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Daily Blogs for 12/2006
by Christopher Chantrill
2006: How Many Unsung Heroes Died? | 12/31/06
The year 2006 saw the deaths of many famous people, from Robert Altman to Al Zarqawi, as ...
Just Don't Say the M-word | 12/29/06
American-in-London ...
David Cameron Exposes "Breakdown Britain" | 12/29/06
For over a year people in Britain have been wondering if the new leader of the ...
Mr Populist wants Privilege and Subsidy | 12/28/06
Senators Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama have been getting nice coverage as moderates, ...
To Help The Poor | 12/28/06
We are far too severe on good honest chaps like Ebenezer Scrooge who refuse to celebrate ...
How Certain Are You? | 12/27/06
The forces of ant-religious bigotry have been developing a nice little meme lately about ...
Gerald Ford, RIP | 12/27/06
President Gerald Ford, who died December 26, represented the minority Republican Party of ...
The Popeye Moment on Single-Parent Families | 12/26/06
And while we are at it, let’s get serious about single-parent families. As the climate ...
Is Racism a Fact or a Faith? | 12/26/06
Let’s talk about racism. Well, it’s the day after Christmas, and time to take up weighty ...
Fonz Moves In On British "Panto" | 12/22/06
If it’s Christmas it must be time for “panto,” the deliciously vulgar British holiday ...
Tis The Season(1) | 12/22/06
It’s the season, and time for a cheery round of carols under the Christmas Tree.
Of ...
The Peace Party vs. The Power Party(2) | 12/22/06
For some time many people have defined the main political division in the United States ...
Skills Commission Wants to Centralize Education | 12/21/06
The New Commission on the Skills of the American Workforce has issued a report on the ...
President Bush Wants To Compromise | 12/21/06
President Bush says he’s all in favor of working with Democrats in the new Congress. As ...
Of Course Blogs are Boring and Predictable... | 12/20/06
What exactly was the point of ...
Watch Your Wallet Says Pete Du Pont(1) | 12/20/06
Wondering what the new Congress will mean? ...
The Child of a Sperm Donor(1) | 12/19/06
Suppose you decided that you wanted a child and you got yourself inseminated by anonymous ...
The Widening Middle Eastern War(1) | 12/19/06
Jordan’s King Abdullah recently warned of three developing civil wars in the Middle East. ...
Middle Class Muscle in South China | 12/18/06
Everybody wonders what is going to happen in China. Will it reform out of its Communist ...
It's The Anti-Semitic Violence That's The Problem | 12/18/06
In Britain right now, one in 400 Jews is likely to be the victim of a “faith-related” ...
After The Great Seattle Windstorm(1) | 12/15/06
The Great Seattle Windstorm is now just a memory. But this morning it was kind of a mess ...
So Bush Created a Catastrophe | 12/15/06
We are at an inflection point in the War on Terror. Three years of effort to produce ...
The Lessons of Pinochet | 12/14/06
Former President Auguste Pinochet of Chile, who died last week, was a dictator who ...
The Great Sexual Taboo | 12/14/06
It’s the great taboo of our time. It’s eating away at half the population. It’s a ...
Oh House! Not Another Anti-hero | 12/13/06
Oh no! Last night on Fox Dr. Gregory House just decided to cop a plea on his forging of ...
God Bless the Secular Fundamentalists(2) | 12/13/06
Did you know that we live in an age when the achievements of science and technology are ...
The Hydra-headed Diversity Monster | 12/12/06
Maybe it would help if the United States Supreme Court would make up its mind one way or ...
Home Mortgage Market: Crash or Bounce? | 12/12/06
Perhaps the most radical change in the financial markets in the last generation has been ...
Bush Pulls Iraqi Puppet-strings | 12/11/06
Is this the light at the end of the tunnel, or too little too late?
The New York ...
Auguste Pinochet, Chile's Departed Embarrassment | 12/11/06
Who was Auguste Pinochet, the former dictator of Chile who died last week? Was he a ...
Men Are Funnier Than Women. Discuss(1) | 12/08/06
Why are men funnier than women? ...
Jean Kirkpatrick, Great American | 12/08/06
As you would expect, when the Associated Press announced the news of the death of ...
The Education Solution is Privatization | 12/07/06
In case you haven’t noticed, the Brits are having a little firestorm about the governance ...
More Iraq Study Needed | 12/07/06
What is it exactly that the ...
The Working Poor Are Different From You and Me | 12/06/06
It’s pretty sobering, isn’t it, to read that the most charitable people in the United ...
Suppose There Was a Government Apple Industry | 12/06/06
Imagine this, writes ...
Bush Nominates a Theocratic Abstinence Advocate | 12/05/06
Oh no, the theocrats in the Bush administration have nominated an abstinence advocate to ...
Honor Friedman With Choice in Education and Health Care | 12/05/06
As we mourn the passing of Milton Friedman, American hero, we must painfully recognize ...
Single Parenthood is Dangerous for Children | 12/04/06
We educated Americans can afford to screw up. We have skills and we have backup. But ...
Education Choice is Working | 12/04/06
It’s a neverending task. To demonstrate again and again that choice works in ...
Giza Pyramids Made of Concrete? | 12/01/06
I know, it sounds so low rent. Surely the pharaohs that built the pyramids at Giza in ...
Steven Pinker is Half-Right on Education | 12/01/06
Harvard psychology professor Steven Pinker is a standout contributor to our national ...
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
Hugo on Genius
“Tear down theory, poetic systems… No more rules, no more models… Genius conjures up
rather than learns… ” —Victor Hugo
César Graña, Bohemian versus Bourgeois
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
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...”
Finke, Stark, The Churching of America, 1776-1990
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
Postmodernism
A writer who says that there are no truths, or that all truth is ’merely relative’, is asking you not to believe him. So don’t.
Roger Scruton, Modern Philosophy
Faith and Politics
As far as the Catholic Church is concerned, the principal focus of her interventions in the public arena is the protection and promotion of the dignity of the person, and she is thereby consciously drawing particular attention to principles which are not negotiable...
[1.] protection of life in all its stages, from the first moment of conception until natural death; [2.] recognition and promotion of the natural structure of the family... [3.] the protection of the right of parents to educate their children.
Pope Benedict XVI, Speech to European Peoples Party, 2006
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
Religion, Property, and Family
But the only religions that have survived are those which support property and the family.
Thus the outlook for communism, which is both anti-property and anti-family, (and also anti-religion), is not promising.
F.A. Hayek, The Fatal Conceit
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
Society and State
For [the left] there is only the state and the individual, nothing in between. No family to rely on, no friend to depend on, no community to call on. No neighbourhood to grow in, no faith to share in, no charities to work in. No-one but the Minister, nowhere but Whitehall, no such thing as society - just them, and their laws, and their rules, and their arrogance.
David Cameron, Conference Speech 2008
Socialism equals Animism
Imagining that all order is the result of design, socialists
conclude that order must be improvable by better design of some superior mind.
F.A. Hayek, The Fatal Conceit
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