Liberals
February 7, 2013 — Steven Hayward
It is natural, and useful as well, that most politically engaged people dwell on the defects of their own camp while overestimating or failing to perceive the problems in the other camp. In the aftermath of the election result, conservatives are notably downcast, reflective, and at times vindictive against the factions (Tea Party, RINOs, etc.), candidates (Romney, Akin, etc) and key individuals (Karl—cough, cough—Rove) they believe are responsible for the
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February 7, 2013 — Scott Johnson
In writing the first volume of The Age of Reagan, covering the period 1964-1980, Steve Hayward had an inspired idea. He decided to tell the liberal’s side of the story partly from the perspective of Daniel Patrick Moynihan — “the thinking man’s liberal” — whose career spanned the entire period in view. It is one of many great things about the book. Moynihan’s heroic moment came in his brief representation
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February 6, 2013 — John Hinderaker
Will Floyd Corkins become the poster boy for gun control? He certainly deserves the honor. Corkins pled guilty today to firearms, terrorism and assault charges in Washington, D.C. Corkins shot and wounded one man in a terrorist attack last August, but he admitted in court that he had intended to kill as many as possible. He was carrying a loaded 9 mm handgun and had in his possession two additional
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February 5, 2013 — Scott Johnson
I’ve known David Horowitz for more than 20 years, from the time he came through town with Peter Collier talking about their invaluable book Destructive Generation: Second Thoughts About the Sixties. As Jay Nordlinger has written, David was a leader of the New Left who became a leader of the fighting Reaganite Right: “He is a thinker and a doer, an intellectual and an activist. His mind ranges widely, and
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January 31, 2013 — John Hinderaker
The New York Times announced today that its systems have been hacked by the Chinese over a period of months: For the last four months, Chinese hackers have persistently attacked The New York Times, infiltrating its computer systems… Here comes the key bit: and getting passwords for its reporters and other employees. So that explains Tom Friedman’s columns! We probably should apologize for believing Friedman was dumb enough to consider
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January 23, 2013 — Scott Johnson
I think it would be a serious mistake to ignore or fail to attend closely to President Obama’s second inaugural address. It speaks to his ambition, his assault on the founding principles, and his attempt to realign the electorate on a misreading or misinterpretation or misrepresentation of the meaning of the founding principles. Attention must be paid. See, e.g., Yuval Levin’s “Obama’s second inaugural.” As R.J. Pestritto has demonstrated, the
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January 22, 2013 — John Hinderaker
Liberals are feeling triumphant these days, but in the backs of their minds there must be a sense of foreboding. They won this year by demonizing Republicans and by bribing various demographic groups with government largesse. But the Left’s tactical victory can’t conceal the fact that its ideology is bankrupt. The left’s real enemy isn’t Republicans, it is arithmetic. Welfare states are collapsing all around the world. Ours is on
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January 19, 2013 — Scott Johnson
One would like to think that liberal self-mockery informs the cover of the new online edition of Newsweek, tied to Evan Thomas’s cover story. Or perhaps an allusion to Yeats’s great poem, asking “what rough beast, its hour come round at last/Slouches toward Bethlehem to be born?” Or perhaps the liberals at Newsweek/Daily Beast recognize that, like Communism, liberalism has become a secular religion. Or perhaps, as Brent Baker suggests,
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January 18, 2013 — Scott Johnson
At the top of chapter 1 of The Age of Reagan: The Fall of the Old Liberal Order, Steve Hayward observes: “The year 1964 was the Year of Lyndon.” In one of his great philosophical statements of 1964, LBJ gave us the liberal credo: “And I just want to tell you this: we’re in favor of a lot of things and we’re against mighty few.” It’s the liberal counterpart to
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January 16, 2013 — Scott Johnson
My 2012 book of the year is Charles Kesler’s I Am the Change: Barack Obama and the Crisis of Liberalism (along with Jean Yarbrough’s Theodore Roosevelt and the American Political Tradition). Kesler is professor of government at Claremont-McKenna College and editor of the Claremont Review of Books, the flagship publication of the Claremont Institute. Kathryn Lopez has an excellent interview with Professor Kesler posted at NRO. I recommend the whole
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January 15, 2013 — Scott Johnson
James O’Keefe strikes again in his latest undercover video. O’Keefe’s merry pranksters go door to door soliciting high and mighty anti-gun advocates to plant lawn signs proclaiming THIS HOME IS PROUDLY GUN FREE in their yards. Jim Hoft quotes the video (O’Keefe’s Project Veritas has more here): Posing as “Citizens Against Senseless Violence,” we visit the homes of journalists working for Westchester Journal News, MSNBC, and the Star-Ledger. We also
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January 13, 2013 — Scott Johnson
The 2012 elections placed Minnesota in the hands of a Democratic governor in conjunction with a Democratic legislature for the first time in a generation. Republican governors and legislators have prevented a lot of damage to the state that would otherwise have taken place. The state’s Democrats now mean to satisfy the pent-up demand to give it to us good and hard. They have big plans for us. In her
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January 12, 2013 — John Hinderaker
In a parallel universe, this would be a big news story: Let’s pretend that in the spring of 2012 Grover Norquist of Americans for Tax Reform, John Engler of the Business Roundtable, Tim Phillips of Americans for Prosperity, and Wayne LaPierre of the National Rifle Association began to organize an assembly of right-leaning groups. Let’s pretend that in the months since there had been not one but two meetings where
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January 11, 2013 — Steven Hayward
So among my liberal friends is Joel Mathis of the Philadelphia Magazine. This is one of those situations made possible in the Internet age: I’ve never met Joel in person, but we’ve spoken on the phone several times, exchange lots of emails and Facebook comments, and he’s one-half of the Right-Left “Ben and Joel Podcast” with Ben Boychuk on the InfiniteMonkeys site that is always excellent. (And let’s face it:
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January 7, 2013 — John Hinderaker
If you doubt whether the Left has gone around the bend, all you have to do is read Paul Krugman. Today, on the New York Times web site, Krugman argued that President Obama should circumvent the debt ceiling by having the Treasury Department mint a trillion-dollar coin, which would then be handed over to the Federal Reserve, thereby freeing up a trillion dollars in additional borrowing. Apparently this was a
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January 3, 2013 — John Hinderaker
As you probably have heard, al Jazeera is buying Al Gore’s Current TV for, apparently, several hundred million dollars. Al Jazeera is owned by the government of Qatar, which has a great deal of money, and Al Gore likes money. A lot. That affinity is more than enough to explain the deal, but there is more, as the Wall Street Journal reports: The deal comes several months after Messrs. Gore
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January 1, 2013 — John Hinderaker
Conservatives are generally unhappy with the deal that Mitch McConnell agreed to last night. But it never hurts to put yourself in the other guy’s shoes, and it turns out that the left isn’t very happy with the outcome of the “cliff” negotiations, either. I am on lots of the Democratic Party email lists, including MoveOn’s. This is the hysterical email I got from them today: From: “Ilya Sheyman, MoveOn.org
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