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Public policy

LinkFest 2016-03-18

We've Been Measuring Inequality Wrong Lots of people forget that US tax and welfare policy is actually pretty progressive, in the fiscal sense. So you need to account for transfer payments to properly assess inequality. You're Gonna Need a Bigger Boat If the United States is

The Long View 2002-09-26: Strange Forms of Life

The internal politics of the Right in the United States have been strange. For most of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, the Right has struggled for respectability without achieving it. Or at least that is how it seems now. It is worth remembering that this has not always been true

The Long View: Our Global Neighborhood

John's basic take on the report issued by the UN in 1995 on improving its own efficiency was this was a document written by hard-working, well-meaning bureaucrats. That doesn't mean it isn't also a revolutionary tract. Many of the complaints in this volume are

The Long View 2002-08-01: War Plans

John has been definitely refuted here by the events that followed not only the downfall of the Baathist Iraqi state, but also Syria and Libya. Deposing Middle Eastern tyrants has shown us there are indeed worse evils. I suppose the one consolation we have is that while President George W.

The Long View 2002-07-18: Morose Delectation

I had been a reader of First Things before I knew John wrote some articles for the magazine in its heyday, when Fr. Richard John Neuhaus was editor. Thirteen years later, I am still a subscriber, probably one of the more unusual ones, since it is primarily a journal for

The Long View: Active Faith

This one is now eighteen years old, but it has only gotten more pertinent, as American politics fossilizes into the Late Republican phase. We find ourselves doing the same things over and over, because there really are no other options left. This is what is meant by the End of

The Long View: On the Nature of the Coming World Government

As a proponent of a mild version of the cyclical theory of history, John thought that the development of a world-spanning universal state was inevitable in the 21st century. I am inclined to agree, and like John, I think it will probably be for the best. John felt that historical