October 11, 2011 — Steven Hayward

Liberal Anti-Democrats

Featured image Over on American.com, I’ve got up an essay this morning on the deep ambivalence liberals have toward popular democracy.  Their incoherence goes back to the theoretical Progressivism of people like Woodrow Wilson, who wanted both more democracy and less democracy at the same time.  Here’s the key paragraph: At the core of “Progressivism,” as it was called then and is again today, was the view that more and more of »
October 11, 2011 — Scott Johnson

How Dems create jobs

Featured imageMinnesota Fifth District Rep. Keith Ellison appeared over the weekend for an interview on MSNBC by the Washington Examiner’s Tim Carney. How did Carney sneak in there? I don’t know, but he made the most of his appearance. He elicited this exemplary teaching from Ellison (video below), summarized by RealClearPolitics: Rep. Keith Ellison (D-Minn.) tells MSNBC regulations create jobs because a business will have to hire people to help them »
October 10, 2011 — John Hinderaker

Copts Under Attack

Featured imageI’m a little late with this by virtue of having been offline over the weekend, but I can’t let the evening go by without commenting on the violence against Christians that is going on in Egypt. For some months now, ever since the uprising that toppled Mubarak, Christians have been under attack. Churches have been burned, and Christians have been beaten and murdered. That in itself isn’t surprising, but the »
October 11, 2011 — Scott Johnson

The uses of praeteritio

Featured imageThe tributes to Professor Harold Rood by Steve Hayward and Peter Schramm to Professor Harold Rood remind us of the debt we owe to the great teachers who opened our eyes to the important things. (So do the comments on these posts.) Reading the prominent critic John Simon’s letter to the editor of the Times Book Review this past weekend, I thought of my high school Latin teachers, Lyman Hawbaker »
October 10, 2011 — John Hinderaker

Belated Suzymania

Featured imageScott caught Suzy Bogguss last spring–has it really been that long?–at his favorite haunt, the Dakota in downtown Minneapolis, and wrote about the concert here. In a word, he loved it. When he learned that Suzy would be passing nearby in October at another fun venue, the State Theatre in Zumbrota, Minnesota, an hour south of the Twin Cities, he snapped up four tickets for us and our wives, only »
October 10, 2011 — John Hinderaker

Running Out of Excuses

Featured imageMichael Ramirez satirizes the increasingly pathetic Barack Obama, as he tries to come up with one more in a long series of excuses for his failed economic policies. When he runs out of room on the chalkboard, maybe Obama will admit the obvious: he has no idea what he’s doing. »
October 10, 2011 — Scott Johnson

Occupy the Left

Featured imageA long time reader observes that the Democratic Party appears to be embracing the Occupy Wall Street movement. This follows statements by several liberal pundits that this movement is the liberal answer to the Tea Party. Occupy Wall Street is indeed that liberal answer. What’s surprising, given the important and obvious differences between the two movements including the way they conduct themselves, is that liberals are willing to admit as »
October 10, 2011 — John Hinderaker

Armed and Dangerous

Featured imageI’ve spent the weekend in South Dakota attending to some family matters, and have been offline. I will have more serious observations when I return home tonight, but for the moment, here is a rare 2nd Amendment post. Based on both data and personal experience, I think that a well-armed citizenry is a good thing. The town where I grew up is notably peaceful, in part, I think, because virtually »
October 10, 2011 — Scott Johnson

Acting to Job America

Featured imageThe left’s insane “Bush lies” mantra was the opposite of the truth. If anything, he was scrupulous to a fault with the facts. To take the classic example, the famous “sixteen words” of his January 28, 2003, State of the Union address were, as we argued on this site repeatedly and at length, exactly accurate. And yet Condoleezza Rice publicly regretted them and George Tenet was forced to apologize for »
October 9, 2011 — Steven Hayward

Harold W. Rood, RIP

Featured imageOver on No Left Turns our friend Peter Schramm reflects on the passing of Harold W. Rood, one of the legendary teachers of so many of us out at Claremont in the 1970s and 1980s.  Peter is right that Rood was a great poet.  But like Socrates he could be an ironic one.  No one could convey like him such unsentimental truths in the weaving of poetic and spellbinding tales. »
October 10, 2011 — Steven Hayward

There They Go Again, Again

Featured imageSo now it’s Nancy Pelosi’s turn, saying on ABC’s “This Week” yesterday: “Listen to Ronald Reagan when he talked about how unfair it was for a bus driver to be paying at the same rate as a millionaire. . . . He speaks beautifully to the unfairness of that scenario.” Sigh.  Well, good news: my Commentary magazine October cover story, “The Liberal Misappropriation of a Conservative President,” is now out from behind »
October 10, 2011 — Steven Hayward

The World Apology Tour Revisited

Featured imageI recall seeing some online grandee—I thought it was Rich Karlgaard of Forbes, but I can’t find it—explain that in the fullness of time Wikileaks would turn around and bite liberals in the rear end, and sure enough there’s been a steady stream of Wikileaks that confirm what we already know about Obama.  But still. Over the last couple of weeks several Japanese newspapers have been all over a new »
October 10, 2011 — Scott Johnson

Help wanted

Featured imageReader Greg Farrell writes to point out what he found on Craigslist. It’s an ad from the Working Families Party looking to hire protesters for Wall Street and offering $350-650 a week, depending on responsibility and length of time on staff: FIGHT TO HOLD WALL STREET ACCOUNTABLE NOW! MAKE A DIFFERENCE! GET PAID! Note: “Recruiters, please don’t contact this job poster.” Here’s the Craigslist posting, in case it gets cut: »
October 10, 2011 — Scott Johnson

This day in baseball history

Featured imageA long-time reader wraps up his coverage of the 1961 World Series. On October 9, 1961, the New York Yankees completed a three-game sweep of the Cincinnati Reds at Crosley Field to win the World Series 4 games to 1. As we have seen, the first of these games, Game 3, required the Yankees to come from behind late in the contest. Games 4 and 5 were routs. Much of »
October 9, 2011 — Scott Johnson

Zombies do Atlanta

Featured imageThe report accompanying the video below reads: What we saw at the “revolution”: Many curious citizens and media outlets came to the first Occupy Atlanta event, and were visibly shocked and confused by the consistent Marxism employed by the group. People abandoned their individuality and liberty to be absorbed into a hypnotizing collective. The facilitator made it clear that he was not a “leader” and that everyone was completely equal; »