Political Thought
David Goldman (aka “Spengler“) writes in First Things: After a $15 trillion reduction in asset values, Americans are now saving as much as they can. Of course, if everyone saves and no one spends, the economy shuts down, which is precisely what is happening. The trouble is not that aging baby boomers need to save.…
It’s disorienting to hear folks who follow politics for a living take speeches as sincere explanations of politicians’ hopes and intentions. One would expect, as a case in point, David Brooks to understand the dangerous undercurrents of a speech by President Obama that Brooks describes as “a small masterpiece” of “explication.” His view was clear.…
Stream, Download This is one of those times in history when a society must make a decision. Social commentators of the near future will say one of two things about us: If we fail to be heard, then these tea parties, these expressions of outrage across the nation, are the final lunge of a fading…
Ed Achorn’s column, yesterday, is more relevant to today’s demonstration than may seem at first to be the case: What’s at the center of [Brown’s Columbus Day] debate, and others like it, is whether we believe in our civilization anymore. Growing numbers of people seem to be losing faith in it. To my mind, Columbus…
Drawing on an excellent quotation from Abraham Lincoln, Thomas Sowell makes a point that has been increasingly relevant, although it could be and has been made for decades — centuries, even: Abraham Lincoln once asked an audience how many legs a dog has if you count the tail as a leg. When they answered “five,”…
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…