Highly Recommended

I know the liberals call you 'the most dangerous man in America,' but don't worry about it, they used to say the same thing about me. Keep up the good work.

— Ronald Reagan
in a letter to
Rush Limbaugh,
December 11, 1992

Cutting off their Early Morning Cocktails is Next

This is what happens to societies that put all of their hopes in the Government, and by extension, at the fate of any and all of their fellow citizens.

An EU Commission paper on pensions argues that no more than a third of our adult lives should be spent in retirement writes Natalie Hamill. This means that by 2060, according to current trends, we should expect to be retiring at 70.

The next few years look rather bleak, as member states grapple to get their national finances in order. With credit ratings slipping and austerity measures becoming more widespread, governments are scrambling to find ways to cut their deficits and implement drastic public spending cuts. Retirement reforms will be an area of high priority.

Quite simply, had these folks taken on the responsibility for their own savings for themselves, they won’t live in societies that through Kamakaze budget spending, have put them in a position where they have to work until they’re 70.

as famed for their 35 hour working week as for their croissants, are the latest to protest, after the French Government announced that the retirement age must be raised to 63. Despite the strikes last week President Sarkozy is adamant; the pension system in France is close to bankruptcy (currently £27 billion in deficit) and therefore the age must be raised. France has the lowest retirement age in the EU, and given the economic climate, it cannot justify this anymore.

But whilst French workers huff and puff on strikes in Paris, they should spare a thought for the hard-working Germans, pillar of the EU, and (as they always feared) now a crutch of the Eurozone. Contributing the largest proportion of the Greek bailout has damaged the German government’s standing with its citizens and frustration is simmering at the injustice of their working hard and retiring at 67, but having to pay for the, previously, comfortable retirements of the Greeks at 61.

In Greece, strikes and violent protests have plunged the country into chaos; but few of the austerity measures have caused as widespread outrage as the proposal to raise the retirement age to 63. Prime Minister Papandreou has no choice, he must cut public spending or he won’t get the rest of his bailout. Greece cannot finance the “golden” retirements its citizens expect, and other countries shouldn’t be asked to.

March, yell, set fire to cars, and bang pots all you like, but your well-being is still your responsibility.

I’m Surprised that he Didn’t Dress them up like Uncle Sam

A cartoon by Arend van Dam says all you really need to know about European intelligence and sophistication. It’s reporting bad news that causes the bad news, not the bad news itself that anyone would need to know about.

The subheading that reads “Credit ratings agencies' estimations of Eurozone debt is hurting the single currency.” Is careful to avoid the fact that it’s the Eurozone debt, unfunded mandates, and punitive over-regulation that might might have something to do with their credit rating instead.

More of the Same Ol' "Rightists, Watch Out You Don't Go Too Far"

The Economist last week printed an issue which included the articles What's wrong with America's right ("Too much anger and too few ideas. America needs a better alternative to Barack Obama") and The risks of “Hell, no!” ("The tea-party movement is pushing the Republicans to the right. That may make it harder to recapture the White House from Barack Obama").

The more positive (i.e., more realistic) news is that this week it compared the Community-Organizer-in-Chief to Vladimir Putin…

I responded by writing them the following:


When you write that America's "voters expect solutions, not just rage", you are suggesting that citizens are demanding (some sort of) intervention from above (from Washington, DC). But that is not what America is about. America is about solutions from the bottom — unfettered from (undue) interference from the top.

Speaking of foreign affairs and the USSR, Ronald Reagan said, "there is only one guaranteed way you can have peace" and that is to "surrender." The equivalent, for liberals, in America's internal affairs, is that there is one guaranteed way to "bridge the divide", to "renounce extremes", and to "go beyond polarization" and "beyond hatred and anger" (all "in the interests of America", of course), and that is for America's conservatives — never for the liberals themselves — to surrender their principles.

Therein we have the true meaning of the Democrats' "bipartisan support." It is Orwellian newspeak, concealing a request for Republicans to shut up and go along with liberals' progressive and statist politics.

The GOP is the party of No. As well it should be. Just as Democrats — and statists the world over — stand for "Yes we can" (get more government intervention and more bureaucracy and more hand-outs and more unity behind a "benevolent" ruler), the party of No stands (or ought to stand) by the Constitution, which itself is the declaration, 222 years ago, to statists the world over, from the British monarchy (in 1776) to would-be élites in the United States itself (from the 18th century to today), that the people stand up and say No.

