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.
… For, borne on the night-wind of the Past,
Through all our history, to the last,
In the hour of darkness and peril and need,
The people will waken and listen to hear
The hurrying hoof-beats of that steed,
And the midnight message of Paul Revere.
God bless America.
We must think things, not words, or at least we must constantly translate our words into facts for which they stand, if we are to keep to the real and the true.
Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., Law and Science and Science and Law, 12 Harv.L.Rev. 443, 460 (1889).
Why do these murdering nut jobs so often target the IRS?[h/t Instapundit]
At first, one might presume they do so out of ideological resentment, but as I noted in my previous post, these nuts tend to pick and choose from various ideologies depending on what is best for them at the moment. If so, why do so many of them perform their final detonation at the IRS?
I think it is because the IRS is the one institution that no one can ever escape.
You can’t escape death and taxes, and the IRS is always the latter and sometimes the former.
Large numbers of people in Iran are taking huge risks in an attempt to free themselves from a despicable regime. There are many horrifying reports and images available on the web demonstrating clearly the levels of brutality that the regime is willing to use in suppressing dissident voices: see for example here and here.
Barack Obama’s expressions of condemnation for the regime and support for the dissidents have consistently been a day late and a dollar short. He eventually says what he thinks he is expected to say, but there’s not much fire in it. He comes across like an IRS official reciting some section of the tax code for the 495th time, or, at best, like a student giving a report on some long-ago historical event that he really didn’t want to study study but which was important for his grade. His genuine passion has been reserved for domestic issues.
As Joshua Muravchik has pointed out, the current administration has been much less focused on international issues of human rights and democracy than has any other administration in decades. Why?
Nat Hentoff is a man of many talents–columnist, historian, jazz and country music critic (jazz and country music? that must be an unusual combination)–he is best known as a civil libertarian. As such, he has had his differences with all administrations. But he is particularly concerned about the behavior and attitudes of the current one.
Read this interview for his reasons.