Conservatives deal with facts and reach conclusions; liberals have conclusions and sell them as facts.
I’m planning a trip this summer to Japan, a country about which I know nothing. Actually that’s an overstatement. I know some things: it’s beautiful, historic, and clean (I love that part), and comes complete with great food and well-mannered people. But that’s all I know. Toji Pagoda I don’t
Continue readingThis is an exercise in pure speculation. I invite all here to bring their own notions to the table. An old friend of mine visited me last Saturday to catch up on things. We walked my dog and began a long conversation that ended later in my backyard over coffee
Continue readingFor years at this blog (and others) when we’ve written about Europe’s problems, we’ve focused primarily, not on the economy, but on those Muslim immigrants. One of the things that we talked about a lot was the fact that these same Muslim immigrants subsisted largely on public benefits. This little
Continue readingIs our democracy germinating the seeds of its own destruction? Alexis de Toqueville warned, “The American Republic will endure until the day Congress discovers that it can bribe the public with the public’s money.” That day has come. It is not yet gone. Democracy in ancient Athens lasted about 250
Continue readingOne of my all-time favorite economic historians is Harvard’s Niall Ferguson, who does a very good job dissecting the transatlantic political and economic cultures with characteristic British clarity in erudition. He’s not perfect, however: witness his bad judgment in affixing his name to a worn-out political rag like Newsweek. But, I
Continue readingAs we settle into the Obama Depression era, one thing that I and others have noticed is that many of the very youth that voted enthusiastically for Obama are the ones already feeling the consequence of his policies: they are unemployed. As one of my college-age kids put it, “our
Continue readingForgive my long opening discourse. I need to set the stage. Most Americans don’t know much about Belgium and Flanders. It’s a shame. For a quick summary, Flanders is the region that stretches from Belgium’s northern border with the Netherlands, west to the English Channel and into northern France (including
Continue readingBookworm recently asked, “is Europe trying to save itself?” To that question, I can only offer anecdotal evidence from family and business visits made to France and Belgium this summer, shortly after the Greece-precipitated financial crisis. Europe (witness the EU) is an uber-bureacracy. For centuries, Europe’s forms of governance have
Continue readingI don’t have a link yet (it was tweeted), but it appears that the Swedes elected a center-right government. I see this as a good thing, although I haven’t lost sight of two facts: (1) Europe is so far Left that, as we know from England, even center-right is Left;
Continue readingOne of the frustrating things about conversing with liberals is that, even as they’ll concede that socialism in Russia and China and Cuba and North Korea is not, or was not, a good thing, they’ve always got Europe to fall back upon. European socialism works, I am told. Europeans have
Continue readingFinally, Israel lashes back . . . at the misrepresentations in the European media. Anyone who speaks Hebrew, French or Spanish, will have a huge advantage over me when it comes to appreciating the videos at that site. To learn more about the ad campaign if you don’t speak those
Continue readingAs part of a larger opinion piece giving thanks that America is still un-European enough to resist Obama’s European-izing efforts, Jonathan Rosenbloom has this to say about the modern European character: In A State Beyond the Pale: Europe’s Problem with Israel, Robin Shepherd analyzes the cast of mind that predisposes
Continue readingI’ve been saying for some years that the biggest mistake the Islamists made was impatience. Demographically, between their fecundity and the sterility of Western culture, Muslims were headed towards societal tipping points all over Europe within a couple of decades. Had they set tight, they could have completed what they
Continue readingHad Europe been able to vote last November’s presidential elections, Obama would have swept into office with a vote above 95%. Over there, they loved him. He was the antithesis of the ugly American who rode into town and imposed law. This was a guy who would be kind and
Continue readingI want to recommend two interesting things to read as a prelude to my core post. The first read comes from a reliably good source: Rusty Shackleford. Over at The Jawa Report, he looks at the banality that exists side by side with the evil that is North Carolina’s recently
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