[VIDEO] There Is No Gender Wage Gap: Christina Hoff Sommers for Prager U
Posted: March 6, 2017 Filed under: Economics, Education, Mediasphere, Think Tank | Tags: American Enterprise Institute, Christina Hoff Sommers, Gender Gap, Prager U, video Leave a comment
Is there a gender wage gap? Are women paid less than men to do the same work? Christina Hoff Sommers, Resident Scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, explains the data.
Source: PragerU
What Explains CPAC’s Dance with Milo Yiannopoulos?
Posted: February 21, 2017 Filed under: Mediasphere, Politics, Think Tank | Tags: 1960s Berkeley protests, 9/11 Truth movement, Alex Jones (radio host), American Conservative Union, American Enterprise Institute, Antisemitism, Berkeley, Breitbart News, Donald Trump, Jews, Jonah Goldberg, Milo Yiannopoulos, MSNBC, National Review, President of the United States, United States, University of California, White House Leave a comment
‘The enemy of my enemy is my ally’
Human monkey behavior is often an under-explored element in articles about group dynamics in politics. That’s why we’re pleased to find National Review‘s Jonah Goldberg liberally including quotations from evolutionary psychologist John Tooby. This is from Jonah’s weekly column in the LATimes:
Jonah Goldberg
writes:
…From the outset, many on the right who do not consider themselves part of the Cult of Milo opposed his invitation. The disturbing thing is that, absent these videos, we would have lost the fight.
“John Tooby, the evolutionary psychologist, recently wrote that if he could explain one scientific concept to the public it would be the ‘coalitional instinct.’ In our natural habitat, to be alone was to be vulnerable. If ‘you had no coalition, you were nakedly at the mercy of everyone else, so the instinct to belong to a coalition has urgency, pre-existing and superseding any policy-driven basis for membership … This is why group beliefs are free to be so weird’.”
Even now, Schlapp defends the initial decision to invite Yiannopoulis. On Monday’s ”Morning Joe,” he insisted: “The fact is, he’s got a voice that a lot of young people listen to.” A lot of young conservative people, he should have added, precisely because he enrages so many young liberals.
“If ‘you had no coalition, you were nakedly at the mercy of everyone else, so the instinct to belong to a coalition has urgency, pre-existing and superseding any policy-driven basis for membership,’ Tooby wrote on Edge.org. ‘This is why group beliefs are free to be so weird.’”
And that’s part of the problem. We are in a particularly tribal moment in American politics in which “the 
enemy of my enemy is my ally” is the most powerful argument around.
[Check out John Tooby’s book “The Adapted Mind: Evolutionary Psychology and the Generation of Culture“ at Amazon.com]
John Tooby, the evolutionary psychologist, recently wrote that if he could explain one scientific concept to the public it would be the “coalitional instinct.” In our natural habitat, to be alone was to be vulnerable. If “you had no coalition, you were nakedly at the mercy of everyone else, so the instinct to belong to a coalition has urgency, pre-existing and superseding any policy-driven basis for membership,” Tooby wrote on Edge.org. “This is why group beliefs are free to be so weird.”
[read the full story here, at LA Times]
We overlook the hypocrisies and shortcomings within our coalition out of a desire to protect ourselves from our enemies.
Today, the right sees the left as enemies — and, I should say, vice versa. Read the rest of this entry »
[VIDEO] Is America an Imperialist, White-Supremacist, Capitalist Patriarchy?
Posted: January 21, 2017 Filed under: History, Mediasphere, Politics, Think Tank | Tags: Academic Left, American Enterprise Institute, Barack Obama, Capitalism, Christina Hoff Sommers, Democratic Party (United States), Donald Trump, Economic freedom, equality, Factual Feminist, Feminism, Free market, Imperialism, Liberty, media, news, Patriarchy, patriot, Republican Party (United States), United States, video Leave a comment
Gender scholars like bell hooks argue that American is an imperialist, white-supremacist, capitalist patriarchy. Is she right? The Factual Feminist responds. Read the rest of this entry »
The End of an Era: Economist Thomas Sowell Says ‘Farewell’
Posted: December 27, 2016 Filed under: Economics, Health and Social Issues, History, Mediasphere, Think Tank | Tags: Alliance for School Choice, American Enterprise Institute, Ancillary revenue, Anderson Bridge, Free market, Freedom, Milton Friedman, Poverty and Politics: An International Perspective, Thomas Sowell, United States, Wealth 1 Comment
‘There is no economist alive today who has done more to eloquently, articulately, and persuasively advance the principles of economic freedom, limited government, individual liberty, and a free society than Thomas Sowell.’
Mark J. Perry writes: After writing a weekly (sometimes semi-weekly) column for the last 25 years (here’s an archive of his columns back to 1998), economist, scholar, author and national treasure Thomas Sowell made this announcement in his column today (“Farewell“):
“Even the best things come to an end. After enjoying a quarter of a century of writing this column for Creators Syndicate, I have decided to stop. Age 86 is well past the usual retirement age, so the question is not why I am quitting, but why I kept at it so long.”
Here’s a link to Thomas Sowell’s second column today (“Random Thoughts, Looking Back“), here’s some of the reaction on Twitter and the Internet to Sowell’s retirement, here’s Thomas Sowell’s webpage, and here’s his Wikipedia entry. Milton Friedman once said, “The word ‘genius’ is thrown around so much that it’s becoming meaningless, but nevertheless I think Tom Sowell is close to being one.”
“I don’t think any living free-market economist even comes close to matching Sowell’s prolific record of writing about economics. And I don’t think there is any writer today, economist or non-economist, who can match Thomas Sowell’s “idea density” and his ability to consistently pack so much profound economic wisdom into a single sentence and a single paragraph.”
In my opinion, there is no economist alive today who has done more to eloquently, articulately, and persuasively advance the principles of economic freedom, limited government, individual liberty, and a free society than Thomas Sowell. In terms of both his quantity of work (at least 40 books and several thousand newspaper columns) and the consistently excellent and crystal-clear quality of his writing, I don’t think any living free-market economist even comes close to matching Sowell’s prolific record of writing about economics. And I don’t think there is any writer today, economist or non-economist, who can match Thomas Sowell’s “idea density” and his ability to consistently pack so much profound economic wisdom into a single sentence and a single paragraph.
Even at 86 years old, Thomas Sowell has remained intellectually active with his syndicated newspaper columns and the publication last year of his 40th book — Wealth, Poverty and Politics: An International Perspective — which was, amazingly, his 13th book in the last decade! To honor Thomas Sowell’s well-deserved retirement from writing his invaluable weekly column for the last quarter century, I present below some of my favorite quotations from Dr. Thomas Sowell (most were featured on a CD post in June on Sowell’s birthday) and a bonus video of the great economist:
1. Knowledge. The cavemen had the same natural resources at their disposal as we have today, and the difference between their standard of living and ours is a difference between the knowledge they could bring to bear on those resources and the knowledge used today.
