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Three Legs Good, Six Legs Better
by Christopher Chantrill
KEN BLACKWELL reminds us that the conservative coalition is not a just the three-legged stool of the Reagan Coalition but something bigger. Here’s his enumeration of the honored members of the conservative coalition and their number one issues.
| 01/31/08 11:17 am ETAgainst McCain
by Christopher Chantrill
AS HE CAMPAIGNS for the nomination of the Republican Party Senator John McCain certainly does a good job of infuriating the conservative base of the party. For instance, you’d think, crafty politician that he is, that he’d have learned how not to talk like a Democrat, playing the class warfare card, and all. But no. Last night at the Republican California debate at the Reagan presidential library, he did a good job running unfold
| 01/31/08 6:19 am ETFlorida: McCain over Romney
by Christopher Chantrill
IT SEEMS incredible that the “maverick” Senator John McCain is the Republican frontrunner. How could this moderate senator from Arizona be leading the the fight for the nomination in the conservative Republican Party? The answer, I think, came in South Carolina when non-activist conservatives seemed to be going for McCain out of buyer’s remorse. Voters were wondering if they were really right to choose George W. Bush back in 2000. The sensible thing to do seemed to be to vote for McCain. Anyway, write
| 01/30/08 3:42 am ETFox Focus Group Response to SOTU
by Christopher Chantrill
IN HIS LAST State of the Union speech President Bush seemed to be a confident man, hardly the broken, failed president that he critics imagine. And you could tell that from the reactions of the focus group assembled by Frank Luntz for Fox News. Few in the focus group had a positive opinion of the president coming into the speech, but nearly all had a good impression after the speech. Now how could that be? Could it be that the media (including unfold
| 01/29/08 2:33 am ETThrow Money at Higher Ed?
by Christopher Chantrill
ARIZONA Governor Janet Napolitano want to spend more money on higher education according to Matthew Ladner from the Arizona based Goldwater Institute. “We must recognize that higher education is something that all Arizona children will need to succeed,” stated Governor Napolitano. The governor wants to increase funding to double the number of college unfold
| 01/28/08 11:07 am ET"Mansfield Park" Mis-Priced
by Christopher Chantrill
ENOUGH OF politics and race cards. Let’s talk about real issues, like a disastrous TV production of Mansfield Park. In the golden age of Hollywood the culture snobs like you and I would always sneer at the costume dramas: Marie Antoinette, Queen of France presented with a hairstyle and small talk right out of 1930s popular culture. There was one comfort. The BBC would never stoop to that sort of thing. Nor would Masterpiece Theater. At least, not when dramatizing Jane Austen. But as my unfold
| 01/28/08 3:50 am ETParty Splitting Time
by Christopher Chantrill
EVERYONE is accusing everyone else of splitting the party. On the Republican side it started with Mike Huckabee, who seemed to be splitting the evangelicals off from the economic and national-security conservatives. Then it was John McCain splitting national-security conservatives off and seeming to diss the economic conservatives and the social conservatives. Then the Clinton tag team started playing gender cards and race cards within the Democratic Party by ridiculing and then polarizing Barack Obama. Then the great unfold
| 01/25/08 5:38 am ETStimulus Plan Could Be Worse
by Christopher Chantrill
HELICOPTER Money. That’s what Larry Kudlow calls it. The economic stimulus deal between the White House and House leaders announced today primarily amounts to a plan to borrow money from investors and give it to taxpayers. Up to $600 per person and more if you are married with children. But if you want economic stimulus instead of the satisfaction of “doing something” then the way to stimulate the economy is to lower the unfold
| 01/24/08 6:47 am ETThe Economy: Now What?
by Christopher Chantrill
LAST WEEK Wall Street was calling for a cut of 50 basis points in the Fed Funds rate. And just to get the Fed’s attention international markets tanked over the MLK holiday weekend. So what did the Fed do? Well we all know now. It topped Wall Street and made a 75 basis point cut, reducing the Fed Funds rate to 3.5 percent. A “panic” cut, according to the British media. Well, yes, but if you look at other short term rates, not out of line. But we ordinary mortals must wonder: Is this 1929 all over unfold
| 01/23/08 3:14 am ETWhy Republicans Don't Appeal to Blacks
by Christopher Chantrill
IN AN ARTICLE about the identity politics now playing at a Democratic presidential debate near you Lisa Schiffren lays out the simple reason why Republicans have never succeeded in attracting black votes.
