Quick Roundup 139

Alex Epstein on How to Support Our Troops

At Principles in Practice is an editorial in which Epstein makes some points similar to a few I recently made, but in a positive and more compelling way.

One does not support our troops by sending them to fight wars of self-sacrifice and then thanking their corpses. The conservatives' call to "stay the course" in Iraq -- or to add 20,000 troops to that course -- is harmful to America and its troops because the mission has been conceived and conducted in defiance of American interests.

...

One does not support our troops by keeping them home when their and our freedom requires military action. Our soldiers did not join the military to sit on their hands while Iran prepares for nuclear jihad.

Beautiful work. Read all of it.

Brad Thompson at Marginal Revolution

Via email yesterday, I learned that C. Bradley Thompson's landmark essay, "The Decline and Fall of American Conservatism" was mentioned over at one of the better libertarian blogs, Marginal Revolution. This blog gets something like -- cough, cough! -- three or four times as many visitors daily as I get in a month, so this is very good publicity for the one-year-old Objective Standard and for Objectivism. (Speaking of which, if you subscribe, it may be time to renew. And if you don't, you really ought to subscribe.)

I haven't looked at the comments today yet, but this is a good opportunity to engage in some intelligent debate on the role of fundamental ideas in politics and the culture, so it might pay to stop by there. I do recall seeing that Nick Provenzo had left a comment.

I got interested in the discussion over there last night and started thinking out loud about it on electronic paper. (How's that for a mixed multimedia metaphor?) Some of what turned out to be some rather far-ranging and rambling notes I have posted here.

A Cruel Economic Experiment

Galileo is on a roll! Read this excellent post on the Dhimmocrats' recent decision to raise the minimum wage and remove American Samoa's exemption.

The existence of the American Samoa exemption is an unpleasant reminder to everyone who votes for the minimum wage -- Democrats, Republicans and President Bush -- that it destroys jobs, and that the higher it is set, the more jobs it destroys. Furthermore, the people who suffer the most from the minimum wage are those who are young and beginning their working years, and those with the least education and skills. These are precisely the people the Democrats pontificate about wanting to help.

You know the drill. But don't leave his site without a stop by his main page.

-- CAV