Property and Democracy in America

To understand how American democracy has worked, and why its future may be limited, it’s critical to look at the issue of property. From early on, the country’s republican institutions have rested on the notion of dispersed ownership of land — a striking departure from the realities of feudal Europe, east Asia or the Middle East.

Transit Planners Want to Make Your Life Worse

In our system of government, the public sector is supposed to serve the public. But increasingly, our state and local bureaucracies seek to tell the public how to live, even if the result is to make life worse.

Antifa demonstration in Washington, DC

The Real Conflict is Not Racial or Sexual, It’s Between the Ascendant Rich Elites and the Rest …

Despite the media’s obsession on gender, race and sexual orientation, the real and determining divide in America and other advanced countries lies in the growing conflict between the ascendant upper class and the vast, and increasingly embattled, middle and working classes.

Common Sense versus Climate Hysteria

The reinforced specter of imminent destruction from climate change increasingly drives the demand for ever more extreme policy choices.

The Politics of Procreation

Throughout most of history, starting a family was a task that most people either aspired to or dutifully performed. Today, that is increasingly not the case— a trend that will reshape our politics, economy, and society in the decades ahead.

American construction workers

The American Working Class Dilemma

For the past 125 years, Labor Day has been a time to celebrate the relevance, and political power, of the American working class.

California students march in protest of educations costs

Public Schools Should Be Places of Learning, Not Propaganda

by Joel Kotkin and Doug Havard — California likes to think of itself as the brain center of the universe, but increasingly much of that intellectual content comes from somewhere else. Once a leader in educational innovation and performance, California is now toward the bottom of the pack.

Will The Democrats End Up Saving The California Republican Party?

Left to its own devices, California’s Republican Party would be ready to be embalmed for display at the Museum of Natural History. But there’s one last hope for the state GOP: the growing lunacy among Democrats.

America’s Identity Crisis

In a healthy political environment, Americans, regardless of political views, would consider the tragedies of the mass shootings in Texas and Ohio to be the heinous actions of disturbed people, motivated mostly by a dangerous combination of madness and ideology. But in our warped political climate, everyone assumes that their enemies want to kill them. Our political polarization reflects a decline in the notion of American identity.

The Regression of America’s Big Progressive Cities

Trump’s recent crude attacks on Baltimore Congressman Elijah Cummings have succeeded in bring necessary attention to the increasingly tragic state of our cities. Baltimore’s continued woes, after numerous attempts to position itself as a “comeback city,” illustrates all too poignantly the deep-seated decay in many of our great urban areas.