Robert Tracinski skewers some libertarians for the socialism in their heads, but still misses why it's there

Here, chalking it all up to "unexamined collectivist assumptions" and mistakenly allowing "a little dominion of socialism over their thinking" and the left "trying to preserve that territory they own in your head" through various schemes like the estate tax.

In other words, they're insufficiently indoctrinated. You know, like all those intractable Russians who were sent to the Gulag for nothing more than mistakenly expressing incorrect thoughts.

It never dawns on Tracinski that ideology is a coin with socialism on the one side and libertarianism on the other.

The article is amusing because the "conservatives" he skewers for being insufficiently libertarian are or were aligned with the left and leftism: Charles Murray (former labor unionist, six years in the Peace Corps, "rebel"), Ronald Reagan ("I didn't leave the Democratic Party . . ."), Stuart Butler of health mandate infamy (Brookings), Milton Friedman (FDR functionary) and Megan McArdle (self-described former "ultraliberal").

With the example of McArdle on the estate tax before him, one might have hoped that Tracinski had stumbled into the origin of the socialism in our heads, but no, "there is no such collective entity as 'society.'"

The man wishing to leave his estate to that little society called his family might have begged to differ.

Obama should pop off to the golf course and clear the way for someone else to actually do the job he won't

So says Robert Tracinski here:

"And this, I suspect, is how he is going to end up being remembered as commander-in-chief: as the guy who, in a crisis, gave us petulant speeches about why he was doing nothing.

"This is one of those moments when you almost appreciate the parliamentary system, which can hold a vote of no confidence in the chief executive. You want to talk about popping off? If Obama is traumatized and overwhelmed by the job of being commander-in-chief, he can pop off to the golf course and clear the way for someone else to do it."

Robert Tracinski has been reading The Bible

It turns out Robert Tracinski is both an atheist and a libertarian, which makes perfectly good sense. I think he gets just one mention here on the blog before this. It turns out he's been reading the Bible.

Story here and here.

I wonder how long it will take him to discover that his own conception of Western-style individualism is also the product of a madman. 

Global Warming Promoter Michael Mann Isn't Like Galileo, Trofim Lysenko Is More Like It

So says Robert Tracinski, here:

Mann is attempting to install himself as a kind of American Lysenko. Trofim Lysenko was the Soviet scientist who ingratiated himself to Joseph Stalin and got his crackpot theories on genetics installed as official dogma, effectively killing the study of biology in the Soviet Union. Under Lysenko, the state had an established and official scientific doctrine, and you risked persecution if you questioned it. Mann's libel suit [against Mark Steyn] is an attempt to establish that same principle here.

Mann has recently declared himself to be both a scientist and a political activist. But in attempting to intimidate his critics and suppress free debate on global warming, he is violating the fundamental rules of both science and politics. If it is a sin to doubt, then there is no science. If it is a crime to dissent, then there is no politics.