In the wake of yet another mass shooting in a public school, a host of familiar recommendations have resurfaced about how to “prevent this from ever happening again.” Predictably, both conservatives and liberals are looking to the government for a solution. Americans have somehow arrived at a point where they cannot conceive of human action
READ MOREEverybody can appreciate acts of kindness. But when it comes to explaining why we do them, people often take one of two extreme positions. Some think kindness is something completely selfless that we do out of love and care, while others believe it is just a tool that we cunningly use to become more popular
READ MOREA friend of mine recently told me that her family was having a discussion when a particular word was used. Her two teenage daughters looked confused and asked, “What does that mean?” Without missing a beat, her younger son, still in middle school, looked up from where he was reading on the sofa and calmly
READ MOREWealthy parents seem to have it made when it comes to raising their children. They can offer their kids the healthiest foods, the most attentive caregivers, the best teachers and the most enriching experiences, from international vacations to unpaid internships in competitive fields. Yet these parents have a problem: how to give their kids these
READ MOREEducation Secretary Betsy DeVos is calling on Americans to embrace a vision of “education freedom” that empowers students and parents with a “multitude of pathways” toward new opportunities. DeVos, speaking during a question-and-answer session Thursday at the Conservative Political Action Conference, said one such pathway would be educational savings accounts to benefit military families who
READ MOREBack in 2005, The Washington Post reported on a Gallup poll asking Americans which U.S. president was the greatest. At the time, men like Reagan, Clinton, and Lincoln led the pack. America’s first president, however, had only five percent support for top slot, leading the WaPo to quip that George Washington would “find it necessary
READ MOREThere are a lot of books on education, but few that are very good. Here are five books that cut to the chase of what education is and how it should be done: 1) Paideia: The Ideals of Greek Culture, by Werner Jaeger. Jaeger was a German scholar writing in the early to mid-20th century. He
READ MORE“Doomsday Preppers,” An American reality series that ran on the National Geographic channel from 2011 to 2014, explored “…the lives of otherwise ordinary Americans who are preparing for the end of the world as we know it.” The movement continues today, with Silicon Valley technology executives among the latest participants in this survivalist world.
READ MOREThere is no epidemic of gun violence in America; quite the opposite in fact. But last week’s shooting at a high school in Florida was a grim and jarring reminder of deep cultural problems lurking just beneath the veneer of our materially comfortable society. Those problems are beyond the scope of libertarianism per se, but
READ MORE