I am in New York City again, and the hard copy New York Sunday Times was delivered to my room. As usual there is interesting stuff in it, despite some of their editorial policies. In particular there are two articles […]
Politics
What to do about Ukraine
In other words, Berezow says they need a Nelson Mandela. My own suggestions are more in the Congress of Vienna – Treaty of Versailles tradition: Cede everything east of the Vorskla and Dnipro rivers to Russia. This includes Crimea, Kharkiv, […]
The Late Chaim Potok and the 2012 Election
My apologies for my long silence. I was gone for five weeks, mainly on my wife’s business, but the last portion of the trip was a journey through the north of Greece looking mostly at painted churches. I should start […]
Arellano Defends the Fire Pits
Columnist Gustavo Arellano, in his inimitable way, defends the fire pits. He even threatens to name the director of the AQMD to the ‘Scariest People’ list that he keeps, a list that I made once in previous years due to […]
A Strategic Political Realignment for Evangelicals?
Darryl Hart, of Hillsdale College, in these two links (“From Culture to Party Wars?” and “Abandon the GOP, Join the Democratic Party”) proposes that evangelicals, probably soon to be rejected by Republicans, could consider joining the Democratic party to evangelize […]
A New Federal Department of Cities?
Oh good grief. Don’t we already have a Department of Housing and Urban Development, Mr. Florida? As C. Northcote Parkinson pointed out more than 50 years ago in Parkinson’s Law, only dictatorships have a cabinet larger than approximately 20. It […]
Allergy to Antithesis, Again
Daniel Henninger in the Wall Street Journal, declares that Obama is trying to destroy the Republican party using a Marcusean strategy of ‘liberating intolerance’. But in the previous term, Obama was trying a policy of including the Republicans and everyone […]
Why ‘entitlement’ programs aren’t really entitlements
I fully agree with Jim Huffman of Lewis and Clark Law school that the ‘entitlements’ of Social Security and Medicare are not, in any moral sense, entitlements. That does not mean that I favor eliminating them. The problem with Social […]
Minimum Wages: A Modest Proposal
Ron Unz, generally considered a conservative but quirky, came out for a radical increase in the minimum wage here last year, not something you generally expect of conservatives, but then Ron Unz and his magazine, The American Conservative, generally take […]
Declining Birth and Marriage Rates Threaten Whom?
Jonathan Last says declining birth and marriage rates are “a threat to the right’s political survival”[?] More likely the left’s political survival; the right is making such babies as are being made, and all they have to do is educate […]