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Obama's Summer Trip
by Christopher Chantrill
OUR CHAPS have been doing a good job lately investigating Sen. Barack Obama’s lack of seriousness on Iraq. Talk-show host Hugh Hewitt says to Obama: “Meet Michael Yon. Now, Read His Book.” He is referring to Yon’s recently published Moment of Truth in Iraq. Presidential candidate John McCain has offered to take Obama to Iraq so that he can update his unfold
| 05/30/08 11:24 pm ETDie, Conservatives, Die!
by Christopher Chantrill
THAT’S the message of George Packer in a long New Yorker piece on “The Fall of Conservatism.” Lefty bloggers are all agog over this piece, and conservatives certainly agree in part. Obviously political conservatism in the United States is in eclipse right now. Packer argues that conservatism has always been a divisive force. It began with the Southern Strategy of Richard Nixon and Pat Buchanan in the 1960s.
| 05/29/08 11:33 pm ETTurning the Terrorists
by Christopher Chantrill
YOUNG MEN are natural-born killers. They love to fight and to kill. That is why it is young men who think up millennarian schemes and revolutions, and causes based on blood and killing. Lee Harris has written about this persuasively in Civilization and Its Enemies. The great task of civilization, he writes, is to turn the “eternal gang of ruthless men,” the natural-born killers, into the benign and productive Western team. In a long article in
| 05/28/08 9:07 pm ETEevil Wal-Mart and Healthcare
by Christopher Chantrill
WAL-MART is sinking its eevil corporate fangs into health care, and nobody is doing anything to stop it. But don’t worry, someone will notice pretty soon. Wal-Mart is hated by every liberal because Wal-Mart moves heaven and earth to prevent the unionization of its employees. You can understand Wal-Mart’s position on this. Why would they want to turn their associates into surly unionized auto workers or even surly unionzied DMV workers. Or totally ineffective unionized education workers. And did you know unfold
| 05/27/08 6:32 pm ETObama's Iran Gaffe
by Christopher Chantrill
WHEN A REPUBLICAN makes a gaffe it’s usually a career-ender. Or at least it makes him a laughing-stock forever. But usually the gaffe is not really a mistake. It is usually something that liberals insist you are not allowed to say. But for Democrats the rules are different. Take Obama’s Iran gaffe. Back in July 2007 on the infamous YouTube debate Obama agreed with a lefty questioner and said he would meet with the leaders of Iran, Venezuela, North Korea, etc., “without preconditions” in the first year of his unfold
| 05/23/08 6:16 pm ETA Word from Tom DeLay
by Christopher Chantrill
WE HAVEN’T heard too much lately from Tom DeLay, the architect, after Newt Gingrich, of the Republican capture of Congress in 1994. We know he’s a passionate conservative, but we haven’t heard too much of what he is doing. In a recent op-ed, DeLay urges conservatives to get moving. There are plenty of good ideas floating around, he writes, and a few bad ones too. But whatever the ideas “Our core principles of order, unfold
| 05/22/08 11:04 pm ETThe Next Batch of Rejects
by Christopher Chantrill
A GENERATION ago, in 1980, I went to the Republican precinct caucus to nominate George Bush for president. But there was a bunch of unfamiliar faces there. People who looked like they ought to be Democrats. And they were all for Ronald Reagan. It turned out we were all for Reagan. The Reagan Democrats were the last lot expelled from the Democratic Party. In 1960 the Democratic Party was unequivocably the party of the working stiff and the lunch-pail crowd. By 1980 it had become the party of elite liberals and identity unfold
| 05/21/08 11:04 pm ETMessage to BillG: Try Freedom in Education
by Christopher Chantrill
BILLIONAIRE Bill Gates made a fortune in the software business, doing stuff without permission, exercising his God-given talents and revolutionizing business and society. But when it comes to philanthropy, it’s same old, same old, according to Neal McCluskey from the Cato Institute. Gates’ strategy for education, partnered with Eli Broad of KBH Homes, is all about big government.
| 05/20/08 11:13 pm ETReality on Judicial Activism
by Christopher Chantrill
NOW WE CONSERVATIVES are all in a tizzy about the California Supreme Court’s ruling on gay marriage. How could they, we wail? How could they find the right to gay marriage in the Fourteenth Amendment? How could they turn upside down centuries of tradition and custom? They found it because they regard the issue as a simple matter of dignity and equality. They found it because the Enlightenment proposes that anything that can’t be rationally defended ought to be regarded as a superstition. Of course gays should be able to unfold
| 05/20/08 2:18 am ETNow She Tells Us
by Christopher Chantrill
AFTER THE “stunning” loss of a special congressional election in Mississippi, many Republicans are “stunned.” Really, writes Peggy Noonan. On her reckoning: You have to be stupid to be stunned by that... Most party leaders in Washington are stupid – detached, played out, stuck in the wisdom they learned when they were coming up, in ’78 or ’82 or ’94... In politics especially, the first lesson unfold
| 05/16/08 11:17 pm ETEnviro-racism
by Christopher Chantrill
ENVIRONMENTALISTS are racists. And sexists, and classists. Think that’s a little bit extreme? Then read Roy Ennis of the Congress on Racial Equality. When Ennis looks at the proposals of environmentalists and global warming enthusiasts he can’t help wonder if they care about poor folks. The Congress of Racial Equality and I care deeply about our environment. But we also care about having jobs, and affordable food, unfold
| 05/15/08 11:18 pm ETPolar Bear Threatened
by Christopher Chantrill
WITH THE listing of the polar bear by the Interior Department as a “ threatened” species, here’s the current state of the Stupidity Index:
| 05/15/08 12:07 am ETConservatives: Be Not Afraid
by Christopher Chantrill
ACCORDING to the opinion polls, over 80 percent of Americans think that the US is on the wrong track. But does that really mean: Go Left, asks Dennis Prager? Well, yes it does, Dennis. The American people have two choices when they go to the polls. It’s the donkey or the elephant, and right now, they are sick of the elephant. It doesn’t matter why: Iraq war, mortgage meltdown. Americans are sick of it, and they think unfold
| 05/13/08 11:14 pm ETAmerica Moving to the Middle?
