Daily Archive: November 17, 2010

Comparing the Faiths of Presidents Washington and Obama

In my last post I noted, provocatively, that there is more evidence for President Obama’s “mere Christianity,” than for Washington’s. A commenter challenged me with Peter Lillback’s “George Washington’s Sacred Fire.” I’ve read the...

Playing games with the deficit

“To the extent that Washington is "broken" (and I’d argue it’s less broken than some suggest) it’s because it suffers from being, unusually, both fat and musclebound. No wonder it finds it difficult to...

In Which NJ Leads the Way on Freedoms

It’s a rare day indeed that I get to say this, but today I’m quite proud of my state’s elected representatives in the State House: State senators Michael J. Doherty (R- Hunterdon) and  James Beach...

Whose Warmest Heart Recoiled at War

During World War II, Brigadier General S.L.A. Marshall asked average soldiers how they conducted themselves in battle. Before that, it had always been assumed that the average soldier would kill in combat simply because...

So What Should Be Done?

So What Should Be Done?

In my first substantive post I suggested not only that perhaps the stimulus had failed, but that we needed to make a major change in our approach, going so far as to suggest that...

The Moral Equivalent of Monarchy

Matt Yglesias plumps for monarchy, based on — what else? — human nature: [I]t seems inevitable in any country for some individual to end up serving the functional role of the king. Humans are...

Don’t Set The Doomsday Clock Ahead Quite Yet

As a general rule, congressional bipartisanship is the political equivalent of the Crips and the Bloods banding together to rob the rest of the neighborhood. (If only we had antitrust laws applicable to our...

A culture war truce?

A few weeks ago, Indiana Governor Mitch Daniels, a possible dark-horse candidate for the 2012 GOP presidential race, urged Republicans and conservatives to make a truce on social issues and focus instead on economics. Daniels...