MUST READ: Foud Ajami: Obama’s Summer of Discontent - WSJ.com

I'm not going to bother cutting and pasting. You simply must read the whole thing.

Foud Ajami: Obama’s Summer of Discontent - WSJ.com

Nice vid by the WSJ

ARTICLE: Uncreative Destruction by The Editors on National Review Online

Uncreative Destruction by The Editors on National Review Online

When we talk about government policies destroying wealth, we usually mean taxes that shift money from efficient to inefficient uses. Rarely do we mean the deliberate destruction of valuable assets. Yet, thanks to the Cash for Clunkers program, which ground to a halt yesterday, we now have a visual aid to help with this abstract concept. Mechanics tasked with destroying the so-called clunkers have been posting the videos on YouTube, often muttering in anger as they fill the engines of perfectly good Corvettes and Cadillacs with sodium silicate and then run them until they self-destruct. The goal of the Cash for Clunkers policy is, literally, the destruction of wealth.

To get a sense of how much value the program has destroyed in its short lifespan, keep an eye on used-car prices, which are expected to skyrocket as dealers see their inventory sacrificed to Washington’s green gods. Look also at the 12 percent decline in used cars donated to charity. This is to say nothing of the extra use their owners could have gotten out of them if the government hadn’t subsidized their destruction.
[. . .]
In the end, though, one returns to the footage of mechanics pouring liquid glass into the engines of drivable cars and destroying them. There is no better symbol for what happens when the government takes over large swaths of the economy. It is an important image to keep in mind during the health-care debate: We may not get death panels, but we’ll definitely get sand in the gears.

When beating the Republicans, any stick will do.

My friend Mike writes in the combox:

I'm just realizing from all your sources just how intolerant the conservative movement really is and how they try to disparage any new ideas. It is as if they are still toddlers with the limited vocabulary: "no".

Maybe it is time for conservatives to propose something that works to deal with the problems rather than just saying no to those who are proposing something.

First of all, there's nothing wrong with saying no--especially when your political opponents are proposing a new idea everyday in an attempt to remake America into a socialist utopia. If you went to the doc for flu symptoms and he suggested that he cut off your hands, feet, and head...the first thing you would say would be no.

Second, the Republicans have done more than say no. See the Patients' Choice Act.

Third, other conservatives have proposed other ideas as well, one of which was John Mackey, CEO of Whole Foods. How has the left treated him for doing nothing more than propose his ideas--what he honestly thinks is best for America? They are punishing him with a boycott. You can't have it both ways: You can't profess the need for healthy debate and a desire to hear more than "no" from your opposition; and then demonize them for doing nothing more than honestly communicating what they think is best for the people.

ARTICLE: Notable & Quotable - WSJ.com

Notable & Quotable - WSJ.com

Journalist Nat Hentoff writing in the Jewish World Review:

I was not intimidated during J. Edgar Hoover's FBI hunt for reporters like me who criticized him. I railed against the Bush-Cheney war on the Bill of Rights without blinking. But now I am finally scared of a White House administration.
[. . .]
No matter what Congress does when it returns from its recess, rationing is a basic part of Obama's eventual master health care plan.

ARTICLE: BREITBART: Boycotting the boycotters - Washington Times

BREITBART: Boycotting the boycotters - Washington Times:

Everywhere one looks these days, the intolerance of self-avowed liberals is on display. Especially since Mr. Obama came to power.
[. . .]
To call these people hypocrites would be a grave insult to those who fail to live up to their own standards. Liberalism has never been about establishing a universal standard. Liberalism is simply intellectual cover for those wanting to gain political power and increase the size of the state.

The Psychology of Error

Recently, I have discerned a certain hubris on the left which I have also recognized in atheists. Both somehow seem to forget that their beliefs are (i) deductions (ii) which are subservient to facts and logic. Their beliefs (i.e. conclusions) seem to harden in their minds as if they were first principles. I think this is the fundamental psychology of error--the less you know, the less you know it. Jesus said that those who seek, find; because even as their beliefs are objectively wrong, they desire to know the truth, making them open to reality which will eventually hold sway. On the other hand, those who give their beliefs primacy over the reality they purport to measure have quit seeking and have cut themselves off from reality. They have become their own truth.

