What Happened to the Reasonable Man?

This is a muddy article about balancing by the muddy Jonah Goldberg.
How much weight should society give to the average and how much
to the outlier? What is the place of morality in the law, and what happens when we strip it out
and replace it with utility? How pragmatic is the pragmatist? It’s actually worth reading.

What Should Democrats Do?

Now Peggy Noonan is giving them advice. “The Bush administration has stood for cutting taxes, allowing high spending,
and being tough in the world. The Democrats stand for raising taxes, high spending,
and being weak in the world,” she writes.
So what should they do? Become more like Republicans? Er, yes. Sorry about that, Democrats.

Steyn: Message from Col. Shrapnell

The men of Battery M send up a barrage of shot and shell against the
Blame America First on tsunamis
crowd, from that Norwegian “stingy” chappie to Brit Claire Short to anyone else who feels
like cocking a snook at our brave boys now helping victims in South Asia.

Spengler: Neocon Gelernter Writes "Utter and Complete Rubbish"

David Gelernter in Commentary thinks the Puritanism of the founders shaded into modern Americanism,
but Spengler is having none of it.
Puritanism dissolved into Unitarianism and Boston
Brahminism after the revolution, he writes. It was replaced on the moral-cultural stage
by the Methodists and Baptists of the Second Great Awakening
who swore to end slavery and did so in the Civil War.
Now, Spengler says, we have a Fourth Great Awakening of people who
“have risen up against a soulless secular culture.”
This is not quite utter and complete rubbish
but it is not the whole story. The fundamentalists in James M. Ault’s Spirit and Flesh were
not born again because the secular culture is soulless, but their lives were wrecked, and they needed
to be born again in Christ through His sacrifice on the Cross to get off the rocks.

CEO Deepthink from Drucker

What is the job of a CEO,
corporate, government, or non-profit? It’s a question that management science
hasn’t really answered yet, says management guru Peter Drucker. The answer? Well, it’s buried in layers of
deepthink!

Steyn: Americans Are Different

Americans are different; they work more than kindler, gentler Euros. For instance, Mark Steyn’s assistant wanted to come in for a couple of hours
on Christmas Day. But what are the Euros doing with all their extra spare time? They certainly aren’t using it to raise children.

Rock Climbing is OK, But Vioxx is Not

Thomas Sowell wonders
why it’s ok to risk your neck rock-climbing, but not ok to risk a heart attack
with the arthritis pain-killer Vioxx. The reason is that there are people in our society who want
to take health decisions away from us. Why is that? Because there is enormous satisfaction in
being part of the elite of “wiser and nobler people — defenders
of the downtrodden, protectors of the environment, advocates of peace and opponents of war. There is
always some crusade that requires their superior wisdom and virtue to be imposed on others.”
Are you part of that elite? Do you deserve the scope to exercise your “superior
wisdom and virtue” for the benefit of the little people? Me too!