Connecticut Commentary: Red Notes from a Blue State

Lieberman Former U.S. Senator from Connecticut Joe Lieberman, a bit like the eupeptic Hubert Humphrey, is a happy political warrior, gleefully defending a vanishing middle ground among his fellow Democrats and so called MAGA Republicans. He is a man of what used to be called “the vital center” in American politics, and his natural optimism is deeply engrafted on his character. In the view of moderate Democrats -- a very thin residue within the party of Jackson, Jefferson and (John) Bailey, Connecticut’s last Democrat political boss, the hard right and left now bracket American politics, which, some have argued, has become Hobbesian in its passions. A remedy for extreme measures and bad political manners embraced by the Democrat and Republican brackets is the elixir now being sold by Lieberman’s “No Labels” party. Lieberman probably will recall Barry Goldwater’s quip – if you cut off California and New England, you’ve got a pretty good country. Goldwater was describing the Democ...

Biden and Xi -- Getty images Connecticut Democrat Governor Ned Lamont and the state’s majority Democrat General Assembly seem determined to follow California’s Democrat Governor Gavin Newsom down a neo-progressive rabbit hole. One of the distinguishing characteristics of neo-progressivism is its vacuous unconcern with attendant consequences. After the neo-progressive assault on the internal combustion engine has been completed, radical environmental extremists in the United States likely will call upon the U.S. Congress to repeal Isaac Newton’s Third Law of Motion, which states that for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. Generally, the Law means that when one object exerts a force on another object, the second object exerts a force of equal magnitude and opposite direction on the first object. The law applies as well in the realm of ideas. Every idea, especially an insupportable one, generates an equal and opposing restorative idea. People in Connecticut who o...

The Micawber principle states: “Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure nineteen and six, result happiness. Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure twenty pounds nought and six, result misery.” The inescapable golden rule of budgeting – announced dramatically by Mr. Micawber in Charles Dickens’ David Copperfield is this: When income exceeds expenditures by an infinitesimal amount, you are blessed with happiness. When, on the other hand, your expenditures exceed your income, you quickly arrive at the gates of “misery.” And in Dickens’ day, misery involved spending a good deal of time in debtors’ prison, the fate of Dickens’ own father. Nearly everyone in Connecticut who does not draw a salary from taxpayer provided funds, regarded as infinite by neo-progressive spendthrift politicians, tends to abide, if grudgingly, by the golden rule, even though debtors’ prisons have long been abolished. In the political realm, exceptions to the rule are the rule. Slithery polit...

The more I considered Christianity, the more I found that while it had established a rule and order, the chief aim of that order was to give room for good things to run wild – G.K. Chesterton Ayaan Hersi Ali has converted to Christianity. Her road to the live and beating heart of Christianity has been a tortuous journey. Such is the usual progress of the pilgrim. She now joins other converts, among them G. K. Chesterton, whom she quotes in her most recent essay, “ Why I am now a Christian .” In her essay, Hersi Ali is playing upon the title of Bertram Russell’s essay “ Why I am not a Christian ,” an influential atheist tract. I’ve written about Hersi Ali before here , and here . Chesterton, a prolific author, is eminently quotable, always the sign of a great writer. Malcolm Muggeridge, also a quotable writer, summarized Chesterton’s view of atheism this way: “When people cease to believe in God, they do not then believe in nothing, but in anything.” Our postmodern age, by rejec...

Chesterton -- public domain Tradition means giving votes to the most obscure of all classes, our ancestors. It is the democracy of the dead. Tradition refuses to submit to the small and arrogant oligarchy of those who merely happen to be walking about . ― G.K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy   “Have we forgotten how to think?” a frustrated waitress at an East Hartford Diner asked me recently. That would be one explanation of our continuing incongruities. Examples abound. People on the far left assume that the polis – whatever it happens to be, a democracy, a republic or a dictatorship – can be, both and at the same time, diverse and equitable. But diversity is at war with equity. An America that is diverse celebrates differences among various groups of people who have been assimilated into the culture of the United States. But equity, the irrational insistence that everyone should be treated in the same manner, seeks to abolish important differences in the name of social justice. J...

"If you've been voting for politicians who promise to give you goodies at someone else's expense, then you have no right to complain when they take your money and give it to someone else, including themselves." – Thomas Sowell How should we account for the steady gains made by Connecticut Democrats in the recent municipal elections? There are people in Connecticut whose daily lives are negatively affected by high taxes, extravagant spending and consequent inflation, which reduces the purchasing power of money. And there are people whose lives are not materially affected by any of these political plagues. Voting patterns suggest that those unaffected belong to the upper middle classes who live in such places as Greenwich and West Hartford, towns once reliably red, now purple verging on blue. High taxes and extravagant spending by federal and state governments are viewed in such places as survivable nuisances. Democrat governors are used to bailing out heavily ...

