Year: 2010

Questions of life and death—abortion, contraception, in vitro fertilization, stem cell research, euthanasia, and suicide—form a fissure in the American political geography, dividing (typically) left from right, but also moral from immoral, and—all too often—sane from insane. In this discussion there will have to a few rules.  Since the goal is to discover principles of...

When does a political deal become a bribe? At the 1952 Republican National Convention, California’s favorite son, Gov. Earl Warren, released his delegation reportedly in return for Ike’s promise that he would give Warren the first open seat on the Supreme Court. In September 1953, Chief Justice Fred Vinson dropped dead of a heart attack....

Rand Paul is the epitome of the Tea Party movement.  By all accounts he is a good man who believes what he is saying.  Unfortunately, he does not know what he is saying.  His knee-jerk repetition of libertarian platitudes, while it does not constitute anything like a coherent or principled political philosophy or ideology, will...

“Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past.” That was the slogan of the Ministry of Truth in George Orwell’s “1984,” where Winston Smith worked ceaselessly revising the past to conform to the latest party line of Big Brother. And so we come to the battle over history books...

The question Rand Paul forces us to look squarely in the face is a sensitive one: when, in human affairs, does pragmatism trump principle? Fairly often, is the answer. It is what we learn at a Certain Age. The world has its own ways of working; nor do all the consequent results interlock in satisfying...

If Barack Obama is sincere in his policy of “no nukes in Iran—no war with Iran,” he will halt this rude dismissal of the offer Tehran just made to ship half its stockpile of uranium to Turkey. Consider what President Ahmadinejad and the Ayatollah himself have just committed to do. Iran will deliver 1,200 kilograms,...

The Supreme Court’s power has become virtually unchecked: Amending the Constitution to reverse an erroneous Supreme Court decision is nearly impossible, and Congress has proved too timid to use the other weapons the Constitution provides to check the Court, including its power to restrict the jurisdiction of the federal courts. As a result, the Supreme...

“I figured if he was there, I’d make sure he wasn’t there [again],” Harlan Drake, a 33-year-old truck driver, told Det. Sgt. Scott Shenk of the Shiawassee County Sheriff’s Department. But on the morning of September 11, 2009, James Pouillon was there, sitting across the street from Owosso High ...

On Sunday we were on our way to church, when I remembered that I had heard on the radio that the Illinois State Police were going to make a big push to arrest drivers who had committed the greatest crime against man and God known to the modern police, that is, they had failed to...

Modern Americans are going to live forever. We must believe that; otherwise we would not rise up in spontaneous outrage whenever a stuck accelerator causes a car to crash or a surgical procedure goes awry. Science and technology have made our world not only foolproof but death-proof, or at least they would have, were it...

“A chorus of black commentators and civic leaders has begun expressing frustration over (Elena) Kagan’s hiring record as Harvard dean. From 2003 to 2009, 29 faculty members were hired: 28 were white and one was Asian American.” CNN pundit Roland Martin slammed “Kagan’s record on diversity as one that a ‘white Republican U.S. president’ would...

But I don't understand: How  all those “experts” who are always mouthing off in the media and who are not really experts manage to get on the air. Why people can’t tell the difference between speculation and investment. Why sports are not as much fun as they used to be and seem ...

The New York Times’ obituary for Michael Foot, who led the Labour Party in the general election that brought Margaret Thatcher to power in 1983 and who died in March at the age of 96, quotes the following passage from a campaign speech Mr. Foot delivered that year: We are not here in this world...

This booklog is the formal inauguration of the all-new and much-promised Rockford Institute website found again at rockfordinstitute.org.  Please check out the old features—earlier discussions of the classical tradition and teaching methods—as well as the booklist and additional columns and resources that will be added on a regular basis.  Between now and Christmas, I am...

The empire was beset by foreign invaders and war in the Middle East. Far-flung wars meant more taxes for the provinces and an increase in poverty. Some men had to choose between feeding their families and paying for medical care. Some couldn’t afford either. In the large urban ...

