That and Friedman has been written some pretty respectable columns over the same period.
Category Archives: Politics
Thought for the Day – Evergreen
The work of making this world resemble one that you would prefer to live in is a lunch pail [expletive] job, day in and day out, where thousands of committed, anonymous, smart and dedicated people bang on closed doors and pick up those that are fallen and grind away on issues until they get a positive result, and even then, have to stay on to make sure that result holds.
– Jon Stewart
Thought for the Day – January 20, 2024
No, not feeling charitable towards conspiracy theorists.
Thought for the Day – October 29, 2023
Divided societies are more easily conquered by the authoritarian forces.
Statement by Congressman Jamie Raskin
Rep. Raskin’s statement strikes the appropriate balance between self-defense and consideration for the lives of by-standers:
“Israel has the indisputable right under international law to engage in military self-defense against this explosion of mass terrorist violence. It may act to stop and repel the violence, completely secure its borders and people, and disarm and neutralize Hamas…
A just war undertaken in self-defense must be prosecuted justly, according to international and humanitarian law, the central purpose of which is the protection of civilian life from military violence…
The ultimate legitimacy of even the most just war depends not only on the original righteousness of its cause but on the legality of its prosecution and the military’s attention to the rights and lives of innocent civilians. The defense of innocent civilians on all sides is not an obstructive legal doctrine or battlefield annoyance but the entire purpose of a just war against an enemy that has set itself against humanity. Contempt for civilian life is the hallmark of terrorist regimes and actors, not liberal democracies.
Thought for the Day – August 4, 2023
In a different time…
In an earlier time, this would be Zuckerberg vs Musk…
Mint the Coin
The House is controlled by a bunch of sociopaths who want to burn everything to the ground. We’re going to run up against the debt ceiling again in 2023. As it approaches, they’re going to use the threat of default to try to extort all kinds BS. The best suggestion for neutralizing the threat I’ve heard so far: Mint the Coin. The headline nails it, “The debt ceiling is an absurd problem. Only an absurd solution can save us.”
Thought for the Day – October 21, 2022
Over the past couple years Carlos Lozada has become a must-read writer for me. His column in yesterday’s New York Times is a good example of why. Some excerpts from “How to Strangle Democracy While Pretending to Engage in It“:
[The] right-side-of-history argument… is rarely about history at all. It is a pre-emptive assertion of one side’s virtue and another’s wickedness; it is not about interpreting the past but about scoring points in the present to shape the future. Hirschman likened this argument to “the earlier assurance, much sought after by all combatants, that God was on their side.” The comparison is apt: God on your side will help you win, and history on your side will say that you did….
“You are extreme and destructive; I have history on my side.”… renders dialogue not just impossible but unfathomable….
“Talkin’ ’bout my generation…”
From Melanie McFarland’s, “Reality bites, so of course Generation X was always going to sell out and vote Republican“:
Halstead prophetically added: “Today’s young adults will be remembered either as a late-blooming generation that ultimately helped to revive American democracy by coalescing around a bold new political program and bringing the rest of the nation along with them, or as another silent generation that stood by as our democracy and society suffered a slow decline.”
Yes, I’m feeling particularly frustrated with my generation. Moderate Burkean conservatives we are not.