Against Mccain

AS HE CAMPAIGNS for the nomination of the Republican Party Senator John McCain certainly does a good job of infuriating the conservative base of the party.

For instance, you’d think, crafty politician that he is, that he’d have learned how not to talk like a Democrat, playing the class warfare card, and all.

But no. Last night at the Republican California debate at the Reagan presidential library, he did a good job running as John Kerry against Mitt Romney.

I know how to lead.

I led the largest squadron in the United States Navy. And I did it out of patriotism, not for profit.

Oh, I see. So Mitt Romney’s career, including a long stint at Bain Capital creating jobs and wealth, just doesn’t measure up?

Then there’s the Wall Street bashing bit, getting a late hit in on the mortgage meltdown.

I think that there’s some greedy people on Wall Street that perhaps need to be punished.

Actually, I think there are some people on Capitol Hill who need to be punished. Who is it that passes laws to keep sluicing money and subsidies at the housing market? Who is it that has been bullying the lending institutions for decades to lend money to minorities? Who is it who cranked interest rates down to one percent in the early 2000s? And who is it who was carrying water for politically-connected S&L magnate Charles Keating back in the 1980s? And what was Senator McCain doing two or three years ago when it was obvious that the real-estate boom was getting out of hand?

It fascinating how pols like Senator McCain go for Wall Street all the time. It’s all smoke and mirrors, of course. Wall Street runs the government bond market, the market that floats the government’s paper out to the world. Wall Street is the most important thing in the world for the government and for the Senators that slosh the feed into the government’s trough.

I’d say that if there’s someone that’s really greedy and really needing to be punished it is the pols that vote to run big deficits, and get Wall Street to push Treasury Bills and Treasury Notes and Treasury Bonds out into the world to fund the deficits. And then with the other hand they sit around doing nothing while the Federal Reserve lets the dollar decline so that bond holders are left holding dollar-denominated bonds worth a lot less today than they were a few yers ago.

Heck of a deal for the US government and its senatorial functionaries. Heck of a deal for Wall Street. But not so good for the folks that bought the bonds.

Who’s the greedy one there, Senator?

Seriously, do we really want this guy in the White House where he can govern like a Democrat and have the Republicans take the fall for more bloated government and more attacks on the First Amendment?

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Christopher Chantrill blogs at www.roadtothemiddleclass.com. His Road to the Middle Class is forthcoming.

TAGS

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

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

Hugo on Genius

“Tear down theory, poetic systems� No more rules, no more models� Genius conjures up rather than learns� ” —Victor Hugo
C�sar Gra�a, Bohemian versus Bourgeois

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

Faith & Purpose

“When we began first to preach these things, the people appeared as awakened from the sleep of ages—they seemed to see for the first time that they were responsible beings...”
Finke, Stark, The Churching of America, 1776-1990

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

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

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

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

Religion, Property, and Family

But the only religions that have survived are those which support property and the family. Thus the outlook for communism, which is both anti-property and anti-family, (and also anti-religion), is not promising.
F.A. Hayek, The Fatal Conceit

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

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

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