Road to the Middle Class - by Christopher Chantrill

SEN. HILLARY Clinton (D-NY) did a workmanlike job in her speech last night on the second day of the Democratic National Convention. But she didn’t make you want to like her. She evidently appeals to women of a certain age for whom the defining aspects of life are the Seneca Falls convention and the Nineteenth Amendment. They are the women who believe in the glass ceiling and male chauvinism.

(Back in the 1970s the women in my office thought it would be a wonderful idea to give me a Male Chauvinist Pig tie. What can you do with that sort of thing except be a good sport?)

Pundits like Michael Barone are saying that the speech was a good preparation for 2012. Maybe it was. Or maybe Hillary Clinton will just be a Senate institution by then.

But Hillary Clinton just isn’t likeable. And that’s like starting First and Ten with a ten yard penalty when you are playing presidential politics.

Certainly if you look back over the last several presidential races, it is clear that the likeable guy always wins.

At least Hilllary Clinton outperformed the Keynote speech. That effort by Virginia Senate candidate Mark Warner was a technocratic yawn.

The big takeaway of the night was the Karl Rove line, issued on Fox News’ Strategy Room. Obama has to show that he is up to the job, said Karl, after a learned disquisition on post-convention poll bounces. What really bothers independent voters is that they just don’t think that Obama is up to the job.

But I wish that they still ran the conventions like a convention, with reports from the Platform Committee, with a formal placing of names in nomination, and a formal roll-call vote. Politics isn’t a variety show. Or at least, not quite.

Ted's a Liberal and Michelle's a Mom

THAT’S what we learned at the Democratic National Convention on Monday night.

It was good to see Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-MA) out there making what is probably his last major national speech. He gave us vintage Ted, railing at us in his hortatory style, and we were grateful for it, as the great liberal lion of our generation enters a twilight of age and disease. We honor Uncle Teddy in the autumn of his life.

Michelle Obama did what she needed to do, and did it well. She spoke as a loving daughter, sister, wife, and unfold

Dems Cheer Criticism of Teacher Unions!

HAVE OUR Democratic friends reached an inflection point on eduction?

Mickey Kaus reports the unimaginable from the Democratic National Convention. He went to an education event and expected the usual EdBlob talk about change, accountability, and resources. But not a word about the teachers’ unions.

Was he wrong! People started talking about how the adults’ agenda always wins against the children’s agenda.

Then Cory Booker of Newark unfold

McCain's Luck or Smarts?

HOW DID he do it? How did Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) come from a campaign written off as dead a year ago to being the Republican presidential nominee that is level-pegging with the Democrat in a Democratic year?

It’s luck, writes Mona Charen.

Luck has been sitting on John McCain’s shoulder for 12 months and seems to be warming to her task as November approaches.

Then she goes on to count the ways. Immigration has faded; unfold

Let's Not Repeat The New Deal Follies

A COUPLE of years ago Amity Shlaes wrote The Forgotten Man about the utter folly of US economic policy during the Great Depression.

First it was Herbert Hoover that helped prolong a necessary correction (ably assisted by the Federal Reserve System). Then it was Franklin Roosevelt starring in the ten year run of the New Deal Follies.

So if our political leaders want to avoid a repeat of that ten year disaster as the credit crunch continues, maybe they should may attention to Shlaes. unfold

BritCons Challenge Labour on "Fairness"

EVERY CONSERVATIVE knows about “fairness.” That’s the line that our liberal friends use when they are ready to increase our taxes and give more money to their supporters, er, no, make that “the poor.”

But now the British Conservative Party has issued a dossier on the Labour Party’s record called “Unfair Britain”.

It takes the present Labour government to task for making unfold

Rick Warren's "Civil" Project

MOST PEOPLE agree that it was Roe v. Wade that created the Christian Right. The forcible introduction of abortion-on-demand as the law of the land by the Supreme Court acting as the agent of the educated elite created a spark. It blew up, first of all, into Jerry Falwell. He was the Christian that liberals loved to hate. Falwell’s political vehicle as the Moral Majority, a cadre lobbying group.

