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Daily Blogs for 10/2005
by Christopher Chantrill
The Folly of Feminism | 10/31/05
Judging by her article in The New York Times Magazine about
the rough time women ...
Alito, Scalito | 10/31/05
Conservatives got what we asked for. In Appeals Court Judge Samuel A. Alito we
have a ...
The Lessons of Volcker and Greenspan | 10/29/05
As the quarter century of inflation-free prosperity under the monetary policies of ...
The Conservative Base Rejoins the Bush Team | 10/28/05
There’s a problem about belonging to a political base. Sometimes your party ignores you. ...
Miers Withdraws | 10/27/05
Today, October 27, Harriet Miers ...
The Global Education Mess | 10/26/05
We think that we have an education mess here in the United States with our education ...
Black and White Shame on Race | 10/26/05
There are two sides to the original sin of the United States of America: Negro slavery. ...
Name-calling Lefties | 10/25/05
We are all so well trained that we often forget just how much we are not
allowed to say. ...
The Fight for Economic Competence | 10/24/05
It’s been well said that, if the parties of the right stand for anything, they stand ...
Battle of Trafalgar | 10/21/05
Today, October 21, is a day that will live... in glory. It was this day two hundred ...
Out of the Mouths of Babes | 10/20/05
What really happened to those WMDs? And what really was the relationship between Al ...
Democrats Still Don't Get It | 10/19/05
Democrats are working hard on making a comeback in 2006 and 2008. But it is not clear ...
"Harmless" Drugs | 10/18/05
As parents and teachers coke our children up on Ritalin, retired
physician ...
Media Loses Heart | 10/18/05
Back in the good old days, when Ronald Reagan, the “amiable dunce,” was president, ...
Iraqis Vote For Constitution | 10/17/05
Early returns show that the Iraqi people ...
Thatcher's 80th Birthday | 10/14/05
They celebrated the 80th birthday last night of ...
Bush's Plan on Track in Iraq | 10/13/05
For about a couple of years now Democrats have pushed the line that the Bush ...
We Don't Need No Stinkin' Reforms | 10/12/05
What does the recent German election mean, in which the two main parties, the SPD and the ...
Low US Savings: Is It a Problem? | 10/12/05
One of the concerns of enlightened elite opinion recently has been a worry over the ...
Who Lost Delphi? | 10/11/05
On October 8, 2005,
Delphi, the auto ...
The New Tory Prince | 10/11/05
As the song goes, “I been down so long that down don’t worry me.” That
is what the ...
Happy Columbus Day | 10/10/05
How should we celebrate Columbus Day? As a celebration of western European values and ...
The President Plants a Stake in Iraq | 10/07/05
In his speech on Iraq on October 6, 2005, ...
Ronnie Barker R.I.P. | 10/06/05
They don’t make them like that any more, certainly not like ...
August Wilson R.I.P. | 10/05/05
In an era in which American theater has driven theatergoers to despair as it
panders ...
The Chavez Plan to Wreck Venezuela | 10/05/05
As we thrill to the excitements of US politics, let us not forget Venezuela as Hugo ...
49 Up: Oral History as it Happens | 10/04/05
Forty years ago Granada TV in Britain broadcast a documentary, Seven Up, about ...
Miers or Less: The Fight Goes On | 10/03/05
President Bush ...
The Underclass: Remember Them? | 10/02/05
Charles Murray published Losing Ground twenty years ago. In it he told how social ...
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
What Liberals Think About Conservatives
[W]hen I asked a liberal longtime editor I know with a mainstream [publishing] house for a candid, shorthand version of the assumptions she and her colleagues make about conservatives, she didn't hesitate. “Racist, sexist, homophobic, anti-choice fascists,” she offered, smiling but meaning it.
Harry Stein, I Can't Believe I'm Sitting Next to a Republican
Liberal Coercion
[T]he Liberal, and still more the subspecies Radical... more than any other in these latter days seems under the impression that so long as he has a good end in view he is warranted in exercising over men all the coercion he is able[.]
Herbert Spencer, The Man Versus the State
Moral Imperatives of Modern Culture
These emerge out of long-standing moral notions of freedom, benevolence, and the affirmation of ordinary life... I have been sketching a schematic map... [of] the moral sources [of these notions]... the original theistic grounding for these standards... a naturalism of disengaged reason, which in our day takes scientistic forms, and a third family of views which finds its sources in Romantic expressivism, or in one of the modernist successor visions.
Charles Taylor, Sources of the Self
US Life in 1842
Families helped each other putting up homes and barns. Together, they built churches, schools, and common civic buildings. They collaborated to build roads and bridges. They took pride in being free persons, independent, and self-reliant; but the texture of their lives was cooperative and fraternal.
Michael Novak, The Spirit of Democratic Capitalism
Society and State
For [the left] there is only the state and the individual, nothing in between. No family to rely on, no friend to depend on, no community to call on. No neighbourhood to grow in, no faith to share in, no charities to work in. No-one but the Minister, nowhere but Whitehall, no such thing as society - just them, and their laws, and their rules, and their arrogance.
David Cameron, Conference Speech 2008
Faith and Politics
As far as the Catholic Church is concerned, the principal focus of her interventions in the public arena is the protection and promotion of the dignity of the person, and she is thereby consciously drawing particular attention to principles which are not negotiable...
[1.] protection of life in all its stages, from the first moment of conception until natural death; [2.] recognition and promotion of the natural structure of the family... [3.] the protection of the right of parents to educate their children.
Pope Benedict XVI, Speech to European Peoples Party, 2006
Never Trust Experts
No lesson seems to be so deeply inculcated by the experience of life as that you should never trust experts. If you believe doctors, nothing is wholesome: if you believe the theologians, nothing is innocent: if you believe the soldiers, nothing is safe. They all require their strong wine diluted by a very large admixture of insipid common sense.
Lord Salisbury, “Letter to Lord Lytton”
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
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”
Government Expenditure
The Union publishes an exact return of the amount of its taxes; I can get copies of the budgets of the four and twenty component states; but who can tell me what the citizens spend in the administration of county and township?
Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America
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
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