True educational reform must re-establish the secondary school as a place for broad learning, vocational training as a highly respected route to respectable work, and college as a place for higher learning. The call for college to be made “free” to all who want it rests on a number of assumptions, most of them self-serving, [...]
Whisky is not a product of savvy entrepreneurs. It is a product of Scottish culture that, like the drink, should be savored and appreciated. The primary consumers should be the local populations that imagined whisky. When operations go big to satisfy cosmopolitan demand, they lose something of that human touch and local flavor that give [...]
It is the perennial task of the conservative to disentangle the truth from the weeds of confusion which keep growing up around it. Samuel Francis and Patrick Buchanan have greatly contributed to the present resurgence of conservative elements rising up in America. Whatever political victories may come of their work should certainly be celebrated. “Go [...]
When the government began to define “essential” services, I began to question the relationship between man and his labor: Does man simply work to provide the means to live for his household or does he engage in work for its own sake? The rising unemployment numbers, which of course is the natural consequence of a [...]
Everybody agrees student loan debt is a large problem, having serious adverse effects on family formation, purchasing of houses, and many other aspects of American life. So, what should we do? Everybody agrees student loan debt is a large problem. In the United States approximately $1.5 trillion is currently owed by around 45 million people [...]
By the fall of 1932, most Americans had come to perceive the depression differently than they had at its beginning. Growing numbers began to worry that depression, rather than being a temporary and purgative event, marked a permanent condition of material scarcity and economic stagnation. With fears mounting that the economy is about to slip [...]
There is a Tory tradition in America that runs against the grain of establishment Liberalism, embracing home, hearth, community, family, church, nature, and the moral realities of everyday life, and opposed to individualism, unlimited free markets, libertarianism, secularism, and the rootless loneliness of global modernity. This tradition comes from within America, not without. One day [...]
As we start a new chapter of life after our move from Minnesota to Texas, I have a new goal for us. From now on, we are to switch our minimalism from Money to Things. No more acceptance of free things that will make our house less free. Henceforth and forevermore, we are no more [...]
When we strip away all the fancy arguments and strong opinions about capitalism, or industrialism if you like, we see a person in the workplace is a commodity, a thing to be used up and discarded. As a result, capitalism creates a thing-oriented society, where machines, profits, and properties are more important than people. I [...]
The poor, Jesus famously said, will always be with us. Jesus’ followers have often been accused of misusing these words of their Master as an excuse to ignore the systemic causes of poverty. Christians, the charge runs, have preached private benevolence as a substitute for the more arduous, and more courageous, task of fighting to change [...]
With so much buying happening online or through self-service kiosks, the art of shopping has lost much of its attraction. Some market-savvy executives have noticed this shortcoming and have recently introduced slow checkouts, which turn the routine chore into a meaningful experience. With so much buying happening online or through self-service kiosks, the art of [...]
The real problem with the technocratic Charles Murray is his zeal for the pernicious “American creed” of radical individualism. Facing Reality: Two Truths About Race In America, by Charles Murray (168 pages, Encounter Books, 2021) Viewed from the right, Charles Murray is an almost tragic figure. A libertarian-leaning proponent of America as the first “proposition [...]
Government programs cannot restore broken families and shattered communities. Only a moral regeneration of non-economic values can do this. The ravages of loneliness, despair, and suicide must be addressed by filling the spiritual voids that haunt people’s lives—and not by issuing government checks. The fight over the latest spending package is raging. Democrats are intent [...]
What made Aaron Feuerstein famous was not success but his attitude in the face of catastrophe. When a fire destroyed the textile mill he owned, he faced the decisions of whether to rebuild and whether to continue to pay his 1,400 workers, who were left destitute in the dead of winter. His decision became a [...]