It is increasingly common for the Left (and its reliable water boys in the loyal opposition like McCain) to demonize its opponents. In Hiss’s day, it wasn’t so common, but his case was the first big instance of it. It is now generally accepted among leftists that those who dare to stand against any aspect of the politically correct agenda are not only wrong. They are evil, morally bankrupt, and stupid to boot – except for the diabolical ingenuity they employed to frame their pure-as-the-driven-snow victims.
This is a pernicious tendency that conservatives should identify and reject whenever and wherever it appears, for the simple fact that even if all her accusers are terrible people who kick their Shih Tzus and don’t recycle, that would not in itself tell us anything about Huma Abedin’s ties to the Muslim Brotherhood. She could still be a Muslim Brotherhood operative even if her accusers were Jeffrey Dahmer and John Wayne Gacy. And to hear the Left tell it, that’s exactly who they are: Alger Hiss and Huma Abedin are innocent, and if you don’t believe that, or even think the questions worthy of investigation, be ready to be bound hand and foot and cast into the outer darkness by an increasingly authoritarian and thuggish Left.
It actually does have elevators. I don’t think I blogged about it at the time, partly because it seemed so hard to believe that a building could get all the way from planning to completion with no one pointing out the problem.
Like the moguls of the early 20th century, who bought and sold senators like so many cabbages, the new elite constitute a basic threat to democracy. They dominate their industries with market shares that would make the old moguls blush. Google, for example, controls some 80 percent of search, while Google and Apple provide the operating system software for almost 90 percent of smartphones. Similarly, more than half of Americans, and 60 percent of Europeans, use Facebook, making it easily the world’s dominant social media site. In contrast, the world’s top 10 oil companies account for barely 40 percent of the world’s oil production.
Like the Gilded Age moguls, the tech oligarchs also personally dominate their companies. Sergey Brin, Larry Page and Eric Schmidt, for example, control roughly two-thirds of the voting stock in Google. Brin and Page each is worth more $20 billion. Larry Ellison, the founder of Oracle, owns just under 23 percent of his company; worth $41 billion, Forbes ranked him the country’s third-richest person. Bill Gates, the richest, is worth a cool $66 billion and still controls 7 percent of his firm. Newcomer Mark Zuckerberg’s 29.3 percent stake in Facebook was worth $16 billion as of July 25, according to Bloomberg.
This combination of market and ownership concentration needs to be curbed.
…Conservatives, for their part, can only face up to the new “axis of evil” by stepping outside their ideology strictures and instinctive embrace of wealth. The increasingly monopolistic nature of the high-tech community, and its widespread disregard for the privacy of the individual, should concern conservatives, as it would have the framers of the Constitution.
Preserving, protecting, and defending the Constitution, especially its Bill of Rights, provides ample grounds for unity between libertarians and most conservatives. Many of our civil liberties — dear to libertarians and conservatives both — are under assault by progressive forces.
There is much to collaborate on: preserving freedom of speech, and of the press, and of the free exercise of religion; honoring the right to peaceably assemble and petition for redress of grievances; not infringing the right to keep and bear arms; rehabilitation the right of people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects against unreasonably searches and seizures; the right not to be deprived of life, liberty, or property without due process of law. Even, casting the net a bit wider, the classical gold standard and the repeal of the Estate tax!
I started drinking coffee a few weeks ago, primarily for medicinal purposes (a couple cups in the morning). I don’t really enjoy it, and I’ve never noticed any mental effect from doing so. If I didn’t make a pot for her every morning, I probably wouldn’t bother. When I skip a day, I don’t notice anything, either. So maybe I’m sort of impervious to its effects. Of course, that could also mean that I’m not getting any of the hoped-for health benefits of drinking it.
I’m not surprised. They don’t know WTF they’re doing. As I’ve said before, climate modeling is an interesting exercise, but it’s insane to base policy on it.
