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Daily Blogs for 12/2006
by Christopher Chantrill
2006: How Many Unsung Heroes Died? | 12/31/06
The year 2006 saw the deaths of many famous people, from Robert Altman to Al Zarqawi, as ...
Just Don't Say the M-word | 12/29/06
American-in-London ...
David Cameron Exposes "Breakdown Britain" | 12/29/06
For over a year people in Britain have been wondering if the new leader of the ...
Mr Populist wants Privilege and Subsidy | 12/28/06
Senators Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama have been getting nice coverage as moderates, ...
To Help The Poor | 12/28/06
We are far too severe on good honest chaps like Ebenezer Scrooge who refuse to celebrate ...
How Certain Are You? | 12/27/06
The forces of ant-religious bigotry have been developing a nice little meme lately about ...
Gerald Ford, RIP | 12/27/06
President Gerald Ford, who died December 26, represented the minority Republican Party of ...
The Popeye Moment on Single-Parent Families | 12/26/06
And while we are at it, let’s get serious about single-parent families. As the climate ...
Is Racism a Fact or a Faith? | 12/26/06
Let’s talk about racism. Well, it’s the day after Christmas, and time to take up weighty ...
Fonz Moves In On British "Panto" | 12/22/06
If it’s Christmas it must be time for “panto,” the deliciously vulgar British holiday ...
Tis The Season(1) | 12/22/06
It’s the season, and time for a cheery round of carols under the Christmas Tree.
Of ...
The Peace Party vs. The Power Party(2) | 12/22/06
For some time many people have defined the main political division in the United States ...
Skills Commission Wants to Centralize Education | 12/21/06
The New Commission on the Skills of the American Workforce has issued a report on the ...
President Bush Wants To Compromise | 12/21/06
President Bush says he’s all in favor of working with Democrats in the new Congress. As ...
Of Course Blogs are Boring and Predictable... | 12/20/06
What exactly was the point of ...
Watch Your Wallet Says Pete Du Pont(1) | 12/20/06
Wondering what the new Congress will mean? ...
The Child of a Sperm Donor(1) | 12/19/06
Suppose you decided that you wanted a child and you got yourself inseminated by anonymous ...
The Widening Middle Eastern War(1) | 12/19/06
Jordan’s King Abdullah recently warned of three developing civil wars in the Middle East. ...
Middle Class Muscle in South China | 12/18/06
Everybody wonders what is going to happen in China. Will it reform out of its Communist ...
It's The Anti-Semitic Violence That's The Problem | 12/18/06
In Britain right now, one in 400 Jews is likely to be the victim of a “faith-related” ...
After The Great Seattle Windstorm(1) | 12/15/06
The Great Seattle Windstorm is now just a memory. But this morning it was kind of a mess ...
So Bush Created a Catastrophe | 12/15/06
We are at an inflection point in the War on Terror. Three years of effort to produce ...
The Lessons of Pinochet | 12/14/06
Former President Auguste Pinochet of Chile, who died last week, was a dictator who ...
The Great Sexual Taboo | 12/14/06
It’s the great taboo of our time. It’s eating away at half the population. It’s a ...
Oh House! Not Another Anti-hero | 12/13/06
Oh no! Last night on Fox Dr. Gregory House just decided to cop a plea on his forging of ...
God Bless the Secular Fundamentalists(2) | 12/13/06
Did you know that we live in an age when the achievements of science and technology are ...
The Hydra-headed Diversity Monster | 12/12/06
Maybe it would help if the United States Supreme Court would make up its mind one way or ...
Home Mortgage Market: Crash or Bounce? | 12/12/06
Perhaps the most radical change in the financial markets in the last generation has been ...
Bush Pulls Iraqi Puppet-strings | 12/11/06
Is this the light at the end of the tunnel, or too little too late?
The New York ...
Auguste Pinochet, Chile's Departed Embarrassment | 12/11/06
Who was Auguste Pinochet, the former dictator of Chile who died last week? Was he a ...
Men Are Funnier Than Women. Discuss(1) | 12/08/06
Why are men funnier than women? ...
Jean Kirkpatrick, Great American | 12/08/06
As you would expect, when the Associated Press announced the news of the death of ...
The Education Solution is Privatization | 12/07/06
In case you haven’t noticed, the Brits are having a little firestorm about the governance ...
More Iraq Study Needed | 12/07/06
What is it exactly that the ...
The Working Poor Are Different From You and Me | 12/06/06
It’s pretty sobering, isn’t it, to read that the most charitable people in the United ...
Suppose There Was a Government Apple Industry | 12/06/06
Imagine this, writes ...
Bush Nominates a Theocratic Abstinence Advocate | 12/05/06
Oh no, the theocrats in the Bush administration have nominated an abstinence advocate to ...
Honor Friedman With Choice in Education and Health Care | 12/05/06
As we mourn the passing of Milton Friedman, American hero, we must painfully recognize ...
Single Parenthood is Dangerous for Children | 12/04/06
We educated Americans can afford to screw up. We have skills and we have backup. But ...
Education Choice is Working | 12/04/06
It’s a neverending task. To demonstrate again and again that choice works in ...
Giza Pyramids Made of Concrete? | 12/01/06
I know, it sounds so low rent. Surely the pharaohs that built the pyramids at Giza in ...
Steven Pinker is Half-Right on Education | 12/01/06
Harvard psychology professor Steven Pinker is a standout contributor to our national ...
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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