Discovery Institute

Smith a Hit in Poland

Discovery Institute

May 24, 2019

Discovery Senior Fellow Wesley Smith’s book, The Culture of Death, has now been translated into Polish and was the center of attention at his addresses this week to a conference on bioethics and to another gathering of 1000 doctors in Krakow. Wesley was interviewed by at least three print media, featured in a book review and hosted on TV and Read More ›

Huawei Is an Asset, Not a Threat

George Gilder

May 20, 2019

Economics, Technology

Among the world’s most inspiring business voices is Ren Zhengfei, founder-philosopher of Huawei, the disruptive and now condemned Chinese telecom-equipment company. Vilified as a cat’s-paw of the Chinese government, Mr. Ren has decided to place his trust in America’s legal system and launch a court challenge to the U.S. government’s campaign against his company—and family. His daughter, Huawei chief financial officer Meng Wanzhou, is fighting extradition to the U.S. from Canada on murky charges that she helped financial institutions violate American sanctions on Iran. She has been under house arrest in Vancouver, British Columbia, since December. Read More ›

The Best Brexit Strategy is to Leave First, and Then Deal

Stephen C. Meyer

May 16, 2019

Foreign Policy

Last month, the European Union’s Council of Ministers voted to allow Britain another extension in its Brexit deliberations. Despite Prime Minister Theresa May’s “success” in negotiating this extension, her Conservative Party recently experienced massive losses in local council elections with more than 1,300 Conservative councillors losing their seats. Since then, May’s party has tanked further in opinion polls. One recent poll has only 11 percent of the electorate supporting Conservative candidates in the upcoming May 23 elections for the European Parliament. Three years after voting to leave the European Union (EU), British voters must now suffer the indignity of voting to send representatives to a body they no longer wish to represent them. Read More ›

Students and Parents Badly Hurt by the Legislature

Bailey Takacs

May 16, 2019

Education

The 2019 legislature missed out on a big opportunity this year. Instead of working to reform how our schools operate, the legislature took a step backwards by undoing much of the good work that was done in response to the McCleary court ruling just two years ago. In 2017, Democrats and Republicans approved a bi-partisan school funding bill, reforming state and local property taxes to ensure that the state met its constitutional obligation to fully fund K-12 education. The law reduced inequities by capping local property taxes, so wealthy areas would not have an imbalanced benefit, by providing equitable state funding to all schools on a per-student basis. All parties, including Governor Inslee, lauded and moved forward with the agreement. Read More ›

Steve Forbes Podcast with George Gilder: The Creativity of Capitalism and the Post-Google Era

George Gilder and Steve Forbes

May 13, 2019

Economics, Technology

Discovery co-founder George Gilder sat down with Steve Forbes on Forbes’s podcast What’s Ahead. There are not many minds that have been able to predict what’s ahead quite like Gilder who has proven to be a true visionary in economics and tech. In this conversation with Forbes, Gilder discusses his new book Life After Google: The Fall of Big Data Read More ›

How the U.S. Can Solve the Current Trade Tariff Impasse With China

Scott S. Powell

May 10, 2019

Economics

Trade talks between the U.S. and China have hit an impasse, but there is surprising bipartisan support for the Trump administration to stay the course on what will be a long process to resolve the full range of trade problems specific to China. Success on this first round of trade negotiations in the form of ending the tariff penalties that are at the heart of a year-old trade war, with further reduction and even elimination of tariffs on as many categories as possible, should actually be attainable in the near term. Future rounds of trade talks to find remedies for China’s intellectual property and trademark theft, national security threats, and forced technology transfer from American companies doing business in China will be far more problematic. China is already feeling the pain of our tariffs, just as American farmers are feeling the pain of their retaliatory tariffs against U.S. agricultural products. Both sides benefit from more trade with minimal tariffs that come naturally because of comparative advantage — a theory that has worked consistently since David Ricardo developed it in 1817. Read More ›

How Seattle’s Elite Brushes Off Violent Homeless Crime

Christopher Rufo

May 6, 2019

Economics

A year ago, in Seattle, a man living in a city-funded homeless encampment raped a woman in the bathroom of a Volkswagen dealership in the city’s Ballard neighborhood, according to the victim and law enforcers. Christopher Teel had arrived from Texas as a transient and was evading at least one active warrant, but the city-sanctioned encampment welcomed him without conducting a criminal-background check. The story caused a sensation, with wide media coverage and public demands for increased security measures, but the woman, Lindsey, remained silent, and her identity was kept secret. Nearly a year later, Lindsey contacted me. Read More ›

Wesley J. Smith Testifies Before Texas State Senate

Discovery Institute

April 22, 2019

Human Exceptionalism

Discovery Senior Fellow Wesley J. Smith appeared before the Texas State Senate Committee on Health and Human Services to advocate in favor of SB2089. The purpose of the bill is to improve Texas’s medical futility provisions and to make end of life healthcare disputes between patients, providers, and their families cooperative rather coercive, which Smith currently believes to be the …

Callao Cave, by Ervin Malicdem [CC BY-SA 4.0], via Wikimedia Commons.

New Fossil Human Species Thwarts Core Darwinian Predictions

Günter Bechly

April 19, 2019

Intelligent Design, Research & Analysis

The rewriting of the evolutionary narrative of human origins is proceeding at such an unbelievable pace that I am running out of new ways to introduce my comments on the latest findings. Just a few weeks ago, for Evolution News and ID the Future, I discussed the ongoing rewriting of human fossil history in Asia (Bechly 2018, 2019, Klinghoffer 2019). Now a new fossil species of Read More ›

Seattle’s Revolt of the Elites

Christopher Rufo

April 16, 2019

Economics

In Seattle, people are losing patience with city leadership over the homelessness crisis, but the frustration is running in both directions: the city’s political, cultural, and academic elites are conducting their own revolt — against the people. Since the release of Eric Johnson’s documentary Seattle Is Dying, which depicts an epidemic of street homelessness, addiction, crime, and disorder, city elites have launched a coordinated Read More ›