Blogs for 2006 - Road to the Middle Class

EVEN AS THE Mideast goes up in flames, Eclipse Aviation marked a big milestone as the FAA awarded them a preliminary certification on their Eclipse 500 Very Light Jet in a ceremony at Oshkosh, July 28, according to USAToday. For photos and videos of the Eclipse 500 go to their site. Said CEO Vern Rayburn:

"We have looked forward to this monumental accomplishment since Eclipse unfold

A Snapshot of Men without Work

by Christopher Chantrill

FOR DECADES we have been taught, nay ordered to believe that the unemployed were helpless victims, denied meaningful work by a cruel and heartless economic system.

Economists disagreed. Ludwig von Mises famously wrote that all unemployment in a free economy is voluntary. When we are out of work we do not take the first job that comes along. We wait, because we expect something better to come up. When we absolutely must get a job, we do.

When Booker T. Washington was traveling across the South after the Civil War on his way to get unfold

Chemerinsky Joins Plame Game

by Christopher Chantrill

POLITICS AIN’T beanbag, they say. When you go into politics, you had better expect rough treatment.

So when Joseph Wilson wrote an op-ed in the New York Times to discredit the Bush Administration over the assertion that Iraq had tried to purchase yellowcake in Chad, he can hardly have been surprised that the Bush Administration would try to discredit him.

But the media was shocked. The very idea! So we got a special prosecutor to determine whether there had been a violation of law in leaking the name of Joseph Wilson’s wife, unfold

The Bolton Kerfuffle Resumes

by Christopher Chantrill

PRESIDENT BUSH has nominated of John Bolton to be reappointed as UN Ambassador, and everyone is rehearsing their arguments of a year ago.

Bolton was appointed to the UN ambassadorship last August in the Congressional recess after Democrats filibustered his nomination. If he is not reappointed his recess appointment will expire at the end of the current session of Congress

Should Bolton be reappointed? As Colum Lynch makes clear, it all unfold

Children are Boring. Discuss

by Christopher Chantrill

HALF A CENTURY ago, in her Second Sex, Simone de Beauvoir called woman “the victim of the species.” Actually, she included in her chapter on “The Data of Biology” the idea that all female mammals were thus disadvantaged. For instance:

The fish and the bird, which expel the egg from the body before the embryo develops, are less enslaved to their offspring than is the female mammal.

The name of the game, you see, is “autonomy.”

So when journalist Helen Kirwan-Taylor exclaims in print “ unfold

Washington State Supreme Court Upholds DOMA

by Christopher Chantrill

WITH THE 5-4 decision of the Washington State Supreme Court upholding the state’s Defense of Marriage Act, it looks like the gay marriage issue will move to an accommodation of gay partnerships and not the redefinition of marriage that the high court in Massachusetts mandated back in 2003.

The court’s majority decision (here and here) was split between three justices (Barbara A. unfold

Is Religion vs. Science a Red Herring?

by Christopher Chantrill

WHILE WE BATTLE in the public square about whether religious belief can coexist with faith in scientific method, some scientists just go ahead and believe in God anyway. In The New York Times Cornelia Dean looks at the books of three scientists who came to faith. For instance,

In “The Language of God,” Dr. Collins, the geneticist who led the American government’s effort to unfold

Humiliation After Humiliation

by Christopher Chantrill

ARE WE IN A war with the Islamists? Andrew C. McCarthy is worried that we don’t really take the Islamists seriously. But they are very serious about us. There is no doubt about what Sheikh Nasrullah, leader of Hezbollah, thinks. It’s war, war to the death.

“We consider [the United States] to be an enemy because it wants to humiliate our governments, our regimes, and our peoples. Because it is the greatest plunderer of our unfold

GDP Up 20 pct. You Gotta Problem With That?

by Christopher Chantrill

HOW MUCH ECONOMIC growth is enough? Writes Pete du Pont,

In the past 33 months the size of America's entire economy has increased by 20%--or, as National Review Online's Larry Kudlow put it, "In less than three years, the U.S. economic pie has expanded by $2.2 trillion, an output add-on that is roughly the same size as the total Chinese economy."

You gotta problem with that? A lot of Americans seem to, since a majority of Americans give President unfold

Can the Left Abandon Appeasement?

by Christopher Chantrill

BACK IN 2004 the German writer Henryk Broder wrote to Welt am Sonntag to say that “Europa - dein Familienname ist Appeasement!” Interesting how he used the English word. The German for appeasement, according to Google, is “Beschwichtigung.” Yes. It means what you think it does. “Europe, thy family name is appeasement.”

