Scott Powell

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Happy Columbus Day concept. Vintage American flag with compass and retro treasure manuscript. Flat lay, top view with copy space.

Why Columbus Day Remains a Foundational American Holiday

Seen within the big picture, Columbus Day is worth keeping and honoring as a great American holiday because it remains foundational to the establishment of a new nation by people who largely shared his qualities of character: self-made, adventurous, and reverent toward God. Read More ›
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Old and worn work gloves on large American flag - Labor day background

Labor Day Celebrates American Exceptionalism

Other than punctuating the end of summer, Labor Day has for many lacked meaning associated with other holidays. Properly understood, it is the holiday that celebrates not only labor, but also the ideas, job creators, and institutions central to the flourishing of the United States and its people. Read More ›
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Licensed via Adobe Stock

Memorial Day: More than Honoring Lives Lost in American Wars

Most people rightly associate Memorial Day with paying homage to those who gave their lives for America in war. But the holiday has roots that go back to the aftermath of the Civil War. At that time America was as or more divided than it is today. The Civil War cost at least 620,000 men — a greater cost than all of America’s successive wars combined. Read More ›
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The 2020 Election Asks: Do You Want the People Who Believe America is Racist in Charge?

Surveying the urban war zones, property destruction, and the shuttered businesses across so many American cities, many wonder, “Just how did we get here, and will we ever regain normalcy?” Those two questions loom over the November election, but what’s really at stake is a choice between civilization and chaos. Read More ›

Making American Intellectual Property Great Again

A deteriorating intellectual property regime in the U.S. has been quietly unfolding over the last decade and has contributed to the declining standard of living for middle class Americans, the stagnant economy, and the outsourcing of high-tech manufacturing. The Great Recession of 2008 technically ended in June 2009, but normal recovery never got traction in the next eight years of President Obama’s two terms. Read More ›

Senior Fellow Scott Powell: Trump’s Push for Deregulation

Executive Orders provide temporary relief, but long term structural change is needed for the U.S. to free itself from the regulatory leviathan and permanently limit federal bureaucracies and their army of unaccountable regulators.

Start with two statutory safeguards: 1) Congressional legislation that requires the delivery of $2 of regulatory cost reduction for every one dollar of new regulatory cost increase; and 2) Periodic Congressional reauthorization of regulations affecting industries and the economy — with sunset provisions for those not reauthorized.

Read More ›

Scott Powell Talks to Students About American Free Enterprise: Its History, Its Critics, and Its Sources of Renewal

The following is a transcript of a recent talk CWPM Fellow Scott S. Powell gave to a crowd of students at Florida Atlantic University.

There have been many civilizations that have come into being over the last 6,000 years—from the ancient Mesopotamians, Egyptians, and Asian civilizations that sprang up around the Euphrates, Tigress, Nile, Indus and Yellow River valleys, to the more recent and advanced Greek and Roman civilizations, which have more directly shaped Western civilization. While each of these civilizations made their own contributions to progress during the times in which they flourished, none of them unleashed the kind of economic development and entrepreneurial productivity witnessed in the first two hundred years of the American civilization. Read More ›