URLs du Jour

2018-04-03

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  • In Proverbs 14:17, the Proverbialist breaks away from the good person/bad person compare-and-contrast format, and just describes the shortcomings and perceptions of those of flawed character:

    17 A quick-tempered person does foolish things,
        and the one who devises evil schemes is hated.


  • <voice imitation="professor_farnsworth">Good news, everyone</voice>: Kevin D. Williamson's first article at the Atlantic website is available.

    But it's also bad news, because… well, it's bad news about The Passing of the Libertarian Moment.

    The GOP’s political situation is absurd: Having rallied to the banner of an erratic and authoritarian game-show host, evangelical leaders such as Jerry Falwell Jr. are reduced to comparing Donald Trump to King David as they try to explain away his entanglement with pornographic performer Stormy Daniels. Those who celebrated Trump the businessman clutch their heads as his preposterous economic policies produce terror in the stock markets and chaos for the blue-collar workers in construction firms and manufacturers scrambling to stay ahead of the coming tariffs on steel and aluminum. The Chinese retaliation is sure to fall hardest on the heartland farmers who were among Trump’s most dedicated supporters.

    On the libertarian side of the Republican coalition, the situation is even more depressing: Republicans such as former Texas Governor Rick Perry, who once offered important support for criminal-justice reform, are lined up behind the atavistic drug-war policies of the president and Attorney General Jeff Sessions, whose big idea on opiate abuse is more death sentences for drug traffickers. Deficits are moving in the wrong direction. And, in spite of the best hopes of the “America First” gang, Trump’s foreign policy has not moved in the direction of Rand Paul’s mild non-interventionism or the more uncompromising non-interventionism of his father, Ron Paul. Instead, the current GOP foreign-policy position combines the self-assured assertiveness of the George W. Bush administration (and many familiar faces and mustaches from that administration) with the indiscipline and amateurism characteristic of Trump.

    Kevin also observes that if Democrats were smart, they'd make some policy moves to appeal to libertarian-leaners. But they are not smart.


  • You may have heard that there's a ban on studying gun violence. At NR, Dan McLaughlin notes: There’s No Ban on Studying Gun Violence.

    One of the common talking points that liberals throw around in the gun debate is that Republicans have banned even studying gun violence. So you get headlines such as “Lift the Federal Ban on Gun Violence Research” (the New Republic), or “Why Gun Violence Research Has Been Shut Down for 20 Years” (the Washington Post’s Wonkblog), or “GOP Chairman: Congress Should Rethink CDC Ban on Gun Violence Research” (The Hill), or “What’s Missing from the Gun Debate. It’s Simple: Science” (an op-ed in Politico).The reality is different, and it illustrates two contending views of how America should be governed.

    Dan's article is long, reality-based, and describes why "gun violence" shouldn't be studied in the public health domain.


  • Perhaps you've been wondering: Should I look to the state to keep media companies from imposing ideological confirmity? J.D. Tuccille has advice for you at Reason: Don't Look to the State to Keep Social Media Companies From Imposing Ideological Conformity.

    Many giant tech companies that were among the biggest supporters of so-called net neutrality have increasingly turned out to be enthusiastic suppressors of content when left to their own devices. But don't look for help to government agencies for help—not unless you want to empower authorities in a long and well-documented effort to muzzle officially disapproved speech. Instead, people who want to speak freely should actively seek out alternatives that let them do just that.

    This is why the cliché "the cure is worse than the disease" is… yeah, such a cliché

  • Michael Ramirez is a pin in the balloon of Bolton hysteria:


Last Modified 2024-01-25 10:00 AM EDT