Subsequently, Mathias Döpfner, CEO of Axel Springer, publisher of Die unfold

Is The West Too Soft To Be Ruthless?

by Christopher Chantrill

CONSERVATIVES are taking a look today at the meaning of “proportionality.” Asks John Podhoretz:

What if liberal democracies have now evolved to a point where they can no longer wage war effectively because they have achieved a level of humanitarian concern for others that dwarfs any really cold-eyed pursuit of their own national interests?

Or you could wonder, with the more pungent unfold

Who Can Cross the Partisan Divide?

by Christopher Chantrill

AS CONNECTICUT Democrats get ready to sink their liberal Democratic senator Joe Lieberman, Debra J. Saunders wonders if he isn’t the Democrats’ version of John McCain. In talking to some Democrats she told them:

I appreciate McCain's efforts to curb Washington's runaway spending.. What is more, I think McCain in the White House could go a long way in healing the country's ugly partisan divide.

Then again, I added, Democrats have their own maverick — unfold

Who Stands for the Jews?

by Christopher Chantrill

EVERYBODY LOVED the Jews when they were helpless victims slaughtered in the Holocaust. And everyone loved them as plucky underdogs against the Arabs in 1948 and 1956 and 1973. But the left has no room in its heart for people who aren’t progressive or who aren’t victims. And so the left of Europe has slowly moved towards an open support of the Palestinians. They must be right because they are victims.

That’s how you get to demanding “proportionate” response to Hezbollah border attacks and rocket attacks. But as unfold

Public Opinion on Lebanon

by Christopher Chantrill

AFTER THE SHOCK of the new Mideast War we are beginning to see public opinion forming in the pronouncements of the opinion makers. In Europe, of course, the watchword is “disproportionate” as in Israel’s response to border violations and rocket attacks on its citizens.

But in the US there is a different dynamic developing. There is the “arc of Shia radicalism” argument, suggested by Walid Phares, in which the Iranians are building an arc of Shia unfold

Anyone for "Mongolian Ping Pong?"

by Christopher Chantrill

I HAVE SELDOM been so delighted by a movie as “Mongolian Ping Pong.” It’s a delightful story of a Mongolian boy whose father sends him down from the yurt to dip a bucket of water in the river. And what does he spy in the river, but a round white thing floating along. What is it? Grandma thinks that it is the treasure of the water spirits.

This Mongol seven-year-old, descendant of the Great Khan no doubt, is already a fine horseman, and he and his two friends get into a lot of adventure and trouble with their parents as the movie unfold

Two Views of Hezbollah

by Christopher Chantrill

WHICH IS IT? Is Hezbollah a homegrown political movement that has organized the downtrodden Shia of Lebanon into a political force, as Bronwen Maddox and others propose? Or is it a overweening satrapy of Iran and Syria, a force of disorder in a weak and suffering land of Lebanon, as Fouad Ajami writes?

What is clear is the Hezbollah has had a ton of money from Iran. You don’t build all that military unfold

The 100 mpg Car That Isn't

by Christopher Chantrill

OUR LIBERAL media friends are getting all excited about the birth of the 100 miles per gallon car. There are even people driving around with stickers advertising their triple digit gas sippers. Here’s a characteristic gushy article on the topic from MSNBC.

But wait a minute. These gas sipping miracles aren’t really getting 100 mpg. If their owners were corporate advertisers they would be getting sued for false advertising.

This unfold

The Black Divide

by Christopher Chantrill

THIS WEEK PRESIDENT Bush finally spoke at the NAACP convention and received, according to reports, a polite reception. The delegates especially liked it when he announced his support for extension of the Federal Voting Rights Act.

Did the president go out of politeness or out of political calculation? According to Harry Jackson there is an emerging split in black America, one that puts African Americans in play politically unfold

How About Some Liberal Villains on TV

by Christopher Chantrill

THE BUSINESS and Media Institute has done a study on the treatment of businesspeople on TV and they don’t like what they see. In Bad Company they report that if you watch TV shows you would see that:

TV Is Overwhelmingly Negative toward Business
Businessmen Are Villains, Not Heroes
Businessmen Are a Greater Threat to Society than Terrorists or Gangs
Businessmen Are Almost as Likely to Commit a Serious Felony as Career unfold

No Wal-Mart Law for Maryland

by Christopher Chantrill

GOOD NEWS. On July 19, a federal district court judge threw out Maryland’s Wal-Mart health care bill. Reports Jan Haberkorn:

U.S. District Judge J. Frederick Motz ruled that the law violates the Employment Retirement Income Security Act (ERISA), a federal law that sets minimum standards for pensions and health plans.

