Yesterday President Obama tried to sell the “Buffett Rule” under a new moniker: What Ronald Reagan was calling for then is the same thing that we’re calling for now: a return to basic fairness and responsibility; everybody doing their part. And if it will help convince folks in Congress to make the right choice, we could call it the Reagan Rule instead of the Buffett Rule. Securing Ronald Reagan’s economic blessing is a new trend among liberals. And no wonder: Ronald Reagan is one of the most popular presidents in …
The Hunger Games has captured the imagination of the entire nation. The book-turned-movie is set in a dystopian world where 12 districts are held under the tyrannical rule of a far-distant Capital. To keep the districts from rebellion, the Capital uses an age-old tactic to manipulate the people: constant fear of arbitrary imprisonment, torture, and death. A very real hunger game took place during most of the past century in the Soviet Union. From 1917 to 1991, the Soviet Union was controlled from Moscow, which subjugated the 14 nations surrounding …
Unemployment is up, inflation has risen, housing prices have stalled, and bankruptcies are at a record high. The price of oil is through the roof, we are on dangerous territory with Iran, and the great communist nation on the other side of the world is on our heels. Meanwhile, the President of the United States still doesn’t understand why Americans will not simply pull themselves out of their funk. Welcome to the year 1980. The resemblance between 1980 and 2012 doesn’t stop at economic conditions and foreign troubles. The year …
Guess how many top-tier universities offer a course on Lady Gaga? Four! The University of Virginia, the University of South Carolina, Wake Forest University, and Arizona State University all now offer semester-long explorations of Lady Gaga’s apparently profound influence—since 2007—on music, fashion, and the LGBT lifestyle. Yet none of these universities requires students to take a course in U.S. history before graduation. Professors and faculty at top-ranked institutions are giving preference to frivolous classes at the expense of true education. In a new study by the National Association of Scholars, …
“Congress hasn’t been able to do it, so I will.” With this bold statement, President Obama announced last Friday that he would unilaterally replace the provisions of the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) with conditions-based waivers. Obama’s waiver strategy is an alarming misuse of executive power that undermines the separation of powers. In and of itself, the use of waivers is not unconstitutional. Congress has the authority to create laws with provisions that allow the President to grant exceptions in certain circumstances. NCLB does, for instance, authorize the Secretary of …
Recently, Americans rated Ronald Reagan as the nation’s greatest president. Reagan merits such praise, because his ideas were successful: they ended the domestic economic recession and the international threat of communism. But Reagan’s ideas were successful, because they were anchored in certain timeless principles. And now these principles are being evoked by a new generation of leaders, including Marco Rubio. In his speech at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library last week, Rubio invoked many of the Gipper’s principles: Limited Government: “Defining the proper role of government is as important …
A third of graduated and rising high school seniors – who will be voting in the 2012 elections – have never studied the U.S. Constitution. A recent study by the National Assessment for Educational Progress reported that only 67% of all high school students have spent any time studying the nation’s founding document. Every four years, the NAEP polls 10,000 students about their knowledge of – or even exposure to – the Constitution. The percentage of knowledgeable students is continually decreasing and, since 2007, the numbers have fallen another five …
“The British are coming!” cried Paul Revere. On April 19th, 1775, the British marched toward the small villages of Lexington and Concord to seize supplies of the citizen militia and snuff out the colonial resistance. But the British would not succeed. Warned by Paul Revere’s alarm, the militia, made up of farmers and shopkeepers, met them on the green outside the town. A hundred and fifty strong, the citizens of Lexington armed themselves and faced the trained forces of British infantry and grenadiers. Captain John Parker told this volunteer militia, …
The Sugar Act is often overshadowed by its infamous cousin: the Townshend Act and its tax on tea. But the outcome of the Sugar Act, instituted on this day in 1764, is significant enough to stand alone in American history. Though it did not have the flair of war-painted men seasoning the Boston Harbor, the imposition of the Sugar Act marks one of the first times the colonists gathered together to protest Parliament’s encroaching authority. The British Parliament instituted the Sugar Act for the reason most taxes are imposed: to …
Of course it’s not surprising news at all: there are many more liberals than conservatives in the universities. But this reality has become an inconvenient truth refusing to stay under the rug. The New York Times reports a finding by University of Virginia social psychology professor Jonathan Haidt: 80% of social psychologists openly admit a liberal preference. Haidt confronted his peers with this disproportion between liberals and conservatives at the Social Psychology conference in San Antonio last month. While any other major disproportions (age, sex, race) in the discipline would …
