Archive for August, 2011
London’s Postmodern Riots
Three key aspects of London’s three successive nights of rioting are missing in the mainstream media coverage: race, the striking indifference of most onlookers to the chaos around them, and the equally striking inability or unwillingness of the police to impose and maintain order.
Who’s Really Downgrading America?
This downgrade is deeply deserved. For no one really believes the United States is going to pay its creditors back the $14 trillion it owes them, or the $21 trillion it will owe them at decade’s end, with dollars of the same value as those that the United States is borrowing today.
Strange Doings
Awhile back the folks out in Seattle got in a dudgeon when they learned that their county, King, was named after William R.D. King, who was elected Vice-President in 1852. They wanted the world to know that the county was ever after to be considered as named for The Reverend Doctor Martin Luther King, Jr.
The Lesson for Democrats: Any Republican Will Do
He blew it. Two days before the United States was officially set to default on its debts on August 2, President Barack Obama had the Republicans where he wanted them.
Democracy at Work (for Better or Worse)
Whoever said it first spoke a mouthful: Rome wasn’t built in a day. To which I would add: congressmen didn’t build it either. Members of Congress bicker, bellow and throw nails under each other’s pickup tires seemingly trying to block meaningful action like the enactment of legislation authorizing payment of national obligations.
Fiscal Hawks vs. Security Hawks
The Republican Party is a stool that stands on three legs: social conservatives, economic conservatives and foreign policy conservatives. Yet since Ronald Reagan departed and George W. Bush arrived, that coalition has been under a growing strain that may yet pull it apart and redefine what conservatism means in 21st century America.
Turn on the Radio
Paul Youngblood and I will be on the air at 3-5 CDT today, chatting amiably about Syria and government-funded contraception–and anything else that comes up. Please call in and save me from Rockford’s rabid welfare dependents who call up screaming insults.
Bernard Mandeville
Bernard Mandeville was a Dutch physician (b. 1670 in Rotterdam), who moved to England, apparently to learn the language. In 1704 he published a poem of doggerel couplets, The Grumbling Hive, which he included in his 1714 book, The Fable of the Bees, Or, Private Vices, Public Benefits. It is one of those rare books [...]
Unsolved Mysteries
I have always been amazed at the sub-intellectual process by which liberals all know at almost the same time and in the same form what they are supposed to think. It is amazing.
The Oslo Fallout: A Review of Views Unfit to Print
On August 1 the Daily Mail published an op-ed by Melanie Philips (“Hatred, smears and the liberals hell-bent on bullying millions of us into silence”) which warns that the baleful effects of Anders Breivik’s recent attacks in Norway have not been limited to the carnage of the day.
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