John Tamny remains as confused as a thinker and as obtuse as a writer as he has ever been

John Tamny has made some progress, however.

He now admits that some of his views are "fringe".

Which is amusing, since we've known that since Russell Kirk demonstrated long ago how the libertarians have always been "chirping sectarians".

A case in point of the continuing confusion:

Tamny expresses fawning admiration for George Will's latest collection of his columns, which opens asserting the priority of the study of history.

But Tamny later avers without the slightest awareness of self-contradiction that "The talented people, the unequal people, have a tendency to run from the present and past."

Nostalgia is "dangerous".

Do make up your mind for once, John.

The seemingly interminable review is here.

Is George Will dead? 5 more years of Trump will mean more utter gridlock, the very definition of his brand of conservatism.

But George Will is nowhere to be found, and is seldom discussed.

Is he dead?

He of all people should be ECSTATIC that Trump and the Democrats keep fighting, day after day, week after week, month after month, year after year. After all, he continuously praised gridlock to high heaven when Barack Obama was president.

But George never appears in my copious, daily reviewing of who's who, saying what's what.

OK, I'm too cheap to pay for WaPo.

I also have standards.

The truth is the more the two sides fight, the fewer the opportunities they have to come together, "get something done" for the American people, and pick our pockets.

We've had way too much pocket picking.

Surely George Will must be keeping quiet these days, repentantly pondering the Ineffable Truth of Trump?

If you plan to vote for Trump in November, dear KAGA, remember to make sure you split your vote to keep Republicans from controlling the US House.

It is under the circumstances Nancy Pelosi at the helm in the House who makes Trump great again, every frickin' day after all, along with Cocaine Mitch in the Senate.

Little new bad spending should pass if this arrangement is maintained indefinitely.

Honestly, don't make me laugh. Kevin McCarthy is not an alternative.

Chuckie Schumer?

A horror show on two legs.

We need more of the current gridlock so that the US Senate judge confirmation machine keeps on spitting out Trump appointments, the only thing Trump seems relatively good at.

So vote for Martha McSally in AZ, for example, who beat Bernie Sanders to the punch when she recently called CNN's Manu Raju a political hack.

Times that try men's souls bring out the best in heroes, and Martha has risen to the occasion. Yes, a brrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrt! from the gun of her A-10 Warthog would have been better, but hey, politics is war by different means.

The best part of Martha winning won't simply be warming a seat along with loser Bernie in the US Senate, but when every time he votes not to confirm a judge she does, and nothing much else gets done.

We must continue to keep George happy, and silent.

Jonah Goldberg, Charles Cooke and NATIONAL REVIEW have it all wrong: The Founders' modest goal was to keep CHRISTIANS from killing each other

The Conservative Divide:

The post-liberals think that Enlightenment-based liberalism is the disease afflicting society because it has no answer for how people should live. They have a point: It is not a religion or moral philosophy. But it wasn’t meant to be. Instead, as National Review’s Charles Cooke rightly put it, classical liberalism was a system designed to keep people of different religions from killing each other.

This is hubris, but not American hubris. America wasn't about people of different religions, broadly conceived. To say otherwise remains the Big Lie of contemporary liberalism.

The Founders sought to create a unique home for mostly English Christian diversity, which meant Protestantism in relation to Catholicism, where its citizens would "assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them". 

Classical liberalism in America was as much a creature of Protestant Christianity as it was of the Enlightenment. It wouldn't have existed without the unique history and interaction of the two phenomena. By importing non-Christian religion into the Founders' equation as liberals do today, however, private hostility among Christians has been all but replaced by public hostility toward Christians. Some parties actually want to kill Christians just as much as some Protestants and Catholics once upon a time wanted to kill each other. Some think that's actually their plan.

It's been a recipe for disaster, and we're living it more and more.

It was a difficult enough game of chess before non-Christianity got introduced. The history of Protestant-Catholic relations in America proves that. But now it's 3-D chess, and very few can play that game, or want to.

But the last person who is going to reset this game board, touted by Goldberg, is the atheist George Will, an open borders libertarian who wants any and every immigrant who can get here to come here. Nor, frankly, will the Catholic enthusiasts at First Things Magazine be of much help. They are not inspired by American sensibilities, by definition, and represent Protestantism's fiercest theological opponents and are at the same time Catholic illegal immigrants' most practical defenders. Their loyalty is plain. All the ills of America and the West they blame on both the Enlightenment and Protestantism.

