Competition, the Reality

In the Left’s World, It’s All About Us, Newsday, February 17, 2019. "On Wednesday, the House of Representatives made a rare use of the War Powers Act by voting 248 to 177 to cut off U.S. military assistance for Saudi Arabia’s war in Yemen. Yet again, the left has refused to recognize that international relations are fundamentally competitive."

It's Woodrow Wilson's Fault

Cracking Down on Presidential Power, Newsday, July 22, 2018. "The power of the presidency has grown at the expense of Congress. President Donald Trump’s trade policy is the latest illustration of the fact that the chief executive in the United States is over-mighty. Unfortunately, the progressive left likes it that way."

The Constitutional versus the Administrative State

Trump and the Limits of Presidential Power, Newsday, May 6, 2017. "Last week, President Donald Trump blamed the Constitution for making his life hard. As he put it, “It’s an archaic system. . . . It’s really a bad thing for the country.” He’s not the first president with that complaint, and, sadly, he won’t be the last."

Liberalism's AWOL Leaders

Where Are the New Leaders For Unpopular Left?, Yorkshire Post, July 6, 2015. "It's difficult to look around America, or Britain, and see the next generation of liberal leaders. Undoubtedly, this is partly cyclical: in the mid-1990s, the Tories were short on talent, yet a decade later, it was Labour that was exhausted. Liberalism is not down forever."

The Social Vision of the Magna Carta

Magna Carta: It’s Not Just About Rights, National Review Online, June 15, 2015. "The characteristic argument of liberalism today is, first, that every institution — family, church, business, art, education, travel, leisure, entertainment — is fundamentally political, and so not really separate from the political realm at all. It’s all politics all the way down, a claim that would (and did) horrify British conservative philosopher Michael Oakeshott. And that claim opens the door to a second one, which is that, as everything is political, all the peaks need to do the same job as the government — and if they do not, they will be forced to do so."

One of These Things Is Not Like the Other: UKIP and the Tea Party

An American’s Perspective on the Rise of UKIP, Yorkshire Post, August 29, 2014. "Though they’re compared relentlessly, Ukip and the Tea Party are actually very different animals. Ukip’s backers are more likely than the average voter to be older, male, and lower middle class former Tories."

Check Your Privilege!

Liberals Have Plenty of Privilege to Check, Too, Newsday, May 30, 2014. "Universities are hothouses for ideas, a lot of them bad. Fortunately, most die a rapid death from mockery. But the trending campus admonishment to "check your privilege" is actually a good one."

The U.S., Sadder But Wiser, Maybe

Optimistic America Deludes Itself About Democracy, Newsday, August 16, 2013. "American enthusiasm for foreign upheaval is as old as Thomas Jefferson's naive admiration of the French Revolution. But that led to the Reign of Terror, and then the Napoleonic Wars. We will be lucky if the Middle Eastern war spawned by the Arab Spring does not spread beyond Syria."

U.S. Campaign All Tied Up WIth Somewhere To Go

"Even Money and Media Can't Bring This Election to Life," Yorkshire Post, August 31, 2012, not available online. "The U.S. campaign seems to be a race that no one can win. But it isn’t for lack of trying. The British media report obsessively on the U.S. campaign, but they can’t convey its curious lack of momentum. President Obama has a lead of a single point over Mitt Romney in the latest poll of polls, but both candidates are trapped in a narrow range."

In the American Campaign, The Delicate Balance Against Freedom

"The Fight for Freedom Cannot Be Outsourced," Yorkshire Post, July 27, 2012. Not available online. "What we need in the U.S. is not an anti-business agenda. Nor is it a pro-business agenda. Backing business is not the same as supporting the free market, and top-down decisions by a few are no more efficient, and less moral, than decisions by the many. Outsourcing, giving back, and infrastructure are all distractions: what we need are voices across the political spectrum speaking up for freedom."

Too Much Is Never Enough, Apparently

A Bottom Up Look at the Top Down, Centre for Policy Studies, May 30, 2012. "If you believe that it is not possible to demonstrate that any particular level of taxation, welfare spending, or redistributive policies are economically counter-productive, and if you are in principle in favor of these things, then when do you say “enough,” and why do you decide to say it? A reliable way to get liberals excited is to say that they’re socialists. Fine, they’re not. But if Britain – where the government currently spends 50 percent of the nation’s GDP – is not verifiably well past the point of diminishing returns on state spending, where does that point lie? Is it 60 percent? 70 percent? 99 percent? If neither evidence nor principle tells you when to stop – and to go into reverse – then what does? At what point does the distinction between a really big government and socialism become irrelevant?