They say No to the idea that we must rally behind the country's ruler (well-intentioned or otherwise); No to the idea that we must not question his policies, his taxes, and his decisions on our behalf (or not criticize them too harshly in any event); No to the very belief that our alleged betters have a better understanding of what is good for us; No to hamstrung efforts by would-be nannies to regulate our lives; and, indeed, No to the belief that the common individual is in need of oversight in the first place.

The EU Has More Regular Summit Meetings With Russia Than with the Obama Administration

So where is all that "smart diplomacy" of the Apologizer-in-Chief's leading us?

The main front page article of the International Herald Tribune on Tuesday (top right) has the European Commission president, José Manuel Barroso, criticizing Barack Obama in an interview with The New York Times' Steven Erlanger and Stephen Castle — criticizing him all so diplomatically, of course, but criticizing him (and his policies, fiscal as well as foreign) nonetheless.

Mr. Barroso, speaking animatedly for 90 minutes, was rebutting a criticism by President Obama and some economists that Europe’s rush to cut government spending to appease market sentiment risked worsening the region’s economic slump. Mr. Obama wrote in a letter last week to his Group of 20 counterparts that withdrawing fiscal stimulus too soon could lead to “renewed economic hardships and recession.”

Mr. Barroso also rejected an American contention, made recently by Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates, that Europe was driving Turkey into the arms of its less secular Islamic neighbors.

…Concerned by Mr. Obama’s postponement of a European Union-United States summit meeting in May, Mr. Barroso confirmed that he had set up a small study group to examine ways to make the relationship more substantive and coordinated, especially on issues of job growth and regulation. He said that he wanted to produce “deliverables” and that the two sides could do more in relations with third parties, like Russia and China.

Yet the European Union has more regular summit meetings with Russia, he pointed out — two a year.

International Day of Rage

Mr Monks said union barons across Europe were planning a co-ordinated ‘day of action’ against the cuts on 29 September, involving national strikes and protests.

They will call it a historic moment for those in love neo-authoritarian-socialism, a tragedy, the beginning of the end, etc. I call it an inflection point.

Further in the old European spirit of licking the boot that kicks you, all the talk is about the old-fashioned thrill of the goose-step. While some pace hither and fro about the diminution of rights and the creeping dictatorship of the non-internationalists, they are at risk of falling into it for no good reason other than the widespread, shared political views of their do-gooders, luvvies, and activist “caring” types.

Mr Monks, now head of the European TUC, said: ‘I had a discussion with Barroso last Friday about what can be done for Greece, Spain, Portugal and the rest and his message was blunt: “Look, if they do not carry out these austerity packages, these countries could virtually disappear in the way that we know them as democracies. They've got no choice, this is it.”

‘He's very, very worried. He shocked us with an apocalyptic vision of democracies in Europe collapsing because of the state of indebtedness.’

Greece, Spain and Portugal, which only became democracies in the 1970s, are all facing dire problems with their public finances. All three countries have a history of military coups.

All of it caused by caving in to those very same do-gooders, luvvies, and activist “caring” types who always seem to demand an enlargement of entitlements. It’s sort of a “we are all ACORN” type of universe.

However it’s all idiotic. Lethargy is the player with all the momentum. The talk of apocalypse, which I guess means having to drink canned beer, the the kind of thing arrived at in moments of fear and ignorance, while rowing through the middle of the stormy sea.

I’ll believe it when I see the promotion of a ‘national dress’ or a reconstituted form of socially unifying mechanism once codified in martial non-uniform garb, like seeing a lot of the same sloganeered t-shirts, or some “unity color” selected by the now-threadbare Roy G. Biv minus the ones used for Thai, Iranian, and Ukrainian protest movements.

However, if I DID have to place a bet, my guess is that if a charismatic Hitlerian figure is to emerge, it will actually be a TV personality with a New Age or self-help bent to their unspoken narrative. Deepak Chopra for “interim manager”, if you will. What makes the jackboot theme implausible is the lack of actual force nor population of military age to pull it off in the stylish manner that they’re accustomed to.

