EjectEjectEject!

Bill Whittle at EjectEjectEject! has written some simply brilliant essays. This one definitely qualifies. It comes in two parts, both are long but still too short (if you catch my drift). Subject is the current run-up to the election in the US, and why voting Kerry is a bad idea, to put it mildly. It does not directly relate to Kerry's position on Israel, but has everything to do with the way Kerry would (not) fight the current war.

It all comes down to carrots (liberals) or sticks (conservatives). By the way: if you’re in a rush and need to run, here’s the spoiler: You can offer a carrot. Not everybody likes carrots. Some people may hate your carrot. Your carrot may offend people who worship the rutabaga. But no one likes being poked in the eye with a stick. That’s universal.

I’m a stick man. I wish it were different. But part of growing up – in fact, the essential part of growing up – is realizing that wishing does not make it so.

Folks, it’s time to reach down deep and get in touch with our inner adult.

And how can anyone argue with this:

Folks, some people who steal and rob are not fundamentally bad people. Some of them are desperate, some of them are stupid, and some of them are just plain lazy. Some of them, though, are psychopaths who’d kill you for a nickel and think nothing more about it – they’d trade your life, and the welfare of your spouse and children, for two hours of getting high and it would not bother them in the least.

Nations are governed by people. People are noble and base, honest and corrupt, brutal and gentle and all the adjectives in between. Yes, even Americans! The success of democracy, it seems to me, is that there is always a counterweight to the most mendacious and the most harebrained of human activities. It’s harder to fool all the people all the time.

Dictatorships, on the other hand – well, you’re down to the limits of one man’s sanity, ego, vanity and judgment. And when you consider the kind of person it takes to rule absolutely and totally the lives of millions of others – many of them more intelligent, educated and capable – then what you are left with is a giant, enormous, destructive Iron Giant – a state – with a tiny, desperate, paranoid, perpetually fearful psychopath pulling the levers. Dictatorships put the power of millions, the muscle and capability of entire nations, behind the guy with the gun in that dark alley.

It is a prospect to make sane people shake with fear. Surely we can agree on this much.

Presenting a few snippets here does not do justice to Bill's writing. Please read it all. And then read it again. You'll have a great weekend. And you'll have no doubt about who to vote for.