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After the Deluge
by Christopher Chantrill
AS WE GET TO know more about the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, the scale of the devastation
becomes clearer, as
The New York Times reports.
In New Orleans the failure of two levees has unundated the city
With bridges washed out, highways converted into canals, and power and communications unfold causing incalculable destruction and rendering it uninhabitable for weeks to come.
Death of a Supply-side Salesman
by Christopher Chantrill
THERE HAVE been many important figures in the rise of the American conservative movement, but in anyone’s front rank must be Jude Wanniski who died Monday August 29, 2005 aged 69. Obituaries can be found here and here. Bob Novak recalls him here. George Gilder, author of Wealth and Poverty, celebrates Jude as unfold
Sphere: Related Content | | perm | comment | print | 08/30/05 7:58 am ETIt Couldn't Happen Here
by Christopher Chantrill
LET US TALK about something important. No, not the burning question whether the
recent Hurricane Katrina was caused by global warming, but something even more important:
The power of the government to take your children away from you.
Maybe there is nothing to worry about on this score. But then again you can’t be too careful
where government power is concerned. In Britain, things seem to be getting beyond the “nothing to
worry about” stage, according to
People Want to Work at Wal-Mart
by Christopher Chantrill
WHO WOULD WANT to work at Wal-Mart? That’s the question at the bottom of the
left-wing campaign to unionize the world’s biggest retailer. Critics make a big
deal out of the fact that Wal-Mart doesn’t offer good benefits to its employees, and therefore
they need a union to get the benefits they deserve.
Here are some facts about Wal-Mart for you, courtesy of the London
Economist.
Wal-Mart retorts that it offers “good, affordable coverage” of unfold
Good God, Carruthers. A Flat Tax in Germany?
by Christopher Chantrill
DON’T GET TOO excited, old chap. Angela Merkel, head of the German Christian Democratic Party, says
that a flat tax in Germany is only a “vision” for the future. But the appointment of Germany’s principal
flat tax proponent, Paul Kirchhof, to her campaign staff has got all us flat tax wackos in a twitter.
The folks at the London Daily Telegraph are getting quite giddy. Writes
George unfold
More Points on the Board in Iraq
by Christopher Chantrill
NOW THAT THE Iraqi constitution is looking like more than Bush administration wishful thinking,
Mark Steyn
is allowing himself a little thimbleful of celebration. The liberals
said it couldn’t be done, but the Bushies just executed on their strategy and made it happen.
By the way, here’s another reason why Iraq isn’t another Vietnam. Back in the Sixties, the Democrats
never really had a strategy. Nixon did, but he got bounced out of office by unfold
After 7/7, Brits are Rediscovering Britishness
by Christopher Chantrill
IN THE AFTERMATH of 7/7, the Brits are pondering what it means to be British.
Even the Labour government, which has done as much as anyone to erase the
concept of Britishness, is joining in, writes
Charles Moore.
But just what is Britishness or “British values?” How about this:
Take sport. Isn’t it rather interesting and important
that most of the greatest sports in the world - soccer, unfold
Will More Money Help?
by Christopher Chantrill
DEMOCRATS SEEM convinced that they don’t have the resources to get their message out. So Democratic strategist Rob Stein is putting together a Democracy Alliance of liberal givers to raise $80 million for a series of liberal think tanks, according to Thomas B. Edsall. Stein believes that the Democrats need to replicate the policy think tanks that dominate the right: The Heritage Foundation, The American Enterprise Institute, and the unfold
Sphere: Related Content | | perm | comment | print | 08/26/05 4:53 am ETNow Even Vacations are Wired
by Christopher Chantrill
PROGRESS NEVER solves anything. It only raises the stakes. Reporting from a vacation on
South Carolina’s Outer Banks,
Suzanne Fields
wonders where it will all end, when we even take our electronics on vacation. She writes on her laptop
while her grandsons play their LEGO Star Wars game nearby.