So that’s all right. Wal-Mart won’t have to pay a tax if its health benefits don’t reach a minimum 8 percent of payroll. You can unfold

Making War Against a Tribal Culture

by Christopher Chantrill

IN THE SEASON of Nicholas Wade’s Before the Dawn we appreciate that primitive man was not a noble savage but a savage killer. Now the excellent Mark Steyn has read Wade and written

that 87 per cent of primitive societies were at war more than once per year, and some 65 per cent of them were fighting continuously. "Had the same casualty rate been suffered by the population of the twentieth century," writes Wade, "its war deaths unfold

SecEd Launches Vouchers, Bureaucrats Run Interference

by Christopher Chantrill

WHAT A COICIDENCE! Just before Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings announces a new federal pilot school voucher program the folks deep in the bureaucracy at the Institute of Education Sciences release a study that shows that “public school students did as well as or better than those in private school” in many areas.

That meant that the New York Times report by Diana Jean Schemo on unfold

Government Fails to Educate NJ Kids

by Christopher Chantrill

WIDOWER VAN-NESS Crawford and a number of other parents have sued the State of New Jersey to demand the right to take their children out of failing schools and send them to the school of their choice.

Filed as Crawford v. Davy the suit aims to be a landmark case that establishes the right of parents to educate their children.

Obviously widower Crawford and his triplet 16-year-old sons that attend the failing Malcolm X. Shabazz High School in Newark have been selected by school choice activists as poster boys for school choice. unfold

"We Don't Want to Fight"

by Christopher Chantrill

IT’S NOT JUST me. It’s all the conservatives who are deploring the “cycle of violence” brigade. Here is Thomas Sowell writing that “Those who keep calling for an end to the "cycle of violence" are what make such violence more likely.”

Then there is Charles Krauthammer.

Amid the general wringing of hands over the seemingly endless and unfold

NYT Clearing Throat Over Mideast "Conflict" And More

by Christopher Chantrill

YOU KNOW THAT when the cat gets its voice back at the New York Times that President Bush is going to be reprimanded for his intemperance in calling for the United Nations to get its, er, stuff together to stop Hamas and Hizbollah.

As all thoughtful people know, the crisis in the Middle East is much more nuanced than that. Until the Times can finish clearing its throat, at least they have Paul Krugman growling about “the same cast of characters” behind the Times Select wall.

But at OpinionJournal.com unfold

Two Different Worlds

by Christopher Chantrill

IF YOU WATCH CNN you are no doubt worried about the “escalation of violence” in the Middle East, and the divided American families who are waiting for the US to evacuate their loved ones from Lebanon.

If you are reading the conservative online media you are experiencing something quite different.

In Frontpagemag.com David Horowitz tells of Hizbollah missiles that clearly come from China via Iran and need sophisticated trained crews to operate. From Strategic unfold

The Flaws of the Famous, Then As Now

by Christopher Chantrill

HUM. WE THINK we are so modern and special, uniquely privileged and uniquely corrupt.

But back in the nineteenth century, preacher Henry Ward Beecher was both uniquely privileged as a great preacher and uniquely corrupted as a great adulterer. He was the brother of Harriet Beecher Stowe, author of Uncle Tom’s Cabin and he is the subject of Debby Applegate’s The Most Famous Man in America.

Beecher’s fame could be put to good use. When the feminist Victoria Woodhull was criticized for her ideas,

Woodhull, unfold

How Important is a College Education?

by Christopher Chantrill

EVERYBODY KNOWS that to compete in the job market these days you need a college education. Better still, get a master’s degree.

Then how come, asks Australian Mercurius Goldstein, that the most successful people in Australia come up short in the academic credentials department?

[T]hese Australians are "one in the eye" for the great middle-class myth that a university education is an essential ingredient for a fulfilling life.

Such people are unfold

Experts Rank Global Warming as Minor Problem

by Christopher Chantrill

EVERYONE IS concerned about global warming, even Republicans, writes Ryan Sager. But when it comes to prioritizing it as a major problem, “ Republicans ranked global warming 19th out of the 19 issues; Democrats ranked it 13th out of 19.”

In this, you might be surprised, the American people agree with the experts. Danish economist Bjorn Lomberg got 50 politicians to review monographs prepared by economists on major world unfold

When the Missiles Start to THAAD

by Christopher Chantrill

THE SHORT ROAD from the current border clashes between Israel and its Hamas and Hizbollah enemies leads to Damascus, according to Yossi Klein Halevi. The long road leads to Iran, the Iran that is working to get nuclear weapons and the missiles to project them.

