Many Americans of all political stripes consider the heated level of political rhetoric to be harmful to our country, and the recognition that we’re very divided is not generally seen as a good thing. Yet I think we often fail to see the reason why there is seemingly more division. We blame the 24 hour […]
Archives
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Bigger government means less tolerance
28 Jul 2017
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Who Cares For the Most Vulnerable?
25 Jul 2017
Our thoughts and prayers are with the Gard family tonight, as they mourn the loss of their baby boy. We sorrow alongside of them. The Gard family’s grief compels us to ask a difficult question that lies at the heart of recent debates over healthcare in America. Who should determine and provide healthcare needs for […]
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I realized only this week that last year was the centennial of the birth of Jane Jacobs, who was born in 1916 and died in 2006. Now some or all of my readers might not recognize the name, but among city planners, architectural scholars, urban historians, urban economists and political scientists of an urban bent, […]
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A reader asked me to post something on President Trump’s proposed budget to Congress. Opinions have varied as to whether this budget is the apocalypse on one end or the second coming on the other, and pretty much every nuance in between. As with most budgets–though you may not remember the last one, since it […]
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The Core Problem of Common Core.
26 Mar 2017
I suppose it is time to write about Common Core again, in light of the recent withdrawal of a former Bush administration pro-Common Core staffer, Hanna Skandera, from consideration as an assistant secretary for the Department of Education. This blog is not about her specifically, though she is a member of one of the Common […]
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Immigration: A Partial Response
14 Feb 2017
My colleague Bert Wheeler wrote a recent piece on Bereans addressing more than one issue related to President Trump. The one that caught my attention was immigration policy. Bert expressed his concern (rightly) about Trump’s policies on that front. I assume from his use of the word “concerns” meant that he might or did have […]
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Elitism and Elitism
02 Dec 2016
Am I an elitist? Does the fact that I support the continued existence of the Electoral College make me elitist? Does my sometimes suspicion of democracy in its raw form make me elitist? And, is being an elitist all bad? Or is there some distinction between being an elitist and a pernicious brand of elitism? […]
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Do immigrants import their economic (and political) destiny? And is there any correlation between a past (in some nation) that is anti-market, undemocratic, untrusting and the present state of the nations to which they have migrated in sufficient numbers? That first sentence is the title of an article in Evonomics: The Next Evolution of Economics, […]
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Critical Thinking About Critical Thinking
22 Jun 2016
“Are Students Really Learning to Be Critical Thinkers?” is the title of an article in BetterEd by Annie Holmquist (http://www.better-ed.org/blog/are-students-really-learning-be-critical-thinkers). This question has been on my mind for some time as I have listened to and read educational leaders, teachers, professors and literature extol the virtues of “critical thinking.” But what have they almost always […]
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Not according to economist Ben Powell, and I’m with him (in the abstract). Of course there are specific cases we should have outrage, but we can’t simply wish that all of the world was wealthy enough for no children to have to work. Indeed, children working has been part of the human experience since the […]
Bert Wheeler
Jeff Haymond
Marc Clauson
Mark Caleb Smith
Tom Mach