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NYT: Take a Powder, Dems
by Christopher Chantrill
THE NATION´S newspaper of record finally said it. Responding to a letter
“from an opponent of the invasion who urged the American left to `get over its anger over
President Bush´s catastrophic blunder´ and start trying to figure out how to win
the conflict that exists,”
The New York Times opined:
No one wants a disaster in Iraq, and Mr. Bush´s critics can put aside, at least temporarily,
their unfold
Free Education for Africa?
by Christopher Chantrill
TONY BLAIR and Gordon Brown want the rich countries to donate $7 billion a year for free education in Africa. But the BBC sent a team to Africa, reports James Bartholomew, author of The Welfare State We´re In, and found that there´s a vibrant private education system in Africa. In Nigeria it outperforms the free state education unfold
Sphere: Related Content | | perm | comment | print | 06/29/05 3:25 pm ETNY Times Notices Ireland
by Christopher Chantrill
DID YOU KNOW that Ireland is the richest country in Europe? You did?
No doubt you read widely, and don’t rely on The New York Times for
your news.
But if you are a Times reader, you are no doubt all
charged up as you learned for the first time from
Thomas Friedman in an opinion piece that
the country that for hundreds of years was best
known for emigration, tragic poets, famines, civil wars and
leprechauns today has a per capita unfold
Let's Teach Liberals the Virtue of a Dead Constitution
by Christopher Chantrill
HOW DO YOU like your constitution? Living or dead?
Conservative Jonah Goldberg
says he´d rather have it dead.
What, you say?
“Without a `living´ constitution, slavery and other such evils would still be constitutional!”
Come now. Tell the truth and shame the devil. Slavery and women´s suffrage were achieved with
the dead letter of the constitutional amendment. When we talk about the “living” constitution
we are talking about unfold
All Power Corrupts...
by Christopher Chantrill
JUST IN TIME for the contradictory Supreme Court decisions regulating the public display of the Ten Commandments, the
indispensible Lee Harris
explains what is going on.
There is nothing ludicrous or stupid about the Supreme Court issuing murky or contradictory
opinions. When people ask you to make decisions about every little thing for them, you
take advantage of it. Because when people let you decide everything for them, what you
have is power.
The Dutch unfold
Ignore that Laffer Behind the Curtain
by Christopher Chantrill
DEMOCRATS ARE still holding their hands in front of their eyes refusing to believe in the supply
side revolution, but the rest of us can take a look at the facts from government tax collections
this year.
Supply side economics says that the critical factor in economic performance is the marginal
rate of taxation, i.e., the share of your next dollar of income that the government demands. In the
Bush 2003 tax cuts:
The capital-gains tax (for gains held at least one year)
was cut to 15 percent from 20 percent while the unfold
Democrats Shocked: Blair Kid to Intern with GOP
by Christopher Chantrill
WHEN TONY BLAIR´S kid Euan decided to try for an internship with Congress, where do you think he applied? Like any ambitious kid, he applied to the “powerful” House Rules Committee. But why oh why did the chip off the old New Labour block sign up with the eevil Republican majority committee staff? Apparently the news has “stunned Democrats in Washington.”
Sphere: Related Content | | perm | comment | print | 06/26/05 12:59 pm ETSteyn: Burn Baby Burn
by Christopher Chantrill
WHAT DO YOU think we conservatives are? Wimps? You think we need a
flag-burning amendment to deal with a few lefties burning
our flag? Why, the whole point about Old Glory to
Mark Steyn is that
A flag has to be worth torching. When a flag gets burned,
that´s not a sign of its weakness but of its strength. If you can´t stand the heat of
your burning flag, get out of the superpower business. It´s the left that believes the
state can regulate unfold
Mehlman Accepts the Challenge
by Christopher Chantrill
THE REPUBLICAN faithful always complain that Republican leaders have no spine, that they cave
before egregious Democratic attacks and run for cover. But it looks as though the GOP is ready
for a rumble on the Karl Rove flap, in which Democrats everywhere are expressing outrage at
Karl Rove when he said:
Conservatives saw the savagery of 9-11 and the attacks and prepared for war;
liberals saw the savagery of the 9-11 attacks and wanted to
prepare indictments and offer therapy and understanding for our unfold
Did the Profs Cry Uncle?
