Blogs for 2005 - Road to the Middle Class

SO WE DIDN´T find WMDs in Iraq, according to the latest report on WMD intelligence. But in the years before the Iraq War, Saddam´s budget for WMD research and development was up, big time. So what does that mean? Bush Lied? Saddam Lied? We should fire the entire intelligence community? We should double its budget? We should impeach Bush for acting on mistaken intelligence? It depends on whose ox you want to unfold

Taking Hillary Seriously

by Christopher Chantrill

PEGGY NOONAN reminds us not to underestimate Hillary Clinton. She´s running for president, and she´ll probably win. That´s the baseline that we should start unfold

Mixing Religion and Politics

by Christopher Chantrill

IN THIS LONG article, Edward Feser takes apart the liberal demand to separate religion and politics. The simple response is: You Can´t. Religion, broadly understood, means the attempt to understand the reality of human existence and purpose. Politics must reflect some attempt to understand the world and its meaning, otherwise it is simply aimless. What liberals are doing, of course, is a power play. They want their religion to drive politics, not unfold

Democrats Worry About Catholics

by Christopher Chantrill

DEMOCRAT CONSULTANTS Stan Greenberg and Matt Hogan look at erosion in the Catholic vote for Democrats. What they must do is “reach across to more traditional Catholics,” define themselves as “the middle class party,” and “reassure broadly on values.” This sounds great, but tell it to MoveOn.org. The Democratic base defines itself in opposition to all these themes, because they are the defining unfold

Cab Drivers are Giving Real-Estate Tips

by Christopher Chantrill

OLD JOE KENNEDY knew that something was wrong when his shoe-shine boy started giving him stock tips in 1929. Cab drivers were giving stock tips in 1999. Now John Makin reports that cab drivers are giving real-estate tips in Florida. Alan Greenspan, can you spell unfold

Steyn: It's Still Wrong

by Christopher Chantrill

AS USUAL, THE incomparable Mark Steyn gets to the heart of the matter of the culture of life vs. the culture of convenience. On Schiavo, he intones: “it may be legal under Florida law for the state to order her to be starved to death. But it is still unfold

Clueless Old Europe

by Christopher Chantrill

ENJOY THESE delicious caricatures of Americans from Stern, the German magazine: noble liberals put up against wacko conservative nutters. Those crazy Europeans. One of these days their mean-spirited ignorance is going to cost unfold

Here Comes Polyamory

by Christopher Chantrill

AFTER MAINSTREAMING the idea of gay marriage, the radical left is limbering up for the next stage: the mainstreaming of polyamory. You girls will remember that: it used to be called polygamy. And the polyamorists have found a bright, intelligent Brit academic to do it for them, according to Stanley Kurtz. Her name is Elizabeth F. Emens.

“A whiz kid with a Ph.D. in English from Cambridge University and a J.D. from Yale Law School, Emens, who teaches the University of Chicago Law School, has published a unfold

Steyn Won't Let Up on Old Europe

by Christopher Chantrill

GLOATER MARK Steyn is at it again, needling aging Europe about its population crash and advising it to get it on before it´s too late. Forget about finishing those “Anger Management, Systemic Racism and Gay Studies degrees,” he advises. Get to work and make some unfold

Tory Party Sees a Glint of Hope

by Christopher Chantrill

EVER SINCE the mid Nineties, the British Conservative Party has been on the mat, the old Tory dog befuddled by the prancings and sincerities of Tony Blair´s New Labour. But now the old Tory dog is starting to growl. And this breathless columnist is reporting that her dyed in the wool Labour friend is complaining about Tony unfold

Republicans are Cracking Up. No They are Not.

by Christopher Chantrill

WHICH IS IT? Andrew Sullivan says the Republicans are cracking up as their various sub-groups start to fight. Robert D. Kaplan says that the Democrats need a guy like Dick Cheney who can keep all the Democratic constituencies in unfold

Competitive Sports? For Children? Whatever Next?

by Christopher Chantrill

IN BRITLAND the progressives are just as firmly opposed to competitive childrens´ sports as their pals here in the United States. But here is a story that the progressives are losing and children are winning. The No Winning Allowed philosophy is being replaced with a school sports program and young teachers that never experienced competitive sports in their lives (!) are learning how to unfold

Britain's Flourishing Slave Trade

by Christopher Chantrill

SO YOU THOUGHT the slave trade went out in the early 19th century? And slavery itself in the American Civil War. Don´t worry; it´s alive and flourishing in Britain, aided and abetted by East European illegal immigrants. Of course, this new slave trade is not supplying strapping field hands for the cotton fields. It is supplying girls for the sex trade. Is that what liberals mean by “sexual unfold

Krauthammer "Tells It Like It Is"

by Christopher Chantrill

BACK IN THE Seventies when liberals ruled the world, a sports-mad liberal Jewish kid from New York like Howard Cosell could “tell it like it is,” knowing that liberals claimed an understanding on reality far beyond the world of sports. Lately, liberals have not been so confident about their grip on reality. And so now it is evil Jewish neo-cons who have been getting a reputation for unvarnished truth telling. President Bush can´t say I told you so, but unfold

The Witness of Ashley Smith

by Christopher Chantrill

THE ENORMITY of the Brian Nichols affair in Atlanta speaks for itself. Conservative bad girl Ann Coulter can twit liberals at full strength about the folly of women guarding dangerous criminals (here). But the real story has been captured by conservative good girl Peggy Noonan (here). For the question that bellows out across the noisy public square is: after decades of the unfold

And Now This...

