“And it is the very cheapness of the identity that causes us to cling to it ever more angrily. Women are more liberated than ever before, but they grow louder about their oppression. “
Read MorePopulism on the right has risen from the neglect of the values that uphold the market and lack of recognition of the market’s effect on our social values.
Populism on the left has risen from an unfulfilled promise of more democracy and then frustrating it with the administrative state, executive orders and judicial decrees.
Read MoreAt 66 I am more inclined to accepts my flaws than work hard to correct them. Again, tipping to Churchill I would hope to limit my annoying virtues and be less ashamed of my admirable vices.
Read More“Simply put, we live in a populist moment when many of the gatekeepers have either abandoned their posts to join the mob or stand lonely vigil at gates that are no longer needed because the walls are crumbling. To borrow a phrase from Julien Benda’s landmark Treason of the Intellectuals, our age is marked by the “political organization of hatreds.” What McCarthy did with letters and telegrams, President Trump does with Twitter.”
Read More“The “middle way” sounds moderate and un-radical. Its appeal is that it sounds unideological and freethinking. But philosophically the Third Way is not mere difference splitting; it is utopian and authoritarian. ” Liberal Fascism
Read MoreHis combative tone is welcomed by his supporters and hated by the opposition. He is solidifying his base and turning his reluctant supporters into committed supporters, but Trump is less effective at getting new supporters.
Read MoreWhile we should not ignore the problems we do have, we should also not ignore the means that have given us the exponential improvements we have enjoyed. Jonah Goldberg in The Suicide of the West emphasizes that human progress is neither natural or inevitable.
Read MoreThese institutions were under full frontal assault in the Kavanaugh hearing. In desperation to preserve their most cherished right they dropped all pretenses of loyalty to the institutions that protect all of our rights. They are willing to sacrifice due process and the presumption of innocence to even the smallest threat to Roe v Wade.
Read More“First the #MeToo movement, which mostly has been a force for good, is entering its moral-panic phase. “
Read More“Right now, both parties are full of people who think this country can be run by a relative handful of people — or even one person – sitting in Washington. They think they’re smarter than the market or the people closest to the problems on the ground. “
Read More“…and saying “character matters” undermines Donald Trump even though character doesn’t matter and even if it did, he’s got character out the ying yang.”
Read MoreIdentity politics only works when another identity is excluded. It only exists in opposition. Identity politics is racist.
Read More“The idea that international institutions, built on the blood-stained rubble of two world wars, must give way to some glorious new era of nationalism is inflaming the minds of people across the West. It’s a very weird epidemic of Year Zero thinking on a global level. “
Read More“Diversity among different “kinds” of people is celebrated everywhere, but intellectual, ideological, and political diversity among those groups is demonized.”
Read MoreThis clarity and distinction on the proper limits of government action defined the objectives of the conservative progressives like William Howard Taft and Herbert Hoover. When the government crosses from protecting property and individual rights to managing and granting these rights, it crosses the line from progressivism to socialism.
Read MorePragmatism is considered the antithesis of ideology but fails to recognize that it has become an ideology. Ideological is not the same as dogmatic. Ideology according to Goldberg is checklist of priorities.
Read More“The American Founding’s glory is that those English colonists took their cousins’ tradition, purified it into a political ideology, and extended it farther than the English ever dreamed. “
Read MoreSocialism and its cousin, Progressivism, are not the forward-thinking ideologies they pretend, but regressions to the natural tendencies of man.
Read MoreThe government of the Founders’ Constitution is more than merely a “night watchman state,” but not very much more. It creates the rules of the garden and the gardeners and little more. This does not mean the government cannot intervene in the society or the economy. It means that, when it does so, it should be to protect liberty, which Madison defined in Federalist No. 10 as “the first object of government.” Jonah Goldberg
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