Atlas Shrugged: The Mocking

Friday, March 30, 2012

Freedom Through Obedience


Pope Benedict: Now repeat after me: You put your left arm in, you pull your left arm out....


Via poor, dim K-Lo, it seems the pope had a great deal to say about religious freedom when he visited Cuba. Some truths, it seems, are more equal than others:

...

The truth is a desire of the human person, the search for which always supposes the exercise of authentic freedom. Many, without a doubt, would prefer to take the easy way out, trying to avoid this task. Some, like Pontius Pilate, ironically question the possibility of even knowing what truth is (cf. Jn 18:38), claiming is incapable of knowing it or denying that there exists a truth valid for all. This attitude, as in the case of scepticism and relativism, changes hearts, making them cold, wavering, distant from others and closed. There are too many who, like the Roman governor, wash their hands and let the water of history drain away without taking a stand.

Take that, Megan McArdle! Of course we know what the truth is; it is whatever our authority tells us it is. And our enemies, who refuse to acknowledge that our truth is the only truth, are bad people; cold and indecisive.


On the other hand, there are those who wrongly interpret this search for the truth, leading them to irrationality and fanaticism; they close themselves up in “their truth”, and try to impose it on others.

Can you believe all those people who insist that their truth is the only truth, which is just irrational and fanatical. If not terroristic. When your religion is the only religion and you are the only person who is right, it just defies logic and reason to refuse to admit the "truth."


These are like the blind scribes who, upon seeing Jesus beaten and bloody, cry out furiously, “Crucify him!” (cf. Jn 19:6). Anyone who acts irrationally cannot become a disciple of Jesus. Faith and reason are necessary and complementary in the pursuit of truth. God created man with an innate vocation to the truth and he gave him reason for this purpose. Certainly, it is not irrationality but rather the yearning for truth which the Christian faith promotes. Each man and woman has to seek the truth and to choose it when he or she finds it, even at the risk of embracing sacrifices.

Our belief in our truth is not irrational because we are right and they are wrong. God said so. And if you do not want to "embrace the truth," well, you might just have to make a few sacrifices and do what others want. And if you don't, we have people trying to pass legislation to ensure that you will be forced to acknowledge the truth.

Furthermore, the truth which stands above humanity is an unavoidable condition for attaining freedom, since in it we discover the foundation of an ethics on which all can converge and which contains clear and precise indications concerning life and death, duties and rights, marriage, family and society, in short, regarding the inviolable dignity of the human person. This ethical patrimony can bring together different cultures, peoples and religions, authorities and citizens, citizens among themselves, and believers in Christ and non-believers.

If everyone would just do as the Catholic Church demands, then everyone would be united in obedience! And hey, guys--you're on top! Give a little, get a little, wink-wink. After all, there's nothing more ethical than Christianity!

...

Dear friends, do not hesitate to follow Jesus Christ. In him we find the truth about God and about mankind. He helps us to overcome our selfishness, to rise above our vain struggles and to conquer all that oppresses us. The one who does evil, who sins, becomes its slave and will never attain freedom (cf. Jn 8:34). Only by renouncing hatred and our hard and blind hearts will we be free and a new life will well up in us.

Freedom through obedience!

...

The right to freedom of religion, both in its private and in its public dimension, manifests the unity of the human person, who is at once a citizen and a believer. It also legitimizes the fact that believers have a contribution to make to the building up of society. Strengthening religious freedom consolidates social bonds, nourishes the hope of a better world, creates favourable conditions for peace and harmonious development, while at the same time establishing solid foundations for securing the rights of future generations.

Since Catholicism is the only true religion, Catholics must be free to practice their religion without restraint. Religious belief is essential for one's humanity. Since peace and harmony are inevitable side effects of Christianity, Catholics must be able to dictate social policy.

When the Church upholds this human right, she is not claiming any special privileges for herself. She wishes only to be faithful to the command of her divine founder, conscious that, where Christ is present, we become more human and our humanity becomes authentic. This is why the Church seeks to give witness by her preaching and teaching, both in catechesis and in the schools and universities. It is greatly to be hoped that the moment will soon arrive when, here too, the Church can bring to the fields of knowledge the benefits of the mission which the Lord entrusted to her and which she can never neglect.

Catholics are not asking for special privileges since the worship of Jesus Christ is the basis for the one true religion. Because only Catholicism is a real religion, Catholics must be permitted to control education.

It makes perfect sense to me.

