Blogs for 2005 - Road to the Middle Class

STEPHEN MOORE proposes a startlingly simple tax reform plan. Enact a flat tax with maximum rate of 20 percent (“there would be no deductions whatsoever, except for a generous personal deduction and child deduction”) and let people decide whether to pay according to the new tax or the old tax. That way people with e.g. mammoth mortgage interest deducations could stay with the old system and the rest of us could unfold

Steyn: Let's Worry About the Euro Quagmire

by Christopher Chantrill

NOW THAT THE Iraqis have decided to give the terrorists the finger, sensitive Mark Steyn is starting to worry about the quagmire in Europe. These days, Iraq looks like the Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave. But Eurabia? Steyn´s not so sure about unfold

Turner: The Iraq Election in Verse

by Christopher Chantrill

FREDERICK TURNER thinks that the Iraq election should be celebrated in verse that rhymes and scans. Now that´s a concept! Verse that unfold

Iraq Election: Handing Out Medals

by Christopher Chantrill

AFTER THE SPECTACULAR turnout in Sunday´s Iraq election, it´s time to name names, as they say. And Stephen Schwartz says there aren´t too many names that deserve any credit. Most of us lolled lazily in the “coalition of the unfold

Steyn: Four More Wars

by Christopher Chantrill

WHILE MANY conservatives are tiring of the War on Terror, Mark Steyn rings down Full Speed Ahead to the engine room. And he understands why people are a little leery of President Bush´s inaugural speech compared to their continuing praise for President Kennedy´s call to “pay any price, bear any burden” 44 years ago. When Bush says “It is the policy of the United States to seek and support the growth of democratic movements and institutions in every nation and culture” they think unfold

More on the New England Vapors

by Christopher Chantrill

WHILE LARRY Summers completes his re-education course somewhere in New England, George Will has a few things to say about Victorian maidens suffering from the vapors and modern feminists that use Victorian methods to attack ideas with which they disagree. What it comes down to, writes Will, is that the left cannot abide “the thought that nature sets limits to the malleability of human material,” that there are physical limits to unfold

Spengler: Americans Can't Do Tragedy

by Christopher Chantrill

YOU CAN´T PUT one over on Spengler. He´s right there in the front rank complaining that it just isn´t on to save Charlotte Simmons from a necessary martyrdom. But, he´s sanguine about it. Americans have an ideal of middlebrow competence—represented by heroes like Chuck Yeager and George W, Bush—that shields from them the real awfulness of life. But not Spengler. He has drunk deep from the German experience, and has seen the face of the Dionysian, the truth unfold

Forming and Breaking Relationships Easily

by Christopher Chantrill

NO, THIS IS not about divorce. It is about the nature of social relationships generally. Some relationships can be formed and dissolved easily, like a temporary business partnership, writes Arnold Kling, and others are more permanent, with higher costs of entry and exit. “Societies that place individuals under the permanent discipline of inherited or assigned collectivities, and permanently bind them into such.” remain bogged down in family favoritism, ethnic, racial, or religious factionalism.” But the Anglsphere is unfold

Ken Mehlman Lays Down a Marker

by Christopher Chantrill

YOU CAN´T MAKE it any clearer than this. Ken Mehlman announces that he´s going to use the 1.4 million volunteers he mobilized to re-elect President Bush in moving the president´s agenda for Social Security reform, tax simplification, and grow the Republican unfold

Ankle Biters Get Teeth into Inaugural Speech

by Christopher Chantrill

LOYAL LIBERAL E.J. Dionne gets to work on knee-capping the president´s inaugural speech. Apparently there was much less than met the eye; Bush isn´t going to march out and conquer the world tomorrow, according to White House staffers. This is a problem “and a terrible mistake for Bush, because the greatest barrier to Bush´s success in his second term is the intense cynicism he has inspired about his motives.” Well that´s a possibility. Or is unfold

Brit Bobbies Lost Key to Gun Cupboard

by Christopher Chantrill

DON´T CANCEL your British vaction, it was nearly a century ago when London bobbies chasing some Latvian armed robbery suspects in London had to borrow pistols from bystanders, because the gun cupboard at the police station was locked and nobody could find the key. Don´t be too hard on those Keystone Kops, though; In 1909 there were only about 12 armed robberies a year in London, and the public had a right unfold

Brit Pundit Says Don't Count US Out

by Christopher Chantrill

A WRITER FROM the London Times observes that America is not as supremely confident as it once was, but it is still a force to be reckoned with and will be for a unfold

Bush Supporters Wonder What It Means

by Christopher Chantrill

REAGAN/BUSH speechwriter Peggy Noonan worries that the President has overpromised a perfect world that can never be. Uber-pundit Fred Barnes writes that the President has integrated the two wings of American foreign policy into a single crusade, combining the idealist vision of worldwide democracy and the realist vision of a safe and secure world into a grand unfold

Inaugural Sour Grapes

by Christopher Chantrill

FOR THE LAST couple of weeks Democrats have been complaining about the cost of the Bush inauguration while tsunami victims go unrelieved. The indispensible Ann Coulter reminds them that back in 1993 while thousand were dying in disasters world-wide, Democrats talked of nothing but partying on forever at the Clinton inaugural. And what about George Soros? Couldn´t he manage to get by on $1 billion of his $7 billion fortune and give the rest to tsunami unfold

Brits on Bush: It ain't over yet

by Christopher Chantrill

A BRIT AT THE London Times does a think piece on the Bush inauguration. The U.S. may not be as optimistic as it was, he opines, but don´t count it out unfold

