Year: 2015

Social observers from Aristotle and Juvenal to James Madison and George Orwell have all warned of the dangers of out-of-control government. Lately, we have seen plenty of proof that they were frighteningly correct. The Environmental Protection Agency spilled 3 million gallons of toxic sludge into a tributary of the Animas River in Colorado. The stinky […]

Donald Trump stands accused of “trashing the GOP brand” by many of the same GOP politicians and pundits who have no reluctance in “trashing” the most consequential recent decision made by a Republican president — the decision to go to war in Iraq. When asked a few months ago whether he would have authorized the […]

One of the most lame excuses for doing nothing is that we can’t do everything. Such excuses have been repeated endlessly, even by some conservatives, when it comes to illegal immigration. We can’t deport millions of illegal immigrants already living in the country, some say, so the wise thing is to just learn to live […]

BELFAST, Northern Ireland — Since his party’s impressive election victory in May, Prime Minister David Cameron is moving quickly to fulfill his campaign promise to ensure welfare benefits are no longer a way of life for many of his fellow citizens. Instead of open-ended benefits for the unemployed, the government, beginning in April 2017, will […]

Death focuses the mind. The recent passing of my dear friend Whitney Ball, who devoted her professional life to making it easier for people to support civil society, inspired this column. Whitney founded Donors Trust, an organization that, as its mission details, “encourages philanthropy and individual giving and responsibility, as opposed to governmental involvement, as […]

In 1935 George Dangerfield published “The Strange Death of Liberal England, 1910-1914,” a vivid account of how Britain’s center-left Liberal Party, dominant for a century, collapsed amid conflicts it could not resolve. The Liberal Party had appeared impregnable. Its cabinet in 1910 included Herbert Asquith (in the midst of the longest consecutive prime ministership since […]