Bullets
Whew, I'm back off the wagon. The temperatures have plunged, and so has my dehydration level. I threw back a healthy number of drinks last night, and I feel pretty bad this morning, but it's a fitting hangover: I'm not on death's door, and an energy drink and 600 mg of ibuprofen ought to put me straight. Give thanks.
A paean to one of my favorite places on earth, Cedar Point. The place is great. I might make it a subject in tomorrow's podcast.
"Here, on a small, pretty peninsula on the edge of Lake Erie, a group of free people has poured hundreds of millions of dollars into building a spaghetti junction of vast, glittering, noisy machines, the sole purpose of which is to fling human bodies in every conceivable direction. And they have done so of their own volition. No dreary central planner or cocksure busybody would ever have consented to such a thing, and no orchestrated economy could ever have hosted it. This is a triumph of imagination, of rebellion, and of evolution – a joyful illustration of what eccentrics do when left alone. Only by trial and error could this niche have been found; only by happy accident could it have grown to such proportions. I had two destinations on my trip: Cedar Point and the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame. Is anybody surprised that neither is located in Moscow?"
I'm kind of ashamed of it, but it didn't dawn on me until I read this article that the new liberalism (the one that juggernauted into public life after 2008) is simply totalitarianism. "I don't use the “T”-word lightly. I've spent years pushing back against those who fling it about in free societies like ours. But totalitarianism doesn't require cartoonish, 1984-style secret police and Big Brother. The classical definition is a society where everything – ethical norms and moral principles and truth itself – is subjugated to political ends." Movies, the NFL, religion. Everything to the modern leftist must be politicized. In that, it's a type of totalitarian as a matter of blackletter understanding: "a totalitarian regime attempts to control virtually all aspects of the social life, including the economy, education, art, science, private life and morals of citizens." Wikipedia.
