“One day, there will be a woman worth electing to the White House. But not this one.”
– Andrew Sullivan. His observations on the contrast between Senator Clinton, and Margaret Thatcher, are spot-on.
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Every child should have authoritarian parents, because then they’ll grow up to be libertarians. -Oddball Australian journalist Paddy McGuinness, as recounted at his funeral this week by Bill Hayden. February 1st, 2008 | 19 comments - (Comments are closed)
 We’d all play like that… if we could. – John Coltrane, no mean saxophone player, talking about arguably the greatest of them all, Stan Getz. His cool, silk-like style is the perfect cure for a stressful day at the office. January 27th, 2008 | 5 comments - (Comments are closed)
I am more and more coming to the conclusion that National Greatness Conservatism, like all quasi-fascist movements, is based on a weird romantic teenager’s fantasies about what it means to be a grown up. The fundamental moral decency of liberal individualism seems, to the unserious mind that thinks itself serious, completely insipid next to very exciting big boy ideas about shared struggle, sacrifice, duty, glory, virtue, and (most of all) power. And reading Aristotle in Greek. However I must disagree with Will elsewhere in his article. I see individualism as magnificently and floridly Art Deco. January 26th, 2008 | 23 comments - (Comments are closed)
Human desire is insatiable. Now, some think this is a bad thing, blaming it on greed and consumerism. But think about Mother Theresa – a saint if ever there was one. Was she greedy? Insatiable? Well, yes, she was. If she could have helped one more person, she would have. – Russ Nelson, The Angry Economist January 20th, 2008 | 24 comments - (Comments are closed)
Whilst roaming the interweb and dozing through meetings, I have collected the Iron Laws of Human Behavior: 1. You get more of what you reward, and less of what you punish. 2. The less you know about something, the easier it looks. 3. If everything is a priority, nothing is a priority. No particular claim to originality of thought is made, but I rarely get through either a political or a business discussion without seeing one or more of them in action. I will caution the reader that noting the application of an Iron Law out loud in a business setting is not without its risks. Additional nominations and/or corollaries are hereby solicited. January 19th, 2008 | 34 comments - (Comments are closed)
At some point we Californians should ask ourselves, how we inherited a state with near perfect weather, the world’s richest agriculture, plentiful timber, minerals, and oil, two great ports at Los Angeles and Oakland, a natural tourist industry from Carmel to Yosemite, industries such as Silicon Valley, Hollywood, and aerospace—and serially managed to turn all of that into the nation’s largest penal system, periodic near bankruptcy, and sky-high taxes. – Victor Hanson Davis, as pointed out by Instapundit. This point though could be made about any community. There is no country on earth that is not voluntarily in poverty. If you choose to have an anti-wealth creating atmosphere, then you will be poor. If you choose a wealth-creating meta-context in your society, then you will have wealth. The rise of the wealthy East Asian nations, with almost none of the natural resources that bless the State of California, demonstrate that there really is no excuse. January 19th, 2008 | 11 comments - (Comments are closed)
– Paul Marks, taking no prisoners January 18th, 2008 | 18 comments - (Comments are closed)
Kill six millions Jews in Germany, your name becomes a synonym with evil. Kill between 44 and 72 million Chinese, you get a café named after you. It’s a funny old world, eh? – commenter Jill Murphy January 16th, 2008 | 91 comments - (Comments are closed)
Ron Paul is the least objectionable Republican. The second-least objectionable Republican is Fred Thompson, and if he were likely to win the nomination I might be persuaded to switch my support. All the ones who are likely to win are indistinguishable from Democrats (and some of them are Democrats on Fire for Jesus which is just all kinds of not a good idea). January 14th, 2008 | 59 comments - (Comments are closed)
The decision to go nuclear has exposed the whole environmental cause for what it is: not a well intentioned drive for clean power but a spiteful, mean-spirited drive for less power. Because less power hits richer countries and richer people the hardest. I’ve argued time and again that the old trade unionists and CND lesbians didn’t go away. They just morphed into environmentalists. The red’s become green but the goals remain the same. And there’s no better way of achieving those goals than turning the lights out and therefore winding the clock back to the Stone Age. Only when we’re all eating leaves under a hammer and sickle will they be happy. I’m serious. All the harebrained schemes for renewable energy are popular among Britain’s beardies only because they don’t work. January 13th, 2008 | 25 comments - (Comments are closed)
For, despite the warnings of the accursed health and safety apparatchiks, who enjoy nothing more than closing paths of self-discovery, the human spirit will not be tamed. That is the important lesson of Hillary’s life, a lesson that is worth passing on to children growing up in a world where everything must be measured and known. – Michael Henderson, talking about the late Sir Edmund Hillary, who died last week: January 12th, 2008 | Comments are closed
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