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2006: How Many Unsung Heroes Died?
by Christopher Chantrill
THE YEAR 2006 saw the deaths of many famous people, from Robert Altman to Al Zarqawi, as Mark Steyn relates. It saw the death of a decent man, in Gerald Ford, a brilliant man, in Milton Friedman, and an evil man, in Saddam Hussein.
But what are you to say of the deaths of the countless unsung heroes, such as Richard Milward, “Schoolmaster whose history lessons, and whose goodness, unfold
| 12/31/06 6:34 am ETJust Don't Say the M-word
by Christopher Chantrill
AMERICAN-IN-LONDON Janet Daley, like us at Road to the Middle Class, is hungrily devouring the new Tory research paper “Breakdown unfold
Sphere: Related Content | | perm | comment | | 12/29/06 8:23 am ETDavid Cameron Exposes "Breakdown Britain"
by Christopher Chantrill
FOR OVER A year people in Britain have been wondering if the new leader of the Conservative Party, David Cameron, is for real.
He began by demonstrating that he would be different, by bicycling to work and by installing a wind turbine on his house.
So much so that traditional Tories have been completely put off by him. But he has brought the Tories into a lead over the Labour Party in the opinion polls for the first time since the early 1990s, whatever that is worth.
His strategy has been to appeal to the secular metropolitan unfold
| 12/29/06 3:48 am ETMr Populist wants Privilege and Subsidy
by Christopher Chantrill
SENATORS HILLARY Clinton and Barack Obama have been getting nice coverage as moderates, even though their ADA ratings for 2005 are both 100 per cent perfect liberal.
Now millionaire lawyer John Edwards is getting a reputation as a populist. He’s running for president on the following five headline issues on his campaign website:
| 12/28/06 8:27 am ETTo Help The Poor
by Christopher Chantrill
WE ARE FAR too severe on good honest chaps like Ebenezer Scrooge who refuse to celebrate Christmas, writes Spengler.
[Dickens'] Scrooge is a vicious caricature of the Puritan position. Considering that America is the last Christian nation thanks in large measure to the accomplishments of the Puritans, we should reconsider Scrooge's point of view.
Christmas is a children’s celebration and Puritans, like
“[t]he Jews[,] are too old to play at being children, unfold
| 12/28/06 3:57 am ETHow Certain Are You?
by Christopher Chantrill
THE FORCES of ant-religious bigotry have been developing a nice little meme lately about certainty. They have been telling all their freinds that they stand nobly for skepticism against the rigid certainties of religious fundamentalism and superstition.
Columnist Jonah Goldberg has a technique for dealing with these professional skeptics.
Whenever I hear people say such things, I like to ask them, "Are you sure about that?" When they say yes, which they always unfold
| 12/27/06 8:20 am ETGerald Ford, RIP
by Christopher Chantrill
PRESIDENT GERALD Ford, who died December 26, represented the minority Republican Party of the post-war era. While living a decent, play-by-the-rules life, Ford was part of a generation of Republicans playing strategic defense against the militant expansion of progressive politics and its product the government welfare state.
A man who lost his father and his name in divorce, Ford married a divorced woman and then shared his life with Betty Bloomer Warren Ford, fathering four children and fifteen grandchildren.
Serving as president in unfold
| 12/27/06 3:27 am ETThe Popeye Moment on Single-Parent Families
by Christopher Chantrill
AND WHILE WE are at it, let’s get serious about single-parent families. As the climate enthusiasts like to say, the science is in.
Single-parent families are a very bad idea. So why don’t CNN and Fox News run single-parent horror stories 24-7? They could, you know, without breaking a sweat. And I’ll bet there are enough single-parent horror stories out there that they could change the story every hour if they had the budget for it.
Now that would be something.
| 12/26/06 8:16 am ETIs Racism a Fact or a Faith?
by Christopher Chantrill
LET’S TALK about racism. Well, it’s the day after Christmas, and time to take up weighty subjects.
Asks Shelby Steele, author of White Guilt:
A recent CNN poll tells us that 84% of blacks and 66% of whites think racism is a "very serious" or "somewhat serious" problem in American life. Is this true?
| 12/26/06 3:45 am ETFonz Moves In On British "Panto"
by Christopher Chantrill
IF IT’S CHRISTMAS it must be time for “panto,” the deliciously vulgar British holiday entertainment. Its eternal subjects are Cinderella, Aladdin, Peter Pan, Dick Whittington and His Cat, and Mother Goose. The leading man is always a girl in tights and there is always a “dame” part, played by a man. Only in Cinderella there are two dame parts, the two Ugly Sisters.