[Read the full story here, at Carpe Diem Blog » AEIdeas]
2. Obamacare. If we cannot afford to pay for doctors, hospitals and pharmaceutical drugs now, how can we afford to pay for doctors, hospitals and pharmaceutical drugs, in addition to a new federal bureaucracy to administer a government-run medical system?
3. Economics vs. Politics I. Economics and politics confront the same fundamental problem: What everyone wants adds up to more than there is. Market economies deal with this problem by confronting individuals with the costs of producing what they want, and letting those individuals make their own trade-offs when presented with prices that convey those costs. That leads to self-rationing, in the light of each individual’s own circumstances and preferences. Read the rest of this entry »
James Grant Explains ‘The Forgotten Depression’
Posted: November 28, 2016 Filed under: Economics, Education, Reading Room, Think Tank | Tags: African Americans, African-American Civil Rights Movement (1954–68), American Enterprise Institute, Austrian School, Benjamin Graham, Chinese yuan, Cindy Gamrat, Economic growth, Federal Reserve System, Friedrich Hayek, Great Recession, Inflation targeting, Janet Yellen, New York City, Unemployment Leave a comment
Mr. Grant confronts the subjectivity of economic measurement head-on in his book in an enlightening discussion of whether the 1921 depression was, in fact, a depression at all.
The Forgotten Depression: 1921 — The Crash That Cured Itself, by James Grant, Simon & Schuster, 2014.
Joseph Calandro Jr. writes: To better understand the current economic environment, financial analyst, historian, journalist, and value investor James 
Grant, who is informed by both Austrian economics and the value investing theory of the late Benjamin Graham, analyzes the Depression of 1920–1921 in his latest work, The Forgotten Depression: 1921 — The Crash That Cured Itself.
[Order James Grant’s book “The Forgotten Depression: 1921: The Crash That Cured Itself“ from Amazon.com]
Grant understands that despite the pseudo-natural science veneer of mainstream economics the fact remains that economic value is inherently subjective and thus economic measurement is also subjective. Mr. Grant confronts the subjectivity of economic measurement head-on in his book in an enlightening discussion of whether the 1921 depression was, in fact, a depression at all.
Was It a Depression?
Grant concludes it was a depression, but mainstream economist Christine Romer, for example, concludes it was not a depression. As Grant observes, Ms. “Romer, a former chairman of the Council of Economic Advisors, presented her research, titled ‘World War I and the Postwar Depression,’ in a 1988 essay in the Journal of Monetary Economics. The case she made for discarding one set of GNP estimates for another is highly technical. But the lay reader may be struck by the fact that neither the GNP data she rejected, nor the ones she preferred, were compiled in the moment. Rather, each set was constructed some 30 to 40 years after the events it was intended to document” (p. 68).
In contrast, Mr. Grant surveys economic activity as it existed prior to and during 1920–21 and as it was evaluated during those times. Therefore, five pages into chapter 5 of his book, which is titled “A Depression in Fact,” we read that:
A 1920 recession turned into a 1921 depression, according to [Wesley Clair] Mitchell, whose judgment, as a historian, business-cycle theorist and contemporary observer, is probably as reliable as anyone’s. This was no mere American dislocation but a global depression ensnaring nearly all the former Allied Powers (the defeated Central Powers suffered a slump of their own in 1919). “Though the boom of 1919, the crisis of 1920 and the depression of 1921 followed the patterns of earlier cycles,” wrote Mitchell, “we have seen how much this cycle was influenced by economic conditions resulting from the war and its sudden ending. … If American business men were betrayed by postwar demands into unwise courses, so were all business men in all countries similarly situated.”
So depression it was … (p. 71)
Interestingly, there are a variety of similarities between “The Forgotten Depression” of 1921 and “The Great Recession” of 2007–2008. For example:
- War finance (the currency debasement and credit expansion associated with funding war) has long been associated with economic distortion including World War I, which preceded “The Forgotten Depression.” Such distortions unfortunately continue to the present day.
- Scandal is also associated with booms and busts; for example, the boom preceding “The Forgotten Depression” had Charles Ponzi while the boom preceding “The Great Recession” had Bernie Madoff.
- The booms preceding both financial disruptions also saw governmental banking regulators not doing a very good job of regulating the banks under their supervision.
- Citibank famously fell under significant distress in both events.
- Both eras had former professors of Princeton University in high-ranking governmental positions: Woodrow Wilson was president of the United States at the beginning of “The Forgotten Depression” while Ben Bernanke was chairman of the Fed during “The Great Recession.”
- On the practitioner-side, value investor Benjamin Graham profited handsomely from the distressed investments that he made during “The Forgotten Depression” while his best known student, Warren Buffett, profited from the distressed investments that he made during “The Great Recession.”
The Crash That Cured Itself
Despite similarities, there are noteworthy differences between these two financial events. Foremost among the differences is the reason why “The Forgotten Depression” has, in fact, been forgotten: the government did nothing to stop it. Not only were interest rates not lowered and public money not spent, but interest rates were actually raised and debt paid down. The context behind these actions is fascinating and superbly told and analyzed by Mr. Grant. Read the rest of this entry »
[VIDEO] What is Social Justice?
Posted: September 10, 2016 Filed under: Education, History, Mediasphere, Politics, Think Tank | Tags: American Enterprise Institute, Barack Obama, Cold War, Donald Trump, Evangelicalism, Hillary Clinton, Jonah Goldberg, National Review, SJW, Social justice, United States Leave a comment
“Social Justice” is a term you hear almost every day. But did you ever hear anybody define what it actually means? Jonah Goldberg of the American Enterprise Institute tries to pin this catchall phrase to the wall. In doing so, he exposes the not-so-hidden agenda of those who use it. What sounds so caring and noble turns out to be something very different.
A Constitutional Amendment Overturning Citizens United: Really? How?
Posted: August 12, 2016 Filed under: Law & Justice, Mediasphere, Politics, Think Tank, White House | Tags: American Enterprise Institute, Antonin Scalia, Attorney general, Citizens United, English Language, Fairness Doctrine, First Amendment to the United States Constitution, Hidden in Plain Sight: What Really Caused the World’s Worst Financial Crisis and Why It Could Happen Again, Hillary Clinton, Peter J. Wallison, SOTUS, Supreme Court, The Second Amendment 1 Comment
Peter J. Wallison writes: One jarring note in Hillary Clinton’s acceptance speech at the Democratic National Convention was her statement that she would press for a constitutional amendment to overturn Citizens United v. Federal Elections Commission.
“The New York Times is a corporation, so this language would prohibit the Times from editorializing in favor of or against either Ms. Clinton or Donald Trump. Moreover, it might shut down blogs, or firms like Facebook or Twitter, that are corporate vehicles for the expression of opinions about candidates by others.”
This 2009 Supreme Court case held that corporations had the same rights as individuals to make statements for or against the election of a candidate for public office. Particularly difficult to understand was her linking Citizens United to the fact that our economy is not functioning well for many Americans.
