Free Republic

Conservatives of a fatalistic bent -- their numbers this month have swollen -- like to depress themselves with the maxim that government programs never perish. Statism's relentless march can be checked at times but rarely beaten back. Just look, they say, at those New Deal relics known as farm programs. And then they see Time magazine's cover this week -- Barack Obama pictured as FDR, with the cover line "The New New Deal" -- and they head for the window ledge. [snip] But the greatest refutation of their dour outlook can be expressed in a single name: Margaret Thatcher. When...

This essay asks two questions: Are Europeans in the throes of passive cultural and political suicide as they ignore the threat of fanatical Muslims in their communities? And if so, have the leaders of the Democratic Party in America joined the Europeans in sleepwalking towards a precipice? My main source for answering the first question is a book review titled Suicide of the West, by Theodore Dalrymple which appeared in the Clairmont Review of Books, Fall 2006. Dalrymple reviewed three books in pursuit of his theme of the "Suicide of the West" — namely, Why the Continent's Crisis is America's...

(Belated) congratulations to Senior Fellow David Berlinski for being included amongst the best science writers for 2002. David's article What Brings a World Into Being? from Commentary Magazine is included in Matt Ridley's The Best American Science Writing 2002. Congratulations David! David is author of the now historical The Deniable Darwin. His books include A Tour of the Calculus, The Advent of the Algorithm, and Newton's Gift. His new book, Secrets of the Vaulted Sky, is forthcoming from Harcourt later this year. From the publisher: If, as Matt Ridley suggests, science is simply the search for new forms of ignorance,...