Ted Bromund has this interesting follow up to the Noah Pollak piece I linked to Wednesday: The problem today is not that the peace process has failed or that this reveals the failure of the liberal vision. All that is true enough. The problem is that the liberal vision itself has changed. Not all liberals […]
Author Archive | David Bernstein
Peter Beinart–Trite
Peter Beinart has written a scathing indictment of organized American Jewry’s “conservative” views on Israel. He claims that “right-wing” Israeli policies, combined with American Jewish groups’ unflinching support for Israel, are alienating young American Jews, and reducing their attachment to Israel. Beinart’s essay has received a remarkable amount of attention, especially considering that its underlying […]
How to Turn Good News into Bad News
The percentage of blacks marrying whites has risen by 3 times since 1980. Asians are just as likely to marry whites as they were in 1980 (40%), even though there is a much larger Asian population to choose from, and Hispanics are significantly more likely to marry whites than in 1980 (38% compared to 30%), […]
Some Strange Consequences of Public Accommodations Laws
All the discussion of Title II of the 1964 Civil Rights Act has obscured the fact that public accommodations laws, especially at the state and local level, have expanded way, way, beyond their original purpose of ensuring that previously excluded minorities are served in restaurants, hotels, and the like. This has happened more via aggressive […]
“Activist Government” and the Rights of Minorities
I want to analyze two positions that I’ve seen liberals take on the role of government in promoting civil rights and antidiscrimination norms. One position is as follows: We liberals believe in government activism to solve important social problems, and the 1964 Civil Rights Act was an important example of where this philosophy had extremely […]
So a Libertarian and a Liberal Walk into a Bar
Let’s say a liberal and a libertarian are having drinks at a bar, and discussing public policy. The liberal asks the libertarian what he thinks of anti-discrimination laws that apply to private parties. The libertarian says that he wants to put the issue of race to one side, because of its special history in the […]
The “Racist” Charge
One thing that’s been especially appalling about the Rand Paul controversy is how quick many liberal commentators (including people who frequent the comments section on this blog), have been to accuse not just Paul of racism, but also anyone who takes the libertarian position on antidiscrimination laws, i.e.., that the government itself may not discriminate, […]
Bruce Bartlett’s Attack on Libertarianism
Bruce Bartlett, an economist whose work I’ve enjoyed reading over the years, and author of a book on the history of the Democratic Party and race, uses the occasion of Rand Paul’s controversial remarks about the Civil Rights Act of 1964 to launch a weirdly ahistorical attack on libertarianism: As we know from history, the […]
Taking the Yglesias Challenge on Human Rights Watch
Matthew Yglesias writes of Benjamin Birnbaum’s piece on HRW in The New Republic: What I had in mind is that I don’t see what there is to rebut in the piece. As we’ve known for a while, some folks don’t like it that Human Rights Watch criticizes Israel. Some of those people aired their grievances […]
Change I Can Believe In
Jack Conway, Kentucky’s attorney general and one of the two leading candidates for the Senate seat on the Democratic side [said about Rand Paul, who has won the Republican nomination for Kentucky Senator]: “He wants to do away with the Department of Agriculture. He wants to do away with the Department of Education.” Lt. Gov […]
Obama Accused of Attempted Murder?
Rev. Jeremiah Wright: “When Obama threw me under the bus, he threw me under the bus literally!” In fairness to Rev. Wright, lots of people use “literally” for emphasis, instead of to mean, well, “literally.” But it’s one of my pet peeves.
Now that the Government has Proved as Incompetent
in first not preventing and then managing a man-made disaster in the Gulf of Mexico as it proved in managing the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, can we finally put to rest the inane (not to mention counter-factual) Krugman argument that the Bush Administration’s incompetence in handling Katrina was a result of the government being “run […]
Do Law Schools Seek “Exciting” and “Diverse” Students?
Berkeley Law School Dean Christopher Edley Jr. writes: In fact, law schools strive for an elitism that is quite democratic in comparison with many other fields. As at Yale and Harvard, we at Berkeley seek to build a campus community that is as exciting and diverse as our nation. That means a New Jersey physics […]
Why Jews and Catholics on the Supreme Court?
I’ll join Orin in some speculation. For the dominance of Catholics appointed by Republicans, I think Alkali, commenting on Orin’s thread, identifies part of the reason: A Republican president can’t win by nominating a Protestant: if the nominee is a conservative evangelical, that could be controversial with moderate voters; if the nominee is not a […]
Kagan and the Cult of Personality
Mary Dudziak is right regarding Elena Kagan: “let’s focus on her ideas and accomplishments, and not on the unsurprising idea of a single Supreme Court nominee.” The problem, though, is the cult of personality that has developed around Supreme Court Justices over the past few decades, aided to a substantial degree by how presidential administrations […]