Alarming News: I like Morgan Freeberg. A lot.
American Digest: And I like this from "The Blog That Nobody Reads", because it is -- mostly -- about me. What can I say? I'm on an ego trip today. It won't last.
Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler: We were following a trackback and thinking "hmmm... this is a bloody excellent post!", and then we realized that it was just part III of, well, three...Damn. I wish I'd written those.
Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler: ...I just remembered that I found a new blog a short while ago, House of Eratosthenes, that I really like. I like his common sense approach and his curiosity when it comes to why people believe what they believe rather than just what they believe.
Brutally Honest: Morgan Freeberg is brilliant.
Dr. Melissa Clouthier: Morgan Freeberg at House of Eratosthenes (pftthats a mouthful) honors big boned women in skimpy clothing. The picture there is priceless--keep scrolling down.
Exile in Portales: Via Gerard: Morgan Freeberg, a guy with a lot to say. And he speaks The Truth...and it's fascinating stuff. Worth a read, or three. Or six.
Just Muttering: Two nice pieces at House of Eratosthenes, one about a perhaps unintended effect of the Enron mess, and one on the Gore-y environ-movie.
Mein Blogovault: Make "the Blog that No One Reads" one of your daily reads.
The Virginian: I know this post will offend some people, but the author makes some good points.
Poetic Justice: Cletus! Ah gots a laiv one fer yew...
I was praying to the GooglGodz trying to get ahold of some remnants of Mark Steyn’s brilliant co-hosting of the Rush Limbaugh program yesterday morning. I’m using “remnant” as an umbrella term. Evidence backing up what he was saying…partial transcript…audio. I let my 24/7 membership lapse, and the service, while amusing at times, has landed in my “luxury” file. Which means it isn’t up for consideration until I’m a zillionaire and own everything. Maybe not even then.
And even if I had it, I don’t recall it being much use to me when it came time to find transcripts of what substitute hosts have had to say.
Evidence to back up what Steyn was saying; I did find some. His point was this: “little laws,” like our leviathan of a health care act that has just made it past both floors of our Congress, represent not only a death-by-a-thousand-paper-cuts to freedom and liberty. They change the character of the people over whom they have their jurisdiction. People start to look at life differently and start to think differently, just as a man’s brain cells die off one by one when his oxygen supply has been cut off. In the UK, says Steyn, the phrase that is the headline of this post, has become a popular cliche. It comes out reliable-as-rain, anytime a bewildered newcomer is informed that he can’t do this-or-that because he doesn’t have a license.
He told the story of a funeral being held for an acquaintance of his, and his own surprise at seeing this large shopping-cart thing being used by a decent chap who was supposed to be a “pall bearer.” Any attempt to do justice to this clip would be futile. Let it just suffice to say the conversation quickly drifted into bathos in the first minute, and then floated downward into thickening absurdity for several minutes more.
Stepladders are banned in the library, so if you want something from the top shelf and you’re less than eight feet tall you’re just outta luck. What can I say? Health-n-Safety Gone Mad, Mate.
Blog-Uncle Gerard thinks we have followed our mother country off the precipice and we aren’t coming back. His argument is a weighty one packing much substance and historical evidence. But it is a disagreement of spirits, not of fact, and in spirit I cannot disagree more.
It comes down to this: His facts and trends are historically valid, but cherry-picked, and there are other facts and trends to see. Mankind desires freedom — there’s one. For over a generation now, America has been the last nostril unplugged all over the globe. Every other country is murmuring some variant of “it’s health-n-safety, mate.” With the last blowhole now obstructed and our known universe airtight, is it really a foregone conclusion what will happen next? The doom-n-gloomers (you’ll see by the comment thread, I am vastly outnumbered there) all share this insurmountable contradiction: We are sure to lose our freedom because nothing ever remains static…and yet…after we have lost our freedom, things shall remain static. My rejoinder to this is you have to pick one of these or the other. You can’t have both. And if you cannot have both, your argument is rent asunder.
If we are sliding inexorably toward a bloodbath, then at some point the bloodbath has to be over. All of mankind won’t live in a nanny-state; not over every single square inch of the globe. And that is history talking, too. At some point the adrenaline has to kick in. It would be truly unprecedented for this not to happen.
Hope for the revolution to be somehow bloodless? Of course we can hope for that. We should; we must; we have great reason to keep it alive. We are, still, the one place most friendly to the bloodless revolution.
But it is useless to hope for, or despair of, no revolution at all. The anti-freedom people, like Sisyphus, roll their boulder to the top of the mountain yet one more time — and it finally stays there?
It’s just contrary to the way the universe works. Can’t happen.
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