There Is No Alternative: Why Margaret Thatcher Matters
Tag: Politics
There Is No Alternative: Why Margaret Thatcher Matters
Dystopian Future or Morning in America?
This week’s Coffee & Market’s podcast featured Peter Ferrara of the Heartland Institute to discuss his new book America’s Ticking Bankruptcy Bomb: How the Looming Debt Crisis Threatens the American Dream-and How We Can Turn the Tide Before It’s Too Late. Ferrara argues that if we continue on the path we are on America is headed to the slow growth soft socialism of Europe and the long term unemployment and lack of dynamism that resulted from their failed policies. But if we instead structurally reform the federal government we can unleash the dynamism of American innovation and start a long term economic boom. This path means not massive cuts to the social safety net but, in fact, better benefits and more independence for the less fortunate.
Related articles
- Coffee & Markets: Mark Steyn on After America (collectedmiscellany.com)
Dystopian Future or Morning in America?
This week’s Coffee & Market’s podcast featured Peter Ferrara of the Heartland Institute to discuss his new book America’s Ticking Bankruptcy Bomb: How the Looming Debt Crisis Threatens the American Dream-and How We Can Turn the Tide Before It’s Too Late. Ferrara argues that if we continue on the path we are on America is headed to the slow growth soft socialism of Europe and the long term unemployment and lack of dynamism that resulted from their failed policies. But if we instead structurally reform the federal government we can unleash the dynamism of American innovation and start a long term economic boom. This path means not massive cuts to the social safety net but, in fact, better benefits and more independence for the less fortunate.
Related articles
- Coffee & Markets: Mark Steyn on After America (collectedmiscellany.com)
James Madison by Richard Brookhiser
There is a tendency by some to look down their noses at politics; viewing it as the grubby fight for power and the inevitable disappointment that results from politicians who promise everything during election years only to deliver hot air and favors for friends once safely ensconced in office. To be fair, all too often this is what politics actually offers.
But in his biography of founding father James Madison, Richard Brookhiser argues that politics is the working out of our ideals; that for freedom, democracy and republican government to function in the real world requires politics and all the baggage that entails.
We pay much less attention to James Madison, Father of Politics, than we do James Madison, Father of the Constitution. That is because politics embarrasses us. Politics is the spectacle on television and YouTube, the daily perp walk on the Huffington Post and the Drudge Report. Surely our founders and framers lefts us something better, more solid, more inspiring than that? They did. But they all knew – and Madison understood better than any of them – that ideals come to life in dozens of political transactions every day. Some of these transactions aren’t pretty. You can understand this and try to work with this knowledge, or you can look away. But ignoring politics will not make it stop. It will simply go on without you – and sooner or later will happen to you.
Madison is one of, if not the, smartest of the founders but he lacked the stature of Washington, or the eloquence of a Thomas Jefferson or a Patrick Henry, and so his intelligence is sometimes overlooked. Madison may not have been an eloquent speaker – he often spoke so quietly that the audience couldn’t hear him – or writer but he learned to master many of the important skills necessary to move public opinion, pass legislation and build coalitions.
The Roots of Modern Conservatism
For this week’s Coffee & Markets podcast Pejman Yousefzadeh and I spoke with Michael Bowen author of The Roots of Modern Conservatism: Dewey, Taft, and the Battle for the Soul of the Republican Party.
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Our Overlawyered America
The latest edition of Coffee & Markets is available. This week Pejman Yousefzadeh and I spoke with Walter Olson about his new book Schools for Misrule: Legal Academia and an Overlawyered America.
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Quick Takes: American Grace
Over the past year or so I have read a number of non-fiction books but failed to review them here. For some reason I have a hard time reviewing non-fiction – I always want to offer a more detailed and intelligent engagement with the book but never seem to have the time or focus to do so. Quick Takes is an attempt to offer quick assesments of these type of books without feeling the pressure to offer a full fledged review (whatever that is).
American Grace: How Religion Divides and Unites Us
by Robert D. Putnam, David E. Campbell
688 pages
October 2010
Simon & Schuster
I found this to be a fascinating and informative look at religious life in America. If you are a stats/data geek this is heaven – charts galore – but they have weaved the data into a compelling narrative. And church vignette chapters break it up and provide some more personalized examples.
There are some interpretations that are arguable, and the authors pretty clearly come from a liberal perspective, but it is still a remarkably interesting read for anyone interested in the history of religion and the debates over politics and the culture wars.
Here is the core narrative or argument of the book:
America has experienced three seismic shocks, say Robert Putnam and David Campbell. In the 1960s, religious observance plummeted. Then in the 1970s and 1980s, a conservative reaction produced the rise of evangelicalism and the Religious Right. Since the 1990s, however, young people, turned off by that linkage between faith and conservative politics, have abandoned organized religion. The result has been a growing polarization—the ranks of religious conservatives and secular liberals have swelled, leaving a dwindling group of religious moderates in between. At the same time, personal interfaith ties are strengthening. Interfaith marriage has increased while religious identities have become more fluid. Putnam and Campbell show how this denser web of personal ties brings surprising interfaith tolerance, notwithstanding the so-called culture wars.
I know there is a lot of disagreement about the components of this argument or story arc (both the conclusions and the data) but I don’t have the depth of knowledge needed to offer much of a conclusion either way.
Here is an example from the Books & Culture review by James L. Guth and Lyman A. Kellstedt:
This dovetails with a more pervasive concern: Putnam and Campbell’s persistent dismissal of the content of religious faith. Although their own survey includes a solid battery of belief items, the authors repeatedly deny that what people believe has any major relevance to social or political values, whether partisanship, charitable activities, or civic engagement. We are unconvinced. An old adage among students of religion and politics is that “behavior begets behavior, and belief begets belief.” Religious practices like church attendance should foster voting or working in campaigns, while religious beliefs should influence choices on issues, parties, and candidates. Thus, findings in American Grace that churchgoers excel in civic participation are not surprising. But reliance on religiosity may be misleading when explaining political choices. True, abortion and gay rights opinions may be structured by religiosity more strongly than other issues, but the authors ignore the possibility that they might be influenced even more by religious beliefs.
What is so helpful about the book is that you don’t have to agree with the authors to enjoy and learn from it. They present the data and the argument and you can engage it at whatever detail is appropriate for you – get into the data or just read it absorbing as much as you can along the way.
With this in mind, I wholeheartedly echo the above review’s conclusion:
These caveats should not deter anyone interested in American religion from reading this challenging volume. For scholars hoping to fathom the connections between religion and public life, for clergy wanting to understand better the people in the pews (and those not there), and for grass-roots believers desiring a broader picture of faith in America, this volume is required reading.