Saturday, March 24, 2012

Truth And Consequences

Speaking of brain trusts, James O'Keefe has built up one of his own at Project Veritas, a name that is more wishful thinking than reality. It's very difficult to expose the truth when you don't have the faintest idea how to determine what is true and what is false. People who depend on self-aggrandizing belief systems instead of facts tend to think that a fact is anything that they want to be true.

For instance, someone named Brian Meinders, director of communications at Veritas, in his wisdom and through the use of his keen analytical reasoning, informed Charles Seife, a journalism professor at New York University, that Veritas was owed an apology for something Mr. Seife said on his blog.

Professor,

My name is Brian Meinders, and I'm the Director of Communications for Project Veritas. I've read your blog entry on James and Project Veritas, and am writing to express my concern with several factual errors contained in your post. You wrote that we broke the law by accepting tax deductible donations before having been approved by the IRS as a nonprofit. IRS regulations permit organizations with pending applications to collect donations which become fully tax deductible when the application is processed and accepted. All of the donations in question were consequently fully tax deductible; we did nothing wrong in soliciting them and those of our donors who made them and wrote them off on their taxes also did nothing wrong.

Poor Mr. Meinders. It must be very difficult to embark on a national project of shaming and humiliating our evil liberal evil academic overlords when you are working from a mental and moral disadvantage. You try and try to reveal the truth to the world while, entirely coincidentally, racking up a little fame, money and access to young women, but something always seems to go wrong....

From Professor Seife's response:

Dear Brian,

You were in violation of IRS regulations by claiming that you were 501(c)(3) when your status was pending. If you were a 501(c)(3) as you claimed, you would have been required to furnish it as you yourself admit.

You also told donors that their contributions would be tax deductible when you had no right to say so. As you admit, the contributions only become tax deductible when the 501(c)(3) status is granted.

The fact that the 501(c)(3) status became official later, and those donations did, in fact, become tax deductible are irrelevant to the fact that when I was requesting information -- under the erroneous assumption that your website was accurate about your 501(c)(3) status -- you were in violation of IRS regulations.

Indeed, it seems you were fully aware that you were not in compliance with the law once I pointed it out. Could you explain why you removed the claim of 501(c)(3) status and tax-deductible donations very shortly after I got into contact with Ms. Kluck?

In short, it seems to me that my blog post is entirely factually correct. That being said, though, if you could point to a specific phrase or clause that you believe is factually incorrect, please let me know, and I'll see if a correction is warranted. (Regardless, I am posting your communication to my blog so that your concerns about my post are properly aired.)

Mr. Meinders, through stupidity or malevolence or both, overlooked one little detail--Project Veritas said it had tax-exempt status when it did not; status was pending, not granted. Just as James O'Keefe repeatedly ignored the laws he was breaking in his attempt to humiliate anyone whom he might be able to use as a footstool in his attempts to gain fame and fortune.  Stupid people with stupid goals using stupid methods. Failure is both inevitable and, fortunately, very funny.

Right now Mr. O'Keefe has more than a few problems on his plate. It seems that unattractive but horny young men with neither brains nor morals end up with all sorts of difficulties.

It's a right-wing rabble-rouser showdown! Jazz-handed pimp impersonator James O'Keefe is at "#WAR" with a former Project Veritas colleague who is now blogging an O'Keefe tell-all involving stolen panties, drugged beers, a "rape barn," "taped intimate moments," a $20K pay-off, and barbs about "black welfare queens." James O'Keefe has graduated from creepy seductions to a full-blown sex scandal.
Harvard grad student Nadia Naffe recently filed a criminal harassment complaint against James. Citing insufficient evidence, a judge dismissed the case. Now Nadia is on a scorched earth cyber rampage. "If he wants a fight, bring it on. This is #WAR," she tweeted last night, after retweeting outraged utterances from an unofficial Rubio4President account about James' "rape barn." On her personal blog, she is currently on part two of a sprawling anti-O'Keefe opus.

Since Nadia Naffe also worked with O'Keefe her own character is questionable as well, but as a graduate student at Harvard she is presumably much smarter than O'Keefe. So far O'Keefe has managed to do more damage to others than himself, but it is only a matter of time before he manages to self-immolate.

I'll bring the marshmallows.

Thursday, March 22, 2012

Atlas Shrugged: The Mocking Part 8


The fantasy.



The reality.

