Cass Sunstein Outdoes Orwell

Cass Sunstein unveiled the Federal government's plans for (cough) 'regulatory overhaul'.

Sunstein said that the reform proposals, which are now available for public review as they head to become final rules in roughly 80 days, “underline and italicize the words freedom of choice.” [emphasis added]

Coming from this Administration - and Sunstein in particular - that is a statement I regard as roughly equivalent to the Nazi slogan Arbeit Macht Frei [Work Makes You Free] used at the entrance to Auschwitz concentration camp.

By the way, as of two days ago, none of those sections allegedly designed for public feedback were operational and there were no comments.


P.S. If the partial list provided at AEI is any indication, none of these changes touch anything serious. (Yes, I'm not surprised, either.) For example,

- Creating a system of hazard labels that conforms to “international harmonization.”

- Making sure federal regulatory code doesn’t refer to nations that no longer exist.

Color me underwhelmed.

[Update] IBD does a good job of showing why, even if Sunstein and crew were sincere, this would still be a drop in a leaky bucket.

Caving to the Left

Since the publication of William Voegeli's book, Never Enough a few conservatives have signed on to the idea that the welfare state is ineradicable. They propose that we 'accept reality', compromise, and call a truce with Progressives (or at least moderates). They suggest, in essence, that we lie back and enjoy it, hoping for at least a little petroleum jelly to ease the pain.

What they are suggesting is not a truce but a suicide pact.

Every aspect of the welfare state is immoral, impractical, and unconstitutional, and therefore completely illegitimate. It violates everyone's rights, including the recipients, to steal from Peter to pay Paul. Calling it "charity" or "good citizenship" or any other pleasant sounding description only adds insult to injury.

It's hardly a metaphysical given that welfare programs - along with every other Progressive policy - can not be eliminated. Progressives are influential - because of their outsized representation in education and the media - but they still number only about 20% of the population.

Persuade the other 50%+ not yet clear on the issue, those who don't yet realize how destructive to their own long-term interests the welfare state is, and we'll have won the intellectual battle, and therefore avoided any necessity for a physical one.

Now is no time to preemptively surrender. Progressives are on the ropes. Keep up the blows for another 10 years and this country might actually survive in some recognizable form.

Alternatively, accept an Obama-like return to America's '1967 borders' as the best you can do and you have agreed to jump off the cliff into a full European social democracy. Become Denmark circa 1990? No thanks. Even the Danes have backed away from that precipice. That road leads to Spain circa 2010.

The welfare state can not be saved by compromise, nor should it. Whether it will fade or consume us, time will tell. One thing is for sure; we should never cease to oppose it with vigor.

Conversations with Progressives, Part 36

Most of the time I refrain from engaging Progressives. They're so dishonest, not just in content but in method, that I judge it a waste of time to try to reason with them. However, from time to time, I respond if I think the audience might find what I have to say useful.

This is one example.

Progressive: Any attempts at repeal [of ObamaCare] with [sic] negatively affect almost 50 million Americans and I'm sure a good number of these citizens do vote. Repeal is a no go and that is a good thing. Denying care to clients because of lack of money and/or insurance is never a good thing or haven't any of you figured this out or do you even care?

Me: You can't back up those numbers, but that's a side issue.

Denying care to clients because of lack of money or insurance is both moral and practical. Most businesses deny service to clients for lack of money. It's called voluntary trade. Nothing in life is free. Forcing you to pay for my health care is immoral and impractical.

Attempting to do so only distorts price signals even further and undermines the market system that makes supplying health care services possible. Not least, it's unconstitutional from start to finish. It violates the rights of free trade and individual sovereignty as guaranteed by the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments.

If you wish to engage in private charity, by all means devote your resources to supplying health care to anyone you wish. Coercing others to do so is wrong in every way.

I'm a middle-aged self-employed writer with less than stellar health who makes an absurdly low annual income. I choose not to pay for health insurance and accept the responsibility if my health goes south.

But whether I suffer through my choices or through no fault of my own, you have no moral or Constitutional obligation to pay for my health care or to provide me health insurance. Your money does not belong to me.

As to the question "how do you handle that problem?" it's no one's problem to handle but mine. I don't owe you any support and you do not owe me any.

Life is not free. It costs money to sustain. Those who can not afford it must rely on voluntary charity.

Even if one granted that government had a role to play in that charity, there's no valid argument whatever for the Federal government to play that role. All American citizens live in some state (or territory). What justification can there be for the taxpayers of Illinois to pay for the health insurance of a resident of Idaho?