In my bleeding-heart conservative youth, I once complained to Spencer Abraham — then the head of the Michigan GOP — that Republicans didn’t try hard enough to attract black voters. He repeated the unfold
| 01/22/08 6:49 am ETMLK, Roe, and Conservatism
by Christopher Chantrill
A WEEK AGO presidential candidate Hillary Clinton got herself into hot water by making the point that it is presidents like Lyndon Johnson that write the laws and not activists like Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. She has a point. Politicians do tend to come along at the last minute and suck up all the oxygen in the room when they take credit for movements that have been decades in the making. In my view it is not politicians that count. It is the people who think thoughts and the actors who lead movements and activist unfold
| 01/21/08 8:56 am ETBack of the Bus No More
by Christopher Chantrill
IT’S always good to hear the sensible words of the adults after a week or so of ranting and raging by the kids. So today Charles Krauthammer opines on the LBJ-MLK flap. You remember. Hillary Clinton said that it is presidents that get things done. It took Lyndon Johnson to pass the civil rights acts of the 1960s. That is true, and it is true for a shameful reason. Back in the 1960s blacks unfold
| 01/18/08 2:49 am ETFreakologic: Making Life Logical
by Christopher Chantrill
AFTER A stunning success with The Undercover Economist, British economist Tim Harford is out with a new book, The Logic of Life. It’s all about the logical choices that people make in their lives. For instance, how would you think that women react when a lot of men are in prison? The more men are in prison, the more likely women are to get themselves a job, and the unfold
| 01/17/08 6:17 am ETThe Reagan-Bush Era Is Over
by Christopher Chantrill
LAST SUNDAY Newt Gingrich went on George Stefanopoulos’ ABC Sunday show and said that the Reagan era was over. Said Newt: We are at the end of the George W. Bush era. We are at the end of the Reagan era. We’re at a point in time when we’re about to start redefining — as a number of people started talking about, starting to redefine — the nature of the Republican Party, in response to what the country needs.
| 01/16/08 3:29 am ETThe Bonfire of the Multicultural Vanities
by Christopher Chantrill
DOES NEW York Times columnist David Brooks nail it, or does he nail it? This contest for the nomination of the Democratic Party between a white woman and a black man is turning into a bonfire of the multicultural vanities, he advises. Both Clinton and Obama have eagerly donned the mantle of identity politics. A Clinton unfold
| 01/15/08 3:43 am ETDem Political Poker
by Christopher Chantrill
IN THE LAST generation our Democratic card sharps have had a grand old time playing the race card, or the gender card, or the class card in the nation’s political card rooms. Time after time they cleaned the clocks of poor unsuspecting Republican fish. What great fun it all was! Until now. There was always the danger, of course, that one day some ruthless Democrat would decide to play the card on a fellow Democrat for crude political gain. But generations of Republicans have gone to their Maker without it unfold
| 01/14/08 9:36 am ETPrimaries Expose Party Splits
by Christopher Chantrill
IN A USEFUL review of the campaign season thus far, Michael Barone finds that the candidates are exposing the fault lines in the two major parties. First the Democrats: One faction of the Democratic Party is relatively upscale, well-educated, young. This faction is supporting Barack Obama. The other faction is relatively downscale, less-educated, old. This faction is supporting Hillary Clinton. The mainstream media unfold
| 01/14/08 4:02 am ETLiberal Fascism Over the Rainbow
by Christopher Chantrill
SOMEWHERE over the rainbow Somewhere over the rainbow Some day I’ll wish upon a star Daily when the netrooter
Way up high
There’s a land that I heard of
Once in a lullaby
States aren’t blue
And the dreams that you dare to dream
Really do come true
And wake up where the libs are far behind me
Where programs melt like lemondrops
And shrink below the budget tops
That’s where you’ll find me
Lib’rals cry
“Fascist Neanderthaler”
Why then, oh why can’t unfold
| 01/11/08 2:40 am ETThe World's Cheapest Car: Tata Nano
by Christopher Chantrill
SOME THINGS are more important than politics, as we all know. The children, for example. Also personal transportation. And today there was a milestone in personal transportation. You can get a measure of the excitement from Richard S. Chang of the New York Times reporting from India. Over the course of the New Delhi Auto Expo, which began this week, anticipation had grown to unfold
| 01/10/08 3:50 am ETClinton Gender Card Threepeat
by Christopher Chantrill
NOBODY EVER accused the Clintons of modesty. So it is not surprising that, in the crisis of New Hampshire, they played the gender card. They did it before, and it worked. But to play the gender card three times in one weekend. That’s positively Clintonian! It even got to Andrew Sullivan: The Clinton machine is now poised to pull every partisan lever and deploy every cheap tactic: the gender unfold
| 01/09/08 12:58 pm ETIs the Right Wrong?
by Christopher Chantrill
TEN YEARS ago, Daniel Finkelstein was an advisor to the doomed Conservative government of British Prime Minister John Major. He knew that the Conservatives were going to lose, and that the Conservatives had to change. “Then what are you waiting for?” said an American friend. Now FInkelstein wants to return the compliment. What do the Republicans do if they lose? They have to change, and unfold
| 01/09/08 3:23 am ET"Liberal Fascism" Hits the Shelves
by Christopher Chantrill
I GOT AN email today from Barnes & Noble to tell me that my Liberal Fascism is on its way.
