The Patriot Post® · Wednesday Short Cuts

Insight: “Whatever the individual motives of the censors may be, censorship is a form of social control. It is a means of holding a society together, of arresting the flux which censors fear. And since the fear cannot be appeased, the demands for censorship mount in volume and intensity. And one form of censorship can easily lead to other forms.” —Carey McWilliams (1905-1980)

Upright: “Our war should be on behalf of conservatism. Trump has divided conservatives on the proper tactics. But once Nov. 9 hits, we’re all on the same page again: We must either stop leftist policies from President Trump or President Clinton. And we’ll need to be allies. The first step should be recognizing the good will of those who fight alongside us, even if we don’t make the same risk calculations with regard to a conservative future.” —Ben Shapiro

The BIG lie: “The [15 Gitmo] detainees [Obama shipped to the UAE] have been vetted through what is a very rigorous process, and I can assure you that it’s a very rigorous process — looked at all of the, you know, whether they would return to the battlefield. … I don’t know the percentage in front of me, but it’s incredibly small.” —State Department spokesman Mark Toner (Fact check: “The Director of National Intelligence confirmed in its March report that 17.5% of prisoners released from Guantanamo over the years have returned to terrorist activities.” —The Wall Street Journal)

Non Compos Mentis: “There’s a guy who follows me, right back here, [he] has the nuclear codes. … [Trump] is not qualified to know the code! He can’t be trusted!” —Joe Biden

Non sequitur: “Texas has really been hit hard by the climate crisis and, for the last 35 years, has had more billion-dollar-plus climate disasters than any other state. Houston in particular has been hard hit. … These kinds of record downpours [over the last week in Louisiana] — that’s one of the manifestations of the climate crisis.” —Al Gore

And last… “We shouldn’t be letting enemies of liberty come to live among us just because stopping them might anger a primitive on the other side of the world.” —Mark Krikorian