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Three Explanations Dominate Speculation About What Obama Is Up To. The First Is That He's Trying To Lay The Groundwork For His Successor, Presumptive Nominee Hillary Clinton. The Second Is That He's Trying To Pad His Legacy. The Third Is That He's Trying To 'troll' Or Bait The Gop Into Debating His Agenda Rather Than Pursuing Its Own. All Are Plausible, And None Necessarily Contradicts The Others.

-Jonah Goldberg

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Three Explanations Dominate Speculation

Jonah Goldberg

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Three Explanations Dominate Speculation About What Obama Is Up To. The First Is That He's Trying To Lay The Groundwork For His Successor, Presumptive Nominee Hillary Clinton. The Second Is That He's Trying To Pad His Legacy. The Third Is That He's Trying To 'troll' Or Bait The Gop Into Debating His Agenda Rather Than Pursuing Its Own. All Are Plausible, And None Necessarily Contradicts The Others.

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[in] The Post-enlightenment World, Science [has] Taken The Place Of Magic, Miracles, And Superstition.

I Have Always Seen The Clinton Foundation - Yes, They Do A Lot Of Charitable Good Works. But By My Lights, The Charitable Good Works Were A Cost Center Like The Electric Bill. The Reason Why The Foundation Exists Wasn't To Do Good Work. It Was To Serve As Sort Of A Place To Park Lugubrious Sycophants Like Sidney Blumenthal And Other Henchman, A Place To Serve As A Super Pac, A Place Park Her Campaign While They Were A Government In Exile

I Think As - All In All, It's Better To Have A Cool President Than A Not Cool President.

Tom Friedman Says China Is So Awesome They Make Kosher Pigs.

Tip To All British Tabloids: Do Not Hack Amy Winehouse's Phone. I Repeat: Do Not Hack Amy Winehouse's Phone.

Despite What You May Have Been Taught About Indians Or Africans Or Ancient Celts, Poor People Are Terrible Stewards Of Their Environment. For Instance, If My Kid Were Starving To Death, I Would Happily Feed Her Fresh Panda.

[libertarianism] Is About Curbing State Power To Let People Be And Do What They Want. Liberalism Is About Using State Power To Make People Do And Be What Liberals Want. And That Makes All The Difference In The World.

Those Who Say [joseph] Padilla Should Get A Civilian Trial Are Essentially Saying That If You Reject The Rules Of Civilized Nations, Like Those Inscribed In The Geneva Convention, You Therefore Deserve To Be Treated Better, Not Worse, Than Those Rules Require.

Civilized Nations

Progressivism Was A Sister Movement Of Fascism, And Today's Liberalism Is The Daughter Of Progressivism.

The Search For A Moral Equivalent Of War Continues To Define American Liberalism To This Day.

A Lot Of The Things That Trump Needs To Do To Be A Popular President Requires Annoying His Biggest Fans.

There Is No - Let Me Repeat - No Example In The Last Quarter-century Of A Large, Complex Economy That Has Been Successful With High Taxes.

If You're Uncertain When Life Begins, Why Not Give The Unborn The Benefit Of The Doubt And Oppose Abortion?

Those Who Say They Dislike Dogma, Or 'certainty', Tend To Be Liars, Hypocrites, Or Simply Wrong. What They Really Dislike Is The Dogma Of Those They Disagree With. A Society That Was Certain, Certain Beyond All Certainty, That Putting Its Citizens In Death Camps Was Wrong, Would Never Put People In Death Camps. Such Things Are Only Possible When You're Open To New Ideas.

Government Money Only Pays For The "liberties" The Government Thinks You Should Have, And Therefore It Can Determine How You Exercise Them. That Turns Liberties Into Privileges Dispensed At The Whim Of The State.

