“Just as people have varying levels of faith in an “invisible God,” so people have differing degrees of belief in the beneficial “invisible hand” of capitalism and freedom. By faith, I mean a certain degree of confidence that, left to
Read More
Victor Davis Hanson writes The Age of Tokenism in The National Review, 1/29/13 Excerpt: No one knows how to break the cycle of Middle East violence, much less how to address the tribalism, statism, lack of transparency and freedom, gender
Read More
“Is making money bad? Would the world be a better place without money, as the young lass hoped (she was so cute—like a puppy explaining brain surgery). Well, without money, we would have to trade for stuff, a solution
Read More
Gordon C rovitz writes in the Wall Street Journal Silicon Valley’s ‘Suicide Impulse’ 1/27/13 Excerpts: In 1999, economist Milton Friedman issued a warning to technology executives at a Cato Institute conference: “Is it really in the self-interest of Silicon
Read More
First, Armstrong and Green contend that agreement among forecasters is not related to accuracy—and may reflect bias as much as anything else. “You don’t vote,” Armstrong told me. “That’s not the way science progresses.” Next, they say the complexity of
Read More
Nicholas Eberstadt writes in The Wall Street Journal, Yes, Mr. President, We Are a Nation of Takers, 1/24/13. Excerpts: Over the 50-plus years since 1960, according to the Bureau of Economic Analysis, entitlement transfers—government payments of cash, goods and services
Read More
Do we really want to have an honest debate about race? Henry Percy exposes this question with Fareed Zakaria in ‘Gun Violence in America Is Off the Chart’ in American Thinker, 1/14/13. excerpt Shortly after being sworn in as Attorney General, Eric Holder told an
Read More
Since the election many of the disappointed, such as I, have diverted attention from the topics that occupied us to something either greater or smaller. Taxes were raised and immediately the president talked of raising them more. The incessant
Read More
Daniel Greenfield writes The Guns of Obamerica in his blog The Sultan Knish, 1/20/2013. Excerpts: Reformers in the twenties blamed the plight of the slums on the availability of liquor. They rammed through Prohibition for the entire country to fix the cities. The
Read More
The January 2013 issue of Commentary asked 53 writers and conservative leaders What is the Future of Conservatism? This is part of the response from Jay Leftkowitz: Conservatives are in danger of falling out of touch not only with America. They are falling out of touch
Read More
Jonah Goldberg writes in Townhall, Time to Grow Up, GOP, 1/16/13. Excerpt: The good is obvious. The ill is less understood. For starters, the movement has an unhealthy share of hucksters eager to make money from stirring rage, paranoia and
Read More
John Poderhetz writes in Commentary Magazine, The Way Forward, 12/12 excerpts: This fact heightens the primary reality of Election 2012: Obama’s victory was an astonishing technical accomplishment but in no way whatsoever a substantive one. His team spent four years building
Read More
from The Wall Street Journal, 1/15/13 Jeffrey Scott Shapiro: A Gun Ban That Misfired What I saw as a prosecutor in Washington, D.C., makes me wary of strict firearms laws. Excerpt: The gun ban had an unintended effect: It emboldened
Read More
Daniel Greenfield writes And This is Revolution in his excellent blog, Sultan Knish, 1/14/13. Excerpt: It’s the aspiring middle class that begins revolutions, but when they turn bloody enough, then they usually aren’t the ones who inherit them. An ascending
Read More
One of the recurring themes in this blog is how some of the best and the brightest can still get it wrong; how even in the face of irrefutable evidence the highly intelligent can still reach the wrong conclusion. Even
Read More
George Will writes in the Washington Post Facing up to what we did in interrogations, 1/11/13. Excerpts: “In the end, everybody breaks, bro — it’s biology,” says the CIA man in the movie, tactically but inaccurately, to the detainee undergoing
Read More
In the United States today we are facing the usual calculus of impossibility, recited by the familiar aspirants to a master plan. It is said we must abandon economic freedom because our frontier is closed; because our biosphere is strained;
Read More
Jonah Goldberg writes Biden’s Faulty Lifeguard Logic “If it saves one life” — at what cost? at the National Review, 1/11/13. Excerpt: The idea that the government can regulate or ban its way into a world where there are no
Read More
The blogosphere is littered with the arguments for and against further action controlling guns. The most comprehensive review to understanding the world of guns and self defense I have yet seen is this post from Larry Correia at Monster Hunter Nation, An
Read More
Cliff Asness writes We Are the 98% in The American. 1/7/2013 Excerpts: The second truth is that you cannot pay for the Life of Julia, or any vision of a cradle-to-grave welfare state, without massive and increasingly regressive middle-class taxes.
Read More
Government’s Limits
The January 2013 issue of Commentary asked 53 writers and conservative leaders What is the Future of Conservatism? This is part of the response from Jay Leftkowitz: Conservatives are in danger of falling out of touch not only with America. They are falling out of touch