- Second Amendment image du jour.
- Children.
- The real heart of the “you didn’t build that” kerfuffle.
- Obama’s enemies list as seen by Ayn Rand.
- Can you say “Witch Hunt”?
- This tomato isn’t rotten enough to crush yet.
“Cleaning with kids in the house is like brushing your teeth while eating Oreos.” (Encountered by Mrs. Tipsy on Pinterest, as was #1.)
As often is the case, the Wall Street Journal’s Peggy Noonan gets to the heart of the matter, the matter in this case being the “you didn’t build that” quip:
The president seemed to me to be confusing a poor argument—he implied we owe our wealth and growth as a nation to government programs—with a good one, that nobody achieves success alone. This is true: Nobody proceeds unhelped through life, everyone who’s achieved something got some encouragement from a neighbor or a teacher or a coach.
But Mr. Obama makes this point mischievously. He aims his argument at his political opponents—Republicans, Romney supporters. Yet many of them—most, probably—are involved one way or another with churches, synagogues, civic groups and professional organizations whose sole purpose is to provide assistance and encouragement to those who are ignored and disadvantaged. Conservatism doesn’t mean “do it alone.” God made us as social animals and asks us to help each other.
Mr. Obama was trying to conflate a nice thought—we must help each other—with a partisan and ideological one, that government has and needs more of a role in creating personal success. He did not do it well because his approach was, as it often is, accusatory and vaguely manipulative.
Meanwhile, rank and file barbarians pull stuff like a black-eyed Obama punching bag at a Delaware County, Indiana Fair GOP booth.
Not that the Obama camp is any classier, mind you, as Frank VanderSloot, an Idaho businessman, found after he contributed heavily to a group supporting Mitt Romney. No doubt it’s just a coincidence that investigators descended on him and his wife at that point.
If they dig long enough, they’ll probably find something. Maybe a Lacey Act violation, like the one suspected at Gibson Guitar (ignore the stupid headline about “criminalizing capitalism”).
On this one, Ayn Rand may have the angle instead of Peggy Noonan:
Did you really think that we want those laws observed? . . . We want them broken . . . . There’s no way to rule innocent men. The only power any government has is to crack down on criminals. Well, when there aren’t enough criminals one makes them. One declares so many things to be a crime that it becomes impossible to live without breaking laws. Who wants a nation of law-abiding citizens? What’s there in that for anyone? But just pass the kind of laws that can neither be observed nor enforced nor objectively interpreted — and you create a nation of lawbreakers — and then you cash in on guilt.
Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged. (Blanket endorsement of the author not implied)
I’ve only eaten at Chick-Fil-A about two times. This seems like a propitious time to, oh, maybe double that in the next week or two.
As I said yesterday, I expect opponents of the employer mandate from HHS to win on RFRA grounds, but several courts so far have held, essentially, that the regulation is still a work in process and no lawsuit is ripe until it’s final.
Fair enough by normal legal standards, and it’s hard to convince me that normal legal standards should be tossed aside willy-nilly. That way lies anarchy.
We’ll see.
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Tipsy Teetotaler ن 