Quotes of the Day

"John Edwards leads an all-star cast of liberal politicians and intellectuals (Edwards is decidedly not the latter) who worship at the altar of Invidia, praying that she will exact penance from the undeserving half of our ‘two Americas.’ Like the ‘scientific socialism’ that concealed envy behind a slide rule, today’s liberals invoke social science as justification for their covetousness.

In one famous study, a majority of people said they would rather make $50,000 if others earned $25,000 than earn $100,000 if others were making $200,000. Such studies are deeply flawed. For starters, as Arthur Brooks notes in the current edition of City Journal, they don’t address the question of whether people would be happier in a world of total equality. Rather, they ask whether people would be happier in a world of inequality so long as they could be richer than everybody else.

More damning, however, is that these studies turn a vice into a virtue. With the exception of the self-esteem movement, which glorifies pride, it’s difficult to imagine another area where we so shamelessly tout a sin as the basis of public policy. All men lust in their hearts; shall we dole out concubines for those of us who can’t live like Hugh Hefner?"

—Jonah Goldberg



"In every state of the union, medical insurance is regulated. In some, it’s heavily, heavily regulated.

Oregon legislators, for instance, just added a few new mandatory benefits to all health insurance policies: contraceptives, prosthetics and orthotics, and treatments for injuries caused by intoxication... Do you really wonder why health insurance costs so much? I don’t. The American health care system is addicted to regulation. Our legislators are the pushers. We need to go cold turkey."

—Paul Jacob




"Multiculturalism’s goal is not to teach about other cultures, but to promote—by means of distortions and half-truths—the notion that non-Western cultures are as good as, if not better than, Western culture.

Far from ‘broadening’ the curriculum, what multiculturalism seeks is to diminish the value of Western culture in the minds of students. But, given all the facts, the objective superiority of Western culture is apparent, so multiculturalists must artificially elevate other cultures and depreciate the West."

—Elan Journo



"The interesting and complicated phenomenon of climate change is still being figured out, and as much as those determined to turn it into a crusade of good vs. evil may insist otherwise, the issue of global warming isn’t a closed book.

Smearing those who buck the ‘scientific consensus’ as traitors, toadies, or enemies of humankind may be emotionally satisfying and even professionally lucrative. It is also indefensible, hyperbolic bullying. That the bullies are sure they are doing the right thing is not a point in their defense. For as Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis wrote long ago, ‘The greatest dangers to liberty lurk in insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well-meaning but without understanding’."

—Jeff Jacoby

(hat tip: Patriot Post US