One cannot hold power and not use it.
Foreign policy is like hitting a baseball: if you fail 70 percent of the time, you go to the Hall of Fame.
When you have a hammer, all problems start to look like nails.
International order is not an evolution; it is an imposition. It is the domination of one vision over others- in this case, the domination of liberal free market principles of economics, democratic principles of politics, and a peaceful international system over other visions that other nations and peoples may have. It will last only as long as those who favor it retain the capacity to defend it.
I think most Americans believe that although it's better not to use military force if you can avoid it, that the world simply doesn't provide us the luxury of giving away military force as an important tool of foreign policy.
It is true that I have known Straussians almost all my life. And the one thing I was taught about them from the earliest age is that they are wrong.
When it comes to setting national priorities, determining threats, defining challenges, and fashioning and implementing foreign and defense policies, the United States and Europe have parted ways.
If the world were a paradise of luxury and ease, a land flowing with milk and honey, where every Jack obtained his Jill at once and without any difficulty, men would either die of boredom or hang themselves; or there would be wars, massacres, and murders; so that in the end mankind would inflict more suffering on itself than it has now to accept at the hands of Nature.
But to love something despite. To know the flaws and love them too. This is rare and pure and perfect.
A girl who is thirteen-which is hard, and difficult, and beautiful, and painful, and exhilarating.
An artist has got to be constantly in a state of becoming.