Idiotarianism, A Brief Survey

Said Nelson Mandela: “Like slavery and apartheid, poverty is not natural. It is man-made and can be overcome and eradicated by the actions of human beings.” Actually, old chum, the opposite is true, writes Tim Worstall. Poverty is the natural state of mankind, has been for millennia. “What is unnatural and what is man made is wealth.” And as for slavery and apartheid, it was only a little over 200 years ago that a few crazy British thought up the idea of abolishing slavery. Before that it was universal and natural. In The Year 1000 author Danny Danziger tells how you could submit yourself to slavery in Britain a thousand years ago, and get yourself three squares a day. In those days, if you wanted to do a little slave-trading you’d head for Dublin, Ireland, the chief slave market of western Europe.

Business as a Learning Process

Arnold Kling wants to bury the equations of the mathematical economists and proposes instead a
“Learning Economics.” Economic activity is not just a question of production and exchange. It
is a learning process.
Mathematics is good for building equations to describe economic activity when we know
all the variables and when nothing changes. But when people are
learning, then it is not so good. “One might say that economic growth involves the transition from
the unknown to the known. We go from an inferior set of production techniques
to a superior one as the economy learns and adopts the better methods.”

"This does not mean that George Bush has been right all along."

Oh no. Perish the thought. But Britain’s lefty Guardian is doing a
modified limited hangout
on the astonishing facts on the ground in the Middle East. You can understand why journalism needs
good writers. It takes real talent to cover your tracks or convince everyone that black is white.
The harmless lovable fuzzballs at The New York Times are in the middle of a similar
Ali Shuffle, as reported by a gloating
New York Post.

Finding Jews for GOP

When the left is becoming more and more anti-Semitic by the day, the world wonders why Jews
still vote Democratic. But someone is doing something about it, talking to Jews and showing
them how far the party of Franklin Delano Roosevelt has gone to join the gathering forces arrayed
against the Jews. It’s the
Republican Jewish Coalition,
and it’s working to create a new Jewish Republican
majority.

Steyn: Gloater-in-chief Hails 7,000 Year March to Democracy in Egypt

Like, what kept you guys so long? Mark Steyn is pulling out old columns and
shamelessly gloating
that he told you so. And that goes for British Tories that went all snooty last year.
Mubarak puts an opposition leader in jail? Condi cancels her visit. Ooooh, Ms Matrix
with the spike heels is jabbing them in the you-know-where. Apparently Egypt’s annual check from
Uncle Sam is a month late. Could that have anything to do with Mubarak’s sudden enthusiasm for
democracy?

Meet The Iranian Resistance

Here’s an in depth interview with two
Iranian activists
working for “regime change” in Iran.
There’s a lot of interesting material, including talk of a turn back to Zoroastrianism, the monotheistic religion
that obtained in Persia before the conquest by Islam.

A Liberal Faces Up to The Wal-Mart Phenomenon. Almost

What do we liberals do about Wal-Mart, worries liberal Robert Reich? Let’s admit it, we liberals all
buy books from Amazon, even if we say we like the community bookstore round the corner. So how can we get
low prices while helping the little guy?
Cartels and regulation: that’s
his highly advanced and sophisticated answer. Come on, Reich. You liberals can do better than that.
I thought that conservatives were supposed to be the standpatters. The bottom
line is that if we Americans want to earn princely salaries, then we have to earn it, by being better trained, better
capitalized, better managed, and better educated.
You liberals are uniquely qualified to do something about that.
You yourselves can go down the street to the education cartel—you know, the one called the National Education
Assocation—and tell them to get with the program. When you’ve done that, and the education system becomes flexible and responsive to the needs
of its customers, then let us start talking about cartels and social regulation.