The Mount Rushmore of Voluntaryism

I recently read a fascinating article, listing the Mount Rushmore for each MLB franchise.  For examples, the Bosox had Williams, Yastrzemski, Martinez, and Ortiz; the Cincinnati Reds had Rose, Bench, Larkin, and Votto; the Giants had Mathewson, Mays, McCovey, and Bonds. The article inspired me to design my versions of two monuments elemental to Voluntaryism.

Swamp Gold

I read yesterday where Ted Cruz thinks we can pay for The Wall by redistributing El Chapo’s ill-gotten gains — just when I thought that politicians couldn’t get any stupider.  Now today I am slapped upside the head with the idea that we can get money from the dissolution of DEA.

McCarthyism, Then and Now

The stale whiff of McCarthyism stole across the venue of the State of the Union address last week.  POTUS played the “socialism” card, or rather he just showed the back of the card, allowing no peeks at the face of the card — not of its value, not of its suit.  He was deliberately vague and ambiguous. 

In the Grain

Jeff Riggenbach points out that European civilization in the North American new world was founded by two distinct types of adventurer, the first sought freedom from the old order, while the second sought to impose a new order.  We Americans, as a people have been in fundamental conflict ever since. 

Rurality/Urbanity

From the 19th century until the mid-20th century, in America, there was a vast migration of people from the farm to the city.  Then, in the 1950s, a new direction arose, spanning into the millennium, where people fled the center city, creating suburbs, which in turn became satellite urban areas,  And gradually, these urban agglomerations became the center city again, in character.

Groundhog Day

I don’t get it.  Why this human propensity to wig out over an excruciating obsession with air currents?  The physics behind weather has long been known.  The Earth has a tilt and rotation, an orbit about a living sun.  It’s cut and dried.  The poor weatherman on TV has to come up with something to keep us buying pork’n’beans.

The Delphi Technique

Whereas the Delphi Technique is intended for honest and scientific use, most bureaucrats have perfected a sub-technique to foil the use of the technique.  It is like the rule of thumb for lawyers — don’t ask any question for which you don’t already know the answer.