by Margaret Menge Indiana Gov. Eric Holcomb said recently that he wants to help Afghan refugees coming to southern Indiana to resettle in the state and get jobs in Indiana. “I can’t tell you how many businesses have said, when can I start hiring?” Holcomb said at a news conference Sept. 1. News had broken earlier that about 5,000 Afghan refugees will be temporarily housed at Camp Atterbury, the National Guard base south of Indianapolis. “I want…

Words: Jot Them Down Quick Before They Disappear “Every year fewer and fewer words, and the range of consciousness always a little smaller. Even now, there’s no reason or excuse for committing thoughtcrime. It’s merely a question of self-discipline, reality-control. The Revolution will be complete when the language is perfect.” — Syme of the Ministry for Truth in George Orwell’s “1984” IT IS ONE OF OUR OLDEST bits of wisdom, attributed to Confucius: “When words lose…

Can you tell from the following three summaries which groups of Americans are being described? Two million of them flooded into this country in the space of a few years. Followers of “an alien religion,” they were also poor and uneducated, and it was feared they would both strain welfare systems and take over all the low-paying jobs. Large cities were overwhelmed. In Boston, a city of just 100,000 where 37,000 of them landed, they…

THE PHRASE “Going to Hell in a hand basket” dates to the Gold Rush. It refers to men being hand-lowered in baskets down mining shafts to set dynamite. That’s what it feels like these days, and some of us have had enough. We’ve read the analyses of how America is failing. We all see the signs. The question is what we’re going to do about it. Members of Indiana’s ruling political class have decided what they’re going to do about it…

by Mark Franke Yogi Berra, whom I consider the 20th century’s pithiest philosopher, once reputedly said, “It’s like déjà vu all over again.” Unfortunately much of what Yogi is credited with saying he never actually said, at least if you believe what Yogi himself claims in the several books published about those very quotes.  He’s too modest. If he didn’t say exactly that, he probably wanted to. Or at least he should have. Yogisms are part of our…

by Leo Morris On the one hand, the little kerfuffle at Fort Wayne’s Northrop High School is too trifling to make a big deal of. But on the other, it invites discussion because it is such a welcome sign of normality in a time when all traditional values are under constant assault. And by “normality,” I mean the kind of dispute we had before the great Red State-Blue State divide, a topic worthy of spirited…

Using Statistics to Stop (or Start) a Crime Epidemic CITING STATISTICS showing that blacks make up 14 percent of her state’s population but 53 percent of prisoners. and that blacks make up 80 percent of those incarcerated on a felony firearm charge, a Michigan prosecutor says she will no longer act on felony firearms charges. That is fair warning that you should be on guard when statistics are used to justify public policy. As is the case with automobiles, sledgehammers and, yes,…

by Mark Franke I recall, just barely, reading James Burnham’s “Suicide of the West” back in my undergraduate days. While not being able to recall most of his arguments, I believe his point was that we are doing this to ourselves. He blamed liberalism, in its modern and not classical definition, for an erosion of our moral and spiritual foundations. Jonah Goldberg borrowed that apocalyptic title for a recent book in which he blamed the…

by Richard J. McGowan, Ph.D. Plato’s dialogue, “Meno,” begins abruptly. Meno asks Socrates, “Can ethics be taught?” I followed Plato’s approach. On the first day of class, I asked my students, “Can ethics be taught?” They wrote that “Ethics and moral standards depend on the individual and their upbringing,” “Morals are not absolute in that they change from culture to culture and over the course of time,” “What one person deems ethical, another may think is…

by Leo Morris On CBS-TV’s Sunday Morning this week, a former Army sergeant who left parts of both arms and legs in Afghanistan came on and tried to say something positive in the face of our ugly retreat from that country. He talked about being “angry, hurt, depressed and hopeless” after his injuries but finding solace in the fact that “Afghanistan wasn’t all for nothing.” “We did good,” he said of America’s 20-year involvement, listing all the…