V

Valentine's Day

“One of the many things I love about my wife is that she doesn't make me do anything for Valentine's Day. Bloody Valentine's. It brings nothing but resentment and misery. It makes single people feel left out and lonely, and turns happy couples against each other.” – FREDDY GRAY (the Managing Editor of the UK SPECTATOR, in Feb. 2014)

Value (and Values)

“A Coke is a Coke and no money can get you a better one.” – ANDY WARHOL

“I don’t see how values can be directly taught. Values are visible in institutions and in the history of those institutions; they can’t be found in the wild and then served raw.” – CHARLES MOORE

“Education without values, as useful as it is, seems rather to make man a more clever devil.” - C. S. LEWIS

"The best things in life are free. The second best are very expensive." – COCO CHANEL (I just read that she was a major collaboratrice during the National Socialist occupation of France. Amazing how her brand – like that of Hugo Boss and Volkswagen – have not only survived, but thrived, unscathed.)

"Everything that can be counted, is; almost by definition, what doesn't matter. Nothing of value can be measured, so it's not valued." -- ALAN JUDD (My man. Judd’s my favorite Brit espionage author.)

Vance, J. D.

"J. D. Vance was picked (for Vice President) not because the working class will necessarily love him but because the contempt rained down on him by the elite and its lapdog regime media will demonstrate that our ruling class will always hate working people who remain true to themselves." -- KURT SCHLICHTER

Vanity

“No man sympathises with the sorrows of vanity.” – DR. SAMUEL JOHNSON

“You never speak about yourself without loss. Your self-condemnation is always accredited, your self-praise discredited.” – MICHEL EYQEM DE MONTAIGNE

"Vanity is the healthiest thing in life." – KARL LAGERFELD

Vegetarians(-ism)

“Vegetarians are of that dreary tribe of high-minded women and sandal-wearers and bearded fruit-juice drinkers who come flocking to the smell of ‘progress’ like blue-bottles to a dead cat.” – GEORGE ORWELL (Actually probably the MOST famous quote, at least disparaging one, ever made on the subject, an admittedly not large pool – and the fact that it was made back in the middle of the ‘30s makes you marvel at how little the “progressive” Left has evolved over the decades…)

“Vegetarians, and their Hezbollah-like splinter-faction, the vegans, are a persistent irritant to any chef worth a damn. To me, life without veal stock, pork fat, sausage, organ meat, demi-glace, or even stinky cheese is a life not worth living. Vegetarians are the enemy of everything good and decent in the human spirit, an affront to all I stand for, the pure enjoyment of food. The body, these waterheads imagine, is a temple that should not be polluted by animal protein. It's healthier, they insist, though every vegetarian waiter I've worked with is brought down by any rumor of a cold." – ANTHONY BOURDAIN

“Of course, for a vegan, it's not just a diet, it's a moral viewpoint that refuses to masticate anything from anything that can feel pain, from the lowliest fish to a Jeb Bush pollster.” -- JAMES LILEKS

“Vegetarianism is the noble rejection of the fierce, bloody, cruel ways of nature – which is totally awesome in all other ways and must be respected, mind you, and if animals eat other animals, it's because they're, well, animals, and we can't judge their culture.” -- JAMES LILEKS

“I am not in favor of killing animals for sport, as it happens, but when it comes to a nice piece of chicken with some mayo and perhaps a dash of Sriracha, that's not morally indistinguishable from a Taliban brigade that blows up a girls' school.” – JAMES LILEKS

"He became sick when he tried vegetarianism. A proselytizing friend of his who suggested it was thin and the color of ashes in the fireplace flue." -- MARK HELPRIN

"Working men can't survive on vegan. Understand this: the fine ladies and gens sitting at their desks in their homes can get by eating cashew milk mozzarella, coconut hummus and scrambled egg substitute made from mung beans (but) manual bororers need meat. Here's an idea for all those pushing the idea of plant-based eating: put the entire working population on veganism for a week and see what happens. Force the road workers, the builders, the plumbers, the men who unblock your drains, the lorry drivers and the car mechanics to eat fake bacon, pretend cheese and 'burgers' made from a grilled mushroom and see what happens. The world would grind to a halt within a few hourse. And it would serve it right." -- MELISSA KITE

“It's less morally culpable to eat a herbivore than a carnivore. Herbivores expect it, carnivores don't.” -- CHARLES FOSTER (the English naturalist and author of his eccentric tome “Being A Beast”)

Venezuela

“The problem in Venezuela is not that socialism has been poorly implemented but that socialism has been faithfully implemented.” – PRES. DONALD TRUMP (at the UN, 19 Sept. 2017)

"Venezuelans have an astonishing capacity for understatement. If the concept of microaggression were ever introduced to Venezuela, millions would die -- of laughter." -- CHRISTIAN ALEJANDRO GONZALEZ (A junior at Columbia, in NR in Dec. 2018)

“When God was creating the world he finally got to Venezuela. He gave it lovely weather, wonderful beaches, a seemingly endless supply of oil, gold and diamonds and absolutely beautiful women. All the other nations complained, crying ‘How can we possibly compete with a country like that?’ And God replied, ‘Wait till you see the men I put there’.”– SAMUEL M’CHEYNE GLASSER

“For those who aspire to live in a high cost, high tax, big government place, our nation and the world offers plenty of options. Vermont, Canada and Venezuela all offer you the opportunity to live in the socialist, big government paradise you long for.” - MARCO RUBIO

"To kill one person is homicide, to kill an entire people by starvation is called Chavismo." -- OSCAR ARIAS ("Matar a una persona es homicidio, matar a todo un pueblo de hambre se llama chavismo." Senor Arias was twice the President of Costa Rica and won the Nobel Peace Prize)

Vengeance

"Never underestimate how much people enjoy being sadistic toward one another once the politics of vengeance has given them a taste of it." -- MARIO LOYOLA (an excellent fellow who used to be a macher in the Rumsfeld Defense Dept.)

"Vengeance is a moral duty." -- KURT SCHLICHTER (echoing my sentiment precisely)

Venice

"STREETS FULL OF WATER. ADVISE." -- ROBERT BENCHLEY ( all in capitals because this was a telegram to his agent back in the US)

Vermont

"Fuck Vermont. I've been wanting to say that my entire life." -- JOE QUEENAN (He was 50 when he wrote this.)

