Tag: Progressivism

Politics & Economics

The Edge of Politics

Posted on by John W Gillis / 0 Comment

Richard Fernandez over at Pajamas Media posted a disturbing commentary yesterday on a couple of articles he had recently read concerning the apocalyptic economic problems facing both California and Great Britain. The root of the problem, in both cases, is easy enough to identify: the entitlement mentality that promotes the belief that something can be had for nothing (or little). The title of his article (I Want My MTV) sums the matter up neatly (money for nothing, chicks for free…). But it’s easy to hammer on the unsustainability of free lunch programs ...

Politics & Economics

Idealism Unencumbered by Reality: Obamacare, pt.2 (Universality & Reality)

Posted on by John W Gillis / 0 Comment

In the on-going debate over how to improve the American healthcare and healthcare delivery systems, the professed intent of most of the players has been to increase “access” or “coverage,” by extending benefits to people who currently do not have such access. Ostensibly, this is because “access” and/or “coverage” is priced out of reach for these folks, on account of some combination of raw poverty, and unavailability of employer-provided/subsidized health insurance, which is the vehicle through which most non-elderly Americans access the healthcare syste...

Politics & Economics

Idealism Unencumbered by Reality: Obamacare, pt.1

Posted on by John W Gillis / 1 Comment

George Orwell, in his 1946 essay “Politics and the English Language” said: “Political language . . . is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind.” There is no more apt description of the political discourse that has defined the “healthcare” issue in this country over the past year. Now that we’ve seen what the Democratic leadership has proposed for legislation, would it be out of line to suggest that someone might owe Joe Wilson an apology? Of course, it was almost impossible to know ...

Politics & Economics

Slander as Political Fashion

Posted on by John W Gillis / 0 Comment

Boy, am I growing weary of the political environment. What George W Bush did for for international relations with his “with us or against us” rhetoric, Barack Obama is doing to the political climate within the country with his treatment of political dissent. Of course, nations actually do operate in an environment of mutual belligerence, which is forever flaring up as actual warfare in some corner or another, whereas nations are supposed to operate, internally, with a civility stemming from civitas, but why split hairs? Perhaps it’s unfair to blame Obama...

Church

Part of the Difference Between Mission and Agenda

Posted on by John W Gillis / 0 Comment

While Pope Benedict XVI is busy bracing the winds of ill-will to find a way to heal rifts of schism within the Roman Catholic Church, the Anglican Communion continues to rush breathlessly toward implosion. Harvard’s Episcopal Divinity School announced today the appointment of the Reverend Dr. Katherine Hancock Ragsdale as the new president and dean of the seminary, a woman with apparently no academic credentials whatsoever, but who luckily happens to be an ordained lesbian Episcopalian priestess. Not only that, but she is a stalwart supporter of the lega...