I haven’t said anything about the recent events, and like others I will miss his writing at NR, but am I the only person wondering if the has affected his judgment?
Category Archives: Media Criticism
Social Darwinism Versus Laissez Faire
A primer for Barack Obama. He, and the Democrats in general, badly need one, but they probably won’t even understand it.
Hunger Games
Will it scar your child’s psyche?
I hadn’t even heard of the book before the movie came out, but it sounds like the whole series might be a useful corrective against the increasing fascism in the country.
Bill Nelson Is Getting Nervous
He’s blaming Obama for high gas prices. I love this line:
Obama has focused on alternative energy and other long-term strategies to bring down gas prices by decreasing demand.
Many republicans say prices will drop if we increase the supply.
So Democrats don’t believe that? Only Republicans are familiar with the law of supply and demand?
“Faster Than You Can Say ‘Furious'”
James O’Keefe pwns Eric Holder.
Bravissima, Jennifer Lawrence
“Screw PETA.”
More Thoughts On Social Darwinism
Over at Althouse’s place:
Strangely enough, “progressivism” was broadly associated with eugenics and racism and yet the only people who remember that are the people accused of being social darwinists.
There’s a lot more to unpack here than I have time for, but a key point made by another commenter is that no one calls themselves a Social Darwinist — it is an illegitimate epithet reserved for the perceived enemies of same, whereas many have been, and continue to be proud to call themselves Marxists and socialists. And they should be ashamed to do so, given the history of the twentieth century.
Hidden History
Günter Grass
An open letter and history lesson:
All this is well known. I should like you to think about something that is less well known, Herr Grass, and that is the fact that the First and Second World Wars were entirely unnecessary. That’s right: the fact that they were fought in the first place is entirely the fault of people like you, and specifically of Kaiser Wilhelm II, who could have pre-empted them in 1905. Kaiser Wilhelm II and Günter Grass: a couple of soul-mates.
Like some of the commenters there, I always found The Tin Drum unreadable, in German or English.
The President’s SCOTUS Attack
Was it good politics?
the president’s demagoguery did agitate the constituencies that matter most: the pro-Obama media, the even more pro-Obama media, and Europeans (who, let’s face it, are just more soignée than we are). Judging by my Facebook feed, he’s doing a pretty good job of getting his rank and file followers to mouth the appropriate slogans as well.
But I think Pruden is missing a piece of good news in all this. Obama has also demonstrated the limits of propaganda that was perfected in the era of totalitarianism. It was easy for FDR to make a crude campaign against the court stick because (sorry, Greatest Generation) Americans back then were across the board less educated and less skeptical, and they had access to a universe of information so small that, by the standards of 2012, it can barely be said to have existed.
Last month, an ABC News/Washington Post poll indicated nearly 70 percent of Americans believed the Court should strike down the individual mandate or the entire PPACA. A Kaiser Family Foundation poll also showed majority belief that the mandate was unconstitutional. I don’t read too much into that. (Among the many ways we’re smarter than our ancestors is that we’re more skeptical of opinion polling.) But if you had taken a similar poll taken in 1935, the majority of responses to a question about judicial review and constitutionality under either the commerce clause or the necessary and proper doctrine would have been “Huh?” That Obama is out of his depth just shows again that he’s everything Bill Clinton wasn’t: inflexible, intellectually lazy, and tied to a vision of America the rest of the country stopped caring about decades ago.
We’re just not as stupid and ignorant as they wish we were. Or they are.