At a campaign rally in Naples, Florida, GOP candidate Rick Santorum said, "It's no wonder President Obama wants every kid to go to college... The indoctrination that occurs in American universities is one of the keys to the left holding and maintaining power in America. And it is indoctrination. If it was the other way around, the ACLU would be out there making sure that there wasn't one penny of government dollars going to colleges and universities, right?"

Right, Ricky. Every class lecture, I spend the entire 75 minutes pouring Leftist drivel down students' throats. I'm teaching economics and finance at the college level, indoctrinating them to the point where they grow poorly trimmed beards and wave firearms while they scream, "Death to capitalism! Death to Ludwig Von Mises! Death to credit derivative swaps, non-zero interest loans, and anything that keeps me from getting free music and movies that take ungodly amounts of money to make just so I can download them FOR FREE!"

Mr. Santorum—you pulsating stellar wind of hypocrisy, fluff, and Right-wing clichés—your bloviating disconnect is laughable. For all but one lecture, I teach hard-core, Western-style capitalism, with barely a chance to mention anything other than the standard economic models of the Classical and Keynesian schools, both of which are predicated on conservative assumptions and not-very-surprising results from those conservative assumptions (although that 18th Century prewash actually leads to some pretty uncomfortable results for Right-wing and modern "conservative" simpletons like you). Given the depth, complexity, and scope of what I need to teach this self-pitying generation of narcissistic failures of parenting and society in general—and fighting as I do a losing battle against the pop-academic airheads on the Right and the Left with their staggering truckloads of "education reform" tripe—I can pretty much promise that you would flunk my most basic finance and economics courses cold. Subsequently, or perhaps concurrently, you'd whine and bitch that I had somehow been mean and unfair to you.

Yes, Rick Santorum, thirty-plus years as a college teacher have accorded me the ability to see a flunky strutting in the door before he even makes it to his first failing grade on one of my (very traditional) tests. You look the part, and you talk the part. If you think you're something other than the poster boy for academic probation, here's the deal, sir: enroll in my one of my classes. Do it, Frat Boy, and I'll shut your pie hole before you can say, "Where do I go to drop this course?"

Do it right away. Bring cameras for plenty of photo ops. Bring your Right-wing supporters. Make it a one-semester, bigger-than-big rally. Let everyone see just how "Leftist" I am; then let them all see just how worthless your claims are, you uninformed little demagogue.

Technological innovations are a marvel to be embraced until they become the pitchfork of cultural corrosion and the tool of repressive rule posing to save us from that very corrosion.

Censorship is fine until it's censorship we don't like; then it's an outrage that simply must be stopped.

Rights are paramount until they are demanded by and then granted to things that aren't even persons.

You think PIPA (Senate 968) and SOPA (HR 3261) can be derailed? Authoritarians don't give up. Moneyed interests don't let go. Privileged people won't quit.

You think you've won, only to find out you lost because you revealed your tactics they will use against you when they come back; and come back they will, as many times, with as much stridence, capital, and force as necessary.

Sooner or later, they'll win.

In this case, those malevolent forces already have, and they have done so at our own behest: technological innovations are wonderful when they give us the means to be weak, lazy, and irresolute; censorship is fine when it's the kind we like; and constitutional rights are already being handed out to things that aren't even humans, much less citizens.

We will tire of the fight long before the authoritarians do; and when we bow ever lower to the unrelenting fist of those who know better than we, as a people we shall once again take some comfort in saying, "Melior diabolus quem scies." After all, at least we'll still have our computers, we'll never be offended by anything we see or hear on the Internet, and we'll have the wisdom and capital of corporations to help us decide who will lead our vibrant democracy away from the perilous temptations of unbridled freedom.

Salus pro licentia.

Regarding that video of U.S. soldiers urinating on killed Taliban fighters, suffer me an unapologetically harsh and decidedly disjointed rant concerning the incident, itself, and reaction to it. Specifically, I will key on Media Matters feasting on the war of words at CNN between several journalists and blow-hard commentator Dana Loesch:

"Several CNN on-air journalists are criticizing Dana Loesch's recent comments supporting the U.S. Marines who allegedly urinated on the dead bodies of Taliban forces.

"Loesch, a CNN contributor, made the comments during her radio show Thursday. Among other things, Loesch said of the incident: 'I'd drop trou and do it too.'

