What politicians do not understand is that [Ian] Wilmut discovered not so much a technical trick as a new law of nature. We now know that an adult mammalian cell can fire up all the dormant genetic instructions that shut down as it divides and specializes and ages, and thus can become a source of new life. You can outlaw technique; you cannot repeal biology.

Charles Krauthammer

Categorized in : Science Life Writing

Great leaders are willing to retire unloved and unpopular as the price for great exertion.

Charles Krauthammer

retiring exertion leader

Israel is the very embodiment of Jewish continuity: It is the only nation on earth that inhabits the same land, bears the same name, speaks the same language, and worships the same God that it did 3,000 years ago. You dig the soil and you find pottery from Davidic times, coins from Bar Kokhba, and 2,000-year-old scrolls written in a script remarkably like the one that today advertises ice cream at the corner candy store.

Charles Krauthammer

ice land names

Obsession with self is the motif of our time.

Charles Krauthammer

motifs obsession self

What made Obama unique was that he was the ultimate charismatic politician - the most unknown stranger ever to achieve the presidency in the United States. No one knew who he was, he came out of nowhere, he had this incredible persona that floated him above the fray, destroyed Hillary, took over the Democratic Party and became president. This is truly unprecedented: A young unknown with no history, no paper trail, no well-known associates, self-created.

Charles Krauthammer

party unique self

History has blessed us with all the freedom and advantages of multiculturalism. But it has also blessed us, because of the accident of our origins, with the linguistic unity that brings a critically needed cohesion to a nation as diverse, multiracial and multiethnic as America. Why gratuitously throw away that priceless asset? How mindless to call the desire to retain it 'racist.

Charles Krauthammer

unity blessed america

Don't touch my junk, you airport security goon - my package belongs to no one but me, and do you really think I'm a Nigerian nut job preparing for my 72-virgin orgy by blowing my johnson to kingdom come?

Charles Krauthammer

airports jobs thinking

It doesn't take a genius to see what happens when the entitlement state outgrows the economy upon which it rests. The time of Greece, Cyprus, Portugal, Spain, the rest of insolvent social-democratic Europe — and now Detroit — is the time for conservatives to raise the banner of Stein's Law and yell "Stop." You can kick the can down the road, but at some point it falls over a cliff.

Charles Krauthammer

detroit law europe

Ideas matter. Legislative proposals matter. Slick campaigns and dazzling speeches can work for a while, but the magic always wears off.

Charles Krauthammer

magic campaigns ideas

If we insist that public life be reserved for those whose personal history is pristine, we are not going to get paragons of virtue running our affairs. We will get the very rich, who contract out the messy things in life the very dull, who have nothing to hide and nothing to show and the very devious, expert at covering their tracks and ambitious enough to risk their discovery.

Charles Krauthammer

things-in-life running discovery

If you believe that health care is a public good to be guaranteed by the state, then a single-payer system is the next best alternative. Unfortunately, it is fiscally unsustainable without rationing.

Charles Krauthammer

alternatives care believe

Obama is clearly a narcissist in the non-scientific use of the word. He is so self-involved, you see it from his rise.There’s not anyone of independent stature around him. There was in the first term, because he needed them to prop him up. But now that he entered a second term, he’s the master of the universe, so there’s nobody around him. He is impervious to outside advice, real advice that he takes.

Charles Krauthammer

independent real self

[I]t is more than slightly ironic that Democrats, the fiercely pro-choice party, reserve free choice for aborting a fetus, while denying it for such matters as choosing your child's school or joining a union.

Charles Krauthammer

party children school

Identity politics is the mother's milk of the Democratic Left.

Charles Krauthammer

identity-politics milk mother

Now this is a way to approach our healthcare problems: increase the number of tax collectors and decrease the number of doctors - brilliant!

Charles Krauthammer

doctors numbers way

Where religion is trivialized, one is unlikely to find persecution.

Charles Krauthammer

persecution unlikely

A one-hour work-week...would minimize the damage that Congress can do.

Charles Krauthammer

damage week political

In the liberal remake of 'Casablanca,' the police captain comes upon the scene of the shooting and orders his men to 'round up the usual weapons.' It's always the weapon and never the shooter.

Charles Krauthammer

police men order

There is no comparing the brutality and cynicism of today's pop culture with that of forty years ago: from High Noon to Robocop is a long descent.

Charles Krauthammer

society long years

Two decades ago, however, socialism and communism died rudely, then were buried forever by the empirical demonstration of the superiority of market capitalism everywhere from Thatcher's England to Deng's China, where just the partial abolition of socialism lifted more people out of poverty more rapidly than ever in human history.

Charles Krauthammer

forever two people

Baseball is a slow, boring, complex, cerebral game that doesn't lend itself to histrionics. You "take in" a baseball game, something odd to say about a football or basketball game, with the clock running and the bodies flying.

Charles Krauthammer

basketball baseball football