Veterans

“Old soldiers never die, their livers fade away.” — HARRY SECOMBE (one of the legendary "Goons", along with Peter Sellers and Spike Milligan, on BBC radio in the 50s)

Vice

“I try to keep my vices to a minimum.” – ANNE B. JOLIS (the editor’s near vice-less daughter)

"Never trust a man who has not a single redeeming vice." -- WINSTON CHURCHILL

“When a religious scheme is shattered it is not merely the vices that are let loose. The vices are, indeed, let loose, and they wander and do damage. But the virtues are let loose also; and the virtues wander more wildly, and the virtues do more terrible damage.” – G. K. CHESTERTON

"It's important to have at least one obvious vice. Never trust people with vices you can't see. They've got worse ones." -- ALAN JUDD

"The hide-and-seek with one's own personality redeems vice of its tedium." -- EVELYN WAUGH

“Most of our vices arise from the abuse of our leisure hours.” – JOHN D. HALLIDAY (in the UK SPECTATOR, August 2020)

"Vice always arrives disguised as virtue -- no exceptions." -- RYAN MEADE (a "legal philosopher" at Oxford Univ.)

Vice President, the U.S.

"The vice presidency is like the last cookie on the plate. Nobody wants it, but somebody always takes it.” – CHARLES McCARRY

Victimhood

"It takes a lot of clout to be a victim". -- JOE SOBRAN (one of the greatest conservative columnists ever, who got, unfortunately, bounced from NATIONAL REVIEW by Boss Bill Fabuckley for perceived anti-semitism.)

“The holy grail of political warfare is to win the sympathy of the global Left by presenting oneself as underdog and victim. (From a historic point of view, it bears pointing out, this is very strange: Traditionally, combatants tried to scare the enemy by presenting themselves as fearsome and unstoppable.)” – DANIEL PIPES

“People who see themselves as victims lose their conscience — especially when they aren’t.” – DENNIS PRAGER

“Perceiving oneself as a victim may be the single biggest reason people hurt other people.” – DENNIS PRAGER

"Americans are forever brooding over advantages they do not possess." -- ALEXIS DE TOCQUEVILLE

“We can all be victims of something. But if we really are all victims, then it seems to me that there are no victims at all. It is all just life, with its tiresome vicissitudes, its hurful impositions, its utter unfairness.” -- ROD LIDDLE

“Blame is envy’s bad-seed baby. It’s trying to win by pretending to lose. And since we’re talking about bad seeds, victimhood is envy’s sibling.” – BRIAN T. ALLEN (an art historian)

“It is from America that we have imported the morally and rationally bereft progressive ideology that insists that if people feel they have been victimized, then they have been.” – ROD LIDDLE (in March 2021)

“Victimhood never did anyone any good.” – LIAM KENNEDY (The author of “Who Was Responsible For The Troubles?”, was actually quoting some anonymous Israeli, so Liam gets the nod as the author...)

"As far as who are the Tarantulas, I believe those are those who feel they're a victim and are seeking vengeance and preach of Justice. But their requirements for justice and thirst for vengeance can never be met. Like a tarantula sucking their prey dry, these people drain others by guilting them into reparations for a perceived victimization." -- FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE

Victory

“A victory is a victory is a victory. It is just like a defeat in that, whatever it is, you certainly know it when you’ve had one.” – SION SIMON (columnist in “The Daily Telegraph”, in April 1999)

“Victory in combat is like sex with a prostitute. For a moment you forget everything in the sudden physical rush, but then you have to pay your money to the woman showing you the door. You see the dirt on the walls and your sorry age in the mirror.” – KARL MARLANTES

Vienna

“Vienna is the cholesterol capital of the world.” – PETER BIDDLECOMBE

Vietnam

“The people of Cochin-China (South Vietnam) differ much more from the Tonkinese (North Vietnamese) than they do from the Siamese. If one sees Cochin-China (the South) in colours of green and gold, one sees Tonkin (the North) only in brown and black. In Tonkin the population is physically more solid than in the south, the climate harsher, the clothing coarser, the women less pretty (!) and gambling is forbidden (!!).” – GRAHAM GREENE (in 1952, in an article for PARIS-MATCH. The exclamation points were his.)

“Why do we believe in God? This is why: When the French controlled Vietnam, we depended on the French to help us, yet they deserted us. During the Vietnam War, we depended on the Americans – they deserted us too. Now we are in the hands of the enemy, who do you think we can turn to?” – KOK KSOR (Hmong “Montagnard” refugee leader in the U.S., in July 2005)

“For over ten years, bombs rained down on every village and hamlet in South Vietnam, and no one budged. It took the coming of a Communist ‘peace’ to send hundreds of thousands of people out into the South China Sea, on anything that could float, or might float, to risk dehydration, piracy, and drowning – everything” – GEN. VERNON WALTERS (A pal of my mother’s, as it happened. They met when he was part of the “Paris Peace Talks” which began in 1969, when she even prevailed upon him to schlep some copies of “Hara Kiri”(!!!) to me in Saigon, which got me into near deep-kimchee with the unhappy and dubious MACV Col. who was charged with delivering this stuff, which he thought bordered on “pornography” – and he wasn’t all that far off – to me… Extraordinary dude, old Gen. Walters – spoke about 15 languages fluently…)

“All those who do not follow the line that I have set out will be smashed.” – HO CHI MINH (in 1946. Nice. The good old “agrarian reformer”)

"It was interesting that the Viets assumed all Americans were anti-Communist. I guess they hadn't met any Ivy League professors." – NELSON DEMILLE (The excellent best-selling novelist and also 1LT platoon leader in the First Air Cavalry in Vietnam)

“The light at the end of the tunnel had been reached, and it was red.” – DOUGLAS KINNARD (the author of “The War Managers”, 1977)

“In a bitter 1975 article for The New Statesman, most of whose readers supported the Communist Vietnamese, I wrote many things that I should have written many years earlier:

‘It is not true to portray South Vietnam as a fascist regime overthrown by a revolutionary movement. Even at this eleventh hour opposition movements have some right of protest, while Saigon’s press is less timid than London’s in its exposure of rascals in office. The Vietcong, the indigenous Southern Communists, now play only a tiny part in the war; the Saigon proletariat, which ignored two calls for an uprising in 1968, seems more apathetic than revolutionary. What began as a guerrilla war has turned into an old-fashioned conventional invasion of the South by the North, which has an immense advantage in tanks, artillery and divisions. It is distasteful, here in Saigon, to read the gloating tone of some foreign newspapers over the fate of anti-Communists here. The gloating is unacceptable from the rich radical chic who are even now doubtless planning to hire a refugee South Vietnamese au pair girl’.” – RICHARD WEST (in 1996)

“Unlike the inhabitants of some other Communist countries, the South Vietnamese expressed their detestation of the regime. Even those who had endured ‘re-education courses’ (the labour camps) or exile in the ‘New Economic Zones’ (known as ‘monkey houses’) were willing to talk of their experiences. People hated most of all the shameful sessions of ‘Marxist self-criticism’.” – RICHARD WEST (in 1980)

“Most American writers on South Vietnam have ignored what happened there between the end of 1972 and the fall of Saigon in 1975. They have not woken up to the fact that by the end, the overwhelming majority of the Southerners were anti-Communist and indeed pro-American. They have clung to the slogans and misconceptions of twenty or thirty years ago. Most writers on Vietnam have succumbed to the old temptation to think that because something happened it must have been bound to happened; that South Vietnam was doomed to be Communist.” – RICHARD WEST

“Today, we have two Vietnams, side by side, North and South, exchanging and working. We may not agree with all that North Vietnam is doing, but they are living in peace.” – SHEILA JACKSON LEE (The black Democrat Congresswoman from inner-city Houston, and she said this.... in 2010!!!)

