2003

Giving the Devil His Due

Over at Takimag, Chronicles contributing editor Tom Piatak has a thought-provoking piece on the proposal to extend $25 to $50 billion in government-backed loans to the Big Three automakers. Among other points completely ignored by those who reflexively shout “Let them die!” whenever the American auto industry is mentioned are, as Tom notes, that as many as three million U.S. jobs may be lost; that the “tax loss from such a catastrophe would be over $150 billion over three years”; and that over 850,000 retirees receive pensions and health benefits from the Big Three–and taxpayers are on the hook for at least some of that cost through the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation.

In other words, the extension of $25 to $50 billion in loans may be the cheapest way out of this mess. Predictably, though, the same people who declared that we had to bail out Wall Street have drawn the line at Midwestern Main Streets.

Tom’s thoughtful, reasoned, and fact-filled post drew a response from Richard Spencer, modestly titled “A Modest Proposal.”

Hating Babies, Hating God

When I sat down to write this article, Google reminded me that, when it comes to the issue of contraception, the stakes are very high. To check the date of publication of Dr. Charles Provan’s important work The Bible and Birth Control, I typed “Charles, Provan, Bible, Birth Control” into the mother of all search engines. As fast as my dial-up connection could react, I was confronted with a paid advertisement, spawned by my search criteria, for Ortho Evra, also known as The Patch, the bastard offspring of The Pill. I followed the link and immediately recognized the happy contraceptor from the ubiquitous television ad, who lifts her baby-T to show, just above her pantyline, the flesh-colored patch, which stands up to the ravages of both shower and swimming pool as it pumps norogestromin and ethinyl estradiol into her erstwhile fertile (healthy) body. The Patch, claims the commercial, is for women who just do not have time to worry about taking a pill every day.

Remember From Whence Thou Art Fallen

“Forget about Europe!” shriek the neo-isolationists. “Only Britain and Israel matter. We saved the French twice in one century, and they still think they have a right to follow their own foreign policy.” Americans used to have somewhat longer memories.