Author: Bookworm

Totalitarian revolutions always end up eating their own

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One of the hallmarks of the French Revolution, the Russian Revolution, the Nazi Revolution (because, although the ballot was used in 1932, it was a revolution), the Hussein Iraq takeover (which was also a form of revolution), and other totalitarian takeovers is that the paranoid leadership style inherent in totalitarianism invariably means that the revolution […]

 

Free speech, in all its glorious ugliness

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Barry Rubin sounds a tocsin at Pajamas Media about the way in which political correctness is slowly but steadily eroding free speech in America, leaving us to speech norms more commonly seen in repressive Middle Eastern countries. As he explains, there’s a reason “the authors of the American Constitution forbade limits on freedom of speech: […]

 

Harvard Magazine and the Left’s Andrew Sullivan love affair

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Speaking of Harvard, I just got a gander at Harvard Magazine, which has a smugly grinning Andrew Sullivan on the cover, as the exemplar of “The New Media.” I thought the article would be about bloggers generally, but the table of contents tells me I’m wrong: “World’s Best Blogger?” it asks. It then explains that […]

 

Attending Harvard Law doesn’t make Obama a genius

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Regular readers know that I have fussed for years about Obama’s much vaunted intelligence. I’ve agreed that he has a feral, manipulative intelligence, but I’ve challenged the whole brilliant scholar thing. It’s not just the missing grades (which one assumes are missing because they’re embarrassing). It’s also the horrible way he expresses himself when he’s […]

 

Yes, a 3 inch lizard can collapse the Texas oil industry.

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There’s a new bad guy in town in West Texas. He’s called the Dunes Sagebrush Lizard. He’s actually kind of cute, as lizards go. He’s about three inches long, a nice tan color, and has a vaguely Winston Churchill-esque expression. He seems harmless enough, but he comes packing a huge, powerful weapon: the federal government. […]

 

What happens when government (state or federal) is pathologically hostile to business

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This post tells the story of a case on which I worked. It’s a true story. Picture this: It’s 2001. You live in California and you own a small business that consists of you and maybe three to five at-will employees. Your profits are decent. One morning, Jane, one of your employees, announces that she’s […]

 

Morality requires constant exercise — and Big Government leaves us morally flabby

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Don Quixote and I got together for lunch today, and the conversation drifted to innate human goodness. Neither of us believes in it. We both noted that, if people are rich and powerful enough to do so, significant numbers of them readily abandon ordinary morality, with sexual debauchery usually heading the list of their moral […]

 

“Social mobilism,” or the anti-Americanism of modern American art

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Back in December, I went to the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (“LACMA”) to see an exhibit entitled “Fashioning Fashion: European Dress in Detail, 1700-1915.” Historic European and American fashion has always been something of a hobby of mine, so I was excited when I first heard about the exhibit. I wasn’t disappointed. The […]

 

Who can you trust? Or how one Leftist may be breaking free of the Goebbels’ school of Leftist lying

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“If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it. The lie can be maintained only for such time as the State can shield the people from the political, economic and/or military consequences of the lie. It thus becomes vitally important for the State to use all […]

 

Passover and the suffering necessary to end tyranny

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Tonight marks the first night of Passover, the ancient Jewish holiday celebrating the Jews’ release from bondage and, I think, their reaffirmed commitment to God. I wrote the following post last year for Passover, and republished it once more a few months ago. It focuses on Iran, but I think you could easily substitute Syria, […]

 

San Francisco discovers free enterprise

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San Francisco is definitely up in the top five when it comes to “most Progressively governed cities in America.” No surprise, then, that the city’s finances are in a shambles. What is a surprise is the fact that, faced with a looming budget collapse, the City has suddenly discovered capitalist incentives: it’s offering the big […]

 

Yeah, I’m not thrilled about that J. Crew advertisement either

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The big “conservatives are evil” exhibit of the moment is conservative protests over at Fox about a J. Crew advertisement in which a mom happily paints her five year old son’s toenails pink. I think it’s worth adding here that the boy clearly hasn’t had a haircut in a while. In other words, if the […]

 

Putting the sexual identity cart before the accomplishment horse

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Okay, I’ll admit that my post title is awkward, but it sums up what California State Senator Mark Leno is trying to do in California public schools: namely, put a person’s sexuality front and center, with a tag-on coda about the person’s actual accomplishments. This isn’t the first time a gay California legislator has tried […]

 