Martin Luther King, Progressive Racist

“We feel we have much to learn from Scandinavia’s democratic socialist tradition . . .”
[Martin Luther King, Jr. during his visit to Sweden to accept the Nobel Peace Prize.]

This and many similar comments demonstrate that King favored Progressivism - both in economics and as social policy.

It's for this reason that he deserves exactly none of the praise he has received over the years and this latest round of conservative gushing is particularly galling.

To be opposed to racism is the bare minimum to expect of any civilized person. It is not some great achievement. But King did more - and worse - than that. He explicitly viewed all American blacks as "brothers and sisters." In short, he was a standard (reverse) racist, judging individuals not by their character but by the color of their skin, contrary to his high-flown rhetoric.

He was not a great man, nor a great thinker. He was just another Progressive leader, and therefore wholly undeserving of praise.

What Will Obama Learn?

RCP links to a Huffington Post story with the headline: "What Obama '10 Can Learn From Obama '08."

Since it's on the HuffPost I can't be bothered to read it; I can imagine well enough the advice offered. But, no matter, it's pointless.

Better we should ask: what will Obama '12 learn from election '10? To which the answer is: not a damn thing.

If the debacles and blatant illegality of his policies of the past two years haven't taught him anything by now, they never will. You can't teach a man closed to all fact and logical argument.

P.S. I did skim the story just now and I'm glad to report my imagination is still working just fine.

NPR's Contradictions

NPR's moral failures go far beyond firing Juan Williams for a politically incorrect remark. It's deeper than being irked over his appearances on allegedly right-wing Fox News.

NPR's CEO, like Progressives everywhere, is caught in the contradictions of subjectivism. Faux liberals that they are, they preach tolerance for everything - because according to their ethical philosophy there are no objective principles of morality - then display intolerance for a remark they regard as "inconsistent with our editorial standards and practices.”

There's no way out of this inconsistency for a faux liberal. It's built into the basic fiber from which the Progressive cloth is cut.

Not content with CEO Schiller's getting herself into hot water by publicly remarking that Williams should've "consulted his psychiatrist" before making the statement, NPR's Ombudsman doubled down on the lunacy.

In a story headlined: "NPR's Firing of Juan Williams Was Poorly Handled" the lying fence-sitter said:

Juan Williams once again got himself into trouble with NPR for comments he made at his other job, at Fox News.

Right. His firing was "poorly handled" but he really did bring it on himself.

She tripled the foolish factor by adding:

Instead, this latest incident with Williams centers around a collision of values: NPR's values emphasizing fact-based, objective journalism versus the tendency in some parts of the news media, notably Fox News, to promote only one side of the ideological spectrum.

That's rich. NPR is objective but Fox is biased. Um, NPR proudly upholds Progressive values (a fact favorably noted by over a third of its listeners as one reason they tune in). Those values are entirely the opposite of fact-based and by definition are not objective. Progressivism's core epistemology comes from Pragmatism, whose central premise is there's no such thing as objective anything.

Apart from all that blatant hypocrisy, the firing of Juan Williams shows that contemporary liberals never mean anything they say about black people.

Here, a black liberal gets fired for making a mild comment about Muslims. (One that even moderate Muslims in this country would agree with if they weren't too scared to speak up, and one he even qualified to nullity later in the same program.) But since blacks no longer have it institutionally bad in this country, they've outlived their usefulness to white race hustlers like Vivian Schiller. So, Muslims are now the au courant 'oppressed' group that faux-liberals can drool all over with their faux sympathy.

If it should come to pass someday that this idiotic series of wars finally comes to an end - contrary to Gen. Petraeus' belief — then Muslims will settle into being just another group whose more vocal self-appointed spokespeople yammer about their victimhood. Then there will no doubt be some new convenient 'oppressed' group that so-called liberals can use to undermine individual freedom.

Of course, the real outrage here is not chiefly the depressingly familiar hypocrisy of yet another Progressive, but that NPR - a (partly) taxpayer funded news and editorial radio program - exists in the first place. Let them compete in the open market and they can be as intolerant - and embrace as many contradictions - as they like.

Article Published at Pajamas Media: Beyond Politics

My article, Beyond Politics: Removing the Progressive Drag On America has been published at Pajamas Media.

It begins:

Fighting the soul-killing, wealth-destroying acts of progressives over the long term is going to take much more than winning an election or two. It will require neutralizing their influence throughout the culture. That’s much harder, of course, but essential if we’re to have to a country that does more than seesaw between two power-hungry parties while spiraling ever downward.

