I love, love, love G.K. Chesterton. He captures better in the following two sentences the point I was trying to make with this entire post.
"My attitude toward progress has passed from antagonism to boredom. I have long ceased to argue with people who prefer Thursday to Wednesday because it is Thursday."
Here are more of his classics. I could go on and on and on...
"It has been often said, very truely, that religion is the thing that makes the ordinary man feel extraordinary; it is an equally important truth that religion is the thing that makes the extraordinary man feel ordinary."
"Reason is itself a matter of faith. It is an act of faith to assert that our thoughts have any relation to reality at all."
"The whole modern world has divided itself into Conservatives and Progressives. The business of Progressives is to go on making mistakes. The business of the Conservatives is to prevent the mistakes from being corrected."
"[W]hen Mr. H. G. Wells says (as he did somewhere), 'All chairs are quite different', he utters not merely a misstatement, but a contradiction in terms. If all chairs were quite different, you could not call them 'all chairs.'"
"Tradition means giving votes to the most obscure of all classes, our ancestors. It is the democracy of the dead. Tradition refuses to submit to that arrogant oligarchy who merely happen to be walking around."
"Poets do not go mad; but chess-players do. Mathematicians go mad, and cashiers; but creative artists very seldom. I am not...in any sense attacking logic: I only say that this danger does lie in logic, not in imagination....The poet only asks to get his head into the heavens. It is the logician who seeks to get the heavens into his head. And it is his head that splits."
"Self-denial is the test and definition of self-government."
"When a politician is in opposition he is an expert on the means to some end; and when he is in office he is an expert on the obstacles to it."
"All the terms used in the science books, 'law,' 'necessity,' 'order,' 'tendency,' and so on, are really unintellectual .... The only words that ever satisfied me as describing Nature are the terms used in the fairy books, 'charm,' 'spell,' 'enchantment.' They express the arbitrariness of the fact and its mystery. A tree grows fruit because it is a MAGIC tree. Water runs downhill because it is bewitched. The sun shines because it is bewitched. I deny altogether that this is fantastic or even mystical. We may have some mysticism later on; but this fairy-tale language about things is simply rational and agnostic."
"The reformer is always right about what is wrong. He is generally wrong about what is right."
"Don't ever take a fence down until you know the reason it was put up."
"When giving treats to friends or children, give them what they like, emphatically not what is good for them."
"The free man owns himself. He can damage himself with either eating or drinking; he can ruin himself with gambling. If he does he is certainly a damn fool, and he might possibly be a damned soul; but if he may not, he is not a free man any more than a dog."
"It is not bigotry to be certain we are right; but it is bigotry to be unable to imagine how we might possibly have gone wrong."
"War is not the best way of settling differences; it is the only way of preventing their being settled for you."
"The true soldier fights not because he hates what is in front of him, but because he loves what is behind him."
"Once abolish the God, and the government becomes the God."
"America is the only country ever founded on a creed."
"He is a very shallow critic who cannot see an eternal rebel in the heart of a conservative."
"You can never have a revolution in order to establish a democracy. You must have a democracy in order to have a revolution."
"By experts in poverty I do not mean sociologists, but poor men."
"There are those who hate Christianity and call their hatred an all-embracing love for all religions."
"These are the days when the Christian is expected to praise every creed except his own."
Wednesday, February 24, 2010
Tuesday, February 23, 2010
"Hey, about the evils of segregation...just kidding!"
What would you think of a State with a separate government for those possessing a certain level of ethnic purity - a State that transfers public assets, land, and political power from ethnically impure citizens to ethnically purer ones?
Shameful?
Unconscionable?
Morally backward?
Hawaii?
Yep. I thought we covered all this in the 60's. Ahh, progress.
******
UPDATE:
Here's an Op-Ed from the WSJ explaining the lunacy of this bill more fully.
Shameful?
Unconscionable?
Morally backward?
Hawaii?
Yep. I thought we covered all this in the 60's. Ahh, progress.
******
UPDATE:
Here's an Op-Ed from the WSJ explaining the lunacy of this bill more fully.
Sunday, February 21, 2010
George Will at CPAC
Wow. This is just incredible. I can't remember the last time I heard such a comprehensive and lucid presentation of conservative principles.
Friday, February 19, 2010
Arrogance
I really, really, really hope the Left continues to insist that Americans are too dumb to understand what's good for them.
That is a perfect, repulsive encapsulation of their entire worldview.
That is a perfect, repulsive encapsulation of their entire worldview.
If You Get What You Want, Is the System Broken?
Imagine that you sit down in a restaurant and order a steak. After a few moments, you realize that you don't have enough money to pay for the steak. You call the waiter over and ask for a cheeseburger instead. He graciously agrees and, a few minutes later, brings you a cheeseburger.
Would anyone cite the scenario above as an example of a system that is "broken"? What if the waiter had ignored your request and brought you a steak instead? Would that be an example of a system that worked?
