Wednesday, November 30, 2011

Winning and Losing

Which is the more difficult case for you to make?  The one against abortion/for life or the one against gay/for traditional marriage?  If it's the latter, you're not alone. Have we won the abortion debate and lost the one over gay marriage?  Sure feels like it, doesn't it?

Over at NRO, David French then Jonah Goldberg have a few thoughts about why this is so.

Monday, November 28, 2011

The Liberal Mind at Work

Economist Paul Krugman is certainly a representative liberal and just the title of his latest New York Times column says it all:  "Things to Tax"

The Kennedy Obsession

I usually put New York Times columnist Ross Douthat in the same pigeon hole I keep his Times colleague David Brooks.  That is, as conservative commentators, they're unreliable.

But, to be fair, I should be more specific and say that as nominally conservative observers of contemporary politics, they're unreliable.   But, as reviewers of books and film, and as observers of broad cultural trends, they're much, much better.

For a particularly good example, consider Douthat's latest piece on "The Enduring Cult of Kennedy."

So why does this enduring JFK cult matter?:
...because its myths still shape how we interpret politics today. We confuse charisma with competence, rhetoric with results, celebrity with genuine achievement. We find convenient scapegoats for national tragedies, and let our personal icons escape the blame. And we imagine that the worst evils can be blamed exclusively on subterranean demons, rather than on the follies that often flow from fine words and high ideals.       

Fwank Won't Wun, cont.

Weetiwing?  Is that the weal weason, owr was it weedistwicting?

Fwank Won't Wun

Who?

Wepweesentative Bawney Fwank.

Wealwy?  Why?

Weetiwing.

Wonderful!

Sunday, November 27, 2011

Pity the Poor Politicians

General Colin Powell blames the current impasse and inability to compromise among the nation's political class on the media and the Tea Party.  To be fair, the latter target came to him with a little help from interviewer Christiane Amanpour.

Anyway, that he would blame the media is actually quite surprising, that he would blame the Tea Party no surprise at all.

Meanwhile, innocent politicians stand idly on the sidelines, shrugging their shoulders, wondering why we all just can't get along.

Good grief General.

Friday, November 25, 2011

Do-Nothing Democrats

In that same piece, Krauthammer makes yet another important point:
Has the president ever publicly proposed a single significant structural change in any entitlement? After Simpson-Bowles reported? No. In his February budget? No. In his April 13 budget “framework”? No. During the debt-ceiling crisis? No. During or after the supercommittee deliberations? No. 
As regarding the supercommittee, Obama was AWOL — then immediately pounced on its failure by going on  TV to repeat his incessantly repeated campaign theme of the do-nothing (Republican) Congress. 
A swell slogan that fits nicely with the Norquist myth. Except for another inconvenient fact: It is the Republicans who passed — through the House, the only branch of government they control — a real budget that cut $5.8 trillion of spending over the next ten years. Obama’s February budget, which would have increased spending, was laughed out of  the Senate, voted down 97– 0. As for the Democratic Senate, it has submitted no budget at all for two and a half years.
Starting now, no GOP presidential candidate, no Republican congressman or senator, should let more than two sentences pass in any print or electronic media interview without saying these words: "The Do-Nothing Democrats"

We absolutely must fight back.

Besides, the alliteration is nice.

Tax Rates vs. Tax Revenue

Charles Krauthammer makes an important point about the Democrats' unwillingness to distinguish between tax rates and tax revenues. To state what ought to be obvious, it is only increased tax revenues, however they are raised, that will pay the bills.  The nation's creditors will not be impressed nor satisfied if we come to them with a big tax rate.  "So what?  Show me the money!", they will scream.

Krauthammer attributes the Dems fixation on rates rather than revenue to a foolish, but otherwise benign "thickheadedness."   I disagree. 

The Democrats are not stupid, they're crazy, as in mad.  Their principal and defining commitment is to equality (itself animated chiefly by envy, I might add) and they aim to pursue it, and aggressively so, no matter the costs or consequences to the country.  As they see it, leveling through a progressive, punishing, soak-the-rich tax code of ever-increasing income tax rates, is the best, is the only way to achieve a fair society.  It's a quasi-religious commitment on their part.  Hence, they refuse to be reasoned away from it and no preponderance of evidence against it will ever convince them otherwise.

