Essays

by Sarah Reardon We are wending toward a season in America in which our thoughts about our country must come to bear upon our decisions, and we must, whatever our convictions about modern democracy, consider how we should best use our constitutional rights. And yet, as we approach the upcoming election season, it seems that […]

by Casey Chalk Former NPR business editor Uri Berliner earned extensive conservative accolades for his recent essay besmirching the federally-funded media organization for what he described as a newsroom increasingly biased in favor of the woke tenets of the Democratic Party. Yet as embarrassing as Berliner’s analysis was to NPR, it wasn’t exactly surprising —

by Richard Gunderman, Indiana University On January 4, 1975, US President Gerald Ford signed into law a section of the Social Security Act that established a national child support collection system. For a number of reasons, he did so with mixed feelings. For one thing, Ford himself had experienced the travails of divorce and a father who

The Soul of Civility: Timeless Principles to Heal Society and Ourselves by Alexandra Hudson (St. Martin’s Press (2023) Reviewed by Henry T. Edmondson III Georgia College Has the practice of “civility” been left behind? Though it has never been practiced as well as it should, it nonetheless has supported a system of social manners, without

by Adam Smith Most of my students say that the main reason for the sorry state of our democracy is that people are “not well-informed.” Usually, the students who say this are not very well-informed, but oddly enough they’re never really talking about themselves. I’m not sure where they came by the notion that being

by Erik W. Matson, Mercatus Center I live not far from Prince George’s County, Maryland, which, due to rising rents and housing prices, enacted in April 2023 a temporary rent-stabilization law. The current law is set to expire this month (April 2024), but several county council members are calling to make it permanent. Rent-stabilization measures have

by Rosemarie Zagarri, George Mason University The US Supreme Court will hear arguments on April 25, 2024 in the case of Trump v. US, a case which will determine whether the former president is immune from prosecution on charges related to trying to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election. Historical evidence from the

by Jason Duncan, professor of History at Aquinas College We in the United States in 2024 are in the midst of what political scientists and others call “polarization,” by which the poles of right and left grow stronger while the “center does not hold,” as the Irish poet once wrote.  Despite the real problems and

Reviewed by Henry T. Edmondson, Georgia College Tolkien’s collected correspondence was first published in 1981; a new edition was released in late 2023, The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien: Revised and Expanded Edition, which adds more letters to the previous correspondence collection. We are lucky that letter writing was still a valued habit in a pre-email

by Richard Gunderman,  Indiana University Recent times have been tough for Boy Scouts of America.  Although still one of the largest youth organizations in the US, its ranks have dwindled from about 3 million in the 1970s to fewer than 800,000 today.  It has been rocked by controversies over bullying, gays in leadership positions, and