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<title><![CDATA[Charles Kesler - Articles - RealClearPolitics]]></title><link>http://www.RealClearPolicy.com/authors/rss/archive/15981.xml</link><description><![CDATA[Charles Kesler]]></description><category domain="15981">Author</category><item>
							<title><![CDATA[I'm Offended]]></title>
							<link>http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2015/06/03/im_offended_126814.html</link>
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							<pubDate>Wed, 03 Jun 2015 00:00:00 -0500</pubDate>
							<author>Charles Kesler</author>
							<description><![CDATA[You can&rsquo;t teach at an American college these days without wondering if&mdash;and at some schools, let&rsquo;s face it, you wonder when&mdash;it&rsquo;s going to happen. A student, fellow faculty member, or administrator is going to charge you with offending him.
For 30 years in my introductory American government course I have assigned the Lincoln-Douglas debates. Most students, I think, regard them as a highlight of the class. But it&rsquo;s easy to imagine the possible objections. Both speakers discuss &ldquo;Negroes,&rdquo; not a polite term anymore though it was then, and Stephen Douglas enjoys playing to the audience&rsquo;s passions by occasionally unloading the other, vile...]]></description>
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							<title><![CDATA[Five Rounds With Harry Jaffa]]></title>
							<link>http://thefederalist.com/2015/01/16/five-rounds-with-harry-jaffa/</link>
							<guid><![CDATA[http://thefederalist.com/2015/01/16/five-rounds-with-harry-jaffa/]]></guid>							
							<pubDate>Fri, 16 Jan 2015 00:00:00 -0600</pubDate>
							<author>Charles Kesler</author>
							<description><![CDATA[In his youth in New York City, Harry V. Jaffa was a Golden Gloves boxer. His pugnacious ways didn&rsquo;t stop there. When he died last Saturday, aged 96, his decades in the intellectual ring with fellow conservatives had reshaped modern American conservatism&mdash;although not enough, he always insisted. Even as his health failed, he was looking forward to the next round. One of the political philosopher Leo Strauss&rsquo;s first American students, Jaffa liked to quote his mentor&rsquo;s favorite medieval aphorism, Solet Aristoteles quaerere pugnam, &ldquo;Aristotle is accustomed to seeking a fight.&rdquo; So was Harry, and the debates he launched, or joined, served not only to keep...]]></description>
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							<title><![CDATA[Red Tide Rising]]></title>
							<link>http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2014/11/09/red_tide_rising_124612.html</link>
							<guid><![CDATA[http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2014/11/09/red_tide_rising_124612.html]]></guid>							
							<pubDate>Sun, 09 Nov 2014 00:00:00 -0600</pubDate>
							<author>Charles Kesler</author>
							<description><![CDATA[Republicans are ready to party like it&rsquo;s 1929.
In the House of Representatives, they will hold a majority nearly 250 seats strong, their largest showing since Herbert Hoover won the presidency in 1928. Though final numbers are not in, the GOP now controls both houses of the state legislatures of 30 states, its highest number since 1920. In all likelihood, Republicans will exceed their historic high for state legislative seats, set in 1928. And they took back the U.S. Senate, by margins comparable to what they enjoyed in the splendid Republican decade of the 1920s.
No wonder that Representative Greg Walden, the chairman of the National Republican Campaign Committee, let slip that his...]]></description>
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							<title><![CDATA[Mount Rushmore Expansion Plans on Hold]]></title>
							<link>http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2014/09/02/mount_rushmore_expansion_plans_on_hold_123830.html</link>
							<guid><![CDATA[http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2014/09/02/mount_rushmore_expansion_plans_on_hold_123830.html]]></guid>							
							<pubDate>Tue, 02 Sep 2014 00:00:00 -0500</pubDate>
							<author>Charles Kesler</author>
							<description><![CDATA[In his most recent colloquy with the president, David Remnick, editor of the New Yorker, noted that in the Oval Office &ldquo;you could hear, between every long pause that Obama took, the ticking of a grandfather clock.&rdquo; Could you ever! The clock is ticking on this administration, and Mr. Obama knows it.
