Now that we have Muslim communities with which to compare, let’s thank our Amish for being such good neighbors. It turns out you can preserve your values and way of life without trying to behead everybody else. Some time ago, my wife and I took a drive in the Amish country near us. About twilight we passed a teen-aged couple holding hands on a buggy ride. They were obviously in love, and it occurred to us that whatever the Amish…

by Dan Eichenberger M.D. The people who wrote the Constitution did not want a government that ran our health care, schools, retirement plans or local businesses. They created a federal government with a short list of specific powers. Everything else was supposed to stay with people, families, churches, towns and the states. James Madison explained this clearly in Federalist No. 45. He wrote that the powers given to the federal government “are few and defined.” The powers kept by…

Indiana liberals are getting nervous about the word “socialism” being bandied about more openly these days by Democrats at the national level. They want you to know there is no such thing as socialism, and even if there were it might not be such a bad thing. I know this because a professor of political science at the university down the road tells me so in this morning’s Capital Chronicle. And professors of political science, please know, can be trusted…

by Mark Franke It was on September 17, 1787, that the delegates to the Constitutional Convention lined up to sign the document they had jointly written. Well, most of them did; 39 of the 42 present signed. That’s a positive margin of 93 percent. Imagine getting that kind of consensus on major legislation in our Congress today. What those 39 founders signed was a proposed Constitution, one that needed to be ratified by at least two…

by Dan Eichenberger M.D Flock Safety’s license-plate cameras have caused a major debate across the country. Some cities have ended their contracts, and lawsuits claim the cameras violate the Constitution. People from both political parties worry about too much government surveillance. The cameras are easy to spot, connected to large databases, and searchable by police. That is why they get more public attention than many other forms of tracking that happen every day. The debate often…

by Richard McGowan, Ph.D. One of my friends remarked that “Ignorance of the past is poor national policy.” It is also poor media policy, especially since that ignorance often guides national policy. This year, on August 31, the 10th anniversary of Colin Kaepernick’s antics on the football field, various media recalled his behavior. The Seattle Medium reported him saying “I am not going to stand up to show pride in a flag for a country that…

“Islam is peace; it has brought peace to the world.” – George W. Bush, six days after 9/11. Everyone other than the stray Democrat Socialist mourns today for the 2,297 innocents, including 441 first responders, who died in the terrorist attack on the New York World Trade Center 25 years ago. But we also mourn something else — this nation’s inability to differentiate good from evil in its public policy. It is important to remember that…

Military historians note a phenomenon when war breaks out. The generals who had achieved high rank during peacetime are nowhere to be found. That relates, I’m sorry to say, to the Indiana GOP’s upcoming battle against socialism. The reason peacetime generals do not matriculate to war is chaos, it cannot be simulated at a war college or in managing a garrison budget. It is as Grand Marshal Ferdinand Foch famously observed of the French: “Superb generals in peacetime…

by Dan Eichenberger M.D. For most of history, the word “equity” meant something simple and good: fairness. It meant treating people justly, looking at the real situation, and not applying rules so rigidly that they caused harm. Today, many on the progressive left use the same word to mean something  different. They claim that true fairness requires equal outcomes. If one group ends up with more money, better jobs, or higher test scores than another, they say the…