“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 will gather this month to relive old times. It is said only half-jokiningly that its members are the last survivors of…

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 that winter has just begun. It is time to move on. I fear the same has happened with our celebration…

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 much-hated cameras, known as Automated License Plate Recognition (ALPR) cameras, are embarrassingly efficient. Nor are they subject to the will…

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 Democratic Socialists of America and progressive intellectuals treat meritocracy as a dangerous myth and an ideology that legitimizes inequality, stigmatizes…

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 own way? A difference of opinion, a policy clash? Zay could run for governor if he feels that strongly about it. Indeed,…

‘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 age five. That has not been realized. Rather, the program has stood in opposition to more effective self-help programs for single mothers and…

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 at Harvard, lectured on political philosophy for more than 60 years. This book is taken from those lectures.  His point,…

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 do-goodism. First, the battle. Writing in the Journal of Economic Education, Van Cott noted that a primary source of military intelligence for…

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 to recover their original meaning and their link to basic Christian wisdom. “Common sense” entered English in the late 1300s.…

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. The news clipping in front of me says that the Indianapolis city council this week overturned a veto by the mayor and…