The reasons that wider change is a must are not hard to find. Even where their relative numbers are low, progressives have come to dominate much more than just the Democratic Party and the major news outlets.

They control curricula for public K-12 education almost everywhere, despite the presence of a great many teachers who disagree with their views. Progressive educators’ numbers are bolstered by the roughly 70-85% of college educators and administrators who identify as liberals. They dominate credential-required education courses, and strongly influence textbook selection.

Read the rest here...

Please weigh in with your views on what it will take to restore America to individualism and freedom, here and there.

McCarthy on Alinksy

The supremely insightful Andy McCarthy has written a long and instructive article on Saul Alinsky. As part of the effort he shows why it's important to know who he was and why what he did is still important, using as a prime example one of his most devoted acolytes.

Meantime, [Obama] berates “fat-cat bankers”—the same ones his acorn associates pressured into making the ruinous sub-prime mortgage loans that necessitated their bail-out. To squeeze them into slashing pay, Obama summoned bank ceos to a White House dressing down, admonishing that “my administration is the only thing between you and the pitchforks.”

To rationalize expanding government control over the financial sector, he had his Treasury Secretary gather together the top executives of the nation’s nine largest banks and goad them (in terms worthy of the Godfather) to accept government capital infusions, whether they wanted the money or not, or risk the wrath of regulators.

In muscling in on the auto industry, the administration skirted the bankruptcy laws, orchestrating a takeover of General Motors in which bondholders were robbed blind in order to reward the President’s supporters at the United Auto Workers.

And as public outcry over the Gulf oil disaster mounted, Obama summoned BP executives to a White House sweat-session in the ominous presence of his Attorney General; when the parties emerged, BP had been brow-beaten into ponying up a staggering $20 billion escrow fund to be doled out by an administration flunky, Kenneth Feinberg — a left wing lawyer previously designated the president’s “czar” to police executive compensation at companies bailed out by the government.

I'm tempted to say that some leftists were/are so evil they deserve only to be put down like rabid dogs before they can bite. Apart from an unshakable attachment to the First Amendment, though, there's another consideration that holds me back. No one had to listen to him. That they did, and do, suggests there's something far more wrong with American culture than a lone nihilist. Regular readers will already know well what I think that is.

New Article Published at PJM: Obama's Playbook

Another of my articles has been published at Pajamas Media -- Obama's Playbook: Why He Keeps Saying Dumb Things.

Here's an excerpt:

The key to everything Obama does is that he truly is a committed, 99-44/100ths pure progressive. That fact explains not only the content of his views but why he keeps stumbling over one controversy after the next. As Jonah Goldberg expressed it in Liberal Fascism, progressivism is “a totalitarian political religion,” and Barack Obama is one of its most faithful acolytes. He’s simply acting in accordance with his personal theology.

Unlike even semi-rational philosophies, progressivism is built on sheer fantasy. Other doctrines may make errors, some of them very serious, but most are built on at least some foundation of real-world evidence and logical analysis. Progressivism is one of the few that is actually anti-evidence and anti-logic.

That assertion is not a wild-eyed interpretation by a crazed right-winger. It’s the official view of progressive intellectuals themselves. Merging with its offshoot of postmodernism, progressivism holds that people are unable to grasp evidence first-hand or to be objective about its interpretation.

Postmodern philosophers from Hegel to Dewey to Heidegger, Herbert Marcuse, and Richard Rorty have said so. Their students and followers are just applying what they’ve been taught. Those individuals are the ones who shaped Obama, nurtured his education and careers, and helped get him elected.

Your feedback is invited here and there.

Thanks,
Jeff

Obama Boasts of Progressive 'Success'

In a recent speech to yet another drooling crowd, Obama the Anti brags:

"We have been able to deliver the most progressive legislative agenda — one that helps working families — not just in one generation, maybe two, maybe three."

I look forward to the day when Americans meet this kind of claim with the same sense of revulsion they would hearing a rapist boast of his 'successes'.

In his own way, though, as I wrote not long ago, he's right that he has succeeded in nearly every big goal. That's something for the public to be very, very concerned about even after November. Never underestimate a Mussolini.

Progressivism, Taxation, and Tyranny

Obama recently offered the threat to “start presenting some very difficult choices to the country.” He hoped that “some of these folks who are hollering about deficits and debt” would “step-up” because he planned on “calling their bluff.” Undoubtedly, he is raising a trial balloon to increase taxes on everyone, violating yet another campaign promise. The only other alternative would be to cut spending, which Obama will never do (other than on Defense).

