Beckwith Is Right SOMEHOW, the Declaration of Independence has become controversial once more. When written, of course, it was highly so, laying out the rationale for a people to break free from what was then the default — an oppressive king and a state religion.  But we had assumed — wrongly, it seems — that the Founder’s point had been proven by now, specifically that men should be free to worship as they please, a post-Enlightenment…

by Richard McGowan, Ph.D. In the last 20 years of teaching business ethics, I asked my students to read Pope Leo XIII’s essay, “Rerum Novarum” (On the New Things). If they did the reading, they encountered ideas from John Locke and Adam Smith. Therefore, that the new pope chose to be named Pope Leo XIV bodes well, suggesting he will follow the ideas and reasoning of his namesake.  Pope Leo XIII, reigning from 1878 to 1903, faced…

By Kyle Gough To write “Original Sin: President Biden’s Decline, Its Cover-Up, and His Disastrous Choice to Run Again,” Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson conducted what is perhaps the most pertinent investigation in the American political theater since Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein broke the Watergate scandal.  But unlike Woodward and Bernstein, who exposed President Nixon’s involvement in the Watergate burglary, Tapper and Thompson merely and inexplicably conclude what the reader already knows — that attempting…

Yo-Yoing: It’s Coming Back  THIS IS THE BEST NEWS I expect to hear this year: An elementary school in my town has begun a yo-yo club. Those of you in my generation will remember that every summer the yo-yo professional (18-year-olds primarily) would come to town. These pimple-faced teen-agers were celebrities to us. They were actually paid to travel around the state spinning the newest yo-yo models. Can you believe it?  I can see in my mind’s eye the day…

Racism: The Rawest of Politics  NO AMERICAN should be denied employment or property because of the color of his skin, the modern dictum reads, unless he is white. The exception was explained recently by Mayor Brandon Johnson of Chicago. The mayor, as a matter of official policy, says he favors blacks over whites for municipal positions and for contractural awards. His reasoning is threefold: 1) because blacks are “more generous” in protecting the rights of all others; 2) because blacks are…

by Mark Franke Last week I shocked my wife. I changed my mind. About baseball, of all things. Specifically, I changed my mind about Pete Rose’s status as ineligible for election to the baseball Hall of Fame at Cooperstown. I should admit that I hadn’t given a whole lot of thought to it. My inclination was to give preference to his activities on the field rather than to those off it. After all, basing a…

A Generation’s Mea Culpa  BEFORE WE GET TOO OLD and before our ChatGBT assistants go woke, we should put together a comprehensive list of the stupid ideas held by our generation, particularly the really, really stupid ones to which we have clung long past the point we should have known better. I’ll start. 1. That Charles Darwin explained why we are here — We continued the misunderstanding of  Darwin’s theory. It was about species adapting over time, not the spark that kicked the whole show off.…

Andre Carson, Home-Grown Phony  IT IS ODD that Seventh District Rep. Andre Carson hasn’t addressed this week’s arrival of South African refugees. — he is tight-lipped, you might say, not a peep. That is so even though he is outspoken on the floor of Congress, gratingly so, welcoming refugees of all circumstances and protecting their “rights.” But call his office and see if you can get a comment. We couldn’t. A semi-black middle-class Indianapolis kid from a Baptist background, Carson rode affirmative…

Stereotype Fatigue THERE ARE TWO TYPES of people, my grandmother would say, those who believe there are two types of people and those who don’t. This is the paradox of stereotypes. If we were to be honest, most of us at least notice stereotypes if not act on them. It is built into our DNA — wrongly so, the progressives lecture, something that must be torn from the social fabric at all cost. Well, good luck with that. You will have…

Redefining American Greatness “Nothing is so important for freedom as recognizing in the law each individual’s natural right to own property.” — Milton Friedman WE HEAR A LOT about making America great again but not much about what made it great in the first place. That, and not an embazoned baseball cap, would seem the place to start. In your opinion, then, what made America great, and what will make it great once more?  I’ll go first. Few today…