Christopher Chantrill

Road to the Middle Class contains my writing and my daily blog. It investigates and celebrates the cultural artefacts that ordinary people appropriate as they struggle to adapt from country ways to the demands of life in the city. Start here.

USgovernmentspending.com is a resource on government spending in the United States. It contains information on federal, state, and local government expenditure in the United States from 1902 to the present. Start here.

USgovernmentrevenue.com is a resource on government taxes and receipts in the United States. It contains information on federal, state, and local government taxes, charges, use fees, and business revenue in the United States from 1902 to the present. Start here.

UKpublicspending.co.uk is a resource on public spending in the United Kingdom. It contains information on public expenditure by central government, local authorities, and public corporations in the United Kingdom from 1983 to the present. Start here.

American Thinker publishes my op-eds most weeks. Click here.

US Stuck on Stupid analyzes the perfect storm of political bungling in the years from 1929 to 1939 that plunged the American people into untold misery during the Great Depression. Start here.

Biography

I am a member of the international capitalist conspiracy. Both my grandfathers owned and operated import/export businesses in the early twentieth century, one in St. Petersburg, Russia, where my father was born, and the other in Kobe, Japan, where my mother was born.

I was born in India and raised and educated in England. I immigrated to the United States in 1968 and worked for many years designing and implementing utility control systems and software in Seattle.

Despite 35 years living in Seattle, I instinctively revolted against the suffocating left-coast culture of the Soviet of Washington, and came to revere the four great Germans who helped inspire the Reagan revolution: Ludwig von Mises, F.A. Hayek, Leo Strauss, and Eric Voegelin.

I have written for Liberty, FrontPageMag.com, and The American Thinker. My forthcoming book Road to the Middle Class celebrates the self-governing culture of the United States in which enthusiastic Christianity, education, mutual aid, and living under law have taught generations of immigrants to rise from indigence in the countryside to a life of competence and prosperity in the city.

Daily Blogging

WE BLOG DAILY, Monday to Friday, at www.roadtothemiddleclass.com, chiefly on national US politics, religion, education, mutual aid, and law. We also look at our junior partners in the global Anglospheric hegemony, the British. It is hard to say why, but very often our blogging zeroes in like a laser on liberal hypocrisies, monopolies, and sinecures. Of course, at Road to the Middle Class we love our liberal friends to bits, but we do not take them quite as seriously as they do. If we get too pompous and serious, please get in touch and tell us to lighten up.

We love to get email from our readers.

Enjoy.

Making It In Politics the Hard Way

POLITICS ain’t beanbag, right? But most prominent women get ahead the old-fashioned way, writes Victor David Hanson.

[Think of] successful contemporary female role-model politicians, such as a Diane Feinstein, Nancy Pelosi, Mary Landrieu, or Hillary Clinton — or pundits like Sally Quinn, Eleanor Clift, Andrea Mitchell, Campbell Brown, Gail Collins[.]

How did these women get started? They married well, or they were the children of established politicians.

Nothing wrong with that. Hey, you gotta play the hand you are dealt.

But it makes you realize that you wouldn’t want to start with these cards, not unless you are playing low-ball.

Grow up in small-town America.
Make it Alaska.
No Ivy League law school.
Marry a guy without money or influence.
No money, connections, or “name” in her family either.
Have lots of children.
Conservative: pro-life, pro-gun, pro-religion, pro-drilling. Republican.
Start career in all-male corrupt machine.
Get national attention in bad year for your party.
Corny photos with moose or party-hardy Alaskans, and more to come.

You gotta hand it to Gov. Palin; she did it her way.

Of course, you say, talent will out. No doubt. But it sure makes things easier when hubby or daddy can get you into the game.

Now It's Obama's Turn

MY OLD GREEK friend used to say that you can’t tell the worth of a dog when it’s out hunting. You can only tell when it’s being hunted.

That’s been the story of the McCain campaign. It came to near death a year ago, and they were measuring him for his political shroud. But John McCain never gave up. Now he’s the Republican Party’s nominee for president.

Two years ago, Sen. Barack Obama (D-IL) set out on Barry’s Excellent Adventure. Against all the odds he beat the favorite in the early primaries and managed to eke out a win against a surging Hillary Clinton. That was Barack Obama out hunting.

