From this morning's Washington Post - I realize we are in a post-ironic age but for these words to come out of the mouth of a Kennedy shows that there is certainly no sense of irony left on the editors of Section A.
KATHLEEN KENNEDY TOWNSEND
Lieutenant governor of Maryland from 1995 to 2003
"Titillating as the stories of Sen. John Ensign and Gov. Mark Sanford may be -- particularly for those who, like me, are disgusted with hypocrisy of the Republican right -- I suspect that both have a fine future in politics if that is what either wants. Sin followed by redemption is a classic religious tale. Better the sinner who is found, the lamb who is rescued, the prodigal son who is welcomed back by the grieving father. America is the land of the second chance.
Still, I wish that the return to the fold would be filled with less righteousness and more humility. But I hold little hope. Consider: Rush Limbaugh, a former drug addict, still rails against those he considers weak with no self-consciousness or reflection on his own lawlessness or addiction. Newt Gingrich jumps to the head of the Republican Party -- having left his wife as she lay in the hospital with hardly a nod to the pain that he caused. The faults to which they confessed did not prove an occasion for deepening love and compassion. "
Wow.
Charles Hankey
Though a good deal is too strange to be believed, nothing is too strange to have happened.
- Thomas Hardy
Half the harm that is done in this world is due to people who want to feel important. They don't mean to do harm-- but the harm does not interest them. Or they do not see it, or they justify it because they are absorbed in the endless struggle to think well of themselves.
-- T. S. Eliot
Democracy is two wolves and a sheep voting on what to have for lunch.
Liberty is a well-armed sheep contesting the vote.
- Ben Franklin
Pardon him, Theodotus. He is a barbarian, and thinks that the customs of his tribe and island are the laws of nature.