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.
Read MoreThe 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,
Read MoreThe 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.
Read MoreNancy 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.
Read MoreThe left has exhibited far more hostility to free speech than Trump has ever remotely considered.
Read MoreWarren 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.
Read More“..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.”
Read MoreThe 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.
Read MoreFDR 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.
Read MoreIn 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.
Read Morefrom 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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