The Bookworm Turns — an e-book with collected posts from the Bookworm Room

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I started blogging in 2004, right before the election, and was hooked.  After years of churning out legal briefs, it was an endless pleasure to write about politics, pop culture, education, social issues, national security, the media, and whatever else caught my attention.  It was wonderful, too, to develop a new writing style, one that […]

 

A post you should read at a blog you should visit

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My son asked me “Is Princeton a good school?”  I didn’t quite know how to answer that.  It’s an old school.  It’s a school with a great reputation.  It’s expensive.  It has its pick of the nation’s best students.  It also employs Paul Krugman and Peter Singer. What!?  You don’t know who Peter Singer is, […]

 

Liberals — lording it over lesser beings

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If there is one defining characteristic of liberals, it is their sense that they are better than everyone else. Nowhere was that more explicitly illustrated than in Ron Schiller’s comments: In my personal opinion, liberals today might be more educated, fair and balanced than conservatives. Schiller wasn’t unique, just unguarded. The whole point of liberalism, […]

 

Charlie Sheen and the bedlamite approach to insanity

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England’s Bethlem Royal Hospital, founded in the 13th Century as part of a convent, eventually transformed itself into the world’s first facility dedicated to the mentally ill. By the 16th Century, when it housed only the mentally ill, it was famous for the cruelty with which those patients were treated. The word “bedlam,” which describes […]

 

It’s entirely possible that, when it comes to gay marriage and the First Amendment, pluralism won’t work.

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Rodney King got his 15 minutes of fame for (a) getting beaten up while resisting arrest; (b) having his name attached to some horrific riots; and (c) plaintively asking “Can we get along?” The last is a great thought. I’d like to get along with people better myself. “Getting along,” though, presupposes that people have […]

 

Life in the nanny state

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I was reading Rick Steves’ Italy 2011 (the 2010) version, when I was surprised to learn this little fact on page 21: Because Europeans are generally careful with energy use, you’ll find government-enforced limits on air-conditioning and heating. There’s a one-month period each spring and fall when neither is allowed. For those of us in […]

 

Conservative candidates are better looking

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You’ve long suspected it, but now we know it’s true: objectively speaking, conservative political candidates are indeed better looking: Rightwing candidates are better looking than their leftwing counterparts, something they benefit from during elections, according to a study conducted by Swedish and Finnish economists. The economists who conducted the study figured this out by asking […]

 

Regressives

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Roger Simon, among others, has noted that the demonstrations in Madison demonstrate how old-fashioned the modern Left is, something that’s true despite the Left’s attempt to re-brand itself with the name “Progressive.” It therefore seemed appropriate for me to run again an article I wrote for American Thinker back in September 2007. My section on […]

 

More thoughts on Wisconsin

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The average Wisconsin teacher has a better total compensation package than the average Wisconsin taxpayer. After the proposed legislation goes through, the average Wisconsin teacher will still have a better total compensation package than the average Wisconsin taxpayer. If this was 1789, events in Madison would be the equivalent of the French aristocrats taking to […]

 

Thoughts about the Wisconsin teachers’ union

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[Updated to correct information about Wisconsin teacher salaries.] As I understand it, Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker, faced with a $3.6 billion biennial budget deficit (for the years 2011-2013), had the choice of raising taxes in his financially beleaguered state or firing up to 6,000 state employees. He chose a third route, proposing that Wisconsin’s public […]

 

Never underestimate hate from the Left, especially when it comes to conservative blacks

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This morning, I read and enjoyed Jeannie DeAngelis’ post about a potential Herman Cain candidacy. From everything I’ve heard, including musings from our own Danny Lemieux, Cain is a person one would like to have in the White House. He may not have a political track record, but he’s still got a lot more under […]

 

Obama suffers an empathy failure when it comes to Israel

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Let’s think about Israel from the Israeli viewpoint for a minute, shall we? It is, by any standards, an extremely small country. Within its own borders, it is a sophisticated Western-style nation that leads the world in scientific innovation. Its political system is a parliamentary style democratic republic. Although its system isn’t perfect, no one […]

 

I now pronounce the Archbishop of Canterbury officially insane

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The Archbishopric of Canterbury used to be a pretty important job. The guy who held that position, going back to the earliest Middle Ages, was the premier leader of the English church, whether that church gave allegiance to Rome or the British Monarch. The current Archbishop, Rowan Williams is, as best as I can tell, […]