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

The Culture of Revolution, Baby

I’m coming to believe that the current moment is a replay of the Sixties “Revoluton, Baby” vibe. Grok says:

The phrase “revolution, baby” encapsulates this heady mix of optimism and defiance, where young people believed they could remake the world.

It involved:

Counterculture and Hippies
Civil Rights and Social Justice
Music as a Catalyst
Political Radicalism
Cultural Experimentation

Then there is Eric Hoffer as his dictum that mass movements usually end up as rackets. But I would say that the “revolution” of the Sixties was already a racket, a movement of, by, and for the privileged children of the educated class.

In the Year of our Lord 2025 what are we to think of today’s revolutionary vibe? As in:

No Kings protests
Rep. Pelosi threatens to arrest ICE agents
Lefty “mass economic blackout”
Gov. Pritzker’s Illinois Accountability Commission to review “federal law enforcement operations” in his state.

And so on.

What I wonder is what our Democratic friends think they are doing with all this.

Do they think that Trump is ending democracy as we know it?
Do they think that politics must always include “protest?”
Do they think that Trump is wrecking their corruption culture?
Is this just part of their secular religious faith in politics and “change?”
Do the leaders think that they have to rile up their rank-and-file to make them think that they are “fighting Trump?”
Are they just doing Revolution “cosplay” because that’s what they learned from the teacher in Protest 101?
Is this end-of-an-era to-ing and fro-ing by a failing ruling class and its supporters on the way out the door?

One of my theories is that the faith of the educated class is in being “creative,” stepping outside the ordinary to make a difference. This, to me explains things from creativity in the arts and creativity in sex and lifestyle. But I think that the educated class does not understand that “many are called but few are chosen.” That goes for everything from business startups to experiments in unconventional lifestyle. Problem is that our liberal friends believe that if their creative efforts are not successful then it must be because of injustice or bigotry rather than just the normal operation living things within nature.

Whereas we racist-sexist-homophobes normies just want our chance to live in the world and maybe make a difference. But we don’t expect to blaze across the sky like a meteor.

Or maybe the problem is just that the Democrats lost in 2024 and they “cain’t stand it.”

| perm | 10/24/25 10:42 pm ET | comments |

Of Course: Ending Liberal Hegemony Ain't Easy

A couple of days ago I wrote about how the No Kings protesters don’t get it. They are all riled up but they don’t realize that there’s a reason why the political center is moving away from them. They don’t understand that all the glorious political programs that were going to save the world didn’t, and they never will.

But “Should Republicans Take the ‘No Kings’ Movement Seriously?” Mike Miller writes that

The “No Kings” rhetoric, which bastardizes patriotic language to attack Trump by absurdly arguing that America’s duly elected president is actually a wannabe “king,” is charged, theatrical propaganda — not a serious constitutional critique.

But Newt Gingrich says not so fast.

The fact that millions of Americans spent part of Saturday in an ideologically driven political event is sobering.

No matter that it was organized by the NGO Industrial Complex and funded by lefty billionaires. The fact is that a lot of people showed up.

What do we want, we racist-sexist-homophobes that the left never tires of linking to another pejorative?

I think that what we want is to deflate and fold up the Age of the Educated Class slowly and gently so that there is no butcher’s bill to pay at the end of it.

For me, I understand the rage of our liberal friends. To an educated liberal, raised to the faith, it is truly “inconceivable,” just as Vizzini, played by Wallace Shawn, says, over and over in The Princess Bride. And it is particularly appropriate that Shawn is the son of New Yorker editor William Shawn.

Secular liberalism, progressivism, whatever, is a religion, just like Christianity. And just as Christianity has its Second Coming of Christ, secular liberals are taught to believe that the day of justice is just around the corner, just a couple of social programs away from Heaven on Earth.

Of course our liberal friends think that Trump is the worst thing ever — since the last Republican President — and a “king” and an “authoritarian” and “tyrannical” and “fascist” and whatever other pejorative comes to mind. Of course they do, because our liberal friends are used to being in the political and cultural driver’s seat and cannot really conceive of an orchestra where they are demoted from the first violins to the second violins.

So how do we do it? I’d say we should learn from the miscues of our Democratic friends, and remember what not to do.

Don’t weaponize the government like Barack Obama did with the Russia Hoax and the fake narrative that January 6 was an armed insurrection and that Trump should be put in jail for mis-valuing his real estate or sexually molesting poor innocent liberal women.
Don’t short-cut the legal process. Let the liberal judges continue with their ridiculous efforts to stop the Trump train, and deal with their injunctions in regular legal process.
Don’t fake up lawfare against Democratic headliners. For sure, prosecute the Brennans and the Comeys and the Boltons. But make sure they are prosecuted for real and serious violations of law. We need to do that anyway, because we need to reel in the out-of-control foreign policy and intelligence community establishments.
Don’t sail too close to the wind. We want to change the rules, and the best way to do that is to respect the new rules we want, and make fools of Democrats that change the rules with a change in the weather.

Fact is, we have bigger fish to fry than just hooking the Democrats in their corruption and lawlessness and ridiculous faith in the ability of politics to create a just society.

We want to make a society where big government and big programs and 40 percent of GDP spent in government is regarded as a pathetic superstition that only ignorant and bigoted people believe in. That doesn’t happen overnight. But it’s something to work on. We want to advance ideas like my Four Laws:

Socialism can’t work because prices.
Administrative government can’t work because bandwidth.
Regulatory government can’t work because “regulatory capture.”
Big programs cannot work because they can’t be reformed.

We need to create an America where every school kid is raised to believe the Four Laws as just common sense. Hey! That shouldn’t be hard, because the Four Laws are just common sense.

And then we want to teach people that human society is far too big and complex and miraculous to trust to a bunch of politicians and bureaucrats and activists.

Yes. The miraculous: how was it possible for humans to come to be, for capitalism to actually work and create unimaginable prosperity, and for humans to live nearly all the time in peace and tranquillity?

But we should understand that the current crop of adult liberals will never abandon the faith they were confirmed in. So we should be patient with them, and understanding.

Because we are the good guys.

| perm | 10/24/25 12:15 am 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

>>more>>