“Political commentator E. J. Dionne has written that Americans are fed up with politics and many among us just want politics to go away. A distaste for conflict is a distaste for politics. The great Frederick Douglass once remarked that you cannot have rain without occasional thunder and lightning. Yet that is what so many […]
Archives for 2000
A New Beginning Or More Of The Same?
By the time you read this, we will have a new President-elect and, regardless of the outcome, there are issues of enormous significance to be addressed by the new administration. Since the first term of FDR, we have been fond of discussing the priorities of a new President’s “first 100 days”. To induce some reader […]
Thoughts On Cultural Pollution
Last summer, the Federal Communications Commission released a report that was critical of the marketing practices of the entertainment industry, accusing it of, among other things, directly targeting younger children with violent TV shows, CD’s, and movies. This report sparked a flurry of activity among policy makers, including hearings conducted by the U.S. Senate and […]
If Things Are So Good, Why Do We Feel So Bad?
Several years ago, Forbes Magazine published a special issue, a collection of articles with a theme approximating the title of this essay. One of the articles, by Peggy Noonan, made the observation that we are the first generation in world history that expects happiness. This struck me as profound, but also prompted my asking, “how […]
Public Education: Intervention and Accountability Not Enough
Public education, its plight, and what to do about it have been at or near the top of every list of public policy priorities at least since the 1983 publication of “A Nation At Risk”. Since then, the private sector (businesses, chambers of commerce, philanthropists, foundations, etc.), to their great credit, have shown a remarkable […]
Quote
“Those who would change a culture corrupt its language, particularly by hiding the reality of an evil they desire behind a less revealing name.”- George Orwell
Special Pre-Election Issue
This edition will be devoted entirely to thoughts I have been collecting over the past several months about the Presidential election. First, I should come clean with my bias. None of you are likely to be shocked by my admission that I am a supporter of George W. Bush. So what else is new? But […]
Quotes
According to Alexander Tytler in The Decline and Fall of the Athenian Republic, the great democracies of history have tended to last only a couple of centuries, during which time they have progressed through the following sequence: From bondage to spiritual faith; from spiritual faith to great courage; from courage to liberty; from liberty to […]
A Watershed Election
We should be greatly encouraged by the results of the election in Mexico in early July. If for no other reason, the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) had been in power for 71 years, longer than any one-party rule in the world other than the Soviet Communist Party (74 years). It represents another defeat for a […]
The “End of Democracy” Debate
Unfortunately for the republic, one of the most critical issues that energize both sides of the Presidential election is the prospect that the new President will likely appoint several Supreme Court Justices, not to mention scores of Federal judges on lower benches. I say “unfortunately” because our Founders could not have conceived of the current […]
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