First Principles

Throughout history, poverty is the normal condition of man. Advances which permit this norm to be exceeded — here and there, now and then — are the work of an extremely small minority, frequently despised, often condemned, and almost always opposed by all right-thinking people. Whenever this tiny minority is kept from creating, or (as […]

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I wish this debate had happened sooner.  Although it definitely helped that there were fewer candidates on stage – it’s not an accident that fewer candidates and no absurd timeclock led to a far more substantive debate than we’ve seen in the past. I haven’t seen a lot of the post-debate spin from other people […]

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I couldn’t live blog tonight, as I had a class to teach.  But I listened to most of it on the radio, and watched the rest on DVR when I got home. I wish the entire nation could have seen Governor Sandoval’s speech last night, in order to contrast it with this one.  Sandoval gave […]

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I just got home from Reno’s Tea Party, and it was great fun.  What better way to spend America’s Birthday than to talk and think and debate and celebrate the founding ideas of the United States! There was certainly anger in evidence, and rightfully so.  But that was a small undercurrent in what (to my […]

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What do you call it when a gift is forced on you, “for your own good” as well as the good of your family and neighbors? And then what happens when you try to give that gift back, and aren’t allowed to? What happens when the response to the attempt to give that gift back […]

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Last week, UCONN’s men’s basketball coach Jim Calhoun put the press conference beatdown on a sniveling reporter who tried to speak truth to power by asking him about his big salary of $1.6 million per year in a time of vast budget deficits.  The coach pointed out that his efforts earn $12 million per year […]

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I recently received a fascinating small business take on the stimulus, which articulated very well some thought I have had that have been percolating for awhile.  The bottom line is that while we may argue about whether spending or tax cuts are the best way to “stimulate” the economy, the worst possible thing you can […]

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The debate over the economic stimulus package gets dumber and dumber.  No one knows how this package will actually “stimulate” the economy.  No one even really knows what that means.  At least, no one in Congress or in the White House. And so in their ignorance, they seize on the only direct metric they can […]

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Every liberal I have ever heard talk to be about how terrible President Bush is, from fellow law students to the Democratic Presidential candidates, talk about how the Great Middle Class, the Backbone of America, is harmed or shrinking or “losing.”  Hillary Clinton tells us, “After six and a half years of Bush administration policies, […]

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Why do liberals love to hate “Big Corporations”? It’s a standard villain for the populist politician on the stump. Perpetually outraged hippies paste anti-corporate fliers all over college campuses, among other things calling for an end to “corporate personhood”. Corporations always seem to be wearing black hats in recent Hollywood fare, at least when it’s […]

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