Joel Mathis

In the newest Weekly Standard , Matthew Continetti makes the case that conservatives don't really have to care about income inequality—whether it's growing or not— because it's not government's job to address such issues.  Inequalities of condition are a fact of life. Some people will always be poorer than others. So too, human altruism will always seek to alleviate the suffering of the destitute. There is a place for reasonable and prudent actions to improve well-being. But that does not mean the entire structure of our polity should be designed to achieve an egalitarian ideal. Such a goal is fantastic, utopian even, and one would think that the trillions of dollars the United States has spent in vain over the last 50 years to promote “equality as a fact and equality as a result” would give the egalitarians pause. That sounds principled, and maybe even a little bit appealing if you're of the right temperament. But it fundamentally ignores one simple fact: By virtu

The Weekly Standard, July 26: Many who object to construction of an Islamic facility so close to the site of the World Trade Center feel that a large, if not dominating Muslim presence there would be at best insensitive and at worst a symbol of the very Islamist supremacy that is the goal of al Qaeda and other jihadist killers. Such sentiments are hardly the last word in a question of public policy. But the background support and financing for this ambitious undertaking are matters that deserve to be addressed.  The Weekly Standard, Aug. 18: Nancy Pelosi yesterday: "There is no question there is a concerted effort to make this a political issue by some. And I join those who have called for looking into how is this opposition to the mosque being funded." Follow-up: Speaker Pelosi announces that she is reviving the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC), abolished in 1975. Hearings on the Opposition to the Mosque, featuring inquiries, under oath, as to whether witness

America'ssmiling face to the Muslim world? Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf, the man behind the so-called Ground Zero mosque, is apparently set to take a State Department trip to "to help people overseas understand our society and the role of religion within our society.” John McCormack of the Weekly Standard responds with confusing pugnaciousness: If the purpose of the junket is to "help people overseas understand our society"--and not to help Rauf raise the $100 million for his mosque--wouldn't it make sense to send someone representative of the vast majority of Americans who oppose the Ground Zero mosque? Perhaps the State Department could send someone--maybe Juan Williams or Rich Lowry or Abe Foxman or Bill McGurn or Neda Bolourchi or Sarah Palin or Rod Dreher or Christopher Caldwell or Bill Kristol--to explain to the people of the world that Americans aren't bigots but simply find it offensive and insensitive to build a mosque two blocks from the site of a ho

Because he's Matt Labash, the new Weekly Standard cover story in which he attempts "living liberally" -- as defined by Justin Krebs' new book, "538 Ways to Live Work and Play Like a Liberal" -- is at least moderately entertaining until it stretches into tedium. In a bit of stunt journalism, Labash attempts to "live liberally" for 10 days, exploring the ways that Krebs' book contains contradictions and/or reaches into the furthest corners of your life. Get it? It's comically tiresome to live every single aspect of your life through the prism of politics. Which, no kidding. If you haven't given up somewhere by page 12 or so, though, it seems to me the real story comes when Labash puts down the book and goes to a "Drinking Liberally" meetup to hang out with some real liberals . The group arrives one by one—about a dozen in all. I haven’t told them in advance I was coming, so when I break the news that I’m a reporter for a c

In perhaps the clearest-ever expression of the Republican id, Victorino Matus responds with disgust to a scene in the new "Karate Kid" movie that features Jackie Chan urging apartment tenants to only heat water for a shower when they're about to take a shower -- instead of having hot water constantly on demand. Chan's line: "Put in a (hot water) switch and save the planet.) Matus' response: It's enough to make you want to join the Cobra Kai, show no mercy, and put 'em in a body bag. I've said before that one reason I knew that torture is bad is because during the 1980s, "Rambo" showed it being done by Communist Russians and Vietnamese. I know Matus is joking here -- kind of -- but it does seem as though Republicans are journeying to the dark side by embracing every villain and villainous deed from the most popular movies of the Reagan Decade. At this rate, the GOP will soon be defending its foreign policy ideas by invoking "

One has to give credit to Matthew Continetti for appraising Glenn Beck's ideas thusly : This is nonsense. Whatever you think of Theodore Roosevelt, he was not Lenin. Woodrow Wilson was not Stalin. The philosophical foundations of progressivism may be wrong. The policies that progressivism generates may be counterproductive. Its view of the Constitution may betray the Founders’. Nevertheless, progressivism is a distinctly American tradition that partly came into being as a way to prevent ideologies like communism and fascism from taking root in the United States. And not even the stupidest American liberal shares the morality of the totalitarian monsters whom Beck analogizes to American politics so flippantly. Maybe there's hope for rational civic dialogue, yet.

Matthew Continetti's piece about the Tea Party movement replays -- like so many similar pieces before it -- Rick Santelli's famous CNBC rant from 2009. But this quote leaped out at me like it hadn't before: In Santelli’s opinion, American elites had neglected the people surrounding him, the commodities traders who made up “a pretty good statistical cross-section of America , the silent majority. We already know that Tea Partiers are wealthier than most Americans , but it's worth pointing out that the median income for a commodities trader in 2008 was $68,680. The median household income nationally the same year was $52,029 . Now: $68,000 a year doesn't put silver spoons in your mouth. And there's absolutely nothing wrong with having a good income. But the Tea Partiers aren't a "good statistical cross-section of America" -- and the commodities traders who surrounded Santelli that day aren't either. Let's not pretend otherwise.

If you read this Weekly Standard article , you might think it a shocking expose -- shocking, because it's in the Weekly Standard -- of BP's longstanding laxness with regards to safety issues. But what develops is something else entirely: An exercise in schadenfreude that a company that tried so hard to brand itself as "green" has enmeshed itself in one of history's more notorious environmental disasters. The game is given away when describing Oberon Houston, an engineer who left the company a few years back after narrowly avoiding death on a BP rig. Andrew Wilson's article presents a litany of safety-related reasons for Houston's departure, but tacks this on: And finally, he told me over the course of several interviews, he was distressed by an abundance of rhetoric—coming from the CEO—about BP going “beyond petroleum” and joining the environmental activists in campaigning for reduced carbon emissions. “To me and everyone I knew, it didn’t make any sens

The Weekly Standard has a new piece out , shocked! that the Obama White House is using the office of "faith-based initiatives" to mount a campaign against climate change. It quotes Jim Towey, a former director of the office, decrying the efforts. The use of churches and congregations to advance the administration’s climate-change agenda, Towey says, “looks a lot like this is simply a political outreach initiative.” He adds: “The faith-based office was supposed to be a common-ground effort with Republicans and Democrats working to assist the poor—and that’s just long gone.” Oh yes, it's awful to use a government-church partnership to advance a political agenda! I'm not going to defend this. I'm just amused that Republicans, who were warned and criticized during the Bush Administration about the problems inherent in establishing church-state partnerships, are suddenly on the side of critics now that Democrats are in charge. It's not as if politicization