Monthly Archives: May 2016

Archive of posts published in the specified Month

Clintonworld

Clinton’s utter lack of integrity is nothing new, But McGurn at the WSJ notes how we have come used to a bar so low that just her being in the race sullies the office. from Hillary’s Crooked Defense-In Clintonworld, anything

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The Difference Between Florence Alabama and Florence Italy

Inequality in American Life is not as easy to measure as you would think and probably even more difficult to make relevant. The common solutions from the left point more to reducing the wealthy than raising the poor, as if

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Intellectual Bigotry

The left is hampered as much by moral superiority as by intellectual arrogance.  The right tend to think the left is ignorant. If they would only read, ” (fill in the blank).”  The right will likely acknowledge that the left

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Another False Ideological Construct

The dark side of pragmatism is not obvious to most people.  Like so many terms its application and meaning in the private sector can alter greatly when applied in the public realm.  But changing reality while being numb to principles

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Political Thoughts 2016 05 28

From whatever biased analysis I can render on Trump he seems to be a Progressive- much like Perot- He believes in strong central executive power, majoritarian democracy, pragmatism over constitutional  or economic principles, and charismatic leadership. As a pragmatic leader

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A New Political Era

Yuval Levin in The Fractured Republic brings a new and illuminating framework to understanding our state of political affairs. Both parties are engaged in political nostalgia. The Democrats see the good old days as 1965 and the Great Society and

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How Donald Trump Would Return Us to Our Constitutional Roots

One of the wisest political warnings- “Imagine the power you are willing to bestow on an elected office in the hands of your worst nightmare.” Charles Cooke’s article is an excellent answer to the recent book Relic by William Howell

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A Flurry of Good Articles

I think I am focused or fairly discriminating on what I post from other writers, but over the years I have gravitated toward only a few.  Kevin Williamson and Charles Cooke of National Review are two of the most used.

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Political Inactivism

Kevin Williamson is probably one of the most excerpted writers on Rebel Yid.  I was fortunate to meet him lat year at Freedom Fest in Las Vegas. He has a creative and unconventional way of viewing the great debates. He

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When Ideas Start Having Sex

The internet gave rise to Google and Facebook. The iPhone gave rise to Uber. The ideologies are important only to the extent that they facilitated ideas. Our current development is less dependent on assets and physical capital than ideas. We

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A Totalitarian Impulse

Why has the left become so intolerant of dissent? The quality and the rationality of any position can be discerned by its tolerance for dissent. In a world of absolute truth there is no safe space, in a world of

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Bernie’s Road to Serfdom

from Bret Stephens at The Wall Street Journal, What’s Socialism, Dad? When Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez died in 2013, an obscure U.K. parliamentarian tweeted, “Thanks Hugo Chavez for showing that the poor matter and wealth can be shared. He made massive contributions

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Conclusions and Decisions

We have observed how one can use irrefutable facts to reach the precisely wrong conclusion.  It happens when we assume away real personal biases, emotionally attach to models and narratives, or are blinded by a delusional sense of moral superiority.

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The Liberal Vice Squad

from the prolific Kevin Williamson at National Review, A Nation of Vice Principals: Where the Left has power, it will use that power to try to crush dissent, debate, and criticism. It isn’t conservative student groups chasing nonconformist speakers off

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Not So Plain and SImple

I rarely comment on Facebook posts but this one deserves a comment IMO: “When a faithfully married black president who was the son of a single-mother, the first black editor of Harvard Law review and a professor of constitutional law

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A Progressive Primer

I was asked last night how I described a Progressive-   The Progressives as described by Wilson believed that the Constitution was deeply flawed; that natural and individual rights were not permanent fixtures of our system of government, that they

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Self Consuming Democracy

from The Federalist How John Roberts Begat Donald Trump by Ilya Shapiro It’s such a shame, and deeply ironic. A constitutional moment had actually arrived in 2010. Remember, the people had risen up against crony capitalism, against bailouts and out-of-control

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Good Enough

from Martin Conrad at Barron’s; Finding the Path to Enrichment Smith argued that man was an economic animal who, by his bargaining and exchanging in the marketplace, could benefit from the diverse talents and genius of all his fellow men.

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A Stronger System

From Glenn Harlan Reynolds in USA Today, How to make the U.S. collapse-proof In Tainter’s characterization, as a society gets older, it accumulates more and more complexity — essentially, onion-like layers of institutions, rules and regulations that offer short term benefits at

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Losing Your Special Deal

from The Wall Street Journal, Ending America’s Slow Growth Tailspin, by John H. Cochrane Most of all, the country needs a dramatic legal and regulatory simplification, restoring the rule of law. Middle-aged America is living in a hoarder’s house of a

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