Both of these parties, ostensibly opposed to each other, seem to agree on one thing: reducing the Protestants to minority status.  

The hatred for what we were and what we are, coming from our supposed allies on the right, should astonish more Republican voters.

Jews now have Israel, thanks to the West. They should move there. Muslims have Arabia, and much more. We don't need them here. Catholics have Rome.

America is the once and future home of Protestantism. Everyone deserves a home.

The superstitious George Packer of The New Yorker imagines that the 2009 stimulus which PASSED failed because Republicans put a hex on it

Proving that it isn't just George Will who suffers from the disease. As Paul Krugman pointed out at the time, the stimulus simply wasn't big enough.

It never is.

Here is Packer:

In February, 2009, with the economy losing seven hundred thousand jobs a month, Congress passed a stimulus bill—a nearly trillion-dollar package of tax cuts, aid to states, and infrastructure spending, considered essential by economists of every persuasion—with the support of just three Republican senators and not a single Republican member of the House. Rather than help save the economy that their party had done so much to wreck, Republicans, led by Senator Mitch McConnell, chose to oppose every Democratic measure, including Wall Street reform. In doing so, they would impede the recovery and let the other party take the fall. It was a brilliantly immoral strategy, and it pretty much worked.

Atheist George Will conflates economy and stock market, remains oddly superstitious about deficits

George Will forgets we've had trillion dollar deficits quite recently but without a stock market crash. 

The trillion dollar deficits recently were in:

2009 $1.41 trillion

2010 $1.29 trillion

2011 $1.29 trillion

2012 $1.08 trillion.

These deficits triggered nothing in particular except fevers among Republicans, but are associated with the misallocation of capital which produces L-shaped instead of V-shaped economic recoveries. Meanwhile that it's an L-shaped recovery is a concept which eludes George Will, eyes fixed as they are on his towering S&P 500 idol. But we do agree the economy isn't the best it's ever been as the president insists. The gap is now about $5 trillion and rising.

Here:

When He, or something, decides that today’s expansion, currently in its 111th month (approaching twice the 58-month average length of post-1945 expansions), has gone on long enough, the contraction probably will begin with the annual budget deficit exceeding $1 trillion.

George Will, ineffectual against Trump, engages in ugly attack on Mike Pence, grouping him in with the lynch mob of old

The hatred. The hatred.

Here in WaPo, thrusting:

Be that as it may, on Jan. 27, 1838, Lincoln, then 28, delivered his first great speech, to the Young Men’s Lyceum in Springfield. Less than three months earlier, Elijah Lovejoy, an abolitionist newspaper editor in Alton, Ill., 67 miles from Springfield, was murdered by a pro-slavery mob. Without mentioning Lovejoy — it would have been unnecessary — Lincoln lamented that throughout America, “so lately famed for love of law and order,” there was a “mobocratic spirit” among “the vicious portion of [the] population.” So, “let reverence for the laws . . . become the political religion of the nation.” Pence, one of evangelical Christians’ favorite pin-ups, genuflects at various altars, as the mobocratic spirit and the vicious portion require.

William J. Bennett parries smartly but wholly inadequately, here, avoiding this egregious, baseless affront.

George Will. Dead to me.

George Will reminds us that the Great War, like the Great Depression, wasn't so great

Because war is essentially uniformitarian, hence the uniforms.

Here in The Washington Post.

George Will excommunicates himself from the Republican Party

Yippee.

Story here.

George Will steals half of my idea

Here.

Here.

And who is George Will to call anyone a sexual lout anyway?

George Will leaves Republican Party over Trump: You know, the guy who predicted Mitt Romney to win in a landslide

Look up "tin ear for politics" and you will find George Will's picture: 321 Romney to 217 Obama, reported here November 4, 2012.

He's also a Cubs fan and an atheist, which somehow makes perfect sense: George Will believes in lost causes.

Obama's going to give Iran nukes and George Will is worried about giving them to Donald Trump

Here.

Reminds me of the lefties who once worried about Reagan's temperament in an arms race against the USSR.

"The bombing begins in five minutes."

George Will calls Donald Trump a one-man Todd Akin

And you thought Todd Akin was just one man.

