David McElroy

If you’ve read much of what I’ve written, you’ll know that I have no use for either of the mainstream parties. I don’t closely follow the debate of the moment in D.C. anymore, because I honestly don’t think it matters.

Sometimes the hypocrisy on both sides gets too thick not to notice, though. The two parties frequently switch sides on positions — based on which party holds the White House at the moment, it seems.

Right now, Democrats are screaming that the debt ceiling must be raised and that anyone who doesn’t vote to raise it is irresponsible. Republicans are piously intoning that there can’t be more borrowing without some serious budget cuts. (Of course, their idea of “serious cuts” amounts to trimming toenails in my book, but we’ll leave that alone.

Take a look at the positions the two parties took on the issue of raising the debt ceiling in 2006. With a Republican in the White House, the Republicans voted to raise it. Democrats voted against it. Check the link below for details of how the Senate voted. They’re almost all a bunch of partisan hypocrites.

GovTrack: Senate Vote On Passage: H. J. Res. 47 [109th]: Debt Limit Increase resolution

Do people on the political left really want to help folks? Or do they just want to make sure everyone suffers equally?

A friend of mine is applying for admission to some elite northeastern U.S. colleges, and he found himself on a tour of one of them last weekend. Something he heard from the tour guide says a lot about the way the modern liberal mind works. (I’m using the word “liberal” not in its classical sense — which would have meant what we call libertarian today — but in the mainstream “progressive” sense.)

While explaining information about the campus dorms at this very liberal school, the tour guide said:

“The two new dormitories have air conditioning, but it’s not used in any of them, because the administration doesn’t think it’s fair for some dormitories to have air conditioning while the rest don’t.”

You just can’t make things like this up.

Those on the left don’t seem to care that medical progress will be slowed dramatically by turning more of it over to state price controls and rationing — as long as everybody is forced to suffer the same kind of care. They don’t exactly say that, but it’s clear what their priorities are. This is true across the board with them, it seems.

My friend pointed out one exception to the egalitarian rule. The administration building from which the college president issues his pronouncements on shared student suffering is air conditioned — and it’s used regularly.

Bessie has lived her entire life in fear.

Well, maybe that’s not entirely correct, but she’s at least lived her life just on the edge of fear. She can go from relaxed and happy to tense and terrified in a split second. She’s not just scared of people who might try to hurt her. She’s even scared of the one person in the world who’s fed her and taken care of her for two and a half years — me.

I wrote about Bessie’s sister, Molly, last week. You can read that story if you’d like, because most of it applied to Bessie, too.

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