In 2007 he said, &ldquo;I have no desire to be one of those Presidents who are just on the list&mdash;you see their pictures lined up on the wall. I really want to be a President who makes a difference.&rdquo; He has made a difference, but often his critics on the right and on the left have trouble recognizing it. Conservatives tend to taunt him both as a tyro who is in way over his...]]></description>
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							<title><![CDATA[The Apology Game]]></title>
							<link>http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2014/06/03/the_apology_game_122824.html</link>
							<guid><![CDATA[http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2014/06/03/the_apology_game_122824.html]]></guid>							
							<pubDate>Tue, 03 Jun 2014 00:00:00 -0500</pubDate>
							<author>Charles Kesler</author>
							<description><![CDATA[Apologizing is rampant these days. Hardly a week goes by without some public figure (or unlucky private citizen, become a public figure) offering to apologize, usually at the demand of some group or other who has taken offense at something said or done. If extorting apologies were an interstate crime, the FBI&rsquo;s hands would be full fighting the crime wave spawned by the apology mafia.
&ldquo;Taking offense&rdquo; is certainly on the offensive in our highly sensitive age. For some people it is a living. What else does Al Sharpton do, exactly, except lie in wait for someone who utters a thoughtless or indiscreet remark that can be ambushed as &ldquo;racist&rdquo;? American universities...]]></description>
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							<title><![CDATA[Unsmiling Faces]]></title>
							<link>http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2014/02/17/unsmiling_faces_121598.html</link>
							<guid><![CDATA[http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2014/02/17/unsmiling_faces_121598.html]]></guid>							
							<pubDate>Mon, 17 Feb 2014 00:00:00 -0600</pubDate>
							<author>Charles Kesler</author>
							<description><![CDATA[In this year that marks not only the centennial of the beginning of World War I, but also the sesquicentennial of the Civil War&rsquo;s climactic battles, we ought to think more about war than we do.
The grainy old black and white photographs that served to immortalize those enormous, bloody conflicts had a haunting stillness. The cameras wouldn't permit anything else, forcing the subjects to pose absolutely motionless; but for all its limitations the technology captured the Stoic soul of the peoples who came to know war so well. Whether of the living or the dead, common soldiers or great statesmen, the photos show no smiles. Joy seems permanently off camera.
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, in his...]]></description>
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							<title><![CDATA[The Tea Party and the Constitution]]></title>
							<link>http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2013/11/25/the_tea_party_and_the_constitution_120770.html</link>
							<guid><![CDATA[http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2013/11/25/the_tea_party_and_the_constitution_120770.html]]></guid>							
							<pubDate>Mon, 25 Nov 2013 00:00:00 -0600</pubDate>
							<author>Charles Kesler</author>
							<description><![CDATA[The original tea party was neither a political organization nor a populist movement. It was a one-night stand, an evening uprising. Nevertheless, the young John Adams judged it so intrepid and consequential as to mark &ldquo;an epocha in history.&rdquo;
The British government agreed. Lord North warned the Commons that a turning point had been reached. &ldquo;We are now to establish our authority,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;or give it up entirely.&rdquo; We all know how that turned out.
Both the old and the new Tea Party stand for resistance to unconstitutional power. In 1773 the Tea Partiers opposed the Tea Act, which violated their rights as Englishmen and as men. Their counterparts today...]]></description>
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							<title><![CDATA[Congress Should Reject Obama's Syria Ploy]]></title>
							<link>http://www.nationalreview.com/article/357658/no-thanks-mr-president-charles-r-kesler</link>
							<guid><![CDATA[http://www.nationalreview.com/article/357658/no-thanks-mr-president-charles-r-kesler]]></guid>							
							<pubDate>Sun, 08 Sep 2013 00:00:00 -0500</pubDate>
							<author>Charles Kesler</author>
							<description><![CDATA[President Obama has asked the Congress for authorization to use military force against Syria to punish Bashar Assad&rsquo;s regime for its use of chemical weapons. Yet what he asks of Congress is not easy for it to do, and is perhaps neither necessary nor proper.In almost every declaration of war it has passed since the War of 1812, Congress has &ldquo;authorized&rdquo; the president to &ldquo;use the whole land and naval force of the United States&rdquo; to bring the war to a successful conclusion. But Obama insists that what he is calling for is not war, and hence congressional permission is only, as the lawyers say, &ldquo;precatory&rdquo; and politically useful, but not necessary.]]></description>
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							<title><![CDATA[How Low Can We Go?]]></title>
							<link>http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2013/03/18/how_low_can_we_go_117490.html</link>
							<guid><![CDATA[http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2013/03/18/how_low_can_we_go_117490.html]]></guid>							
							<pubDate>Mon, 18 Mar 2013 00:00:00 -0500</pubDate>
							<author>Charles Kesler</author>
							<description><![CDATA[Though it wasn&rsquo;t the filibuster heard round the world, it certainly reverberated around Washington. Rand Paul&rsquo;s nearly 13-hour talkathon not only extracted from the Obama Administration a rare constitutional limit to executive power, it made the senator from Kentucky a conservative hero and breathed new life into the movement that helped elect him.