Spengler: Two Cheers for Hypocrisy

by Christopher Chantrill

SPENGLER´S been taking the odd week off over the holiday season, enraging his world-wide fans, but he´s back with a characteristic piece on the virtue of hypocrisy in a lighthearted romp through Goethe, Ibsen, and unfold

Scorched Earth Won't Work For Democrats

by Christopher Chantrill

DAVID BROOKS advises Democrats not to emulate Newt Gingrich and execute an oppositional strategy in Congress over issues like Social Security. It´s the wrong strategy and will further marginalize unfold

President Bush: "I Assume I'm Right"

by Christopher Chantrill

WHEN WILL THE Democrats stop misunderestimating President Bush? Here is the president talking about his policy of extending democracy across the globe. “It´s exciting to be part of stimulating a debate of such significance. It really is the philosophical argument of the age.” Some people say his policy is wrong, he admits. But he says: “I assume I´m right.” Well, you´d hope so. But I suspect that many people are scandalized by such a unfold

Uncle Ted, The Face of the Democrats

by Christopher Chantrill

BOSTON COLUMNIST Don Feder takes apart Ted Kennedy and the Democrats. This is a good read for liberals, because it surfaces the issues on which mainstream America differs from the Democratic coalition of victims and unfold

The Political Math for Social Security Reform

by Christopher Chantrill

FRED BARNES discards the conventional wisdom and tries to figure out how President Bush can get to 51 percent on Social Security reform this unfold

Sshh! The Deficit is Shrinking!

by Christopher Chantrill

WHILE WE ARE all attentively watching Dan Rather´s rather outré retirement party, the deficit is shrinking rapidly from a big increase in corporate tax collections and individual income tax collections. And the Bush administration is planning a couple of hold-the-line budgets. Expect the pips to start squeaking any moment unfold

Peggy Noonan at Her Finest

by Christopher Chantrill

PEGGY NOONAN—WHO used to write Dan Rather´s radio commentaries—weighs in on the Rathergate Report. Don´t worry that the report doesn´t mention liberal bias, she writes. It didn´t need to. But the important thing is that the world has changed. The old MSM monopoly is dead. Back in the old days, if your ox was gored by the media you could write a letter. Maybe they would read it; maybe they wouldn´t. Maybe they would publish it; maybe they unfold

Steyn: Brits are to Blame for Black Homophobia?

by Christopher Chantrill

NO, MARK STEYN hasn´t gone bonkers. But the earnest Decca Aitkenhead in The Guardian thinks that the rampant homophobia among Jamaican blacks in Britain is a legacy of slavery. It all goes to show, writes the long suffering Steyn, that multiculturalism is a suicide cult, a way of blaming yourself (or at least your right-wing compatriots) for all the ills of the unfold

Steyn: Last Week's Boxer Rebellion Means Dems are Losers

by Christopher Chantrill

SPEAKING AS a Canadian and resumably entitled to vote in California, Mark Steyn isn´t buying the flim-flam from last week´s Democratic media show on Stolen Ohio. All it means is that Democrats are unfold

NYT Trendspotters: Religion is Reviving Worldwide!

by Christopher Chantrill

ALL THE UPPER West Side is agog this week after the New York Times´s Laurie Goodstein announced that religion is on the rise, worldwide. But not to worry, “fundamentalism” seems to be mostly declining and progressive politics is still the only thing that unfold

What Happened to the Reasonable Man?

by Christopher Chantrill

THIS IS A MUDDY article about balancing by the muddy Jonah Goldberg. How much weight should society give to the average and how much to the outlier? What is the place of morality in the law, and what happens when we strip it out and replace it with utility? How pragmatic is the pragmatist? It´s actually worth unfold

What Should Democrats Do?

by Christopher Chantrill

NOW PEGGY NOONAN is giving them advice. “The Bush administration has stood for cutting taxes, allowing high spending, and being tough in the world. The Democrats stand for raising taxes, high spending, and being weak in the world,” she writes. So what should they do? Become more like Republicans? Er, yes. Sorry about that, unfold

Steyn: Message from Col. Shrapnell

by Christopher Chantrill

THE MEN OF Battery M send up a barrage of shot and shell against the Blame America First on tsunamis crowd, from that Norwegian “stingy” chappie to Brit Claire Short to anyone else who feels like cocking a snook at our brave boys now helping victims in South unfold

Spengler: Neocon Gelernter Writes "Utter and Complete Rubbish"

by Christopher Chantrill

DAVID GELERNTER in Commentary thinks the Puritanism of the founders shaded into modern Americanism, but Spengler is having none of it. Puritanism dissolved into Unitarianism and Boston Brahminism after the revolution, he writes. It was replaced on the moral-cultural stage by the Methodists and Baptists of the Second Great Awakening who swore to end slavery and did so in the Civil War. Now, Spengler says, we have a Fourth Great Awakening of people who “have unfold

CEO Deepthink from Drucker

by Christopher Chantrill

WHAT IS THE job of a CEO, corporate, government, or non-profit? It’s a question that management science hasn’t really answered yet, says management guru Peter Drucker. The answer? Well, it’s buried in layers unfold

Steyn: Americans Are Different

by Christopher Chantrill

AMERICANS ARE different; they work more than kindler, gentler Euros. For instance, Mark Steyn’s assistant wanted to come in for a couple of hours on Christmas Day. But what are the Euros doing with all their extra spare time? They certainly aren´t using it to raise unfold