"In Saigon, 'before' always meant before 1975, and when one talked about before 1975 it paid to be careful, even among friends." -- JAMES WEBB (Ex-senator, decorated USMC Vietnam War platoon-leader, and author of the great "Fields Of Fire", in 2001)

"The Vietnamese were the great spies of Asia, not only because they were great masters of intuition but because they genuinely loved the game." -- JAMES WEBB

“They looked young, but Viets always looked younger than they were, until they got to be twenty-five or so, then they always looked older. Especially the women.” – LARRY HEINEMANN (in my experience, you can say the same for Russians and Greeks.)

Vietnam War, The

“Our armies never lost in Vietnam, and Vietnam only fell after our armies had been withdrawn and our politicians reneged on their promise to re-supply the South Vietnamese and bomb the North Vietnamese in the event of further aggression against the South.” – R. EMMETT TYRRELL, JR.

‘Those of us who were opposed to the U.S. effort in Indochina (as I was) should be at the least very humble in the face of the aftermath of America’s defeat. The bloodbath theory was not, as leftists maintained in the 1960s and 1970s, CIA propaganda. It happened as soon as the Communists won in 1975.” – WILLIAM SHAWCROSS (the “celebrated” author of SIDESHOW, in Sept. 2005. I say “celebrated” because when he wrote that attack on Nixon and the American effort in Indochina, he was lauded by the usual claque of anti-American cognoscenti, but, of course – like John dos Passos decades before him – now that he’s seen the light, he’s either ignored or reviled by his peers… A good and wise man.)

“The American effort in Vietnam, however ultimately unsuccessful in the peninsula, held the line long enough to permit the secure establishment of a democratic market economy outside Indo-China itself. The existence in liberty of the ASEAN and the prosperity and independence of Japan, South Korea and Taiwan all spring from US resistance to tyranny in Vietnam. They are monuments to the American dead in Indo-China, and to all those men of the US armed forces whose presence in Vietnam gave the rest of Asia the time to grow, un-harassed and at peace. That was not in vain.” – JOHN COLVIN (British Consul-General in Hanoi, 1965-67, from his 1991 autobiography “Around The World”)

“The final defeat in Vietnam is inexplicable apart from Watergate.” – VICTOR DAVIS HANSON (pre-cise-ly.)

“Given the horrors of what happened afterwards in Indochina I think that all of us who opposed the American war effort need to be very humble.” – HENRY KISSINGER

"When he came into office there were 500,000 Americans in Vietnam and 50,000 in transit. He felt the mental, political and strategic problem was: how to withdraw these people without betraying the individuals in the region that had risked their lives by throwing their lot in with democracy. So the only real issue for Nixon and me in the Vietnam war was whether we were able to withdraw these forces under conditions in which the non-communist part of Vietnam was given a real political opportunity to sustain itself. In my opinion, he achieved this and then it collapsed not in Vietnam, but in Washington as a result of Watergate." -- HENRY KISSINGER (in an interview with the British historian Andrew Roberts, reported in the UK SPECTATOR on 2 July 2022. And the italics are mine.)

“We will be fighting the Vietnam War for the rest of our lives.” – GEORGE McGOVERN (Yes, George. And thanks, in no small part, to you. And the moral bankrupts who agreed with you. You warmed-over turd.)

“It’s customary to say that we lost the Vietnam war, but who’s ‘we’?” – DINESH D’SOUZA

"It was very misunderstood. I thought we won, but apparently we didn’t. We actually kicked their butts, killed a lot of them." -- NELSON DEMILLE (himself a decorated Vietnam vet — DeMille was an infantry platoon-leader with the 1st Air Cav… during Tet ‘68.)

“The Vietnam war was lost on the television screens of the United States.” – SIR ROBERT THOMPSON

“We will win the Vietnam War not in Vietnam, not at the Paris talks, but in the streets of America.” – YURI ANDROPOV (Head of the KGB, here addressing the Soviet Politburo in 1972, as quoted by the Soviet defector Arkady Schevchenko. By the way, please note the “We”. Of course, Andropov would go on to become, if only briefly, Top Commie. Certainly he knew what he was talking about regarding the Vietnam War.)

“And those who are not convinced that our soldiers did their job in Vietnam should ask the North Vietnamese how they lost 900,000 soldiers dead. Better yet, they might go to Hanoi and try to find someone my age..” – SENATOR JAMES WEBB (The author of the best Vietnam novel, “Fields of Fire” — other than P.N. Gwynne’s “Imperialist Warmonger Pig”, of course. He said this before he became a Democrat senator.)

"Fuck 'em. Just fuck 'em. Fuck everybody who doesn't come out here and do this." -- JAMES WEBB (actually spoken by Lt. Hodges, in Webb's seminal 1978 Vietnam War novel, "Fields Of Fire")

“After the Tet offensive of February 1968, although battlefield conditions markedly improved (for the U.S.) over the next two years, attitudes had hardened agains the war and against our South Vietnamese allies.” – BING WEST (in September 2006)

“In South Vietnam, the guerrilla forces (Viet Cong) were decimated and the North Vietnamese regular divisions had to fall far back into the jungles. But in the United States, the anti-war student protests gained momentum and most Democratic members of Congress turned in unified opposition against the war.

Nixon’s resignation sealed the fate of South Vietnam. By 1973, President Nixon had withdrawn American troops, while promising fulsome (sic) military supplies to the South Vietnamese and heavy aerial bombing against any North Vietnamese offensive. Once he resigned, the Democratic majority in Congress forbade any bombing in Southeast Asia and slashed military supplies to South Vietnam. In contrast, Russia and China provided North Vietnam with a vast quantity of trucks, armor, artillery, and munitions. On April 30, 1975, Saigon surrendered to North Vietnamese forces.

