Liberalism
One sees an uncomfortable degree of reflection in Fred Siegel’s article about early progressive author Herbert Croly. Here, for example, one can’t help but see Rhode Island: Croly hoped to see geographic representation, with its accompanying two-party system, replaced by syndicalist-style functional representation. In Croly’s ideal, government would not be built around states (which would…
Another founding father of modern progressivism described in the series of National Review essays that I mentioned yesterday is Oliver Wendell Holmes, whose repercussions in modern jurisprudence Bradley Watson describes thus: There is a residual incoherence to the progressive jurisprudence that has followed Holmes. It alternates between two poles. On one hand, it expresses the…
The current print edition of National Review includes a collection of pieces on turn-of-the-last-century founders of modern liberalism that are valuable not the least in the degree to which they shed light on current strains of thought on the Left (strains that seem not to have progressed very much, in the last hundred years). Although…
Well, there you have it, from the chairman of the Nobel Peace Prize committee: Jagland singled out Obama’s efforts to heal the divide between the West and the Muslim world and scale down a Bush-era proposal for an anti-missile shield in Europe. “All these things have contributed to – I wouldn’t say a safer world…
Isn’t there something fundamentally dishonest about the sort of calculation that RI House Majority Leader Gordon Fox is making in his campaign for speakership? … with one notable exception, he is guarded about where he stands on some of the more volatile issues the 2010 legislature is likely to face, including casino gambling, gay marriage…
The U.S. House of Representatives has joined the Senate in overwhelmingly voting to defund ACORN after recent voter fraud allegations and a grassroots undercover investigation revealed a willingness by ACORN operatives in various states to encourage breaking U.S. law. This follows a decision by the Census Bureau to bar ACORN from assisting in the 2010…
We’ve argued (for a while) for closing the loophole in Rhode Island law that enables indoor prostitution. It’s an issue upon which conservatives, independents and some progressives have found common ground. For instance, Democratic Rep. Joanne Giannini and URI Women’s Studies professor
I suppose when you’ve established a weekly shtick, you gotta keep doing it. Even when the source material is a Revolutionary War hero. So sometimes you overreach. Like comparing Rhode Island’s own Revolutionary War hero General Nathanael Greene to Lt. William Calley, the war criminal notorious for his role in the My Lai massacre. It…
Still talking about ‘Plantations’: Supporters of a plan that would give voters in next year’s general election the opportunity to strike the phrase “and Providence Plantations” from the state’s formal name, launched a public awareness and education campaign Wednesday….Backers say there is much work to be done if they are to persuade Rhode Island voters…
Glenn Reynolds points to a Wall Street Journal editorial that is well worth a few moments of your time. (Those in Rep. Ray Sullivan’s Coventry may be relieved to learn that it’s available online.) President Obama has bet the economy on his program to grow the government and finance it with a more progressive tax…
