September 30, 2004

A DAY IN THE LIFE OF JOE DEMOCRAT:

Joe gets up at 6 a.m. and fills his coffeepot with bottled water because he knows that the municipal water system supplies water that occasionally has e coli and other natural organisms that will make him ill -- after all his mother died from drinking water that was polluted by sewage after a heavy rain. Joe tried to sue, but was told that the city had sovereign immunity from such suits as a result of state law. If the water he pours from the bottle he bought at Safeway is polluted, he knows he can sue the manufacturer and collect big, so he feels pretty sure that it's clean.

Joe grinds his coffee beans carefully because they're very expensive as a result of the U.S. government-enforced international coffee cartel that exists to protect the jobs of coffee importers -- heavy campaign contributers to Congress. He's also careful about how much sugar he puts in his coffee because it costs seven times the world price of sugar as a result of the U.S. government imposed import restrictions on sugar to protect the domestic sugar beet and sugar cane industry.

Some mornings he drinks a coke instead, although it hasn't tasted as good since the manufacturer substituted corn syrup for sugar as a sweetener, since sugar is so expensive.

With his first swallow of coffee Joe takes his daily medication for his liver cancer. His doctor assures him that it is the best medication available in the U.S., although more effective medicines are used in Europe. Joe has a life expectancy of only two more years, but it will be a decade or so until the FDA tests on those other medicines are complete and they are allowed to be sold in the U.S. Joe feels protected anyway; after all, he might lose his hair or suffer some dizziness from the new medicines.. The FDA will protect him from that eventuality. Besides, the medicines he takes are paid for by money that his employer would have otherwise paid him in his regular salary. Since he never sees that money, he doesn't realize that his medicine isn't really subsidized by his employer after all ...

-- Sam Bostaph

Can anyone top Sam's effort on this? Give it a shot and email me. And compare -- "A Day in the Life of Joe Republican."

Posted by Greg Ransom / Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

February 18, 2004

George Will -- Thank Conservatives for the Welfare State. Quotable:

The welfare state, beginning with unemployment relief, was pioneered in part by European conservatives, Disraeli and especially Bismarck, to reconcile people to change -- to the frictions and casualties of economic dynamism on which, such enlightened conservatives saw, national greatness would depend in the industrial age. It is sound social policy, and simple justice, that the party who benefits from free trade -- the nation as a whole -- should be taxed to ameliorate the discomforts of those who pay the short-term price of progress. That is the case for education and job training for persons needing to change their skills. Such assistance is especially imperative when the casualties of change bear no responsibility for their fate .. ".

Posted by Greg Ransom / Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

January 07, 2004

The unmatch Mark Steyn on an earthquake, a virus and a heat wave -- in Iran, China and France. What do they all have in common? Steyn explains.

Posted by Greg Ransom / Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

December 29, 2003

Banning religious symbols from public schools? Small potatoes in the French war against cultural diversity -- it goes back five centuries. More on the making of modern France and the triumph of social engineering with a boot and a gun:

As fellows of the Institute of Current World Affairs, of Hanover, N.H., we spent two years studying the French and trying to explain what makes the French tick. One of our main conclusions was that the French system functions according to values and assumptions alien to Canadians, who pride themselves on their multicultural, British-style democracy. Democracy � la fran�aise involves a huge central state whose purpose it is to determine the common good, and this calls for a lot of social engineering.

French social engineering began five centuries ago.

To understand what France was back then, it is more useful to compare it to today's Balkans � it was a patchwork of lesser and bigger duchies, each with their own language, culture and religion. In order to create a single French identity, French kings set out to erase these differences.

This process was brutal and slow, but successful. At the time of the French revolution, half of the French still didn't speak French. By 1900, most understood it and left their local language � Occitan, Breton, Alsacian, Corsican, or Basque � at home.

During this period, the French closed parishes, and forbade many religious orders. To this day, the French never appoint high civil servants to work in their home region, for the purpose of breaking down social ties and avoiding local power cliques. Now that's social engineering.

Part of the reason France waged total war on its own cultural differences was to overcome an essential trait of the French political culture: extremism. Just to give a sense of this: From 1789 to 1958, the French went through four democratic regimes, three monarchies, two empires and one fascist dictatorship, each ending in a coup, a war or a revolution.

The reason France didn't dissolve into a banana republic throughout this was that their very strong central state acted as an arbitrator of the common good in spite (some say, because) of the political instability. Whether they were Protestants, Breton or Corsicans, French citizens had to fall into line, and they did ..

(thanks to Richard Jensen of Conservativenet listserv)

Posted by Greg Ransom / Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

July 03, 2003

What would Jesus do? Well, he'd raise taxes. "The Bible made me do it" is the argument of Alabama Gov. Bob Riley, who's bringing the largest tax increase in state history to his people.

Posted by Greg Ransom / Permalink | Comments (0)