That is why it is important that today down at the White Sands Missile Range they conducted a successful test of the THAAD missile, as reported by Jason unfold

Feminists Against Choice

by Christopher Chantrill

IN MICHIGAN the state legislature recently passed a bill to permit single-sex programs in the public schools. “No child would be required to attend a single-sex classroom,” writes Carrie Lukas, but parents would be allowed to choose. Those parents who believe that children learn better without the distraction of the other sex in the classroom could have their way. And those parents who believe that co-education “breeds healthy social interaction” unfold

A Republican Brawl in 2008?

by Christopher Chantrill

AFTER PRESIDENT Bush is goes “a Republican Party known for ideological solidarity is on the cusp of a far more searching philosophical battle than are the Democrats, historically accustomed to bruising fights over the finer points of political theory.”

That is what liberal columnist E.J. Dionne thinks is coming up. “A Republican brawl.”

Why do I as a thoroughly Republican voter think that this is a load of hot air?

Correct that. I expect that unfold

Religious Left At Prayer

by Christopher Chantrill

YOU WONDER about our liberal friends when they agitate for more social programs with fine moral fervor. What about all the money we are already spending? Doesn’t that count?

The religious left had a convocation recently, organized by Jim Wallis and reported by Mark Tooley. The idea was to reignite the Social Gospel movement of 1900.

Like most religious left outfits, Mr. Wallis's groups want to disengage churchgoers from concerns about abortion unfold

A Word About Our Fighting Marines

by Christopher Chantrill

WE CONSERVATIVES honor our troops. “Thank you for your service,” is the constant refrain of the talk-show host. But what do we actually do for them? Do we walk the walk or just talk the talk?

In the American Thinker they ran a speech delivered by Marine Maj. Gen. Mike Lehnert, commander of Marine Corps Bases (West) to a San Diego community group.

Lehnert began with his son’s graduation at Stanford, at which Tom Brokaw told the graduates that unfold

How American Racism Works

by Christopher Chantrill

CONSERVATIVE radio talk-show host Dennis Prager was watching videos of “people reacting to radio talk shows.” No doubt it’s a part of his job, to understand his audience.

But he was surprised to notice that there were no black people on the panels. Why not?

Oh, they used to include blacks, responded the firm that had organized the panels. But they had to give it up. White people on the panels would not publically disagree with the blacks.

Therefore, unfold

MSM Doesn't Get Freedom of the Press

by Christopher Chantrill

IT IS INTERESTING to follow Hugh Hewitt’s interview (perm) of Cleveland Plain Dealer editorial board member Elizabeth Sullivan. Sullivan had published an article supporting the New York Times’s outing of the Bush Administration’s program to track down terrorist financing. So Hewitt got to do another of his forensic interviews, the kind in which he manages to show that the MSM journalist in question doesn’t unfold

The Future of Marriage Seen from 1926

by Christopher Chantrill

EIGHTY YEARS ago advanced people were beginning to understand “that the emancipation of women was changing the nature of marriage.” What would that mean to marriage a hundred years from 1926? The London Times asked some “luminaries from the arts world” for their predictions about marriage. You can see their prophesies (here). Interestingly, the most sensible thinking came from Leonard Darwin, son of Charles Darwin and President of the Eugenics Education unfold

Iraq Getting On Its Feet

by Christopher Chantrill

WHAT IS HAPPENING in Iraq? With Sunnis appearing to be ready to cry Uncle and end their insurgency, the Shias are beginning to reel in their death squads, the chaps who have been retaliating against Sunni outrages by killing Sunnis. StrategyPage reports that

the Shia are ready to fight their own, and in the last week, Shia and Kurdish police and soldiers fought Shia radicals, led by men like Abu Deraa.

I’ve been reading about Germany after its defeat unfold

New York Times Says Boys Underperforming in College!

by Christopher Chantrill

NOW EVEN THE folks at The New York Times admit it. Boys aren’t doing too well in college. Writes Tamar Lewin,

A quarter-century after women became the majority on college campuses, men are trailing them in more than just enrollment.

Department of Education statistics show that men, whatever their race or socioeconomic group, are less likely than women to get unfold

A Nation of Shoplifters

by Christopher Chantrill

THEY USED TO sneer at the Brits as a Nation of Shopkeepers. That’s what the Germans thought when they marched to war in 1914.

But now Mary Wakefield worries that they have become a nation of shoplifters. And she is not talking about boys with pants down around their ankles.

Rob is a kind man, who listens carefully to his conscience and usually follows its advice. He's well off, no unfold

Ken Lay: RIP But Still a Crook

by Christopher Chantrill

DID YOU KNOW that in Enron’s home town of Houston they regard the Enron collapse as a tragedy rather than an example of capitalist rascals at work?

