U.S. Recalls Ambassador From Syria

Posted February 15, 2005, 12:33 p.m.

The United States has recalled its ambassador from Syria as a response to the assassination of Rafik Hariri, the former prime minister of Lebanon. The bombing that killed Hariri in Beirut also killed 16 others and injured 137.

Supporters of Hariri have blamed the Syrian government—which has had a major military presence in Lebanon since the end of the Lebanese civil war in 1991—alternatively for the bombing or for security failures that allowed it to happen.

Syria has been under increasing pressure from Lebanon and the United States to divest itself from Lebanese affairs. U.S. State Department spokesperson Richard Boucher, in announcing the recall of Ambassador Margaret Scobey, questioned the continued presence of Syria’s troops in Lebanon.

Scott Bradford has been putting his opinions on his website since 1995—before most people knew what a website was. He has been a professional web developer in the public- and private-sector for over twenty years. He is an independent constitutional conservative who believes in human rights and limited government, and a Catholic Christian whose beliefs are summarized in the Nicene Creed. He holds a bachelor’s degree in Public Administration from George Mason University. He loves Pink Floyd and can play the bass guitar . . . sort-of. He’s a husband, pet lover, amateur radio operator, and classic AMC/Jeep enthusiast.

Quotes

Once we stop believing that morality has a basis in objective reality, once we start believing that morality is nothing more than subjective feelings and wishes, once we reduce justice from a cosmic law to a private preference, we no longer see it as binding or fear to disobey it when it is inconvenient.

There is no country in the world in which everything can be provided for by the laws, or in which political institutions can prove a substitute for common sense and public morality.

In general, if you were to design a country ideally suited to flourish in the world we are living in, it would look more like the United States than any other.

All pagan religions begin with the teachings of adults, but Christianity begins with the birth of a child.

When you get into trouble 5,000 miles from home, you’ve got to have been looking for it.

Often the most convincing moralists are the very ones who feel the temptation to sin most strongly. . . . Very few, if any, great men or women are pure of heart, but inner torment and even a touch of wickedness can be catalysts to greatness.

Since faith rests upon infallible truth, and since the contrary of a truth can never be demonstrated, it is clear that the arguments brought against faith cannot be demonstrations, but are difficulties that can be answered.

My nomination for the most loserthinkish advice in history is: ‘Stay in your lane.’ That is the sort of advice that is better served to an enemy, not a friend.

Building from scratch isn’t too different from building from a kit, except that you have to make your own kit.

Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what course others may take; but as for me, give me liberty or give me death!

A methodology that can scarcely do other than confirm the hypothesis that it was designed to test is not valid social science.

Normally the man of great productive capacity who becomes rich by guiding the labor of many other men does so by enabling them to produce more than they could produce without his guidance; and both he and they share in the benefit, which comes also to the public at large.

You have seen how a man was made a slave; you shall see how a slave was made a man.

Because it prescribes government of the people, liberal democracy can be only as strong as the people who live under it.

Freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed.

The Bible is a library composed of many books, each written and edited by many people. It’s a truly emergent document—a selected, sequenced and finally coherent story written by no one and everyone over many thousands of years.

All democrats object to men being disqualified by the accident of birth; tradition objects to their being disqualified by the accident of death.

All men are by nature born equally free and independent.

A monarch’s neck should always have a noose around it. It keeps him upright.

God judged it better to bring good out of evil than to suffer no evil to exist.

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