Here:

"The debate gets hijacked [by Trump], the process gets hijacked [by Trump], and at the end of the day he is a one-man Todd Akin."

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Makes you wonder if George Will believes Donald Trump's business losses since announcing his candidacy are legitimate, if you know what I mean.

George Will appears content with judicial tyranny, the price we pay for stymieing the legislative and executive

Here:

With the composition of the Supreme Court likely to change substantially during the next president’s tenure, conservatives must decide: Is majority rule or liberty — these are not synonyms, and the former can menace the latter — America’s fundamental purpose?

George Will confuses self-defense with imitation

Here:

When Fred P. Hochberg, the [Export-Import] bank’s chairman and president, defends it, an old joke comes to mind: A pastor officiating at a man’s funeral asks if anyone in the congregation would like to say something about the deceased. After a long, awkward silence, a voice shouts: “His brother was even worse.” South Korea, Hochberg says, provides “four to five times more export support than we do.” Thus does sound policy get defined down: Others are even worse, supposedly forcing us to emulate them.

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Nice try, George. War is evil, but when we are attacked, that we fight back doesn't mean that we are evil, too.

In this case a paraprosdokian aptly applies: We dispense with so-called free-trade in order to defend free-market principles.

George Will falls in love with Bill Clinton's free-trade utopianism

George Will here:

'You who are reading this column probably have a chronic, indeed incurable trade deficit with your barber or hair dresser. You regularly buy what he or she sells, yet he or she never buys anything from you. But things somehow work out. As they do between nations, because as the late Robert Bartley, editor of the Wall Street Journal’s editorial page, once wrote, “International transactions are always in balance, by definition.”

'“Protectionism,” said Clinton during the NAFTA debate, “is just a fancy word for giving up; we want to compete and win.”'

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Do we really need to point out that if transactions are always in balance then there is no such thing as winning? Trade is an endless struggle between competing interests just as is politics. It is pure utopianism to dream otherwise. There is no finality in politics or trade, simply a pause before the next confrontation or negotiation, which usually ensues after a party to the transaction realizes it got shortchanged in some way, or will be.

Karl Marx was all for free-trade because it hastens the transition from capitalism to socialism by shifting political power to a growing, impoverished proletariat and the elites who run them. 

Its odd bedfellows today are Barack Obama and George Will, and too many members of the two political parties.

Justin Amash Isn't A Conservative, Just An Ambitious Climber

People keep calling Rep. Justin Amash, Republican (MI-3), a conservative, but he isn't. What he mostly is is ambitious, like most politicians, despite what his own campaign website continues to say.

Conservatism is a tool in the hands of this tool peddler's son, which he has used to advance his career in elections but has set aside when it comes to votes on say abortion, energy and the budget where he has made the good the enemy of the perfect. This is surprising from someone who claims to be a moderate.

By his own admission to George Will last April, when the prospect of throwing his hat in the ring to vie for the seat of retiring Democrat Senator Carl Levin was still tantalizingly real, Justin Amash demonstrated that his conservatism is merely part of his calculated "mix of positions", not the center of who he is:

“Tell me how a Democrat is going to attack me on the social issues.” Republicans, however, might take up that task. Nevertheless, he thinks that he could win a Republican primary and that “my mix of positions is best for winning the general.”

“Because I do not fit neatly in the Republican box, some establishment Republicans and pundits think I am extreme,” but “I am a moderate” because “the point of the Constitution is to moderate the government.”

Republicans take note.

Justin Amash doesn't moderate his positions for the sake of Republican votes, but for the sake of Democrat ones. But God help you if your positions as a Republican don't toe his libertarian line, then he won't budge an inch.

A clearer picture of the practical meaning of libertarianism you will hardly find: They are Democrats in disguise.

Self-Described Moderate Rep. Justin Amash To Receive Primary Challenge From Conservative

Grand Rapids businessman Brian Ellis is set to challenge Rep. Justin Amash in the Republican primary as a conservative because of Amash's idiosyncratically liberal voting record, as reported here:

Kevin Heine, chief strategist for iCaucus Michigan, said he's interested in hearing more of Ellis' platform. iCaucus is a Wyoming-based nonprofit that is "strategically allied" with the Tea Party, Heine said. "We saw this primary challenge coming because Congressman Amash's voting record is conspicuously sloppy on both military and veteran issues, as well as social issues," he said. "Neither of those play well in the 3rd District."