Other than that, I would expect a real meltdown to take the form of a continent in a sort of localized chaos where a continental government still exists, but all their laws governing their citizens are ignored, and local and regional entities function in the manner of a fragmented array of something that looks an awful lot like the duchies and mini-states of the previous millennium. Pockets of cosmopolitanism (i.e. running water and public transit), form an archipelago laid out on a plane of more rural entities that will provide a wide range of quality of life from prosperous suburban life to ones where outsiders passing through are attacked out of simple paranoia.

Assuming that IS the case, it will some time in the future beyond it, well after a struggle of reconstitution of some kind, be looked back upon with horror, but also a great age of awakening for a revival of the creative arts, the individual will, and perhaps even of faith. An aristocracy will emerge. A lack of funding and of ingenuity will end most any conflict we now know of. One issue crackpots will simply evaporate, and Greek public culture will rationalize its superiority somehow.

Then again, it could really go south, even by the standards of medieval age style fragmented continent. The Greenies could take over.

How Dare you Smoke in ze Presence of the Philosopher!

Having doubled back over and over, over the years to cover Martin Heidegger’s inspiration and rationalization of the acts of the Nazis, a transcript of his now notorious seminar has been published.

A darling of recent ‘deconstructionists’, who ironically enjoy aesthetic chaos, his work has been blindly used over the past 25 years in the same way Derrida’s empty, self-absorbed rubbish has: to obfuscate.

Now everyone can read for themselves what, according to student transcripts, Martin Heidegger lectured on between November 1933 and February 1934 under the title "On the Essence and Concepts of Nature, History and the State". In April 1933, he became rector of the Albert Ludwig University and in 1934, he handed in his resignation. During his year in power he applied himself single-mindedly to organising the university's Gleichschaltung (bringing into line). All the documents from his rectoral term are now all being published together. The lack of empathy in their tone stands in contrast, for example, to his speech honouring the the Nazi martyr figure Albert Leo Schlageter from May 1933. The documents show that during the one year intermezzo, the new masters could rely on Heidegger. He cancelled the evening readings in January 1934, so that the "swearing in of the People's Chancellor" could be celebrated in style. He called upon people to make donations to the Winterhilfswerk so that it might become a "visible demonstration of the Volksgemeinschaft" (people's community).

The “people coming together” theme, especially that of constructing gleischhaltung or (uniform and universal) social agreement, might sound familiar to those paying close attention to the contemporary left, that seems to call anything that doesn’t agree with them ‘divisive’.

As opposed to monomaniacal gleischhaltung that they like to promote as ‘nice’ and free of disagreement and other viewpoints.

Admired for enacting "the automatic restoration of voting rights for former felons": Charlie Crist Praised by a Democrat Back in 2007

In case anybody is wondering about the late transformation (or betrayal) of Charlie Crist: already back in 2007, in a letter to the editor of The Economist, a Florida Democrat is heard to praise the governor of the Sunshine State for bringing an end to the alleged bickering in a "state that had once symbolised polarisation", for allowing "meaningful relationships to be forged across the political aisle" (in spite of angering "many of his fellow Republicans"), and because "his post-partisanship appears to be every bit as meaningful" as that of Arnold Schwarzenegger.

In other areas pragmatism has almost always trumped partisanship. Mr Crist may not be as flashy as California's governor, but his post-partisanship appears to be every bit as meaningful.

The post-partisanship for which Crist is to be praised includes "the automatic restoration of voting rights for former felons"! Let nobody say we were not forewarned.

Sunshine state

SIR – Lexington frets that the “post-partisanship” politics of Arnold Schwarzenegger may not spread much beyond California (November 3rd). Lexington can find solace in another state that had once symbolised national polarisation: Florida. I voted against Charlie Crist in 2006, but in his first year as governor he has done more to re-enfranchise (mostly Democratic) black voters than any of his predecessors through his support for voting systems with paper records and the automatic restoration of voting rights for former felons. This has angered many of his fellow Republicans, but allowed meaningful relationships to be forged across the political aisle. In other areas pragmatism has almost always trumped partisanship. Mr Crist may not be as flashy as California's governor, but his post-partisanship appears to be every bit as meaningful.

Seth Kaplan
Miami Beach

Caring and Sharing

Remember: they’re better than you.