The only thing that will stop them, and I do mean the only thing, is electoral defeat.

Beat'em!

Thursday, November 24, 2011

Happy Thanksgiving!

A posture of gratitude is good for the soul.

That's true even if at first it's only a pose.  After awhile it can become a discipline.  After that a habit.  And then, over time, an essential part of who you really are.

And who you really are will be a much happier human being.

So, sometime today, give thanks.

Wednesday, November 23, 2011

Playing Pepper

I always knew the Atlantic's James Fallows to be a reliable liberal, but I also thought he retained a modicum at least of, what?, common sense, perspective?  Apparently not.

Upset by the images of the police pepper-spraying the student "Occupy" protesters at UC-Davis, after they refused to obey repeated pleas, then orders to disperse, Fallows writes:
I can't see any legitimate basis for police action like what is shown here. Watch that first minute and think how we'd react if we saw it coming from some riot-control unit in China, or in Syria. The calm of the officer who walks up and in a leisurely way pepper-sprays unarmed and passive people right in the face? We'd think: this is what happens when authority is unaccountable and has lost any sense of human connection to a subject population. That's what I think here.
That's what you think Mr. Fallows?

Well, what I think is that very unlike China and Syria, which are brutal authoritarian regimes where the people have no voice and no other recourse save public protest, peaceful or not, the United States is a government of law, a representative democracy where the people enjoy constitutional protections of their rights and nearly countless avenues for seeking redress of their grievances, the most important of which is the ballot.

The "Occupy" phenomenon is first and foremost crude political theatre. The pepper-spraying of the protesters is precisely the response or kind of response it is calculated to engender, with the hope that the mere image of it will inspire broader sympathy among fellow citizens.

But aside from managing to offend a few silly, un-thinking liberals who are forever waiting to be offended anyway, the ploy won't work.  It didn't work during the Vietnam era, remember Nixon was both elected and re-elected, and it won't work now.

Tuesday, November 22, 2011

The Stemmed Cell Debate

Remember when the news was full, 24/7 full, of reports about the oh-so-promising future of embryonic stem cell research?  Promising, that is, if only those crazy, right-wing, obscurantist, anti-choice zealots would get the heck out of the way.

Haven't heard much about it lately, have you?

The Weekly Standard's Wesley J. Smith explains why not.

While it's important always to emphasize the fact of the elite media's double standard, not to mention report the very much more promising future, as it happens, of adult stem cell research, I'm more than a little wary of this kind of piece.

Imagine that embryonic stem cell research had been as fruitful as its most enthusiastic advocates insisted it would be.  Would it be, then, morally acceptable?

"Horizontalism"?

It's the organizing principle of the "Occupy" movement, which is neither organized, nor principled in the sense that it has a particular purpose or direction that anyone can articulate.  And, by definition, no one can articulate it because "horizontalism" means "leaderless", in opposition to "verticalism" which means "hierarchy".  Whatever else these truly unwashed masses stand for, they certainly stand, or sit, or pitch their tents, against hierarchy

But, of course, without someone like a leader to tell us, we're only guessing, aren't we?

Mattathias Schwartz of The New Yorker is to be commended for communicating all this fairly well in what is supposed to be, I think, a sympathetic, or at least non-judgemental report about "The origins and future of Occupy Wall Street."

I say I think it's sympathetic because, well, let's just hope Tom Wolfe is taking notes for a future novel and leave it at that. 

Monday, November 21, 2011

The Duty to Die

I missed this when it was published a month or so ago, but my sister-in-law just brought it to my attention, and now yours as well.

To be clear, the duty to die is nowhere yet the case in Europe or the US.  But the trip from a right to suicide, to a right to an assisted suicide, to the legitimacy of organ harvesting from rightful suicides, to a growing social pressure to commit suicide, to the duty to die is not very far.  To my mind, the trip to the state's right to kill is shorter still.

But we should not be afraid.  Instead, we should gird our loins and strike back...hard.

