Some Chicago Boyz know each other from student days at the University of Chicago. Others are Chicago boys in spirit. The blog name is also intended as a good-humored gesture of admiration for distinguished Chicago School economists and fellow travelers.
Shannon Love Mine looks something like this:
I am somewhat embarrassed to admit I already knew what a merkin was. I learned it as a teenager reading John Varley’s “The Barbie Murders.”
Things like this make me glad I’m a provincial who is isolated from the hip, urban fashions. Come to think of it, the rest of you should be glad as well.
Somethings, you just don’t want to see.
[Oh, h/t Instapundit]
Victor Davis Hanson[h/t Instapundit] asks:
In other words, why cannot liberal defenders of Obama simply say, “Government, much more wisely than a selfish private sector, can ensure a vibrant economy. When people are assured of comprehensive government entitlements they use that security as a base for renewed work and investment. Deficits create consumer demands, spread money around to those who need it most, and spur economic prosperity. And when business provides society with over half its profits in income, payroll, and assorted state and local taxes, the resulting redistributive change and spread-the-wealth equality ensure aggregate economic growth”?
Part of the problem is that leftists can’t actually back up the general claim that government makes better economic decisions than the people do acting as individuals. After the collapse of the Great Lakes states, once the industrial heartland of not only America but the free world, they can’t plausibly claim that spreading the same policies to the rest of the country will make everything better. The same is true in regard to the current plight of California and other similar deep blue areas.
However, the real problem is simply that, as elitists, leftists don’t believe they have any obligation to respect the opinions or experiences of any non-elites.
Non-leftists spend a lot of time these days telling leftists that the leftists are “elitist.” Leftists usually respond with something like this:
But somehow these born-into-wealth aristocrats get away with calling people who advocate for, say a living wage, or universal health care, or decent public education “elites.”
Translation: We leftists are not elitist because we do things for the economically non-rich that we leftists believe to be in the best interest of the non-rich. Elitists only do things that leftists believe to be in the interest of the rich.
By the leftist definition of elitism, we could live in an absolutist, hereditary aristocracy and still not have an elitist government as long as the aristocrats made decisions that, in the opinion of leftists, benefited the poor.
The leftists are wrong. Elitism isn’t defined by who benefits, elitism is defined by who decides.
I started this post as a comment to Dan’s previous post but it grew overly long so I decided to make it a separate post. Dan asked an important question:
…do people of this generation or people in general seem to show more pride in today’s era than in past eras? Or do you think I am noticing something that isn’t there?
Most of the world’s traditional religious and secular moral systems view pride as the most dangerous emotion. Modern research bears this out. I think the dynamics of modern life make us very prone as individuals to rationalize our unearned pride.
I started this post as a followup to my previous post on Palin hatred, and then I noticed this Instapundit post on the cluelessness of reporters who cover religion. I think it’s pretty safe to say that most reporters don’t know much about religion and neither do most academics or leftists in general.
That would certainly explain the following bizarre claim which I have seen more than once.
Palin is not bright, amoral, and divorced from reality. She is also a devotee of an apocalyptic toxic fundie xian cult, Assembly of god. I’d be afraid that President Palin would decide to help jesus bring about the End Times by launching our 5,000 nuclear weapons. Jesus is 2,000 years late and the Rapturists are getting more and more frantic about his nonappearance as time goes on.
WTF? The Assemblies of God is an apocalyptic cult? Since when? Isn’t like half of Kansas Assemblies of God? What, are they sneaking up on the missile silos?
I’d like to say that this is a rare comment but it isn’t.