- Nov 26, 2011
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I've always liked George Will. He is perhaps the best political writer of our times.
It is unfortunate I cannot quote his whole editorial here. Every sentence is a gem. I highly recommend reading the entirety of the link.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opin...ec56cd414732_story.html?wpisrc=nl_most&wpmm=1
Some select excerpts:
Presidential aspirant Beto O’Rourke, thrashing about in an attempt to be noticed, says tax exemptions should be denied to churches and other institutions that oppose same-sex marriage. O’Rourke’s suggestion, and Sen. Elizabeth Warren’s plan to tax the “excessive” exercise of a First Amendment right, and the NBA’s painful lesson about the perils of moral grandstanding illustrate how progressivism has become a compound of self-satisfied moral preening and a thirst for coercion.
<snip>
Warren, a policy polymath, has a plan for everything, including for taxing speech that annoys her. The pesky First Amendment (in 2014, 54 Democratic senators voted to amend it to empower Congress to regulate spending that disseminates political speech about Congress) says “Congress shall make no law” abridging the right of the people “to petition the government for a redress of grievances.” One name for such petitioning is lobbying. Warren proposes steep taxes (up to 75 percent) on “excessive” lobbying expenditures, as though the amendment says Congress can forbid “excessive” petitioning. Lobbyists are unpopular, and her entire agenda depends on what the amendment was written to prevent: arousing majority passions against an unpopular minority (the wealthy). Warren, who like O’Rourke is operatic when denouncing President Trump’s ignorance of, or hostility to, constitutional norms, might not be a plausible person to make the case against him.
<snip>
But back to Silver. He took the 2017 All-Star Game away from Charlotte, so horrified was the NBA by a North Carolina law requiring transgender people to use public bathrooms according to the sex on their birth certificates. The NBA’s decision expressed its “long-standing core values,” which are, however, compatible with the NBA having its China training camp in Xinjiang province, where Chinese citizens are in concentration camps that facilitate “reeducation.”
<snip>
Unfortunately, however, O’Rourke, Warren and Silver demonstrate the tendency of too many progressives to cut constitutional corners, to despise and bully adversaries, and to practice theatrical but selective indignation about attacks on fundamental American principles, some of which they themselves traduce. Just what we did not need in our dispiriting civic life: additional evidence that there really is no such thing as rock bottom.
It is unfortunate I cannot quote his whole editorial here. Every sentence is a gem. I highly recommend reading the entirety of the link.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opin...ec56cd414732_story.html?wpisrc=nl_most&wpmm=1
Some select excerpts:
Presidential aspirant Beto O’Rourke, thrashing about in an attempt to be noticed, says tax exemptions should be denied to churches and other institutions that oppose same-sex marriage. O’Rourke’s suggestion, and Sen. Elizabeth Warren’s plan to tax the “excessive” exercise of a First Amendment right, and the NBA’s painful lesson about the perils of moral grandstanding illustrate how progressivism has become a compound of self-satisfied moral preening and a thirst for coercion.
<snip>
Warren, a policy polymath, has a plan for everything, including for taxing speech that annoys her. The pesky First Amendment (in 2014, 54 Democratic senators voted to amend it to empower Congress to regulate spending that disseminates political speech about Congress) says “Congress shall make no law” abridging the right of the people “to petition the government for a redress of grievances.” One name for such petitioning is lobbying. Warren proposes steep taxes (up to 75 percent) on “excessive” lobbying expenditures, as though the amendment says Congress can forbid “excessive” petitioning. Lobbyists are unpopular, and her entire agenda depends on what the amendment was written to prevent: arousing majority passions against an unpopular minority (the wealthy). Warren, who like O’Rourke is operatic when denouncing President Trump’s ignorance of, or hostility to, constitutional norms, might not be a plausible person to make the case against him.
<snip>
But back to Silver. He took the 2017 All-Star Game away from Charlotte, so horrified was the NBA by a North Carolina law requiring transgender people to use public bathrooms according to the sex on their birth certificates. The NBA’s decision expressed its “long-standing core values,” which are, however, compatible with the NBA having its China training camp in Xinjiang province, where Chinese citizens are in concentration camps that facilitate “reeducation.”
<snip>
Unfortunately, however, O’Rourke, Warren and Silver demonstrate the tendency of too many progressives to cut constitutional corners, to despise and bully adversaries, and to practice theatrical but selective indignation about attacks on fundamental American principles, some of which they themselves traduce. Just what we did not need in our dispiriting civic life: additional evidence that there really is no such thing as rock bottom.
