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Evil Wal-Mart Overrruns Democratic Bastion
by Christopher Chantrill
THE WAL-MART PR guys just sent an e-mail to announce the opening of the first Wal-Mart in Chicago, so naturally as a mind-numbed Wal-Mart robot I am blogging about it.
The first reaction was shock. I thought that Chicago didn’t want no stinkin’ Wal-Marts polluting its pristine neighborhoods.
The second reaction was wonder. I wonder how close the new store is to downtown Chicago?
According to Google Maps, it is a mere 7 miles from downtown, so the Democrats entrenched there ought to be able to hear the rumble of the guns unfold
| 09/30/06 5:57 pm ETMore Than "School Choice" Needed
by Christopher Chantrill
HOW MUCH OF a difference do the current initiative on school choice make? Not much, according to Frederick M. Hess.
[C]harter-school enthusiasts, including President Bush and Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings, have touted the remarkable work of the high-performing KIPP Academies and the new teachers recruited by Teach For America. However, these entrepreneurial ventures are gnats alongside the $550 billion a year behemoth unfold
| 09/29/06 4:35 pm ETBorn on the Fourth of July
by Christopher Chantrill
SHE DIED ON Tuesday, September 26, aged 90. She might have been an ordinary aspirational American, born to immigrants from Japan and graduating from UCLA in 1940 with a bachelor’s degree in zoology, “hoping to become a physician,” according to Richard Goldstein in The New York Times. But then things went wrong for Iva Toguri.
In the summer of 1941, she visited an ailing aunt unfold
| 09/29/06 11:27 am ETWhy Did the Brits Invite Clinton and McCain?
by Christopher Chantrill
WHY DO THE Brits like to have American politicians address them at their political conferences?
This week Bill Clinton, his mind cleared after telling off Chris Wallace on eevil Fox News, gave the Labour Party a pep talk at its annual conference in Manchester. Don’t make the same mistake we did, he told them.
Next week Senator John McCain is going to address the British Conservative Party at its annual conference in Bournemouth. And so the British Spectator’s
| 09/28/06 4:27 pm ETHarris on Ratzinger at Regensburg
by Christopher Chantrill
THERE IS PERHAPS no more exciting thinker living than Lee Harris, a student of philosophy and some time owner of an auto tint shop, whose first book Civilization and Its Enemies, proposed the present unpleasantness as a war between the western team and the “eternal gang of ruthless men.”
Now he has published a long article entitled
| 09/28/06 11:30 am ETWhy Are The Rich Getting So Much Richer?
by Christopher Chantrill
BACK AT THE end of the 19th century the rich were very rich. They were, principally, the people who had brought us the industrial revolution in oil, steel, railroads, and finance.
Then, over the last century, inequality declined. But now it is rising again.
As Robert Samuelson writes,
Productivity gains (improvements in efficiency) are going disproportionately to those at the top. We do not really understand unfold
| 09/27/06 4:51 pm ETTony Blair's Last Conference Speech
by Christopher Chantrill
WHATEVER HIS faults, British Prime Minister Tony Blair has understood that the welfare state needed reform. It could not continue in its one-size-fits-all implementation. So in his last speech to the Labour Party conference he spent a lot of time trying to move his party towards a consumer- not a producer-powered society.
In an opportunity society, as opposed to the old welfare state, government does not dictate; it empowers.
It makes the individual - unfold
| 09/27/06 11:57 am ETMedia Always Hypes Fears of Climate Change
by Christopher Chantrill
WHAT ARE WE going to do about global warming? That’s what the media were worried about in the 1930s.
But what about the next ice age? Good point. The media were worried about that back in 1900 and again in the mid 1970s.
In fact, says Sen. James Inhofe (R-OK), the media are always worrying about climate change.
Since 1895, the media has alternated between global cooling and warming scares during four separate and sometimes overlapping time unfold
| 09/26/06 4:03 pm ETEuston Manifesto is Great, But...
by Christopher Chantrill
EARLIER THIS year a bunch of left wingers and progressives in Britain wrote the Euston Manifesto, in which, according to Martin Walker, they hammered out
a statement of principles in support of democracy, freedom of speech and ideas, and firm opposition to terrorism, all forms of totalitarianism and all soft-headed apologies for it.
Which is nice. Now the manifesto has moved to the United States where
a number of leading academics and unfold
| 09/26/06 11:45 am ETClinton Rallies the Democratic Troops
by Christopher Chantrill
SO WHY DID Bill Clinton “lose his temper” with Chris Wallace last weekend?