Another thing about the pantos is that there is always audience participation, a pleasure very thin on the ground in our modern age. Still, as
| 12/22/06 3:46 pm ETTis The Season
by Christopher Chantrill
IT’S THE SEASON, and time for a cheery round of carols under the Christmas Tree.
Of course, Some People don’t know to leave well enough alone, and we at the Road to the Middle Class have this week, I am afraid, put out a modest effort in this direction:
God rest ye merry, bureaucrats,
Let nothing you dismay.
For Christopher Columbus
Was born on Fitzmas Day.
To save us all from Satan’s power,
When we were gone unfold
| 12/22/06 8:44 am ETThe Peace Party vs. The Power Party
by Christopher Chantrill
FOR SOME TIME many people have defined the main political division in the United States as the Mommy Party and the Daddy Party. Democrats represent people who believe that the government should mother the American people. And Republicans represent people who believe that the government should be a strict father.
But now comes Matthew Continetti with the news that the real cleavage between the parties is on peace vs. war. The Democratic unfold
| 12/22/06 3:48 am ETSkills Commission Wants to Centralize Education
by Christopher Chantrill
THE NEW COMMISSION on the Skills of the American Workforce has issued a report on the nation’s education system, entitled “Tough Choices or Tough Times.” Recognizing that the bureaucratic system set up a century ago is not exactly best practice, the report admits that
our education and transing systems were built for another era, an era in which workers needed only a rudimentary education.
So the commissioners do not propose just a modest reform of the current unfold
| 12/21/06 8:56 am ETPresident Bush Wants To Compromise
by Christopher Chantrill
PRESIDENT BUSH says he’s all in favor of working with Democrats in the new Congress. As Stephen Dinan reports,
"I don't expect Democratic leaders to compromise on their principles, and they don't expect me to compromise on mine. But the American people do expect us to compromise on legislation that will benefit the country," he said.
The president says he is willing to raise
the minimum wage to $7.25 as long as that doesn't hurt unfold
| 12/21/06 3:31 am ETOf Course Blogs are Boring and Predictable...
by Christopher Chantrill
WHAT EXACTLY was the point of Joseph Rago’s rant in today’s Opinion Journal? I read it through twice and I’m still not sure of the point.
Unless the point is that Joseph Rago is thankful that he is an “assistant editorial features editor at The Wall Street Journal” by virtue of being editor-in-chief of the Dartmouth Review, you know, like the Pharisee, who was thankful he was not like other men, publicans and sinners.
When someone drags Henry James into the unfold
| 12/20/06 8:21 am ETWatch Your Wallet Says Pete Du Pont
by Christopher Chantrill
WONDERING WHAT the new Congress will mean? Pete Du Pont gives us a quick rundown in today’s Opinion Journal
| 12/20/06 2:59 am ETThe Child of a Sperm Donor
by Christopher Chantrill
SUPPOSE YOU decided that you wanted a child and you got yourself inseminated by anonymous sperm donor from a sperm bank. You’d be exercising your reproductive choice, of course, as guaranteed by a penumbra of the constitution.
There’s just one thing, and it’s something that we adults tend to forget as we forge ahead on our “sexual choices.”
What does the kid, the issue from such a union, think about having an anonymous sperm donor as a father?
Not much, according to
| 12/19/06 8:20 am ETThe Widening Middle Eastern War
by Christopher Chantrill
JORDAN’S KING Abdullah recently warned of three developing civil wars in the Middle East. There’s the headline war in Iraq. But there is also a developing civil war in Lebanon. And now there is the growing likelihood of civil war in the Palestinian Occupied Territories between the forces of Fatah and Hamas, reports Claude Salhani.
According to Laurie King-Irani, "The Palestinians have let themselves fall right into the trap set for them by the Israeli extreme unfold
| 12/19/06 3:14 am ETMiddle Class Muscle in South China
by Christopher Chantrill
EVERYBODY WONDERS what is going to happen in China. Will it reform out of its Communist Party monopoly? Or will it come to a smash-up as the irresistible force of a vibrant economy collides with the immovable object of an ossified political system?
Our friend at the New York Times, Howard W. French, reports that things are starting to move in Shenzhen, just across the border from Hong unfold
| 12/18/06 8:38 am ETIt's The Anti-Semitic Violence That's The Problem
by Christopher Chantrill
IN BRITAIN right now, one in 400 Jews is likely to be the victim of a “faith-related” attack in Britain every year.
One in 1,700 Muslims is likely to be a victim of a faith-related attack, according to Tom Harper and Ben Leapman.
