"It profits me but little that a vigilant authority always protects the tranquillity of my pleasures and constantly averts all dangers from my path, without my care or concern, if this same authority is the absolute master of my liberty and my life."

--Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America

Friday, May 4, 2012

Commentary, Albeit Belated

The Regular Guy has had a lot of work lately, so blogging has necessarily taken a back seat.   Here are some quick hits on recent stories:

1. Elizabeth "Pocahantas" Warren.   A lily-white law professor claims to be Native American in order to qualify as a "minority" hire for Harvard's diversity police.   Then she runs for Senate in Massachusetts, presumably hoping no one would notice.  

Now would be a good time to have, as Obama would say, a "national conversation on race."   Specifically, could we have a frank national conversation on the wisdom of continuing the corrupting regime of affirmative action.   And, could we have that conversation civilly, without calling anyone a racist?

I doubt it.   For obvious reasons.   There are too many jobs on the left wrapped up in diversity and the industries it's spawned.    Follow.   The.   Money.

***

John Fund captures an additional nuance of the story:

But last week it came out that in 2009, the Warren household had an income of $980,000 and indeed in recent years has always been part of the top “1 percent” of income earners. But Massachusetts has long offered tax filers a choice between paying the standard 5.3 percent flat income-tax rate or a higher 5.85 percent rate. All they have to do is check a box. Despite her belief that the rich should pay more, Warren has never paid the higher rate. “I did not make a charitable contribution to the state,” she explained to reporters. Nor did she volunteer to donate much to charity.

Warren is free to believe that she has Native American ancestry, just as she is free to keep as much of her money as she is legally entitled to. But her choices in filling out forms are instructive. In checking the boxes claiming Native American status for so many years and in not checking the box to pay a higher state income-tax rate, she has revealed more than we need to know to brand her as yet another sanctimonious liberal who wants to have it all ways.
He calls it, instructively, "check-the-box liberalism."

2.  The Life of Julia.   I am not the first person to notice that "Julia" -- the heroine of an epic tale of bureaucracy and nanny-state dependency touted as Obama's "vision" -- shares the name of the love interest of Winston Smith in the dystopian nightmare of Orwell's 1984.   The irony, the sweet, sweet irony!   Here's a taste of the deep-thinking, "reality-based" Democratic Party ca. 2012:


I don't want to live in a country where government leaders think in cartoons.   Or where voters can be convinced by cartoons.   But that's just me.  

3. Occupy Shows Its Stripes.   For anyone with eyes to see and ears to hear, the "Occupy Wall Street" movement was always a creature of the proto-violent anarchist hard left.   Now, in Cleveland, five members of "Occupy Cleveland" have been arrested for plotting to blow up a bridge.  These are the people Obama was supporting and fomenting just a few months ago.   Will anyone in the MSM notice?   If a right-wing group had plotted a terrorist bombing after receiving support from George W. Bush a few years back, do you think that would have led the news?   No and Yes.

No comments:

Post a Comment