Opeds for 10 - Road to the Middle Class - by Christopher Chantrill

Senator Chuck Schumer (D-NY) is reported to be “irked” that President Obama didn’t take his advice and use the tax bill to “corner Republicans into defending millionaires and billionaires.” In fact he’s not just irked, he’s “deeply

| more | 12/18/10

Warren Buffett, Robber Baron

I know that we are all supposed to love Warren Buffett as the Sage of Omaha, businessman and all-around good guy, but I keep reading stories that make me wonder. Here’s a story about Warren Buffett, the estate tax, and the life insurance industry.

Did you know that the life insurance lobby is actively lobbying to restore the estate

| more | 12/09/10

Dems Fume over Wall Street Trillions

All of a sudden, liberal pundits are getting worked up about the influence of Wall Street. From the concern expressed one would think that the contributions from Goldman Sachs have suddenly dried up now that the Republicans have taken over the House of Representatives. Here’s William D. Cohan in The New York Times worrying about

| more | 12/09/10

Giving Thanks for Obama

Have you heard the one about the guy from the lefty “reality-based community?” He could only tell reality when it knocked him upside the head. And that’s the story of the Obama administration thus far.

It’s not easy to admit it, but in 2008 we needed the Democrats to run the national security apparatus for four

| more | 11/25/10

QE Then and Now

There are two reasons for the Federal Reserve’s decisions to print lots of money. The good reason is that the real-estate crash still hasn’t cleared. That is, too many mortgaged homeowners are still under water and the real-estate estate market is all locked up with a huge overhang of foreclosures. When too many debtors are under

| more | 11/25/10

Yes We Can Repeal

Last week the MSM Tingle Brigade all of a sudden discovered, in President Obama’s post-election news conference, that he just didn’t get it, didn’t understand the message from the voters. “That Tin Ear,” wrote the London Economist.

What did the

| more | 11/11/10

Obama's Grand Strategic Error

So President Obama really is a socialist after all. According to Stanley Kurtz in Radical-in-Chief the young Obama went to socialist conferences in the 1980s and then became participant in the extensive socialist community

| more | 11/05/10

At the End of a Dynasty

You really have to feel sorry for our liberal friends. With each passing day they are coming to resemble the old WASP elite they sneered at for a century. Good liberal journalists should only visit those inscribed in the Social Register. And the Netroots seem more and more like southern rednecks, the folks that howled their approval when

| more | 11/01/10

Fun Frolic and Midterms

When your team looks to do well in the playoffs it’s time to head down to the big-box store to buy a big-screen HDTV. But what do you do when your party looks to wipe the floor in the midterms?

The question is: When the results start rolling, how will the election rate against the Best All-time Midterms? Obviously there will be

| more | 10/21/10

Paychecks vs. Food Stamps

The mark of a good politician is an instinct for the dividing line. We are talking about the line drawn in the sand that gets you to 51 percent of the vote and leaves your opponent with the rest.

Say what you like about Newt Gingrich, but his new dividing line over paychecks

| more | 10/18/10

8/28 vs. 10/2: Dueling Faith Traditions

It’s pretty obvious that the One Nation rally held at the Lincoln Memorial on Saturday, 10/2, was in every way the left-wing version of Glenn Beck’s Restoring Honor rally on 8/28.

Just as Glenn Beck’s rally was a celebration of the Judeo-Christian virtues of Faith, Hope, and Charity, American exceptionalism, and

| more | 10/09/10

About That River in Egypt

Our liberal friends are wondering where it all went wrong. Their generals, the elected politicians, are all running for election either by ignoring ObamaCare or by running against it. But the word hasn’t gotten down to the mustachioed, well, bearded officers in the Liberal Hussars. They are still haranguing the troopers with “

| more | 10/03/10

Power or Principle?

Tea Party favorite Christine O’Donnell’s victory over Washington establishment favorite Mike Castle raised an interesting question.

Do we just want political power and 51 seats in the US Senate? Or do we want to build a movement? That’s what movement guy

| more | 09/23/10

This is Just the Beginning

It’s beginning to look like the Republicans win both houses of Congress this fall. But a Republican Congress won’t be enough repeal the disaster of ObamaCare. President Obama will be able to veto any repeal effort at least through 2012. And even with a Republican president in 2013 Democrats may still be able to filibuster a repeal

| more | 09/20/10

Noboby But Us 400,000 Chickens

For years and years the national moralists have been telling conservatives to reach out to minorities and women. But how? Minorities and women, at least of the professional variety, believe in big government and politics-with-everything. Conservatives don’t.

In fact conservatives believe, with

| more | 09/09/10

Barack's Cunning Plan

Some of you may know and love the British Blackadder TV series. It featured Rowan Atkinson as an upper-class twit and Tony Robinson as Baldrick, his crafty lower-class servant/sidekick. A recurring theme was “Baldrick’s cunning plan” that usually failed to get them out of a jam.