by Christopher Chantrill
ALL OF A SUDDEN, according to David Horowitz, it seems that the academic establishment has called for a peace process in the academic freedom wars. For the last couple of years Horowitz has been campaigning for universities to adopt his Academic Bill of Rights, a manifesto “that would foster intellectual diversity, fairness and equity in higher education.” For his pains, Horowitz has been “compared to McCarthyites, Maoists, and Orwellian thought unfold
Sphere: Related Content | | perm | comment | print | 06/24/05 4:19 am ETBeware of Close Relationships
by Christopher Chantrill
MARRIAGE IS a problem. On that we can all agree. And so a number of people
have decided to do something about it. Let´s replace family law with “close-relationship”
law, they say.
Suzanne Fields gives
us a little intro to the close-relationship movement and a
report
about changing ideas on
marriage in the academy.
Influential advocates from politically correct academic and legal organizations unfold
French-bashing on Sartre's Centenary
by Christopher Chantrill
CONSERVATIVE philosopher
Roger Scruton
does a retrospective on Jean-Paul Sartre, the Frenchman who tried to
find a meaning for life after God is Dead. It’s a problem.
For the religious world-view, self-consciousness is a
source of joy, proof of our apartness from nature, of our special
relation to God and of our ultimate redemption, as we leap from the
world into the arms of our creator. For Sartre, self-consciousness
is a kind of all-dominating unfold
What's The Point?
by Christopher Chantrill
NEWS REPORTS indicate that House Republicans are drafting a Social Security bill that strips out personal accounts. If that is true, then what´s the point of it? There is no point in doing anything with Social Security unless we start the process of sucking money out of the government´s coffers and into individual Americans´ pockets. The current Social Security surplus just allows the federal government to spend money on Democrats and buy their votes. unfold
Sphere: Related Content | | perm | comment | print | 06/22/05 4:41 am ETCheer Up Chaps!
by Christopher Chantrill
EVER SINCE the election, conservatives have been down in the dumps.
Cheer up, conservatives, write John Micklethwait and Adrian Wooldridge, British authors
of The Right Nation, you chaps are still winning. After the orgasm of November, of course
you are going to feel sad.
The bottom line is that conservatives are the optimists in America.
They write:
the Republicans are more optimistic, convinced that the future
will be better than unfold
Victim of the Welfare State
by Christopher Chantrill
FOR OVER A century progressives have dined out on the misery of the poor. It was
all the fault of capitalism, they said. It was the inevitable consequence of
an uncaring society blinded by a mean-spirited ideology to the sufferings of the poor and
the unfortunate, the helpless
victims of ruthless capitalism. But after a century of the welfare state,
we are seeing another kind of victim, people victimized by the culture and the ethos
of the rule of the experts.
Laffer Rides Again
by Christopher Chantrill
REMEMBER THE Laffer Curve, the curve that economist
Arthur Laffer drew on a napkin
in a restaurant meal in 1994 with Ford Administration biggies Rumsfeld and Cheney and the late, great
Bob Bartley?
Stephen Moore reminds us what
happens when a government implements the Laffer Curve by lowering tax rates. Tax revenues take a jump.
Individual and corporate income tax receipts have exploded like a cap unfold
The Science of Free Trade
by Christopher Chantrill
DEMOCRATS HAD a grand time in 2004 congratulating themselves as being the party of science (i.e.,
pro embryonic stem cell research) while the Republicans were the party of superstition that would
shut of hope for Alzheimers sufferers.
Of course when it comes to economics, the shoe is on the other foot, as
Thomas Sowell
reminds us. Ever since the early economists came up with the law of comparative advantage, the
advocates of economic privilege and clientage unfold
Productivity Rules the World
by Christopher Chantrill
WHY IS THE US the most advanced industrial nation in the world? Because of productivity.
