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Beware Debt-, Deficit-, and Budget-Fundamentalism
Tweet Share on Facebook February 25, 2011 Comment (10)“What we are witnessing is the rise of a new strain of politician: the budget fundamentalist,” writes Michelle Goldberg in a brief and biting piece in New York magazine (hat tip: Stan Collender).
The phrase “budget fundamentalist” is perhaps a loaded one, especially coming from Goldberg, but she’s nonetheless onto something. I’ve been toying with a similar thesis—namely that the line between culture and economics is disappearing. Small-government conservatism is seen more or less as a philosophical extension of Christianity, and the Constitution is practically the 67th book of the Bible.
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Will Republican Debt Solution Target Public Workers and the Poor?
Tweet Share on Facebook February 23, 2011 Comment (14)Commentary blogger Peter Wehner wonders whether we’ve “reached an inflection point on entitlement programs”: “Is there a new sobriety among the citizenry when it comes to fiscal matters?”
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Why Obama's Wrong on Entitlement Reform Patience
Tweet Share on Facebook February 15, 2011 Comment (10)In his famous "Letter from Birmingham Jail," Martin Luther King Jr. aptly wrote:
For years now, I have heard the word “Wait!” It rings in the ear of every Negro with piercing familiarity. This “Wait” has almost always meant “Never.”
If you’ll pardon the analogy, this sounds a lot to me like the perversity of the budget debate.
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The Budget Debate Is a Joke
Tweet Share on Facebook February 11, 2011 Comment (6)In last year’s lameduck session, both parties agreed, via the tax-cut compromise, to rack up a mountain of fresh debt--$337.5 billion in fiscal-year 2011 alone.
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Democrats and Republicans Both Get Reagan Wrong
Tweet Share on Facebook February 9, 2011 Comment (3)Was Ronald Reagan the triumphantly conservative statesman Republicans claim him to be?
Was he the well-intentioned but hapless failure liberals make him out to be, now as then?
Or, alternatively, was he a cryptocentrist Democrat whose Republican heirs have intellectually drifted further rightward than the man himself ever dreamed?
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Where Conservatives Are Wrong--and Right--on Obamacare Funding
Tweet Share on Facebook February 4, 2011 Comment (6)The Wall Street Journal’s Kimberly Strassel has a plan to undo Obamacare piece by piece, and, unsurprisingly, it involves the isolation of the least popular parts of the law:
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Glenn Beck's Egypt Protest Theories Show He's Finally Lost It
Tweet Share on Facebook February 2, 2011 Comment (69)Let me see if I have this straight.
According to Glenn Beck, the Egyptian crisis is part of a “coming insurrection” that spans the Mediterranean region of Africa and Southern Europe, and could at some point involve Russia and China. The culprits are an unholy alliance of Weather Underground-type Marxists and radical Islamists (both Shia and Sunni). [See photos of the Egypt protests.]