The Jews, particularly those ravaged by Iranian backed Hamas wolves, likely would characterize former President Barack Obama’s remarks concerning Hamas’ violent attack on Israeli Jews attending a music festival as a form of extreme hutzpah. People in Connecticut who have voted numerous times for U.S. Senator Dick Blumenthal, a prominent Jew, might want to know how he would characterize Obama’s remarks. Others have weighed in, while U.S. Senator Chuck Schumer , another prominent Northeast Jew, remains unaccountably silent. What cat, one wants to ask, has got your tongue? In an interview with alumni of his administration on Pod Save America , Obama offered his opinion on the ongoing war following the initial attack that killed 1,400 Israelis on Oct. 7. He fulsomely condemned Hamas’ actions but suggested that additional history is needed to contextualize the situation.  Obama wants people in the United States to examine the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, as ...

Andree and Dublin The events referenced below took place long before educrats, those who couldn’t teach and had made it their life’s work to teach teachers – destroyed education. The names have here been changed to protect both the innocent and guilty. Mrs. Smith was what once had been known as a “tough teacher” entirely immersed in her subject area, meaning she gave Fs to those of her students who richly deserved Fs, over the protesting cackles of their parents, who imagined their sons and daughters graduating with honors from Yale University. My mother recalled a call she had received from Mrs. Smith concerning her reproachless, though unawakend, son. “You know, your boy, Donald, has a lot going for him.” “Thank you.” “There is one slight difficulty. I wish he would learn to focus.” This perplexed Mom, whose furrowed brow Mrs. Smith could nearly see through the phone. “Focus on what?” “The important things.” “Such as?” “His teacher, his future, life, liberty, and ...

Reuters Confusion – and more importantly ambiguity – in politics is often a deliberate choice made by those for whom clear choices are riddled with unsavory campaign risks or neglected policy tasks. The attack on Israeli citizens by Iranian supported Hamas terrorists presented the political world with a stark either/or: Either the friends of Israel support Israel in its war against Middle East terrorists and their financiers, or they do not. President Joe Biden early in the war assured the nation that the United States will do all in its power to support Israel – which has, people will have noticed, declared war on Hamas, Hezbollah and other terrorist clients of Iran. It will and must be a war to end Hamas and Hezbollah. Either the enemies of Israel will destroy Israel, or Israel will destroy its enemies, who have daily pledged since the Israeli state was first formed in the modern era in 1948 to push Israel into the sea; that is, to destroy the Israeli state. The first world lea...

It is not at all surprising that Connecticut U.S. Senator Dick Blumenthal should throw his lot in with Israel in the besieged country’s attempt to thwart future terrorist attacks. A recent story in a Hartford paper mistitled “ Blumenthal calls for Iran sanctions ” leaves little campaign wiggle room for Blumenthal. Blumenthal, “now offering bipartisan legislation this week with U.S. Senator Joni Ernst to clamp down on Iran for providing funding for Hamas,” according to the Hartford paper, has said that anti-Israeli terrorism in the Middle East would be short-sheeted if Iran’s often stated pledge to drive Israel into the sea were to be frustrated by a combination of sanctions and a successful war prosecuted by Israel against Hamas and Hezbollah. Of course, to be successful, wars first must be won, after which the winning party may dictate peace terms. All wars are struggles between contesting parties to determine the terms of peace, thereby shaping the future in the long term. Ac...

National Review , founded by Bill Buckley in 1955, has been a stumbling block to neo-progressive Democrats for nearly seven decades. The mission of the magazine, Buckley announced at its founding, was to “stand athwart history, yelling Stop, at a time when no one is inclined to do so, or to have much patience with those who so urge it.” Jack Fowler, now running for City Clerk in Milford, Connecticut, has been associated with the magazine for more than three decades and served for a time as its publisher. Fowler , along with Buckley and other non-far-right conservatives at National Review, cannot reasonably be accused of either anti-Semitism or unflinching support of former President Donald Trump. Before he threw his hat in the presidential ring, Buckley characterized Trump as a “vulgarian,” and National Review took some kicks in the stomach for having devoted a whole issue of the magazine to a political polemic titled “ Never Trump .” In 1992, Buckley published what some consi...