This time the national passenger rail system, Amtrak, really is heading for a train wreck. So badly in debt is the public corporation that the General Accounting Office (GAO) and a host of other observers see it as functionally bankrupt. Congress and the Clinton Administration have been warned repeatedly of the need to plan ahead for the kind of privatization Read More ›
We made up political buttons that said, “I am an Extreme Moderate.” Our antagonism to big government was genuine, but more, well, moderate than those of our friends and adversaries on the GOP right. Tender of years in the early 1960s, we at Advance magazine and, later, the Ripon Society seldom got much media attention, unless we were criticizing the Read More ›
Published on May 1, 1991, Centesimus Annus returns to the themes of a lapidary encyclical of 100 years before, Rerum Novarum, which refuted Marxism long before it had refracted into a global plague of tyranny and murder. The critique of socialism, however, did not signify an affirmation of capitalism. The `new things’ to which the Pope devoted his attention more Read More ›
The Presidents’ Summit for America’s Future that begins in Philadelphia this Sunday promises to provide prestigious encouragement for broad citizen volunteering, a worthy purpose, we can all agree. But here’s a caveat that should, and possibly will not, be heard: Don’t let the government continue to invade–define, finance, direct–voluntary associations. We already are well down that path and it leads Read More ›
Could jaywalking contribute to a climate of lawlessness? Could public drunkeness? When a former mental patient wielding a sword on a downtown street can tie up traffic and the police for 11 hours, as happened recently in Seattle, can we see any relevance to our laws on involuntary treatment? The answer is “yes” to all these questions. Increasingly, law enforcement Read More ›
Law enforcement authorities in a number of American cities, including New York and Seattle, decided in the early 90’s to throw a half century of relativist theory out the window and try some common sense and practical experience for a change. Guess what they found? A) If you make law breakers responsible for their actions they will behave more responsibly. Read More ›
Conna Craig is a former foster child, and adoptee, who heads the Institute for children in Cambridge, Mass. She describes a teenage present-day foster child who observed, “Everywhere I go, someone makes money by keeping me from having a mom and dad.” How can that be? How can the child welfare system that is supposed to protect and serve kids Read More ›
The U.S. is heading for a new type of young adult: upbeat, colorful, civic-minded. A recent Wall Street Journal series called them Generation Y, but I prefer the term “Millennials”–because this is the age cohort that will start graduating rom high school seven months before the new century commences. And these “kids” are already sending us clear signals. ITEM: A Read More ›
A recent press conference held by the NAACP and a group of angry white, female Army personnel at Aberdeen Proving Ground in Maryland was a public relations breaktrhough. It had the intended effect of showing that over-zealous Army brass had pressured the women to make unfounded rape charges against a group of black male soldiers. But it also demonstrated how Read More ›
Americans either tend to hate to love it, or to love to hate it. But neither attitude toward the United Nations is appropriate to the situation today. Neither is the old, idealistic view on the far left that the UN eventually should develop into some kind of world government, nor the recent far right delusion that the UN is trying Read More ›
The scandal game in Washington, DC is only going to get worse, and you may want a scorecard. That is because the latest collection of charges could turn out to do long-term damage to our system of representative democracy, leading to false reforms that will make matters worse, not better. Here is the dilemma: If serious law breaking at high Read More ›
American politics has lots of bad habits. Among them: Nothing (or is defined as) a scandal or a crisis. Two others: Politicize the nonpolitical; criminalize the noncriminal. Yet another: Regard accusations as proof of guilt. And yet another: Whenever possible, sue. And now this ugliness has reached the military, a supposedly apolitical institution being torn apart by cumulative crises and Read More ›