The Anti-Gang-Of-Eight-Bill Lines Of The Day

"A huge amount of American social policy is directed to reducing the number of people in our country who have low levels of skills and education, and it would be bizarre to use our immigration policy to increase that number significantly. Between the temporary-worker program . . . and its increase in low-skill immigration, this bill envisions a very significant increase in that number."

-- Yuval Levin in National Review, here.

Oh well, no more bizarre than imposing new federal taxes on mortgages while we attempt to drive down interest rates to boost home ownership. The ancients called this carding wool into the fire or carrying water in a sieve, the fruitless, eternal occupations of the inhabitants of the infernal regions.

Welcome to hell.

Yuval Levin Opens A Window On Obama's American Fascism

Yuval Levin opens a window on Obama's American fascism, noting its assault on the middle ground which separates the individual from The State:

Its approach to the private economy has involved pursuing consolidation in key industries — privileging a few major players that are to be treated essentially as public utilities, while locking out competition from smaller or newer firms. This both ensures the cooperation of the large players and makes the economy more manageable and orderly. And it leaves no one pursuing ends that are not the government’s ends. This has been the essence of the administration’s policies toward automakers, health insurers, banks, hospitals, and many others. ...

The [contraception] rule implicitly asserted that our nation will not tolerate an institution that is unwilling to actively ratify the views of those in power — that we will not let it be and find other ways to put those views into effect (even though many other ways exist), but will compel it to participate in the enactment of the ends chosen by our elected officials. This is an extraordinarily radical assertion of government power, and a failure of even basic toleration. It is, again, an attempt to turn private mediating institutions into public utilities contracted to execute government ends.

Read it all, here.

Yuval Levin Notices Obama Suffers From Liberal Projection Syndrome

Here:

"[Obama] speaks as though the problem—our unsustainable entitlement state—were the solution, and as though the solution—a budget that restrains the growth of spending, modernizes and reforms our collapsing entitlement and welfare programs to avert their collapse, and charts a path toward economic growth—were the problem. In this upside-down, inside-out world, Barack Obama accuses Paul Ryan of putting the future of America’s younger generation in danger and inviting American decline.

"A psychologist might call this projection."