"Dagny is myself, with any possible flaws eliminated, Ayn [Rand] once said."*

Chapter 9 The Sacred And The Profane

When we last visited Hank Reardon and Dagny Taggart, they were expressing their contempt and disdain for each other by having sex. As our chapter opens, Dagny is sprawled on the bed in post-coital bliss, while Reardon is---not.

"I want you to know this."

He stood by the bed, dressed, looking down at her. His voice had pronounced it evenly, with great clarity and no inflection. She looked up at him obediently. He said:

What I feel for you is contempt. But it's nothing, compared to the contempt I feel for myself. I don't love you. I've never loved anyone. I wanted you from the first moment I saw you. I wanted you as one wants a whore--for the same reason and purpose. I spent two years damning myself, because I thought you were above a desire of this kind. You're not. You're as vile an animal as I am. I should loathe my discovering it. I don't. Yesterday, I would have killed anyone who'd tell me that you were capable of doing what I've had you do. Today, I would give my life not to let it be otherwise, not to have you be anything but the bitch you are. All the greatness that I saw in you--I would not take it in exchange for the obscenity of your talent at an animal's sensation of pleasure. We were two great beings, you and I, proud of our strength, weren't we. Well, this is all that's left of us--and I want no self-deception about it.

Reardon goes on to tell her that he wants "no pretense about love, value, loyalty or respect," and he will accept the consequences of their act of depravity. Dagny laughs in his face, telling him that she glories in their depravity.

"It's I who will depend on any whim of yours. You'll have me any time you wish, anywhere, on any terms. Did you call it the obscenity of my talent? It's such that it gives you a safer hold on me than on any other property you own. You may dispose of me as you please--I'm not afraid to admit it--I have nothing to protect from you and nothing to reserve."

Dagny tells Reardon that her greatest pride in life is to earn the right to be used sexually by him. Reardon has "earned" her through his manly, individualist superiority, and she has earned the right to owned and discarded by him through her own superiority.

When he threw her down on the bed, their bodies met like the two sounds that broke against each other in the air of the room: the sound of his tortured moan and of her laughter.

This is what passes for hot sex in the libertarian universe. But it is in keeping with the libertarian belief that their theories do not need to have any relationship to reality whatsoever. The idle fantasies of young men and women who spent too much time plotting revenge against lesser minds and too little time actually talking to anyone else tend to veer into melodrama and self-aggrandizement, it seems. Nobody, not even libertarians, want to give up love, intimacy, caring, and every other tender emotion so they can force their partner to submit to their crushing superiority, or submit mockingly to the moral defeat of their mate. In her biography of Ayn Rand, Barbara Branden, who was able to both adore Rand and see her clearly for what she was from the distance of time, said:

In [Atlas Shrugged]. Francisco presents Ayn's theory of sex, saying."A man's sexual choice is the result and the sum of his fundamental convictions. Tell me what a man finds sexually attractive and I will tell you his entire philosophy of life.  Show me the woman he sleeps with and I will tell you his valuation of himself...He will always be attracted to the woman who reflects his deepest vision of himself, the woman whose surrender permits him to experience--or to fake--a sense of self-esteem. The man who is proudly certain of his own value, will want the highest type of woman he can find, the woman he admires, the strongest, the hardest to conquer--because only the possession of a heroine will give him the sense of an achievement, not the possession of a brainless slut...There is no conflict between the standards of his mind and the desires of his body.... Love is our response to our highest value--and can be nothing else."

It is an intriguing theory--and a potentially dangerous one, which already had had explosive effects on Ayn's life. It had led her to wildly aggrandize the men who were her sexual choices--Leo and Frank--and it would continue to do so in the future; if the men to whom she was attracted were not heroes, then what would her choices say about her? And it had led her to denounce those of her friends who were not able to demonstrate that their choices were similarly exalted....Few things in life are so complex and so little understood as that which motivates our passionate sexual response; to require, as proof of psychological health, that this motivation lead only to the choice of a "hero," is to inflict, on oneself and others, inestimable damage.

...

In Atlas Shrugged, through the relationship of Dagny and Galt, Rand was creating the "ideal" romance....The passion, the capacity for joy, the hero-worship, the violent sexuality, the longing for submission to a stronger force, that had found its outlet only in her novels, was screaming to be lived before it was too late, and could no longer be denied.

