Progressives Know Best

Secretary of labor, Hilda Solis, produced a video advising workers to contact her office should they feel that they have been shorted wages by their employers. But then she goes on to explicitly include workers who are not documented and to promise them confidentiality, “Every worker has a right to be paid fairly, whether documented or not.”

“Undocumented” is the current circumlocution for residing here illegally. Although Solis is a federal executive sworn to uphold existing federal law, she has decided which laws suit her and which do not. She rightly promises to pursue lawbreaking employers, but quite wrongly not to pursue lawbreaking employees.

 

Law professor Obama campaigned on respect for the rule of law as he trashed elements of the Bush administration’s war on terror — almost all of which he subsequently kept or expanded. Note how what was deemed illegal before 2009 has suddenly become quite legal and worthy of emulation and expansion.

Why Doesn’t Evolution Get Rid of Liberals?

Why isn’t everyone beautiful, smart and healthy? Or, in a less-polite formulation, why haven’t ugly, stupid, liberal people been bred out of the population—ugly people because no one will have them as mates, meaning they don’t get the chance to pass their ugliness to the next generation; stupid people because they’re outgunned in the race to financial success; liberal people because they can not dodge bullets very well?

Allow me to illustrate my point with this old graphic.

Never underestimate the power of stupid people in large groups.

"The danger to America is not Barack Obama but a citizenry capable of entrusting a man like him with the Presidency. It will be far easier to limit and undo the follies of an Obama presidency than to restore the necessary common sense and good judgment to a depraved electorate willing to have such a man for their president. The problem is much deeper and far more serious than Obama, who is a mere symptom of what ails America. Blaming the prince of the fools should not blind anyone to the vast confederacy of fools that made him their prince. The Republic can survive a Barack Obama, who is, after all, merely a fool. It is less likely to survive a multitude of fools such as those who made him their president."  

Terrorists = Nitwits

They blow each other up by mistake. They bungle even simple schemes. They get intimate with cows and donkeys. Our terrorist enemies trade on the perception that they’re well trained and religiously devout, but in fact, many are fools and perverts who are far less organized and sophisticated than we imagine.

Thank goodness for that!

Wondering If Liberals Accept Gravity?

This survey illustrates why you can not have a discussion with liberals. Their knowledge of the real world is abysmal.

Who is better informed about the policy choices facing the country—liberals, conservatives or libertarians? According to a Zogby International survey that DANIEL B. KLEIN writes about in the May issue of Econ Journal Watch, the answer is unequivocal: The left flunks Econ 101.

Zogby researcher Zeljka Buturovic and I considered the 4,835 respondents' (all American adults) answers to eight survey questions about basic economics. We also asked the respondents about their political leanings: progressive/very liberal; liberal; moderate; conservative; very conservative; and libertarian.

Here are the questions. See how you do.

1) Mandatory licensing of professional services increases the prices of those services (unenlightened answer: disagree)

2) Overall, the standard of living is higher today than it was 30 years ago (unenlightened answer: disagree).

3) Rent control leads to housing shortages (unenlightened answer: disagree).

4) A company with the largest market share is a monopoly (unenlightened answer: agree).

5) Third World workers working for American companies overseas are being exploited (unenlightened answer: agree).

6) Free trade leads to unemployment (unenlightened answer: agree).

7) Minimum wage laws raise unemployment (unenlightened answer: disagree).

8) "Restrictions on housing development make housing less affordable." (unenlightened answer: disagree).

How did the six ideological groups do overall? Here they are, best to worst, with an average number of incorrect responses from 0 to 8: Very conservative, 1.30; Libertarian, 1.38; Conservative, 1.67; Moderate, 3.67; Liberal, 4.69; Progressive/very liberal, 5.26.

Americans in the first three categories do reasonably well. But the left has trouble squaring economic thinking with their political psychology, morals and aesthetics. In other words, reality does not exist in wonderland.

The survey also asked about party affiliation. Those responding Democratic averaged 4.59 incorrect answers. Republicans averaged 1.61 incorrect, and Libertarians 1.26 incorrect.

No One Ever Said it Better

Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth, upon this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.
Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived, and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met here on a great battlefield of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of it as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.

But in a larger sense we can not dedicate - we can not consecrate - we can not hallow this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled, here, have consecrated it far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember, what we say here, but can never forget what they did here.

It is for us, the living, rather to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they have, thus far, so nobly carried on. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us - that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they here gave the last full measure of devotion - that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain; that this nation shall have a new birth of freedom; and that this government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.


Lincoln's Gettysburg Address: Echoes of the Bible and Book of Common Prayer
This is a new look at the sources of one of history's great speeches. While it has long been determined that Abraham Lincoln's writings were influenced by the King James Bible, until now no full-length study has shown the precise ways in which the Gettysburg Address uses its specific language

How We Got Here

Never underestimate the power of stupid people in large groups.