Footnotes to Plato from the foothills of the Superstition Mountains

Category: Politics

  • Can a Return to Federalism Save Us?

    The Problem I fear that we are coming apart as a nation.  We need to face the fact that we do not agree on a large number of divisive, passion-inspiring issues.  Among these are abortion, gun rights, capital punishment, affirmative action, legal and illegal immigration, same-sex 'marriage,' taxation, the need for fiscal responsibility in government,…

  • “If You’re a Conservative, You are not My Friend”

    Rebecca Roache writes, One of the first things I did after seeing the depressing election news this morning was check to see which of my Facebook friends ‘like’ the pages of the Conservatives or David Cameron, and unfriend them. (Thankfully, none of my friends ‘like’ the UKIP page.) Life is too short, I thought, to…

  • Sam Harris versus Noam Chomsky

    Here.

  • Did Rand Paul Really Say That?

    Heather MacDonald: Announcing his presidential bid this month, Sen. Rand Paul said he wants to repeal “any law that disproportionately incarcerates people of color.” Did he really say that?  If yes, then he's  pandering Hillariously .  'People of color,' to use the politically correct phrase, are disproportionately incarcerated because they disproportionately commit crimes.  Is Rand…

  • Hillary’s Presidential Bid as an Exercise in and Referendum on Cynicism

    Another penetrating column by Bret Stephens.  Excerpts: All of which means that Mrs. Clinton’s presidential bid is an exercise in—and a referendum on—cynicism, partly hers but mainly ours. Democrats who nominate Mrs. Clinton will transform their party into the party of cynics; an America that elects Mrs. Clinton as its president will do so as…

  • Hillary the Corrupt

    Another day, another scandal.  Or so it seems these last few days.  Here is the Clinton Scandal Manual. I also recommend Daniel Halper, Clinton, Inc.: The Audacious Rebuilding of a Political Machine, Harper Collins, 2014, xxv + 319 pp.  A page-turner! Doesn't require the effort of say, Erich Pryzwara's Analogia Entis. With Obama we had…

  • Hillary the Fabulist

    It has been said of Bill Clinton that he'd rather climb a tree and tell a lie than stand on the ground and tell the truth.  Hillary continues the family tradition.  One of her latest untruths is that all four of her grandparents came to the U.S. as immigrants when only one of them did. …

  • Anarcho-Tyranny

    A fine post by Malcolm Pollack. (HT: Bill Keezer) The anarcho-tyranny fork has two tines, Pollack tells us.  One is "the total collapse of the rule of law as applied to illegal immigrants and the crimes, petty and otherwise, that they commit."  The other is "the increasing (and increasingly capricious) burdens and indignities that are…

  • Harry Reid on Burden of Proof

    Here: Harry Reid, the top Democrat in the Senate, was asked by CNN’s Dana Bash this week if he regretted his 2012 accusation on the Senate floor that GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney “hasn’t paid taxes for ten years.” Reid presented no evidence at the time and claimed he didn’t need any: “I don’t think…

  • Two Mistakes

    To reject moral equivalentism is not to embrace 'Manicheanism.'  To reject robust interventionism in foreign policy is not to subscribe to 'isolationism.'  To think otherwise in either case is to make a mistake.  Most leftists make the first mistake; many conservatives the second.

  • Hillary and the Saga of the Self-Serving Server

    I predict that the current controversy will soon be forgotten and Hillary will bounce back more formidable than ever.  She looks tired, but she is as hungry as ever.  She has Ambition written all over her.  Do not underestimate her.  The rumors of her imminent political demise are greatly exaggerated.  Mark my words!  I hope…

  • Bibi and Barry: Fundamental Differences

    Daniel Greenfield: In 1967, Benjamin Netanyahu skipped his high school graduation in Pennsylvania to head off to Israel to help in the Six Day War. That same year Obama moved with his mother to Indonesia. When Obama suggested that Israel return to the pre-1967 borders, described by Ambassador Eban, no right-winger, as “Auschwitz borders,” it…

  • Hanson on Obama on Netanyahu

    Lately liberalism has gone from psychodrama to farce. Take Barack Obama. He has gone from mild displeasure with Israel to downright antipathy. Suddenly we are in a surreal world where off-the-record slurs from the administration against Benjamin Netanyahu as a coward and chickensh-t have gone to full-fledged attacks from John Kerry and Susan Rice, to…

  • Netanyahu

    Statesmanship. Gravitas. Moral Clarity. Wisdom. Courage. Great oratory. All in stark contrast to that jayvee player, Obama the Feckless.

  • Why the Firestorm? Rudy Spoke the Truth that Hurts and Punctured the Obama Myth

    Why the furiously intemperate ranting over Rudy's remarks?  After all, the distinguished former mayor of New York City merely articulated what vast numbers of us have suspected or believed for years.  Giuliani had the temerity to speak truth to power and this enraged the Left. (Lefties think they alone own dissent and the right to…