Liberalism

The Liberal’s Tempered Perspective

By Justin Katz | June 21, 2009 |

The first thing to note about Washington Post columnist E.J. Dionne’s after-dinner speech at the Portsmouth Institute’s conference on William F. Buckley’s conservatism is his mention of something that struck me for the duration of the event: namely, that religious life does not preclude real life, much less intellectual life. Stream, download (52 sec). Experience…

How the Moderate Enables the Liberal

By Justin Katz | May 31, 2009 |

David Brooks’s recent column on judicial empathy is a wonderful example of the method by which moderates enable liberals. He begins with a strawman that in no way bears scrutiny: The American legal system is based on a useful falsehood. It’s based on the falsehood that this is a nation of laws, not men; that…

American Hate Groups Exposed!

By Justin Katz | April 18, 2009 |

There may really be reason for concern about terrorism among domestic hate groups: After Tancredo entered the room, protesters kept him from speaking by shouting insults and holding a sign declaring “no dialogue with hate” in front of his face. Tancredo waited calmly while protestors held the sign and chanted… After protestors exited the hallway,…

When the Dictator Branch Takes Over for the Representative One

By Justin Katz | April 8, 2009 |

Andrew McCarthy puts it well: Courts are not there to resolve national controversies, to stand outside and above the United States. They were created as a sub-section of government to remedy individual injuries, and they were given no power to enforce their judgments. That, indeed, is why Hamilton (in Federalist No. 78) anticipated that the…

The Fundamental Dishonesty of an Antidemocratic Movement

By Justin Katz | April 4, 2009 |

If one knows the history of the same-sex marriage debate, the opening paragraph of this editorialized report in the DesMoines Register strikes an odd note: Basic fairness and constitutional equal protection were the linchpins of Friday’s historic Iowa Supreme Court ruling that overturned a 10-year-old ban on same-sex marriage and puts Iowa squarely in the…

There’s No Socialism in America – Except Where There Is (And That’s Why We Should Want More?)

By Carroll Andrew Morse | April 3, 2009 |

Projo columnist Froma Harrop provides what I think is an excellent snapshot of contemporary liberal logic on the subject of “is the government turning socialist?” You see, according to Ms. Harrop, there really isn’t any move towards socialism in American government…Princeton economist Alan Blinder reasons: “Socialism means public ownership and control of business, right? So…

Life on the Plantation

By Marc Comtois | March 13, 2009 |

Rhode Island and Providence Plantations was established by Royal Charter in 1663: Because titles to these lands rested only on Indian deeds, neighboring colonies began to covet them. To meet this threat, Roger Williams journeyed to England and secured a parliamentary patent in March 1643-44 uniting the four towns into a single colony and confirming…

Milking It

By Marc Comtois | September 24, 2008 |

PETA’s latest crusade is aimed at those paragon’s of ultra-conservative, right-wing, free-market capitalists….Ben and Jerry. What did they do wrong? Well, milk does come from cows and, in the eyes of PETA, Ben and Jerry just aren’t towing the ideological line close enough, I suppose. But PETA has a solution! People for the Ethical Treatment…

Levelling

By Marc Comtois | September 19, 2008 |

Sen. Joseph Biden, September 18, 2008: “We want to take money and put it back in the pocket of middle class people. Anyone making over $250,000….Is going to pay more. You got it. It’s time to be patriotic, Kate. It’s time to jump in, it’s time to be part of the deal, it’s time to…

Our Loss of Memory

By Donald B. Hawthorne | August 6, 2008 |

Jonah Goldberg writes about Forgetting the Evils of Communism: The amnesia bites a little deeper: Alexander Solzhenitsyn is dead. Peter Rodman is dead. And memory is dying with them. Over the weekend, Solzhenitsyn, the 89-year-old literary titan, and Rodman, the American foreign-policy intellectual, passed away… What I admired most in both men was their memory.…