Try as I might, I was not able to avoid entirely the media coverage surrounding the anniversary of the shootings at Kent State, coverage that was particularly intense here in nearby Cleveland. I am too young to remember the shootings, but I do remember the civil trial of the National Guardsmen who fired on the...

But I don’t understand: Why the government spends billions on welfare but people keep saying hunger is a big problem. Why the government spends billions on education and the population gets dumber and dumber. Why the government spends billions on “intelligence” and defense but could not prevent September 11. Why pointless filthy language ...

BP’s oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico continues to be a lead story.  Naturally it has engendered polemics over who is responsible and a broader discussion of whether offshore drilling should be continued or even increased.  On these great issues that agitate NPR listeners and FOX watchers, I have nothing to say.  I would,...

Faisal Shahzad sought to massacre scores of fellow Americans in Times Square with a bomb made of M-88 firecrackers, non-explosive fertilizer, gasoline and alarm clocks. Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab tried to blow up a U.S. airliner over Detroit with a firebomb concealed in his underpants. Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan shot dead 13 fellow soldiers at Fort...

She’s more likely than not to win confirmation to the Supreme Court. Thus, the really big question about Elena Kagan is blunter: How and when does the United States as a whole get out from under the sway of an alien enterprise such as her university, Harvard? That the Kagan nomination positions one more Harvard...

A sentence from a recent New York Times Magazine profile clings to the mind, like lint. The profile is of Scott Brown, whose sudden ascent to the U.S. Senate fascinated America a few months back. In 2001, the story relates, when a colleague of Brown’s, a lesbian state senator in Massachusetts, “announced that she and...

As I write, it’s already been three weeks since the Academy Awards broadcast on March 7, and I’m still surprised that the judges for Hollywood’s annual ceremony of self-love named The Hurt Locker Best Picture of 2009, awarding it six Oscars in all. The pooh-bahs of mediocrity voted for art rather than commerce, and so...

If you want to know why it isn’t a bright idea to permit homosexuals to serve openly in the military, consider the subject of “snorkeling.” That, according to The Atlantic, was one of Rep. Eric Massa’s occupation specialties as a lieutenant commander in the U.S. Navy. You might have heard of Mr. Massa. He quit...

How do you make $100 million per day? Goldman Sachs did it—and still does it. It even brags about it. Goldman’s net revenues for 2009 were over $45 billion. Most of this—$34.37 billion—came from trading. During the second and third quarters of 2009, Goldman made over $100 million per day on 82 out of 130...

This film has won a major prize and is being given the big hype by all the trendy thinkers as a profound look at the

The Little Picture—the picture of what’s happening right this minute—is what you get from the media, and that’s to be expected. But the Little Picture has to fit inside a bigger one for news consumers rightly to appraise all the stakes and angles. The news of the ominous oil slick from the offshore rig explosion...

Gordon Brown may have torpedoed his last chance to be prime minister in his own right when, in the privacy of his limo, he called 66-year-old Gillian Duffy that “bigoted woman.” What had widow Duffy done to deserve the slur? After taking the Labor Party leader to task for several minutes, Mrs. Duffy raised the...

In reaffirming the rule of law and giving local support to national sovereignty, Arizona has taken a bold, perhaps dangerous step.  How it will end, I do not know.  Much depends on the will of the electorate and the political class that is supposed to represent the people.  The predictable backlash from the Latino community...

(good for putting down right-wing bigots at cocktail parties or in the classroom) Taking off your shoes at the airport is patriotic and makes you safer. If college athletes fail academically it is obviously society’s fault. HIV is an unfortunate virus and not caused by human behaviour. Presidents are good and do what is best...

Scarce a week goes by without some scaremongering headline about climate change, premised on apocalyptic conclusions drawn from a computer-generated climate model. Modeling lies at the heart of the whole vast climate-change industry, an industry sparked by the big government-backed computer modeling centers in the U.S. and U.K. To understand the frail connection between these...