Am I missing something? Is Rick Ungar really comparing a mandatory fee on a particular industry (one entered into voluntarily by citizens otherwise unaffected by the “individual mandate”) — one that soon after became a part of the military (the Merchant Marines), to boot — to a federal law requiring all citizens to purchase a particular product from a private vendor, as directed by the federal government? And is Greg
identity politics
April 11, 2010
Provocateurism, 11
As a follow up to our discussion over what should be the conservative / classical liberal strategy with regard to illegal immigration (in particular, how best to influence the national debate and so give whatever political party we back the rhetorical cover to address the issue), allow me to offer additional material to fuel what I hope will be an ongoing discussion. Again, from Mark Levin’s Liberty and Tyranny: The
April 8, 2010
Provocateurism, 10
So I was reading this morning about how “Violence on the border endangers Americans,” and it got me to thinking about what Nishi and happy have been obliquely arguing of late — namely, that should conservatives / classical liberals become vocal over forthcoming high-profile immigration “reform” proposals, their subsequent depiction by both the media and lawmakers (of both parties, potentially) as ravaging nativists and xenophobes will go a long way
April 7, 2010
The Rape of “The Rape of Liberty”
Via David Thompson, Elle Gray in The Guardian: Then, I saw a cartoon, the “creative” work of a conservative blogger, that depicted the aftermath of the rape of the Statue of Liberty by President Obama. My first thought was, oh, hello, yet another idea reinforced during reconstruction and redemption – the myth of the sexually violent black man. This “brute” was a particular danger to white women and this myth
March 15, 2009
This way lies fascism: an OUTLAW’s lament (cont.) [UPDATED]
So long as we’re talking about code words and “who decides” what interpretation is best, let me add a few points to help combat the creeping fascism that comes with certain ideas about how language works. To do so, let me quote from an example left in the comments to a post at Patterico’s that seeks to explain to us “What words mean”: Words not only mean different things in
March 12, 2009
Losing more slowly: an OUTLAW’s lament
As a follow-up to Dan’s piece on the (ironic, surreal, and — let’s just say it, profoundly Orwellian) shouting down of a “conservative” speaker looking to address the question of hate speech, I’d like to offer a few observations: first, students are taught, from early on in their writing and literature courses, that they, as readers, control meaning. So it follows that, acting through that particular linguistically faulty hermeneutic (drink!)
November 3, 2008
“Are Obama’s Friends Fair Game?”
Bari Weiss, WSJ: It’s not every presidential election that American voters are introduced to characters like former domestic terrorist Bill Ayers or Middle East historian Rashid Khalidi — both of whom, we have learned, Barack Obama worked and socialized with in Chicago. To the Obama campaign, these men are unimportant, except as products of the McCain campaign’s desperate willingness to deploy tactics of guilt-by-association. But faced with Mr. Obama’s short
October 29, 2008
Mr Bojangles, dance
I wrote about it yesterday, but it certainly bears repeating: you conservaghouls need to find yourself a new token brother, one with a little bit of sizzle. Fo’shizzle, even. Because let’s face it: trotting out “articulate” types like Uncle Tom Sowell won’t win you many fans from the Spike Lee set, who are convinced an Obama presidency is “predeortained.” Which, you know — fuck your bourgeois insistence on intelligibility in
August 12, 2008
Provocateurism, 7
In a way it was predictable — and I won’t deny that, on some level, I probably knew the issue would be broached — but yesterday’s post in the provocateurism series wended its way, in exchanges between author and commenters / commenters and commenters, to the subject of race-based affirmative action, a dubious practice of late saved, against (in my opinion) the clear intention of certain Constitutional prohibitions, by the
August 11, 2008
Provocateurism, 6
Longtime readers of this site have frequently encountered arguments in which I fasten identity politics to a form of soft, progressivist totalitarianism “PC” speech (which, we are often told with a wave of the hand and a gourmands’ sniff, is, like, so ’90s — and thus, supposedly antiquated as a legitimate point of ideological friction, current fashion circumscribing the only authentic topics for political complaint, with that fashion decided upon,