The Other McCain

"One should either write ruthlessly what one believes to be the truth, or else shut up." — Arthur Koestler

Blame @Instapundit for This

Posted on | December 26, 2013 | 8 Comments

Late Surge in Web Buying
Blindsides UPS, Retailers

What caused this unexpected surge in online buying? Sunday, I put up a post about Justine Sacco that included this:

[H]er liberalism (like all liberalism) is misguided, assuming as it does that the problem of AIDS in Africa (or any similar social problem) results from a shortage of caring. This is a species of Magic Thinking: “We could solve this problem, if only we cared enough.” And from this delusion, we get a lot of empty gestures that do nothing to solve problems, but make people feel good about themselves.
Thomas Sowell wrote an entire book about this, The Vision of the Anointed: Self-Congratulation as a Basis for Social Policy – a book that no liberal has ever bothered to read, because if they bothered to read it, they wouldn’t be liberals anymore.

That post got linked by Instapundit, with the result that Sunday’s traffic was 170% higher than Saturday’s traffic and, over a two-day period, we sold 39 copies of The Vision of the Anointed (19 in print, 20 as Kindle e-books) via our Amazon Affiliate links, as well as 72 other items sold at Amazon, including a Garmin GPS navigator and a 4-terabyte external hard drive. Probably, Amazon and UPS just couldn’t deal with that monster blitz of orders.

For those who ordered The Vision of the Anointed, I promise I’m not exaggerating: It’s the best single-volume analysis of liberalism ever written and could cure the delusions of any liberal who reads it (assuming that the liberal is intelligent enough to understand it, admittedly a large assumption). And once they’re through reading that, maybe they’ll want to try reading Sowell’s The Quest for Comic Justice in which, among other feats, he dismantles Lenin’s Imperialism in less than two pages.

While I can’t speak for Instapundit, on behalf of myself and Thomas Sowell, I apologize to America for crashing Amazon and UPS, but destroying liberalism requires certain sacrifices.

 

 

Category: Amazon

Comments

8 Responses to “Blame @Instapundit for This”

  1. DaTechGuy on DaRadio
    December 26th, 2013 @ 8:17 pm

    May I point out that there are 12 days of Christmas so there is plenty of time for those gifts to get there, Insty links or no

  2. Steve Skubinna
    December 26th, 2013 @ 8:29 pm

    Obviously the so-called “free market” is incapable of responding to the peoples’ needs.

    We need more government intervention. Nationalize Amazon and USP now!

  3. Zohydro
    December 26th, 2013 @ 8:52 pm

    I fail to see how any of this benefits Americans of sexual orientation or gender expression…

  4. Justine Sacco Rule 5 | Batshit Crazy News
    December 26th, 2013 @ 9:20 pm

    […] TOM: Blame Instapundit for this… […]

  5. Steve Skubinna
    December 26th, 2013 @ 11:00 pm

    Or Michelle’s kids?

  6. Robin Sizemore
    December 27th, 2013 @ 8:43 am

    I’m not clear on how buying books affects UPS. Don’t books just magically appear in one’s tablet or reader of choice now?

  7. Dana
    December 27th, 2013 @ 9:32 am

    I certainly hope that the 20 Kindle editions didn’t cause the backlog. 🙂

  8. Steve Skubinna
    December 27th, 2013 @ 6:09 pm

    And how does one’s tablet or reader arrive, Rocket Surgeon?

    Jeez.