Christopher Chantrill

Road to the Middle Class contains the eponymous book 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.

An American Manifesto is the site for my book and blog. I am writing this book about "life after liberalism" and blogging about it as I go. All are invited to comment. Start here.

USgovernmentspending.com is a resource on government spending in the United States. It presents tables and charts on federal, state, and local government expenditure in the United States from 1902 to the present. Spending data are sourced from US budget data and US Census reports. Start here.

USgovernmentdebt.us is a resource on government debt in the United States. It presents tables and charts on federal debt and overall national debt in the United States from 1792 to the present. Data are sourced from US budget data and US Census reports. Start here.

USgovernmentrevenue.com is a resource on government taxes and receipts in the United States. It presents tables and charts on federal, state, and local government taxes, charges, use fees, and business revenue in the United States from 1902 to the present. Revenue data are sourced from US budget data and US Census reports. Start here.

UKpublicspending.co.uk is a resource on public spending in the United Kingdom. It presents tables and charts on public expenditure by central government, local authorities, and public corporations in the United Kingdom from 1900 to the present. Spending data is sourced from UK government Public Expenditure Statistical Analyses, the UK National Statistics “Blue Book,” and academic studies. 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.

US Federal Bailout gets down to the details of the recent federal bailouts. Everyone knows about TARP and the bank bailout. Fortunately, the banks have paid back most of the money they got in the fall of 2008. Now you can check out all the other bailouts and guarantees that the federal government handed out in its efforts to stave off a global financial meltdown. Start here.

US Midterm Elections tabulates the history of midterm elections for the US Senate and the US House of Representatives going back to 1790. You can sort the elections by year, by party strength, and by party gains and losses. 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. And you can follow on Twitter .

Enjoy.

How to Judge Actions

IF YOU ARE a philosopher like Aristotle or maybe a legislator in the business of judging the actions of lesser mortals, you need a template, a measure, by which to rule and hand out honors and punishments.

To do this you probably need to be able to "distinguish between the voluntary and the involuntary" action. Sometimes, of course, you have to do something, such as throw goods overboard in a storm, that you would normally never do voluntarily. And sometimes you would face death rather than voluntarily do something evil.

But what about things done by reason of ignorance? Obviously, says Aristotle, everything "done by reason of ignorance is not voluntary". Now he makes a fine distinction. Suppose you do something in ignorance that you would presumably not do voluntarily. If you repent of your action, your action is "involuntary." If you do not repent, your action is "not voluntary."

So, says Aristotle, if you throw a pointed spear at a friend, thinking that your spear "had a button on it", your action would be involuntary, since you would surely repent of your action. That is action in ignorance that is involuntary. It is hard to think of an action in ignorance that is "not voluntary," i.e., not repented. Suppose you threw a pointed spear at an enemy thinking it had a button on it. Would you regret the action when the poor chap fell down dead? If you didn't regret, the action in ignorance would be "not voluntary." Perhaps a better example would be Candidate Romney saying that he doesn't worry about the "very poor." Everyone thinks that this is a stunning error, because conservatives do too worry about the poor. But if the struggling middle--the folks that Romney says he does worry about--were to wake up and say to themselves, "Wow, finally a politician that cares about us and not the bloody poor!" then Romney would not repent of the action in ignorance. So that would be action in ignorance that is "not voluntary."

But Aristotle is not yet done. He does not want to admit that actions due to anger or appetite could be involuntary. The "wicked man is ignorant of what he ought to do" but that does not make his ignorance involuntary. Actions done in ignorance but where "the moving principle is in the agent himself" are voluntary. Thus we could say that the liberal welfare state policies that have cratered the working class are voluntary. Liberals may have been ignorant of the specific consequences of their policies, but they cannot hide from the results. It is evil to encourage people to exchange their birthright for a mess of pottage. Period.

| perm | comment(0) | | 02/03/12 1:15 pm ET

No Sex, We're Japanese?

GLENN REYNOLDS at Instapundit has two fascinating looks at sex and marriage in Japan. There's a poll out that says the Japanese are uninterested in sex.

The survey, conducted by the Japan Family Planning Association, found that 36% of males aged 16 to 19 said that they had â€œno interestâ€ in or even â€œdespisedâ€ sex. Thatâ€™s almost a 19% increase since the survey was last conducted in 2008.

If thatâ€™s not bad enough, The Wall Street Journal reports that a whopping 59% of female respondents aged 16 to 19 said they were uninterested in or averse to sex, a near 12% increase since 2008.

Hold on, says an emailer to Glenn. The real problem is the three lost decades in Japan since the meltdown in the 1990s.

The statistics you link to miss the point. Young Japanese guys are as horny and desperate to get laid as any guys in the world. Probably more so, since only young Arabs get less actual sex. Japanese girls are as eager to find an alpha male boyfriend as any other nationality. Japan still produces the most prolific and extraordinary porn in the world. Someone is watching it.

Unfortunately, three lost economic decades has resulted in a plethora of un- or under-employed young beta men, without real jobs or prospects of success, and young women who look at these prospective suitors and despair.

And, of course, our Japanese friends have been patiently doing Keynesian economics now for three decades in a conventional attempt to get out of their economic doldrums. They have little to show for it.