But which movement was that? Everyone noted the similarities between this old-fashioned filibuster and the one in Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, the classic Frank Capra movie. What the newly appointed Senator Jefferson Smith (played by Jimmy Stewart) achieved through innocent grit, Senator Rand Paul accomplished by courage and guile. I...]]></description>
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							<title><![CDATA[Obama and the End of Liberalism?]]></title>
							<link>http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/337798/obama-and-end-liberalism-interview</link>
							<guid><![CDATA[http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/337798/obama-and-end-liberalism-interview]]></guid>							
							<pubDate>Fri, 18 Jan 2013 00:00:00 -0600</pubDate>
							<author>Charles Kesler</author>
							<description><![CDATA['He was much more liberal than his presidential campaign let on,&rdquo; Charles Kesler writes of Barack Obama in 2008. You can say that again. &ldquo;Liberals like crises, and one shouldn&rsquo;t spoil them by handing them another on a silver salver. The kind of crisis that is approaching . . . is probably not their favorite kind, an emergency that presents an opportunity to enlarge government, but one that will find liberalism at a crossroads, a turning point,&rdquo; he argues in I Am the Change: Barack Obama and the Crisis of Liberalism. &ldquo;Liberalism can&rsquo;t go on as it is, not for very long. It faces difficulties both philosophical and fiscal that will compel it either to go out...]]></description>
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							<title><![CDATA[The Age of Obama?]]></title>
							<link>http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2012/12/20/the_age_of_obama_116459.html</link>
							<guid><![CDATA[http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2012/12/20/the_age_of_obama_116459.html]]></guid>							
							<pubDate>Thu, 20 Dec 2012 00:00:00 -0600</pubDate>
							<author>Charles Kesler</author>
							<description><![CDATA[Cheer up, conservatives. Election night was gruesome, but it produced neither a landslide for President Obama nor a wipeout of the Republicans. Judging by the numbers alone, the message was not so much &ldquo;Forward!&rdquo; as &ldquo;Sideways!&rdquo;
The president&rsquo;s 332 electoral votes (counting Florida, which fell eventually into his hands) amounted to a convincing victory. Measured against all the presidential contests since 1896, however, the year which political scientists often regard as the beginning of &ldquo;modern&rdquo; American politics, Obama&rsquo;s winning percentage (61.71% of the electoral vote) was below average, ranking 22nd out of 30.
Likewise, his percentage of...]]></description>
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							<title><![CDATA[Romney's Dilemmas]]></title>
							<link>http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2012/08/07/romneys_dilemmas_115029.html</link>
							<guid><![CDATA[http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2012/08/07/romneys_dilemmas_115029.html]]></guid>							
							<pubDate>Tue, 07 Aug 2012 00:00:00 -0500</pubDate>
							<author>Charles Kesler</author>
							<description><![CDATA[With three months to go, Mitt Romney&rsquo;s campaign faces three strategic problems: what to say about his governorship of Massachusetts, how to describe his relation to the policies of George W. Bush&rsquo;s administration, and how to explain to the public the stakes of the 2012 contest.
