Indiana at 200 (20): Indiana Becomes 16th State
by Andrea Neal It’s a date every Hoosier should know: Dec. 11, 1816. On that day, Indiana became the 16th state. We’ve been observing it formally since 1925, when the Indiana General Assembly passed a law requiring the governor to “issue a proclamation annually designating the eleventh day of December as Indiana Day.” Indiana Code Read the full article…
Bohanon: Is Health Care a Right?
by Cecil Bohanon, Ph.D. As a former cigarette smoker, I have a nightmare. Somewhere down the road, I get a diagnosis of lung cancer. The doctor tells me the the cancer is treatable, the prospects for a full recovery are better than 60 percent and the costs of the treatments will be around $250,000. Now Read the full article…
Indiana at 200 (19): Framers Met Under an Elm
by Andrea Neal James Madison, Benjamin Franklin and colleagues spent almost four months debating, writing and editing the document that would become the U.S. Constitution. It took James Brownlee, Benjamin Parke and associates only 18 days to write Indiana’s. The framing of our first constitution represented the final step in a lengthy and sometimes controversial Read the full article…
The Spring Journal: ‘Why Politics Turned Nasty’
REGISTRATION: To ensure an advance copy of the spring journal, click on the “Join Us” button on the menu bar above. WHY POLITICS TURNED NASTY “The narcissism of my generation — the baby boomers — has become a permanent feature of our culture. An ‘it’s all about me’ attitude extends beyond materialistic selfishness. It also Read the full article…
The Public Debate Is Reduced to Misology
by Andrea Neal It’s little wonder that today’s political discourse is polarized. The folks doing most of the arguing know so little about the past that they cannot justify their views with historical evidence or data. So they appeal to emotion, name calling, stereotypes and hyperbole. A few recent examples: MSNBC’s Melissa Harris-Perry described the Read the full article…
Quick Hit: Racial Journalism
What if the featured columnist for the Indianapolis Star is wrong that Western Civilization can be explicated through the historical lens of Selma, Alabama, circa 1965? What if there is a difference between behavior and skin pigment? The columnist was so outraged that a group of black ministers would speak out against same-sex marriage that Read the full article…