We will return to Barack’s cunning

| more | 09/08/10

What Liberals Should Have Known

Rep. Barney Frank (D-MA), chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, has changed his mind about Fannie and Freddie, the home-mortgage government-sponsored giants. According to Larry Kudlow, Rep. Frank is ready to send Fannie to a death

| more | 08/30/10

How's That "Spread the Wealth Doing?"

Conservatives’ favorite moment in the 2008 campaign was the altercation between the Anointed One and Joe the Plumber.

Back then Joe Wurzelbacher was worried that Obama’s plan to raise taxes on the wealthy, those making more than $250,000 per year, would hurt folks like

| more | 08/20/10

A Liberal Judge Lights a Fuse

Last week, when Judge Walker’s decision in Perry v. Schwarzenegger came out, I felt a dreadful fear.

My fear was not about what gay marriage would do to the institution of traditional marriage. I reckon that marriage is not as fragile as conservatives fear,

| more | 08/13/10

Andrew Breitbart Can't Be Fired

As the mainstream media synchronized their watches over the Shirley Sherrod affair, the object of their little trench raid was clear. Demonize Andrew Breitbart for the un-ethical publication of a video featuring Ms. Sherrod uttering racist remarks at an NAACP awards dinner.

You could see the strategy. The MSM wanted to discredit and

| more | 07/29/10

Of Course Obama's a Socialist

Thomas Frank, the Wall Street Journal’s quota liberal, is shocked that people are calling President Obama a socialist. Last

| more | 07/24/10

Free at Last: The End Game of Liberal Racism

Back when they were asking us if we were ready for a black president, we all know what Americans were thinking. If we elect a black president, could we do a deal? Could we stop calling everyone racists?

It was easy back then to indulge in a hope for change. Back in July 2004, State Senator Barack Obama (D-IL) wowed the political

| more | 07/19/10

After Obama: Forgiveness

The great religious movements of the 20th century, Communism and Fascism, liked to think that they toiled in the wilderness against a corrupt political and religious establishment. In fact, of course, they always obtained support from young fashionables in the educated elite, and their ideas leaked quickly into the political mainstream.

| more | 07/09/10

Keynes: The End of a Bad Idea

Every bad idea seems to have its Wordsworthian moment:

Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive But to be young was very heaven.

The early enthusiasm for Keynesian economics certainly qualifies. The dawn of Keynes was very heaven, if you were young back then. But now we are at the moment when a new generation asks:

| more | 06/30/10

A Bridge Too Far

According to Fred Barnes at The Weekly Standard, the Obamis are planning a lame-duck session of Congress, “filled

| more | 06/29/10

Mr. President, You're Stuck on Stupid

It is true that liberalism is cruel, corrupt, wasteful and unjust. But one should never forget its delusion. The delusion is a simple one. It is a belief that government can be made rational and efficient. This delusion leads our liberal friends into disaster after disaster.

Liberals were shocked that President Bush failed to get

| more | 06/19/10

The Rand Paul Gaffe and Liberal Injustice

A political gaffe is when a politician accidentally tells the truth. So when GOP senate candidate Rand Paul discussed with MSNBC host Rachel Maddow “his belief in a limited government that should not force private businesses to abide by

| more | 06/14/10

Big Government's Katrina

The mess in the Gulf of Mexico is not just Obama’s Katrina. It is Big Government’s Katrina.

Thank goodness it happened on the Democrats’ watch. When George W. Bush was president the lackadaisical performance of the federal government could be set down to Republican disinterest in governance. Republicans don’t care

| more | 06/14/10

The Liberal Trilemma

Many people are looking for the reason to explain the Greek/Euro mess. Edmund Conway in the London Daily Telegraph has as good a reason as any. The current crisis, he

| more | 06/14/10

Can Women Return Us to Beauty?

If anyone wants to know why theater is dead in the United States the reason is simple. It is trapped in a time-warp of liberal pieties. When the Oregon Shakespeare Festival sent out a call for plays celebrating “American Revolutions”

| more | 05/19/10

Greek Crisis Nothing New

Last week government workers in Greece were marching through the streets chanting “thieves, thieves” to the industrialists and politicians that have robbed their nation blind. These workers would be experts about

| more | 05/11/10

Mundell: Blame the Fed

Who really was to blame for the bank meltdown in 2008? Economist Robert Mundell, supply-sider-in-chief and China’s new Confucius, is unequivocal.

In a speech at the

| more | 05/11/10

Taxes Are Not the Problem

The Tax Day tea parties were a start. Taxes are too high, we all agree. You can see how high at usgovernmentrevenue.com. But taxes aren’t the problem. Nor indeed is government spending the problem, although you can take a look at the century of steadily increasing government

| more | 04/23/10

Obama's World Without Giving

Last week we learned what happens to health care when you impose ObamaCare upon it. For we learned how the prototype ObamaCare health plan is wrecking health care in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts.