Extremism: A Classic Irregular Verb

Are Republicans Crazy?, The Commentator, May 2, 2012. "My own view is that error and unreason are widely distributed across humanity, and any reasonably-sized group of people is likely to contain a similar amount of both. To an extent, that’s one reason I’m conservative: since people (including the very educated) are likely to get it wrong most of the time, I think it’s prudent to keep government as small as possible so as to limit its opportunities for inflicting damage. On the other hand, so much contemporary liberalism – dating back to the Progressives of the late-nineteenth century – is based on the idea that while the people are dopes, the elites are wise."

American Conservatives and the Constitutional Order

Limitless Liberalism, Centre for Policy Studies, May 2, 2012. "One of the subjects I found the least understanding about in Britain – though not, I hasten to add, in the Centre – is the connection that American conservatives draw between constitutional and limited government, American exceptionalism, and their discomfort with both the American Progressivism and the Obama administration. A common motif in press comment in Britain (and in the U.S.) is that Republicans or conservatives – the mash-up of the two is revealing, if incorrect – are simply unreasonable, petulant, and extreme. That charge is false, but it is a very old one, and it reveals something about the nature of the fundamental conflict in the U.S. political system."

Deficit Hawks and Deficit Chickens

Obama Plays the Card of Financial Responsibility, Yorkshire Post, December 2, 2011. "Playing the responsible spender card is shrewd from another point of view. Americans naturally look on Congress with a degree of disdain, while according the President the respect that goes with his office. Right now, the American people have no particular affection for Obama, but their opinion of Congress could hardly be worse. By positioning himself as the adult in the room, Obama plays to the American tendency to view Congress as a collection of squabbling children."

Taking Bentham Seriously

No, Utilitarians Are Not Nice, Contentions, September 27, 2011. "It is all very well to suggest that legislation should seek to do more good that harm. But the problem with applying utilitarianism to legislation, in Bentham’s day or ours, is that someone has to decide which ends serve the greater good, just as the Ivy League experiments require someone to decide who lives and who dies, and just as top-down legislation in the progressive tradition requires wisdom that no single person possesses. This vision presumes the goal of legislation is control and direction, not the promotion of freedom under law."

Journalism Schools and All That

Pretending to Teach a Trade: From the Progressive Era to Today, Contentions, February 10, 2011. "Journalism schools are useless, argues Michael Lewis, but they prosper because they appeal to our worship of professionalism. That’s a nut graph — a nutshell paragraph — one bit of journalism jargon that Michael Lewis doesn’t grasp in his wildly entertaining piece on the Columbia School of Journalism."

More On The "Sputnik Moment"

Re: Re: Oh, Man, Not Another Sputnik Moment . . ., Contentions, January 28, 2011. "J.E. Dyer’s reaction to my post on the “Sputnik moment” theme prompts this reflection: as a conservative, you can cite examples like the academy’s treatment of the Cold War all day long. If you’re a historian, you can point to the Arming America saga, which revealed that a few Second Amendment supporters and amateur historians had a better grasp of historical methodology and reality than the distinguished committee that awarded the Bancroft Prize to that faked book (and then was forced to take it back)."

The Pretension to Expertise

A Tiger Mother in a Legal World on Fire, Contentions, January 27, 2011. "I don’t know much about parenting, so I’m not going to comment on the merits of Amy Chua’s much-discussed book Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother. What strikes me about the uproar is entirely unrelated to her Stakhanovite views on how to raise children: she’s a tenured professor at Yale Law School."

Obama Uses Another Bad Historical Analogy

Oh, Man, Not Another Sputnik Moment . . ., Contentions, January 26, 2011. "I keep a list of historical analogies — derived from years of grading papers — that tell me that the individual using them is (to be polite) more interested in rhetorical impact than historical accuracy. Before last night, the list began with “we need a Marshall Plan for X,” where X usually equals Africa or the Middle East, and ended with “the United States is a young country.” Both are fallacies: the Marshall Plan was a pump-priming program, not an effort to rebuild the infrastructure and remake the culture of half a continent; and while European settlement of North America is fairly recent, the U.S.’s political institutions have a longer continuous existence than those of any other country except, arguably, the United Kingdom. Now, thanks to President Obama, I’ve got a third analogy to add to the list: 'Sputnik moment.'"