The Patriot Post® · Friday Short Cuts

Insight: “Under fascism, citizens retain the responsibilities of owning property, without freedom to act and without any of the advantages of ownership. Under socialism, government officials acquire all the advantages of ownership, without any of the responsibilities, since they do not hold title to the property, but merely the right to use it — at least until the next purge. In either case, the government officials hold the economic, political and legal power of life or death over the citizens.” —Ayn Rand (1905-1982)

Food for thought: “Just how much must evangelicals and conservatives compromise themselves to support Trump? That is the ultimate problem. Every person supporting Trump has not just compromised on a candidate, but compromised their core values. … These people are compromising their integrity for a presidential candidate willing to use profane language on the campaign trail and bombast to overcome a lack of knowledge of details. ‘For what does it profit a man to gain the whole world and forfeit his soul?’” —Erick Erickson

Upright: “I’m not saying someone shouldn’t blow up the Republican Party. I’m saying that that someone shouldn’t be an unprincipled imposter. Because at some point there’s going to be a counterrevolution. Those who swear up and down that they would never vote for Jeb Bush or Marco Rubio because they aren’t conservative enough shouldn’t be surprised that a large faction on the Right — more than likely, the larger faction on the Right — won’t support a candidate who is adversarial to its belief system.” —David Harsanyi

Race bait: “What you are seeing today in this Supreme Court situation is nothing more than the continuous and unprecedented obstructionism that President Obama has gone through. … A racist effort to try to de-legitimatize the president of the United States.” —Bernie Sanders

The BIG Lie: “I’ve never believed in dividing America between ‘us’ and ‘them.’ We’re all in this together, and we all have to do our part.” —Hillary Clinton, who divides constantly and thinks she’s facing attack from a “vast right-wing conspiracy”

Late-night humor: “NASA said this week it has received a record high number of 18,000 applications for their astronaut training program. NASA said it shows a growing interest in space exploration. Then people said, ‘Nah, we just wanna get off the planet before this election.’” —Jimmy Fallon