“the worst forms of tyranny very much include majoritarian tyranny. One might think that the Trump presidency would cause progressives to think twice about what William F. Buckley Jr. dismissed as “the authority of political truths arrived at yesterday at the voting booth.”
Read MoreFrom National Review, Kevin Williams’ China’s Population Problem: Governments always operate in ignorance, and authoritarian governments suffer from this more than the governments of liberal societies. That is because in liberal societies, the spontaneous orders of markets, civil society, and…
Read MoreHalf of Trump’s supporters like his in your face, hit back twice as hard, refusal to be intimidated, trolling, protocol style. The other half fear the poorly thought, lunatic, illiberal, and authoritarian ideas and behavior of the Democrats much more than the ego and unpredictability of Trump. The Kavanaugh hearing was a live rehearsal of how they handle power, like a self righteous mob.
Read MoreFounders considered the Electoral College their crowning achievement of the Constitutional Convention. The divisions by state make the system less corruptible; the hanging chad problem in Florida was limited to one area of one state. The system requires a candidate to appeal to a broad range of interests, not just the interests of a small if heavily populated area.
Read More“…the real evils of censorship and suppression are considerably worse than the hypothetical troubles that a more liberal attitude toward unpopular speech might risk.”
Read More“..the desire for popularity is the original sin of the American intellectual: When he subordinates his independent mind to the demands of the herd, he ceases to perform any useful function. He abandons culture for Instant Culture, discourse for antidiscourse, and truth-seeking for status-seeking.”
Read MoreWhile the Progressives imbued the administrative state with moral and political authority they overestimated its competence. The second false assumption was that this uber-qualified elite would be capable of managing a complex society while trying to fulfill and endless list of social objectives.
Read More“I am grateful to the men and women of our military for their service, but armies are only expedients, necessary evils. They should be kept out of sight for the same reason I keep the guns out of sight in my home. A military parade does not display greatness—it displays power. And that may be where I most part company with our new nationalists. “
Read More“The Bill of Rights shelters certain fundamental rights from democratic passion — no matter how terrified, how angry, how sanctimonious, how self-righteous the demos and the demagogues may be.”
Read More“When a politician declares a “right” in a scarce good, it indicates either that he is a simpleton or that he believes you to be, and one’s as good as the other, that being another defect in democracy.”
Read More“The purpose of emergencies — and, especially, phony emergencies — is to empower partisans and advocates and people with power to overrule those institutions in the pursuit of their own immediate parochial goals, whether those include a wall along the southern border or a mandatory seminar on “rape culture” at Yale. “
Read More“The Democrats are simultaneously attempting to enforce a zero-tolerance approach to these scandals while also handing out plenary indulgences to such figures as Sen. Warren, whose career as a “professor of color” is in many ways more repugnant than literal blackface.”
Read More“The disastrously unsuccessful social experiment of the early 21st century has been attempting to substitute hundreds or thousands of superficial and transitory instant relationships for genuine community and family, which require time and a different kind of effort to cultivate.”
Read MoreIdentity politics and its accusation of “privilege” is collective guilt. It is the opposite of individual rights. In the case of Kavanaugh it is used to undo due process and the basis of our legal system. The illusion of social justice is used to destroy the reality of legal justice, the justice that truly counts and protects all of us from the mobs feared by our founders.
Read MoreUtopian political movements — and all totalitarian movements are basically utopian — love the world, except for all the people in it.”
Read More“Left and Right alike are partly or wholly captive to the fantasies of managerial progressivism and neo-mercantilism, with the Left imagining that Washington can intelligently direct energy and labor markets and much of the Right falling in behind protectionism, “managed trade,” and corporate welfare for everybody from Boeing to Foxconn.”
Read MorePouring money into a problem without fixing the underlying problem accomplishes the political task of surviving an election cycle. The people who voted for this nonsense are long gone and no longer held to account.
Read More“Being so focused on Washington, it is natural that the Democrats have allowed the atrophy of their political muscle in the states, leading to diminished power in them. At the same time, the people in the more rural states have not failed to appreciate that the Democrats’ Washington-first approach devalues them and their communities — precisely the problem that our constitutional order was designed to ameliorate.”
Read More“The fact that America just keeps on trucking irrespective of the qualities or character of the man in the Oval Office ought to make us think rather less of the presidency and rather more of ourselves — and think better of our neighbors, our businesses, our public institutions, our civil society, and much else — including the citizens who do not share our political views.”
Read More“Our politics is full of performative outrage, histrionics that are designed to imbue unserious people with an air moral seriousness and to keep the rubes emotionally invested long enough to get them to a commercial break.”
Read More
Recent Comments