Insight: “You can only protect your liberties in this world by protecting the other man’s freedom. You can only be free if I am free.” —Clarence S. Darrow (1857-1938)

Upright: “What the left is doing is fighting bigotry with bigotry. And they’ve exposed their hypocrisy and their true motivation. It has nothing to do with ending prejudice; it has everything to do with claiming, or getting, more power. … There’s a coming backlash to this liberal oppression that is becoming front and center and they’re not even hiding their hands anymore… That’s why it’s so important that we stand in the gap for this nation because the greatest comeback in American history is on its way.” —Senator Tim Scott

Re: Double standards: “[Tim] Scott’s most controversial statement, allegedly, was to contend that, ‘America is not a racist country.’ … Yet, the very next morning, when asked by ABC News about Scott’s comments, Vice President Kamala Harris said: ‘I don’t think America is a racist country, but we also do have to speak truth about the history of racism in our country and its existence today.’ It’s one thing to see flagrant double standards in politics, and another thing to hear two people say the same thing within 24 hours and be treated completely differently.” —David Harsanyi

The bottom line: “The left’s demeaning of any African American who strays from leftist orthodoxy is one of the ugliest acceptable smears in our political discourse.” —David Harsanyi

Re: The Left: “The left devotes tremendous resources to smearing and defeating any female and minority Republicans. They do their best to destroy conservative minority candidates, and then attack the GOP for being ‘too white.’ The left claims to stand for diversity. But it can’t stand diversity of thought. The intolerant, totalitarian left increasingly demands that everyone must think, speak, act and vote the same way.” —Gary Bauer

For the record: “Absent similar hard commitments from India, China and other developing countries, which we don’t have, Biden’s emissions targets are likely to cause pain for Americans without improving our climate situation. U.S. and European emissions are already falling. Our reduction is more than made up for by increases in emissions from China and India. Without comparable commitments from these countries, Biden’s climate target would harm America’s working class and ship American jobs overseas for no benefit besides making wealthier Americans feel better about themselves. Look at the polarization in America today. The course Biden wants to embark on is just going to increase the divisions we already face.” —Neil Patel

Political futures: “Whether it is on human sexuality, the right to life for unborn children, gun rights, immigration sanity or a host of other issues, woke capital treats the Republican Party as more of an enemy than it would ever dream of treating sadistic detention facility managers in Xinjiang, China. Republicans should stop trying to prevent the unpreventable and permit its amicable divorce from corporate America to continue apace. … The GOP’s future comes in the form of a multiracial working-class political coalition — not in the C-suite.” —Josh Hammer

Observations: “In 2009, President Barack Obama created a spontaneous, hugely influential conservative grassroots movement on the basis of an $800 billion stimulus bill and a health care plan estimated to cost less than a trillion. In 2021, Biden is proposing to spend about $6 trillion in his first three big bills, and he can barely create more interest than the debate on wearing masks outdoors.” —Rich Lowry

Friendly fire I: “While I share President Biden’s urgency in fixing our broken immigration system, what I didn’t hear [Wednesday night] was a plan to address the immediate crisis at the border, and I will continue holding this administration accountable to deliver the resources and staffing necessary for a humane, orderly process as we work to improve border security, support local economies, and fix our immigration system.” —Arizona Senator Mark Kelly

Friendly fire II: “[Governor Andrew Cuomo] should resign. I’ve been saying this for months. He can’t continue to lead. Nursing home scandal, sexual harassment and assault scandal, using his staff to write his book, I mean, it’s just — it doesn’t end. He just has to go.” —New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio

And last… “No country on Earth is as obsessed with the ‘sins’ of its past as we are. Is that because those other countries have no sins? No. Many of them have done much worse, and done it for much longer. Yet they live in the present and we stay stuck in the past. It’s absurd and pathetic.” —Matt Walsh