by Christopher Chantrill
EVERYONE says that they are fed up with the partisanship of the past decade. In consequence many people are eager to uncover signs that the partisan years are over, and that America is moving to the middle. So along come Gerald F. Seib and John Harwood to tell us that Americans want change. When the Wall Street Journal and NBC News surveyed voters in December, as the campaign began, almost half agreed that America needed "major reforms and a brand new and different approach" to handling unfold
| 05/12/08 11:47 pm ETBritCon Throws Down Gauntlet
by Christopher Chantrill
LOTS OF people think that British Conservative Party leader David Cameron is a lightweight. I don’t. Instead I see a strategic mind at work. This week, after cold-cocking the British Labour Party in the local elections and scoring a huge gain in the horse-race opinion polls, Cameron wrote an op-ed for the lefty Independent: “We are the champions of progressive ideals.” He throws unfold
| 05/10/08 12:27 am ETThe Happiness Quotient
by Christopher Chantrill
FIRST HE discovered that conservative religious people give more, in Who Really Cares? Now Arthur C. Brooks is writing about happiness, according to Maggie Gallagher, and the happiest people are—wait for it—religious conservatives. Really, this should surprise nobody. We know that the worst thing in the world is to have nothing to do and nothing to contribute. Naturally, unfold
| 05/08/08 11:32 pm ETLast Refuge of a Liberal
by Christopher Chantrill
GREAT NEWS! Hillary Clinton, fighting for the people against the elites, vows to smash OPEC, according to Geoff Elliott.
"We’re going to go right at OPEC," she told supporters in Merrillville, Indiana. "They can no longer be a cartel, a monopoly that get together once every couple of months in some conference room in some plush place in the world, they decide how much oil they’re going to produce and what price they’re unfold
| 05/07/08 6:42 pm ETNow It's the Vast Elite Conspiracy
by Christopher Chantrill
THAT HILLARY Clinton is some smart girl. It was she, ten years ago, who fearlessly deployed her super-sniffer conspiracy detector during the Clinton impeachment scandal. She found nothing less than a “Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy” determined to drive her husband out of office. When you work hard at something, you get to be pretty good at it. This last month, according to David unfold
| 05/07/08 1:00 am ETChanging the Terms of the Debate
by Christopher Chantrill
AFTER THE Conservative Party’s local election win in Britain last week, Janet Daley asks: what next? The answer, she writes, involves reframing the debate. Gordon Brown (and liberals here in the US) want to say that the choice before us is between a party (his) that believes in "doing things" - taking people out of poverty, unlocking talent, etc, etc - and one that would prefer to "walk away" and leave people to get on with it. No, no, no. Conservatives have got to insist on a different unfold
| 05/05/08 6:13 pm ETEmployment: Household Survey Up Big Time
by Christopher Chantrill
HERE WE go again. The Labor Department’s Employment Situation Summary released today shows employment down by 20,000 jobs—if you look at the Establishment Survey, the data obtained from employers. But if you look at the Household Survey, the survey of people, asking them whether they are employed or not, then you get a different story, a radically different story. In the Household Survey employment is up by a shattering 362,000 jobs. This number unfold
| 05/02/08 6:44 pm ETCongress Can't Do Nothin' Right
by Christopher Chantrill
THANK GOODNESS for one thing. What with the spiraling increase in food prices the leaders of our beloved Congress are going to fight for the people against the powerful on ethanol.
They are going to lower ethanol subsidies, according to Stephen Dinan. House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer allowed as how this was a case of “unintended consequences.” "The view was to look to alternatives and try to become more unfold
| 05/01/08 6:20 pm ET
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
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
China and Christianity
At first, we thought [the power of the West] was because you had more powerful guns than we had. Then we thought it was because you had the best political system. Next we focused on your economic system. But in the past twenty years, we have realized that the heart of your culture is your religion: Christianity.
David Aikman, Jesus in Beijing
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
Civil Society
“Civil Society”—a complex welter of intermediate institutions, including businesses, voluntary associations, educational institutions, clubs, unions, media, charities, and churches—builds, in turn, on the family, the primary instrument by which people are socialized into their culture and given the skills that allow them to live in broader society and through which the values and knowledge of that society are transmitted across the generations.
Francis Fukuyama, Trust
Class War
In England there were always two sharply opposed middle classes, the academic middle class and the commercial middle class. In the nineteenth century, the academic middle class won the battle for power and status... Then came the triumph of Margaret Thatcher... The academics lost their power and prestige and... have been gloomy ever since.
Freeman Dyson, “The Scientist as Rebel”
Conservatism
Conservatism is the philosophy of society. Its ethic is fraternity and its characteristic is authority — the non-coercive social persuasion which operates in a family or a community. It says ‘we should...’.
Danny Kruger, On Fraternity
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
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
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
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
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
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