Blogs for 2007 - Road to the Middle Class

Actually, it is not surprising that the surge is working. The surge is a military operation in which the US Armed Forces are doing military things, like searching out unfold

SHOULD REPUBLICAN presidential candidates descend to the level of YouTube? Actually, more to the point, should they subject themselves to the Children-of-the-Welfare-State worldview of the YouTube generation? Hugh Hewitt says: No. But Patrick Ruffini thinks that a Republican YouTube debate is on, whether we like it or not.

Governor unfold

Alarm bells on China

by Christopher Chantrill

CLASSICAL liberals thought that they had won the argument over free trade back in the nineteenth century. But the apologists for directed trade or mercantilism keep popping up again. Like William Hawkins from the US Business and Industrial Council.

The "global economy" is not based on the "harmony of interests" once envisioned by 19th century classical liberals, but on cut-throat unfold

"Can I Help You?"

by Christopher Chantrill

IT’S A GILDED Age, writes Peggy Noonan, an age of fabulous wealth, but the manners aren’t so good. Noonan reports daydreaming into a store on Madison Avenue recently

"Hi! Let me help you find what you’re looking for!" She is a saleswoman, cracking gum with intensity, about 25 years old, and she has made a beeline to her mark.

Hmm. And another store:

"How are you today? How can I help you?" Those dread words.

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Mean-spirited Universities Sit on Cash

by Christopher Chantrill

OUR DEMOCRATIC friends in the House of Representatives recently passed an education bill to take $18 billion away from the evil student loan industry and give it to students. We at Road to the Middle Class have criticized them for this, a mindless shoveling of more cash and subsidies to the universities. Now Senator Kennedy is pushing the bill through the Senate.

But that’s not the real problem, writes unfold

The Cruelty of the Welfare State

by Christopher Chantrill

EVERYONE knows that the welfare state is the most wonderful thing in human history. Finally, after the madness of the nineteenth century when the poor went unfed and the homeless unsheltered and children uncared-for, we have a system that cares.

Then there are the folks like us here at Road to the Middle Class that believe that the welfare state is the cruelest, most uncaring system in history. This column by unfold

Grabbing The High Ground

by Christopher Chantrill

BACK IN the old days before the French Revolution the world was a conservative place. Rigidly conservative.

And the reason was pretty simple. In the agricultural age if you made a mistake out on the farm it was curtains. The only thing to do was to stick with what worked: tradition.

But since the Enlightenment tradition has been on the defensive. In fact even gradual reform has been on the defensive. Human rights and reason have carried all before them.

In the old days, the reformer had to unfold

British Conservatives in a Pickle

by Christopher Chantrill

IN BRITAIN they are trying to dry out after 50 year floods. But in the Conservative media they are drowning from the incompetence of Conservative leader David Cameron. At least that’s what ASimon Heffer thinks.

The leader of the Labour Party, he writes, has shown himself to be a “serious politician.”

The Leader of the Opposition, by contrast, has no unfold

The Secret Life of Cars

by Christopher Chantrill

YOU MAY not have wondered how a car makes you feel, but BMW has. That’s what Richard Morrison found out. Says the “driver interfaces psychologist” at BMW:

We’re constantly asking the question: what kind of psychological space is a car?

Well, of course, we’ve all wondered that. And we’ve wondered how many people call their car by a nickname (26 percent of women), the importance of cup-holders (they unfold

Democrats' New War on Poverty

by Christopher Chantrill

DEMOCRATIC presidential candidates Barack Obama and John Edwards both want to declare a new war on poverty, writes Linda Chavez.

Mr. Obama wants to tie the minimum wage to the Consumer Price Index, which would price the lowest-skilled workers, especially young blacks, out of the job market, not to mention increase inflationary pressure on wages.

Mr. Edwards would have the government create 1 million unfold

The "New Victorians:" a Trend or a "Trend?"

by Christopher Chantrill

IT WOULD all seem pretty sensible if it weren’t that the trendy New York Observer’s Lizzy Ratner was all over it. According to Suzanne Fields the new generation of twentysomethings are getting married earlier and having children.

