Franke: Consent of the Governed?
by Mark Franke ”Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.” These words of Thomas Jefferson can be found in the second paragraph of the Declaration of Independence, immediately after the more recognizable “Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.” Jefferson writes that it is to secure these Read the full article…
The Outstater
A Man Without a City I HAVE THE COMPLETE off-year election results in front of me. My analysis? God seems to use elections to warn us that democracy is not going to be our salvation. Around here, we unthinkably reelect everybody. Our top council vote-getter is a race merchant with a socialist bent. Our pay-to-play mayor won his fifth term Read the full article…
The Outstater
Pausing for a Silent Moment of Malfeasance FOR A JOURNALIST, malfeasance is something for which you expect to have to dig. You are surprised to find it on top of the ground or, in this particular case, sitting on a council table wrapped up as a $50-million present to special interests. The discussion last week in my Read the full article…
The Outstater
Deport Them; They’ll Like It THE ADMINISTRATION of Indiana University is deep into what my colleague Mark Franke has identified as cognitive-dissonance reduction, a way of cramming inconvenient facts into an impossible ideology. Pamela Whitten, with a doctorate in communication studies, is the university’s first female president if that is important to you. She seems confused or perhaps just stymied as Read the full article…
Franke: What’s U.S. Foreign Policy?
by Mark Franke I learned something new the other day in a Wall Street Journal column: the term “cognitive-dissonance reduction,” a form of mental gymnastics used to fit inconvenient facts to the ideology. I know what cognitive dissonance is, having run into the term in my undergraduate business school classes. Think of it as a Read the full article…
The Success of an ‘Annoying Child’
I LOVE TO TELL HER STORY. She is an inspiration that you can bloom where you are planted, you don’t need a high affirmative-action score or special favors to succeed. Heck, you don’t even need a college degree. Bobbi Ann Mlynar and I had the same English teacher our senior year, an eccentric word fiend who Read the full article…
