Christopher Chantrill - Writer, conservative, government spending taxes debt deficit

Christopher Chantrill

Welcome!

WELCOME. I am Christopher Chantrill @chrischantrill, writer and conservative. You can see my work at the following sites:

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.

US Spending 101 is a “university” of government spending. It features several walks through the pages of the usgovernmentspending.com suite of websites. And the learning never stops. But it is not a real university, nor does it offer credits for courses completed. 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.

UKpublicrevenue.co.uk is a resource on public revenue in the United Kingdom. It presents tables and charts on public revenues by central government, and local authorities in the United Kingdom from 1900 to the present. Revenue data is sourced from UK Office for Budget Responsibility, the UK National Statistics 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 Presidential Elections tabulates the results of presidential elections going back to 1788. 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 CHRISTOPHER CHANTRILL, 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.

Soon after moving to Seattle, I instinctively revolted against the suffocating left-coast culture of the Soviet of Washington, and soon came to revere the four great Germans who helped inspire the Reagan revolution: Ludwig von Mises, F.A. Hayek, Leo Strauss, and Eric Voegelin. Since then I have broadened my appreciation of “The German Turn” that has transformed the world over the last 200 years.

I have written for Liberty, FrontPageMag.com, and The American Thinker. My 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. My book An American Manifesto: Life after Liberalism tries to imagine what America would look like after the end of left-wing politics and big government.

Disclaimer and Transparency

WE make no respresentation about the accuracy of the data presented in these websites. Nor does Christopher Chantrill represent himself to possess any formal qualifications to select, evaluate or present the information. Users are urged to check all data against the published data sources and to report any errors or inconsistencies.

The websites have no relationship with any government institution, or any other institution. They are supported solely by advertising and by the life, fortune, and sacred honor of Christopher Chantrill.

Daily Blogging

WE BLOG DAILY, Monday to Friday, 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, 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.

LATEST BLOG

No Kings Protesters

About a year ago I wrote a set of pieces on “What Went Wrong” during the Age of the Educated when experts ruled the world.

After October 18, 2025 I feel that anyone that supported the No Kings mostly peaceful protests should be forced to run a gauntlet. Not of people that teach them a lesson by hitting them, but by yelling at them all the stupidities enacted in the Age of the Educated.

Yes, but what? No problem “I’ve Got a Little List” of What Went Wrong in the Age of the Educated.

Finance. Governments have always corrupted the money supply, whether it’s debasing the coinage, or ruining Italian bankers, or running the government war debt through a central bank and igniting inflation. Recently the Federal Reserve Board increased money supply by 20 percent in one year — on Trump’s watch during the late COVID unpleasantness. And then another 20 percent on Biden’s watch.

The net result of government running the monetary system seems to be endless wars and endless inflation.

Hey, No Kings protesters! Why don’t we get together to stop the billionaires and oligarchs making fools out of us and impoverishing us with their ruinous inflation. Any ideas? I thought not.

The Safety Net. Obviously one of the fundamental reasons for human society is safety in numbers so that people having a hard time can be helped by the rest of us. But is it really a good idea to have the government run the safety net. Here’s what I think went wrong.

A government safety net lets the rest of us ignore the poor.
A government safety net allows politicians to buy the support of the poor.
A government safety net hurts the family.
A government safety net lets fathers off the hook.

The fact is that, ever since the feudalism of the Middle Ages ended when landowners got into “improvement,” the care of the poor has been a disaster, starting with the Poor Laws and continuing through our own Great Society.

Hey, No Kings protesters! Why don’t we get together to end the corrupt government safety net and operate it ourselves, person to person? Any ideas? I thought not.

Education. Today we just accept that the government educates our children in what I call “government child custodial facilities.” But is that the best we can do? Does the government really have the best interest of parents and their children at heart?

Why do we have a government system anyway? Maybe because in the 19th century Boston Transcendentalists like Horace Mann didn’t like the Catholicism of their Irish neighbors and decided to corral them into government schools. Instead the Irish “John Dagger Hughes” decided “first, build the school, then the church” for the next century or so. That’s why we have Catholic schools.

By the way, Horace Mann promised that his government “common school” would reduce the crime rate by 90 percent.

Hey, No Kings protesters! What should we do about our non-functional government schools? Any ideas? I thought not.

Equality. Now it is my belief that men, like male chimpanzees, are hierarchical creatures and warriors and women, like female chimpanzees, are equality creatures that do not recongize formal hierarchy. This is not a problem if men are soldiers and/or workplace warriors and startup warriors, and if women engage with the other women in the neighborhood to cooperate and help each other.

Christianity celebrated equality, probably because its believers were lower class people in the cities around the Mediterranean — like Saul of Tarsus, son of a leatherworker — that wanted to rise. Then came the Enlightenment with an educated class that wanted to rise into political power against the landowning feudal lords. Then came Socialism with the idea that everyone should be equal except the dictator and his minions to rule over them.

