by Andrea Neal A drive across Indiana on the National Road is a trip back in time. This was the route taken in the 19th century by pioneers hauling household goods west in Conestoga wagons, by stagecoaches carrying mail and by farmers moving crops to markets. Today it’s paved and known as Highway 40. Though it looks nothing like the primitive roadway it replaced, relics are everywhere. In Centerville, two original mile markers still stand.…

Editors: This is the second in a three-part series on political polarization.  By Stephen M. King, Ph.D. “Democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts and murders itself.”— John Adams When asked what the Founders created in Philadelphia, Benjamin Franklin replied: “A Republic, madam, if you can keep it.” MUCH HAS BEEN WRITTEN in the last few years regarding the contemptuousness and division of the American political system. Thomas Mann and Norman Ornstein in “It’s…

Editors:  This is the first in a three-part series. By Stephen M. King, Ph.D. There is no doubt about it: Political polarization is the norm in D.C. and the states. A recent Pew Research Study, “Political Polarization in the American Public,” finds that political and ideological lines of division are not limited to the political elites but are embedded in the American public itself. More and more are identifying with the extreme Left or the…

HOORAY to the Fort Wayne Journal Gazette for reprinting June 22 its classic editorial decrying what a long line of its editors has found to be the offensive use of “Redskins” in sports names. This famously progressive newspaper, though, will want to go further. At question is the name of the newspaper’s hometown, proudly if thoughtlessly incorporated into its own masthead. Fort Wayne, of course, is named to honor Gen. “Mad Anthony” Wayne. You should know…

by Cecil Bohanon, Ph.D. The key to enjoying any sport is to fully embrace the addiction. To a non-golfer watching grown men walk down a fairway to club a small ball toward a green is perverse torture. The true golfer, however, embraces the tension before the hit, observes the swing with care, relishes the ball’s flight to green and joins the crowd in the oohs and aahs that follow. Looks like madness to an outsider—and…

DO WE PUT TOO MUCH FAITH  in constitutions? What if securing liberty is harder work than setting words to paper? Our foundation tried to answer that question 20 years ago this month. It filed a lawsuit against the Indiana Legislature, which had hidden a pay raise in a package of bills. The Indiana Constitution, of course, specifically and exactly prohibits such trickery. Article IV, Section 19: “An act, except an act for the codification, revision or…

For the use of the membership only (549 words) SOME OF US used to complain that our politicians rarely returned to Indiana after leaving office. There will be fewer such complaints now that former Rep. Mark Souder has so firmly replanted himself here. Suffering only from obsessive political personality disorder, Souder returns undaunted by scandal, fully pensioned and comfortably ensconced in academia. And although forced to forgo his Washington staff and trappings, he seems generously…

by Andrea Neal Like other pioneers, free African-Americans came to Indiana in search of land and liberty and, for the most part, found both. Beginning in the 1820s and continuing until the eve of the Civil War, they migrated in family groups to Indiana and established farming societies that valued hard work, education and faith. More than a dozen such communities were formed before 1860. Greenville Settlement, founded in 1822 in Randolph County, is believed to…

By Tyler Watts, Ph.D. Caesar had Brutus, Manning has Patriot fans and state Sen. David Long has Sheila Kennedy. Ms. Kennedy, a law and public-policy professor at Indiana University-Purdue University at Indianapolis, made comments over the weekend pooh-poohing Senator Long’s goal of restoring fiscal sanity to the federal government through a state-led constitutional amendment process. Before we look at her argument, here is the background: Congress, as spelled out in Article V of the U.S.…

For the use of the membership only (119 words) MATTHEW TULLEY, the Indianapolis Star columnist, leans on a tautology in his June 9 blast in what he imagines is the direction of Indiana conservatives. In “Richard Mourdock Blows it Once Again,” he lectures the former GOP Senate nominee that there is nothing, nothing comparable to Hitler’s atrocities, certainly nothing on the American political left. Well yes, and historical analogies in political discourse are a famously…