Just as atheists regard religious believers, the left regards conservatives as narrow-minded. Why? Because they disagree with the left? Why aren't liberals regarded as close-minded when they disagree with conservatives? It seems to me that those on the left regard themselves as more intellectual, open-minded, and tolerant not because they necessarily seek out these virtues, but merely because they have joined a club which labels itself as such. And I think this has something to do with why they, ironically, dispose of competing views as if from a position of unchallengeable neutrality. For some reason, they don't recognize that their beliefs, just as competing beliefs, are conclusions subject to being fallible.

I'm not saying that every individual on the left is this way. But I do sense these things as a tendency on the left as a whole.

• What used to be "the highest form of patriotism"--dissent (against Bush)--is not tolerated when they are the recipients of it.
  
• Conscience clauses are not recognized by those who pride themselves on "choice".
• Tolerance is for everybody...except those who disagree. The left takes disagreement with their values as an act of intolerance, but its disagreement with your values is deemed a prerogative of personal choice.
  

- - - -

Critics of theism were not, as they liked to think, disposing of it from a position of unchallengeable neutrality, but proposing an alternative metaphysics of some kind or other which it was incumbent upon them to acknowledge and defend.
Basil Mitchell
—“War and Friendship”, from James Clark, Philosophers Who Believe

He forgets that it is a deduction at all and treats it as a first principle. He might discover that the whole calculation is a mis-calculation… But he has forgotten that it is a calculation, and is almost ready to contradict the sun if it does not fit into the Solar System.
—G.K. Chesterton, The Everlasting Man

Atheism is not a philosophy. It is not even a view of the world. It is simply an admission of the obvious.
—Sam Harris, Letter to a Christian Nation

"Morality" becomes at best an assertion of the prevailing (and in principle ever-shifting) sensibilities of the majority, or at least of those with the loudest mouths. It has no ultimate basis in objective fact or in reason, but only in sentiment and existing custom. This is, as I say, inevitable once one abandons realism of the Platonic, Aristotelian, or Scholastic sort.
—Edward Feser, The Last Superstition

I thought that he appeared wise to many people and especially to himself, but he was not. I then tried to show him that he thought himself wise, but that he was not. As a result he came to dislike me, and so did many of the bystanders. So I withdrew and thought to myself: “I am wiser than this man; it is likely that neither of us knows anything worthwhile, but he thinks he knows something when he does not, whereas when I do not know, neither do I think I know; so I am likely to be wiser than he to this small extent, that I do not think I know what I do not know”.
—Plato, Apology

What I mean by the slavery of the mind is that state in which men do not know of the alternative. It is something which clogs the imagination, like a drug or a mesmeric sleep, so that a person cannot possibly think of certain things at all. It is not the state in which he says, “I see what you mean; but I cannot think that because I sincerely think this” (which is simply rational): it is one in which he has never thought of the other view; and therefore does not even know that he has never thought of it… The thing I mean is man’s inability to state his opponent’s view; and often his inability even to state his own.
—G. K. Chesterton, The Thing

For the modern world will accept no dogmas upon any authority; but it will accept any dogmas on no authority. Say that a thing is so, according to the Pope or the Bible, and it will be dismissed as a superstition without examination. But preface your remark merely with “they say” or “don’t you know that?” or try (and fail) to remember the name of some professor mentioned in some newspaper and the keen rationalism of the modern mind will accept every word you say.
—G. K. Chesterton, The Superstition of Divorce

Like most of the left since Marx, the American left today has created an image of the world to which reality is subservient. Left-wing theories define reality, not vice versa. And in that closed world, left-wing dissent is patriotic, while dissent against the left is fascistic at worst, or paid for by the greedy at best.
—Dennis Prager, "I Thought 'Dissent Is Patriotic'"