Sunday, November 20, 2011

A Dirty Business

What was predictable was that the Super Committee would under perform.  What was not predictable, however, was this headline and story: "Blame Game Erupts as Hope for Deficit Deal Fades"

If the past is any indicator, it was much more likely that the GOP members would try to take the high road and thereby leave it to the Democrats to frame the story about the committee's failure.  And can there be any doubt as to how they would frame it?  Something or other about Republican intransigence, sympathy for the well-heeled, lack of same for the poor and unemployed, etc., etc., etc..

Now the fight over who's to blame can begin in earnest and winning that fight, or at least making a good show of it is absolutely crucial, crucial for the coming election and even more so for the future of the country.

Call it the low road if you wish, I call it trench warfare and although it's always dirty in the trenches, it's still necessary.

Who are We to Judge?

If you've read this blog for very long, you'll know that I don't read New York Times columnist David Brooks anymore.  He's a token, and I do mean token, conservative over at the Gray Lady and his work, more often than not, drove me absolutely nuts. "With friends like these..."  That kind of thing.

As a result, I didn't read his reaction to the reaction to the news of the charges of child sexual abuse made against a former Penn. St. football coach and what has come to be the very widespread fallout.  Anyway, a week or so ago, Brooks did in fact react with this column, "Let's All Feel Superior".

Mark Steyn, whom I adore, commented on the scandal himself just yesterday, but more importantly on Brooks' reaction as well.  His piece is titled, "No Man's Land".

I'd ask you to read both columns, first Brooks', then Steyn's.

I suspect I'm guilty of overstatement, but it occurs to me that the differences between Brooks and Steyn here (and elsewhere), and you may put as positive a spin as you like on either position, capture almost perfectly the divisions that exist within the Republican Party and contemporary conservatism.

In case I wasn't clear, I'm of the Steyn party.

Same Old, Same Old

Remember Clinton Labor Secretary Robert Reich?  He's sure he knows how to heal our ailing economy.

From UC-Berkeley (where else?), in what is almost a parody of the liberal Democrat position, he very succinctly prescribes, you guessed it, (1) more and bigger stimulus, (2) more and higher taxes, (3) cut military spending.

Reich may not be original, but at least he's short.

Friday, November 18, 2011

I Love to Tell the Story

Tired of all the encomiums to the King James Bible, this year celebrating its 400th anniversary?

Too bad, here's another, this time from National Geographic.

But first sample this taste of what you'll find inside the article as the writer here, in a single paragraph, attempts to communicate just how immeasurably important this book has been and still is for anyone who speaks or writes in English.
Most of us might think we have forgotten its words, but the King James Bible has sewn itself into the fabric of the language. If a child is ever the apple of her parents' eye or an idea seems as old as the hills, if we are at death's door or at our wits' end, if we have gone through a baptism of fire or are about to bite the dust, if it seems at times that the blind are leading the blind or we are casting pearls before swine, if you are either buttering someone up or casting the first stone, the King James Bible, whether we know it or not, is speaking through us. The haves and have-nots, heads on plates, thieves in the night, scum of the earth, best until last, sackcloth and ashes, streets paved in gold, and the skin of one's teeth: All of them have been transmitted to us by the translators who did their magnificent work 400 years ago.

Thursday, November 17, 2011

Show Me the Money

Among the latest incontrovertible but unexamined truths of the Left is that over the past couple of decades the distance between rich and poor has grown ever larger, that the middle class is shrinking, shrinking, shrinking.

As you might expect, it's a bit more complicated than that says Veronique de Rugy at NRO.  Relax, it's numbers, but it's short...and worth it.

Christmas Victims, cont.

True to form, the Hollings Cancer Center is bowing to pressure once again.  This time, however, in the right direction as it seems that Santa's back.

You see, we can win this war, quite easily actually, if we're just willing to fight.

Uh, No Comment

"One in Four American Women Take Medication for a Mental Disorder"

And the other three-quarters sh...sorry, I said "No comment" and I meant it.

Christmas Victims

The Hollings Cancer Center of Charleston, SC has decided to close its doors to Santa Claus this season.  Why?  Well, because the administration is fearful of giving offense.  To whom?  Uh, not sure, someone, maybe.

