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David Warren issues a revolutionary warning.
… Yet here we come up against a hard fact of life, beyond individuals; one which we must try to understand when looking forward -not only in Libya, but perhaps throughout the realm of Islam. Ruthlessness works. And in almost every revolution in history, the most ruthless faction eventually triumphed.
Chance, or what looks like chance, can also come into this. In their several ways, Robespierre of France, Hitler of Germany, and Pol Pot of Cambodia, overplayed their hands. Lenin, Stalin and Mao did not: each bequeathed a regime of monstrous tyranny to his successors.
While it is impossible to predict the course of history in narrative detail, that is not what “learning from history” is about. History seldom repeats itself, in any melodic sense, but repeats itself constantly in rhythm and themes. We should grasp, for instance, that the American Revolution was almost unique in history, for ending so well. We should also grasp why. It was, from beginning to end, under the leadership of highly civilized men, governed by a conception of liberty that was restrained and mature. George Washington commanded, in his monarchical person, the moral authority to stop the cycle of reprisals by which revolutions descend into “eating their own.” Nelson Mandela achieved something similar in South Africa. …
George Will goes after high speed rail.
… To progressives, the best thing about railroads is that people riding them are not in automobiles, which are subversive of the deference on which progressivism depends. Automobiles go hither and yon, wherever and whenever the driver desires, without timetables. Automobiles encourage people to think they—unsupervised, untutored, and unscripted—are masters of their fates. The automobile encourages people in delusions of adequacy, which make them resistant to government by experts who know what choices people should make.
Time was, the progressive cry was “Workers of the world unite!” or “Power to the people!” Now it is less resonant: “All aboard!
Rich Lowry quotes Chris Christie on his chance to run.
‘ Yes. Believe me, I’ve been interested in politics my whole life. I see the opportunity. But I just don’t believe that’s why you run. Like I said at AEI, I have people calling me and saying to me, “Let me explain to you how you could win.” And I’m like, “You’re barking up the wrong tree. I already know I could win.” That’s not the issue. The issue is not me sitting here and saying, “Geez, it might be too hard. I don’t think I can win.” I see the opportunity both at the primary level and at the general election level. I see the opportunity.
But I’ve got to believe I’m ready to be president, and I don’t. And I think that that’s the basis you have to make that decision. I think when you have people who make the decision just based upon seeing the opportunity you have a much greater likelihood that you’re going to have a president who is not ready. And then we all suffer from that. Even if you’re a conservative, if your conservative president is not ready, you’re not going to be good anyway because you’re going to get rolled all over the place in that town.
I just see how much better I get at this job every day, and I do, and I learn things. If not every day, at least every week. And my wife and I were actually talking about this last night. We had dinner together with the family after the [New Jersey budget] speech and she was saying how much better she thought I was yesterday than I had been before in my speech. She said, “You are getting better.” ‘ ..
Mark Steyn on the unions.
… Big Unions fund Big Government. The union slices off two per cent of the workers’ pay and sluices it to the Democratic Party, which uses it to grow government, which also grows unions, which thereby grows the number of two-per-cent contributions, which thereby grows the Democratic Party, which thereby grows government… Repeat until bankruptcy. Or bailout.
In his pithiest maxim, John Maynard Keynes, the most influential economist of the 20th century social-democratic state and the patron saint of “stimulus”, offered a characteristically offhand dismissal of any obligation to the future: “In the long run we are all dead.” The Greek and Wisconsin bullies are Keynesians to a man: The mob is demanding the right to carry on suspending reality until they’re all dead. After that, who cares?
If the new class war is between “public servants” and the rest of us, some countries no longer have enough of “the rest of us” even to put up a fight. That’s why you can’t wait to fight in the last ditch. The longer you wait to stand up against the “public service” unions, the less your chance of winning.
Jennifer Rubin writes on the administration’s attitude towards unions.
… Obama’s comments were not the only indication of the degree to which this administration is beholden to and biased in favor of Big Labor. Byron York of the Washington Examiner reports on the cheerleading by the secretary of labor, Hilda Solis:
‘ “The fight is on!” Solis told a cheering crowd at the Democratic National Committee’s winter meeting over the weekend in Washington. Giving her support to “our brothers and sisters in public employee unions,” Solis pledged aid to unionized workers who are “under assault” in Wisconsin and elsewhere. ‘
This is appalling. She is not the secretary of unions. She is the secretary of a department that is, theoretically, supposed to be a neutral umpire between labor and management and promote employment. No wonder her outburst made her subordinates nervous: …
Joel Kotkin mines census results for a peek into the future.
With the release of results for over 20 states, the 2010 Census has provided some strong indicators as to the real evolution of the country’s demography. In short, they reveal that Americans are continuing to disperse, becoming more ethnically diverse and leaning toward to what might be called “opportunity” regions.
Below is a summary of the most significant findings to date, followed by an assessment of what this all might mean for the coming decade.
Point One: America is becoming more suburban.
Point Two: America is becoming more diverse, and the diversity is spreading.
Point Three: The Shift to “Opportunity Regions”
Pajamas Media catches the latest BS from Krugman.
Paul Krugman’s latest column is yet another waste of NYT editorial real estate. He take to the the Paper of Reactionary Zeal to blame the Lone Star State’s drop-out rate on its budgetary frugality.
“And in low-tax, low-spending Texas, the kids are not all right. The high school graduation rate, at just 61.3 percent, puts Texas 43rd out of 50 in state rankings.”
Slight problem here, namely, the cause and effect relationship that Krugman implies. If low state spending leads to high state dropout rates, as Krugman suggests, then riddle me this: Why does California spend more per pupil, yet have a higher dropout rate? And why does New York spend even more per pupil than California and Texas, and also have a higher drop-out rate? And why does the District of Columbia spend almost twice as much money per pupil as Texas, and yet have a much higher dropout rate than Texas? …
Speaking of NY Times junk, John Podhoretz spots the same old rant inside the new-look cover.
… I haven’t read the magazine piece, by the often brilliant novelist Jennifer Egan, so it may be brutally honest about all this. But no matter what the text says, the cover image is consciously designed to make Berenson look like the Madonna with child — the child to whom she gave birth in prison in 2008. His father is also a convicted member of the Tupac Amaru group.
The Times has a repugnant history of this sort of thing; many people remember its glowing story about Bill Ayers, the Weather Underground domestic terrorist, which appeared, to the paper’s eternal shame, on September 11, 2001. It’s almost 10 years later. Evidently, the statute of limitations on journalistic embarrassments ran out, and it was time for the Times to snag another one.
And John Steele Gordon finds the fraud in a NY Times poll.
NBC News in Tulsa is worried about the New Madrid Fault and a repeat of the monster quakes of the winter of 1811-12.
… According to the U.S. Geological Survey , “The area of strong shaking associated with these shocks is two to three times as large as that of the 1964 Alaska earthquake and 10 times as large as that of the 1906 San Francisco earthquake.”
The New Madrid quakes were reportedly felt by people in an area ranging from the Gulf of Mexico all the way to Canada. They toppled chimneys in Maine, rang church bells in Boston, cracked sidewalks in Washington, D.C.
They caused parts of the mighty Mississippi River to run backwards, and created sand blows so massive they can still be seen from the air to this day.
The amount of damage that a series of quakes that size would cause in the modern southeastern United States can only be imagined….