In that context, the following quotes from individuals with considerably more wisdom may be of interest.

The debate on Progressive taxation didn't begin two years ago, or even 100 years ago just prior to the passage of the 16th Amendment. Writing in 1845, the English writer Ramsay McCulloch said:

“The moment you abandon... the cardinal principle of exacting from all individuals the same proportion of their income or their property, you are at sea without rudder or compass and there is no amount of injustice or folly you may not commit.”

The history of the past century has proven him right with a vengeance.

A hundred years ago, only the very wealthy paid any income tax at all. In 1913, the top tax rate was 7% on incomes above $500,000 (roughly $10 million 2007 dollars), according to Wikipedia. (Individuals earning over $3,000 — equivalent to $60,000 today — paid 1%.) Today, the top 1% pay 40% of all federal income taxes. The bottom 50% pay only 3%.

Some believe that is only fair. They clearly do not share the Founders view, when they were paying 2%, that 3-4% would constitute tyranny. They're also, no doubt, indifferent to Montesquieu's belief that "when the savages of Louisiana wish to have fruit, they cut the tree at the bottom and gather the fruit. That is exactly a despotic government."

That puts me in mind of another tree, the one Jefferson mentioned as needing refreshing from time to time. Fortunately, at present, all this can be reversed by shedding tyrant's blood only metaphorically. The signs for that happening this November are promising. According to a recent Rasmussen poll, only

22% would pay higher taxes to prevent cuts in entitlement programs for low-income Americans. Sixty-three percent (63%) say they would not pay more to keep these programs afloat. Another 15% are undecided.

When the American people begin to reject Federally-funded altruism, it's a sign the tyrants' power is waning. For, as Hugo said, "not all the united armies can stand against an idea whose time has come."

Hey, Let's Make Firing the Ugly Illegal

Demonstrating once again that there is no limit to the absurd positions the self-appointed PC police will take, a Stanford law professor wants to make hiring and firing based on appearance illegal.

Professor Rhode writes:

As the history of civil rights legislation suggests, customer preferences should not be a defense for prejudice. During the early civil rights era, employers in the South often argued that hiring African Americans would be financially ruinous; white customers, they said, would take their business elsewhere.

Fair enough. How about the preferences of the business owners as a defense? Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments anyone? Is it asking too much for a law professor to be aware of those? Sheesh. Once upon a time, such lunatics were confined to street corners. Today, they get professorships at the country's leading law schools.

She continues:

In rejecting this logic, Congress and the courts recognized that customer preferences often reflect and reinforce precisely the attitudes that society is seeking to eliminate. Over the decades, we've seen that the most effective way of combating prejudice is to deprive people of the option to indulge it.

Right. Because there's no good reason not to fight prejudice through government coercion. What's a little thing like personal choice and property rights – when that personal choice is wrong (in the eyes of a statist feminist) and someone's employment is at stake?

But if "depriving people of the option to indulge it" is the goal, for the holy sake of acceding to 'society's desire' to eliminate it, why stop there? Why not just lock up anyone who says an unkind word about Rosie O'Donnell? Better still, why not drown anyone over the age of twelve who makes a rude remark about Elena Kagan?

Ok, fine. I'm finally going to join the "there ought to be a law" crowd. Let's toss out the First Amendment and make stupid suggestions from PC Progressives that ignore my constitutional rights illegal. If they're free to indulge their subjective desires, backed by cherry-picked data, and have them enforced by law, so am I. Let's do a little social engineering my way for a change.

Double sheesh.

Another Totalitarian Joins Obama Gang

More evidence that Obama feels comfortable appointing totalitarians to important posts. As David Harsanyi reports,

Donald Berwick, a professor at both the Harvard Medical School and the Harvard School of Public Health and Obama's pick to head the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. Berwick will be charged with managing government health care programs.

Forget for a moment that there should be no government health care programs for anyone to manage. For now, ask what does Mr. Berwick believe that merits him that horrific charge? This horrific statement:

Berwick's most revealing assertion was that he did not "believe that the individual health care consumer can enforce through choice the proper configurations of a system as massive and complex as health care. That is for leaders to do."

If there's anyone left in the United States who's actually paying attention and doesn't believe that Progressivism and its adherents are a grave danger, he or she is simply unpersuadable by evidence.

Was Woodrow Wilson a Progressive?

I have many disagreements with Jonah Goldberg. But he is one of the foremost popular-level writers on Progressivism and he has earned that rank. He's done his homework and he knows his stuff, and is very able at showing that without showing off.