In April Rep. Amash famously described himself as a moderate in an interview with George Will when Amash was still flirting with the idea of running for Carl Levin's Senate seat:

He adds, “Because I do not fit neatly in the Republican box, some establishment Republicans and pundits think I am extreme,” but “I am a moderate” because “the point of the Constitution is to moderate the government.”

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This may well be a battle of the businessmen, DeVos and company vs. Chamber of Commerce types, not of conservatism vs. libertarianism per se. Both are what we used to call "shop and till" conservatives, hands familiar with the feel of coins but which fumble with the pages of Plato, the Bible and Shakespeare. Ellis is an accounting major and finance MBA who at least has a history in the real world of making a go of it and raising a family. Amash is an economics major and lawyer who went straight into politics and controversy, heir to a fortune made by his father, not by himself. As a representative he has taken as many courageous stands as he has controversial ones, but remains a mixed bag of predictable aloofness which is always at risk in elections where emotion, not reason, often carries the day. In a region where people think of old trees as members of their family, the advantage goes to the candidate who can tap into that sap. Ellis' entry from the right is a good opener.  

Lois Lerner: Sen. Dick Durbin's Government Attack Dog Since 1996

George Will, here:

In the fall of 1996, at the [IL Senate] campaign’s climax, Democrats filed with the Federal Election Commission charges against [Al] Salvi’s campaign alleging campaign finance violations. These charges dominated the campaign’s closing days. Salvi spoke by telephone with the head of the FEC’s Enforcement Division, who he remembers saying: “Promise me you will never run for office again, and we’ll drop this case.” He was speaking to Lois Lerner.

After losing to Durbin, Salvi spent four years and $100,000 fighting the FEC, on whose behalf FBI agents visited his elderly mother demanding to know, concerning her $2,000 contribution to her son’s campaign, where she got “that kind of money.” When the second of two federal courts held that the charges against Salvi were spurious, the lawyer arguing for the FEC was Lois Lerner.

More recently, she has been head of the IRS Exempt Organizations Division, which has used its powers of delay, harassment and extortion to suppress political participation. For example, it has told an Iowa right-to-life group that it would get tax-exempt status if it would promise not to picket Planned Parenthood clinics.

George Will's Euphemism For The Left's And Obama's Tyranny

"[P]rogressivism’s agenda — unchecked executive power."

Read all about it, here.

What Do The FBI And The IRS Have In Common In March 2010?

How about a conspiracy against the president's political opponents?

Late March 2010 was when the FBI swatted the Hutaree militia for supposedly subversive activities, and now it turns out also when the IRS explicitly began targeting conservative groups for investigation. It was also the month ObamaCare was very controversially passed and some vandalism erupted in various places around the country.

It's clear the trigger was pulled way too early on the Hutaree militia. The government's case was still too weak at the time, and it subsequently fell apart in court, quite ignominiously for the FBI. The militia members were completely vindicated in court of conspiracy to overthrow the government. Only the charge of illegal possession of a fully automatic weapon stuck. Not even the bomb charges could be proven. The rationale for pulling the trigger early must have been as a shot across the bow of the right wing, so to speak, in the light of the vandalism across the country after ObamaCare passed. The coincidence of the raid on the Hutaree at the end of that week in March 2010 should not be discounted, especially now that it turns out that the IRS also began targeting conservatives in that same month in 2010, according to ABC News, here:

The targeting of conservatives by the IRS started earlier and was more extensive than the IRS acknowledged last week, according to a draft IRS inspector general report obtained by ABC News.

As we reported on “Good Morning America” this morning, the IRS began targeting “Tea Party or similar organizations” in March 2010. That was when the Cincinnati-based IRS unit responsible for overseeing the applications for tax exempt status starting using the phrases “Tea Party,” “patriots” and “9/12″ to search for applications warranting greater scrutiny.

The only other person I know to have called the government's response in the Hutaree affair a calculated response to ObamaCare violence at the time, other than yours truly, is Monica Crowley. But now it appears there is more to it than that, making it look more and more like Obama has been using other organs of government against the people who oppose him, with deliberation and in a coordinated manner.

And George Will, of all people, might as well be calling for Obama's impeachment.

Maybe it's time to subpoena the mayor of Chicago.