The Left, the Founders, and the Constitution

Well, of course the left understands the U.S. Constitution better than its authors did.

How to know if we really believe in the right to free speech

Mark Steyn, in a recent speech given in Australia:

Anyone can be in favour of free speech for Barney the Dinosaur and the Wiggles, but if you’re not in favour of free speech you find offensive and repellent and loathsome, you’re not in favour of free speech at all. And you’re on the side of creeping totalitarianism.

Ironically, a generation ago it was the left that claimed the need to remind conservatives of this truth.

Sen. Barack Obama condemns the Obama administration’s “leadership failure” in debt limit crisis

The fact that we are here today to debate raising America's debt limit is a sign of leadership failure. It is a sign that the U.S. Government can't pay its own bills. It is a sign that we now depend on ongoing financial assistance from foreign countries to finance our Government's reckless fiscal policies... 
 
Increasing America's debt weakens us domestically and internationally. Leadership means that "the buck stops here." Instead, Washington is shifting the burden of bad choices today onto the backs of our children and grandchildren. America has a debt problem and a failure of leadership. Americans deserve better.
 
-- Sen. Barack Obama (D-IL), March 20, 2006

There’s simply no way to spin the budget deal as a victory for fiscal sanity

Politics is the art of the possible. -- Otto von Bismarck

Politics is not the art of the possible. It consists in choosing between the disastrous and the unpalatable. -- John Kenneth Galbraith

If $38 billion out of a $1.5 trillion budget shortfall is all that was possible, we’re done for.

If the United Nations had existed in the 1860s…

Imagine, if you will, that the United Nations existed in the 1860s. 

Upon receiving news of Sherman’s March to the Sea, it would not be farfetched to presume that the leading power of the day, Great Britain, would have assembled a coalition of the willing and, armed with the appropriate UN resolutions, intervened on behalf of the Confederacy*.

By the rules of “humanitarian intervention” under which we apparently operate today, it doesn’t matter whether or not Lincoln had any legitimate interest in keeping the union together** – the actions of his generals would have brought upon the north the wrath of the nations.

Just saying.

* Just like today, the nation leading the coalition would have had its personal reasons for wanting to deal some serious hurt to the offending government.  So then, as today, one wonders if the motivation for the intervention would have been completely altruistic.
 
** I have my own opinions on this, but they are not germane to this post.

Quick Quote: James Madison on the federal leviathan

“It will be of little avail to the people, that the laws are made by men of their own choice, if the laws be so voluminous that they cannot be read, or so incoherent that they cannot be understood; if they be repealed or revised before they are promulgated, or undergo such incessant changes that no man, who knows what the law is to-day, can guess what it will be to-morrow. Law is defined to be a rule of action; but how can that be a rule, which is little known, and less fixed?”

— James Madison, The Federalist #62

Curing what ails us: How can we dethrone the ruling class? (A modest proposal)

A good place to start might be a voter boycott of the Ivy League.

For two or three election cycles (if not longer), simply refuse to vote for anybody, regardless of party, who graduated from Ivy League universities.

That seems to be the primary breeding ground of every -ism that is using the levers of power to drag our country and culture into the abyss.

Thoughts?

Vanity, thy name is Barack Obama

What rankles, though, is Obama's habit of putting down America while praising himself. The laughable assertion that Obama has taken 'historic steps to improve our own democracy' shows not humility but an extreme vanity. A truly humble president would occasionally evince some doubt as to whether he is worthy to lead America. Obama seems to doubt whether America is worthy of being led by him.

-- James Taranto, Best of the Web (WSJ), April 12

Quick Quote: Frédéric Bastiat on wealth redistribution

There’s an abundance of data supporting this from the experience of Communist societies, but certain western academics and politicians remain convinced that the problem resides in the execution of the philosophy, not in the philosophy itself.

If it were to be asserted on principle, admitted in practice, sanctioned by law, that every man has a right to the property of another, the gift would have no merit—charity and gratitude would be no longer virtues. Besides, such a doctrine would suddenly and universally arrest labor and production, as severe cold congeals water and suspends animation; for who would work if there was no longer to be any connection between labor and the satisfying of our wants?

-- Frédéric Bastiat, Essays on Political Economy

Feel free to draw your own applications to the financially destructive, liberty-smothering health care boondoggle that just passed.

The last refuge of the intellectually lazy

Accusing one’s opponent of racism is easier than addressing the substance of his arguments.

The essence of the case for confirming Sonia Sotomayor

1. Sonia Sotomayor has a compelling life story.
2. [insert heartwarming details here]
3. Therefore, give her a lifetime appointment to the most powerful court in the land.
4. If you don’t vote for her, you’re a racist misogynist.

Did I miss any details?

(Thanks to Dysart at FR for inspiring #4)

You think that Tiller's murder is an indictment against all pro-life people? Fine.

We'll take moral responsibility for Scott Roeder's actions if the American Left will agree to take moral responsibility for the actions of Ted Kaczynski and Bill Ayers. Oh, and you "pro-choice" people need to own up to the eugenics views of Margaret Sanger.

Deal?

Did you ever notice...

Did you ever notice that many of the people
who condemn waterboarding as a moral atrocity
celebrate abortion as morally neutral -- and even compassionate?

Map of confirmed and suspected H1N1 flu cases

Courtesy of the Emergency and Disaster Information Service, Budapest, and based on WHO data.

Eye of Newt doesn't always see clearly

AP notices that Newt Gingrich is quite obviously testing the waters for a 2012 presidential run.

I welcome him to make his case, but I have one serious reservation about him. He is brilliant and correct on countless issues, but that does not include his swallowing hook, line and sinker the premises of the global warming cult.

Irony, thy name is Joe Biden

Vice President, speaking to Al Sharpton's National Action Network,
decries the senseless violence of the Binghamton, NY murders
while standing in front of a banner that reads
"NO JUSTICE, NO PEACE"

(Via FinkelBlog)

The market continues to vote "no confidence" in whatever Obama's economic plan is called this week

The Dow is below 7,000 for the first time in 12 years. Down 213 so far today, at 6849.

Quick Quote: The trouble with socialism

"The trouble with socialism is that
you eventually run out of
other people's money."

-- Margaret Thatcher

(Found here)

Stimulating bureaucracy

Is creating more than half a million new federal jobs really part of the key to jump-starting our economy?