Let us also give thanks for Dave Barry. "In the end, as is so often the case with these burning issues that consume the nation’s capital, nothing happens, which is the whole point of the constitutional system of checks and balances put into place by the Founding Fathers, all of whom — and this is a testament to their wisdom and foresight — are dead."
Let us also note the deprivation aspired to in progressivism. "At stake in this current debt ceiling struggle is preserving what sets the United States apart from Europe. In the United States, working people get to keep most of what they earn and decide how to spend it. Don't let the Washington pols treat your paycheck as if it belongs to them."
The weekly round-up of pithy elaborations of traditional Cold Spring Shops themes follows.
1. Florida's New School: "[It] operates as an echo chamber where 'druggies' and 'weirdos' thrive on the 'politically correct' while conservative and religious students are ostracized." Evergreen. Cathartic.
2. Bingo. "Arguments for more stakeholder rights are arguments for less property rights." Milton Friedman for the win.
3. Let's go, Brandon. "Giving people their jobs back after being taken away because of the left's totalitarian lockdowns during the pandemic isn't creating new jobs." They'll brag on it anyway.
4. Sidney Hook, mugged by reality. “I was guilty of judging capitalism by its operations and socialism by its hopes and aspirations; capitalism by its works and socialism by its literature. To this day, this error and its disastrous consequences are observable in the judgement and behavior of some impassioned individuals, mostly young.”
5. Shame is a bourgeois conceit, isn't it? "The left is aware, and somewhat ashamed of, just how un-liberal they’ve become. But they can’t help themselves; they’re addicted to power."
6. Pat Moynihan's shade haunts contemporary pundits. "The structure of the family is the most important factor in determining rates of violent crime."
7. Governments fail. Use markets. "Real accountability comes when people can decide for themselves what works and what doesn't and choose accordingly."
8. His own worst enemy. "It is hard to overstate the level of antipathy toward Trump among millions who otherwise are Republican or swing voters."
9. Central planning is seductive. As were the Sirens.
10. See the tyranny inherent in the progressivism. “If the government has a right to confiscate one man’s life for public purposes, it certainly ought to have the right to confiscate another man’s wealth for the same purposes.”
11. Amen. "The COVID-19 pandemic has apparently brought us full circle, with a public health clerisy having replaced the religious one as the singular source of unassailable truth. The analogy goes further, unfortunately. The same priests of public health that have the authority to distinguish heresy from orthodoxy also cast out heretics, just like the medieval Catholic Church did."
12. Show business for the unattractive. "Is there a medical condition making Senate Majority leader Chuck Schumer wear his glasses like an old schoolmarm?"
13. Frequency and connectivity, forsooth. "In Europe, trains actually come on time, are scheduled multiple times a day and are fast."
14. First Hamline, ultimately Harvard? "Are even liberal faculty exhausted with efforts to suppress intellectual freedom and procedural fairness?"
15. When you deny coherent beliefs, emotionally satisfying nonsense drives out objective reality. "Your comments exemplify a sweeping and disturbing trend at our district and throughout much of the academy: a general willingness to ignore evidence-based arguments in favor of emotional appeals."
16. Contemporary Gulliver. "The Burger King meal really is a triumph of globalization."
17. No Constitution, living or dead. "Biden is selecting nominees who share his own extraordinary ignorance of the document that defines the workings of our government."
18. We should be realistic about politicians. There is no mapping from "better candidates" to "better policies."
19. Extremely disconcerting. The cover-up, not the Republicans seizing. "The National Institutes of Health failed to provide adequate oversight of an American organization that funded controversial research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology in China"
20. Higher education's self-inflicted troubles. "One has to believe it’s not too late for the institutions to embrace the core mission and sell that mission to the public." Yes, after abdicating them for the expedience of the moment. "This argument would be easier to make had institutions better lived by their values all along."
21. That target-rich environment. "One of the many benefits enjoyed by conservative political pundits is never having to make crap up."
22. Lesson learned. "You can try to nudge people to do something that doesn’t come natural to them, but that usually has limited success."
23. I want better, younger, choices. "Despite clear evidence of Trump Fatigue, the 'Always Trump' faction of the GOP will follow Trump to the gates of Hell."
24. Gridlock is good. "A Congress that spends all its time voting on who to lead it is a Congress that can do minimal damage."
25. Social Security, Medicare, failing. "None of this is really about politics, but rather about designing a system that's sustainable. That wasn't done, and it's not being fixed."
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