A sign during a protest against the Citizens United decision in Portland, Oregon. Credit: Flickr/lance_mountain
“Clearly, closing down newspapers that publish editorials wouldn’t be satisfactory to many Americans, and if extended to other corporate opinion forums would be highly unpopular among the American people. How, then, could the language be modified to allow the New York Times and other corporations to express their views and still overturn Citizens United?”
Taking the last point first, what could be the link between Citizens United and a poorly functioning economy? It’s likely that Ms. Clinton wanted her listeners to infer that corporate power, expressed through independent expenditures—presumably 
contributions to superpacs or other hidden sources—had distorted the public’s will for the benefit of powerful private parties.
[Order Peter J. Wallison’s book “Hidden in Plain Sight: What Really Caused the World’s Worst Financial Crisis and Why It Could Happen Again“ from Amazon.com]
This is a peculiar claim to make after almost eight years of the Obama presidency, in which the most significant government actions—the Dodd-Frank Act, ObamaCare, and various tax increases on corporations and wealthy individuals—could hardly be said to favor corporations or business interests generally. It is also peculiar in light of a recent Wall Street Journal report that hedge fund contributions to Clinton superpacs have outraised those to Trump superpacs by a ratio of more than 2000-to-1 ($46.5 million to $19,000).
But leaving aside these anomalies, what is it about Citizens United that has stirred Ms. Clinton to propose something as drastic as a constitutional amendment, especially one affecting the First Amendment’s right to free speech?
[Read the full story here, at AEI]
Many of Ms. Clinton’s listeners who cheered her idea probably believe that their right to free speech would not be affected by overturning Citizens United. Of course, the language of the amendment would be determinative, but let’s assume it is as simple as adding new language at the end of the First Amendment as it now reads. Read the rest of this entry »
John Bolton: Obama’s Shameful Apology Tour Lands in Hiroshima
Posted: May 27, 2016 Filed under: Asia, Diplomacy, Japan, Politics, White House | Tags: American Enterprise Institute, Barack Obama, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Harry S. Truman, Hiroshima, Japan, John Bolton, The New York Post, United States 3 Comments
Narcissist-in-Chief Honors Himself in Hiroshima, Japan
John Bolton writes: An American president’s highest moral, constitutional and political duty is protecting his fellow citizens from foreign threats. Presidents should adhere to our values and the Constitution, and not treat America’s enemies as morally equivalent to us.
If they do, they need not apologize to anyone.
The White House says that President Obama won’t apologize as he visits Hiroshima Friday. But who believes his press flacks?
“Obama’s narcissism, his zeal for photo opportunities with him at the center, whether in Havana or Hiroshima, too often overcomes lesser concerns — like the best interests of the country.”
His penchant for apologizing is central to his legacy. He may not often say “I apologize” explicitly, but his meaning is always clear, especially since he often bends his knee overseas, where he knows the foreign audiences will get his meaning. It is, in fact, Obama’s subtlety that makes his effort to reduce America’s influence in the world so dangerous.
He started in Cairo in 2009, referring to the “fear and anger” that the 9/11 attacks provoked in Americans, saying that, “in some cases, it led us to act contrary to our traditions and our ideals.” He later said, “Unfortunately, faced with an uncertain threat, our government made a series of hasty decisions . . . based on fear rather than foresight” — a characterization Americans overwhelmingly reject.
[Read the full story here, at the New York Post]
In Europe, saved three times by America in the last century, Obama apologized because “there have been times where America has shown arrogance and been dismissive, even derisive.” And in this hemisphere, Obama said, “We have at times been disengaged, and at times we sought to dictate our terms,” culminating in his recent fawning visits with the Castros in Cuba.
The list goes on and on.
President Barack Obama walks with Japan’s Prime Minister Shinzo Abe.Photo: Getty Images
Then there’s his penchant for bowing to foreign leaders. He has bowed to the king of Saudi Arabia. He bowed to the emperor of Japan on a previous visit. He has bowed to China’s leader, Xi Jinping. And these are not casual nods of the head, but unmistakable gestures of obeisance. Read the rest of this entry »
OH YES THEY DID: 20,642 New Regulations Added in the Obama Presidency
Posted: May 23, 2016 Filed under: Economics, Politics, Think Tank, White House | Tags: American Enterprise Institute, Barack Obama, Bill Clinton, Donald Trump, Federal Communications Commission, Federal Trade Commission, George W. Bush, Red Tape, Regulations, Republican Party (United States), The New York Times, White House Leave a comment
The unparalleled increase in regulatory burdens spells a decline in economic freedom and individual liberty, with a concomitant increase in political gamesmanship and cronyism—all of which inhibits innovation, investment and job creation, increases prices, and curtails consumer choice.
James Gattuso and Diane Katz report: The tide of red tape that threatens to drown U.S. consumers and businesses surged yet again in 2015, according to a Heritage Foundation study we released on Monday.
More than $22 billion per year in new regulatory costs were imposed on Americans last year, pushing the total burden for the Obama years to exceed $100 billion annually.
That’s a dollar for every star in the galaxy, or one for every second in 32 years.
The consequences of this rampant rulemaking are widespread:
- Restricted access to credit under the hundreds of rules unleashed by the Dodd–Frank financial regulation statute
- Fewer health care choices and higher medical costs from the Affordable Care Act
- Reduced Internet investment and innovation under the network neutrality rules dictated by the Federal Communications Commission
These are just a few of the 2,353 regulations of 2015—and there have been 20,642 since Obama took office in 2009.
The worst of last year’s wave—in terms of cost, at least—was the Environmental Protection Agency’s “Clean Power Plan.”
[read the full story here, at DailySignal.com]
The rule represents the first direct regulation of so-called greenhouse gas emissions from power plants, at a cost of $7.2 billion a year (and far more according to critics). Despite the huge costs, the plan will do nothing to mitigate global warming.
America’s problem with excessive regulation did not start with the Obama administration, of course. Read the rest of this entry »
James Bowman on the Eternal Inaccuracy of the Socialist-Invented Word ‘Capitalism’
Posted: May 5, 2016 Filed under: Economics, Education, Global, History, Think Tank | Tags: American Enterprise Institute, Barack Obama, Bernie Sanders, Capitalism, Communism, Democratic Party (United States), Free Markets, Freedom, Geonocide, Hillary Clinton, Liberty, Marxism, Mass murder, Seattle, Socialism, United States, Vladimir Lenin Leave a comment
Like life, markets will generally find a way to survive. Socialism can harass and suppress what it calls capitalism—now, often just by calling it capitalism—but it can never replace it.
James Bowman writes: They’re demonstrating in Seattle about “capitalism” again. Young people, presumably of the hip variety now famed for supporting Bernie Sanders, rioted there on May Day.