Websites for "modest clothing" are expanding, and Wendy Shalit, who earlier wrote about "A Return to Modesty," unfold

Dean Barnett's 9/11 Generation

by Christopher Chantrill

WE KNOW all about the Boomer generation, says 40-ish Dean Barnett. Forty years ago, they (that is, we, since I’m a boomer) checked out of their generational challenge.

Confronted with a generation-defining conflict, the cold war, the Boomers—those, at any rate, who came to be emblematic of their generation—took the opposite path from their parents during World War II.

But now we have the 9/11 unfold

What Do Women Want?

by Christopher Chantrill

THE FEMINISTS don’t want to hear it, according to Megan Basham, but married women are trickling out of the workforce. And it’s because they don’t want to work full-time.

Only 21 percent of working mothers report a preference for a 40+-hour work week, while only 16 percent of at-home moms say the same.

What could be driving this? Feminists say it’s the post 9/11 unfold

When the US Leaves Iraq

by Christopher Chantrill

CALL ME a conspiracist, but I believe that US political class has already decided to leave Iraq.

I base this on the behavior of presidential candidate John Kerry during the 2004 election campaign. Time and time again he would rail at the Bush administration for not doing something—like ramping up training of Iraqi security forces—and then it would turn out six months later that the Bush administration was doing it, but just hadn’t splashed it all over the media.

It was as though Kerry knew what unfold

Eating beef 'is less green than driving'

by Christopher Chantrill

THEY’RE coming to take you away, those lefty global warming types, those watermelons—green on the outside, red on the inside, socialists in drag.

Now some Japanese scientists have computed that, according to the Daily Telegraph, eating meat contributes to global warming.

Producing 2.2lb of beef generates as much greenhouse gas as driving a car non-stop for three hours, it was claimed unfold

Dem House Solves College Costs With Subsidies and Regulation

by Christopher Chantrill

WITH COLLEGE costs soaring way above the rate of inflation and many graduates finding that they can’t find jobs to pay off their loans, what would you do if you were Congress?

Naturally, you would increase the already vast subsidies for higher education and you would get tough on price gougers with new regulations, as reported by Ruth Mantell of Marketwatch.

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Who Is Norman Borlaug?

by Christopher Chantrill

EVERYBODY knows Paris Hilton. But who the heck is Dr. Norman Borlaug? Like, whatever?

Step away from that remote! And listen.

Norman Borlaug is the guy behind the green revolution, the advances in grain breeding that has produced staggeringly large increases in crop yield in the third world.

It started in Mexico, as Elizabeth M. Whelan reports.

Over the course of 20 years, he developed unfold

The Not-so All-Night Debate on Iraq

by Christopher Chantrill

THE UNITED States Senate is the world’s greatest deliberative body, and last night they debated a motion to begin troop withdrawals from Iraq.

But it turned out not to be quite the extravaganza we were promised, according to Shailagh Murray, Paul Kane and Debbi Wilgoren in the Washington Post.

Reid, the majority leader, initially had threatened to schedule votes throughout the predawn hours. But unfold

In the Belly of the Beast

by Christopher Chantrill

THE REASON we need the welfare state, liberals tell us, is because we need a safety net to protect us from the excesses of the free enterprise system. Without the rights and the protections of an activist government people would suffer. Corporations have no mercy. The moment you can’t do the job, you are out on the street. That’s why we need workers’ rights and consumers’ rights and a host of benefits provided and enforced by government.

