Citizen Leadership

The missus and I watched Sabrina last night, the 1954 award winning film with Audrey Hepburn and Humphrey Bogart, written and directed by the great immigrant film-maker, Billy Wilder (Sunset Boulevard, Some Like it Hot, One, Two Three, etc.). In the film, the fabulously wealthy Larrabee family owns a vertically integrated series of industries. Of the two sons who stand Read More ›

Here’s an idea for our local Medici’s: Give a large grant to your favorite museum so it can distribute some of its mostly unseen treasures to institutions in smaller communities; to schools, to libraries and to local government offices. “Share the art.” Otherwise most of it goes unseen for long periods and some may never be shown in public. Meanwhile, Read More ›

We all have noticed the progressive sector’s attack on dissenters in the media ranks, on almost any issue, but especially lately on the sequester. First it was Woodward, then Lanny Davis, next Ron Fournier. But what interests me most about Fournier is his statement in The National Journal that foul speech and attempted intimidation have become emblematic of the Obama Read More ›

The New York Times absolutely hates intelligent design. If they don’t have a written policy about the need to trash the idea, they might as well have. As a result, they feel obliged to take a swipe at it every chance they get. One result is that they give prominence to developments that others in the Darwinian camp would like Read More ›

A few weeks before last year’s presidential election, Mitt Romney held a high-profile meeting in North Carolina with the Reverend Billy Graham, patron saint of American Evangelicals. Graham declared, “I’ll do all I can to help you—and you can quote me on that.” Graham’s organization followed up by placing prominent ads in a number of newspapers around the country in Read More ›

As America tumbles into the abyss of socialism, we try to look ahead to see what awaits us there. And we must face it — a majority of Americans have chosen to have a socialist form of government. Barack Obama made that clear both before and during the recent election campaign. When he said he intends to “transform America,” he Read More ›

A new book, Where They Stand, written by National Interest editor Robert W. Merry, shows that American historians consistently list Franklin Delano Roosevelt just behind Lincoln and Washington on their ratings of American presidents. A recent issue of Newsweek lists FDR as the top modern president. Years ago, the Schlesinger Presidential Poll even rated FDR first among all presidents. I Read More ›

Oh, the good old days of the Eisenhower Administration when the top income tax rate was 91%–now the source of sudden nostalgia by liberals like Paul Krugman. I was in college about the time in the early ’60’s when President Kennedy, a supposed liberal Democrat, cut that rate and ushered in a supply side economic boom that lasted at least Read More ›

Americans have always reveled in nostalgia about the music, fashion or favorite foods of bygone eras, but a sudden yearning for the high tax rates of yesteryear seems new and strange. While some opinion leaders pine openly for the tax system that once claimed a big majority of income from top earners, their cozy, communitarian vision offers a deeply distorted Read More ›

The Commission on Presidential Debates selected six subjects for the foreign policy debate: America’s role in the world; Afghanistan and Pakistan; Israel and Iran; Changing Middle East (two segments, “I and II”), and China.  These are topical, all right, but they do not begin to exhaust the vital issues that face the U.S. presidency. Instead, they remind us again how Read More ›