Political Thought
They can be won, as James Brooke suggests in the The Sun: In the latest sign of a rightward swing of the pendulum in Latin America, voters in Ecuador opted overwhelmingly for tough anti-crime measures, including joint army and police patrols against cocaine gangs. Ecuador is only one example. This reminder does not mean the…
With that perspective, I’d suggest that America works better when voters put the adults in charge but then laugh at them through media and entertainment. Once, adults could be of either party, but they became increasingly of the Republican variety. Unfortunately, voters’ frustration with the inability to return to adult policies is loosening that rule,…
That’s why, although I agree with Jordan, here, I think he’s a step away from the key point: We must reframe. A libertarian lean is correct, but valorizing success won’t work. The impulse to identify with the oppressed has to be changed to wanting to help people, to make THEM successful. It’s the principle at…
This exchange between CNN’s Kaitlan Collins and former U.S. Attorney General Bill Barr has made the rounds and received its share of commentary: To my mind, the most telling part is when Collins looks for a comparison among conservatives to progressive bureaucratic government impositions and points to a local library debate. What Barr should have…
The headline of a Alexa Gagosz’s recent Boston Globe article asks, “Will tenants unions make a difference in Rhode Island’s housing crisis?” The answer, we can be confident, is “yes,” although it will make a difference by making it worse. The state’s problem is insufficient housing, and the only durable, healthy way to give tenants,…
This flaw of inexperience among the young (and progressives) has become far too pervasive in our society and is particularly notable in Rhode Island. People seem to think that the current state of affairs has been established and will continue indefinitely, so we can shape it like clay to the future we want to see. …
On the list of people for whom the exposure of social media has been a source of disappointing exposure, novelist Stephen King has got to be near the top. Like his books or not (and, honestly, given the content, I regret the influence that he had on my younger life), authors are generally placed in…
Letting 17-year-olds vote in primaries if they’ll be eligible to vote in the associated general elections is certainly reasonable, but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t note a pair of conspicuous questions along the way. Firstly, why do Democrats seem always to want to expand voting toward the most manipulable constituencies? Secondly (and perhaps relatedly), why…
A truism about government used to be heard periodically: A government big enough to give you everything you want is big enough to take away everything you have. That saying’s a bit dark, though, and makes its point in an extreme way that younger Americans who’ve been raised with an implicit trust of big government…
Johnston’s challenge gaining access to a neighborhood during emergencies exposes several problems of RI’s way of doing things.