Bruce Chapman

Cofounder and Chairman of the Board of Discovery Institute

Archives

Caesar’s Wife and the Politics of Destruction

Bruce Chapman
September 28, 2018
Senate Democrats wrote President Trump Wednesday asking him to withdraw Brett Kavanaugh’s Supreme Court nomination. It’s reminiscent of the old saying that in a position of public trust, one must be “like Caesar’s wife, above reproach.” Yet no one is above reproach. Neither was Caesar’s wife.

Make the Seattle City Council Great Again

This city used to build dams, now it just taxes
Bruce Chapman
May 30, 2018
There seem to be cycles in city politics. Fifty years ago a small band of Young Republicans and Young Democrats came together in an unusual alliance to overturn the existing Seattle City Council. They called themselves CHECC: Choose an Effective City Council. It took a couple of elections, but they prevailed and it was then — in the 1970s — that formerly sleepy, somewhat stodgy Seattle began to get national attention as the “most livable city.” Sixty years before that, in the early 20th century, another group of novice politicians introduced the “Progressive Era” that gave us Seattle’s city water and light dams (providing abundant, cheap water and electricity), the public park system we enjoy today and the ship canal connecting Puget Sound and Lake …

From Darwinism to Dataism: Will We Lose Our Representative Democracy to Techno-Religion?

Bruce Chapman
May 23, 2018
Science fiction writers have long understood that when tyranny comes it often is introduced as some improvement, or as the correction of some perceived problem. C. S. Lewis, for example, warned of the therapeutic state that wants what is best for us, whether we ask for it or not. It starts as science, becomes scientism, then demands obedience. Jeremy Rifkin is a philosopher of Big Data in our own time who has a Marxist view of human good, organized in the “Commons,” whose space, according to his book “The Zero Marginal Cost Society: The Internet of Things, the Collaborative Commons, and the Eclipse of Capitalism,” is “more basic than both business and the market.” He writes that “The very purpose of the new technological platform is to encourage a sharing culture, which is …

New Book Says Politicians Are “The Worst Kind of People to Run the Government, Except for All the Others”

Bruce Chapman
May 17, 2018
Political “middlemen” who infringe on the relationship between the people and their elected representatives constitute a growing danger to democracy, according to new book, Politicians, by Bruce K. Chapman. “Politicians themselves are partly to blame for ceding responsibilities to unelected powers,” says Chapman, himself a former elected and appointed official. “Those powers include bureaucrats and judges, but also media, academics, non-profit cause groups, ‘professional reformers’ and  campaign businesses that ‘live off of’ politics, rather than ‘for it.” A good example of shifted responsibility, says Chapman, is Congress’ relinquishment of authority to government regulatory agencies. Another, Chapman says, is the “scandal business” that …

Politicians

The Worst Kind of People to Run the Government, Except for All the Others
Bruce Chapman
April 12, 2018
About the Book Americans love to trash their politicians as corrupt and self-interested, but they don’t agree on a solution. How can America attract good leaders to the thousands of elective offices in the land? In Polticians: The worst Kind of People to Run the Government, Except for All the Others, Bruce Chapman lays out a bold plan for the changes we need to make in our public life if we are serious about enable worthy leaders to emerge to and to succeed. Drawing on history as well as his own extensive experience in politics and public policy, Chapman challenges the conventional wisdom about politicians, arguing that their chief rivals — the media, bureaucrats, college professors, and even political “reform” groups — are often sources of further …

How Amtrak has come off the rails

Bruce Chapman
February 2, 2018
President Trump says that his highest legislative priority in 2018 is an infrastructure bill that includes private investments in “roads, rails and regulatory reform.” The best way to enlist the private sector in the passenger rail element of an infrastructure plan is to open the 15 national long-distance corridors and 27 state-supported routes to private competition with Amtrak. …

The Man Who Could Be King

John R. Miller and Bruce Chapman
August 28, 2017
This lecture was recorded as part of Discovery Institute’s Gorton Series Lecture. Former U.S. Congressman John R. Miller discusses his new book The Man Who Could Be King, a historical novel about George Washington’s struggle over whether to heed the call of his officers to become king. Archived August 28, 5:00 pm Event Page at …

Remembering Eleanor Roosevelt Video Now Available

Bruce Chapman
May 24, 2016
The Center for Citizen Leadership is presenting a unique film interview with Patricia Baillargeon, one of the last people to work directly with Eleanor Roosevelt in the varied and fast-paced last decade of Mrs. Roosevelt’s life.

Let the Candidates Debate

Bruce Chapman
May 21, 2015
There supposedly are 36 candidates vying for the Republican nomination for President in 2016. Charlie Cook calls the field “flat.” That means, I think, that no one is clearly ahead. How does the public sort it out? The media will run stories with manufactured exposes, jabber about “gaffes” (like the exaggerated reaction to Jeb Bush’s answer to questions about the Iraq War), and other gotcha gimmicks. They also will focus rigorously on polls and focus groups, until the issues are lost in a sea of changing imagery. On the Democratic side the slack-jawed fascination is with Hillary Clinton’s elusive emails and with her all too palpable financial ties at the Bill, Hillary and Chelsea Clinton Foundation. As new details keep raining down — as indeed they must, given the …

Coping with the Political Pain of Early Onset SDD

Bruce Chapman
May 13, 2015
“April is the cruelest month,” wrote T. S. Eliot, but for Britain’s Liberal Democrats and Labor (er, Labour) the cruelest month will always be May. In particular, Nick Clegg of the Liberal Democrats and Ed Milliband of Labour will never forget the very night in May when each was stricken with what might be called “Sudden Onset SDD”— Staff Deprivation Disorder. It’s sometimes known as “Morning After Disease.” In a matter of election return minutes, Mr. Clegg lost his office as Deputy Prime Minister, lost his government car and driver, his scheduling assistant, his government computers, his government cell phone, his security detail — yea, in a sword’s flash, his salary. Likewise, Mr. Milliband with his leadership of the Loyal Opposition. It was like a scene …

Corker Bill is Still Best Hope Against Bad Iran Deal

Bruce Chapman
April 26, 2015
The U.S. Senate is expected to vote next week on the Corker/Menendez bill to require a subsequent vote on any Iran deal that the Obama Administration completes by early summer. There is great uncertainty about everything involved, however. To start with, the Iranians and the American Administration are saying contradictory things about what they have “agreed” on. Increasingly, as the Israelis have figured out, Obama and Kerry are so eager — or is it desperate? — to get something, anything, they can call an accomplishment that they will concede practically everything other than a useless promise not to build a bomb. And maybe even that. In Iran, nobody advocates backing down on anything. Of course, there is no real democracy there, and so no serious dialogue. The public …