Essays


  • Book Review: ‘The Founders at Home’ by Myron Magnet

    The reviewer, an adjunct scholar of the foundation, is formerly the Associate Vice Chancellor for Enrollment Management at Indiana University-Purdue University Fort Wayne. Reviewed by Mark Franke It’s difficult being a classical liberal these days. Is one a conservative or libertarian in current political speak? To get all the way down into the verbal gutter that too frequently describes our political discourse today, does one qualify as a True Conservative? A Tea Partier? An Angry…

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  • The Outstater: Mitch Daniels in the Land of Fools

    Not for publication, quotation or distribution. For the use of the membership only (630 words). MITCH DANIELS is said to suffer no fools. With the diplomas handed out and the federal student loan money in the bank, it is a good time to reflect on what that might mean for Indiana higher education. Daniels is sympathetic to the thinking behind the “Chicago Principles,” a letter drawing the line on student protest. “Our commitment to academic freedom means that we do not support…

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  • Reality Check

    Q.  If you were to relocate or start a business, which Indiana cities would you consider? Click HERE to participate in this quarter’s sample of membership opinion.

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  • Backgrounder: ‘Mad Anthony’ to the Ramparts

    For the use of the membership only (673 words). NOW THAT NEW ORLEANS has rid itself of Robert E. Lee, et al., it surely must be Fort Wayne’s turn. How long can it be, given the new rules of acceptable statuary, before someone smashes Gen. Anthony Wayne to smithereens? For if political correctness is the measure, Mad Anthony is high on the list of marble and bronze undesirables. Consider for starters that the general’s only recorded words…

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  • Book Review: A ‘Florida’ Vacation? Rethinking Eco-Devo

    (For release May 26 and thereafter.) by Jason Arp Being a city councilman in a medium-sized city, you are going to come across the writings of Dr. Richard Florida in one way or another. Real estate developers, Chambers of Commerce heads and politicians of all stripes have learned that Florida’s concept of “quality of place” translates into big bucks at the taxpayers’ expense. The best-selling author, however, has recently done an about-face that might signal…

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  • The Outstater: All the Sanctimony Fit to Print

    (Not for publication; for the use of the membership only.) A FEW DAYS AGO the top story on the front page of our morning newspaper was not the threat of a North Korean nuclear attack or the chaos in Washington. It wasn’t even the impact of increased state taxes on a dwindling middle class. No, it was that a black justice on the Indiana Supreme Court is retiring and it appears that his seat will not be filled by…

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  • Half Past the Month: The Silence on Private Property

    “Life, liberty and property do not exist because men have made laws. On the contrary, it was the fact that life, liberty and property existed beforehand that caused men to make laws.” — Frederic Bastiat by Craig Ladwig Watching last night’s meeting of our city council, the fellow in the next chair leaned over to ask, “Do you think they know about private property?” That was not apparent even on the Republican side of the…

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  • Backgrounder: First Amendment Fantasies

    “We are not fake news. We are not failing news organizations. And we are not the enemy of the American people.” — Jeff Mason, president of the White House Correspondents’ Association by Craig Ladwig It is a question that has dogged some of us for years: If it is a good thing to break up Wall Street banks, regional hospitals, monopolies and such, why are we supposed to think it is a bad thing to break…

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  • Op-Ed: Yes, Capitalism Is a Good Idea

    by Cmdr. John Pickerill All the prosperity we enjoy today we owe to capitalism. For decades progressivists have attempted to challenge this notion. One of the most notable was Phil Donahue in his 1979 interview with Milton Friedman, the 1976 Nobel Prize winner in Economics. Donahue posed this question to Friedman: “When you see around the globe the mal-distribution of wealth, the desperate plight of millions of people in underdeveloped countries, when you see so few ‘haves’…

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  • Huston: Automatic Tax Increases

    I SUPPORTED the legislature enacting a multi-year program for constructing and maintaining our roadways and bridges, public infrastructure which is necessary to economic growth and public convenience. So far, no big deal, but unlike my friends at Indiana Policy Review, I also supported raising the revenue to pay for these improvements through rational and measured tax increases. I can nitpick the mix and relative balance of the various “revenue raisers” the governor and the legislature…

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