Such is the power of political correctness that even when no "victim" is present, nearby, within sight, or anticipated, we are now forced to imagine them nevertheless.

And don't be fooled when some representative of the Left, an ACLU lawyer perhaps, laughs and says the hospital is over-reacting.  If they, the Left, decides they need it, that there is something they want, you can be sure that in short order there will be a rent-a-rally out front of sign-carrying "pretend vicims" demanding some concession or other from the hospital.

Political correctness is a now well-established tool of the Left, or weapon rather, always loaded and cocked, even if not yet aimed.  

Wednesday, November 16, 2011

Tortured Logic

Many thanks to Marc Thiessen for making some invaluable corrections to the record about the practice of waterboarding, the enhanced interrogation technique the editors at the Washington Post called into question yet again just the other day.

This subject has been used cynically, yes, cynically by the Left, to include the editorial board of the Washington Post, ever since the practice of waterboarding was first revealed during the earliest stages of the war on terror.  And that, ladies and gentlemen, is far too long.

So, if I may, I'd like to offer my own response to the editors:

If you cannot distinguish between the extreme measures sometimes employed for the sole purpose of trying to avoid further atrocities, from those employed for the sake of nothing more than the brutality itself, then you are a moral idiot.

Racist America

A new CNN poll confirms what liberal commentators everywhere have been saying all along.  Since November 2008, America has become an increasingly racist country.  The number simply do not lie: "White Americans give Obama a thumbs down by a 61%-36% margin, with non-white Americans give the president a thumbs up by a more than 2-1 margin."

Monday, November 14, 2011

"Who wants to be feminine?"

So asks feminist icon Gloria Steinem in response to a question from her UK Observer interviewer. 

Does Ms. Steinem ask it:  Rhetorically?  Ironically?  Confusedly?  Honestly?

Hard to know for sure, so I'm guessing we just might be back to the original question after all.  That is, "What do women want?"

Sunday, November 13, 2011

Can You Hear Me Now?

Christopher Hitchens, bravely battling esophageal cancer, wonders engagingly, albeit silently, or nearly so, about losing one's "voice".

Stolen Valor, Wasted Time

Goerge Will writes about a case before the US Supreme Court over the constitutionality of the Stolen Valor Act.  The act, which basically makes it a crime to falsely claim to have been awarded a military medal or decoration, passed both houses of congress without dissent and was signed into law by President Bush in 2005.  Will correctly describes the law as "a compound of political pandering and moral exhibitionism," and argues that it should be ruled unconsitutional as a violation of the First Amendment guarantee of free speech, the claim made by the defendent in the particular case now before the Court.

I have to agree.  What is it they say about acts that pass Congress by 100%? 

But had the law been before the Senate in 2011 instead of 2005, you can be sure there would have been at least one dissenting vote.  No doubt the junior Senator from Connecticut, Democrat Richard Blumenthal, who lied about his military service in Vietnam during his campaign, would have found serious consitutional flaws in the proposed law and perhaps even could have motivated enough of his colleagues to put a stop to this assault on liberty.

More seriously, aside from the constitutional issues, you would think that the mere exposure of such behavior would suffice as its own corrective.  Isn't the price for just being strange punishment enough?  But then, the good people of Connecticut knew Blumenthal had lied about his service and voted for him anyway.  He was a dependable liberal and only dependable liberals get elected in that state. 

Nevertheless, while such lying makes him, for most of the country anyway, more than a bit weird, it shouldn't make him a criminal as well.  As a politician, he'll have plenty of other opportunities for that.

Thursday, November 10, 2011

Couldn't Resist

Over at the American Spectator, George Neumayr pens a great column with the subtitle "The Farce that is American Public Life."   His topic is the accusations of sexual harassment and worse against GOP presidential candidate Herman Cain and the elite media's, along with much of liberal punditry's disgusting reaction to them.  Be warned, candidate Cain himself comes in for some deserved criticism as well.

