SURROUNDED BY GOVERNMENT FAILURE, WHY DO PEOPLE STILL BELIEVE? Veronique de Rugy, writing for the American Institute for Economic Research (AIER), asks a question that strongly suggests somewhere along the way in her ancestry there is a connection to that Ockham fellow with the razor.
Archive for 2020
June 29, 2020
WALTER WILLIAMS ON THOMAS SOWELL AT 90: “In many respects, Sowell is an Austrian economist like the great Nobel laureate Friedrich Hayek, who often talked about elites and their ‘pretense of knowledge.’ These are people who believe that they have the ability and knowledge to organize society in a way better than people left to their own devices — what Hayek called the fatal conceit. Their vision requires the use of the coercive powers of government. In my book, Thomas Sowell is one of the greatest economist-philosophers of our age, and I am proud to say that he is one of my best friends. Sowell demonstrates something that is uniquely American; namely, just because you know where a person ended up in life, you cannot be sure about where he started.”
THE GIRONDISTS ALWAYS FALL TO THE MONTAGNARDS IN THE END: Activists Set Up Guillotine In Front Of Jeff Bezos’s D.C. Home, Call For Amazon To Be Abolished. “The event appears to have been held by a group called ‘Abolish The Present Reconstruct Our Future.'”
Real Year Zero stuff. I think they should have to live in a communal apartment with other Marxists for five years with no outside subsidies as re-education.
Question: Is setting up a guillotine in front of someone’s house a ‘true threat’ or is it ‘mere hyperbole.’ I mean, we all know that nooses are right out, even if they’re fake.
ARE YOU OPPRESSOR OR OPPRESSED? And speaking of hoary liberal myths, Joseph Backholm offers three solid reasons there is nothing biblical about the Critical Theory behind Black Lives Matter, 1619, White Fragility, et. al., contrary to the claims of progressives and even some evangelicals, who seem to be transitioning to progressives.
WHO? BidenWatch for June 29, 2020. “Black voters have about the same enthusiasm for Biden as they do for leftover tuna casserole, his non-profit did more to line staffer’s pockets than fight cancer, and Biden agrees to three debates with Trump.”
NO, JESUS WAS NOT A ‘PERSON OF COLOR:’ Tom Gilson of thinkingchristian.org shreds the hoary liberal myth, then reminds would-be co-opters of all stripes that “Jesus won’t let us use Him for our politics.” You don’t have to agree with everything, or anything, in this provocative piece, but I am confident you’ll come away from it understanding these issues with greater clarity.
BIAS BY OMISSION: Media headlines seem to be leaving out some context about armed St. Louis couple guarding their home as ‘peaceful protesters’ were ‘passing by.’
Related: ‘We were in fear of our lives’; Central West End couple seen pointing guns at protesters speaks. “This is all private property. There are no public sidewalks or public streets. We were told that we would be killed, our home burned and our dog killed. We were all alone facing an angry mob,” personal-injury lawyer Mark McCloskey was quoted by St. Louis CBS affiliate KMOV4.
MY LATEST FOR THE PJMEDIA MOTHERSHIP: #DefundThePolice Fantasy Crushing Minorities, Inspiring Lawlessness. “Police have tough enough jobs even when their elected leaders have their backs; when police departments’ own governments abandon them, the breakdown comes hard and fast.”
Lots of video at the link, none easy to watch.
SUPREME COURT STRIKES DOWN LOUISIANA ABORTION RESTRICTIONS: “The Louisiana law required abortion practitioners to have admitting privileges at a hospital no further than 30 miles from the abortion clinic. In a 5-4 ruling, Chief Justice John Roberts sided with liberal justices to declare the law unconstitutional.”
Or as America’s Newspaper of Record noted ten days ago: Having Been Betrayed By Republican Judges, Conservatives Vow To Vote Republican Even Harder Next Time.
IN THE MAIL: Anatomy and 100 Essential Stretching Exercises.
NIFTY: NASA Says The SpaceX Crew Dragon Module Parked at the ISS Is Generating Way More Power Than Expected. “In fact, the spacecraft’s solar arrays are performing ‘better than predicted,’ according to Stich, meaning that it could technically stay docked 114 more days, way past its planned return date with Behnken and Hurley aboard on August 2.”
FINALLY: Feds warn UCLA about disciplining professor who read N-word from MLK letter.
The US Department of Education has warned UCLA it could face fines if it disciplines a political science professor who read the N-word from Martin Luther King Jr.’s “Letter from a Birmingham Jail.”
Lecturer W. Ajax Peris, an Air Force veteran, has been under investigation since early this month. UCLA Political Science Chair Michael Chwe and two others in his department had blasted Peris in an email, agreeing with students’ complaints that he didn’t “pause and reassess [his] teaching pedagogy” after objections to the N-word.
An apology from Peris did little to assuage students and faculty. According to Fox News, Chwe and company alleged Peris’s act of contrition “escalated the situation rather than engaging in […] thoughtful and open discourse.”
The DOE informed UCLA that Peris has been “improperly and abusively targeted.”
Universities need adult supervision these days, and while I’d rather that not be the case, the DoE and DOJ need to provide some.
WHY IS THE MOB WINNING? Not sure I agree that it is, but Issues & Insights makes a disturbingly convincing case for the proposition.
AT AMAZON, Work Sharp Knife & Tool Sharpener.
GOOD: New Gun Owners Could Sway Future Elections. “Gun groups say millions of new gun owners could create ‘an even more formidable voting bloc’.”
HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: UC-Irvine Law Admissions apologized for spotlighting the campus’ chapter of the Federalist Society on its Instagram page after students commented on the post claiming that the organization “advocates against marginalized groups.” “The Federalist Society President, Richard Angel, told Campus Reform that not only is his chapter non-partisan but that the majority of its members are people of color.”
As usual, lefties are mostly angry at their own fantasies of what the right looks like.
ROGER KIMBALL: The Purity Spiral Turns, as Courage Goes Missing. It’s amazing how almost uniformly awful and pathetic the people in charge of our universities, corporations, and press are.
SO NOW THAT PRINCETON HAS DE-NAMED THE WOODROW WILSON SCHOOL, DOESN’T THIS INCREASE THE PRESSURE ON YALE TO CHANGE ITS NAME? Wilson was a terrible racist, but he wasn’t an actual slave trader like Eli Yale. Say, do you think one reason Princeton made the change was to ratchet up the pressure on its rival?
SALENA ZITO: Madonna of the Trail defies statue-toppling culture.
DE BLASIO’S NEW YORK: FROM ONE OF THE SAFEST CITIES IN THE WORLD TO THIS IN JUST A FEW MONTHS. 112 injured or killed in 83 shootings over 9 days in NYC: ‘I haven’t seen anything like this in my entire life.’