Quote of the week

“Should we err today and remove some of the most important checks on state power in the name of fighting terrorism, well then the terrorists have won" — Rand Paul

New and Improved Chess: Meet the new pieces.

The Pope moves like the Bishop, except that when moving the Pope, you get to change the rules as you go along.

The Evangelical Pastor moves like the Pope, except that the rules of New and Improved Chess strictly forbid you to admit that you have changed the rules. Therefore, you change the rules retroactively to the beginning of the game and pretend not to have done so at all.

The Politician can be moved to any space where your opponent can immediately capture it. When your opponent moves to capture your Politician, you select a Pawn to be captured in the Politician's place.

The Journalist does not actually move at all. Instead, when you wish to play the Journalist, you simply lecture your opponent on what has happened in the game so far, while seriously misrepresenting most of it. Your opponent can then either use his own Journalist or, more likely, simply ignore you.

The Crony Capitalist can engage in castling with the Politician, like the King and the Rook. Another way to use your Crony Capitalist is to wait until your opponent has gotten up to get a beer and then rearrange the pieces so that your Crony Capitalist can easily checkmate your opponent. Another new piece, the Lobbyist, helps here. If your opponent questions you on this, you should use either your Journalist or your Evangelical Pastor.

You can move the Route 1 Driver whenever you please, regardless of whether it's your turn. The Route 1 Driver occupies between two and four spaces on the board. You got a problem with that?

Everyone knows what a vitally important piece the Famous-for-Being-Famous is, although no one can remember the last time the Famous-for-Being-Famous was even placed on the board.

Quote of the week

Ron Paul on profiling: "What if they look like Timothy McVeigh? * * * So I would be very cautious about protecting the rule of law. It will be a sacrifice that you'll be sorry for."

Religious right or P.C. left? Quotes 32 and 33

In this series of blog posts, your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to read each quote and guess, before doing a Web search, whether someone in the religious right or the politically correct left said it.

32.

This ethic [referring to the Mill harm principle], increasingly pervasive in culture and popular with Libertarians in particular (the intellectual children of Mill) has well documented flaws. Essentially utilitarian as opposed to deontological, it thus has strong appeal from those who do not wish to be "burdened" with "restrictions." An unfortunate result is that it is an ethic does not call us to higher personal or communal goods or goals.... It also levels all human relationships to that of human contracts mutually entered into by participating parties, leaving little in the way of thought of community good and charity for the poor and disabled.

33.

[In response to someone bringing up the Mill harm principle] jonathanan, what a lovely explanation of the beginner’s understanding of human rights: everything you want to do is fine as long as you’re not “hurting” anyone. Perhaps when you grow up a bit you’ll realize how shallow and insipid that idea is. Until then, do consider from time to time that there are people who know far, far more about how the world works and that if you spend some time reading and thinking, rather than displaying your ignorance for all to see, you might be further along in your understanding some day.

Or stay shallow and ignorant, that’s an option too.

The bipartisan war on liberty, and why it matters to us

Today's Richmond Times-Dispatch has an op-ed column by A. Barton Hinkle, titled "Elites agree: Americans are too darn free." The following are the thesis sentence and the concluding paragraph:

The nation's high and mighty may be divided about many things, but on one point they often agree: Americans are still too darn free.

* * *

This is what power fetishists always do: assume the power will be used in ways they like. (And since the ends are noble, they surely must justify the means, right?) Sometimes it is. But power changes hands, and the inheritors may be a rather different sort. The people pushing for more government power never seem to think of that — until it's too late.

I have long tried to make the same point to the politically correct government-worshipers in the LGBT community. To show one of the reasons (but not the only one) not to increase government power, I have tried to explain to them that when a government (federal, state, or local) gains vast new powers while progressive Democrats run that government, those powers will not magically dissipate by the time power switches to Republicans or to socially conservative Democrats. Regarding some proposals for broadened government power, I have even said point blank, "Is that a power that you want (insert name of current Republican baddie) to have over your life?" For example, a government powerful enough to control whether businesses grant domestic-partner benefits can forbid them to do so, as Virginia did for a time.

In response, politically correct statists may try to argue that no matter who wins the next election, the government will for some reason observe the difference between government coercion against them (oh, the humanity!) and government coercion against someone else (shout glory!). More often, however, they use that all-purpose scathing rebuttal known as "La la la, I can't hear you."

Are rules meant to be broken?

Someone has asked whether rules are meant to be broken, in the context of inconsistent enforcement of rules, so here's my response:

The meta-rule states that the rules are written and enforced so that whatever you do, you are wrong. The meta-rule is never broken.

I could give examples. I'm sure we all could.

The wonders of Holy Mother Rome

The New York Times gives us back-to-back articles on the Catholic Church as the guardian of sexual morality and as a nest of pedophiles and their enablers. Didn't someone once say something about knowing every tree by its fruit or about casting the beam out of your own eye before casting the mote out of your brother's?