Will the violent XBox first-person shooter games create a generation of violent young men? Will the
chatter of cell phones obliterate the deep waters of long-considered unfold
Spengler on Global Demographics
by Christopher Chantrill
NOT SURPRISINGLY, liberal academicians have hesitated to investigate the consequences of the childless
society that they and theirs have championed. That is why we have
Spengler,
the peripatetic scholar writing at Asia Times.
Spengler wonders whether there is a statistical correlation between childbearing and religious
belief. Since no social science professionals have been doing any serious statistical study of the problem,
Spengler recently volunteered his
In the Productivity Explosion, Government is Left Behind
by Christopher Chantrill
IN A PIECE published for India’s Independence Day,
Subir Gokarn
wonders why the public sector in India, from ministers down to the lowliest intern,
has not participated in the productivity explosion that is going on in the
private sector.
The unfortunate economic reality today is that the state, far
from being a partner and facilitator in quest for faster growth and
productivity gains, unfold
What Reenlistment Problem?
by Christopher Chantrill
BACK IN THE spring, the MSM was trumpeting the news that the U.S. Army was
way behind in its recruitment goals. They didn’t say so, but you could read between the lines
the awful prospects: understrength units sent to fight in Iraq, plunging morale, humiliating pullout,
plunging poll numbers for President Bush.
But a few months later, everything looks hunky-dory, according to
Ralph Peters.
It turns out that the Army will meet and exceed its recruitment goals unfold
March of the Nannies
by Christopher Chantrill
NANNIES AT the NCAA want to ban the use of tribal names for college teams. But they forgot
to ask the Indians. The Seminole tribe in Florida, for instance, approves of the use of the tribe’s name
as a mascot for the Florida State Seminoles. And anyway, didn’t old Red Barber, good loyal
liberal sportswriter that he was, wax endlessly about the Florida State Seminoles on NPR? Doesn’t that
give them a pass?
The problem is, nannying doesn’t stop at college team mascots. Nannying is everywhere,
according to
An Environmental Split-up
by Christopher Chantrill
IF THE REPUBLICANS were as split as the environmentalists are over wind power for Cape Cod, there
would be predictions all over of the end of the Republican Party as we know it.
But because environmentalists are battling environmentalists instead of evil conservative
Republicans battling not-so-evil moderate Republicans, the only reaction is a little
harmless chuckling.
Introducing the whole sordid affair Jonah Goldberg
invites his readers
“to take a Nestea unfold
Lying and Politics
by Christopher Chantrill
EVERYBODY KNOWS that politicians lie. But there was a time in Britain when the Duke of Wellington
could say, according to
Paul Johnson
(subscription required), of Sir Robert Peel: “I have sat in many cabinets with him,
and I have never known him, in public or
in private, say anything which he did not believe to be the strict truth.”
We have certainly progressed a long way since then.
The question is: why do today’s politicians today lie so much? unfold
The Coalition between the Left and Islamic Terror
by Christopher Chantrill
IT STILL SEEMS almost beyond belief: the coalition between the western left and
the Islamicists. Is it really possible that the champions of women, minorities,
gays, and lesbians could really be allied with the Islamic terrorists.
The answer is clearly: Yes. Judging from this article by
Douglas Davis,
there exists a formal alliance in Britain between the lsft and radical Islam.
You don’t have to search for them under rocks. They are organizing in unfold
Legislating The Morality of Health
by Christopher Chantrill
HOW IMPORTANT is diet and exercise to a healthy life? Everyone knows, of course, that it
is very important. You can change your life by ending unhealthy eating habits and by
starting a program of moderate exercise.
Everybody knows this, but is it true?
TechCentral Station’s
Sandy Szwarc
and now
John Luik have been pulling out some research that says “not so unfold
Government Guts Gifted Kids
by Christopher Chantrill
ALL YOU NEED to say about government education is: Why? When the working
class of the nineteenth century were crowding around the school house door,
when 90 percent of children were literate and 90 percent of them went to school, why
did government have to take over?
