First Principles

Yeah – I’m talking to you, Guy Who Rammed His Car Into the Planned Parenthood Clinic.  Good work.  You just helped make sure your cause is stunted for about another decade.  If you think the unborn are lives worth saving as I do, you just did your part to ensure a lot more of them […]

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Andrew Breitbart launched an awesome new blog today, a clearinghouse of Hollywood Conservatives blogging together in a site called “Big Hollywood.”  In my mind, this is a critical step in the rebirth of real conservatism in America.  I’m linking to it, and will check it often. One of the big differences between conservatives and libertarians, […]

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And so will you.

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In this election, and in many debates I’ve had before and since, that political “moderation” is a self-evident virtue was and is often taken as, well, self-evident.  After all, “moderate” is a lot like “reasonable,” is it not?  And isn’t it the opposite of “extremist,” which no one wants to be? I have to admit […]

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One tool that always comes up in political discussions by nerds like me (and my great commenters) that attempt to define and pin down political philosophies is some kind of chart.  I tend not to like them, because I think they tend to do a poor job explaining the relationships between various philosophies.  But if […]

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So how is it that the Left simultaneously believes the US Government is the root of All Bad Things (or at least in on the conspiracy), but wants them in charge of our auto industry, banks, and health care?  I think it boils down to a (wholly unearned) presumption of competence. Liberals think government is […]

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So it seems that one of President Obama’s first international military crises will be a repeat of one of our nation’s first menaces – piracy on the high seas.  How he deals with it will tell us much about the alleged steel in the spine of our mysterious new President-Elect.  There is, after all, a […]

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A Rant.

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Tonight we went to the second-to-last last stump speech of the McCain-Palin campaign, held here in Reno with the Alaska governor.  I went to the last one, too, but this one was different.  It was bigger, more serious, and more hopeful – no matter who wins tomorrow. When we arrived, there were thousands of people […]

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A lot has been already made about Barack Obama’s lament that “economic justice” and “redistribution of wealth” wasn’t a priority for the Warren Court.  (I’ve even heard some people call his arguments “conservative” because he suggests that the courts may not be the best places to achieve such re-distribution.)  Not enough has been made, to […]

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Peggy Noonan is glum, of late.  Bitter, even.  I heard her on a radio broadcast of Meet the Press complaining about the grace “both sides” needed, in commiseration with Glen Ifell who sat next to her and complained that how unfair criticism of her for moderating a Vice-Presidential debate in a race in which she had a direct financial stake.  She […]

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That’s how the Reno Gazette Journal summed up the bailout package this Sunday in their lead editorial.  The funny (not ha-ha) thing is that it was how they summed up a positive editorial on the situation. The only thing worse than the summation was the headline:

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It was very interesting to see Michelle Obama give two speeches at the same time last night at the DNC.  One was actually full of hope, while the other one claimed that mantle while actually espousing a philosophy that is grounded and mired in bleak hopelessness.

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I got a campaign call yesterday from a supporter of local pawn shop manager and proud pit bull owner James Smack, a self-proclaimed “Constitutionalist” running against Dean Heller for his Congressional seat in the Republican primary.  He’s a Ron Paul type, and I’m not, so I politely told his supporter I was voting for the […]

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For their global sponsorship of the Olympic Games, Visa has gone with the sepia toned ad campaign they call simply “Go World.” Blech.

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A friend of mine sent me a rather amusing article in National Review this morning, teasing PETA for their inconsistent and somewhat hypocritical stand on the whole “meat is murder” thing.  The piece cited a study noting that farming vegetable products actually kills far more animals (field mice and such) than raising livestock does, counted […]

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Today Slate columnist Camille Paglia, in responding to a reader’s letter complaining about her “moral relativism,” had the following to say: What makes me uneasy in your argument is the Manichean polarization between “good guys” and “bad guys” among world governments. In my view, such stark moral absolutes do not exist, except from a fundamentalist […]

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One of the undeniable attributes of sovereignty is the right of self defense, or put another way, the right to exclude by whatever means necessary.  If you cannot prevent other people from taking something that belongs to you, you cannot be said to truly possess it.  If you cannot exclude people from your home, then […]

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What would you do if you found out that your home town was actually isolated from the wider world?  What if you discovered that people in the rest of the world had technology yet unheard of that improved their lives, allowed them to communicate more easily, and made their homes more comfortable and more safe […]

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A friend of mine and I were recently discussing the role of government in acting morally, or rather, its role in a moral society.  The area of contention was whether there was a moral imperative for a government to provide for the needy, and if that was a “legislation of morality.” My belief is that […]

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