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The Folly of Feminism
by Christopher Chantrill
JUDGING BY her article in The New York Times Magazine about the rough time women are having in the Noughties columnist Maureen Dowd is fixin’ to publish one of those tiresomely superficial books that pretends to capture the zeitgeist while actually telling us nothing except that media people in New York persist in thinking that they are central to the unfold
Sphere: Related Content | | perm | comment | print | 10/31/05 9:04 am ETAlito, Scalito
by Christopher Chantrill
CONSERVATIVES got what we asked for. In Appeals Court Judge Samuel A. Alito we
have a judge with years on the bench, a clear paper trail, and impeccable conservative
credentials. In return for the compliment from President Bush in nominating
such a candidate for the Supreme Court we have an obligation to
fight for victory over the abortion today, abortion tomorrow, and abortion forever brigade.
And the battle begins today.
On his blog Hugh Hewitt
has unfold
The Lessons of Volcker and Greenspan
by Christopher Chantrill
AS THE QUARTER century of inflation-free prosperity under the monetary policies of Federal Reserve
Board Chairmen Paul Volker and Alan Greenspan comes to a close with the retirement of Greenspan,
Steve Chapman
reviews the lessons learned.
Back in 1980 people believed that there was a tradeoff between inflation and unemployment. It
was the precipitate of a generation of Keynesian economics.
Back then, the conventional wisdom was that we had to unfold
The Conservative Base Rejoins the Bush Team
by Christopher Chantrill
THERE’S A PROBLEM about belonging to a political base. Sometimes your party ignores you. It takes
you for granted and spends all its energy wooing moderates and independents.
So occasionally the base needs to rebel. Just to remind the politicians where they live.
President Bush obviously wants to get Supreme Court nominations through the US Senate with the
minimum of fighting. That’s why he chose John Roberts: brilliant, but slippery. Democrats
could never get a grip on him, so half of them ended up voting for his unfold
Miers Withdraws
by Christopher Chantrill
TODAY, OCTOBER 27, Harriet Miers
withdrew
her nomination to be an associate justice on the
United States Supreme Court. So that’s over. The question is: What comes next? Or, to put it another
way, what does the captain of a mutinous company do to stop the growling and scowls from his
licentious soldiery?
The answer is obvious. Lead them into battle. And he should not just lead them into a fight but
make it perfectly clear that he expects them to unfold
The Global Education Mess
by Christopher Chantrill
WE THINK THAT we have an education mess here in the United States with our education “blob” spending five percent of GDP every year in return for what? Rising mediocrity. In Britain, things are even worse because their public school system is a completely centralized, national government system, whereas in the United States the government education system is rather more decentralized with most of the money raised and spent at the state and local level.
Britain’s Prime Minister Blair is
Black and White Shame on Race
by Christopher Chantrill
THERE ARE TWO sides to the original sin of the United States of America: Negro slavery. There is the shame of white guilt for the centuries of oppression and slavery. But there is also, writes Shelby Steele, the shame of black inferiority. The great achievement of the civil rights revolution of the 1960s was for whites to own up to their guilt, and admit their fault. Ever since, blacks have provided an ever-present witness to the fact of white guilt. unfold
Sphere: Related Content | | perm | comment | print | 10/26/05 4:41 am ETName-calling Lefties
by Christopher Chantrill
WE ARE ALL so well trained that we often forget just how much we are not
allowed to say. And that is odd, because our national educated and cultural
elite believes in free speech and abhors censorship.
Radio host Dennis Prager lists what happens to you when you
cross the line on free speech. You are called anti-education, or anti-woman, or
homophobic. It’s great if you are a lefty.
One of the more appealing aspects about being on the
Left is unfold
The Fight for Economic Competence
by Christopher Chantrill
IT’S BEEN WELL said that, if the parties of the right stand for anything, they stand for
economic competence in national affairs. Not for them the easy road of compassion and spending
other people’s money on vaguely defined “needs.” When you stand for compassion and sensitivity
you always have the excuse when things go south that you meant well. When you stand for
common sense and balanced budgets and good management, then you have to deliver. If you can’t
deliver, who needs you?
In this season of discontent the Bush unfold
Battle of Trafalgar
by Christopher Chantrill
TODAY, OCTOBER 21, is a day that will live... in glory. It was this day two hundred years ago
that the British Royal Navy squadron under the command of Admiral Lord Nelson defeated the combined
fleets of France and Spain off Cape Trafalgar.
The victory was a great military triumph in operational terms, for it was a bold attempt to
suprise and confuse the French with unexpected and unorthodox tactics. As
Brett M. Decker writes:
Nelson aimed his ships unfold
Out of the Mouths of Babes
by Christopher Chantrill
WHAT REALLY happened to those WMDs? And what really was the relationship between Al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein?
Oh, and how is Syria involved in the Iraqi insurgency?
