Political Thought
This week between Christmas and New Year’s Day is an apt one for thinking on a grand scale — of the where-we’ve-been-and-where-we-must-go variety. Essays in that vein fill the tabs on my open browser window, and as is often the case, most of them come from the center-right’s great aggregator and one-line editorialist Glenn Reynolds.…
Here is what is at stake in the lawsuit to void Rhode Island’s 2011 pension reform law, Rhode Island Public Employee’s Coalition et al. vs Chafee et al., being litigated in Judge Sarah Taft-Carter’s courtroom today. The state’s public employee unions are asserting a right to veto legislation that impacts their direct economic interests, i.e.…
Evading the progressive ideology snatchers; under surveillance; the not-employed young; and growing up, one way or another. Continue reading on the Ocean State Current…
Paul Rahe’s written an excellent essay explaining why libertarians ought to be social conservatives (via Instapundit), which is a point on which I’m writing for future publication. For the moment, though, this paragraph is more immediately relevant: In America, [Tocqueville] found institutions, mores, and manners antithetical to what he took to be democracy’s natural drift.…
While Ross Douthat‘s New York Times column from this week isn’t exactly an election postmortem, it certainly suggests that a politics focused solely on economic efficiency is incomplete…Beneath these policy debates, though, lie cultural forces that no legislator can really hope to change. The retreat from child rearing is, at some level, a symptom of…
Political theory (watching where you’re going); bonds added to the pool of bubbles; safe regions in a pool with dangerous; government as the most dangerous bubble. Continue reading on the Ocean State Current…
Taft-Carter takes the Iannazzi mantle; RI back to pre-democracy; the ascendance of unaccountable bureaucracies; and America gone mad (with the Big Blue Bug) Continue reading on the Ocean State Current…
National Review Online‘s Ramesh Ponnuru does not believe that Mitt Romney’s problem was that his economic message was drowned out by social issues; he argues the Republican economic message heard by voters lacks broad appeal…Romney was not a drag on the Republican party. The Republican party was a drag on him… The Republican story about…
I don’t agree with everything in this Robert Oscar Lopez election post-mortem from the American Thinker, but it’s definitely a more interesting read than anything telling Republicans that electoral success is only attainable if they limit their message to promising thrifty and honest management of government designed by Democrats…By now it’s widely understood that all…
On the politics (and policy) of exit polls, social issues, statism, and hugging. Continue reading on the Ocean State Current…