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Does Britain Have the World’s Best Health System?0
- Economics
- July 24, 2017
“The National Health Service is the closest thing the English have to a religion,” Margaret Thatcher’s Chancellor Nigel Lawson famously once observed. However, given the swivel-eyed fanaticism with which its supporters will defend it, even from the overwhelming evidence of its shortcomings, at this point it might be more accurate to describe the NHS as
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The ‘God of the Gaps’ Is Growing 0
- Religion
- July 24, 2017
The story of the god of the gaps ends like a bad dream. The scientist has scaled the mountains of ignorance, he is about to conquer the highest peak; as he pulls himself over the final rock, he is greeted by a band of theologians who have been sitting there for centuries… Atheists have a
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Oregon Wants to Defelonize All the Drugs 0
- Politics
- July 24, 2017
Over the last several years, ending drug prohibition has steadily become an idea whose time has come. After spending decades and billions of tax dollars policing what individuals can and cannot put into their own bodies, the government has absolutely nothing to show for its “war on drugs,” aside from a swelling prison population. The
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Higher Wages Don’t Improve Teacher Quality, Left-Leaning Think Tank Finds 0
- July 24, 2017
To paraphrase Jane Austen, it is a truth universally acknowledged that a teacher is the most important component of a child’s education. As a result of this acknowledgement, conventional wisdom seems to indicate that the way to attract and retain effective, high-quality teachers is through lucrative salaries. But surprisingly, that may not be the case.
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Media Ramp up Attack on PBS’s ‘School, Inc.’—And Blow It 0
- Education
- July 24, 2017
Last month, I wrote about The Washington Post’s attack on the PBS documentary “School, Inc.”, produced by the late Andrew Coulson, former director of the Cato Institute’s Center for Educational Freedom. In a June Washington Post commentary launched by staunch public school advocate Diane Ravitch, “School, Inc.” is excoriated for presenting the successes of free-market
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Why did medieval monks preserve pagan literature?0
- Culture
- July 21, 2017
Many educated people – though perhaps not enough – know that it was medieval monks who preserved classical culture. Between their daily offices, the monks huddled in their cells by candlelight to copy the great cultural artifacts of Western civilization. But why did they preserve works that had been produced by, and often reflected, the
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