After Nixon’s resignation, we chose by our democratic process to quit in South Vietnam. We cut our aid and walked away. South Vietnam did not fall due to historical predestination, or to irremediable faults in South Vietnamese leadership.” – BING WEST (Bing West fought as a Marine grunt in Vietnam in 1966–67. In 1971 Defense Secretary Melvin Laird sent him to Cambodia to assess the Cambodian army. In 1975, he served as Special Assistant to Defense Secretary James Schlesinger as Saigon fell. He has written two books and numerous analyses about the Vietnam war. His latest book is “The Last Platoon: A Novel of the Afghanistan War)

“It is hard to understand how we could have worked so hard, been so successful, and yet we lost the country. It was as if the referees had decided the game.”—JAMES E. PARKER, Jr. (One of my fellow CIA paramilitary “case officers” in northern Laos. His code name was “Mule”. Wrote a terrific book about it, which happens to be called “Codename: Mule”. By the way, in case you’re wondering, my code name up there was – rather extraordinarily -- “Hippie”. In this quote Mule was specifically referring to our “secret war” in northern Laos, but he had already served a tour in Vietnam, and went on to serve another tour there – in fact, he was the last armed American to leave Vietnam, Republic of, in 1975 – after those Air America helicopters. Don’t ask.)

"Under Johnson and Westmoreland we lost a war the establishment said we were winning. Under Abrams and Nixon we won one they said we were losing." -- ROBERT MESSENGER (The Books Editor of the WSJ, he was a senior editor of THE WEEKLY STANDARD, in his terrific article on Dien Bien Phu, in the 13 September 2010 issue, called "Theirs But To Do And Die")

“The United States won the Vietnam War. America was never defeated on the battlefield, after all, and the United States compelled North Vietnam to sign a peace treaty. When American troops left South Vietnam, it was still a sovereign, independent, non-Communist country, and American troops had also given the rest of East Asia a 2 1/2-year breathing space from Communist expansion. It was only after the liberal Democrat Congress refused to hold North Vietnam accountable for violating the peace accords and walked away from America's commitment to South Vietnam that victory became defeat.” – JAMES DELINGPOLE

"I was caught up in the hysteria during the Vietnam era, which was brought about through Marxist propaganda underlying the so-called peace movement. The radicals of that era were successful in giving the communists power to bring forth the killing fields and slaughter 2.5 million people in Cambodia and South Vietnam." -- JON VOIGHT

"The American boys in Vietnam never lost a battle. What happened was that the war turned into a battlefield for various home-baked points of view." -- VASSILY AKSYONOV (the Russian writer who emigrated to America, writing here in 1985 -- and although he's 100% accurate, he's putting it rather, er... politely)

"I hope to see you soon, but even if I don't, allow me to offer my personal congratulations for the work you've done and the very pure and dramatic victory you've accomplished. I can only feel saddened by all the pain and death and suffering this ugly war has caused on all sides, but your victory, I think, is a victory for all of us who believe that man is still ccapable of making this world a better, more peaceful and generous place for all our sons and daughters to live in." -- HUNTER S. THOMPSON (He wrote this in May 1975 to Col. Vo Dan Giang, then the official spokesman for the "victorious", "PRG" -- People's Revolutionary Government, "Vietcong" -- in Saigon. And I believe these are the most disgusting words I've ever read written by a putative American. I mean, I'm normally a big fan of Hunter Thompson, but like so many others, he was driven literally cukoo by our efforts to keep the commies out of Vietnam. A bit like Trump would do to the same idiots, or their progeny, 40+ years later.... Anyway, I had to force myself to type this vile entry.)

“The light at the end of the tunnel had been reached, and it was red.” – DOUGLAS KINNARD (From his 1977 book “The War Managers”)

“Despite the fact that the Democrats had plunged the country into Vietnam without any proper authorization, mismanaged the war, and lost control of domestic opinion, they, with the eager complicity of the national media, abandoned their former leaders and became anti-war agitators, and the entire Democratic establishment except Scoop Jackson set out to inflict defeat on the U.S. while Nixon and Kissinger worked with great skill and often courage to extract America from the war while salvaging a non-Communist government in South Vietnam, in obvious conformity with the wishes of most of the people of South Vietnam.” – CONRAD BLACK (The conservative Canadian press baron – a good guy, wrongly pilloried and convicted. Later 90% exonerated.)

“Nixon salvaged the Vietnam War the Democrats had pushed their own leader, Lyndon Johnson, into. The Democrats gave up on LBJ and pushed him out of the Forum, and he waited to die peacefully on his farm. They instantly made it Nixon’s war, and went to unimaginable lengths to depose him, to sever aid to South Vietnam, and to deliver Indochina to Hanoi and the Khmer Rouge.” – CONRAD BLACK

“Nixon withdrew from Vietnam while retaining a non-Communist government in Saigon, but the Democrats, exploiting Nixon’s mismanagement of the trivial Watergate affair, brought his administration down and abandoned Indochina.” – CONRAD BLACK (in May 2020, in NRO)

“During the Vietnam War we spread vitriolic stories around the world, pretending that America's presidents sent Genghis Khan-style barbarian soldiers to Vietnam who raped at random, taped electrical wires to human genitals, cut off limbs, blew up bodies and razed entire villages. These weren't facts. They were our tales. Nevertheless, millions of Americans ended up being convinced their own president, not communism, was the enemy.” – ION MIHAI PACEPA (Lt. Gen. Pacepa, the ex-head of the Romanian KGB and the highest-ranking defector ever from the Commie side during the Cold War, said this in the late 70s, either echoing John Kerry's earlier vile testimony to Congress, or, more likely, showing us where Kerry got his words in the first place. Anyway, this is the very definition of “dsezinformatzia”)

“North Vietnam cannot defeat or humiliate the United States. Only Americans can do that.” – RICHARD NIXON (in 1969, in his “Moral Majority” speech – and you could pretty much put in any other country's name as North Vietnam and it would still be true....)