She could not find what she needed with a man who was a contemporary and an equal. Such a man might challenge the whole structure of the fantasy in which she progressively had begun to live--the fantasy in which she was flawless, serene, morally and intellectually superior to those around her, the apotheosis of rationality, the woman without self-doubts or inner conflicts. And so she chose a boy--a brilliant, talented boy, but still a boy, who posed no threat, who revered her and would confirm the fantasy picture she could allow no one to threaten.


Rand coolly informed her husband Frank O'Connor, who was dependent on her financially, and Barbara Branden that she and Nathaniel Branden were going to have an affair. There was nothing Frank could do about it. He was a passive man who had no marketable skills. He had been happy on their California ranch but went along when Rand decided that they would be happier in New York. He had to do what his wife wanted or be out on the street, penniless and to old to start a career. He and Rand had inevitably grown apart and Rand would take out her frustration on him by flying into a rage over small things, or discard friends who disagreed with her image of herself. They were both unhappy, but Rand, according to Barbara Branden, assumed that Frank felt what Rand felt and wanted what Rand wanted.

This is something out of space and out of time. If the four of us were lesser people, it could never have happened and you could never accept it. But we're not lesser people....It's right and rational that Nathan and I between us can last only a few years. I could never be an old woman pursing a younger man.

Of course she was and she did. Branden was 25 and Rand was 50. But Rand convinced herself that her affair was natural and right, just as selfish people who harm others to get their own way always convince themselves that their actions will benefit everyone.  In a 1964 interview with Playboy, Rand explained her philosophy regarding love and happiness.

PLAYBOY: You hold that one's own happiness is the highest end, and that self-sacrifice is immoral. Does this apply to love as well as work?

RAND: To love more than to anything else. When you are in love, it means that the person you love is of great personal, selfish importance to you and to your life. If you were selfless, it would have to mean that you derive no personal pleasure or happiness from the company and the existence of the person you love, and that you are motivated only by self-sacrificial pity for that person's need of you. I don't have to point out to you that no one would be flattered by, nor would accept, a concept of that kind. Love is not self-sacrifice, but the most profound assertion of your own needs and values. It is for your own happiness that you need the person you love, and that is the greatest compliment, the greatest tribute you can pay to that person.

PLAYBOY: You have denounced the puritan notion that physical love is ugly or evil; yet you have written that "Indiscriminate desire and unselective indulgence are possible only to those who regard sex and themselves as evil." Would you say that discriminate and selective indulgence in sex is moral?

RAND: I would say that a selective and discriminate sex life is not an indulgence. The term indulgence implies that it is an action taken lightly and casually. I say that sex is one of the most important aspects of man's life and, therefore, must never be approached lightly or casually. A sexual relationship is proper only on the ground of the highest values one can find in a human being. Sex must not be anything other than a response to values. And that is why I consider promiscuity immoral. Not because sex is evil, but because sex is too good and too important.

PLAYBOY: Does this mean, in your view, that sex should involve only married partners?

RAND: Not necessarily. What sex should involve is a very serious relationship. Whether that relationship should or should not become a marriage is a question which depends on the circumstances and the context of the two persons' lives. I consider marriage a very important institution, but it is important when and if two people have found the person with whom they wish to spend the rest of their lives -- a question of which no man or woman can be automatically certain. When one is certain that one's choice is final, then marriage is, of course, a desirable state. But this does not mean that any relationship based on less than total certainty is improper. I think the question of an affair or a marriage depends on the knowledge and the position of the two persons involved and should be left up to them. Either is moral, provided only that both parties take the relationship seriously and that it is based on values.

PLAYBOY: As one who champions the cause of enlightened self-interest, how do you feel about dedicating one's life to hedonistic self-gratification?

RAND: I am profoundly opposed to the philosophy of hedonism. Hedonism is the doctrine which holds that the good is whatever gives you pleasure and, therefore, pleasure is the standard of morality. Objectivism holds that the good must be defined by a rational standard of value, that pleasure is not a first cause, but only a consequence, that only the pleasure which proceeds from a rational value judgment can be regarded as moral, that pleasure, as such, is not a guide to action nor a standard of morality. To say that pleasure should be the standard of morality simply means that whichever values you happen to have chosen, consciously or subconsciously, rationally or irrationally, are right and moral. This means that you are to be guided by chance feelings, emotions and whims, not by your mind. My philosophy is the opposite of hedonism. I hold that one cannot achieve happiness by random, arbitrary or subjective means. One can achieve happiness only on the basis of rational values. By rational values, I do not mean anything that a man may arbitrarily or blindly declare to be rational. It is the province of morality, of the science of ethics, to define for men what is a rational standard and what are the rational values to pursue.