Well, all the recent talk from the Left about the political system being "broken" has really annoyed me. It really is disingenuous, will-to-power nonsense. The argument is absolutely nothing more than, "If the political system allows popular opinion to prevent us from getting our way, then the system is broken."
If the Republicans were, as the Democrats claim, obstructing the will of the American people, then the Republicans would presumably pay a price for their "obstructionism" at the polls. But, of course, that isn't happening.
Charles Krauthammer's piece on this subject is absolutely perfect, so I'll just reproduce it in it's entirety (and illegally?) here:
*****
Ungovernable? Nonsense.
This isn’t structural failure; this is the system working the way it’s supposed to.
In the latter days of the Carter presidency, it became fashionable to say that the office had become unmanageable and was simply too big for one man. Some suggested a single, six-year presidential term. The president’s own White House counsel suggested abolishing the separation of powers and going to a more parliamentary system of unitary executive control. America had become ungovernable.
Then came Ronald Reagan, and all that chatter disappeared.
The tyranny of entitlements? Reagan collaborated with Tip O’Neill, the legendary Democratic House speaker, to establish the Alan Greenspan commission that kept Social Security solvent for a quarter-century.
A corrupted system of taxation? Reagan worked with liberal Democrat Bill Bradley to craft a legislative miracle: tax reform that eliminated dozens of loopholes and slashed rates across the board — and fueled two decades of economic growth.
Later, a highly skilled Democratic president, Bill Clinton, successfully tackled another supposedly intractable problem: the culture of intergenerational dependency. He collaborated with another House speaker, Newt Gingrich, to produce the single most successful social reform of our time, the abolition of welfare as an entitlement.
It turned out that the country’s problems were not problems of structure but of leadership. Reagan and Clinton had it. Carter didn’t. Under a president with extensive executive experience, good political skills, and an ideological compass in tune with the public’s, the country was indeed governable.
It’s 2010, and the first-year agenda of a popular and promising young president has gone down in flames. Barack Obama’s two signature initiatives — cap-and-trade and health-care reform — lie in ruins.
Desperate to explain away this scandalous state of affairs, liberal apologists haul out the old reliable from the Carter years: “America the Ungovernable.” So declared Newsweek. “Is America Ungovernable?” coyly asked The New Republic. Guess the answer.
The rage at the machine has produced the usual litany of systemic explanations. Special interests are too powerful. The Senate filibuster stymies social progress. A burdensome constitutional order prevents innovation. If only we could be more like China, pines Tom Friedman, waxing poetic about the efficiency of the Chinese authoritarian model and complaining that America can only flail about under its “two parties . . . with their duel-to-the-death paralysis.” The better thinkers, bewildered and furious that their president has not gotten his way, have developed a sudden disdain for our inherently incremental constitutional system.
Yet, what’s new about any of these supposedly ruinous structural impediments? Special interests blocking policy changes? They have been around since the beginning of the republic — and, since the beginning of the republic, strong presidents, such as the two Roosevelts, have rallied the citizenry and overcome them.
And then, of course, there’s the filibuster, the newest liberal bête noire. “Don’t blame Mr. Obama,” writes Paul Krugman of the president’s failures. “Blame our political culture instead. . . . And blame the filibuster, under which 41 senators can make the country ungovernable.”
“Ungovernable,” once again. Of course, it seems like just yesterday that the same Paul Krugman was warning about “extremists” trying “to eliminate the filibuster” when Democrats used it systematically to block one Bush (43) judicial nomination after another. Back then, Democrats touted it as an indispensable check on overweening majority power. Well, it still is. Indeed, the Senate, with its ponderous procedures and decentralized structure, is serving precisely the function the Founders intended: as a brake on the passions of the House and a check against precipitous transformative change.
Leave it to Mickey Kaus, a principled liberal who supports health-care reform, to debunk these structural excuses: “Lots of intellectual effort now seems to be going into explaining Obama’s (possible/likely/impending) health care failure as the inevitable product of larger historic and constitutional forces. . . . But in this case there’s a simpler explanation: Barack Obama’s job was to sell a health care reform plan to American voters. He failed.”
He failed because the utter implausibility of its central promise — expanded coverage at lower cost — led voters to conclude that it would lead ultimately to more government, more taxes, and more debt. More broadly, the Democrats failed because, thinking the economic emergency would give them a political mandate and a legislative window, they tried to impose a left-wing agenda on a center-right country. The people said no, expressing themselves first in spontaneous demonstrations, then in public-opinion polls, then in elections — Virginia, New Jersey, and, most emphatically, Massachusetts.
That’s not a structural defect. That’s a textbook demonstration of popular will expressing itself — despite the special interests — through the existing structures. In other words, the system worked.
Charles Krauthammer is a nationally syndicated columnist. © 2010, The Washington Post Writers Group.
Would anyone cite the scenario above as an example of a system that is "broken"? What if the waiter had ignored your request and brought you a steak instead? Would that be an example of a system that worked?
