"Again, it was liberalism, not communism, that conceived the greatest hatred and loathing of Joe McCarthy. McCarthy, with his usual obtuseness regarding other people's motives, never understood this." -Arthur Herman

There is a thinking problem found on both left and right: It is to assume that because a bad thing happened, the opposition WANTED it to happen.

E.g. Bush wanted 9/11. Obama wanted Ferguson rioting. Trump wanted Jan 6 rioting. Biden wants hyper-inflation.

"Nonfamous people know that sometimes the press distorts what famous people say. But they generally don't know how common it is." -Scott Adams

“The reason I don’t like it is because in the old days, they’d go: ‘Hey, that old man died.’ Now, they go: ‘He lost his battle.’ That’s no way to end your life: ‘What a loser that guy was! Last thing he did was lose.' He was waging a brave battle, but at the end, he got kind of cowardly with what happened. Then, the bowel cancer, it got brave. You’ve got to give it to the bowel cancer." -Norm MacDonald

Canceling the phrase "Indian style" proves teachers don't understand their role.  Defund.

Women live on average five years longer than men. What if it were the reverse?

"I walked through blood and bones in the streets of Manhattan trying to find my brother." -Norm MacDonald

If a truck driver who has driven over many bridges comes to one which, after looking at it from this way and that, he refuses to cross, we do not say he is “anti-bridge.”

Recall election polls lying to suppress the vote?  I don't think so.

I was watching "The Deadliest Catch" and the guys do two things:  They wish for good weather and they work maybe the toughest fishing spot on earth to make like two or three grand a day.  There's good weather over almost the entire earth.  They don't want good weather.

Be pleased, gentlemen, to dispose of what belongs to yourselves as you think proper, but leave us the disposal of the fruit of our own toil, to use it or exchange it as we see best.  –Frederick Bastiat

Everyone wants to live at the expense of the state. They forget that the state wants to live at the expense of everyone.  –Frederick Bastiat

All you have to do to ban something is make it expensive.  The death penalty, nuclear power, speaking your mind.  Doesn’t matter what it is.

People who can't name drawbacks to their positions should be ignored.

"Solar panels and wind!"

"Affirmative action in police and air traffic controllers!"

"Masks all day at school!"

"$15 minimum wage!"

Virtually nobody on the left can tell you a drawback.  Which means virtually nobody on the left should be listened to, except in self-defense.

When young people live in the past, it usually means they're leftists.

Feminists pretend women can't work.  Or can't work much.  Or can't get fairly paid for their work.

Environmentalists pretend our lakes/air are dirty.  Or that our forests are vanishing.

BLM pretends there are lynchings amuck.  Or that cops are more likely to shoot a black man who resists arrest.

Social justice types pretend the poor starve.  Or that the rich don't pay their "fair share."

Past = Present

“Seeing victims everywhere you look is the zeitgeist, it is what gives people license to behave as they like while feeling virtuous. Virtue is not manifested in one’s behavior, always so difficult and tedious to control, but in one’s attitude toward victims.” -Theodore Dalrymple

People who say "Addicts can't stop" are self-aggrandizing.

“The American philosopher Herbert Fingarette pointed out in his book Heavy Drinking that experiments show that even very drunk chronic alcoholics (than which no addiction is more chronic) can resist the temptation to have another drink if they have an incentive to do so. Their problem is that they rarely do have such an incentive.” -Theodore Dalrymple

“Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable.”  -JFK, 1962

"We are five days away from fundamentally transforming the United States of America."  -Barack Obama

I issue a correction and clarification for last week's conclusion:  Of course, our experiences matter in what we believe, but LARGE numbers of them.  What our parents believed or what our society believed over thousands of pronouncements.

Cornell Law School tells me Stare decisis is Latin for “to stand by things decided.”  This is a stupid principle in the case of the Supreme Court:  It tells them, after all, to use two sometimes opposite principles to decide cases.  (Or even three, in the case of leftist justices)

I don't expect this court to overturn Roe:  For one, I expect one or two will do the braindead "stare decicis" ruling which could be only one line long if they didn't draw it out.  For two, the left wins wins wins wins.  And the right lose lose lose loses.  Barbara has an idea why.

“If someone says that our criminal justice system is bad ecause there have been too many miscarriages of justice (in the direction of wrongful conviction, of course), I ask, “How many miscarriages of justice would you expect?”  A perfect human institution is almost inconceivable, after all.  –Theodore Dalrymple

More important than your obligation to follow your conscience—or at least prior to it—is your obligation to form your conscience correctly.  –Antonin Scalia

A man died on the road outside my subdivision.  And I have a really good ghost story.  And yet... We are not products of our experiences.  We are products of our decisions.

“The desire for explanation always outruns the recognition of explanatory power.  The illusion of understanding is more important for most men than understanding itself.  And what counts as an understanding today will be revealed tomorrow as an illusion, often so gross that people will wonder how anyone came to believe it.  Conduct that was once attributed to the devil will be attributed by successive generations to a deficient or excessive phrenological bump, to an unresolved Oedipus complex, to bad conditioning, to faulty brain chemistry, to unfortunate genes, or to a part of the brain that fails to light up on fMRI scans when appropriately provoked.  The illusion of understanding is like the grin of the Cheshire Cat:  it is what remains when all else has disappeared.”  -Theodore Dalrymple

"The 'futility of war' is an exhilarating set of sounds rather than a serious statement to be tested seriously against facts.  Some wars are indeed futile. Some are not." -Sowell

The Taliban, whom we have fought for 20 years until two weeks ago, are now being relied on for American safety. Spot the problem? 

"The bombers appear to have somehow gotten past Taliban checkpoints on the outer perimeter of the airfield, McKenzie said, acknowledging there was 'a failure somewhere.'"  -The New York Post

"If I were a father and had a daughter who was seduced, I should not despair over her; I would hope for her salvation. But if I had a son who became a journalist, and continued to be one for five years, I would give him up." -Kierkegaard

"If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear." -George Orwell

"It would probably be rude to ask, but I’m sure none of [the Afghan refugees] support sharia law, hate gays or Jews, or favor the death penalty for apostasy. People are really the same everywhere on earth, regardless of beliefs."  -Racist

"The right to offend is far more important than any right not to be offended. The right to ridicule is far more important to society than any right not to be ridiculed because one in my view represents openness - and the other represents oppression.” -Rowan Atkinson

“Men have been taught that the highest virtue is not to achieve, but to give.  Yet one cannot give that which has not been created.  Creation comes before distribution—or there will be nothing to distribute.  The need of the creator comes before the need of any possible beneficiary.  Yet we are taught to admire the second-hander who dispenses gifts he has not produced above the man who made the gifts possible.  We praise an act of charity.  We shrug at an act of achievement.”  -Ayn Rand

War destroys.  But peace does not build.

“This type of reasoning would mean that a ‘big’ genius, like Edison, and a ‘big’ gangster, like Stalin, were equal malefactors:  one flooded the world with immeasurable values and the other with incalculable slaughter, but both did it on a very big scale.  I doubt whether anyone would care to equate these two—yet this is the precise difference between big business and big government.”  Ayn Rand