...

PLAYBOY: Isn't the individual equipped with powerful, nonrational biological drives?

RAND: He is not. A man is equipped with a certain kind of physical mechanism and certain needs, but without any knowledge of how to fulfill them. For instance, man needs food. He experiences hunger. But, unless he learns first to identify this hunger, then to know that he needs food and how to obtain it, he will starve. The need, the hunger, will not tell him how to satisfy it. Man is born with certain physical and psychological needs, but he can neither discover them nor satisfy them without the use of his mind. Man has to discover what is right or wrong for him as a rational being. His so-called urges will not tell him what to do.

Rand's attempt to reduce sexuality to a rational response is, of course, doomed to failure; man does possess instincts and emotions don't always come from reason as Rand theorized. When Rand thought she was using reason to explain her affair with Nathanial Branden she was using rationalization instead. Overwhelmed by the strength and newness of sexual feelings and deeply insecure about their sexual desirability, teenagers might easily envy the self-confidence of the Rand heroes, who have passionate affairs based on mutual recognition of innate superiority. When you are young, Dagny Taggart, Hank Reardon and John Galt might seem like the epitome of heroic and sexual ideals. Barbara Branden said:

Ayn had established herself among her young friends, through the rigor of her argumentation and the forcefulness of her personality, as the epitome and the standard of the human potential, of everything we were struggling to become and everything we loved. I felt that she had given me so much, she had pulled me out of the intellectual morass of adolescence and had helped me to make sense of a complex, confusing world, she had given me friendship, and knowledge, and love. She had opened wide the doors of her own shining world to admit me, she had consistently encouraged me to achieve my most treasured goals, in my work, in my person, in my life; she had healed my wounds and ended my lonely distance from the world around me; she had taught me to exchange the leaking life raft on which I'd floundered for a sturdy, high-speed cruiser; she had shown me the grandeur and the limitless possibilities of existence. It was unthinkable that I should interfere with her happiness or that I should run from the sight of it. She had given me the possibility of mine.

Atlas Shrugged is a power fantasy, and unfortunately Rand's power fantasy was partially sexual in nature; because she did not want to deal with such incoherent, inconvenient things as emotions, all her heroes must be overcome to indulge in them. Dagny must be forced to physically submit and Reardon must be morally overcome, to fulfill Rand's sexual fantasies of power and submission at the hands of a superior man. In her own life Rand chose a passive man who gave into her at all times but her disconnect between fantasy and reality is ignored by her devout followers.

But it's not enough to have gods to worship, one must have demons to despise as well. After we leave Reardon and Dagny to their exalted and violent passion, Rand describes James Taggart's encounter with a young pretty drugstore clerk, Cherryl Brooks. As always, it is striking how today's libertarians sound exactly like the looters and moochers they despise. James says:


"How do you know what's good, anyway? Who knows what's good? Who can ever know? There are no absolutes--as Dr. Pritchett has proved irrefutably. Nothing is absolute. Everything is a matter of opinion. How do you know that that [Reardon] bridge hasn't collapsed? You only think it hasn't. How do you know that there's any bridge at all?"


Nobody knows anything ever; nobody can do anything ever. The constant lament of the Megan McArdle libertarians, who ignore facts, reason and logic so they can continue to enjoy the perks and pleasures of being sycophants of the ruling class. James listens to Cherryl praise him for Dagny's accomplishments and escorts her home, giving up the chance to sleep with her because, "He felt nothing. The prospect of experiencing pleasure was not worth the effort; he had no desire to experience pleasure." The scum very conveniently don't feel anything but rage and jealousy in Atlas Shrugged, which is of course why they deserve their eventual and inevitable deaths and destruction.

Meanwhile, Reardon and Dagny continue their well-deserved affair, with Reardon slapping Dagny and twisting her arms behind her back, throwing her on her knees, and Ayn Rand making sure that we know exactly how much pleasure Dagny feels at being treated with cold and angry violence and pain. In Rand's libertarian world it's always Christmas and never winter; Dagny is never harmed more than she wants to be harmed. Reardon simultaneously worships and degrades Dagny, a ridiculous situation that bears no relation on reality. A man as cold, cruel, arrogant and emotionally deadened as Reardon would glory in breaking down another person, making himself feel better by destroying everything good in Dagny, but these characters were never meant to be real people with real emotions. They are Heroes, and their heroic acts are always right.

