A youth-obsessed society is, invariably, a stupid society.
Via Jonah Goldberg: “‘In America,’ Oscar Wilde quipped, ‘the young are always ready to give to those who are older than themselves the full benefits of their inexperience.'”
Category Archives: Family
Millennials Deserve What They Get. But Are Boomers Ready For What They’ll Dish Out?
America, Debt, Elections, Family, Healthcare, Pop-Culture, Welfare
My Millennial readers are the best and the brightest. They’ll probably agree that, for the most, theirs is “a generation of idle trophy kids” (a Jennifer-Graham coinage).
Still, America worships youth, no matter how dumb. (The economically nascent Chinese do the exact opposite: revere experience.) To enhance his cool quotient, every Boommer and Gen Xer on TV has been belaboring the theme of generational theft. The country’s national debt amounts to stealing from “our children.” Obamacare sticks it to the kids.
Boohoo.
In this vein, you’ve watched John Stossel “taking toys from babies” to instantiate the burden on da babies of $280 trillion in debt and unfunded liabilities.
Avik Roy at Forbes beats on breast: “Why Aren’t Millennials Marching In The Street Over Obamacare?” Roy wants to know. After all, people his age have declared war on the “generation born between 1977 and 1995.”
… by design, this law can work if and only if enough young people are willing to pay premiums far higher than are actuarially fair in order to subsidize workers my age who on average earn far more than the young workers who are subsidizing them. Even if one takes into account that Millennials in the long run eventually will become old themselves and benefit from these subsidies, Obamacare still is an extraordinarily bad deal that effectively would force today’s 18-year olds to pay 18 percent more for their medical care over a lifetime than if each generation paid its own way. Such an age-related tax is unconscionable. Imagine if sales taxes or income taxes included a surcharge for everyone who happened to be a twenty-something. If this idea sounds preposterous, welcome to Obamacare.
Highly productive, wealthy, well-employed, slightly older sorts, who’ve worked hard for what they have, are hard at work generating contempt for their kind.
Lord knows that Millenials—Ms. Graham calls them the “new American idle”—will rise to the occasion. They will dish out contempt and much more. Ask and they’ll oblige.
I sincerely hope the contempt they’ve ginned up for themselves sits well with Boomers and Gen Xers. Since Millenials are big on Obama—and thus deserve everything they get, from more debt to ZerO. Care—I’m sure they’ll also grow into the idea of rationing care for their elders (death panels).
Politically, Millennials were among Barack Obama’s strongest supporters in 2008, backing him for president by more than a two-to-one ratio (66% to 32%)
Be careful what you wish for, stupid. There is no need to teach your precious progeny still more disrespect for their elders.
Über Alec, Barking-Mad Bashir, Death-Defying Libertarians
Ann Coulter, English, Family, Feminism, Gender, Individualism Vs. Collectivism, libertarianism, Objectivism, Political Correctness
“Über Alec, Barking-Mad Bashir & The Death-Defying Libertarians” is the current column, now on WND. An excerpt:
…. BLACKOUT. “Phony panic” and “urban myth” is how the “prestige press” is characterizing widespread reports of en masse, black-on-white Knock-Out attacks. “Boys behaving badly,” noodled one jocular Democratic strategist about the sucker-punching to death of a few people, so far.
The mischief-makers must be laughing. They couldn’t care a fig. In fact, the rhetorical reprisals the perpetrators deploy to define their crimes are as precise as the blows they land on their pale victims: “polarbearing,” Jew hunting, and so on.
But some libertarians were having none of it, insisting à la the left, that to frame the felons in anything but race-neutral terms is collectivist and racist.
In the face of such dogged denial, I worry that libertarians who reject reality may be doomed to extinction.
Picture this: You walk past a feral gang of black youths, like the ones depicted in all these terrifying YouTube clips. You grin bravely, place honky hands on ears and hum loudly as you saunter by, until… you are coshed on the head by a black youth. Then another. And another.
As you fall to your knees near death, you congratulate yourself on cleaving not to reality, but to a noble “theory” instead. You die a happy, theoretically pious libertarian.
It must be abundantly clear to any thinking man that this is idiotic, not individualistic.
Those who’re derided as apostles of intolerance—”collectivists”—for cleaving to reality will likely outlive the self-sacrificing, self-styled individualists, sacrificed to an idea that has no basis in objective reality. …
The complete column is “Über Alec, Barking-Mad Bashir & The Death-Defying Libertarians.” Read it on WND.
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Happy Private-Property Day.
Liz Cheney: Like Father, Like Daughter
Ann Coulter, Family, Homosexuality, Neoconservatism, Paleolibertarianism, Republicans
Liz Cheney is a snake like her father, Dick, whom Fox News continues to dust off periodically and present as a voice of wisdom. Even though she hangs out with her gay sister and sister’s partner and expresses support for the couple in private, the opportunistic Liz—who is running for office—disses her sister’s life in public:
It’s a good thing Mary Cheney can’t vote in Wyoming.
After an appearance on Fox News Sunday in which Wyoming Senate candidate Liz Cheney said she and her married gay sister “just disagree” on the subject of marriage equality, Mary Cheney posted a sharp rebuke to her Facebook page. “Liz – this isn’t just an issue on which we disagree, you’re just wrong – and on the wrong side of history,” she wrote.
Mary Cheney’s wife, Heather Poe, also took to Facebook to sound off. “Liz has been a guest in our home, has spent time and shared holidays with our children, and when Mary and I got married in 2012 – she didn’t hesitate to tell us how happy she was for us. To have her say she doesn’t support our right to marry is offensive to say the least.”
Their comments came after Liz Cheney, who is struggling in the polls against Rebublican [sic] incumbent Senator Mike Enzi, tried to explain to host Chris Wallace that her support of a State Department policy that grants benefits to same sex couples is not inconsistent with her broader opposition to allowing those couples to get married.
Ann Coulter had some fighting words for Liz (in defending the indefensible: the GOP):
“The problem is we have hucksters, shysters, people ripping off the Republican Party for their own self-aggrandizement, for their own egos, to make money,” Coulter said on Fox News’s “Hannity.”
“I would put Todd Akin, Newt Gingrich, Liz Cheney, Mark Sanford all in the same boat, and the consultants who persuaded Linda McMahon and John Raese to run,” she added.
Republicans just can’t stop mentioning issues that win them no support from most Americans. Most people think that a person’s sexual life is his or her business. What’s wrong with saying, “I have very many positions on policy, gay marriage is not one of them.” It’s hardly a make-or-break matter. Or simply echo this paleolibertarianism position:
In furtherance of liberty, Uncle Sam’s purview must be curtailed, not expanded. On this score, let our gay friends and family members lead the way. Let them solemnize their commitment in contract and through church, synagogue and mosque (that will be the day!). Once interesting and iconoclastic, gays have become colossal bores who crave nothing more than the state’s seal of approval. Go back to the days of the Stonewall Riots, when the police’s violations of privacy and private property were the object of gay anger and activism.