It Was In The 1960s That The Left Convinced Itself That There Is Something Fascistic About Patriotism And Something Perversely "patriotic" About Running Down America. Anti-americanism - A Stand-in For Hatred Of Western Civilization - Became The Stuff Of Sophisticates And Intellectuals As Never Before. Flag Burners Became The Truest "patriots" Because Dissent - Not Just From Partisan Politics, But The American Project Itself - Became The Highest Virtue.

In Many Respects Fascism Not Only Is Here But Has Been Here For Nearly A Century. For What We Call Liberalism--the Refurbished Edifice Of American Progressivism--is In Fact A Descendant And Manifestation Of Fascism.

And On Thursday, President Obama Seized The Opportunity Of The National Prayer Breakfast To Forthrightly Criticize The 'terrible Deeds' . . . Committed 'in The Name Of Christ.'.

But If The Choice Is A Cool President And 8 Or 10 Percent Unemployment In A Declining Economy And A Country That Seems To Be Going In The Wrong Direction And Structural Unemployment For Young People At 50 Percent, I'd Rather Have A Dorky President Who Fixed Those Problems.

The Problem Is I Think Howie Is Exactly Right, Is That Donald Trump Would Rather Be At The Center Of A Media Controversy In A Negative Way Than Allow The Limelight To Move To Hillary Clinton And Let Her Actually Take Heat In The Public - In A Public Arena. And It Just Sucks Up All Of The Oxygen.

We Are A Species That Must Try To Impose And Find Systems - Systems Of Thought, Ways Of Organizing And Categorizing Reality.

Liberals And Leftists Have Been Dismissing Inconvenient Facts By Attacking Motives For Generations. In The 1930s, '40s, And '50s, Soviet Spies And Abettors Attacked The Motives Of Their Accusers Because The Fact Of Their Guilt Was Undeniable. In The 1960s, Over A Thousand Psychiatrists Who'd Never Even Met Barry Goldwater Signed A Petition Saying The Gop Candidate Was Too Mentally Unstable To Be President.

Hypocrisy Is Bad, But It's Not The Worst Vice In The World. If I Declared “murder Is Wrong” And Then Killed Somebody, I Would Hope That The Top Count Against Me Would Be Homicide, Not Hypocrisy. Liberal Elites ' Particularly In Hollywood ' Believe That Hypocrisy Is The Gravest Sin In The World, Which Is Why They Advocate Their Own Lifestyles For The Entire World: Sleep With Whomever You Want, Listen To Your Own Instincts, Be True To Yourself, Blah, Blah, Blah. Our Fear Of Hypocrisy Is Forcing Us To Live In A World Where Gluttons Are Fine, So Long As They Champion Gluttony.

A Rising Economic Tide Is Bad For People Who Live Off Of The Poverty Of Others.

In Europe And America Alike, Voters Increasingly Recognize That The Benefits Of The Green Revolution Aren't Worth The Costs, Particularly When The Revolutionaries Don't Have A Clue What They're Doing.

I Think What We're Seeing On A Lot Of Parts Of The Right Is People Bending Their Positions And Their Principles On Account Of The Fact That Donald Trump Won.

I Like Vengeance As Much As The Next Guy, If The Next Guy Likes Vengeance A Whole Lot.

Republican Politics Have Been Off-kilter For Several Years Now Because A Large Segment Of The Conservative Base Does Not Look Back Fondly On The Bush Presidency.

Let's Treat Politicians Like Twinkies. They Have To Disclose Their Ingredients - I.e., Where Their Money Is From - But Beyond That, Let The Buyer Beware.

John Kerry Is A Sphincter. Okay, That's A Bit Juvenile.

And In The Minds Of Progressives You Are Free To Live Anyway You Want So Long As It's Progressive.

When You Treat Reprehensible And Ludicrous Arguments With Respect You Have Elevated The Reprehensible And Made The Ludicrous A Bit More Reasonable. Having A Serious Argument With A Nazi Makes The Horror Of The Holocaust A Debatable Point. Don't Wrestle In The Mud With Pigs. You Get Dirty And The Pig Likes It.