No doubt we do need protection from corporations. And unfold

It's a Regional War, Stupid

by Christopher Chantrill

FROM THE very beginning of the war on terror, it was obvious that the war was not just a war against Al Qaeda or Saddam Hussein, but a war to prevent the emergence of a single regional hegemon in the Middle East. Democrats profess not to know this, and Republicans barely seem to know it. But President Bush does, according to Michael Ledeen. In his press conference Monday, the president said:

The unfold

Germany and France on Collision Course

by Christopher Chantrill

THE EURO has climbed to stratospheric levels in recent months, approaching $1.40 to the euro. But Ambrose Evans- Pritchard thinks it will all end in tears. The high euro is sitting on the back of a revived German economy, achieved by a signal achievement of German companies in moderating the wages of German workers.

By screwing down wages, Deutschland AG has deflated costs since 1995 by 20pc against France, unfold

L.A. Diocese Pays for Abuse

by Christopher Chantrill

THE ROMAN Catholic Archdiocese of Los Angeles has agreed to pay out over $600 million to plaintiffs to settle claims of sexual abuse by clergy, reports the Associated Press.

The settlement pushes the total amount paid out by the U.S. church since 1950 to more than $2 billion, with about a quarter of that amount paid by the Los Angeles Archdiocese.

It is, of course, right and proper that the Catholic unfold

Religion is Safe With Democrats Says TIME

by Christopher Chantrill

FOR YEARS Democrats have warned that religion and politics don’t mix. You’d expect them to say that because Democratic voters are secular. Democratic voters don’t mix religion and politics. In fact they don’t really “get” religion at all. If they feel a religious impulse they call it “spirituality.”

The trouble is that the American people are religious. That makes it difficult for Democrats to win elections. But now things are changing. Hillary Clinton is talking about unfold

Working Moms Want to Cut Back on Work

by Christopher Chantrill

WOMAN, WE know, is the “victim of the species.” That’s what Simone de Beauvoir, haute bourgeoise and existentialist, wrote in The Second Sex, and she should know.

Back then, high-born victims like the Beaver wanted jobs, careers, anything that men did. But now the average working victim, according to the Pew Research Center, wants to work part time. Here’s how AP reported the Pew findings of unfold

Hewitt Talks to Republican Jews

by Christopher Chantrill

CONSERVATIVE talk-show host talked to the Republican Jewish Coalition recently, reports Current Jewish Issues. He was not optimistic when it came to the next presidential election.

People look back at the 1980 election, Hewitt told his audience, and remember only that it was a landslide. But, of course, in fact it was a close-run thing and Reagan only began to break away in the last week. Hewitt remembers. He was unfold

Global Warming and Solar Heating

by Christopher Chantrill

WHO DO YOU believe? Today there were two articles on the relation between solar radiance and global warming. In the American Thinker D. Bruce Merrifield writes that the global climate is driven by a variety of solar variations and that CO2 and methane concentrations are a product of heating and cooling rather than a cause of it.

The current 100 year solar radiation cycle may now have reached its peak, and unfold

The End of the Newspaper Columnist

by Christopher Chantrill

ABOUT TWELVE years ago, according to columnist Bruce Bartlett, a pal called him up and suggested he write a column for the Detroit News. He agreed, and eventually the column got syndicated.

But now Bartlett is hanging it up. No more columns, thank you; there’s more money and more editorial control in writing books. In fact, he reckons, “the demand for traditional column writing has pretty much dried unfold

British Conservatives Issue Plan To Fight Social Breakdown

by Christopher Chantrill

IT’S CALLED Breakthrough Britain and it has been billed as the most important document on social welfare in Britain since the Beveridge Report of 1944 that set the agenda for the post World War II welfare state.

The idea behind the report is fairly simple, according to George Jones. It says that:

It is time to unfold

Keeper of the Tower Lives in France

by Christopher Chantrill

IS THIS what Britain has come to? The chap who keeps an eye on the crown jewels in the Tower of London lives in north-western France. Brittany, to be exact.

And why would Major General Keith Cima live in France? It starts with the basics: “less traffic, less crowding, affordable housing.” Then there is the matter of the schools.

