Thanks to Lynn Vincent for this quote from former president Thomas Jefferson:

“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.”

I guess we can’t.

Speaking of taking care of us, the Tax-the-Future bill to be signed into law today has a curious health care provision. Cal Thomas writes:

[Betsy] McCaughey discovered buried in the bill a new bureaucracy called the National Coordinator of Health Information Technology. Among other things, it means that a Washington official will “monitor treatments to make sure your doctor is doing what the federal government deems appropriate and cost effective.” The idea comes straight from former HHS nominee Tom Daschle’s 2008 book “Critical: What We Can Do About the Health-Care Crisis” in which he says that doctors are going to have to give up their autonomy and “learn to operate less like solo practitioners.” Inevitably, this means the government will decide who gets life-saving treatment and who doesn’t.

This is immoral. The whole bill and the way it was rushed through Congress are all immoral. I honestly don’t know what to do, besides blog about it. I do know that my worries are unfounded, in that my hope is in the Lord. With others overreacting to their real and perceived struggles, Christians can hope in the Lord no matter what. Whatever we will face, the Lord will see us through. Paint the darkest imaginable picture; it will only resemble the valley of the shadow of death through which the Lord has promised to remain with us. We are more valuable than birds and field lilies. We are eternal children of God. (Matthew 6:25-26)

I did my big presentation, “The Two Olafs,” at a retreat in Wisconsin this past weekend. Not a religious retreat. It’s a gathering of academics with Scandinavian specialties, some of their students, and a few other people who are just interested in Scandinavian culture. Once a year they get together at a nature preserve in Wisconsin.

The experience was both good and bad. I think I did as good a job with the PowerPoint talk as I’ve ever done, and the audience was attentive and appreciative, from all I could tell. I sold a few copies of my books, and got the nicest speaker’s fee I’ve ever pulled down.

The second day wasn’t great for me, however. I felt I’d been keeping to myself too much, which (as you know) is one of my besetting sins. So I determined to join the organizers for breakfast, and try to be part of the conversation.

I heard a number of things I disagreed with, but kept quiet and listened, attempting to understand and evaluate the things that were being said. But when it descended into plain Republican-bashing, I left the table with the words, “He never said that. He said he didn’t like broccoli,” and went back to my quiet area with my book. Then, when everyone else went off to see a movie, the final event of the retreat, I packed up Mrs. Hermanson and drove home without saying goodbye to anyone.

This is one of those frustrating things. On the rare occasions when I make a determined effort to move outside my comfort zone, I so often end up sorry I even tried. You know the old saying, “Better to keep silent and be thought a fool, than to speak and remove all doubt”? My own best motto seems to be, “Better to keep to myself and be thought a jerk, than to talk to people and remove all doubt.”

There’s a popular idea that all a shy person has to do is take the risk of talking to people, and he’ll soon discover that his fears are groundless.

I have very little evidence of that in my own experience.

Older women (over 31 as far as I can figure) are among the most committed players of EverQuest 2, a massive online role-playing game, but they don’t readily admit how much time they spend in the game. According to researchers, these female gamers under report the amount of time they spending playing by three hours a week.

Gigi Anders has been waiting for Castro to kick it ever since her family left Cuba and her tricycle was stolen from customs.

Castro promised a democratic government with elections, the restoration of the Constitution, and freedom from corruption. We believed. Castro wasn’t a mythic white knight on a steed coming to save us. He was the steed itself, El Caballo. The Stallion.

My family and I fled Cuba because within months of the takeover Castro and his men appropriated everything we had worked so hard for: my father’s medical practice, my mother’s social work job, our apartment, its contents, my grandparents’ and uncles’ and aunts’ businesses and homes, and everybody’s bank accounts.

Some interesting thoughts on the idea that we should “never deny, rarely affirm, always distinguish.”

It’s difficult to truly listen to someone words and sift them for the truth. It’s easier to reject them out of hand or even accept them the same way.