FRIDAY SHORT TAKES.

The last two weeks have provided clarity, haven't they?  "When you are Jewish, you are always aware that there is a large population in the world that wants to kill you."  It is time to see off the boutique multiculturalism.  "How do you destroy a culture? For starters, you discredit it."  In Gaza, or at Georgetown, This Means You. "It’s time the West believes in its own civilizational exceptionalism."  And superior firepower.  "Who needs a 30-round magazine?"  Make hummus out of Hamas.

Academia delenda est.  "Cowardly administrators give in to the braying left. Every time."  Has the woke bill finally come due?  "It’s time — past time — to change this increasingly toxic industry." As Milt Rosenberg had it, "'Tis a consummation devoutly to be wished!"

The weekly round-up of pithy elaborations on traditional Cold Spring Shops themes follows.

1.  Oh, to be a fly on the wall at that conversation.  "We do not spend our days huddled in smoke-filled rooms plotting world domination while Jared Kushner plays dreidel in the back with Noam Chomsky and George Soros sneaks the last latke."

2.  Liberating tolerance.  "The left wanted these new rules, and they will be made to live by them."

3.  Rules of conservation.  "The big deficits now are crowding out private investment."

4.  Dear reader, don't.  "Why should anyone trust our 'expert classes?'"

5.  No duh.  "Predicting weather is not a perfect science."

6.  Why should road socialism be any different?  "The largest infrastructure investment in our lifetime doesn’t keep up with the rate of decline of the roads we’ve already built."

7.  Democracy:  "It no longer meant a consensus of individuals, it meant a consensus of institutions."

8.  And now, try hiring a plumber.  "The rift in our work force and the labor shortage we're seeing today can be walked right back to the moment we decided to take shop class out of high school."

9.  No.  Next question?  "Can Economists Predict Recessions?"

10.  Sic semper tyrannis.  "Only the delusional vision of the anointed could ascribe a constitutional amendment to our system of government with such cosmic significance."

11.  Would Hiram Johnson be pleased or dismayed?  "Referendums are becoming a safety valve which, by giving people what elites might seek to deny them, lets pressure out of the system, and so helps to preserve it."

12.  Government failure über alles.  "Berlin is baffled by the disconnect between what their bureaucracy figures are telling them versus what Herr Hans und Frau Gertrude are grousing about in the local Hofbräuhaus."

  

13.  By their fruits shall ye know the woke.  "The problem is the principles themselves."  When you killed my idealism, I had no forgiveness left.

14.  The Republican Party is made up of idiots.

15.  The Drive-By Media?  "Perhaps the Walter Cronkite Awards ought to have slightly higher standards?"

16.  To protect these Rights, Governments are Instituted among Men.  "We can be called populatists, nationalists, racists, I don't care."

17.  War is cruelty.  "Hard to get a decent night's sleep when your quiet little neighborhood's decided to paraglide into another country's peace festival and kill all the hippies."

18.  Why everything sucks.  "Repairing the world is equated with leftist causes."

19.  Use leftist language, get leftist results.  "Interfaith dialogue is a realm in which self-delusion can all too easily run wild and fond hopes reign supreme over reality."