The 2008 Fix Is In

WHAT FOOLS we were to think that George W. Bush was an imbecile. It is all so clear now. How he arranged 9/11 just as the Arab nation suspects—but not as an excuse to invade the Land of the Two Holy Places, oh no. It was part of a fiendish plan hatched by Karl Rove to boost Mayor Rudolph Guiliani and to scotch the presidential plans of Hillary Clinton. Then Bush set up the war in Afghanistan and Iraq to distract the anti-war left. And, of course, he crossed up the Democratic mayors and governors of the Gulf Coast so that they would blow off their post 9/11 disaster planning and First Responders training.

So it was all a setup. Now that the inevitable hurricane has made a mess of the Gulf Coast we are waiting for the other shoe to drop. President Bush knows, as he has planned all along, that he will soon be �forced� by universal demand to appoint Guiliani as Gulf Coast Czar to clean up the mess. How did he do it? No one will ever know.

And if the socially liberal Guiliani can be the favorite presidential candidate of conservative Republican women because �he made us safe,� could independent suburban women possibly feel any different?

Might not even a few childless liberal nuns pause in their devotions before the altar of Roe v. Wade and crinkle the ghost of a smile towards the knightly Rudi?

The brilliance of it. The strategery. The audacity. It is a coup that out-shines in brilliance the very best efforts of of a Talleyrand, Metternich, or a Bismarck. And it brings to an end the presidential ambitions of the Clinton family, at least in this generation.

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

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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

Mutual Aid

In 1911... at least nine million of the 12 million covered by national insurance were already members of voluntary sick pay schemes. A similar proportion were also eligible for medical care.
Green, Reinventing Civil Society

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

Living Under Law

Law being too tenuous to rely upon in [Ulster and the Scottish borderlands], people developed patterns of settling differences by personal fighting and family feuds.
Thomas Sowell, Conquests and Cultures

German Philosophy

The primary thing to keep in mind about German and Russian thought since 1800 is that it takes for granted that the Cartesian, Lockean or Humean scientific and philosophical conception of man and nature... has been shown by indisputable evidence to be inadequate.
F.S.C. Northrop, The Meeting of East and West

Knowledge

Inquiry does not start unless there is a problem... It is the problem and its characteristics revealed by analysis which guides one first to the relevant facts and then, once the relevant facts are known, to the relevant hypotheses.
F.S.C. Northrop, The Logic of the Sciences and the Humanities

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

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

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

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

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

Living Law

The recognition and integration of extralegal property rights [in the Homestead Act] was a key element in the United States becoming the most important market economy and producer of capital in the world.
Hernando de Soto, The Mystery of Capital

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