Remember this, the next time someone tells you that the market (and, thus, capitalism) failed:

Capitalism cannot fail, because it is not a philosophy or a construction, it is simply a systematization of reality.

Capitalism cannot break, because it is the fundamental mechanism by which things work. The universe would have to fundamentally change, for this fact to change.

The whole post is more of the same, and not particularly long, but it’s definitely worth reading and memorizing so you can use it to counter socialists^[a] who say capitalism failed.

1. Unlike capitalism, Socialism is an unnatural system, and will inevitably fall prey to entropy. It’s just a question of how many people it kills in the process. [↩]

Remember what they say — it’s not paranoia if they’re really out to get you.

As Classical Values’s Eric Scheie points out, they could very easily be out to get you, especially if you ask an inconvenient question at the wrong time.

As I pointed out here just after the nomination, I quite like Sarah Palin. Patrick Stephens does a good job of explaining why:

It’s more important that an ignorant executive be cautious than decisive. On that score, Palin is the only candidate in either ticket that seems even mildly conscious of her own ignorance. When foundering in ignorance, Obama reverts to platitudes, Biden makes stuff up, McCain suspends his campaign, and Palin asks for clarification.

…

No matter how intelligent a person is, it would be impossible to master every subject and every issue that a President would face in his term of office. The range of knoweldge is simply too diverse. That’s why a President has advisors, experts in specific fields who offer advice and counsel.

Sarah Palin doesn’t seem to pretend to be an expert on topic she doesn’t know. Admitting when I’m over my head in a conversation and that I need someone to step back and either give me additional context or educate me on the topic at hand is something that I personally struggle with, and I have a great deal of respect for anyone, especially a public figure who (as we’ve seen) is likely to take a great deal of heat for any sign of ignorance, who can admit when they simply don’t know enough to talk about a topic at the moment.

While I think Palin is being held back by her running mate (which is an odd thing to say about a Vice Presidential candidate, I know), I hope that this exposure to the national political scene is just the beginning of a new phase of her political career.

Some time back, Rachel Lucas opined about those conservatives/Republicans who were thinking about voting for the Democratic nominee (at the time, everyone assumed the nominee would probably be Hillary Clinton, though Senator Obama’s campaign was starting to put a dent in her “inevitability”). The discussion centered around a metaphor (one that I don’t think was purely Rachel’s, though I could be wrong) where conservative voters were choosing to adopt a dog that they knew would bite them six times a day, because they wanted to avoid adopting the dog they knew would bite them four times a day. Obviously, given the metaphor, you can tell that Rachel thought that this wasn’t exactly an ideal plan for these voters.

Still, there’s some merit in the idea that, by not voting for McCain, conservatives (and those who prefer the idea of a smaller government, which is a group that has some overlap with “conservatives”) might be able to snap the Republicans out of this tendency they have to transform themselves into the “Democrat-lite” party^[a].

The question is, can the country survive years with the six-bite dog? If that was the only issue, I’d say yes, and I’d be happily planning to vote for Bob Barr or some other third party candidate. Unfortunately, it’s not the only issue, because the six-bite dog would simply be the leader of a pack of dogs that are akin to a pack of pirahnas. They will not stop biting until every bit of flesh is gone from your bones.

That link details a plan by Democrats in the House of Representatives to do away with tax deferments for 401(k) retirement accounts^[b], in favor of retirement accounts that would be run by the government and to which workers would be obliged to contribute. Frighteningly enough, this would likely not be the worst of what they would come up with if they had a supermajority in Congress’s two branches and the executive branch.

We must elect John McCain, not because he’s likely to be a good President^[c], but because, no matter how much third-party candidates might wish that it’s not true, he’s the only candidate who has a realistic chance of beating Barack Obama, and we cannot allow the current batch of Democrats to have control over both Congress and the Executive Branch^[d]. To do so is not to simply invite a dog to take a bite out of your arm — it is to stare face to face at a dangerous viper and invite it to bite you.

1. As Venomous Kate said about McCain, he’s too liberal to be considered a conservative and too conservative to be considered a liberal [↩]
2. In the minds of Democrats, that’s a “subsidy”, by the way, just like the subsidy (as commenter “Is” said on that blog post) that you get for everything you purchase because the federal government doesn’t charge you sales tax. It’s like these people think that they are God (you know — everything belongs to God, and tithing is just showing respect to that fact — they think everything belongs to the Government). [↩]
3. I think that previous blog posts here have made it obvious that I think that McCain was by far the worst of a not-particularly-inspiring group of Republican candidates for the nomination. [↩]
4. Granted, this particular plan is not one that belongs to Barack Obama himself, but does anyone really think that he’d veto something that came from his own party? [↩]

As has been heavily reported in the news, Barack Obama’s grandmother, Madelyn Dunham, is in very poor health. Obama has taken some time off of campaigning to be with her, and is supposed to be doing so again later this week, as I understand it.

While I am not a fan of Senator Obama’s, I am praying for him and his family. It’s always difficult to face the possibility of losing a loved one, and having this come at a time when he’s probably under the worst stress of his life cannot be easy for him.

If you’re one to pray, please join me in praying for Mrs. Dunham, Senator Obama, and the rest of their family.