by Mark Frank Memorial Day is here again and much of our attention will be on those who died in service to their, our, country. As a popular meme says: All gave some. Some gave all. It is those who gave all that focus our memories now, while in November we thank everyone who served. That is a significant difference, one that is not merely conceptual. Sometimes remembering our fallen military hits close to home.…

Horse Thieves Matter THE SON OF PIONEERS in the Flint Hills of Kansas, my sheriff grandfather was familiar with the story of “the Sedgwick County Anti-Horse-Thieving Association” — or the SCAHTA as it was never known because they were blessedly free of acronyms back then.  Let us just say that it would not have fit into the defund-the-police messaging, nor would grandfather have known what you were even talking about. In the winter of 1870 a group of 60 or so…

James Briggs: The New Journalism WE DON’T ENJOY discouraging a fellow journalist. First of all, nobody cares. It is “inside baseball,” as an editor of mine liked to say. Our members have more important things to do. Still, any job has standards and after some decades in the business (note that I didn’t say “profession”) I have a right to express my understanding of them — standards that James Briggs of the Indianapolis Star fails to meet. I start with what…

Unserving ‘the Unhoused’ OUR MAYOR has thrown down the NIMBY gauntlet. She is trying to shame opponents of her plan to build a $3.8 million “homeless services” center downtown, a couple of blocks from the  art museum. She says they selfishly don’t want the center in their backyard but cannot offer an alternative plan. I am here to help, but first some background. Our foundation once had offices near a rescue mission and not far from…

Let’s Pack the U.S. House GALLUP REPORTS this week that the approval rate of Congress has fallen to 10 percent. Coincidentally, a Butler graduate student, Evan Wareham, has an intriguing idea — reapportionment on steroids. What if we reformed the U.S. House of Representatives by adding members to increase per-capita representation? That, please know, was the original plan. In the Federalist Papers, James Madison argued that the House of Representatives should expand with the size of the American population. …

by Dan Eichenberger MD, MBA Ancient civilizations recognized pride, or hubris, as a recurring human vulnerability with serious consequences. In Greek mythology and tragedy, excessive arrogance — defying natural limits or overestimating one’s place—invariably led to nemesis, or downfall. The tale of Icarus, who ignored his father’s warnings and flew too close to the sun, melting his wax wings, served as a cautionary archetype. Similarly, figures like Niobe, who boasted of her superiority, or Oedipus, whose…

by Mark Franke There are two ways to think about governmental incentives for new commercial enterprises. One is the high-level theoretical or philosophical one. In this way of thinking, the basic question is whether government even should be involved in what essentially are free enterprise activities.  The other is to accept that government, being government, will provide incentives so the question is to determine which projects are productive for the community and which are just…

“A conservative is someone who stands athwart history, yelling, ‘Stop,’ at a time when no one is inclined to do so, or to have much patience with those who so urge it.” ― William F. Buckley Assessing the Next Indy Mayor AS INDIANAPOLIS SLIDES into progressivism, the way to think about Democrats is not what candidates stand for but what they stand against. We once had Henry “Scoop” Jackson, who, despite being a staunch supporter of labor, could be depended…

The Unmet Demand for a Well-Rounded Education WE STRESS the importance of teaching history in our newly published Indiana Mandate. The Founders believed the country would remain free only if its people learned history’s lessons. Benjamin Franklin noted that history would show the young “the advantages of liberty, mischiefs of licentiousness, benefits arising from good laws and a due execution of justice, etc.” Until recently, higher education took this responsibility seriously. Not anymore. Surveying over 1,000 liberal arts…

by Dan Eichenberger, MD, MBA “Christian Nationalism” has become one of the most abused phrases in American political debate. Once an academic term, it is now routinely deployed to delegitimize citizens who believe America’s Judeo-Christian moral inheritance should continue to inform public life. The phrase is rarely defined with precision and seldom applied consistently. Its modern function is not descriptive but exclusionary — to push Christian viewpoints outside the bounds of acceptable democratic participation. Critics…