Liberals always place themselves in a higher position than their interlocutors, and from that position they have an irresistible urge to dominate. What they usually say is something like this: We are not interested in deciding any particular issue; all we want to do is to create a system within which you will make your own decisions. By saying this they do two things which I find rather dubious. First, they always usurp for themselves—without asking anyone for permission and without any permission being granted—the role of the architectonic organizer of society; thus they always want to dominate by performing the roles of the guardians of the whole of the social system and the judges of the procedural rules within the system.
[. . .]
Not only is liberalism not modest, its ambition to have a decisive voice is unquenchable: because it is the result of self-deception. The socialists, the conservatives, the monarchists are ambitious too, but they all know very well how far they want to penetrate the social fabric, and at least some of them are well aware that reality often resists and that giving in to reality is sometimes a sound decision. The liberals, however, live in a world of self-delusion about their mildness and modesty, believing that even their most arrogant interference somehow does not touch moral or social “substance.”
[. . .]
Learning from others is something liberals never do.
[. . .]
Classical liberals such as John Stuart Mill believed that enlarging freedom by encouraging eccentricities would result in an explosion of human creativity. Liberals today are less interested in creativity. They are on the one hand pedantic doctrinaires who never tire of constructing ever more complex and ever more dubious ideologies of inclusion, and on the other hand they are ideological commissars who have acquired remarkable abilities to silence their critics. For whoever disagrees with them is a potential candidate to become a new Adolf Hitler.
—Ryszard Legutko, "What’s Wrong With Liberalism?"

ARTICLE: Mark Steyn: Stimulus hits a pothole | obama, percent, sign, president, government - Opinion - OCRegister.com

Mark Steyn: Stimulus hits a pothole | obama, percent, sign, president, government - Opinion - OCRegister.com:

For Obama, government health care is the fastest way to a permanent left-of-center political culture in which all elections and most public discourse will be conducted on Democrat terms. It's no surprise that the president can't make a coherent economic or medical argument for Obamacare because that's not what it's about – and for all his cool he can't quite disguise that.

ARTICLE: Dennis Prager : Americans Are Beginning to Understand the Left - Townhall.com

Dennis Prager : Americans Are Beginning to Understand the Left - Townhall.com

The left imposes its values on others whenever possible and to the extent possible. That is why virtually every totalitarian regime in the 20th century was left-wing. Inherent to all left-wing thought is a totalitarian temptation. People on the left know that not only are their values morally superior to conservative values, but that they themselves are morally superior to conservatives. Thus, for example, the former head of the Democratic Party, Howard Dean, could say in all seriousness, “In contradistinction to the Republicans, we don't think children ought to go to bed hungry at night.”

Therefore, the morally superior have the right, indeed the duty, to impose their values on the rest of us: what light bulbs we use, what cars we drive, what we may ask a prospective employee, how we may discipline our children, and, of course, how much of our earnings we may keep.

ARTICLE: Dennis Prager : I Thought 'Dissent Is Patriotic' - Townhall.com

Dennis Prager : I Thought 'Dissent Is Patriotic' - Townhall.com

The worst part of the liberal mantra, "Dissent is Patriotic," however, is not that is meaningless. It is that it is apparently meant solely to defend liberal and left dissent. Dissent against the right is inherently patriotic.

Dissent against the left is another matter. To Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi and to the New York Times Paul Krugman and every other left-wing commentator I have read on the issue, those who dissent against the Obama/Democratic Party health care plan are not only not patriotic; they are Nazis, mobs, white racists (according to Krugman's non-sequitur thesis) and are always organized. They are activists sent by health insurance companies, the Republican Party, or by some other nefarious right-wing organization.
[. . .]
Like most of the left since Marx, the American left today has created an image of the world to which reality is subservient. Left-wing theories define reality, not vice versa. And in that closed world, left-wing dissent is patriotic, while dissent against the left is fascistic at worst, or paid for by the greedy at best.