Using publicly available intelligence and his home computer, 19-year-old Ryan Mauro, analyst for
“Tactical Defense Concepts and Northeast Intelligence Network,” has
dug out all the answers to these vexing questions. And he’s got a book out:
Death to America: The Unreported Battle of Iraq.
In an interview with
Democrats Still Don't Get It
by Christopher Chantrill
DEMOCRATS ARE working hard on making a comeback in 2006 and 2008. But it is not clear that
they really have something new to excite the voters.
As Jonah Goldberg writes, there may be a lot for Republicans to be gloomy about
right now, what with scandals as far as the eye can see, high gas prices, and a bulge in inflation.
But Democrats really haven’t come up with anything new. With the encouragement of the progressive
George Lakoff, they have gotten the idea unfold
"Harmless" Drugs
by Christopher Chantrill
AS PARENTS and teachers coke our children up on Ritalin, retired
physician
Theodore Dalrymple recalls that it was ever thus. There
is always a convenient and harmless drug floating around to take care of our mood or
keep children quiet.
Back in the 19th century parents dosed their children up with laudanum (that’s
a solution of opium) to keep them quiet. Then in the 1960s there was
“Phenergan, an unfold
Media Loses Heart
by Christopher Chantrill
BACK IN THE good old days, when Ronald Reagan, the “amiable dunce,” was president, and
when Republicans first took over Congress after the mid-term elections of 1994, conservatives
used to fulminate over the gross misrepresentation of conservative policies in the media, writes
Tony Blankley, former aide to Newt Gingrich.
But now, they just don’t seem to have the same old fire.
Today, big media has lost interest in policy substance almost unfold
Iraqis Vote For Constitution
by Christopher Chantrill
EARLY RETURNS show that the Iraqi people
approved
a new constitution on October 15, 2005, with only
two provinces appearing to vote against approval. So the Bush strategy seems to have cleared another
hurdle.
For now at least, the program of bringing consensual government to the Middle East goes on. And
the Bush plan to inject a blocking regime against the militant and expansionist Islamist regime in
Iran remains a success.
That’s the plan, in case unfold
Thatcher's 80th Birthday
by Christopher Chantrill
THEY CELEBRATED the 80th birthday last night of
Margaret Thatcher, the other half
of the tag team of Reagan and Thatcher. She was a scholarship girl, daughter of the corner
grocer who went to Cambridge University and then into national politics.
Her great life achievement was to turn Britain away from the disastrous expert-led death
spiral of the 1970s when the economy was utterly devastated by political power and rent-seeking,
all in unfold
Bush's Plan on Track in Iraq
by Christopher Chantrill
FOR ABOUT A couple of years now Democrats have pushed the line that the Bush administration
had no plan for Iraq. It sent the US armed forces into Baghdad and then and then stood around
wondering, Now what do we do?
The Bush plan was, and is, to replace the terror regime of Saddam Hussein with some sort of
consensual regime. The plan was to replace one-man rule with Iraqi rule. It was to replace the politics
of the gun with the politics of the negotiation.
So with two major Sunni parties signing onto the proposed Iraq unfold
We Don't Need No Stinkin' Reforms
by Christopher Chantrill
WHAT DOES THE recent German election mean, in which the two main parties, the SPD and the CDU/CSU basically ended in a dead heat? Anatole Kaletsky reckons it means that the three great nations of Europe, Germany, France, and Italy, are checking out. First in France with the rejection of the EU constitution and now with the German rejection of reform, the Europeans are saying that they don’t want any stinking reforms. They just want to go on as they are. unfold
Sphere: Related Content | | perm | comment | print | 10/12/05 3:41 pm ETLow US Savings: Is It a Problem?
by Christopher Chantrill
ONE OF THE concerns of enlightened elite opinion recently has been a worry over the lagging US savings
rate. Compared against any nation you like, the US savings rate comes in at the bottom. But like
the balance of payments problem, another worry of concerned elitists, the question is: Is “the problem” a problem?
The balance of payments is always in balance, wrote Ludwig von Mises half a century ago. He meant
that if the US runs a balance of payments deficit in, say, merchandise, it merely reflected the
choice of millions of unfold
Who Lost Delphi?
by Christopher Chantrill
ON OCTOBER 8, 2005,
Delphi, the auto parts supplier, became
the largest US manufacturer to file Chapter 11 bankruptcy proceedings. Delphi is
the parts division
that General Motors spun off a few years ago.
The bankruptcy of Delphi will have serious consequences even if it survives. It will no doubt eliminate
shareholders’ equity. It will severely cut workers’ wages and benefits. It will likely throw the
company’s pension plan into the hands of the federal pension insurance system, unfold
The New Tory Prince
by Christopher Chantrill
AS THE SONG goes, “I been down so long that down don’t worry me.” That
is what the British Conservative Party has been singing after three successive
defeats at the polls. But in last week’s party conference a new star was born singing a new
song: David Cameron,
who electrified the Tory Party with the best speech of the week.
