American Greatness's Julie Kelly admits it: "You idiot!" She admits that she was gullible and stupid and trusted people that she shouldn't have trusted. Then she lists all the things about which she and Beltway Republicans have been wrong since whenever. Including:
Nation-building wasn't so hot, but in the far-off days before fracking when Middle East oil was the name of the game, well, we had an interest in making sure that the oil got here. We needed to be able to bash the Wahabis and the Saddams and the Iranian mullahs around just to show we cared.
Immigration got me here, an immense benefit to America! And if feminists teach educated American women not to have babies, something's got to give. But every immigrant is another entry in the labor market and the law of supply and demand applies. And if employers are tempted to hire illegals under the table and avoid paying payroll taxes, and our Democratic friends exempt illegal aliens from the burden of following the law...
Contempt? Well, that's the name of the game with politics. Our guys are great guys and the others are contemptible. And what do you say about the white working class that kept voting for Democrats long after the Democrats made it perfectly clear that they didn't care a whit for the white working class?
The job of government is to protect us from existential perils. But should it protect each and every job from the next technical revolution? That is what a lot of us want when our industry goes into decline. Should government protect us from discrimination? Probably, but that does not mean that government should be doing quotas and timetables. Should government protect widows and orphans? Probably.
But here's an idea. Suppose we say that government's job is just to protect us from enemies, foreign and domestic. And that it is the measure of each of us how much we help people that have lost their job, that are marginalized because of their race or gender or class, that are too poor to help themselves through no fault of their own. That way, government stays in its lane, which is force, and the rest of us are under constant self-examination, worrying about whether we helped enough.
Couldn't we say that the welfare state is a moral cop-out that lets us all sit in front of our 4K digital wall TVs and say, well, I gave at the office in my paycheck, so don't bother me?
My line is that the industrial revolution has completely overturned the basis of human society in the agricultural age, which was to protect our food-growing lands from pirates and predators. The consequence is that we need much less force and political power.
But the politicians and the voters are acting as if nothing has changed. The Dems are running around conjuring up huge new applications of government power, from universal health care to the Green New Deal. Of course they are, because the business of political leadership is to lead a band of warriors to either conquer new lands and promise glorious loot and plunder, or to defend our land against other conquerors -- say, eevil fossil fuel producers -- and protect us all from their depredations.
It is very difficult for any politician to say: hey, not really much to do around here. I´ll just sit on the front porch to be ready in case anything blows up.
So all politicians run around like idiots, and their staffers and sycophants run around in circles to make it look as if they are doing something useful.
And the rest of us sit around and complain that "they" haven't fixed the pothole on our street.
- Free trade; outsourcing.
- Nation-building in the Middle East.
- Immigration.
- Contempt for our fellow countrymen.
- And so on.
Nation-building wasn't so hot, but in the far-off days before fracking when Middle East oil was the name of the game, well, we had an interest in making sure that the oil got here. We needed to be able to bash the Wahabis and the Saddams and the Iranian mullahs around just to show we cared.
Immigration got me here, an immense benefit to America! And if feminists teach educated American women not to have babies, something's got to give. But every immigrant is another entry in the labor market and the law of supply and demand applies. And if employers are tempted to hire illegals under the table and avoid paying payroll taxes, and our Democratic friends exempt illegal aliens from the burden of following the law...
Contempt? Well, that's the name of the game with politics. Our guys are great guys and the others are contemptible. And what do you say about the white working class that kept voting for Democrats long after the Democrats made it perfectly clear that they didn't care a whit for the white working class?
The job of government is to protect us from existential perils. But should it protect each and every job from the next technical revolution? That is what a lot of us want when our industry goes into decline. Should government protect us from discrimination? Probably, but that does not mean that government should be doing quotas and timetables. Should government protect widows and orphans? Probably.
But here's an idea. Suppose we say that government's job is just to protect us from enemies, foreign and domestic. And that it is the measure of each of us how much we help people that have lost their job, that are marginalized because of their race or gender or class, that are too poor to help themselves through no fault of their own. That way, government stays in its lane, which is force, and the rest of us are under constant self-examination, worrying about whether we helped enough.
Couldn't we say that the welfare state is a moral cop-out that lets us all sit in front of our 4K digital wall TVs and say, well, I gave at the office in my paycheck, so don't bother me?
My line is that the industrial revolution has completely overturned the basis of human society in the agricultural age, which was to protect our food-growing lands from pirates and predators. The consequence is that we need much less force and political power.
But the politicians and the voters are acting as if nothing has changed. The Dems are running around conjuring up huge new applications of government power, from universal health care to the Green New Deal. Of course they are, because the business of political leadership is to lead a band of warriors to either conquer new lands and promise glorious loot and plunder, or to defend our land against other conquerors -- say, eevil fossil fuel producers -- and protect us all from their depredations.
It is very difficult for any politician to say: hey, not really much to do around here. I´ll just sit on the front porch to be ready in case anything blows up.
So all politicians run around like idiots, and their staffers and sycophants run around in circles to make it look as if they are doing something useful.
And the rest of us sit around and complain that "they" haven't fixed the pothole on our street.
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