“You’ve got to wonder how, for all those centuries, nobody realized that they were either oppressed or oppressing merely by marrying and having children—just as it never occurred to either employers or employees that they were part of a system, whether called ‘capitalism’ or something else, until patently self-interested socialist theorists came up with a rival system that, they said, would solve all their problems.”
The Seattle Times reported nine arrests and several injuries to police, including one officer who was bitten. Meanwhile, James Pethokoukis of the American Enterprise Institute, noting that a recent survey found 51 percent of young people, aged 18–29 described themselves as not supporting capitalism, wondered if the c-word “really isn’t the right word for the free enterprise system, the deep magic that has made America the richest, most powerful nation on Earth.”
“The system should rather be called ‘technological and institutional betterment at a frenetic pace, tested by unforced exchange among all the parties involved.’ Or ‘fantastically successful liberalism, in the old European sense, applied to trade and politics, as it was applied also to science and music and painting in literature.’ The simplest version is ‘trade-tested progress.’”
I hope it will not sound immodest in me if I mention that this is what I have been saying for years. As I wrote back in June of 2002, “capitalism” is simply the socialist word for life. You can tell because even under socialism there is still capitalism, in the form of the black market.
Like life, markets will generally find a way to survive. Socialism can harass and suppress what it calls capitalism—now, often just by calling it capitalism—but it can never replace it. 
[Order Deirdre McCloskey’s book “Bourgeois Equality: How Ideas, Not Capital or Institutions, Enriched the World” from Amazon.com]
You can’t replace an organic growth of human enterprise and ingenuity with a merely theoretical system designed by intellectuals to transform fallen humanity into a perfect society.
Mr Pethokoukis’s point is to promote “Bourgeois Equality: How Ideas, Not Capital or Institutions, Enriched the World, by Deirdre McCloskey….(read more)
Source: thenewcriterion.com
Narcissism is Increasing: You’re Not Special
Posted: April 15, 2016 Filed under: Education, Mediasphere, Science & Technology, Think Tank | Tags: American Enterprise Institute, Anti-social behaviour, Bernie Sanders, Donald Trump, Jean M. Twenge, Narcissism, Narcissism Epidemic, Narcissistic personality disorder, Social Psychological and Personality Science, United States, W. Keith Campbel Leave a comment
The percentage of college students exhibiting narcissistic personality traits, based on their scores on the Narcissistic Personality Inventory, has increased by more than half since the early 1980s, to 30 percent.
My teenage son recently informed me that there is an Internet quiz to test oneself for narcissism. His friend had just taken it. “How did it turn out?” I asked. “He says he did great!” my son responded. “He got the maximum score!”
When I was a child, no one outside the mental health profession talked about narcissism; people were more concerned with inadequate self-esteem, which at the time was believed to lurk behind nearly every difficulty. Like so many excesses of the
1970s, the self-love cult spun out of control and is now rampaging through our culture like Godzilla through Tokyo.
[Order Jean M. Twenge and W. Keith Campbell’s book “The Narcissism Epidemic: Living in the Age of Entitlement“ from Amazon.com]
A 2010 study in the journal Social Psychological and Personality Science found that the percentage of college students exhibiting narcissistic personality traits, based on their scores on the Narcissistic Personality Inventory, a widely used diagnostic test, has increased by more than half since the early 1980s, to 30 percent. In their book “Narcissism Epidemic,” the psychology professors Jean M.
Twenge and W. Keith Campbell show that narcissism has increased as quickly as obesity 
has since the 1980s. Even our egos are getting fat.
[Read the full text here, at AEI]
It has even infected our political debate. Donald Trump? “Remarkably narcissistic,” the developmental psychologist Howard Gardner told Vanity Fair magazine. I can’t say whether Mr. Trump is or isn’t a narcissist. But I do dispute the assertion that if he is, it is somehow remarkable
This is a costly problem. While full-blown narcissists often report high levels of personal satisfaction, they create havoc and misery around them. There is overwhelming evidence linking narcissism with lower honesty and raised aggression. It’s notable for Valentine’s Day that narcissists struggle to stay committed to romantic partners, in no small part because they consider themselves superior.
The full-blown narcissist might reply, “So what?” But narcissism isn’t an either-or characteristic. It’s more of a set of progressive symptoms (like alcoholism) than an identifiable state (like diabetes). Millions of Americans exhibit symptoms, but still have a conscience and a hunger for moral improvement. At the very least, they really don’t want to be terrible people.
To solve the problem, we have to understand it. Read the rest of this entry »
The Price of Free Speech in Japan
Posted: November 11, 2015 Filed under: Asia, Censorship, Japan, Mediasphere | Tags: American Enterprise Institute, Art of the Third Reich, Barack Obama, Benjamin Netanyahu, Debbie Wasserman Schultz, Dmitry Peskov, Harlan Crow, Irving Kristol Award, Liberal Democratic Party (Japan), Marco Rubio, Ministry of Foreign Affairs (Russia), Nuclear program of Iran, Shinzō Abe Leave a comment
Koji Murata was dismissed Friday as president of a prestigious Japanese university for supporting Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s policies. Photo: Kyodo
“Japan’s academics are known to be a largely liberal lot, but the concerns over free speech in the Murata case reflect Japan’s larger problems. At root, it’s about how the country will face both its past and its future.”
A favorite claim of liberal academics and activists is that Japan remains one of the most conservative societies. In recent years, their invective has been directed toward Mr. Abe, who is charged with repressing and intimidating liberal views. Media outlets argue that they have been pressured, and academics warn that government forces are trying to stifle debate about the country’s wartime past.
Yet punishing free speech in Japan is no prerogative of the right. Last week, the president of the prestigious liberal-arts college Doshisha failed to be re-elected due to his support earlier this year of Mr. Abe’s controversial security legislation to relax post-World War II restrictions on the use of the military.
Koji Murata is a well-known and respected academic and public intellectual in Japan. A fixture on news shows, the nattily dressed Mr. Murata is also an expert on foreign policy and security. In July, he was one of several experts testifying in front of Japan’s Parliament in favor of Mr. Abe’s security bills, which would modestly expand Japan’s ability to conduct military operations abroad. Read the rest of this entry »
‘As Difficult as it Might Be to Accept, There Are Problems That Can’t Be Fixed By Washington’
Posted: October 2, 2015 Filed under: Law & Justice, Politics, Think Tank, White House | Tags: 2012 Aurora shooting, Afghanistan, American Enterprise Institute, Barack Obama, Bernie Sanders, Bloomberg L.P., David Harsanyi, Gun violence, Gun violence in the United States, Hillary Clinton, Joe Biden, Mass murder, Ramesh Ponnuru, Rand Paul, Ronald Reagan, United States, Virginia Tech massacre Leave a comment
The More You Politicize Guns, The Weaker Your Case Becomes.
David Harsanyi
writes: After the horrific mass shooting at a community college in Oregon, President Obama made an impassioned case that gun violence is “something we should politicize”—and why should this be any different:
“This is a political choice that we make, to allow this to happen every few months in America. We collectively are answerable to those families who lose their loved ones because of our inaction.”