Ten years later it was Christian broadcaster Pat Robertson’s turn to enter the political arena. He ran for president in unfold

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OPED

Cupcukes in Greenwich Schools

AT A GREENWICH, Conn. elementary school recently the principal was suspended for a little juggle-ology with the school student handbook. Seems that he told a parent that birthday cupcakes needed to be left at the office. See, he said a little later, it’s right here in the rules. Only it turned out that the principal had doctored the handbook, to provide, as Pooh-Bah, Lord ...

| more | comment | 08/23/08

Not Another Bipartisan Betrayal

In the week that the last of the climate-change “| more | comment | 08/19/08

The Politics of the Social Safety Net

"Obama Doesn't Really Think This Way"

Energy and Freedom

RMC CHAPTER-A-DAY

RMC Contents

Chapter 1: After the Welfare State

Chapter 2: Down in South Carolina and Out in Brooklyn

Chapter 3: Awakenings of Monotheism

Chapter 4: The Nineteenth Century From the Top Down

THE GREAT EVENT of the second millennium was the rise of the world-historical middle class.... more

Chapter 5: The Nineteenth Century From the Bottom Up

RMC BOOKS

RMC Book of the Day

Armstrong, Karen, A History of God

RMC Books on Education

Andrew Coulson, Market Education
How universal literacy was achieved before government education

Carl Kaestle, Pillars of the Republic
How we got our education system

James Tooley, Reclaiming Education
How only a market in education will provide opportunity for the poor

James Tooley, The Miseducation of Women
How the feminists wrecked education for boys and for girls

E.G. West, Education and the State
How education was doing fine before the government muscled in

RMC Books on Law

Hernando De Soto, The Mystery of Capital
How ordinary people in the United States wrote the law during the 19th century

F. A. Hayek, Law Legislation and Liberty, Vol 1
How to build a society based upon law

Henry Maine, Ancient Law
How the movement of progressive peoples is from status to contract

John Zane, The Story of Law
How law developed from early times down to the present

RMC Books on Mutual Aid

James Bartholomew, The Welfare State We're In
How the welfare state makes crime, education, families, and health care worse.

David Beito, From Mutual Aid to the Welfare State
How ordinary people built a sturdy social safety net in the 19th century

David Green, Before Beveridge: Welfare Before the Welfare State
How ordinary people built themselves a sturdy safety net before the welfare state

Theda Skocpol, Diminished Democracy
How the US used to thrive under membership associations and could do again

David Stevenson, The Origins of Freemasonry
How modern freemasonry got started in Scotland

RMC Books on Religion

David Aikman, Jesus in Beijing
How Christianity is booming in China

Finke & Stark, The Churching of America, 1776-1990
How the United States grew into a religious nation

Robert William Fogel, The Fourth Great Awakening and the Future of Egalitarianism
How progressives must act fast if they want to save the welfare state

David Martin, Pentecostalism: The World Their Parish
How Pentecostalism is spreading across the world

Amazon.com Widgets

READINGS

Is College Worth It?
stats on effectiveness of college for low-performers

People's Platform
Newt's poll-driven political issue platform

Ranting Cant from Enviros
they are raising the level of rhetoric because they are losing.

Obama Needs to Explain His Ties to William Ayers
Michael Barone gives a seminar on Chicago politics. How Obama became a "somebody somebody sent."

Pollution In The Arctic worse 100 years ago
Well, who would have thunk it? Apparently the eevil Rockefeller plan to make us all use oil resulted in a reduction in pollution.

Take the Test!

THE PROJECT

Work to restore the Road to the Middle Class. Here’s how. Ground it in faith. Grade it with education. Protect it with mutual aid. Defend it with the law. more>>

THE ARGUMENT

The Road to the Middle Class is a journey from a world of power to a world of trust and love. In religion, it is a journey from power gods that respond to sacrifice and augury to the God who makes a covenant with mankind. In education, it is a journey from the world of the spoken word to the world of the written word. In community, it is the journey from dependence on blood kin and upon clientage under a great lord to the mutual aid and the rules of the self-governing fraternal association. In law it is the journey from the violence of force and feud to the king�s peace, the law of contract, and private property.