But I almost wish I had decided to go out and buy it at the store. Author Jonah Goldberg reports that some buyers are getting the dead fish treatment from the liberal store clerks, as in: “The clerk made me say the name three times. She looked for it. Couldn’t find it. I made her unfold
| 01/08/08 8:57 am ETWinning the Obama Way
by Christopher Chantrill
THEY SAY that the Clintons invented and patented the politics of personal destruction. But then there’s Senator Barack Obama. According to Kyle-Anne Shiver in the American Thinker Obama won his first elected office with a bit of fancy footwork. He was running for the Illinois State Senate against the incumbent Alice Palmer. Palmer had failed in a run for Congress and filed to run for her old job. According to unfold
| 01/08/08 3:41 am ETWhat Is This Thing Called "Change?"
by Christopher Chantrill
DEAR OLD Rush is in better case today than he was Friday, on the day after the Iowa caucuses. But he confesses to being flummoxed by all this talk of “change.” That’s because, as far as he can tell, a chap like Barack Obama doesn’t represent change at all, but just same-old-same-old adding another layer of government programs on the already rather substantial government program cake. Rush is thinking like a political activist, not like an ordinary voter. Voters are not saying that they want to change unfold
| 01/07/08 8:01 am ETThe SST BizJet
by Christopher Chantrill
ENOUGH OF the sainted Barack Obama starring in “The Fall of the House of Clinton.” Enough of the end of the Romney campaign. Or is it the mean-spirited John McCain and his Straight Snark Express. Let’s talk about guy stuff, like a new $80 million business jet that’s designed to carry 12 important executives at Mach 1.6 non-stop for up to 4,600 miles. Of course, it is nothing to do with prestige and getting there before the ordinary hoi polloi in their airborne Greyhound buses. As
| 01/07/08 3:55 am ETThe Horse-race After Iowa
by Christopher Chantrill
THE GLORIOUS thing about presidential politics in the US is that it really is an open process. An outsider really can come in and change the politics of the United States. Last night two outsider candidates came in and beat the establishment, politics-by-the-numbers candidates. Of course, Harvard-educated Barack Obama isn’t really such an outsider, and neither is Governor Huckabee. But they certainly cleaned the clocks of insiders Clinton and Romney. In an
| 01/04/08 3:22 am ETConservatives Need Not Apply
by Christopher Chantrill
THE AUGUST New York Times has decided to give conservative William Kristol a column on the editorial page. Not a bad idea, you’d think. Kristol represents a fairly centrist big-government conservatism that ought to go down fairly well with the big-government liberals that read the Times. But you’d be wrong. The NYT readers are beside themselves. Writes Harry Stein, author of How I Accidentally Joined unfold
| 01/03/08 3:34 am ETOn the Day Before
by Christopher Chantrill
TOMORROW, Friday, January 3, 2008, they will start counting the first votes in the 2008 presidential election. All the hype will start converting into Ws and Ls.
In the Republican race it seems that the most professional candidate, the guy who has spent the money and built the organization, and plotted the most detailed strategy—Mitt Romney—is challenged by two candidates without much of either. In Iowa, Mike Huckabee has come to challenge Mitt Romney, but lacking money and organization has had to rely on stunts unfold
| 01/02/08 4:20 am ET
Faith & Purpose
“When we began first to preach these things, the people appeared as awakened from the sleep of ages—they seemed to see for the first time that they were responsible beings...”
Finke, Stark, The Churching of America, 1776-1990
Mutual Aid
In 1911... at least nine million of the 12 million covered by national insurance were already members of voluntary sick pay schemes. A similar proportion were also eligible for medical care.
Green, Reinventing Civil Society
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
Living Under Law
Law being too tenuous to rely upon in [Ulster and the Scottish borderlands], people developed patterns of settling differences by personal fighting and family feuds.
Thomas Sowell, Conquests and Cultures
German Philosophy
The primary thing to keep in mind about German and Russian thought since
1800 is that it takes for granted that the Cartesian, Lockean or Humean scientific and
philosophical conception of man and nature... has been shown by indisputable evidence to be
inadequate.
F.S.C. Northrop, The Meeting of East and West
Knowledge
Inquiry does not start unless there is a problem... It is the problem and its
characteristics revealed by analysis which guides one first to the relevant facts and then,
once the relevant facts are known, to the relevant hypotheses.
F.S.C. Northrop, The Logic of the Sciences and the Humanities
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
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
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
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
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
Living Law
The recognition and integration of extralegal property rights [in the Homestead Act] was a key element in the United States becoming the most important market economy and producer of capital in the world.
Hernando de Soto, The Mystery of Capital
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