Everyone Understands That [democrat Senator Harry Reid] Is Deliberately Lying. The Man Reads His Lies From Prepared Texts. You Can't Read From A Script And Then Claim You Misspoke.

The Mainstream Perception That Conservatives Are Close-minded And Dogmatic While Liberals Are Open-minded And Free-thinking Has It Almost Exactly Backward. Liberal Dogma Is Settled: The Government Should Do Good, Where It Can, Whenever It Can. That Is President Obama's Idea Of Pragmatism And Bipartisanship: He's Open To All Ideas, From Either Side Of The Aisle, About How Best To Expand Government And Get The State More Involved In Our Lives.

I Think There Needs To Be A Meeting To Set An Agenda For More Meetings About Meetings.

The Truth Is France Has Been The Chief Western Advocate Of Normalizing Relations With Iraq - One Of Its Largest Trading Partners - For Years, Partly Because France Holds Billions In Ious From Iraq That Wouldn't Be Redeemable By A New Regime.

There's Nothing Within Science Per Se That Says Medical Researchers Must Not Experiment On Human Subjects; It Is The Imposition Of Ethical Dogma That Constrains The Scientist.

Not Reassuring When Weathermen Say 'today Will Be Terrible But Don't Worry It Won't Be As Terrible As Tomorrow Or Friday.

Obama Did Inherit A Deficit When He Came Into Office. Why This Fact Justifies Racking Up Vastly More Debt And Bigger Deficits Is A Logical Mystery.

I Am Just Mystified By These People Telling Me I Would Think Obama Was Doing A Great Job If His Skin Contained Less Melanin.

Joe Biden Says The Wall Street Crisis Is The Result Of George W. Bush's Tax Cuts, Which Makes As Much Sense As Blaming The Rising Price Of Fairy Dust. But As A Wise Man Once Asked, Who Gives A Rat's Patoot What Joe Biden Thinks?

Hollywood's Martyr-mythology Leaves Out The Fact That The Famed Hollywood Ten, For Example, Were In Fact Members Of The Communist Party, Which Advocated The Violent Overthrow Of The U.s. Government In Violation Of The Smith Act And Which Took Orders Directly From Moscow.

Today's Unions Are Less Mobbed-up Than Those Of Yesteryear To Be Sure, But They're Hardly Above Tactics That Would Be Considered Intimidating And Coercive.

Pragmatism Is The Disguise Progressive And Other Ideologues Do When They Want To Demonize Competing Ideologies.

If You Think Shrinking Government And Getting It Less Involved In Your Life Is A Hallmark Of Tyranny It Is Only Because You Are Either Grotesquely Ignorant Or Because You Subscribe To A Statist Ideology That Believes The Expansion Of The State Is The Expansion Of Liberty.

Champions Of Liberty Get Called Fascists By Champions Of Statism

The Premise Of My Book Is That Everyone Is A Bit Ideological To Some Extent. Everyone Comes From A Ideological Perspective.

Fascism Isn't A Libertarian Doctrine! It Just Isn't, Never Will Be And It Can't Be Cast As One.

...associational Ad Hominem Attacks Remain The Left's Favorite Rhetorical Strategy For Undermining Opponents.

Rhetorical Strategies

A Week After His State Of The Union Address, Political Observers Are Still Trying To Figure Out What President Obama's Game Is. That's Because Rhetorically And Substantively, He Seems To Be In Another World.

(i)t Is Simply Wrong To Confuse Cowardice With Appeasement. Cowardice Is A Failing Of Character. Appeasement Is A Failure Of Policy. Stalin Appeased Hitler When He Signed The Molotov-ribbentrop Pact. Stalin Was An Evil Character, To Be Sure. But Cowardice Really Isn't The First Word That Comes To Mind When Thinking Of Stalin ' That Word Is “sexy.” I'm Kidding, I'm Kidding.

