Political Philosophy

Educating Obama

by

Thomas Sowell has been re-reading the works of Edmund Burke, and finds the words of this philosopher to be very relevant to our current era.

I wonder if Obama, during his much-heralded passage through the university system, ever found time to read Burke and other writers (Hayek, for example) who are outside of the “progressive” worldview?

(via Common Sense & Wonder)

And Victor Davis Hanson suggests that Obama might have a little more depth in his understanding of the world had he ever owned a small farm with a difficult neighbor.

Since When?

by

RealClearPolitics via Instapundit:

 Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., for example, when asked on “Face the Nation” to respond to Rush Limbaugh’s and Newt Gingrich’s comments about Sotomayor, said, “That’s an absolutely terrible thing to throw around. Based on that statement — that one word ‘better than’ (sic) — to call someone a racist is just terrible and I would hope that Republicans would not do this.

I had to stop laughing before I could post this. Since when do leftists consider it terrible to accuse some of being racist, sexist, homophobic, etc. based on the  flimsiest  evidence?  

Leftists casually accuse people who disagree with them of having the vilest motivations imaginable.

Read more

Worthwhile Reading

by

Here are some items I thought might be of interest to Chicago Boyz and Chicago Grrlz and Readerz.

Megan McCardle on the moral infrastructure of capitalism.

via the Assistant Village Idiot, who adds thoughts of his own.

The seen and the unseen–an important article on political decision-making, written by a law school professor and drawing on the work of Frederic Bastiat. Highly relevant to the discussion over Obama’s Supreme Court nominee.

via Betsy

A long and well-written comment on my post the age of blather by kathteach. I am (sadly) willing to believe her when she says that few students now learn the art of reading carefully and analytically: however, I remain unconvinced that jargon such as “self-to-self connections” really helps in addressing the problem. Anyhow, the comment (at the end of the thread, at least at the moment) deserves to be read.

Bill Waddell has a baseball analogy for the way in which certain F500 manufacturing companies are run. But after reading about the backround of Obama’s point man on General Motors, I’ve been racking my brains trying to extend the analogy. Maybe someone who was selected as manager of a baseball team after impressing the owner while working on his (the owner’s) campaign for the city council?

Or maybe another analogy entirely.

Now, Brian Deese is probably–unlike the political appointees mocked by Gilbert & Sullivan in the above song–a very bright guy. He may even be a briliant guy. But I venture to say he would never have been selected for this job if his career path had actually been centered around working for companies that actually make things and sell them. Nor, of course, if he had the precise background and skills that he does have but had been working for the losing campaign.

Watch The Goode Family

by

ABC has a new animated comedy by “King of the Hill” creator Mike Judge that takes a  satirical  look at faddish leftism. Even if you don’t usually watch these kinds of shows you should watch this one. It’s a riot. This trailer doesn’t begin to do it justice.  

My son and I watched the first episode and we had to pause the DVR every couple of minutes so we could stop laughing so hard we couldn’t hear the dialog. The show starts with a shot of a bumper sticker on the back of a Prius that reads, “We support our troops… and their opponents” and just gets more and more humorous from there out.

Judge does a good job of gently poking fun at his subjects without dehumanizing them. Yes, the characters and their views are  exaggerated  but only compared to real life. They’re not exaggerated compared to most characters on TV. They’re certainly not more  exaggerated  than the bizarre depictions of  social conservatives that one routinely sees on TV, especially on animated shows.  

You should watch “The Goode Family” and let ABC know you appreciate some balance in TV’s depiction of various parts of the social spectrum. You can watch the first episode online at ABC’s website.  

How Faddish Leftism Kills: Part 2,658,893

by

While people in  Zimbabwe  starve,  Robert Mugabe’s [sic] “consumer rights group” raids stores that sell genetically modified food.  In  Zimbabwe, GM plants provide basic staple foods that the country must import. Their loss  seriously  depletes the food supply.

This is a case in which the intellectual fads of western leftists in rich countries mutate into something lethal in the less  sophisticated  political systems of the 3rd world. In this case, the hysteria over genetically modified foods promoted by revenue-seeking, activist-corporations (e.g., Greenpeace) in the developed world provides the moral justification for a thug like Mugabe to kill people.

Read more