Anyway, what got my attention and prompted this blog was the sentence with which he begins a paragraph to highlight the double standard that is the media's treatment of Cain when compared to their treatment of former president Bill Clinton.  He writes:
If Cain is lying, he is an uncannily confident liar, a feat to rival Clinton's.
To my mind, of tremendous significance in that sentence is the inclusion of the word "if".  To this point, as his steady poll numbers seem to indicate, there remains out there many who are still prepared to give Cain the benefit of the doubt.

What was unique about Clinton was that from the very beginning, no one, and I do mean no one, ever believed much of anything he, or his wife, ever said.  After all, "Slick Willie" was the nickname he earned from his Arkansas days and "congenital liars" is what the late William Safire called them both once they became national figures.  And yet, not many, certainly not enough, seemed to care

So, if I may, and with apologies to the late Senator Lloyd Bensten of Texas, I know Bill Clinton, and Herman Cain is no Bill Clinton.

Sorry, but, as I said, I couldn't resist.



Wednesday, November 9, 2011

"5" Dead in O-HI-O

Ohio "Senate Bill 5", that is.  You know, the one championed by Republican Governor John Kasich, the one that would have restricted the collective bargaining rights of Ohio's public sector unions, the one that would have given Ohio's various local jurisdictions the authority to balance their budgets.

Look, there's no way to sugarcoat it, in Ohio last night the unions won, the Democrats won, the Left won, and they won big, by a nearly 2-to-1 margin.

But, actually, they didn't win because they can't win.

Ladies and Gentlemen, the trumpet has sounded and the bill is finally due.  Denial in the form of voting for left-wingers of any stripe will not delay for even one minute the day of reckoning, the Great Reckoning.  In fact, voting for any incarnation of the Left at all will only hasten its coming.

We, all of us, Left or Right, Democrat or Republican, from any and all states and regions, must now run the gauntlet.  We cannot escape it and, make no mistake, it will be painful.  The only question we have to answer is whether or not the pain we have to endure will be more or less.

Last night, although they thought they were choosing otherwise, the people of Ohio voted for more.

Tuesday, November 8, 2011

"Period!"

Did you see Herman Cain's press conference?

He denied all the accusations.  Inarticulately at times, certainly not Ivy League trained, but clearly and without equivocation.  No one had to listen carefully, parse the words, or chew over the phrasing after the fact.  For heaven's sake, the guy said he would submit to a lie detector test

Most definitely not Bill Clinton, almost the anti-politician.

Look, I don't know who's telling the truth.  As they say, it's a "He said, she said," or "He said, they said."  But, and I've said this before in a different context, if you cannot understand, appreciate, or at least concede, the political appeal of a Herman Cain, then I have no choice but to conclude that you are simply not interested in actually winning elections.

Too Far Senator, Too Far

Attorney General Eric Holder appeared before a Senate committee today to answer questions about the ill-fated "Fast and Furious" program.  Along the way, he had this interchange with Senator John Cornyn, R-TX:
Cornyn: "Have you apologized to the family of Brian Terry [the murdered Border Patrol agent]?"

Holder: "I have not apologized to them, but I certainly regret what happened."

Cornyn: "Have you even talked to them?"

Holder: "I have not."

Cornyn: "Would you like to apologize today for this program that went so wrong that took the life of a United States law enforcement agent?"
I'm not really interested in Holder's answer to this question, an answer I'm sure is filled with the   evasions, half-truths, and refusals to accept responsibility we've come to expect from him on behalf of this administration. 

What I am interested in, and upset about, is the direction and tone of Cornyn's questioning here.

Uh, Senator, this is not us.  This is them.  This is precisely the bull$#!+, grandstanding, "gotcha" kind of questioning employed by Democrat pols and their too-many-to-count aiders and abettors in the elite media.

Keep it professional Senator.  The facts of this case are on our side and, at least this time, the facts are all we need.

Birds of a Feather

Heard about the gay penguins?

Seems to be a "natural" fact, but their Toronto zookeepers are splitting them up nevertheless. Why?  Well, of course, because they won't, or rather, can't breed.  It's not clear whether the zookeepers are interested in continuing the penguin line or the gay penguin line.