Everything in that statement is wrong. What happened in Oregon is tragic, and the nation should comfort families and look for reasonable and practical ways to stem violence, but there is only one murderer. Now, if government somehow bolstered, endorsed, or “allowed” the actions of Chris Harper-Mercer—as they might, say, the death of 10,000-plus viable babies each year or the civilian deaths that occur during an American drone action—a person could plausibly argue that we are collectively answerable as a nation.
“For the liberal, every societal problem has a state-issued remedy waiting to be administered over the objections of a reactionary Republican. But just because you have a tremendous amount of emotion and frustration built up around a certain cause doesn’t make your favored legislation any more practical, effective or realistic.”
Then again, when the president asserts Americans are collectively answerable, what he really suggests—according to his own broader argument—is that conservatives who’ve blocked his gun-control legislation are wholly responsible. The problem with that contention, outside of the obvious fact that Republicans never condone the use of guns for illegal violence (in fact, these rampages hurt their cause more than anything) is that Democrats haven’t offered a single bill or idea (short of confiscation) that would impede any of the mass shootings, or overall gun violence. This is not a political choice, because it’s likely there is no available political answer.
[Read the full text here, at The Federalist]
For the liberal, every societal problem has a state-issued remedy waiting to be administered over the objections of a reactionary Republican. But just because you have a tremendous amount of emotion and frustration built up around a certain cause doesn’t make your favored legislation any more practical, effective or realistic. It doesn’t change the fact that owning a gun is a civil right, that the preponderance of owners are not criminals, or that there are 300 million guns out there.
And if it’s a political argument you’re offering—and when hasn’t it been?—you’ll need more than the vacuousness of the “this is bad and so we have to do something.” That’s because anti-gun types are never able to answer a simple question: what law would you pass that could stop these shootings?
Despite Obama’s ‘Equal Pay’ Rhetoric, White House Still Pays Female Staffers Less
Posted: September 22, 2015 Filed under: Economics, White House | Tags: American Enterprise Institute, Barack Obama, Code Pink, Employment, Equal Opportunity, Equal Pay, Iran, White House Leave a comment
Women White House staffers still earn 15.8 percent less on average than their male counterparts, according to an analysis from the conservative American Enterprise Institute of the latest disclosure reports. But the 25 highest-earning aides are evenly split – with 13 men and 12 women each earning between $165,300 and $173,922 a year.
The real discrepancy is at the bottom, where the 100 staffers on the bottom rung – those earning between $41,000 and $47,631 – are 57 percent female to 43 percent male. Read the rest of this entry »
Arthur Brooks: Playing the Music of Capitalism
Posted: July 11, 2015 Filed under: Art & Culture, Politics, Think Tank | Tags: American Dream, American Enterprise Institute, Arthur C. Brooks, Barack Obama, Barcelona, Brookings Institution, Bureau of Economic Analysis, Charter school, Free Markets, French Horn, Karlyn Bowman, morality, Ted Wells, The Wall Street Journal, Twitter Leave a comment
To become a majority again, conservatives need to reassert the moral case for free markets
William McGurn writes: Before he was president of the American Enterprise Institute, Arthur Brooks played the French horn. Not on the side. For a living.
It’s not the standard route to the top job at a Beltway think tank. Then again, not much about Mr. 
Brooks is standard. From dropping out of college to go to Spain to play for the Barcelona City Orchestra, to earning his B.A. degree via correspondence courses from Thomas Edison State College in New Jersey, his life makes for an eclectic résumé.
“Our side has all the right policies. But without the music, the public hears just numbers and we have no resonance.”
Today he boasts a Ph.D. from the RAND Graduate School and enjoys an honored spot in the capital’s intellectual firmament. But the horn still defines how he sees the world.
“We don’t need to write an opera about free enterprise to reach people. But it’s not a bad idea.”
“The French horn is the harmonic backbone of the orchestra,” Mr. Brooks says. “The physics are tricky. It’s as long as a tuba but with a mouthpiece as small as a trumpet’s. This gives the French horn its characteristic mellow sound but also makes it easy to miss notes. The metaphors here form themselves.”
Indeed they do. Not least because think tanks have distinct personalities in addition to their politics.
“The liberation of hundreds of millions from desperate poverty ranks among the greatest success stories in history. But it’s a story that remains largely untold and mostly unheralded.”
The libertarian Cato Institute, for example, looks as though it had been designed by Howard Roark, the hero architect of Ayn Rand’s novel “The Fountainhead.” The Liberty Bell on the Heritage Foundation logo evokes a classic conservatism 
rooted in the American founding. The clean modernist lines of the Brookings Institution suggest its faith in good, rational government.
“Capitalism has saved a couple of billion people and we have treated this miracle like a state secret.”
In Mr. Brooks’s hands, AEI has beome an orchestra. Sure, it is sometimes labeled “neocon” (almost always deployed as a pejorative) because of the home it provides for former George W. Bush administration officials such as John Bolton and
Paul Wolfowitz, not to mention scholars such as Fred Kagan who write on military matters. 
These people are all vital to AEI, but they are only part of a larger ensemble.
[Order Arthur Brooks’s book “The Conservative Heart: How to Build a Fairer, Happier, and More Prosperous America” from Amazon.com]
“Our side has all the right policies,” Mr. Brooks says. “But without the music, the public hears just numbers and we have no resonance.”
“We need to know Adam Smith who wrote ‘The Theory of Moral Sentiments’ as well as we do the Adam Smith who wrote ‘The Wealth of Nations,’ Because when you do, you begin to understand we are hard-wired for freedom by the same Creator who gave us our unalienable rights.”
He is speaking over lunch in his corner office overlooking 17th and M streets in northwest Washington, D.C. The office 
isn’t standard-issue, either.
[Read the full text here, at WSJ]
The walls are bereft of the signed photos and tributes from presidents, senators and other pooh-bahs that are de riguer for the capital’s movers and shakers. The largest piece in the room is a poster featuring José Tomás, Spain’s greatest bullfighter. Mr. Brooks once saw him in the ring. “A true master artist,” he says.
The other poster is from the Soviet Union circa 1964. It features two workers. One is a drunk scratching his head as he looks at the one-ruble note in his hand. The other is a hale-and-hearty type proudly looking at the 10 rubles he has earned. The caption: “Work more, earn more.”