This helps put Mitt Romney's bonehead comment about not worrying about the very poor in context. The Democratic Party is an over-under party, a combination of the top 20 percent in their tenured sinecures and the bottom 20 percent in their lifetime benefits. The Republican Party is the party for the people in the middle, the people without benefits and without government sinecures.

The Republican Party better pay attention to the tragic situation of ordinary young people in Japan. Because we must not let that happen here. So it's good that Mitt Romney is paying attention.

| perm | comment(0) | | 02/02/12 12:33 pm ET

Romney's "Gaffes"

FIRST WE LEARNED that Mitt Romney enjoyed firing people. Â Yeah, I know the context was that he enjoyed firing insurance companies, but coming from the private equity guy at Bain Capital, it was a bit jarring. Now "foot-in-mouth" Mitt has dropped another one. Â He says he's not worried about the very poor. "Iâ€™m in this race because I care about Americans," Romney said. "Iâ€™m not concerned about...

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| perm | comment(1) | | 02/01/12 1:39 pm ET

End of Mitt Milquetoast

THE REPUBLICAN voters, the pollsters tell us, are interested in one thing: a candidate that can beat Barack Obama. Â Presumably that's why we fell in love with Newt Gingrich for half an hour when he beat up the media and liberals in the debates before the South Carolina primary. The Romney campaign learned something from South Carolina and we learned something about the Romneyites. To get back...

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| perm | comment(0) | | 01/31/12 10:10 am ET

Leaders Must Be Winners

WHY ARE LEADERS such cowards? Â Why do they duck the hard decisions for decades? Â Why is Jerry Brown, in his 70s, unwilling to stand up to the unions in California? Â Steven Greenhut: Many of us had hoped that Brown, who no longer seeks higher office, would embrace the tough work of real governance and take on his own alliesâ€”i.e., the public sector unionsâ€”who are the key obstacle to reviving...

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| perm | comment(0) | | 01/30/12 9:02 am ET

Are Incontinent Fools Wise?

YOU MIGHT WONDER why Aristotle is so interested in incontinence that he devotes the whole of Book VII of his Nichomachean Ethics to it.Â Is that really a problem for philosophers to worry about? Well, it is, at least the kind of incontinence that Aristotle worries about. The continent man is one "ready to abide by the result of his calculations" while the incontinent man is "ready to abandon...

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| perm | comment(0) | | 01/27/12 9:04 am ET

The Anguish of the Reactionary President

BACK IN THE old days, rulers ruled. Â They ruled over everything, from church, to military, to trade. But then came the modern mechanical era. Â God no longer kept the planets in their orbits, and an "invisible hand" seemed to guide merchants and consumers without the constant intervention of a wise ruler. What is a ruler to do? Â He worries about "inequality." Â Not because he's caring and...

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| perm | comment(1) | | 01/26/12 9:45 am ET

Duck and Cover, Mr. President |

| 01/25/12 10:18 am ET
Obama is not a Friend of Catholics(1) |

| 01/24/12 10:50 am ET
Educrats Chase Teenaged Sailor Round World |

| 01/23/12 1:48 pm ET

What About That Mean?

EVERY VIRTUE, says Aristotle, brings things into good condition. Â Therefore virtue is also "the state of character which makes a man good and which makes him do his own work well." Does that mean that the harder you work at virtue, the better? Â Not exactly, for virtue is not found in extremes, writes Aristotle, but at the mean between two extremes. Â It is "an intermediate between excess and...

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| perm | comment(0) | | 01/20/12 12:34 pm ET

The Green "Fight Against Big Oil" |

| 01/19/12 12:48 pm ET

How Many Divisions Has the Soul?

STALIN FAMOUSLY inquired in 1944 how many divisions the pope had. Â Reportedly, Pope Pius XII replied that â€œYou can tell my son Joseph that he will meet my divisions in heavenâ€. Almost as confusing is Aristotle's explanation of the elements of the soul in Nicomachean Ethics I 13.Â OK, chaps, he says, there are, first of all, the rational and the irrational, although they are not quite as obviously...

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| perm | comment(0) | | 01/18/12 1:33 pm ET

Who Gets to Judge?

IF WE SAY, as we did yesterday, that we in western society are dealing with the Two Great Crimes of Modernity, then what do we do about it? The two great crimes are really quite simple. Â Capitalism's great crime is plantation slavery, when business owners got to own the people that worked their sugar plantations, first in Cyprus, then in the West Indian sugar islands and Brazil. Â And then there...

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| perm | comment(0) | | 01/17/12 12:31 pm ET

Two Great Crimes of Modernity |

| 01/16/12 12:23 pm ET
Happiness: Is Virtue Sufficient |

| 01/13/12 12:58 pm ET
Barack Obama, "Vulture Capitalist" |

| 01/12/12 1:16 pm ET
Aristotle's Waffle on the Function Argument |

| 01/11/12 1:47 pm ET
Make Some Lemonade, Mitt(1) |

| 01/10/12 1:08 pm ET
What's the Story? |

| 01/09/12 1:58 pm ET

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>>

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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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AN AMERICAN MANIFESTO

With the failure of the welfare state, it is time to consider what comes next. In "An American Manifesto: Life After Liberalism" I develop a narrative about where we are and where we should go to redeem the American experiment.

GAMES

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