Political and cultural causes are important. They motivate us to make the world around us better and hone our sense of justice. Also, the excitement of fighting the good fight can be, for lack of a better word, fun. But everything has its time and place. And even if we think a particular political issue...
As the year draws to a close and the holiday season envelops us in its festive glow, I’m reminded of Charles Dickens’s timeless sentiment from A Christmas Carol: “I have always thought of Christmas time as a good time; a kind, forgiving, charitable, pleasant time; when men and women seem by one consent to open their...
When we exercise our personal freedom within dense networks of families and other associations, we make better choices. We’re nudged in the right direction.
The undercounted cost of the COVID pandemic is in the lives lost to despair, addiction, suicide, and other illnesses. Whether people have voluntarily cut off ties, albeit after government officials suggested shutting down for two weeks in March to “flatten the curve,” or were forced to do it by their employer or a government mandate,...
Teachers and parents, we have a trust problem. Just 36 percent of public school teachers express “complete” or “a lot of” trust in parents, EdChoice’s new “Schooling in America Survey” says. What’s eroding trust? One likely culprit: Parental expectations are sky-high. Harried millennial parents want schools to teach skills once considered part of child-rearing. In a new Walton Family...
Much more so than our international counterparts, Americans tend not to believe that government is the only important means of addressing matters of common concern.
One thing I’ve learned from my North Carolina public school education and my private college experience is to support arguments with data. And in hyperpartisan political times, it’s important to separate facts from fiction. Let’s be clear: For the most part, our schools are adequately funded. In the News & Observer’s July 26 editorial, “Public...
A domestic-violence shelter in Wilson uses a model for combating social problems that draws support from across the political spectrum.
It is entirely possible that one reason charities aren’t reaching their full potential is that they so often pitch donors with a barely disguised mixture of contempt and accusation.
“Our nation is coming apart at the seams — not ethnic seams, but the seams of class.” At first glance, a casual reader could mistake that sentence as originating from the pen of a class-warfare liberal. Instead, it reflects the thesis of libertarian scholar Charles Murray’s new treatise on the economic and cultural decline of whites in the United States, titled Coming Apart. ... Although the book can be “wonkish” and heavy on Census data — so much so that it’s easy to get lost in the weeds — Murray’s latest offering makes a critical point. It’s a must-read for any serious observer of contemporary American culture.
If proponents of diversity can look beyond their own self-interests, then it is reasonable to assume opponents can as well.
