David Brin, Charlie Stross: only a virtuous people

David Brin pushes the Democratic party line. He mentions the ill-behaved Left, but never pushes them back. He is a scared little boy who does not with to thwart the kleptocratic, anti-republican longings in his own party:

• "When faced with American public defection from elite preferences outcomes on certain policy issues that involve many difficult tradeoffs of the kind that democracies, with much jostling and argument, are supposed to work out among many different groups, Friedman extols the example of … China’s political system, because it’s both enlightened and autocratic?"
• "To Krugman — and, apparently, to most Obama-supporting Democrats — there’s no such thing as legitimate opposition."
• SF Protesters to Obama: Please Be a Dictator!
• Rep. Charlie Rangel, D-N.Y., Barack Obama should simply rule by decree, issuing executive orders for everything. He then slammed Tea Party Republicans for refusing to cooperate with Obama, and compared them to criminals.
• Washington proposes a Reich Flight Tax: "Mr. Schumer would surely bridle at having his exit-tax policy compared to that of the Nazis, as would Mr. Boehner, so let me be clear: The Reichsfluchsteuer was originally imposed not by the Nazis, but, rather, on December 8, 1931, by the pre-Hitler, centrist government of Heinrich Brüning, who had a doctoral degree in economics."
• Jacob Heilbrunn, "Is It Time To Abolish Congress?"
• MSNBC's Ed Schultz said President Obama should "put the boot on the neck of BP" and act like a "dictator" in his Oval Office address tonight.
• "It’s hard to come up with new ways to describe the Obama administration’s improvisational approach to the Affordable Care Act’s troubled health insurance exchanges."

Linked from the fever swamps found over here. This is simply a panic piece which hopes you've never noticed that the Far Left and the Far Right wrap around. Brin and Stross seem to think Democracy is awesome, especially when it intrudes into every part  of your life. Sensible people know better.

In the meantime, I would like to leave you with the wise words of a man Messrs Brin and Stross would undoubtedly despise: "Let me add, that only a virtuous people are capable of freedom. As nations become corrupt and vicious, they have more need of masters."

Well, now you see what the people above think of you.

Trust, the MSM and abortion

This is hilarious. Dave Weigel (a liberal “conservative” for the MSM) admits reporters are overwhelmingly Democratic (we knew that, 85%) but keeps saying that Amanda Marcotte (classic Limbaugh feminazi) and William Saletan (reliably Progressive technical writer) “covered” the grand jury report. Said report reads like the Grand Guignol, but let us see how Marcotte “covered” it (link at that article):

• “Abortion provider Dr. Kermit Gosnell and some of his staff members have been charged with eight counts of murder”
• “It was a little hard to find reliable information on Gosnell in the sea of anti-choice hysterics online”
• “Until more information is available, I would advise caution on jumping to conclusions about the charges of murder on the seven babies.”
• “The accusation resemble a fairly routine accusation leveled by anti-choicers at doctors”
• “it's possible that Gosnell is guilty of the charges, but one should take the history of this particular claim into account before jumping to conclusions.”
• “Gosnell ran a crappy clinic”
• “pro-choice community exerts quite a bit of effort trying to improve the quality of abortion care”
• “That shady abortion providers get patients at all is something we can safely blame the anti-choice movement for”

I like the word “safely” there. And finally this bit deserves quotation in full:

These particular charges involve late-term abortion, and all I could think upon reading the news story was, "I wish these women could have gone to Dr. George Tiller," because he was renowned for the quality of care provided at his Kansas clinic. But sadly, that wasn't even an option, even for those who could afford it, as Dr. Tiller's life was taken by an anti-choice extremist in 2009.

This is not journalism, this is inoculation: the careful, planned release of information designed to minimize the effect upon your side and maximize the damage to the other. Note the bringing up of Tiller: his murderer was convicted and imprisoned immediately. Gosnell was allowed to continue his horror show without even visits from the department of public health for years. Somehow, a solitary killer (and would-be terrorist with a previous conviction, how the hell was he on parole?), denounced as a coward and criminal by Operation Rescue, is worse than a storefront multiple murderer operating with government complicity.

Most doctors in this country are pro-choice, and many would like to provide abortion, but as Slate 's Emily Bazelon demonstrated in the New York Times , the stigma of doing so makes it that much harder to do

Yes, Amanda, and between journalism and erasing the visible signs of that stigma, we can see which you prefer.

Hat tip to Instapundit.

Orson Scott Card And Superman’s Klansman Roots

The Atlantic posts on America’s most, critical, at-risk resource: “The Real Problem With Superman’s New Writer Isn’t Bigotry, It’s Fascism, Orson Scott Card’s anti-gay beliefs would do more than contradict the Man of Steel’s inherent goodness.” Basically, it's another glue-huffing piece on the shocking news that not all Americans love all the gays 100%.

(The article goes on, carefully if ignorantly tracing Superman’s Klansman roots.)

Meanwhile, a box on the same page links to an article on the decidedly mixed results from Steven Spielberg’s whitewash, so to speak, of the overt, negative racial stereotyping in the Tintin books: “Overcoming Tintin’s Racism by Ignoring It.” (Mixed, as apparently removing all minorities is hardly satisfying either.)

I respectfully submit to the Atlantic their own advice.

(The Atlantic makes no mention of how Card plans to merge labor, corporate power and the state, oddly enough.)