Perfectly simple, writes William Kristol. He was helping Democrats.
He rallied the troops, and he “reminded them of their talking points on Bush's alleged passivity” during the runup to 9/11. Which is the line that the Democrats were pushing on the 9/11 Commission. So now Clinton can take credit for showing up the evil Republican push on terror as unfold
| 09/25/06 9:48 pm ETReal-estate Prices Bobble
by Christopher Chantrill
SO NOW IT’S hit the New York Times. “Home Prices Drop after 11-Year Ascent” is the story reported by Jeremy W. Peters.
The median price of a previously owned home fell for the first time in 11 years last month, and inventories of unsold homes swelled to levels not seen in more than a decade.
But not to worry too much. Says David Lereah, chief economist of the unfold
| 09/25/06 4:15 pm ETSchool Choice a Winner in Alberta
by Christopher Chantrill
HERE’S an interesting factoid, reported in The Economist. Alberta’s schools come in No. 2 in the international school league tables. That is Alberta the Canadian province we are talking about. It’s the home province of Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper, leader of the Canadian Conservative Party.
Needless to say, US schools don’t appear in the top ten.
So what is Alberta doing right?
Thank you Senator, I’m glad you unfold
| 09/23/06 9:32 pm ETTwo Limeys Fight Over Home Schooling
by Christopher Chantrill
HOME SCHOOLING. Is it a good idea or a bad idea? In Britain’s Spectator they are duelling it out.
Last week James Bartholomew, author of the welfare state critique The Welfare State We're In, wrote that he had had enough.
For during this term at least, I am going to home-educate her.
Oh please, responds
| 09/22/06 4:26 pm ETThe Swedes are Retiring Early
by Christopher Chantrill
BACK WHEN THE apologists of the welfare state wanted more of our money we got to hear a lot about the condition of the working class.
But now that the welfare state has become established and tenured it has become more secretive. We seem to know little about the lives of the poor, and the bureaucrats and the experts like it that way.
Every now and again, someone lifts a flap of the tent and you can look in. That happened this week when the Moderate Party coalition won the elections in Sweden.
When 25-year-old Swede Jessica unfold
| 09/22/06 11:41 am ETDems Defend Bush Against Chavez
by Christopher Chantrill
YESTERDAY VENEZUELA’S President Hugo Chavez called President Bush a devil.
Today two leading Democrats told Chavez he was a thug.
According to Fox News Rep. Charles Rangel (D- NY) told Chavez:
Don't come to the United States and think, because we have problems with our president, that any foreigner can come to our country and not think that Americans do not feel offended when you offend our chief of state... It should be clear to all heads of government unfold
| 09/21/06 4:14 pm ET"The Great Risk Shift"
by Christopher Chantrill
ACCORDING TO political science professor Jacob Hacker in his book The Great Risk Shift the United States has seen a big increase in risk for its ordinary citizens in recent decades.
According to Brink Lindsey, Hacker argues that the culprit is
America's sweeping transformation away from an unfold
| 09/21/06 11:27 am ETUniversities Biased Against People Without 'Wives'
by Christopher Chantrill
WOMEN ARE UNDERREPRESENTED in the sciences and engineering because of “bias and ‘outmoded institutional structures’ in academia.
That is what a an Academy of Sciences panel has decided, according to Cornelia Dean.
“Unless a deeper talent pool is tapped, it will be difficult for our country to maintain our competitiveness in science and engineering,” the panel’s unfold
| 09/20/06 4:27 pm ETThe Three Currents of Islam
by Christopher Chantrill
ACCORDING TO Bernard Lewis there are three currents in modern Islam, the revival that is trying to deal with the crisis of modernization.
Before modern times the Islamic countries had a fairly pacific government. Rulers had to deal with “established orders—the bazaar merchants, the scribes, the guilds, the country gentry, the military establishment, the religious establishment, and so on.”
But in response to the challenge unfold
| 09/20/06 11:56 am ETB-XVI Regensburg: Who Has the Problem?
by Christopher Chantrill
IF YOU DIDN’T know that we have a cultural war going on you can see it today in the differing takes on the pope’s Regensburg speech of September 12, 2006.
