Tag: Statism

Politics & Economics

Initial Thoughts on Reactions to Fast & Furious and Obamacare Developments

Posted on by John W Gillis / 0 Comment

Very interesting day in the political world, with the Supreme Court handing down its judgment on Obamacare, and Congress finding Attorney General Holder in contempt of Congress for his evasive shenanigans trying to cover up the background to the “Fast & Furious” program – the first sitting US Attorney General to receive such an honor. How now to prosecute him becomes quite a conundrum, since the department he runs is responsible for such prosecutions, but I’m getting ahead of myself. Neither finding is very surprising to me (the first admittedly more...

Critical Issues

Forced Abortions & Sterilizations in Massachusetts?

Posted on by John W Gillis / 0 Comment

Occasionally, I read or hear about something so stunning that I feel like I’m having an out-of-body experience, watching from a detached vantage point as the world unfurls strangely in front of me. Yesterday afternoon, I had one of those experiences. I was at work, pausing to check the headlines, weather and traffic, when I saw the surreal headline: “Massachusetts Appeals Court rules that judge was wrong to order mentally ill woman to have an abortion and to then be sterilized”. Forced abortions and sterilizations in Massachusetts? Granted, the court-ord...

Learning

My biggest regret isn’t that I didn’t learn Fortran, but that I didn’t study Dante

Posted on by John W Gillis / 1 Comment

Quote of the Day for Saturday, January 7th, 2012. Virginia Postrel, posting at Bloomberg yesterday in a piece called How Art History Majors Power the U.S. Economy, on the misguided but largely unexamined tendency of many critics of higher education to apply a supposed realpolitik of utility to the evaluation of programs and curricula, becoming in the process shadows of the smug, short-sighted central planners they typically scorn: The students who come out of school without jobs aren’t, for the most part, starry-eyed liberal arts majors but rather people...

Critical Issues

Same-sex marriage violates the right of the family to protection by society and the state

Posted on by John W Gillis / 0 Comment

Quote of the Day for Thursday, January 5th, 2012. Douglas Farrow, from an outstanding piece in the new (and terrific-looking) issue of Touchstone, entitled Why Fight Same-Sex Marriage? Nail-head, meet hammer: [W]e should observe also that when a family of some description is founded by a same-sex couple, it is always founded by violating the natural parent-child bond that marriage is intended to nurture and protect. It deprives the child, whether in the same way that divorce does or in some more innovative technological way, of its prima facie right to i...

Culture & Philosophy

College as a way to babysit 18-year-olds is not very efficient for anyone involved

Posted on by John W Gillis / 0 Comment

Quote of the Day for Sunday, June 5th, 2011: Naomi Schaefer Riley, writing in the June 3rd Washington Post, on the value of a modern college education, and the disconnect exposed by PayPal’s Peter Thiel when he recently thumbed his nose at the university system: Executives at U.S. companies routinely complain about the lack of reading, writing and math skills in the recent graduates they hire. Maybe they too will get tired of using higher education as a credentialing system. Maybe it will be easier to recruit if they don’t have to be concerned about the ...

Learning

One of the Deadliest Enemies to Liberty that Has Ever Been Devised

Posted on by John W Gillis / 0 Comment

Quote of the Day for Monday, Nov. 22nd, 2010: A double-quote day. First, in honor of John F. Kennedy on the 47th anniversary of his assassination: A nation that is afraid to let its people judge the truth and falsehood in an open market is a nation that is afraid of its people. Second, J. Gresham Machen (1881-1937) testifying before the joint Senate Committee on Education and Labor, and House Committee on Education, February 25, 1926, on the proposed establishment of a Department of Education, specifically here addressing the alleged benefits of national...

Politics & Economics

Out, Off, End… Goodbye

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Quote of the Day: West Virginia Democrat Senator John (Jay) Rockefeller IV: I hunger for quality news. I’m tired of the Right and the Left. There’s a little bug inside of me which wants to get the FCC to say to FOX, and to, to MSNBC: “Out, off, end… Goodbye.”  [It would] be a big favor to political discourse, our ability to do our work here in Congress — and to the American people to be able to talk with each other and have some faith in their government, and in their  – more importantly – in their future. (U.S. ...