by Christopher Chantrill

FIRST WALI Jumblatt said it: “[W]hen I saw the Iraqi people voting [on January 30th], 8 million of them, it was the start of a new Arab world” And now here´s another Arab voice saying that the worm has turned and that Bush was right. “From Casablanca to Kuwait City, what Bush says mirrors, reinforces and, in fact, reflects what has long been in the heart: A yearning for human rights, justice, freedom, rule of law, transparency, limits on power unfold

What Went Wrong? No Fairness Doctrine

by Christopher Chantrill

POLITICAL PHILOSOPHER John Kerry has stumbled on the reason for his defeat, according to political humorist P.J. O´Rourke. The abolition of the FCC Fairness Doctrine back in the 1980s. “A lot of the mainstream media were very responsible during the campaign. They tried to put out a balanced view, and they did show what they thought to be the truth in certain situations of attack... But it never penetrated.” If only we could bring unfold

Democrats in the Desert

by Christopher Chantrill

MICHAEL BARONE surveys the plight of the “bookless” Democrats. Nobody is coming up with good ideas, and it doesn´t look like things are going to change. Some day, perhaps, a Democrat will come up with a progressive idea that doesn´t involve expanding the powers of government. When that day dawns, Republicans should look to their unfold

Steyn: Yeah, Terrorism in Ireland

by Christopher Chantrill

NEVER MIND Al Qaeda. Let´s talk about the terrorist warlords in Northern Ireland and the sisters of the slain Robert McCartney. For years British governments have been appeasing the IRA and now, suddenly, its power has come up on the radar with the brutal killing of McCartney in a Belfast pub. “There were 70 witnesses in the bar but none of them saw a thing.” Needless to say, Mark Steyn has something to say about all unfold

Ronnie We Hardly Knew Ye!

by Christopher Chantrill

AS DEMOCRACY starts to bud in the Middle East, this commentator remembers the “surprising” day the Berlin Wall fell and Ronald Reagan´s commentary on ABC. Why, he asked, should we be surprised at all this? Why was it “that anyone should be surprised that a people enslaved for over four decades should want to agitate for their freedom. The surprising thing was not that people wanted to be free. Rather, it was that they were enslaved in the first unfold

Slip in the Shiv

by Christopher Chantrill

LET´S STICK it to Dan Rather one more time! There is so much to tell, so little time to tell unfold

Cuddly Pessimist Admits Error

by Christopher Chantrill

AMERICA´S MOST cheerful pessimist, Ex-Brit John Derbyshire, cheerfully admits that the pessimists were wrong, he being one of them, of course. But still, there is plenty to be pessimistic about. Things could still go horribly wrong. And anyway, what is the point of being pessimistic unless your pessimism turns out to be too pessimistic. Or something like unfold

Steyn: Assad Checks the Eye Chart

by Christopher Chantrill

FINALLY, THE “arab street” is being heard from, and it is holding up an eye chart not for Uncle Sam but for Boy Assad in Syria. Mark Steyn is gloating unfold

Spengler: 20th Century Losers are Dying Out

by Christopher Chantrill

LOOK AT THE UN population projections, advises Spengler, and think about what it means. The nations that are losing population are the ones that lost the wars of the twentieth century. Ukraine, Russia, Germany. There is no substitute for collective identity, he warns, of the kind that showed its ugliest side with Hitler and Stalin. Depopulation begins with the Ibsen woman: “Instead of children, she has soul-conflicts.” We know all about that, these days, unfold

Your Bias is Showing!

by Christopher Chantrill

DAVID FRUM takes The Washington Post to task for its instinctive liberal bias. Side-by-side stories make the point. The first is an article about evangelicals by the “acid-tongued” Hanna Rosin. Her piece “drips with disdain.” Right alongside is a cheerleading report on a public showing of PBS´s recent lesbian episode of “Postcards from unfold

Idiotarianism, A Brief Survey

by Christopher Chantrill

SAID NELSON Mandela: “Like slavery and apartheid, poverty is not natural. It is man-made and can be overcome and eradicated by the actions of human beings.” Actually, old chum, the opposite is true, writes Tim Worstall. Poverty is the natural state of mankind, has been for millennia. “What is unnatural and what is man made is wealth.” And as for slavery and apartheid, it was only a little over 200 years ago that a few crazy British thought up the idea of unfold

"This does not mean that George Bush has been right all along."

by Christopher Chantrill

OH NO. PERISH the thought. But Britain´s lefty Guardian is doing a modified limited hangout on the astonishing facts on the ground in the Middle East. You can understand why journalism needs good writers. It takes real talent to cover your tracks or convince everyone that black is white. The harmless lovable fuzzballs at The New York Times are in the middle of a similar Ali Shuffle, as reported by a gloating unfold

Business as a Learning Process

by Christopher Chantrill

ARNOLD KLING wants to bury the equations of the mathematical economists and proposes instead a “Learning Economics.” Economic activity is not just a question of production and exchange. It is a learning process. Mathematics is good for building equations to describe economic activity when we know all the variables and when nothing changes. But when people are learning, then it is not so good. “One might say that economic growth involves the transition unfold

Finding Jews for GOP

by Christopher Chantrill

WHEN THE LEFT is becoming more and more anti-Semitic by the day, the world wonders why Jews still vote Democratic. But someone is doing something about it, talking to Jews and showing them how far the party of Franklin Delano Roosevelt has gone to join the gathering forces arrayed against the Jews. It´s the Republican Jewish Coalition, and it´s working to create a new Jewish unfold