Blame

Jack Kemp

When democratic governments create economic calamity, free markets get the blame. 

Thoughts from Jimmy Fallon

"New York just passed a law that allows same-sex conjugal visits for prisoners. Isn’t that pretty much what prison is?"

Jimmy Fallon

Federalism

Federalism is not when the central government graciously allows the states to do this or that. That is just another form of administration. True federalism is when the people of the states set limits to the central government. Fundamentally, federalism means states rights. The cause of states rights is the cause of liberty. They rise or fall together. 

Clyde C. Wilson

Von Mises

Opium and morphine are certainly dangerous, habit-forming drugs. But once the principle is admitted that it is the duty of the government to protect the individual against his own foolishness, no serious objections can be advanced against further encroachments … Is not the harm a man can inflict on his mind and soul even more disastrous than any bodily evils.? Why not prevent him from reading bad books and bad plays, from looking at bad paintings and statues and from hearing bad music? The mischief done by bad ideologies, surely, is much more pernicious both for the individual and for the whole society, than that done by narcotic drugs. 

Von Mises, Human Action

Obama on Taxes

Thoughts from Jimmy Fallon

"Hillary Clinton said that watching the raid on Osama bin Laden's compound was '38 of the most intense minutes.' Which can only mean one thing: she's never had to assemble a chair from Ikea."

Jimmy Fallon

Taxes

In levying taxes and in shearing sheep, it is well to stop when you get down to the skin. 

Austin O'Malley

What Would Jesus Cut?

by Shawn Ritenour

That is the question asked by the left-leaning Christian organization, Sojourners, in its campaign of the same name. Sojourners claims that, despite record budget deficits and national debt, reducing subsidies for things like vaccines and bed nets in Africa, school lunch programs, early childhood education, and income maintenance in the United States is immoral. Indeed, such subsidies, Sojourners says, “are dollars we can’t afford to not invest.”

What are we to make of these claims? Certainly we are called to love our neighbor as ourselves and this love, when directed toward the poor and needy, must manifest itself by providing real material help to those who truly need it. It is not enough merely to wish a suffering soul to be warm and well fed. We must be willing to put our money where our mouth is.

It is a mistake, however, to treat as materially poor those who merely have lower incomes than others. For example, the average officially “poor” American has more living space than the average person living in Paris or London. Sixty-two percent of officially poor American homes have satellite or cable television and nearly 75 percent own an automobile. In the United States, what passes for poor certainly does not imply destitution.

Most important, we need to remember that the ends never justify the means, especially for the Christian. Good intentions are never enough to establish an action’s ethical validity. Scripture not only ordains ends we are called to pursue; it also guides us regarding the means that are acceptable to use in achieving those ends.

We should keep these principles in mind when considering Sojourners’ campaign. The campaign correctly notes that societal righteousness is not measured by GDP or military spending; also one of the good works demonstrated by righteous people is charity to the poor. This is all true.

Read the rest at Lew Rockwell....

Sobran

"Need" now means wanting someone else's money. "Greed" means wanting to keep your own. "Compassion" is when a politician arranges the transfer. 

Joseph Sobran, columnist.

Thoughts from Jimmy Kimmel

"Some top Republicans are giving most of the credit for killing bin Laden to former President George W. Bush. It's kind of like when someone opens a pickle jar and you say, 'Well, I loosened it.'"

Jimmy Kimmel 

King on Hitler

Never forget that everything Hitler did in Germany was legal.  

Martin Luther King Jr.

The EU Crackup

by Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr.

Lew Rockwell

Political upheaval has hit Finland, and it’s merely a foreshadowing of bigger changes ahead. The core issue is whether Finland ought to be paying for bailouts for other EU states. In reaction to establishment support for the bailout, voters ousted the pro-bailout ruling party and gave an upset victory to the bailout-critical conservative party. Against every expectation, the eternal rule of the social democrats is at an end.


But most striking of all are the gains made by a previously invisible party called True Finns. This is the only party to take a hardcore position: no bailouts at all. It also so happens that this party is predictably nationalist on issues of trade and immigration. But that’s not the source of the appeal. The bailout is what is on everyone’s mind. And you know that the anger must be palpable if it fired up the usually sleepy world of Finnish politics.


In the sweep of history, few issues are as politically volatile as tax-funded bailouts of foreign countries, especially during difficult economic times. It’s a policy that provokes dramatic political change. The 20th century’s most famous case was in interwar Germany, when nationwide resentment against payments to conquering allied nations ushered in National Socialist rule.



It should be no surprise that over-taxed Finns have no interest in sending their tax dollars to bail out the banking industry of Portugal, a country that is 2,500 miles and two days travel away. Even governments should have learned long ago that it is never a good idea to enact these sorts of policies. In this case, however, every EU nation is bound by a political contract to bail out any other; the bailouts are embedded in the very structure of how the political, financial, and monetary sector is currently structured.

Washington

Washington is not America. It has become an alien city-state that rules America, and much of the rest of the world, in the way that Rome ruled the Roman Empire. 

Richard Maybury

The Church of Silence (A Classic Joseph Sobran piece)

May 18, 2000

by Joseph Sobran

Unlike most spiritual leaders and moral teachers, Jesus of Nazareth offered no formula for worldly happiness and social order. Just the opposite: he told his disciples to take up their crosses (an image he used well before the Crucifixion) and to expect suffering. He warned them that the world would hate them as it hated him: it was their destiny as Christians.

After the conversion of the Roman world under the Emperor Constantine, a Christian civilization arose and the age of martyrdom seemed to be over. Most Western Christians still think of that period as a thing of the past, a venerable but remote phase of their history.

But the most intense persecution of Christianity occurred not in the Roman Empire, but in the twentieth century, especially in the Communist world. A large part of this story, hidden and ignored, is told in a new book by Robert Royal, The Catholic Martyrs of the Twentieth Century (Crossroad Publishing).

It is hard to tabulate or even estimate the number of Catholics and other Christians murdered by modern tyrannies. The figure certainly runs into the tens of millions, though it isn’t always easy to distinguish between those killed specifically for their religion and those killed for other reasons, ethnic and social. But contrary to recent slanders, the Nazis as well as the Communists regarded the Catholic Church as their mortal enemy.

Read the rest at Lew Rockwell.....

The Official End of Bin Laden