Matthew Lesko Quotes

Bush promised a foreign policy of humility and a domestic policy of compassion. He has given us a foreign policy of arrogance and a domestic policy that is cynical, myopic and cruel.

As a governor, I am naturally inclined to focus on the domestic side of protecting the United States.

Are we Uncle Sam or Uncle Sucker?

Conservatives believe that some problems have no solution, that they can only be mitigated at best. Liberals believe that most every problem has a government solution.

Foreign policy debates are frequently segregated from domestic policy ones, so commentators who propose increasing the defense budget or sending more foreign aid are seldom asked to explain which domestic programs they’d cut or which taxes they’d raise, in order to find the money.

I'm not much of an economic conservative, and I'm not conservative at all on foreign policy.

President Obama wants to increase the size of government and raise taxes, while I support less government and more individual freedom.

In our excessive involvement in the affairs of other countries, we are not only living off our assets and denying our own people the proper enjoyment of their resources; we are also denying the world the example of a free society enjoying its freedom to the fullest.

We must rid this nation of the United Nations, which provides the communist conspiracy with a headquarters here on our own shores, and which actually makes it impossible for the United States to form its own decisions about its conduct and policies in Europe and Asia.

Venezuelan interests are to be defended by Venezuela. The U.S. should defend the interests of the U.S. Where are the U.S. people, where are the intellectuals, who could put limits on their government?

In the Senate, there is a wide spectrum of views on foreign policy.

I often heard Latvians compare Russia and America. Latvians find both countries and their leaders possessed of the same mysterious confidence.

Remember how Margaret Thatcher came to believe that abroad was more important than at home? Didn't do her much good.

Wilson thought in terms of the whole world; Harding was for America first. And, finally, whereas Wilson wanted America to exert itself nobly, Harding wanted to give it a rest.

We should stop giving aid to countries that hate us..

Neoconservatism is a blend of realism and idealism. We have the idealism of the liberals but we look at the reality of the world.

You help us pay for the war we’ll fight; we’ll launch it while you’re asleep at night. We don’t need friends all around the world; We’ll buy our friends with our flag unfurled, And spread our arms on a global scale To show the world that we still prevail. Oh, we’re not leaders inspiring peace, But we’re in power as the world’s police. So pay your tax for our little war, And we’ll not ask for any more. This year!

Isolationism has been a calamity.

In most nations, public opinion is in revolt against foreign policy.

Unilateralism and isolationism are ideological twins.

... you may be sure there will be no jingo nonsense under my administration.

There is a limitation upon the ability of the U. S. to solve these problems [of foreign policy].

We cannot clean up the mess in Washington, balance the budget, reduce taxes, check creeping Socialism, tell what is muscle or fat in our sprawling rearmament programs, purge subversives from our State Department, unless we come to grips with our foreign policy, upon which all other policies depend

The war is going to end because we're gonna have such a political and financial havoc here with the devaluation of our dollar, because we just can't keep affording it. This is usually how empires end, by spending too much money maintaining their empire. We're in 130 countries, we have 700 bases around the world, and it's going to come to an end. I want it to come to an end more gracefully and peacefully, follow the constitution, and follow a more sensible foreign policy.

Foreign policy involves a good deal of domestic policy.