Yoda & PM Martin

What the Force can do for you, ask not. But what you can do for the Force - ask.

There's a Fark caption contest going on where you submit famous quotes as they would have been phrased by Yoda.

From the It's About Time page, Seattle's ticketing drivers that wait until the last second to merge. Yay.

David Frum thinks that same-sex marriage is going to cause the end of society - oh boo hoo. Should the government really refuse civil marriage based on an immuatble characteristic like sexual orientation? How about race then? Don't be fooled, this is the next civil rights struggle. Hopefully though, the battle will be fought in the arena of ideas and not in the courts.

And, for God's sake, why can't we get the same sort of intelligible rhetoric on same-sex marriage in this country that Paul Martin's demonstrated in Canada?

The rights of Canadians who belong to a minority group must always be protected by virtue of their status as citizens, regardless of their numbers. These rights must never be left vulnerable to the impulses of the majority.

Bravo, Mr. Prime Minister.

The nut of the debate: In the last post I talked about the struggle for control of the Republican party, and Ryan Sager's 02/21 piece on (of all places) Tech Central Station started that little dialogue with the National Review.

Make absolutely no mistake about it: This party, among its most hard-core supporters, is not about freedom anymore. It is about foisting its members' version of morality and economic intervention on the country. It is, in other words, the mirror image of its hated enemy.

It's so disheartening to see what's happened to the GOP over the last few years. Savvy politicking on one incendiary issue to each demographic has resulted in a populist patchwork of economic liberalism and social "conservatism" that results in bigger and bigger government. I'm waiting for them to completely abandon the idea of individual empowerment altogether. The rhetoric survives, at least for now.

My brother's raving to me about the new Dave Holland disc. Anyone heard it yet?