During my formative years, the United States and the West in general was said to be locked in a “clash of civilizations” with the Islamic world, or at least radicals within it. Groups like Al Qaeda, the Taliban, Al Shabaab, Boko Haram, and later ISIS dominated the news. There was always a bombing, beheading, stoning,...
North Carolina has a housing and sawmill problem. The number of local sawmills in North Carolina has been declining, while the population of North Carolina, and the subsequent demand for housing, continues to rise exponentially. North Carolina’s Department of Housing has found that the state will be short a little under a million houses by...
Ever since 1789, when UNC-Chapel Hill was founded, North Carolina taxpayers have been very generous to public higher education. North Carolina’s colleges and universities receive annual appropriations of more than $4 billion. And on a per-student basis, UNC schools receive more public funding than almost any other schools in the nation. In return for their...
People of faith across America, including here in North Carolina, had good reason to celebrate Independence Day this year. In the week preceding the July Fourth holiday, the U.S. Supreme Court handed down two landmark decisions which significantly clarified and extended constitutional protection of religious liberty in American life and law. With a hostile administration...
Has there even been a point of time in which so many public controversies rest on a single, abstract principle of constitutional government? I can’t think of one. The principle in question is the separation of powers. Here are only some of its recent political manifestations: • The U.S. Supreme Court has just blocked President...
Viewers and readers suffer when media outlets hype provocative comments taken out of context.
“Time and tide wait for no man.” This famous phrase comes from Chaucer’s medieval Canterbury Tales, but a more modern version could just as easily say, “A child’s education waits for no policy.” Telling a student in a failing public school that they shouldn’t be able to transfer to a good private school down the...
