Monthly Archives: April 2018

Archive of posts published in the specified Month

Political Dog Bombers

The left had hoped that their outage would be limited to Roger Ailes and Bill O’Reilly, but Matt Lauer and Charlie Rose also became victims. Roy Moore may have been cock blocked (pun absolutely intended), but so was Al Franken.

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Path Dependence

“The fact that the Constitution is hard to change— a great frustration to passionate political movements of every stripe— automatically confers deep democratic legitimacy to any successful alterations and provides assurance that we will not sacrifice some fundamental liberty in the heat of a given moment. ” J Goldberg

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Progress is Not Inevitable

Reform is seductive.  The faults of the status quo and our current institutions are vivid, magnified in an academic media complex that considers ‘viral’ an achievement. Reform is inchoate and illusive with faults yet to be recognized, presently clear only in the minds of critics and reactionaries.  In the future these faults are the subject of history.

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Bored into Submission

The politically correct nonsense is worse than illiberal.  If they got their wish we would be bored into submission.  The diversity they claim to cherish would disappear from American thinking.

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Rust Never Sleeps

“Modernity often assumes that we’ve conquered human nature as much as we’ve conquered the natural world. The truth is we’ve done neither. We simply restrain each from generation to generation. If you’ve ever owned a boat, car, or house, you know that nature needs only time and opportunity to reclaim everything. Rust doesn’t sleep. Termites respect a grandfather clock no more than an outhouse. “

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HKO Observations 2018 04 19

The patronage and influence of the first Progressive Era has only morphed into lobbyists and regulatory capture. But the real threat is the control they exert on government or the democratic process. 

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Passion and Persuasion

“Our political system was designed to be deliberative. Deliberation is a waste of time if minds cannot be changed. But today, partisans left and right value purity and passion over persuasion. Opponents aren’t potential converts; they’re an abstract and unredeemable them, and their tears, we’re told, are delicious.”

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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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Artificial Tribes

“Populism, which always wants the national government to solve local problems, is in vogue on left and right precisely because local institutions and civil society generally no longer do their jobs. “

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It’s the Entitlements, Stupid

“The long run budget problem has essentially nothing to do with the Trump tax cut. It has been brewing under Bush, Obama, and Trump. It fundamentally comes from growth in entitlements an order of magnitude larger. “

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Tax Math Reality

“A key principle here is that the overall marginal tax rate matters.  There is a tendency, especially on the left, to quote only the top Federal marginal rate of about 40%, and to say therefore that high income Americans pays less taxes than most of Europe. But that argument forgets we also pay state and sometimes local taxes.”

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Petty Little Tyrants

It is the illiberalism of the left that should be marginalized. This obsession with white privilege is ludicrous. Those who decry Amy Wax and Charles Murray as racists are just narrow-minded idiots. Those who dwell on people rather than ideas have small and weak minds. Those who dismiss a life’s work because of a single, questionable irrelevant comment, in or out of context, are petty little tyrants.

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The Overton Window

The left thinks it wins when it silences dissent.  This never works, even when it is forced by violence and tyranny.  It only impoverishes their own understanding.  When I am demonized I do not go away, even though I will no longer engage with you.  As one political server noted, the voting booth is the ultimate safe space.

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The Borking of Kevin Williamson

The left has become so illiberal that they not only reject ideas, but they reject the rights of free expression to those who hold those ideas. Their strategy to win an argument is to deny that the argument even exists. By demonizing the opposition as racists, misogynists, bigots or hate-speech, they can dismiss them as unworthy of debate and deny them any platform for expression. The accusations do not have to be true to be effective.

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