Never assume that a logical connection exists between some instance of what is and some ideal of what could be. Some things cannot be redeemed, but are best destroyed or simply left alone. Indeed, many of history’s saddest chapters began with efforts to turn a present but dying evil into a lively engine for good.

That’s what the so-called “financial crisis” of 2008 has cost the federal government directly… so far.* Wonder how that stacks up to other crises? CNBC has a slideshow showing the costs (inflation-adjusted) of some of the biggest government projects ever. There are many events not listed in that slide show, of course. Two of the [...]

So, America has elected its next President, its next Vice President, 35 Senators, 435 members of the House of Representatives, and thousands of state and local officers. We did it, again, without violence or bloodshed, with a minimum of intimidation, with a minimum of fraud, and, in general, with great dignity. There can be no [...]

I have one request of Americans this week: Please, don’t immanentize the Eschaton.

I’ve been doing a lot of thinking – far too much, actually – about this election. I am not going to blog here about the relative merits of each candidate – anyone undecided between these two extremely different candidates at this point hasn’t been paying attention. In fact, this will probably be my last election-related [...]

As a math major, law school grad, and economic policy wonk, I’m not sure which aspect of this stupidity by the New York Times horrifies me most. Is it: that people think we do tax at those rates, that some people think we should, that no editor caught the logical flaws before publication, or that [...]

See Arthur C. Brooks on Charitable Giving & Barack Obama on National Review Online (yes, my title pun was intended).

I had a short series of recent conversations on the nature of conservatism. The upshot of the conversations was this: conservatives don’t really have very many tools at their disposal, while a liberal political theory has at its disposal all the means of the state. This follows from the fact that liberal politics – at [...]