Category Archives: Government

Loughner, Language, and The Big Lie

Education, English, Free Will Vs. Determinism, Government, Political Correctness, Politics, Propaganda, Pseudoscience, Psychiatry

The following is from my new WND.COM column, “Loughner, Language, and The Big Lie”:

“… Jared Lee Loughner was both fixated on his representative’s imagined failings, and preoccupied with language and its misuse. These elements combined and then combusted in his head.

As a writer who really loves the English language, I am intrigued by the intrusive, persistent thoughts about grammar and illiteracy to have plagued Loughner.

You see, as I mourn the senseless slaughter of my countrymen, I also grieve – with almost every book I pick up or Internet tract I read – the bastardization of the language.

Given time, the nation’s mental-health mavens will confuse matters. They will likely assert, without any science, that misfiring neurotransmitters in the man’s brain brought us to this point. It would appear, however, that what pushed Loughner into an abyss was the inability to “read” the world around him.

Words are symbols. They are used as agreed-upon conventions to make sense of the world. For Loughner, these constructs no longer corresponded to the things they are supposed to describe.

The magazine Mother Jones interviewed Bryce Tierney, a close friend of Loughner. Tierney confirmed “the fascination Loughner had with semantics and how the world is really nothing – [an] illusion.” In addition, Loughner, said his pal, liked to insist (credibly) that government was “f—ing us over.”

Perhaps, then, it was not speech per se that inflamed Loughner’s febrile passions, but, rather, Orwellian speech; lies that belie reality.

The Big Lies. …”

Read the complete column, “Loughner, Language, and The Big Lie.”

UPDATED: RELATIVE Economic Freedom: Canada Clobbers the US

Business, Canada, Economy, Free Markets, Government, Regulation

Hong Kong, Singapore, Australia, New Zealand, Switzerland, Canada, Denmark, and even Ireland have leapfrogged over the US with respect to economic freedoms, measured by the Heritage Foundation’s 2011 index of Economic Freedom, in accordance with “10 measures that evaluate openness, the rule of law, and competitiveness.

I confess to finding the Heritages’ indices of “individual empowerment, non-discimination [sic], and the promotion of competition” a little vague, if not statist, as they all presuppose a central authority that acts to “empower,” police discrimination, and “promote” competition.

The Canadian Fraser Institute actually considers parameters like the “Size of Government, Legal Structure, Security of Property Rights, Access to Sound Money, Freedom to Trade Internationally, Regulation of Credit, Labor, and Business—all recognizable as fundamental to economic freedom.

You know that American freedoms are on the wane when the very constructs our intellectuals use to measure those freedom are, well, so veiled and politically correct.

UPDATE: RELATIVE ECONOMIC FREEDOMS. Ingemar, these indices are relative. Ireland is not free, not by a long shot. Neither are we. According to the Heritage Foundation, Ireland is economically freer than the US. What you need to take away from this, vis-a-vis the US, is the following: If a think tank that is prone to American boosterism rates Ireland, which is bankrupt, higher than America—we are in bad shape. But then you already knew that.

“The Great American Waiver Act”

Government, Healthcare, Regulation, Republicans, Socialism, The State

With a title such as “Repealing the Job-Killing Health Care Law Act,” you’d think the House Republicans’ plan to kill HealthScare would find its way onto the front pages of the parrot press. Alas, unless the migraine I’ve suffered for the past two days has interfered with my vision, I saw no exclusive report on the bill over the website pages of the New York Times, TIME magazine, Newsweek, Orange County Register, or the Los Angeles Times.

Luckily, there is Michelle Malkin, who covers the news exceptionally well.

Befitting a Republican political ploy is how the Obama houseboys of Hardball saw this simple Bill and its title.

From the hulking horror itself I had originally excerpted here, so that you could get a feel for the impenetrable legalese the Managerial State has evolved over time to ensure the people have not the faintest notion what’s upon them.

If the H.R.4872 Reconciliation Act of 2010 was not cause for revolution, I don’t know what is. It has thousands of sections. Green provisions, early learning fund, promotion of employment experience, translation or interpretation services, whistle blower provisions—all sub-chapters in what is a violative bill by every conceivable criterion.

The two pages endeavoring “to repeal the job-killing health care law and health care-related provisions in the Health Care and Education Reconciliation Act of 2010” are indeed too sweet and simple to be true. Not in Washington.

TSA Solution: Name ‘Em And Shame ‘Em

Barack Obama, Government, Homeland Security, Justice, Law, Left-Liberalism And Progressivisim, Terrorism

This week’s column had been titled “It’s Hard Out Here for a Pimp.” After all, it is about The Transportation and Security Administration. Thankfully, writers have editors. The following is from “TSA Solution: Name ‘Em And Shame ‘Em,” my new, and newly named, WND.COM column:

“… If Michelle Obama had experienced a gut reaction to the ordeal inflicted by her husband’s administration (begun under his predecessor) on travelers and their tots — she was not letting on. The First Lady, as you know, is in touch with her gut — and the gut of every kid in the country. The FLOTUS of the fat-based initiatives ‘cares’ enough to decide what America’s bloated babes will ingest, but not enough to weigh-in when their bodies are being invaded by state workers. …

… It’s safe to say that the moms of the Fox News Blond Squad were with The FLOTUS. One of these interchangeable females implied that the interminable complainers at the terminals were no more than an insignificant group of noise-makers. Kirsten Powers, a liberal member of that squadron, expressed her satisfaction with the porn protocol. Her sympathies, she said, go out to TSA workers.

Yes, ‘It’s Hard Out Here for a Pimp.’ On a more cheerful note, let me suggest a theme song to perfectly capture the TSA’s mission and mien. I give you the hip hop band ‘Three 6 Mafia'”: