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We lived in D.C. for 3+ years back in the 60s -- when it was, compared to now, little more than a country village. We frequently visited the National Archives to spent time with and marvel at the Declaration and Constitution. Each time we climbed the steps, I would glance up at the motto over the portico: "WHAT IS PAST IS PROLOGUE." Just a fancy way of uttering the universal truth from Scriptures that "There is nothing new under the sun." I offer THESE words from Mr. Franklin (who admitted to having borrowed them from the Greek Admiral Themistocles) advising...

Many conservatives may not understand the logic of President Obama's preference for the "public option" that leads to "single payer" government health care for all. So let me tell you about some Democratic neighbors of mine. They are a fiftyish childless couple. He works as a contract technical writer. She's overweight, doesn't work, and already rides an electric buggy down the aisles when shopping at the supermarket. Bad joints, you see. When you talk to her, you quickly discover that she experiences the world as a victim.

In an earlier post, we wrote a bit about the differences between modern politics and the approach taken by our pre-agricultural ancestors. When thinking about these issues (modern vs. pre-ag), it's important to understand that while our experience of the modern is (obviously) more immediate, the experience of those who lived in that long dawn before agriculture was far more lasting, and thus is more likely to find reflection in our deepest patterns of thought and feeling. If we agree that our species, modern Homo sapiens came into being around 200,000 years ago, and the earliest evidence of agriculture is...

MAUREEN DOWD'S New York Times columns used to be fun. Whether you agreed with her or not, they were witty and incisive. Sometimes they were even insightful. But recently, many readers are asking the same question as a letter writer to the Denver Post: "What has happened to Maureen Dowd lately? . . . she is no longer informative, clever or entertaining, just childish and vindictive." The truth is, Maureen Dowd hasn't changed; the times have. She's always been a formulaic writer, but the formula has never been less appropriate (and therefore more conspicuous) than it has since September 11,...

As a snob, I have little use for the typical NASCAR-watching, foam-hat-wearing, tract-house-dwelling American lump. I find such people to be boorish, clownish, and largely incapable of rational thought. And the upper crust of the Republican Party feels the same way that I do. They detest the average American. However, at least I’m not going around pretending to be a friend of the common man. I’m open about my better-than-thou attitude, which is one of the many reasons you will never see me running for any political office. The same can’t be said for the typical GOP “representative”. He or...

Health-care reform is said to be in trouble partly because of those raucous August town-hall meetings in which Democratic members of Congress were besieged by shouters opposed to change. But what if our media-created impression of the meetings is wrong? What if the highly publicized screamers represented only a fraction of public opinion? What if most of the town halls were populated by citizens who respectfully but firmly expressed a mixture of support, concern and doubt? There is an overwhelming case that the electronic media went out of their way to cover the noise and ignored the calmer (and from...

When the political world arrives at the point where even the Japanese rise up to toss a party from office after almost 54 years in power, it's time to see something's happening here, Mr. Jones. The ever-entertaining Karl Marx described a society's least politically engaged people as the lumpen proletariat. Well, it's beginning to look as if the globe's lumpen proletariat has decided they've had about enough of the lumpen bureaucratariat. It could be a revolution under way, though not the one predicted by the boys at the barricades. To Mr. Marx, the lumpen proletariat (often slurred into a single...

If the Kennedy Era in American politics is over, instead of just taking a breather (Joseph P. Kennedy II has been mentioned as a possible candidate for his Uncle Ted's Senate seat), what did it mean? Character failings are not irrelevant to how well one serves the public; it was because of Chappaquiddick that Ted Kennedy was defeated by Robert Byrd as Democratic party whip in the Senate in 1971. But defenders are so quick to dismiss these issues, so let's stick to policy instead, and see if the liberal argument that Kennedy's political work made up for his personal...

...In the past week town meetings have been just like primary schools, but without teachers or principals, and crowded not with children but with adults behaving worse than children, shouting, shoving and almost coming to blows. The American town hall gathering, with its venerable history dating from New England self-governance in the 17th century, has always inspired some mix of revulsion and respect. Just like democracy everywhere. But as Congress has abandoned Washington for the month with unfinished business, namely health-care legislation, and with the public riled by genuine fears and ginned-up misinformation, the town hall meeting has never looked...

If Americans had any doubt how the liberal elite (Democrats in Congress, the press, the entertainment industry) felt about them before this month’s congressional recess, surely they must understand it now. Hard-working taxpaying Americans have been relatively complacent until recently, understandably occupied by their jobs, their finances, their families, and their personal responsibilities. Americans have had a largely unspoken but abiding faith in the enduring principles of American government, the fidelity of their elected representatives to those principles, and the vigilance of the press in defending both.Oops. The past few months have been eye-openers, haven’t they?As awareness of Obama’s true...

WASHINGTON — Pressing colleagues to replenish the "cash-for-clunkers" program, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid warned lawmakers they might miss their August vacation takeoff plans Friday if they don't quickly pass the $2 billion measure. "If we don't work something out on the cash for clunkers," Reid said from the Senate floor Wednesday morning, he would file motions to close debate. Under Senate procedure, that could mean votes on both Friday and Saturday, when lawmakers would otherwise be scattering for their coveted summer break. "We all acknowledge there's a significant majority that want to move forward with this legislation," said Reid,...

So Obama’s poll numbers are in freefall, support for his health care plan in the toilet, and opposition to his policies in general are rising. How can this be? Our dear leader’s policies are so important, so critical for reinventing America? Andrea Mitchell of State-Run Media outlet MSDNC, has figured it out! We, the lowly proletariat, oppose the policy because we don’t know what’s best for us. The dripping condescension of Mitchell in this video for Americans who happen to disagree with her boss on his health care policy is evident in this video, and illustrates what the elites really...

The poor, benighted little people. They just don't understand what a wonderful hopey-changey world Pres. Obama is offering them . . . Andrea Mitchell has suggested that the problem Pres. Obama is facing in selling his health care plan to Americans who already have coverage is that people "may not know what's good for them." [H/t reader Restless 1] Mitchell made her condescending comment on today's Morning Joe. View video here.

We received a comment the other day from a reader who thought the only mistake U.S. President Barack Obama made during his press conference last week -- when he was asked about the arrest of his friend, Harvard Professor Henry Louis Gates, Jr. (whom the President referred to as “my friend, Skip Gates”) – was a lack of “calibration” in stating what he really thought. …Setting aside the fact of the statements of both the lone Hispanic police officer on the scene and also the statements of an African-American police sergeant on the scene, both of whom back Sergeant Crowley’s...

Did Harvard’s Professor Gates sink Obama? On July 21, Dick Morris commented in The Hill that superficially, the United States appears to have a presidential system, but in fact it more and more resembles a parliamentary form of government. When a president loses the approval of the majority of the voters and polls reflect that his ratings have fallen substantially below 50 percent, he loses his power. Then on Saturday, the Rasmussen Reports Daily Tracking Poll reported that for the first time 49 percent of voters say they only somewhat approve of the president's performance. This was the second straight...

(July 25) -- A farm compound where the Clintons once dined will serve as the Obamas' summer vacation home in Martha's Vineyard late next month, according to a local newspaper. The Vineyard Gazette reported Friday that the first family has leased the Blue Heron Farm, a 28.5-acre spread worth $20 million that offers a pool, golf tee and basketball court, along with a Victorian farm house. A reconstructed Pennsylvania barn and a Vermont shed there date to the 1800s.

...On Wednesday, legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin implied that the Supreme Court’s 2008 decision to uphold the Second Amendment was revolutionary: “When I was in law school...the idea that you had a Second Amendment right to a gun was considered preposterous....But the Supreme Court [in Heller]...said that...individuals have a personal right to bear arms.”...Anchor Wolf Blitzer raised the Second Amendment issue with Toobin, a graduate of Harvard Law School, and the others on their panel analyzing the hearings.... [and] asked...what were the nominee’s “positions, specifically on the federal obligation to support the Second Amendment, as opposed to local communities..?” The CNN...analyst...

...I always enjoy it when the mask slips and the warm-mongers explicitly demand that we adopt a massive poverty expansion program to save the planet. "I don't think a lot of electricity is a good thing," said Gar Smith of San Francisco's Earth Island Institute..."I have seen villages in Africa that had vibrant culture and great communities that were disrupted and destroyed by the introduction of electricity." He regretted that African peasants "who used to spend their days and evenings in the streets playing music on their own instruments and sewing clothing on foot-pedal-powered sewing machines" are slumped in front...

What do Janet Napolitano, Kathleen Sebelius and Jon Huntsman have in common? All were governors who resigned this year to pursue other opportunities, and did so without a peep of criticism from journalists or their fellow pols for "quitting" on the peoples of Arizona, Kansas and Utah, respectively. I write not to belabor the news media's double standards with regard to Democrats and Republicans, or between other politicians and Sarah Palin. I want to highlight an observation made by Princeton Professor Angelo Codevilla: "The distinctions between Republicans and Democrats, liberals and conservatives, are being overshadowed by that between what we...

I used to be a big fan of Peggy Noonan. I thought that her columns were thoughtful, eloquant, and had a way with the English language. Her seeming understanding of the world and of Conservatism was always enjoyable, and I looked forward to her weekly columns. All of that started to change after the 2004 election. While still writing good columns, she seemed off her game. As the 2008 campaign heated up last fall, she started to show tendencies of elitism, denigrating Sarah Palin and swooning over Barack Obama. Now, in her latest column, she viciously attacks Sarah Palin, calling...

When Mark Twain set out to tell “the truth, mainly” about aristocrats, he did it this way: “How much do a king git?” “Get?” I says; “why, they get a thousand dollars a month if they want it; they can have just as much as they want; everything belongs to them.” “Ain’that gay? En what dey got to do, Huck?” “They don’t do nothing!...They just set around.” Now, if Twain had allowed Huck and Jim to slip in the fact that aristocrats also “don’t know nothing” (thus explaining the tragedies they cause when they get off their lazy duffs to...

In today's Washington Post, Bill Kristol asks tauntingly "[T]he mainstream media and the Republican establishment. … tend not only to dislike and disdain Palin, they also want to bury her chances now as a presidential possibility. What are they afraid of?" That's easy to answer: They -- we! -- are afraid that Palin's distinctive combination of sex appeal, self-pity, and cultural resentment has a following in today's GOP. We are afraid that it is not utterly inconceivable that she could win the Republican presidential nomination in 2012, and we are afraid that if she did so she would lead the...

Elites often propose health care solutions that limit options for the general public, secure in the knowledge that if they or their loves ones get sick, they will be able to afford the best care available, even if it's not provided by insurance. Devinsky asked the president pointedly if he would be willing to promise that he wouldn't seek such extraordinary help for his wife or daughters if they became sick and the public plan he's proposing limited the tests or treatment they can get. The president refused to make such a pledge, though he allowed that if "it's my...

Jon Meacham admits it is hard to explain, even to his own people, why chopping Newsweek's circulation in half is a good thing. 'It's hugely counterintuitive,' the magazine's editor says. 'The staff doesn't understand it.' That step -- along with a redesigned, revamped publication that hits newsstands today -- may well determine whether the 76-year-old newsmagazine survives. Newsweek will concentrate on two things -- reporting and argument -- while kissing off any recap of the week's developments. Time has been gravitating in that direction as well. But Newsweek, owned by The Washington Post Co., is accelerating the process because it...

Praise G_d!!! Today we have one of the first of many signs to come that the liberal media will soon be dead. CNN, except for their i-report section had no mention of yesterday's tea parties. Amazingly on their main web page they failed to even mention the word tea. This is not speculation!! It is my informed opinion that the American media is irreversibly polarizing ala European Latin American media. The reason this is so important is, soon the last vestiges of a monolithic media in the US will be forever gone. It is wonderful news. I can't explain everything...

