Tag: QotD

And This is Why the Party’s Over

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Quote of the… well, end, I suppose:

The Republicans more or less follow the laws and constitutional procedures, the Democrats deliberately and consciously break them. But the Republicans, while they complain incessantly about the Democrats, never identify this underlying fact. Why? Because that would show that the system is no longer legitimate. And the function of the Republicans, as “patriotic, conservative Americans,” is to uphold the goodness and legitimacy of the system, a legitimacy which rests on the belief that everyone in American politics shares the same basic principles and loyalties. So the Republicans, as defenders of the system and its presumed basic unity, cannot expose what the Democrats are. If they exposed it, politics would be replaced by open war between two radically incompatible parties and America as we know it would come to an end. — Lawrence Auster, View from the Right, Kagan’s non-recusal and what it means

Found at Van der Leun’s. I’ve been saying it for years. So have others. This is a realization that most people will not be able to avoid much longer, regardless of the education system, the media, and the .gov. Sooner or later Mr. and Ms. MiddleAmerica are finally going to say “ENOUGH!”

Quote of the Day – It’s the .gov’s Fault Edition

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From The Washington Examiner, Conn Colin’s column (say that three times fast) “Facts show Fannie, Freddie led mortgage market to the collapse“:

From 1992 through the height of the housing bubble, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac used their monopoly position in the mortgage securitization industry to reward firms like Countrywide for making bad bets in the housing market. Countrywide’s success was a signal to other market participants to lower their standards as well.

Wall Street banks are not blameless for the financial crisis. But they were only responding to the incentives set up by the federal government. Ignoring this history will help no one.

But ignore it they will.  It does not fit The Narrative™.

RTWT.  The .gov set up the conditions, the lenders ran with it.  If they didn’t they’d have been penalized by the .gov.  Once one major lender did it, everybody did it.  Why wouldn’t they?

It Isn’t That There’s No Jobs,

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…it’s that there aren’t qualified people to fill the jobs that are out there.  Mike Rowe understands it.

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3h_pp8CHEQ0?feature=player_embedded]

Right now, American manufacturing is struggling to fill 200,000 vacant positions, I’m told.  And there are 450,000 openings today in trades, transportation, utilities.  The skill gap seems real, and it’s getting wider.  In Alabama a third of all skilled tradesmen are now over 55.  They’re retiring fast, and there’s really nobody there to replace them.  Alabama’s not alone.  A few months ago in Atlanta, I ran into Tom Vilsack, our Secretary of Agriculture.  Tom told me about a governor he knows who is unable to move forward on the construction of a new power plant.  The reason, I thought, was fascinating.  It wasn’t a lack of funds or lack of support, it was a lack of qualified welders.  

In general, people are surprised that high unemployment can exist at the same time as a skilled labor shortage.  But they shouldn’t be.  We’ve pretty much guaranteed it.  In high schools the vocational arts have all but vanished.  We’ve elevated the importance of higher education to such a lofty perch that all other forms of knowledge are now labeled as “alternative.”  Millions of parents and kids see apprenticeships and really valuable on-the-job training opportunities as vocational consolation prizes best suited for those not cut out for a four-year degree.  And still, we talk about creating “millions of shovel-ready jobs” for a society that doesn’t really encourage people to pick up a shovel.

In a hundred different ways I think we’ve slowly marginalized an entire category of critical professions, reshaping our expectations of a good job into something that no longer looks like work.

If tough history does come, we’ll be learning those skills again because we must.

Now, go read the associated post at House of Eratosthenes.

Welcome to My World, Rush

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From Ann Althouse‘s comments via Instapundit:

I think the thing that made Rush so popular was his sense of cheerful optimism. Unlike the O’Rilleys and Savages of the world, Rush has always been optimistic about the future.

I think that the Obama presidency has been such a disaster of Biblical proportions that Rush is no longer optimistic about the future.
— Jim Howard

One of the things about Bill Whittle that amazes me is his nearly unflappable optimism. I wish I could share it, but I don’t.

Quote of the Day – Peggy Noonan Edition

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Several years ago Peggy penned a piece about “tough history coming.”  Saturday, her Wall St. Journal column echoes that earlier piece a bit:

People are increasingly fearing the divisions within, even the potential coming apart of, our country. Rich/poor, black/white, young/old, red/blue: The things that divide us are not new, yet there’s a sense now that the glue that held us together for more than two centuries has thinned and cracked with age. That it was allowed to thin and crack, that the modern era wore it out.

