nanny state

May 14, 2014

Don’t Let That Kid Out Of Your Sight: Taking Helicopter Parenting To A New Level

I am not now nor have I ever been a helicopter parent. With five kids, I often depended on them to keep an eye on each other. They had the usual share of bumps, bruises, stitches and lowered grades because of forgotten homework that I refused to bring to school (failure is a good teacher.) Continue Reading...

April 30, 2014

C.S. Lewis on the Progressive’s Regress

Over at Christianity Today Art Lindsley has a good piece on how C.S. Lewis’s support for true progress led him to oppose Progressivism: Some of Lewis’s most pointed criticisms of “progress” came when he wrote on economics and politics, even though he did not often comment on these topics. Continue Reading...

March 05, 2014

Student loan update: ‘I’m from the government, and I’m here to entice you into debt slavery.’

The massive federal student loan program is creating a gargantuan higher education bubble and unsustainable levels of student loan debt, but at least all that borrowed money is going primarily to educate people, right? Continue Reading...

January 15, 2014

Senator Rubio’s Poverty Speech Muddled

A recent speech by U.S. Senator Marco Rubio laid out what his press office terms “Conservative Reforms for Combating Poverty.” It began well and had a nice line or two emphasizing the role family breakdown plays in perpetuating generational poverty, but then it went all technocratic and wobbly. Continue Reading...

March 20, 2013

Is The Divinization of Federal Government Complete?

We are now witnessing how some make the tie between human tragedy and federal spending. Just yesterday, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid shamelessly implied that the accident that killed seven Marines in Nevada is tied to spending cuts from sequester. Continue Reading...

October 22, 2012

Tonight’s Foreign Policy Debate: ‘It’s the Economy, Stupid’

At some point in tonight’s foreign policy debate between the two presidential candidates, Governor Mitt Romney should send his very capable inner wonk on a long coffee break and press a big-picture truth that otherwise will go begging: America’s strength on the international stage requires economic strength, and our economic strength cannot long endure under the weight of a government so swollen in size that it stifles human enterprise. Continue Reading...

October 04, 2012

Mr. President, it isn’t your job to ‘channel’ America’s genius, grit and determination

One line from last night’s debate leapt out at me. It wasn’t a stumble amidst the cut and thrust of open debate. It was during President Obama’s closing statement—400 words that I’m guessing he and his staff crafted with painstaking care. Continue Reading...

August 23, 2011

If Corporations Are Making Your Child Fat, Run Crying to Mommy

The New York Times ran an op-ed yesterday by Canadian legal scholar Joel Bakan, the author of a new book titled Childhood Under Siege: How Big Business Targets Children. Bakan argues that the 20th century has seen an increase in legal protections for two classes of persons, children and corporations, and that one of these is good and one is terribly, terribly bad—mean, even. Continue Reading...

August 02, 2010

An Open Letter from Alexis de Tocqueville to President Barack Obama and the American People

I think that the oppression threatening democracies will not be like anything there has been in the world before…. I see an innumerable crowd of men, all alike and equal, turned in upon themselves in a restless search for those petty, vulgar pleasures with which they fill their souls…. Continue Reading...

August 11, 2008

Nannyfornia

Writing in the London-based Times, Chris Ayres in “Welcome to Nannyfornia” looks at the “frenzy of puritanical edicts from California’s politicians” that cover a host of sins, ranging from transfats to the highly objectionable use of the terms “Mom” and “Dad.” Continue Reading...