Which raises again the important and vexing question about what is and isn't "natural".  If homosexuality is a "natural" phenomenon among animals, then how does it survive the process of "natural" selection?

Just wondering. 

Joe Frazier, RIP

Former heavyweight champion Joe Frazier died yesterday of liver cancer at 67.  The boxing world, indeed the world of American sports has lost one of its very greatest. 

Those of you who follow the Sage know that I am, or at least was, a great fan of boxing.  Muhammad Ali's rise to fame and infamy occurred during my lifetime, so I was very much aware at the time of  the hype that surrounded, as well as the stakes that defined his first fight with Joe Frazier in 1971.

During that intensely political era, Ali promoted the fight in part by politicizing it and I, like most Americans of a conservative disposition (although I was no "conservative" at the time, too young to even know what that meant) wanted nothing more than for Frazier to SHUT ALI's MOUTH.

While he did beat him, he didn't shut him up.  No one could. No one ever could.  Sadly, it would take Parkinson's Syndrome to silence Muhammad Ali.

But even more sadly, Frazier's life after that fight and the two more with Ali, most especially the last, the famous "Thrilla in Manila" in 1975, became characterized chiefly and increasingly as that of a bitter old man who bore a huge grudge.  Therefore, it is no doubt sadder still that the story of Joe Frazier, an undeniably great fighter in his own right, one of the best ever, can only be told in relation to his nemesis Ali.

With that in mind, let me recommend to you this very good piece by Richard Hoffer over at the Sports Illustrated website. It's not so much a eulogy for Frazier as a memorial.  Here's a taste:
That fight [the "Thrilla in Manilla"] was pretty much the end of their careers (Frazier lost once more to Foreman then gave it up; Ali stuck it out several more years, though never again as brilliant or determined), and Frazier was left to a life of resentment. He never got over the losses, the insults, the legacy that was left him. Ali became a world hero, lighting Olympic flames, an example of political courage the rest of his mute life. Frazier, a bitter, old warrior, instead had to consider the inadequacies of grit in a time that was more inclined to reward glamour. (my emphasis)
(That last phrase, I thought, served as well to describe and diagnose almost perfectly the state of the country since the 1960s.  This is a political blog after all.  Well, mostly anyway.

Monday, November 7, 2011

Advise and Consent

So long as Bill Clinton is handing out free advice to presidential hopefuls, maybe Herman Cain should give him a quick call.  Of all people, certainly Bill and Hillary know how to handle this sort of problem.

Saturday, November 5, 2011

"For What It's Worth", cont.

The indispensable Mark Steyn reports on the, uh, progress of "Occupy place city name here".

A few weeks back, to the tune of that old Buffalo Springfield song, I blogged that this spasm ("movement" implies a direction, a goal) could only help conservatives and the GOP win back the government.  My worry was that as a spasm--maybe tic is better--it would run too quickly out of energy.

Well, it hasn't, and, as Steyn points out in this paragraph, its spread has actually been quite useful.
I don’t “stand with the 99%,” and certainly not downwind of them. But I’m all for their “occupation” continuing on its merry way. It usefully clarifies the stakes. At first glance, an alliance of anarchists and government might appear to be somewhat paradoxical. But the formal convergence in Oakland makes explicit the movement’s aims: They’re anarchists for statism, wild free-spirited youth demanding more and more total government control of every aspect of life — just so long as it respects the fundamental human right to sloth. What’s happening in Oakland is a logical exercise in class solidarity: The government class enthusiastically backing the breakdown of civil order is making common cause with the leisured varsity class, the thuggish union class, and the criminal class in order to stick it to what’s left of the beleaguered productive class. It’s a grand alliance of all those societal interests that wish to enjoy in perpetuity a lifestyle they are not willing to earn. Only the criminal class is reasonably upfront about this. The rest — the lifetime legislators, the unions defending lavish and unsustainable benefits, the “scholars” whiling away a somnolent half decade at Complacency U — are obliged to dress it up a little with some hooey about “social justice” and whatnot. (my emphasis)

Friday, November 4, 2011

If I Only Had a Heart...a Brain...Courage!

