Citizen Leadership

Chapman Center for Citizen Leadership

Enforcing a Good Law: Stopping Sexual Slavery

This article, published by BreakPoint, discusses John R. Miller of Discovery Institute: Stories like these are sickeningly familiar—and they are what drove former Congressman John Miller from Washington state to take on the post at the State Department enforcing the Trafficking in Persons Protection Act. “I realized that slavery was still alive,” Miller told World Magazine. The rest of the Read More ›

Clinton’s Afghan Triumph?

My Beltway friend was furious. “Every cocktail party I go to, the liberals are claiming it was Bill Clinton’s military that won Afghanistan.” “Glad we go to different parties,” rejoindered I from Seattle. Then I started hearing it on television, and noticed a similar claim in, of all places, The Washington Times. According to Morton Kondracke’s column of Feb. 4, Read More ›

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book lot on black wooden shelf
Photo by Giammarco Boscaro via Unsplash

The Roots and Remedy of Judicial Imperialism

Legal pragmatism traces its origins to the early decades of the twentieth century, when America was wrestling with the implications of Darwin's theory of evolution. Arguably the most significant impact of the Scopes trial was on legal philosophy itself. Read More ›

What’s in a Name

Anti-WTO demonstrators continue to get the benefit of the doubt from many in the media and even from some public officials. That benefit consists of a supposed distinction commonly made between the ‘bad’ WTO protesters who broke windows, assaulted policemen and set fire to dumpsters, and the ‘good’ protesters — supposedly everybody else in the anti-WTO ranks. The ‘bad’ protesters, Read More ›

Demonstrators Give Birth to Brand New Left

The satirist Tom Wolfe coined the term “radical chic” to characterize the way certain stylish New Yorkers in the 1960s fawned over, and financed, law-breaking groups like the Black Panthers. Just as the New Left attempted a “baby-boomer” imitation of real revolutionaries from still earlier eras, something like a Brand New Left is attempting to be born during the World Read More ›

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politiician speaking to business people in conference room during meeting

Just Because it is Called “Reform” Doesn’t Mean It’s Progress;

This summer the Congress is expected, finally, to take up the subject of campaign finance reform. If you believe the interpretation put upon this issue by most of the media and the permanent, self-designated “reform” lobby, the only reason to oppose the proposals being made is the self-interest of politicians and their major backers. But this simplistic view increasingly is Read More ›

Can the Church Take the Lead? Saving Marriages and Preventing Divorce

Okay, in order to ease the strain and allow a civilized consideration of this subject, let’s not get personal here. Anyone who has been divorced, is the child of divorce or has close friends and family members who have divorced — in other words, nearly everyone these days — knows the pain of it. There is a tendency when the Read More ›

The Issues Behind Filegate; It’s Not Just a “Bureaucratic Snafu”

If illegal use of confidential FBI files is proven, Filegate will most resemble that part of Watergate wherein White House zeal to dig up dirt on others led to dirty practices–and genuine scandal. No one familiar with the White House pass system could believe that “Project Update” was merely concerned with reviewing 407 FBI files of former presidents’ aides to see if they still merited passes. That transparently false explanation is even more suggestive of a cover-up than the reluctance of the White House to provide Congress with evidence of the affair.

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Oregon Trail near Baker City Idaho

Washington State History Often Neglects this Heroic Puget Sound Country Pioneer

Test yourself: who was he? In most ways he was a self-made man, a well-to-do farmer from Missouri who assisted other frontiersmen on the Oregon Trail. Most noteworthy, he was the determinative leader of the first pioneer settlement in Puget Sound country in 1845. His homesteading helped the United States establish the future national identity of this whole region. One Read More ›