October 25 marks the 250th anniversary of the birth of Benjamin Constant, who Nicholas Capaldi termed “the key thinker in the French classical liberal tradition between Montesquieu and Tocqueville,” and Isaiah Berlin characterized as “the most eloquent of all defenders of freedom and privacy.” One might expect that with such plaudits, Constant’s quarter-millennium anniversary would
READ MOREA dominantly black public school in Mississippi named after Jefferson Davis, president of the Confederate States in the 1860s, will be renamed after former President Barrack Obama, according to a report released Wednesday. Stakeholders in the school voted earlier this month at the Jackson Public Schools Board of Trustees meeting to change the elementary school’s
READ MOREThe headline is catchy: ‘Mom was called to school after her daughter hit another student. Her response was perfect.’ The article last night appeared twice in my Facebook feed within a span of 30 minutes, so I decided to click. Here’s the gist of the story: An ER nurse is called into school because her
READ MORENot long ago, I was walking through a parking lot hurriedly looking for my car so as to get away from the drizzling rain. Climbing in and catching my breath, I glanced up at the adjacent field in which a soccer game was taking place. It was ringed with dedicated parents huddled under umbrellas, probably
READ MORETo minimize the chances of another horrific massacre like that in Las Vegas, imaginative risk assessments must be made and acted on by ordinary citizens, organizations that sponsor events, and state and local authorities. The most ineffective, irrelevant reaction would be for Congress to enact yet more gun control legislation. While the federal Gun Control
READ MOREWhat makes a good leader? This question confronts us at every election and with every domestic and international policy decision. As a professor of classical languages and literature for more than 30 years, I marvel at our insistence on addressing this question as if it were brand new. Centuries ago, myths helped the Greeks learn
READ MOREWith the horrific shooting that recently took place in Las Vegas, debates over gun control have been given center stage in our media and politics once again. And while every pundit seems to have their own surefire way of combatting gun violence, they all gloss over the elephant in the room. Which is, although mass
READ MOREOne of the signature issues defining today’s society is the changing attitudes on religion, God, and traditional Christianity. Evidence of this fluctuation was most recently seen in a Pew survey on morality. According to Pew, respondents were asked whether or not belief in God was necessary in order to live a moral life. As the
READ MOREAmerican Enterprise Institute scholar Christina Hoff Sommers will be speaking at Intellectual Takeout’s gala on Oct. 30. A graduate of NYU who received her Ph.D. in philosophy from Brandeis University, Sommers joined AEI as the W.H. Brady fellow in 1997. She had previously taught philosophy at the University of Massachusetts Boston and Clark University. A best-selling
READ MORE