The Big Think

“I’d just as soon get rid of the Commerce Clause and have a simple constitutional principle: “The Federal government can do anything a state government can do, and if there’s a conflict the Federal rule wins.” It would shorten legal textbooks considerably. Unfortunately, it’s not what the document at issue says.

Nevertheless, in the course of arguing for the constitutionality of Obamacare’s “individual mandate,” Einer Elhauge pretty much rules out the possibility that limiting the federal government to the regulation of “commerce … among the several states” inhibits the feds from doing anything. To counter the charge that then Washington could make you buy broccoli, Elhauge argues … um, Washington could make you buy broccoli! But don’t worry, there are other limitations . . . Well, OK then! As long as we can just leave it rotting in the fridge. … But it’s a little suspicious–-and surely not a selling point–-that under Elhauge’s argument the only limits on government would be the rights — like “bodily integrity” and privacy — that liberal lawyers have dreamed up but not the limits — i.e. whether or not something is “interstate commerce” – the Founders dreamed up.”

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Heh

A rather dark and depressing essay on the state of things. Very in line with my feelings of late.

Something indeed feels ready to snap, and nobody knows what the result will be. Personally, I feel that there is a race with decaying nation-states staggering toward a Leibowitzian retelling on one hand and the Kurzweilian forces of positive technological change on the other. Which will win? If the last century has taught us anything it’s that the smart money has always been on dumb humanity.

Not really funny, but eye opening to see it in context.

• U.S. Tax revenue: $2,170,000,000,000
• Fed budget: $3,820,000,000,000
• New debt: $ 1,650,000,000,000
• National debt: $14,271,000,000,000
• Recent budget cut: $ 38,500,000,000

Let’s remove 8 zeros and pretend it’s a household budget:

• Annual family income: $21,700
• Money the family spent: $38,200
• New debt on the credit card: $16,500
• Outstanding balance on the credit card: $142,710
• Total budget cuts: $385

“The Tea Party, perhaps more than any other contemporary movement, brings out the ‘Yeah, but what they’re really saying…’ tendency. The ‘tea’ stands for ‘Taxed Enough Already’ but, if you relied on the BBC and the Guardian for your information, you might not know it. Many Lefties pretend – or perhaps have genuinely convinced themselves – that the Tea Party is clandestinely protesting against immigration or abortion or the fact of having a mixed race president; anything, in fact, other than what it actually says it’s against, viz big government. The existence of a popular and spontaneous anti-tax movement has unsettled the Establishment. They’d much rather deal with a stupid and authoritarian Right than with a libertarian one. Hence the almost desperate insistence that the Tea Partiers have some secret agenda.”

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But dealing with a Libertarian Right would mean they would have to argue their position on the merits instead of demonizing their opposition.

Since the 60′s two unifying forces, for good or ill, were removed from the country: the removal of Judeo/Christian values as the semi-official moral code of the public schools) and the death of the draft/aka Vietnam. (actually ending in the 70′s). These two changes had one thing in common, it took two generations for them to have the following effect:

It is now unlikely that a student going to school today, had a teacher or parent who 1. Served in the military or 2. Was taught that moral code in school. To a whole generation now being born these are things that belong to outsiders. This makes the military and religious people outsiders and strange to one group and vice versa. Since the military draws predominantly from those two groups it will become more isolated from the rest of the public as time goes by.

Very interesting perspective worth reading over at Datechguy.

Sounds like James Delingpole yearns to breathe free. He’d be welcome.

“The thing that has not been sufficiently understood, I think, is this: The United States is not on a downgrade watch because the markets fear we won’t raise the debt ceiling in time to avoid a default; the United States is on a downgrade watch because the markets believe the debt-ceiling debate presents the last real opportunity for the government to enact a meaningful fiscal-reform program before it is well and truly too late to avoid a national crisis. The credit agencies, wisely or not, aren’t worried about the short-term political fight leading to an immediate default, but about the near- to medium-term fiscal situation, which is plainly unsustainable.

I sincerely hope that in five or ten years, I will have to sheepishly admit that I was among the alarmists back in 2011. But right now, I believe that the question isn’t how to “win” the debt-ceiling fight, but how to survive the underlying economic disorder it represents.”

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The family law system performed exactly as intended—and a despairing father set himself aflame.

Ironically, the Thomas Ball family is a triumph of the family-law paradigm. Within the context of that paradigm, everything in the Balls’ case went according to plan. The family’s fate is not a failure of state policy. It’s the best the state can do. That should impress upon us two things: the urgent wisdom of putting less faith in law and government, and the paramount need to cultivate—by other means—a motivating vision of marriage and family for our society.

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