Topic: Liberal Fascism
It's not a bridge, a dam, a pipeline or a skyscraper that makes a progressive's pulse race. It's a rule, a regulation, a restraining order…
Posted by tmg110
at 3:18 PM EDT
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It's not a bridge, a dam, a pipeline or a skyscraper that makes a progressive's pulse race. It's a rule, a regulation, a restraining order…
Proponents of Obamacare (and of government-run healthcare systems generally) have trouble grasping a point that is really, when you think about it, quite elementary: Health insurance is not the same thing as healthcare. Ah, but reality is an insistent teacher:
Is America running out of doctors?
ObamaCare is set to expand the number of insured Americans, but an apparent shortage of doctors could make it difficult to treat them all
No kidding? The truth is that Obamacare doesn’t add one single doctor, nurse, hospital, clinic, surgical suite, bottle of aspirin or bedpan to the amalgam of goods and services that goes by the name of healthcare. It operates on the tacit assumption that since healthcare is a “right,” the supply of it is practically unlimited. Finite supply, unlimited demand: “Here’s another fine mess you’ve gotten me unto,” as Ollie said to Stan.
I happened to mention Ayn Rand’s elephantine magus opus, Atlas Shrugged, in an earlier post and, as often happens, this throwaway reference trigged a chain of thought.
Commenting on the book, I said something to the effect that it was an example of a good idea ruined by wretched excess. That Rand had a point about the dismissive and contemptuous attitude of the anointed political and cultural elites toward society’s productive, innovative wealth creators is undeniable. And Barack Obama’s “You didn’t build that gaffe” illustrated that point perfectly. The passage of which that line formed a part would seem quite natural, coming from one of the “looters” of Atlas Shrugged. Indeed, the President himself would be very serviceable as a Randian villain. And perhaps the economy’s failure to produce results at Obama’s behest is the result of a strike, albeit not a conscious, deliberate strike, on the part of America's productive, creative minority.
I don’t much care for Ayn Rand and I loathe Atlas Shrugged, but her doorstopper novel embodied a genuine prophecy.
A preview of America’s future under the second Obama Administration (in the event that, heaven forefend, it comes to pass):
On the front door of the San Bernardino city hall is a sign that reads: “Out of Order.” Broke city, broken door: There’s a certain pleasing symmetry in the fact that the San Bernardino city council meets behind a door that, like the city government itself, does not work and is in need of replacement. On this particular evening in late July, the council has met to make public what everybody already knows: Intellectually bankrupt, morally bankrupt — the city is under criminal investigation for sundry financial shenanigans — San Bernardino is above all old-fashioned bankrupt bankrupt, a pitiful penniless pauper that cannot even afford a cup of coffee: Seriously—the coffee guy wants cash up front now and has stopped serving the municipal office building until the city makes good on its latte liabilities.
That’s Kevin Williamson, reporting from the late, great state of California for National Review. His sketch of the state’s fiscal problems presents an almost unmitigated tale of woe. And he makes this provocative observation:
California is a state with Hollywood at one end and Silicon Valley at the other, and driving along Route 1 between the two, you’d think its highways did nothing but connect money with money and success with success: From San Francisco’s financial district down to Big Sur, from Beverly Hills to the solidly middle-class precincts of Orange County, California still is home to some of the richest, most productive, most energetic, and most creative people in the world… But there’s another route between Los Angeles and San Francisco, too, through the blasted desert and agricultural backcountry. You don’t have to get very far out of Los Angeles before you’re in the world of “PIGS FOR SALE” signs, low-rent evangelical radio, and those millions of illegal aliens that Californians spend their time studiously not talking about… It is sobering how empty, run-down, and poor much of interior California is. Bakersfield and environs is enough to make you wonder why the Joads even bothered: Tulsa is Paris by comparison.
Those of us who live elsewhere tend to forget how large and diverse the Golden State really is. We think of LA/Hollywood, Silicon Valley, San Francisco, Napa—never the poverty-stricken interior to which Williamson alludes. It seems almost Wellsian—the Eloi and the Morlocks. And I can well believe that unless fiscal sanity is made to prevail in Washington, DC, and that quickly, California’s increasingly dystopian present will become America’s future.
Is Nancy Pelosi an idiot or a liar? The two charges are not mutually exclusive, of course, but if you only want to choose one, she really makes it tough for you. From the Minority Leader's recent interview with Al Hunt:
[T]he fact is that President Obama has been the strongest person in terms of sanctions on Iran, which is important to Israel. He’s been the strongest person on whether it’s Iron Dome, David’s Sling, any of these weapons systems and initiatives that relate to Israel. He has been there over and over again.
These are mostly arguable points, but what’s up with that last sentence? “He has been there over and over again”? Pelosi is claiming that Obama has visited Israel repeatedly when in fact he hasn’t travelled there even once.
So either Pelosi is flat-out lying in the hope that American Jews (whom she condescendingly describes as “smart people”) won’t realize that Obama hasn’t been to Israel, or she’s dumber than a box of rocks. Choose one—oh, all right, all right, choose both!
Hey, guess what? If you criticize Barack Obama’s “You didn’t build that” remark—you’re a racist!
That’s Jonathan Chait’s take on Obama’s gaffe and the Romney campaign’s response to it. Because, you see, when Obama spoke those fatal words, he was angry and speaking in “black dialect.” So anyone who criticizes it is playing to the white middle classes suspicion that Obama and the Democrats want to shower money on lazy black people. Seriously, Chait actually included this prize piece of idiocy in a blog post for New York magazine.
