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It’s time for some politics!

It’s time for some politics!

Last updated on: August 8, 2017 at 10:07 pm by Dan Peterson

It’s time for some politics! 2017-08-08T22:07:22-06:00 Dan Peterson

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The Capitol of the United States (Wikimedia Commons)

First off, a really fine article by my friend and colleague Ralph Hancock:

“The most blind and aggressive kind of partisanship is one that pretends to be nonpartisan”

I think he’s precisely right.

***

Have you heard about the new reign of commissars at Google?

“The Mountain View Inquisition”

“Google Is Being Evil After All”

I’m reminded of the three slogans in George Orwell’s 1984:

“War is Peace!”

“Freedom is Slavery!”

“Ignorance is Strength!’

Perhaps Orwell should have added a fourth slogan. But even he, in his remarkable prescience, probably didn’t see this one coming:

“Unanimity is Diversity!”

***

This, I think, is very likely an accurate insight into our current president:

“Donald Trump has a sickening fetish for cruelty”

I don’t read the Romney-Trump quite the way the columnist does, but I think the overall point is sound.

***

A nice, albeit brief, overview of a political movement:

“American Conservatism, 1945–2017”

I hope that the obituary is premature.

***

David French, whose writing I almost always admire, hopes that there’s still life in genuine conservatism. But he’s concerned:

“Don’t Let the Left Define Conservative Opposition to Trump”

***

Here’s an important headline from America’s newspaper of record, The Onion. There’s a very tiny bit of rough language, but the news is urgently vital:

“76 Million Baby Boomers Abscond To Fiji After Draining Nation’s Social Security, Medicare Accounts”

***

Back to serious. Here’s a short piece by the consistently thought-provoking Rod Dreher:

“Trump Can’t Save American Christianity”

Back in May of this year, I published a column about Mr. Dreher’s bestselling book The Benedict Option: A Strategy for Christians in a Post-Christian Nation:

“‘The Benedict Option’ or ‘The Brigham Option’?”

***

And, finally, a quotation from one of my heroes, whom I had the privilege to meet and to spend some time with shortly before he won the Nobel Prize. I like to think that it was his encounter with me that pretty much sealed that deal for him with the Prize committee:

“Because we live in a largely free society, we tend to forget how limited is the span of time and the part of the globe for which there has ever been anything like political freedom: the typical state of mankind is tyranny, servitude, and misery. The nineteenth century and early twentieth century in the Western world stand as striking exceptions to the general trend of historical development. Political freedom in this instance clearly came along with the free market and the development of capitalist institutions. So also did political freedom in the golden age of Greece and in the early days of the Roman era.

“History suggests only that capitalism is a necessary condition for political freedom. Clearly it is not a sufficient condition.”

Milton Friedman, Capitalism and Freedom (2002), p. 10

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