Despite a few missteps, Romney has shown himself an able campaigner who is continually improving. But there is a huge difference between campaigning and governing&mdash;President Obama is now back to his strong suit, running for office&mdash;and Americans are eager for a hint of what kind of leader Romney would be.
That he turned around the 2002 Olympics in Salt Lake City is hardly relevant, a fact...]]></description>
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							<title><![CDATA[Promises, Promises]]></title>
							<link>http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2012/06/03/promises_promises.html</link>
							<guid><![CDATA[http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2012/06/03/promises_promises.html]]></guid>							
							<pubDate>Sun, 03 Jun 2012 00:00:00 -0500</pubDate>
							<author>Charles Kesler</author>
							<description><![CDATA[Out of the mouths of babes, and pirates, can come wisdom. The pirate in this case is the Pirate Captain, as he's called, brilliantly voiced by Hugh Grant in the new stop-motion animation film, The Pirates! Band of Misfits. His quest to win the Pirate of the Year award brings him in contact with Charles Darwin and his servant monkey Bobo, who resembles his master or perhaps the other way around, and an evil Queen Victoria, whose royal crest proclaims, "I Hate Pirates." Her majesty resembles an angry Hillary Clinton. (A certain former president and his Secret Service detail may wish to avoid the movie's 3D version as too realistic.) More renowned for his "luxuriant beard" than his...]]></description>
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							<title><![CDATA[Debating the Debates]]></title>
							<link>http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2011/10/21/debating_the_debates_111755.html</link>
							<guid><![CDATA[http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2011/10/21/debating_the_debates_111755.html]]></guid>							
							<pubDate>Fri, 21 Oct 2011 00:00:00 -0500</pubDate>
							<author>Charles Kesler</author>
							<description><![CDATA[Saturday Night Live, that reliable and now venerable source of political satire, took aim recently at the race for the Republican presidential nomination. It announced its spoof as &ldquo;Either the 7th or 8th GOP Debate,&rdquo; nicely capturing the ennui already setting in. With nine candidates on stage, a half dozen more debates to come, and the primaries still three or four months away, why do we tune in to the spectacle, which&mdash;with Rick Perry played not by Alec Baldwin but by the real governor of Texas&mdash;is bound to be both a comedic and dramatic disappointment?
American politics has had its share of great debates, but never at the presidential level. Our proudest forensic...]]></description>
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							<title><![CDATA[ObamaCare &amp; the Costs of the Welfare State]]></title>
							<link>http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2010/09/28/obamacare__the_costs_of_the_welfare_state_107333.html</link>
							<guid><![CDATA[http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2010/09/28/obamacare__the_costs_of_the_welfare_state_107333.html]]></guid>							
							<pubDate>Tue, 28 Sep 2010 00:00:00 -0500</pubDate>
							<author>Charles Kesler</author>
							<description><![CDATA[As a candidate, Barack Obama used to joke about the sun breaking through the clouds when he started to speak. Lately, the sun god seems to have deserted him. The Washington Post/ABC News poll reports that six out of ten voters say they lack faith in him to do the right thing for the country. His health care scheme appears to be on life support, attracting about 38% approval across a range of polls. The economy teeters on the edge of a second recession. The Gulf oil spill, at least, is over-though the cleanup continues and the images remain indelible. Day after day, those belching black clouds mocked Obama's billowing oratory. They became an omen of subterranean Nemesis for this president...]]></description>
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							<title><![CDATA[The Tea Party Spirit]]></title>
							<link>http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2010/03/10/the_tea_party_spirit_104699.html</link>
							<guid><![CDATA[http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2010/03/10/the_tea_party_spirit_104699.html]]></guid>							
							<pubDate>Wed, 10 Mar 2010 00:00:00 -0600</pubDate>
							<author>Charles Kesler</author>
							<description><![CDATA[Sometimes the most obvious derangements of our politics are staring us in the face but we don't see them. Take, for instance, the health care reform bill for which President Obama and the Democrats are forever lusting. Many people have protested it isn't really a reform bill, because reform implies improvement and this isn't an improvement.
