-By Yuval Levin, National Review
(ED: I don’t usually repost an entire article from another site but this article is too important to just excerpt. I apologize to Mr. Levin in advance, but his essay is one of the best definitions of what American conservatism truly is that I’ve seen for a long time. It is also a good explanation on why modern liberalism is as wrong as can be and anti-American to boot. It is a must read for anyone that wants a hint of the character of American conservatism and a good guide on how to think about what conservatives advocate. I just had to post it in it’s entirety, just had to have this chronicled on my site.)
This fall, liberals from the president on down have begun to grasp the scope of the political and intellectual disaster that the past three years have been for the Left. Their various responses to the calamity have tended to have one thing in common: immense frustration. But the different expressions of that frustration have been deeply revealing. They should help Americans better understand this complicated moment in our politics, and, in particular, help conservatives frame their responses.
Liberal frustration has fallen into two general categories that seem at first to flatly contradict each other: denunciations of democracy and appeals to populism. In September, Peter Orszag, President Obama’s former budget director, wrote an essay in The New Republic arguing that “we need less democracy.” To address our country’s daunting problems, Orszag suggested, we need to take some power away from Congress and give it to “automatic policies and depoliticized commissions” that will be shielded from public pressure. “Radical as it sounds, we need to counter the gridlock of our political institutions by making them a bit less democratic.” Two weeks later, North Carolina’s Democratic governor, Beverly Perdue, made a less sophisticated stab at the same general point, proposing to suspend congressional elections for a few years so members of Congress could make the difficult decisions necessary to get our country out of its deep problems.
Orszag and Perdue both seemed to channel a long and deeply held view of the Left — that the complexity of modern life and the intensity of modern politics should lead us to put more power in the hands of technical experts who have the knowledge to make objective, rational choices on our behalf. Leaving things to the political process will result only in delay and disorder. President Obama has frequently expressed this view himself — wistfully complaining to his aides earlier this year, for instance, that things would sure be easier if he were president of China.
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What Is Constitutional Conservatism?”
Ron Fournier of the National Journal has committed the same
You know, it is unfortunate that the Democrat Party’s name has the word “democracy” as it root because the modern Democrat Party is 100% opposed to both democracy and our system of government. Senator Chuck “Hitman” Schumer just proved this to be true once again.
On Friday I attended an informative business roundtable meeting of Chicago-area small businessmen who came together to discuss how government intervention and its avalanche of regulations are killing jobs and businesses not only in Illinois, but nation wide. Some of the stories were chilling, to say the least. These trials go to show how anti-business the most famously capitalist country in the world has become. No wonder we can’t get out of this second great depression!
The event was held at the headquarters of The Rabine Group in Schaumburg, Illinois. The Rabine Group is a group of nationwide companies that specializes in driveway paving, roofing, and other contracting work. The company is headed by owner and CEO Gary Rabine.
This is the funniest thing I have ever…
Barack Obama is nothing less than a hypocrite on his admonitions over public discourse and the latest example of this truth lies in his refusal to condemn the violence-tinged language of Teamsters president Jimmy Hoffa not to mention his similar silence on the obscene rhetoric of many of the leading members of the Congressional Black Caucus.
In one of the most well attended yet contentious State Central Committee meetings for some time, the movers and shakers of the Illinois GOP met on Tuesday evening to attempt to decide if the system for certifying delegates for GOP presidential candidates should be changed. The short answer is that there was a lot of sound and fury from party members lower on the food chain, much debate from those on top, and questions all around all of which resulted in a failure of the proposal to make the change. In the end a resolution was passed to keep it all the same as it was in 2008.
President Obama wants to give us his jobs plan. Yeah, three years after he got elected saying he was all about jobs. It isn’t the speech that is important, here, though —
The Hill has an interesting, if not
OK, what’s the deal, here? I thought all the rich folk was s’possed to be Republican? But in 
After running on the claim that he’d make presidential records more available and after criticizing George W. Bush and Vice President Cheney for “secret meetings” in the White House because visitor logs were kept from public view, the Obama administration continued the Bush era practice of keeping White House visitor logs secret. Now a court has ordered that Obama release those logs.
Oh, the union thugs in Wisconsin will certainly try to act as if winning a mere two of the six recall elections of the Republican State Senators in the Cheese State was a big win… but it wasn’t. In fact, this recall nonsense shows that the union issues were a huge failure. After all, they even shied from using the union issues to push the recall efforts after they got going because they were looking like a losing issue.
America is fast coming to a crossroads from which there will be no return if we take the wrong path. Do we take the road that leads away from America and toward a Euro-esque way of governing? Do we cast aside our American character and bury our great nation in a grave of socialist-styled authority? Do we damn our progeny to a failed superstate that violate every tenet of our original ideals?
Yes, it’s time for another tale of millions of your tax dollars wasted by the NEA on “art” in America.
The Democrats Party of Illinois has released its plans to destroy the current districts and instead dish up a mangled, contorted mess of a
In
Our fourth president, James Madison, has been called the father of the Constitution for not inconsiderable reasons. Madison was highly educated, widely read, and well thought of. He was also a prescient man. Madison was so prescient that in February of 1788 he was able to describe the precise reasons why his beloved Republic would be faring so badly 222 years later in 2010.