Peter Beinart QUOTES

1 " It's easy to see why conservatives would be salivating at the thought of a Hillary primary challenge. Presidents who face serious primary challenges—Ford, Carter, Bush I—almost always lose. The last president who lost reelection without a serious primary challenge, by contrast, was Herbert Hoover. But in truth, the chances that Obama will face a primary challenge are vanishingly slim, and the chances that he will lose reelection only slightly higher. No wonder conservatives are fantasizing about Hillary Clinton taking down Barack Obama. If she doesn't, it's unlikely they will. "

― Peter Beinart

2 " Fears don't exist in isolation. They tend to rise and fall depending on what people think they can do about them. "

― Peter Beinart , The Icarus Syndrome: A History of American Hubris

3 " For more than a half-century, anti-intellectualism has had a pretty good run in presidential politics. In fact, Republicans would never have gotten where they are without it. "

― Peter Beinart

4 " The shape of Soviet power,” Kennan explained, “is like that of a tree which has been bent in infancy and twisted into a certain pattern. It can be caused to grow back into another form; but not by any sudden or violent application of force. The effect can be produced only by the exertion of steady pressure over a period of years in the right direction. "

― Peter Beinart , The Good Fight: Why Liberals - and Only Liberals - Can Win the War on Terror and Make America Great Again

5 " for all of their accomplishments, Americans should not fall in love with their own virtue, and should not expect non-Americans to take that virtue on faith. "

― Peter Beinart , The Good Fight: Why Liberals - and Only Liberals - Can Win the War on Terror and Make America Great Again

6 " We all have to recognize—no matter how great our strength,” Truman declared, “that we must deny ourselves the license to do always as we please. "

― Peter Beinart , The Good Fight: Why Liberals - and Only Liberals - Can Win the War on Terror and Make America Great Again

7 " Rustin foresaw a terrible chain reaction: black violence, inflamed by militant black leadership, producing a white backlash that would destroy liberalism just when it was poised to produce real change. "

― Peter Beinart , The Good Fight: Why Liberals - and Only Liberals - Can Win the War on Terror and Make America Great Again

8 " North and South Vietnam were meant to be reunified in national elections two years later, but Saigon—with Washington’s support—reneged. "

― Peter Beinart , The Good Fight: Why Liberals - and Only Liberals - Can Win the War on Terror and Make America Great Again

9 " After China’s fall to the Communists in 1949, which McCarthy and his allies deemed a stab in the back by a treasonous State Department, the Far Eastern Affairs division had been gutted, its most gifted analysts farmed out to other bureaus or hounded out of government altogether. "

― Peter Beinart , The Good Fight: Why Liberals - and Only Liberals - Can Win the War on Terror and Make America Great Again

10 " But exacerbating those differences was exactly what Nixon had in mind. Years later, former Nixon aide John Ehrlichman would write that the president took great pleasure “in constructing a political dilemma for the labor union leaders and the civil rights groups. "

― Peter Beinart , The Good Fight: Why Liberals - and Only Liberals - Can Win the War on Terror and Make America Great Again

11 " In 1968, George Wallace ran for president again, this time not merely against civil rights, but against the antiwar movement as well. He appealed to the “average man in the street, this man in the textile mill, this man in the steel mill, this barber, this beautician, the policeman on the beat.” And he delighted his blue-collar crowds by taunting the student left. “If any demonstrator lies down in front of my car when I’m President,” he vowed, “that’ll be the last car he lays down in front of. "

― Peter Beinart , The Good Fight: Why Liberals - and Only Liberals - Can Win the War on Terror and Make America Great Again

12 " John Kenneth Galbraith, “on the shrewd notion that people who are insecure, hungry, and without hope are not ardent defenders of liberal institutions or discriminating in the political systems they embrace. "

― Peter Beinart , The Good Fight: Why Liberals - and Only Liberals - Can Win the War on Terror and Make America Great Again