The very idea that students will suffer any significant loss of educational attainment by losing two months of twelve-plus years of school—less than two percent—is nonsense. Such an argument that every minute of school attendance is irreplaceable can only be made by someone who never attended American elementary and secondary schools. A frequently worried-about consequence [...]
The Catholic order of nuns, the Little Sisters of the Poor, are apparently not little enough or poor enough to avoid governmental coercion and interference with their works of charity. For almost a decade now, they have been involved in court cases resisting governmental attempts, first federal and now state, to require them to incorporate [...]
We need to see beyond the myopia of the current crisis to its long-term consequences. What awaits us when the pestilence passes? What sort of world will we be living in? Will the lessons learned lead to the restoration of lost liberties, or will we find that the freedoms we relinquished in this time of [...]
Now, standing patiently in line for their bailouts, are the states—and America's cities and counties. The one certain victor in the coronavirus pandemic war will likely be Big Government. "War is the health of the state," wrote the progressive Randolph Bourne during the First World War, after which he succumbed to the Spanish flu. America's [...]
A few weeks ago, the word was temporary. Now we are hearing indefinite. America’s recently unemployed subjects under house arrest can be forgiven for starting to wonder from behind their bootlegged face-masks: If politicians and the media continue to clamor for increasingly draconian measures (including, in the case of EWTN White House correspondent Owen Jensen, [...]
A journal is claiming that the Russian government was using the Covid-19 outbreak to strengthen anti-EU feelings, make propaganda gains, and gather intelligence at the heart of NATO. Although this report has gained traction, what is this statement really saying and who is saying it? According to a recent news report, Russia is using the [...]
What does this deliberate decision to shut down the country and carpet-bomb our own economy, upon which we all depend, tell us about what we Americans value? For each American lost to the pandemic, 1,000 Americans have lost their jobs because of conscious and deliberate decisions of the president and 50 governors. Some 60,000 citizens, [...]
My initial skepticism about the way in which we have dealt with this real but exaggerated threat has only grown. In fact, the lockdowns and the shuttering of our medical and economic system have now become a greater threat than the disease itself. After my essay on conservative skepticism about both the severity of the [...]
From the founding generation to the greatest generation, Americans sought meaning in one or more of the three operating systems that informed Western civilization: Judeo-Christianity, the Enlightenment, and Romanticism. The productive tension among those three operating systems defined the modern age. Three radically different world views—yet we moderns kept them suspended in a three-way polarity. [...]
When nations under the European Union close their borders to protect their people from the coronavirus, the pomposity of the EU is exposed. This is a telling sign that its serpentine grip on its empire is slipping. On April 2, the Court of Justice of the European Union, the EU’s “supreme court,” ruled that its [...]
Closing borders is a grievous offense against liberalism that is supposedly rooted in the sin of xenophobia. But what governments in Europe are saying by closing their borders, what Americans are saying by banning travel from Europe, is that while all men may be created equal, we will always put our own people first, ahead [...]
History teaches that chosen leaders can unite and divide nations. Unfortunately, discussions on what true leadership must mean for America have been lacking. There is no dearth of leaders in America. Countless platoons representing special interests that range from wealth preservation to sexual orientation favor their own version of a leader. Much of the country [...]
During LBJ’s presidency, a war was waged, as Amity Shlaes demonstrates in “Great Society,” by the federal government against the rest of the nation. This tragic story of government growth sowed seeds of division in America which suggests that, as long as federal power dominates civil society, Americans will live in a “tribalized” nation. Great [...]
The belief that wars can be fought to defend democracy or to make the world safe from tyranny retains its potency and still has political mileage. It is indeed a large part of the rationale for the neoconservative worldview. Nonetheless, it is worthy of serious consideration. The tragedy of war is that it is self-perpetuating, [...]