Max Boot Quotes (1969-)

“Republican Party is dead. It was wounded by the tea party absolutists who insisted on political purity and rejected any compromise. Now it has been killed by Donald Trump.”

“Catering to populist anger with extremist proposals that are certain to fail is not a viable strategy for political success.”

“U.S. imperialism has been the greatest force for good in the world during the past century. It has defeated communism and Nazism and has intervened against the Taliban and Serbian ethnic cleansing.”

“The Republican embrace of anti-intellectualism was, to a large extent, a put-on. At least until now.... There is no evidence that Republican leaders have been demonstrably dumber than their Democratic counterparts.”

“Inside the administration are Vice President Dick Cheney and Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz. Their agenda is known as "neoconservatism," though a more accurate term might be "hard Wilsonianism." Advocates of this view embrace Woodrow Wilson's championing of American ideals but reject his reliance on international organizations and treaties to accomplish our objectives.”

“Bernie Sanders, a self-professed socialist who is almost as extreme in his own way as Trump is. I don't “feel the Bern” and I can't make common cause with those who do.”

“Maybe he should be a little more concerned about the suffering of [Ukrainian] civilians at Russian hands? But on his show Monday night, he didn't mention the Bucha massacre. The Kremlin is, naturally, delighted with Carlson's support and has made quotations from his dishonest program a mainstay on its television shows and social media feeds.”

“Reagan was what John F. Kennedy had been to an earlier generation: an inspirational figure who shaped my worldview. Reagan had his faults, like JFK, but he was optimistic and gentlemanly. He was pro-free trade and pro-immigration. He believed in limited government at home and American leadership abroad. That's what I believed in too — and that's what I thought the Republican Party stood for.”

“Hillary Clinton is a centrist Democrat who is more hawkish than President Obama and far more principled and knowledgeable about foreign affairs than Trump, who is too unstable and erratic to be entrusted with the nuclear triad he has never heard of. Even in his prepared foreign policy speech couldn't pronounce "Tanzania." For all her shortcomings (and there are many), Clinton would be far preferable to Trump.”

“Soon, he was cooking up a lot of trouble: His Internet Research Agency became a tool of Russian disinformation, helping to attack the 2016 U.S. election, and his Wagner Group became a tool for Putin to project power in Africa and the Middle East with a patina of implausible deniability. When Putin decided in 2014 to seize Crimea and foment an insurgency in eastern Ukraine, Wagner — full of former special forces operatives from the Russian military — was one of the instruments he used.”

“During the 2000 campaign, President Bush sounded very much like a realist, with his suspicions of "nation building" and his warnings about American hubris. Then along came 9/11. The National Security Strategy that he released in September--which calls for "encouraging free and open societies on every continent"--sounds as if it could have come straight from the pages of Commentary magazine, the neocon bible. I suppose that makes George W. Bush a neocon. If it's good enough for the president, it's good enough for me.”

“Patrick Buchanan, for one, claims that his views represent the true faith of the American right. He wants to drive the neocon infidels from the temple (or, more accurately, from the church). Unfortunately for Mr. Buchanan, his version of conservatism--nativist, protectionist, Isolationist--attracts few followers, as evidenced by his poor showings in Republican presidential primaries and the scant influence of his inaptly named magazine, the American Conservative. Buchananism isn't American conservatism as we understand it today. It's paleoconservatism, a poisonous brew that was last popular when Father Charles Coughlin, not Rush Limbaugh, was the leading conservative broadcaster in America. ... Pretty much all conservatives today agree on the need for a strong, vigorous foreign policy. There is no constituency for isolationism on the right, outside the Buchananite fever swamps.”

“One thing that every late-stage ruling class has in common is a high tolerance for mediocrity. Standards decline, the edges fray, but nobody in charge seems to notice. They're happy in their sinecures and getting richer. In a culture like this, there's no penalty for being wrong. The talentless prosper, rising inexorably toward positions of greater power, and breaking things along the way. It happened to the Ottomans. Max Boot is living proof that it’s happening in America.”

“Trump was running against more armed conflicts. ... Boot hated him. As Trump found himself accused of improper ties to Vladimir Putin, Boot agitated for more aggressive confrontation with Russia. Boot demanded larger weapons shipments to Ukraine. He called for effectively expelling Russia from the global financial system, a move that might be construed as an act of war against a nuclear-armed power. The stakes were high, but with signature aplomb Boot assured readers it was "hard to imagine" the Russian government would react badly to the provocation.”