Political Thought
This is the crazy time of the year again when the politicians come to your door with their smiles and palm cards and ask for your vote. You see their ads in the paper and their yard signs scattered around town. Another thing you see is endorsements for every race from President all the way…
Today’s quick(ish) hits touch on: Partisanship as evidenced by Bill Maher, Rachel Maddow, and Nick Gillespie. The libertarian-conservative divide and this year’s election. Ed Fitzpatrick’s one-way love of fact checking. The dependency nation as an existential threat. Read all about it on the Ocean State Current…
Via Ted Nesi comes a Bloomberg column by Josh Barro. It’s one of those commentaries in which it isn’t quite clear whether the author is offering pure political advice or expressing his opinion, so I’ll assume the latter. In that context, here are Barro’s thoughts on the balance of the economy and government: If you…
On the latest State of the State with John Carlevale, I discussed Rhode Island’s civic scene and how residents can begin to get involved and sort through the system along with Lisa Blais, of Ocean State Tea Party in Action, and Marina Peterson, of East Bay Patriots. Of particular note, related to my habitual role…
The Stephen Hopkins Center for Civil Rights’ panel discussion on the event of Milton Friedman’s hundredth birthday offset “liberaltarian” Brown professor John Tomasi with June Speakman, a Roger Williams professor more inclined to agree with the prefix of the coinage. The panel would have benefited from the inclusion of an unabridged conservative who agreed with…
It’s intriguing to observe the telescoping nature of the “context” to which folks are referring when discussing President Obama’s infamous Friday the 13th Roanoake speech. The damning two sentences continue to be: If you’ve got a business — you didn’t build that. Somebody else made that happen. The inferred meaning is that somebody else should…
President Obama’s teleprompter style has been the subject of substantial (often mocking) critical commentary, and with some justification, as this nearly parodic 2010 video from a Virginia classroom proves: Given recent political events, one can sympathize with the desire of public officials to avoid extemporaneous speech. In a world in which one’s every public utterance…
Thanks to WPRI-TV‘s Ted Nesi, for inviting me to contribute a guest post to Nesi’s Notes this summer. The essay begins with the big picture…If you are interested in understanding the eternal wisdom of the conservative viewpoint towards government, here are two questions to ask yourself: Do we really think that people are smarter now…
The Ocean State Current encourages readers to spend some time today reading the Declaration of Independence and considering its continuing significance in our times. Some of the particulars resonate as if addressing present issues: He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good. He has forbidden his Governors…