But now it’s clear that the Obama campaign is in trouble. Against all the odds, what with the war, the economy, the housing mess, the gas price explosion, John McCain is just behind in the polls, and we haven’t seen the full convention bounce yet.

Today, on the day after the Republican National Convention it is Barack Obama who is being hunted.

Obama supporters should be glad of this.

Up to now, Sen. Obama has been a candidate with a good organization and a great style on the stump. He has introduced the age-old themes of Hope and Change in a new vernacular to a new generation. So far so good. But we don’t elect organizations to office, and we want to know a bit more about what’s on offer than the gauzy vision of Hope and Change. We’d like to know if Obama can lead.

Now that the Obama campaign is in trouble, we are about to find out. How good a leader is Sen. Obama when the going gets rough? Can he revise his tactics? Can he retire broken formations without the tactical retreat turning into a rout? Can he deploy new units into the gaps and advance?

Stay tuned. We are about to find out.

If Obama demonstrates an ability to learn from mistakes and come back stronger than ever he will deserve to be elected president.

If not? Well John McCain and Sarah Palin just spent three days in St. Paul, MN demonstrating that they are ready to rule if Obama isn’t.

The Mom vs. The One

ALASKA GOVERNOR Sarah Palin gave a polished speech last night in accepting the 2008 nomination for Vice President from the Republican Party. This morning conservatives are thrilled and lefties are a-feared.

Obviously Sarah Palin is a great natural political talent with real potential.

But right now I am trying to draw a line down the great cultural divide in this country. It is the divide between women like Sarah Palin and the lefty feminist women that despise her. It is the divide between Christian believers and the lefty secularists that despise them. It is the divide between loyal husbands and fathers that go to work every day to support their families and the Cultural Creatives that sneer at them.

What this adds up to, I believe, is the divide between the culture that celebrates ordinary life, and the culture that wants to escape it.

The life of Sarah Palin is an ordinary life. She went to school, she went to college, she got married and had kids. She supported her husband’s commercial fishing business. Then she got involved in the PTA and got into politics. One thing led to another, and now she is the Vice-presidential nominee of the Republican Party.

The life of Barack Obama is the life of the Chosen One. He was plucked out of a rather messy childhood and chosen. He was sent to elite universities, and became, like the Dalai Lama, or a Janissary, a creature of that special education and training. He has not, at any time in his life, lived or celebrated an ordinary life. He vaulted through temporary occupations: community organizer, part-time university lecturer, non-profit board member. And then he got helped into politics by the Daley machine.

This difference, between The Mom and The One, is a symbol of the great divide in America. The beginning of the modern era saw a huge and influential affirmation of the value of ordinary life. The best life was not Aristotle’s life of the mind, or the warrior (and politician’s) life of honor. It was to work at ordinary life and value it. But in our era, the liberal elite celebrates a life that rises above and utterly transcends the ordinary life in the cult of creativity. Instead of creating a family and children, you create a philosophy, a creative and original work of art, a new vision of society.

Which is best? Which is truth, and which is lie? That is what the culture war is all about. That is what we are fighting about.

Chris Chantrill

Take the Test!

US GOVERNMENT EXPENDITURE

At usgovernmentspending.com we have assembled a record of government spending in the United States for the last century. You can view government spending, federal, state, and local, for every year from 1902 to the present. And you can generate charts of that spending. more>>

US GOVERNMENT RECEIPTS

At usgovernmentrevenue.com we have assembled a record of government revenue in the United States for the last century. You can view government receipts, federal, state, and local, for every year from 1902 to the present. And you can generate charts of that revenue. more>>

UK PUBLIC EXPENDITURE

At ukpublicspending.co.uk we have assembled a record of public spending in the United Kingdom for the last century. You can view British public spending, central government and local authority, for every year from 1983 to the present. And you can generate charts of that spending. more>>

ROAD TO THE MIDDLE CLASS

The Road to the Middle Class is a journey from a world of power to a world of trust and love. In religion, it is a journey from power gods that respond to sacrifice and augury to the God who makes a covenant with mankind. In education, it is a journey from the world of the spoken word to the world of the written word. In community, it is the journey from dependence on blood kin and upon clientage under a great lord to the mutual aid and the rules of the self-governing fraternal association. In law it is the journey from the violence of force and feud to the king´s peace, the law of contract, and private property.

Road to the Middle Class: The Book

Contents

Chapter One

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