Politics

David Brooks | October 5, 2007

Modern conservatism begins with Edmund Burke. What Burke articulated was not an ideology or a creed, but a disposition, a reverence for tradition, a suspicion of radical change.

When conservatism came to America, it became creedal. Free market conservatives built a creed around freedom and capitalism. Religious conservatives built a creed around their conception of a transcendent order. Neoconservatives and others built a creed around the words of Lincoln and the founders.

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Free Congress Foundation |Ralph Hostetter | August 09, 2007

The much vaunted leadership of the 110th Congress arrived last January in Washington amid much fanfare about the first 100 hours of Congressional action, leading on through the first 100 days of major legislative accomplishments.

Representative Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) was installed as the first woman Speaker of the House. Finding a new use for her broom, she immediately began sweeping the cobwebs of corruption, untruths and incompetence left by the former Republican occupants of her newly draped offices. She would make her influence felt in Washington.

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Interfax | 24 July 2007

Moscow, July 24, Interfax – Famous writer Alexander Solzhenitsyn believes the Church in Russia today has managed for an amazingly short period of time to occupy a position independent of the authorities.

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The Wall Street Journal (subscription) | Sam Zaramba | June 12, 2007

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The United States and Europe eradicated malaria by 1960, largely with the use of DDT. At the time, Uganda tested the pesticide in the Kanungu district and reduced malaria by 98%. Despite this success, we lacked the resources to sustain the program. Rather than partner with us to improve our public health infrastructure, however, foreign donors blanched. They used Africa’s lack of infrastructure to justify not investing in it. Today, every single Ugandan still remains at risk. Over 10 million Ugandans are infected each year, and up to 100,000 of our mothers and children die from the disease. Recently Ugandan country music star Job Paul Kafeero died of the disease, a reminder that no one is beyond its reach. Yet, many still argue that Africa’s poor infrastructure makes indoor spraying too costly and complex a means of fighting malaria.

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Opinio.nu | Jonathan Price | June 1, 2007

In his new propaganda piece, Sicko, Michael Moore uses interview, anecdote, and the editing room to full effect. He attacks the American healthcare industry not so much about those without health insurance (around 40 million), as about the quality of the healthcare that the insured receive.

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Washington Post | George Will | May 31, 2007

Conservatism’s recovery of its intellectual equilibrium requires a confident explanation of why America has two parties and why the conservative one is preferable. Today’s political argument involves perennial themes that give it more seriousness than many participants understand. The argument, like Western political philosophy generally, is about the meaning of, and the proper adjustment of the tension between, two important political goals — freedom and equality.

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Wall Street Opinion Journal | Wndy Kaminer | May 23, 2007

The ACLU is becoming very selective about what it considers “free” speech.

“ACLU Defends Nazi’s Right to Burn Down ACLU Headquarters,” the humor magazine The Onion announced in 1999. Those of us who loved the ACLU, and celebrated its willingness to defend the rights of Nazis and others who had no regard for our rights, considered the joke a compliment. Today it’s more like a reproach. Once the nation’s leading civil liberties group and a reliable defender of everyone’s speech rights, the ACLU is being transformed into just another liberal human-rights group that reliably defends the rights of liberal speakers.

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