Chapman’s News & Ideas

I read The New Republic, the venerable liberal journal founded by Progressives a hundred years ago, and even under the new owner management of Chris Hughes, a Facebook billionaire, I find it stimulating. That doesn’t mean that I agree with it, but just that it is less predictable and knee-jerk left-wing than, say, the editorial page of The New York Times. Unfortunately, Chris Hughes, age 30, thinks print is on its way out and that the future of the magazine is digital.

On their way out as a consequence are the editor, Franklin Foer, and senior editorial writer, Leon Wieseltier. The latter has been an icon of TNR for ages. Read More ›

For three decades there have been two issues that politicians regarded as so thorny they were best left alone: health care and immigration. The moving parts in each subject are complicated, and feelings run so strong that Presidents and Congresses long decided to speak only in general terms on the topics and otherwise leave them alone. Now we have seen what happens when one party (call it the President Obama party) decides to impose a health care solution. The clean up is still going on five years after passage of the misnamed Affordable Care Act and it will continue long into the future. Even more so, sadly, immigration. Fortunately, some critics are bringing up one of the veiled aspects of Read More ›

The Dutch are about to adopt a binding law to allow–no, encourage–the harvesting of organs of people who are euthanized. (They are way past mere “assisted suicide” in the Netherlands.) There are a number of supposed protections in the proposed policy to keep people from being pressured to die in order to donate their organs, but those protections are the sort that have a way of evaporating in practice. That is especially true once the elderly, sick and/or depressed understand–or are made to understand–that their seemingly unsatisfactory lives can be redeemed by premature death.

And, in some cases, the decision can be made for them. Read More ›

The Thanksgiving holiday is a perfect occasion for reading The Hobbit Party by Jonathan Witt and Jay Richards, both of them Discovery fellows. It’s an amusing and sage guide to Tolkien’s philosophy as applied to modern times–to economics, for example. The distinguished Catholic priest/cultural guide, Fr. C. John McCloskey does the book proud in Catholicity.com. .

There is a difference between news and hyped-news. The murder charge against a white policeman in Ferguson, MO, like the O.J. trial, the Rodney King arrest and the Travon Martin case in Florida,is an examples of media-induced hysteria. They are the racial equivalent of the death of Princess Diana that for a while transfixed much of the world or the disappearance of the Malaysia Airlines jet. It’s of interest, but the total absorption of the media is owing to ratings, not significance. There are so many truly consequential developments in the world, including the world of American blacks–starting with stunted income and opportunity in a stagnating economy–that it is hard to credit the exaggerated emphasis on one highly equivocal death.

There’s a widely accepted assumption in the media that Hillary Clinton has to move left in order to consolidate her claim to the 2016 Democratic Presidential nomination. She gave credence to that assumption recently when she burbled fulsome praise for Sen. Elizabeth Warren, probably he most threatening potential rival on the left, and then made some remark about corporations not being responsible for their success.

However, while the left wing of the Democratic Party was her natural home in her early days of Saul Alinsky, Vietnam and Watergate, her most sincere and winning base now is the center of her party. She will get most of the feminist vote, no matter what. Even another woman, like Warren, doesn’t have her unbreakable record.

Plus–labor. The unions are very frustrated with Obama and the way Republicans like Gov. Scott Walker have trounced public employee unions in the states, while the Obama Administration sides with environmentalists on major energy and other economic projects. Unions can make a huge difference in Democratic primaries.

She also will inherit the Obama base among blacks, largely because she had it to begin with in early 2008, until Barrack became a likely winner. She doesn’t need to move left to get their support. Elizabeth Warren or any other likely primary foe (including Joe Biden) lacks her appeal.

And she has huge support on Wall Street, where she is known as the “candidate from Goldman Sachs.” The immense power of Wall Street in the Democratic Party is slowly dawning on the middle class and working people generally (how times change!). Crony capitalism is a certain theme for Republicans. But until the summer of 2016, Clinton could benefit from the backing of Wall Street and Hollywood–and swamp her opponents in fundraising.

Meanwhile, the Republicans have damaged the Democratic brand in many states–such as Appalachia and much of the Middle West–by pro-growth economic policies and hostility to Obama’s hostility to energy development. So Democrats in those states will be looking for someone who can carry the ticket–and it won’t be Elizabeth Warren.

A “Clinton Democrat”, therefore, might well try to “triangulate” (in the old phrase) by advocating for pro-energy policies at the same time as she advocated for “real progress” on alternative fuels. She could argue persuasively (and please her big business/Wall Street friends) by calling for more infrastructure investments–roads and bridges, etc. Indeed, she could please the “builders” and the environmentalists at the same time by calling for a gas tax increase tied exclusively to transportation’s unmet needs. She could call for a buildup of the military, even while pledging to keep the country out of “new wars.” Read More ›

Mitch Kokai in the Carolina Journal provides another glowing review of George Gilder’s Knowledge and Power.

It is terrible enough that the murder of four rabbis and a policeman at a synagogue in Jerusalem was welcomed with dancing in the streets of Gaza. But the strange coverage in the New York Times by Jodi Rudoren is so disappointing it borders on Orwellian.

We learn “That blood splattered the victims’ prayer shawls and holy books underscored growing indications that extremists on both sides are turning the stalemated battle over territory and identity into a full-throated religious war.” Really, both sides?

When Israelis murder a Palestinian, they are prosecuted. When Palestinians murder Israelis they are praised by Hamas and excused by other Palestinian leaders. Read More ›

Discovery Sr. Fellow Scott Powell today presented readers of Investors Business Daily a persuasive catalog of extra-legal actions by President Obama and his Administration. The article is too good to quote; read it for yourself.

Intelligence services are connecting “Jihadi John”, the British-accented, black-masked jihadist shown in ISIS videos of beheadings, with Anonymous, the affiliation of hackers attacking Western businesses and government agencies.

The Unity Coalition for Israel has pulled together various strands of a story that at least two prominent Jihadis appearing in ISIS videos are likely known rappers/activists from Britain with a record of provocative hacks into government and personal files, which it then publishes. Their names have not surfaced officially, but UCI provides two of them.

One is Adel-Majed Abdel Bari, probably the “Jihadi John” of the videos who jokes as he cuts off heads of Western captives. Another is Junaid Hussain. Writes the UCI, “Under the alias ‘TriCk,’ Hussain claimed responsibility in 2011 for hacking, among other targets, the Facebook accounts of company cofounder Mark Zuckerberg and former French President Nicolas Sarkozy, and for publishing the personal information of former British Prime Minister Tony Blair. He was arrested for the computer crimes as a minor, and last year skipped bail over allegations of violent disorder, announcing his plans to flee into the Syrian conflict zone. Read More ›