Blogs for 2008 - Road to the Middle Class

WHY WAS it that Sen. Barry Goldwater voted against the 1964 Civil Rights Act? A majority of Republicans in both Houses of Congress voted for it. But Mr. Conservative voted against.

William Voegeli tells how it came about.

The fact is that Bill Buckley and the National Review crowd were so anxious to roll back the New Deal and Big Government that they were blind to the need for federal brute force to end the power of the unfold

Heller and "Select Militias"

by Christopher Chantrill

THE BIG takeaway for me on the Second Amendment case of District of Columbia v. Heller is the description of its history.

Justice Scalia writes intriguingly about what the framers and the people of the 18th century thought about the right to keep and bear arms.

Their memory was the attempt by governments to disarm the people they didn’t like. In the late 17th century their memory was of the British kings Charles II and James II and their unfold

Heller Doesn't End It

by Christopher Chantrill

TODAY THE United States Supreme Court in District of Columbia v. Heller upheld the plain meaning of the Second Amendment. But obviously it didn’t end there. The decision was 5-4 in favor of the amendment and it’s likely that the next president will be a liberal.

Anyway, as we know, liberals never stop litigating. So we can see that liberal groups will start moving cases through the court system in the hope that they will ultimately reach the unfold

Are You Sure, Dems?

by Christopher Chantrill

IF YOU SCRATCH a Democrat this year, you will probably find someone who feels like they are waking up out of a bad dream, the bad dream of 28 years of conservative backlash against rational, progressive governance.

To put it another way, Democrats have learned nothing from the last 30 years. They still believe in top-down expert-led central government programs to organize and direct the commanding heights of the economy, politics, and the culture.

But here’s my prediction. After Barack Obama gets elected president and unfold

What's So Depressing?

by Christopher Chantrill

WOMEN ARE twice as likely to be depressed as men, writes Dennis Prager.

If that’s true, then maybe we should do something about it.

But first we have to ask: Why?

Is is patriarchal oppression? Is it the glass ceiling? Is it the lack of affordable child care?

Prager is a conservative, so he’s more likely to suggest that the problem is liberalism. And so he does.

One of the things we’ve done, unfold

Wright Was Almost Right

by Christopher Chantrill

EVERYONE understands that messages often get garbled in transmission. Teachers demonstrate it by whispering a message to a kid at the front of the class and then getting it back from the kid at the back of the class after it’s been whispered from desk to desk.

Then there’s the old saw about the message sent from the front lines: “Send reinforcements we’re going to advance!” It ended up as “Send three and fourpence, we’re going to a dance!”

So now I understand what Reverend Wright got unfold

The Age of Anti-Heroes and Anti-Modesty

by Christopher Chantrill

AT THE BEGINNING of his remarkable book Honor: A History James Bowman defines honor.

Honor in men is bravery, the courage to stand in the line with your brothers even unto death. Honor in women is chastity. And if you think all that is old-fashioned then try calling a man a wimp or a woman a whore and see where it gets you.

So why is it that our liberal friends and their willing accomplices in the media and the popular culture make such a big deal about the anti-hero, the man who unfold

The GOP Energy Raid

by Christopher Chantrill

FOR YEARS the liberals have been telling us that we needed to end our addiction to oil. We needed to do this because energy use harmed the environment. It paved over the nation. It released greenhouse gases. Anyway, there was a finite supply of fossil fuels, and pretty soon we would hit the “peak oil” moment and oil production would go into irreversible decline. And we needed a national energy plan to prepare for a future of solar power, wind power, bio-fuels, and renewables.

All along, conservatives have been saying unfold

Free the Subprime Six!

by Christopher Chantrill

SO WHAT if Sen. Chris Dodd (D-CT) and Sen. Kent Conrad (D-ND) got sweetheart mortgages from Beltwaywide Financial, er, make that Countrywide Financial Corp. They are adults. They can take a bribe and stiff the briber as well as any men in Illyria.

But the chaps at Investors Business Daily have their knickers in a twist. It is one thing to be a “friend” of Angelo Mozilo, CEO of Contrywide, as Chris Dodd apparently was when he got mortgages at unfold

The Gay Marriage Question

by Christopher Chantrill

NOW THAT the California Supreme Court has spoken about gay marriage, it’s time for conservatives to think.

What is it that we want? Apart from our natural conservative instinct that warns us against the innovation of gay marriage, what really is our problem?

And we should also think: what do the advocates of gay marriage want? Marriage activist Maggie Gallagher asks this latter question.

Given that the California unfold

Who Gives and Who Takes?

by Christopher Chantrill

WHO KNEW? Back in 2006 Arthur C. Brooks published Who Really Cares? It was a study about giving to charity. Guess who gave most, as a percentage of income? Right first time. The working poor who went to church. Who gave least? Right again. Secular liberals. Conservatives? Well, conservatives give more than liberals, and not just to church, but to secular charities as well.