What was the glue? A love of country based on a shared knowledge of how and why it began; a broad feeling among our citizens that there was something providential in our beginnings; a gratitude that left us with a sense that we should comport ourselves in a way unlike the other nations of the world, that more was expected of us, and not unjustly — “To whom much is given much is expected”; a general understanding that we were something new in history, a nation founded on ideals and aspirations —— liberty, equality —— and not mere grunting tribal wants. We were from Europe but would not be European: No formal class structure here, no limits, from the time you touched ground all roads would lead forward. You would be treated not as your father was but as you deserved.

“Shared knowledge.”  Education.  That had to go first.

RTWT.

Quote of the Day – Social Contract Edition

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A long time ago, I quoted Ezra Taft Benson, Eisenhower’s Secretary of Agriculture on “the proper role of government”:

It is generally agreed that the most important single function of government is to secure the rights and freedoms of individual citizens. But, what are those right? And what is their source?

There are only two possible sources. Rights are either God-given as part of the Divine Plan, or they are granted by government as part of the political plan. Reason, necessity, tradition and religious convictions all lead me to accept the divine origin of these rights. If we accept the premise that human rights are granted by government, then we must be willing to accept the corollary that they can be denied by government.

…Frederick Bastiat, phrased it so succinctly,

‘Life, liberty, and property do not exist because men have made laws. On the contrary, it was the fact that life, liberty, and property existed beforehand that caused men to make laws in the first place.’

In a primitive state, there is no doubt that each man would be justified in using force, if necessary, to defend himself against physical harm, against theft of the fruits of his labor, and against enslavement of another.

Indeed, the early pioneers found that a great deal of their time and energy was being spent doing all three – defending themselves, their property and their liberty – in what properly was called the “Lawless West.” In order for man to prosper, he cannot afford to spend his time constantly guarding his family, his fields, and his property against attack and theft, so he joins together with his neighbors and hires a sheriff. At this precise moment, government is born. The individual citizens delegate to the sheriff their unquestionable right to protect themselves. The sheriff now does for them only what they had a right to do for themselves – nothing more.

I didn’t fully agree with Mr. Benson and still don’t, but it was a good citation at the time. This, however, says it far better:

The social contract exists so that everyone doesn’t have to squat in the dust holding a spear to protect his woman and his meat all day every day. It does not exist so that the government can take your spear, your meat, and your woman because it knows better what to do with them. 

(h/t to Glenn)

Quote of the Day – Occupy a Job Edition

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From David Horowitz and 2009:

In our epoch, according to Marx, capitalists are the oppressors and are pitted against proletarians who are the oppressed. But to compare capitalists to slave-owners, or feudal lords and serfs, as Marx and his disciples down to Alinsky do, is ludicrous. There are tens of millions of capitalists in America and they rise and fall with every economic wave. Where are the Enrons of yesteryear, and where are their bosses? If proletarians can become capitalists and capitalists can be ruined, there is no class struggle in the sense that Marx and his disciples claim, no system of oppression and no need for revolution.

The myth of the Haves and the Have-Nots is just that — a myth; and a religious one at that, the same, as I have said, as the myth advanced by Manicheans who claim that the world is ruled by Darkness, and that history is a struggle between the forces of evil and the forces of light. The category “Haves” for secular radicals is like the category “Witches” for religious fanatics and serves the same function. It is to identify one’s enemies as servants of the devil and to justify the war against them.

It is true that there are some haves and some have-nots. But it is false to describe our social and economic divisions this way and it malicious and socially destructive to attempt to reverse an imaginary hierarchy between them. In reality, our social and economic divisions are between the Cans and the Can-Nots, the Dos and the Do-Nots, the Wills and the Will-Nots. But to describe them this way — that is, accurately — is to explode the whole religious fantasy that gives meaning to radical lives.

It is the difference between the Tea Party and the Occupy Wherever crowd.  You’ll note the difference between the group that is accused of religious fundamentalism and the crowd that actually is.

Read all five parts of David’s To Have and Have Not: Alinsky, Beck, Satan and Me. The links to all of them are in the last one. It explains a lot.

Hat tip: What Bubba Knows