In Crude Marxist Terms, Liberals Have A Theory Of Infallible Government That Is Constantly At War With The Reality Of Life.

I'd Like To Know Why Sociologists Can't Decide Whether Movie Sex And Violence Has Any Effect On Children, But There's A Universal Consensus That Even A Glimpse Of A Camel Will Force Children To Become Lifelong Smokers.

But You're Never Taught In Schools - We Don't Teach Anyone In Public Schools That Government Is The Problem. We Don't Teach Anyone In College That Government Is The Problem - Except Maybe A Handful Of Sort Of Unique, Conservative Schools. But Mainstream Media Never Talks As If Government Is The Problem.

The Problem With The United Nations Is That While Democracy Within Nations Is The Best Available Form Of Government, Democracy Among Nations Can Be A Moral Disaster - Especially If Some Nations Are Not Democracies.

Keep In Mind That Eric Alterman Is Media Critic For The Nation-a Hysterically Left-wing Magazine Dedicated To The Proposition That Corporate America, U.s. Foreign Policy And The Republican Party Are Criminal, Racist Or Both. The Simple Reality Is That, For Him, The Democratic Party Is Far Too Conservative.

Keep Hope Alive, Particularly If Hope Is The Name Of A Very Cute Puppy And Not Some Ill-defined Abstraction That Is In Fact Code For Big Government.

[c]ontemporary Liberalism Stands On A Foundation Of Assumptions And Ideas Integral To The Larger Fascist Movement.

And, Of Course, Liberals See No Problem With Using The Government To Impose Their Cultural Beliefs On Others; They Just Won't Admit That's What They're Doing.

Whenever A Republican Gets In Office, All Of A Sudden Progressives Realize That Federalism And State's Rights Aren't Necessarily Only About Defending Slavery Or Jim Crow. They're Actually About Maximizing Freedom.

The Founders Understood That Democracy Was Important, But If You Didn't Filter It Through A Republican System You'd Be Just As Likely To End Up With A Tyranny Of The Majority As You Would With A Healthy Society. Don't Worry, I Won't Quote The Federalist Papers, But Trust Me, It's In There.

(j)ust To Clarify: If You Go Into Every Situation Saying There's Absolutely Nothing Worth Fighting Over, You Will Inevitably End Up On A Cot Sleeping Next To A Guy Named Tiny, Bringing Him Breakfast In His Cell Every Morning, And Spending Your Afternoons Ironing His Boxers. Or, In The Case Of The French, You Might Spend Your Afternoon Rounding Up Jews To Send To Germany, But You Get The Point.

Yes, I Know Liberals Are More Empirical Because Jonathan Chait Says They Are, But My Empirical Studies Of Liberal Empiricism Keep Spitting Out Contradictory Findings.

The Progressive Notion Of The State As A Loving, Caring Parent Is Becoming A Bipartisan Affair.

Capitalism Is The Greatest System Ever Created For Alleviating General Human Misery, And Yet It Breeds Ingratitude.

The More You Socialize The Costs Of Personal Liberty, The More License You Give Others To Regulate It.

Conservatives Value Economic Liberty And Moral Security, While The Liberal Values Economic Security And Moral Liberty.

When I Started Criticizing Donald Trump When He Got More Popular On The Right, One Of The Most Things That I Discovered Was How Many People Were Mad At Me For Not Living Down To Their Expectations. There Are A Lot Of Pundits On The Right Who Think Their Job Is To Be A Cheerleader For Their Team. That Is Not My Job. My Job Is To Tell The Truth As I See It, And That Is Gotten A Lot Of People Angry.

You Know Those Navy Seals, They Weren't Democrats And Republicans. They Were Just Doing What Was Best For America. Wouldn't That Be A Great Country If All Of You Americans Were Just Like That? You Followed Orders, You Marched In Step And You Followed My Agenda.