Our younger children go unfold

Now The Lawyers are Upset

by Christopher Chantrill

THE BRITS are just waking up to the idea that lawyers are miserable. Apparently 25 percent of them want to leave the profession, according to Sathnam Sanghera. But of course this is nothing compared to lawyer misery in the United States. Here, 40 percent of lawyers want to leave the profession. In fact, lawyer misery has become an industry.

[T]here are now almost more books, articles and websites unfold

The Underclass As Residue of Social Mobility

by Christopher Chantrill

MOST OF us like to write about the underclass as a failure of the welfare state. Underclass unemployment, crime, and social pathology are all the consequence of anesthetizing poor people with subsidies and rewarding failure. But Matthew Parris has a different idea about the underclass, at least in Britain. He sees it as the residue left in the “sink estates” [public housing] after everyone else has left for unfold

The Real David Halberstam

by Christopher Chantrill

FOR WHAT seems like forever we have been taught to celebrate David Halberstam as the intrepid journalist who blew the lid off the Vietnam War. He wrote about how The Best and the Brightest betrayed the United States in their fumbling little war in Vietnam.

Actually, it wasn’t like that at all, according to Mark Moyar, author of an expose about Halberstam, Triumph Forsaken. It was Halberstam and his unfold

Is Government Force? Michael Moore Says No

by Christopher Chantrill

WE ALL KNOW, or at least we’d better know by now, that Michael Moore thinks that government health care, as practiced in Canada, Britain, and Cuba is hunky-dory.

(I know. Have you asked a Brit about her wonderful NHS lately?)

Libertarian John Stossel got to ask him about this on ABC’s 20/20 TV show. How come he could be so relaxed about government unfold

Don't The Pols Get It?

by Christopher Chantrill

NOW THAT the Democrats are back in control of Congress we are hearing calls for increasing taxes on business and the rich. A couple of senators, one of them a Republican, want to increase taxes on financial partnerships from 15 percent to 35 percent.

And then there are the genius Democrats in the House, according to Richard W.Rahn:

At the same time, House Democrats proposed an increase of 4.3 percentage unfold

Arnold Kling on Trust in Society

by Christopher Chantrill

THE BIG problem of the human race is the problem of extending trust beyond blood kin. In traditional society you just don’t trust people who are not blood kin. That works pretty well in an agricultural village but it begins to be a problem in the city. So mankind has developed the radical notion of extending trust beyond the limits of blood kin.

As Arnold Kling puts it:

A high-trust society is one where trust extends unfold

BBC Scare Quotes for Climate 'Scepticism'

by Christopher Chantrill

IT’S TRULY amazing, when you think about it, that after all the scare stories and media advocacy that the BBC would find itself reporting the results of a public opinion poll on global warming:

The public believes the effects of global warming on the climate are not as bad as politicians and scientists claim, a poll has suggested.

What is more, the public is not at all sure that the motives of the climate change advocates are as unfold

The Broken Society in Germany

by Christopher Chantrill

YES, YES. For decades we have been worrying about little girls in school. Feminist organizations have been gussying up studies showing how girls are hopelessly shortchanged by just about everything.

Now the real results are coming in, according to The Economist.

In eastern Germany, that would presumably be Brandenburg and Pomerania, the girls have left to go west, and they have left unfold

A Father Speaks

by Christopher Chantrill

IN THESE diverse postmodern days what should a father do? The father of teenaged girls, that is.

Doug Giles has some ideas. You see, he doesn’t get with the “hip and groovy dad” bit that lacks a strong “opinion regarding their [daughters’ dating life.” No sirree. Says he:

Yes, seeing that I’m still the unfold

Steyn on Immigration and the "Pork-filled Rooms"

by Christopher Chantrill

HOW DOES he do it? We are talking about Mark Steyn, of course. His post-immigration-bill article fairly gushes with Steynisms, as in:

[T]he people... declared their independence from the United States Senate... "No legislation without explanation."
[Cooking] up the "comprehensive" immigration bill’s "grand bargain" behind the scenes in the pork-filled unfold