Recently I’ve seen several blog posts about alleged “epistemic closure” in the modern conservative movement. The claim is that the American right is substantially more closed-minded than the American left. In the posts I’ve read, however, this state of affairs is assumed and the focus is on explaining it. Absent is any effort meaningfully to assess the comparative open-mindedness of the two factions. The closest thing I’ve seen to a real argument is the claim that the left must be more idelogically diverse because its base is more diverse. The premise here is true in some senses. For example, the left-wing base is more racially diverse…
It’s too early to say that Sen. Blanche Lincoln (D-AR) is in trouble in the Democratic primary. It’s probably even to early to say that trouble is brewing there (although trouble is definitely brewing for her in the general election). But Lt. Gov. Bill Halter, who’s challenging Lincoln, has to like how the early indicators are reading: he’s out-fund-raising her, the polls in their race are tightening a bit, and recent polls of the general election show him doing slightly better against the Republican field than she is doing. In early April of a volatile year, those three positive indicators don’t add up to Halter momentum, but the absence of any one of those three would probably be enough to write off his campaign. So this one bears close watching.
As you have probably surmised, there will be a large round of Tea Parties coming up on April 15th. There will be large names, even larger crowds – and honestly, organizers would be unable to stop people from coming if they wanted to at this point. I will be speaking in Atlanta, and the FreedomWorks event in DC has a fantastic line-up including Lord Monckton, Andrew Breitbart, and Ron Paul. I experienced first hand some of the tension at the Capitol last weekend during the health care votes. People are undeniably angry. For the most part, however, lefties have laughed off the Tea Party movement. They’ve called them crazy, racist, homophobic, and sexist. They’ve compared them to neo-nazis and domestic terrorists. They’ve done everything they can to keep them out of the mainstream coverage and paint them as a fringe movement. The problem? The Tea Party movement represents the dead center of American politics, which is the fiscal conservative. The over the top accusations are laughable, and now they’re forced to acknowledge the political power of the movement. And they’re freaking out. Someone sent this to me this morning: The organizers of this nationwide day of protest call it a tea party. This tea party movement that emerged only a year ago is a coalition of conservatives, anti-semites, fascists, libertarians, racists, constitutionalists, militia men, gun freaks, homophobes, ron paul supporters, alex jones conspiracy types and american flag wavers. If the tea party movement continues to grow in size and strength there is a big chance they will dominate this country in the near future. If the tea party movement takes over this country they will really hurt poor people by getting rid of social programs like food stamps, unemployment benefits, disability benefits, student aid, free health care, etc. The tea party movement will say these programs must be gotten rid of because hard-working taxpayers cannot afford to pay for these things especially when the economy is in a depression. It’s on some site I’ve never heard of, so naturally I Googled it, and apparently it’s on a network of self-proclaimed anarchist sites. It’s linked here , here , here , and naturally, on a slew of conservative sites who have since picked up on it. Let’s start by pointing out the obvious: These are “anarchist” websites that think it’s bad to eliminate government run social programs. I feel like maybe they need a definition of “anarchy”. an·ar·chy [an-er-kee] 1. a state of society without government or law. 2. political and social disorder due to the absence of governmental control: The death of the king was followed by a year of anarchy. 3. a theory that regards the absence of all direct or coercive government as a political ideal and that proposes the cooperative and voluntary association of individuals and groups as the principal mode of organized society. So. ABSENCE of government control. ABSENCE of all direct government. This isn’t complicated stuff. Let’s look back at the release floating around again: If the tea party movement takes over this country they will really hurt poor people by getting rid of social programs like food stamps, unemployment benefits, disability benefits, student aid, free health care, etc. Right. Now that we have cleared that up, we should address the actual issue: the left has FINALLY caught on and started to voice the fact that they believe the tea party movement is a threat to their agenda. It’s easier when they don’t take the movement seriously. Then we do what we want, we win, and they wind up being, well, Marth Coakley… standing there like stunned beasts wondering how they could possibly have lost. It appears, however, that they were able to wrap their brains around the idea that we’re not going away. They’re looking to escalate the attacks. FreedomWorks has been receiving threats . Up until this point, the counter protests and such have been a joke – like when a whopping four Code Pink moonbats showed up at Michele Bachmann’s House Call event in November. Lately, there has been more interest in the movement, and with that comes Lefty blowback… which we’ve seen in full force recently. Gird your loins, kids. This is going to be a rough road. Show up, fight hard, and don’t retaliate. See ya on the 15th!
