What I Learned Over Spring Break

Filed under:Children's Books,Church of Liberalism — posted by Anwyn on April 5, 2007 @ 11:29 pm

Dr. Seuss apparently believed that Soviet communism differed from American capitalism no more than eating one’s bread butter-side-down differs from eating it butter-side-up.

I believe that’s what Allah would refer to as nuance.

He Wouldn’t Have Been There

Filed under:Language Barrier,Priorities,Sad — posted by Anwyn @ 11:25 pm

O’Reilly and Geraldo lose it, big time, over the illegal alien drunk driver who killed Alison Kunhardt, 17, and Tessa Tranchant, 16, last week in Virginia. The red-faced loss of control was startling enough. But in all the yelling, O’Reilly somehow failed to use the words that would get his point across–not to Geraldo, he was deaf to reason–but to any viewers who may have been wavering towards Geraldo’s side:

If the law had been followed, that man, Ramos, would not have been where he was at the time he was, drunk, sober, or in any other condition. And those two girls would still be alive. Geraldo can scream all he wants about the thousands of fatalities from drunk driving. How would he like to stop them? Seems to me about the most effective way, if you can manage it, is to prevent the presence of the drunk driver altogether. Seems to me that the government, not being able to foresee all ends, might want to consider that as a general policy, following the law will probably lead to better ends than not. Seems to me that Geraldo’s “17,000” don’t matter a whit right now to the parents of those two girls. Stats don’t, when it’s your kid.

Whatever Geraldo thinks, Bill was the farthest possible from making a political point. He was making a personal one, though he was too angry to use the right words. For those girls, for their parents, if Ramos had been deported for his illegal status, two dead girls would be alive and their parents spared the worst kind of grief. Yes, 17,000 other Americans may have lost their lives to 17,000 drunken American drivers in whatever fiscal period Geraldo was babbling about. It’s entirely irrelevant to the point that these two deaths need never have happened, had that man, Ramos, not been there. Liberals love individual life so much, as long as it’s in the body of somebody “disadvantaged.” It doesn’t get more disadvantaged than death for those two Viriginia girls.

Update: Patterico with the analogy that makes my point. Two extra “drinks” that would have been unspilled, had this criminal been removed from this country.



image: detail of installation by Bronwyn Lace