“It was part of a public-information campaign to raise productivity by paying people more,” Mr. Brooks says. It’s the sort of irony he loves, a confirmation of basic market wisdom—courtesy of communist propaganda. Read the rest of this entry »
‘The First Rule of Economic Fight Club is…’ Stephen Moore, Paul Krugman Meet for ‘Economic Fight Club’ at Freedom Fest
Posted: July 10, 2015 Filed under: Economics, The Butcher's Notebook, Think Tank | Tags: American Enterprise Institute, Arthur Laffer, Barack Obama, Club for Growth, Economic inequality, Flat tax, Income tax, Liz Sheld, Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, Paul Krugman, Rand Paul, Ronald Reagan, Stephen Moore, The Heritage Foundation 1 Comment
I was fortunate to catch the majority of this debate live, via Periscope, watching it live on my phone’s screen (mostly just listening to the audio) and I agree with this description: “All in all this was a very interesting discussion. Of course I was not convinced by anything Krugman had to say but I did think it was a good-faith conversation on a variety of topics.” I’ve not found the video online yet, but stay tuned, when we find it, we’ll post it. In the meantime, enjoy a sample of this account by PJ Tatler‘s Liz Sheld,
“I have to give some props to Krugman for showing up, as he had to know this was going to be a tough crowd. And this panel was one of the best I’ve seen at a conference — it was thoughtful and did not get hostile at all, while both Moore and Krugman addressed each other’s points.”
Liz Sheld writes:
One of the big spectacles at Freedom Fest was the showdown between Stephen Moore and Paul Krugman that took place this morning. Moore founded the Club for Growth and was formerly on the editorial board of the Wall Street Journal. The former chief economist at the Heritage Foundation was billed as the “supply-sider.” On the other side of the debate was Krugman – New York Times columnist, professor of economics at Princeton, and Nobel prize winner. He was billed as the “Keynesian.”
The topic was “What happened to the American Dream?” or “How can we best restore the American Dream?”
“I wish we had more of this and less grandstanding at our center-right conclaves.”
I have to give some props to Krugman for showing up, as he had to know this was going to be a tough crowd. And this panel was one of the best I’ve seen at a conference — it was thoughtful and did not get hostile at all, while both Moore and Krugman addressed each other’s points. I wish we had more of this and less grandstanding at our center-right conclaves.
[Read the full text here, at PJ Tatler]
Since this was an hour-long debate, I’ll sum up some of the most interesting exchanges between the two economists. It didn’t take long before each was urging the moderator to pull up one of their charts. Charts really add some gravitas to the discussion. As they say on the streets, sh!t got real when the charts started coming out.
Moore pointed out that everything done by the Obama administration has thwarted recovery from the economic disaster of 2007-8. But to be fair, he included Bush along with examples of Obama’s mistakes: cash for clunkers, stimulus, bailouts, and tax increases, for starters. He said that Reagan also inherited a bad economy but did the right things for a much faster turnaround. Moore said that we have 8 million fewer jobs under Obama than we would have had if Obama had taken Reagan-esque action.
Read the rest of this entry »
Why College Kids Can’t Take a Joke
Posted: June 11, 2015 Filed under: Censorship, Comics, Entertainment, Humor | Tags: American Enterprise Institute, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Christina Hoff Sommers, comedy, Feminism, Kirsten Powers, Progressivism, Purdue University, Racism, Safe Space, Sexism, Trauma trigger, Trigger Warning, University of Chicago Leave a comment
Kyle Smith writes: What’s the deal with young people today? “They just want to use these words: ‘That’s racist,’ ‘That’s sexist,’ ‘That’s prejudice,’” Jerry Seinfeld told ESPN’s Colin Cowherd this week. “They don’t know what the f—k they’re talking about.”
“I stopped playing colleges, and the reason is because they’re way too conservative.”
— Chris Rock
Comics are afraid to work on college campuses, Seinfeld said. To give an idea of how young people think, he cited a bizarre response his 14-year-old daughter made when his wife noted that the girl might want to go to New York City from the suburbs more often “So you can see boys.” The girl replied that the remark was “sexist,” her father said.
“There is a word…That word is illiberal; there is nothing ‘conservative’ about it.”
— Kyle Smith
The determination of the identity-politics obsessed to shut down speech on campus inspired a couple of hilarious one-liners in the past year. One was from The Onion: “College Encourages Lively Exchange of Idea: Students, Faculty Invited to Freely Express Single Viewpoint.” The other, though unintentionally funny, was equally amusing, and came from Chris Rock: “I stopped playing colleges, and the reason is because they’re way too conservative.”
There is a word for the move to ban a screening of 2014’s most popular movie, American Sniper (and replace it with Paddington), to hound a major university into rescinding its honorary degree to Ayaan Hirsi Ali, to punish someone with a Title IX investigation for the crime of questioning the wisdom of certain Title IX investigations, and designating a “safe space” to which to flee after failing to prevent a speech by Christina Hoff Sommers from taking place. Read the rest of this entry »
Michael Barone: Is it Time for Civil Disobedience of Kludgeocratic Bureaucracy?
Posted: June 1, 2015 Filed under: Crime & Corruption, Politics, Think Tank | Tags: Advocacy journalism, American Enterprise Institute, Articles of Confederation, Baltimore, Barry Goldwater, By the People: Rebuilding Liberty Without Permission, Charles Murray (author), Civil disobedience, James Madison, Losing Ground, Memorial Day, Michael Barone, Obama administration, Protest 1 Comment
Michael Barone
writes: Is there any way to reverse the trend to ever more intrusive, bossy government? Things have gotten to such a pass, argues Charles Murray, that only civil disobedience might — might — work. But the chances are good enough, he says, that he’s written a book about it: By the People: Rebuilding Liberty Without Permission.
“The Progressive push to give politically insulated bureaucrats power to impose detailed and often incomprehensible rules was a product of the industrial era, a time when it was supposed that experts with stopwatches could design maximally productive assembly lines.”
Murray has a track record of making seemingly outlandish proposals that turn out to be widely accepted public policy. His 1984 book Losing Ground recommended the radical 
step of abolishing all welfare payments. A dozen years later the federal welfare reform act took a long step in that direction.
[Order Charles Murray’s book “By the People: Rebuilding Liberty Without Permission” from Amazon.com]
Murray was prompted to write By the People, he says, when a friend who owns a small business was confronted by OSHA inspectors and had an experience similar to one recounted in Philip Howard’s The Death of Common Sense.
[Read the full text of Michael Barone’s article here, at WashingtonExaminer.com]
The inspector found violations. Railings in his factory were 40 inches high, not 42; there was no automatic shutoff on a conveyor belt cordoned off from workers; a worker with a beard was allowed to use a non-close-fitting dust mask. Picayune stuff. But unless changes were made, the inspector said, we’ll put you out of business.
“What is to be done? Citizens, says Murray, should be willing to violate laws that the ordinary person would instantly recognize as ridiculous. And deep-pocketed citizens should set up a Madison Fund, to subsidize their legal defense and pay their fines.”
How had things come to this pass? Murray ascribes it to the abandonment of effective limits on government embedded in the Constitution by its prime architect James Madison. That started with the early twentieth century Progressives, who passed laws setting up independent and supposedly expert bureaucrats in charge of regulation, and furthered by New Deal Supreme Court decisions.
“The cultural uniformity that people remember from the post-World War II decades is the exception rather than the rule in American history. We were a religiously, ethnically and regionally diverse nation in James Madison’s time, Murray says, and we are once again. The uniformity temporarily imposed by shared wartime and postwar experiences is no more.”