And why do liberals, who so famously celebrate diversity, want one size fits all
when it comes to the education of our children?
One thing they want is to keep gifted children back. They want to mainstream
everyone’s kids so that nobody gets left behind—or unfold
The Corrupted University
by Christopher Chantrill
ONE THING ABOUT big business. Whenever some CEO steps out of line, the whole nation
descends on him in unison. Americans are shocked, shocked, by corporate malfeasance.
But suppose there is corruption and malfeasance at a government university? What then?
For some reason, nobody cares.
So when a bright young law professor gets the shaft on tenure from his department because
he failed to sign a petition supporting the rights of the notorious plagiarist Ward Churchill of
the University of Colorado, we don’t get to hear about unfold
Teacher Knows Best at Wal-Mart
by Christopher Chantrill
HOW WILL THE unions’ new strategy on increased organizing affect you and me? Well, here is
how. The National Education Assocation, the teachers’ union, is organizing a boycott of
Wal-Mart.
Er, just why would it be so important for the teachers to take their eye off the ball and
their critical national role in educating our children to worry about Wal-Mart and its
employees? That is what
Michael Reitz
is wondering too. unfold
Al Qaeda's Seven Phase Strategy
by Christopher Chantrill
THROUGH ANALYSIS of an interview in Der Spiegel
Bill Roggio reviews the grand seven stages of Al Qaeda’s plan to bring
the whole world under a new caliphate.
The big question is how seriously we should take it. So a rich kid holed
out in Afghanistan has formulated a grand plan to take over the world. So
he has staged a spectacular attack on the icons of the great world hegemon. So
he predicted that the US would attack Iraq in response. So he got a unfold
Liberals Said It Couldn't Be Done
by Christopher Chantrill
REMEMBER THE Carter malaise? Remember 10 percent inflation and 10 percent unemployment?
Remember crime in New York City? How long ago it all seems. Even the crack epidemic has subsided.
And the liberals said there was nothing we could do about it. America had become ungovernable.
In a remarkable piece in the London Times that could never have appeared in The New
York Times
Andrew Sullivan
reminds the Brits just how much things unfold
Many Muslims are on Our Side
by Christopher Chantrill
ON THE “JUST how big are they anyway” front, the incomparable
Mark Steyn
clears the bases in the Spectator this week. Warming up with the story of the
Innu people of Davis Inlet in Labrador, Canada, and their culture of
“snorting drugs, glue, petrol and pretty much anything else,” and how the
“impeccably progressive soft-lefties” in the Canadian government actually managed
to make things worse, he then turns to the Islamicist terrorists.
The fact is, he unfold
Last Union Breakup Led to More Organizing
by Christopher Chantrill
WILL THE BREAKUP make a difference to the union movement? That
the question as the Change To Win faction led by SEUI president Andy Stern
splits off from the AFL-CIO.
The last time the unions broke up was in the 1930s when the breakaway group, then as now, wanted to crank up organizing, according to
Carl F. Horowitz.
In 1935, a group of unions, led by Mine Workers President
John L. Lewis, formed a dissident faction within the American unfold
Coverup! Clinton Administration Knew of 9/11 Plot!
by Christopher Chantrill
OUR OBJECTIVE friends at the MSM are very busy trumpeting the left-wing fantasies of a gold star mother
down in Texas this month. So they really don’t have the time to report the story that the Clinton Administration
knew of the Atta terror cell in 2000, according to evil
Fox News and NY Post columnist
Deborah Orin.
But according to rules set up by 9/11 commission member Jamie Gorelick while unfold
What If They Are Stumble-Bums?
by Christopher Chantrill
WHAT IS THE difference between a bunch of would-be world conquerors who can talk
a good line and the ones who can deliver world domination?