ARTICLE: Stop and Think by Thomas Sowell on National Review Online

Stop and Think by Thomas Sowell on National Review Online:

The thing most associated with America — freedom — is precisely what must be destroyed if this is to be turned into a fundamentally different country to suit Obama’s vision of the country and of himself. But do not expect a savvy politician like Barack Obama to express what he is doing in terms of limiting our freedom.

He may not even think of it in those terms. He may think of it in terms of promoting “social justice” or making better decisions than ordinary people are capable of making for themselves, whether about medical care or housing or many other things. Throughout history, egalitarians have been among the most arrogant people.

Obama has surrounded himself with people who also think it is their job to make other people’s decisions for them. Not just Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel, his health-care advisor who complains of Americans’ “over-utilization” of medical care, but also Prof. Cass Sunstein, who has written a whole book on how third parties should use government power to “nudge” people into making better decisions in general.

ARTICLE: The American Spectator : Woodstock Authoritarians

The American Spectator : Woodstock Authoritarians

The unruly left-wing protesters of yesteryear have become the authoritarians of today, criticizing and clamping down on protests far tamer and more sober than the ones they engineered in the 1960s.

Notice that as liberals fulminate about the sudden lack of "civility" in the country and the supposedly chilling spread of nihilism and protest across the land they simultaneously celebrate this month's anniversary of the hideously stupid and destructive Woodstock festival. Somehow the Woodstock protests were charming and harmless, according to their moral calculations, while today's raucous townhall meetings are perilous to the future of the republic.
[. . .]
The self-delusion of liberalism is bottomless. It blithely celebrates the inane though no less destructive nihilism of Woodstock while treating as nihilistic traitors serious, property-holding, taxpaying citizens who protest a statist takeover of one-sixth of the United States economy.

Beneath the well-pressed suits of those establishment liberals who are now touting the virtues of "civility" lies the sordid attire of Woodstock, illustrating once again that no one is more authoritarian than a successful left-wing protester. And as the agents of previous liberal revolutions understood acutely, the Woodstock authoritarians know that they must cow vigilant citizens into docility, for the most sweeping revolutions are not carried out against state power but with it.

ARTICLE: Old World Swine: Hudge and Gudge, Right and Left

Old World Swine: Hudge and Gudge, Right and Left:

An old college friend just posted this link, titled 'Is The Right Moving Towards Violence?' on Facebook. It is a video report posted at The Nation.

I replied; 'Is the left moving towards tyranny?'.
[. . .]
There are good people on both 'sides' who have instictively or for whatever reason put a kind of blind faith in one of two very hazy and completely unfounded ideals... either in the benevolent state (where everything is run by 'experts' who know better than everyone) or else in some dogmatic belief that Free Markets or Capitalism (also run by 'experts') will eventually solve everything. But the State and the Capitalists have been in bed together for a hundred years or more. One hand washes the other, but we ordinary citizens are the ones who had better remember not to drop the soap.

ARTICLE: American Papist: Not Your Average Catholic!: Politics: Lies, and the Obama who tells them, and the Faux Catholics who let him

American Papist: Not Your Average Catholic!: Politics: Lies, and the Obama who tells them, and the Faux Catholics who let him

Abortion & Obamacare

ARTICLE: Why ‘Obamacare’ Is Failing by Jonah Goldberg on National Review Online

Why ‘Obamacare’ Is Failing by Jonah Goldberg on National Review Online:

Imagine if George W. Bush, in his effort to partially privatize Social Security, had insisted that the “time for talking is over.” Picture, if you will, the Bush White House asking Americans to turn in their e-mails in the pursuit of “fishy” dissent. Conjure a scenario under which then-Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott derided critics as “evil-mongers” the way Harry Reid recently described town-hall protesters. Or if then-House Speaker Dennis Hastert and then-Majority Whip Tom DeLay had called critics “un-American” the way Nancy Pelosi and Steny Hoyer did last week, or if White House strategist Karl Rove had been Sir Spam-a-lot instead of David Axelrod.

