Bookworm Room

I got the latest Commentary Magazine in the mail yesterday, so that’s what I’m reading today.  What are you reading today?

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For conservatives and libertarians, the movie icons might be High Noon or True Grit.  For Liberals, the defining anthem is John Lennon’s “Imagine“. Why is there such a fundamental gulf between ourselves and Liberals, to the point where we find ourselves simply talking past each other? Can this gulf ever be bridged? I came across [...]

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The core problem, which this video illustrates, is that the government forces public sector employees to pay dues to public sector unions, that then use those dues to buy elections, to place into power politicians who raise taxes to pay ever higher government salaries and pensions.  This has nothing to do with fairness, and everything [...]

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This is a lovely matched set, because I know the New York Times editors would be horrified to realize that they’ve perfectly proved Bill Whittle’s point.  First, watch Bill Whittle, who is about 90% right.  (What he misses, I think, is that while consumerism is diffused amongst individuals, manufacturing, to be cost effective, still has [...]

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Mark Steyn harmonizes with my thoughts about liberal wars and multiculturalism, and Andy McCarthy gives an in-depth, erudite analysis of something I’ve also pointed out before:  the totalitarian statism that ties together the Left and radical Islam.

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Mark Steyn took a long break from writing, and I really missed him terribly.  Why?  Because he wrote things like this, as part of a larger essay about the Kosovan who killed to U.S. Airmen in Frankfurt, Germany: Remember Kosovo? Me neither. But it was big at the time, launched by Bill Clinton in the [...]

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Sorry for the silence today.  Not long after I put up my first, short post, I got a call from a client, and have spent the rest of the day working.  I didn’t even get the chance to recommend to all of you that you check out this week’s Watcher’s Council winners.  As to that, [...]

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Bradley Manning got into some unknown type of dispute with his prison guards and ended up having to sleep in the buff for seven hours!!!  Are you outraged?  Or, like me, are you giggling at the fact that this story actually made the news? The lawyer for an Army private suspected of giving classified material [...]

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Caroline Glick is the Andrew Breitbart of Israel, since it was she who founded Latma, the group that uses comic skits and music to lambaste Israel haters.  As an Abba fan, I especially enjoyed this one: I’m also becoming a really big fan of the guy doing the singing.  He’s one of the main Latma [...]

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Forty-one years too late, but it’s finally happening: Harvard University is welcoming the Reserve Officer Training Corps program back to campus this week, 41 years after banishing it amid dissent over the Vietnam War. The Cambridge, Mass., school’s change in policy follows the decision by Congress in December to repeal the military ban on gays [...]

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As you all know, I’m going to blog come Hell or high water . . . but it would still be very nice to earn some money for all the effort I expend.   I’ve now had a small money-making opportunity come my way. A friend of mine works for an internet travel site.  (It’s called [...]

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As always, my brain is expanding with every word I read from this week’s Watcher’s Council nominations: Council Submissions The Noisy Room – So, What is the Going Price for a Soul Nowadays? Rhymes With Right – The OTHER Problems With Public Sector Unions Simply Jews – Moammar Gadhafi and his potential heirs Joshuapundit -Schooling [...]

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On the “real me” facebook, a “joke” is making the rounds: ‎”A public union employee, a tea party activist, and a CEO are sitting at a table with a plate of a dozen cookies in the middle of it. The CEO takes 11 of the cookies, turns to the tea partier and says, ‘Watch out [...]

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Several friends sent me links to a story about a “sex ed” class at Northwestern University.  I was all set to write a post about the decline of Western standards, and the travesty that sees parents paying hundreds of thousands of dollars to send their kids to schools that do this kind of thing on [...]

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Mr. Bookworm loves Jon Stewart.  Most of his political views are shaped by Jon Stewart, except for those that get a helping hand from the New York Times.  I therefore ending up watching more Jon Stewart than I like.  What I’ve noticed about Stewart’s coverage on Wisconsin is that it’s very narrow in focus.  It [...]

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I don’t normally look to the U.K. Guardian for humor, but this time, the Guardian has hit one right out of the park.  If you go here, you can find a quiz that has you trying to figure out whether Gaddafi or Sheen uttered such unforgettable lines as “I have defeated this earthworm with my [...]

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Paul Krugman has a bully pulpit in the New York Times.  Its numbers may be declining under Pinch’s overlordship, but it still remains “the paper of record” to a lot of people with their hands in or near the power trough.  Paul Krugman’s readers respect him because (a) he holds their elitist Left outlook and [...]

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What we see in Madison, Cairo and Tripoli today is a glimpse of the new information-based age in its birth pangs. Bill Whittle of Pajamas Media provides a helpful view of progressivism in its historical perspective. Basically, he observes, the “Progressive age” is coming to its logical end game as the new age dawns. In [...]

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My condolences to the family and friends of the two airmen killed in Germany.  And my best wishes for a safe and speedy recovery for the two airmen who are seriously wounded.  And a plague and a pox on the media which tries so desperately to hide that this was not a random crazy man, [...]

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England’s Bethlem Royal Hospital, founded in the 13th Century as part of a convent, eventually transformed itself into the world’s first facility dedicated to the mentally ill.  By the 16th Century, when it housed only the mentally ill, it was famous for the cruelty with which those patients were treated.  The word “bedlam,” which describes [...]

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Read this.  Then, if you’re moved to do so, donate to this.

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Gaddafi is not going gently into the good night.  With the bitter end staring him in the face, he’s bombing his own countrymen and threatening to kill them by the thousands and tens of thousands if they don’t leave him his throne.  In his honor, I reprint my Passover post from last year, one I [...]

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Fascinating. In our great Western civilization, we’ve had Feudalist, Mercantilist, Capitalist, Marxist, Keynesian, Austrian School and Monetarist Economics and, now (drum roll)…Noodlesian economics. Here is a wonderfully entertaining summary on Noodlesian economics, as explained by earnest young minds full of mush through the dark prisms of a moronic convergence. This, my friends, is the future [...]

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In connection with the British judges’ decision barring as foster parents people who disapprove of homosexuality, I posited that making gay marriage a Constitutionally protected civil right could expose conservative faiths to lawsuits.  Many had a hard time envisioning this, but legal expert Richard Epstein had exactly the same thought: To this day there are [...]

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One of my take-away images from reading George Orwell’s 1984 is Winston Smith’s job:  he destroys any historic evidence that conflicts with Big Brother’s current agenda.  As with all things Left, George Orwell knew exactly what he was talking about.  The Left likes to re-write history.  Its misfortune is that it hasn’t yet created a [...]

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