Alan K. Henderson's Weblog

AEI celebrates.

Labels: Birthdays, Economics, Politics

The Brexit Party won 29 out of 73 of the UK's seats in the European parliament.

Labels: Europe, Politics

Theresa May resigns.

Musical reference.




 

Update: Check out this image in Instapundit comments.

Labels: Europe, Music, Politics

Sarah Hoyt offers this answer: "It is this: the left thinks that wealth can’t be created or destroyed."

Labels: Economics, History, Politics

Labels: Politics

American Thinker has some background.

Labels: Education, Politics

Michael Filozof writes:

If Bernie's European-style socialism does come to America, it will be an utter disaster. Euro-socialism works because Europe still has a socially stratified society. A British girl who is born a princess or a baroness knows from the time she is a toddler that she is a princess or baroness – and the daughter of a working-class soccer yob knows from the time she is a toddler that she will never, ever be a princess or baroness. The purpose of European socialism is to buy off the lower classes to maintain the existing social order, and the European elites do a reasonably good job of managing socialist programs because maintaining their superior status depends upon it.

But in the United States, everyone is born equal under the law. The American attitude was always that any individual could enrich himself beyond his wildest dreams – but his ambition was tempered by the fact that he could just as well fall into complete destitution. Socialism in America would eliminate the latter – but not the former. American socialism would turn into the same kind of corruption, plunder, and special-interest favoritism that Sanders decries in the private sector.

Labels: Politics

Time to start overcoming blogger burnout. Let's start with this headline:

Glenn Reynolds: Liberals have chosen The Donald as their 'Destructor'

Labels: Humor, Politics

Update: Note that this cartoon dates back to November 2008.

Labels: Europe, History, Politics, World

(Roiters) Baltimore Gun Club v. Stroud has landed on this year's United States Supreme Court docket.

In June last year, members of the Baltimore Gun Club approached freelance party planner Celine Stroud to organize a party planned in honor of the upcoming fifth anniversary of the Supreme Court ruling in District of Columbia v. Heller, the landmark case that struck down several Federal firearms laws and held that the Second Amendment protects the individual's right to possess a firearm. Stroud refused, stating that she could not in good conscience participate in a festivity celebrating an event she rigorously opposed.

The club hired a different party planner, and days after the event filed a discrimination suit against Stroud. The Maryland Commission on Civil Rights ruled that Stroud had violated state anti-discrimination law and ordered Stroud to pay several thousand in attorneys’ fees to the plaintiffs. The Maryland Supreme Court upheld the decision, and Stroud successfully appealed the U. S. Supreme Court, which will hear the case in early May.

Stroud claims that the ruling violates her First Amendment free speech rights. "Party planners aren't like the pizza delivery guy who just drops off food and goes away. We work with the client to put the event together, to create the activities and entertainment and atmosphere the client wants. We - along with cake bakers, entertainers, photographers, and the like - are essentially paid to be part of the celebration. It is unconscionable for the government to determine what its citizens must celebrate."

Her legal team cites Wooley v. Maynard as the key to her defense. The 1977 decision ruled that a state cannot compel motorists against their will to display a state motto (in this case, New Hampshire's "Live Free or Die") on their motor vehicle license plates. An amicus filed regarding a similar case, also also citing Wooley, stating that "speech compulsions are generally as unconstitutional as speech restrictions," and that such a compulsion "invades the sphere of intellect and spirit which it is the purpose of the First Amendment to our Constitution to reserve from all official control...Creating expression...requires sympathy with the intellectual or emotional message that the expression conveys, or at least absence of disagreement with such a message."

Stroud complains about media misreporting of the case. "The talking heads keep saying I'm discriminating against gun rights supporters. I'm not. I've planned parties for some of the club members in the past. I am discriminating against a certain type of event."

Musician Ted Nugent quipped to one reporter that if she loses her case, Piers Morgan should buy out her business. "Second Amendment patriots are boycotting him, so that way she doesn't have to do any more RKBA parties."

Labels: Law, Politics, Roiters, Satire

Inspired by the headline Wendy Davis endorsed by ‘sugar daddy’ dating service...

Labels: Music, Politics

The Education Intelligence Agency releases its 2013 Public Education Quotes of the Year. And the winner is a doozy:

“Since a teacher’s working conditions are a child’s learning conditions, attacking teachers is the same as attacking children.” – Randy Mousley, president of United Teachers of Wichita. (February 9 Wichita Eagle)

Labels: Education, Politics

I posted this comment at this Facebook post:
Here's the problem re fiscal policy. Fiscal leftists accept the Second Theory of Thermodynamics, that a closed system will eventually achieve entropy. They recognize the relevance to economics, that true growth cannot be achieved without inputs from outside the system. Unfortunately, they believe that the wealth of The Rich™ is external to the economy. And over at Instapundit, which reports that Oklahoma lawmakers are actually going through the effort to propose this law... Under Kern’s bill, students couldn’t be punished for possessing small toy weapons or using writing utensils, fingers or their hands to simulate a weapon. Students also couldn’t be punished for drawing pictures of weapons or wearing clothes that “support or advance Second Amendment rights or organizations.” ...I said this: Has anyone noticed that the state of Oklahoma is shaped like a battleship turret? If the law passes and its constitutionality is successfully challenged, Oklahoma will have to change its map. So will Idaho, BTW.

Update:Instapundit link added.

