Bookworm Room

My post caption is an exaggeration, but what’s frightening is that it’s only a slight exaggeration, as a government committee really does advise banning meat as part of its push to reduce greenhouse gases.  Right now, it advices using government manipulation to ban these products, but you just know brute force will soon follow: Wholesale [...]

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A couple of weeks ago, I ranted about the way bureaucracies are relentless in pursuit of some imaginary perfection.  My focus was health care, but I noted that bureaucracies will always keep going, trying to nail every detail down, so much so that life becomes impossible.  Britain perfectly proves my point about bureaucracies: Local government [...]

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The British government has proposed stealth communism:  all paychecks go to the government first, which then doles out to the wage earner whatever amount the government feels is the wage earner’s due.  Think about it.  As Pat Sajak wrote yesterday, withholding is bad enough, because it deprives the worker of a sense of ownership over [...]

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When I lived in England many, many moons ago, I met an English student who had spent the previous summer working, very, very hard, at the local zoo.  The highlight of his work day was driving around the little kiddy train, and even that wasn’t much fun.  He spent the rest of the time mucking [...]

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Several years ago, my family and I visited Pompeii, which is one of the most wondrous tourist destinations in the world.  To maximize our experience, we hired a highly recommended guide who walked us over the grounds, explaining everything before us.  This guide’s particular passion was plumbing.  He had no words for the wonders of [...]

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In 1931, Nancy Langhorne Astor’s son Robert Gould Shaw III was arrested for committing a homosexual act (in a park, I believe).  This was a continuation of a long-standing British public policy of prosecuting “sodomists.”  Arguably the most famous prosecution was that against Oscar Wilde, for public indecency.  The trial, scandal and imprisonment destroyed the [...]

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If you want to see what modern socialism looks like, look no further than Britain.  I cannot urge you strongly enough to read this article.  If it is the only thing you read this week, read this article.  Because I read the British papers daily, I can attest to the truth of every fact stated [...]

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England is not one of my favorite places anymore, because of the raging antisemitism that characterizes her politics and her street.  Nevertheless, she is our ally and has been our staunch ally for more than a century.  For Obama to abandon her over the Falklands is disgusting.  At Power Line, in a few words, John [...]

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The British, who represent what America will be in 20 years if Obama-stuff continues unchecked, are being offered a way out.  Daniel Hannan, the brilliant British conservative speaker, is hosting a Tea Party.  Here are details.  So far, fewer than 100 people are scheduled to show but that doesn’t mean more won’t show, nor does [...]

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A few days ago, I posted about the fact that, in England, it is illegal to defend yourself against an attack within your own home.  I shouldn’t have gotten so upset about the whole thing.  You see, it seems that I was operating from a ridiculous premise, which is that one actually has legal rights [...]

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One of the most basic principles of Anglo-Saxon common law is a homeowner’s right to defend himself against intruders.  Oh, wait!  That’s not quite true anymore.  In England, which practically gave its name to the notion that “a man’s home is his castle,” homeowner self-defense is against the law (emphasis mine): Myleene Klass, the broadcaster [...]

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When parents think about what a school should do for their children, they think in terms of the three “Rs,” plus a lovely layering of science, history, and other subjects that maketh a full (and employable) man.  The politically correct Nanny State, however, cares little for education and a great deal for ideology.  It should [...]

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Two views of moral behavior, one from the source, and one from an English divine: God:  Thou shalt not steal.  (Exodus 20:15) A priest in England:  It is far better for people desperate during the recession to shoplift than turn to ‘prostitution, mugging or burglary’. It is true that, under Jewish law, Jews in extremis [...]

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If I were devising a citizenship test for Great Britain, I can think of some things I would ask.  Broadly, I would ask about her  history (what makes Britain British?), her form of government (details about Parliamentary Democracy), and the duties of a citizen. But you see, I’m not writing the test one needs to [...]

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Britain’s NHS, which is government-run (i.e., Communist) medicine, has, unsurprisingly, Communist outcomes.  Lots of people die unnecessarily in England under the government’s beneficent care: British health care is little better than that of former Communist countries, which spend a fraction of the billions poured into the NHS. A survey published yesterday by the Organisation for [...]

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Disillusioned members of the World War II generation state honestly that, had the England that now exists been the England in 1939, they would not have believed it was a country worth saving.  Most feel that their fellow veterans, those who died in the fight, are rolling in their graves as they look at the [...]

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Just so you know, Britain, the ne plus ultra of single payer care, is having a little bit of death panel trouble: Liver cancer sufferers are being condemned to an early death by being denied a new drug on the Health Service, campaigners warn. They criticised draft guidance that will effectively ban the drug sorafenib [...]

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Not a big story, not an American story, but still a story perfectly illustrative of the cultural insanity that elevates perpetrator rights over the rights of ordinary citizens: A teenage sex attacker kidnapped and raped a five-year-old boy eight days after a judge spared him custody for another rape, it has emerged. The 16-year-old, who [...]

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The Daily Mail has the data to prove what we all knew:  a political party that shifts the tax burden to less than 50% of the population, while leaving more than half the population dependent on government largesse, wins in perpetuity (or until the country implodes, whichever comes first).

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The other day, the Daily Mail ran an article about the exponential increase in stranger attacks in England, a byproduct of the public drunkenness that is increasing at an even faster rate than the violence.  I still remember when England was a remarkably safe, clean little country, except in the worst neighborhoods of the biggest [...]

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We’re not talking about the way distant past here, we’re talking about Britain in the 1950s, a place some found stable, safe and charming, and others repressive and stultifying.  I’m a stable, safe and charming gal myself, so I developed a real sense of nostalgia reading about a place and time I never knew. UPDATE:  [...]

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If there was ever an example of misguided compassion, this story out of Britain must rank at the top of the list: A psychopathic Satanist, given a ‘life means life’ sentence for strangling his cellmate whilst already serving life for murder, has had that cut to 20 years on appeal in order ‘to give him [...]

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It happened there and it can happen here.  As for me, I’m stodgy, and like our national character just fine.  I want a slow, controlled flow of immigrants to ensure that they adapt to our norms, and not we to theirs.

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I don’t think I need to offer much comment on this story, which is one more indictment of the danger of over-regulation that always follows in the wake of Big Government: Ambulance paramedics battling to save a nine-year-old car crash victim were told the nearest back-up crew could not help as they were on their [...]

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In his latest opining about world events, the Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, has certainly managed to assure that every one of his illustrious predecessors is rolling in his grave.  Please recall that Williams is the same Church prelate who advanced Sharia law. He’s now calling for the end of economic growth the save the [...]

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