Part II of The Sacred and The Profane to follow.


*From The Passion Of Ayn Rand, by Barbara Branden

Monday, March 12, 2012

Guest Posting For Dummies

Do you know how you ensure that you will not be replaced by your guest posters? Find some who are even more bubble-headed than you are. Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry tells us that the best way to ensure we have no more giant financial crises is to almost completely deregulate the financial system and Avik S. A. Roy tells us that we need to privatize the VA hospital system to end its monopoly of the military health care system. He also tells us that if birth control is free, women will all want expensive "designer" birth control instead of that less-trendy WalMart birth control. Because buying birth control is like choosing a handbag when you're one of those shopping-happy, shallow-brained women creatures. And speaking of which, don't forget Katherine Mangu-Ward, who wants to privatize space exploration so private business can reap the profits--after the government funds the "real science."

It's quite the brain trust.




(I am still working on Atlas Shrugged. I will be working on Atlas Shrugged forever and forever, world without end. Amen.)

Saturday, March 10, 2012

Dirty Old Men

It's difficult to figure out why the push-back against Rush Limbaugh finally reached critical mass after all this time. There might be an unspoken factor behind the Rush Limbaugh self-destruction: his aging.




The sight of this old man demanding a young woman's sex tape is enough to turn off anyone. Followers want their leaders to be better than they are, richer and more attractive. (The richer you are the less attractive you have to be.) Once conservatives no longer want to fantasize about having your money (or you), you're toast.

And Sarah Palin is about five years away from having the same problem. When your popularity is based on a fantasy, it only lasts as long as the fantasy lasts.

ADDED: Digby discussed this as well.

Wednesday, March 7, 2012

Coming Soon(ish): Atlas Shrugged: The Mocking Part 8

Picture from here.

Or, A Phlebotinum, A Train, A Psychopath, And His Lover.

Sunday, March 4, 2012

The Greatest Tweet Of All Time

At last, my prayers have been answered! Thank you, Jesus!



Break out the booze, boys, it's time to celebrate!


Megan McArdle is now on book leave!

Click to read the Good News!

McArdle's book will explain how failure leads to success, a field in which she has considerable experience. We look forward to the chapters on choosing the right womb, honing interview techniques  by making girls cry in the rest room, and the use of shopping therapy to squash any inconvenient twinges of conscience. We expect that the central metaphor will be how five year olds must be able to play with spaghetti or we will end up with 80% less corporate innovation.

The only remaining question is, who will replace the irreplaceable McArdle? Who could ever fill her stylish yet affordable shoes?


The Atlantic is happpy to announce that an empty shirt will take the place of Megan McArdle, who is on book leave. We do not know whether she is writing or reading one.

Friday, March 2, 2012

Fair And Balanced

We have been very critical of Megan McArdle here at the Snark so we wish to commend her for her thoughtful and reasonable posts regarding her mother's health care. McArdle notes that our system has its flaws but in the end it is still the best of all possible worlds.

Ultimately, there's never going to be a perfect solution. There are good reasons for families to have a care-giving roles--and good reasons why that's often difficult. It's possible that for all the complaints, the current system represents the right set of tradeoffs: we ask families to pitch in when they can, and provide extra help when they can't.

We wish to praise the braveness with which Ms. McArdle faces the ever-mounting bills, the insurance companies, the lack of sleep, and the lost work opportunities. Not everyone would be as happy to pick up those burdens, especially as time passes and the burdens begin to take their toll. Fortunately we also know that whenever God closes a door he opens a window, and if the insurance companies refuse to pay one can just yell at them, very few people go into bankruptcy for medical bills, and a more socialist type of health care would kill millions.

While I Was Sleeping

While I was sleeping off a headache, Andrew Breitbart slept the Big Sleep. Mr. Breitbart's biggest successes entailed finding easy targets to humiliate with doctored videos so he could smear their employers. He will be greatly missed by those who enjoy seeing minority women humiliated.

Mr. Breitbart, a loving family man, died shortly after going "on a walk" around 9 pm. During his walk he just happened to stop by a neighborhood bar, where he spent a couple of hours drinking and having animated conversations about politics with complete strangers. Less than an hour after he returned home, he was dead.

The conservative world will greatly miss this "happy warrior," who was never happier than when he was engaging his many enemies in a face-to-face shouting match. Early speculation says that he died from a bad heart.