Civilizing our ‘Youths’ THE REALITY IS that a couple of generations of urban juveniles have not been socialized — have not been civilized, if you will. The solutions are difficult but generally understood. The problem is in what sequence they should be applied. Both Indianapolis and Fort Wayne experienced multiple shootings over the July 4 weekend involving numbers of “youths,” the media code for fatherless black teenagers running amok at 1 o’clock in the morning. Officials were quick…

by Dan Eichenberger M.D. We once built civilizations on the raw edge of uncomfortable speech. Now we demand trigger warnings for the Iliad and therapy puppies for election results. This isn’t progress. It’s civilizational decay. Let’s look back without the rose-tinted glasses of modern sensitivity  and we’ll see the ancient Greeks didn’t invent “safe spaces” — they invented parrhesia, the dangerous right to speak truth bluntly in public assemblies, theaters and philosophy. Socrates died for it. Athenian democracy thrived on…

by Dan Eichenberger M.D. We once built civilizations on the raw edge of uncomfortable speech. Now we demand trigger warnings for the Iliad and therapy puppies for election results. This isn’t progress. It’s civilizational decay. Let’s look back without the rose-tinted glasses of modern sensitivity  and we’ll see the ancient Greeks didn’t invent “safe spaces” — they invented parrhesia, the dangerous right to speak truth bluntly in public assemblies, theaters and philosophy. Socrates died for it. Athenian democracy thrived on…

by Mark Franke With the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence and all, the number of patriotic events and ceremonies seems endless. I’m not complaining about that; I think it is a good thing that we are looking back to this important founding document and its timeless truths. We need its encouragement now more than ever. So it was no surprise when my wife, who is an active member of the Fort Wayne chapter of…

Not a Traitor, Exactly DEMOCRATIC ‘REPRESENTATION’ has lost any meaning. This year, 90 percent of representatives to the U.S. House will be determined before a general election, that is, gerrymandering will allow our “representatives” to choose who they “represent.” Mulling this upside-down state of affairs, the question occurs: Can we even define who we are not? Can anybody be called a  “traitor” anymore? I have a test case. The positions and statements of 7th District U.S.…

by Dan Eichenberger M.D. Language remains one of humanity’s most powerful tools. Spoken words helped early humans cooperate, hunt and pass down knowledge. Written language allowed civilizations to record laws, ideas and stories for future generations. Today, language is under attack. The political Left, particularly progressive activists who dominate many colleges, news outlets and major corporations, has increasingly weaponized words. Terms are stretched, flipped and redefined to make questionable ideas sound normal and to make dissent…

by Mark Franke With the semiquincentennial of the Declaration of Independence, there is a plethora of new books written about this major event. Most focus on the Declaration’s language and its meaning, especially its most memorable sentence in the second paragraph. That’s understandable but I am a contrarian by nature so I have been wondering about the process of writing, editing and publishing the Declaration. For example, is the document on display at the National…

Common Sense Catches Up THIRTY YEARS AGO, George Witwer, a founding scholar of the Indiana Policy Review Foundation and now CEO of Cavo Health, won a dark-horse race for the GOP nomination for lieutenant governor at a contested state convention. He did so campaigning on the floor, delegate-by-delegate, with a simple argument, “Property taxes mean you never really own your property, you merely rent it.” We highlighted it in our book, “Indiana Mandate: An Agenda for the 1990s.”…

by John F. Gaski, Ph.D. The way Donald Trump has faltered on Iran is far beyond what we could have foreseen. The latest Iran pseudo-negotiations represent another surrender by President Trump. We never thought he would cave to Iran as Biden and Obama did, but it now appears that he doesn’t have the stomach to “finish the job.” Maybe he still imagines that a Nobel Peace Prize is achievable.   Trump actually has surrendered several times to…

by Dan Eichenberger MD, MBA To prevent the further erosion of ordered society, Indiana must take a clear and permanent stand against the Left’s campaign to detach law from biological reality. Activists have spent years pressuring institutions to replace objective sex with subjective “gender identity.” The General Assembly and voters should amend the state Constitution to codify objective, scientifically grounded definitions of “man” and “woman.” Statutory efforts are welcome but remain vulnerable to reinterpretation or reversal…