The ever-surprising Ralph Nader has recently been reading some paleo-conservative sources, and has written a book entitled Unstoppable; the Emerging Left-Right Alliance to Dismantle the Corporate State. In the acknowledgements at the end, he specifically thanks Intercollegiate Studies Institute, a […]
Howard Ahmanson
Art Epiphany, Part II: the Millennium Bridge
I write this, and the previous post, from London. One of the newer features of the city, finished in 2000 [opened for two days, shut down for repairs, and reopened in 2002], is a pedestrian bridge called Millennium Bridge. It […]
My Great Art Epiphany of 1995
I think I must have read, somewhere before 1995, that arts institutions were taking the place of religious institutions among the upper classes of this country. But it did not stick with me until an important epiphany I had in […]
The Closer to Home, The Farther from the People: The Media have Turned the Founding Fathers’ World Upside Down
In an essay in the recent book The Beholden State [pages 96-101], William Voegeli, of the Claremont Institute, writes about the scandal in the Los Angeles borough of Bell, where the city officers were found to be ridiculously overpaid. He questions […]
“Addicted to Inflation,” Indeed
Paul Krugman has just issued a column charging conservatives with being “addicted to inflation,” not that they are pro-inflation necessarily but that they believe, and always believe, that hyper-inflation is imminent. Well, we had the real thing back in the […]
Man of the Left George Skelton Admits California Income Tax is too Top-Heavy on the Rich! Plus, Apparently Man of the Left Thomas Piketty Endorses Proposition 13!
George Skelton, LA Times columnist and generally a ‘progressive,’ admits, that the California state income tax is too top-heavy on the few and the rich. A welcome insight from someone on his side of the political spectrum. Note that Mark Paul, […]
What Kevin Starr Doesn’t Get About Small Towns
I have been enjoying Kevin Starr’s volume in his cultural history series, Golden Dreams: California in an Age of Abundance, 1950-1963. It is a period of which I have some living memory, and I have heard of, or met, in […]
Michael Lind’s New Paradigm, and the ‘End’ of Social Conservatism
Michael Lind has released a new essay titled “The Coming Realignment” in The Breakthrough Journal, one of the most innovative magazines around today. He predicts that social conservatism as we know it will fade away, but that we will not […]
Why June 28, 2014, is a Really Big Anniversary
First of all, it is the 100th anniversary of the assassination of Archduke (i.e., Crown Prince) Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo. This led, of course, to the Great War and a series of wars and cold wars that lasted for much of […]
Some Bleats About the ‘Common Good’
James Davidson Hunter is doing commendable work trying to restore the interest, of Christians especially, in the ‘common good.’ Not a bad thing, but first we have to think about what the ‘common good’ is. 1. First of all, we […]