Tag: QotD

Quote of the Day – Monster

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Quote of the Day – Monster

“You ever heard of Richard Matheson? He wrote some pretty good science fiction back in the day, lots of Twilight Zone Episodes and a whole host of short stories back in the 50’s and 60’s. He’s most remembered for one short story thats been made into a movie about a half a dozen times. It’s called “I AM LEGEND”. Its the story of the last man on earth after a plague wipes out most of the population. What parts of the population the plague doesn’t wipe out, becomes transformed into what can best be described as ‘vampires’. Most people know that narrative of the story, but most every filmed version and most retelling of the story forget is the main point of the story. The point is this; When you live on a planet where humans are normal and vampires are the monsters, thats something we understand. What Matheson’s story forces the reader to come to grips with is the opposite, that when you live on a world where the vampires are the normal, then you, as the last remaining human, have become the monster.

“This is what we conservatives and libertarians have become. With the plague of ‘fairness’ now loose in the ecosystem of public ideas and discourse, we have become the monster. They are working to destroy our nest (the markets) and after that is destroyed, they will come for us.” – Varifrank, Monster.

READ. THE. WHOLE. THING.

I’ve been holding this one for Halloween.

Even More

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From the same portion of the Uncommon Knowledge interview of Thomas Sowell:

Peter Robinson: Back to Barack Obama. You mentioned the, uh . . . I think you would call it a naive view of world affairs. That he places a great deal of faith in rhetoric, the ability of rhetoric to solve global problems. This reminds you of the 1930’s, it reminds you of Neville Chamberlain. I read you a quotation, the notion of “spreading the wealth around” and again you said that’s perfectly pure Socialist doctrine from the 1930’s. Is it . . . Would you argue that this man is the most leftwing, or the uh, purest embrace of the Unconstrained Vision that we’ve seen in American politics since . . . since when? Since the New Deal?

Thomas Sowell: Since there’s been an American politics.

Robinson: Really?

Sowell: Yes. Yes, I mean, even FDR you know pulled back on some things. But Obama really, he does have the Unconstrained Vision which is really an elitist vision that says “I know what is the best to be done, and I will do it.” When he says “I will change the world” you realize this is a man who’s actually accomplished nothing other than advancing his career through rhetoric. And it reminds me of a sophomore in college, you know, who thinks that he can run the world, because he’s never had to run anything. And you can believe that only until you have personal responsibility for consequences, and that’s when it gives you a little bit of humility.

Robinson: Why don’t the American people see through that? Isn’t that the fundamental bet that the Founders made, that the, that voters would see through, ultimately they’d see through nonsense?

Sowell: Yes, but that was before nonsense became a large part of the curriculum of our educational institutions.

Again, absolutely. Absolutely.

Now, read this.

Too Good a Quote to Leave Until Tomorrow

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Too Good a Quote to Leave Until Tomorrow

Aside from the fact that I have a QotD for tomorrow that I’ve been sitting on for a while.

Thomas Sowell from his Uncommon Knowledge interview with Peter Robinson, Part 4 of 5

When people ask me why am I going to vote for McCain rather than Obama it’s because I prefer disaster to catastrophe.

To further quote Mr. Sowell: Oh, absolutely. Absolutely.

Quote of the Day

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Quote of the Day

I have never in my life been so ready for an election season to be over and done with. I can hardly wait for the Messiah to be sworn in so unicorns will start farting rainbows on the front lawn of my gold house and I can run them over with my rocket car on the way to my governmentally-guaranteed middle class job. – Who else? Tam, of course!

Quote of the Day

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Whole enchilada unconstitutional? We can only hope.

Also, can the Supreme Court issue a writ of mandamus to have Lautenberg kicked in the testicles? Or would that raise separation of powers issues? – “Jim W” in a comment to Lautenburg Amendment going to Supreme Court at Of Arms and the Law

The Lautenberg Amendment isn’t the only problem, but it is a problem.

Let me say up front that if someone is physically abusive and found so by a court then due process is served. This case appears to be ex post facto. Second, a restraining order is not ajudication of physical threat. Restraining orders seem to have become a divorce tactic.

