Hiatus is self-explanatory. I’ve taken a break from my political blogging activities of indefinite length but don’t necessarily want to get rid of the blog as I may want to return to it. What isn’t self-explanatory is why and for the few of you who keep track of what I have to say, I think [...]
I haven’t had a drink in 16 yrs, but I’m very tempted to buy a bottle of scotch tonight, drink it and talk philosophy, politics and morality all night, in honor of Hitch.
A fundamental aspect of being American is freedom of conscience. This idea is the bedrock of classical liberalism and of individual sovereignty. We respect the individual’s right to make up his/her own mind about one’s relationship with God, and other important moral decisions. Some traditions have emerged over time in the U.S. with regards to how religious life and secular life intermingle. It seems to me that we’ve tacitly agreed that certain spaces are ‘cosmopolitan’, i.e.; we recognize that people of conflicting beliefs will all want to participate in such areas of civic life and accordingly, as a matter of politeness, we keep our religion to ourselves in the. Most of us know what these places are. For example, in a diner, you don’t stand up and ask everyone to say grace. You don’t preach at a dinner party of many strangers, realizing that there may be people of many faiths present who don’t want to be subjected to religious hectoring. Conversely, at gatherings in which most people are known to share the same faith, it’s quite appropriate to engage in overt displays of religious expression. I won’t drag this out – hopefully you readily recognize that this is traditional in the U.S.
Sigh, listening to the likes of Peter Schwiezer and the right wing echo chamber discuss ‘crony capitalism’, one would think that this kind of thing never happened in government before, or that other’s haven’t been complaining about it for years. I say welcome to the party, but you should realize most on the right are [...]
The spectacle happening on Wall Street and in other cities across the U.S. is no mystery. We turned government into a teat for special interests to suckle from a long time ago. It’s inevitable that some people will get angry and believe that they should get a chance to live off the rest of us [...]
A friend of mine recently asked me to comment on some investment advice from Robert Anorth, commented on by Jonathan Burton, at Marketwatch (here)in a recent article. I think he’s spot on in many respects, but I also took the opportunity to write down how I see our current problems and my assessment was indeed [...]
Alan Blinder, Ph.D. of Princeton, laid out the case for not cutting government spending right now due to it’s economic impact in today’s Wall Street Journal. In this article, he posits such half-truths and simplistic questions as the following: “The generic conservative view that government is “too big” in some abstract sense leads to a [...]
Obama has just announced that he intends to renew his ‘outreach’ to the Muslim world. Perhaps this gooey sentiment will be as effective as Obama’s many failed efforts as a community organizer in Chicago, but I digress. My question is does Obama think his vaporous words can change the hearts and minds of Arabs and [...]
I keep reading articles in the “liberty” blogosphere as to whether unions are relevant or not, or whether they “work” or one author even talks about once “liking” them and now not liking them. How absurd. Guess what, the utility of unions are rightfully be determined by the parties who use them – not right [...]
It’s pretty clear by now that any examination of Jared Loughner’s motivations will reveal only a sordid mess of incoherent rage, impotence and pathology that culminated in Saturday’s horrific mass murder. And yet the drumbeat from the hard left was immediate, and concluded that this is the fault of Sarah Palin and/or the Tea Party, [...]
