Al Gore won the presidency in 2000 by almost half a million votes. Hillary Clinton won in 2016 by almost three million. Joe Biden would have won the presidency in 2020 sans COVID-19 by, probably, about six million votes. Yet, in fact, Gore lost to Bush, Hillary lost to Trump, and sans COVID Joe very…
Search Results for: ECONOMIC GROWTH
Twilight of Democracy: Anne Applebaum’s front-row seat to disaster
I have already written with great approval of Anne Applebaum’s recent article for the Atlantic, History Will Judge the Complicit, while snickering at Ramesh Ponnuru’s anguished protest—for surely the dude protested too much—that he was totally not—repeat not—“complicit”. He’s just friends with people who, it so happens, are complicit”.1 Which is like a totally different…
The Republicans: WTF Happened to this Party?
We’re in such a mess these days, one can either bemoan that mess, or wonder how we got here. I feel a little helpless to be just bemoaning, and, as the situation changes from day to day, one is compelled to constantly update one’s bemoans, which in retrospect can begin to sound both repetitive and…
Does the libertarian movement need a kick in the pants? Or is it just Nick Gillespie?
Sorry, Nick, but if you give Literature R Us an opening for a cheap shot, we’re going to take it. Nick incautiously let his guard down last month with a post in Reason, “The Libertarian Movement Needs a Kick in the Pants”, in itself a riposte, as it were, to Tyler Cowen’s thought-, if not…
Daniel Drezner and the Darkening Detritus of Doom
A few months ago, WashPost columnist Daniel Drezner blossomed forth with a series of articles on the future lying before us whose tone was so gloomy that I may start wishing I won’t live long enough to see it. His biggest “big picture” picture appeared in Reason last April, titled “Will Today’s Global Trade Wars…
Sweeping up a few Republican crumbs
Okay, that’s a bit harsh, even though, let’s face it, a lot of Republicans are crumbs. A week or two ago, I ran a piece, “John McCain, Paul Ryan, and the Myth of the Virtuous Republican”, in the course of which I quoted fairly extensively from two often interesting “I’m outta here” books by (more…
Sebastian Mallaby, shamelessly—nay, nakedly—covering Alan’s ass
(Author’s note: What started as a brief headslap directed at Sebastian Mallaby turned into a 3,000+ word semi-diatribe on the subject of the multiple sins of Sebastian, Alan Greenspan, and a few other big-wigs. Read at your own risk.) Okay, not my ass, the other Alan’s ass—Alan Greenspan, former chairman of the Federal Reserve. The…
David Cannadine’s Victorious Century: A bit too victorious, if you ask me
A couple of months back I bounced a post, pithily entitled Forward!, off Kyle Sammin’s review in the National Review of David Cannadine’s new book, Victorious Century, The United Kingdom 1809-1906. I said at the time “I have read the introduction, and I’m definitely looking forward to the rest. Kyle’s review only encourages my appetite.”…
Forward!
Okay, it’s National Review week at Literature R Us. I’m bouncing this post off a nice review by NR’s Kyle Sammin of Brit historian David Cannadine’s new book, Victorious Century, The United Kingdom 1809 – 1906. I’ve got Victorious Century already loaded on my ebook, but my backlog is pretty massive, so I won’t be…
Paging Dr. Yeats! Paging Dr. Yeats!
Some time ago, I got so tired of reading about things “slouching towards Bethlehem”, or at least slouching somewheres, that I took upon myself to announce that no one, with the exception of Huckleberry Finn, would be allowed to use that verb, at once so affectedly literary and so uncouth that the poor word was…