Lest any of our readers think that I have an uncritical attitude toward the nation-state that I currently call home, here is a fantastic piece in the new Adbusters magazine about Canada’s transition, under the Harper government, from a peacekeeping nation to an ally in the U.S.-led “War on Terror.” An excerpt: This certainly pleases Washington, which is delighted to have a well-regarded country like Canada as an active ally as it ramps up its confrontation with the Islamic world.... Read more
I used to be against flip-flopping, but now I’ve changed my mind. Allow me to explain. (more…) Read more
I can’t say that you’ll be missed. Read more
How to deal with economic downturns? The US response is to loosen monetary policy (by lowering interests rates) dramatically, and by opening up the fiscal taps until everything is drunk. In Europe, it is different. For the European Central Bank, price stability is everything. Interest rates are only changed cautiously and incrementally, always with an eye on inflation and longer-term stability. If that means tolerating lower growth today, so be it. Likewise, fiscal policy is constrained within a rules-based framework... Read more
Andrew Sullivan recently expressed his doubts about the state of America in a recent post: My own view is that America’s crisis is a very deep one. The markets are reflecting the fact that seven years of Bush have added $32 trillion to future debt, and there is no one able to either raise revenues or slash entitlements to get us back to fiscal sanity. Iraq has shown that America’s imperial burden is becoming greater and greater even as her... Read more
From Starbucks, we now go to China to see how the government is incapable of making moral judgements in the public interest and how private business really cares about us. Chinese police have shut down a Web site selling real-time porn and arrested 33 people, state media said on Wednesday, part of a campaign which led to the shut-down of 44,000 Web sites and arrest of 868 people last year. China launched a crackdown on online pornography and “unhealthy” Web content... Read more
Here is why. My friends, this is a lesson in semantics. My emphasis below. The pill, often called “miffy” after its chemical name mifepristone and brand name Mifeprex, also has helped slow the decline in abortion providers, as more physicians who previously did not perform the procedure discreetly start to prescribe the pill. Read more
Confirming that we only have to fear government attempting to control our lives, Starbucks is being investigated for illegal union busting activities. After having several stores unionized in the New York area, the company’s thought police dutifully went to work. They figured out that two of the organizers had been graduates from Cornell University’s labor program. Having discovered this, they did a company wide search for Cornell graduates of the program and found ones located in Michigan, California, and Illinois. ... Read more
Charming: To commemorate Tuesday’s 35th anniversary of the U.S. Supreme Court ruling that legalized abortion, Mohawk Hudson Planned Parenthood in Schenectady has asked local clergy to bless its new facility. Officials at Planned Parenthood invited the media to tour the surgical wing and the new building at 1040 State St., calling the event in a press release: “On Sacred Ground –Blessing of the Building by Schenectady Clergy.” After the ceremony, the three clergy members will speak “in support of the... Read more
My friend Dan Philpott (Political Science, Notre Dame) has this review, over at The Immanent Frame (a really good blog), of Mark Lilla’s, The Stillborn God. Here’s a bit: The idea of modern liberalism depends decisively on a jettisoning of theology as a source for arguing about politics: If there is one claim to which Lilla returns again and again from different angles, this is it. So if there is one phenomenon that most decisively calls Lilla’s argument into question,... Read more
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