In a wide-ranging 2001 review of books on “new natural law” by John Finnis and Robert George published in the journal Religion ), G. Scott Davis zeroes in on sexual ethics, which he notes is one of the main themes of George’s essays on natural law. Drawing on the Finnis/Grisez . . . . Continue Reading »
Peter Lawler very astutely described the problems of some of the self-employed. Some of those observations also apply to much of the working and middle-classes, and especially families with minor children. The problems of these groups are much more pressing (as a matter of both policy and politics) . . . . Continue Reading »
It’s Even Worse than It Looks: How the American Constitutional System Collided With the New Politics of Extremism by Thomas E. Mann and Norman J. Ornstein Basic Books, 226 pages, $26 Thomas Mann and Norman Ornstein just don’t seem to understand—or they just choose to ignore—that lots of . . . . Continue Reading »
About fifteen years ago Rush Limbaugh did a skit about Montana. The joke was that when you entered Montana they gave you a black robe, a shotgun, and a fill-in-the-blank copy of the Constitution. The skit ended with the narrator shooting a questioner and saying “I always knew he was a . . . . Continue Reading »
We just went through a presidential election where the Republicans demonstrated an unhealthy obsession with cutting the marginal income tax rates of the job creator, high earners who “built that” in the top two percent of the income distribution. We also caught a glimpse of the . . . . Continue Reading »
but does anybody see a Republican endgame in the fiscal cliff negotiations that isn’t about intra-Republican positioning and careerism? John Boehner looks like he is just trying to muddle through and get the best deal from Obama under conditions where Obama is more popular, more trusted and . . . . Continue Reading »
David Frum likes Jean Edward Smith’s biography of Eisenhower. I mostly enjoyed it myself, but Frum agrees with Smith’s claim the Interstate Highway Act was a Keynesian stimulus program to deal with the end of the Korean War. That seems mostly wrong when I look at the dates. Smith wrote . . . . Continue Reading »
Reagan started his political life trying to win over the other party’s voters alongside mobilizing his own party’s base. In this forum, Henry Olsen talks about the difference between “reaching out” and “inclusion.” Olsen says: I think reaching out says . . . . Continue Reading »
Because that is how much the candidate we support got in an election with high unemployment, tepid growth, and high gas prices. Rerun the election with Romney as the incumbent and Obama as the challenger and how does it go? Sort of depressing isn’t it? Want to feel better? Reagan began his . . . . Continue Reading »
As the American right emerges from its November defeat, I’m wondering how conservatives will relate their current situation to their memory of Ronald Reagan. What lessons of Reagan’s career are most appropriate for our current situation? One approach is to repeat heavily distorted and . . . . Continue Reading »
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