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Daily Blogs for 8/2007
by Christopher Chantrill
Karl Rove and Bush's Legacy | 08/31/07
On his last day at the White House, long-time Bush aide ...
Bush to Help Subprime Borrowers | 08/31/07
Obviously some sort of assistance to financially strapped homeowners was coming down ...
How to Reclaim the Streets | 08/30/07
In the old days, we all know, adults used to correct children who misbehaved. ...
The Three Principles of Government | 08/30/07
Now that I’m getting into the guts of ...
Blacks Move to SF Suburbs: Liberals Hardest Hit | 08/29/07
The liberal issue de la semaine as we French linguists have it is blacks moving ...
Can Peaceful Christianity Beat Militant Islam? | 08/29/07
Robert Spencer’s book ...
Is It Over Yet? | 08/28/07
The Dow was down another 280 points today, and ...
Appoint a Special Prosecutor? | 08/28/07
In the wake of the resignation of Albert Gonzales as Attorney ...
Fixing the System For Highways | 08/27/07
Everyone is naturally outraged by the collapse of an interstate highway bridge over ...
The End of Secularism | 08/24/07
I had tagged the New York Times Magazine article by Mark Lilla on ...
Education: What to Do?(1) | 08/23/07
The other day, rancher, military expert, and college teacher ...
The Politics of Demonization(1) | 08/22/07
Why do Democrats hate Karl Rove so much? And why do Republicans hate Senator ...
Women Like Big Government(1) | 08/21/07
Yes, they really do. John Lott has run the numbers in his new book ...
A Conservatism of Fraternity | 08/21/07
Let’s do some serious thinking. That’s the watchword now we’ve reached the end ...
Your School Kid is "Invisible" | 08/20/07
Senator Hillary Clinton has recently been reported asserting that ordinary people are ...
Bernanke's "Rookie Mistake?" | 08/20/07
For the last two weeks the Federal Reserve Board and the European Central Bank have ...
Climate Change Deniers(2) | 08/17/07
It’s turning out to be a rough year for the Climate Change Deniers, you ...
Dem Dodges on School Choice | 08/16/07
Presidential candidate and United States Senator Joe Biden (D-DE) sent his children to ...
Rove on Rush | 08/15/07
Karl Rove was on the Rush Limbaugh Program today for about 15 minutes, and spoke about ...
Time to Curb "Sanctuary Nation?" | 08/15/07
The United States has laws to identify and pick up illegal aliens and deport ...
Beyond Rove, The Hard Thinking | 08/14/07
Beyond the Rove Myth, there is reality, ...
Now They Tell Us | 08/14/07
The much-typed “surge” is working. Even the global MSM is noticing, as ...
Karl Rove Resigns | 08/13/07
Love him or hate him, Karl Rove is the outstanding Republican political operator of ...
End of Civil Liberties? | 08/10/07
Is the new warrantless wiretapping law passed by Congress last weekend the end of ...
US Tipping Balance of Power in Mideast | 08/09/07
It’s been notable to me that the o-called “surge” in Iraq has involved US troops ...
Army Says Beauchamp Articles False | 08/08/07
It looks like it could be time to start rolling out the long German words with respect ...
A New Look at the Industrial Revolution | 08/07/07
Why did the industrial revolution begin in Britain? And why did it begin in the ...
Education Fatties Won't Diet | 08/06/07
The government education monopoly eats about $500 billion a year for K-12 ...
Is DailyKos Really Rush for Liberals? | 08/03/07
We right-wingnuts and hatemongers look at the output of the DailyKos with ...
Bush Attacks Excess Dem Spending | 08/03/07
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi says it’s “only” $22 billion. But President Bush had ...
What Voters Know That Isn't So | 08/01/07
You can call it economic illiteracy, as ...
Murdoch Gets the Prize | 08/01/07
Yesterday Rupert Murdoch finally overcame the finicky objections of the legacy Dow ...
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
What Liberals Think About Conservatives
[W]hen I asked a liberal longtime editor I know with a mainstream [publishing] house for a candid, shorthand version of the assumptions she and her colleagues make about conservatives, she didn't hesitate. “Racist, sexist, homophobic, anti-choice fascists,” she offered, smiling but meaning it.
Harry Stein, I Can't Believe I'm Sitting Next to a Republican
Liberal Coercion
[T]he Liberal, and still more the subspecies Radical... more than any other in these latter days seems under the impression that so long as he has a good end in view he is warranted in exercising over men all the coercion he is able[.]
Herbert Spencer, The Man Versus the State
Moral Imperatives of Modern Culture
These emerge out of long-standing moral notions of freedom, benevolence, and the affirmation of ordinary life... I have been sketching a schematic map... [of] the moral sources [of these notions]... the original theistic grounding for these standards... a naturalism of disengaged reason, which in our day takes scientistic forms, and a third family of views which finds its sources in Romantic expressivism, or in one of the modernist successor visions.
Charles Taylor, Sources of the Self
US Life in 1842
Families helped each other putting up homes and barns. Together, they built churches, schools, and common civic buildings. They collaborated to build roads and bridges. They took pride in being free persons, independent, and self-reliant; but the texture of their lives was cooperative and fraternal.
Michael Novak, The Spirit of Democratic Capitalism
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
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
Never Trust Experts
No lesson seems to be so deeply inculcated by the experience of life as that you should never trust experts. If you believe doctors, nothing is wholesome: if you believe the theologians, nothing is innocent: if you believe the soldiers, nothing is safe. They all require their strong wine diluted by a very large admixture of insipid common sense.
Lord Salisbury, “Letter to Lord Lytton”
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
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”
Government Expenditure
The Union publishes an exact return of the amount of its taxes; I can get copies of the budgets of the four and twenty component states; but who can tell me what the citizens spend in the administration of county and township?
Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America
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
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