OK. But aren’t the Japanese more productive than US corporations? That is
true, in the manufacturing sector. But Japanese retailers are 50 percent less productive
than the US. And productivity
in food processing [is] about a third of the US. And
food processing, although it´s a manufacturing industry and it´s not
heavily traded, it has more employment than steel, automotive,
computers, and machine
tools added together. So it´s unfold
Our Favorite French Babe
by Christopher Chantrill
ANY TIME YOU want, link to
Liberté Chérie, the web site of enlightened French youth, symbolized by activist
Sabine Herold. Here´s an article by
Veronique de Rugy
that mentions her visit to the American Enterprise Institute. A couple of years ago Herold created a sensation
by staging a demonstration against public employee strikes. About 80,000 people turned up.
The educated youth of Europe have an interesting challenge. Do unfold
Benefit Fraud in Old Europe
by Christopher Chantrill
FOR OVER A century conservatives have struggled against the welfare state´s claim to be “helping people.”
But the problem about helping people is: what if they are lying? Here´s an article about benefit
fraud in Sweden written by an Iranian immigrant,
Nima Sanandaji.
Nima relates how the Swedish welfare state shovels money at beneficiaries, and how it really doesn´t
pay to be responsible and work. There is a presumption of helplessness:
Social unfold
HSAs Equal First Party Payment
by Christopher Chantrill
EXPERTS AGREE that the “third party” payment system in health care is one of the big
factors driving up health costs. People just don´t pay much attention to costs when a third party
is paying for their health care. But it looks as if the tax-advantaged Health Savings Accounts (HSAs)
are beginning to change all that.
HSAs are accounts that consumers use to pay routine health costs. They
are usually combined with a high-deductible health insurance policy.
Democrats Still Don't Get The Eighties
by Christopher Chantrill
WHAT ARE THE lessons to be learned from the Eighties? In an interview with John Ehrman, author of the eponymous book, Orrin C. Judd reviews the tumultuous decade in which Ronald Reagan changed American politics and the old smokestack economy morphed into the entrepreneurial startup nation that we live in today. “Many Democrats understood these changes and knew that their party needed to change its ideas and programs if it was going to rebuild its majority,” says unfold
Sphere: Related Content | | perm | comment | print | 06/13/05 8:00 pm ETJesus Fights AIDS
by Christopher Chantrill
THERE IS ONE thing that cannot be true, must not be true for our liberal friends. And that is that religion really is a necessary part of the human experience. But the conservative David Brooks witnesses to this truth. He goes to Africa and concludes that when it comes to AIDS, it is not the technique of condoms and treatment that matters. “The problem is that while treatment is a technical problem, prevention is not. Prevention is about changing behavior. unfold
Sphere: Related Content | | perm | comment | print | 06/12/05 8:00 pm ETThe Tipping Point: $24,000
by Christopher Chantrill
THE NEW DEMOCRATIC group Third Way
has done a poll of the electorate, and they have found that white
voters just don’t like the Democrats. Middle income whites start voting
Republican when income exceeds $23,900 per year, and middle income
whites think and vote similarly to upper-income whites. Hispanic voters
are trending rapidly Republican as their income increases.
The Democratic savior is the black vote. Blacks are the only group
that do not trend Republican with unfold
Fear and Loathing in Manhattan
by Christopher Chantrill
LET US NOT get mad at Howard Dean for tagging the Republican Party as monolithically
“white Christian.” He is just reflecting the mainstream belief in his Democratic
Party, writes
Don Feder.
The same sentiments are routinely advanced in the elite media and with rather less moderation
by wacko lefties in the academy.
It is easy to be outraged by Dean´s hate speech, or alternatively chuckle at the gift that keeps on giving. But there is a bigger unfold
Smart Guys on Janice Rogers Brown
by Christopher Chantrill
JUDGING FROM the mournful comments of left-wing law school professor
Erwin Chemerinsky, the successful nomination of Janice Rogers Brown to
the DC Court of Appeals is the end of life as we know it. You can get
a flavor of the left-wing take on Brown in Chemerinsky´s comments
on the Hugh Hewitt Show captured by
Radio Blogger.
I think Janice Rogers Brown is pretty much as far to the right on the political spectrum as you´re going to get for a federal Court of Appeals. She unfold
Bush Stays on Message
by Christopher Chantrill
ACCORDING TO American strategy expert John Boyd, we have two options in life:
“To Be or To Do.” In an interview with
Neil Cavuto
on Fox News President Bush told us the choice he has made as president.