The urgency I’ve felt about the possible closure of the Boston Globe was put into stark contrast yesterday morning. As I walked home after accompanying my daughter to her elementary school, I was joined by another parent who had just completed the same duty. As we strolled up the street, I mentioned the story that I’ve been obsessing over the last few days. Cadbury, put the Boston Globe next to the champagne and cavier. And send a check to some orphans. Cadbury put the Boston Globe next to the champagne. And send a check to some orphans. It was news...

New viral video star and Harvard Grad student Joel Pollak joins EC to talk about how the video of Joel asking Frank a simple, direct question and Barney Frank's hysterical and intimidating response has become an instant symbol of the government's heavy-handed elitism, and what light his prior experience writing speeches for the opposition party in South Africa sheds on this conflict. Get the LAST WORD on the day's news and events direct from EC every night. The hottest grass-roots radio show in America delivers the last word on politics and news straight from the streets of New York City...

This is the Democratic Party's moment, its power now greater than any time since the mid-1960s. But do not expect smooth sailing. The party is a fractious group divided by competing interests, factions and constituencies that could explode into a civil war, especially when it comes to energy and the environment. Broadly speaking, there is a long-standing conflict inside the Democratic Party between gentry liberals and populists. This division is not the same as in the 1960s, when the major conflicts revolved around culture and race as well as on foreign policy. Today the emerging fault-lines follow mostly regional, geographical...

The problem I have with Barack is not his intelligence. It's not even his naiveness about the way the business world works versus the Harvard Law School world or Illinois.. Those differences are just about perspective and someone can give him that over time if he doesn't figure it out. The real problem I have with Barack is his arrogance and a sort of smugness that comes across as an intellectuall elitism about almost every issue from global warming to polar bear stem cell research. The mannerism that irritates me the most I that when I hear him speak I...

The Alexandra Pelosi (daughter of Nancy) documentary, "Right America: Feeling Wronged," premeried on HBO last night. One word perfectly describes it: "tedious." Over and over and over again, Pelosi tries to hammer home the point that conservatives are angry because they just don't know what is best for them. And what is best is Obama...at least in Pelosi's opinion. Overall, her documentary offers very little insight except for the fact that Pelosi thinks socialism is misunderstood by the "unenlightened" yahoos. However, a Salon.Com interview with her about the documentary reveals quite a lot of insight into the incredible elitism of...

02.10.09MARINE VETERAN KICKED OUT OF SCHOOL FOR POSSESSING FIREARMS WOU STUDENT TRIED, CONVICTED AND SENTENCED.The WOU student who was falsely arrested and charged with possession of a firearm in a public building, had all his criminal charges dropped by the Polk County DA tonight.The DA admitted no wrongdoing on his part, or on the part of the police who arrested Jeff Maxwell for a "crime" that does not exist.In a statement released to OFF's attorney, the DA said "I believe the Monmouth Police Department issued the citation in good faith and that there was an arguable violation. However, a careful...

And let me say this to aaaall of the chattering class that focuses on those little, tiny—yes, porky—amendments. The American peope really don’t care.That, my friends, is the sound of elitism. That is the sound of the drunkenness of government power. That is the sound of the detestable smarmy Chucky Schmucky Schumer of NY telling us what he thinks of the American people. In 10 seconds, Chuck Schumer illustrated what your government thinks of you. You are either the “chattering class,” merely a bunch of insignificant rabble-rousers. You are simply nuisances, like flies annoyingly buzzing around his nose. Or you’re...

It seems like a classic “do as I say, not as I do” scenario. Last August, when Republican presidential nominee John McCain couldn’t answer a reporter when asked how many houses he owned (“I’m not sure, I’ll have to check with my staff” was McCain’s response), candidate Obama and his fellow Democrats were quick to seize the moment. Portraying McCain‘s foible as evidence that his lifestyle was “out of touch“ with “everyday Americans,” Obama said before an audience in Virginia: “….Now think about that….There’s just a fundamental gap of understanding between John McCain’s world, and what people are going through...

