February 1, 2023 — Steven Hayward
The freshman Senator from Ohio, J.D. Vance, writing today in the Wall Street Journal: [F]rom grand-strategy seminars to the State Department, our entire notion of statesmanship is broken. For many, statesmanship means having a polite social-media presence and throwing out slogans about “freedom” and “democracy” while starting world-historic catastrophes in the Middle East. I prefer a different kind of statesmanship: one that stands athwart the crowd, reminding leaders in both
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February 1, 2023 — Steven Hayward
Matthew Arnold’s most famous verse from “Dover Beach” laments the ebbing of Christian faith in Europe: The Sea of Faith Was once, too, at the full, and round earth’s shore Lay like the folds of a bright girdle furled. But now I only hear Its melancholy, long, withdrawing roar, Retreating, to the breath Of the night-wind, down the vast edges drear And naked shingles of the world. Here’s a snapshot
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February 1, 2023 — Steven Hayward
Needless to say the academic scene in America is dismal, but there are some excellent conservative academics scattered around. I’m delighted that the Intercollegiate Studies Institute (ISI) has organized a two-day conference taking place on February 23-24 in Fort Lauderdale featuring many leading conservative professors, under the general title “American Politics and Government Summit.” There is a modest registration fee, but the conference is open to the general public as
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January 31, 2023 — Steven Hayward
Power Line University will be back in the seminar room again tomorrow (Wednesday) afternoon at 5 pm Pacific time/8 pm Eastern, to resume our leisurely stroll through The Federalist Papers. We’ll begin this week’s session with a detour into why and how the Progressives attacked the separation of powers along with rejecting the natural rights philosophy of the Founding, both of which were necessary for their project of creating the
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January 31, 2023 — Steven Hayward
From C.S. Lewis’s essay “The Poison of Subjectivism”: One cause of misery and vice is always present with us in the greed and pride of men, but at certain periods in history this is greatly increased by the temporary prevalence of some false philosophy. Correct thinking will not make good men of bad ones; but a purely theoretical error may remove ordinary checks to evil and deprive good intentions of
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January 31, 2023 — Steven Hayward
I’ve wondered for a long time why westerns declined so precipitously in film, along with musicals (though both have their occasional breakthrough exceptions), and it seems that they have been replaced by horror and thriller films. It is also apparent that comedy has been the most durable genre for almost a full century. I wonder if fantasy films will begin a slow decline. The latest Marvel-style superhero movies don’t seem to
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January 31, 2023 — Steven Hayward
As a follow up to our previous item asking questions about our grand strategy toward Russia, Iran, and the Ukranian war (such as whether the Biden Administration has a grand strategy at all), this item from today’s Wall Street Journal jumps out: Yet the largest ground war in Europe since World War II isn’t translating into boom times for U.S. defense contractors. Hobbled by supply chain disruptions, a tight labor
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January 30, 2023 — Steven Hayward
Sometime back around 1990, I was privileged to get to spend some time with Jaime Escalante (d. 2010), the Bolivian-born high school math teacher whose compelling story was made into a feature film, Stand and Deliver, which featured Edward James Olmos playing Escalante. Escalante had become nationally famous in the 1980s when 18 of his hispanic students from a low-income east Los Angeles neighborhood scored highly on the AP calculus
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January 30, 2023 — Steven Hayward
Hating Bill Clinton was thought to have been an obsession of the right, but as I have been tracking for a while, the left has been turning against him for a long time now. And over the transom from Princeton University Press comes the galleys to a forthcoming book, A Fabulous Failure: The Clinton Presidency and the Transformation of American Capitalism, written by two professors who lean to the left (is
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January 30, 2023 — Steven Hayward
Our last two Daily Charts have noted that liberals are intolerant. Let’s keep going with this theme, and note that liberals are generally unhappy people (with liberal women being the most unhappy cohort), which is one reason leftists are determined to make your life less pleasant.
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January 29, 2023 — Steven Hayward
This week’s geopolitical news should raise a lot of questions about what is going on, and whether the “strategists” in the Biden Administration have any clue what they are doing. So we’re going to send 31 Abrams tanks to Ukraine—eventually (because it will take months to get them deployed). This decision is apparently thought necessary to get Germany to send 200 of its smaller and simpler Leopard tanks. Abrams are
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January 29, 2023 — Steven Hayward
We noted here the other day, in “Physicians—Heal Thyself, Fast,” how the Society of Thoracic Surgeons had publicly rebuked their outgoing president John Calhoon for the sin of affirming the older understanding of individual merit. Apparently that initial groveling apology wasn’t sufficient to placate the woke mob, so the new president has issued a new statement: A Statement from STS President Thomas MacGillivray Earlier this week, STS issued an apology
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January 29, 2023 — Steven Hayward
• Remember the launch of the Obamacare website back in 2013? Looks like the Biden Administration is determined to match the incompetence of Obama’s geniuses with their new asylum website. From AP News: The U.S. government’s CBPOne mobile app that’s been overloaded since the Biden administration introduced it Jan. 12. Many can’t log in; others are able to enter their information and select a date, only to have the screen
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January 28, 2023 — Steven Hayward
Many of The Federalist Papers bear the title, “The Same Subject Continued,” and with a lot of news about the Ukrainian situation coming out this week, we decided to continue last week’s vigorous argument over Ukraine with some of the new facts, such as how much of our own munitions inventory is being drawn down to supply Ukraine (see chart below), the decision to send Abrams tanks, the news that
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January 28, 2023 — Steven Hayward
I’m hawking a new bumper sticker: Honk if you DON’T have classified documents in your house. And have John Kerry and the other extraterrestrials left Davos yet for the mothership at Martha’s Vineyard? And does the high price of eggs explain why there is an egghead shortage—wait, there is no egghead shortage, if you listen to Biden and the World Economic Forum. The statistics are wrong! (Oh, and let’s beat
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January 27, 2023 — Steven Hayward
We have noted here several times the way in which executive agencies in the administrative state obliterate the separation of powers by the convenience of having their own “administrative law judges” to adjudicate disputes over an agency rule or action. Turns out Tocqueville was also on to this problem in 1840, where he saw the trends in Europe and cautioned that they might follow eventually in the United States: The
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January 27, 2023 — Steven Hayward
This serves as a sequel to yesterday’s daily chart on how race-obsessed liberals self-report having fewer black friends than moderates or conservatives, which figures. Meanwhile, guess which demographic is quickest to “unfriend” or block people on social media because their political views don’t match? Chaser: Over 50% Of Liberal, White Women Under 30 Have A Mental Health Issue Conservatives label younger liberal generations as snowflakes or as having Trump derangement
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