The Patriot Post® · Wednesday Short Cuts

Insight: “If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear.” —George Orwell (1903-1950)

Upright: “You can’t have a good-paying job without a healthy business. But if you’re taxing and regulating businesses to death, you’re going to extinguish healthy jobs, millions of them. In other words, business is labor’s best friend. And to get the work done and produce, labor is business’s best friend. They both work together to benefit the entire country. The Biden approach is just class warfare. That is really their agenda. In a futile effort to redistribute income, they want to tax successful businesses and entrepreneurs. They don’t really care about economic growth. They’re only interested in these left-wing social policies, violating the American dream, violating American traditions, going all the way back to the Founding Fathers. They want to punish success. That runs completely against the American Dream. One thing about Donald Trump, he understood the need to reward success, not punish it.” —Larry Kudlow

Observations: “Democrats should display some humility when it comes to African-Americans and voting since it was members of their party who opposed civil rights legislation, defended slavery in the 19th century and promoted "black codes” in Southern state legislatures that denied many rights to former slaves. … Most people are willing to accept the defeat of candidates for whom they voted if they believe the system was fair and the tabulations accurate. Achieving that end is the purpose of the new Georgia law. It’s not about Jim Crow, or for that matter, ‘Jim Eagle.’“ —Cal Thomas

For the record: "The old Jim Crow was billy clubs and fire hoses; the alleged new Jim Crow is asking people to write a driver’s license number on their absentee ballot envelopes. The old Jim Crow was poll taxes; the new Jim Crow is expanding weekend voting. The old Jim Crow was disenfranchising voters en masse based on their race; the new Jim Crow is limiting ballot drop boxes to places they can’t be tampered with. It’s hard to believe that one real voter is going to be kept from voting by the new rules.” —Rich Lowry

Braying jenny: “The Republican who is sitting in Stacey Abrams’ chair just signed a despicable voter suppression bill into law to take Georgia back to Jim Crow.” —Senator Elizabeth Warren

Non compos mentis: “Before COVID … I did take a delegation to the Northern Triangle … to see what the causes of migration were. And of course, it’s corruption. It’s violence. It’s also, which was new to me as one who is a follower of the climate issue, that climate played a role as well.” —House Speaker Nancy Pelosi

Grand delusions: “Biden’s goal of doubling the vaccination rate is great and inspiring, especially compared with the mess we’re seeing in terms of the vaccine rollout in Europe. And I appreciated his tough talk on China’s authoritarian leadership. In some ways, Biden’s presidency may one day be remembered as the second coming of Harry S. Truman. A former vice president, underestimated by his critics as a small-town pol, brings middle- class decency back to the White House, expands the social safety net and builds a global order to contain and ultimately defeat an expansionist enemy abroad.” —NY Times columnist Bret Stephens

Editorial hogwash: “Eight slain in Atlanta, now 10 in Boulder. Your town could be next. Can the nation finally do something about weapons of war on our streets? … The New York Post does not see this as a conservative or liberal issue — it’s an issue of life and death. Curbing guns is what led to New York City’s three-decade reduction in murders. And, sadly, it’s the dismissal of that progress that has led to a rise in shootings here. Outside the city, the toll of semi-automatic weapons is a sad litany of cities and schools: Newtown, Parkland, Aurora, Las Vegas. It’s a national shame. … When they enshrined the Second Amendment, the Founding Fathers could not have conceived of high-capacity magazines. Hunting and home protection are one thing — but what civilian needs an AR-15? The Supreme Court has ruled the Constitution protects guns ‘in common use,’ not weapons of war. Our forefathers did not want every American to be capable of mass slaughter.” —New York Post editorial board

Dezinformatsiya: “BREAKING: Arkansas has become the first state to ban health care for trans youth.” —ACLU (“Puberty blockers for prepubescent youth, mastectomies on teen girls’ healthy breasts, and castration of young boys is not healthcare. It’s insane we have to say this. This isn’t ‘care,’ it’s malpractice. No healthcare has been banned whatsoever.” —Lila Rose)

And last… “If you think voter ID is racist, but a vaccine passport is just fine, you need some serious help thinking through public policy.” —Senator Rand Paul