Monthly Archives: April 2017

Archive of posts published in the specified Month

Religion without God

from the Claremont Review of Books, The Church of Environmentalism In contrast to Klein’s dogmatism, Robert Nelson’s The New Holy Wars takes a measured, philosophical approach to the environment and the economy. A professor of public policy at the University of Maryland,

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Progressive Disruption

The Challenge of Our Disruptive Era by Ben Sasse at National Review Industrialization brought a massive disruption. At the end of the Civil War, 86% of Americans still worked on the farm. By the end of World War II, 80 years

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Failure to Accept Victory

by Henry Oliner The first Progressive Era from Teddy Roosevelt through Woodrow Wilson established the regulatory and administrative state and changed the nature of our government. It was tainted by an elitist view of race that used the science of

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Circumventing the Solution

The Challenge of Our Disruptive Era by Ben Sasse at National Review I am a historian, and that usually means I’m a killjoy. When people say we’re at a unique moment in history, the historian’s job is to put things

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Aggression vs Ideas

O’Reilly, Ailes, and the Toxic Conservative-Celebrity Culture from David French at National Review What followed was a toxic culture of conservative celebrity, where the public elevated personalities more because of their pugnaciousness than anything else. Indeed, the fastest way to

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Turning Corn into Cars

from Kevin Williamson in National Review, The Social Machine: Consider another kind of machine, a more limited one: Bryan Caplan’s magical idea for a machine that turns corn into cars: “Lo and behold — corn goes in, and cars come out.”

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The March Against Science

How Progressives Cherry-Pick Science They Like from Mona Charen at National Review Science, however, to be respected, must be purely the search for truth. The organizers of this “March for Science” — by acknowledging that their demonstration is modeled on

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Jobs are a Means, Not an End

from Kevin Williamson in National Review, The Social Machine: The purpose of an automobile factory is not to “create jobs,” as the politicians like to say. Its function is not to add to the employment rolls with good wages and UAW

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Undemocratic Liberalism

from “Populism: A Very Short Introduction (Very Short Introductions)” by Cas Mudde, Cristobal Rovira Kaltwasser “In fact, elites have used the growing influence of unelected bodies and technocratic institutions to depoliticize contested political issues, like austerity and immigration, and so

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Rage is Not a Strategy

There is a short fable about two men walking in the jungle when they come face to face with a large tiger. One of the explorers quickly but quietly unlaces his boots and proceeds to put on a pair of

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The American Brexit

From Kevin Williamson at National Review, The Anglo-Americans: Hannan, too, is kind of populist, a leading figure in a populist political campaign. An American friend sent him a note during the referendum that read: “We voted ‘Leave’ in 1776, and it

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The Saturation Point

from The Jerusalem Post, HOW A PRO-PALESTINIAN AMERICAN REPORTER CHANGED HIS VIEWS ON ISRAEL AND THE CONFLICT by Hunter Stuart: For example, after the November 2015 ISIS shootings in Paris that killed 150 people, a colleague of mine ‒ an educated 27-year-old

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The Slavery of the System

from Daniel Greenfield at Sultan Knish, From Freedom to Slavery The slavery of the present is a more subtle thing. It grips the mind more tightly than the body. It still remembers that men enslave themselves best. It knows also that

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A Response to Undemocratic Liberalism

from “Populism: A Very Short Introduction (Very Short Introductions)” by Cas Mudde, Cristobal Rovira Kaltwasser “Populism is part of democracy. Rather than the mirror image of democracy, however, populism is the (bad) conscience of liberal democracy. In a world that

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The Idolatry of the Whip

from Daniel Greenfield at Sultan Knish, From Freedom to Slavery Freedom like slavery, is as much a state of mind as a state of being. It is possible to be legally free, yet to have no freedom of action whatsoever.

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The Essence of Identity Politics

from Ed Driscoll and The Rise of the John Birch Left The modern left is built around a trio of laudable principles: protecting the environment is good, racism is bad, and so is demonizing a person over his or her

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Trump Populism

From Kevin Williamson at National Review, The Anglo-Americans: But there was much that was said, honestly and in good faith, that left me increasingly convinced that the current expression of populism — Trump populism, in short — is simply incompatible with

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The Illusion of Control

From National Review’s Jonah Goldberg, Throw Away the New Playbook: Here’s the important point. Politics is like the weather; it doesn’t care what you think about it. It simply is. And at least in this sense, I was right when I

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The Essence of Political Wisdom

from ‘Politicized’ by Kevin Williamson in National Review: That is not a bad thing — not necessarily. The Supreme Court, acting in its role as illegitimate superlegislature and scriptural council, from time to time attempts to remove some item of

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When Did an Increase in Efficiency Become a Bad Thing?

from Kevin Williamson in National Review, The Social Machine: American factories are one of the wonders of the world, and, in spite of what President Donald Trump, Senator Bernie Sanders, and other lightly informed populists claim, they are humming. U.S.

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