But it isn't the "reform" part of the Democrats' health care bill (if they ever agree on one) that strikes me as most perverse. It's calling this voluminous monstrosity a bill. Can you have a bill, a single law, that is almost 3,000 pages long? In the old days, that would have constituted a whole code of laws. When our founders thought about law, they...]]></description>
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							<title><![CDATA[The Politics of Repeal]]></title>
							<link>http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2009/12/09/the_politics_of_repeal_99476.html</link>
							<guid><![CDATA[http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2009/12/09/the_politics_of_repeal_99476.html]]></guid>							
							<pubDate>Wed, 09 Dec 2009 00:00:00 -0600</pubDate>
							<author>Charles Kesler</author>
							<description><![CDATA[Everything depends on health care reform. President Obama has made that clear in his 29 (at last count) speeches on the subject and by his administration's legislative and lobbying priorities. His long-term ambitions to revive the Democrats' reputation for epochal social reform, to restore his party as America's majority party, and to elevate himself as one of its immortals-all turn on a breakthrough on health care.
Success would allow him to fulfill a promise made by Franklin Roosevelt 65 years ago. Failure would make him another Bill Clinton. That's why Obama can be counted on to fight for the last vote in the Senate as he did in the House of Representatives, whose narrow passage of a...]]></description>
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							<title><![CDATA[The New New Deal]]></title>
							<link>http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2009/05/21/the_new_new_deal_96592.html</link>
							<guid><![CDATA[http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2009/05/21/the_new_new_deal_96592.html]]></guid>							
							<pubDate>Thu, 21 May 2009 00:00:00 -0500</pubDate>
							<author>Charles Kesler</author>
							<description><![CDATA[If you believe President Barack Obama, he's working overtime to save American capitalism.
"I strongly believe in a free-market system," he told reporters in London, "and...in America, at least, people don't resent the rich; they want to be rich. And that's good." The market, he declared, "is the most effective mechanism for creating wealth...that history has ever known."
Unfortunately, it's no slouch at destroying wealth, either. Sometimes "it goes off the rail," he noted, and without some "thoughtful frameworks to channel the creative energy of the market...it can end up in a very bad place." Abroad and at home, Obama's pleas for "commonsense" economic reform sound almost sensible,...]]></description>
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							<title><![CDATA[How Will Obama's Liberalism Shape America?]]></title>
							<link>http://www.csmonitor.com/2009/0211/p09s01-coop.html</link>
							<guid><![CDATA[http://www.csmonitor.com/2009/0211/p09s01-coop.html]]></guid>							
							<pubDate>Wed, 11 Feb 2009 00:00:00 -0600</pubDate>
							<author>Charles Kesler</author>
							<description><![CDATA[from the February 11, 2009 editionPage 1 of 2Claremont, Calif. - Despite all his efforts to transcend partisanship, President Barack Obama is demonstrably a liberal. But what kind of liberal
         is he? And what does his brand of liberalism augur for America? 
      Even in the Democratic primaries, he shunned the "liberal" label. (Hillary Clinton did, too, preferring to be called a progressive.)
         Mr. Obama's favorite tack was to assail the whole argument between left and right as cynical and outdated. In its place he
         offered a pragmatic, hopeful, allegedly nonideological way forward.
      On Election Day, his "working majority for change" turned out for him and the...]]></description>
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							<title><![CDATA[The Audacity of Barack Obama]]></title>
							<link>http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2008/10/the_audacity_of_barack_obama.html</link>
							<guid><![CDATA[http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2008/10/the_audacity_of_barack_obama.html]]></guid>							
							<pubDate>Fri, 17 Oct 2008 00:00:00 -0500</pubDate>
							<author>Charles Kesler</author>
							<description><![CDATA[Any politician who has taken on Bill and Hillary Clinton's national political machine and won should not be underestimated. Yet Republicans as well as many Democrats persist in underrating Barack Obama's electoral talents and, above all, his soaring political ambition.His writerly mind, professorial bearing, and effortless self-control make it difficult to take his measure as a politician. He can seem cool, detached, unusually introspective. As a wag at the Financial Times put it, if John McCain's life story is the stuff of Hollywood movies, Obama's is like an off-Broadway play--it lacks action but is full of internal monologues. Raised in Hawaii and Indonesia, his father a Kenyan, his...]]></description>
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