Top 100 Quotes & Sayings by Neil Macdonald

I seem to have a missing gene when it comes to organized sports. Televised events bore me and I literally fear the crowds at live matches.

White nationalism is in fact white supremacy. It's understandable that white supremacists would want to be called nationalists, but that doesn't make them any less supremacist.

I once found myself in Paris, Texas, possibly the most curious juxtaposition of place names in America.

Conservatives generally think it's best to take enemies at their word, to believe their bombast and threats and make preparations, rather than dismiss them as crackpots and regret it.

A white nationalist would claim that flying the confederate flag on a state building is an expression of cultural history, rather than racial sentiment. A white nationalist would claim, as the television host Megyn Kelly once did on Fox News, that Jesus was white, and, by implication, God, too.

I have an aunt named Ida. She's the widow of my late Uncle Basil, nearly 100 years old, and very religious, and has managed to live her extremely long and virtuous life out of the pitiless public spotlight.

Moderation is regarded by the Republican base with suspicion.

The Fed has been acting in rare concert with central banks worldwide to encourage borrowing and spending - and risk. And because all the new money being unleashed has to flow somewhere, it's been flowing, among other places, into the equity markets.

As a senator, Obama denounced the Big Brother provisions of Bush's post-9/11 Patriot Act, particularly its sections enabling the state to spy on Americans without their knowledge. After taking power, Obama acquired his other face. That face speaks far less, but when it does, it justifies Bush's policies.

In 2008, Obama rode to victory in good part by wearing the openness face, casting the Bush administration as intrusive, secretive hawks who had little regard for individual privacy or civil liberties.

When I was a kid, and the Hockey Night in Canada theme issued from our black-and-white Sylvania TV, I disappeared to the basement to listen to 45s and read the encyclopedias that my parents kept buying from travelling salesmen.

It is hard for the media to outright label a sitting president a white supremacist, or even a garden variety racist. If Trump was still a private citizen, this would be easier.

France has long been regarded as the most adept at stealing trade secrets.

I often wonder, when I hear some important speaker rattle off the rote land acknowledgements that have become the standard introduction for official events in this country, whether Indigenous people are getting sick of being constantly and dolefully reminded of who owns their land now.

The fact is, American law encourages whistleblowers and, often, they go down in history as courageous people of principle who made their country better.

Yes, America's vast foreign service and intelligence organs may disagree with that assessment. And some of Israel's most senior intelligence figures regard Iran as dangerous, but rational. But in Netanyahu's view, diplomacy has had its moment.

The other danger of the Snowden disclosures, of course, is that they reveal methods that should make any sensible person more careful about what he or she says on a cellphone or landline, or in an email.

In fact, American presidents never apologize for what America does in war, because in the American mind, all its wars are defensive, always fought from the high moral ground, always good versus evil.

Trump's direct predecessor, Barack Obama, never attacked his own generals or officials on Twitter, and never referred to war criminals as heroes.

Americans are raised to believe that anything is possible in America if you are pure of heart and willing to work hard, which is nonsense, and that anyone can become president, which is even more foolish, and that free markets always make the right decision, which is nuts.

Maybe the Tea Party dream is coming true, and the next Republican presidential nominee will be a blunt-object, red-meat down-the-line rightie.

I, forever a product of my Scottish Calvinist upbringing, never knew how to react when someone smilingly took both my hands and told me 'Jesus loves you, and we love you.' I'd just grin rigidly, and urgently will it to stop.

The office of the president is meant to confer dignity.

As stupid as it might sound, older people everywhere would probably be better off if they'd abandoned prudence and borrowed more. That is obviously not what the central bankers or our political leaders want. But that's the situation they've created.

A lot has already been written about this. Criticism has been ferocious. Still, most in the mainstream media have stopped short of saying outright that Donald J. Trump, president of the United States, is a white supremacist, or white nationalist, or whatever it is these people call themselves.

But that's the way America rolls nowadays. Consensus, laws and treaties are out. Smug, religion-soaked majoritarianism is in fashion. It is not coincidence that Bible study is returning to American public schools.

I am grateful to hockey. As a CBC employee, I would be foolish not to be. Hockey Night in Canada probably pays a good chunk of my salary.

Among other things, Netanyahu is a master of timing. His emphasis on irrationality coincides with the annual burst of anti-Israel, anti-U.S. malevolence, delivered from the podum of the United Nations by Iran's bombastic and somewhat clownish president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

Obama has spoken out a few times since on race, but without much effect.

There's a reason the United States opposes the very existence of the International Criminal Court, at least where American war crimes are concerned.

America's habit of distilling vicious, pitiless, cynical reality into a morality play can be an oasis.

