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Daily Blogs for 9/2008
by Christopher Chantrill
What is a Mortgage Worth? | 09/30/08
Enough of the partisan political rhetoric, already. Let’s think about the big ...
Our Unserious Politicians | 09/29/08
Today the unserious House of Representatives ...
March towards the Sound of Guns. Not. | 09/25/08
Back in the good old days, when armies marched on their feet rather than Humvees, they ...
Mr Potter is Buying! | 09/24/08
Remember the run on the Bailey Brother Building and Loan in It’s a Wonderful ...
Close-coupled Character | 09/23/08
I was commenting on the financial meltdown of 1907 at the ...
Dead Cat Bounce? | 09/22/08
After two days soaring, stocks turned lower again today, with the Dow down 372.75 or ...
It's the Debt Stupid | 09/18/08
So here we are, we hope, at the selling climax of this bear market, with the big Wall ...
An Eight-point Economic Plan | 09/17/08
With the distractions of Palin Power and the earthquake on Wall Street, some of us are ...
Market Failure: Government is the Problem | 09/16/08
The candidates rushed out statements on the Wall Street meltdown yesterday. According ...
The Arc of Celebrity | 09/12/08
If you burst onto the scene, they say, your celebrity will last about 15 months unless ...
Why Palin Really Matters | 09/11/08
Never mind the fun-and-games of the Palin candidacy> What started with the pure joy ...
Is Abortion the 21st Century Equivalent of Slavery? | 09/10/08
In the ancient world, we know, slavery was ubiquitous. In ...
A Open Letter to Sen. Obama(1) | 09/09/08
Here at Road to the Middle Class we are not exactly fans of ...
Fannie and Freddie Hit the Buffers | 09/08/08
It was ...
Making It In Politics the Hard Way | 09/05/08
Politics ain’t beanbag, right? But most prominent women get ahead the ...
Now It's Obama's Turn | 09/05/08
My old Greek friend used to say that you can’t tell the worth of a dog when ...
The Mom vs. The One | 09/04/08
Alaska Governor Sarah Palin gave a polished speech last night in accepting the 2008 ...
Newt ImPales MSM on Experience Issue | 09/03/08
Yesterday at the Republican National Conventions it looks like good old Newt had his ...
Another Camel's Nose Under the Conservative Tent | 09/02/08
Some people reckon that the conservative movement is composed of three parts: the ...
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
Postmodernism
A writer who says that there are no truths, or that all truth is ’merely relative’, is asking you not to believe him. So don’t.
Roger Scruton, Modern Philosophy
Racial Discrimination
[T]he way “to achieve a system of determining admission to the public schools on a nonracial basis,”
Brown II, 349 U. S., at 300–301, is to stop assigning students on a racial basis. The way to stop
discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race.
Roberts, C.J., Parents Involved in Community Schools vs. Seattle School District
Physics, Religion, and Psychology
Paul Dirac: “When I was talking with Lemaître about [the expanding universe] and feeling stimulated
by the grandeur of the picture that he has given us, I told him that
I thought cosmology was the branch of science that lies closest to religion.
However [Georges] Lemaître [Catholic priest, physicist, and
inventor of the Big Bang Theory] did not agree with me. After thinking it over he
suggested psychology as lying closest to religion.”
John Farrell, “The Creation Myth”
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