Now, I’m not asking you, dear reader, to do this so that you might be able to see through the glare of Obama’s halo or the outlines of the media’s staggering double standard when it comes to covering this White House. Rather, it is to grasp that the Obama administration has been astoundingly incompetent.

Lashing out at the town-hall protesters, playing the race card, whining about angry white men, and whispering ominously about right-wing militias is almost always a sign of liberalism’s weakness — a failure of the imagination.

ARTICLE: Russell Mokhiber: Boycott Whole Foods

More proof that libs will eat their own when the deviate from Official Dogma.

Russell Mokhiber: Boycott Whole Foods

ARTICLE: Statement from the American College of Surgeons Regarding Recent Comments from President Obama

Statement from the American College of Surgeons Regarding Recent Comments from President Obama:
CHICAGO—The American College of Surgeons is deeply disturbed over the uninformed public comments President Obama continues to make about the high-quality care provided by surgeons in the United States. When the President makes statements that are incorrect or not based in fact, we think he does a disservice to the American people at a time when they want clear, understandable facts about health care reform. We want to set the record straight.

Yesterday during a town hall meeting, President Obama got his facts completely wrong.

[ . . . ]

The President’s remarks are truly alarming and run the risk of damaging the all-important trust between surgeons and their patients.

We assume that the President made these mistakes unintentionally, but we would urge him to have his facts correct before making another inflammatory and incorrect statement about surgeons and surgical care.

Orwell or Huxley?

A good cartoon parsing the differences between the prophecies of Orwell and Huxley:

Amusing Ourselves to Death by Stuart McMillen - cartoon Recombinant Records

ARTICLE:Notable and Quotable - WSJ.com

Notable and Quotable - WSJ.com:

"[Journalist] Robert Wright notes that 'we already ration health care; we just let the market do the rationing.' This is a true point made by the proponents of health care reform. But I'm not sure why it's supposed to be so interesting. You could make this statement about any good:

'We already ration food; we just let the market do the rationing.'

'We already ration gasoline; we just let the market do the rationing.'

'We already ration cigarettes; we just let the market do the rationing.'

[. . .]

goods rationed by fiat rather than price have a tendency to disappear, decline in quality, etc. Government tends to prefer queues to prices. This makes most people worse off, since their time is worth much more than the price they would pay for the good. Providers of fiat-rationed goods have little incentive to innovate, or even produce adequate supplies. If other sectors are not controlled, the highest quality providers have a tendency to exit. If other sectors are controlled, well, you're a socialist."

ARTICLE: Karl Rove: Obama and the Permanent Campaign - WSJ.com

Karl Rove: Obama and the Permanent Campaign - WSJ.com:

"The White House now insists that the president doesn't want to enact a single-payer health-care system or eliminate private insurance. What's more, a White House spokeswoman attacked the video, saying its compilers 'Take a phrase here and there—they simply cherry-pick and put it together—and make it sound like he's saying something that he didn't really say.'

That's laughable. Mr. Obama's remarks are straightforward and indisputable. Rather than saying his views have changed as he has worked to create a national consensus, the administration denies what is obviously true."

ARTICLE: The Catholic Thing - Political Religions

The Catholic Thing - Political Religions:

"For Dawson, man knows by nature that there is something greater than himself and is driven to the transcendent. Religion serves man “as a bridge between the spiritual and the physical.” “A culture that has by and large rejected its religion or secularized itself,” Dawson argued, “has merely substituted some false religion – most likely an ideology of some kind – for its lost faith.” Ideologies are merely “religious emotions divorced from religious belief.”"

ARTICLE: The American Spectator : Obama Plays Defense

The American Spectator : Obama Plays Defense

President Obama gave an extraordinary performance at his "town hall" meeting in Portsmouth, N.H., on Tuesday. There was no soaring oratory or fainting crowd (although it was a very friendly audience). Actually, overall, the affair was rather dull and unmemorable. What was extraordinary was seeing the president of the United States -- this president of the United States -- spend more than an hour limply defending himself against critics who were neither named nor present on the premises, but rather omnipresent in the very air.