As the economic crisis pinches national budgets, EU member states' funds set aside for development are dwindling and increasingly being used instead as channels for public cash for domestic companies and promoting national vested interests rather than poverty reduction in the poorest of countries.

Some states are even counting the cost of deporting refugees back to their home countries as 'development aid'.

They even believe the platitudes they’ve been parroting about themselves.

"There is even talk of counting remittances - the money sent home by immigrants. This is taking the fruits of the labour of migrants and calling that aid."

Meanwhile, between breathless, overbearing complaints about the Arizona border enforcement law, they take time to be munificent and generous.

A number of countries, notably France and Italy, have made agreements with developing countries that force them to co-operate on repatriation of migrants before they can access the aid, making development aid into a tool of anti-immigrant policies.

Presumably, they aren’t talking about personal remittances.

Countries often use aid to funnel money to domestic companies. Aid to China makes up a large proportion of Polish aid and aims to boost national exports for example. This sort of activity, termed 'tied aid' has existed for as long as governments have offered development assistance, but in the last few years, this has taken off as a share of aid.

Surely you ‘little people’ will understand that.

Democracy is 5 wolves and a sheep voting on what to have for lunch; If you were the sheep, which would you rather live in—a republic or a democracy?

If you remember much from your high school history classes about the founding of this country

writes Chip Wood,

you know there was a great deal of controversy about what type of government the newly independent states should create.

The first effort, the Articles of Confederation, was generally regarded as a failure. But what should replace them? Each state sent a group of representatives to meet in Philadelphia and hammer out a new agreement. The deliberations of the Constitutional Convention in 1787 were held in strict secrecy. Consequently, anxious citizens gathered outside Independence Hall when the proceedings ended, eager to learn what had been produced behind those closed doors.

As the delegates left the building, a Mrs. Powel of Philadelphia asked Benjamin Franklin, “Well, Doctor, what have we got?”

With no hesitation, Franklin replied, “A republic, if you can keep it.” Not a democracy, not a democratic republic. But “a republic, if you can keep it.”

… I loved to tell [high school students] about the differences between a republic and a democracy.

“A lynch mob is democracy in action,” I would say. “While if you believe someone is innocent until proven guilty, that they deserve their day in court and that a jury of their peers should decide their fate, then you believe in a nation of laws, not just the whims of a mob.”

Another line I used a lot was, “Democracy is five wolves and a sheep voting on what to have for lunch. If you were the sheep, which would you rather live in—a republic or a democracy?”

I told them about the importance of “binding men down with the chains of a Constitution.” That this was the only sure way to protect their freedom. And that anyone who wanted to change this republic into a democracy was an enemy of liberty.

A century or two earlier there would have been no need to give such a talk—and no interest if one did. Back in the 18th and 19th centuries, every American who could read and write (and probably most of those who couldn’t), knew we were a republic. The campaign to brainwash us into believing we were a democracy didn’t begin until 100 years ago. Today, if you take a poll of high school or college students, the overwhelming majority will tell you that we are a democracy.

Please don’t dismiss this as a mere quarrel over semantics. Understanding the difference between the two systems of government is absolutely vital. I am not exaggerating when I tell you that our very liberties depend on getting more Americans to realize the importance of this seemingly arcane dispute.

Who’s the Cowboy (Capitalist) Now ?

Some Germans mull the sanest outcome of the Eurozone’s dependency on them. It isn’t kicking out the undercapitalized and profligate-borrower member states, it’s leaving them for dead.

Gerard Baker:

The euro version goes like this: fiscal policy is run by the Greeks, the Spanish and the Italians; interest rates are set by a central bank in thrall to politicians in France and Italy, and it is all organised by a Portuguese socialist and a Belgian. The idea will go down a treat in places like France, Greece and Portugal. But if you’re German — an increasingly disgruntled citizen of Europe’s largest and most productive economy — you might be starting to think it represents a final signal to get the hell out of there.

I exaggerate, of course. The EU summit is destined to break up without any firm plan being agreed.

The Battle Hymn of the Democrat

The Education Bubble

Michael Phillips sounds out on an argument made by Glenn Reynolds on the high cost and lack of efficacy of the present stae of higher education, a system geared more to be a make-work system for those employed in it that the development of the student.

The value of work after college, in general, will no longer justify the astronomic costs of college time. It hasn't for nearly two decades. The same goes for prep-schools and many post graduate departments.

