Road to the Middle Class - by Christopher Chantrill

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, heat and transportation. We care about impoverished Third World families achieving their dreams.

Me too. You wonder about the agenda of rich environmentalists.

The fact is that you can trust rich people to look after themselves. And one of the things that rich people value is open space and freedom from “sprawl,” other peoples’ sprawl, that it. But you can’t really trust them to think of other peoples’ needs.

When the rich environmentalists want to make ANWR out of bounds to oil production, and the outer continental shelf, it means something. When they want to stop energy development to save the polar bear, it means something.

These energy takings force Americans to pay more for energy that is artificially scarce. Their economic progress is held back. They lose the jobs that energy development would create. They lose billions of dollars in royalties and taxes.

So let’s go ahead and blame ExxonMobil and Shell Oil for “price-gouging.” That should teach them a lesson. And it is bound to help the poor.

Polar Bear Threatened

WITH THE listing of the polar bear by the Interior Department as a “ threatened” species, here’s the current state of the Stupidity Index:

Polar bear threatened
No oil drilling in ANWR
No oil drilling on continental shelf
No refineries built in last 30 years
No nuclear plants built in last 30 years
No reform of education in 100 years
Huge subsidies for health care
Huge subsidies for unfold

Conservatives: Be Not Afraid

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

America Moving to the Middle?

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

BritCon Throws Down Gauntlet

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

The Happiness Quotient

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

Last Refuge of a Liberal

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

| May blogs | April blogs |

OPED

How About Those BritCons?

FOR ELEVEN long years the British Conservatives have wandered in the political wilderness. Political magician Tony Blair won three smashing elections with a re-branded “New” Labour Party in 1997, 2001, and 2005. The Tories were written off as the “nasty” party, and it looked like New Labour would rule forever.

Not to worry, an old Tory, Ken Clarke said. “Labour governments always run out of money,” and Conservatives get back in to clean up the mess.

Only this time, Labour didn’t run out of money. ...

| more | comment | 05/16/08

At the Turn of the Cycle

For those of you worried about the start of solar Cycle 24, good news. ...

| more | comment | 05/08/08

America, You've Been Had

The Pope's Challenge to Conservatives

A Century of Tax

RMC CHAPTER-A-DAY

RMC Contents

Chapter 1: After the Welfare State

Chapter 2: Down in South Carolina and Out in Brooklyn

THE CONVENTIONAL WISDOM among western cultural elites is that God is dead and we are well rid of him.... more

Chapter 3: Awakenings of Monotheism

Chapter 4: The Nineteenth Century From the Top Down

Chapter 5: The Nineteenth Century From the Bottom Up

RMC BOOKS

RMC Books on Education

Andrew Coulson, Market Education
How universal literacy was achieved before government education

Carl Kaestle, Pillars of the Republic
How we got our education system

James Tooley, The Miseducation of Women
How the feminists wrecked education for boys and for girls

James Tooley, Reclaiming Education
How only a market in education will provide opportunity for the poor

E.G. West, Education and the State
How education was doing fine before the government muscled in

RMC Books on Law

Hernando De Soto, The Mystery of Capital
How ordinary people in the United States wrote the law during the 19th century

F. A. Hayek, Law Legislation and Liberty, Vol 1
How to build a society based upon law

Henry Maine, Ancient Law
How the movement of progressive peoples is from status to contract

John Zane, The Story of Law
How law developed from early times down to the present

RMC Books on Mutual Aid

James Bartholomew, The Welfare State We're In
How the welfare state makes crime, education, families, and health care worse.

David Beito, From Mutual Aid to the Welfare State
How ordinary people built a sturdy social safety net in the 19th century

David Green, Before Beveridge: Welfare Before the Welfare State
How ordinary people built themselves a sturdy safety net before the welfare state

Theda Skocpol, Diminished Democracy
How the US used to thrive under membership associations and could do again

David Stevenson, The Origins of Freemasonry
How modern freemasonry got started in Scotland

RMC Books on Religion

David Aikman, Jesus in Beijing
How Christianity is booming in China

Finke & Stark, The Churching of America, 1776-1990
How the United States grew into a religious nation

Robert William Fogel, The Fourth Great Awakening and the Future of Egalitarianism
How progressives must act fast if they want to save the welfare state

David Martin, Pentecostalism: The World Their Parish
How Pentecostalism is spreading across the world

Amazon.com Widgets

READINGS

The world's 50 most powerful blogs
at least as far as the lefty Guardian is concerned.

Obama says Bush falsely accuses him of appeasement
why not accuse Bush of racism while you are about it?

Jim Crow Energy Policies
environmentalism hurts the poor. Any comments?

Roy Spencer on Polar Bears
a scientist's take on the polar bear listing

Churchgoing isn't always religious
even atheist grandmas think their grandsons should go to church

Take the Test!

THE PROJECT

Work to restore the Road to the Middle Class. Here’s how. Ground it in faith. Grade it with education. Protect it with mutual aid. Defend it with the law. more>>

THE ARGUMENT

The Road to the Middle Class is a journey from a world of power to a world of trust and love. In religion, it is a journey from power gods that respond to sacrifice and augury to the God who makes a covenant with mankind. In education, it is a journey from the world of the spoken word to the world of the written word. In community, it is the journey from dependence on blood kin and upon clientage under a great lord to the mutual aid and the rules of the self-governing fraternal association. In law it is the journey from the violence of force and feud to the king�s peace, the law of contract, and private property.