In this opinion article in The Daily Telegraph
Cameron
attempts unfold
Happy Columbus Day
by Christopher Chantrill
HOW SHOULD we celebrate Columbus Day? As a celebration of western European values and expansion?
Or as a shameful conquest of noble savages that lived in harmony with nature?
Edward Hudgins celebrates the ordinary people that came out from Europe to America.
It may have been that the stout Cortez and his ilk enslaved the Meso and South Americans. But
in North America, the conquerors were workers who came to carve a new life out of the unfold
The President Plants a Stake in Iraq
by Christopher Chantrill
IN HIS SPEECH on Iraq on October 6, 2005,
President Bush
clarified, finally, the war aims of the
United States in the global war on terror. It is to oppose and neutralize the forces that
“call for terrorist murder against Christians and Jews and Hindus -- and also against Muslims from other traditions, who they regard as heretics.”
But how? That was the meat of the president’s speech. What he called the fifth element of his
strategy is in fact the unfold
Ronnie Barker R.I.P.
by Christopher Chantrill
THEY DON’T make them like that any more, certainly not like
Ronnie Barker, the British
TV comedian and writer who died October 3, 2005, aged 76.
American public TV viewers will remember Barker as the fat half of The Two Ronnies,
a show characterized by wordplay, stock British caricatures, and the “honest vulgarity” of
double-entendres. He
also exceled as the crafty imprisoned career criminal Fletcher in Porridge, and the unfold
August Wilson R.I.P.
by Christopher Chantrill
IN AN ERA IN which American theater has driven theatergoers to despair as it
panders to
elite fashions about race, class, and sexual orientation, there
is at least August Wilson. But not any more. The African American playwright who died October 2, 2005 aged 60.
The question about any lionized African American in the United States
at the turn of the twenty-first century is: Was he any good, or was he just
another average performer boosted into celebrity by fawning liberals? It’s
a pity, but that’s the reality.
Having seen unfold
The Chavez Plan to Wreck Venezuela
by Christopher Chantrill
AS WE THRILL to the excitements of US politics, let us not forget Venezuela as Hugo Chávez flushes
it down the toilet.
As Carlos Alberto Montaner
writes: “The raid on private property in Venezuela has begun.”
Chávez and his thugs are moving in “factories and large land tracts that are supposedly unproductive.”
That is Spanish for pouring oil money in and fat salaries and wages out—for Chávez supporters.
Anyone who knows a lick of economics knows where unfold
49 Up: Oral History as it Happens
by Christopher Chantrill
FORTY YEARS ago Granada TV in Britain broadcast a documentary, Seven Up, about
the lives of twenty children, then aged seven.
It was to be a narrative about class, showing how class was destiny. To make the point
absolutely clear they anchored the show around three boys and three girls. They showed us three dreadfully
conceited boys from a fancy London private school and three charming working class girls from the East End
of London.
Last month in Britain they broadcast 49 Up, interviewing the same children at the age unfold
Miers or Less: The Fight Goes On
by Christopher Chantrill
PRESIDENT BUSH
nominated
White House counsel Harriet Miers this morning to be an Associate Justice on the United States
Supreme Court. And conservatives are underwhelmed.
Conservatives want a nominee that can stick it to the Democrats and teach them a lesson. But the
President is clearly signaling that he doesn’t want a knockdown drag out fight. The Roberts nomination
seemed to have been made on the basis of going as conservative as possible without unfold
The Underclass: Remember Them?
by Christopher Chantrill
CHARLES MURRAY published Losing Ground twenty years ago. In it he told how social policy
had created the non-working underclass out of the old working class, a world of fatherless families that
lived without working.
Now with Hurricane Katrina we have suddenly rediscovered the underclass. And we will likely pull out
a few of the old palliatives to make it go away.
The underclass is not going away. It is still getting bigger,
Murray writes. The measure unfold
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
Socialism equals Animism
Imagining that all order is the result of design, socialists
conclude that order must be improvable by better design of some superior mind.
F.A. Hayek, The Fatal Conceit
Sacrifice
[Every] sacrifice is an act of impurity that pays for a prior act of greater impurity... without its participants having to suffer the full consequences incurred by its predecessor. The punishment is commuted in a process that strangely combines and finesses the deep contradiction between justice and mercy.
Frederick Turner, Beauty: The Value of Values
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
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
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
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”
Pentecostalism
Within Pentecostalism the injurious hierarchies of the wider world are abrogated and replaced by a single hierarchy of faith, grace, and the empowerments of the spirit... where groups gather on rafts to take them through the turbulence of the great journey from extensive rural networks to the mega-city and the nuclear family...
David Martin, On Secularization
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”
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
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
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