Justin Katz and Steve Ahlquist discuss prayer/creed banners in Cranston and the separation of Church and State.
Americans support conservative/Republican policies, but distortions in the media, entertainment, and cultural fields lead them still to prefer progressives/Democrats.
Rules, rules, rules — whether for the experience of modifying houses, business activities, or Bob Plain’s arrest record — keep our community from realizing its potential.
A “Creed” banner to replace the banned “Prayer” banner at Cranston High School West replaces God with the government and a free people should find it deeply disturbing.
Pope Francis has not revolutionized the beliefs of the Roman Catholic Church (whatever a godless media might say). But maybe the tide has turned, and the world is seeing the face of the Church that it needs to see.
Chafee’s record; the many ways to spy on civilians; what a constitution is for; when the debate on health-plan abortion?; the “natural right” to work the land.
In the name of the cause of same-sex marriage, American government is completely flipping requirements about who must follow what laws when in their work, freeing government and shackling citizens.
Quadrupling down on Rhode Island; finding the American-statist antidote in the Ocean State; school choice as the real civil rights battle of the day; who gets media “support” and why.
Republican diversity; John Galt moves to the Ocean State; RI’s employment backslide; “how could it come to that?”
Probably best known for portraying characters that exist primarily in the slacker/doofus spectrum, actor Ashton Kutcher accepted a Teen Choice Award the other night and revealed that he really isn’t a slacker and that being a doofus ain’t cool.
The opening chapters of Huxley’s Brave New World resonate uncomfortably with observations of the state of education and popular culture.
What’s happening to the news media these days? Perhaps it’s tough to maintain a large, popular audience from a narrow, out-of-touch tower.
Essays submitted to the RI Center for Freedom & Prosperity’s “Friedman Legacy Day 2013” contest suggest that public schools are preparing students for public dependency, not the dynamic process of overcoming obstacles on which the American dream is founded.
The narrow intellectual framing of the news media and popular culture have a tendency to sensationalize the candid statements of contemplative people and organizations, as with Pope Francis and his comments on the “gay lobby.”
Ethical hardship in the governor’s office; IRS scandal… drip, tick, drip, tock; missing culprits in racial division; getting out of the pension business.
Discussion of affordable housing needs to come out of the realm of theory and be understood through reasoning about human nature and geography.
Undermining the civic structure of the United States is a bit more serious of an act than should be compartmentalized in balance with endearing sci-fi references.
Addendum: I wrote this post back on April 22, talking about how our society likes to glamorize the worst criminals. I just thought I’d bring it back up again…
Governor Chafee’s veto of a minor bill to create “Choose Life” license plates indicates a belief that, democracy notwithstanding, people with views different than his must be excluded from the activities of government.
An update on the Commissioner of Higher Education ethics issue doesn’t cast the state executive in any better light, and marketing materials for the RI ObamaCare health benefits exchange don’t present young men as parts of families.
Finding a civic metaphor in peculiar Rhode Island traffic patterns.
At the Portsmouth Institute conference on “Catholicism and the American Experience,” Roger Kimball presented the art world as a hollow religion, standing in opposition to ordinary life just because.
Reflections upon a morning reading of the Declaration of Independence.
The sky is falling! 22 year olds are leaving college with $27,000 of debt and now they’ll have to pay 6.8% in interest on it! For a career path they chose. Can we stop with the hysteria and look at the bigger picture. They have plenty of time to pay it off and look at the long-term benefits.
Using current controversies to contrive a trick for cooling off on a hot day.
The Roosevelt Society’s inaugural event, featuring “conservative black chick” Crystal Wright, raised the central challenge of the American Right… even though nobody seemed to see it.
Some thoughts on the obligation to be cranky and contrarian in modern day Rhode Island.
The school choice debate comes down to philosophy and priorities, and the education of the public, in its vast diversity, should come first.
Peter Steinfels offered some intellectually challenging opposition to conservative Catholics at the Portsmouth Institute conference on “Catholicism and the American Experience.”
Robert George’s opening talk at the 2013 Portsmouth Institute conference on “Catholicism and the American Experience” argued for the necessity of religious freedom, in opposition both to theocratic imposition of doctrine and secular exclusion of existential searching.