logo

Say thanks by supporting us!

Our website is made possible by displaying online advertisement to our visitors. Please consider supporting to us by disabling your ad blocker.

Processing...

In an ideological age, diplomacy may seem weak and prosaic. But sometimes it is all we have.

- Noah Feldman
logo
Author:
Noah Feldman
Tags:
Age
Diplomacy
Sometimes
Related Quote
Show all

Roosevelt got a chance to name an amazing nine justices of the Supreme Court. He was not namby-pamby on this question. He wanted people who shared his views, he wanted liberals, and he wanted lots of them.

In an ideological age, diplomacy may seem weak and prosaic. But sometimes it is all we have.

The true test of whether Mr. Obama has improved on the Bush era lies in how his administration justifies its decisions on the 241 remaining Guantanamo detainees, whose cases will now be evaluated internally and reviewed by the courts.

The rise of the presidency began with the Louisiana Purchase, which in 1803 doubled the land mass of the United States. History taught the framers that, just as Rome changed from republic to empire with conquest of new lands, territorial acquisition would lead to the centralization of political power.

The Mormons' passage from bugbears of the Republican Party to its stalwarts may be analogized to a similar move among middle-class white Southerners, to whom the Republican Party was anathema until the 1970s and '80s, after which it became almost the sole representative.

The modern presidency, as expressed in the policies of the administration of George W. Bush, provides the strongest piece of evidence that we are governed by a fundamentally different Constitution from that of the framers.

The 1994 elections that brought Newt Gingrich to power in the House decisively shaped the remaining years of Bill Clinton's presidency, pushing him further to the right and bringing out his latent tendency to govern every day as if an election were being held the next.

I have a 2-year-old son, and I know I'm dealing with a big, grand word when I can't point to the thing when I define it. Right? If he wants to know what a chair is, I can point to the chair. If he wants to know what religion is, I can't point to anything in particular. The same is true of the state.

What is driving the tendency to discount Joseph Smith's revelations is not that they seem less reasonable than those of Moses; it is that the book containing them is so new. When it comes to prophecy, antiquity breeds authenticity. Events in the distant past, we tend to think, occurred in sacred, mythic time.

Showcase
Show all

In an ideological age, diplomacy may seem weak and prosaic. But sometimes it is all we have.

In an ideological age, diplomacy may seem weak and prosaic. But sometimes it is all we have.

In an ideological age, diplomacy may seem weak and prosaic. But sometimes it is all we have.

In an ideological age, diplomacy may seem weak and prosaic. But sometimes it is all we have.

In an ideological age, diplomacy may seem weak and prosaic. But sometimes it is all we have.

In an ideological age, diplomacy may seem weak and prosaic. But sometimes it is all we have.

In an ideological age, diplomacy may seem weak and prosaic. But sometimes it is all we have.

In an ideological age, diplomacy may seem weak and prosaic. But sometimes it is all we have.

In an ideological age, diplomacy may seem weak and prosaic. But sometimes it is all we have.

In an ideological age, diplomacy may seem weak and prosaic. But sometimes it is all we have.

In an ideological age, diplomacy may seem weak and prosaic. But sometimes it is all we have.

In an ideological age, diplomacy may seem weak and prosaic. But sometimes it is all we have.

In an ideological age, diplomacy may seem weak and prosaic. But sometimes it is all we have.

In an ideological age, diplomacy may seem weak and prosaic. But sometimes it is all we have.

In an ideological age, diplomacy may seem weak and prosaic. But sometimes it is all we have.