Now comes Peter Schweizer with Makers and Takers. It extends our unfold

Liberal Lawyers Notch Another One

by Christopher Chantrill

TO CONSERVATIVES the decision of the US Supreme Court to give the detainees at Guantanamo Bay access to US courts seems utterly foolish. Hey, why not let prisoners of war clog up the courts?

Actually the lefty lawyers have a simple principle. Equality. That was the justification that Erwin Chemerinsky gave in his support of the California State Supreme Court’s decision on gay marriage. If heterosexuals could have marriage then equality demanded that homosexuals should too.

So it makes sense to lefties that the unfold

McCain Clueless on Energy

by Christopher Chantrill

IS JOHN McCain really clueless on energy? Or is he just pretending?

He talked the liberal line on energy on the Today Show today. Said McCain:

The real key to this is nuclear power, alternate energy. We’ve got to, er, solar, wind, tide, develop batteries. We have to embark on a national mission, a national mission to become energy independent.

So Matt Lauer jumps in and prompts him on the move away from oil. Oh yes, says McCain, unfold

The D'Oh-bama Factor

by Christopher Chantrill

YOU HAVE to wonder, as Barack Obama stumbles from one gaffe to another. Is he really up to the job?

In the last few months we’ve had the flap over Reverend Wright and serial statements that became inoperative. Then we had Father Pfleger. Now we have the Case of the Clintonoid Retreads.

That’s what we are talking about when we look at the chaps that Sen. Obama selected to vet vice-presidential nominee candidates.

Obama selected three people to serve on his VP committee: unfold

Liberals are Different From You and Me...

by Christopher Chantrill

IT’S like the old saying: “The rich are different from you and me. They have more money.”

So it makes sense that liberals are different from you and me. They do more whining.

Liberals whine more about everything, according to a review of the social science literature by Peter Schweizer.

A wide body of research shows that modern liberals are much more likely to complain about things in their unfold

Left Doesn't Like Free Speech

by Christopher Chantrill

EVERYONE is properly outraged at the quasi-legal proceedings of the British Columbia Human Rights Commission in the case brought by Muslim extremists against Mark Steyn and MacLean’s, the Canadian newsmagazine.

Some Muslims disliked the excerpt from Steyn’s book America Alone published in MacLean’s a while back. But they didn’t think to sue in regular courts. Oh no, that would cost money. Instead they brought MacLean’s up on a charge of hate unfold

Labor Market Turmoil

by Christopher Chantrill

THE EQUITY markets are off sharply today and you can see why.

No, it’s not that the BLS headliine employment number from the Establishment Survey is off 49,000, as published in the Employment Situation Summary.

As usual, the real story is in the Household Survey. And there you can see real turmoil in the US labor market. Let’s do the numbers.

Civilian labor force: up 577,000
Employment: down 285,000
Unemployment: up unfold

Obama's Vision for America

by Christopher Chantrill

SEN. BARACK Obama (D-IL) gave a speech on Tuesday obviously intended to be a curtain-raiser on the general election campaign. What did he say, and what does it mean?

In his peroration, Obama declared that we would look back on this moment generations from now.

[W]e will be able to look back and tell our children that this was the moment when we began to provide care for the sick and good jobs to the jobless; this was the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal; this was the unfold

Obama We Hardly Know Ye

by Christopher Chantrill

AS SEN. Barack Obama (D-IL) becomes the presumptive presidential nominee of the Democratic Party today, The Wall Street Journal comments on just what an extraordinary moment this is.

Democrats are nominating a freshman Senator barely three years out of the Illinois legislature whom most of America still hardly knows.

It’s also remarkable that a major political party in the United States has chosen, unfold

MSM: What Took You So Long?

by Christopher Chantrill

CONSERVATIVES are having a grand old time this election season watching the Clintons in eclipse.

Back in 1992 Bill Clinton was the Great Liberal Hope, and anyone who disagreed was a Clinton hater.

But now Barack Obama is the Great Liberal Hope and the Clintons are just a dynasty in terminal decline.

What took you so long, MSMers?

We could invent a poetical allusion, and talk, Dover Beach-like about the now retreating sea of faith in the Clintons:

The sea of faith
Was once, too, at the full, and unfold

"The Metrics Pointed to Failure"

by Christopher Chantrill

ONE OF THE key things to understand about human conflict (and that means human life in general) is that victory usually goes to the guy who gives up last.

So when you speak about Iraq in terms like this: “The Metrics Pointed to Failure,” you are missing the point.

When “you,” as Jennifer Rubin writes, are the very foolish Andrew Sullivan, you see the problem.

Of course the metrics pointed to failure. When things are going unfold