Connecticut Commentary: Red Notes from a Blue State

It took the modern world two days to catch up to President John Adams’ enthusiasm for a national celebration. On July 3, 1776, Adams wrote, “The Second Day of July 1776, will be the most memorable Epocha, in the History of America. It ought to be solemnized with Pomp and Parade, with Shews, Games, Sports, Guns, Bells, Bonfires and Illuminations from one End of this Continent to the other from this Time forward forever more." Three of the country’s first five presidents died on the Fourth of July. Ideological rivals during their politically formative years and after, owing largely to an election that is still considered one of the most disreputable in the nation’s history, Adams, the second president of the United States, and Jefferson, drew close together after both had put aside active politics. Adams died at 90, Jefferson at 83, hours apart on July 4, 1826. Before he breathed his last, Adams whispered – almost a prayer -- “Jefferson still lives.” Five years after the deaths of...

Democrats, far more than Republicans in Connecticut, have shown themselves to be prisoners of their ideological convictions. Some of these persuasions are mentioned in a recent column by Chris Powell, Managing Editor of the Journal Inquirer and a political columnist for the paper, who is often mistaken by politicians he has gored over the years as a conservative, an error Linda McMahon is not likely to make.

The decisions made by two key political players in Connecticut, Gov. Jodi Rell and U.S. Sen. Chris Dodd, not to defend their seats in the upcoming election gives the lie to assertions often made by opponents of term limits that they would diminish the intellectual substance of the office vacated. After Rell announced she would not run again for governor last November, a number of Republicans and Democrats rush to fill the vacuum, leaving in their wake other positions to be occupied. Wounded by allegations that his relationship to the businesses he was regulating as head of the powerful banking committee was too cozy, Dodd adroitly stepped aside. Attorney General Richard Blumenthal then leapt, some said too precipitously, into the breech, and when Blumenthal announced he was permanently separating himself from an attorney general position he had occupied for more than two decades, secretary of state Susan Bysiewicz announced her availability, some said too precipitously, leaving h...

”Pray, Father Abraham, what think you of the Times? Won’t these heavy Taxes quite ruin the Country?” “Friends, the Taxes are indeed very heavy…but we have many others. . . We are taxed twice as much by our Idleness, three times as much by our Pride, and four times as much by our Folly. . . .” -- Poor Richard’s Almanack Not well known today is Poor Richard’s Almanack, though people may have heard of the Franklin stove and bifocals—which Ben Franklin invented. Franklin started his annual Poor Richard’s Almanack in 1732, the year George Washington was born. It was a means for publicizing his ideas and helped make his printing shop a financial success. (Circulation: 10,000 copies a year). Ben learned printing as an apprentice to his brother James. but the apprenticeship term was nine years with no pay till he final year, and his brother maltreated him, so he fled to Philadelphia. There, he came to the attention of the provincial governor, who urged him to acquire a printing press ...

“What the three [Madison, Hamilton, Jay] did not know, could not know, was that the right to have the Constitution ratified would . . . rival any that would follow in the history of the country” -- Triumvirate, p. 38 The Articles of Confederation were a failure. They needed not to be improved but wholly rewritten. The Constitution was the best form of government ever offered to the world. But to get it ratified, nine of the 13 states were needed. Madison, Hamilton, and Jay started writing essays, all under the name of Publius, (with widespread support from the biased newspapers). How they got started, was not revealed in the mass of letters available to author Bruce Chadwick for his new book, “Triumverate” (Naperville, IL, Sourcebooks, 2009). Fears by Anti-Federalists and Federalists were intense. If the Constitution were not ratified, what would become of the states that voted against it? Anarchy? Like a ship without a rudder or pilot. The chief obstacle was the need for...

What’s coming at us – at warp speed – down the red-brick road is an economic catastrophe. Things are really bad when the Chinese, our dept patrons, begin to throw Ben Franklin our way. According to an article in the British Telegraph , former vice-chairman of the Standing Committee and now head of China's green energy drive Cheng Siwei admires Ben Franklin enough to have read him, which is more than can be said for President Barack Obama’s economic advisers: “Mr Cheng said the root cause of global imbalances is spending patterns in US (and UK) and China. “’The US spends tomorrow's money today,’ he said. ‘We Chinese spend today's money tomorrow. That's why we have this financial crisis.’ “Yet the consequences are not symmetric. “’He who goes borrowing, goes sorrowing,’ said Mr. Cheng. “It was a quote from US founding father Benjamin Franklin.” The Chinese problem is that the country’s leaders -- far more persuasive than, say, send’em-a-dead-fish Rahm Eman...

Former vice-chairman of the Standing Committee and now head of China's green energy drive Cheng Siwei on Ben Franklin: “Mr Cheng said the root cause of global imbalances is spending patterns in US (and UK) and China. “’The US spends tomorrow's money today,’ he said. ‘We Chinese spend today's money tomorrow. That's why we have this financial crisis.’ “Yet the consequences are not symmetric. “’He who goes borrowing, goes sorrowing,’ said Mr. Cheng. “It was a quote from US founding father Benjamin Franklin.”

The Danish philosopher Soren Kierkegaard once said that he would rather be quickly shot than to be trampled to death by geese. That is exactly the way human rights are lost – not in one fell swoop, but by a slow insidious process of attrition, hardly noticeable at all. The right of freedom of speech in Canada and elsewhere has now come under attack by an aggrieved group that – marvelous irony – is using the state, normally the guardian of the constitutional right of unfettered speech, to suppress free speech. Ira Levant has already felt the tread of geese on his back, and now it is Mark Steyn’s turn. Steyn , the author of “America Alone: The End of the World as We Know it,” is also a prolific, international conservative political commentator who has written for such publications as National Review, The New York Sun and The New Criterion. Last month, according to a story in the Jan 14 edition of the Washington Times , Steyn became the subject of “a CHRC (Canadian Human Rights C...

Henry Mencken, the great Baltimore sage and journalist, once defined democracy as that form of government in which “the people get what they want – good and hard.” What is that form of government in which the government gets what it wants, good and hard? We might call it Rellism, or Rowlandism, or Weickerism. This form of government was perfected by Lowell Weicker, but his Republican gubernatorial accolades have followed the former senator and governor faithfully in his rather large footsteps. The thing achieved perfection when Weicker, having shunned the prospect of an income tax in his campaign, then became governor and appointed as head of his Office of Policy Management William Cibes, who had run in and lost a primary as a pro-income tax candidate. Following this appointment, came the income tax, followed in turn by a decade long deluge of spending and a predictable seemingly endless bout of economic anemia. Elsewhere in the country during these years, the economy has been robust; ...

In Kelo vs. New London the U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that from the moment of its decision forward it shall be lawful for agents of the government to seize homes from citizens and to force those citizens to sell their property to commercial interests. Before the court crafted this decision -- out of snakes and snails and puppy dog’s tails -- eminent domain could be invoked by the federal or municipal government only when the seizure of property was necessary to satisfy a legitimate state interest. After Kelo agents of our republic’s tripartite government will be authorized to seize my home and force me to sell it to satisfy a commercial rather than a public interest. From the point of view of constitutional interpretation, this is the most harmful U.S. Supreme Court decision in my lifetime. And if there is anything that can arouse the citizens of our sleepy republic to march on Washington and demand a repeal of this decision and a restoration of our constitutional liberties, it is ...