FRIDAY short TAKES.

No less than J. S. Mill Himself warned people that the common school might be more repressive than compulsory church.  "A general State education is a mere contrivance for moulding people to be exactly like one another; and as the mould in which it casts them is that which pleases the predominant power in the government, whether this be a monarch, a priesthood, an aristocracy, or the majority of the existing generation, in proportion as it is efficient and successful, it establishes a despotism over the mind, leading by natural tendency to one over the body."

OK, that's not exactly a short short take, but it's catholic in its application.

Now, let's see if Illinois as an abortion sanctuary state will somehow compensate for the loss of all sorts of productive activities that the soft-on-crime corrupt state establishment has midwived.

The usual collection of pithy reinforcements of traditional Cold Spring Shops themes follows.

1.  Your choice.  "[H]ow are you with the thought of killing a gestating human?"

2.  [S]ex has for many become one more empty pleasure.

3.  Solipsism to the max.  "[T]hat combination of self-pity and self-aggrandisement is emblematic of our contemporary understanding of mental health."

4.  Spockian adolescents.  "Do what you want, hippies; the government is on your side, and they won’t say no to you, just like your mommy."

5.  The fatal flaw of "Secretary shall issue regulations."  "Congress long ago ceded authority and gave up its oversight powers to the bureaucracies it created."

6.  A thoroughgoing nincompoop.  "Joe Biden has always been a dim bulb."

7.  Bet on emergence.  "[C]ollective action only works when it springs from the ground up."

8.  It's. For. Your. Own. Good. "[S]top erecting regulatory hurdles that make it harder for working-class parents to feed their families."  Pay attention, dear reader, Our Progressive Betters do libertarian things in extremis.

9.  You want more "MAGA people," Sleepy Joe?  "Biden enacted policies that reduced the size of America’s private-sector workforce and made America less economically competitive."

10.  Lose Nature, and Militant Normals notice.  "If they can’t get their models right, I can’t help but figure they don’t really understand what they’re talking about."  By their failures shall we know them.

11.  Thanks, counterculture.  "Like most of America’s wounds, [Pizza] Hut’s were self-inflicted."

12.  Celebrate perversity.  "[T]hat combination of self-pity and self-aggrandisement is emblematic of our contemporary understanding of mental health."  Do read the article, my blurb is being outrageous to make a point.

13.  Undermine them with mockery!  "Glee’s protagonists unwittingly stand for nothing less than the unjustified persecution complex of elite liberal America."

14.  Because there's no market test?  "Why do so many absurdities of our present time have a connection to Yale Law School?"

15.  Our pathetic intellectual betters.  "As the American liberal élite unites around a commitment to 'trusting science,' it is especially sobering to consider the implications of handing over the authority to define ancestry to geneticists."  Three score years of affirming bastardy and thirty years of surrogate parenting create a lot of potential cousin marriages, don't they?

16.  Stop watching "The View."

17.  Those secular Pharisees.  "[P]rogressives mistake what they wrongly believe to be their singularly excellent intentions as evidence that they are more ethically and intellectually advanced than are those of us who are so insufficiently enlightened that we oppose their preferred means."

18.  Easier to abolish the People?  "It is the epitome of arrogant incompetence for elites to complain about ordinary people, since elites volunteer to rule them."

19.  "Ultra-MAGA" is the new Deplorable.  "Scolding and mocking voters was a signature of Hillary’s campaign, and look where that got her."

20.  Reality doesn't care about your intentions.  "Democrats had many good intentions in drafting the American Rescue Plan."  Turf them out.  "You’d Think They’d Get Tired of Losing."

21.  Cotton candy for the mind.

22.  Expose.  Mock.  Repeat.  "When you're losing on both, shut the whole discussion down -- and call that 'democracy.'"

23.  Biden is encouraging lawlessness.

24.  Road socialism at work.  "The only thing that will ever make a crowded curbside convenient again is to use a combination of permits, meters, and time limits to manage the public street."  The post might be more germane in parts of the country where houses don't have cellars.  But I do see some garages on this street with the car crowded out.

25.  Democrats alienate hard-working, family-oriented, patriotic normals.