How Debt Weakens Family Formation among Generation X The Federal Guaranteed Student Loan program represents an almost pure example of the “law of unintended consequences” in public policy. Initiated in the mid-1970s as a modest supplement to means-tested federal (later, Pell) grants, it has grown into a massive program involving a majority of students at […]
Read MoreWhy a Little-Noticed Crisis Portends Economic Disaster This list of adjectives the media used to characterize the economic meltdown of 2008 runs long: grim, catastrophic, unprecedented, stunning, devastating, unexpected, confusing . . . . The adjective no news writer or broadcaster has used to describe the economic crisis is unnoticed. With the exception of the […]
Read MoreRepublicans and Democrats differ on a wide range of issues, but almost all elected officials in Washington, D.C., believe that a key responsibility of both the White House and Congress is keeping the economy running at full-speed, providing an ever-increasing number of jobs, products, and services for the American people. Elections are won or lost […]
Read MoreWhat Social Conservatives Offer the Party of Lincoln The Republican victories in Massachusetts (Scott Brown), New Jersey (Chris Christie), and Virginia (Bob McDonnell), coupled with growing disenchantment with President Obama’s initiatives, has the Republican party feeling bullish about its prospects for congressional elections this fall. Many strategists are predicting a repeat of 1994, where the […]
Read MoreIs the Political Economy of Gender-Based Affirmative Action Good for the Home Economy? George Steven Swan, S.J.D. When the new governor of Virginia, Bob McDonnell, was on the campaign trail last summer, the Washington Post expressed alarm about his 1989 master’s thesis that had noted, among other things, the impact of rising rates of labor-force […]
Read MoreThe one great principle of the English law, is to make business for itself.—Charles Dickens, Bleak House In the modern state, law—like nature—displays a marked distaste for a vacuum. Spurred by elites distrustful of independent social institutions and a cultural embrace of atomistic individualism, the United States in past decades has experienced a dramatic incursion […]
Read MoreLarge-scale wars often take place on several fronts. In its undeclared war against the American family, the Supreme Court of the United States has initiated conflict in several areas of constitutional law. The Court launched its first attacks more than fifty years ago, with the most important developments occurring from roughly 1957 to 1977. Today, […]
Read MoreHow U.N. Bureaucrats Are Turning ‘Human Rights’ Against the Family Ever since President Woodrow Wilson lobbied for his League of Nations at the end of World War One, Americans have resisted international political causes or organizations. In recent years, that resistance has been directed against the United Nations and its international human rights conventions that […]
Read More
Living Constitution, Dying Faith:Progressivism and the New Science of Jurisprudence Bradley C. S. Watson ISI Books, 2009; 250 pages, $25.00 Toward the end of Living Constitution,Bradley C. S. Watson recalls the remark by the second Earl of Pembroke as to how Parliament can do anything but make a man into a woman. Pembroke’s point was that […]
Read MoreThe Dismal Science:How Thinking Like an Economist Undermines Community Stephen A. Marglin Harvard University Press, 2008; 359 pages The best thing about The Dismal Science: How Thinking Like an Economist Undermines Community is the title. Stephen Marglin is absolutely right that something is wrong with modern economics, particularly its treatment of communities of all kinds, including the […]
Read More