In London and Manchester, where Muslims outnumber Jews by four to one, anti-Semitic offenses exceeded anti-Muslim offenses. The figures do not record the faith of the offenders.
Here is the record of merely one unfold
| 12/18/06 3:26 am ETAfter The Great Seattle Windstorm
by Christopher Chantrill
THE GREAT SEATTLE Windstorm is now just a memory. But this morning it was kind of a mess after a night in which winds were reported to exceed 70 miles per hour, according to the Seattle Times.
I know. 70 miles per hour? One to two inches of rain? What kind of wimps are we in Western Washington? Nevertheless, downed powerlines are downed powerlines. And closed bridges are closed bridges.
But that sort of stuff doesn’t bother me! I decided to unfold
| 12/15/06 12:16 pm ETSo Bush Created a Catastrophe
by Christopher Chantrill
WE ARE AT AN inflection point in the War on Terror. Three years of effort to produce democracy in Iraq after the 2003 invasion has demonstrated that the forces of chaos in Iraq are stronger than the move to democracy. “Bush Has Created a Catastrophe,” complains Timothy Garton Ash in The Guardian.
Yes, of course. The Middle East is a catastrophe, and Bush created it. That was always understood as a possibility from the beginning. Back in 2003, some unfold
| 12/15/06 3:29 am ETThe Lessons of Pinochet
by Christopher Chantrill
FORMER PRESIDENT Auguste Pinochet of Chile, who died last week, was a dictator who toppled a would-be Marxist dictator. With all this dictator-ology going on, his life offers many lessons to us, writes Peruvian Alvaro Vargas Llosa.
| 12/14/06 8:19 am ETThe Great Sexual Taboo
by Christopher Chantrill
IT’S THE GREAT taboo of our time. It’s eating away at half the population. It’s a political issue waiting for some brave political entrepreneur to grasp. You know what it is.
"I want to spend more time with him, and do stuff like go shopping or see a movie. That would make it a friendship for me. But he says no, because if we do those things, then in his opinion we'd have a relationship--and that's more than he wants. And I'm confused, because it seems like I don't get the 'friend' part, but he still gets the 'benefits.'" It unfold
| 12/14/06 3:09 am ETOh House! Not Another Anti-hero
by Christopher Chantrill
OH NO! LAST night on Fox Dr. Gregory House just decided to cop a plea on his forging of prescriptions for the prescription painkiller Vikodin, but when he turned up at the detective’s office, it was no deal.
Why? Because the acerbic House had signed for a dead patient’s prescription for painkiller, and the DA was going to hang him on that instead of the testimony of colleague Dr. James Wilson.
But the next exciting episode of Fox’s hit series House M.D. won’t be aired until unfold
| 12/13/06 7:16 am ETGod Bless the Secular Fundamentalists
by Christopher Chantrill
DID YOU KNOW that we live in an age when the achievements of science and technology are under attack from religious extremism as never before? Then the Center for Enquiry (CFI) is for you. As CFI’s home page puts it:
Although modern world civilization is based upon the achievements of science and technology, until this time there has been no authoritative and credible voice defending the scientific outlook in examining religion, human values, and the borderlands of science.
Oh unfold
| 12/13/06 3:11 am ETThe Hydra-headed Diversity Monster
by Christopher Chantrill
MAYBE IT WOULD help if the United States Supreme Court would make up its mind one way or another. And maybe it will in the next few years.
Unfortunately, right now, diversity is metastasizing like cancer, as articles in NRO by Thomas Sowell and Frederick M. Hess make only too clear.
It’s an irony, if you like, that back in 1954 the unfold
| 12/12/06 10:15 am ETHome Mortgage Market: Crash or Bounce?
by Christopher Chantrill
PERHAPS THE most radical change in the financial markets in the last generation has been the securitizing of home mortgages, the bundling of home mortgage obligations into mortgage bonds which are then sold to investors.
But Lewis Ranieri, the Wall Street guy who is credited with creating the market is worried that risky mortgages are creating a problem, according to Patrice Hill.
Banks and mortgage brokers have been passing along to unwary investors unfold
| 12/12/06 2:54 am ETBush Pulls Iraqi Puppet-strings
by Christopher Chantrill
IS THIS THE light at the end of the tunnel, or too little too late?
The New York Times reports that the Iraqi political parties are in talks to limit the power of militia leader Moktada al-Sadr.
According to Edward Wong, the US is “working hard to help build the coalition” to dislodge al-Sadr.
