A Collection of Unrelated Articles

The reading at RealClearPolitics.com was so good tonight that I thought I'd take only a few of the articles I read and link to them here. Titles will be in full, commentary brief.

Is It Xenophobic to Regulate Entry into the US?

By Ed Koch
No commentary needed.

Mississippi Has a Place for Heroes: Jail

By John Stossel
Here, Stossel talks about why price gouging (specifically after Hurricane Katrina) isn't such a bad thing. He ends his essay this way:

"High prices are good because what they do is they give people -- and companies -- the incentive to bring supply in ... and help people in the time of crisis. Without that price increase, who has the incentive to bear the risk of stocking up to take care of people?" said economist Roberts.

You may not believe me or Roberts when we say "gouging" is good, but will you believe three Nobel Prize-winning economists? Nobel Laureate (1992) Gary Becker says "gouging" is the "fairest and best" way to get supplies to those who need them the most. "That's a good thing," added Vernon Smith (2002). And Milton Friedman (1976)?

"The 'gougers' deserve a medal."

The New Temptation Of Democrats

By Ruth Marcus

Based on her last paragraph, I'm going to assume Ruth is a liberal Democrat who doesn't think much of God or of religious people:

So, by all means, let Democrats woo evangelicals and cast the message in a way that speaks to religious voters. But in doing so, keep in mind: What does it profit a party to gain a demographic but lose its soul?

Revisionist History
Antiwar myths about Iraq, debunked.
BY PETER WEHNER

I've written about this before, and linked to similar articles. Lefties will dismiss the inconvenient truths contained within, but the open-minded among us know.

Harry Reid & The End of Liberal Thought

By Dennis Prager

Prager is further to the right than I am (people in California who don't know any better may disagree, but it's pretty easy for a conservative to be to the right of me), but I'll agree with his article about liberalism.

Welcome to the thoughtless world of contemporary liberalism. Beginning in the 1960s, liberalism, once the home of many deep thinkers, began to substitute feeling for thought and descended into superficiality.

One-word put-downs of opponents' ideas and motives were substituted for thoughtful rebuttal. Though liberals regard themselves as intellectual -- their views, after all, are those of nearly all university professors -- liberal thought has almost died. Instead of feeling the need to thoughtfully consider an idea, most liberal minds today work on automatic. One-word reactions to most issues are the liberal norm.

He states that anyone who disagrees with a liberal is a racist, homophobe, sexist, imperialist, or is intolerant. These one-word put-downs are designed to stifle debate by silencing or shaming the recipient. It would be like a moderate conservative who called everyone who disagreed with him a communist :-)

Then, in what I can only consider to be a stroke of brilliance, Prager explains my liberal students to me.

[T]hese words make it easy to be a liberal -- essentially all one needs to do is to memorize this brief list and apply the right term to any idea or policy. That is one reason young people are more likely to be liberal -- they have not had the time or inclination to think issues through, but they know they oppose racism, imperialism and bigotry, and that they are for peace, tolerance and the environment.

Genius. I've said for years that one of the interesting things about high school and college students is that they have an amazing ability to learn, but they have next to no experience about how the adult world works. Prager's explanation says the same thing, only so much more clearly.


So that's a small sojourn through my evening's reading. Now, good night.