Leadership — The Other Kind YES, WE SEEM TO HAVE fallen into chaos, stumbled off a cliff even. The recent swirl around the office of Speaker of the House — a “gyre” is the new Beltway word for it — had me rethinking a decision of a couple summers back. I had chosen to play cards with some friends instead of attend a local political rally. It was the right call. The invitation was sincere. The politician was a…

by Mark Franke Like nearly every other red-blooded American, I have dreamt about get-rich-quick schemes but to no avail. I wish I had been the genius who figured out that he could take free water, bottle it and then sell it at three bucks a crack. I was also too late with hula hoops, slinkies, soap-on-a-rope and pet rocks. Genius is 99 percent perspiration and only one percent inspiration, if Thomas Edison is to be…

Obviously . . . AS C.K. CHESTERTON famously said, every high civilization decays by forgetting obvious things. This is an apology to our members for continuing — perhaps monotonously — to remind them of those obvious things. But somebody has to do it. A week ago we highlighted an economist’s courageous study showing that, yes, two-parent families have an advantage in raising children. Earlier this week we reminded ourselves that private property matters, critiquing the business…

Cornucopian Welfare I CAN’T KNOW ENOUGH about my city’s new government grocery store, one of several proposed for areas officially designated as food “deserts.” If the facts are ever known it will serve as a bipartisan example of government folly, as good a one as any liberal could dream up and one overseen by a Republican city council. Heck, authorized shoppers at the government grocery won’t even need money. It expects to tap into a virtual cornucopia of welfare: Persons living in the designated areas…

A Man for the ‘Masses’ AS ERIC HOLCOMB prepares to leave office after another summer of foreign travel ostensibly in search of jobs for us, the opinion of him has softened. It is expressed to friends this way: He is a blockhead but he is our blockhead. And as the view has become more charitable, we have had to put certain pictures out of our mind. There he is with that smile of obliviousness holding a gift plate on a visit to China with a high official…

‘Family’ Misdefined THE BABY BOOMERS thought they had invented a better way — the single-parent (female headed) family, easier to form and to organize. The next generation sped up the trend as young women’s salaries increased relative to young men’s and divorce became more practical in a reordered social structure, all while government support increased. The rationale developed that the nuclear family was optional; a successful happy family could be modeled with a single liberated woman. Men…

For immediate release. by Mark Franke I will come clean up front: I am not a Donald Trump supporter. I will also come clean by publicly stating I voted for him in the 2016 and 2020 general elections but in neither primary. What choice did I have when considering the alternatives? The current state of affairs with Joe Biden and his administration validates my choice. And no defense is required for refusing to vote for…

by Dennis Ganahl, Ph.D. Advertisers understand incrementalism better than anyone. They leverage a brand’s growth with the understanding that change comes in increments sometimes imperceptibly. Who was the genius copywriter who created the directions on a shampoo bottle, “wash, rinse and repeat”? I’m guessing sales doubled. In the 1950s, Brylcreem created the slogan, “A little dab’ll do ya.” Copywriters knew if they could entice a man to use a dab of their hair dressing every…

By Jason Arp and Craig Ladwig A friend, a longtime political observer here, quipped that if Fort Wayne city councilmen were going to pretend to be investment bankers, we should elect smarter city councilmen. That has proved woefully prescient as workers and businesses nationwide are abandoning downtown offices for more flexible, safer and more efficient remote work. Fort Wayne’s downtown real estate is particularly at risk of collapse just at a time when the political class is blindly…