…finish last. Thoughts from Thomas Sowell.
All posts by Rand Simberg
California Is A European-Style Social Democracy
And he says that like it’s a good thing.
ObamaCare
…is still vulnerable. This should be the key issue in 2014 to retake the Senate.
NASA’s Safety Culture
Wayne Hale has an interesting excerpt from a recent speech by Admiral Gehman on the Columbia loss. I may incorporate this into my space safety book. Hard to believe that it will be ten years in February.
Unbundling The Issues
Some optimistic thoughts on the potential for a post-election compromise, on taxes and health care.
The president doesn’t have as much of a mandate as he thinks he does, and if he overreaches again he’ll be in for another shellacking in two years.
African Democracy
…is a sham. Ya think?
Absent a culture of liberal and particularly anglospheric values, democracy can be catastrophic. It’s why the Founders established a republic. Not to claim that Africa was well off under colonialism, but much of it was certainly better off. Just ask the residents of what used to be Rhodesia.
Just In Case The Petraeus Story Wasn’t Weird Enough
Advice For Americans
From a Frenchman:
Have you ever heard about the French Libertarian Party?
Me neither. True, there’s a couple of pretenders to the title, but they are merely social clubs, where every now and then attendants get a tingling in the pants by quoting good old Ludwig Von Mises and Claude Frédéric Bastiat between connoisseurs. Their true distinctive feature when compared to the other French is that they won’t even bother entertaining any delusion of grandeur or relevance — they know they have no place in the French political process, and no chance to ever gain one.
So hear this, Friends of Gary the Third Party and other Principled Abstentionists: by choosing ideological purity over strategic thinking, you’ve effectively hedged your own political future in the one competing force that is most capable of propelling you into irrelevance and oblivion—as we say in France: Bravo!
Just as in France, once a majority of the US population—no matter how slim — has tasted the poisonous fruits of the State, they will demand the keys to the cornucopia and regard with disdain, scorn or hostility any soul brave or foolish enough to call it unsustainable and propose to lock the larder. The fact that you are right will not matter at all. Just as they do in France, the people will ask for more and tout de suite, never realizing or willing to acknowledge that they are effectively cannibalizing themselves and their offspring — as we’ve been saying in France for quite a while: Après moi le Déluge!
Thank in no small part to you, Obama now has more time to multiply the locusts, thus depleting your future ranks. You shall keep fancying yourselves as The Smart Ones, when compared to those Neanderthaloid Conservatives and Liberal Zombies, until one of you wonders aloud why the lights went off in the Libertarian cave, and hears only the echo in answer.
Understand this: I am not a US citizen nor a resident in the USA, so this is not the bitter retort of a sore loser. This is a prophecy from a foreigner who has seen your future because he lives in it: you, my friend, who didn’t oppose Obama today will be politically extinct tomorrow.
He has advice for Republicans, too.
The Social Issues
Where do Republicans go from here?
Note that, despite the derangement of some, this has almost nothing to do with the Tea Party, which was successful in 2010 because it pretty much ignored them. Unfortunately the Democratic operatives with bylines (like George Stephanopolous) wouldn’t allow that to happen this year.
Remembering Those Who Served
[Note that I’m keeping this post at the top all day, but there’s lots of new content if you haven’t checked in in a while — just scroll past it]
Here is my Veterans Day post from last year.
And this is ridiculous, and one more sign of the decline of Old Blighty.
I wouldn’t go so far as to say that all those men died in Flanders’ fields so that this schmuck could burn a poppy on the Internet, but that’s certainly the sort of thing that Americans have died in battle for, and many of them did die at Ypres and other places for that right, even for non-Americans.
I’ll try to keep this at the top today, so keep scrolling.