It is hard to tell because anyone that can do a stand-up in front of a video camera. And it
is not too hard to stage a terrorist bombing and
fill a camera frame with mayhem and destruction.
Our friends in the international MSM can make these chaps look pretty imposing. But to Amir Taheri they
don’t look to great. His unfold
Global Warming Convergence
by Christopher Chantrill
IS GLOBAL WARMING real? Up to now there had been a difference between surface temperature measurements
and satellite temperature measurements with surface temperature measurements coming in at 0.2 degrees
per decade and satellite temperature measurements showing 0.09 degrees per decade.
But now Roy Spencer reports that anomalies in the measurements from satellites
indicate that the satellite temperature series comes in much closer to the surface series.
Which indicates unfold
Welfare in Paris
by Christopher Chantrill
WE DON’T OFTEN get to read about the details of the welfare state in Old Europe due
to the language barrier. We Americans do not know French and German, and we should.
But here’s a story from
Sylvain Charat about
the poverty trap in France.
Yes, in France as elsewhere, it doesn’t pay for a woman to get off welfare because
she loses as much in benefits as she gains in income from work. So there are about half
a million people (although nobody knows exactly how many) who unfold
Trying to Smoke Out the Lawyers
by Christopher Chantrill
REMEMBER THE great lawsuit against Big Tobacco? It was a noble crusade to make the tobacco companies pay for the damage they have
done to smokers. Well, not exactly. They are going to pay state governments
to compensate them for the extra health costs of smokers. Well, not exactly,
because smokers die early and cost government less than ordinary folk.
So what is going on with the great Tobacco Deal?
Smokers are going to pay tobacco companies who are going to pay state governments
and lawyers about $250 billion over 25 unfold
Turtles All The Way Down
by Christopher Chantrill
THE SUMMER of ’05 seems to be turning into a good old-fashioned sophomore bull session, arguing
across the political divide about intelligent design vs. evolution.
Paul Campos, for my money, has the best entry yet. He argues that it’s
turtles all the way down, as in
The student asks the great sage, "O Master, upon what does the Earth rest?" The
sage replies, "O seeker of knowledge, the Earth rests on the back of an unfold
It's Because We are Taking Over the World
by Christopher Chantrill
WHAT COULD we do, the war critics ask, to deal with Al Qaeda’s demands so that
they will go away and leave us alone? What have we done to stir them up to such rage?
The thesis of the “Why do they hate us” crowd gets a good airing from the
BBC’s security correspondent,
Frank Gardner.
Gardner walks through the usual routine. The terror masters do not exactly
tell us what they want.
But unfold
Inside the Movement
by Christopher Chantrill
WE SHOULD HAVE been reading this stuff years ago, but better late than never. The London Times
sends an
undercover reporter
into a group in the Islamicist terror network in Britain and finds—well,
an ordinary mass movement driven by rage and hate.
So now we know what we are dealing with, now
we can get cracking to solve it. It seems that the number one thing we can do is stop the welfare.
These noble terrorists and their leaders make a unfold
Jobs Disconnect Continues
by Christopher Chantrill
THE INCREASE in non-farm payroll jobs this last month was impressive, at 207,000 new jobs
since the June establishment survey. But the household survey was even more impressive. (The
household survey is the one used to come up with the unemployment rate.)
It showed an increase of 438,000 jobs.
Why is there such a huge difference between the establishment survey and
the household survey? Great minds wonder too. But here are the numbers in the
government’s
Economy Great, Americans Are Miserable
by Christopher Chantrill
WHAT’S WRONG with the Yanks, asks British commentator
Gerard Baker?
