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- With the possible exception of the transgender debate (which in this country has been almost totally subsumed into arguments about women’s sports) the anti-abortion cause is now the sole raison d’être of traditional social conservatism. Its prospects are bleak to say the least. As J. D. Vance ruefully acknowledged during his debate with Tim Walz, the results of ballot initiatives and referendums in states from Kansas to Ohio have shown opponents of abortion what they ought already to have known: their fellow citizens largely do not agree with them. This includes their fellow citizen Donald Trump. Long before he announced his opposition to a federal abortion ban, it was clear that the former president’s views on abortion were at best equivocal, if not abjectly cynical. Before Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, all this could be conveniently elided by both sides. Now he flirts with open support for the proposed pro-abortion amendment to the Florida constitution. His allies ensured that that unambiguously anti-abortion language that had appeared in every R.N.C. platform from 1984 until 2020 was removed. Now the pro-life movement faces a position it has not been in since the 1970s: it has no obvious political home. At least two generations of voters for whom abortion was the single most important issue—if not the only one—now face a choice between two candidates who are unwilling to pursue what they see as the great moral cause of our age. [The Lamp]
- The net interest margin for the quarter ended September 30, 2024 increased 11 basis points to 1.07%, as compared to 0.96% in the quarter ended June 30, 2024. This was the second consecutive quarter of continued expansion. This improvement was the result of an increase in the yield on earning assets combined with a decline in the cost of interest-bearing liabilities. The six basis points increase in the yield on earning assets was driven primarily by a higher yield on loans, as the Bank continued to originate loans at higher rates and reprice existing loans. The cost of interest-bearing liabilities fell three basis points, as the Bank began to reduce rates later in the third quarter and continued to take advantage of the inverted yield curve by adding lower rate FHLB advances and brokered deposits. The net interest margin in the final month of the third quarter of 2024 was 1.14% annualized. [Hingham Institution for Savings]
- According to the courts, the presence or absence of an invasion was a nonjusticiable “political question” with no judicially “manageable standards” for resolution. To opine on the subject would be to “disregard the constitutional duties that are the specific responsibility of other branches of government,” namely, Congress and the president. The courts of the 2020s appear no bolder than their 1990s predecessors. In a pending case regarding Texas’s authority to construct a 1,000-foot barrier in the Rio Grande, Texas has resurfaced the migration‑as‑invasion theory of the Constitution. Instead of rejecting Texas’s theory on the merits, the courts have thus far said that the political question doctrine “bars consideration” of the argument. If the courts will not substantively reject a state’s invasion argument — even when it is contested by the executive branch in litigation — it is difficult to envision the courts substantively rejecting the president’s invasion argument. [Brennan Center]
- I would be kinder to the tree if it were only a Cox’s Orange Pippin, the greatest of the English eating apples, which has now almost disappeared. Here I will complain about this tragedy, largely because silly people insist to me that it has not happened. Before I went to live abroad in 1990, the Cox’s Orange Pippin was still easily found each year all over England. It was the embodiment of autumn. It had a special glow, a little like a sunset towards the end of October, viewed through the bare branches of a copse of trees, across clean, harvested fields. Its skin was rough to the touch, not waxily shiny like the supermarket fruit. It had some bite in it, and its sweetness was offset by its sharpness. But now there are smooth, bland, unsubtle, pulpy spheres sold under this name. Fools buy and eat them, and tell me they are the same, but they are not. [The Lamp]
- Communism was only one branch of the spreading Left fungus, which notably also included anarchism, exemplified by Mikhail Bakunin, and the syndicalism of Pierre-Joseph Proudhon. The nineteenth-century Left was not a unity, certainly, even if their goals were the same at their core. For the past two hundred years, the twin trunks of the Left tree, what defines the Left, have been equality, the primary focus of the Communists, and emancipation from unchosen bonds, the secondary focus of the Communists, but the primary focus of other brands of Left thought. Bakunin, no fool, disliked the very obvious authoritarian streak in Marx’s thought, and saw clearly that Marx’s ideas meant not actual equality but rather a new ruling class, of intellectuals claiming to speak for the proletariat, which would be “the most oppressive, offensive, and contemptuous kind in the world.” Such splits among the Left are interesting to examine, because they may shed light on how to permanently defeat the Left—most obviously, through a strategy of divide and conquer, if enough will can be brought to bear. [Charles Haywood]
- Americans are used not only to an allegedly two-party system, but also to much more monolithic political activity. They are not accustomed to anything like the fractured atmosphere of late Weimar Germany, where many interests aggressively competed—not just political parties, but also powerful independent forces such as trade unions and the National Rural League (representing landowners), which were not aligned with a specific party. For decades in America, the Left has acted in unison, cooperatively crafting and rolling out a program which is then broadcast by Regime media to create the Narrative, then implemented and enforced by every powerful “independent” group in the country. In and through this process, every element of the Left coalition is rewarded and continually supports the collective line (though the recent wars in Israel have caused some cracks in this cozy setup, for the first time). The pretend opposition of the Republican Party cooperates with the Left’s program in exchange for social and material rewards. As a result, today the American system is close to a one-party state. We therefore find it hard to grasp the chaos that a system like Weimar embodied. [Charles Haywood]
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