Author Archives

Archive of the posts written by author : Henry Oliner.

Losing the Working Class

Married to a binary one-dimensional interest spectrum, the Democrats only consider the economic interests at stake and even then, only consider the immediate consequences.  Perhaps the working class is responding to more than their immediate economic interests, and are reacting to cultural differences, urban crime, and the illiberalness that has infected our institutions.  Throwing money at a problem that is not economic at its source will not persuade the working class.

Read More

An Alliance with Barbarism

It is also why it is important to remember the principle behind the divided government and intentional firewalls to democracy designed in our constitution: that human nature is permanently flawed and cannot be trusted with concentrated power, whether that power originates in the divine right of kings or the ‘will of the people’.  Where our founding came from the thinking of the Enlightenment and classical liberalism, Progressivism grew from the historicism of Hegel, Pragmatism (capital ‘P’), and social scientific thinking that thought principles of the physical sciences could be applied to the social realm.   Progressivism in the U.S. was tempered by the Constitution, but it traveled in the same boat as political ideologies that considered human nature malleable and capable of improvement, if not perfection,
by the state if it is in the right hands.

Accepting human flaws and governing accordingly has proven far less oppressive than those who spoke in the name of ‘the people’ in their grand schemes to improve humanity. 

Read More

The Great Lie of American Politics

“But that’s the great lie of American politics (and of democracy at large): that the people cannot fail but can only be failed.”

Read More

End DEI !

“What I saw was a worldview that replaced basic ideas of good and evil with a new rubric: the powerless (good) and the powerful (bad). It replaced lots of things. Color blindness with race obsession. Ideas with identity. Debate with denunciation. Persuasion with public shaming. The rule of law with the fury of the mob. “

Read More

The Identity Trap

I disagree with Mounk that this shift is sudden.  It has been ignored, tolerated, and excused for decades.  It is shameful that it took the overt antiSemitism displayed after October 7 for it to be recognized for what it is.

Read More

We Have Only Seen the Tip of the Iceberg

With all of the claims for diversity the one they need the most is intellectual diversity.  It is fine to discuss critical theory and Marxism but not without the balance of constitutional democracy and free markets.  It is shameful when graduates have studied Howard Zinn, Karl Marx, or Ibram Kindi but have never heard of Gordon Wood, Friedrich Hayek, or Thomas Sowell.  Hiring practices should seek a far more balanced faculty.

Read More

Finally Reaching Their Moment of Shame

“If a member of an oppressor class says something edgy, it is a form of violence. If a member of an oppressed class commits actual violence, it’s speech.”

Read More

The Road to Censorship

“What if human beings are merely creatures that take whatever shape is imposed on them by the impress and promptings of the culture in which they are situated? If so, then controlling the culture becomes imperative. And politics must saturate every nook and cranny of life. And this saturation will, inevitably, mean controlling what people say and hear and read and think and teach. Shaping the consciousness of the people — purging the people of what Marxists call “false consciousness” — becomes the great, the encompassing political project.”

Read More

The Aftershock

The media, apoplectic for weeks from hatred displayed in Charlottesville in 2017, lack the same outrage at the depth and scale of the hatred that followed the Hamas attack on October 7.  It is worth noting how often the cry against Zionism quickly turned to plain hatred of Jews.  It has always been a false distinction.  Jewish sympathizers for these attacks on Israel are progressive kapos, selling their soul hoping the alligator eats them last.

Read More

Cancelling Cancel Culture

I always thought identity politics would end badly.  The reaction will not be just about the tolerance of anti-Semitism but will address all the other values that embraced it. 

Read More

History Moves On

“The mystery is why the Palestinians continue to put up with it, and have for so long. They don’t need “days of rage.” They need property rights, free enterprise, the rule of law, and decent government. And nobody would be better pleased to see them have these than the Israelis. “

Read More

When Woke Broke

Social justice grifters in all their forms were easy prey for the Jew haters.  It was just the next logical step. Periods of revisionism and moral ambiguity are breeding grounds for antisemitism and other forms of social and moral rot. 

Read More

Marxian Anti-Semitism

“Democratic political leaders, who have credibility on elite campuses their Republican colleagues lack, have a duty to denounce these spineless university presidents and fomenters of anti-Israel bigotry. Jew-hatred among the cognoscenti has a history of spreading faster than anybody expected.”

Read More

Thoughts on October 7

If Israel and the Jews disappeared tomorrow, do you seriously think this hatred will dissipate and they will peacefully attend to the grinding work of building a civil society?  Who will they then blame for their dysfunction and misery and how will they react?  Do you think their animosities will be contained in their region?

Read More

Capitalism is Cooperative

“We free-market types like to talk about competition—and competition is important—but capitalism is profoundly cooperative: This marvelously productive worldwide economy is something we all do together. “

Read More

We The People

“That’s the real conservative sensibility at work: If progressivism is about making incremental improvements in the direction of utopia, conservatism is about avoiding catastrophe. And if democracy is a hedge against Caesarism, constitutionalism is a hedge against democracy—against the horrifying things that the people will do when you give them political power without checks and accountability.”

Read More

Overstating Economic Influence

“But history doesn’t wait for anybody to vote on it. That affects everything, including the economy.”

Read More

The Coolidge Tax Cuts

“Thus, total individual tax receipts ballooned by 70% from 1924 to 1928; and, throughout the 1920s, the share of income taxes paid by earners of over $100,000 a year doubled. Meanwhile, Coolidge held spending constant, allowing him to eliminate nearly a quarter of the national debt and leave it fully 29% smaller than it was when Harding took office.”

Read More

Gray Swans

Small firewalls that contained corrections were being dismantled, leading to larger, far more damaging crashes.  Part of this was the result of greater connections from travel and communications, but a great part is the result of central powers believing they can control macro markets when they cannot. There is just too much dispersed and unarticulated knowledge for anyone or any administrative bureaucracy to accomplish this.

Read More

DEI and Anti-Semitism

DEI is just an institutionalized form of political correctness. It is intolerant and anti- intellectual and when these two vices combine we know what is to follow.

Read More