The End Of The Bork Era

Robert Bork’s America is a land in which women would be forced into back-alley abortions, blacks would have to sit at segregated lunch counters, rogue police would break down citizen’s doors in midnight raids, schoolchildren could not be taught about evolution, writers and artists would be censored at the whim of government, and the doors of the federal courts would be shut on the fingers of millions of citizens for whom the judiciary is often the only protector of the individual rights that are the heart of our democracy.

That was then. Nineteen years later, Senator Kennedy is just another ageing Democratic senator with a taste for bullying witnesses.

This is now. Despite the nastiness of Senator Kennedy’s questioning of Judge Alito, who cares? Who cares what white-haired liberal senators think and do? Their time is past. They are voices of the past, mumbling the ideas of the past. Liberal ideas have consequences, and liberals would rather not talk about it. Because

Ted Kennedy’s America is a land in which mourning women cannot forget how old their aborted baby would be if it were alive today, blacks have been taught to hate the nation that confessed and honestly atoned for its Original Sin, rogue gang-bangers make life a misery for poor people, schoolchildren are not taught much of anything, writers and artists are censored at the whim of the politically correct, and the doors of the federal courts are slammed shut on the fingers of ordinary people to avoid disturbing the latest elite séance channeling a new constitutional penumbra or emanation.

But with Ted Kennedy now a rutted bully rather than the rutting bull of his prime, we can see the Bork era coming to a close. Conservatives have learned how to beat the bork. You nominate a brilliant, mild-mannered appeals court judge who can talk for days and days about the law and about the nice legal issues in this case or that case, and with every word demonstrate that he knows more about the law and about judging than any senator past, present, or future.

And, of course, after being roundly borked, insulted, demeaned, and humiliated for a month or two, the new justice has been thoroughly vaccinated against the disease of Strange New Respect, that malady discovered by political epidemiologist Tom Bethell that often turns good conservative justices into blithering liberals, just so that they can say to the Washington social elite: “You like me! You really like me!”

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Christopher Chantrill blogs at www.roadtothemiddleclass.com. His Road to the Middle Class is forthcoming.

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Action

The incentive that impels a man to act is always some uneasiness... But to make a man act [he must have] the expectation that purposeful behavior has the power to remove or at least to alleviate the felt uneasiness.
Ludwig von Mises, Human Action

Chappies

“But I saw a man yesterday who knows a fellow who had it from a chappie that said that Urquhart had been dipping himself a bit recklessly off the deep end.” —Freddy Arbuthnot
Dorothy L. Sayers, Strong Poison

China and Christianity

At first, we thought [the power of the West] was because you had more powerful guns than we had. Then we thought it was because you had the best political system. Next we focused on your economic system. But in the past twenty years, we have realized that the heart of your culture is your religion: Christianity.
David Aikman, Jesus in Beijing

Churches

[In the] higher Christian churches… they saunter through the liturgy like Mohawks along a string of scaffolding who have long since forgotten their danger. If God were to blast such a service to bits, the congregation would be, I believe, genuinely shocked. But in the low churches you expect it every minute.
Annie Dillard, Holy the Firm

Civil Society

“Civil Society”—a complex welter of intermediate institutions, including businesses, voluntary associations, educational institutions, clubs, unions, media, charities, and churches—builds, in turn, on the family, the primary instrument by which people are socialized into their culture and given the skills that allow them to live in broader society and through which the values and knowledge of that society are transmitted across the generations.
Francis Fukuyama, Trust

Class War

In England there were always two sharply opposed middle classes, the academic middle class and the commercial middle class. In the nineteenth century, the academic middle class won the battle for power and status... Then came the triumph of Margaret Thatcher... The academics lost their power and prestige and... have been gloomy ever since.
Freeman Dyson, “The Scientist as Rebel”

Conservatism

Conservatism is the philosophy of society. Its ethic is fraternity and its characteristic is authority — the non-coercive social persuasion which operates in a family or a community. It says ‘we should...’.
Danny Kruger, On Fraternity

Conservatism's Holy Grail

What distinguishes true Conservatism from the rest, and from the Blair project, is the belief in more personal freedom and more market freedom, along with less state intervention... The true Third Way is the Holy Grail of Tory politics today - compassion and community without compulsion.
Minette Marrin, The Daily Telegraph

Conversion

“When we received Christ,” Phil added, “all of a sudden we now had a rule book to go by, and when we had problems the preacher was right there to give us the answers.”
James M. Ault, Jr., Spirit and Flesh

Democratic Capitalism

I mean three systems in one: a predominantly market economy; a polity respectful of the rights of the individual to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness; and a system of cultural institutions moved by ideals of liberty and justice for all. In short, three dynamic and converging systems functioning as one: a democratic polity, an economy based on markets and incentives, and a moral-cultural system which is plural and, in the largest sense, liberal.
Michael Novak, The Spirit of Democratic Capitalism

Drang nach Osten

There was nothing new about the Frankish drive to the east... [let] us recall that the continuance of their rule depended upon regular, successful, predatory warfare.
Richard Fletcher, The Barbarian Conversion

Education

“We have met with families in which for weeks together, not an article of sustenance but potatoes had been used; yet for every child the hard-earned sum was provided to send them to school.”
E. G. West, Education and the State

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