A Seemingly-Safe Target

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I’ve written previously about  the level of fear, contempt, and anger that many educated/urban/upper-middle-class people demonstrate toward Christians and rural people (especially southerners.) This complex of negative emotions often greatly exceeds anything that these same people feel toward radical Islamists or dangerous rogue-state governments.

A rather classic example of this was recently observed by a commenter at a post by Sarah Hoyt:

One of my relatives posted a snarky meme during the day or two that the Dreamer program being ended was trending showing some hillbilly/redneck types saying they were going to get a tech job now that the Dreamers were out of the way. The meme was presented in a way that you were supposed to say “Ha ha, look at the poor, ugly, unintelligent peasants thinking they can get a tech job”

(direct link to comment)

Discursive Comments Suggested by the Sex life of Judge Moore

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Sexual predation is real but the potential for another day care scandal ask the Duke lacrosse team or the frat at Virginia lies in he said/she said incidents with a political or sexual factor. Accusations encourage prurience and self-righteousness. But often neither the he nor the she lies; if children are vulnerable to suggestion, no less are adults whose perspective from forty years is hazy. We all like plots and prefer to see our selves more positively than others might. Deviations from a truth unknowable today are less rhetorical tricks than a natural desire to create favorable narratives.

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America’s Principal-Agent Problem

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Instapundit frequently links to another story of government incompetence with the comment “We have the worst ruling class in our history.”

There are so many examples, it is hard to list them but I will try with a few.

First, let’s have a definition.

The principalagent problem, in political science and economics, (also known as agency dilemma or the agency problem) occurs when one person or entity (the “agent”) is able to make decisions on behalf of, or that impact, another person or entity: the “principal”.[1] This dilemma exists in circumstances where agents are motivated to act in their own best interests, which are contrary to those of their principals, and is an example of moral hazard.

The Founders were well aware of this problem and tried to protect the citizens with certain provisions of the Constitution.

No Money shall be drawn from the Treasury, but in Consequence of Appropriations made by Law; and a regular Statement and Account of the Receipts and Expenditures of all public Money shall be published from time to time.

This provision was violated by Barack Obama who spent billions to subsidize insurance companies to support his “Affordable Care Act” which was not successful.

Of course, the Amendments were intended to protect the rights of the people but the one that has been ignored for 100 years is the Tenth.

The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.

The Civil War largely ended Federalism.

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Rerun- Memo on Royal Families

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To: The Usual Media
From: Sgt.Mom
Re: Use of a Particular Cliche

1. I refer, of course, to the lazy habit of more than a few of you to refer to the Kennedy family, of Hyannisport, late of the White House, and Camelot, as “royalty”, without use of the appropriate viciously skeptical quote marks. Please cease doing this immediately, lest I snap my mental moorings entirely, track down the most current offender, and beat him/her bloody with a rolled-up copy of the Constitution. This is the US of A, for god’s sake. We do not have royalty.

2. We did, once, as an agreeable and moderately loyal colony of His Majesty, Geo. III, before becoming first rather testy and then quite unreasonable about the taxation and representation thingy, but we put paid to the whole notion of hereditary monarchy for ourselves some two centuries and change ago. There is a certain amount of respect and affection for certain of Geo. III’s descendants, including the current incumbent; a lady of certain age with the curious and old-fashioned habit of always wearing distinctive hats, and carrying a handbag with no discernible reason for doing so. (What does Queen E. II have in her handbag, anyway? Not her house-key to all the residences; not her car keys; not a checkbook and credit cards, not a pocket calendar or business card case, not a spare pair of stockings— I understand the lady-in-waiting takes care of that — handkerchief, maybe? In the case of her late mother, a flask of gin?) Oh, anyway, back to the subject: royalty, or why we, a free people, should feel any need to grovel before the descendants of particularly successful freebooters, mercenary businessmen, and social climbing whores of both sexes.

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What Chicago Boyz Readers Are Reading (June – October 2017)

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Below is a list of the books, ebooks, music and videos that Chicago Boyz readers ordered in June, July, August, September and October 2017 via Amazon links on this blog. (A cumulative list of Chicago Boyz readers’ Amazon purchases is here.)

Your book and non-book Amazon purchases help to support this blog via the Amazon Associates program. Chicago Boyz earns a percentage on all of your Amazon purchases as long as you get to the Amazon site by clicking on Amazon links on this blog (including the Amazon banner in the blog header, the link above the Amazon banner, and even Amazon links on Chicago Boyz for products other than the ones that you want to buy).

(Note that Amazon recently changed its reporting system and it is not longer practical to include in this list items that were clicked but not purchased.)

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