"There was plenty of strong rhetoric coming from the stage at the Republican Leadership Conference....From 'Duck Dynasty’s' Phil Robertson to Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas to a succession of others, the call for a return to first principles and strict adherence to conservative convictions was loud and clear. But there was another message as well, delivered most forcefully by former Mississippi governor Haley Barbour: a reminder to the delegates in attendance that the main purpose of a political party is to win elections in order to govern. 'I hope we will not let purity be the enemy of victory,' Barbour told them." Dan Balz in The Washington Post
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"The terrible thing about our time is precisely the ease with which theories can be put into practice. The more perfect, the more idealistic the theories, the more dreadful is their realization. We are at last beginning to rediscover what perhaps men knew better in very ancient times, in primitive times before utopias were thought of: that liberty is bound up with imperfection, and that limitations, imperfections, errors are not only unavoidable but also salutary. The best is not the ideal. Where what is theoretically best is imposed on everyone as the norm, then there is no longer any room even to be good. The best, imposed as a norm, becomes evil.”
"Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander,” by Trappist monk, Father Thomas Merton
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