Category: Indiana Writers Group

 by T. Norman Van Cott, Ph.D. As controversy swirls about the forthcoming Obama Presidential Center in Chicago, its builders cite jobs associated with the center as benefits. According to the Obama Foundation, there will be 5,000 jobs during the Center’s construction and 2,500 after it opens. Whatever the job figures turn out to be, they…

by Eric Schansberg, Ph.D. In his book “Bobos in Paradise” from 2000, David Brooks describes key members of American culture in the 1990s. He combines two “bo’s” to get “Bobo” — “the bourgeois world of capitalism” and “the bohemian subculture.” Since Bobos are still quite influential, it’s worth a look back at Brooks’ study to help us…

by Mark Franke Growing up in Fort Wayne in the 1950s, even a youngster like me realized that this was an industrial town. The east end industries employed tens of thousands of workers, General Electric (where my father worked) had three large plants, and there was a strip of heavy industry along Taylor Street on…

by Leo Morris Are you a conservative? You are? Really? What does that mean? How do you see yourself when you embrace that label? Would you like to know what I mean when I say that I am a conservative? I’ll offer you a wager. Come up with a definition acceptable to me, and I’ll…

by Eric Schansberg, Ph.D. Everyone seems to agree that partisanship is increasingly prevalent and toxic. But few people seem to see themselves as part of the problem. One aspect of partisanship can be a troubling lack of objectivity and empathy — and, even, blindness. So, how would we know if we’re partisans? We all know that,…

by Leo Morris I wasn’t in-country for the Tet offensive, but I didn’t quite escape it. I missed the carnage but had a front-row seat for the human detritus it created. I had been medevacked to the U.S. Army hospital at Camp Zama, Japan – sick, not wounded. Even during the war, the place usually…

OVER THE COURSE of eight years George W. Bush uttered not a single word critical of President Obama. Having led the nation into two unnecessary and fruitless wars, presided over the worst economic collapse since the Great Depression, opened the borders to mass illegal immigration and left the Republican Party in shambles, it is only right that…

“How could it be legal that the state government under the color of state power constrained by the due process obligations imposed on it by the 14th Amendment can openly discriminate against people in one party because they’re members of that party?” — Jay Yeager, an attorney with Faegre Baker Daniels, commenting on redistricting in…

by Eric Schansberg, Ph.D. Maybe you’ve heard about the recent firestorm in Oregon. People there are now being allowed to pump their own gas in the state’s less-populous counties. Some Oregonians are worried about their ability to do it safely or they don’t want the smell of gasoline on their hands. Of course, markets will…

by Leo Morris Hoosiers disgusted with legislatures that don’t apply the same laws to themselves that they pass for everyone else can take heart that the Indiana General Assembly seems to be breaking from this deplorable tradition. The #MeToo movement has apparently achieved such volume and intensity that it can be heard even in Indianapolis,…