The Gop Needs To Figure Out A Way To Become More Appealing To New Constituencies.

(t)he Most Important Reason American Leftists Love France Is That French Elites Say Bad Things About America. French Intellectuals Call Us Racist, Stupid, Imperialistic, Simplistic, Etc. ' And That Alone Is Proof Of Their Intellectualism. So Long As You Call America “racist,” You Could Add That An Enema Is As Good As A Toothbrush And Some Professor Of “communications Theory” Would Applaud.

If You’re Too Stupid To Understand That A Philosophy That Favors A Federally Structured Republic, With Numerous Restraints On The Scope And Power Of Government To Interfere With Individual Rights Or The Free Market, Is A Lot Different From An Ethnic-nationalist, Atheistic, And Socialist Program Of Genocide And International Aggression, You Should Use This Rule Of Thumb: If Someone Isn’t Advocating The Murder Of Millions Of People In Gas Chambers And A Global Reich For The White Man You Shouldn’t Assume He’s A Nazi And You Should Know It’s Pretty Damn Evil To Call Him One.

I Suppose In John Kerry's World Good Diplomacy Lets The Boys In The Bar Finish Raping The Girl For Fear Of Causing A Fuss. Okay, That Was Unfair.

I Would Also Say Barack Obama Has Spent Much, Much, Much, Much More Money Than The Republicans.

Governing Involves Choosing And Making Choices Between Competing Goods.

I Have A Simple Answer To Any American Patriot Who Claims That There Is No Conflict Between His Love Of Country And His Desire To Hitch Our Fate To The United Nations: “you're Mistaken.” And, Therefore, I'm Thinking Of Adding This Corollary To My General Rule Of Patriotism: The More Intellectually Consistent And Pro-u.n. You Are, The Less Patriotic You Are Likely To Be. I Haven't Thought That All The Way Through, But It Seems Right To Me.

By This Point, It Was Clear She Wasn't Interested In Continuing The Relationship. What Publication On Earth Would Continue A Relationship With A Writer Who Would Refuse To Discuss Her Work With Her Editors? What Publication Would Continue To Publish A Writer Who Attacked It On Tv? What Publication Would Continue To Publish A Writer Who Lied About It - On Tv And To A Washington Post Reporter? ... It's True: Ann Is Fearless, In Person And In Her Writing. But Fearlessness Isn't An Excuse For Crappy Writing Or Crappier Behavior.

[there] Is Something Fundamentally Unpatriotic In The Yearning To Fundamentally Transform Your Country.

Free Trade Has Been Proven, Time And Again, As A Reliable Path To Economic Development. It Pushes The Public And Private Sectors Alike Toward Greater Accountability And Transparency. It Lifts People Out Of Poverty, And While It Can Force Unsettling Changes On A Society, Those Changes Prove To Be Worthwhile In A Very Short Time.

We’re All Born Idiots, And We Only Get Over That Condition As We Get Less Young.

Our Fear Of Hypocrisy Is Forcing Us To Live In A World Where Gluttons Are Fine, So Long As They Champion Gluttony.

When I See Hipsters Wearing Mao Hats Or Lenin T-shirts, I'm Grateful. It's Like Truth-in-labeling. For Now I Know You Are: Woefully Ignorant, Morally Stunted, Purposively Asinine, Or All Three.

Nothing Drives Your Opponents More Crazy Than Being Utterly Reasonable. And Nothing Makes Demonizing Or Delegitimizing Your Opponents Easier Than Letting Them Shriek Unreasonable Things For You. The Republicans Need To Get Back To Being The Party That Elicits Unreasonable Shrieking From Their Opponents. Not The Other Way Around.

As A Broad Generalization, Big Businesses Have No Moral Objections To Being Whores. Getting Into Bed With Uncle Sam Is All A Question Of Price, Not Principle.

When Activists Say We Need To Move Past The Partisan Divide, What They Mean Is: Shut Up And Get With My Program. Have You Ever Heard Anyone Say, "we Need To Get Past All Of This Partisan Squabbling And Name-calling. That's Why I'm Going To Abandon All My Objections And Agree With You"?

Social Distinctions Tend To Matter Only At Your Own Level And Above.

Are You A Producer Or A Looter? If Diversity Were Always And Everywhere Good We Would Be Clamoring For More Midgets In The Nba.

Dissent Is Morally Neutral. You Can Correctly Call Yourself A Dissident Because You Like To Kick Puppies, But At The End Of The Day, You're Just A Jerk Who Likes To Kick Puppies.

The End Of The Day

One Of The Overriding Points Of Liberal Fascism Is That All Of The Totalitarian "isms" Of The Left Commit The Fallacy Of The Category Error. They All Want The State To Be Something It Cannot Be. They Passionately Believe The Government Can Love You, That The State Can Be Your God Or Your Church Or Your Tribe Or Your Parent Or Your Village Or All Of These Things At Once. Conservatives Occasionally Make This Mistake, Libertarians Never Do, Liberals Almost Always Do.

Simply Because The Nanny-state Wants To Hug You Doesn't Mean It's Not Tyrannical If You Don't Want To Be Hugged.

[a] Country Without A Word To Describe Its Love For What Is Best Within It Is A Country Ill-equipped To Defend What Is Best Within It.

We Are All Descended From Cavemen Who Broke The Skulls Of Their Enemies With Rocks For Fun Or Profit. But That Hardly Mitigates The Crimes Of A Man Who Does The Same Thing Today. I See No Problem Judging The Behavior Of The Islamic State And Its Apologists From The Vantage Point Of The West's High Horse, Because We've Earned The Right To Sit In That Saddle.

On Tuesday, The So-called Islamic State Released A Slickly Produced Video Showing A Jordanian Pilot Being Burned Alive In A Steel Cage. On Wednesday, The United Nations Issued A Report Detailing Various 'mass Executions Of Boys, As Well As Reports Of Beheadings, Crucifixions Of Children, And Burying Children Alive' At The Hands Of The Islamic State.

Historians Write Favorably, You Know, For Example, About Stalin Because He Was Doing Big Things.

As We All Know, The Most Effective Lies Are The Ones Sprinkled With The Most Actual Truths.

If Power Made One Evil, Then God Would Be The Devil.

If We Say That Anyone Who 'moralizes' Must Be Perfect Morally Then We Are In Effect Saying No One Can Moralize.

Getting The Support Of Syria Is The Moral Equivalent Of Winning The Klan's Endorsement - It Might Be Useful But It Doesn't Necessarily Speak Well Of You.

If There Is Ever A Fascist Takeover In America, It Will Come Not In The Form Of Storm Troopers Kicking Down Doors But With Lawyers And Social Workers Saying. "i'm From The Government And I'm Here To Help.

The Logical Upshot Of Liberalism's Hatred Of Hypocrisy Is That It Is Better For The Liar To Champion Lying, The Glutton To Advocate Gluttony, The Adulterer To Celebrate Adultery, Than For Someone To Preach The Right Thing If He Himself Occasionally Does The Wrong Thing. Better To Let Your Failings Define You And Be Happy About It, Than To Let Your Ideals Define You But Then Fall Short Of Them, For That Opens You Up To The Charge Of Hypocrisy.

If You Write For The Critics, Only The Critics Will Read You.

There Was No Intellectual Movement In American History Called Social Darwinism. The People Who Were Supposedly The Leaders Of The Social Darwinist Movement Never Embraced Something Called Social Darwinism. It Didn't Exist.

The Mars Polar Lander Cost The Average American The Price Of Half A Cheeseburger. A Human Lander Would Cost The Average American More - Perhaps Even Ten Cheeseburgers! So Be It. That Is No Great Sacrifice.

