Reasonable Nuts: Won't You Be My Neighbor?

Sometimes nuts. Always reasonable. We are REASONABLE NUTS.

The Reasonable Nuts are a small band of conservative and libertarian thinkers who have come together to exposit, expound, and (sometimes) explode on topics of public discourse (or those we think should be in public discourse). "Yeah, like the 'net needs another right-wing blog!", you're thinking. We hear ya. Our primary purposes here are twofold: 1, to post our notions and interpretations of current and recent events, bouncing them off one another - and you - and 2, to add a unique content to the 'net - not readily found elsewhere.
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Contributors

queen_spoo

CS

daniel

Protagonist

Spoomonger

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Reasonable Nuts of Yore:
"It does not require a majority to prevail, but rather an irate, tireless minority keen to set brush fires in the people's minds." -- Samuel Adams, one of the original Reasonable Nuts
"I own that I am not a friend to a very energetic government. It is always oppressive."
"I predict future happiness for Americans if they can prevent the government from wasting the labors of the people under the pretense of taking care of them." -- Thomas Jefferson, quite Reasonable at times, always a Nut.
"I ask, sir, what is the militia? It is the whole people except for a few public officials."
"To disarm the people (is) the best and most effectual way to enslave them..." -- George Mason, unalienable rights nut
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Reasonable Nuts of Today:
"The first lesson of economics is scarcity: There is never enough of anything to satisfy all those who want it. The first lesson of politics is to disregard the first lesson of economics." -- Thomas Sowell
"Most people who read 'The Communist Manifesto' probably have no idea that it was written by a couple of young men who had never worked a day in their lives, and who nevertheless spoke boldly in the name of 'the workers'." -- Thomas Sowell
"The purpose of an open mind is to close it, on particular subjects. If you never do â you've simply abdicated the responsibility to think" -- William F. Buckley, Jr.
"I would rather be governed by the first 2000 names in the Boston phone book than by the faculty of Harvard University". -- William F. Buckley, Jr.
"We might think of dollars as being 'certificates of performance.' The better I serve my fellow man, and the higher the value he places on that service, the more certificates of performance he gives me. The more certificates I earn, the greater my claim on the goods my fellow man produces. That's the morality of the market. In order for one to have a claim on what his fellow man produces, he must first serve him. Contrast that moral standard to Congress' standing offer, 'Vote for me and I'll take what your fellow man produces and give it to you.'" -- Walter E. Williams
"Creating false distinctions between human rights and property rights plays into the hands of Democrat and Republican Party socialists who seek to control our lives. If we buy into the notion that somehow property rights are less important, or are in conflict with, human or civil rights, we give the socialists a freer hand to attack our property." -- Walter E. Williams

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Thursday, May 04, 2006

Won't You Be My Neighbor?

Now for something G-Rated: Below is some archived footage of Fred Rogers before a Senate Committee meeting on funding of public television

I disagree with the premise of public television. Mr, Rogers, Sesame Street and Barney can easily survive in the public sector; and PBS is now thoroughly obsolete with the dozens of learning channels and kids channels on cable. The "bombardment" which Rogers lamented ended up being only a temporary situation remedied by new technologies and media which gave kids and parents better choices of entertainment. Whether parents made those better choices, and avoided worse choices, is another controversy.

Nonetheless, Rogers' motivation was admirable, to create wholesome relation-based children shows at the height of the "Itchy and Scratchy" era of violent kids' shows. To teach kids not to fight and have temper tantrums, but to use their words.

Fred Rogers appears to have won. Children's shows emphasizing relationships and getting along are common, while kid's cartoons about two animals trying to kill each other have fallen out of style. Yet has child's programming really gotten better? Why are grownups comfortable with Elmer and Bugs and Tom and Jerry and G.I. Joe and Cobra Commander, yet weirded out by cartoons like these?

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