This post perfectly describes the intellectual dishonesty of Mr Brooks argument and points to how people are seduced into allowing a large centralized government to develop.
Big government appeals to us because it seems--at first -- to be a way of having both security and a tempting but potentially unhealthy kind of privacy. We thought we wouldn't any longer have to work to understand, persuade, avoid offending, or prove ourselves trustworthy to family members, extended family, neighbors and, say, fellow parishioners, because the government would be there to do what we once had to learn to do through relationships with people we lived with or near.
Then we realize that not only was the sense of privacy an illusion, but we still need to cooperate with other people to get ahead. The people we now have to please might or might not be family, neighbors, or known to us through church, or people who know us or who we know at all. We find we now need to cooperate with people who have connections to that centralized power.

I think it should be the intern, or prospective intern, who decides if the experience of the job, and the chance to make connections and show that he (she) is hardworking, reliable and good with people, is payment enough. Obviously, sometimes it is and sometimes it isn't. Internships in which interns do only menial work, and are kept away from anyone except each other, will get a reputation for being a waste of time (I would think).

What's a gender neutral dorm ? At 18, in order to have more space than a small room to slop around in comfortable but unbecoming old clothes without caring who saw me, I would have wanted an all women dorm. But I don't think I would have said so.

Re comment 347
Duane Oyen,
"......and prostate cancer rates have been proven to directly correlate to frequency of ejaculation."
Does that mean prostate cancer occures less among men who ejaculate more frequently ?

Re comment 345

You're right. Why should we assume that husbands or wives have a faulty sex drive that needs to be chemically modified.

I went over to Prager University, clicked on Life Studies and watched "Men and the Power of the Visual--Male/Female Differences,1". Am now convinced all sexually frustrated married men should take pills to lower their testosterone.

We need a Spanish speaking group at Ricochet to listen to this stuff and answer it in Spanish on podcasts. And we need to stop sounding so judgmental and, instead, make the case to immigrants for how liberty is more in their interest in the long run.

People who talk about "negative beliefs" would put someone like Joan of Arc on Thorazine.

Dave,
Please take care of yourself.

Ansonia and Tom

I can't help thinking that these orgasmic yet still sexually disinterested wives wouldn't have to will themselves to accept their husband's initial advances a certain number of times a month if their husbands seemed to them to enjoy the process of attracting them. (I. e. , if their husbands seemed to them to enjoy observing them, and listening to them, in order to effectively employ subtle flattery, humor, body language and the power of suggestion, to entice them sexually. ) Is anyone working on a pill to increase a husband's interest in flirting with his wife? Of course, pill or no pill, a husband who gets good at flirting with his wife has a dangerous power advantage in the marriage. Sex is only one of many ways his wife becomes more cooperative. So there are moral issues to consider. Maybe it is better for women to feel like martyrs, and maintain control of their desire for their husbands, by just taking the pill we're discussing.

I love the story of Job, and was comforted by it years ago when I read and reread it during a divorce. Still, under the circumstances, Job 1:19, with a picture of cheerfully smiling John Piper above it, seems devoid of empathy to say the least.

Dave, I'm retyping this in larger print and sending it to people. I'm always grateful that you write.

I'd bring back long summers for kids--summers that start about June 20th and don't end until the day after Labor Day. I'd bring back the experience of walking home from school for lunch in all kinds of weather. Then walking back to school to finish the day refreshed and ready to focus. (I was attending third grade in a public school when I walked home every day for lunch.)

I think it's so disturbing that young people now act as though they think their sexual orientation should be seen as more important to who they are than anything they do.

Re comment # 23

I think because Latinos are often less informed, and because Republicans--especially Catholic Republicans--come across as snooty and cold, it has been easy for the left to convince Latinos that Republicans want them all deported.

Re comment # 17

And it stands to reason that ESL voters would be more vulnerable to being unaware of news or of both sides of different arguments.