Sunday, October 24, 2010

SWNIDish Must-Reads

This is not an election on November 2. This is a restraining order.

So says the inimitable P. J. O'Rourke, stating with his usual acerbic hyperbole that the Donks are "drunk on power." P. J. knows about being drunk, so we take his analogy seriously. Read between the lines and you'll see O'Rourke, like a manic, modern-day Thomas Paine, warning citizens that they're being turned into clients.

More soberly, Amity Shlaes offers another precis of her celebrated history of the Great Depression and its relevance to the Great Recession. Then as now, no one will play a game when a single player--the federal government--can dominate all the others by setting new rules. Forgive the PDF file from the impassioned conservatives at Hillsdale College, for this is an essay worthy of reflection.

Is there a common thread here, aside from SWNIDish endorsement? Yes. It is that we have agreed to elect people who insist they're so much smarter than we, they need to tell us what to do all the time. Well, we insist otherwise, and not just because we know that "we," not "us," is correct following "than" in the previous sentence. We insist because of the self-evident truth articulated by St. Milton of Chicago: No one takes better care of your stuff than you.

4 comments:

JB in CA said...

Speaking of grammar, did St. Milton really say that no one takes better care of your stuff than [he or she takes care of] you?

Anonymous said...

Mr. O'rourke might find some fun with this suggestion from David Brooks writing in the NY Times:

By they way, here’s a fun party game: Get a bottle of vodka and read Peter Baker’s article “The Education of President Obama” from The New York Times Magazine a few weeks ago. Take a shot every time a White House official is quoted blaming Republicans for the Democrats’ political plight. You’ll be unconscious by page three.

Jon A. Alfred E. Michael J. Wile E. SWNID said...

For P. J., life is a drinking game.

Unknown said...

If by "life" you mean the 1860 Milton Bradley classic that just keeps getting better through the years, then I would definitely like to hear more. Oooh, I hope it uses the "spin the wheel to see how you did on the stock market" mechanism.