Look, I Think Liberals Have Reasonable Gripes With Fox News. It Does Lean To The Right, Primarily In Its Opinion Programming But Also In Its Story Selection (which Is Fine By Me) And Elsewhere. But It's Worth Remembering That Fox Is Less A Bastion Of Ideological Conservatism And More A Populist, Tabloidy Network.

Why Is It Fair Game To Question Conservatives' Love Or Loyalty To Children Or To Their Fellow Man, But Beyond The Pale To Question Liberals' Love Of Country?

Cultures Grow On The Vine Of Tradition.

Americans Are Very Smart About The Things They Care About, And Ignorant About The Things They Don't.

Three Explanations Dominate Speculation About What Obama Is Up To. The First Is That He's Trying To Lay The Groundwork For His Successor, Presumptive Nominee Hillary Clinton. The Second Is That He's Trying To Pad His Legacy. The Third Is That He's Trying To 'troll' Or Bait The Gop Into Debating His Agenda Rather Than Pursuing Its Own. All Are Plausible, And None Necessarily Contradicts The Others.

Bill Maher Is Anything But An Impartial Host. He Sucks Up To Hollywood Liberals Because A) He Needs To Get Them Back On The Show, B) He Usually Agrees With Them, And C) They Tend To Be Wildly Ignorant.

(i)f France's Righteous Bloviating Against War Makes Them Your Dashboard Saint Of International Integrity, It's Either Because You Are Sand-poundingly Ignorant Of How The World Works Or It's Because You Think France's Self-interest Is More Important Than America's. If The Former Applies To You, Read A Book. If It's The Latter, Maybe You Should Move There Along With Alec Baldwin, Robert Altman, And The Rest Of The Crowd Who Promised To Leave A Long Time Ago. But Whatever You Do, Don't Call France's Position Principled, Because That Just Insults Us Both.

[american] Liberalism Today Sees No Realm Of Human Life That Is Beyond Political Significance, From What You Eat To What You Smoke To What You Say.

Progressivism, Liberalism, Or Whatever You Want To Call It Has Become An Ideology Of Power. So Long As Liberals Hold It, Principles Don't Matter.

Someone Once Noted That A 'gaffe' In Washington Is When A Politician Accidentally Tells The Truth.

Telling The Truth

The Suggestion That Liberals Aren't Moralizers Is So Preposterous It Makes It Hard For Me To Take Any Of Them Seriously When They Wax Indignant About "moralizers." Almost Every Day, They Tell Us What Is Moral Or Immoral To Think And To Say About Race, Taxes, Abortion - You Name It. They Explain It Would Be Immoral For Me To Spend More Of My Own Money On My Own Children When That Money Could Be Spent By Government On Other People's Children. In Short, They Think Moralizing Is Fine. They Just Want To Have A Monopoly On The Franchise.

Of Course, It's A Mystery To Me Why Any American Who Can't Be Bothered To Pay Attention To Politics Unless Pamela Anderson Is Discussing It Should Be Welcome In That Conversation.

Science Is Wonderful At Explaining What Science Is Wonderful At Explaining, But Beyond That It Tends To Look For Its Car Keys Where The Light Is Good.

America's Political System Used To Be About The Pursuit Of Happiness. Now More And More Of Us Want To Stop Chasing It And Have It Delivered.

Pursuit Of Happiness

But This Is The Kind Of Ass-clownery That Stems From The Fact That All Philosophy Looks Weird When You Don't Have One.

Our Country, If You Read The 'federalist Papers,' Is About Disagreement. It's About Pitting Faction Against Faction, Divided Government, Checks And Balances. The Hero In American Political Tradition Is The Man Who Stands Up To The Mob - Not The Mob Itself.

