John Myles White: Die Sudelbücher

Progressive, n. A political activist who seeks to force upon the people the “freedom” they do not want.

Whenever someone wonders why people are dubious about the moral quality of swingers, remember this.

When lust is too readily indulged, evil follows.

Whether your motto is “¡Viva la muerte!” or “¡Viva la vida!”, the next thought will always end up being “¡Abajo la inteligencia!”.

“What we’re learning here is really the bedrock difference between the United States and the countries that are in a broad sense its legal cousins,” Mr. Steyn added. “Western governments are becoming increasingly comfortable with the regulation of opinion. The First Amendment really does distinguish the U.S., not just from Canada but from the rest of the Western world.”

I have added the emphasis to these incredibly important words, quoted in a New York Times article on an important upcoming free speech trial in Canada.

There are times when one must be grateful for those strengths America possesses that the rest of the world so readily condemns.

Liberalism and conservatism are, like optimism and pessimism, symmetric vices rather than complementary intelligences.

If you are neither embittered nor emboldened, avoid writing aphorisms.

I think the secret to comedy’s didactic value is to be found in the speech of mothers to their infants. By exaggerating the inconsistencies of daily life to the point of absurdity, comedy teaches to focus on the salient features of argument.

While walking to work this morning, it struck me that the questions being lumped together under the moniker of neuroeconomics should be a source of fascination to everyone who is amazed by the fact that the continued existence of the penny makes every single American factually poorer, but is continued because it makes a majority of them feel subjectively richer.