Random thoughts on the passing scene:
Many people may have voted for Barack Obama in 2008 because of
his charisma. But anyone familiar with the disastrous track record
of charismatic political leaders around the world in the 20th
century should have run for the hills when they encountered a
politician with charisma.
What is scarier than any particular political policy or issue is
the widespread tendency to treat political issues as personal
contests in talking points — competitive skill in fencing with
words — rather than as serious attempts to find out what the facts
are and what the options are.
People who are wondering what to get as a graduation present
this year should consider The Passage of Power by Robert
Caro, the recently published 4th volume in his monumental biography
of Lyndon Johnson. Its revelations of the cynical, fraudulent, and
vicious politics in Washington should counter the pious graduation
speeches that young people hear about the nobility of “public
service.”
The new French president, a socialist, says frankly that he does
not like rich people, that “my real enemy is the world of finance,”
and apparently he has plans for much higher tax rates on high
incomes. Has he not noticed how easy it is for the rich to move to
some other country where the tax rates are lower — or to send
their money there?
For a long time, Democrats have gone to Washington to win at all
costs, while too many Republicans went to Washington to compromise
with Democrats. The rise of the Tea Party may change that.
Increasing numbers of people seem to have convinced themselves
that they are entitled to a “fair share” of what someone else has
earned. Whole nations now seem to think that they should be bailed
out from the consequences of their own reckless spending by nations
that lived within their means.
Those who favor huge cuts in military spending seem not to
understand that our military exists not simply to win wars, but to
present such overwhelming superiority to potential enemies as to
prevent having to fight a war in the first place.
Some people who are belatedly seeing what Obama is really like
are saying that he has changed. This is probably easier to say than
admitting that you were blind to the man’s whole history before,
and were taken in by his rhetoric and geniality.
Wishful thinking is not idealism. It is self-indulgence at best
and self-exaltation at worst. In either case, it is usually at the
expense of others. In other words, it is the opposite of
idealism.
The visceral hostility of liberals against Sarah Palin is
something that liberals themselves ought to be concerned about.
After all, she is just someone who has a different opinion about
politics and a different social background and style. What I fear
the liberals most resent is their perception that she is someone
who is talking back to her betters.
When Harry Truman was President of the United States, he had a
sign on his desk in the White House that said: “The buck stops
here.” If Barack Obama had a sign on his desk, it would say: “The
buck stops with Bush.”
Does anyone seriously believe that short dresses, exposing bony
knees, make women look more attractive?
In most discussions of the problems of American public schools,
the low intellectual quality of people who come out of our schools
of education is the 800-pound gorilla that keeps getting ignored.
Such teachers cannot give their students intellectual abilities
that they themselves don’t have.
Did we have to wait for the Solyndra and other government
“investment” disasters to learn what economic nonsense political
“investments” are? Reckless spending to win votes, or campaign
contributions, from the recipients of government largesse is still
reckless spending, regardless of what other words are used to try
to dignify it — whether these words are “stimulus,” “jobs,”
“investment” or whatever.
In liberal logic, if life is unfair then the answer is to turn
more tax money over to politicians, to spend in ways that will
increase their chances of getting reelected.
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