Anyway, I guess the whole idea for how our country would work was that we’d basically govern ourselves and hire some people — our representative and senators — to represent us in the federal government, as none of us have time for that. And since we’d all elect them together out of our entire population, we’d pick only the best people to do it.
But here’s the problem. Who are the people who tend to run for political office? Political office is hard to get and takes a lot of effort, so only ambitious people seek it. That wouldn’t be so bad if we got smart/ambitious — and the useful kind of smart, not the pointless write-a-doctoral-thesis-on-transgender-Native-American-pottery “smart.”
But what do ambitious, capable people do in this country? They start their own businesses and lead successful lives comfortably away from the fickleness of the ballot box. So that just leaves the people who are ambitious but useless and just love the thought of being able to meddle in all the useful things everyone else is doing. And then the whole election process, where the politicians constantly lie and change their positions on issues to keep their jobs, tends to weed out the people who aren’t also sociopaths. So the system we have has basically set us up to be governed by ambitious, useless sociopaths who love to meddle in everything actual contributors to society are doing. So lawyers, for the most part.
And when you put these people in charge, of course they’re going to just try to grab more power so they can interfere even more, hence the steady bloating of government we’ve seen throughout American history. So what do we do? Change the system to make sure we get good, qualified people who aren’t arrogant weirdos to be our legislators?
Good luck with that. Fortunately, he has a better solution. They won’t like it, though.
So, I was reading comments at this post from yesterday, and Ed Wright mentioned some of von Braun’s death-bed regrets. Curious, I did a little searching, but all I came up with (so far) was this bit of lunacy from Carol Rosin.
It was always an obvious lie, except to the rubes.
I’m still amused at Bill Clinton’s prediction of how popular this would be once it passed, and I continue to wonder if he really believed it, or was setting up the Messiah for failure, in anticipation of 2012.
As the facts have come out, that Enright is far from a right-wing zealot, and actually works for an “Interfaith” group which supports the Cordoba Mosque, the left-wing blogosphere is backtracking. Enright was extremely drunk at the time of the incident (no excuse, but a fact), and a crime appears to have been committed. That is all (and enough), and fortunately there do not appear to be serious injuries.
The Anti-Muslim Cabbie Stabber joins the others in the rogues gallery of criminals who disappointed the left-wing blogosphere by failing to fit the eliminationist narrative.
This reminds me of Tom Wolfe’s aphorism that fascism is always on the rise in America, but somehow always seems to land in Europe. All of these accusations against the “right” (i.e., anyone who believes in freedom, apparently) of a tendency to violence are (like the accusations of “lying,” “racism,” “hate,” etc.) simply psychological projection by the left, and a tactic to distract from the things that they actually do.
[Update a while later]
Ed Schultz, arsonist. As Glenn asks, what is it with these left-wing nut jobs and violence?
I would point out, per Gene DiGennaro’s comment, that the popularity of space-related toys tells us nothing about the degree of public support. If only ten percent of the kids like space toys, that’s still a huge market.
Jason Kuznicki takes a look back at one of the economically stupidest and vicious things that the government did in the past two years (and that’s saying something, considering how much policy stupidity has abounded):
See how that works? You can’t get something for nothing. Cash for Clunkers turns out to have been a highly inefficient wealth-transfer program, that is, one that destroyed a bunch of wealth along the way. It gave wealth to those already relatively wealthy people who did the government’s bidding (that is, those who could afford to part with a used car and buy a new one). And now it’s taking wealth from those relatively poor people who need a used car today — in the form of higher prices.
Along the way, it destroyed hundreds of thousands of cars — that’s the real wealth these poor people don’t have access to anymore, because the scrapped cars aren’t a part of the economy.
And this is what passes for a successful government program.
And I had idiots here in my own comments section applauding it as being a “success” because so many people (willing to take handouts) participated in it. This is the same kind of warped thinking that declares a legislator “successful” if he passes lots of legislation, regardless of its quality, or how damaging to the Republic it is. I’m always amazed and amused at the morons who think that I should be impressed by the president, and approve of him more, because he managed to ram so much of his destructive agenda through.