Ummm, when did this happen? Great idea from the RCP guys.

Danny Kruger, a special adviser to David Cameron — leader of the British conservative Party — has penned an excellent essay that American conservatives could learn a lot from. Now before any of my friends get angry and point out that the British conservatives are playing fast and loose with conservative principles when it comes to their policy prescriptions, let me say, I agree. However, that does not discount the ideas that Kruger has put forth in this essay.

On Fraternity puts the focus where it should be: making government work for people.

The battle of ideas is not over but entering a new and more interesting phase, according to Danny Kruger, special adviser to Conservative Party leader David Cameron MP. In the late 20^th century, politics was the clash between Liberty on one hand and Equality on the other – a battle over the respective roles of the individual and the state. This remains the basic axis of our politics. But rather than a straightforward clash between Liberty and Equality, politics today is a contest for possession of the principle beyond them both: Fraternity. 

In his booklet On Fraternity, published by the independent think-tank Civitas, Kruger sketches the philosophical framework of the new battle of ideas, drawing on the writings of Locke, Burke and Hegel. He argues that Liberty, not Equality, is the natural ally of Fraternity, and that individual freedom, not state coercion, best protects the institutions of belonging and promotes the habits of solidarity.

At the heart of Kruger’s argument is a fundamentally correct understanding of human anthropology.  We are at our best when we are connected to others. We need fraternity. Fraternity provides the proper context for learning, for growing and for becoming properly socialised. The result is a vibrant and healthy civil society.

Society today is headed in the opposite direction, where individials are increasingly alientated from community, from family and therefore from society. No man is an island, and Kruger understands that. He argues that conservative policies are the proper prescription for reconnecting the isolated man with his community.

Of course the Left has hijacked this language. Liberal politicians talk of helping the least of these in society. They talk of social obligations and responsibility. But underneath their rhetoric is an unmistakeable truth: In the name of equal outcomes (instead of opportunities) the state will assume these obligations, not individuals. Or as Kruger writes, the promise of the modern liberal is that the state will erect “a great steel citadel to house everyone together and equally.” Behind this steel monstrosity, individuals will be protected from the “harsh winds of reality.”

Like most liberal prescriptions, this one hurts those it purports to help. The poor are further disconnected from communities as the state assumes the obligations that should be those of the community. The isolated in society are subjected to more loneliness, as their only connection with the society at large is through large and unfamiliar federal programs that create dependency and rob both the recipient and the would-be giver of the rewards that come with real charity on a personal level.

In this picture, the state with all its grandiose intentions is nothing more than a thief and deceiver. With its rhetoric about society it promises something that it has not the capacity to deliver and instead it indiscriminately doles out the addictive poison of federal aid with the purpose of nourishing itself, not society.

Kruger is on to something here. I highly recommend his essay, On Fraternity.

PS - For those of you still subscribed to this feed, you will be seeing the resumption of posts as my employment has changed. I won’t be as frequent as I used to be, but I do intend to write a few posts a week at least.

2007 brings a big change for me.

I recently accepted a position with South Carolina Senator Jim DeMint. Starting this week I will be leaving Heritage to serve as DeMint’s Senior Communications Advisor. In that capacity I will be helping Senator DeMint with speechwriting and communications strategies.

Of course, given my background I will be paying special attention to the blogosphere. Conservative bloggers will have a friend and a resource in Senator DeMint, no doubt about it.

DeMint was recently elected to chair the conservative Senate Republican Steering Committee. As leader of that group, I believe DeMint is poised to become an even more visible conservative leader in a Congress that is now ripe for such leadership.

Late in the 109th Congress observers saw Senator DeMint team up with Senator Tom Coburn to shut down the Senate favor factory much to the chagrin of many pork-addicted lawmakers. Those kind of heroics will become even more necessary now that the GOP is in the minority and in need of a righting of the ship. Keep an eye out for DeMint as he leads the charge on issues conservatives care most deeply about in the 110th Congress.

The Heritage Foundation will always be my ideological home. For decades now Heritage has been on the front lines of the battle fighting hard to build an America “where freedom, opportunity, prosperity and civil society flourish.” In that fight Heritage has so often been the standard bearer for Reaganesque conservative principles that have been the anchor to which conservatives are tethered.

My affiliation with Heritage makes me proud.

Of late, Heritage has recognized the growing importance of new media and has made strategic decisions to be a leader in the field. Hiring me was part of that strategy and they have done one better in hiring my replacement, Rob Bluey from Human Events.

Under Rob’s leadership Heritage will continue to be a leader in the think tank world when it comes to new media.

As for TimChapmanBlog.com, I will keep the site and the archives up but my posting will be rare and will probably concentrate on less political topics — to be honest, I have yet to really work out what I will do with this space. Subscribe to the rss feed if you want to be notified of occassional new posts.

So for now, this is a sign off of sorts. I will still write, but it will be for Senator DeMint and Senate conservatives at the Steering Committee. I look forward to the challenge that this presents and I am thrilled to have the opportunity to work for Senator DeMint.

Finally, thanks to all of you who have been regular readers of this blog. Without you guys checking in daily and joining in the conversation via email or comments, my blogging would not have been nearly as much fun.

At least one Democrat clearly understands the stakes in Iraq. Joe Lieberman in a Washington Post OpEd today:

I’ve just spent 10 days traveling in the Middle East and speaking to leaders there, all of which has made one thing clearer to me than ever: While we are naturally focused on Iraq, a larger war is emerging. On one side are extremists and terrorists led and sponsored by Iran, on the other moderates and democrats supported by the United States. Iraq is the most deadly battlefield on which that conflict is being fought. How we end the struggle there will affect not only the region but the worldwide war against the extremists who attacked us on Sept. 11, 2001.