“The enemy does not possess the psychological and political means to fight a long, drawn-out war.” – VO NGUYEN GIAP (The top NVA general, of course, and of course he was right – we didn't)

"America lost because of its democracy; through dissent and protest it lost the ability to mobilize a will to win." -- (NVA COL.) BUI TIN (in a 1995 interview with the WSJ)

“Let me make this perfectly clear, Those of us who inspired and then led the anti-war movement did not want just to stop the killing as so many veterans of those domestic battles now claim. We wanted the Communists to win.” – DAVID HOROWITZ

"When the fires of Watergate consumed the Nixon presidency in 1974, the Left won control of the Democrat Party and a new class of Democrats was elected to Congress, including anti-war activists like Ron Dellums, Pat Schroeder, David Bonior, and Bella Abzug. Their politics were traditionally left as opposed to the anti-communist liberalism of the Daleys and the Humphreys (Abzug had even been a communist). Their first act was to cut off economic aid and military supplies to Cambodia and South Vietnam, precipitating the bloodbath that followed. Though it is conveniently forgotten now, this cut off occurred two years after the United States had signed a truce with Hanoi and American troops had been withdrawn from Vietnam." -- DAVID HOROWITZ (the author of "Radical Son", in 1999)

" 'Bring The Troops Home' may have been the slogan of the so-called anti-war movement, but it was never its only goal. The slogan was designed by its authors to bring about a 'liberated' Vietnam. Within three months of the cut off of military aid by the Democrat "Watergate Congress", the anti-communist regimes in Saigon and Phnom-Penh fell, and the genocide began." -- DAVID HOROWITZ (one of those very "authors", and he said this in 1999)

“You often hear that the lesson of Vietnam was that America's military lost the will to fight. But that wasn't the lesson. The lesson of Vietnam was that America's military lost the will to fight in wars that it wasn't allowed to win.” – A. W. R. HAWKINS (A military historian and conservative journalist from Texas. Too young for Vietnam, but not too young to get it right.)

“Now that he'd come to where the humidity was awful and the beer cheap and infinite, he really understood beer's meaning and its purpose.” – DENIS JOHNSON (on a GI arriving in Vietnam, in “Tree Of Smoke”)

"Lost in the uproar (over the Vietnam War) was the failure of the South Vietnamese population to heed North Vietnam's call for a popular nationwide revolt." -- ROBERT TIMBERG (the USNA-graduate, Marine platoon-leader in Vietnam and author of the 1996 "The Nightingale's Song")

"By 1967 Hanoi was now more heavily defended against air attack than any city in history." -- ROBERT TIMBERG

"In Tet '68 the North Vietnamese and their Vietcong allies had badly overreached and been dealt a devastating battlefield defeat. Somehow, though, largely through the magic of television, the defeat had been transformed into a stunning victory for the enemy." -- ROBERT TIMBERG

"By August 1973 the United States had retired to the sidelines in Vietnam, its role reduced to arms supplier and increasingly lifeless cheerleader." -- ROBERT TIMBERG

"Those who opposed the war forged a movement that eventually led to the withdrawal of American troops Vietnam." -- ROBERT TIMBERG (the USNA-graduate, Marine platoon-leader author of the 1996 "The Nightingale's Song")

"The Ford administration begged the newly installed Watergate Congress for a $700 million supplemental appropriation to mobilize fresh South Vietnamese units but the legislators balked." -- ROBERT TIMBERG (I'll say they "balked" -- they stone refused, loudly and spitefully.)

"Any real hope South Vietnam had for sustaining itself was about to end as the newly elected congressional class of 1974, dominated by antiwar Democrats, readied itself to severely scale back American aid. A few months later, as North Vietnamese forces poured across the DMZ, the United States had ceased to be a reliable ally." -- ROBERT TIMBERG (the USNA-graduate, Marine platoon-leader author of the 1996 "The Nightingale's Song")

"These guys weren't in black pajamas. It was a conventional invasion of the South while our Congress cut the aid and cut and cut again." -- JOHN McCAIN (on the end of the Vietnam War, 1974-75)

"For too long we have lived with the 'Vietnam Syndrome'. It is time we recognized that ours was, in truth, a noble cause." – RONALD REAGAN

“Vietnam led to everything, in the sense that its trauma penetrated so deep into the American psyche that it corroded the ability to think clearly about war as a tool of national purpose.” – MARK STEYN

"It is never a mistake to fight for someone else's freedom." -- BOB KERREY (The good Kerrey--with a second "e". Ex-Democrat Senator from Nebraska, Won the Medal of Honor in Vietnam while losing the better part of a leg there.)

"By the time President Nixon resigned office on Aug. 9, 1974, the Vietnam War was all but won and the South Vietnamese were confident of securing a permanent victory. But in December 1974 — three months after Mr. Nixon departed the White House — a vengeful, Democrat-dominated Congress cut off all aid to South Vietnam. It was a devastating blow for those to whom Mr. Nixon had promised — not U.S. troops — but steadfast military, economic and diplomatic support. As chronicled in memoirs written afterwards in Hanoi, Moscow and Beijing, the communists celebrated. The ignominious end came with a full-scale North Vietnamese invasion five months later." -- LTC OLIVER NORTH (in November 2017)

"Dr. Spock, Dave Dellinger, every wacko that has ever come down the pike and hated the country was on gook radio telling you how bad the United States was and how great Communism was. We (POWs) would talk about the fact that there was no punishment that would adequately deal with these kinds of scuzz that are eating your country, taking all the benefits, and then tearing it apart from the inside." -- BUD DAY (USAF pilot, POW in Hanoi and cellmate with John McCain)

“The American Revolutionary War was pretty much the exact opposite of the Vietnam War: During the American Revolution we kept on losing until one day we won; whereas during the Vietnam War we kept on winning until one day we lost.” – JACK JOLIS

“The Vietnam War was fought all over the world.” – A. A. GILL (in the LONDON SUNDAY TIMES, 1996)

“The Vietcong are by no means finished, but now (in 1967) I can see that the mass of peasants in South Vietnam are already turning against the Communists, and hoping to better their lives under the market system. This is in large part due to America’s pacification programme, particularly by the Marines in I Corps.” – RICHARD WEST (the legendary English war correspondent, who made innumerable trips to Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia between 1966 and 1994. All his quotes are from his 1996 excellent memoir, “War And Peace In Vietnam.)

“The May (1968) Offensive, coming on top of Tet, had broken the hearts of the Southern Communists, as they admitted twenty years later. This was really the end of the Vietnam insurgency. From now until the fall of Saigon in May 1975, the Vietnam War was once again part of the struggle for power between North and South that began as long as the sixteenth century.” – RICHARD WEST

“By 1968, the United States had already achieved its ends in South Vietnam. The revolt of the Southern Vietcong guerrillas had virtually ended after the Tet and May offensives. In President Thieu, the South Vietnamese had found a solid if uninspiring leader. From I Corps down to the Mekong Delta, the peasants had come to accept if not like the Saigon government. The Americans had achieved their aims and might have obtained an honourable peace treaty. However, the pressure of public opinion at home was forcing Nixon and Kissinger into a speedy withdrawal, on terms that could be dictated by Hanoi.” – RICHARD WEST

“After 1973, South Vietnam was gaining strength as a country, economically and politically. If it had held on till the off-shore oil came on tap, South Vietnam could have bought the armaments needed to match the military build-up of the North. American liberals never understood that the Saigon regime was becoming more efficient and more accepted.” – RICHARD WEST (Note the “If it had held on till...” – that’s where the fucking Democrat “Watergate Congress” stepped in and did its thing.)

