David McElroy

Last week, we saw what happened when Rick Perry tried to think on his feet during one of the debates. It was 53 seconds of embarrassing video that put a serious crimp into his campaign. This week, it’s Herman Cain shooting himself in the foot. In an embarrassing five-minute segment of an interview with the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, Cain was asked a very simple question about Libya and whether he supported or opposed Barack Obama’s policy on Libya. (See video below.) I think anybody reading this could easily have explained a coherent position on the subject. Cain could not — and spent five minutes trying to avoid saying, “I have no idea what you’re really talking about.”

I can’t figure out why anyone would have supported Cain anyway, but if you can watch his complete ignorance here and still support him, why?

UPDATE: A friend just pointed me to a similarly bizarre Cain performance when he was asked about his views on abortion.

It sounds like something from a dystopian science fiction novel, but it’s real. The Oxford City Council in England has decided that all of the city’s 600 taxies are to have video and audio recording equipment — to record all conversations of occupants. It’s for “public safety,” of course.

According to the politicians who passed the law, all conversations are to be recorded, but no conversations will be listened to unless it’s a “police matter.” And we know that such information in the hands of police is never abused, so we don’t have to worry.

This is a great idea, but it needs to be expanded greatly. For instance, to protect against the risk of workplace crime — or even sexual harassment — they need to insist that all businesses record all employee conversations. And homes are rife with domestic violence, so every home should be required to have multiple cameras in every room. And given the fact that charges of rape so frequently come down to disputes over what happened, it definitely should be mandated that cameras record all sexual activity. (But your privacy is assured, because no one will look at the video — stored by the police, of course — unless there’s been a crime committed.) And since politicians frequently turn corrupt and take bribes, the City Council members need to be recorded 24/7 in all of their private conversations.

Surely the council members wouldn’t object to placing themselves under the same kind of surveillance they demand of the general public, because politicians never pass laws that don’t affect them as they do the public, do they?

The arrogance of collectivists seems to know no bounds. What’s even worse, their attitudes are so ingrained that they don’t even realize they’re being arrogant. Instead, they see themselves as magnanimous folks helping the collective.

Two completely unrelated stories Monday focused my attention on this. First, I read comments from retired U.S. Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens defending the decision he wrote in the infamous Kelo case — the one that made it legal for local governments to take property from pretty much anybody and give it to private entities to do what they want with it.

Even now, he seems to think that case wasn’t a big deal, even knowing the outcome — that the homes of Kelo and others were taken from them against their will and torn down, all to end up with useless vacant lots. (You might recall that a Connecticut Supreme Court justice who ruled against Kelo sees things differently now.)

The second story that made me focus on the arrogance of collectivists was close to me. Here in the Birmingham area, the city of Birmingham is mostly just the core older parts of town. It’s been losing residents for 50 years. Even though the metro area has a million people now, the core city is down to about 200,000. Although there are wealthy pockets remaining, most people who have the ability have moved to suburbs where the government isn’t so dysfunctional and the schools are still good (at least by modern standards).

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