URLs du Jour

2018-07-27

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  • Yet another advertisement for being good in Proverbs 10:9:

    9 Whoever walks in integrity walks securely,
        but whoever takes crooked paths will be found out.

    Extra points, however, for maintaining the metaphor over the entire proverb; as we've seen previously, the Proverbialist (or the translators) didn't always manage that.


  • John McCain's daughter, Meghan, is the token conservative on a TV program called The View. (Which people, I guess, watch. Not I. And I only hear about it when someone on it does something stupid.)

    Anyway, Meghan said something true the other day, and David Harsanyi of the Federalist has the story: Meghan McCain Is Right. Socialism Leads To Misery And Destitution.

    On the same day that Venezuela’s “democratically” elected socialist president Nicolas Maduro, whose once-wealthy nation now has citizens foraging for food, announced he was chopping five zeros off the country’s currency to create a “stable financial and monetary system,” “The View’s” Meghan McCain was the target of her cohost, and Internet-wide condemnation, for stating some obvious truths about collectivism.

    On the same week we learned that democratic socialist Daniel Ortega of Nicaragua had massacred hundreds of protesters whose economic futures have been decimated by his economic policies, Soledad O’Brien, and writers at outlets ranging from GQ and BuzzFeed to the Daily Beast, were telling McCain to cool her jets.

    David does as good a job of debunking "socialism" (whether "implemented by a mob of people or by a single strongman") as it's possible to do in a single short column.


  • I concur with the wise one-line observation from Instapundit: "Gun control is like socialism. When it fails, the answer is more gun control."

    Actually, there are all sorts of state activities you can convincingly substitute for "gun control". It's a flexible template.


  • Power Line (John Hinderaker) reports that: New York Times Targets Kavanaugh's Wife. Specifically, a right-to-know demand of the Chevy Chase MD government to cough up e-mail messages from Ashley Kavanaugh that contain "interesting" words. Like "Liberal", "Abortion", "Gun", "Gay", … (Two terms are redacted from the Times' demand; I guess we have no right to know that.)

    John observes:

    They won’t find anything, of course. But this is what I want to know: When Stephen Breyer, Ruth Ginsburg, Sonia Sotamayor and Elena Kagan were appointed to the Court, did the Times, or the Associated Press, try to investigate documents sent or received by their family members?

    To ask the question is to answer it. The New York Times is only too happy to do opposition research for the Democratic Party for no charge.


  • I recently re-read 1984, so I'm sensitive to occurrences of Doublethink, such as that described by J.D. Tuccille at Reason: Liberty Makes Us Unfree, Says the ACLU

    What purpose is served by the American Civil Liberties Union? I know that the words "civil liberties" appear right there in the name, but it's increasingly difficult to take that seriously as the organization's mission. Just a month after leaked internal ACLU case-selection guidelines revealed the organization to be stepping back from viewpoint-neutral advocacy of free speech rights, the ACLU claims that vigorous advocacy for self-defense rights is to blame for government expansion of the security state.

    "Mass shootings create a pervasive sense of insecurity and anxiety that politicians and policymakers will inevitably seek to address," senior policy analyst Jay Stanley insists on the ACLU's Speech, Privacy, and Technology Project blog. As a result, he argues, "those who support expansive gun rights as a protection against excessive government power should strongly consider how much government intrusion and expanded power they're willing to trade for those rights."

    How about "none"? Does "none" work for you?


  • George F. Will appears at National Review, noting that Protectionism’s Appeal Endures, Despite Its Disastrous Effects.

    If you are not collateral damage in the escalating trade wars, the bulletins from the wars’ multiplying fronts are hilarious reading. You are collateral damage only if you are a manufacturer, farmer, or consumer, so relax and enjoy the following reports.

    Whirlpool, which makes washing machines and demands for government protection, wheedled Washington into imposing tariffs on, and quotas for, imported machines. Unfortunately for Whirlpool, American steel and aluminum makers horned in on the protectionist fun, getting tariffs — taxes paid by Americans — imposed on imports of those materials that, the Wall Street Journal says, account for most of the weight of 200-pound washing machines. And for part of the decline in Whirlpool’s share price. And for declining demand for appliances, the prices of which have risen as protectionism increases manufacturing costs and decreases competition.

    Mr. Will is a national resource. When on the road, I'm listening to his Reason podcast interview with Nick Gillespie.


  • Betsy Newmark compares recent Senatorial rhetoric (Cory Booker on Judge Kavanaugh, specifically) with Gustavus Adolphus, then King of Sweden, threatening a Brandenburg city father to get on the Right Side:

    I tell you plainly I will hear not a word of neutrality. Your Serenity must be either friend or foe. As soon as I get to your frontier you will have to declare yourself. Here strive God and the devil. If you will hold with God, come over to me, If you prefer the devil, you will have to fight me first. Tertium non dabitur [There is no third choice,] of that you may be sure.

    I got similar treatment for my never-Trump, never-Clinton behavior a couple years back.


Last Modified 2024-01-25 9:20 AM EDT