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Daily Blogs for 8/2005
by Christopher Chantrill
After the Deluge | 08/31/05
As we get to know more about the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, the scale of the ...
Death of a Supply-side Salesman | 08/30/05
There have been many important figures in the rise of the American ...
It Couldn't Happen Here | 08/30/05
Let us talk about something important. No, not the burning question whether the
recent ...
People Want to Work at Wal-Mart | 08/29/05
Who would want to work at Wal-Mart? That’s the question at the bottom of the
left-wing ...
Good God, Carruthers. A Flat Tax in Germany? | 08/29/05
Don’t get too excited, old chap. Angela Merkel, head of the German Christian Democratic ...
More Points on the Board in Iraq | 08/28/05
Now that the Iraqi constitution is looking like more than Bush administration wishful ...
After 7/7, Brits are Rediscovering Britishness | 08/26/05
In the aftermath of 7/7, the Brits are pondering what it means to be British.
Even the ...
Will More Money Help? | 08/26/05
Democrats seem convinced that they don’t have the resources to get their message out. ...
Now Even Vacations are Wired | 08/25/05
Progress never solves anything. It only raises the stakes. Reporting from a vacation ...
Spengler on Global Demographics | 08/24/05
Not surprisingly, liberal academicians have hesitated to investigate the consequences of ...
In the Productivity Explosion, Government is Left Behind | 08/23/05
In a piece published for India’s Independence Day, ...
What Reenlistment Problem? | 08/23/05
Back in the spring, the MSM was trumpeting the news that the U.S. Army was
way behind ...
March of the Nannies | 08/22/05
Nannies at the NCAA want to ban the use of tribal names for college teams. But they ...
An Environmental Split-up | 08/21/05
If the Republicans were as split as the environmentalists are over wind power for Cape ...
Lying and Politics | 08/21/05
Everybody knows that politicians lie. But there was a time in Britain when the Duke of ...
The Coalition between the Left and Islamic Terror | 08/18/05
It still seems almost beyond belief: the coalition between the western left and
the ...
Legislating The Morality of Health | 08/18/05
How important is diet and exercise to a healthy life? Everyone knows, of course, that ...
Government Guts Gifted Kids | 08/17/05
All you need to say about government education is: Why? When the working
class of the ...
The Corrupted University | 08/17/05
One thing about big business. Whenever some CEO steps out of line, the whole ...
Teacher Knows Best at Wal-Mart | 08/16/05
How will the unions’ new strategy on increased organizing affect you and me? Well, here ...
Al Qaeda's Seven Phase Strategy | 08/15/05
Through analysis of an interview in Der Spiegel ...
Liberals Said It Couldn't Be Done | 08/14/05
Remember the Carter malaise? Remember 10 percent inflation and 10 percent ...
Many Muslims are on Our Side | 08/12/05
On the “just how big are they anyway” front, the incomparable ...
Last Union Breakup Led to More Organizing | 08/12/05
Will the breakup make a difference to the union movement? That
the question as the ...
Coverup! Clinton Administration Knew of 9/11 Plot! | 08/12/05
Our objective friends at the MSM are very busy trumpeting the left-wing fantasies of a ...
What If They Are Stumble-Bums? | 08/11/05
What is the difference between a bunch of would-be world conquerors who can talk
a good ...
Global Warming Convergence | 08/11/05
Is global warming real? Up to now there had been a difference between surface ...
Welfare in Paris | 08/10/05
We don’t often get to read about the details of the welfare state in Old Europe due
to ...
Trying to Smoke Out the Lawyers | 08/09/05
Remember the great lawsuit against Big Tobacco? It was a noble crusade to make the ...
Turtles All The Way Down | 08/09/05
The summer of ’05 seems to be turning into a good old-fashioned sophomore bull session, ...
It's Because We are Taking Over the World | 08/08/05
What could we do, the war critics ask, to deal with Al Qaeda’s demands so that
they ...
Inside the Movement | 08/08/05
We should have been reading this stuff years ago, but better late than never. The London ...
Jobs Disconnect Continues | 08/05/05
The increase in non-farm payroll jobs this last month was impressive, at 207,000 new ...
Economy Great, Americans Are Miserable | 08/05/05
What’s wrong with the Yanks, asks British commentator ...
New Biggies Help Self-employed | 08/04/05
Everybody knows that the e-businesses like Amazon.com and eBay are revolutionizing
the ...
What's the Big Deal About Stem Cells? | 08/04/05
Ever since Ron Reagan Jr. appealingly promised at the Democratic National Convention in ...
China Converts to Christianity | 08/03/05
It’s not a story that leads in The New York Times. It’s not an issue that
you’d ...
Moderate Democrats Put Party over Principle | 08/02/05
Five years ago a group of moderate Democrats signed onto a declaration of principle
on ...
The Power of Ideas against Terror | 08/02/05
It was 58 years ago that Ayatollah Khomeini issued a fatwa against Iran’s ...
Judge Obstruction: Now They Tell Us | 08/01/05
Now they tell us. The Democratic tactic of obstructing judges is hurting them at the ...
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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