Liberal columnist E.J. Dionne thinks we have a problem. And The Wall Street Journal thinks that Islam has a problem. Says Dionne:
[R]eligious dialogue will not progress very far if unfold
| 09/19/06 4:30 pm ETCompassionate Conservatives Win in Sweden
by Christopher Chantrill
HERE IN THE United States President Bush’s “compassionate conservatism” has disappeared in a hurricane of Bush hatred.
But in Britain Conservative Party leader David Cameron has given new life to the Tories with an emphasis on green, windmills, and work/life balance.
Now the Moderate Party in Sweden, led by Frederick Reinfeldt, has romped home to an election win in the world capital of the welfare state with a program that promises not to change too much too fast.
Yes, but what will Reinfeldt actually do?
| 09/19/06 11:36 am ETThe Devout American Who Wrote "The Path to 9/11"
by Christopher Chantrill
IT’S A free country, like they say. So it is interesting to read what Cyrus Nowrasteh has to say about “The Path to 9/11.”
Remember Cyrus? He was the right-wing nut who wrote the script as a deliberate right-wing plot to discredit the Clintons.
After all the effort we put into the script, he writes, it would have been nice if the critics had done a bit of due diligence. (In your dreams, pal!)
Much was made of his association with Rush Limbaugh unfold
| 09/18/06 4:02 pm ETSticking to the Ground Game
by Christopher Chantrill
DO YOU WONDER why Republicans keep pulling rabbits out of a hat on election day? Donald Lambro says it’s the “ground game.”
And it was the ground game that helped Rhode Island Senator Lincoln Chafee win his Republican primary against Cranston Mayor Stephen Laffey.
[T]he Republican National Committee pumped $400,000 into the race on a voter identification-turnout drive that brought a record number of voters to the polls -- and gave unfold
| 09/18/06 11:44 am ETJobs and Inequality
by Christopher Chantrill
WE’VE all heard the news that the US median income isn’t going up. Some commentators insist that things have been going downhill ever since 1973.
But David R. Henderson says just a minute. Take a look at the US Census data, particularly Table 3. Distribution of Households by Selected Characteristics within Income Quintiles: 2005.
Throughout the report, U.S. households are categorized by the unfold
| 09/15/06 4:28 pm ETDemocrats Do Too Stand for Something
by Christopher Chantrill
REPUBLICANS have been enjoying for some time the idea that Democrats don’t stand for anything. It goes along with the idea that Republicans are thinkers and Democrats are feelers.
Even Peggy Noonan agrees, sort of. She criticizes the Democrats for obsessing about Bush.
[I]f you're going to turn away from [Bush], you'd better be turning toward a plan, and the Democrats don't appear to have one.
Actually, the Democrats do have a plan. unfold
| 09/15/06 11:26 am ETGoogle's For-profit Foundation
by Christopher Chantrill
WHEN BILL GATES set up his charitable foundation, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, I was disappointed.
Here was a guy who had revolutionized the world of the computer, but when it came to philanthropy he was just doing routine stuff.
Of course, he had to, because liberals were all over him like a cheap suit asking him why he wasn’t giving it all away yet.
But the Google guys, Larry Page and Sergey Brin, are different. Their foundation, Google.org, will be a for-profit foundation. What a concept!
Of course, the unfold
| 09/14/06 4:11 pm ETWal-Mart and the 3.3 Million Job Gap
by Christopher Chantrill
EVEN CONSERVATIVE pundit George Will is joining the Up With Wal-Mart campaign with a piece about the Wal-Mart store just outside the city limits of Chicago. He writes about the resentful Wal-Mart shopper who didn’t get a job at the new store because
the person doing the hiring "had an attitude." So why is the woman shopping here anyway? She looks at the questioner as though he is dimwitted and unfold
| 09/14/06 11:30 am ETThe Transformation of North Korea
by Christopher Chantrill
YOU GOTTA READ this stunning analysis of North Korea, “The Natural Death of North Korean Stalinism,” by Andrei Lankov.
He writes that the regime of Kim Jong Il is imploding as its Stalinist system has been slowly relaxing by the natural difficulty of keeping extreme political repression going. In the last decade, though, this process has accelerated as a result of economic collapse in 1991-95 and famine in 1996-1999.
The three big factors unfold
| 09/13/06 4:25 pm ETThe Divide Between Evangelicals and Libertarians
by Christopher Chantrill
EVER SINCE the beginning of the modern American conservative movement there has been a tension between traditional conservatives and libertarians. For traditional conservatives the greatest good is virtue. For libertarians the greatest good is liberty.
