Free Republic

Freedom to do as we please has to yield to security and the freedom of others. How much freedom should we trade for security? How much do we still have? Another question is, do we still have choices? Our earnings, property and other assets are increasingly viewed by libruls as belonging to the Government. The bases asserted for their notions include a perceived need for an ever higher, more comfortable and more spacious "floor" for those who prefer (but do not need) to be cared for by a benign Government (i.e., tax payers). There, they can snooze, booze, use illegal...

It is a real burden not to cite every other paragraph spoken from the stage as a vindication of my book, The Tyranny of Clichés (or, for that matter, Liberal Fascism). Over and over again the Democrats spout, to paraphrase De Tocqueville, clear-but-false ideas. The overarching one of the whole convention: Government is the only thing we all belong to. Such bogus appeals to unity and community as a justification for activist government drive me batty. That’s what Elizabeth Warren’s speech was all about and countless other lesser luminaries as well. Here’s Bill Clinton’s soundbite of the night: “You see,...

Revealing Politics asked DNC attendees and delegates in Charlotte what they thought of one of the themes of the DNC promotional video that played in the arena last night— “The government is the only thing we all belong to.” The Obama campaign is backing away from the video, but DNC attendees sure aren’t. “Regardless of where you live, you’re gonna be owned by someone at some point. I think the American government so far has been a fair government and I don’t necessarily hate that I’m OWNED by them at this point.”

Yes, rest assured, Romney and the GOP are already working on ads about this. It’s the GOP that cut the clip and circulated it, in fact. Mitt himself evidently can’t wait to get started: People are going to follow Romney’s lead and seize on the word “belong” but that’s only half the problem. Even if Democrats had chosen a phrase that didn’t connote ownership, like “participate in” (Obama’s preferred turn of phrase when pushing this idea is “doing things together”), this is still a creepy, spurious justification for expanding government.

Recent Landslides In La Conchita, California Belong To Much Larger Prehistoric Slide The deadly landslide that killed 10 people and destroyed approximately 30 homes in La Conchita, California last January is but a tiny part of a much larger slide, called the Rincon Mountain slide, discovered by Larry D. Gurrola, geologist and graduate student at the University of California, Santa Barbara. The slide started many thousands of years ago and will continue generating slides in the future, reported Gurrola at the national meeting of the Geological Society of America today in Salt Lake City. Mudslides at La Conchita. (Image courtesy...