Labels: Economics, Politics

The Year of the Zombies, so he says.

Labels: Culture, Humor, Politics

In light of the infantilizing Pajama Boy ad, and in remembrance of the infantilizing Life of Julia campaign (briefly discussed here),  I am reprinting the reprint of my 2006 post.


--
Rand Simberg links to this Marsblog post, which remarks on American media attitudes toward the general public (emphasis added to this and all following excerpted material):


Bluntly put, there is an elitist expectation [among the media] that the intolerant and easily-led dupes in flyover country might rise up in violence if told the whole truth...that -- like children -- the ignorant public at large must be protected from the unpleasant facts, since they cannot be trusted to integrate such information rationally and formulate a response which these elitists would approve of as sensible and reasonable. The press must therefore act as a gatekeeper, concealing the truth lest the redneck mob draw the "wrong" conclusions and be roused by some jingoistic demagogue to the pogroms and crusades which are its nature.
I was reminded of an incident during the 1992 presidential debate in Richmond, which I quoted in a recent comment thread at Samizdata:


The most notorious example of this [debate] format lending a platform for people who seek to be pampered by the nanny state was that pony-tailed guy from the 1992 presidential debate in Richmond who got up and asked then President George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton and Ross Perot: "[H]ow can we, symbolically the children of the future president, expect the two of you – the three of you – to meet our needs."
I also recalled something I once read in a tale told by John Fund, which fortunately I was able to find documented here. He describes an encounter with several teenage girls in a department store during a 1984 trip to East Germany:


"We [Fund and his traveling companion(s), unnamed in the article] showed them our passports; they showed us their identity papers and told us a little about what it was like to live in a small town in East Germany. One of the girls told us, for example, the economy was so run-down that, when she lost an air valve on a bicycle tire, there was no way to replace it. People didn't have much money, but what was worse, there was nothing on which to spend it.

"Our travel visas expired at midnight, so by dusk we were on our way back to the glittering lights of West Berlin. The girls came along to the train station to bid us farewell. They had never seen the Berlin Wall, but they knew it was close. They gradually slowed their pace and stopped on a street corner just before we reached the railyard. One said, "You know, we really shouldn't go any further. We are not Berliners. If we are stopped, the guards will ask us why we are so close to the border zone.

"As we stood in the growing darkness, a feeling of incredible sadness came over me. here I was, in my mid-twenties, free as a bird. I wasn't rich, but I could go anywhere in the world from that street corner. They could not go another one hundred yards. Their world ended at the Wall. They could not go any further.

"... I asked what they wanted to be when they grew up. One said a beautician, one said a nurse, and one said a teacher. But the oldest and wisest, whose name was Monica, looked up at me with the most sorrowful face I have ever seen and said very slowly, 'It doesn't matter what we become when we grow up. They will always treat us like children.'

"... That sentence really defines Soviet communism in its waning years. There were very few knocks in the dead of night; people were rarely taken away to the gulag. There were very few summary executions. Instead, there was an insufferable and widespread paternalism. It was a dark cloud hanging over citizens. It weighed down their spirits and prevented them from maturing. Worse of all, it kept them from becoming that which was best within them.

"We parted almost tearfully. Monica and I exchanged addresses, and every year or so a postcard would come from her, and I would send some little trinket in the mail. She wrote that she had applied to a university, but she was rejected for her unacceptable views. She managed to get a job in a veterinarian's office."
Monica eventually came to the US, and Fund arranged for her to speak to some high schoolers:


"I swallowed my doubts and arranged a talk for Monica. It was a disaster. The students weren't openly disrespectful, but they whispered constantly during her remarks and now and then a spitwad would rocket across the room. Even the quiet students were simply uninterested.

"Finally, Monica opened the session up to questions. A girl asked, 'Why in the world would someone want to build a wall in the middle of a city?' She clearly had no understanding why this had happened or what historical forces were at work, even after Monica had told her story.

"As we walked out of the classroom, I tried to explain to Monica that not all young Americans were like this. She looked at me, and once again I saw that same sad, pensive face I remembered from a street corner in East Berlin. She said, 'John, please don't explain anymore. I've been in America for three weeks now, and I've learned that this is a great and wonderful country. But because you have never lost your freedom, because you have never been conquered, because you have never had all your possessions taken from you, you are now willing to surrender your freedom, independence, and autonomy by inches. You simply don't notice it, but, one inch at a time, it slips away.' She continued, 'Those students in there -- I feel sorry for them. No matter what they do when they grow up, many of them will always be acting like children.'"
Update (2/8/2013): Chris Rock furthers this meme (Coincidentally, link via Rand Simberg):


I am just here to support the President of the United States. President of the United States is our boss, but he is also... you know, the President and the First Lady are kinda like the Mom and the Dad of the country. And when your Dad says something you listen, and when you don't it will usually bite you on the ass later on. So, I’m here to support the President.


Update (12/22/2013): Found a currently working link for the John Fund article. The original WND article is a dead link.

Labels: History, Politics

Barack Obama, enemy of oil and natural gas industry expansion, takes credit for the US oil boom.

Labels: Politics

Headline: Pelosi Wants Obamacare Extended to Include Universal Childcare

Her body language looks awfully familiar...

Labels: Humor, Politics

Huffpo headline: KKK Rally At Gettysburg Canceled Because Of Government Shutdown.

Labels: Culture, Politics