Now comes Ryan H. Sager, columnist at The New York Post, worrying again about a split between conservatives and libertarians in the Republican Party. He has a book about it: The Elephant in the Room: Evangelicals, unfold
| 09/13/06 11:14 am ETTeaching Students About Tortured Souls
by Christopher Chantrill
AFTER A SPATE of student suicides in the 2003-04 academic year, New York University has come up with a response. It is a musical “The Reality Show: NYU,” and over 5,000 incoming students have seen it already, according to Karen W. Arenson in The New York Times. The production, which
will be shown twice more this month, tells of drugs and date rape, drinking and anorexia, unfold
| 09/12/06 4:21 pm ETA General's View of the War on Terror
by Christopher Chantrill
YOU’D expect that Gen. John Abizaid, commander of the U.S Central Command, would have guarded opinions to give to talk-show host Hugh Hewitt. But you would expect to be able to glean some unexpected insight into what the US military sees happening in the Middle East.
Here are the take-aways for me.
| 09/12/06 11:30 am ETTearing Up The Last Half-Millennium
by Christopher Chantrill
THE EVENTS of 9/11, according to Michelle Malkin, awoke her from a slumber.
The mass murder nearly 3,000 innocent people on American soil forced open my eyes to the Islamic holy war against the West, freedom and modernity. The battle has raged not for years or decades, but for centuries -- well before the Crusades.
If you want to know how the holy war works, writes Malkin, just go down the list: Jihad, Infidels, Sharia, Caliphate, Taqiyya (deception), unfold
| 09/11/06 4:15 pm ETTwo Kinds of Chess
by Christopher Chantrill
THERE ARE TWO kinds of chess in the world. There is the western game of chess, in which the pieces move about the board. And there is Chinese chess, in which you put your pieces, or stones, on the board never to move them again.
I say this in connection with the continuing political argument over 9/11 and the war on terror. Democrats are all over the board, yelling at one moment that Bush is to blame, at another that Clinton is not to blame, that Iraq has nothing to do with the war on terror, that the whole thing is “Bush’s unfold
| 09/11/06 11:32 am ETWhy the West Won't Win Against Islam
by Christopher Chantrill
WE ALL KNOW that we will win the war against Islamic fascism. Or will we? Author David Selbourne sets out ten reasons why, as things stand, Islam will not be defeated. Selbourne is author of the book The Losing Battle with Islam.
| 09/10/06 12:31 pm ETThe Blank Page of History
by Christopher Chantrill
IS MAHMOUD Ahmadinejad the new Hitler? And Osama bin Laden the new Lenin? Is Iraq the new Vietnam?
The problem with our national analysis of the war on terror is that most of us don’t know much history, according to Jonah Goldberg. So we go cherry-picking where we already know there are cherries.
One of the main reasons we leap to analogies about World War II and the Cold War is that it’s the only history most of us unfold
| 09/08/06 4:22 pm ETIf Democrats Win in November
by Christopher Chantrill
WHAT IF DEMOCRATS win in November? What will they do? Richard E. Cohen runs down their agenda.
[Democratic House Leader Nancy] Pelosi has also promised that within 100 hours after taking control of the House on January 3, Democrats will pass legislation to increase the minimum wage, mandate the negotiation of Medicare prescription drug prices, fully implement the recommendations of the 9/11 commission, and repeal tax benefits for big oil unfold
| 09/08/06 11:42 am ETThe Path to Censorship
by Christopher Chantrill
IMAGINE THE following news item in your friendly local newspaper.
A furious former President Bush is warning ABC that its mini-series "The Path to Kuwait" grossly misrepresents his actions in the first Iraq war - and he is demanding the network "pull the drama" if changes aren't made.
Imagine the screams. Imagine the outrage. Censorship! Abuse of power!
Actually it would never have happpened. Republicans know better than to even whisper a suggestion that a broadcast TV network should edit, or, God forbid, withdraw a unfold
| 09/07/06 4:18 pm ETThe Election Campaign Begins
by Christopher Chantrill
WITH LABOR Day behind us we can expect to see, in the next couple of weeks, how the Bush administration intends to fight the mid-term elections.
Many people have noted how the Bushies seem to manage to pull themselves out of the ditch every election cycle—just after “everyone” has consigned them to electoral disaster.
The reason for this is not remarkable. In normal times the informal alliance of Democrats and liberal media means that the liberal world view occupies most of the public square. Only in the conservative unfold
| 09/07/06 11:55 am ETThe Two Nations in Education
by Christopher Chantrill
HOW COME IF the US education system is so poor, asks Robert Samuelson, that the economy is so good? How do you answer the following riddle:
Why do Americans do so badly on international educational comparisons and yet support an advanced economy?