...I fear that one element in Obama's well-intentioned infrastructure plan—his goal of providing all Americans with broadband Internet access—might one day be seen as inadvertently laying the foundations for a return to fascism, the political catastrophe of the 1930's.... The 1930s fascists were expert at using all the most technologically sophisticated communications technologies—the cinema, radio, newspapers, advertising—to spew their destructive, hate-filled message. What they excelled at was removing the the traditional middlemen like religion, media, and politics, and using these modern technologies of mass communications to speak with reassuring familiarity to the disorientated masses. Imagine if today's radically unregulated Internet,...

"The nation’s elite universities disdain honest intellectual inquiry, which is by its nature distrustful of authority, fiercely independent and often subversive. They organize learning around minutely specialized disciplines, narrow answers and rigid structures that are designed to produce certain answers." ~ Chris Hedges This is an excellent piece about the state of higher education in America, the elites who run it, and what it's producing. Hedges, a self-proclaimed atheist who holds a seminary degree from Harvard, brilliantly diagnoses the elitist attitude in higher education and its rotten fruit. . .

President-Elect Barack Obama’s two daughters will be attending the same Sidwell Friends School that former first daughter Chelsea Clinton did. The price tag: $29,000-a-head. Obama brushed aside the “elitist” implications. “Am I saying that the DC public schools are unfit?” Obama asked. “You’re damned right I am. I’m not going to sacrifice the education of my children just because some might think it looks bad politically. Not when I can afford to do otherwise.” This decision has been described as “highly personal” and is not expected to influence the administration’s position on controversial issues like school vouchers or school choice....

"The View" co-host Joy Behar is well on her way to unhinged, if not already there. Earlier today, NB's Justin McCarthy noted that Behar, in mentioning GOP Vice Presidential nominee Sarah Palin, said that "we all know that the woman is an airhead." Michelle Malkin noted this evening that Behar also took an uncalled-for cheap shot at those who are involved in an important and growing alternative not only to the public schools, but also to traditional brick-and-mortar classroom education (video is at link): Behar show(ed) .... her contempt for both homeschooled students and parents: “A lot of them are...

To listen to some Republicans, not to mention, the braying of media outlets such as MSNBC, and even, here and there, a few economic libertarians, you would think that traditional conservatives, the defenders of the unborn and the integrity of marriage as a venerable and ancient institution, were responsible for two wars gone sour, over-spending at a level to embarrass Lyndon Johnson, the largest expansion of entitlement spending since the Great Society, numerous cases of GOP corruption and betrayal of the public trust centering around earmarks and political favors and the miserable results in the presidential and congressional elections just...

Among the many wonders to be expected from an Obama administration, if Nicholas D. Kristof of the New York Times is to be believed, is ending "the anti-intellectualism that has long been a strain in American life." He cited Adlai Stevenson, the suave and debonair governor of Illinois, who twice ran for president against Eisenhower in the 1950s, as an example of an intellectual in politics. Intellectuals, according to Mr. Kristof, are people who are "interested in ideas and comfortable with complexity," people who "read the classics." It is hard to know whether to laugh or cry. Adlai Stevenson was...

During a roundtable discussion on Monday’s Newsroom program with conservative talk show host Martha Zoller and her left-wing colleague Mike Malloy, CNN anchor Rick Sanchez strangely differentiated between "intellectual" conservatives who are "not so crazy" about Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin and social conservatives who "love" her. Sanchez then described Zoller as a "mix" of the two. Later in the segment, Malloy opined that Sarah Palin "brought out the crazy people. That's what the Republican base is. The Republican base are people who don't want the queers to get married. They don't want a woman to have a right...

On Saturday's Religion page in The Washington Post, they highlighted the latest hot item from their On Faith website, which really should be called On Doubt, since it so heavily promotes atheism and liberalism. This time, it was New Age guru Deepak Chopra, denouncing the allegedly ridiculous idea that God should play a role in the voting booth: There never will be, and never should be, a religious reason to pick one candidate over another. God hasn't personally voted in an American election, but he keeps voting by proxy. In an ideal world that would never happen. Supernatural beings aren't...

