“In its Wilsonian form, progressivism is a system in which the elected branches attempt to permanently outsource many of the country’s key political decisions to an ostensibly disinterested technocracy. When that technocracy is trusted, as it was for a while in the early 20th century and again in the 1950s and early to mid 1960s, those attempts enjoy a sufficient degree of support. When that technocracy is not trusted, as was the case after the fall of Robert McNamara and during the malaise-ridden 1970s, those attempts create a mighty backlash.”
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“This was the Madisonian insight,” he contends: “that you can make all sorts of promises on a piece of paper, and call it a ‘bill of rights,’ and it’s not worth the paper it’s written on unless you have some means to enforce it. Like any good contract, it’s only worth the enforcement mechanism it stands on.”
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“The third problem is that socialism, following Marx’s dialectical theory of history, lends itself to a theory of inevitability or preordination that leaves no room for dissent, and that leads in consequence to the elevation of a political class that responds to failure by searching for wreckers and dissenters to punish. “
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“It is reasonably well understood in this country that to place the word “democratic” in front of, say, “speech restrictions” or “warrantless searches” or “juryless criminal prosecutions” would be in no way to legitimize those things or to make them more compatible with the preservation of a free society.”
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from Democrats Finally Wake Up to the Dangers of Illiberalism by Charles C.W. Cooke at National Review Throughout, the Brendan Nyhans of the world will ask, “How could this happen?” And the answer will be elementary: It happened because process
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from Charles C.W. Cooke in The National Review, Our Presidents Are Beginning to Act Like Kings Most important of all, why are we not up in arms when the president openly abuses his position as the head of the bureaucracy in
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from Of Course Sarah Palin Is Endorsing Donald Trump by Charles Cooke at National Review If you are surprised by this development, you shouldn’t be. Ours is an age in which politics and entertainment are melted together without opposition or disfavor;
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from Charles C.W. Cooke in The National Review, Our Presidents Are Beginning to Act Like Kings The Constitution of the United States, Hamburger contends, represented a conscious attempt to banish from this country’s political structure a host of the insidious tools
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John Cochrane- economist at his blop. The Grumpy Economist, Economic Growth. Second, we should separate the tax code from the subsidy and redistribution code.Let us agree, the tax code serves to raise revenue at minimal distortion. All other economic policy
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from Charles C.W. Cooke in The National Review, Our Presidents Are Beginning to Act Like Kings At best, Wilson’s argument is a good-faith but terribly naïve attempt to make government “work.” When the Supreme Court rules, as it did in 1989,
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from Charles C.W. Cooke in The National Review, Our Presidents Are Beginning to Act Like Kings Which is all to say that, pace Woodrow Wilson & Co., the recipe for political liberty is as it ever was. For men to be
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from Charles C.W. Cooke in The National Review, Our Presidents Are Beginning to Act Like Kings As Thomas Jefferson had it, “the natural progress of things is for liberty to yield, and government to gain ground.” There are no new
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from Charles C.W. Cooke in The National Review, Our Presidents Are Beginning to Act Like Kings This rejoinder, alas, is a poor one. If, as the American system presumes, we all have a right to a voice in making the laws
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