In his inaugural address Wednesday, President Joe Biden called for unity, saying "we must end this uncivil war", but it doesn't look like his leftist supporters are heeding that call. Their war is being unleashed at the business level now.READ MORE
We could go on and on refuting fact after fact, but the facts are unimportant. The leftist is creating a narrative. As a marketing guru will tell you, Facts tell, but stories sell. It’s a lesson the leftist has learned well.READ MORE
Even more disturbing, in recent years, this method of “argumentation” has increasingly become the first tool pulled out of the toolbox. No longer does the leftist feel as compelled to make real arguments. All he needs to do now is shout “Racist!” or “War on Women!” and his job is done. He walks away feeling smugly satisfied of his own politically correct superiority, and the untrained observer is left addled at best, and possibly even swayed by the narrative.
So why they are so vicious? Why do people who self-describe as “compassionate” direct such vitriolic hate and assaults at their ideological opponents? How they can justify painting you as such a monster?
Simple: To them, you are a monster. You must be.
One of the several magnificent intellectual achievements of the Austrian economist Ludwig von Mises (1881—1973) was his development of a comprehensive science of human action, called “praxeology.” One of the main conclusions drawn from praxeology is that free markets will result in more prosperity than government-directed economic activity–a position that naturally makes Misesian economics popular with conservatives. At the same time, one aspect of praxeology often poses a gigantic stumbling block to conservatives of deep religious convictions. They have been perplexed and put off by Mises’ insistence that, in praxeology, he had developed a Wertfrei (value-free) science of economics.READ MORE
Well-funded Stasi-like groups such as UnKochMyCampus, reports the Wall Street Journal’s Kimberley Strassel, are already at work, seeking “trusted informants” among faculty and students to target and harass the few remaining conservative professors whose thought runs counter to “progressive values” and might “undermine environmental protection, worker’s rights, health care expansion, and quality education.”READ MORE
I hadn't yet been able to find the time to write a properly comprehensive post on what we were doing at the Apple Computer shareholder meeting last Friday, but with something like a thousand news media articles out there getting the story either wrong or incomplete, I don't want to leave our story untold.READ MORE
The Guardian newspaper sent us three questions on Monday for an article, it said, to run Tuesday. I answered them by email and in so doing touched on at least some parts of this story that are largely uncovered.
As Tuesday has come and gone, I figure I've given the Guardian fair time to use the words first, if it wanted to, so I'm going to post its three questions, and my answers. After that, I've added a bit more detail that goes beyond what the Guardian asked, but which should give anyone following this story -- and that includes you, Apple fans -- some food for thought.
The three questions:
If things are going badly, we're told the GOP should compromise on what it believes in to start winning elections again. If things are going well, we're told we must turn a blind eye to the GOP abandoning its beliefs so as not to ruin the great year we're going to have. The establishment Republicans who are always arguing in favor of trading off dearly held principles in return for magic beans always claim they're doing it to win elections, but it's hard to miss the fact that they don't actually seem to be any better at winning elections than the grassroots conservatives they seem to write off as amateurs. Setting that aside, winning elections isn't an end unto itself. You win elections in order to implement your agenda, which win or lose, the GOP never seems to be all that interested in.READ MORE
.Some in the animal-protection movement mistake the cause for a part of the liberal progressive agenda (as if the Obama years have ushered in some golden era of cruelty-free living in America) and can be so wrapped up in that ideology as to ignore the most obvious of connections. In what moral universe does it makes sense to protect a wolf, pig, dog, or any other animal from needless suffering and violence, but not a human baby stirring in her mother’s womb? To their lasting credit, many animal activists post pictures on the Internet from factory farms, slaughterhouses, laboratories, and elsewhere, scenes so nightmarish at times that you have to study them for a moment before the horror of what’s unfolding becomes clear. How many of those same good people have ever brought themselves to look at pictures and films (even the ultrasonic and relatively endurable Silent Scream) showing what happens in an abortion, especially after the second or third month of fetal development, and to whom it happens? Different people are called to serve different causes, and if your vocation is to protect animals then no one is saying you have to sign up right away at National Right to Life. But if the creed is empathy for the weak, shouldn’t your sympathies at least lie in that direction?
Representative Steve King of Iowa, for example, is a solid pro-life vote every time and, just as dependably, an apologist for animal cruelty. He typifies a certain way of looking at animals that manages to be both lofty in tone and morally obtuse in practice. An influential member of the House Agriculture Committee, the man has opposed any kind of leniency for farm animals, dogs in puppy mills or dog-fight rings, birds used by cockfighters, horses bound for slaughter plants, exotic wildlife slain by big-game trophy hunters, any creature at all. All the while, he uses his pro-life principles as a pretext for doing nothing on behalf of animals, in a version of the abortion–cruelty connection that other conservatives have also traded on. The idea is that since the law does not now grant full protection to the unborn, any attempt to protect animal life is an expression of profoundly misplaced priorities, subversive to the sanctity of human life, an affront to Man in all his glory. The result of this high-minded stance? Glorious man, made in the image of God, can go back to his dog-fighting, cock-fighting, chick-grinding, hog torture, wolf slaughter, and general abuse of the animal world without being held to account.
If it is possible to give pro-life principles a bad name, little tyrants like Steve King are the ones who can do it. They are making excuses, not arguments. They are friends of power, not of life, serving no cause except human arrogance — in the spirit of what Governor Bob Casey used to call the Imperial Self. By showing such contempt for the healthy majority of voters in both parties who care about animals, they aren’t doing the Republican party any favors, either.
Alias Barack Obama: a lie is born: The greatest identity fraud in history Paperback – July 10, 2012
