Quotes from Max Boot

Irrationality may be more prevalent in the party of climate denial, but it isn't limited to Republicans.

Freedom will not prevail because of historical forces; it will only win, if it does, because of historical actors. In other words, us. Those like me who came of age around 1989 used to take democracy for granted.

Diplomatic eminences often natter on about preventive action, making the obvious point that it's better to cure festering ills before they metastasize into something much worse.

The crisis of the old order in Europe produced nearly 80 years of often bloody conflict between democracy and its foes from 1914 to 1991.

Protests are the very essence of America! It is a country founded in protest.

In 1964, the GOP ceased to be the party of Lincoln and became the party of Southern whites.

Mom developed an interest in 'heritage-language education after noticing an increasing number of students in her UCLA classes whose parents were Russian.

And I think the only way you're going to improve US foreign policy and set a sound course for the future is if you're willing to look back at what went wrong before.

I find contentment in the craft of writing and fulfillment in self-expression.

The ur-conservatives of the 1950s - William F. Buckley Jr., Barry Goldwater, Ronald Reagan and all the rest - were revolting not against a liberal administration but against the moderate conservatism of Dwight D. Eisenhower.

You can debate when the conservative movement became a racket - I nominate 1996, the year Rupert Murdoch and Roger Ailes created Fox News Channel to monetize right-wing outrage - but there is no doubt it has long since passed that point.

In the 16th and 17th centuries, as many as 60,000 people were executed in Europe as suspected witches. But it would be nice to think that centuries of advances in science and education have made people less prey to phantasms and falsehoods.

Unfortunately, history suggests that dictatorial regimes can withstand years, even decades, of economic sanctions.

Stupidity is not an accusation that could be hurled against such prominent early Republicans as Abraham Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt, Elihu Root and Charles Evans Hughes.

Thirty years on, I am no longer as certain about anything as I was at age 20. I now regret my support for the war in Iraq and kick myself for the naive expectation that freedom was destined to prevail.

I am white. I am Jewish. I am an immigrant. I am a Russian American. But until recently I haven't focused so much on those parts of my identity. I've always thought of myself simply as a normal, unhyphenated American.

As a Jewish refugee from the Soviet Union, I felt it was ridiculous to expect me to atone for the sins of slavery and segregation, to say nothing of the household drudgery and workplace discrimination suffered by women.

The scandal isn't that refugees want to come to the United States. It's that Trump is abusing these aspiring Americans and closing our doors to them.

The 60th anniversary of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima on Aug. 6, 1945, has not so far provoked the kind of anguished debate that accompanied the 50th anniversary. The lack of controversy is fitting because there wasn't much soul-searching at the time.

History has been my primary intellectual passion ever since, as a boy in Southern California, I began reading books on World War II and the life of Winston Churchill.

Air superiority, which the United States has taken for granted since World War II, is no longer assured. And, without control of the skies, U.S. ships and soldiers would be vulnerable in ways that are difficult to imagine.

My allegiance to the GOP was cemented during the 1980s, when I was in high school and college and Ronald Reagan was in the White House. For me, Reagan was what John F. Kennedy had been to an earlier generation: an inspirational figure who shaped my worldview.

All acts of terrorism - all killings of the innocent - are an abomination, and one that is made all the worse when the victims are chosen for their skin color, ethnicity, sexuality or religious beliefs.

Growing up in the 1980s, I remember when the GOP was the party of ideas. Now it's brain dead.