John Hawkins runs down the list and offers this little tidbit about the number one story:

Hold onto your wallets and burn proof your American flags because the Democrats are back in charge and this time? It’s personal!

Ha!

The Washington Post has the scoop on former Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist’s activity now that he is out of the Senate. In an email Frist gave his update:

But retirees shouldn’t reminisce, and Frist won’t. “Over the next couple of weeks, Karyn and I and the boys will be on the go; traveling and visiting with family and friends,” he writes. For example, he said, he was heading to South Texas with two of his sons and some friends for a father-son hunt.

“Karyn, the boys and I will then spend the 23rd with Karyn’s Mother and sister Trisha and their extended family (45 McLaughlins at their biannual McLaughlin family Christmas) in Austin. And then back to Nashville for Christmas Day to join the Frist clan,” he writes. “We’re rehabbing the home I grew up in, but it’s not ready so we are living in the backyard in a garage apartment (now beautifully decorated by Karyn!).”

The key is to keep moving. “Another hunt with the family on the 26th to replicate the traditional southern hunt (at night) that we did exactly four years ago on the night that I became majority leader.”

A hint of nostalgia there, but Frist quickly recovers. “I’ll spend early January talking with and listening to folk around the country on the new focus for my leadership committee Volunteer PAC (VOLPAC) and promise to send along information before the end of the month.”

Okay. Maybe all that doesn’t excite you. But at the end of his message, Frist promises real news. “February I’m off on my annual medical mission trip delivering care, doing surgery, and treating AIDS patients in Kenya and Sudan and am so excited that Karyn will join me this year.”

So stay active and keep moving. There’s always a future presidential run to think about.

Posting has been sparse as I have been enjoying the Christmas season. Plenty of fun with family, much food, good drink and merriment have filled the last few days. But this Christmas my wife and I bought a puppy so it has been a little different. By different I mean no sleep. I have been chasing Pippin (like the hobbit not Scottie) around for five days now cleaning up messes, waking up to whining in the middle of the night etc. etc.

Here the little creature is below seen playing with my sister-in-law and little niece. He is a Welsh Corgi.

• Obama to run
• Christmas song contest
• So much for earmark reform
• Kudlow for McCain?
• Before the first Christmas
• The longest night is over
• Christmas breakfast beer
• A last Christmas for some?
• Conan’s Christmas cards

The Washington Times writes about an emerging trend:

The most desirable up-and-coming retail space isn’t necessarily in the mall. It’s in your list of favorite Web sites, right between your best friends’ blogs.

A growing number of retailers have started blogs, or Web logs, this year, hoping that an account of the company’s newest ideas, explanations of big decisions and stories of employees’ lives will show the human side of their shops and create some buzz.

“For any company, blogs are the most efficient way to get people talking about your Web site,” said Andrew Sernovitz, chief executive officer of the Word of Mouth Marketing Association, a Chicago trade group.

President Bush today said he supported raising the minimum wage:

President George W. Bush said on Wednesday that he supports a Democratic proposal to increase the U.S. minimum wage but said it should be coupled with tax and regulatory relief for small businesses.

“I believe we should do it in a way that does not punish the millions of small businesses that are creating most of the new jobs in our country,” Bush told a news conference. “So, I support pairing it with targeted tax and regulatory relief to help these small businesses stay competitive and to help keep our economy growing.”

Democrats, who took control of Congress in November elections, have said they will push to raise the minimum wage over two years to $7.25 per hour from $5.15 per hour.

Bush appears to have GOP congressional backing as well. This statement was released today from Senate GOP leader Mitch McConnell:

An increase in the minimum wage needs to help both the workers who earn it and the small businesses that pay it. That’s why it just makes sense to pair the increased wage with tax and regulatory relief to help the small businesses that provide most of the jobs in this country stay competitive and employ even more people. The President laid out a commonsense approach to this issue, one that the Congress can pass in a bipartisan way.

But what nobody is talking about is consequences of raising the minimum wage. Heritage’s Tim Kane:

After decades of experience, everyone should know that regulating the price of labor is identical to any other price control and an especially crude way to “fix” free markets. Raising the minimum wage will hurt low-income workers, cost jobs, and hobble the American economy. Congress should know by now that bucking the laws of economics does not work.

The Washington Post:

Signaling a new flexibility on issues in the wake of the Democrats’ wins, Bush said he is willing to discuss Democratic ideas for solving the Social Security problem, including tax increases. “I don’t see how you can move forward without people feeling comfortable about putting ideas on the table,” Bush said when asked about the prospect of tax increases to keep Social Security solvent. “I have made it clear that I have a way forward that can do it [without raising taxes] and I want to hear other people’s opinions.”

Here is the problem: Bush will put tax increases in the table for discussion while Democrats will continue to say no to discussing personal retirement accounts. It is not a fair trade. This is a strategy that I fear will end with a poor solution for the Social Security problem and a tax increase. If that happens, all the effort that this President has put forth to avoid the “read my lips” moment that his father could not will have been for nothing.

Red State, the premier conservative group/social network blog has announced today that they have been bought by Eagle Publishing here in Washington, DC.

The Wall Street Journal today:

Maybe our liberal friends are onto something. They keep saying the rich should pay more taxes, and it turns out the rich already are! That’s one of the valuable lessons from the IRS’s annual study of income tax data, just released for 2004.

Americans who earned more than $1 million in adjusted gross income paid $178 billion, or an average of $740,000 per filer, in income taxes in 2004. That’s up about one-third from 2002, the year before the Bush tax cuts in marginal income-tax and dividend and capital gains rates. The wealthiest 1% of tax filers paid a remarkable 35% of all individual income-tax payments that year.