I know. The answer to the riddle is simple: Democrats and Republicans. Democrats are the cause of the lousy school system, and Republicans are the cause of the advanced economy. unfold
| 09/06/06 4:12 pm ETThe Real Plame Story
by Christopher Chantrill
FOR PERENNIAL hawk Frank J. Gaffney Jr. the astonishing thing about the Plame game was the identification of leaker Richard Armitage as “no partisan gunslinger.” What do you mean, he writes.
Rich Armitage in truth is the consummate partisan gunslinger. It's just that his partisanship is... the other sense of a partisan: one who wages war from behind enemy lines.
But that is not what astonishes me. What astonishes me is that the unmasking unfold
| 09/06/06 11:43 am ETDon't Look For Education Reform From Within
by Christopher Chantrill
WHEN YOU HAVE been president of Harvard, as Derek Bok has been, or dean of Harvard College, as Harry Lewis has been, you ought to have some ideas about how to fix higher education.
But according to Robert Kagan himself a former president of Yale, neither Derek Bok in Our Underachieving Colleges nor Harry R. Lewis in Excellence Without a Soul: How a Great University Forgot Education has a clue what to do about the “imperial faculty.”
They unfold
| 09/05/06 4:13 pm ETMortgage Moms Feel the Heat
by Christopher Chantrill
BACK IN THE Nineties it was the Soccer Moms who voted for Bill Clinton. Then after 9/11 it was the Security Moms who voted for President Bush.
Now, according to Jeffrey H. Birnbaum and Chris Cillizza in the Washington Post, it’s the Mortgage Moms, people who are up their eyeballs in debt.
Flat wages and rising debt nationally have converged to leave millions of middle-class households feeling acutely vulnerable to unfold
| 09/05/06 11:05 am ETFrench Ex-pats in London
by Christopher Chantrill
THE FRENCH were already having a rough summer, with presidential hopeful Nicolas Sarkozy advising them to get a clue in his new book Témoignage (Testimony).
But now comes Marc Levy with his bestselling novel
Mes Amis Mes Amours, the story of two divorced Parisian men who move to the UK to raise their children. The plot was really just a framing device for Levy’s real purpose: a love letter to his adopted home of London.
What? A Frenchman in love with Britland? Certainly. As Levy tells
| 09/04/06 12:01 pm ETDependency Ratio Hits WSJ
by Christopher Chantrill
EARLIER THIS week I criticized an article by Malcolm Gladwell in The New Yorker. In the article Gladwell criticized the notion of a company defined-benefit pension plan. It could never work because of the natural changes in the “dependency ratio” between workers and non-workers.
But I critiqued the notion that the dependency ratio is out of our control. The dependency unfold
| 09/01/06 4:23 pm ETPresident Bush Makes His Case
by Christopher Chantrill
YESTERDAY AT the American Legion convention in Salt Lake City President Bush began a series of speeches to bolster support for the war on terror.
Earlier in the week Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld created controversy by delivering a “bad cop” speech accusing the president’s critics of “moral confusion.” But a day later Mr. Bush got to make “good cop” in which he laid out his case in positive terms without descending to blaming his critics.
In The unfold
| 09/01/06 11:28 am ET
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, and that a refusal to use the means appointed was a damning sin.”
Finke, Stark, The Churching of America, 1776-1990
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
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
Living Under Law
Law being too tenuous to rely upon in [Ulster and the Scottish borderlands], people developed patterns of settling differences by personal fighting and family feuds.
Thomas Sowell, Conquests and Cultures
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
Knowledge
Inquiry does not start unless there is a problem... It is the problem and its
characteristics revealed by analysis which guides one first to the relevant facts and then,
once the relevant facts are known, to the relevant hypotheses.
F.S.C. Northrop, The Logic of the Sciences and the Humanities
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
Democratic Capitalism
I mean three systems in one: a predominantly market economy; a polity respectful of the rights of the individual to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness; and a system of cultural institutions moved by ideals of liberty and justice for all.
In short, three dynamic and converging systems functioning as one: a democratic polity, an economy based on markets and incentives, and a moral-cultural system which is plural and, in the largest sense, liberal.
Michael Novak, The Spirit of Democratic Capitalism
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
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
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
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
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