A Few Notes

Mona Charen discusses the most recent American suicide shooter. I crossed out the unimportant stuff.

Once again the cable news programs are going wall to wall covering the latest mass shooting. All other programming is on hold. I've said this before. When the news shows do this they are guaranteeing the next atrocity. A twisted desire for fame and attention drives some of this. Recall that when the networks were having a problem with streakers at televised football games, they simply turned their cameras away. The problem evaporated. These mass shootings are a little more complicated, and news organizations cannot completely ignore them. But they don't need to stop everything to cover them. And they certainly should never provide stories about the shooter's problems, failed romances, experience with teasing, or political views.

Cab drollery (via Avedon Carol and Escheton) points out the free market at work. Megan McArdle would be so pleased. What was it she said to explain why regulation wasn't needed?

One thing that strikes me about the arguments I've been having with voucher opponents is just how little they seem to understand how markets work. Markets don't work because they get it right the first time; they succeed because if at first they don't succeed, they try, try again.

Failure, to put it bluntly, works. Failure is nature's way of telling you "Hey, that doesn't work!" The American economy is vastly strengthened by the fact that companies are allowed to fail--and also by the fact that our crazy culture encourages us to try things that don't work.

Those dead children are just nature's way of telling you hey, that vaccine didn't work.

Jonah Goldberg prints a response from a reader who points out Jonah's racist assumptions regarding drugs and Black people. His response is pure Jonah:

Fair enough on the last point. I don't know any such thing one way or the other. I was merely going by the inherent assumptions behind some legalization arguments. But, I don't think that concession — which I am happy to make — changes my overall argument much. Poor people are disproportionately affected by all sorts of things all of the time and blacks are disproportionately poor. In most other spheres, libertarians don't take that fact and bend their principles to it.

So the writer is probably right, and Jonah doesn't have any idea if his facts are correct or not. He's just assuming they are. And anyway, the true facts don't change his opinion. If you started taking reality into account, then where would libertarians be? Their views only succeed in bad fiction.