How they beat the Oregon Trail

There not being bureaucrats overseeing wagon trains, however did the people manage?

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Administrative rule isn’t the same as the rule of law

Americans, almost uniquely in the world, have had reason to consider themselves truly citizens rather than subjects, but that’s changing as the administrative state grows. Angelo M. Codevilla takes a look at the situation in a post at the Library of Law and Liberty.

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Some perspective on Christian conscience

If you’re wondering why, say, The Little Sisters of the Poor can’t just sign off on a form and let others go along with the HHS mandate for them, read this (“St. Thomas More, The Little Sisters of the Poor & the Casualness of Conscience,” Tod Worner, January 7, 2014, at Patheos). Well, even if you know already why they can’t, you might want to read the post. It’s a good overview, and a good reminder of some of what’s at stake.

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Do not let the idea of checks and balances scare you

Government has a nasty tendency to overgrow its proper boundaries. (You might have noticed that?) That’s why showdowns between different branches of government, or between the Senate and the House, aren’t necessarily a bad situation overall. Thoughts on the Shut Down at Breakpoint helps explain why.

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The ‘golden age’ of skyjackings, and what was done to stop it

From a new book, a look at the epidemic hijacking of airplanes in the ’60s and ’70s, with emphasis on those starry-eyed people who sought to go to Cuba – where they found themselves despised.

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Fake villages for G8 backdrop

The G8 leaders’ limos will be driving past fake storefronts ‘stocked’ with fake goods later this month, according to IrishCentral.

 

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Sequester perspectives

Michael Avramovich provides some details in The Sequester: National Catastrophe or Much Ado About Nothing? at Mere Comments.

At Townhall, Daniel J. Mitchell would like for the New York Times to show him the “deep cuts” they keep writing about:

Sigh. I feel like a modern-day Sisyphus. Except I’m not pushing a rock up a hill, only to then watch it roll back down.

I have a far more frustrating job. I have to read the same nonsense day after day about “deep spending cuts” even though I keep explaining to journalists that a sequester merely means that spending climbs by $2.4 trillion over the next 10 years rather than $2.5 trillion.

He includes a graph, to make it even more plain what he’s talking about.

Then there’s the Michael Ramirez cartoon that compares the 2007 federal budget with the 2013 federal budget, using pie charts.

I think I’m starting to get the picture.

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Living in Romania under socialism…

… was a nightmare, as Virginia Prodan explains in Socialism: Against Gold, Guns, and God at American Thinker.

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Soft despotism, then and now

Samuel Gregg provides some background to our present cultural/political situation, in a post called Mitt de Tocqueville.

…if the liberal commentariat deigned to pick up a copy of the second volume of Tocqueville’s Democracy in America and read the chapter entitled “What Sort of Despotism Democratic Nations Have to Fear,” they’d find the link between creating tame citizens and a state that generously volunteers to do everything on their behalf spelt out quite gracefully…

hat tip: John Couretas

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Stopping tyranny in time

G.K. Chesterton made a good point about tyranny, and timing.

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