Too Much Of A Good Thing

...is a great thing. Kevin Williamson is not only brilliant, he's prolific as well. Here are links to three of at least four op-ed length columns he's produced in the past week.

First he scolds conservatives for making the perfect the enemy of the good.

Maybe you were not that excited that 2012 gave you a choice between Mitt Romney and Barack Obama. I sympathize — I liked Rick Perry. But how is President Romney vs. President Obama a hard choice? How is Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell vs. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid a hard choice? How is Speaker of the House John Boehner vs. Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi a hard choice?

It isn’t.

http://www.nationalreview.com/article/374528/which-side-are-you-kevin-d-Williamson

Then, he explains why governments fail when they overreach (as they invariably do).

...man is a fallen creature, and ..., contra the Obamacare regime, there are no exemptions to be handed out from that condition, no waivers from human nature. The progressive view, on the other hand, is that our politics and our institutions could be channels of moral action and reliably ethical arbiters of such ill-defined standards as “fairness” and “social justice,” if only we put the right people in power.

But there are no right people.

Democrats (I think to myself) are liberals who believe the people are basically good, but that they need government help to organize their lives. They believe in freedom so fervently that they think it should be compulsory. They believe that the poor and ignorant are victims of an unfair system and that their circumstances can be improved if we give them help. Republicans (I think to myself) are conservatives who think it would be best if we faced the fact that people are no damned good. They think that if we admit that we have selfish, acquisitive natures and then set out to get all we can for ourselves by working hard for it, that things will be better for everyone. They are not insensitive to the poor, but tend to think the poor are impoverished because they won't work. They think there would be fewer of them to feel sorry for if the government did not encourage the proliferation of the least fit among us with welfare programs.
Read more at http://quotes.dictionary.com/democrats_i_think_to_myself_are_liberals_who#qEEwGeOMskm52j5G.99

http://www.nationalreview.com/article/374405/hypocrisy-hypocrisy-kevin-d-Williamson

And he explains why prices are unexplainable and why attempts to control them are foolish.

...the United States passed its first minimum-wage law in 1933. It was thrown out as unconstitutional, and then reestablished in 1938, at which point it became constitutional via the magic of the infinitely flexible Commerce Clause. (There’s a reason Supreme Court justices and fairy-tale wizards wear the same outfits, with the nine-member national super-legislature missing only those awesome conical hats, which we, a freedom-loving people, should insist they adopt immediately.) Why? Because, as with the case of the sugar producers, somebody with sufficient political power decided that the price wasn’t right — and a wage is nothing but a price, the price of labor. The same people who understand why LGA–MIA costs more in the winter than MIA–LGA cannot understand — or refuse to accept — that wages work in precisely the same way. I hear fairly regularly from public-school teachers who insist that they should be paid more because they have a master’s degree, from MFA holders who insist that they should be paid more than Starbucks is paying them, and from people who insist that people working in fast-food jobs should be paid $10.10 an hour, or whatever it is that the Democrats are proposing this week. But there is no should when it comes to prices.

...Supply and demand don’t always move in smooth, predictable curves, but the relationship between them is not optional, because consumers and producers are real people, not imaginary constructs in somebody’s policy model. Interfere with the supply of sugar and prices will go up. Raise the price of labor and demand for it will go down. That is reality, and reality is not optional.

http://www.nationalreview.com/article/374577/here-comes-sun-kevin-d-williamson

Also, Deroy Murdock presents the best discussion of the sexual identity/orientation morass* that I've ever read. Not that I'm well versed in the literature on the subject, but still...

http://www.nationalreview.com/article/374559/gay-genes-or-choice-deroy-Murdock

*Incidentally, in the third Williamson piece, linked above, he makes the following observation -
“Morass” is not a contraction of the phrase “moralizing asses,” but it should be.