Sifting through the debris

"During the next hundred years, the question for those who love liberty is whether we can survive the..."

Wed, 16 May 2012 11:59:53 -0400

“During the next hundred years, the question for those who love liberty is whether we can survive the most insidious and duplicitous attacks from within, from those who undermine the virtues of our people, doing in advance the work of the Father of Lies. “There is no such thing as truth,” they teach even the little ones. “Truth is bondage. Believe what seems right to you. There are as many truths as there are individuals. Follow your feelings. Do as you please. Get in touch with your self. Do what feels comfortable.” Those who speak in this way prepare the jails of the twenty-first century. They do the work of tyrants.”

- Michael Novak (via The Transom of course)

“Why am I soft in the middle, when the rest of my life is...

Wed, 16 May 2012 09:39:00 -0400

“Why am I soft in the middle, when the rest of my life is so hard?” (You Can Call Me Al - Paul Simon)

Harsh, but true …

Wed, 16 May 2012 09:20:33 -0400

Harsh, but true …

Yup, I need this …

Tue, 15 May 2012 13:32:20 -0400

Yup, I need this …

Not sure this should be in the kids section …

Sun, 13 May 2012 20:48:36 -0400

Not sure this should be in the kids section …

The Proper Role of Government in One Chart

Fri, 11 May 2012 14:22:29 -0400

The Proper Role of Government in One Chart

"Why did the right fail? The assumption was simple: conservatives thought they had won. In the wake..."

Wed, 09 May 2012 09:19:28 -0400

“Why did the right fail? The assumption was simple: conservatives thought they had won. In the wake of the fall of the Soviet Union and the explosive economic growth of the Reagan years, the leading voices of the right concluded that they no longer needed to advance the cause for free enterprise to the country, and certainly not to their own people. Yet slowly but surely, the left’s attempts to redefine the conversation about fairness and equality encroached steadily into the right’s territory. Consider evangelical Christians, of which Brooks is one (again, a rare exception within the right’s intellectual sphere), as the population at the center of this tug of war. The language of social justice deployed by the progressive left is targeted directly at the Christian populations who have been voting for Republicans purely for reasons of culture for years, and who harbor a latent populism and a dislike for the super-rich. They care about human flourishing more than wealth, and while they know capitalism can deliver the latter, they’re not sure about the former.

Beyond the matter of communication, the right failed to guard against the chief perversions of free enterprise which lead to distrust and unfairness. One motive comes from Washington, using taxpayer money to reward friends and corporate cronies; and the other from Wall Street, which pushes the costs of its mistakes onto society through bailouts, trade quotas, sweetheart loan deals, and corporate subsidies. One robs the taxpayer to hand out political kickbacks; another robs them for investor profit. The working public assumes the risk while others reap the rewards. A century after Weber’s Protestant Ethic, the young Huckabee voter is less enthused about the McMansion and more concerned than ever that their personal success benefits the poor and needy. With the arrival of the economic crisis, the bottom fell out: after two decades of failing to make the case for free enterprise, the right saw support for democratic capitalism plummet.”

- Ben Domenech, The Transom

My kids would love this. laughingsquid: Angry Birds Land...

Mon, 07 May 2012 19:57:22 -0400

My kids would love this.

laughingsquid:

Angry Birds Land Opens in Finnish Theme Park

Can you say “dependence”? (via The Tax Foundation)

Fri, 04 May 2012 21:39:22 -0400

Can you say “dependence”? (via The Tax Foundation)

FORWARD!!! (via Nate Beeler Cartoons)

Tue, 01 May 2012 13:31:26 -0400

FORWARD!!! (via Nate Beeler Cartoons)

"The mechanical optimist endeavors to justify the universe avowedly upon the ground that it is a..."

Tue, 01 May 2012 08:52:21 -0400

“The mechanical optimist endeavors to justify the universe avowedly upon the ground that it is a rational and consecutive pattern. He points out that the fine thing about the world is that it can all be explained. That is the one point, if I may put it so, on which God in return, is explicit to the point of violence. God says, in effect, that if there is one fine thing about the world, as far as men are concerned, it is that it cannot be explained… To startle man God becomes for an instant a blasphemer; one might almost say that God becomes for an instant an atheist. He unrolls before Job a long panorama of created things, the horse, the eagle, the raven, the wild ass, the peacock, the ostrich, the crocodile. He so describes each of them that it sounds like a monster walking in the sun. The whole is a psalm or rhapsody of the sense of wonder. The maker of all things is astonished at the things He has Himself made. Job puts forward a note of interrogation; God answers with a note of exclamation. Instead of proving to Job that it is an explicable world, He insists that it is a much stranger world than Job ever thought it was.”

