For example, it is well-known that the Ku Klux Klan would deny liberty to blacks, Jews, and Catholics, among others. Yet in rallying people to their cause, they speak of defending their freedoms. Now any who would defend liberty can be discounted as fellow travelers, tarred by association.

This rhetorical identification allows those who would expand their power at the expense of liberty greater discretion. You don’t really want to be like them, do you?

When discussing a Constitutional right to privacy, Senator Obama ranked it with the First Amendment, and then groped for some other Very Important Right to use as a second example. The transcript doesn’t show the hesitation between “than” and “many.”

And I think that the Constitution has a right to privacy in it that shouldn’t be subject to state referendum, any more than our First Amendment rights are subject to state referendum, any more than many of the other rights that we have should be subject to popular vote.

At that point, right there, Obama should have said “the Second Amendment.”

Last night during the post-election analysis on CNN, David Frum, whom Jerry Pournelle calls “the egregious Frum” for his erroneous ways, remarked,

You know, the Democrats claim not to be the party of the rich, but they’re raking in the bucks.

The troubling fact is that taking a lot of exercise and then eating a bit more food is not good for the global atmosphere. Eating less and driving to save energy would be better.

Or so says Chris Goodall, Green Party parliamentary candidate for Oxford West & Abingdon, as quoted in The (London) Times [via Eugene Volokh (via David Sucher) and John Massengale].

The troubling fact is that living is not good for the global atmosphere. Dying would be better.