Free government education types take note: it’s true, whoever is paying the bill. Phillips also notes some fundamental life-isses that Reynolds misses:

Paying off the associated student loans is debilitating and destroys the working life and working opportunities for many people. If you have to pay off a student loan at $700 per month, you usually can't take a job where you will learn important lessons about the business world, or start your own business if you have the skills. You also must look forward to a very grim loan paying future with no likely reward in sight. Depression. You postpone a family at the time when you are most capable of raising children.

Having carried student loans, I disagree. Then again, I took up an area of professional study and found a WAY to pay them off.

Similarly in the fantasy world of “free University education” the want ads in European publications and websites make it clear: the offers are limited largely due to the over-regulation, over-management, and burden of employer mandates. What is stunning from an American perspective, are the listings for academic programs found in those publications and websites where job openings should be.

Colleges are a business disaster. The administrative costs of college are far out of proportion to their contribution to the final product. I've consulted with several colleges and walked away stunned by the administrative overhead, not to mention the incredibly high salaries to faculty which is wasted in 98.3% of the positions.

Which can be only MORE true the more socialized the management mechanisms are, regardless if the costs of state-owned or managed institutions are hidden: i.e.: Does a state run university get an electric bill? Did they sourcing of their own facilities appear on their own budget? Etcetera, etcetera.

Either way, for the outcome, one which barely benefits society and confers it’s questionable benefits on the student, the price of the way things presently operate is just too high, even if they weren’t turning out too many graduates for the economy not to undercut their value in the economy.

If intellectual fulfillment is a larger (PC/non-“greed” feeding) goal, what’s missing is something that was once ubiquitous: a society of well read and literate workers who enjoyed the pursuit of knowledge on their own initiative, and for their own personal enrichment. It didn’t require a degree, just a library card and a well ordered use of ones free time. It’s a pursuit that’s equally true of those who did come through the degree mills.

Defining evil down in a fashion that does immense violence to good sense, good taste, and good leadership

Once more, Plantu makes an inappropriate comparison with 9-11, and that on the front page of Le Monde (and that's not even taking into account that no tanker was involved in the Deepwater Horizon disaster).


To quote John Podhoretz (merci, Professor Reynolds) — speaking of the Apologizer-in-Chief's efforts to do the same:

By likening the murder of 3,000 people and the efforts to take out the US government to a series of mistakes that added up to a catastrophe, Obama has defined evil down in a fashion that does immense violence to good sense, good taste and good leadership.

Update: Plantu is hardly the only French cartoonist to compare "an unwanted disaster to a conscious act of war, [thereby] adding an improper moral dimension to the effort to clean up the Gulf", as Delucq joins in the evil-down-defining "fun"…

A Signpost on the Road to Demographic Collapse

Paging the delusional Paul Ehrlich, and all those lauding the ‘environmental’ argument for self-selected social sterilization: a Danish government panel report finds one third of schools to be too small to be sustainable. [Bold emphasis mine.]

One of the key recommendations of the report, released yesterday, recommends setting a minimum of three pupils per class, a limit currently met by only 1,000 of the country’s schools.
The task force, set up to find ways to improve the quality of education, recommends implementing the closings over a period of five years.

Education experts and community activists disagree with the findings. Peter Allerup, a professor at Aarhus University’s School of Education, challenges the panel’s argument that larger schools are more effective and educate students better.

‘The right answer is we just don’t know,’ he told Kristeligt Dagblad newspaper.

He added that closing schools in small communities would probably result in families moving to towns where schools were located.

And a population of those who DO want the family to have a future engaging in palliative act of retreat – if only to keep life as normal as possible, for as long as possible.

Fear the USA and Its Ghastly Weapons, Weapons Far More Redoubtable Than America's B-52s: chewing gum, Coca-Cola, McDonald's, MTV, Michael Jordan, etc…

Anti-Americanism is as common in France as a baguette

writes Richard in an email. "This is Bloc Identitaire." The Awakening of Identities is the professed goal of the block, which pouts that "we have been Americanized"; which displays a photo of a Yankee "predator" (a pedophile?) tending (fellatio-like?) a bottle of soft drink (drugging?) an unsuspecting little innocent girl; and which claims that since 1945, America has been wielding "weapons far more redoubtable than all the B-52s mass-produced by America's military industry", an assertion followed by a partial listing of the ghastly weapons in question: "chewing gum, Coca-Cola, McDonald's, Desperate Housewives, MTV, Michael Jordan, etc."

