Principles are not accountable to ideologies; ideologies are accountable to principles.
Read More“I care less about whether the top personal income-tax rate is 39 percent or 36 percent than I do about whether we can pick one and stick to it for a few decades at least, and, more generally, about ensuring that we do not undertake big and disruptive changes to the policy environment without real consensus and careful deliberation. But instead of that conservative approach, every time a party achieves a temporary majority in Congress or control of the White House, its leaders promise revolution and a radical reordering of taxes, regulations, incentives, terms of trade, and everything else they can think of. “
Read MoreOur political elite took supply for granted. They confused dollars with goods. Demand stimulus is a very short term and limited tool. If we get into debt to stimulate demand, what happens when we pay it back? Debts are always repaid – one way or another- even if you are not a Lannister.
Read More“Strongman democracy is in practice very much like ordinary monarchy or dictatorship, and the strongman usually outlasts the democracy. It is democracy without liberalism.”
Read MoreEven the most educated and credentialed are subject to cognitive biases, and commitment to a preferred narrative over objective facts.
This is especially true for a government run Ministry of Truth, no matter what you decide to call it.
Read More“Another driving force behind the growth of the fact-checking complex is the necessity of enforcing loyalty to progressive ideas that can’t survive on their own. Stripped of their specialized language and social and bureaucratic context, key articles of Progressive Church faith are repulsive to most ordinary voters, regardless of gender or race.”
Read MoreHistory is complicated and not easily reduced to single theory explanations such as the 1619 Project. We can address our sins without ignoring our redemption. We can learn more from understanding context than by either glorification or demonization.
Read More“Free speech and freedom of mind, if we understand them properly, should be rooted in intellectual humility. It is possible — it is certain — that some of the things we believe are wrong, be those matters of fact, matters of moral judgment, or estimates of the dangers posed by words and ideas that offend us. “
Read More“We see this wonderful paradox today that democratic intellectuals want more democracy than the American people—who are not intellectuals—want. They speak for the people and ask for reforms that the people themselves haven’t thought of or aren’t demanding or wouldn’t care about really but for their intellectuals, who impose on them.”
Read More“A working-class revolution led by the working class is the left’s worst nightmare because the working class doesn’t want what the left wants. “
Read More“Like medieval nobles claiming a right to rule based on being a superior breed, and then openly practising inbreeding, our current elites rarely live up to their own hype. Often, the experts are stupid and wrong, sometimes to an almost comical degree. “
Read More“One could charge the white upper middle class of America as committed to a form of ruthless meritocracy in some areas of life and to ruthless egalitarianism in all the others. Debt relief and minimum-lot-size regulations for the households in their neighborhoods. Lawlessness in the name of advancing equality for your neighborhoods.”
Read More“Rule of the people requires that the power of the people be limited, spread out, and qualified, and argued out. “
Read More“He’s more authoritarian, but that’s just what democracy is, when it isn’t made moderate and deliberate by constitutions. So he’s the underside of our system. And he’s the very kind of enemy that we were warned against at the very beginning.”
Read More“So each thinks it’s losing, because it’s losing what it most wants. But if you look at those two things—economics and culture—that just goes back to the two rights in Locke: economics, private property; and culture, toleration. “
Read MoreA liberal democracy is a limited democracy. Without that immensely important modifier, democracy is ripe for tyranny.
Read More“So the intellectuals were no longer allies or friends of businessmen and became enemies. This happens with Rousseau. The whole idea of keeping together these two social currents of liberalism—namely, private property and toleration—gets lost. What we have today are mostly progressive intellectuals.”
Read MoreProgressives think the Constitution is organic and the economy is mechanical; in reality it is the reverse. Thinking you can tax an isolated segment without affecting others ignores the dispersed nature of knowledge that no central authority can emulate.
Read MoreThe Constitution has two important functions: to protect the republic/ democracy that represents the people and to protect the people’s individual liberty from the abuses of democracy. Democracy is not the end, it is the means and must be limited.
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