Socially Liberal, Fiscally Liberal
After a Hellish Month in Virginia, Democrats Have Some Explaining to Do
I say this as a Democrat: After the recent events in Virginia, our entire party, from Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi down to the equivocating state legislators of the Old Dominion, deserves a jumbo-sized helping of remorse — and perhaps a side of reflection to go with.
How Past Generations Thought Differently about the Economy
Yet something about economists’ unwavering optimism seems to offend the progressive sensibilities. Several Democratic presidential hopefuls, including California Senator Kamala D. Harris, Massachusetts Senator and Law School Professor emeritus Elizabeth A. Warren, and former Secretary of Housing and Urban Development Julián Castro, have already made fixing the economy a keystone issue — adding to a raucous chorus of new progressive voices in Congress that are raising concerns about subsistence wages and what they consider the growing ranks of working poor. There’s also something unsettling, as the conservative British author Tim Montgomerie once put it, about the amorality of the capitalist marketplace in general. Something about divorcing economics from civic or moral judgment naturally unsettles us.
We Are Failing as a Moral Republic
Abraham Lincoln famously wrote, in a moment of great moral fortitude, that by “giving freedom to the slave, we assure freedom to the free — honorable alike in what we give, and what we preserve.”
Hope after the Midterms
I wasn’t all that disheartened a week ago Tuesday when I learned that Charlie D. Baker ’79 had won reelection as Governor of Massachusetts.
Trump’s Monetary Policy is Economically and Ethically Confused
It was strange watching a Republican president criticize the Federal Reserve for its latest interest rate hike (the Board of Governors voted to raise the rate by a quarter-percent to 2.25). Gone were the days of a laissez-faire GOP lauding small government and market efficiency (though I already suspected this). The thought that government might exit the money market was now a “crazy” idea — a “mistake.”
