Tag Archives

Archive of posts published in the tag: Claremont Review of Books

The 1619 Riots

But the 1619 Project claims that the entire founding was motivated by the most immoral objectives.  History is much too complex to be reduced to a single theorem; good and evil often ride on the same horse.  George Floyd may have ignited the riots but the idea that we are irretrievably racist, that it is in our DNA, not only ignores the incredible progress made, but ignores scores of other influences on our social and racial constructs.

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Progressive Principles

“[t]he progressive idea, simply put, is that the principled American constitutionalism of fixed natural rights and limited and dispersed powers must be overturned and replaced by an organic, evolutionary model of the Constitution that facilitates the authority of experts dedicated to the expansion of the public sphere and political control, especially at the national level.”

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The Paradox of Capitalism

Walter Williams properly noted that socialism works if you know everybody’s name; in small family and tribal units.  It is poorly suited to the dispersed knowledge that is the glue of an integrated complex world.  Capitalism is efficient but contrary to our biological nature.  It is no surprise that the growth of tribalism in politics is accompanied by anti-capitalist rhetoric. Capitalism, like democracy, depends on values that may be contrary to human nature, while serving the betterment of mankind in our complex world.

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Incubator of Civility

While politics dismisses  ideology, it still underlies our differences.  The belief in permanent human nature and governing principles is what distinguishes the conservative from the progressive.

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University Justice Infects the House

“..the hectoring self-righteousness that grievance studies professors display in faculty senates is now an increasingly common feature of the U.S. Senate. Thus, Judiciary Committee hearings on a Supreme Court nominee became a venue for the same contempt for procedural fairness and epistemological humility as a campus sexual harassment tribunal run by the campus Women’s Center’s Grand Inquisitors.”

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Can Bad Leaders Do Good?

“The framers intended to enable men of good character to have the powers and duties they needed in office to put their virtues and talents to work, consciously pursuing justice and the common good; and at the same time, the framers intended to compel bad men to serve the public even if they would prefer not to.”

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The Progressive Faustian Bargain

“when there is already a federal program for almost every imaginable social problem—what is “populism” supposed to do?”

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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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