Turning of the Tide of Dirigisme?
Karl Marx (5 May 1818 – 14 March 1883): Is his time finally finished? Wikimedia Commons / John Jabez Edwin Mayall The administration of President Barack Obama may have marked the high-water mark … Read More
Tag: progressivism
President Trump Faces a Divided People
Donald Trump giving his victory speech early this morning YouTube / RT.com Donald J. Trump’s victory yesterday to become the President-elect of the United States is a fitting surprise for … Read More
Reality Is Wagging Its Finger At Us!
Reality to us: Oh, No, No! Don’t Go There! (c) Can Stock Photo / ngaga35 Usually when we do not recognize some aspect of the nature of Reality, Reality reminds … Read More
The Ruins of Obama’s Catastrophic Foreign Policy
President Obama meets with Russian President Vladimir Putin to discuss Syria and ISIS, September 29, 2015 Wikimedia Commons/Kremlin.ru No American president in my lifetime has had a foreign policy that … Read More
How to Form Your Personal Ideology
The Thinker in The Gates of Hell at the Musée Rodin Wikimedia Commons/Jean-Pierre Dalbéra, Paris, France The most sacred words any human being can utter are “I believe …”, The more … Read More
Should Christians Be Stigmatized?
A symbol of hope or a symbol of ignorance and prejudice? FreeImages.com/abcdz2000 Christians have a great deal to fear in this world. In the Middle East, they have been marked … Read More
Hillary and The Donald: What a Choice!
Which to Choose? Photo Credits: CNN.com and CNN.com The choices we have for president, while … Read More
A Defense for Democracy and Free-Markets
An Icon of Human Freedom with its Author, Thomas Jefferson Flickr.com/Drew Myers It is no secret that American progressives are at the very best terribly ambivalent about democracy, and about … Read More
The Fermenting of the West’s Discontents: Crisis of Ideology
Double, double toil and trouble; Fire burn, and cauldron bubble. The three witches in Shakespeare’s Macbeth, Act 4, scene 1 Image Credit: Wikimedia Commons/Johann Heinrich Füssli 1783 The Western World’s political … Read More
If Hillary Clinton Were President …
Hillary Clinton speaking at the Brown & Black Presidential Forum in Des Moines, Iowa on January 11, 2016 Wikimedia Commons/Arthur Skidmore Given how the bombastic Donald is increasingly sabotaging his own … Read More
Dismal Economic Numbers
Real U.S. GDP growth rate from the first quarter of 2009 to the second quarter of 2016. The maroon curve is a linear fit to the data from Q1 2014 … Read More
The Socialism of the Scandinavian Countries
The Scandinavian Countries of Denmark, Norway, and Sweden Image Credit: Wikitravel/Stefan Ertmann In the previous post Are European States More Socialist Than The US?, I noted that American progressives had … Read More
Are Leftist Economies Better Than Free-Markets?
Country per capita GDP vs. WSJ/Heritage Foundation Index of Economic Freedom for 195 nations Data courtesy of Wall Street Journal/Heritage Foundation and the World Bank In a comment to the … Read More
Are You Unconvinced Democrats Are Growing More Authoritarian?
Cover to the first edition of George Orwell’s Animal Farm. In a People’s Republic, some animals are more equal than others! Image Credit: Wikimedia Commons Today I engaged a young … Read More
Comparing the Economies of All Countries on Earth
World Map of countries by per capita GDP in 2014 Image Credit: St. Louis Federal Reserve District Bank/FRED Plus or minus a few controversial states (like Taiwan, the Holy See, and Palastine), … Read More
Conversations
It’s good to talk! Photo Credit: FreeImages.com/Jon Wisbey One of the most important duties we have for our country and to … Read More
Are We No Longer a Nation of Laws?
Contemplation of Justice Image Credit: Flickr.com/dbking American Exceptionalism is an ideology based on the concept we rule ourselves through our government representatives, and that government is strictly limited … Read More
Progressives Are NOT Liberals
John Locke (29 August 1632 to 28 October 1704), the first to develop a liberal philosophy that included the right to private property and the necessity for government to have … Read More
The Anti-Freedom Bias of Progressives
Galileo’s trial for scientific heresy by the Roman Catholic Church Wikimedia Commons/Painting by Cristiano Banti (1857) (US-PD-Art) I am not the only one to notice the increasingly authoritarian tendencies of … Read More
The Intolerance of Barack Obama and the Democrats
Obama and Trump: Two sides of the same coin? Photo Credits: Left: President Barack Obama in Nordea Concert Hall via photopin (license) Right: Flickr.com/WalkingGeek Yesterday the Wall Street … Read More
The Growing Backlash Against the Left
Tea Party Protest, Washington D.C. Photo Credit: Wikimedia Commons/Freedom Fan In my last post I commented on Peter Beinart’s confident prediction that America would follow the … Read More
Are Americans Really Moving to the Left?
Tomb of Karl Marx Photo Credit: Flickr.com/Matt From London These troubled times see Americans traveling in sharply different ideological directions. At least partially isolated from each other … Read More
The Limits to Free Speech
Plato’s Academy in Athens Image Credit: Wikimedia Commons/Raphael (1509-1510) Recently I heard on Fox News of an event that illustrates autocratic tendencies among students at an elite university, and for … Read More
Progressives’ Disrespect for the US Constitution
Ever since President Woodrow Wilson, progressives in the United States have expressed varying degrees of disrespect for the U.S. Constitution, and have chafed over its limitations on the implementation of … Read More
Progressive’s Views of Conservatives (2)
Photo Credit: CanStockPhoto.com/dundanim What is it about conservatives that makes at least some progressives want to incarcerate them and otherwise remove them from any influence on society? I can understand … Read More
Progressives’ Views of Conservatives (1)
I have frequently referred to the autocratic instincts of the American “progressive”. It is such a fascinating characteristic of progressives given their self-picture of themselves as the epitome of tolerance, … Read More
The Insuperable Problems of the Democratic Party
Sisyphus and his rock. Photo Credit: Wikimedia Commons/Titian(1490-1576), Prado Museum, (PD-US-no notice) In the post Democrats’ 2016 strategy assumes America is lurching left. Are they wrong? in this morning’s theweek.com … Read More
The Proper Functions of Government
The most fundamental ideological division between progressives and conservatives concerns their beliefs on the proper functions of government. What roles do we think should be given to government and what … Read More
Progressives’ Basic Assumptions
The lady in the photo above, like most others in the conference I am attending, has a sunny, upbeat personality that takes anything that life offers in stride. The conference … Read More