On the question of conservatism, one can count on two things: First, that at any moment, some opinion-monger or other is holding forth on the nature of conservatism, and, second, that nearly everything he is saying is unedifying. Conservatism as conventionally understood is either vacuous ("conservatives respect tradition—except when they don’t"), asinine ("conservatives resist change"), or imperceptible ("conservatism is no more … [Read More]

Yesterday, in an already much remarked upon column, David Brooks reviewed the state of the kulturkampf between “assertive atheists” and “defenders of faith” by way of a discussion of developments in neurobiology.  Brooks’ central insight is that the “cognitive revolution is not going to end up undermining faith in God, it’s going to end up challenging faith in the Bible” by … [Read More]

As someone who originally got engaged in politics because of the Life issue, it might sound strange that I am desperately eager for the issue to be rendered moot. Or at least non-partisan. I am always happy, for instance, when pro-life Democrats win—as a good one did recently in my beloved 2nd home, Louisiana. Best of all, he beat Woody Jenkins, … [Read More]

A longer version of this article went into the Lancaster Newspapers, for which I’m a regular columnist and through which I’m now reaching about half a million readers. Despite the local popularity of my columns, I’ve not been syndicated; nor have I been invited on to Republican talk radio nor asked to appear with prepubescent bloggers on the O’Reilly Hour. The … [Read More]

Richard hits on an important point when he writes: This is certainly true, but I think that Luttwak might be giving a bit too much credit to the Obamaniacs (not the undeceived Obamacons, like myself).  They don’t so much confuse the potential reactions of East Africans with Muslims to an Obama presidency as conflate most all Third World people into one … [Read More]

Journalists covering the primaries in January characterized Bill Clinton’s “fairy tale” remark as “injecting” race in to the campaign, as if this was an illicit or improper development. This mistakenly implies that race was not already an aspect of the campaign—how could it not be?—or that it should not be part of the discussion. ~John Hartigan Actually, there’s a much bigger … [Read More]

The recent meltdown of the mortgage bubble illustrates a basic insight of Austrian Economics:  cheap money leads to distortion and malinvestment, which can only be resolved through mass liquidation.  Liquidation is an anodyne term, but in real life it means lost jobs, declining wages, “upside down” bank notes, bankrupt businesses, and stagnant housing values.  The Federal Reserve’s decision after the September … [Read More]

Challenger Joe McLaughlin was half right in describing the stakes of the North Carolina 3rd Congressional District’s Republican primary: It was, as he told Congressional Quarterly, about the future of the Republican Party in his congressional district and beyond. But Congressman Walter Jones’s nearly 20-point margin of victory doesn’t signal the end of the party. It points the way out of … [Read More]

In response to my recent piece on science and religion, one of the commenters, GM, took me to task:  “you may want to consider and ask why atheists seem angry.  There’s no indication that you understand why.” I have to confess, GM was right:  I do not understand why some atheists are so angry. I have no trouble understanding that some … [Read More]