What if the solution to the current political impasse would be to ignore party bosses and work with those with whom we disagree on so much? After all, we don’t disagree on everything. Click on over to Townhall.com, for this week’s Common Sense foray into political strategy. And back here, for more reading.
When politicians fail at the petition process, citizen activists can enjoy the last laugh. For the Conyers re-election campaign, call it a Detroit irony.
Rush on over to Townhall.com, then come back here for the full reading list:
A recent poll determined that Illinois citizens are the most restive. That is, more of them than citizens of any other state would leave their state, if their situations allowed.
Why? The weather?
More like the political climate: corruption.
But they are doing something about that. Click on over to Townhall.com for this weekend’s dose of Common Sense. Then come back here to root around the story in greater depth.
Over at Townhall.com, an expansion of Friday’s “pension tsunami” Common Sense.
And, if there is anything less commonsensical, it’s out-of-control government employee pensions. Consider:
It’s an old trick: make the exception clauses completely transform the principles involved.
In Colorado, a politician is trying mightily to transform the nature of citizen involvement in state government. She thinks she’s an angel, of course. But if you think of her as a devil, I’d completely understand.
Click on over to Townhall for this week’s Common Sense column. Come back here, of course, for a little more context.
For other recent Common Sense columns on Townhall, you can view them on this site, as well as on Townhall.com itself: click here for the index.
Two American freedom fighters share April 13 as their birth date: Thomas Jefferson, author of the Declaration of Independence, and Jane Jacob, my mother. Happy Birthday to you both, Tom and Mom!
There, you have read the ending to my current Townhall column. Why not read the rest of it? Click on over. Then come back here for more reading:
Public schools are designed, in part, to solve a problem . . . that may not exist.
Click on over to Townhall.com, then come back here for a little more reading. Or a lot. It is up to you. It’s your education.
First, for links to the study, consult Wednesday’s Common Sense for links.
For a gimlet-eyed view of Horace Mann’s philosophy — peering behind the strata of praise heaped upon his reputation — try the work of education historian Joel Spring. In Educating the Worker-Citizen Spring: The Social, Economic and Political Foundations of Education, , Spring writes much of interest:
Mann’s arguments were based on his fears about how individuals would act, given the opportunity to elect their own governors. In calling for the teaching of a republican catechism, Mann was essentially saying that a republican society could function only if people acted the way he thought they should act. Or, stated another way, people could be free as long as they acted in a good manner and endeavored to do right. “Good” and “right” were to be defined by people like Horace Mann. (p. 13)
Much later in the book, Spring contrasts Mann’s idea of compulsory attendance and funding of public schools with the ideas from those on the opposite end of the spectrum, Milton Friedman being his primary example. What, he asks, about another area of possible government support, “free and compulsory eating?”
As [E. G.] West argues, it seems strange that contemporary governments provide free and compulsory education establishments but not free and compulsory eating establishments; there would seem to be more proof of the beneficial effects of diet than of the beneficial effects of schooling. . . . West’s illustration highlights the uniqueness of government-provided schooling in terms of other services provided by government. (p. 165)
E. G. West’s contributions to the economics of schooling and education reform are fascinating and important. You can learn a lot from reading West. But Spring seems more radical. His basic take? See chapter nine of the book I’ve been quoting from: “The major hindrance to the completion of the liberal revolutions of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries has been the rise and expansion of the modern school.”
Some simple solutions are really complex problems in disguise.
This weekend, at Townhall.com, your Common Sense columnist expands on a very popular meme, covered earlier: that the federal debt is no problem because the government, after all, can just print more money.
Amazing. It’s like we, wow, never thought of that!
Not.
Click on over to Townhall, then back here. You know, to add your two cents (yes, comments really are appreciated). Or to click through to a few of the additional links, below. Just scroll down to Saturday’s presented video to watch (in case you’d missed it) the sheer bravado of simple-minded inflationism and insider hubris (that is, the video in question). There are a few links in the column, but here please find some more interesting reading related to the subject:
Over at Townhall this weekend, the enormity of the Colorado insiders’ lawsuit against the voters who put them in office receives expanded treatment. Click on over, then back here. Comment. Share. Shout.
The foundation of a free society? The rights of the people in that society. Chiefest of these? The right to self-defense.
And that’s under attack these days. For the latest example, check out the column this weekend at Townhall. And then come back here, for more reading.
The third citation, above, briefly and concisely states the classical republican argument about self-defense as the basis of government.