American Ideology

The Anti-Empirical Left

Science is ignored when it doesn’t support politically correct policy. by Victor Davis Hanson // National Review Online President Obama entered office promising to restore the sanctity of science. Instead, a fresh war against science, statistics, and reason is being waged on behalf of politically correct politics. After the Sandy Hook tragedy, the president attempted to convert […]

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The Decline of College

by Victor Davis Hanson // Tribune Media Services  For the last 70 years, American higher education was assumed to be the pathway to upper-mobility and a rich shared-learning experience. Young Americans for four years took a common core of classes, learned to look at the world dispassionately, and gained the concrete knowledge to make informed arguments

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Life in the Twilight

by Victor Davis Hanson // PJ Media   The Good News America is in great shape energy-wise. We have more gas and oil reserves than ever before. Indeed, the United States could shortly become the world’s largest exporter of coal. Our cheaper power rates may bring energy-intensive industry back from Europe and Asia. Share This

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Revolutionary Tribunals

Our courts have too often become expressions of the popular will. by Victor Davis Hanson National Review Online In ancient Athens, popular courts of paid jurors helped institutionalize fairness. If a troublemaker like Socrates was thought to be a danger to the popular will, then he was put on trial for inane charges like “corrupting

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The Lost Meaning of Independence Day

by Bruce S. Thornton Front Page Magazine Independence Day is a time of backyard barbeques and fireworks, department-store sales and blockbuster movies, patriotic bunting and flying the flag––in short, a time of leisure and consumption, with a few obligatory nods to the momentous event that July 4 is supposed to celebrate. But as the years

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One Nation, Under God?

by Bruce Thornton Defining Ideas The role of religion in American social and political life is an ever-present element in our civic conversation. The recent controversy over the contraception mandate ignited a smoldering conflict over just this issue. Share This

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A Wasted Educational Crisis

by Bruce Thornton Pope Center Commentaries As former White House Chief of Staff and now Mayor of Chicago Rahm Emanuel famously said, “You never want to let a serious crisis to go to waste.” The economic Armageddon facing the country’s largest state university system, the 23-campus California State University, undoubtedly qualifies as a serious crisis. Share

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In Praise of Polarization

by Bruce Thornton Defining Ideas As the presidential campaign intensifies, we are sure to hear more and more complaints about the “polarization” of the electorate and the increasingly bitter divide between the two major parties. “It’s worse now than it’s been in years,” the Brookings Institution’s Darrell West said recently. “Our leaders are deeply polarized,

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Imams of Islam and the Environment

by Victor Davis Hanson National Review Online In the Arabic media, there are reports that Muslim clerics — energized by the sudden emergence of Egypt’s new president, Mohammed Morsi of the Muslim Brotherhood — are agitating to demolish the Egyptian pyramids. According to the imams, the pharaohs’ monuments represent “symbols of paganism” from Egypt’s pre-Islamic

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