Robert Novak - Defending The American Dream Summit

This evening Robert Novak spoke during our dinner at the Defending the American Dream Summit. Yes, I know what some of you are thinking who routinely read my blog. It has not been long since I said of Novak that as he has aged (he is 76) he has gradually stopped doing research and reporting and instead has become a gossip columnist. (And, yes I made a similar claim about the Wall Street Journal’s John Fund who will be speaking to us tomorrow.) But, let me tell you, Novak’s speech this evening and the Q&A session afterwards were both insightful and interesting.

Novak’s speech was built around two points; (1) that Barack Obama is not as strong a candidate as some have given him credit, and (2) that this election matters.

Novak cited numerous data points which have historically been negative indicators that an incumbent party can retain the White House; an unpopular President, engagement in war, a third term for the same party, etc. The Republican party is not just fighting against one or a few of these negative circumstances but a whole plethora of them, yet Read more

Your BC Isn’t My BC

The following is a story I like to tell from time to time to illustrate the problem of communicating when the sender and receiver are not working from the same worldview or when the same vocabulary is used but a different lexicon.

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There was a rather old fashioned lady, always quite delicate in her use of language. She and her husband were planning a weeks vacation to Florida, so she wrote to a particular campground asking for a reservation.

She wanted to make sure the campground was fully equipped, but didn’t quite know how to ask about the toilet facilities. She just couldn’t bring herself to write the word “toilet” in her letter. After much deliberation, she finally came up with the old fashioned term “Bathroom Commode”, but when she wrote that down, Read more

Search For A Great President

Who were the truly great Presidents in the history of the United States? And how does one measure true greatness when it come to this position. After all, there have only been 43 men who have held this unique position, and they are spread across more than 200 years so it is in many ways very difficult to compare them.

In 1996 Arthur Schlesinger Jr. did poll ranking of the presidents using thirty-two experts (most academics). They did not include the two presidents who died shortly after taking office (Games Garfield and William Henry Harrison). The following are the results, as reported by John Maxwell Hamilton in Casanova Was A Book Lover.

GREAT PRESIDENTS– George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, Franklin Roosevelt

NEAR GREAT PRESIDENTS

– Thomas Jefferson, Andrew Jackson, James Polk, Theodore Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson, and Harry Truman

UPPER AVERAGE PRESIDENTS

– John Adams, Monroe, Grover Cleveland, William McKinley, Dwight Eisenhower, John F. Kennedy, and Lyndon B. Johnson

LOWER AVERAGE PRESIDENTS

– James Madison, John Quincy Adams, Martin Van Buren, Rutherford B. Hayes, Chester A. Arthur, Benjamin Harrison, William H. Taft, Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush, William Jefferson Clinton

BELOW AVERAGE PRESIDENTS

– John Tyler, Zachary Taylor, Millard Fillmore, Calvin Coolidge

FAILURES

– Franklin Pierce, James Buchanan, Andrew Johnson, Ulysses S. Grant, Warren G. Harding, Herbert Hoover, and Richard Nixon

I am curious, what do you think makes a successful President of the United States? Most readers of this blog would move Ronald Reagan much higher on the list and William Jefferson Clinton lower on the list. What other changes would you make to the evaluations above?

Was Darwin Anti-Evolutionary?

Charles Darwin evidently didn’t like the evolution of the book industry. It is said that when he acquired a book that he would rip the covers off and put the loose pages in a box, because the pages were easier to turn and access that way. Hmmm… he must have longed for the good ol’ days when writing was committed to scrolls.

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Conservative versus Libertarian

While the Republican primaries were in full swing, I heard talk radio hosts say some of the most inane things I have ever heard. Not that radio talk show hosts don’t say some pretty stupid things on a continuing basis, but these were things so outrageously idiotic that I would not expect them even from such people as Rush Limbaugh, Hugh Hewitt, Sean Hannity, Laura Ingraham, and Mark Levine (all of whom must be taken with about 32 grains of salt).

Among the many misstatements of fact and inconsistencies in reason were Read more

McCain’s VP

Who should John McCain select to be his running mate. The selection of a Vice President running mate has historically been a small factor in the success or failure of elections. However, I believe that the dynamics are different in this particular election such that the VP candidate will be absolutely crucial for both Republicans and Democrats.

In the video below Laura Ingraham discusses with Greta Van Susteren her preferences for who John McCain should ask to join him.

Free Expression & Censorship On College Campuses

I am confused. Should not the ideology behind liberalism promote free expression? Yet, it would seem that on most college campuses free expression of ideas is only free for those who agree with the dominant liberal culture. Whether in the area of poli-sci, the hard sciences, or journalism it is simply not acceptable to openly express conservative ideas.

In Letters To A Young Conservative, Dinesh D’Souza shares what happened when he was invited to a university to speak. He arrived to find protesters with bullhorns and placards surrounding the auditorium making it impossible to enter without the assistance of security. The protesters then proceeded to follow him into the auditorium where they did everything possible to keep him from sharing his thoughts with those assembled.

Undoubtedly the high point of the evening occurred near the end of my talk when the large, disheveled woman came rolling up the aisle shouting, “We don’t need a debate! Stop this man from speaking! My usual strategy in such circumstances is to try to calm the protester down and engage in a discussion, but this time there was no point. Finally, the woman was dragged from the room by the campus police. On her way out she yelled, “I am being censored! I am being censored!

It is amazing to me that so many of those who invoke the first amendment to justify their own right to freedom of expression, are often the same people who will do everything possible to keep others from expressing ideas contrary to their own. Maybe what we need most on our college campuses are courses in critical thinking.

Soren Kierkegaard: Literary Influences

I contributed the following article to the Biographical Dictionary of Literary Influences: The Nineteenth Century, 1800-1914. edited by John Powell (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2001).

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KIERKEGAARD, SOREN AABYE (1813-1855). Soren Kierkegaard, Danish writer, was born in Copenhagen in 1813 and educated at the University of Copenhagen (1830-1840) and at Berlin (1841-1842).

Kierkegaard has been subject to much psychological speculation–and rightfully so since Read more

Are Professors Being Expelled

“Professors aren’t being fired because they support intelligent design, they are being fired for lots of other reasons and then they have to justify their firing to other people and say it was because they advocated ID, rather than admit they were in some other way inadequate.”

That is what I was recently told by a cheeky fellow who was trying to cast an aura of confidence and disdain.

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Girls Shouldn’t Just Wanna Have Fun

Girls shouldn’t just wanna have fun, and neither should anyone else. Consider this story told by J.P. Moreland in The Lost Virtue Of Happiness which he co-authored with Klaus Issler;

When my daughter’s eight-grade team was being creamed in a soccer game, the coach said at halftime, “Girls, don’t worry about the score. The reason we play soccer is to have fun; so let’s try to have a blast during the second half and go home happy whatever the final result.” That coach reminds me of Cyndi Lauper’s song “Girls Just Wanna Have Fun.” He was mindlessly parroting the cultural mantra that pleasurable satisfaction is the goal of life. The reasons my wife and I wanted our daughter to play soccer where to learn how to win and to lose, to cooperate with others, to sacrifice for a long-term goal, which requires delaying instant gratification, and — well, you get the picture. What was really sad was not simply the coach’s speech, but the fact than none of the parents so much as batted an eye at his counsel.

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