The economy is great, and basically has been for twenty years ever since the Reagan years,
with a couple of shallow recessions just to keep things ship-shape. Yet
only 4 per cent of the public rate the economy to be in excellent
condition; a further 37 per cent describe it as good. But 59 per cent say it’s
either not good or poor. This incongruous misery is reflected in a unfold
New Biggies Help Self-employed
by Christopher Chantrill
EVERYBODY KNOWS that the e-businesses like Amazon.com and eBay are revolutionizing
the economy. Or something like that. But under the radar they are revolutionizing
business in ways you wouldn’t expect, according to
Glenn Harlan Reynolds.
eBay is offering health insurance
“to their `Power Sellers’-- basically people who sell
$1,000 or more a month and get good customer reviews.” So not only does eBay provide
a marketplace for millions of buyers and sellers, but it also unfold
What's the Big Deal About Stem Cells?
by Christopher Chantrill
EVER SINCE Ron Reagan Jr. appealingly promised at the Democratic National Convention in 2004
that embryonic stem cell research would yield miracles, the question has lingered.
Just what is going on in the politics of stem cell research? Is it just the
Democrats creating a wedge issue, dividing pro-life Republicans from the practical
majority of Americans who would reflexively support research on “new hope” for
Alzheimers, cancer, AIDS sufferers?
The conservative line, rehearsed here by
China Converts to Christianity
by Christopher Chantrill
IT’S NOT A story that leads in The New York Times. It’s not an issue that
you’d expect to furrow the brow of Katie Couric on NBC’s Today Show. But China
is converting to Christianity. How much? How fast? According to
Richard Spencer
State-sanctioned Protestant and Catholic churches in China count up to 35
million followers, making Christianity the third most practiced religion in
the country after Buddhism and Taoism. Islam ranks unfold
Moderate Democrats Put Party over Principle
by Christopher Chantrill
FIVE YEARS ago a group of moderate Democrats signed onto a declaration of principle
on Social Security at FDR’s old Hyde Park mansion. They said, according to
Michael G. Franc
“We believe in shifting the focus of America’s ... social insurance
programs from transferring wealth to creating wealth.” President Bush couldn’t
have said it better. That’s exactly why he and his allies in Congress have
proposed adding personal retirement unfold
The Power of Ideas against Terror
by Christopher Chantrill
IT WAS 58 YEARS ago that Ayatollah Khomeini issued a fatwa against Iran’s greatest
living writer, Ahmad Kasravi. Six months later, Kasravi was dead. Writes
Amir Taheri:
So why unfold At the time of his murder Kasravi was one of Iran’s leading intellectuals.
A veritable Renaissance man, he was a senior jurist at the high court, a distinguished historian,
a magnetic orator, a master of the Persian prose, and a best-selling author.
Judge Obstruction: Now They Tell Us
by Christopher Chantrill
NOW THEY TELL us. The Democratic tactic of obstructing judges is hurting them at the polls.
Manuel Miranda
reports that Republican pollsters observed the effect back in 2002.
In the 2002 mid-term elections
In unfold In three states, Missouri, Minnesota, and Georgia, single-issue, pro-life voters
came out to vote in unusually large numbers in a mid-term election. Their margin was, in fact,
larger than the Republican margin of victory in all three states.
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
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
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
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
Conservatism's Holy Grail
What distinguishes true Conservatism from the rest, and from the Blair project, is the belief in more personal freedom and more market freedom, along with less state intervention... The true Third Way is the Holy Grail of Tory politics today - compassion and community without compulsion.
Minette Marrin, The Daily Telegraph
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
Drang nach Osten
There was nothing new about the Frankish drive to the east... [let] us recall that the continuance of their rule depended upon regular, successful, predatory warfare.
Richard Fletcher, The Barbarian Conversion
Government Expenditure
The Union publishes an exact return of the amount of its taxes; I can get copies of the budgets of the four and twenty component states; but who can tell me what the citizens spend in the administration of county and township?
Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America
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
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
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
Holy Families
Revelations cannot be sustained and transformed into successful new religions by lonely prophets... Indeed, new religious movements based on revelations typically are family affairs.
Rodney Stark, Exploring the Religious Life
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