There may be one or two Americans left in the country who don’t know that we are currently living in an anti-Establishment, anti-professional, anti-politician era. Nationally we have voted someone into the Presidency whose primary claim to high office is that he has never held office. (In my own state, we have had a smaller version of the exact same phenomenon.) In virtually every Congressional and state-level campaign beyond the Presidential elections, we have candidates (including incumbents) engaged in an ever-escalating rhetorical battle to claim the low ground of experience. In Politicians: The Worst Kind of People to Run the Government, Except for all the Others, Bruce K. Chapman argues that this disdain for long-serving public servants has to stop. Keep reading.
The COSM Conference is a premier national summit on the converging future of technology. Held in the beautiful Pacific Northwest, COSM highlights the interplay between global innovations and the pullulating Seattle scene of some of the world’s leading tech companies confronting the fastest moving opportunities. Focusing on the “systems of the world” competing to shape our economy and society, the mission of the conference …
In recent years, socialism has emerged from the fringe to become, once again, a popular political idea. National politicians embrace it, and large numbers of Americans tell pollsters they would like to live in a socialist society. 2017 was the one hundredth anniversary of Russia’s communist revolution. To mark the grim occasion, the New York Times treated readers to a Read More ›
The televised Democratic presidential sound byte pageants will not be true debates by any realistic standard. They are reminiscent of the 2016 Republican primaries that started with 16 candidates preening on a platform and enduring “gotcha” questions by reporters/moderators trying to get themselves into the news story. Until the nominee field narrows, these shows are almost a parody of real debates in the Lincoln-Douglas or Oxford Union manner.
That’s too bad. We need to bring back real debates in America, and not just among candidates. Name the issue (climate change, foreign interference in our elections, abortion, immigration, tariffs, privacy online, the future of artificial intelligence, the meaning of “free speech,” whatever): Americans are badly divided. Since media and politicians often operate in inward-looking communities, they tend to ignore or distort views that differ from their own. In this environment, mere calls for greater civility don’t work. What can work is facing issues straight on and together. Read More ›
As Ben Franklin was leaving Independence Hall after the adoption of our Constitution, a lady asked, “Well, Doctor, what have we got — a Republic or a Monarchy?” He replied, “A Republic, if you can keep it.” Read More ›
By latest count, some 109,089 men and women are sleeping on the streets of major cities in California, Oregon, and Washington. The homelessness crisis in these cities has generated headlines and speculation about “root causes.” Progressive political activists allege that tech companies have inflated housing costs and forced middle-class people onto the streets. Declaring that “no two people living on Skid Row . . . ended up there for the same reasons,” Los Angeles mayor Eric Garcetti, for his part, blames a housing shortage, stagnant wages, cuts to mental health services, domestic and sexual abuse, shortcomings in criminal justice, and a lack of resources for veterans. These factors may all have played a role, but the most pervasive cause of West Coast homelessness is clear: heroin, fentanyl, and synthetic opioids. Read More ›
“This is unlike any film project we’ve done before,” said Discovery Institute vice president John. G. West. “Science Uprising directly confronts the false views of science held by the growing number of science popularizers like Neil deGrasse Tyson and Bill Nye.” The episodes are 6-8 minutes long each and address issues such as the existence of an immaterial mind, the Read More ›
Want to promote intelligent design as an activist, doctor, donor, scientist, writer, educator, student, or ministry leader? Plan now to attend Discovery Institute’s third Intelligent Design Action Network Meeting in Seattle on October 18-19, 2019. Hear about the current state of the debate from the leaders of the movement; talk with David Berlinski by video-link about his forthcoming book; meet Read More ›
