Tuesday, June 16. 2009
From a Canadian, via Right Wing Prof via SDA:
The cognitive behavior of Western intellectuals faced with the accomplishments of their own society, on the one hand, and with the socialist ideal and then the socialist reality, on the other, takes one’s breath away. In the midst of unparalleled social mobility in the West, they cry ‘caste.’ In a society of munificent goods and services, they cry either ‘poverty’ or ‘consumerism.’
In a society of ever richer, more varied, more productive, more self-defined, and more satisfying lives, they cry ‘alienation.’ In a society that has liberated women, racial minorities, religious minorities, and gays and lesbians to an extent that no one could have dreamed possible just fifty years ago, they cry ‘oppression.’ In a society of boundless private charity, they cry ‘avarice.’ In a society in which hundreds of millions have been free riders upon the risk, knowledge, and capital of others, they decry the ‘exploitation’ of the free riders. In a society that broke, on behalf of merit, the seemingly eternal chains of station by birth, they cry ‘injustice.’
In the names of fantasy worlds and mystical perfections, they have closed themselves to the Western, liberal miracle of individual rights, individual responsibility, merit, and human satisfaction. Like Marx, they put words like ‘liberty’ in quotation marks when these refer to the West.
Friday, June 12. 2009
“You can get much further with a kind word and a gun than you can with a kind word alone.”
Al Capone, quoted at My Vast Right Wing Conspiracy in a piece on CaponeCare
Wednesday, June 10. 2009
What's the difference between Obama and God?
Obama gets better press.
Rush, on the radio today
Monday, June 8. 2009
The right side of the blogosphere is playing checkers, and the Democrats are playing Kill the Man With the Ball.
Roger de Hauteville, King of Sicily, at Maggie's Farm
Friday, June 5. 2009
The artist brings something into the world that didn't exist before, and he does it without destroying something else. A kind of refutation of the conservation of matter. That still seems to me its central magic, its core of joy.
John Updike, from Author's Guild Bulletin, Winter 2009 p. 39
Tuesday, June 2. 2009
Atheism turns out to be too simple. If the whole universe has no meaning, we should never have found out that it has no meaning.
Monday, June 1. 2009
"[T]here is not a syllable in the plan under consideration which directly empowers the national courts to construe the laws according to the spirit of the Constitution." . Alexander Hamilton, Federalist No. 81, 1788. Hmmm. I guess they meant what they said.
Friday, May 29. 2009
Everywhere I go I'm asked if the university stifles writers. My opinion is that they don't stifle enough of them. Flannery O'Connor, h/t to Novalis
Thursday, May 28. 2009
Your math courses are one long IQ test. We use math courses to figure out who is really smart.
Prof. Mankiw
Wednesday, May 27. 2009
“If you want to succeed, double your failure rate.”
Tom Watson, via our link last weekend
Friday, May 22. 2009
Stolen from Samiz:
"I think in the U.S. and in most of the world the public understanding of economics is abysmal. But it’s one thing not to understand something. I don’t understand brain surgery. It’s another to want to form policies on things on which you are ignorant. I hear the wonderful phrase “I want to make a difference” when it comes to policy. I would be horrified if I wanted to make a difference in brain surgery. The only difference is more people would die on the operating table. The only encouraging thing about public reaction to the crisis is that going by polls citizens seem to have more misgivings about some of these policies than politicians or the media. Still, though there have been studies that indicate the New Deal prolonged the Great Depression by years, what is also clear is it was enormously popular. FDR was elected four straight times, and more than once without ever having brought unemployment down to single digits. An economic disaster does not necessarily mean a political disaster. If we could raise the average level of understanding of economics to what Alfred Marshall had in 1890, the vast majority of politicians would be voted out of office."
Thomas Sowell
Society in every state is a blessing, but government, even in its best state, is but a necessary evil; in its worst state an intolerable one; for when we suffer or are exposed to the same miseries by a government, which we might expect in a country without government, our calamity is heightened by reflecting that we furnish the means by which we suffer.
Tom Paine
Wednesday, May 20. 2009
Perhaps the fact that we have seen millions voting themselves into complete dependence on a tyrant has made our generation understand that to choose one's government is not necessarily to secure freedom.
Friedrich Hayek (h/t, Samiz)
(Related, via Politico: "a recent CBS News poll show(ed) 72% of Republicans worried over the growth of government as opposed to 58% of Democrats who want more of it." What sort of red-blooded American would want "more government"?)
Tuesday, May 19. 2009
“We all declare for liberty; but in using the same word we do not all mean the same thing. With some the word liberty may mean for each man to do as he pleases with himself, and the product of his labor; while with others, the same word many mean for some men to do as they please with other men, and the product of other men’s labor. Here are two, not only different, but incompatible things, called by the same name — liberty. And it follows that each of the things is, by the respective parties, called by two different and incompatible names — liberty and tyranny.”
Abraham Lincoln, Baltimore, MD, 1864 (h/t, And rightly So)
Monday, May 18. 2009
The weakness of all Utopias is this: that they take the greatest difficulty of man and assume it to be overcome, and then give an elaborate account of the overcoming of the smaller ones. They first assume that no man will want more than his share, and then are very ingenious in explaining whether his share will be delivered by motorcar or balloon.
G.K. Chesterton, via Dr. Bob who has a piece up, Epiphany of Evil, inspired by Roger Simon's postings.
Sunday, May 17. 2009
It is a wonderful day indeed when we stop working for God and begin working with God.
Anon.
Friday, May 15. 2009
Never put it in writing.
Unless you want it on the front page of the newspaper...assuming there is a newspaper any more. Writing includes email.
If you don't read the newspaper you are uninformed, if you do read the newspaper you are misinformed.
Mark Twain (h/t, Lib Leanings)
Wednesday, May 13. 2009
Poster via Theo:
Vanderleun has some of Twain's Corn-Pone opinions
Monday, May 11. 2009
Our brains are a cemetery of words. There is no way except with inner vision to explain how you feel. Thoughtless. Be careful or you will think with words. That's why I can do ballet. I can't write, I can't even spell. I am made in silence. As soon as I start speaking, I stop seeing.
George Balanchine
Friday, May 8. 2009
The only reward of virtue is virtue.
Ralph Waldo Emerson (h/t, Vanderleun)
Tuesday, May 5. 2009
Populus Vult Decipi, Decipiatur.
h/t, AVI
Monday, May 4. 2009
Never frighten a little man. He'll kill you.
Robert A. Heinlein (h/t, Villainous' The Politics of Fear)
Wednesday, April 29. 2009
In passing, we should note this curious mark of our own age: the only absolute allowed is the absolute insistence that there is no absolute.
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There's no such thing as 'capitalism'; Marx made that up. It's just another way of saying 'freedom'.
Commenter "Ahem" at Maggie's Farm
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