I can’t believe this libertarian nonsense. According to the libertarians that wrote this article college kids are yearning for libertarianism. If that is the case it is because these students don’t know what libertarianism is and what Ron Paul actually stands for.

I loathe the fact the democrats don’t seem to want to do anything about illegal wiretaps, torture and the war. But just because Ron Paul says he wants these things does not make him your friend. For the last thirty years we have as a country relentlessly been shrinking the role of government in everything except law enforcement and defense, reversing a fifty year trend in the opposite direction. Before you go and vote for Ron Paul because he wants to legalize it and get out of Iraq you should consider why government was expanded in the first half of the twentieth century, and consider the wisdom of Paul’s reactionary ideas.

It’s good for business!

The Dow closed at a record high for the fourth straight session today. Kudos to the rich! Meanwhile, in poor-people-land, Dozens Massacred in Diyala, 80 Dead in Kirkuk Bombings. As Patrick Cockburn writes, “just another day in Iraq.”

Only a tiny minority of the super-rich dare to speak out against the ideology of the free market, as in this NYT article: The Richest of the Rich, Proud of a New Gilded Age. But even those super-rich espouse an anti-democratic, elistist view of politics in their views of how their money should be redistributed - through philanthropies that they control - rather than through taxes (or direct seizure of their property).

The new tycoons oppose raising taxes on their fortunes. Unlike Mr. Crandall, neither Mr. Weill nor Mr. Griffin nor most of the dozen others who were interviewed favor tax rates higher than they are today, although a few would go along with a return to the levels of the Clinton administration. The marginal tax on income then was 39.6 percent, and on capital gains, 20 percent. That was still far below the 70 percent and 39 percent in the late 1970s. Those top rates, in the Bush years, are now 35 percent and 15 percent, respectively.

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This story on digg (and its comments) were so vile, so one sided…and so common. After the feeding frenzy over the Duke case I sort of felt that brought out a certain group of people that like to feel as if white men are a persecuted minority. But looking around I think the really is a strong current of misogyny in online communities. I don’t know what causes it, but it really disturbs me. Anyway, a couple of writers have tackled this well. Read on:

Joan Walsh
Random Blogger I found on Google

A very thoughtful article in harpers…

Harry Reid finally came out and says what everyone already knows: the war is lost. Of course a crazy story like this VT shooting is more resonant to Americans than the constant stream of horror that comes out of Iraq. Exceptional things happening to everyday people is what makes good fiction and its what makes interesting news. The story is complex, we will never really understand why he did what he did. It makes for great television. (I say this with all respect for the people who died and those survived this tragedy)

On the the other hand the hundreds of men, women and children dying every in Iraq isn’t a good story. A good story has a mystery. It has suspense. The story in Iraq is predictable and tragically explicable. The only outstanding question about this war is how much longer and how many more people need to die. Forty innocent people die every day in Iraq as a direct result of this predictable and avoidable tragedy. The worst thing is that we can say for certain, even if we leave tomorrow, is that thousands more will die.

Amanda has a good post on the VA tech story. The fact is that from what we know now there is very little that can be gleaned from this story. With all due respect to my coblogger Eli, spree killers are an aberration. As Amanda notes they tend to be angry loners and they tend to be male. Other than that it just seems that a certain (teeny tiny) percentage of people go on killing sprees. Some are mentally ill. Some are sociopaths.

The Columbine story was a good example of one that got completely out of control. When something with no meaning happens everyone grasps at straws that probably say more about the culture than the spree killer did. In Columbine the first storyline that these were crazed goth kids bent on revenge for bullying was a great story with good staying power. Unfortunately it was just a story that turned out to be completely untrue. We will not know the whole story of this killing for some time, and I suspect that we will never really know or understand why.

Attn: Everyone. You can’t draw a trend with one data point. Sometimes a crazy person is just a crazy person.

Hilarious.

Also, Joe Bob from Reno, your comment is staying in moderation, there is nothing worth addressing in it. If you are wondering what I am talking about (everyone else) Joe Bob thinks that a random shooting by a crazy person proves that immigrants are to blame for everything wrong with this country. Anyway, no point in airing is insane rantings on the net. But he is the first comment that got moderated away on this site, so that is a prize for him.

When things like this happen I try to resist the impulse to draw any conclusions. There are too many unknowns at this point to know what conclusions, if any can be drawn from yesterdays tragedy. We can however, say for certain that whatever conclusions Debbie Schlussel draw are pretty much the wrong ones:

UPDATE: The shooter has now been identified as a Chinese national here on a student visa. Lovely. Yet another reason to stop letting in so many foreign students…[later post]…So, the perpetrator of the Virginia Tech massacre is a Chinese national here on a student visa. And, today, this alien did “the job that Americans just won’t do.”

Remember that the next time you hear President Bush and Condi Clueless waxing lyrical about how we need more foreign students in America. We do not. Remember the Mana Saleh Almanajam and Shaker Mohsen Alsidran, two Saudi students in Tampa, last year, who hijacked a school bus full of kids while wearing trench coats in 90-plus degree weather?

Debbie has updated to note this was a South Korean national. She hasn’t figured out what a green card is yet. I recommend heading over to her site to see how “national security” conservatism looks a lot like plain, old fashioned racism. (I’m not going to link, her domain is her name)