Author: Redactor

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Townhall: Some Days the Bear Eats You

Post author By Redactor
Post date August 7, 2016
No Comments on Townhall: Some Days the Bear Eats You

Russia. The Bear.

Putin. The Tyrant.

America. The Oblivious?

Click on over to Townhall for further variations on a theme. With Trump in the picture.

Then retreat back here, for your further edification:

C-Span: Donald Trump on Russia and Missing Hillary Clinton Emails
New York Times: Cash Flowed to Clinton Foundation Amid Russian Uranium Deal
Associated Press: Hillary’s Reset Button to Russia Misspelled
MSNBC: Romney’s comments about Russia being no. 1 geopolitical foe made him look dumb
CBS: 2012 Presidential Debate between Romney and Obama
YouTube: The Haughty John Kerry at 2012 Democratic Convention
CBS: Obama Caught Telling Russian Leader To Wait Until After Election On Missile Defense
Foreign Policy: If Russia Started a War in the Baltics, NATO Would Lose — Quickly
Aljazeera: Is Russia really a threat to the Baltic states?
AntiWar.com: The US Promises to Go to War For More Than 54 Countries
RT: Putin Lectures U.S.
Amnesty International Report: Russian Federation 2015/2016
The Guardian: Three Russian editors resign amid threats to press freedom
Reporters Without Borders: Bush asked to raise Russia’s press freedom violations at meeting with Putin in Bratislava
Common Sense: Bombed Into Submission?
Rotten Tomatoes: The Russians Are Coming! The Russians Are Coming!

Today

Purple Heart

On August 7, 1782, George Washington instituted the Badge of Military Merit to honor soldiers wounded in battle, an award later renamed “the Purple Heart.”

Illustration: “Washington Crossing the Delaware,” Emanuel Leutze, 1851, Oil on canvas (Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City), depicting an event in 1776, not 1782.

Thought

Tonie Nathan

Each man has the sole right to dispose of his own life. The recognition that the rights of each individual have priority over the demands of the state is an honored and traditional American concept.

Tonie Nathan, from her proposed preamble for the first Libertarian Party platform (On Libertarianism: Historical Notes & Articles, 1981).

video

Video: Equality, Opportunity, and All That

Post author By Redactor
Post date August 6, 2016
No Comments on Video: Equality, Opportunity, and All That

“Sargon of Akkad,” a videoblogger on YouTube who is most famous for his weekly series “This Week in Stupid,” makes an eloquent and commonsense case for the traditional meaning of “equality of opportunity,” against a Vox.com egalitarian who thinks the idea is unworkable (and who prefers straight equality of outcomes):

https://youtu.be/TkVwYOYrxWM

Note: “Sargon” has named himself after history’s first emperor (the YouTuber’s extra-net name is Carl Benjamin), and argues from what he calls the “liberal” position, of what might be specified more accurately as Limited Transfer State Liberalism. It is a position very similar to F. A. Hayek in The Road to Serfdom. Sargon, in this video, continues his ongoing attacks upon progressivism and socialism of the “Social Justice Warrior” left. He also, interestingly, uses the word “libertarian” as a general designator of a tendency, as philosopher Benedetto Croce used his coinage “liberist” — a general term to replace a once well-understood “liberalism.” Sargon is not a modern libertarian.

Sargon’s online enemies often refer to him as “alt-right” and “ultra-conservative,” to which Mr. Benjamin rightly objects, and on good grounds.

Sargon’s case, here, is strikingly like the standard, moderate Democrat/moderate Republican standpoint of America and Britain, fifty years ago.

How times have changed!

Today

Jamaican independence

On August 6, 1962, Jamaica became independent of Great Britain. In 1991, on this date, Tim Berners-Lee released files describing his idea for the World Wide Web, and puts up the first website, running on a NeXT computer at CERN, in France.

Thought

Jeannette Rankin

Men and women are like right and left hands; it doesn’t make sense not to use both.

Jeannette Rankin, the first woman to serve in the U.S. House of Representatives, was the only American politician to have voted against America’s involvement in both World War I and World War II.

Today

Flogged, Founded, Fired

On August 5, 1861, the U.S. Army abolished flogging. The same day 23 years later, Bedloe’s Island in New York Harbor received the foundation stone for the Statue of Liberty (which was featured in the rousing conclusion to Alfred Hitchcock’s wartime picture, Saboteur). The island was later renamed Liberty Island.

President Ronald Reagan fired 11,359 striking air-traffic controllers (who had ignored his order for them to return to work) on August 5, 1981.

Thought

Rose Wilder Lane

I am a contributing creator of American civilization; it does not create me. I control the stem of this civilization that is within my reach; it does not control me. It can not even make me read Spengler, if I’d rather read a pulp magazine.

Rose Wilder Lane, The Discovery of Freedom (1943).

Thought

Mark Thornton

Bureaucracies established by prohibition are inherently inefficient and unable to discover the knowledge required to solve social problems. Prohibition also suppresses the market’s ability to solve social problems, so that little or no progress is made while prohibitions are in effect. And finally, prohibitions create profit opportunities which add to the problems prohibition is intended to solve.

Dr. Mark Thornton, The Economics of Prohibition (1991).

Today

Overturned Prohibition

On August 4, 2010, in Perry v. Schwarzenegger, Judge Vaughn Walker overturned California’s Proposition 8, the ballot initiative prohibiting same-sex marriage that had passed two years earlier by the state’s voters.