The Commonwealth of Virginia’s new Attorney General, Ken Cuccinelli, has created a stir by advising the state’s public colleges and universities that they have no authority to adopt policies that ban discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation. He has called on these institutions to rescind such policies. Cuccinelli, a strong social conservative, concludes that only the state legislature can extend legal protections to gay state employees and students. Virginia’s legislature, the General Assemby, has repeatedly (and again just recently) declined to take this step. Cuccinelli’s position is, I think, correct as a matter of law. Indeed, though it denounces the decision, the Washington Post editorial board concedes that, for 25 years, Cuccinelli’s predecessors — Republican and Democrat — have “come to a similar conclusion concerning cities and counties that wished to extend protections to gay and lesbian residents.” If the elected representatives of local governments lack this power, I’m at a loss to understand how university bureaucrats possess it
This guy is shaping up as Public Nuisance Number One around New York. Public-health officials cannot use the state’s budget woes to avoid building housing for the mentally ill, a Brooklyn federal judge ruled yesterday. Judge Nicholas Garaufis . . . gave the state four years to comply with the Americans with Disabilities Act by building 4,300 units for mentally ill people
Follow the Warmist logic: Absence of winter snow proves the existence of Anthropogenic Global Warming, and winter snowstorms prove its existence as well.
Amnesty advocates are still clinging to the fiction that a “comprehensive” immigration bill is possible this year. The reality is, as a “veteran Senate lobbyist” tells the Post , “immigration is deader than a doornail.” This is why the amnesty crowd is getting testy with their man in the White House. Luis Gutierrez, amnesty’s loudest champion in the House, said of the president’s state of the union speech, “He was very weak on immigration, lackadaisical.” And Frank Sharry, one of the top left-wing amnesty lobbyists, said, “I had very low expectations, but [the president] surprised even me with how little he said.” I know schadenfreude is an unworthy sentiment, but in the absence of real victory (i.e., reducing immigration), it’ll have to do.
Here in the Washington legal community, the rumors are growing stronger that Justice Stevens will soon announce his retirement. The front-runner appears to be Elana Kagan, former Dean of Harvard Law School and currently the Solicitor General of the United States. Kagan’s advantages, as compared to judges like Diane Wood, are said to be her youth (she’s 49) and the absence of a paper trial of judicial opinions
When Obama gives the usual review of all the programs, stimulus efforts, and new entitlements he’s overseeing, almost no one seems to conclude that he is simply detailing how he is going to redistribute nearly $2 trillion a year in annual borrowing. When we cut through all the soaring Great Society rhetoric, we are left with a “Gorge the Beast” strategy in which money is borrowed and given to favored constituencies before being paid back by less popular groups through higher taxes. Given the aggregate $7-10 trillion in additional debt envisioned over the next four years, Obama may well become the greatest redistributor in U.S. history, at last addressing his 2001 lamentation about the absence of meaningful “redistributive change” in America. The only question at this point is whether Obama’s gargantuan deficits are aimed primarily at lavishing constituencies with cash, or rather at making it necessary to raise taxes in a way that serves to reduce income inequality
I don’t know who will win today’s election in Massachusetts, but there are two things I’m confident of. First, if Brown wins, the Democrats will claim that the result is the product of “local considerations” and, in particular, a poor candidate. Second, this claim will be misleading at best. When Bob McDonnell trounced Creigh Deeds in Virginia, I argued that his victory was largely the result of local conditions and was not, for the most part, a referendum on President Obama or the national Democrats.