Like Rome, America apparently can coast for a long time on the fumes of its wonderful political heritage and economic dynamism — even if both are little understood or appreciated by most who still benefit from them.

Contrast: The tragedy in Christchurch (h/t Adrian)

Teach a man to fish and he’ll have to buy a fishing license. (Language advisory).

Ed Driscoll, on how American elites went insane:“Apologies for the length of this post, but it’s merely a partial list of 1968′s horror stories.”

They are starving, when miraculously they find a box filled with canned food. What to do? They consider the problem, bringing their collective lifetimes of study and discipline to the task.
Being the practical, straightforward sort, the engineer suggests that they simply find a rock and hit the cans until they break open. “No, no!” cry the chemist and economist, “we would spill too much food and the birds would get it!”
After a bit of thought, the chemist recommends that they start a fire and heat the cans. The pressure in the cans will force them open and the food will conveniently already be heated. But the engineer and economist object, pointing out correctly that the cans would likely explode and splatter the food all over the beach.
The economist, after carefully studying the cans and reading the labels, starts scrawling a series of equations in the sand, which eventually cover the entire beach. After much pondering, he excitedly announces, “I’ve got it! I’ve got it!” as he points to the final equation. They ask him to explain, with their visions of finally getting a meal causing them to regard the economist with a new sense of respect.
The economist clears his throat and begins, “First, assume a can opener …”

Jeff Goldstein;

Here, today, the narrative from the neo-Stalinist progressives is that constitutionalists are racial supremacists and paranoid freaks; the Founding Fathers are their false idols; and the founding documents are their fetish. Religion is both their opiate and their cocaine, the thing that simultaneously dulls them into an intellectual stupor and turns them into evangelical zealots bent on demanding obeisance. Taken together, this toxic blend of hateful ignorance makes these slack-jawed clingers to their guns and their religion exceedingly dangerous to “sensible” people who want to live in a “community” wherein “common sense” laws — not the hoary edicts of dead white patriarchal slave owners — hold sway. Rational, cultured, intellectual people want to live in a land that looks forward, to progress, not backward, to a time of tri-cornered hats and oppression of the Other.
This is the propaganda war being launched against you, against me, against we, the people.

Dave Barry’s Year In Review;

It was that kind of year. Remember back in 2011, when the big sex scandal involved Anthony Weiner, the ferret-like congressperson who committed political suicide by tweet? We all thought, “Oh, well, another Washington politician who wants to regulate everything except his own personal ding-dong. At least there are SOME institutions, such as the Secret Service, the CIA and the Army, where males in positions of responsibility can control their …”

Some animals are more equal than others.

Mayor Bloomberg has a small cadre of hired hands who are near and with him literally 24 hours a day. They are armed, all the time, and they are paid to worry about these things so he doesn’t have to.
Likewise, President Obama has a literal army of trained, armed soldiers in the form of parts of the military and an entire division of officers (The Secret Service) who’s job it is, once again, to make this not his problem for both him and his entire family. Michelle and his children do not have to concern themselves about these issues because there are literally over a thousand others who are paid to take that responsibility — up to and including eating a bullet in their place.
Neither of these people is proposing to rely on what they claim you should rely on — a “law.” A piece of paper, which today doesn’t even get printed on real paper; it’s a ghost in a machine that glows at you in the dark.
[…]

Up until all of these people in political office disband their police forces, their Secret Service details, throw down their own arms, armored cars, body armor and other defensive means of interdicting assault they have nothing — not even a moral argument — behind them in their demand that you disarm and become an intentional victim — no matter who you are.

Read it all. (Via)

At RCP: Rick Santelli Explains Difference Between A Democracy And A Republic. And more.