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Early in the evenin’ / jus’ aroun’ supper time…

I just came across this li’l nugget — from NRO’s Jonah Goldberg, who’s down on the Corner, bloggin’ on the SOTU address:

Okay, I admit this is unfair criticism…but I loathe the phrase ‘economic security’ and it makes me cringe that this was his biggest applause line. How come every civil libertarian in open-toed shoes thinks it’s brilliant to say something like ‘our security must not come at the cost of our liberties,’ but sees no contradiction in making ‘economic security’ an absolute right when it so clearly comes at the expense of our economic liberties? If there’s a tradeoff between personal freedom and personal security shouldn’t there be a tradeoff between economic security and economic freedom? The philosopher Robert Nozick died just last week. He warned that the paternalistic was attempting to ‘forbid capitalistic acts between consenting adults.’ Well, when the economic puritans finally manage to [do] that, they’ll do it in the name of ‘economic security.’ Blech.

There’s also a nice exchange of head-scratchings between Rod Dreher, John Miller, and Kathryn Lopez concerning Kweisi Mfume and Jesse Jackson’s presence at the President’s address. Here’s a bit from Miller:

A year ago, [Mfume and Jackson] were protesting the legitimacy of President Bush’s election and telling us they would never forget what happened in Florida. Mfume had just wrapped up one of the nastiest political advertising campaigns in history, essentially accusing Bush of complicity in the murder of a black man in Texas. Much has changed in recent months, of course, but it seems to me these guys either should have boycotted the State of the Union or have publicly renounced their behavior.


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