October 27, 2023

Ten more statistics to ruin your day

Just in case you're feeling too cheerful, here are ten more statistics to make you consider emigrating to Mars: 1. Paul Bond quotes a poll by the Barna Group: "Nearly 40 Percent of U.S. Gen Zs, 30 Percent of Young Christians Identify as L...

January 13, 2022

Ten Statistics to Ruin Your Day

Over the past few years, I've encountered various statistics that ruined my day, so to spread the pain, I've collected a few here.  Let's start with: The nuclear family fades in the USA: According to a Pew Resear...

February 13, 2021

Are you feeling safer yet?

A liberal relative of mine said of Biden's victory that she was overwhelmed with relief.  But she is not likely to experience the life of calm and safety she anticipates with the Democrat party having won the presidency, the Senate, and...

September 15, 2020

Should the Republican Party move to the left on trade?

Some argue that the Republicans should move to the left economically if they want to survive as a party.  Moving left means adopting several policies, including tariffs, discouraging outsourcing, investing in infrastructure projects, and mo...

August 14, 2020

America’s (Current) Suicide Attempt

It’s tempting to look on current events as unprecedented, with divisions as deep as at any time since the Civil War.  An antidote to this ahistorical view is to read (or re-read) historian Paul Johnson’s 1983 Modern Times -- especial...

January 26, 2017

The Dictatorship of Equality

In 1972 Congress prohibited discrimination in America's schools -- that is, discrimination based on gender. This law, Title IX, had a safety clause to prevent preferential treatment to women if there was an imbalance between women and men in some...

October 19, 2016

Don't trust the Americans

Imagine that you are thinking of defecting from a dictatorship.  Pehaps you have important information about a plan by your country's "supreme leader" to assassinate unfriendly American politicians.  With this information, you...

March 26, 2016

Trumping Free Speech

Donald Trump believes that the laws against libel by the news media should be stricter. At a rally, he promised:  "We're going to open up libel laws and we're going to have people sue you like you've never got sued before."...

March 11, 2016

Is Public Anger at the Republican Establishment Justified?

A frequent accusation that has been leveled at Republican politicians is that they did nothing to fight the Obama agenda, even though they had a majority in both houses of Congress. Supposedly the rank and file now see them as useless or unprinc...

February 3, 2016

Private Interests and Public Money

One of the extraordinary developments in the current presidential campaign is that the front runners on both the Democrat and the Republican side are emphasizing their opposition to the "special interests". Given that the world is rapi...

July 14, 2015

Trump is wrong on trade

The vast preponderance of recent news coverage on Donald Trump has been on his remarks about Mexican illegal aliens, but he also made statements on outsourcing jobs, saying that if he were president, those U.S. automakers who move their manufacturing...