Political Thought
Responding to my reference to Peter Schwartz’s “Mob rule comes to Washington,” RIC Professor Thomas Schmeling seems to think that I’ve written myself into a corner: I’m confused. In this post you object to rule by the “mob” (which appears to be the democratically elected representatives of the people) and you object to “government unconstrained…
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…
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…
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…
Yeah, we could discuss the rights of a governing entity that is spending billions of dollars to prop up a specific company, but that would slide past the real question of political philosophy that makes this such a frightening proposition, no matter which step we highlight as the one in the wrong direction: The Obama…
Tom Sgouros likes the idea of centralized government. (He also knows just how to run it, it seems, at least better than a growing list of his fellow citizens, including our “absurd[ly] scolding” governor and the “blind squirrels” who advocate for consolidation.) In a recent column with the aim of supporting that affinity, he attempts…
Channeling John Locke and Edmund Burke via Newt Gingrich on last night’s Matt Allen Show on WPRO radio (630 AM), Zack the Speculator provided a brief tour of the evolution of the philosophy of government in Western Civilization…The great Newt Gingrich said this many years ago; he said the difference between us and England and…
On the Matt Allen show, last night, Matt and I discussed the madness of the modern world — from CEOs who are practically daring the government to begin finding ways to limit their pay to teachers’ unions that are risking PR devastation to keep their contracts growing. Stream by clicking here, or download it.
It amazes me that we can watch these things, which should have been entirely foreseeable, and never return to our initial premises: Some of the big-name Boston teaching hospitals that have managed to extract higher insurance payments include Children’s Hospital and the members of Partners HealthCare, a group including Massachusetts General and Brigham and Women’s.…
Across the society, from cornered municipal officials to the national commentariate, people are preparing the way with palms for the eye-popping stimulus proposals of Obama and Congressional Democrats. A radio report, the other day, explained that the president-elect recognized that the stimulus plan required a tax cutting component, and although, unlike conservatives, liberals see tax…
