society

Few things are as clear as the bankruptcy of the political “left.”

For early progressives the state was the true embodiment of the social will, the thinking, acting entity of which individual people are only one part.

No matter how many courts have rejected their pleadings, enemies of school choice appear committed to a 100-year-long judicial war in quest of some ultimate edict that will keep American students forever captive in government schools.

England’s Royal College of Physicians (RCP) recommended on April 28th that doctors “promote the use of e-cigarettes, NRT and other non-tobacco nicotine products as widely as possible as a substitute for smoking in the UK.”

The first week in May is National Charter Schools Week, a time to celebrate the advancements made in the charter school movement over the past 25 years. Because of the nation’s hundreds of new and developing charter schools, thousands of parents and their children now have the opportunity to enroll in a school that better meets children’s specific education needs.

The United States has lapsed into aristocracy, the New Class — the politically connected “enemies of promise” — standing in the way of the free market reforms that could make America the home of social mobility once again. This is among the central theses of a thought-provoking and inspiring new book from George Mason University law professor F.H. Buckley, whose The Way Back challenges us, perhaps audaciously, to pursue socialist ends through capitalist means.

Sometimes there are men of principle who live their values and not merely speak or write about them. People who stand up to political evil at their own risk, and then go on to say and do things that help to remake their country in the aftermath of war and destruction. One such individual was the German, free-market economist, Wilhelm Röpke.

If governments truly believe that man’s production of carbon dioxide causes dangerous global warming, they would ban the use of motor cars, motor trucks, tractors, motor homes, motor bikes, motor mowers, motor launches and petrol-driven chain saws. These all pump out the two dreaded greenhouse gases – carbon dioxide and water vapour. Horses, bullocks, wagons, bicycles, scythes, row-boats and axes are the true-green tools – all were good enough for our pioneers.

What is the role of government in society? This has been and remains the most fundamental question in all political discussions and debates. Its answer determines the nature of the social order and how people are expected and allowed to interact with one another – on the basis of either force or freedom.

In today’s edition of The Heartland Daily Podcast, managing editor of Budget & Tax News Jesse Hathaway talks with Jonathan Williams, Vice President of the American Legislative Exchange Council’s (ALEC) Center for State Fiscal Reform, about how welfare reform and economic reform go hand in hand, and what states can do to help the needy back onto their feet and into society.

While the vast majority of Americans say that their nation’s not headed in a good direction, there’s a minority that are optimistic about the future. Indeed, author Michael Lotus believes America’s greatest days are yet to come.

Wherever we turn we are confronted with politicians, political pundits, television talking heads, and editorial page commentators, all of whom offer an array of plans, programs, and projects that will solve the problems of the world – if only government is given the power and authority to remake society in the design proposed.

A new kind of business model connecting customers and providers is cutting out inefficient middlemen and reducing costs. Unfortunately, some governments are trying to undercut these new services at the request of the old-economy companies that are displacing them with their greater efficiency.