A Thinking Reed

"Man is but a reed, the most feeble thing in nature, but he is a thinking reed" – Blaise Pascal

Conservatism

  • Defining conservatism down

    E.J. Dionne contrasts angry, pseudo-populist Tea Party-style conservatism with a more humane conservatism that “seeks to preserve the best of what we have.” He recognizes that he may be defining conservatism as little more than a corrective to progressivism rather than a free-standing ideology in its own right, but he maintains that Burkean-Kirkian conservatism is Read more

  • Needed: better political symbolism

    I’m all for an alternative to the “Tea Party” phenomenon that believes in “promot[ing] civility and inclusiveness in political discourse, engag[ing] the government not as an enemy but as the collective will of the people, [and] push[ing] leaders to enact the progressive change for which 52.9 percent of the country voted in 2008.” But “Coffee Read more

  • Mavericky!

    Interesting spin offered by the WaPo on Sarah Palin’s reported $100,000 speaking fee for her Tea Party speech: By delivering a paid keynote address at a convention other politicians had avoided because of allegations of profiteering, Palin displayed one of the traits that has electrified her anti-establishment followers: a talent for persistently and defiantly flouting Read more

  • “Statism” revisited

    John makes some fair points in his response to this post. In particular, I probably did paint with too broad a brush in characterizing conservatives and libertarians as “mostly deny[ing] that [the environment, health care, etc.] are problems and/or that government has any role in addressing them.” At the same time, John is painting what Read more

  • Statism

    “Statism” is a word that obscures more than it clarifies. Conservatives and libertarians tend to use it for any government program they don’t like. But everyone who’s not an anarchist admits the need of a state of some sort. The question is what the appropriate duties of the state are. Hence, I don’t find this Read more

  • First Things and climate denialism

    John Schwenkler with an excellent post taking down First Thing‘s resident climate change denialist, Thomas Sieger Derr. I’m not sure if I’ve changed or it has, but I used to really enjoy reading FT and was a faithful subscriber for about ten years. It introduced me to a lot of contemporary theology offered at a Read more

  • Burke v. Madison

    Whether, like Burke, one believes that anarchy is the great threat to liberty and social peace, or, like Madison, that tyranny poses the greatest threat to liberty, goes a long way toward determining if one is a conservative or a liberal. –John McGowan, American Liberalism: An Interpretation for Our Time, p. 105 McGowan here is Read more

  • TAC expands its blog-presence

    The American Conservative has added two blogs to its already-stellar lineup: Daniel McCarthy’s “Tory Anarchist” and “PostRight.” That latter features a stable of young(ish) writers who “take a jaundiced view of the conventional left-right spectrum.” Talk of going “beyond left and right” is often just code for a vacuous and muddled “moderation” or “centrism,” but Read more

  • What Big Food has to worry about

    Not a leftie, organic-arugala loving Obama administration, writes Tom Laskawy at Slate, but the constraints imposed by Mother Nature herself: The one threat that Big Food hasn’t proven itself very adept at handling, however, is the multiheaded hydra of climate change, drought, and the shrinking supplies of various natural resources. The industry is not ignoring Read more

  • So much for states’ rights

    In the grand tradition of Congress treating D.C. as its own personal political laboratory, Nevada’s Republican senator John Ensign has attached an amendment to the D.C. voting rights bill that would essentially gut what remains of the District’s gun control laws post-Heller. I actually have fairly middle-of-the-road, or even conservative views on gun rights. Part Read more