William F. Buckley is spinning in his grave at 300K RPMs minimum.

What, at the thought he’s going to be sharing his sulfur pit with this loser in the afterlife?

I’m still waiting for this post from Jonah:

I have lately been inundated by emails from readers advising me that my postulated correspondences between modern American Liberalism and dictatorial fascistic regimes rooted in imperial ambition, military fetishism, mystical nationalism, masturbatory populism and shotgun-style ethnic-cleansing are the sort of facile, bullshit quick-buck intellectual con-job they’d normally expect from Victor Davis Hanson. I’d like to take a moment to respond to these criticisms, but—yikes—look at the time! Gotta run! 

OT (mostly*):

What, at the thought he’s going to be sharing his sulfur pit with this loser in the afterlife?

An eternity with Jonah Goldberg? There’s a pleasant thought.

I can’t even grasp the point of Jonah’s post. Why would you post the facts that refute your point, announce your intention to refute them, and then do nothing? Why not wait until you have time?

Actually, wait a sec - he did try to refute the facts, doing so in a typical half-assed Goldberg way. The next paragraph reads thusly:

At minimum it doesn’t really address this point in my original post: “Pick a country — any country — over the last 40 years that has equaled the American record of job creation, growth, and innovation. Sure some countries, Japan for example, have had great runs. But does Nancy Pelosi honestly believe Japan Inc.‘s now-fading successes were attributable to its health-care policies?”

Central to my point, etc.

What a douche!

We should stalk him in the comment section of his next LA Times article (if that’s what they’re called).

That suggests that fear of losing health insurance does play a factor in discouraging entrepreneurship.

As does fear of having to find a way to provide it, if you get a company with half a dozen or a dozen workers up and running.

Not quite shorter Johan Loadedhosen: I’m going to hide under my desk until someone comes up with a rebuttal that I can steal.

And if he decides to address it instead of hoping everyone forgets, he’ll come back with some disingenuous America-fuck-yeah-Wolverines!11!! bullshit that has fuck-all to do with the original point.

Or he’ll decide the GEC is a LIEberul organization and therefore fascist and therefore central to his point.

He’ll come up with some arbitrary criteria for judging Murka to be the greatest country evar since entrepreneurship didn’t stand up.

““Pick a country — any country — over the last 40 years that has equaled the American record of job trucker hat creation, growth corn syrup consumption, and innovation the invention of male masturbatory aids. Sure some countries, Japan for example, have had great runs. But does Nancy Pelosi honestly believe Japan Inc.‘s now-fading successes were attributable to its health-care policies?”

The old fartsack says something doesn’t “smell right” about the statistics. Well, he is wrong, wrong and a bit right.

The statistics refute his stupid fact-less argument that good health care = bad entrepreunerism (sic). They also refute his stupid, fact-less argument that state-run health care is bad for the economy in general, as some of those nations cited have seen dramatic growth in the last decades and some have higher per capita GDP than the US.

What he is flailing around about is that there is yet to be (to my knowledge) a conclusively established link between state-run health care and entrepreneurship. It seems logical, that people would be more willing to take a risk knowing that they won’t be pauperized should they become sick, but as we are wont to say, correlation does not equal causation.

Correlation does not equal causation.

If not-so-young Mr. Goldberg were to absorb this simple logical principle, much of his oeuvre, including his much (self-) praised Liberal Fascism: the Secret History of the American Left from Witches to Low-Calorie Menus would, poof!, vanish into the ether of logical contradiction.

That’s why he thinks “something doesn’t smell quite right.”