In a recent interview with James L. Buckley at Uncommon Knowledge, Peter Robinson posed the following question: By the time I came along, the New Deal had been enacted. But you came along beforehand. Of course, you were a boy,… Continue Reading
Responding to my demurrer to “the old saw that Americans are ideologically conservative but operationally liberal,” Yeggmen sticks up for the saw: what researchers have (repeatedly) done is get a bunch of people together and have them fill out a… Continue Reading
Yuval Levin: The other, and more common, view argues that liberal institutions were the result of a discovery of new political principles in the Enlightenment — principles that pointed toward new ideals and institutions, and toward an ideal society. Liberalism,… Continue Reading
In the comments to my previous post on California Gov. Jerry Brown’s veto message, I said: I cannot subscribe to a theory of government in which all our choices are reduced to a crib sheet and then regulated, penalized, mandated,… Continue Reading
Tim Sandefur writes: The pro-slavery argument was very much what we would today call “communitarianism”—the argument was that the society of status was more human and spiritually rewarding than the allegedly cold, commodified, alienating society of industrial capitalism. . .… Continue Reading
Despite modern liberalism’s sweeping scope, no one seems to know quite what it is. Liberalism appeared somewhere in the sixteenth century—“St. George, in the guise of Rationality,” as Kenneth Minogue puts it—to slay the dragons of despotic kingship and religious… Continue Reading
Andrew Sullivan’s recent apologia—or, perhaps, obituary—of conservatism makes at least one very good point: Modern conservatism has painted itself into a corner. Concerning the poor and uninsured, for example, Mr. Sullivan rightly observes that “in a society that won’t let… Continue Reading
Kevin Drum wonders: to the extent that you really do believe that cognitive abilities are (a) important, and (b) strongly biologically determined, shouldn’t you also believe that the poor are more unlucky than anything else, and haven’t done anything to… Continue Reading