The Beatings Will Continue Until Morale Improves

December 12, 2018 – 3:33 pm

Here’s an illustrative point from Theodore Dalrymple:

Curiously, liberals who have long denied that punishment deters crime””or indeed serves any purpose, except to take vengeance on the weak and vulnerable, driven to crime by their wretched circumstances””are generally avid for strong penalties for hate crime. The way to make people like one another is to punish them into amiability.

If you think (as even Mr. Dalrymple seems to do) that this shows a lack of principle, you’re wrong: you’re just looking in the wrong place. As I’ve noted before, these people most certainly do have a consistent guiding principle, a “Prime Directive”, and they stick to it with admirable discipline. It is simply this:

Defend your people, always. Attack the enemy with whatever comes to hand, always.

Remember always that this principle trumps all others. If it conflicts with another — as, in this case, it conflicts with the hallowed liberal principle of offloading personal responsibility for bad behavior onto social or other causes — the Prime Directive always wins.

Posted by Malcolm on at 3:33 pm, filed under Society and Culture. RSS feed for this post. Trackbacks are closed, but you can post a comment.

4 Comments

  1. JK says

    Yes of course I recognize my (this) comment is likely off-topic however – Golly I sure like the way the Texas Court writes:

    [But] the Intervenor Defendants downplay the Supreme Court’s most crucial conclusion: § 5000A “yield[ed] the essential feature of any tax: It produce[d] at least some revenue for the Government.” NFIB, 567 U.S. at 564; accord Rosenberger v. Rector and Visitors of Univ. of Virginia, 515 U.S. 819, 841 (1995) (“A tax, in the general understanding of the term, and as used in the Constitution, signifies an exaction for the support of the Government.” Not indicative, not common–essential. Thus, the bottom line is the Individual Mandate was buoyed by Congress’s Tax Power only because it “trigger[ed]” a provision that “produce[d] at least some revenue for the Government.” And it was high tide when the Supreme Court decided NFIB because the shared-responsibility payment was still a payment. But with the TCJA, the tide has gone out.

    (Text noted at the bottom of page 24 and the top of page 25)

    https://oag.ca.gov/system/files/attachments/press-docs/211-texas-order-granting-plaintiffs-partial-summary-judgment.pdf

    *** Malcolm, I expect you’re still in Austria and so haven’t a clue to what I’m on about – yesterday a Texas court declared the ACA unconstitutional. ***

    Posted December 15, 2018 at 1:50 pm | Permalink
  2. Malcolm says

    Wow, JK, that’s a pretty big deal. Let’s see where it goes.

    Posted December 16, 2018 at 5:57 am | Permalink
  3. JK says

    Pasting the comment I’d placed on LB’s yesterday

    The courts have been very busy these recent days. Might take a gander at the comment I left over on Malcolm’s … if you bother with the link you’ll probably see the “humor” I see. The Court really took Congress to task for, basically, abdicating its Constitutionally enumerated duty — and hilariously (or in “junior high level schoolroom civics” fashion if you will).

    Remember … I think it was Pelosi who said, “We’ll have to pass the bill to see what’s in it”?

    Well the court really spanked the defendant class — went so far as to, in its citing precedent go all the way back to Marbury v. Madison! Heck, there’s even at least three instances of the courts citing Webster’s Dictionary.

    Can’t hardly go no schoolroom more’n telling Congress to hit the dictionary.

    In spite of all the assurances Schumer’s crowd are giving on today’s Sunday shows, in my humble (non-lawyer) opinion, I see trouble ahead for higher courts “simply” overturning the Texas court’s reasoning.

    Posted December 16, 2018 at 11:30 am | Permalink
  4. JK says

    Premature ejaculations?

    https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2018/12/experts-weigh-in-on-decision-striking-down-obamacare.php

    Maybe so maybe so

    Posted December 16, 2018 at 10:32 pm | Permalink

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