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G.K. Chesterton’s “democratic faith” demanded that the choosing of spouses be left to ordinary people, not the state. Which ideological tendency today best practices what he preached?
Archive for the ‘Conservatism’ Category
September 13th, 2012
George Will, channeling (and hacking to pieces) Charles Kesler, claims that the President’s belief in progress blasphemes the Founder’s belief in natural rights and limited government. He has half a point. But it doesn’t much matter. The Founders’ beliefs deserve to be challenged. And once one jumps outside the conservative bubble, where all that matteres is culture and rhetoric, is to realize that progressive critics of the original constitution won on the institutional level, definitively, about a century ago.
September 11th, 2012
This weekend I posted some reflections on the remarkable reversal of our soi-disant conservatives from, um, conserving stuff to a program that puts widespread waste front and center. It occurs to me that another equally striking new Republican theme is a truly bizarre attitude to time, specifically that we should live as though it stops [...]
September 9th, 2012
What moral/religious/ethical principle can the broadest possible spectrum of a diverse nation agree on? It might seem to be the fifth commandment, but it isn’t. That one is on something of a roll – even Texans are losing their traditional enthusiasm for having the state kill people, and murders are on a twenty year slide [...]
August 20th, 2012
Category: Abortion, Campaign 2012, Conservatism, Moral philosophy, Republican Party, Watching Conservatives
Especially from the Republican side. 1) If you believe, as the Catholic church does and most conservatives do, that abortion is murder, then it is irrelevant whether a woman becomes pregnant through rape or through consensual sex. At the moment of conception, there is a human being with human rights attached to it. It really [...]
August 9th, 2012
Category: Clash of Civilizations, Climate change, Conservatism, Democratic Party, Energy and Environment, Liberalism, Moral philosophy, Republican Party, Watching Conservatives
My friend and colleague Steve Bainbridge is out with a new article on “Corporate Lawyers as Gatekeepers,” which, if you are interested in corporate law, you should read (Steve is one of the country’s most distinguished scholars in the field). But what piqued my interest when he sent it to me was his offhand remark [...]
July 24th, 2012
In the wake of the Colorado horrors, lots of people want to know why gun control is not on the national agenda, with the usual responses about feckless liberals. While I certainly never hesitate to castigate the invertebracy of progressives, I think that there is a simpler answer: Violent crime went down. Crime rates are [...]
January 19th, 2012
Category: Campaign 2012, Conservatism, Income distribution, Mitt Romney, Republican Party, Watching Conservatives
If you think we should discuss economic inequality in anywhere but quiet rooms, then go to China — I already sent your job there. Okay, cheap shot. But equating any discussion of inequality with Communism as Romney did is no more than crude red-baiting. Nevertheless, I can’t agree with those who think that the exchange means that “the pressure [...]