Love, when legislated, becomes hate.
– John B, from the comments here. (This is a SQOTDBPD, or Samizdata Quote of the Day by Popular Demand.)
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I might repeat to myself slowly and soothingly, a list of quotations beautiful from minds profound – if I can remember any of the damn things. – Dorothy Parker August 25th, 2010 | 5 comments - (Comments are closed)
 In the intifada that began in 2000, Palestinian terrorism killed more than 1,000 Israelis. As a portion of U.S. population, that would be 42,000, approaching the toll of America’s eight years in Vietnam. During the onslaught, which began 10 Septembers ago, Israeli parents sending two children to a school would put them on separate buses to decrease the chance that neither would return for dinner. Surely most Americans can imagine, even if their tone-deaf leaders cannot, how grating it is when those leaders lecture Israel on the need to take “risks for peace.” August 20th, 2010 | 27 comments - (Comments are closed)
As someone who has consistently been in favor of in-your-face attempts to offend Muslims (e.g., “Everybody Draw Mohammed Day”), I can’t very well advocate any governmental effort (or any violent effort by other parties) to prevent the building of this in-your-face attempt to offend non-Muslim Americans. But to suggest that this center is not provocative, and that Americans should not see it as such, insults my intelligence. There is no right to NOT be offended, but we have every right to be offended, and to protest loudly to that effect. – Commenter Gene August 19th, 2010 | 13 comments - (Comments are closed)
Most revolutions throughout history have been conducted by a small but determined group, maybe as much as 20% of the population (and probably less). The majority of the people are basically indifferent, just keeping their heads down until the shooting stops so they can go back to their lives under the rule of whoever prevailed. 20% could be more than enough for a successful revolution, but it’s not enough to win an election. – Commenter ‘Laird’ August 18th, 2010 | 16 comments - (Comments are closed)
“Traditionally, a bank is a means by which old people with capital lend to young people with ideas. But the advanced democracies with their mountains of sovereign debt are in effect old people who’ve blown through their capital and are all out of ideas looking for young people flush enough to bail them out. And the idea that it might be time for the spendthrift geezers to change their ways butts up against their indestructible moral vanity. Last year, President Sarkozy said that the G20 summit provided “a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to give capitalism a conscience.” European capitalism may have a conscience. It’s not clear it has a pulse. And, actually, when you’re burning Greek bank clerks to death in defence of your benefits, your “conscience” isn’t much in evidence, either.” – Mark Steyn, writing about Greece and the ongoing train-crash of the European welfare state model. August 17th, 2010 | 22 comments - (Comments are closed)
And to think that a little over a 100 years ago, passports were almost unknown until an international assembly of governments decided to impose them. There’s just no stopping a bad idea whose time has come. Not without a guillotine, anyway. – Commenter ‘tehag‘ August 16th, 2010 | 30 comments - (Comments are closed)
I was about to stick this up as a(n) SQotD, but I see that there already is one. Never mind, here it is anyway:
That’s Richard Fernandez reflecting on the declining esteem in which President Obama is now held, abroad and at home. Two thoughts. First, I’d have put a comma where it says “hats or dresses or deckchairs”, to make it “hats or dresses, or deckchairs”. There is a slight change of gear there, which, I would say, needs a bit of punctuational acknowledgement. But second, more seriously, is Obama’s present nosedive in esteem, well described by Fernandez, irreversible? Having just watched our own former Prime Minister, Gordon Brown, damn near levelling out from what looked like a nosedive towards total catastrophe for himself and for his party, and achieving a very decent, under the circumstances, crash landing that nearly saved both. Brown only lost by an extraordinarily narrow margin, given how things had looked only a few months earlier, and his main opponent, from having looked a winner by a mile, had to make do with leading a mere coalition. Seemingly doomed politicians – inevitable losers, to use the word that Fernandez also uses – can make comebacks. Can Obama? Can this Titanic yet be kept afloat? One thing that might improve matters for President Obama is that just now (or so it looks to me from over here) even the one party media who got Obama elected are now criticising him, a bit, partly for real, but partly in order that their next burst of slavish support for him will look honest instead of slavish. On the other hand, if what happened here with Gordon Brown is anything to go by, Obama’s saviours will not be his media cheerleaders, or for that matter his own speechwriters, but his leading opponents, who will somehow contrive to look as clueless as he now looks. August 14th, 2010 | 53 comments - (Comments are closed)
In most every election, 80% of blacks vote Democratic – the perceived party of free stuff – rather than for the party that ended slavery. August 14th, 2010 | 43 comments - (Comments are closed)
The British government want to sign up to the Schengen Agreement… but they want the police state parts of it without the free movement of people parts of it – Guy Herbert August 10th, 2010 | 13 comments - (Comments are closed)
The danger is not that a particular class is unfit to govern: every class is unfit to govern. – John Dalberg-Acton August 9th, 2010 | 7 comments - (Comments are closed)
The American media has used up its credibility on vanity projects. AGW was the primary one over the last few years, but the biggest vanity project of theirs was Obama. He’s been elected, and no one in America really has any illusions, on either side of the aisle, that he was “the media’s candidate.” The problem that they face is that they are now tied to him, and he’s sinking fast. Turns out, despite how many times they claimed it wasn’t true or didn’t matter, that he’s inexperienced, indecisive and lacks any sort of guiding principle. They spent all the credibility they had with the American people over the last 15 years or so, and ramped that spending way up to get Obama elected. They are now broke, incredible, and paying the price. Fox News is the only one that didn’t waste its credibility capital on this (and have learned to horde it viciously after being under credibility attack by the others since its birth) and is now thriving because of it. Even leftists in America are now turning to Fox more than the rest of the media when they need hard news, like in a crisis or attack situation. The media wasted the reputation they built up since WW2 on tawdry baubles like AGW and Obama, and now no one trusts them. That’s the state of the US media. – Samizdata commenter “Phelps”, writing about this. August 5th, 2010 | 40 comments - (Comments are closed)
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