Murray argues that these mistakes cannot be reversed by the political or judicial processes. The Court won’t abandon longstanding doctrines on which millions of people have relied. Congress, even a Republican Congress working with a Republican president, won’t repeal vaguely worded statutes that give regulators wide-ranging discretion. Read the rest of this entry »
[VIDEO] Everytown: We’ll Only Debate If Our Sparring Partners Agree With Us
Posted: April 29, 2015 Filed under: Guns and Gadgets, Mediasphere, Politics, Self Defense | Tags: 2nd amendment, American Enterprise Institute, Anti-Americanism, Charles C. W. Cooke, Christina Hoff Sommers, Civil Rights, Everytown, Feminism, Georgetown University, Gun control, Gun rights, National Review, NRO, Oberlin College, OCRL, Sexual Assault Awareness Month, Trauma trigger, Washington DC Leave a comment
At The Corner, Charles C.W. Cooke has this item:
Watch this representative from gun-control group “Everytown for Gun Safety” explain on C-SPAN why he won’t debate anybody who disagrees with him:
[Read the full text of Charles C.W. Cooke‘s post here, at National Review Online]
Here’s transcript of the relevant part of his answer:
Everytown is committed to an evidence-based approach. We speak with criminologists, legislators across the country and we welcome debate. In fact, we’re thrilled that there is an increased amount of research in this area, and an increased amount of conversation about what laws are effective to keeping guns out of the hands of felons and domestic abusers. So, when there’s a credible scientist — somebody who wants to have a real constructive conversation about this — we’re going to be there. But folks who seek to minimize the grave issue of gun violence in this country – or to draw attention away 
from the real issues to themselves – that’s not a conversation I think it’s productive to be a part of.
[Check out Charles C. W. Cooke‘s new book: “The Conservatarian Manifesto: Libertarians, Conservatives, and the Fight for the Right’s Future” at Amazon.com]
Obviously, the speaker is doing little more than begging the question. “Sure we’ll talk to people who disagree” he appears to be saying, “but only if they agree. Because to disagree with the claims that we are making is to take attention away from the claims that we are making, which are true by virtue of their having been made.”
Oddly enough, this is also exactly how critics of, say, Christina Hoff Sommerstend to explain away their unwillingness to engage. Read the rest of this entry »
SCANDAL! ThinkProgress Exposes National Review for Smearing Hawaii Democrat
Posted: April 2, 2015 Filed under: Entertainment, Humor, Mediasphere | Tags: Aaron Schock, American Enterprise Institute, Barack Obama, comedy, Democratic Party (United States), Hawaii, National Review, Paranoia, propaganda, satire, Tulsi Gabbard Leave a comment
The National Review magazine described Rep. Tulsi Gabbard (D-HI) as “exotic” and “beautiful” in an article about her stances on foreign policy, ThinkProgress reported on Thursday.
The National Review made mention of what it called Gabbard’s “exotic background,” using the fact that she was born in American Samoa and is Hindu. It also strongly focused on her looks with a headline that read: “Meet the Beautiful, Tough Young Democrat Who’s Turning Heads by Challenging Obama’s Foreign Policy.”
“She’s young, she’s hip, and she’s beautiful,” the article said. “She’s also a combat veteran and a Democrat.” Read the rest of this entry »
[VIDEO] Dr. Krauthammer’s Clinical Diagnosis: ‘Early-Onset Clinton Fatigue’
Posted: March 7, 2015 Filed under: Mediasphere, Politics, U.S. News, White House | Tags: 2010 Nuclear Security Summit, American Enterprise Institute, Barack Obama, Charles Krauthammer, Democratic Party (United States), Hillary Clinton, Hillary Clinton presidential campaign, John McCain, National Review, Rick Scott, United States Department of Homeland Security 1 CommentThe problem for Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign, according to Charles Krauthammer: “She can’t run on her record.”
“Ask yourself, what did she achieve as secretary of state? Nothing. What was her signature achievement as senator? I can’t remember. What did she achieve as first lady? Hillarycare, which went down in flames.”
“She is running on two things: gender and her name. And her name evokes the ’90s, and until these recent scandals, it would evoke the good stuff in the ’90s: peace and prosperity, her association with it. It is really a tremendous asset…”
“…What we are getting right now, is early-onset Clinton fatigue…”
“…But what has happened now is people are now re-remembering the other side of the ’90s and the Clintons, and that was a sort of low-level corruption, above-the-law Clintonisms, and that is what hurts you…(read more)
A Simple Cure for ObamaCare: Freedom
Posted: February 23, 2015 Filed under: Health and Social Issues, Law & Justice, Think Tank | Tags: Alcee Hastings, American Enterprise Institute, Americans, Barack Obama, Book of Numbers, Charles Murray (author), Congressional Budget Office, Cost overrun, Daily Mail, Democratic Party (United States), Health Insurance, Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, Rick Perry, Texas, Uncle Sam, United States 1 Comment
The GOP needs a politically defensible alternative if the Supreme Court overturns federal-exchange subsidies
Phil Gramm writes: On March 4 the Supreme Court will hear oral arguments in King v. Burwell, with a decision expected in late June. If the court strikes down the payment of government subsidies to those 
who bought health insurance on the federal exchange, Republicans will at last have a real opportunity to amend ObamaCare. Doing so, however, will be politically perilous.
“Of all potential Republican proposals, the freedom option seems the most likely to garner the six Democratic votes in the Senate needed to break a filibuster, pass the bill and put it on the president’s desk.”
The language of the Affordable Care Act states that subsidies should only be paid through state exchanges. The bill’s authors perhaps believed that pressure from citizens and the health-care providers who would benefit would entice states to set up exchanges. But, faced with mounting technical problems in setting up the exchanges, the Obama administration decided—legally or illegally—to allow subsidies to be paid through a federally run exchange. Therefore, political pressure that might have convinced states to set up exchanges never developed.
“The opposition would come solely from those who understand that ObamaCare is built on coercion—and that unless young, healthy Americans are forced into the program to be exploited with above-market insurance rates, the subsidies will prove unaffordable. That will be an exceedingly difficult case to make to the public.”
The political pressures to set up state exchanges if federal subsidies are now struck down will be enormous. The Kaiser Family Foundation used Congressional Budget Office data to estimate that 13 million people will receive subsidies in 2016 through the federal exchange. If the Supreme Court strikes down these subsidies, 13 million people would lose an average of $4,700 a year, and health-care providers would certainly fight to protect some $60 billion a year in subsidies.
The president’s most likely response to an adverse court decision would be to refuse to work with Congress to fix ObamaCare. Instead he will likely mount an effort to force the 37 states now using the federal exchange to set up state exchanges to qualify for the subsidies. His administration could make it easy for states to continue to use the federal exchange while nominally taking ownership through a shell state entity. Ten states already have some form of partnership with the federal exchange.