"Such views brought sharp criticism from some CNN on-air reporters."

I have little use for journalist cherries posing thumbs up or thumbs down on specific military actions unless the deeds rise to the level of clear crimes against individuals and groups, and by that I refer to the living. Where were all of these grunting armchair warriors when the Navy Seals shot and killed an unarmed woman who "lunged" at them after they had just shot and killed her unarmed husband, a rather famous terrorist and perfect excuse for ever-escalating denial of any supposed right to privacy? Oh, wait, the White House was wrong; she was only wounded in the leg. Fog of war, and all that. Yes, sitting there watching the whole thing in real time on multiple monitor feeds from headgear cams gets that fog really thick. Photo ops like that are way too news-worthy for circumstantial accuracy about who died and who didn't, especially when you're killing a terrorist.

Wait, she wasn't exactly "wounded." Our heroes wouldn't do that, of course. It was collateral shrapnel.

Wait, the 12-year-old daughter says her father, the late Osama bin Laden, was captured and then executed. Lying little snot, right?

Oh, that's right, those Navy Seals were heroes because it was Osama bin Laden they shot, although I can't say I saw the body, the corpse having been dumped at sea out of respect or some such facile reason. I can't say I saw the video, either. Marines, take note: it's all about spin, all about controlling the media, all about keeping those videos and photographs from getting hauled up into that fog of public opinion, informed or uninformed as it might be.

Terror Alert Level raised to Confetti for that one! Yay! Mr. Obama gets butch to shut the neocon cherries up for a few minutes. Liberals and conservatives join hands for a moment of unity in extrajudicial executions of the indicted-by-10 years-of-propaganda and their menacing wives, except that part about his wife, she wasn't killed, she was shot in the calf; no, she got some shrapnel. Did I mention that the 12-year-old girl is a little liar?

Yay, Obama. Yay, heroes. Boo, Marines who pee on dead warriors. Boo to everyone who can't keep horror videos from going viral.

Look. Urinating on killed combatants is demonstrable collapse of good order and discipline, and that happens from the top down; but, then again, let's hang the grunts just like we did with the Abu Ghraib jail keepers, and let's make sure once again that the top of the chain of command gets off the hook with their sincere lies. That way, those too-important-to-hang people might be able to serve in the Obama Administration after they've done their worst for the Bush Administration. After all, Mr. Obama wants to be respected by the big boys.

That's the same reason he'll let the Iranian nuclear weapons situation get real ugly fairly soon. We mustn't look like wimps going into the 2012 general election.

That chickenhawk Dana Loesch says she would pull her panties down and urinate on dead enemy fighters, too, just like the soldiers in that video did. Good for her. I'll just turn the other way. Seeing bloody corpses is bad enough. Watching candyass pseudo-journalists pee just might ruin my appetite.

It's almost as bad as watching what remains of the liberal apologists spinning for President Weathervane. No wonder I've lost so much weight the past few years.

No, really, everything's okay. Privacy is deeply respected, the rule of law applies equally to the rich and poor, the citizenry and the enforcers, the elite and the commoners. You are secure in your personal effects, and the courts jealously protect you in your home, as well as in your comings and goings. Your life is your own, and your ability to behave according to customs, traditions, and laws is not questioned before the fact.

Those who reveal official misconduct are received as valued watchdogs of the people.

No thing, be it an association for commerce, an agency of the government, or a position with title, carries the fundamental rights of the living who are the citizens, themselves.

Extrajudicial executions of citizens by law enforcement and military personnel are always prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law and to the top of the chain of command that authored the environment in which such malicious conduct could happen.

You are essentially good, and the sovereign predicates its affairs upon the unwavering understanding that a parsimonious, circumscribed government is best when its principal objective in all of its actions is to foster that good: hypocrisy, cruelty, mendacity, and violence are never to be exemplary of us as a people because they are not exemplary of us as individuals.

The national interest is your interest simply because your interest, when it is rightful and good, is the national interest.


What I wrote above is risible satire; as such, it is sublime tragedy.

Featuring Phinnaeus, the newest cat in my family, may you all have an exciting year filled with economic prosperity and civil freedom.

Or, on the other hand, have a year like the ones we've been having.