This looks to me like a textbook example of a rhetorical technique that I often observed, and then named, many years ago in Usenet debates during the 1990s. I call it the Emperor’s New Clothes Gambit.
‘Obamacare’ Ruled Unconsitutional
As reported in the news yesterday, The ‘Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act’ — colloquially known as ‘Obamacare’ — has been ruled to be unconstitutional, in its entirety, by a Florida court. This is the case in which 26 US states filed suit (not including Virginia, which filed separately) to overturn the act. In his…
A Moral Revolution
The reason why statists have been so aggressive about spending other peoples’ money through government coercion is because, like most of the rest of our culture, they have been indoctrinated in the morality of altruism. They actually think that forced redistribution of wealth for the benefit of the “less fortunate” is moral, and they feel…
Jefferson on Future Debt
From AZ Quotes: But with respect to future debt; would it not be wise and just for that nation to declare in the constitution they are forming that neither the legislature, nor the nation itself can validly contract more debt, than they may pay within their own age, or within the term of 19 years….
‘Obamacare’ as Pull Peddling
A good law should apply to everyone equally. That is what equality under the law is supposed to mean in a free society. If it doesn’t, then it is not only a bad law, but an affront to the rule of law and to the principle of equality under the law itself. As Congressman Rogers’…
On Eliminating Social Security
Should one advocate a gradual phaseout of Social Security and Medicare, or outright abolition? That’s a question on which I’ve had mixed thoughts for a while. On the one hand I see the point of Ayn Rand’s own statements in support of a phaseout because people have become dependent on the system. But my attitude…
No Meaning in Madness
In an article at Salon.com (“The real message of Loughner’s book list“), Laura Miller does an admirable job of exposing the absurdity of attributing political significance to the favorite books list of Arizona shooter Jared Lee Loughner: “Loughner is almost certainly insane and… his ideas would have been ignored as incoherent and irrelevant if he…
Politically Exploiting a Tragedy
I can’t even begin to express my contempt for those who have been trying to exploit the Arizona shooting for purposes of political propaganda. The shooter was clearly mentally ill, and the hodgepodge of random comments and influences we’re hearing about him reflect no coherent theme beyond that. To try to spin that into an…
Welcome to the Repeal the Bailouts Blog!
Welcome to the Repeal the Bailouts Blog! The Repeal the Bailouts Blog is an outgrowth of the old Repeal the Bailout website. Inspired by outrage at Congressional passage of the 850 billion dollar Bush/Paulson “financial bailout bill” on October 3, 2008, the original site was intended to be a resource for intellectual activism in opposition…