Political Thought
In number 71 of The Federalist, Publius (Alexander Hamilton) makes an important point about the relationship between popular opinion and the executive. He argues that there is a difference between “the deliberate sense of the community” and “transient impulses.” There are some who would be inclined to regard the servile pliancy of the Executive to…
Former RI Senate Majority Leader and CCRI Professor David Carlin (D, Newport) has written a new book, Can a Catholic Be A Democrat. Here’s a summary: When author David Carlin was a young man, it was scandalous for a good Catholic to be anything but a good Democrat. In the pews, pubs, and union halls…
It’s somewhat surprising how little segue is deemed necessary, in America’s letters to the editor sections, to bash the president or the pope. On the death of Kurt Vonnegut, Ivan Wolfson from Riverside explained: Vonnegut’s novels explored, often with humor, the inexhaustible ability of humans, as individuals, governments and corporations, through their greed, thoughtlessness, stupidity…
Justin jumped in ahead of me on this one (hey, it happens with us non-coordinating bloggers). Here’s a little more background. NY Times columnist David Brooks ($ required) started it off, and Andrew Sullivan, Ross Douthat and Jonah Goldberg have all weighed in thus far. The acute argument being had is between Sullivan and Douthat/Brooks.…
Nathan Smith at TCS daily offers this contrast between how President Bush and Sen. Jim Webb view the poverty question: President Bush has proposed an array of policies that confront different aspects of real deprivation as experienced by the poor here and abroad: bad education, lack of legal status and fear of deportation, lack of…
Yuval Levin has written a piece that is getting some attention around the web. In it, he identifies what he calls the “parenting class” as being the new group to whom politicians will need to appeal: The worry of middle- and lower-middle-class families arises from a genuine tension between the two things they most eagerly…
Earlier today, Marc noted the “neat little trick” whereby “moderates” and those to their left claim to tolerate everybody except the intolerant and then define as intolerant anybody with whom they disagree. To my ear, there’s something similar in the recently vogue usage of the term “mandate,” as in: “The election did show that there’s…
Offering a decidedly contrarian viewpoint (relative to the usual MSM perspective), Pawtucket Times columnist Jim Baron comes out against political parties that are big tents…The Republican and Democratic parties long ago stopped standing for any particular ideology or principle. Both have determined to become “Big Tents” attracting any voters they can. They have become about…
In an op-ed in today’s Projo, Froma Harrop invokes the name of Milton Friedman in arguing for drug legalization…I was alone on a New York subway platform, when a man started toward me. His glassy eyes foretold what was to happen. He pointed at the flute case I was carrying and said, “Give it to…
I think an important distinction needs to be made in this discussion about re-invigorating the Rhode Island Republican Party by “defining conservatism.’ The attempt to excise the social aspects from the holistic definition of conservatism–essentially smaller government and traditional morality–indicates that it’s not conservatism that is being defined so much as Rhode Island Republicanism. The…