Life's Inanities and Ironies

Norman Mattoon Thomas was born in 1884 and died in 1968.  He was a leading American Socialist, pacifist and six-time presidential candidate for the Socialist Party. In 1944, Norman Thomas, as a candidate for president said in a speech,   " The American people will never knowingly adopt Socialism. But under the name of ‘liberalism,’ they will adopt every fragment of the Socialist program, until one day America will be a socialist nation, without knowing how it happened." He went on to say,  " I no longer need to run as a presidential candidate for the Socialist Party. The Democrat Party has adopted our platform." I agree with Mr. Thomas, but I would also include many in the Republican Party who have strayed from their conservative roots. I would most certainly include Sen. Richard Lugar in this group of Republicans. The next national election may be the most important in the history of this country. We must elect individuals who will put our country, and ...

A particularly humorous anecdote I ran across from the life of Leonardo da Vinci: When the wine-grower from Belvedere found a very unusual lizard, Leonardo made wings for it out of the skin of other lizards and filled these wings with mercury so that they waved and quivered whenever the lizard moved; he likewise made eyes, a beard, and horns for it in the same way, tamed it, put it in a box, and used the lizard to terrify his friends. I’m low on sleep and so you get this kind of post. Minnie The Moocher:

Last week's Supreme Court ruling striking down the ban on corporate and union spending at election time is both a blessing and a curse. On the one hand, removing a legal barrier to free speech is always a good thing in itself. Government shouldn't dictate who can speak or from where people may get their information. This is more than a matter of abstract freedom; it's also a practical matter. More contentiousness in politics is better than less. Free-wheeling debate is more likely to produce good outcomes than a controlled flow of information. But there is a downside to the ruling that we should freely acknowledge. If history and recent times are any indication, big corporations and unions will use their new freedom of political speech to promote bad ideas. By "bad ideas" I mean proposals for more government interference with our lives and liberty. (Not that the spending ban kept them from doing that in other ways.) It's a great myth that businesses, especiall...