Thomas Jefferson is said to have quipped, "a government big enough to give you everything you want is a government big enough to take away everything that you have." While history does not support the Jeffersonian attribution, it does support the conclusion—witness Soviet Russia, Communist China, and North Korea. But how big is too big? [...]

We’ve come to that agonizing point in our political process when each political party must choose its champion. Republicans are trying to decide in whose hands to place their party’s fate. The inexperienced but well-spoken Marco Rubio? Rand Paul, a man of intelligence and conviction who nonetheless selected drone strikes as the issue most worthy of a [...]

That a French socialist economist is trashing the American economy for fomenting inequality should hardly be news. But Thomas Piketty is enjoying some moments in the popular press, before returning to the usual comfortable sinecure for the left—academia. Why? Well, we are told, economic inequality is on the march again, and must be stopped. Stopped [...]

We are familiar enough with left-of-center Catholics, like Catholics United and the professors who publicly opposed House Speaker John Boehner’s honorary degree from The Catholic University of America in 2011, beating the drum for governmental—especially federal government—“solutions” to problems. We also witness it, however, from some Catholics known for being committed to the orthodox teaching [...]

Why must the children of light always be ten revolutions and a hundred years behind the children of darkness?  If we cannot always defeat our enemies on the battlefield, can’t we at least learn to recognize their tactics so that we won’t be fooled the next time?  Never mind that.  Can’t we learn to recognize, [...]

“This is about the government coercing religious institutions to violate their own beliefs.” So clarifies the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty in their feature ‘The Truth Should Not Be A Secret’. It aims to debunk the top myths that quickly circulated out of spin control centers from the administration and their complicit media partners. I’ve [...]

  If you've been watching cable television regularly, you've heard from many analysts who know Newt Gingrich personally. They either call him the smartest man in the room or they tell us Gingrich believes he's the smartest man in the room. Gingrich has always been a government ideas man, and whenever he says something odd, [...]

This past Fourth of July marked 235 years since the Declaration of Independence was published. In this immortal document, the Spirit of ’76 was given its fullest, most eloquent expression. The Declaration is a timeless document, espousing eternal principles that, while forever historically identified with America, are universal in their application. The Fourth provided an [...]

It's not unusual for the federal government to provoke widespread retching among its citizens, but it rarely does so intentionally. The new warning labels required on cigarette packs, however, have that goal. Designed to evoke disgust with smoking, they may also induce revulsion at excessive uses of power. The old cigarette warnings inform consumers of [...]

The trustees of the Medicare system recently reported that the program will go broke in the year 2024—five years sooner than was projected just last year. The millions of Americans who have been counting on Medicare to be a reliable, stable guarantor of affordable healthcare in their senior years should be asking themselves, “Who is [...]

The Kingdom of Sweden has been revered by supporters of big government around the world for decades, cited by statist college professors and policy makers everywhere. It started with the myth that its "socialist" system could simultaneously provide freedom, prosperity, and generous welfare benefits to all. But now, the illusion is beginning to crumble. The [...]

On April 26, 1783, two weeks after Congress approved a preliminary peace treaty with England, the states of Pennsylvania and New Jersey entered into a compact over their shared use of the Delaware River. The waterway was an important shipping route, and any interference in its operation, either from dams or bridges, would harm both [...]