And his evidence? Well, Chait quotes the Wall Street Journal’s Kimberly Strassel, though to what end is unclear, since the point Strassel makes in her column has nothing to do with race. But the details don’t really matter, because you understand what’s really going on here, right? It was inevitable at some point that desperate libs and lefties would default to their standard-issue charge of racism. It’s what they’ve been doing in the wake of every Obama gaffe, bumble and stumble from 2009 to the present day.
Chait also charges that the Romney campaign is “blatantly lying” about the substance of Obama’s disastrous speech—a weak defense since, as I pointed out in an earlier post, the full context makes the President look even worse. That Chait, like Obama, can’t see that doesn’t really surprise me. As the French say, a fool can always find a bigger fool to admire him.
So I became curious about the content of the statement made by Chick-Fil-A CEO Dan Cathy and why it sparked so much outrage among progressives. Surely, I told myself, there must have been some sort of offensive or at least insensitive reference to gays or same-sex marriage. So I looked it up. And here, courtesy of NRO, are the sixty-one words that launched a million denunciations:
“We are very much supportive of the family—the biblical definition of the family unit. We are a family-owned business, a family-led business, and we are married to our first wives. We know that it might not be popular with everyone, but thank the Lord, we live in a country where we can share our values and operate on biblical principles.”
Nary a reference, you will note, to gays or same-sex marriage! Well, as Parsons said to Winston Smith, “Thoughtcrime is a dreadful thing, old man. It's insidious. It can get hold of you without your even knowing it.”
Indeed.
An update on Mayor Rahm Emmanuel’s definition of “Chicago values.” It seems that they not only encompass the vile anti-Semitism of Minister Louis Farrakhan, but that they’re flexible enough to overlook the fact that Farrakhan, like the CEO of Chick-Fil-A, is an opponent of same-sex marriage. In fact, when President Obama came out in favor of marriage rights for gay people, Farrakhan had this to say:
Males coming to males with lust in their hearts as they should to a female. Now don't you dare say Farrakhan was preaching hate, he's homophobic. I'm not afraid of my brothers and sisters or others who may be practicing what God condemned in the days of Lot. That's not our job, to be hateful of our people. Our job is to call us to sanity. Our job is call the people to righteous conduct.
Farrakhan then went on to mock Obama for being characterized as America's "first gay president" by Newsweek.
So there you have it: Chicago Values in the Age of Emmanuel. Way to look like a two-faced jerk, Rahm.
He passed away in June at the great old age of 91—and ever since hearing the news I’ve been pondering what, if anything, I should say about Ray Bradbury. For there’s a problem: I’ve never thought much of his best-known book, Fahrenheit 451.
Need I add that mine is a minority opinion? But consider:
It was a special pleasure to see things eaten, to see things blackened and changed. With the brass nozzle in his fists, with this great python spitting its venomous kerosene upon the world, the blood pounded in his head, and his hands were the hands of some amazing conductor playing all the symphonies of blazing and burning to bring down the tatters and charcoal ruins of history. With his symbolic helmet numbered 451 on his stolid head, and his eyes all orange flame with the thought of what came next, he flicked the igniter and the house jumped up in a gorging fire that burned the evening sky red and yellow and black. He strode in a swarm of fireflies. He wanted above all, like the old joke, to shove a marshmallow on a stick in the furnace, while the flapping pigeon-winged books died on the porch and lawn of the house. While the books went up in sparkling whirls and blew away on a wind turned dark with burning.
This is the first full paragraph of Fahrenheit 451, coming immediately after the novel’s stand-alone opening line: “It was a pleasure to burn.” That first line, by the way, is great—but oh, how the writing goes downhill from there! Bradbury knew how to use words; I give him that. The passage I’ve quoted, however, is an exercise in wretched excess. Take, for example, “his symbolic helmet numbered 451 on his stolid head.” Even at first glace it’s clear that there’s no real need for either “symbolic” or “stolid.” “He strode in a swarm of fireflies” is nice, but then comes “He wanted above all, like the old joke, to shove a marshmallow on a stick in the furnace, while the flapping pigeon-winged books died on the porch and lawn of the house.” Huh?
All right, maybe it’s just me. But I found Fahrenheit 451 to be a dismal slog of a read, mostly because Bradbury’s style is so over the top. Like another literary exercise in wretched excess, Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged, his supposed masterpiece takes a good idea and buries it in a torrent of words. The praise that Fahrenheit 451 has attracted has more to do, I think, with its pretentions to social commentary than with literary merit. How many impressionable young minds have been awakened to the Dangers of Censorship (capitals seem mandatory in the context) by Bradbury’s cautionary tale? Probably far too many.
Trashing Fahrenheit 451 may seem like a strange way of commemorating such a celebrated writer, one whose career began in the fabled days of the pulps. (Bradbury made his first professional sale in 1942.) Well, there’s at least one swing and a miss in every literary career, and as far as I’m concerned Fahrenheit 451 was Bradbury’s. But considering his total output, the overall quality of Bradbury's writing is actually quite high. And there are so many gems, particularly among the short stories! To name in no particular order just a few of my favorites: “A Sound of Thunder,” “And the Moon Be Still as Bright,” “The Veldt,” “Zero Hour,” “Kaleidoscope.”
“And the Moon Be Still as Bright,” incidentally, forms part of another widely praised Bradbury masterpiece, The Martian Chronicles. And this one, I agree, is a masterpiece. When the classics of science fiction are cited, it’s seldom absent from the list. I believe, in fact, that The Martian Chronicles is one of the classics of twentieth-century American literature. But that claim raises a question: Just what kind of writer was Ray Bradbury? For if you look over his whole body of work, to call him an SF writer seems…not wrong, precisely, but off the beam. I’ll explain what I mean by that in my next post.
The world according to Mayor Rahm Emmanuel:
Chick-Fil-A = Not Chicago values.
Minister Louis Farrakahn = Chicago values.
