Citizen Leadership | Page 46 | Discovery Institute

Child decorating Christmas tree with homemade gingerbread man cookies at Christmastime

^{Bruce Chapman
December 15, 1995
Citizen Leadership

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Designer trees? I say, ‘humbug!’ to these fashion zombies

_{Bruce Chapman
December 15, 1995
Citizen Leadership

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I suppose I'll make a lot of people mad and start some household fights, but I have to say it: Designer Christmas trees aren't the real thing. I'm willing to accept all varieties, sizes and shapes of Christmas trees as genuine. So long as the ornaments are many-colored, I'll go for all white lights, since the early trees had candles on them, after all. I'll even admit that some artificial trees from Thailand or China can qualify as "real;" in fact, our family has been thinking of getting one (we are always thinking of getting one). But I draw the line at self-consciously arty trees, especially those of monochromatic decorator design. You know them: the elegant ones with, maybe, all gold balls and gold ropes and bows. A two-color scheme isn't much better: the maroon and silver numbers, for example, with (yawn) all maroon ribbons and silver baubles and perhaps a silver light cleverly shining down on them from the ceiling. Such self-conscious concoctions are to real Christmas trees what robots are to human beings; they lack souls. Read More ›

A lawyer is presenting a case in front of blurred figures in a courtroom setting; professionalism and law

^{Bruce Chapman
December 8, 1995
Citizen Leadership

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Tort reform one route to restoration of a more civil society

_{Bruce Chapman
December 8, 1995
Citizen Leadership

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A woman at McDonald’s spills hot coffee in her lap and a jury awards her $2.7 million. Another jury awards a man $4 million from BMW because he wasn’t told that his new car had received a minor paint touch-up before he bought it. Yet another man is awarded $12.3 million, most of it in “punitive” damages,” because he fractured Read More ›

Wall building with bullet holes from Bosnian War period in Mostar, Bosnia and Herzegovina

^{Bruce Chapman
December 1, 1995
Citizen Leadership

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Clinton risks leading us into quagmire of ‘Vietnam II’

_{Bruce Chapman
December 1, 1995
Citizen Leadership

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Vietnam started, too, with limited purposes in service of a universal goal (containing communism, in that case.) And it ended with a goal of merely getting our prisoners home - and with years of disillusionment. President Clinton, who cut his political teeth on opposition to the war in Vietnam, has learned some of the lessons of that conflict, but not the most important one: Don't send troops into a war unless you have a way to win and get out. Yes, of course, "peace enforcement" is not war, supposedly. But it also is not mere "peacekeeping," and in Bosnia even the latter resulted in the deaths of more than 200 United Nations troops. When the president says that the United States mission "may well involve casualties," and that if U.S. troops are attacked "they will have the authority to respond immediately and . . . with overwhelming force," what then follows, if not war? In explaining to the American people and Congress why he had avoided direct intervention earlier, the president said, "I decided that American ground troops should not fight a war in Bosnia because the United States could not force peace on Bosnia's warring ethnic groups: the Serbs, Croats and Muslims." Just so. But why does he think he has "forced" that outcome now, when the Bosnian Serbs are still uncommitted and when whatever commitments are made on paper mean so little in the Balkans anyhow? There have been 34 "truces" and "cease-fires" and other "agreements" before this one, and none has held up. What enables peacekeeping is a manifest and genuine desire for peace on all sides or, even better, the defeat and disarmament of the aggressors. Is someone planning to go door to door to disarm the Bosnian Serbs? Read More ›

Desert combat with a battle tank that supports the army on the advance generative ai

^{Bruce Chapman
November 24, 1995
Citizen Leadership

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Think tanks instrumental weapons in conservatism’s arsenal

_{Bruce Chapman
November 24, 1995
Citizen Leadership

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Polls show that the public primarily blame Republicans in Congress, rather than President Clinton, for the recent (and future?) government shutdown. Those who blame both sides equally think that the battle is merely “political” in the worst sense. At the state level, Referendum 48, the property rights initiative, was soundly defeated earlier this month by a margin of 60-40. Is Read More ›

A train on the railroad tracks at Perrache station in Lyon (Gare de Lyon-Perrache), France, during sunrise.

