Saturday, September 28, 2013

Pearls of expression – XXXVI.

ObamaCare is something new in American life: the creation of a massive bureaucracy charged with downsizing you — to a world of fewer doctors, higher premiums, lousier care, more debt, fewer jobs, smaller houses, smaller cars, smaller, fewer, less; a world where worse is the new normal.
"Are Western Nations 'Rich Enough To Be Stupid?' ." By Mark Steyn, Investor's Business Daily, 9/28/13.

3 comments:

YIH said...

Off topic but worth passing along; A 'Teaching Assistant' at the Univ. of Wisconsin is calling out the rampant leftism of his school:
''to wit: “Trans”: for those who “identify along the gender-variant spectrum,” and “Genderqueer”: “for those who consider their gender outside the binary gender system”. I hasten to reiterate that I am quoting from diversity handouts; I am not making any of this up.

Please allow me to be quite frank. My job, which I love, is to teach students Japanese history. This week, for example, I have been busy explaining the intricacies of the Genpei War (1180-1185), during which time Japan underwent a transition from an earlier, imperial-rule system under regents and cloistered emperors to a medieval, feudal system run by warriors and estate managers. It is an honor and a great joy to teach students the history of Japan. I take my job very seriously, and I look forward to coming to work each day.''
He said, in a nutshell, ''And just what the hell does 'genderqueers' have to do with the history of Medieval Japan?''.
To be frank, my knowledge of pre-WWII Japan is rather sparse, but I can't imagine that modern fetishes have anything at all to do with Japanese history.

Joseph said...

Been there. Done that. In the 1930s, it was taken for granted by people with too much free time that the Depression was due to "over"production. The FDR administration created a massive bureaucracy assigned to downsize production ... and was successful at it. This was put on hold during WWII (which is why WWII cured the Depression) and not revived until recently.

This is not unprecedented. The annoying part is that we should know better by now.

Col. B. Bunny said...

YIH, that's a choice email that that TA sent. I sat through a mild version years ago in the federal bureaucracy. It was ridiculous.

Joseph, that was an amazing period. A revolution was intended and effected as Garet Garrett showed in _The Revolution Was_. He spoke of the revolution within the forms. We bought it with little protest. I had an uncle who went red in the face at the mention of FDR and called him a traitor to his class. I wish I'd known to ask him about FDR.

FDR worked to reduce production and Hoover worked to keep wages high rather than let the market shake out. The lessons of recession of the early 1920s were ignored.

It's true we don't learn. The 20th century was a slaughter house due to totalitarian government but the Europeans concluded it was all because of "nationalism." They then set about creating and reinforcing the common market and successor E.U. which is a centralized, statist, antidemocratic locomotive with no arresting buffer down the rail line. And the E.U. is in full throttle mode working to extinguish the nation state, per globalist pipe dream. We can all breathe easier as a result!

The entire Western world is "facts optional" in every sphere from what I can see.