A Democratic friend seemed surprised that this was so. After all, if you read the New York Times every day you likely think that the Enron fraud was hatched in the offices of Halliburton and signed off by then-Governor Bush in Austin.

Of course, Democrats don’t realize that Republicans feel just as angry as they do about Enron. And Republicans don’t just feel outraged by Enron’s unfold

Job Growth Moderating; Or Is It?

by Christopher Chantrill

TODAY’S ANNOUNCEMENT by the Bureau of Labor Statistics put the increase in payroll employment at 121,000 last month. It’s the “nonfarm employment” number from the Bureau’s Establishment Survey, and indicates that payroll growth is moderating from the faster pace of last year.

On the other hand, if you look at the increase in employment from the Bureau’s Household Survey, employment increased by 387,000. Here employment growth is, if anything, accelerating. What is unfold

Brits Rail at US While Teen Thugs Run Riot

by Christopher Chantrill

THE BRITS HAVE a rather poor opinion of the United States, according to Ben Fenton. Only 12 percent of them think that the United States can be trusted to act responsibly on the world stage.

Britons, writes Anthony King, feel that

America appears to be a unfold

Liberals Miffed As Canine Cultural Studies Wins Course-of-the-Month

by Christopher Chantrill

LIBERALS LIKE to say that university faculties are overwhelmingly liberal because liberals are just more intelligent. Naturally you would find more liberal professors than conservative ones, they tell us.

It is certainly true that no conservative could write a fictional parody of liberal academic antics that could beat the real thing. Truth is stranger than fiction, especially at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill.

The folks at John William Pope Center for Higher Education Policy have decided unilaterally that they have a unfold

Missile Defense Train Has Left the Station

by Christopher Chantrill

ON THE FOURTH of July as North Korea launched six rockets into the skies of eastern Asia American liberals at their dinner tables were still trotting out their talking points about missile defense being a waste of resources.

But really, the train has left the station. All the guff about “Star Wars” with which liberals have persuaded themselves of their superior understanding about the impossibility of missile defense is now, as the saying goes, “inoperative.” Eventually the word will get down the political food chain to the liberal unfold

Theocracy and the Religious Right

by Christopher Chantrill

I LISTENED to Randall Balmer today on the Michael Medved Show talking about his book Thy Kingdom Come: How the Religious Right Distorts the Faith and Threatens America: An Evangelical's Lament. The religious right, he complained, is turning the United States into a theocracy.

What about back in the 1950s, asked Medved? Was the US a theocracy then? Almost, replied Balmer.

Leaving aside the idea that the term “religious right” is a political pejorative, let us think about what this man is saying. Can he really suggest that unfold

So's Your Liberal Mother

by Christopher Chantrill

BLOOMBERG AND the Los Angeles Times are out with a poll today about a Mormon as president. In the poll, 35 percent of registered voters say they would not vote for a Mormon for president. What a bunch of bigots, you say.

So’s your liberal mother, I say. Let’s look at the numbers.

Among political groups, the highest opposition to a Mormon candidacy comes from people who describe themselves as liberal Democrats, 50 percent of whom unfold

Celebrating Our Nation State

by Christopher Chantrill

AS WE MARK another anniversary of our great Declaration of Independence in joyous celebration let us also celebrate the importance of the nation state.

It is important for conservatives to do this because for upwards of a century the fashionables have been sneering at the nation state. They look forward to a global, pan-human society, led by themselves.

The future global society, when it comes about, and assuming it can actually succeed, will doubtless be a glorious thing. But we must never forget the remarkable achievement of the unfold

The Internet is Amazing

by Christopher Chantrill

IT’S THE LITTLE things that matter. That is what women have been telling men for ages. And it is the little things on the Internet that matter, too.

Over the weekend, Lady Marjorie was trying to save some JPEGs emailed to her by a friend. Only the computer would get jammed up trying to save the files from her email browser. What to do?

It turned out that if you tried to browse to the affected directory with Windows Explorer it would hang too. What could be wrong?

After a day of foolishness, I finally decided to Google "windows unfold

Conservatives Take Academic Freedom from Liberals

by Christopher Chantrill

IF YOU LISTEN to liberals—and I do, very carefully—you sense that “academic freedom” is a concept that has high totemic value for them.

Academic freedom is something that liberals are for, and they know that their support for it defines them as a force for reason and enlightenment. It is all that is noble and decent, and it defines the courageous researcher beavering away on the frontiers of knowledge beset by the forces of darkness and superstition. He knows that, but for academic freedom, yahoos and fundamentalists would put unfold