“Can you spare a dollar so I can buy this book?” I heard a man’s deep voice ask this question as I raced up a flight of stairs, speeding my way to the second floor of the local public library to drop off some overdue books. His voice was coming from the library’s “sale room”
READ MOREIn Federalist #51, the ‘Father of the Constitution’, James Madison, argued: The interest of the man must be connected with the constitutional rights of the place. It may be a reflection on human nature, that such devices should be necessary to control the abuses of government. But what is government itself, but the greatest of
READ MORE“What is it you object to?” asked Syme. “You want to abolish Government?” “To abolish God!” said Gregory, opening the eyes of a fanatic. “The silly sentimentalists of the French Revolution talked of the Rights of Man! We hate Rights and we hate Wrongs. We have abolished Right and Wrong.” “And Right and Left,” said
READ MORELast year, Intellectual Takeout posted a popular quote from Mythbusters star Adam Savage on the need to reinstate shop class. Savage said: “If you want the kids’ test scores up, bring back band and bring back shop and get kids actually learning stuff instead of teaching them how to take a test.” The effectiveness of
READ MOREIt can be hard finding time alone in a world that has most of us “connected” in some way, 24/7. The technology that has made its way into our daily lives is almost impossible to avoid using in this day and age. Between smartphones, tablets, iPods, laptops and regular desktop computers, we’re never far from
READ MORESeveral months ago, Dr. Leonard Sax made headlines when he proposed that the lack of discipline we see in America today is simply the surface symptom of a greater problem: the decline of parental authority. Dr. Sax’s theories were recently underscored by psychologist Lisa Damour in a New York Times piece on the benefits of
READ MOREAldous Huxley and George Orwell wrote arguably the two most popular novels portending the West’s dystopian future. For decades, thinkers have opined on which of the two starkly distinct totalitarian nightmares–that of Huxley’s Brave New World or Orwell’s 1984–was more likely to come to pass (or, as some contend, had come to pass). What has garnered rather little
READ MOREMost of us know teaching pioneer Anne Sullivan from “The Miracle Worker,” a story based on the autobiography of Helen Keller that has been made into several Broadway plays and movies. The name of the story derives from Mark Twain, who declared Sullivan such; and it’s hard to disagree with Twain’s assessment. In 1887, Sullivan,
READ MOREDid Stanford students just reject Western civilization? According to the headline of a Daily Caller story a few weeks ago, they did. Given what actually happened, that seems grossly exaggerated. But not by as much as some might think. A few months ago, the conservative campus paper The Stanford Review proposed instituting, as part of
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