Author: Craig Ladwig

“To know the road ahead, ask those coming back.” — Chinese proverb WE ARE NEARING the season for high-school reunions. Could one class hold a valuable secret for upcoming generations? My nominee would be the class of 1963, those born at the tail end of World War II, one that has little in common with the others that…

by Mark Franke What is it about us Americans and our hurry to move on to the next thing? By Christmas night the TV commercials are changing over to the next retail season and by New Year’s Day, the advertising demigods have made the snow disappear. Forget the 12 days of Christmas and the fact…

A Defense of ALPR Cameras THERE’S A BIG DIFFERENCE between the automated corner camera and the venerable corner policeman, an institution long recognized for accelerating investigations, raising crime clearance rates, locating missing people, reducing auto theft and generally keeping our streets safe for the law-abiding.  The difference? We can no longer afford the policeman.  But the…

by Dan Eichenberger M.D. The word “meritocracy” was born as an insult. In 1958, British sociologist Michael Young published The Rise of the Meritocracy, a dystopian satire warning that a society ruled by intelligence and effort would create a new, more arrogant elite and a resentful underclass. The Left later embraced the term’s pejorative spirit. Today the…

Public ‘Service’ Understood I’M HAVING TROUBLE sorting out the Andy Zay settlement this week. Zay, a former state senator, describes himself as a “public servant.” As commissioner of the Indiana Utilities, though, he displeased his boss the governor and was fired, somewhat abruptly.  But this is politics, not tiddlywinks. Wouldn’t grown-ups just agree to disagree and go their…

‘Head Start Never Worked’ CAN A FAILED PROGRAM uphold a billion-dollar budget for decades? Yes, if it is run by the government and promises the impossible in the name of beautiful, vulnerable children. That in a sentence is Head Start, the federal program created in 1965 with a pledge to provide school readiness for low-income children from birth to…

by Mark Franke “There is no vacant space left in the world today; founding something new requires destroying something old.” — Harvard Professor Harvey C. Mansfield I ran across this quote in Mansfield’s recently released book “The Rise and Fall of Rational Control: The History of Modern Political Philosophy.” Mansfield, sometimes called the last conservative standing…

Custer’s Vindication and More WE SORELY MISS the late Norman Van Cott, our curmudgeon and senior adjunct. Van Cott claimed to have wandered into an economics Ph.D. while looking for something more useful to do. Nonetheless, he left us with two sterling insights, one on the Battle of the Little Bighorn and the other on rabid…

by Dan Eichenberger M.D. The words “common sense” and “nonsense” are used as weapons in politics today. Each side claims to own reality. Conservatives talk about “obvious truths.” The Left often calls those claims ignorance or cruelty. To understand why these words carry force, and why many policies feel detached from the real world, it helps…

Conspiracy or Stupidity, You Choose OUR WOES are not the result of a conspiracy — at least that’s what I keep telling myself. But there is a theory that nags at me. It involves the Cloward-Piven strategy and it works to raise the cost of social-justice programs to the point of societal ruin. More about that later.…