He has decided To Do: to advance his Social Security reform, to advance his
energy plan, to advance his “ownership” agenda.
Naturally, the president’s critics
(
Democrats Not Sure About Judge Compromise
by Christopher Chantrill
TWO WEEKS AGO conservatives were mad as hell about the compromise on judicial filibusters and liberals
were smug. Now liberals are not so sure. In the Washington Post liberals are expressing their shock
about Janice Rogers Brown, “one of the most extreme nominees” ever to come before the Senate. In
the debate on Brown´s nomination on the floor of the Senate, according to reporter
Charles Babington:
Democrats unfold
What Would President Hillary Be For?
by Christopher Chantrill
GLOBAL CONTENT provider
Mark Steyn
takes a look at the prospect of President Hillary in our future, and rates the chances at 50-50.
Senator Clinton is the only Democrat running for president that can afford to ignore the sacraments of
peace and abortion. So she is the only Democratic candidate that can appeal to middle America.
But the question is: what would President Hillary be for? Surely, the Democrats have tested to
destruction the old formula of the rule of the unfold
Americans Like Their Religion Straight
by Christopher Chantrill
IT´S AN OLD story. Conservative, strict churches are growing, and liberal, secular churches are shrinking. According to sociologist Rodney Stark, it´s always been like this. But it doesn´t hurt to get a second opinion. So David Shiflett has written a book about it: Exodus: Why Americans are Fleeing Liberal Churches for Conservative unfold
Sphere: Related Content | | perm | comment | print | 06/06/05 8:00 pm ETThe Experts Can't Read
by Christopher Chantrill
THE PROBLEM with our glorious empire of experts, where experts pronounce, and we the people genuflect, is
this. What if the experts are wrong, and fails to teach about 20 percent of kids to read? What if they have pronounced a one-size-fits-all regime of
“whole language” reading for every schoolkid, and it turns out their program is wrong?
Don´t think about it. Just praise the lord that the experts and their political masters have
finally seen the light, as
The End of the Expert
by Christopher Chantrill
EXPERTS GAVE us the defined-benefit pension, now dying in the bankruptcies
of the steel companies and the airlines. Experts gave us Social Security
with its promise that is not a promise.
Michael Barone sees that we are moving away from all that
stuff.
But some people haven’t got the message. Democrats attacking the
president’s reform of Social Security fail to see that there is a risk
in Social Security just as there is a risk in personal retirement unfold
Forget the Dieting!
by Christopher Chantrill
NUTRITIONIST
Sandy Szwarc has
been telling this story for some time. Studies show that dieting doesn´t work. In fact, women that
diet experience worse health outcomes that women that don´t diet. Scientists conducted a randomized
clinical trial of two groups of women:
For six months, half of the women participated in a traditional diet and weight loss program, complete with social support; standard nutritional guidance to moderately restrict calories, on how to unfold
Ryanair's Cost-cutting Frenzy
by Christopher Chantrill
DID YOU KNOW that Mike O´Leary, boss of Europe´s Ryanair, has now stopped employees charging
their mobiles (cellphones to you) at the office? And that they have to cadge pens
and highlighters? There´s worse. Ryanair is now charging for checked baggage. The idea is not to
make baggage a revenue item. Oh no. The idea is that
if nobody checks baggage then Ryanair can cut costs because they don´t need to pay for baggage-handling at the airport. Still not impressed?
The Scotsman, quoting Ryanair´s own figures, writes unfold
Right Wing Noise Machine
by Christopher Chantrill
NOW IT IS JOHN Kerry that is complaining about the right-wing message machine that is drowning
out the liberal message, according to
Jeff Jacoby:
This is absurd, as Jacoby writes. Sure there is Fox and Rush Limbaugh and The Washington Times. But
there is also unfold ´´Several times a day, their message is amplified," grumbled the former Democratic standard-bearer.`´We don´t have anything like that."
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
Hugo on Genius
“Tear down theory, poetic systems… No more rules, no more models… Genius conjures up
rather than learns… ” —Victor Hugo
César Graña, 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
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
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