Weekly Goodness

Think of them as vitamins. VDH writes of signs of progress in the Middle East, taking Arafat and our Saudi pullout as examples.

As a rule of thumb in matters of the Middle East, be very skeptical of anything that Europe (fearful of terrorists, eager for profits, tired of Jews, scared of their own growing Islamic minorities) and the Arab League (a synonym for the autocratic rule of Sunni Muslim grandees and secular despots) cook up together. If a EU president, a Saudi royal, and a Middle East specialist in the State Department or a professor in an endowed Middle Eastern Studies chair agree that the United States is "woefully naïve," "unnecessarily provocative" or "acting unilaterally," then assume that we are pretty much on the right side of history and promoting democratic reform. "Sobriety" and "working with Arab moderates" is diplo-speak for supporting or abetting an illiberal hierarchy.

Ray Haynes explains why California doesn't get its "fair share" of "Federal Dollars" in Give Me Your Old, Your Poor And Your Really Sick.

More important, however, we now know that the reason California is getting less money than other states is that California is younger, richer and healthier than most other states. Today, California only receives about 79 cents of every dollar it sends to Washington. At first blush, this would seem unfair, and my Democrat colleagues have taken to complaining about this “unfairness” this year, more than others, to embarrass the President and the Governor. It turns out, however, that if California wants more federal dollars, using existing formulas, it would need to import more old people, more sick people and more poor people.

I put the scare quotes around "Federal Dollars" because, as my father pointed out so often, there is no such thing. It's our money, not the government's. Every penny taken in by the government is money confiscated at gunpoint from the citizenry. If you don't believe me, just stop paying your taxes and let me know how long it is before men with guns show up.