"Government is not the solution to our problem. Government is the problem."

Your favorite aphorism?



Here's a take on it:



Yeah, I know. The response to that is obvious to a decently educated person, but this is an effective viral video aimed at... other people. And even if you know what's wrong with the argument in that video, it's about manipulation of opinion at an emotional level.

"In my mid-adolescence... I became obsessed with William F. Buckley."

"This makes more sense when you realize that we were living in Bible Belt farming country miles from civilization," said Malcolm Gladwell.

Buckley seemed impossibly exotic. We used to go into Toronto and prowl the used-book stores on Queen Street looking for rare first editions of “The Unmaking of a Mayor” and “God and Man at Yale.” To this day I know all the great Buckley lines. Upon coming to Canada for a speech, for example, he is asked at the border for the purpose of his visit:

Buckley: “I have come to rid Canada of the scourge of socialism.”

Guard: “How long do you intend to stay?”

Buckley: “24 hours.”

In southern Ontario farming country when I was growing up, we considered that kind of thing deeply hilarious.

Gladwell is doing an interview in the NYT, and the question was "Who was your literary hero [when you were young]?" I take it he told the truth when he said William F. Buckley, and then, thinking of the NYT reader, he quickly acknowledged how hard that would be to understand and went into that you-have-to-understand-this-was-Canada riff.

"Did you bristle at the journalism at all, like why do we need the New York Post if the Times is gonna publish a headline saying you were a leftist?"

WNYC’s Brain Lehrer asked Bill de Blasio (the Democratic candidate for mayor of NYC).

De Blasio, admitting that the NYT headline saying that he "Was Once a Young Leftist" fit his own description of himself, in 1990 as being for “democratic socialism,” but that "I always described my philosophy of being made up of a blend of influences and ideas."

“I think that article didn’t fully represent what I feel except for one passage,” he said, “that very accurately noted that one part of me is a New Deal Democrat – just an updated version of it – one part of me is probably similar to a European Social Democrat, and I’m also very deeply influenced by liberation theology, which I learned a lot about in the years I worked on Latin America.”

So in the interest of diluting his connection to "democratic socialism," he's calling attention to his devotion to "liberation theology." Alex Pareene at Salon plays defense:

De Blasio was working with the Quixote Center, a Catholic social justice group that fights poverty and economic inequality and that is inspired by liberation theology. This is actually very typical humanitarian work, and Catholic groups in particular have been doing it for years.

But the Times seems determined to make working for a Catholic social justice organization sound much more radical than it really was, or is. So unnamed “critics” make a few appearances, to suggest that de Blasio and his friends were Marxists — “its harshest critics accused it of hewing to a Marxist agenda” — or naive hippies: “Critics, however, said they were gullible and had romanticized their mission — more interested in undermining the efforts of the Reagan administration than helping the poor.” Which critics? Who knows! How accurate were these criticisms? You decide!

"Left-wing feminists are protesting the Barbie Dreamhouse Experience — a 27,000-square-foot lifesized pink estate — opening in Berlin...."

"'They present an image of cooking, primping and singing, as if it were in some way life-fulfilling,' Socialist Alternative editor Michael Koschitzki, 27, told German newspaper Der Spiegel. 'The Barbie Dreamhouse is the expression of a conventional role model that isn't OK,' he said.

The Berlin movement has led to an "Occupy Barbie Dreamhouse" page on Facebook, which displays a cover image of a dark-haired girl saying, "I can't stand pink!" in German.

Ich habe kein Bock auf Pink! That's from the Facebook page. Google translate would have gone with "Ich kann es nicht ertragen pink!" All I can say is that I am now confident that I know how to say "pink" in German. Google translates "Ich habe kein Bock auf Pink!" as "I have no mood to Pink!" — which reminds me: I have no mood to socialist alternative male German feminists. Ich bin nicht in der Stimmung für eine sozialistische Alternative männlichen deutschen Feministinnen.

Now... how do you say "The Barbie Dreamhouse is the expression of a conventional role model that isn't OK" in German? Der Barbie Traumhaus ist der Ausdruck eines herkömmlichen Vorbild, das nicht OK.

I'm quite sure I know how to say "pink" and "OK" in German. Okay? Ok, raus, Deutsch pinko feministische Männer.

Rush Limbaugh calls Margaret Thatcher "one of the greatest Americans, quote, unquote, that I've ever met."

He describes a dinner party at which the hostess, Gay Gaines had seated him next to her longtime friend Margaret Thatcher and was urging him to talk about the latest political issue, which he said he was too tired to do. Thatcher said  "Gay, he doesn't wish to speak about politics. So let's talk of the rule of law" and, as Rush puts it:

... bam, there we are off on a discussion, the rule of law. She loved the founders. She absolutely thought they were the most brilliant people, 'cause they were Brits, don't forget. Our founders were British. She loved them.

She loved Thomas Jefferson. Thomas Jefferson was it. But she loved them all. She knew the history of this country better than most people in this country do, and she revered it. She was one of the greatest Americans, quote, unquote, that I've ever met.

What topic would you suggest if your tablemate said he was tired of talking about politics? The rule of law?! I'd hear a cue to go somewhere lighthearted. Perhaps something about pop culture.

Here's a "Firing Line" appearance from 1977 that's up at the Rush Limbaugh website:



That's a 15-minute clip, not all of which was played on yesterday's radio show, but here's one of the parts that was:

THATCHER: I think what we've learned in Britain is that we've gradually, over the last certainly 12 or 13 years, with perhaps a little interruption, gone slowly further and further away from the free society towards something else.... At the same time we've found -- I don't find it strange, but some other people do -- that we have stopped creating wealth. We've had a large number of increasing restrictions. And you've been finding two things: First, that we are more and more concentrating on redistributing the wealth we've got, rather than creating any more. To create more, you need a slightly freer society, and you need an incentive society. Naturally when I see that happening, I look with very great alarm to societies which have gone even further left. That is, they've tried to redistribute even more and haven't had the incentives for people working hard on their own account, doing well for their families and often then being able to create jobs for others, they've produced a much more prosperous society than we have. But by and large you've got the two broad, different economic and political approaches.

RUSH: Here we are, 1977, and again, the value here, not just an illustration of who Lady Thatcher was, for those who don't know, but rather in 1977 it was known what is known today. And it was being executed then, as it's being executed now. And in 1977 it failed, i.e., the redistribution of wealth, the stoppage and the creation of wealth, which happens at the same time. The moment a society becomes redistributive, it stops creating wealth. She was cataloging current circumstances in Britain in 1977. And this was, of course, to set up her eventual triumph as prime minister.

"I’m not so sure why we want more people on our crowded, overheated planet..."

"... where world population is projected to increase by 2 billion before finally beginning to fall. But if [NYT conservative columnist Ross] Douthat really thought through what it means to have and raise a child these days, I’m sure he could come up with a lot of great ways to help women and families. The trouble is, he couldn’t be a Republican anymore. He’d be a socialist."

That's Katha Pollitt over at The Nation, reacting to Douthat's reaction to the plummeting birthrate in the United States, which we were talking about here. I'd asked:

If it is an emergency, what could be done? Is there a role for government? What if government wanted to get involved, really deeply involved? Suggestions? Don't violate any rights. This is a government of laws, in which women have reproductive freedom. But there is the taxing power and the spending power and so forth.

So I agree with Pollitt on where the solution to the problem lies... except that she's not ready to see how it's a problem.