I received my introduction to libertarianism first by subscribing to
Reason Magazine in 1986 or '87 while a cadet for two years at West Point. Then, after I left, I became a faithful listener to the Gene Burns Program on WRKO AM 680 for a few years. Gene, a silver-tongued broadcaster, had been a former candidate for the Libertarian Party on the national level before he withdrew his name.
From him I really developed a fondness for the free market, and eventually discarded my liberal political beliefs very forcefully after reading Charles Murray's
Losing Ground, which another Boston-based radio broadcaster praised to the hills, the erudite late David Brudnoy of WBZ AM 1030, whom I still miss a great deal. I mean this was all before the emergence of Rush Limbaugh whom I considered an interloper for years.
(I only recently accepted him when he defended business as not the enemy that government is, after having an exasperated conversation with a good friend--and one of the few fellow liberals at West Point--who asserted that Microsoft was more powerful than the federal government. I spit out my tobacco at that one.)
Holy Moses, has Gene become a Democrat more than just nominally, as he became one in opposition to the Iraq II Attack.
Here is gloats at the prospects of national health care's passage last Friday by calling various Republicans "liars" with very few if any valid examples other than Palin's "death panel" argument which I suspect is valid, as
Charles Rice of the Notre Dame Law School read the whole bill in September and quotes that that is
exactly what will transpire and by urging his listeners to go the
this op-ed by Nicholas Kristof, showing how the arguments against the current health care proposal are eerily similar to those that were used in the 1960s against Medicare. You know, that gloriously successful program now hemorrhaging money?
Nonetheless, a fair and good point as far as it goes. But that's the problem--we are living forty-five years later and the bills are truly coming due. (And the estimated costs were wildly off the mark as Kristof noticeably omits.) If Gene had waited four days he could have added
this New York Times article that Glen Beck referenced this morning.
I mean when
SNL gets it on the health care bill and a former presidential candidate from the Libertarian Party doesn't, it truly is a topsy-turvy world. A mad, mad, mad world.
Gene, I've outgrown you and moved on to people like Charles Rice. You dismiss the "Birther" movement that is not without
some evidence when you treated the dubious
Gary Sick book as worthy of an open-minded hearing. George Bush flying in an SR-71 to negotiate the release of the Iranian hostages for his boss Ronald Reagan? That's when you started losing me, Gene.
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