Finally, the law that needs to be given judicial review under the Heller precedent is 18 USC section 922(g)(1) in its entirety:

It shall be unlawful for any person –

(1) who has been convicted in any court of, a crime punishable by imprisonment for a term exceeding one year;

(2) who is a fugitive from justice;

(3) who is an unlawful user of or addicted to any controlled substance (as defined in section 102 of the Controlled Substances Act (21 U.S.C. 802));

(4) who has been adjudicated as a mental defective or who has been committed to a mental institution;

(5) who, being an alien –

(A) is illegally or unlawfully in the United States; or

(B) except as provided in subsection (y)(2), has been admitted to the United States under a nonimmigrant visa (as that term is defined in section 101(a)(26) of the Immigration and Nationality Act (8 U.S.C. 1101(a)(26)));

(6) who has been discharged from the Armed Forces under dishonorable conditions;

(7) who, having been a citizen of the United States, has renounced his citizenship;

(8) who is subject to a court order that –

(A) was issued after a hearing of which such person received actual notice, and at which such person had an opportunity to participate;

(B) restrains such person from harassing, stalking, or threatening an intimate partner of such person or child of such intimate partner or person, or engaging in other conduct that would place an intimate partner in reasonable fear of bodily injury to the partner or child; and

(C)

(i) includes a finding that such person represents a credible threat to the physical safety of such intimate partner or child; or

(ii) by its terms explicitly prohibits the use, attempted use, or threatened use of physical force against such intimate partner or child that would reasonably be expected to cause bodily injury; or

(9) who has been convicted in any court of a misdemeanor crime of domestic violence,

to ship or transport in interstate or foreign commerce, or possess in or affecting commerce, any firearm or ammunition; or to receive any firearm or ammunition which has been shipped or transported in interstate or foreign commerce.

Any crime punishable by a term exceeding one year.

Any.

Have any idea how many crimes today can get you a sentence of “more than one year”?

Well, for example, remember those cheerleaders?

Quote of the Day

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It’s difficult not to froth when one reads, as I did again and again this week, doubts about Sarah Palin’s “intelligence,” coming especially from women such as PBS’s Bonnie Erbe, who, as near as I recall, has not herself heretofore been burdened with the Susan Sontag of Journalism moniker. As Fred Barnes—God help me, I’m agreeing with Fred Barnes—suggests in the Weekly Standard, these high toned and authoritative dismissals come from people who have never met or spoken with Sarah Palin. Those who know her, love her or hate her, offer no such criticism. They know what I know, and I learned it from spending just a little time traveling on the cramped campaign plane this week: Sarah Palin is very smart.

—

Now by “smart,” I don’t refer to a person who is wily or calculating or nimble in the way of certain talented athletes who we admire but suspect don’t really have serious brains in their skulls. I mean, instead, a mind that is thoughtful, curious, with a discernable pattern of associative thinking and insight. Palin asks questions, and probes linkages and logic that bring to mind a quirky law professor I once had. Palin is more than a “quick study”; I’d heard rumors around the campaign of her photographic memory and, frankly, I watched it in action. She sees. She processes. She questions, and only then, she acts. What is often called her “confidence” is actually a rarity in national politics: I saw a woman who knows exactly who she is.

For all those old enough to remember Senator Sam Ervin, the brilliant strict constitutional constructionist and chairman of the Senate Watergate Committee whose patois included “I’m just a country lawyer”… Yup, Palin is that smart. – Elaine Lafferty, “a former editor-in-chief of Ms. magazine as well as a feminist activist” – Sarah Palin’s a Braniac

And Biden?

From the Horses’s, . . . er, . . . Mouth

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Reader DJ has found the ultimate Barak “Spread the Wealth” Obama quote. From an NPR interview in 2001:

If you look at the victories and failures of the civil rights movement and its litigation strategy in the court. I think where it succeeded was to invest formal rights in previously dispossessed people, so that now I would have the right to vote. I would now be able to sit at the lunch counter and order as long as I could pay for it I’d be o.k. But, the Supreme Court never ventured into the issues of redistribution of wealth, and of more basic issues such as political and economic justice in the society. To that extent, as radical as I think people try to characterize the Warren Court, it wasn’t that radical. It didn’t break free from the essential constraints that were placed by the founding fathers in the Constitution, at least as its been interpreted and Warren Court interpreted in the same way, that generally the Constitution is a charter of negative liberties. Says what the states can’t do to you. Says what the Federal government can’t do to you, but doesn’t say what the Federal government or State government must do on your behalf, and that hasn’t shifted and one of the, I think, the tragedies of the civil rights movement was, um, because the civil rights movement became so court focused I think there was a tendency to lose track of the political and community organizing and activities on the ground that are able to put together the actual coalition of powers through which you bring about redistributive change. In some ways we still suffer from that.

