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Daily Blogs for 1/2008
by Christopher Chantrill
Three Legs Good, Six Legs Better | 01/31/08
Ken Blackwell reminds us that the conservative coalition is not a just the ...
Against McCain | 01/31/08
As he campaigns for the nomination of the Republican Party Senator John McCain ...
Florida: McCain over Romney(4) | 01/30/08
It seems incredible that the “maverick” Senator John McCain is the ...
Fox Focus Group Response to SOTU | 01/29/08
In his last State of the Union ...
Throw Money at Higher Ed? | 01/28/08
Arizona Governor Janet Napolitano want to spend more money on higher education ...
"Mansfield Park" Mis-Priced | 01/28/08
Enough of politics and race cards. Let’s talk about real issues, like a ...
Party Splitting Time(1) | 01/25/08
Everyone is accusing everyone else of splitting the party. On the Republican side it ...
Stimulus Plan Could Be Worse | 01/24/08
Helicopter Money. That’s what Larry Kudlow calls it. The ...
The Economy: Now What? | 01/23/08
Last week Wall Street was calling for a cut of 50 basis points in the Fed Funds rate. ...
Why Republicans Don't Appeal to Blacks | 01/22/08
In an article about the identity politics now playing at a Democratic presidential ...
MLK, Roe, and Conservatism | 01/21/08
A week ago presidential candidate Hillary Clinton got herself into hot water by making ...
Back of the Bus No More | 01/18/08
It’s always good to hear the sensible words of the adults after a week or so of ...
Freakologic: Making Life Logical | 01/17/08
After a stunning success with The Undercover ...
The Reagan-Bush Era Is Over(1) | 01/16/08
Last Sunday Newt Gingrich went on George Stefanopoulos’ ABC ...
The Bonfire of the Multicultural Vanities | 01/15/08
Does New York Times columnist ...
Dem Political Poker | 01/14/08
In the last generation our Democratic card sharps have had a grand old time playing ...
Primaries Expose Party Splits | 01/14/08
In a useful review of the campaign season thus far, ...
Liberal Fascism Over the Rainbow | 01/11/08
Somewhere over the rainbowWay up highThere’s a land that I heard ...
The World's Cheapest Car: Tata Nano | 01/10/08
Some things are more important than politics, as we all know. The children, for ...
Clinton Gender Card Threepeat | 01/09/08
Nobody ever accused the Clintons of modesty. So it is not surprising that, in ...
Is the Right Wrong? | 01/09/08
Ten years ago, ...
"Liberal Fascism" Hits the Shelves(1) | 01/08/08
I got an email today from Barnes & Noble to tell me that my ...
Winning the Obama Way | 01/08/08
They say that the Clintons invented and patented the politics of personal ...
What Is This Thing Called "Change?" | 01/07/08
Dear old Rush is in better case today than he was Friday, on the day after the Iowa ...
The SST BizJet | 01/07/08
Enough of the sainted Barack Obama starring in “The Fall of the House of ...
The Horse-race After Iowa | 01/04/08
The glorious thing about presidential politics in the US is that it really is an open ...
Conservatives Need Not Apply | 01/03/08
The august New York Times has decided to give conservative William Kristol a ...
On the Day Before | 01/02/08
Tomorrow, Friday, January 3, 2008, they will start counting the first votes in the ...
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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