George F. Will, Ken Adelman, Frank Fukuyama, David Brooks -- these are just a few names on the list of eminent experts who have declared that Sarah Palin is what's wrong with the Republican Party. Even if we were to add all their prestigious names to the list, however, it wouldn't be nearly as long as the line of people who stood in the cold wind of Pennsylvania to see Palin this week. The line outside the Heiges Field House at Shippensburg University was already growing long by noon, more than two hours before the doors opened for a Tuesday...

OBAMA SAID… “We can’t drive our SUVs and eat as much as we want and keep our homes on 72 degrees at all times… and then just expect that other countries are going to say OK. That’s not leadership. That’s not going to happen.” - Barack Hussein Obama , May, 17 2008. "Obama said… Obama said… Let’s talk about arrogance. Let’s talk about elitism. Let’s talk about Socialism. Let’s talk about Barack Hussein Obama." About one week until the general election for the President of the United States. I'd like to revisit the above quote by Obama. There has been...

We at American Thinker have covered the first shots in the conflict between traditional conservatives and what many are referring to as conservative "elites." Just this week, we've featured several excellent articles on our front page including "Betting Against the Elites on Sarah Palin by J. Robert Smith and "Noonan's Slipped a Peg" by Jan LaRue. We will continue to follow this ideological struggle closely because we believe it to be the most important story of this young century. Who is a conservative? Who gets to decide that question? Has conservatism "failed?" These and other questions will no doubt roil...

Financial Times reporter Edward Luce has found another sign of trouble for the McCain campaign: he's turning up the noses of the "cocktail party circuit" inside Washington, D.C., which is "swelling with disaffected Republicans." I kid you not. From Luce's page 4 October 24 article, "McCain's troubles highlight party rift": The more trouble John McCain's campaign encounters, the more it highlights the cultural divide between the "real America" the Republican candidate says he represents and the Washington "cocktail party circuit" that largely disdains it. That circuit is swelling with disaffected Republicans. Some complain about Mr McCain's selection of Sarah Palin,...

When Politico revealed the Republican National Committee spent $150,000 outfitting Sarah Palin and her family after she was picked as John McCain's running mate, one would assume it would be worthy of a brief, snarky story buried on the New York Times's "Caucus" page, filled mostly with anonymous Republicans griping about campaign spending priorities. But Patrick Healy and Michael Luo's "$150,000 Wardrobe for Palin May Alter Tailor-Made Image" made the front page Thursday morning. (The other major papers had more self-control.) The Times played up what they saw as the hypocritical disconnect between Palin's "Joe-six-pack" appeal and the posh wardrobe...

As NewsBusters has been reporting since we were at the Republican National Convention in St. Paul, former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich has been a strongly outspoken critic of how the mainstream media have covered Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin since she was first announced as John McCain's runningmate. On Wednesday, appearing on Fox News's "On the Record," Gingrich called recent press reports involving the Republican vice presidential candidate "factually wrong, intellectually dishonest, totally biased, worthy of the Polish state news media attacking Lech Walesa back in the 1980s." Moments later, he put an exclamation point on his criticism: "This...

This election cycle has exposed an enormous divide across the country. It's not the divide between black and white; it's not even the divide between liberals and conservatives. It's the divide between elitists and the rest of us. Elitism is a state of mind. Not everyone in New York and Los Angeles is afflicted by it, and not everyone from Jackson, Miss., is free from it. Elitism is the feeling of superiority enjoyed by certain people based on their income, education and nuanced value system. Elitism carries with it a strong hint of "sophisticated" Europeanism, as well as a large...

(Crain’s) — The best-funded political campaign in American history says news organizations will have to pay—in some cases almost $2,000 each—if they want to cover Barack Obama’s election-night celebration in Chicago. A memo sent to news organizations on Tuesday by the Obama campaign says credentials will cost $715 to $1,815, depending on whether electrical and phone lines are needed and whether an indoor or outdoor seat is requested for the event, which is expected to be held outside the evening of Nov. 4 in Grant Park.