Today is William Shakespeare’s birthday. To mark the day I thought I’d mention something I linked to several years ago, but recent discoverers of this happy blog may have missed.

It is not widely appreciated that Shakespeare was a world class insulter. His plays contain some of the finest put downs and disses ever composed by the dark human heart. Don Rickles and Triumph the Insult Comic Dog are mere hackers compared to Bill.

A few years ago, some enterprising English Lit major decided to assemble all of the insults from Shakespeare’s works and put them in a random generating database. Thus was born . . .  the Shakespearean Insult Generator.

My brief visit there this morning produced:

Thou saucy dismal-dreaming hugger-mugger!

Thou artless ill-breeding flap-dragon!

Thou rank hasty-witted giglet!

Get over there and try it in honor of the bard before I get cranky and call you a “clouted fen-sucked death-token.” Which I would probably later regret.

I give you: The Voluntary Human Extinction Movement. Enjoy

Here you have the suppositions and values of environmental activitsts taken to their logical endpoint. Their assumption: We humans don’t belong here and the sooner we disappear the better.

Not coincidentally, the History Channel has been re-running its “Life After People” specials the last few days. In it you see CGI depictions of what the earth would be like 10, 100, 1,000, and 10,000 years after a day in which all humans disappeared.

It’s basically p0rn0graphy for Greenpeace activists.

Of course, if humans did disappear tomorrow, the Earth’s well-established cycles of climate change would continue, invariably causes wide-spread habitat destruction and extinctions. As in the ancient past, natural disasters would continue to occur resulting in periodic massive-scale extinctions like the Late Devonian  extinction which wiped out 70% of all species on earth and the Permian-Triassic extinction which destroyed 96% of marine species.

Of course, in the environmentalist fantasy, none of that matters as long as no human would be around to feel guilty about existing.

Ross Douthat has some interesting thoughts over at the Atlantic blog about a discussion on what will serve as America’s unifying “civil religion” in a secular age.

Read “Theology Has Consequences.”

In researching the forthcoming book on Paul Harvey, I was deeply impressed by the writing Mr. Harvey did back in the 1950s. Here are two examples that we cite in the book. First, on the Income Tax:

But you know it was for us, the American people, to become the first in recorded history voluntarily to surrender our rights to private property? Oh, yes we did. With an innocent sounding constitutional amendment, the 16th, which says that “Congress shall have the power to lay and collect taxes on incomes, from whatever source derived.”

And we forgot to put any limits on the extent to which we could tax ourselves. Conceivably, we could be taxed out of all private property . . . we could awaken one morning and find that the government owns the farm and the house and car and has a mortgage on the church—legally!

Historically, whenever any nation has taxed its people more than 25 percent of their national income, initiative was destroyed and that nation was headed for economic eclipse.

And here’s Paul Harvey warning us about the runaway growth of government:

At first there appears to be nothing wrong asking government to perform some extra service for you . . . but . . . if you ask government for extra services, government, in order to perform its increasing function, has to get bigger . . . right?

And as government gets bigger, in order to support its increasing size, it has to . . . what? Tax the individual more. So the individual gets littler.
And to collect the increased taxes requires more tax collectors so the government gets bigger and in order to pay the additional tax collectors it has to tax the individual more and the government gets bigger and the individual gets littler. And the government gets bigger. And the individual gets littler.

Until the government is all-powerful and the individual is hardly anything at all.

Until the government is all-powerful . . . and the people are . . . cattle.

At the risk of appearing self-serving, I must tell you there is a great deal in this book that American’s need to be reminded of at this moment in history.

The criminalization of conservatism has begun.

Michelle Malkin has the details:

Yesterday, Roger Hedgecock and the Liberty Papers posted an unclassified DHS Office of Intelligence and Analysis report titled:

Rightwing Extremism: Current Economic and Political Climate Fueling Resurgence in Radicalization and Recruitment.

The “report” (PDF file here) was one of the most embarrassingly shoddy pieces of propaganda I’d ever read out of DHS. I couldn’t believe it was real.

More here.

Peter Kirsanow has a revealing little post about the Congressional Black Caucus’ fawning over Fidel Castro:

Useful Idiots Caucus

Excerpt:

Next time they visit the island gulag, they might notice the contrast between the number of blacks in positions of political power and the number of blacks confined in Castro’s political prisons. Should they need any explanation for the contrast, they should consider consulting Oscar Elías Biscet, the heroic black physician and winner of the 2007 Presidential Medal of Freedom who has been rotting in one of Castro’s dungeons because of his tireless advocacy for basic freedoms for all Cubans.

Does Amazon’s new Kindle II herald the end of publishing as we know it?  Probably not. But Jacob Weisberg has some thoughts: Book End: How the Kindle will change the world.

Update–Link fixed. (Thank, Ted!)

One of America’s best and clearest thinkers talks about books that had a significant impact on him here:

Four weeks and 50,000 words later, I have emerged from the fortress of solitude.

So . . .How’ve you been?

We sent the manuscript for Paul Harvey’s America off to the publisher yesterday. I must confess, that’s the most fun I’ve had in a long time–especially the research part. If a guy could make a good living doing research, I’d be all over it. I love trolling through the archives of old newspapers and magazines in search of hidden gems. I found a treasure chest full of them on this project.

Back in college, I would spend hours at the library spinning through microfiche reels of the New York Times and LIFE magazine from the ’20s and ’30s. (instead of studying something related to a class I was actually enrolled in.)

You gotta love this internet thing, though. I gathered research online in 5 days that would have required 12 months and lots of travel just 15 years ago.

Regular ranting, linking and musing will now resume. Same over at Chris Matthews’ Leg. Oh, and I’ll be launching a Paul Harvey’s America site very soon, too. There I’ll post wonderful PH quotes I’ve discovered that relate to current events and news.

How very grateful I am that you stop by from time to time to see what my fevered brain is finding interesting. I’ll try to make it worth your while.

As we push toward the finish line on the book Paul Harvey’s America (see previous post), I was struck by some remarkable photos I saw today of efforts to stem the flood tide up in Fargo/Moorehead.

I couldn’t help but think: “This is Paul Harvey’s America right here, captured in a slice of time. . .

More incredible pics here.