He demonstrates his skill once again with a thorough takedown of Scott Galupo at U.S. News who wants us to believe that Woodrow Wilson was not a Progressive.

This fellow would also have us believe that "progressivism — which is indeed guilty of much of the baggage that Goldberg lays at its doorstep — is on the same family tree as classical liberalism." Worse still, Galupo claims, "Lockean insistence on individual civil liberties [is] the possession of the Left."

Now, there is a guy who has not done his homework. Or, more accurately, if he had and were in one of my former physics courses, would fail the test. I fear, at minimum, that he has not been keeping up with events of the past 40 years, and has a serious misunderstanding of the history and philosophy of the past 100. Whatever respect old leftists had for 'civil liberties' faded with the rise of the New Left over the past generation.

The tip off comes at the end when Goldberg shows how Mr. Galupo belongs in the same "I hate Glen Beck" wing of faux conservatism as David Frum. 'Nuff said on that score. I've got plenty of beefs with conservatism myself, not least the fact that no one who claims to be one can seem to define it. (I've had my own recent difficulties defining what I mean by 'the Left', but never mind that now.)

The bottom line is: believing that support for individual rights a la Locke is a feature of the Left means you simply don't understand individual rights, Locke, or the Left. Three strikes and you're out.

Anyway, read Goldberg's superbly well-reasoned and empirically-based response and enjoy the short history lesson in real-world political philosophizing.

Beware Obama's Scyth

I was going to write an essay on Obama's recent idiotic remark that "[A]t a certain point you've made enough money." Before I could get around to it, I discovered that Ralph Reiland writing at the Pittsburgh Tribune Review has said about everything I was going to say. The whole (short) article is worthwhile, but here is — Obama should excuse the expression — the money quote:

[S]hould the central committee of White House czars decide how much of Ben [Roethlisberger's] $25 million was due to the lucky inheritance of a good throwing arm and how much was "fairly earned" for hard work?
...
So who decides when we've "made enough money"? Should we tell Julia Roberts not to make another movie, tell her she's "made enough"? Should the czars tell Tiger Woods that he's way past that "certain point" when he's earned "enough," unless he wants to play for free or donate 100 percent of the winnings to the needs of the collective?

Egalitarianism is one of the ugliest aspects of Progressivism and Obama embraces it wholeheartedly. Tall poppies everywhere, beware. The crab bucket mentality is now government policy.

Terrorist Threats: Left, Right, And Other

Apropos the response to the recent jihadist near-miss attack in Times Square, it's useful to consider some of the attitudes expressed by creatures like Mayor Bloomberg. He said in a CBS interview hours after the incident:

The bomb could have been placed by “somebody with a political agenda who doesn’t like the health care bill or something. It could be anything.”

This not-so-subtle allusion to Tea Party sympathizers is a sentiment that comes more or less automatically to the mind of a Leftist.

[Update 17:55:] Here is one where there is no subtlety involved at all:

The Nation’s Robert Dreyfuss discounted the possibility of a jihadi from the Pakistan-based Taliban: “It seems far more likely to me [he] was either a lone nut job or a member of some squirrely branch of the Tea Party, anti-government far right.”

Yet, according to the FBI, what is the source of the #1 domestic threat? Eco-terrorism.

The FBI currently has 180 ongoing eco-terror investigations and over the last several years has tied them to some 1,800 criminal acts, Kolko said.

Anyone who, like me, lives in the Pacific Northwest is fully familiar with the sort of thing the FBI has in mind. Everything from tree-spiking to torching upscale homes occurs with frightening frequency. And, though it should not have to be said, let us hasten to point out that viro-paganism and the political movement to which it gives rise, Environmentalism, are phenomena of the Left, not the Right.

[Hat Tip: Jonah Goldberg, NRO for the Bloomberg quote.]

Is Obama Lying or Just Deluded?

Commentators to Jacob Sullum's article at Reason.com try to analyze whether Obama is a liar or just self-deluded. I've made some efforts along those lines myself and confess I have no set-in-concrete conclusion.

True, he does lie from time to time (ok, often), but do they rise above and beyond the usual politician's dissembling? Only his hairdresser knows for sure.

What we can say with certainty is that he is a Progressive and a Pragmatist. Both those philosophies make distinguishing between fantasy and reality very difficult, since Pragmatism implies there is no such distinction and Progressivism provides a moral motivation for not feeling compelled to make the effort.

So, the search for the real Obama continues...

