You cannot beat something with nothing. Obama had a record that was less than nothing but a machine and an approach to victory that were more than enough to add up to something. Romney, in the end, had nothing but Obama’s nothing.
Seen in this light, the notion that the right is dying is ludicrous. Romney called himself “severely conservative,” and that may be true of him personally, but it certainly was never true of him politically. Indeed, it was only when he finally and at long last ran as himself—the confident and well-spoken serious person with leadership skills—that he began making the sale to the American people. Then, when his challenge was to put meat on those bones in the second and third debates, he could not do so. When he needed to convince people not only that he had it in him to be presidential but that he had distinct ideas of what he would do once he became president, he failed. Conservatism could have saved him. He did not understand it, and he rejected it.
How can Romney’s loss invalidate the right when he was not a candidate of the right? It can, perhaps, as a matter of image, but it cannot as a matter of fact.
…The United States will now undergo a four-year stress test of American liberalism, as Obama will get his tax hike and ObamaCare will be implemented. Those who think Obama cared about people like them will now experience the full extent of his caring.
As Mencken said, democracy is about the idea that the common man know what he wants, and should get it good and hard.
Krugman knows all this, of course. He just writes as if we don’t.
Which is what makes him a hack, for whom the Times should be embarrassed to provide a platform. Of course, they have a lot of hackery to be embarrassed about.
Leaving aside the obscenity of comparing out-of-work screenwriters with gassed Auschwitz inmates, there’s this: Communists are no better than Nazis. Refusing to hire Communists is on the same moral plane as refusing to hire Nazis. Which is to say: It’s a good and admirable thing, not a sin. Go broke and starve, commies. It’s what you deserve for being eager, willing servants of totalitarianism.
That it’s perfectly acceptable to be a communist, but not a Nazi, in society at all, let alone teaching students on campus, is morally disgusting. All children of Rousseau should be ostracized in a truly liberal democracy.
I’m often asked why our current leadership class forgets the lessons of the past so often. They are, after all, very smart men and women. Don’t they know that collectivism will fail?
No, they don’t. Not anymore. For much of our history, our leaders were educated in the principles which were to help them avoid errors once they have joined the ruling class. They studied to learn how to not misuse power. Now our leaders learn nothing of the dangers of abusing power: their education is entirely geared to its acquisition. All of their neurons are trained on that one objective – to get to the top. What they do when they get there is a matter for later. And what happens to the country when they’re done with their experiments is beside the point: after all, their experiments will not really affect them personally. History is the story of the limitations of human power. But the limits of power is a topic for people who doubt themselves and their right to rule, not the self-anointed.
It’s always worth a reminder this time of year (and particularly in light of the disastrous recent election) that socialism doesn’t work.
Efforts to curb so-called man-made climate change had little or nothing to do with it. Government mandated “green” energy didn’t cause the reductions. Neither did environmentalist pressure. And the U.S. did not go along with the Kyoto Protocol to radically cut CO2 emissions. Instead, the drop came about through market forces and technological advances, according to a report from the International Energy Agency.
…”It’s good news and good news doesn’t get reported as much,” John Griffin, executive director of Associated Petroleum Industries of Michigan, said of the lack of reporting about the CO2 reductions. “The mainstream media doesn’t want to report these kinds of things.”
I’ve belatedly launched my Kickstarter project to publish my book on our irrational attitudes toward safety on the high frontier. I’ve put a short fuse on it — just fifteen days to raise four grand. I’d like to raise a lot more, to really publicize the thing, but that’s the minimum I need to have a quality product, I think.
Everyone who contributes at least five bucks will get some form of the book. Please consider donating generously, if you want to see this get more attention in the new year.