Gov. Deval Patrick (D) just rejected 90

| more | 04/17/10

Let's Change the Conversation on Education

Diane Ravitch has given up on school choice. Her latest book, The Death and Life of the Great American School System: How Testing and Choice Are Undermining Education, tells the story of her change of heart. You can read a quickie version in The Wall Street Journal or

| more | 04/09/10

Who Do You Trust?

Everyone seems to need a narrative of good against evil. Even people who don’t believe in God or in Satan. Take Noam Chomsky, scourge of US imperialism. In the lefty mockumentary The Corporation, he delicately compares corporations to slaveowners:

When you look at a

| more | 04/02/10

In Defeat, Defiance

A liberal acquaintance likes to say that “taxes are the price we pay for civilization.” He would, for he’s a retired professor from a government university.

He didn’t think this up on his own, of course. His sound bite is a quote from

| more | 03/24/10

ObamaCare: Why the Rules Matter

Back in Bush era it was Republicans that got fed up with the rules. Democrats in the US Senate were filibustering conservative judge nominees and Republicans had had enough of it. So they planned to change the rules in the Senate with the “nuclear option” that would allow an up or down vote on their judges with a bare 51 vote

| more | 03/18/10

ObamaCare: Defeat or Repeal?

The big question for Americans is whether they are better off defeating the monstrosity of ObamaCare now or whether it is best to let the Democrats pass it and then work to repeal it, whether it takes a day or a decade.

The short answer is: Defeat it. The passage of ObamaCare lets a genie of government power out of the bottle that will

| more | 03/12/10

Science's Big Problem

Last week Dr. Judith Curry, climate scientist from Georgia Institute of Technology, admitted on What’s Up With That that climate scientists needed to do a better job of communication, in order to reestablish trust

| more | 03/02/10

The Back-pocket Manifesto

This week the Tea Party conservatives launched their “Contract from America.” And a group of conservative luminaries released the “Mount Vernon

| more | 02/24/10

Liberals Say US Is Ungovernable. Again

Liberals are at it again. They are worrying that the US is “ungovernable.” Political scientist Jay Cost has the details:

Ezra Klein

| more | 02/18/10

Liberal Condescension Isn't the Problem

We all know liberal condescension. “Why are Americans so anti-intellectual?” your liberal friend might ask. But Gerard Alexander has written about it—in the Washington Post. “Why are

| more | 02/11/10

Budget Fun with Fannie and Freddie

Remember when your liberal friends used to writhe on the floor in a foaming rage? They were outraged because the Iraq War never got into the federal budget, but got slipped in through the back door with “supplemental appropriations.”

Now there’s a new game in town. Advanced conservatives are going to class to learn

| more | 02/05/10

You Ain't Seen Nothing Yet

Isn’t it great to have a Republican Senator from Massachusetts? It’s also good to have the First Amendment reaffirmed by the United States Supreme Court—even if our liberal friends are shocked and appalled at the notion of corporations sticking up for themselves.

As delicious as last week’s good news was for

| more | 02/03/10

The Content of Obama's Character

On the holiday celebrating Martin Luther King’s birthday we celebrate also the first year of America’s first black president, Barack Obama.

It’s telling that 47 years ago, when Reverend King made his great speech on the Washington Mall, he did not say that he had a dream that one day, an African American would become

| more | 01/22/10

Obama's Jobs Hole

The Bureau of Labor Statistics released the December employment report January 8, and the mainstream media reported that 85,000 jobs were lost. The big story, as usual, was in the Household Survey. There was no mild leakage of 85,000 jobs there, but a whomping 589,000 jobs flushed down the drain. Here are the numbers from the

| more | 01/16/10

Repeal the Health Bill

Sooner or later the American people must rise up and do more than complain about the latest wizard wheeze of the progressive educated class. We must take one of their gigantic government takeover bills and flat out repeal it.

Otherwise they will return every generation and lay another unjust burden upon us.

Why don’t we do

| more | 01/07/10

TAGS

Responsible Self

[The Axial Age] highlights the conception of a responsible self... [that] promise[s] man for the first time that he can understand the fundamental structure of reality and through salvation participate actively in it.
Robert N Bellah, "Religious Evolution", American Sociological Review, Vol. 29, No. 3.

Taking Responsibility

[To make] of each individual member of the army a soldier who, in character, capability, and knowledge, is self-reliant, self-confident, dedicated, and joyful in taking responsibility [verantwortungsfreudig] as a man and a soldier.
Gen. Hans von Seeckt, quoted in MacGregor Knox, Williamson Murray, ed., The dynamics of military revolution, 1300-2050.

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”

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