Cass Sunstein, Most Dangerous Man In America

I've claimed elsewhere that Cass Sunstein may well be the most dangerous man in America. (Progressives are always more dangerous when they are the most sincere and scandal free.) Here is more evidence, from Salon, not exactly a right-wing site, by any stretch:

In 2008, while at Harvard Law School, Sunstein co-wrote a truly pernicious paper proposing that the U.S. Government employ teams of covert agents and pseudo-"independent" advocates to "cognitively infiltrate" online groups and websites -- as well as other activist groups -- which advocate views that Sunstein deems "false conspiracy theories" about the Government.

The paper discussed needs to be read to be believed. Here is a short, telling sample: "Government can partially circumvent these problems if it enlists nongovernmental officials in the effort to rebut the theories." If that isn't pure Stalinism, it's hard to know what would qualify.

Keep in mind as you read it, that Cass Sunstein is not just some obscure, off-the-wall academic. He is one of the most respected legal academics in the country and the head of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs.

But, then, I guess all this will just get me put down as another conspiracy theorist. Fine. But if Sunstein's actions are a conspiracy, it's the most open in history.

Remarks on 'Liberal Elites'

I find all this high dudgeon about 'liberal elites' a little silly.

What would people prefer, that those in question run around in sackcloth and ashes, scourging their own backs as they flail ours? Because, heaven help the country when that sort takes power. The worst excesses of the French Revolution occurred when the pusillanimous Puritan Maximillian Robespierre came to power.

Sure, the arrogance of the self-annointed saints is annoying. Their not-well-disguised (and completely unearned) air of moral superiority is certainly off-putting. But woe to us if the real true believers come to power. Obama is already halfway there; imagine what a full-blown Earth First type would do.

A prancing, grasping gangster type like Rahm Emmanuel is certainly loathsome. But Henry Waxman is far worse. Al Gore is simply ludicrous, a buffoon who destroys his own credibility every time he takes another private jet flight. When something like Cass Sunstein gains high office, you'll know we're in for real trouble.

The one type is self-limiting, since their hypocrisy gets exposed and ridiculed fairly soon. They're the sort who sooner than later usually get found in a hotel with a hooker.

An authentic Claude Frollo — the repressed, self-loathing Archdeacon in Hunchback of Notre Dame — is far more dangerous. Too many are more inclined to forgive their destructive acts because their motives are 'pure'. Frankly, if Frollo had simply headed for the nearest brothel, Esmeralda would have a much easier time of it.

Surveying The Progressive Fantasy World

The Progressive's capacity for living in a fantasy world never ceases to amaze me. Blog comment sections are burning with trolls proclaiming their joy that "now anyone who needs medical care can get it."

Who knew? All we had to do was pass a big, unconstitutional law and suddenly every medical care provider in America will willingly bend over for a Federal rectal exam prior to dispensing one for free. All that was needed is to raise taxes on a few thousand evil rich guys, who have more trinkets than they deserve anyway.

Demand can increase by 30 million individuals who, almost by definition, have had much less medical care to date and nothing whatsoever will happen to the supply, cost, or quality of that care. Thanks, rich guys (and compassionate Congressmen, indifferent to their constitutional rights)!

In another idiotic arena, Progressive soul-killers are cheerful about the prospect of Republican candidates running on the plank of repeal. Such creatures imagine Democratic ads depicting children dying of cancer while the heartless Republican promises to eliminate her 'free' care. Never mind that, in the real world ten years from now, that child will die waiting to see a specialist (if there are any left). But, oops, I forgot. To suggest such a future is just so much right-wing fearmongering. My bad.

(Sadly, some spineless Republicans like John Cornyn of Texas are already intimidated enough by this line of attack to scale back any effort at repeal of HR3590.)

Who knew all we had to do was pass a law to make care magically appear? If only I could get Congress to pass a law mandating that heretofore free women were required to service me on demand, and for much less than it has cost me to date. Surely, there should be no reason whatever to expect a decrease in the supply of willing females, no? Why should any of them resent being ordered to do so when, after all, it's to satisfy someone's desperate need?

Sure, some of these commenters — perhaps most — are just paid attack dogs of OFA and other left wing organizations. But, having followed them for months, it seems that some actually believe their fantasy.

I wonder if I could interest them in supporting a bill to establish a Bureau of Prostitution inside the HHS? It's worth looking into, anyway. I mean, David Frum keeps telling me I should make nice with Progressives. This is one goal I feel sure we can both, so to speak, get behind. Hey, they have their fantasy, I'm entitled to mine.