Think for yourselves and let others enjoy the privilege to do so, too.
Voltaire
Poem of the Day
HT Lew Rockwell
A Christmas Carol, by G.K. Chesterton
The Christ-child lay on Mary’s lap,
His hair was like a light.
(O weary, weary were the world,
But here is all aright.)
The Christ-child lay on Mary’s breast,
His hair was like a star.
(O stern and cunning are the kings,
But here the true hearts are.)
The Christ-child lay on Mary’s heart,
His hair was like a fire.
(O weary, weary is the world,
But here the world’s desire.)
The Christ-child stood on Mary’s knee,
His hair was like a crown,
And all the flowers looked up at Him,
And all the stars looked down.
His hair was like a star.
(O stern and cunning are the kings,
But here the true hearts are.)
The Christ-child lay on Mary’s heart,
His hair was like a fire.
(O weary, weary is the world,
But here the world’s desire.)
The Christ-child stood on Mary’s knee,
His hair was like a crown,
And all the flowers looked up at Him,
And all the stars looked down.
Rant of the Day: Hebert and Middeton Skewer Obamanomics With "Please Protect Us From Santa Claus"
I won't reproduce the entire satire but just a couple of samples:
Every year on December 24, we struggle to fall asleep, anxious over the arrival of the villain known as Father Christmas. Santa’s crimes are not breaking and entering or stealing foodstuffs. No, Santa is guilty of the much more serious crime of destroying American jobs. Products imported from abroad and consumed domestically make Americans worse off. Every "gift" from Santa represents a reduction in measured American welfare; this is one of the fundamental assertions of national income accounting when calculating gross domestic product. In fact, the North Pole is worse than other countries, for the North Pole does not receive any goods produced for export from the United States. Thus, the US trade deficit with the North Pole is entirely one-sided.
The fact of the matter, Mr. President, is that all foreign producers have a degree of Santa in them from a domestic perspective. Foreign producers sell us goods and services, and while they do not do so at zero price like Santa, they still charge a lower price that our domestic counterparts are either unwilling or unable to match. Unlike Santa Claus, however, these foreign producers send us their "gifts of good cheer" 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. What’s more, they do not restrict their gift giving to any particular religious group, but instead offer their gifts to all the boys and girls regardless of religious affiliation.
We therefore urge you to be logically consistent: either recognize every foreign producer that sends exports to the United States as if they were like Santa Claus, celebrating their efforts at enriching our lives, or recognize that Santa is simply another foreign producer, and condemn his activity as destroying American jobs.Tweet of the Day
I like the Rand Paul/Rubio feud over Cuba policy. An anachronistic, counterproductive policy dating from the Cold War should be repealed.
— Ronald Guillemette (@raguillem) December 24, 2014
Chart of the Day |
| Courtesy of Mercatus Center |
Image of the Day
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| Via Bastiat Institute |
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| DEFICITS |
First Nominee For Scumbag Public Servant of the Year 2015
Suspended San Jose cop Phillip White:
In one of his tweets, [Officer Phillip] White said: "Threaten me or my family and I will use my God given and law appointed right and duty to kill you. #CopsLivesMatter."Cool Science
In another, he said he would be off-duty at the movies with his gun if anyone "feels they can't breathe or their lives matter."
The Marquette Warrior
A tenured political science professor at Marquette, John McAdams, publishes an independent/more conservative blog, the Marquette Warrior. In his blog, there was an expose of a junior faculty member of the philosophy department, Cheryl Abbate, who told a student in her ethics class that comments in support of traditional marriage (vs. "gay marriage") would not be allowed; a secretly-recorded conversation revealed Abbate comparing the promotion of the traditional definition of marriage to racism. Keep in mind Marquette University is a Catholic university; the unambiguous position of the Catholic Church is that marriage is the indissoluble union of a man and a woman. A university, by definition, is open to a full and frank free exchange of ideas. McAdams has been suspended with pay but banned from unescorted visits to campus, obvious violations to his academic freedom and due process rights. For a related post from the Wisconsin Institute of Law and Liberty, see here. To sign a petition for McAdams' reinstatement, click here.
My statement:
Marquette, by reinforcing the censorship of opposing points of view in favor of a traditional concept of marriage, is neither a university or Catholic. By punishing a professor for exposing such unprofessional behavior by a fellow instructor, Marquette has violated the professor's academic freedom, due process and contractual rights.Cato Institute: GOP Winning the Fiscal Fight
There have been some notable setbacks to the GOP/conservatives over the past 6 years: debt-limit showdowns, cromnibus battles, reinstatement of Clinton class warfare tax hikes, etc. But what's less noticed is the GOP has basically sucked the oxygen out of the room of Obama's dreams of expanding the Statist empire. Key excerpts:
- domestic discretionary spending is now below where it was during the Bush years, when measured as a share of GDP
- revenues are now projected to average only 18 percent of GDP over the next 10 years. That’s a smaller tax burden than we had throughout the Clinton years.
- federal spending has dropped from 24.4 percent of gross domestic product (GDP) in 2009 to 20.3 percent of GDP in 2014
Facebook Corner
(Cato Institute). "Libertarians are just as internationalist, if not more so, than those of other political persuasions."
The idea that we classical liberals/libertarians are "isolationist" is absurd. Just because we are more skeptical to open up the Pandora's box of foreign disputes doesn't mean that our natural rights to exchange or travel stop at arbitrary national borders. The idea that an elitist group of political whores and bureaucrats can micromanage an unfettered marketplace is hubris. Economic restrictions are double-edged swords, "beggar thy neighbor" vicious circle dysfunctions. Prospering trade partners loathe the destruction of wealth and lives through war and other counterproductive Statist policies. American conservatives in the classically liberal/small government tradition from the Founding Fathers through the Old Right of the New Deal era were suspicious of Big Defense and interventionist policies; we libertarians or pro-liberty conservatives are modern descendents of the Old Right.
Political Cartoon
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| Via Institute for Justice |
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| Courtesy of Scott Stantis via IPI |
Trans-Siberian Orchestra, "Christmas Canon"