“When the North struck again in 1975, it only won because of its superiority of numbers. The ARVIN (sic) was courageous against all odds. When the North attacked Phuoc Long, the outnumbered defenders fought literally to the death, losing half a division. When the Southerners would not withdraw from Xuan Loc, the invaders rained down 10,000 shells on the town in a single day. This went unnoticed in the liberal American newspapers. As South Vietnam entered its death agony, opinion polls in America showed that eighty percent were against meeting its basic needs in petrol and ammunition. Although the invading Communists called on the population to rise up against their government, in no place did this happen. There were virtually no defections from ARVIN, the Southern army. Most of the population either fled or greeted the invaders with sullen dread.” – RICHARD WEST

“Opponents of the Vietnam War seem to forget its original, limited goal: to save South Vietnam from conquest by Communism and to establish a government acceptable to the people and capable of defending itself. That goal was attained by 1973.” – RICHARD WEST

"There's a wall ten miles high and fifty miles thick between those of us who went and those who didn't, and that wall is never going to come down." -- MILT COPULOS (Wounded Vietnam veteran)

"The Vietnam War wasn't lost on the battlefield. It was lost right here, in this city (Washington D.C." -- LTC OLIVER NORTH (In his 1987 testimony to Congress)

"In all honesty, we didn't achieve our main objective, which was to spur uprisings throughout the south." -- TRAN DO (Senior NVA officer to Stanley Karnow, after Tet '68)

"Journalism during and after Tet '68 had rarely veered so widely from reality." -- PETER BRAESTRUP (an ex-US Marine journalist, writing in the Washington Post)

"Some unfortunate things had come out after the Soviet archives were opened up -- I mean, damn! -- now Vietnam, the holiest of all the causes! Those perfidious secret records made it look like the Soviets and the Chinese, in concert with the North Vietnamese Communists, were manipulating the Vietcong all along!" -- TOM WOLFE

"Washington took communist ideology more seriously than the communists themselves." -- SIR CHRISTOPHER MEYER (the patrician, lefty ex-British Ambassador to the US -- summarizing the cyncial, anti-Vietnam War view. Obviously, I disagree with it, but it's pithily put, at least, here.)

“The ingratitude wasn’t a problem with the army, it was a problem with the country. I felt my country didn’t give a damn about me or the sacrifice I and thousands of others were making in their (sic) name. Much of the population openly took the side of the Vietnamese communists, while complacent middle America offered no protest, no counterpart, only silence.” – DAVID DONOVAN (the author was an Army captain in Vietnam in 1969, an ARVN advisor in the Mekong Delta, and this is taken from his outstanding memoir, “Once A Warrior King”)

“The Left insisted that we abandon, in 1973, a war we had just won in Vietnam, and go on home.” – DAVID MAMET

"The Viet Cong are burying village chiefs, head-down, and trying to force a grotesque style of misgovernment on the South Vietnamese." -- JOHN UPDIKE (who, extremely rarely among his liberal peers, Got It.)

“I would rather live under Diem (or Ky, or Thieu) than under Ho Chi Minh and his enforcers, and assumed that most South Vietnamese would. Those who would not, let them move North. But the foot traffic, one could not help noticing in these Communist/non-Communist partitions, was South, or West, away from Communism. Why was that?” – JOHN UPDIKE (in 1989)

“The United States was not losing the war in Vietnam, but was choosing not to win it.” – DUANE “DEWEY” CLARRIDGE (of the CIA)

"Those who remember the fall of Saigon will recall that a young Sen. Biden voted in 1975 to deny the last bit of aid sought by President Gerald Ford for the increasingly desperate government of South Vietnam, which found out the hard way the assurances they had been given meant nothing. Today Mr. Biden boasts to the world that 'America is back.' But to vulnerable Afghans facing down the Taliban, America is gone." -- WILLIAM McGURN (Journalist and ex-speechwriter for George W. Bush, writing in THE WALL STREET JOURNAL, 19 July 2021)

"It is dishonest of those who demand the immediate withdrawal of all American troops (from Vietnam) to pretend that their motives are purely humanitarian. They believe, rightly or wrongly, that it would be better if the Communists won. I believe a negotiated peace, to which the Vietcong will have to be a party, to be possible, but not yet, and that, therefore, American troops, alas, must stay in Vietnam until it is." -- W. H. AUDEN (Yes, believe it or not this is the great pote himself-- in 1967)

“Deserting Vietnam by cutting aid to the South after our military gains between 1968 and 1972 did, in fact, have a very direct domino effect. The cost was paid by millions of lives in Ethiopia, Angola and elsewhere.” – ROBERT D. KAPLAN (of the ATLANTIC, writing in NR in Sept. 2006. Kaplan is the author of “Imperial Grunts”)

"In 1975, President Ford was left to manage the difficult ending of the Vietnam War. President Ford went to Congress for a relief package to allow American personnel and our allies to evacuate. However, there was one US senator who opposed any such support. The result was the embarrassing and hurried evacuation from the roof of the American embassy in Saigon. This senator reveled in the embarrassment and did everything he could to leverage it politically against Ford. Despite the efforts of this U.S .Senator, President Ford managed to rescue 1,500 South Vietnamese allies prior to the country's fall. Had President Ford not acted quickly, these people would have been targeted and slaughtered for their support for America. When they arrived in America, President Ford asked Congress for a package to assist these refugees to integrate into American society. That same troublesome senator torpedoed any support for these shell-shocked, anti-communist, Americans and our helpers, the refugees. Instead, President Ford had to recruit Christian organizations to offer assistance on a voluntary basis. As he did so, the Senator belittled those efforts. What kind of person would oppose President Ford's tireless work to do the right and humanitarian thing? Who would want to play politics with the well-being of innocent people who stood by America in the tragic Vietnam War? That Senator was Joe Biden." -- DONALD RUMSFELD (in his 2018 memoir, "When The Center Held")