Obama came to New Hampshire to stop the bleeding. His campaign for massive health care reform is dying of 1,000 bipartisan cuts, and the White House senses that time is running out. His diagnosis: Expose the critics as liars. It didn't work.
. . .
At the same time he was promising most everyone in America that health care reform would mean zero noticeable changes in their health insurance, he was attacking the "status quo" and explaining that if reform passes, everything will change.
. . .
And he kept contradicting himself. For example, he noted that Medicare was in crisis and would soon be bankrupt, then cited it as a proof that government can do health care right.
. . .
It is no surprise that there was no "Aha!" moment when a viewer would say, "So that's what he means! I get it now! I'm so relieved!" Obama gave no skeptics any reason to suddenly start believing him. If you weren't a believer before, you are very unlikely to have changed your mind after listening to the President in Portsmouth.

ARTICLE: John Mackey: The Whole Foods Alternative to ObamaCare - WSJ.com

John Mackey: The Whole Foods Alternative to ObamaCare - WSJ.com:

"'The problem with socialism is that eventually you run out
of other people's money.'—Margaret Thatcher

With a projected $1.8 trillion deficit for 2009, several trillions more in deficits projected over the next decade, and with both Medicare and Social Security entitlement spending about to ratchet up several notches over the next 15 years as Baby Boomers become eligible for both, we are rapidly running out of other people's money. These deficits are simply not sustainable. They are either going to result in unprecedented new taxes and inflation, or they will bankrupt us.
. . .

Health care is a service that we all need, but just like food and shelter it is best provided through voluntary and mutually beneficial market exchanges. A careful reading of both the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution will not reveal any intrinsic right to health care, food or shelter. That's because there isn't any. This "right" has never existed in America

Even in countries like Canada and the U.K., there is no intrinsic right to health care. Rather, citizens in these countries are told by government bureaucrats what health-care treatments they are eligible to receive and when they can receive them. All countries with socialized medicine ration health care by forcing their citizens to wait in lines to receive scarce treatments.
. . .

We are all responsible for our own lives and our own health. We should take that responsibility very seriously and use our freedom to make wise lifestyle choices that will protect our health. Doing so will enrich our lives and will help create a vibrant and sustainable American society.

Mr. Mackey is co-founder and CEO of Whole Foods Market Inc.

ARTICLE: Obama in 2008: Obamacare Will Eliminate Private Coverage Over Time » The Foundry

Obama in 2008: Obamacare Will Eliminate Private Coverage Over Time » The Foundry:

"Obamacare will “set up a series of choices” that “over time” will transition into a single payer/government-run health care system. That is how Obama defended his health care plan in the primaries. It is also the exact same reason conservatives have been accurately describing Obamacare as a Trojan Horse for government-run health care. . . So was Obama misinforming Democratic primary voters in 2008? Or is he misinforming the American people now?"

ARTICLE: Obamacare: One Pill, Two Pill, Red Pill, Blue Pill

Obamacare: One Pill, Two Pill, Red Pill, Blue Pill: "Top 10 Reasons Obamacare Is Wrong for America"

ARTICLE: The Catholic Thing - “THERE’S KEBLE!”

The Catholic Thing - “THERE’S KEBLE!”

The rational thing is to defer to authority, to a tradition connected to living experience. The opposite is the essence of Modernism wherein every insane idea is proposed in the name of reason.

ARTICLE: Confidence in U.S. Health Care System Has Grown in Recent Months - Rasmussen Reports™

Confidence in U.S. Health Care System Has Grown in Recent Months - Rasmussen Reports™:

"80% of those with insurance rate their own coverage as good or excellent."

