#365376
Rand Paul is trying to fire up the base ahead of the next debt limit debate, even with the likelihood of a "clean" increase.
#365377
The fundamental issue behind income inequality could be boiled down to a single question: Are poor Americans better or worse off because Bill Gates ($79 billion net worth), Oprah Winfrey ($3 billion net worth), Michael Jordan ($1 billion net worth) and Mark Zuckerberg ($40 billion net worth) are living in the United States?
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Cross posted from the blog of David Collier During the height of the second Intifada, the media and politicians in general were adamant, only total desperation could cause one human being to walk o...
#365379
Marvel Comics launched its new Captain America series on Wednesday. The title character gets very political in the story, which culminates with him beating u...
#365380
FacebookTwitterGoogleEmailWhat was it Mark Levin said….oh yes, that after the midterms Obama would go “full Mussolini” and attempt to do everything with his pen and his phone that…
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Krauthammer: Biden to Run As ‘Insurance Policy’ in Case Hillary Indicted
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2/7/13 - More videos at: http://www.freedomslighthouse.net Follow us on Twitter - http://twitter.com/FreedomsLH Update 3/16/13 - Dr. Carson's Stirring Speech...
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#365384
CPR: This is why I love Texas and worry about the common sense and sanity of those in Sacramento—especially the very confused Guv Brown. Texas has no income or corporation tax, so it can steal Cali…
#365385
The race problem revealed by the statistics on both killings and arrests of blacks reflects something larger: the structure of our society, our laws and policies.
#365386
It appears that President Obama may not meet personally with Texas student Ahmed Mohamed at tonight's Astronomy Night at the White House.
#365387
The upside-down moral world of the Left’s latest drone-war exposé.
#365388
Voice your opinion on the poll: What political party are you Reddit?
#365389
Mean Girls star Lindsay Lohan has announced she may run for president of the United States in 2020.
#365390
It was all over the news recently; a group of feminists held a protest during the red carpet event for the newly released drama Suffragette. The group, who were allegedly protesting against domesti...
#365391
“Went to @schwankekasten jewelry today in White-Fish Bay during regular business hours . They locked the door and told me to go away . After I rang the…”
#365392
Gatestone: If the wave of migrants keeps coming, in 10-15 years, Swedes will be a minority in their own country. That there is, in fact, an exchange of populations going on, should be clear in any …
#365393
A federal judge Monday denied the administration’s request to hit pause on a House lawsuit over Obamacare so that it could appeal an earlier, and notable, ruling that allowed the case proceed in the first place.
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President Obama praised it as a shining example of America's clean energy future.
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Complete election results for the 2015 Federal election. Find out who will form the next Canadian government and who won in your riding.
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'I just don't like that guy," the former president tells donors.
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In fatherless households, the college-enrollment gender gap is larger than average; even fewer men than women in these households matriculate.
#365399
What explains the weird unpredictability of the 2016 presidential race? An anemic economy that has Americans questioning incumbents, doubting experts and worrying about their own prospects.
