Wednesday, December 31. 2008
Winter is the time for study, you know, and the colder it is the more studious we are. Thoreau
Friday, December 26. 2008
In my view, it is best to consider all knowledge as tentative. The best scholars maintain an open-mindedness and humility about even their own core beliefs. Greg Mankiw
Monday, December 22. 2008
There are people who strictly deprive themselves of each and every eatable, drinkable, and smokable which has in any way acquired a shady reputation. They pay this price for health. And health is all they get for it. How strange it is. It is like paying out your whole fortune for a cow that has gone dry. Mark Twain, quoted at AVI
Friday, December 19. 2008
A cynic is a man who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing. Oscar Wilde (h/t, Dr. Bob)
Wednesday, December 17. 2008
When the media uses a scary number, it is because the percentage is small. When the media uses a percentage without using a base number, it is because the number is small. Don Surber
Tuesday, December 16. 2008
Capitalism undoubtedly has certain boils and blotches upon it, but has it as many as government? Has it as many as marriage? Has it as many as religion? I doubt it. It is the only basic institution of modern man that shows any genuine health and vigor. H.L.Mencken (h/t, Vanderleun)
Monday, December 8. 2008
Obscurity and competence: That is the life that is worth living. Mark Twain (h/t, LGF)
Thursday, December 4. 2008
"A fad or heresy is the exaltation of something which even if true, is secondary or temporary in its nature against those things which are essential and eternal, those things which always prove themselves true in the long run. In short, it is the setting up of the mood against the mind." G.K. Chesterton (h/t, reader, in one of a number of good comments on our Watermelon Man and Hippie Totalitarianism). As we always say here, "Reality Rules...eventually."
Monday, December 1. 2008
"In modern America, the market's bounty is assumed always to be there, as if it emerges naturally from the soil, available for us to "redistribute" as we wish." Boudreaux, posted here yesterday. It's always reasonable for us all to ask what bounty we create, vs. what bounty we take. My work is more or less parasitic, and I have never felt good about that aspect of it, even though I feel pretty good about my expertise.
Sunday, November 30. 2008
No man’s life, liberty, or property is safe while the legislature is in session. Mark Twain (h/t, LGF)
Friday, November 28. 2008
If you think that government really wants to, or can, or will, help you with your life problems, just ask yourself this: "Where did I ever get that idea? Who put that idea in my head?" Rush, paraphrased, on the radio today. Related: Is govt a service or a product? Related: Angst about how hard life is, from multi-millionaire Michelle Obama. Who said life was supposed to be easy? What do we have bones and muscles and brains for? Surely not to play tiddlywinks.
Thursday, November 20. 2008
I have argued for decades that America is the least racist country in the world. By and large, only Americans on the right have believed, or at least had the courage to say this. Now that fact is obvious to virtually anyone with eyes to see. Dennis Prager, via Attack Machine
Wednesday, November 19. 2008
The disasters pile up and yet the faith in government solutions persists. And of course because of unintended consequences more government is required. Simon at Classical Values
Wednesday, November 12. 2008
"The woods would be very silent if no birds sang there except those that sang best." Princeton's Henry Van Dyke. h/t, LGF
The internet is both wonderful and terrible. For instance, it enables patients to learn a lot about their own diseases, and if they are discriminating, sometimes even to save their own lives. But medical information, or opinion, on the internet has probably already killed far more people than it has saved. Dalrymple, in an enjoyable piece on used bookstores: Bibiolphia and Biblioclasm
Tuesday, November 11. 2008
"I didn't know you were allowed to say those things." A Bird Dog pup, after seeing Taming of the Shrew this weekend.
Monday, November 10. 2008
Government's view of the economy could be summed up in a few short phrases: If it moves, tax it. If it keeps moving, regulate it. And if it stops moving, subsidize it. Ronald Reagan
Government exists to protect us from each other. Where government has gone beyond its limits is in deciding to protect us from ourselves. Ronald Reagan
Saturday, November 8. 2008
"Ah, you fool, it's the educated reader who can be gulled. All of our difficulty comes with the others. When did you read of a workman who believes the papers?...But the educated public, who read the highbrow weeklies, don't need reconditioning. They're alright already. They'll believe anything." The head of the secret police in CS Lewis' That Hideous Strength, as quoted in a piece by AVI
Thursday, November 6. 2008
“It cannot be emphasized too clearly and too often that this nation was founded, not by religionists, but by Christians; not on religion, but on the gospel of Jesus Christ. For this very reason, peoples of other faiths have been afforded asylum, prosperity, and freedom of worship here.” Patrick Henry, May 1765 Speech to the House of Burgesses
From May of this year. h/t, Ed Driscoll: I grew up in the 1950s, supposedly the heyday of conformity, but there was much more freedom of opinion back then. And as a result, you knew that your neighbors might hold different views from you on politics or religion. Today, the notion that men of good will can disagree has disappeared. Can you imagine! Today, if I disagree with you, you conclude there is something wrong with me. This is a childish, parochial view. And of course stupefyingly intolerant. It's truly anti-American. Much of it can be laid at the feet of the environmental movement, which has unfortunately frequently been led by ill-educated and intolerant spokespersons--often with no more than a high-school education, sometimes not even that. Or they are lawyers trained to win at any cost and to say anything about their opponents to win. But you find the same intolerant tone around considerations of defense, taxation, free markets, universal medical care, and so on. There's plenty of zealotry to go around. And it's hardly new in human history. The media might stand as a corrective, cool and a bit detached, showing by example how to approach information and controversy. Instead, the media has clearly caught the fever of our intolerant times. Formerly, news people would never openly state their allegiance; young reporters understood it was poor form, and a senior person would carry the caution born of the experience that at least some of what one believes in the course of one's life turns out to be wrong. But it's a new era. Now, media reporters are proud to pound the table and declare their advocacy. Since so few of them have any training in science, they don't really know what they are pounding about, when it comes to global warming. They couldn't tell you even in general terms how the global mean temperature is calculated, for example. But it doesn't matter anyway. They just want to declare they believe what "everyone" believes. Who values such a news source?
Wednesday, November 5. 2008
Quote from an 85 year-old codger neighbor yesterday afternoon (WW2 gunner, devout Roman Catholic, Repub, widower, master tomato-grower): "I like John McCain, but I had to vote for a change. You turn on the nightly news and the whole country seems like it's just going to hell. We have to do something different." There you go.
Tuesday, November 4. 2008
Every collectivist revolution rides in on a Trojan horse of ‘emergency’. Herbert Hoover, a fine, if highly unlucky, president
Monday, November 3. 2008
"When the people find they can vote themselves money, that will herald the end of the republic."
. Benjamin Franklin (paraphrasing Aristotle) from Tell Them They Can, at Wiz. The Founders feared the tyranny of democracy almost as much as they feared the tyranny of leaders, which is why they created a Republic instead of an Athenian democracy. But you already knew that.
Sunday, November 2. 2008
Steyn says:When first I heard about the Undocumented Auntie, I thought I'd finally figured out how this spread-the-wealth thing works: The government taxes Joe the Plumber to fund public housing agencies that illegally provide welfare and accommodation to illegal immigrants thereby freeing up their cash flow to enable them to make illegal campaign contributions to any nephew who might chance to be running for president and get him elected so he can tax Joe the Plumber even more to fund even more public housing for even more illegal immigrants to make even more illegal campaign contributions... Etc.
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