Random thoughts on the passing scene:
Even squirrels know enough to store nuts, so that they will have
something to eat when food gets scarce. But the welfare state has
spawned a whole class of people who spend everything they get when
times are good, and look to others to provide for their food and
other basic needs when times turn bad.
The 14th Amendment to the Constitution prescribes “equal
protection of the laws” to all Americans. But what does that mean,
if the President of the United States can arbitrarily grant
waivers, so that A, B, and C have to obey the laws but X, Y, and Z
do not — as with both Obamacare and the immigration laws?
Two reports came out in the same week. One was from the
Pentagon, saying that, in just a few years, Iran will be able to
produce not only a nuclear bomb but a missile capable of carrying
it to the United States. The other report said that the American
Olympic team has uniforms made in China. This latter report
received far more attention, both in Congress and in the media.
People who lament gridlock in Washington, and express the pious
hope that Democrats and Republicans would put aside their partisan
conflicts, and cooperate to help the economy recover, implicitly
assume that what the economy needs is more meddling by politicians,
which is what brought on economic disaster in the first place.
(Skeptics can read
The Housing Boom and Bust.)
Racism is not dead, but it is on life support — kept alive by
politicians, race hustlers, and people who get a sense of
superiority by denouncing others as “racists.”
One of the arguments for Medicare is that the elderly don’t want
to be a burden to their children. Apparently it is all right to be
a burden to other people’s children, who are paying taxes.
Those who talk as if more people going to college is
automatically a Good Thing seldom show much interest in what
actually goes on at college — including far less time spent by
students studying than in the past, and a proliferation of courses
promoting a sense of grievance, entitlement, or advanced
navel-gazing and breast-beating.
One of the most dangerous trends of our times is making the
truth socially unacceptable, or even illegal, with “hate speech”
laws. It is supposed to be terrible, for example, to call an
illegal alien an “illegal alien” or to call an Islamic terrorist an
“Islamic terrorist.” When the media refer to “undocumented” workers
or to violence committed by “militants,” who is kidding whom — and
why?
After the charismatic — and disastrous — Woodrow Wilson
presidency, the voters did not elect another president in the next
decade who could be considered the least bit charismatic. Let us
hope that history repeats itself.
For more than two centuries, the U.S. military never had a
public celebration of anybody’s sex life — until the recent “gay
pride” event under the Obama administration. Here, as elsewhere,
the gay political agenda is not equality but privilege.
Franklin D. Roosevelt famously said, “We have nothing to fear
but fear itself.” Then he proceeded to generate fear among
businesses for years on end, with both his anti-business rhetoric
and his anti-business policies. Barack Obama is repeating the same
approach and getting the same results — namely, an agonizingly
slow economic recovery, as investors hang on to their money,
instead of risking it in a hostile political environment.
If we wake up some morning and find some American cities in
radioactive ruins, courtesy of a nuclear Iran, nobody is going to
care whether the president who lets this happen is the first black
president or the last WASP president. But, in the meantime, many
people will keep on voting for symbolism, as if an election is a
popularity contest, like choosing a college’s Homecoming Queen or
Parade Marshal.
There seems to be something “liberating” about ignorance —
especially when you don’t even know enough to realize how little
you know. Thus an administration loaded with people who have never
run any business is gung-ho to tell businesses what to do, as well
as gung-ho to tell the medical profession what to do, lenders whom
to lend to, and the military how to fight wars.
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