Call me radical, but I've always thought there are at least two subjects on which journalists are absolutely entitled to express public opinions: freedom of expression, and attacks on journalists.

If you speak to his friends like Adam Sandler, David Spade or Tim Meadows - the people he came up with at 'SNL' - they would all agree that Norm was the purest amongst them. He was the comic's comic.

For a journalist working in Gaza or the Occupied Territories, a PRESS badge offers limited protection at best. For a Palestinian journalist, it clearly offers none at all.

Personally, I saw no organized malevolence toward reporters in the IDF; I'd dealt with enough Israeli soldiers to know that many of them operated by the book. But I also knew very well that others among them were fanatics, some from ultra-nationalist settlements, and considered foreign journalists enemies of the Jewish State.

Political professionals on all sides of the Ottawa aisle understand the same basic fact: given the electoral realities in this country, there is no path to victory without the support of urban centres and/or Quebec.

I cycle like a fiend, but I can't even sit through the highlights of the Tour de France.

Speech is protected in the U.S., and at the risk of repeating a hackneyed aphorism, free speech is worthless unless it applies to offensive speech. It is an American value, and one well worth protecting.

The fact is, no modern president, Democrat or Republican, has shown the level of contempt for taking questions from the media that Stephen Harper has demonstrated.

While most of us have long understood that privacy is a fading commodity, something in human nature still expects that a phone call or email is a closed communication, and we tend to behave as though it is. That behaviour is what the electronic spies count upon, and want to preserve.

It seems to be the modern Canadian approach to Indigenous people: rather than deny their problems or accuse them of creating them through their own laziness, which was how my parents' generation dealt with the question, we now smother them with humid apologies and abnegation, but not actual compensation.

During my years in the United States, I met a lot of evangelicals; they comprise a quarter of the American population, and are utterly unlike most Christians you'll encounter in this country.

Certainly no university president, at least to my knowledge, has ever stood up and said 'this land is unceded, meaning it's not ours, so we're going to give some of it back.'

Quietly, without much public fuss or discussion, a new ruling class has risen in the richer nations. These men and women are unelected and tend to shun the publicity hogged by the politicians with whom they co-exist. They are the world's central bankers.

Very deliberately, the central bankers have punished savers, pushing interest rates so low that any truly safe investment - and older people are always advised to play it safe - yields a negative return when inflation is factored in.

At the very least, Donald Trump and his most rabid followers have been objective allies of the white supremacist movement, even if they thought they weren't.

Resist, however peacefully and even in your own home, and heaven help you, no matter what your skin color.

It's almost ironic sitting here watching stories about Norm's courageous 'battle' with cancer. He actually did a bit on stage about how stupid that is. What battle? It's your own body. Is it a win or lose thing?

Any reporter who's ever covered the Middle East can tell you about the Arab leader photo op. It is one of the most curious acts of solipsism ever invented. The beloved leader-for-life, a king or a president, always a man, appears on some hideous filigreed-and-gilded couch or chair, chatting with an important visitor.

Barack Obama actually grew up black in America. He knows a thing or two about being judged by the color of his skin, rather than the content of his character.

I've seen Jordanian television lead its newscast with three identical, consecutive scenes, all on the same royal couch. It's hilarious, and most Western reporters cackle sarcastically when they first see it. I certainly did.

Fortunately for Canada it is part of the so-called Five Eyes network, along with the U.S., Britain, Australia and New Zealand. These nations are in fact so integrated that they effectively comprise a single colossal listening organization, the most powerful in history, with America in charge.

Trump seems to accept the idea that there are secret Muslim training camps in America, and has openly suggested Obama himself is a Muslim, and foreign born.

Pro-Israel media 'watchdog' groups and other activists in Canada, the United States and the U.K. are quick to attack, characterizing reporters whose coverage they don't like as Israel-haters or anti-Semites, urging their readers to mount letter-writing campaigns.

Politicians pose and grip and grin, and mouth blandishments, and, like the beloved Arab leaders, are careful to say nothing. The prime photo op directive, it seems, is to say absolutely nothing.

The word nationalism, to most people, has a virtuous whiff; historically, it's been conflated with terms like patriotism and loyalty and solidarity with one's civic tribe.

People are told in their churches to vote Republican. I've heard pastors say it from the evangelical pulpit. Congregants are actually told that lower taxes and less government is the Christian way.

Trump might have a mouth like an open sewer, but at least he says something.

White nationalism is about keeping power white. Yes, yes, there are minority groups represented among Justin Trudeau's ministers, but they were all given jobs by a white guy.

Of all the criticisms levelled at Stephen Harper by his critics, the most puzzling, at least to anyone who has covered Washington, is that he behaves more like a president than a prime minister.