- G.K. Chesterton (via The Transom)

Mapping the electoral power of shale

Mon, 30 Apr 2012 14:01:42 -0400

Mapping the electoral power of shale

"One lesson is that Washington really hasn’t been taken over by moneyed groups. In a democracy,..."

Mon, 30 Apr 2012 12:01:02 -0400

“

One lesson is that Washington really hasn’t been taken over by moneyed groups. In a democracy, even the rich are entitled to promote their interests. It’s true that their lobbyists and lawyers sometimes win lucrative tax breaks, subsidies or regulatory preferences. But as the spending numbers show, their influence is exaggerated, especially considering their tax burden. The richest fifth of Americans pay nearly 70 percent of federal taxes (included in this group, the richest 10 percent pay 55 percent), estimates the CBO.

The larger lesson is that, contrary to conventional wisdom, American politics have not become insensitive to the “the people.” In many ways, just the opposite is true. Politicians are too responsive to popular will. The real Washington is in the business of pleasing as many people as possible for as long as possible. There are now vast constituencies dependent on the largesse of the federal government. This is the main cause of huge “structural” budget deficits, meaning that they aren’t simply a hangover from the Great Recession.

”

- Democracy in America

Student Debt: feeling the squeeze

Mon, 30 Apr 2012 11:18:03 -0400

Student Debt: feeling the squeeze

Anakin Skywalker Lightsaber Lamp

Tue, 24 Apr 2012 18:01:11 -0400

Anakin Skywalker Lightsaber Lamp

Kickball!, A Sweet Animated Short by Dana...

Tue, 24 Apr 2012 16:01:33 -0400

Kickball!, A Sweet Animated Short by Dana Terrace via laughingsquid

"Conservatives aren’t wrong to want to ensure that incentives to work and invest are robust, or to..."

Tue, 24 Apr 2012 14:01:20 -0400

“

Conservatives aren’t wrong to want to ensure that incentives to work and invest are robust, or to favor a predictable, rules-based monetary policy. But these principles have to be applied to the circumstances in which we find ourselves, not the ones of 1981.

Compared to the various mythical Reagans on offer, the real Reagan is less convenient for today’s Democrats — and a more challenging example for Republicans.

”

- Ramesh Ponnuru

"The more that financial success depends on high IQ; the more demand there is for lawyers, lobbyists,..."

Fri, 20 Apr 2012 12:42:49 -0400

“

The more that financial success depends on high IQ; the more demand there is for lawyers, lobbyists, and accountants; the more onerous regulations become for men-with-strong-backs to find work or for entrepreneurs to start businesses — then the more we move towards a society where the government rewards people based on their ability to navigate paperwork or fulfill quotas on a political to-do list. Complexity benefits statists because increasing complexity allows statists to claim we need more government to help people navigate through these complex times. In the process of helping, they make the government more complicated, creating new services for “fixers” of all stripes to solve problems the statists created in the first place.

The more you look around at spots where society and government intersect, the more you can see how pervasive and pernicious this dynamic is. The more rules you have, the more power you bequeath to the people well-suited to make or manipulate the rules.

”

- Jonah Goldberg, April 20, 2012 G-file

“College tuition, up 300% since 1990, has outstripped...

Thu, 19 Apr 2012 09:14:00 -0400

“College tuition, up 300% since 1990, has outstripped inflation by a factor of four. The run-up in health-care looks tame by comparison.”

Sifting through the debris

"During the next hundred years, the question for those who love liberty is whether we can survive the..."

“Why am I soft in the middle, when the rest of my life is...

Harsh, but true …

Yup, I need this …

Not sure this should be in the kids section …

The Proper Role of Government in One Chart

"Why did the right fail? The assumption was simple: conservatives thought they had won. In the wake..."

My kids would love this. laughingsquid: Angry Birds Land...

Can you say “dependence”? (via The Tax Foundation)

Top 10 Most Read Books in the World

FORWARD!!! (via Nate Beeler Cartoons)

"The mechanical optimist endeavors to justify the universe avowedly upon the ground that it is a..."

Mapping the electoral power of shale

"One lesson is that Washington really hasn’t been taken over by moneyed groups. In a democracy,..."

Student Debt: feeling the squeeze

Anakin Skywalker Lightsaber Lamp

Kickball!, A Sweet Animated Short by Dana...

"Conservatives aren’t wrong to want to ensure that incentives to work and invest are robust, or to..."

"The more that financial success depends on high IQ; the more demand there is for lawyers, lobbyists,..."

“College tuition, up 300% since 1990, has outstripped...