URLs du Jour

2019-06-17

[Amazon Link]
(paid link)

  • At National Review, Wesley J. Smith notes the news from across the Salmon Falls River: Maine Governor Comes out Pro-Suicide.

    Maine Governor Janet Mills (D) just signed a bill legalizing assisted suicide. That means she is pro, at least some, suicides.

    But her statement justifying her signing goes even further, and in my view, crosses the line to full-bore pro-suicide advocacy. From the Courthouse News Service story:

    “It is not up to the government to decide who may die and who may live, when they shall die or how long they shall live,” Mills said in a statement. “While I do not agree that the right of the individual is so absolute, I do believe it is a right that should be protected in law…

    That’s a very opened-ended statement.  If government has no right to decide who may die and who may live, when they shall die or how long they shall live, we might as well kiss government-sponsored suicide-prevention programs goodbye. We should tell cops not to pull people off bridge precipices. And no more forced hospitalizations for treatment of those found beyond a reasonable doubt to be a danger to their own lives.

    Since I am sometimes a bad person, I envisioned a cop going up on a bridge tower and "assisting" the distraught person at the top by …

    "Here ya go, fella!"

    "Aiee ee ee ee…"

    "You're welcome! Always happy to assist!"


  • The next time some lefty attempts to slander your favorite ideology as being anti-science, you might want to dig out this American Interest article from Tara Isabella Burton: The Rise of Progressive Occultism.

    Back in March 2019, an elected government representative shared something personal about her spiritual identity. Not a preferred Bible verse or a conversion story. Rather, progressive New York Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez shared her birth-time with a self-described psychic and astrologer, Arthur Lipp-Bonewits, who in turn shared her entire birth chart with what can only be described as Astrology Twitter.

    Astrology Twitter went wild. So did the mainstream media, with outlets from Vox to The Cut to Allure speculating about what Ocasio-Cortez’s astrological chart could tell us about her fitness for political office. “AOC’s Aries Moon indicates that she’s emotionally fed by a certain amount of independence, self-determination, and spontaneity,” concluded Allure’s Jeanna Kadlec. “But that independence always finds a way home.” Meanwhile, Lipp-Bonewits told The Cut’s Madeleine Aggeler that the stars predicted that Ocasio-Cortez’s “career in politics is likely to last the rest of her life.”

    A fascinating illustration of that quote that Chesterton didn't say: when you stop believing in God, you'll believe anything.


  • [Amazon Link]
    (paid link)
    Good advice from J.D. Tuccille at Reason: Stop Treating Government With Respect.

    The government in the United States has increasingly become a powerful weapon that two warring tribes repeatedly seize control of and then use against each other. For those of us who are averse to being smashed, it's long past time to consider the machinery of the state as nothing more than a bludgeon in the hands of dangerous maniacs.

    Dangerous? Indeed. It's hard to beat the insight into the malicious heart of government offered by Rep. Ted Lieu on CNN in December.

    "I would love to be able to regulate the content of speech," the California Democrat told CNN's Brianna Keilar. "The First Amendment prevents me from doing so, and that's simply a function of the First Amendment."

    Lieu obviously takes it for granted that many politicians would muzzle their enemies if it were permitted and that only meddlesome legal strictures prevent them from enacting their dark desires.

    J.D. recommends checking out Jason Brennan's latest book When All Else Fails: The Ethics of Resistance to State Injustice (Amazon link at right). It's on my get-at-library list, but I might move it to my "buy" list.


  • I'm not quite there yet, but my ears pricked up for Andrew Ferguson at the Atlantic: Tyranny of the 70-Somethings.

    Why have national Democrats and not national Republicans fallen under the tyranny of the 70-somethings? It seems so contrary to common expectation. Democrats are, as they often remind us, the party of progress and the future. The question seems to rival those enduring, unanswerable mysteries such as “What happens when you die?” and “Why did Mick Taylor quit the Rolling Stones?”

    People in their mid-to-late 70s are thick on the ground nowadays, while in an earlier era, of course, you’d have been more likely to find them under it. This is especially true in the urban centers of the Northeast and mid-Atlantic, according to a recent survey of census data by the Associated Press–NORC Center for Public Affairs Research. In particular, the Washington, D.C., area is a leader in “senior labor force participation,” by which the researchers mean the region is loaded with people who have passed the age of retirement yet somehow neglected to retire.

    Yeah. Those guys are jerks. Interesting factoid, because Andrew gets around to politics pretty quickly: "Infamously, the three leading Democrats in the House are 79, 78, and 79, for a staggering combined age of 236, making the Democratic leadership team older, in aggregate, than the Constitution itself."


  • And Storyline is a very neat game you can play right here:

    Test your knowledge (or ability to make reasonable estimates)! I suggest you do it by your lonesome to avoid embarrassment!


Last Modified 2024-02-04 7:14 AM EDT