"In Vietnam, Nixon pursued, and at first seemed to have achieved in the Paris Accords, agreement with the North Vietnamese to settle for the status quo. But his successor Gerald Ford, facing a Democratic Congress that simply refused all further military aid to South Vietnam, helplessly watched as the North repudiated its agreement and overran the South." -- WILLIAM A. RUSHER (incidentally, the "status quo" at the signing of the Paris Accords in 1873 -- were extremely favorable to the US and South Vietnam. Meanwhile, Rusher was the publisher of NATIONAL REVIEW, and then became a Fellow at the Claremont Institute)

Vigilantism

"If the wolves kill the wolves, that's no problem, but if the sheep kill the wolves, then you have holy hell." -- MARK HELPRIN

"By the way, I've never accepted the pejorative 'vigilantism' for... defending oneself. After all, the 'authorities' are all well and good -- but only as long as the 'authorities' are all well and good." -- JACK JOLIS

“Where there is no democracy, democrats take to the streets. And when they are forced off the streets, they crawl underground and start making bombs.” – RICHARD LITTLEJOHN (the “populist” columnist for the UK “Sun”, in 1995)

Violence

“I don’t know, I wasn’t there when he killed the guy, but, shit, if a guy got killed he was probably doing something he wasn’t supposed to be doing. You know what I mean? I’m a strong believer in that. Not in a drive-by shooting, but very few people get killed for no reason, from where I come from.” – DON KING (Not sure if he’s referring to Harlem, or Beverly Hills. I’m also not sure it makes any diff.)

“Violence of any kind, once it starts, is like fucking a gorilla – you ain’t done until the gorilla’s done.” – GRAIG FERGUSON

“It is an odd paradox of human nature, seen in sergeants’ messes as well as boxing gyms, that there is never more ease of manner, concentration on mastering tasks and skills, and warm fellowship among men than when they have come together in a group to perform lawful acts of physical violence.” – JOHN DERBYSHIRE (the naturalized English-born writer for National Review – before he got fired for saying something quite true but deemed “unacceptable”, about race relations. A legendary, self-described “YoungFogey”)

“Times have not become more violent. They have just become more televised.” – MARILYN MANSON (the somewhat bizarre not to say eccentric rock artiste who, let us not forget, is actually a chap, i.e., a bloke from Canton, Ohio, called Brian Hugh Warner.)

"Sometimes giving them both barrels isn't enough; you have to reload.” – DEVIL ANSE HATFIELD (the actual patriarch of the West Virginia Hatfields – of the famous Hatfields and McCoys “feud”. And you've gotta love a guy who's actually named “Devil”.... can you imagine when he was a baby?)

"Violence, naked force, has settled more issues in history than any other factor, and the contrary opinion is wishful thinking at its worst. Breeds that have forgotten this basic truth have always paid for it with their lives and basic freedoms." -- ROBERT A. HEINLEIN

"Lefties shout 'Violence never solves anything!' only when the good guys use violence." -- JONAH GOLDBERG

“Animals remind you that most intraspecies violence is ultimately about sex: human violence peaks among men of mating age.” – MATT RIDLEY (actually, the 5th Viscount Ridley, is a popular author and successful businessman)

"Your speech is violence, my violence is speech" -- DAVE "IOWAHAWK" BURGE

“All life is paid for in blood.” – ADOLPH HITLER

"Dear America: You are waking up, as Germany once did, to the awareness that 1/3 of your people would kill another 1/3, while 1/3 watches." -- WERNER HERZOG (famous -- infamous, actually -- German film director)

"They are children when they are Palestinian. They are violent young men when they try the same thing anywhere else." -- ROD LIDDLE

“Good violence stops bad violence.” – JIM HORN (my old CIA “communicator” buddy from Bangui, on the Twoot on 12 June 2019)

“If you are not prepared to use force to defend civilization, then be prepared to accept barbarism.” – THOMAS SOWELL

"A state is a geographically defined monopoly on violence." -- MAX WEBER (the German all-round big-head, 1864-1920)

“They sicken of the calm, who knew the storm.” – DOROTHY PARKER (What she knew about it I have no idea, but it’s a nifty-enough quote...)

"In the end the world yields only to violence; only the violent bear it away and short of violence all is in the end impotence." -- WALKER PERCY

“When all is said and done, violence doesn’t dehumanize us but forces us to recognize the fact of our humanity.” – DONALD WESTLAKE (I’m not sure I agree with this, or even if I understand what the hell he’s talking about – but it’s Westlake, so I give him a break and he makes the cut.)

“There is something about coshing a man for the first time that inspires a certain wild but unstable confidence. One moment you are faced with a powerful and unnerving obstacle; the next, without thought or subtlety, you have overcome it. By disengaging from the habits of a lifetime you have slipped into a new effortless gear in which all things seem possible. Minutes afterwards the adrenalin aftertaste still tickles the roots of the tongue, nauseous, exultant, the unique flavour of rewarded violence.” – LIONEL DAVIDSON (in his superb 1960 spy novel, “The Night Of Wenceslas”)

"We don't disagree --we just hate each other." -- HANNO SAUER (the Dutch philosophy professor-author of "The Invention Of Good And Evil")

Virtue(s)

“Without prudence other virtues would be blind or mad, while without courage they would be futile or ineffectual.” – NICHOLAS FEARN (English journalist)

“Virtue not freely chosen is not virtuous.” – FRANK MEYER

“The socialist project was to design a system so perfect that no one would have to be good.” – T. S. ELIOT (Wow. Think about it. Good one, T.S…)

“Our political theory is based on the assumption of a virtuous people — all the safeguards and roadblocks of the Constitution would be for naught if the people, after due deliberation and delay, still wanted to do the wrong thing.” – GEORGE CAREY (NOT the one-time Archbishop of Canterbury, but rather a government professor at Georgetown U.)