Should we worry about inequality? The fact is that the story of the last 500 years is of complete nobodies coming up with crazy business ideas and making the world richer so that everyone could rise. Whereas the political class has only been interested in wars and paying off supporters.

Hey, No Kings protesters! What should we do about equality? Any ideas other than all power to the protesters? I thought not.

Politics. How should we elect our rulers, and what kind of power should they have? The story of the last century has been the celebration of “democracy” and the enormous expansion of government, from spending about 10 percent of GDP mostly on wars to spending about 40 percent of GDP mostly on social programs.

What does that mean? I say that it issues from Nazi jurist Carl Schmitt’s idea that the political is the distinction between friend and enemy. What do you do with your enemy? You fight him. What do you do with your friend? You gift him.

I learned from Schmitt that we cannot expect government ever to be more than fighting enemies and gifting friends. That means that the rest of us must live all our lives trying to make human society something other than the dead end of war and corruption.

But how? I’d say it starts with reducing our faith in government and increasing our faith in each other.

Hey, No Kings protesters! Once we have dethroned the Kings then what do we do to stop fighting and start cooperating? Any ideas other than all power to the protesters? I thought not.

Conclusion: I don’t want anyone to think the future is going to be easy. Milton Friedman said that government spends as much as it can and taxes as much as it can. Is it possible to create a society that only spends a little and taxes a little?

I don’t know. But that is my dream.

| perm | 10/21/25 10:36 pm ET | comments |

Can Feminization Endure?

Right now, Helen Andrews’ article “The Great Feminization” is taking the world by storm. She argues that “wokeness” is really about the feminization of the workplace and the enforcement of feminization by the legal system.

Wokeness arose around the same time that many important institutions tipped demographically from majority male to majority female.

Men and women act differently in a social situation like the workplace.

[A] group of men given a task will “jockey for talking time, disagree loudly,” and then “cheerfully relay a solution to the experimenter.” A group of women given the same task will “politely inquire about one another’s personal backgrounds and relationships … accompanied by much eye contact, smiling, and turn-taking,” and pay “little attention to the task that the experimenter presented.”

And then there is this

The problem is that female modes of interaction are not well suited to accomplishing the goals of many major institutions.

I like to say that for men, the workplace is war by other means. For women it is neverending pursuit of resources and status within a fixed community.

But it’s not just that. There is also the enforcement of feminiation by the legal system: there is a thumb on the scales of justice.

The most obvious thumb on the scale is anti-discrimination law. It is illegal to employ too few women at your company. If women are underrepresented, especially in your higher management, that is a lawsuit waiting to happen. As a result, employers give women jobs and promotions they would not otherwise have gotten simply in order to keep their numbers up.

And there are battalions of lawyers ready to make you pay.

The solution is not that hard. We have to get away from the idea that discrimination can be proved by the sexual / racial percentages among employees, rather than by individual acts of discrimination. Then, if it is a Good Thing to have a workplace dominated by feminine culture then so be it. But if a masculine culture is needed to make things work in the market economy and an administrative organization like a corporation then so be it.

But first we have to get away from the Affirmative Action / Quotas legal rules that have been in effect for the last 50 years. And then total feminization of law would be a disaster:

All of us depend on a functioning legal system, and, to be blunt, the rule of law will not survive the legal profession becoming majority female. The rule of law is not just about writing rules down. It means following them even when they yield an outcome that tugs at your heartstrings or runs contrary to your gut sense of which party is more sympathetic.

We are already seeing this, when a black woman judge released the kids that attacked Big Balls defending a woman from attack.

Am I outraged by all this? Actually, not so much. In part, there is Stein’s Law:

If something cannot go on forever, it will stop.

Then there is the fundamental fact that all living things in the world get on by adaptation. That extends from adapting to the weather every morning when you go outside to changing prices in response to the market, to species adapting to a changing environment. If you don’t adapt, you die.

In my view the male culture is all about defending the border. Modern capitalism is an adaptation of men to the notion that life in not about defending the border and killing the enemy, but making a great product and demolishing the competition. I say that today's business start-up culture is just one way in which men have learned to do battle in the marketplace.

Female culture is all about “keeping the kids alive.” If you are a woman with children then you need to cooperate with and share with the other women in your community. In the world before supermarkets the women in the community kept the kids alive by sharing out the food, and exchanging experience about how to make nutritious food and keep things clean. For instance, one of the big themes in George Eliot’s Adam Bede is the obsession of Mrs. Poyser and Lisbeth Bede with keeping their homes clean.

My take on The Great Feminization is that it probably isn't adaptive enough to survive, just as socialism doesn't survive because it is based on a fantasy that we don't need no stinkin’ capitalists to thrive.

The only question is how bad things will get before the ladies give up on the feminization of the public square and the workplace.

| perm | 10/20/25 10:42 pm ET | comments |

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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.

An American Manifesto: The Book

Contents

Chapter One

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