VDH on the Don Kroah Show (32:25)
Questions Rarely Asked–and Never Answered
by Victor Davis Hanson // PJ Media
It Can’t Happen Here?
What does it take to warn Americans about unchecked pension growth, socialized medicine, vast increases in 
entitlements, higher taxes, and steady expansion of government? In other words, what is it about Detroit, Italy, or Greece that we do not understand?
In the last five years, the Obama administration has raised taxes on the top income rates, implemented Obamacare, added millions to the disability and food stamp roles, grown the size of the federal work force, run up the national debt, and vastly expanded the money supply, along with insuring near zero interest rates. Are there any historical examples where these redistributive efforts have brought long-term tranquility and prosperity?
To put it another way, does anyone ask basic questions about human nature anymore? If one gives more incentives to obtain government support while unemployed, why would not fewer people be working? If the food stamp, unemployment, and disability rolls are markedly up, and if it is almost impossible to verify that recipients are also not working for unreported cash wages (we hear mostly of government efforts to add more to these programs, rather than to audit those already on them), why would one seek a “regular” job that would lose such subsidies and make all one’s income reportable? (We know two basic truths about the IRS in the age of Obama: first, it goes after political opponents in partisan fashion, and second, it gives away billions of dollars in federal income tax rebate credits to those who did not deserve them.) Continue reading “Questions Rarely Asked–and Never Answered”
The Launch of the Freedom Academy
by Victor Davis Hanson // PJ Media
Today launches the Freedom Academy®, a project some 18 months in the making. In the 
present age, we need a meeting place where people can rediscover what freedom entails and appreciate the origins and role of liberty. The majority of Americans yearn for a rebirth of these values that have sustained Western civilization, and birthed the American experiment. Such reverence for our heritage and origins is why we at PJ Media will offer a variety of ways to understand our present dilemmas through an appreciation of past ideas and events.
Despite all the contemporary upheavals in Washington—whether over the government shutdown, debt-ceiling increase, or Obamacare—we can be certain that history remains both our gateway to the future and our window to the past. The political strife we are witnessing is not new, but a continuance of the age-old struggle between the tragic and therapeutic views of the human condition, over the collision of history and humanities with the social sciences, and the liberty of the individual pitted against the coercive power of the collective. Continue reading “The Launch of the Freedom Academy”
ObamaCare and the Techocratic Abyss
by Bruce S. Thornton // FrontPage Magazine
The continuing disaster of the Obamacare website, like the law itself, illustrates one of the biggest bad ideas of the Progressive movement, one that reflects a central assumption of modernity: that new knowledge is now available that will allow an elite of technicians to order society more justly and efficiently, and eliminate the tragic realities of existence. Progressives bought into this idea wholesale, and ever since have wanted to expand the scope and reach of the state in order to empower those technocrats so they can lead Americans into a world of justice, equality, prosperity, and universal happiness. The metastasizing federal government now bankrupting the country is the creation of this dubious proposition. Continue reading “ObamaCare and the Techocratic Abyss”
Angry Reader #10
Angry Reader:
We Americans are much better informed these days, and while your numbers may be accurate, you failed miserably to account for inflation and any increase in the gdp. I can only surmise that you disincluded this information in order to skew the numbers to your advantage.We call this lying. It is intended to make folks believe something that is not true. We Americans do not approve of lying. Continue reading “Angry Reader #10”
Obamacare Redefines the Shutdown
by Victor Davis Hanson // NRO’s The Corner
Democratic senators up for reelection in 13 months are now embracing, in their calls to delay Obamacare, the same themes as did the House Republicans and a few senators a few weeks ago—hoping to preempt mounting criticism. In this surreal landscape, three weeks ago Obamacare was unquestioned “settled” law (despite the fact that the president himself unsettled the law by suspending the employer mandate) that only dead-ender “anarchists” and “hostage takers” wished to stop or amend. Continue reading “Obamacare Redefines the Shutdown”
Beware of Beautifully Misnamed Laws
Who would oppose “affordable care” and “farm security”?
by Victor Davis Hanson // National Review Online
Washington has a bad habit of naming laws by what they are not.
These euphemisms usually win temporary public support. After all, who wants to be against anything “affordable”? But on examination, such idealistically named legislation usually turns out to be aimed at special interests and the opposite of what voters were promised.
The “Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act of 2010,” otherwise known as Obamacare, frontloaded for immediate enactment some popular freebies. Who would oppose keeping children on their parents’ health coverage until age 26, or prohibiting denial of insurance for those with pre-existing illnesses?
Then, three years later and with two elections out of the way, the tab for all the perks suddenly came due. The law turns out neither to protect patients from rate hikes nor to make health care affordable. In fact, the administration promises of 2009–10 are becoming the nightmare of 2013. Continue reading “Beware of Beautifully Misnamed Laws”
Book Review: Intelligent Design or Unintelligent Design?
by Terry Scambray // New Oxford Review, October 2013
Darwin‘s Doubt: The Explosive Origin of Animal Life and the Case for Intelligent Design, Stephen C. Meyer. Harper One, 2013. 412 pp.
Stephen Meyer has followed his highly acclaimed, Signature in the Cell, with a worthy sequel. The sequel, Darwin’s Doubt, blends the findings from molecular biology found in his first book with discoveries in paleontology, anatomy and other 
disciplines in order to make the case for intelligent design as the best scientific explanation for life’s origin and development. And Meyer does this in his usual clear and composed voice while explaining some complicated material without the distracting emotion that often distorts the study of origins.
“Darwin’s Doubt” refers to Charles Darwin’s admission in his consequential book, On the Origin of the Species, that the fossil record contradicted his theory that life began with simple organisms and it then progressed through endless transitions on up to the present. As he admitted: “The abrupt manner in which whole groups of species suddenly appear in certain formations has been urged by several paleontologists – for instance Agassiz, Pictet, Sedgwick – as a fatal objection to the belief in the transmutation of species. If numerous species belonging to the same genera or families have really started into life all at once, the fact would be fatal to the theory of descent with slow modification through natural selection.” Continue reading “Book Review: Intelligent Design or Unintelligent Design?”
Murdered Christian Children: The Price of Obama’s Pro-Brotherhood Jihad
by Raymond Ibrahim // RaymondIbrahim.com
Who is more deserving of punishment by the United States? Millions of Egyptians, for ousting the Muslim Brotherhood? Or the Muslim Brotherhood, for habitually terrorizing and murdering Christians, among many other crimes? Continue reading “Murdered Christian Children: The Price of Obama’s Pro-Brotherhood Jihad”
The Shutdown in 2014
by Victor Davis Hanson // NRO’s The Corner
No one knows what the effect of the presently unpopular shutdown will be 13 months from now on the eve of the 2014 elections, but it may be far less than the consequence of the Obamacare rollout. Continue reading “The Shutdown in 2014”