Pun Salad

Amidst our celebrations today, let's give some serious thought to Kevin D. Williamson's Declaration Against Idolatry.

KDW is more religious than I, and I think (or, more accurately, hope) that we can secure the blessings of liberty without being (in John Adams' words) a "moral and religious people”. But KDW has a powerful argument on his side: in the absence of religion, it's pretty darn easy to slip into idolatry.

Do I need to make that more explicit?

Also of note:

• "Other than that, though, it's fine!" Just kidding. Veronique de Rugy is not a fan: The $4 Trillion 'Big, Beautiful Bill' Breaks the Bank and Violates Congress' Own Budget Rules.

  Here we go again. This week, the Senate finally passed its version of the "One Big Beautiful Bill Act," and the House signed off.* What was already an oversized mess has been supersized into a $4 trillion ode to unseriousness.

  This isn't tax reform. It's a bipartisan piñata stuffed with pork, gimmicks, and—of course—debt. We're told to cheer because the bill makes permanent a few pro-growth policies, including 100 percent bonus depreciation and research and development expensing. However, a few pearls in a vast ocean of bad policies are nothing to celebrate. It's like marveling at newly painted rooms in a burning house.

  We've been told to cheer because the bill removes or trims $147 billion of the House version's worst handouts. But as an Arnold Ventures analysis points out, the Senate also added $186 billion to the pot. That's a net increase of $39 billion in pork.

  Ah well. Since I'm old, I noted that there might be a sugarplum in there for me: an additional "senior deduction"; I'll have to wait until (probably) sometime in February 2026 to see if it works.

• "Other than that, though, it's not great!" Jeff Maurer pledges his allegiance: I Support the Big, Beautiful, Bill Because I Think Coal is the Future, Find Uninsured Poor People Funny, and Am Rooting for a Debt Catastrophe.

  Is the “Big, Beautiful, Bill” good or bad? That depends on your priorities. We know the bill’s basic shape: The 2017 tax cuts will be made permanent, there will be cuts to Medicaid and food stamps, and green energy subsidies will be pared back. Whether you consider that good or bad depends on your values.

  Me: I’m all-in. I think this is the right bill at the right time. Though the details are still being hammered out, Congress is most of the way to a bill that addresses this country’s woes with surgical precision. Kudos, sirs and madams! You have proven yourself equal to the moment. Because — in my humble opinion — we sorely need three things: 1) A less-accessible health care system; 2) Commitment to 19th-century fuel sources, and 3) A debt crisis so severe that it could give rise to a pre-civilizational economy in which power is held by warlords and exemplary prostitutes.

  Yes, he's kidding. I think.

  Just an additional comment: the unstated desire for Democrats is an eventual "single payer health care system". So any movement away from that goal, anything that might make people not dependent on government footing the bills, is to be bitterly opposed. And, shout it with me at the top of your lungs…

• Holman W. Jenkins, Jr. has some good news on that front: ‘People Will Die’ Isn’t the Policy Clincher It Seems. (WSJ gifted link)

  And, yes, Remy's #1 example from his 2017 video is still singing the same tune:

  Creating a government program means creating a beneficiary who may be worse than bereaved if the benefit is later taken away. Thus a three-word formula has rushed to the fore in criticism of the Trump agenda: “People will die.”

  These words appear in the Factiva database of news sources 883 times in the past six months in relation to the administration, 211 times in relation to DOGE, and 185 times in relation to the One Big Beautiful Bill Act.

  This usage augurs well for the media’s replacement by an algorithm but otherwise applies straight-edge reasoning to a complex problem. When a program goes away, after all, people may adapt and find new solutions for themselves. They may choose not to die.

  Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D., Mass.) has been a fiery proponent of “people will die” opposition to spending cuts. But people will die no less from Ms. Warren’s failure to push through new programs or expand existing benefits to new classes of Americans. People will also die if enticed to rely on programs that politicians know aren’t sustainable and must be changed. Medicare and Medicaid are certain to produce long waiting lists in the future. Social Security benefits are already scheduled to be cut sharply as soon as 2033 under existing law.

  Ah, if only Elizabeth could promise me Life Eternal…

• Just read it. Neal Stephenson reflects on his 30-year-old (!!) book, The Diamond Age and how he views Emerson, AI, and The Force.

  OK, go read The Diamond Age first, if you haven't. (My own report is here.) I'll wait…

  Ah, good, you're back. Here's Neal:

  Thirty years on, I think I have enough distance on this to grade my performance. I’m happy with the fact that the Primer, as described in the novel, doesn’t invariably produce great results. That seems like a measured and realistic outcome. Nevertheless it’s clear that when I wrote this thing I was influenced by a strain of techno-utopian thinking that was widespread in the mid-1990s, when the Internet was first becoming available to a mass audience. In those days, a lot of people, myself included, assumed that making all the world’s knowledge available to everyone would unlock vast stores of pent-up human potential.

  That promise actually did come true to some degree. It’s unquestionably the case that anyone with an Internet connection can now learn things that they could not have had access to before. But as we now know, many people would rather watch TikTok videos eight hours a day. And many who do use the Internet to “do research” and “educate” themselves are “learning” how Ivermectin cures COVID, the sky is full of chemtrails spewed out by specially equipped planes, and vaccinations plant microchips in your body.

  And yet…