". . . little shall I grace my cause

In speaking for myself. Yet, by your gracious patience,

I will a round unvarnish'd tale deliver . . ."

(William Shakespeare's Othello, I.iii.88-90)

Monday, November 24, 2008

What They Said

Two links that say what I am feeling and thinking these days:

Ten Random, Politically Incorrect Thoughts - Victor Davis Hanson

Excerpt:

10. The K-12 public education system is essentially wrecked. No longer can any professor expect an incoming college freshman to know what Okinawa, John Quincy Adams, Shiloh, the Parthenon, the Reformation, John Locke, the Second Amendment, or the Pythagorean Theorem is. An entire American culture, the West itself, its ideas and experiences, have simply vanished on the altar of therapy. This upcoming generation knows instead not to judge anyone by absolute standards (but not why so); to remember to say that its own Western culture is no different from, or indeed far worse than, the alternatives; that race, class, and gender are, well, important in some vague sense; that global warming is manmade and very soon will kill us all; that we must have hope and change of some undefined sort; that AIDs is no more a homosexual- than a heterosexual-prone disease; and that the following things and people for some reason must be bad, or at least must in public company be said to be bad (in no particular order): Wal-Mart, cowboys, the Vietnam War, oil companies, coal plants, nuclear power, George Bush, chemicals, leather, guns, states like Utah and Kansas, Sarah Palin, vans and SUVs.

Clinging to My Guns, Salt, and Light Bulbs - Pam Meister

Excerpt:

It’s apparent that many people lack basic nutrition skills. Yet again, is it government’s duty to remedy the problem by placing restrictions on what we eat? I don’t claim to have the answer to the growing problem of morbidly obese people, but the idea of limiting personal freedom in exchange for the government taking care of yet another problem is not one I care to contemplate. After all, Congress decided it knew what it was doing when it came to handling the mortgage industry — and look where that got us.




1 comment:

Barb the Evil Genius said...

This site gives a lot of evidence against the idea that "many people lack basic nutrition skills" or that there even is a "growing problem of morbidly obese people." I'm against government intervention as much as anybody, but I think there's room for dialogue as to what the actual problems are.