Category Archives

Archive of posts published in the category: Democrats

Politics and Policy

I lament the subversion of ideas and policy to the passions of the electorate, but it is hard to escape that reality.  The more distant we get from our founding principles, both chronologically and intellectually, the more divisive we become.  When you do not know what you believe everything becomes an argument.  Without the unity of commonly held ideas we descend into the combat zone of identity politics.

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Economic Growth and Inequality

The passion for equality and social justice often obscures the best way to achieve it. This is the epitome of virtue signaling; policies and results matter more than intent,

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The Stark Silence of the Politically Correct

The failure to address this problem will only cause it to proliferate. Witness the Democrats boycotting AIPAC- a first.  I saw Obama and Pelosi speak there. The left wishes to put their heads in the sand and contend this is a minority in their midst.  They have not yet learned that passionate minorities rule politics.  

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Their Last Worst Act

Nancy Pelosi remains as viscerally objectionable today as she was then. Only today she is joined by Kamala Harris, Elizabeth Warren, Ortessa-Cortez, Cory ‘Spartacus’ Booker, Maxine Waters, Bernie Sanders, and now Diane Feinstein. I used to consider Ms. Feinstein a class above the rest of this crowd but she humiliated herself in the Kavanaugh debacle. We are remembered by our last worst act.

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Who Is Really Hostile to Free Speech?

The left has exhibited far more hostility to free speech than Trump has ever remotely considered.

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Elizabeth Warren’s Lunacy

Warren shows no understanding of what profit is.  It is the signal that determines the best allocation of resources.  The better ideas attract the most capital through the profit incentive. Profit is a byproduct of innovation and ideas.  Ms. Warren would substitute this with a government bureaucracy who will determine the proper allocation of resources.  The would not only squelch economic growth and innovation, it would increase corruption exponentially as businesses curried political rather than consumer approval.  Startups would head overseas.

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Branded Ignorance

“..a Stanford graduate now usually knows less history than his Hillsdale counterpart. A successful self-made businessman can know a lot more about the economy than does a Harvard M.B.A., and a state-college graduate is likely to have better ethical bearings that the Clintons with their Yale Law degrees.”

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Should the Religion of a Supreme Court Justice Matter? 

The American Catholics did not look to the government to be the center of their religious mission. This made them less likely to look to the government to enforce their religious codes on others. This was not due to a superior loyalty to a foreign papist monarch, but to a local community cohesion. The Catholics felt stronger about the separation of church and state than the Protestant pietists. Their parochial schools relied less on public education and government support.

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The Roots of FDR

FDR expressed a willingness to experiment his way out of the Great Depression.  But experimentation requires recognizing failures, and the self preserving dynamics of government bureaucracies laced with political cronyism is reluctant to confess failure.

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Fake News Irony

In the past the media had lost respect because they were in a bubble and the world they reported  did not match the experience of many of the readers and viewers. The election  of Donald Trump incited such a rage that they abandoned all precedence of journalistic integrity as long as the outrage of the day fit their narrative.  Their bias became obvious and crippling.

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Policy vs Culture

Rambunctious rhetoric can damage a position.  So can the abuse and weaponization of institutions that require trust to function.  Obama’s abuse of the IRS for political purposes, and the possible politicization of the FBI stand to cause far more damage than Trump’s reckless tweets, bullying tactics, and idle threats.

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Sex and Power

This leads to the true motivation.  This is about sexual abuse, but sex is just the instrument. The motivation is the ultimate aphrodisiac: power.  These abusers on the left and the right indicate they can not be trusted with power.  Their thrill is the use of power.

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Moving the Political Battle to the Courts

Mark Lilla is a committed  Democrat who admonishes his party for the its descent into Identity Politics in The Once and Future Liberal- After Identity Politics  Distrust of the legislative process and increased reliance on the courts to achieve their goals

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Democrat’s Self Sabotage

Mark Lilla is a committed  Democrat who admonishes his party for its descent into Identity Politics in The Once and Future Liberal- After Identity Politics   The only adversary left is ourselves. And we have mastered the art of self-sabotage. At a

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Limits of Government Power

Mark Lilla is a committed  Democrat who admonishes his party for the its descent into Identity Politics in The Once and Future Liberal- After Identity Politics  But every catechism tends over time to become rigid and formulaic, until it eventually becomes

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Power Assymetries

from Scientific American, The Unfortunate Fallout of Campus Postmodernism- The roots of the current campus madness, by Michael Shermer: The intellectual battlefields today are on college campuses, where students’ deep convictions about race, ethnicity, gender and sexual orientation and their social justice

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Evangelism and Politics

Mark Lilla is a committed  Democrat who admonishes his party for the its descent into Identity Politics in The Once and Future Liberal- After Identity Politics  The paradox of identity liberalism is that it paralyzes the capacity to think and

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The Soul of the Democrats Relocated

Mark Lilla is a committed  Democrat who admonishes his party for the its descent into Identity Politics in The Once and Future Liberal- After Identity Politics  Up until the 1960s, those active in liberal and progressive politics were drawn largely from

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Targeted Resentment

How the Democrats Lost the White Working Class– Book review of White Working Class by Joan Williams- reviewed by Joe Queenan in Barron’s: “The working class…has been asked to swallow a lot of economic pain, while elites have focused on

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A Culture of Contempt

From Ted Van Dyk at The Wall Street Journal, The Democrats’ Biggest Problem Is Cultural: The Democratic voter exodus began in 1968 when millions of traditional blue-collar and middle-income voters moved to Republican Richard Nixon or third-party candidate George Wallace,

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