Ebola vs. Conservatism

Ebola is an enemy of conservatism. It's a deadly disease, it's spreading in Africa and there is more than one case in the United States.  To date the current outbreak has killed several hundred people in Africa. But it's not going to become an epidemic - at least in the Western world.  Africa could be another story. In fact that should be the story, here without proper intervention, thousands more could die.

Influenza by comparison, kills hundreds of thousands of people every year.  But Ebola is a virus that lends itself to sensationalism in journalism.  That's because the symptoms and relatively quick and inevitable death is so gruesome. 

Tomorrow: Ebola vs. Conservatism

Why ebola is anti-conservative.  Stay tuned tomorrow for the answer.

Some truths are timeless

This morning I was watching a lawyer's commercial that was really quite odd. The commercial was the lawyer talking the whole time about the Second Amendment. The whole time he had to promote his business he spent to argue that those who supported the right to bear arms (singling out the NRA) were wrong simply because the Founders lived in another era, and the Constitution needed to be brought up to date. No mention of course of how that could be done.

He of course used a straw man argument, and reductio ad absurdum to ask why not give everyone the right to possess thermonuclear weapons. It was too ridiculous to not just laugh. I wouldn't want this guy being my lawyer, because the argument he made was so easily deconstructed that surely he would be a feeble opponent in court.

But it's interesting that he probably would not make the same argument for updating the First Amendment. Is that too an outdated notion?

Some truths are timeless. Forget the First Amendment, are the Ten Commandments out of date? Thou shalt not kill - too old fashioned?

No. But progressive liberalism is characterized by the selective application of principle, and the distortion of the opposition's point of view. So I'm not surprised by this at all.

But the Founding Fathers knew that the moment you turn your back on protecting liberty from tyranny, that's when liberty begins to decay. The Second Amendment is designed to keep the government accountable to the people. Without that accountability the government starts to think that it can do whatever it pleases with no consequence. Oh, wait...

Saturday Learning Series - Constitutional History (8)

Continued from last week. This week, ratification.

Friday Musica Interlude - Friday Night

A Friday Musical Interlude, about Friday. How novel.  Eric Palsay's country tune is a nice listen.

Taiwan`s explosions, China`s fingerprints?

Photo via ABC7Chicago.com

A series of gas explosions in Taiwan has to make you ask yourself about Chinese involvement.  China has been beefing up it`s military, it`s espionage abilities, and it certainly is interested in repatriating Taiwan with China, even though the Taiwanese don`t feel that way.  There`s means, motive and quite likely opportunity as well, as some of the details of the explosion would indicate:

Heavy machinery pulled vehicles from huge trenches gouged by explosions along an underground pipeline in Taiwan's second-largest city that killed at least 25 people and injured 267.

The series of five explosions from about midnight Thursday to early Friday struck a densely populated industrial district in the port of Kaohsiung where petrochemical companies operate pipelines alongside the sewer system under city streets. The cause of the disaster was being investigated...

The explosions were believed caused by leaking propene, a petrochemical material not intended for public use, said Chang Jia-juch, director of the Central Disaster Emergency Operation Center. Chang said the cause and location of the leaks were unknown.

The story includes the following details - it`s a port city where the explosions occurred. The explosions commenced at night. The pipeline is operated by the government, and the result has been that many in the city are now without power.

None of that directly implicates Chinese involvement. And I`m not suggesting that, just raising the possibility. But with China becoming more internationally aggressive, this could certainly be a test of their ability. And if they get caught, so what? It's not like president Obama hasn't backed down from conflict with China before.

China has truly expansionist dreams for the first time in perhaps several millennium.  That does not men they are behind these explosions.  At all.  But it's not all that far-fetched either.