Well, all the recent talk from the Left about the political system being "broken" has really annoyed me. It really is disingenuous, will-to-power nonsense. The argument is absolutely nothing more than, "If the political system allows popular opinion to prevent us from getting our way, then the system is broken."
If the Republicans were, as the Democrats claim, obstructing the will of the American people, then the Republicans would presumably pay a price for their "obstructionism" at the polls. But, of course, that isn't happening.
Charles Krauthammer's piece on this subject is absolutely perfect, so I'll just reproduce it in it's entirety (and illegally?) here:
*****
Ungovernable? Nonsense.
This isn’t structural failure; this is the system working the way it’s supposed to.
In the latter days of the Carter presidency, it became fashionable to say that the office had become unmanageable and was simply too big for one man. Some suggested a single, six-year presidential term. The president’s own White House counsel suggested abolishing the separation of powers and going to a more parliamentary system of unitary executive control. America had become ungovernable.Then came Ronald Reagan, and all that chatter disappeared.
The tyranny of entitlements? Reagan collaborated with Tip O’Neill, the legendary Democratic House speaker, to establish the Alan Greenspan commission that kept Social Security solvent for a quarter-century.
A corrupted system of taxation? Reagan worked with liberal Democrat Bill Bradley to craft a legislative miracle: tax reform that eliminated dozens of loopholes and slashed rates across the board — and fueled two decades of economic growth.
Later, a highly skilled Democratic president, Bill Clinton, successfully tackled another supposedly intractable problem: the culture of intergenerational dependency. He collaborated with another House speaker, Newt Gingrich, to produce the single most successful social reform of our time, the abolition of welfare as an entitlement.
It turned out that the country’s problems were not problems of structure but of leadership. Reagan and Clinton had it. Carter didn’t. Under a president with extensive executive experience, good political skills, and an ideological compass in tune with the public’s, the country was indeed governable.
It’s 2010, and the first-year agenda of a popular and promising young president has gone down in flames. Barack Obama’s two signature initiatives — cap-and-trade and health-care reform — lie in ruins.
Desperate to explain away this scandalous state of affairs, liberal apologists haul out the old reliable from the Carter years: “America the Ungovernable.” So declared Newsweek. “Is America Ungovernable?” coyly asked The New Republic. Guess the answer.
The rage at the machine has produced the usual litany of systemic explanations. Special interests are too powerful. The Senate filibuster stymies social progress. A burdensome constitutional order prevents innovation. If only we could be more like China, pines Tom Friedman, waxing poetic about the efficiency of the Chinese authoritarian model and complaining that America can only flail about under its “two parties . . . with their duel-to-the-death paralysis.” The better thinkers, bewildered and furious that their president has not gotten his way, have developed a sudden disdain for our inherently incremental constitutional system.
Yet, what’s new about any of these supposedly ruinous structural impediments? Special interests blocking policy changes? They have been around since the beginning of the republic — and, since the beginning of the republic, strong presidents, such as the two Roosevelts, have rallied the citizenry and overcome them.
And then, of course, there’s the filibuster, the newest liberal bête noire. “Don’t blame Mr. Obama,” writes Paul Krugman of the president’s failures. “Blame our political culture instead. . . . And blame the filibuster, under which 41 senators can make the country ungovernable.”
“Ungovernable,” once again. Of course, it seems like just yesterday that the same Paul Krugman was warning about “extremists” trying “to eliminate the filibuster” when Democrats used it systematically to block one Bush (43) judicial nomination after another. Back then, Democrats touted it as an indispensable check on overweening majority power. Well, it still is. Indeed, the Senate, with its ponderous procedures and decentralized structure, is serving precisely the function the Founders intended: as a brake on the passions of the House and a check against precipitous transformative change.
Leave it to Mickey Kaus, a principled liberal who supports health-care reform, to debunk these structural excuses: “Lots of intellectual effort now seems to be going into explaining Obama’s (possible/likely/impending) health care failure as the inevitable product of larger historic and constitutional forces. . . . But in this case there’s a simpler explanation: Barack Obama’s job was to sell a health care reform plan to American voters. He failed.”
He failed because the utter implausibility of its central promise — expanded coverage at lower cost — led voters to conclude that it would lead ultimately to more government, more taxes, and more debt. More broadly, the Democrats failed because, thinking the economic emergency would give them a political mandate and a legislative window, they tried to impose a left-wing agenda on a center-right country. The people said no, expressing themselves first in spontaneous demonstrations, then in public-opinion polls, then in elections — Virginia, New Jersey, and, most emphatically, Massachusetts.
That’s not a structural defect. That’s a textbook demonstration of popular will expressing itself — despite the special interests — through the existing structures. In other words, the system worked.
Charles Krauthammer is a nationally syndicated columnist. © 2010, The Washington Post Writers Group.
Tuesday, February 2, 2010
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
