Tag: conservative
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Extreme Thinking: Dangerous? Or Just Irrelevant?
A recent Bryan Caplan post finally crystallized for me why I find so much libertarian thinking and commentary to be irrelevant: The philosophically insightful breakdown, rather, is the "statist-libertarian" spectrum. Here's the best way to sum up my outlook: The endpoints of the political spectrum are not the "far left" Michael Moore and the "far…
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Republicans Create Opportunity? Yeah, Right.
Republicans constantly proclaim that inequality is the price of prosperity. If things are more unequal, there’s more incentive–and crucially, opportunity–for people to better themselves. Everyone benefits from that. Except it’s not true. Let’s think about Joe the Plumber, who made $40K in 2006 but would like to buy the plumbing business he works for–for a…
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Europe vs. U.S.: Family Time Versus Four-by-Fours and Two-by-Fours
Finally! Someone has come back at me (well he didn’t know he was talking to me) with the key, perhaps-trumping argument on my Europe vs. US longatribes. I gave this argument away in a previous post, hoping someone would pick it up, but have yet to hear it well enunciated elsewhere. Summary of my arguments:…
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Teddy Roosevelt on “the true conservative”
From his “New Nationalism” speech. 1910. The true friend of property, the true conservative, is he who insists that property shall be the servant and not the master of the commonwealth; who insists that the creature of man’s making shall be the servant and not the master of the man who made it. The citizens…
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More Great Minds: Lincoln on “Conservatives”
From the Cooper Union speech. Emphasis mine. “But you say you are conservative – eminently conservative – while we are revolutionary, destructive, or something of the sort. What is conservatism? Is it not adherence to the old and tried, against the new and untried? We stick to, contend for, the identical old policy on the…