Conservatism

Bourgeois Dignity

by

I was struck yesterday by a post on Ann Althouse’s blog, and by a Virginia Postrel piece that makes the same point, how wrong Obama was to say “You didn’t build that..”

The incident, so characteristic of this leftist ideologue president, is the stimulus for theorizing about how economies work, and perhaps why this one is so stuck with Obama in the White House.

There is an excellent analysis by David Warren printed last year in Canada and which I have saved. It is a comparison of Obama with Gorbachev and brings considerable light on the subject of success of nations.

Yet they do have one major thing in common, and that is the belief that, regardless of what the ruler does, the polity he rules must necessarily continue. This is perhaps the most essential, if seldom acknowledged, insight of the post-modern “liberal” mind: that if you take the pillars away, the roof will continue to hover in the air.

Gorbachev seemed to assume, right up to the fall of the Berlin Wall and then beyond it, that his Communist Party would recover from any temporary setbacks, and that the long-term effects of his glasnost and perestroika could only be to make it bigger and stronger.

There is a corollary of this largely unspoken assumption: that no matter what you do to one part of a machine, the rest of the machine will continue to function normally.

This brief discussion fits well with the book that was recommended by the Postrel piece.


The Bad History Behind ‘You Didn’t Build That’
By Virginia Postrel

The controversy surrounding President Barack Obama’s admonishment that “if you’ve got a business — you didn’t build that. Somebody else made that happen” has defied the usual election-year pattern.

Normally a political faux pas lasts little more than a news cycle. People hear the story, decide what they think, and quickly move on to the next brouhaha, following what the journalist Mickey Kaus calls the Feiler Faster Thesis. A gaffe that might have ruined a candidate 20 years ago is now forgotten within days.

Three weeks later, Obama’s comment is still a big deal.

Read more

The Strange Case of l’affaire du Poulet Filet

by

Yep when the going gets weird, the weird turn pro … Here we are, shaking our heads in amazed disbelief that now a fast-food chain purveying tasty chicken entrees, distinguished among other fast-food outlets only for a corporate policy of being closed on Sunday and a rather witty advertising series featuring illiterate cows urging us to eat chicken … is the hill to be defended in the culture war. That would be the newly-vicious cultural war between the forces of tolerant political correctness and those conservative and libertarian defenders of free-market principles as well as the freedom of belief and expression. Most of us of that persuasion are actually rather stunned at how suddenly Chick-Fil-A is now the demon that must be defeated! And defeated by any means, fair, foul, shrill or underhanded as is required by the mission, naturally. Is there some PC target of the week decided upon? Last time I looked around it was the Koch Brothers who were the Goldstein o’the Week. One can hardly keep up without a scorecard.

Read more

Chicago Tax Day Tea Party, April 16, 2012, Daley Plaza, Noon

by

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
April 12, 2012

Contact: Eric Kohn
Communications Director, Chicago Tea Party
eric@chicagoteaparty.org
773-209-3435

TAX DAY TEA PARTY PLANNED FOR CHICAGO

CHICAGO Concerned citizens are set to gather at noon on Monday, April 16 at Daley Plaza at 50 W. Washington to protest out of control spending, unsustainable deficits and the unprecedented growth of government. People will come together in downtown Chicago, where the tea party movement began, to hold politicians of both parties accountable, stop runaway spending and defend individual liberty and free markets.

“We are concerned with the direction of our country and our state,” said Chicago Tea Party Communications Director Eric Kohn. “The only solutions being offered from politicians in Washington and Springfield are higher taxes, more spending and massive debt. We will continue to fight for less government, more freedom and fiscal responsibility on tax day and every day through the November election.”

EVENT DETAILS

What: Chicago Tax Day Tea Party
Where: Daley Plaza, 50 W. Washington St., Chicago
When: Noon – 2PM, Monday, April 16

FEATURED SPEAKERS:
U.S. Conressman, Joe Walsh, IL-8th District
Wisconsin Lieutenant Governor Rebecca Kleefisch
Dana Loesch, CNN Contributor, Co-Founder St. Louis Tea Party
Denise Cattoni, State Director, Illinois Tea Party
Joel Pollak, Editor-in-Chief, Breitbart.com
Dan Proft, WLS-AM 890 Host
David From, State Director, Americans for Prosperity Illinois
Contact Eric Kohn at 773-209-3435 for press availability with the speakers.

There will be shirts for sale at the 4th annual Tax Day Tea Party Rally, including the above design from Bob Black.

Derb and All

by

So the blog kerfuffle du jour is John Derbyshire and the internet essay that he wrote for another obscure blog-magazine, the topic of which has raised such a general ruckus among the right-thinking side of the blogosphere, that it got him dumped over Easter weekend from the National Review and has the Breitbart conglomerate all in a twitter, and many of the rest of us on the libertarian/conservative/free-thinking side of the spectrum seeming to be thinking thoughts pretty much split three ways; cringing and thinking ‘oh, s**t’ or ‘about damn time’ and ‘ ‘OK then if representatives of the capital ‘B’ Black community can witter all over the print media and the intertubules about their worries about their children running afoul of the 21st century version of the KKK can those of us from the race of pallor worry frankly and openly about getting lost in certain neighborhoods, the odds on survival when taking the wrong exit off particular interstates in big urban areas, or the wisdom of going to certain sports venues without being armed to the teeth?’

Read more