Depuis 1945, l’environnement culturel européen est façonné par les Etats-Unis grâce à des armes bien plus redoutables que tous les B’52 produits en masse par l’industrie militaire américaine : le chewing gum, Coca-Cola, Mc Donalds, Desperate Housewives, MTV, Michael Jordan, etc…

This sounds almost like my (tongue-in-cheek) statement to Frenchmen in my book on anti-Americanism, La Bannière Étalée, in which I politely ask several ranters to forgive me, but I cannot say that tears well up in my eyes when I think of the "horrific sufferings" that France, Europe, and the rest of the world have been confronted with under American imperialism, since I can hardly abstain from pointing out that there have existed, through the centuries, peoples who have suffered worse ignominies than to have to submit to jeans, to Coca-Cola, to McDonald's, to Schwarzenegger movies, and to a rodent named Mickey.

[Les alarmistes] voudront bien avoir la gentillesse de m'excuser de ne pas montrer plus de solidarité avec leur indignation intense, mais je ne peux pas dire que les larmes me viennent aux yeux quand je pense aux "terribles souffrances" auxquelles ont été confrontées la France, l'Europe, et le reste du monde sous l'impérialisme américain, et j'ai peur que je ne puisse m'abstenir de dire que je pense qu'il existe des peuplades qui, au fil des siècles, ont souffert de pires ignomies que d'être soumises aux jeans, au Coca-Cola, à McDonald's, aux films de Schwarzie, et à une souris prénommée Mickey.

It’s That ‘Quality of Life’ World Power Thing

The Sofa bar in the northern city of Kiel caters to a very particular clientele -- unemployed alcoholics. The experiment has been such a success that other cities are now hoping to follow suit.

As opposed to, say, just about every decent sized town center and public park in Germany. Hey! Don’t judge! It’s a lifestyle thing.

It's 10:30 a.m., and things are hopping at the Sofa bar in the northern German city of Kiel. The men sitting at the table on the left, in the front of the room, have already had their first four rounds of beer, the radio is blasting loud guitar riffs, and a young girl hops onto a patron's lap and asks him for a sip. A glass bottle is rolling back and forth on the floor, and the air is thick with cigarette smoke. Atze and Dirk sit at the bar, coughing, rolling unfiltered cigarettes and asking if anyone wants a drink.

A.K.A., a perfectly normal thing to do, enabled by the ‘injection park’ idea, were it not for the fact that public drinking is nearly ubiquitous in German cities, and that they don’t need a “safe place” for what couldn’t ever amount to a handful of those that do it, but rather, just the most responsible of the irresponsible.

In this bar, some of the costs are covered by taxpayer money from the city treasury. The Sofa is Germany's first drinking room, a sort of crash smoking room for alcoholics. Most of the people who frequent the place are serious alcoholics and are allowed to bring their own cheap beer and sangria. The bar itself only serves soft drinks and strong coffee. "It's great," says Dirk, twisting his tattooed face into a smile, "isn't it?"

Yeah – free shit from your non-alcoholic neighbors who actually work. Sure, why not?!?

There are rarely aggressive confrontations, and anyone who does cause trouble is temporarily barred from the premises and forced to drink elsewhere for a few days. "The place is hopping," says Kai. He is 49, a recipient of benefits under the Hartz IV* welfare reform program, and the employment agency* considers him impossible to place. He does have a permanent residence*, like most of the regulars. The homeless rarely turn up at the Sofa.

* More free shit from your non-alcoholic neighbors who actually work.

Al Unable to Control His Emissions

"It couldn’t be avoided."

Of Mosques and Men: Reflections on the Ground Zero Mosque

Smiling in our faces while cursing us in our hearts
(Abu Darda; see also Tafsir Ibn Kathir, 3:33):
Reflections on the Ground Zero Mosque
(shookhran to Mark)

Bouncing Baby Go Boom

Puzzled? Confused? Take a look at the cheery scene at We Are Government. It’s sort of like ‘Toys ‘R Us’, except for megalomaniacs.

My, they blow-up so fast.