Michael J. Totten makes “The Liberal Case for Bush” today at TCS. I would take issue with this: Woodrow Wilson, good Democrat that he was, fought to make the world “safe for democracy.” There is no more noble or inspiring reason to fight. John Kerry is no Woodrow Wilson. In his most important speech, the…

From a story in the Philly Inquirer: As is the case with American bourbon, Scotch whisky is an outgrowth of unlicensed distillers fighting with the government over taxation of their homemade products. The first recorded mention of whisky in Scotland was in 1494. For the most part, it remained a homemade product for centuries, used…

Lee Smith writing at Slate: …while we interpret the current Iraqi occupation as a situation where U.S. troops are putting down Iraqi insurgents, another way to see the conflict—one more in keeping with the region’s history—is that we are a proxy force in a civil war: The coalition is fighting for the Shiites against the…

Or, Newt Gingrich call your office. Anne Applebaum: Seen from the perspective of the 108th Congress, which is stumbling to the end of its ignominious session this week, Newt Gingrich is a towering historical figure. By that I don’t mean Gingrich was a paragon of virtue, or that Gingrich was a great unifier of men.…

From Pontifications: It is popular today, as perhaps it always has been, to assert that God reveals himself in many ways. This is of course true. But the creedal claim is more than just an assertion of divine revelation. It is a claim that Jesus of Nazareth reveals God because Jesus is God. In each…

Reading the pieces from the Commonweal symposium on the election that I linked to yesterday, I was struck more than anything by the fact that partisans on each side can disagree so sharply not just about values or policies, but about the facts themselves. Here’s how Thomas Higgins, who’s voting for Kerry, describes the Iraq…

This may be the residual libertarian in me, but if there’s one idea that repulses me, it’s “the politics of national greatness.” This was brought to mind by a recent article by former McCain adviser Marshall Wittmann explaining his support for the Kerry-Edwards ticket: I am an independent McCainiac who hopes to revive the Bull…

Johny Ray makes an often neglected point: One of the commonest Leftist arguments in defence of big government (a sophisticated example here) is to say that the individual could accomplish nothing and would earn nothing without the community of which he forms part — and that therefore he “owes” the community something. That is of…

It’s coming says Radley Balko. They’ll have to pry the mug from my cold dead hands I tell ya…

An interesting essay by Roberto Rivera y Carlo: There aren’t a lot of people like me — not as many as you might think, anyway. Oh, you hear political commentators talk about “single-issue voters,” by which they (almost always) mean voters for whom a candidate’s position on abortion is the decisive or most important factor…