The Welfare State will Eat Your Soul...

...or at least your checking account.

I discovered a draft post that somehow I failed to publish from last year. Samuelson's article may be from a year ago, but it's just as applicable today as last year.

Economics writer Robert Samuelson has a new article out today (Feb 14, 2007) that puts much of the political battle over government spending into perspective. Neither party is willing to do much to rein in spending although both are eager to castigate each other for it.

It is useful to examine the chart Samuelson includes with his article. It shows the massive growth of welfare spending, especially as it compares to the decline of defense spending as a percentage of the government budget. These percentages are even more astounding when you realize that defense spending grew to a (numerically) record high of $520 billion for 2006 (including spending on Iraq and Afghanistan).

These figures are frightening enough today, but the real scare will hit us in the coming decades as our aging population retires and live longer lives, expecting government support for many more years than did their grandparents, without as many grandchildren to work and pay for it.

The Problem with Pacifism

"Pale Ebenezer thought it wrong to fight
But Roaring Bill (who killed him) thought it right."

-Hilaire Bellloc, "The Pacifist" 1938

Quote for the day...

...from Thomas Sowell.

"The beauty of doing nothing is that you can do it perfectly. Only when you do something is it almost impossible to do it without mistakes. Therefore people who are contributing nothing to society except their constant criticisms can feel both intellectually and morally superior."

Hitler Quotes

A high school in New York state is upset two senior chose quotes from Hitler's Mein Kampf for their senior quotes. Supposedly the high school's administration is even considering whether or not these students should be punished. Let me say unequivocally that they should not be.

First and foremost these students have a right to free speech and if a school publication solicits these students' personal maxims, it has no right to punish them for their choice.

The first maxim mentioned in the article, "Strength lies not in defense, but in attack", is nothing more than a rephrasing of "the best defense is a good offense". Hitler said it? So what? This is a problem with too many debates today. Someone of dubious character (or in this case, no character at all) is sympathetic to a similar position so now it's automatically disqualified from any serious consideration. Time and time again, one will find that the saying "strength lies not in defense, but in attack" has historical validity.

The second quote, "The great masses of people...will more easily fall victims to a big lie than to a small one", is historically true as well. Witness the masses that suffered under the lies of socialism and communism throughout the twentieth century and continue to suffer under the regimes of the People's Republic of China, Cuba, and North Korea.

The origin of the quotations do not diminish their accuracy, no matter how evil the source.

Those Democrats are such Clean Campaigners...

...Yep, it's the Republicans that are all Mean-Spirited

Dog feces? Are we in junior high? Apparently, the Democrats think so.

More on Global Warming

Stop. Freaking. Out. Al Gore is taking the issue way too serial. Super serial.

The hysteria about "global warming" really annoys me. As always, College Republicans are doing their best to piss off campus liberals.

Algore....

....And "A Convenient Lie"

So if the cause is good enough, it's now okay to lie? President Bush is constantly denounced as a liar for presenting evidence the he (as well as the CIA, Russian President Vladimir Putin, Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, British Prime Minister Tony Blair, and most intelligence agencies worldwide) believed to be true but for Al Gore, who believes in the righteousness of his cause, is praised for a movie in which he admits to having an "over-representation of factual presentations..." in order to scare people into worrying about global warming.

Now Back With More to Come...

I should get a substantial post up sometime this week.

Meanwhile, this weekend I received a contribution solicitation from the Democratic National Committee with one of those surveys that are nothing more than a come-on for money. So I filled out the survey and added a few answers of my own that they had not offered such as suggesting vouchers as a possible solution to our schools' performance and that we should not get out of Iraq until 2010 (the latest the DNC apparently thinks we have any business there is 2007). I'm sending back to them in their postage-paid envelope without my own stamp (which they suggested in order to "help save [them] much-needed funds").

I sincerely hope that by responding the DNC will be encouraged to send me more solicitations in the future - the more postage they spend on sending envelopes back and forth the better!

Socialists are Soooo Progressive...

The latest socialist bigotry comes from London Mayor Ken Livingstone. The mayor recently compared a Jewish journalist to a Nazi prison guard and this week told two Jewish brothers to "go back (to their own country) and see if they can do better under the ayatollahs". The two are developers that are working on facilities for the London 2012 Olympics and were actually born in India to Iraqi Jewish parents.

Socialism...

...rots your soul. Also it paves the way to economic and political servitude.

Whackjob Dictators Abound

I always thought North Korea's Kim Jong-Il had the nutjob market cornered but it looks like Turkmenistan is offering some comptetition. President-for-life Saparmurat Niyazov is offering assured admittance to Heaven for readers of his philosophical writings. The collection is called "Rukhnama" or "Ruhnama" and your very own ticket to eternal bliss may be viewed and purchased here.

This seems to follow a trend that flourishes among dictators who apparently fancy themselves literary prodigies. Kim Jong-Il is an expert on cinema, Fidel Castro analyzes current geopolitics and economics, Saddam Hussein wrote a romance novel before he was deposed, and Hugo Chavez wrote the introduction to a biography of Simon Bolivar.