#365400
Ponder this passage of stately prose:The diversity in the faculties of men, from which the rights of property originate, is not less an insuperable obstacle to a uniformity of interests. The protection of these faculties is the first object of government. From the protection of different and unequal faculties of acquiring property, the possession of different degrees and kinds of property immediately results; and from the influence of these on the sentiments and views of the respective proprietors, ensues a division of the society into different interests and parties.That, of course, is James Madison, from Federalist 10, where he dilates on the origin of “faction” — its causes, he observes, are “sown in the nature of man” — and argues for a large republic (as distinct from a pure democracy) as the best prophylactic against the evil potential of conflicting interests, not least of which evils is the tyranny of the majority.But let me return to the famous passage I quoted: “The protection of these faculties,” Madison wrote, “is the first object of government.”Question: is it the first object of our government, the government of Barack Obama? Would it be the first object of a government presided over by, say, Hillary Clinton (who, in case you didn't notice, is a woman)? How about a government presided over by Bernie Sanders, who is not a woman but makes up for it by being a lunatic?To ask these questions is to answer them. But, if I may adapt an interjection from Hillary Clinton (who is a woman): At this point, what difference does it make? I mean, who cares about some 18th-century stiff who was droning on about “the protection of different and unequal faculties of acquiring property”? Does anyone understand what he was talking about any more?I am happy to report that there are a few people left who understand what Madison was getting at. And I can reveal that (to paraphrase the female cited above), at this point, it makes a very big difference indeed.One such sage is the columnist George Will. In his syndicated column yesterday, Will takes up the Democrats’ biggest obsession (the biggest, anyway, apart from Hillary Clinton, who is a woman): “income inequality.” The Democratic Party, Will notes, “believes that economic inequality is an urgent problem, and that its urgency should be understood in terms of huge disparities of wealth.” But is income inequality a problem, urgent or otherwise? And are disparities of wealth really a bad thing?Will’s next sentence encapsulates a deep, Madisonian truth:“The fundamental producer of income inequality is freedom.”There you have it, folks, a lapidary sentence that is as true as it is often forgotten. “The fundamental producer of income inequality is freedom.” If you have freedom, you will also have inequality. It’s part of the natural order of things.A couple of observations: first, it does not follow that if you take away freedom you will thereby produce more equality, though that is a logical fallacy (or perhaps it is just a cynical rhetorical gambit) employed by socialists and other totalitarians from the dawn of time. As Dean Inge once pointed out, just because most of the saints were poor, it does not follow that most of the poor are saints.Second, Will’s observation helps explain a phenomenon that everyone recognizes but few have analyzed with the requisite clarity: I mean the instinctive hatred the Left has for freedom.This may seem at first blush counter-intuitive. Isn’t the Left always going on about revolutions or “fundamentally transforming” society, etc.? And aren’t all those revolutions and fundamental transformations undertaken for the sake of more freedom?The brief answer is “No, they aren’t,” but that fact is obscured by the rhetorical barrage depositing the word “freedom” like ground cover all around us while the Left’s storm troopers set about mopping up pools of actual (as distinct from merely rhetorical) freedom where they may subsist. Ask the Environmental Protection Agency how this is done — if you’re nice, they might tell you. Or ask any college dean of diversity busy policing what students say and read and think.“The fundamental producer of income inequality,” Will observes, “is freedom.” Why? Because (Madison couldn't have put it better) “individuals have different aptitudes and attitudes. . . .ome people want to teach, others want to run hedge funds. In an open society, rewards are set not by political power but by impersonal market forces, the rewards of which will differ dramatically but usually predictably.”Yes indeedy, which is why the Left is so hostile to those “impersonal market forces.” They may make us all immeasurably richer than anyone could have ever dreamed possible even a century ago. But here’s the intolerable thing: they make some people richer than others and (the dirty little secret) the ones they make really rich tend not to be the revolutionists and architects of fundamental transformation (though there is an exception to almost every rule as the spectacle of the poor little rich girl Hillary “Dead Broke” Clinton reminds us: just take a look at her foundation).Will quotes a short but brilliant new book by Harry Frankfurt, On Inequality, which cuts through acres of dead wood to note that there is no moral imperative for economic equality but only for economic sufficiency.”The fundamental error of economic egalitarians,” Frankfurt writes, “lies in supposing that it is morally important whether one person has less than another, regardless of how much either of them has and regardless also of much utility each derives from what he has.” How much is enough? Frankfurt has intelligent things to say about that, too, but let me close by returning to my main point: that, rhetoric notwithstanding, the Left hates, is determined to root it out wherever it may thrive, and that is why they hate the free market (never mind that it has made us all richer) and it is also why they have made fools of themselves enacting speech codes, “trigger warnings,” and all the other Orwellian paraphernalia of intellectual tyranny on campuses across the country. The rise of the miso-Leftists — and I am not talking about soy-based politics, but one based upon hatred — also helps to explain the sudden emergence of counter insurgencies like the phenomenon of Donald Trump, but that is a matter for another day and, besides, understanding that the Left (no matter what they say to the contrary) is the enemy of freedom is lesson enough for one day.