In The Weeks Prior To The War To Liberate Afghanistan, A Good Friend Of Mine Would Ask Me Almost Every Day, “why Aren't We Killing People Yet?” And I Never Had A Good Answer For Him. Because One Of The Most Important And Vital Things The United States Could Do After 9/11 Was To Kill People. Call It A “forceful Response,” “decisive Action” ' Whatever. Those Are All Nice Euphemisms For Killing People. And The World Is A Better Place Because America Saw The Necessity Of Putting Steel Beneath The Velvet Of Those Euphemisms.

You Can See Why The Marxist Left Would Resist The Idea That Hitler Was A Revolutionary. Because If He Was, Then Either Hitler Was A Force For Good, Or Revolutions Can Be Bad.

Liberals Are Nazis, And Nazis Are Liberals. And If You Don't Agree With Me, You're A Nazi Too.

But There's A Fourth Interpretation: Obama Can't Leave His Comfort Zone. No President Since Woodrow Wilson Has Been As Enamored Of Abstract Ideas Or More Sure That Disagreement With Him Is Proof Of Ignorance, Bad Faith Or Dogmatism. As A Candidate, He Insisted His Real Opponent Was 'cynicism,' And In His Address Last Week, He Returned To This Trite Formulation, Insisting Again He Was Bravely Battling The Cynics.

If You Spend Any Time In Washington You'll Find Nerds. What Happens Is Most Of Them Sublimate Their Fixations With Comics, Or Baseball Cards, Or 1960s British Comedies To Policy Minutiae And Political Arcana. But, Like Christians In Ancient Rome, You Can Still Spot Them If You Know The Signals.

Facts Are Mere Speed Bumps On The Road To Lefty Moral Outrage.

Forests Are Breaking Out All Over America. New England Has More Forests Since The Civil War. In 1880, New York State Was Only 25 Percent Forested. Today It Is More Than 66 Percent. In 1850, Vermont Was Only 35 Percent Forested. Now It's 76 Percent Forested And Rising. In The South, More Land Is Covered By Forest Than At Any Time In The Last Century. In 1936 A Study Found That 80 Percent Of Piedmont Georgia Was Without Trees. Today Nearly 70 Percent Of The State Is Forested. In The Last Decade Alone, America Has Added More Than 10 Million Acres Of Forestland.

Seriously, In 2008 We Elected A Community Organizer, State Senator, College Instructor First Term Senator Over A Guy Who Spent Five Years In A Vietnamese Prison. And Now He's Lecturing Us About How America's Gone "soft"? Really?

The White Male Is The Jew Of Liberal Fascism.

The Government Cannot Love You, And Any Politics That Works On A Different Assumption Is Destined For No Good.

Christian Socialism”). This Is A Difficult Concept For Modern Liberals To Grasp Because They Are Used To Thinking Of The Progressives As The People Who Cleaned Up The Food Supply, Pushed Through The Eight Hour Workday, And Ended Child Labor. But Liberals Often Forget That The Progressives Were Imperialists, At Home And Abroad. They Were The Authors Of Prohibition, The Palmer Raids, Eugenics, Loyalty Oaths, And, In Its Modern Incarnation, What Many Call “state Capitalism.

One Of The Things That Really Drove Me Crazy Was The Way In Which College Kids, In Particular, Are Educated To Think That Ideology Is Dangerous And Bad.

[progressives] Think The Constitution Is Like Felix The Cat's Magic Bag: Look In There Long Enough And Hard Enough, And You Can Find Anything.

I Don't Think Twice About Picking Up My Dog's Poop, But If Another Dog's Poop Is Next To It, I Think, 'eww, Dog Poop!

I've Just Returned From My Daughter's Halloween Parade At Grade School. She Was Supergirl - And She Was Perfect. And, Even Better, She Still Considers Boys To Be Made Of Kryptonite.

Public Unions Are The Country's Foremost Advocates For Increased Taxes At All Levels Of Government.

The Decision [to Create A Theme Park Called "euroworld"] Was Made By The Eu Countries In Response To Their Collective Realization That No One In Europe Has Had An Innovative Idea In Well Over A Century.

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