Quote of the Day: The Masses Start to Get Scary

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From E.J. Dionne, possibly the nicest guy in the whole world, telling George Will he’s a bounder and a cad for treating Elizabeth Warren badly:

This is a tour de force. My colleague has brought out his full rhetorical arsenal to beat back a statement that he grants upfront is so obviously true that it cannot be gainsaid. Will knows danger when he sees it.

Here’s the backstory. Elizabeth Warren gave a speech a few weeks ago making the unremarkable—almost banal—point that businesses depend on roads and schools and courts and police protection and lots of other products of our tax dollars. They don’t just spring out of Zeus’s forehead. George Will, obviously in a cold sweat over the possibility that the ragamuffins in Zuccotti Park might take this to heart, admitted that Warren was obviously right but then sprang for her throat, accusing her of not merely making a case for fair levels of taxation, but of wanting to convert the United States into some kind of Leninist collectivist hellhole. It went downhill from there.

I haven’t bothered blogging about any of this before, since Will long ago allowed his sense of nightmarish panic over creeping lefty totalitarianism to destroy whatever decent instincts he used to have. But Dionne’s column does give me an excuse to post Warren’s video, which I haven’t done before. So here you go. This is for my sister, who’s not especially political but finds Warren an inspiration nonetheless. Bankers beware.

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In "It's Not a Crisis. This Is the New Normal," we explain, as matter-of-factly as we can, what exactly our finances look like, how brutal it is to sustain quality journalism right now, what makes Mother Jones different than most of the news out there, and why support from readers is the only thing that keeps us going. Despite the challenges, we're optimistic we can increase the share of online readers who decide to donate—starting with hitting an ambitious $300,000 goal in just three weeks to make sure we can finish our fiscal year break-even in the coming months.

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