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Daily Blogs for 3/2009
by Christopher Chantrill
NYT Dips Toe in Climate Denial | 03/31/09
Suppose you were the New York Times. And suppose you decided that what with ...
How to Neutralize the Trolls(1) | 03/30/09
West-coast Drudge captain ...
Beyond Tea Parties | 03/27/09
It’s great to see the growth of the Tea Party movement, and especially to see ...
Dollar Tim Learns Another On-the-Job Lesson | 03/26/09
Yesterday Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner sent the world into a tizzy when he ...
Organizing vs. "Organizing" | 03/25/09
It is, of course, an irony that a spontaneous political movement should form within a ...
Government Wants More Power | 03/24/09
I know. So what else is new? The Obama admininistration “will call ...
Bailout on the Cheap | 03/23/09
One thing is obvious. The Obama administation’s plan to bail out the banks ...
Dems on Privacy, Immigration, Mortgages | 03/20/09
Yesterday ...
O-Stone Cops Routine | 03/19/09
The problem with the AIG flap is that we know that all the big players must have ...
The Pride of the Liberals | 03/18/09
In the latest National Review Ramesh Ponnuru ...
The GOP Minority Problem | 03/17/09
It’s the perennial problem: How do Republicans recruit minorities to the ...
The Delusion at the Heart of the Left | 03/16/09
According to David Selbourne in The Spectator, Tony Blair’s rebranding of ...
President Straw Man | 03/13/09
For months conservatives have been goggling at President Obama trying to size up the ...
Five Principles for Conservatives(1) | 03/12/09
A while back I wrote an oped that ...
Don't Blame the Help | 03/11/09
Even partisan Democrats are starting to notice. All is not well with the Obama ...
Dems Start to Split | 03/10/09
Many Democratic elected officials have a problem. They run for election as moderates, ...
"Obama is Overwhelmed"(1) | 03/09/09
If you read Solzhenitzyn’s August 1917 you will recall his description of ...
Dems' Luck Running Out? | 03/06/09
How lucky are the Democrats? They came into power in 1933 after a Republican ...
Obama Blinks on Vouchers | 03/05/09
Candidate Obama was sorta low-key about school vouchers, and you could see why. ...
Let's Get Serious Mr. President | 03/04/09
Now that the president’s budget has been out for about a week, it is time to ...
The Culture of Compulsion | 03/03/09
According to President Obama, he doesn’t believe in Big Government. When he ...
Why Presidents Fail | 03/02/09
Our liberals friends are predictably annoyed by Rush Limbaugh’s hope that ...
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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