Yearly Archives: 2013

Archive of posts published in the specified Year

The Blood of the Mind

Daniel Hannan writes a perspective of our basic government system in the weekend Wall Street Journal, The World of English Freedoms. The conceit of our era is to assume that these ideals are somehow the natural condition of an advanced

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The Proper Fate of Charisma

Fouad Ajami writes When the Obama Magic Died in the Wall Street Journal, 11/15/13. Excerpts: The current troubles of the Obama presidency can be read back into its beginnings. Rule by personal charisma has met its proper fate. The spell has been

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Unscrambled Eggs

From Thus Spake Obama by Mark Steyn in National Review. I love when humor enters politics. I love it when arrogance meets reality.  I love it when we mix the two. Excerpts: On Thursday, he passed a new law at

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Five Million Cancellations

Jonah Goldberg writes Obamacare Schadenfreudarama in National Review Online: Here’s a number that isn’t tiny: Five million people — and counting — have lost their health insurance, despite the president’s years of “you can keep your plan” promises. The president has apologized, sort of.

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Measurable Objectives are Worthless

An awesome speech from a high school senior.   “If everything I learn in high school is a measurable objective, I have not learned anything,” Young proclaimed. “I’d like to repeat that. If everything I learn in high school is

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A Third World Health Care Experience

Jonah Goldberg writes Obamacare Schadenfreudarama in National Review Online: In the wake of Hurricane Katrina, it took about five minutes for liberals to cast the chaos and confusion of the disaster as a searing indictment of not just the Bush administration but

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The Bernie Madoff Health Care Plan

Jonah Goldberg writes Obamacare Schadenfreudarama in National Review Online: The hubris of our ocean-commanding commander-in-chief surely isn’t news to readers of this website. He’s said that he’s smarter and better than everyone who works for him. His wife informed us

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The Pragmatic Trap

“The backup philosophy for business is pragmatism. In fact, pragmatism is systematically taught in business schools. Many business leaders are proud to be called pragmatists. Pragmatists do “what works.” They are “practical.” However, actually being practical requires that we act

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97 Per Cent

James Taylor writes in Forbes: Global Warming Alarmists Caught Doctoring ’97-Percent Consensus’ Claims: Viewing the Cook paper in the best possible light, Cook and colleagues can perhaps claim a small amount of wiggle room in their classifications because the explicit

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The IPCC and The Answers You Get

In American Thinker,  IPCC ‘s Bogus Evidence for Global Warming by S. Fred Singer: Excerpt: In spite of much effort, the IPCC has never succeeded in demonstrating that climate change is significantly affected by human activities — and in particular,

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Obama and Nixon

Kevin Williamson writes The Front Man in The National Review, 8/5/2013 Excerpts: We have to some extent been here before. It is a testament to the success of free-market ideas that it is impossible to imagine President Obama making the announcement that President

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It’s The Ideas, Stupid

Daniel Greenfield writes in The Sultan Knish, Apologies from Utopia. Excerpts: Obama had boasted that he was a better speechwriter than his speechwriters and a better political director than his political directors. But apparently he’s not a better programmer than

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Institutionalism

Daniel Greenfield writes in his blog Sultan Knish, The Art of Building Things, 6/10/13. Excerpts: The seduction of the collective as builder however is not limited to countries that flew the red flag.  When Obama and Warren proclaimed that there were no

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Libertarian (and other) Cop Outs

Derek Hunter writes The Problem With Libertarians in Town Hall: Libertarians have devolved from the pro-liberty wing of the right side of the ledger to the annoying kid who, when he doesn’t get 100 percent of what he wants, takes

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Why Politics Matter

“While science, medicine, art, poetry, architecture, chess, space, sports, number theory and all things hard and beautiful promise purity, elegance and sometimes even transcendence, they are fundamentally subordinate. In the end, they must bow to the sovereignty of politics. “Politics,

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The Real Forces of Decline

“It is perverse and self-defeating for conservative CFOs to focus on the federal government’s profit and loss statement as if it were some test of fiscal virtue and the path to national revival. The key issue is not the prodigal

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A Necessary Evil or a Necessary Good

From Jonah Goldberg in The National Review Online, Father Knows Best: The president’s more intellectually honest defenders have said exactly that. “Vast swathes of policy are based on the correct presumption that people don’t know what’s best for them. Nothing

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Expert Problems

“Expert problems (in which the expert knows a lot but less than he thinks he does) often bring fragilities, and acceptance of ignorance the reverse.3 Expert problems put you on the wrong side of asymmetry. Let us examine the point

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The Permanent Bureaucracy

Kevin Williamson writes The Front Man in The National Review, 8/5/2013 Excerpts: Democracy never lasts long,” Adams famously said. “It soon wastes, exhausts and murders itself. There was never a democracy that did not commit suicide.” For liberal regimes, a very common starting

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The Unique Challenge of Overturning Obamacare

From The Weekly Standard, Killing Obamacare by Jay Cost: Why should we believe that the federal government is remotely capable of managing something as complicated as American health care? The complexities of the task make a mockery of the very notion of

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