Now that France’s incumbent President Sarkozy has been defeated at the polls by socialist candidate M. Hollande, Americans should have gotten a wake-up call. Angela Merkel now seems to be the only voice of European reason in the rising popular tide against budgetary austerity and a return to the by now old-fashioned idea that...
Read More »

James Delingpole reports in the Telegraph of London that James Lovelock, the “greenest” of the “greens,” now admits that the doomsaying over global warming is wrong. [O]ne of the archest of the world’s arch Greenies – James Lovelock, inventor of the Gaia hypothesis and therefore, more or less, founder of the world’s most powerful...
Read More »

Jesse Walker has an intriguing blog post about data concerning illegal immigration. The most fascinating part to me discusses an analysis concluding that illegal alien crackdowns and border fencing has actually increased the illegal immigrant population in the U.S. By making it more risky for undocumented migrants to come in, the border walls have...
Read More »

On Friday, the members of the Supreme Court will meet together and voice their positions on the Patient Protection and Affordable Healthcare Act. Prior to the three days of arguments, most pundits were skeptical that the Court would strike the law. However, in reading the tea leaves after argument, the bet is that swing-vote...
Read More »

As legions of fans descend on theaters this March to watch the The Hunger Games, I wonder how many will have also recognized in Suzanne Collins‘s books another theme that may well give her trilogy a shelf life equal to that of that of another great social critic, George Orwell. While Collins’s story includes...
Read More »

We are delighted to announce the publication of the Spring 2012 issue of the Independent Institute’s peer-reviewed journal, The Independent Review. This issue’s articles and book reviews deal with the following questions: What does evidence from hunter-gatherer societies suggest about whether human beings are better adapted for individualism or collectivism? Read the article. What...
Read More »

Unsurprisingly, President Obama’s campaign speech masquerading as the routine address to Congress, spelled out in the Constitution and known as the State of the Union, was saturated with every prevalent form of modern American statism—protectionism, corporate-liberal socialism, nationalism, and militarism. In a couple areas, however, he was particularly bold in his statist proposals. Obama...
Read More »

A recent development in Obamacare’s reach raises an important point about religious liberty. The health care law requires hospitals to provide contraceptives to patients. Churches have protested and have won an exemption to this regulation as it concerns their own health services. This is all well and good: Religious institutions shouldn’t be forced to...
Read More »

We live in a secularized world of nation states in which traditional religion, especially Christianity, is unwelcome. Rooted in the “Enlightenment,” this view supports a secularized and authoritarian public square enforced by government and that progress requires forcing religion ever backward into remote corners of society. In short, America has become a secular theocracy...
Read More »

We live in an increasingly secularized world of massive and pervasive nation states in which traditional religion, especially Christianity, is ruled unwelcome and even a real danger on the basis of a purported history of intolerance and “religious violence.” This is found in most all “public” domains, including the institutions of education, business, government,...
Read More »