two months, Obama and Geithner have done nothing but vaporize your wealth, and your children's future. What began as an economic crisis is now principally a political usurpation. And, to return to the president's "false choice," that "chaotic and unforgiving capitalism" is exactly what we need right now.

05/09/09

"Seems like only yesterday that an unmanned drone on the 49th Parallel meant Nelson Eddy doing the 'Indian Love Call'."

07/24/09

"Outside, Sgt. Crowley's mama failed to show."

7/31/09:

Freedom is messy. In free societies, people will fall through the cracks – drink too much, eat too much, buy unaffordable homes, fail to make prudent provision for health care and much else. But the price of being relieved of all those tiresome choices by a benign paternal government is far too high.

Government health care would be wrong even if it "controlled costs." It's a liberty issue. I'd rather be free to choose, even if I make the wrong choices.

A classic:

"A society whose political class elevates "a woman's right to choose" above "go forth and multiply" is a society with a death wish. So today we're the endangered species, not the spotted owl. We're the dwindling resource, not the oil."

Seasonal:

"If I were ever to write my own seasonal advice book, I would do so under the nom de plume (or, indeed, nom de plume pudding) of Persimmon Coxcomb."

Comments welcome.

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