Mar
28
2007

URLs du Jour

2007-03-28

  • If you liked the "Crisis ≠ Danger + Opportunity" post from a few days back, Ben Zimmer at Language Log has more fascinating information. (No, I'm not being sarcastic; it is fascinating, dammit!)

  • Apparently, Barack Obama delights in using the term "social Darwinism" against any political foe who might happen to favor free markets, property rights, and less government dependence. Betsy Newmark catches a recent occurrence, but the Google reports [as I type] 24500 hits for Obama "social darwinism", indicating that he's been deploying this rhetoric for a number of years.

    Well, it's better than calling us Nazis, I suppose. Betsy points out the implications: despite Obama being the alleged fresh-faced candidate of shiny new ideas and approaches, he's really philosophically attached to collectivist old-school approaches. Will Wilkinson, writing nearly two years ago, came to the same conclusion, dating Obama's philosophy as "coming from 1935 or thereabouts."

  • Staying in our Democrat-quoting mode, Hillary Clinton was recently quoted in Newsday speaking on heath care to a forum at UNLV:
    "And people are going to have to take better care of themselves," she added. "We cannot afford all the illness that folks are bringing on themselves. ... We need to start working on that, myself included."
    This is via Ann Althouse, who points out there's a couple of ways to interpret that, one more charitable than the other. I'm afraid I'm betting on the other, but maybe that's just the Social Darwinist talking.

  • A good article telling real inconvenient truths about American health care contains a version of the classic P. J. O'Rourke quote:
    If you think health care is expensive now, wait until you see what it costs when it's free.
    Hillary makes the corollary pretty obvious: if you think the nanny state is intrusive and annoying now, wait until it starts paying for your health care.

  • Michelle Malkin notes the recent anonymous threats and vile comments directed against Kathy Sierra, the unprecedented reaction to them, and asks, simply enough: "Where have y'all been?" Good point. Rough language at the link.