It's not Bush's Fault (It's the Dems')

ARTICLE: The American Spectator : Illusions and Delusions About the Uninsured

The American Spectator : Illusions and Delusions About the Uninsured:

"'Obamacare' was launched in the wake of a long, persistent Greek Chorus of claims that 46 million Americans lacked health insurance, had to have it and only the federal government could 'reform' the system to make it possible. The number of uninsured was climbing steadily, said Dr. Obama. . . . Just who are the uninsured? In 2005 the Congressional Budget Office reported that 15.9 percent of Americans were in that category, down slightly from 16 percent in 1998. In fact, health care of children improved strongly. In 1998, the CBO reported 11.1 million without coverage; in 2005, 8.3 million. The 2005 CBO report said that the majority of the uninsured are either illegal immigrants (as many as 12 million), or earn between $50,000 and $75,000 annually (8.3 million), or earn more than $75,000 a year (8.74 million) and elect not to purchase health insurance. That adds up to 29 million of 46 million total. Of the rest, approximately 8.8 million are without insurance for four months or less and then return to the ranks of the insured. That leaves some 8.2 million Americans the Kaiser Family Foundation's analysis describes as 'chronically uninsured.'"

ARTICLE: PhRMA and Democrats Make Deal, PhRMA loses - WSJ.com

PhRMA and Democrats Make Deal, PhRMA loses - WSJ.com:

"This week it emerged that the pharmaceutical industry’s supposedly voluntary peace offering to cut drug costs by $80 billion to help finance ObamaCare was an explicit quid pro quo in exchange for White House protection. . . . It’s astonishing to watch the press corps pass all this off as just another day at the Oval Office. During the Bush years, even eye contact with a business, CEO or lobbyist was treated as prima facie evidence of corruption... But apparently having corporate America dictate public policy is fine as long as it’s the largest expansion of the welfare state since the Great Society."

And from what I gather this is why you see the gov. go after the insurance industry...because they're not playing ball. I'm just amazed at how libs swallow this whole. It must be due to their presumption that profit- making is inherently evil and any form of American socialism, benign and benevolent.

ARTICLE: What Does The Prayer Really Say?»Blog Archive » Obama advisor John Holdren: newborns are not fully human

What Does The Prayer Really Say?»Blog Archive » Obama advisor John Holdren: newborns are not fully human:

"Just remember… President Obama is committed to reducing the number of abortions. Keep saying that to yourself over and over again."

Why do I have the feeling that my friends on the left will give this little more than an insouciant shrug? (See the previous post on sentimentality.)

"I've repeated what the (Democratic) Congressional Budget Office has said..."

Sentimentality & the Left

In a recent blog post entitled Superheroes and sentimentality, Edward Feser gave a brief recap of Roger Scruton's description of sentimentality which, for me, is a missing piece in coming to an understanding of the psychology of the Left:

In short, a sentimental person is one whose emotional life becomes an end in itself and loses its connection both to the external circumstances that would normally shape it and to the behavior that it ought to generate. Feelings of moral outrage, romantic passion, and other emotional states become valued for their own sake to such an extent that the actual moral facts, the well-being of the beloved, etc. fade into the background.

ARTICLE: Jonah Goldberg : Democrats' Fear Is Showing on Health Care

Jonah Goldberg : Democrats' Fear Is Showing on Health Care:

"It's difficult for mere mortals like us to fully grasp the enormity of the Democrats' hypocrisy. Put aside all that talk of dissent being the highest form of patriotism. Overlook that Democrats would have upended jerry cans of gasoline and immolated themselves in protest if the Bush administration had asked people to inform on their neighbors. You can even forget that the DNC's claims are untrue. But how can we ignore the fact that the world's most famous community organizer is whining about community organizing?"

ARTICLE: Mark Steyn: Conformity is now the new dissent

Mark Steyn: Conformity is now the new dissent:

"DISSENT IS THE HIGHEST FORM OF PATRIOTI… No, wait, that bumper sticker expired January 20th. Under the stimulus bill, there's a new $1.3 trillion bills-for-bumpers program whereby, if you peel off old slogans now recognized as environmentally harmful ("QUESTION AUTHORITY"), you can trade them in for a new "CELEBRATE CONFORMITY" sticker, complete with a holographic image of President Obama that never takes his eyes off you."