^{Bruce Chapman
November 17, 1995
Citizen Leadership

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Continued socialization will derail passenger service

_{Bruce Chapman
November 17, 1995
Citizen Leadership

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Budgetary choices that ask voters to decide between equally unpalatable alternatives are often unnecessary. With a bit of imagination, budget cuts can be therapeutic rather than painful. A good example is Amtrak. Do we really have to choose between losing passenger rail service and subsidizing a cripple Amtrak? The present budget fudges this question by phasing out the roughly $700 Read More ›

^{Bruce Chapman
November 10, 1995
Citizen Leadership

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Only a fathead would ban fat substitute from my junk food

_{Bruce Chapman
November 10, 1995
Citizen Leadership

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This confession, I realize, is hardly unusual enough to get me on the "Jenny Jones Show." Half of all adults in America and a fifth of our children are overweight, and my case is only marginal. But I probably would have ballooned up like the Michelin Man if it hadn't been for the sugar and fat substitutes that food companies considerately began inventing just as I entered middle age. Diet drinks are approaching a third of the market in some areas. You have to look hard for the sugar behind the little pink and blue packets of sugar substitutes at the latte stands; but who's looking? Now, it turns out that the good people at Procter and Gamble Co. are nearing the end of a long, expensive effort to get Food and Drug Administration approval for "olestra," a product that allows potato chips, tortilla chips and other "savory snacks" to be cooked with all the taste of the crunchy little devils we love today but with none of the fat and few of the calories. Soon enough, if the FDA agrees, olestra also can be used to prepare conscience-free french fries, peanut butter, cookies, cakes and ice cream. But the CSPI's evidence is misleading. For example, it cites a study wherein five of 17 people who used olestra products came down with "diarrhea, gas, bloating (or) nausea." Urp! That sounds bad. But CSPI doesn't mention a far bigger and longer study of 3,357 consumers that found no differences in digestive effects between the olestra snacks and regular, full-fat snacks. It also claims that potato chips made with olestra may block absorption of certain vitamins, but neglects to note that the same is true of regular potato chips, and, for that matter, milk. Read More ›

A single raised blue fist in the center in front of the flag of Quebec

^{Bruce Chapman
November 3, 1995
Citizen Leadership

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Ethnic nationalism risk not unique to Quebec

_{Bruce Chapman
November 3, 1995
Citizen Leadership

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What do you follow in politics, economics or your heart? The moral discipline of the market or the lure of memory? Your future as an individual or the passions of your group? When Quebec was asked such questions this week, it split almost neatly in two. And so might many of us. Indeed, what Canada faced, and will face, is Read More ›

^{Bruce Chapman
October 27, 1995
Cascadia, Citizen Leadership

5}

For Canada, breaking up is hard–and wrong–thing to do

_{Bruce Chapman
October 27, 1995
Cascadia, Citizen Leadership

5}

Canada is a country where something terrible is always just about to happen, but never does. The terrible thing is usually the secession of Quebec. The mere possibility of a province seceding reminds a U.S. citizen of the relative stability bequeathed to our country by the Union victory in the Civil War. But hardly anything disturbs the political calm like breaking up one's country. And in Canada, that is a real possibility. Like Sisyphus, Canada seems condemned to roll the rock of Quebec up the hill of federalism, only to have it roll back down, over and over. Worse, federalist forces have to win every election that is held on the issue, while secessionists need only win once. Probably. You can't say for sure because, in Canada, referenda often settle even less than they do here. If Quebeckers next Monday vote for "sovereignty," it is still unclear what that will mean in practice. Canadian Prime Minister Jean Chretien says it means separation, clear and simple. No more Canadian passports for Quebeckers. A division of the national debt, and no special favors thereafter. The federalists also are likely to back the Cree Indian Grand Chief, Matthew Coon Come, who wants his tribe's huge northern tracts in Quebec to remain in Canada. The chief argues that aboriginals (as native peoples are known) have the same right to secede from Quebec that Quebec demands from Canada. Read More ›

Labor Law Lawyer Legal Business Internet Technology Concept

^{Bruce Chapman
October 20, 1995
Citizen Leadership, Technology

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Individuals, not governments, should shape Internet’s future

_{Bruce Chapman
October 20, 1995
Citizen Leadership, Technology

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The Internet is no longer a government network tying computer users together, but a worldwide network of many networks, free and open to all, and increasingly easy to access. There is no monopoly potential to it, so government's excuse to regulate it is almost nil. Read More ›

USA, Washington, Seattle. The Sail-in parade of the Bell Street Pier Classic Rendezvous.

^{Bruce Chapman
October 13, 1995
Citizen Leadership

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Bell Street Pier project a jewel in Seattle Port crown

_{Bruce Chapman
October 13, 1995
Citizen Leadership

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The Port of Seattle's tax rates over the last five years have declined by 33 percent, while its revenues have increased by 34 percent. Incorrect numbers were published in Bruce Chapman's column last Friday on the port's new Bell Street project. Somehow, the Bell Street Pier, a multipurpose, $88 million creation of the Port of Seattle, has managed to go through the whole development process, right up to the interior work now under way, without raising the ire of any economic interest, environmental body or taxpayer watchdog group. But already little bands of potential users are lining up to get a hard-hat tour of a civic facility that is sure to attract international attention. Ordinary folks are beginning to ask about it, too. When a class of fifth graders from the "TOPS" program at Seward School on Capitol Hill walked down to a parking lot above the site recently, they were given a description of the project that left them reporting back like the legendary blind man who encountered an elephant. Each one had a different impression of the beast. Read More ›