Whither Logic

City Journal

This article need not be so long but it does well to personify the problem in the case of Mr. Ayer. What a scary guy.

The Ed Schools’ Latest—and Worst—Humbug by Sol Stern, City Journal Summer 2006

Reason: Judge Taylor's Tapped-Out Argument: Federal domestic spying program nicked, not nixed: "'There are no hereditary Kings in America and no powers not created by the Constitution,' Taylor wrote in her decision, a much-needed attempt at some executive-bashing rhetoric. It sounds to these ears like a conscious callback to the debates on the Constitution itself, when the fear of an untamed despot was palpable. But as part of a legal opinion?"

The World’s Worst Organization: "The finances of the United Nations are the only concrete application of Karl Marx’s description of communist Utopia: 'from each according to his ability, to each according to his need.” Thus, the United States foots 22 percent of the UN bill, Japan 19.63 percent, Germany 9.82 percent, France 6.50 percent, the United Kingdom 5.57 percent, Italy 5.09 percent, Canada 2.57 percent, Spain 2.53 percent, and Brazil 2.39 percent—which is to say that 9 countries, constituting 4.7 percent of total membership, pay 76 percent of the UN budget. The U.S and Japan (the latter not even a permanent member of the Security Council) pay over 40 percent of the costs. (If you are a New Yorker, the people who work at the UN owe the city nineteen millions in parking fines.) China and Russia, incidentally, pay 2.053 percent and 1.1 percent, respectively. Ultimately, the entire UN financing system is nothing but a global form of wealth redistribution that entails, as one observer said, taking money from the poor in the richest countries to give it to the richest in poor countries. "

The Title says it all.