Pardon this discursive Friday rumination.  It's prompted by this review by Ian Marcus Corbin of a new biography of the mid-twentieth century American critic Lionel Trilling and a Halloween memory from childhood.

Huh?

Bear with me.

The review, which is quite good, serves to remind us of both who Trilling was and, more importantly, why he was important.
Ironically, the strongest argument for why Trilling matters might well be the fact that neither Mr. Kirsch [the author of the book Corbin's reviewing], nor any other critic working right now, seems willing and able to do what Trilling did. The inherent weaknesses that Trilling saw in our liberal democratic order have not gone away. We have not outgrown the need for moral realism—for reminders that we are finite, and that every social arrangement involves real ambiguities and losses. A society that found all of this regrettable, but not surprising or unacceptable, would be a wiser one, able to face its problems with greater maturity and responsibility.  
Great thinkers often emerge at moments of great upheaval, when a society is threatened by catastrophe or enticed by promises of salvation. Trilling and his cohort were tempted by the glittering mirage of a worker's paradise. Their temptation was squashed after they saw the gray-drab barbarism of real-world communism. The era lent a martial urgency to the perennial task of thinking well about the world.
It occurred to me that Trilling's story is the familiar one of countless it seems twentieth-century European and American intellectuals.  Men and women who in their relative youth heard the siren song of socialism only to awaken at long last from the reverie, the nightmare actually, and see finally the evil that was staring them in the face all along for what it was.

I was reminded of the old quote, usually attributed to Churchill, that, “If you're not a liberal at twenty you have no heart, if you're not a conservative at forty you have no brain.”

I, along with many, many others in this country never heard the siren song of socialism.  Were we heartless?

Anyway, I do remember one Halloween when I was eight or nine years old.  For some reason, my younger brother and the oldest of my younger sisters were moved to pour all our candy into a common bowl from which we were to feast, "each according to his need." 

Do I have to tell you what happened?  Or the lesson we learned?

Will anyone ever write our biography?

"I'm the wrong gender"

So explains former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright for GOP presidential candidate Herman Cain's failure to call her for her views on American foreign policy.

Hell hath no fury...

Anyway, I'll resist the temptation to make a crude joke in response to her comment and instead draw your attention to the gross display of hypocrisy here.  We should remember that this woman, apparently itching for the opportunity to take a gratuitous cheap shot at Mr. Cain, served enthusiastically nevertheless in the administration of that serial sexual harasser and self-indulgent sybarite Bill Clinton.

With credentials such as those, maybe Herman thought calling her would just make things worse.

Not for All the Tea in China

Jonah Goldberg reminds us why we needn't envy China, quoting along the way to making his case one  Michael Levy from an interview with NPR.  You would be very hard pressed to get it more perfectly concise than this:
“Imagine that there’s a country exactly like the United States. Exactly the same size. It’s got the same cities. It’s got the same number of rich people and poor people. It’s just like us. And now add 1 billion peasants. That’s China.”

"Who Lost Iraq?"

...and why?  Charles Krauthammer answers both questions and demonstrates again, as if it needed to be demonstrated again, why the Democrat Party cannot be trusted with the conduct of American foreign and defense policy.

Wednesday, November 2, 2011

Could it Be?

For some reason, I found this L.A. Times headline and story about as encouraging and hopeful as anything I've read or heard lately:  "Colorado Voters Reject Raising Taxes to Support Education"

At last count, yesterday's vote in the Centennial State over "Prop 103" was 65% - 35% against the initiative. "Prop 103", had it passed, would have raised a hodgepodge of state taxes to the tune of some $3 billion, but only temporarily and only for the purpose of funding education.

Could it be that in a bell-weather state like Colorado, they've finally come to their collective common sense?  That is, have the voters there awoken to the fact that pouring even one more dollar down the black hole of just about government-run anything, including even government-run "education", you know, the bureaucracy that's most obviously "for the children", is at some point unforgivably foolhardy?

And if so, what does this signal about the disposition of the rest of the country when we all go to the polls in November of 2012?

I know, it's still a long way from here to there, but you'll forgive me if I smile (maybe even smirk) for just a moment or two, won't you?