“From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs.” Redistributive change.

So we have proof that Obama understands the purpose of the Constitution – “a charter of negative liberties.” But he decries that the Warren Court didn’t go farther and re-interpret the Constitution to give the government the powers of “redistributive change.” Barring that, the civil rights movement should have eschewed the court system (or at least not have concentrated so exclusively on that path) in order to achieve said redistributive change by other means.

Here it is, 2008, and Barack “I’m Not a Socialist” Obama still holds the same beliefs.

But you have to catch him by surprise to get him to admit it.

More at Stop the ACLU.

Jennifer Rubin has something to say about it, too.

Quote of the Election

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Thomas Sowell on Locke v. Rousseau with respect to this election, via Peter Robinson in Forbes.com:

Then there is Thomas Sowell, the economist and political philosopher. He prefers an older way of looking at American politics–a much older way. In his classic 1987 work, A Conflict of Visions, Sowell identifies two competing worldviews, or visions, that have underlain the Western political tradition for centuries.

Sowell calls one worldview the “constrained vision.” It sees human nature as flawed or fallen, seeking to make the best of the possibilities that exist within that constraint. The competing worldview, which Sowell terms the “unconstrained vision,” instead sees human nature as capable of continual improvement.

You can trace the constrained vision back to Aristotle; the unconstrained vision to Plato. But the neatest illustration of the two visions occurred during the great upheavals of the 18th century, the American and French revolutions.

The American Revolution embodied the constrained vision. “In the United States,” Sowell says, “it was assumed from the outset that what you needed to do above all was minimize [the damage that could be done by] the flaws in human nature.” The founders did so by composing a constitution of checks and balances. More than two centuries later, their work remains in place.

The French Revolution, by contrast, embodied the unconstrained vision. “In France,” Sowell says, “the idea was that if you put the right people in charge–if you had a political Messiah–then problems would just go away.” The result? The Terror, Napoleon and so many decades of instability that France finally sorted itself out only when Charles de Gaulle declared the Fifth Republic.

That’s not the QotD. That’s lead-in for it:

Take it all together, Sowell believes, and this election will prove decisive.

“There is such a thing as a point of no return,” he says. If Obama wins the White House and Democrats expand their majorities in the House and Senate, they will intervene in the economy and redistribute wealth. Yet their economic policies “will pale by comparison to what they will do in permitting countries to acquire nuclear weapons and turn them over to terrorists. Once that happens, we’re at the point of no return. The next generation will live under that threat as far out as the eye can see.”

“The unconstrained vision is really an elitist vision,” Sowell explains. “This man [Obama] really does believe that he can change the world. And people like that are infinitely more dangerous than mere crooked politicians.”

Read the whole piece. Print it out and pass it around.

Quote of the Day

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Quote of the Day

The Weathermen’s plans included putting parts of United States under the administration of Cuba, North Vietnam, China and Russia and re-educating the uncooperative in camps in located in the Southwest. Since there would be holdouts, plans were made for liquidating the estimated 25 million unreconstructable die-hards.

The most interesting moment of the video comes when (Undercover agent Larry) Grathwohl asks the viewer to imagine what it’s like to be in a room with 25 people, all of whom have master’s degrees or higher from elite institutions of higher learning like Columbia, listening to them discuss the logistics of killing 25 million Americans.

Actually, it’s easy. What’s hard to imagine is sitting in a room full of plumbers discussing the same thing. – “Concerned American”, Western Rifle Shooters Association, The Plan

. “. . a pork conveyor for incumbent congressweasels.”

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The Quote of the Day from the inimitable Tam. Here’s the full flavor:

“But Tam,” you say “We’ve already mapped the moon! We’re playing with R/C model cars on Mars!“

Yes, but after we mapped the moon and hit a few golf balls around up there, we just turned our back on the whole thing. Scrapped our huge boosters. Used an outdated, overengineered flying garbage truck as a make-work program for NASA and a pork conveyor for incumbent congressweasels. Got in the way of private progress with government interference that would have strapped airbags on the Wright Flyer and prevented them from flying at Kitty Hawk lest they wound some rare sand flea.

Read the Whole Thing.