“In a world where everything is permitted, virtue has a very hard time poking up from the weeds.” – JONAH GOLDBERG

“Is there no virtue among us? If there be not, we are in a wretched situation. No theoretical checks-no form of government can render us secure. To suppose that any form of government will secure liberty or happiness without any virtue in the people, is a chimerical idea, if there be sufficient virtue and intelligence in the community, it will be exercised in the selection of these men. So that we do not depend on their virtue, or put confidence in our rulers, but in the people who are to choose them.” – JAMES MADISON

“The modern world is full of the old Christian virtues gone mad.” – G. K. CHESTERTON

“If we lived in a State where virtue was profitable, common sense would make us good, and greed would make us saintly.”-- ROBERT BOLT (through the mouth of Sir Thomas More, in his "A Man For All Seasons")

"Few men have virtue to withstand the highest bidder." -- GEORGE WASHINGTON

“What reign is worse than that of militant virtue?” – AMIN MAALOUF (my favorite Lebanese author – not a terribly long list – and author of the great “Leo The African”)

"Villainy wears many masks, none so dangerous as the mask of virtue." -- WASHINGTON IRVING

"One of the fringe benefits of associating with evil is that by comparison to it I come out feeling semi-decent, virtuous almost." -- STEVE TESICH

“Worth and sufficiency consist of being able to hawk and hunt, ride a horse, play at cards and dice, swagger, drink, swear and take tobacco with a grace.” – ROBERT BURTON (in his magisterial “The Anatomy of Melancholy, 1621)

“Waste no more time arguing about what a good man should be. Be one.” – MARCUS AURELIUS

"Only the weak are good; they are good because they are not strong enough to be bad." -- CHIEF COMORO (a local African chieftain, no first name recorded, in Gondokoro, in what is now South Sudan, to his good friend, the great British explorer Sir Stanley Baker, in 1871)

"It strikes me again and again that the most self-deceiving people in modern public life are those who publicly set themselves on the side of virtue. 'We do good, so we can do no wrong' is the great non-sequitur of the age." -- CHARLES MOORE

“Is the pleasant the good, or not quite?” – JOHN UPDIKE (Italics in the original – in 1974’s “A Month Of Sundays”)

“Virtue Signaling”

“So much better to embody virtue than to signal it.” – CHARLES MOORE

"I reject the phrase 'virtue-signaling' -- There's nothing 'virtuous' about Leftism." -- JACK JOLIS

"The term virtue-signaling doesn't quite cover it. 'Eunuch-signaling' might sum it up better." -- DOUGLAS MURRAY

"Showing you're good is not the same as going good." -- RORY SUTHERLAND

"A noisy minority has co-opted the focus of political debate from discussing how problems can best be solved, to demonstrating how much you care about those problems." -- RORY SUTHERLAND

"If you win, come up, accept your little award tonight, come up, accept it, thank your agent and your God, and fuck off. No one cares about your views on politics or culture." -- RICKY GERVAIS (5 Jan. '20, as the emcee of the Golden Globes Award in Hollywood)

Vision

"It is no use trying to ‘see through’ first principles. If you see through everything, then everything is transparent. But a wholly transparent world is an invisible world. To ‘see through’ all things is the same as not to see.” -- C.S. LEWIS

"The eye never closes. It's the lid that closes over it." NICHOLAS SHAKESPEARE

“Voodoo”

“They pray to make the dead go cause a ruckus. We send our spirits up. They send theirs’ sideways to cause problems for others. We’re the Ghost Busters, they’re the Ghost Dispatchers.” – FATHER RICK FRECHETTE (American missionary in Haiti and, incidentally, a great hero. A whiskey-drinking, cigarette-smoking American version of Dr. Schweitzer and Mother Theresa.)

Voting (Voting Fraud)

“So it's all lost? No! you say. Buck up! you say. We're a can-do people. If we can put a man on the moon, perhaps we can put 60 million Democratic voters on the moon, and figure a way so their absentee ballots get 'lost' somewhere between Tranquility Base and here.” – JAMES LILEKS

"There is no Constitutional right to illegally vote" -- MATT MACKOWIAK (GOP strategist, from Texas)

"I took a vote. The shrugs had it." -- CHARLES McCARRY

“If we don't take voting validity seriously, we don't take voting itself seriously.” – CHARLES MOORE (The great English editor and Maggie Thatcher's biographer, here talking about voter fraud – “validity” over there – in the UK)

“Never voting for a lesser evil means never voting.” -- TULLY BORLAND (A philosophy professor justifying voting for the unsavory Roy Moore in Alabama, 2017)

"When a Republican wins, he always has to win beyond the margin of lawyer." -- MARK STEYN

“I would like some of these genius jurists, including (US Supreme Court Chief Justice) Mr. Roberts and his colleagues, to then give us a figure on what is the acceptable level of fraud in American elections. Denmark, in its history, has never actually had a plausible accusation of any kind of electoral fraud. As we know, in the United States, in cities like Philadelphia, this is a tradition that has long roots and goes back 150 years. If you have no basic election integrity, essentially, all the other issues are irrelevant.” – MARK STEYN

“One of the biggest voter frauds may be the idea… that there is no voter fraud.” -- THOMAS SOWELL

“What’s the difference in foreign interference in elections and illegal immigrants voting? What am I missing?” – DAVID LIMBAUGH (the late El Rushbo’s lawyer kid brother)

“Without illegal immigration, Democrats cannot survive as a viable political party. Illegal immigration is rewarded with free perks, and illegal fraudulent voting is the tacitly accepted quid pro quo.” – JAMES WOODS (the famous actor – a rare Hollywood good guy)

“As a group, teens, of course, aren’t immoral or irremediably broken, just unfinished and slightly unbalanced – awkwardly oscillating between incomprehensible immaturity and unearned confidence, and between impulsiveness and irrational anxiety. Incentivizing elected officials to pander to the fleeting whims and mercurial idealism of people who have been known occasionally to ingest detergent pods is national suicide. Sixteen-year-olds have good excuses for their lack of judgment: an underdeveloped prefrontal cortex, a dreadful public-school system, and coddling parents. Those who want to empower kids to chime in on war and peace and marginal tax rates when they still have to ask their parents for permission slips before going on a class trip, however do not.” – DAVID HARSANYI (writing in NEW YORK in May 2019)

"Anyone who says the claims of voter fraud are 'unfounded' is either willfully ignorant or lying." -- TOM FITTON (head of Judicial Watch, 10 Nov 2020)

“How do you stop voter fraud? You put people in jail” -- MAYOR RUDY GIULIANI (In Michigan, December 2020)

“In Mexico, Mexican residents cannot vote without a valid ID... They must come to America to be able to do that.” – MATT COUCH (who runs something called “The D.C. Patriot”)

"The struggle is no longer about who gets to vote, it’s about who gets to count the vote.” -- PRESIDENT JOE BIDEN (to a "holiday celebration" of the Democrat National Committee, on 14 December 2021. Channeling Joe Stalin.)

Voyeurism

“Power to the peephole!” – JOHN UPDIKE (nice one, John)

Vulgarity

“A consumer society without taste is a horrible thing to behold.” – THEODORE DALRYMPLE

“Vulgarity is the rich man's modest contribution to democracy.” – OSCAR WILDE

“It would be a relief if something actually was vulgar.” – NICKY HASLAM (famous English poofter “social critic” quite rightly noticing that when EVERYTHING is vulgar, nothing is vulgar....)