This is not good news. What we would like to hear is that the Iraqi politicians are fed up unfold
| 12/11/06 11:33 am ETAuguste Pinochet, Chile's Departed Embarrassment
by Christopher Chantrill
WHO WAS AUGUSTE Pinochet, the former dictator of Chile who died last week? Was he a fascist dictator, as the left believes, or a man who rescued his nation from a Marxist maelstrom?
The facts are that Pinochet, after violently suppressing the socialist Allende government in a 1973 coup, slowly rebuilt Chile economically, and returned the nation to democratic rule, while carefully maintaining immunity for any improper acts committed while he was in power.
But, as the
| 12/11/06 4:51 am ETMen Are Funnier Than Women. Discuss
by Christopher Chantrill
WHY ARE MEN funnier than women? Christopher Hitchens wants to know.
Why are men, taken on average and as a whole, funnier than women? Well, for one thing, they had damn well better be. The chief task in life that a man has to perform is that of impressing the opposite sex.
He means, no doubt, im-pressing that into the opposite sex. And the most effective way of dissolving the natural reticence and modesty unfold
| 12/08/06 8:37 am ETJean Kirkpatrick, Great American
by Christopher Chantrill
AS YOU WOULD expect, when the Associated Press announced the news of the death of Ambassador Jean Kirkpatrick at the age of 80 the one thing it did not mention was the greatest moment in her life.
It was the “Blame America First” speech at the 1984 Republican National Convention.
You remember. She famously connected the “San Francisco Democrats” with the instinct, so common among liberals then and now to “Blame America unfold
| 12/08/06 4:03 am ETThe Education Solution is Privatization
by Christopher Chantrill
IN CASE YOU haven’t noticed, the Brits are having a little firestorm about the governance at the University of Oxford.
A new Vice Chancellor, John Hood, has recommended “replacing the traditional system of governance with a more ‘top-down’ managerial approach,” according to Martin Jacomb in The Spectator. But the professors voted Hood’s proposals down 730 votes to 456. Shades of Larry Summers and Harvard faculty.
The unfold
| 12/07/06 8:17 am ETMore Iraq Study Needed
by Christopher Chantrill
WHAT IS IT exactly that the Iraq Study Group is proposing? A drawdown in troop strength in 2008? An approach to Syria and Iran?
The Bush administration and the Congress must work together in forging a new course in Iraq despite partisan differences over how to end U.S. involvement in the long-running war, the co-chairmen of the Iraq Study Group said Thursday.
The basic recommendation is probably true.
The panel's unfold
| 12/07/06 3:12 am ETThe Working Poor Are Different From You and Me
by Christopher Chantrill
IT’S PRETTY sobering, isn’t it, to read that the most charitable people in the United States are the working poor. I mean, they don’t exactly have a lot of spare cash lying around. Not like some people I know.
But then neither do your average middle-class homeowner sup to their ears in mortgage debt. They say: “I don't have enough money to spare,” according to John Stossel. And of course, they (make that we) don’t. We already spent it on our houses, our cars, our unfold
| 12/06/06 8:12 am ETSuppose There Was a Government Apple Industry
by Christopher Chantrill
IMAGINE THIS, writes Terence P. Jeffrey. “Suppose there were a law that forced you to pay a government agency for apples you were supposed to feed your children.”
And suppose it turned out that some of the government apples were bad. What should parents do?
When they complained to the public-apple agencies, agency bureaucrats and their union would say: "Excuse me, the bad apples are not our fault. You need to give us more money so we can unfold
| 12/06/06 4:17 am ETBush Nominates a Theocratic Abstinence Advocate
by Christopher Chantrill
OH NO, THE theocrats in the Bush administration have nominated an abstinence advocate to head up the federal Office of Population Affairs.
Dr. Eric Keroack “advocates abstinence as the most reliable method of pregnancy and STD prevention,” according to
| 12/05/06 8:28 am ETHonor Friedman With Choice in Education and Health Care
by Christopher Chantrill
AS WE MOURN the passing of Milton Friedman, American hero, we must painfully recognize that much of what he urged upon the United States as beneficial reform remains to be realized, particularly, write Newt Gingrich and David Merrit, in education and health care.
Milton Friedman stood courageously for choice in education and health care against all the special interests of the nation. What better memorial to the great man could we build than a unfold
| 12/05/06 3:10 am ETSingle Parenthood is Dangerous for Children
by Christopher Chantrill
WE EDUCATED Americans can afford to screw up. We have skills and we have backup. But there is a class of Americans that don’t. They are the children of single-parent families. In fact, as Kay S. Hymowitz tells us in Marriage and Caste in America, it’s gone beyond a question of class.