Absent a strong Republican alternative, the president’s strategy would unleash powerful political pressure on Republican governors and legislators and force them to establish state exchanges. Such a result would saddle Republicans with a partial ownership of ObamaCare, alienating their political base and producing substantial fallout in the 2016 elections.
Republicans need a strategy that is easy to understand, broadly popular and difficult to oppose. Read the rest of this entry »
Jonah Goldberg: NBC’s Puffed Up Anchor Brian Williamson: ‘He Couldn’t Stop Himself’
Posted: February 11, 2015 Filed under: Mediasphere, Think Tank | Tags: American Enterprise Institute, Ark of the Covenant, Brian Williams, Fox News Channel, Jonah Goldberg, Mitt Romney, National Review, Pew Research Center, The New York Times, The New Yorker, The Weekly Standard Leave a comment
Surrounded by fans and protected from criticism, it’s no wonder Brian Williams became a serial fabulist
Jonah Goldberg
writes: By now everyone knows about his transgressions. If even only some of the reports are true, Brian Williams is a serial embellisher, a self-aggrandizing fabulist.
No doubt everyone knows somebody like this, and if you don’t it’s probably because you’re that guy. But Williams’ case is special. This isn’t some sad Willy Loman at the end of the bar who needs to invent impressive stories about himself. If anything, he needed to not tell such stories, given that he reportedly makes more than $10 million a year to be a trusted name in news.
Yet he couldn’t stop himself.
“To walk down a street with an anchor is to be stunned both by how many people recognize them and how many viewers call out to them about specific stories. There’s a respectful familiarity different from the awe displayed to Hollywood celebrities. The anchor is treated as the citizen’s trusted guide to the news. As a result, they can feel expected to dominate discussions, to tell war stories, to play God.”
— Ken Auletta, The New Yorker’s media critic
I have no doubt that’s true. But I am also certain that Williams is hearing only from the people who see him as their trusted guide to the news, and that can be 
very deceptive.
[Jonah Goldberg‘s book, “The Tyranny of Cliches“, is a few keystrokes away, at Amazon]
If Kathy Griffin is the quintessential D-list celebrity, then I’m probably somewhere south of Z. But I do get recognized at airports and restaurants from time to time, mostly because of my stints on Fox News. A couple dozen times a year, someone will come up and compliment me. (Or, they’ll compliment The Weekly Standard’s Stephen Hayes, thinking I’m him.)
But you know what virtually never happens? Someone coming up to me to tell me how much they hated my column, my comments, my book, my face, or my existence. Read the rest of this entry »
Are Today’s Millennials a New Victorian Generation?
Posted: January 26, 2015 Filed under: Health and Social Issues, Politics, Think Tank | Tags: American Enterprise Institute, Andrew Cuomo, Arrest warrant, Assault rifle, Bail, Bill Cosby, Michael Barone, Millennial generation, Millennials, Pregnancy, Sexual abuse, Sexual assault, Teens, Victorian, William Strauss and Neil Howe 1 Comment
Michael Barone
writes: Public policymakers and political pundits tend to focus on problems — understandably, because if things are going right they aren’t thought to need attention. Yet positive developments can teach us things as well, when, for reasons not necessarily clear, great masses of people start to behave more constructively.
“What accounts for this virtuous cycle? …I think what we are seeing is a mass changing of minds.”
One such trend is the better behavior of the young Americans of today compared to those 25 years ago. Almost no one anticipated it, the exception being William Strauss and Neil Howe in their 1991 book Generations, who named Americans born after 1981 the Millennial generation and predicted that “the tiny boys and girls now playing with Lego blocks” — and those then still unborn — would become “the nation’s next great Civic generation.”
The most obvious evidence of the Millennials’ virtuous behavior is the vast decline in violent crime in the last 25 years. The most crime-prone age and gender cohort — 15-to-25-year-old males — are committing far fewer crimes than that cohort did in 1990.
Statistics tell the dramatic story. In two decades the murder rate fell 49 percent, the forcible rape rate 33 percent, the robbery rate 48 percent, the aggravated assault rate 39 percent. Government agencies report that sexual assaults against 12-to-17-year-olds declined by more than half and violent victimization of teenagers at school declined 60 percent.
Binge-drinking by high school seniors is lower than at any time since 1976, sexual intercourse among ninth graders and the percentage of high school seniors with more than three partners has declined. Read the rest of this entry »
[BOOKS] Ayn Rand’s Early Novel ‘Ideal’ To Be Published After 80 Years
Posted: December 4, 2014 Filed under: Art & Culture, History, Mediasphere, Reading Room, Think Tank | Tags: American Enterprise Institute, Atlas Shrugged, Ayn Rand, Ayn Rand Institute, Collectivism, John Galt, Objectivism (Ayn Rand), Random House, The Fountainhead Leave a comment
Jennifer Maloney writes: Ayn Rand fans, here’s something to whet your appetites: New American Libraryhas released the cover image for “Ideal,” the first Ayn Rand novel to be published in more than 50 years.
“I’ve heard wishful comments over many years from readers wondering if there were other novels in Ayn Rand’s papers.”
— Richard Ralston, publishing manager at the Ayn Rand Institute
Ayn Rand, author of “Atlas Shrugged” and “The Fountainhead,” invented the philosophy of Objectivism. More than 25 million copies of her novels have been sold around the world.
[Order Ayn Rand’s book “Ideal“ from Amazon]
“Ideal” tells the story of a screen actress who is accused of murder and visits six of her most devoted fans to ask for help. In 1934, when she was in her late 20s, Rand first wrote “Ideal” as a work of fiction.
But Rand was dissatisfied with it and set it aside. The same year, she rewrote it as a play. The play didn’t have its New York premiere until 2010 – 66 years after she wrote it. Read the rest of this entry »
‘Net Neutrality’ De Facto Already Exists, Without the Aid of Any Governmental Entity to Enforce it
Posted: November 10, 2014 Filed under: Law & Justice, Mediasphere, Politics, Think Tank | Tags: American Enterprise Institute, Anna Eshoo, Barack Obama, Bill Nye, Federal Communications Commission, Marsha Blackburn, National Review, Net neutrality, Republican Party (United States) 2 Comments
Why, then, is Government Enforcement Suddenly Necessary to Maintain the Status Quo?
At The Corner, Ian Tuttle writes:
….Writing at National Review Online in July, Tennessee congresswoman Marsha Blackburn and FCC commissioner Michael O’Rielly noted that “on the issue of net neutrality, the [FCC] has already conceded that there is no current harm to consumers . . . [and] bragged that the rules would be ‘prophylactic.’”
I am all for planning ahead, but basing sweeping government action on the argument that “while there is no problem currently, there could be in the future” is hardly persuasive. What couldn’t one justify by that logic?
Now, it may eventually be the case that the complex Internet economy falls prey to quasi-monopolistic forces who abuse consumers, requiring some 21st-century trust-busting. But what is certainly the case is that the Internet has thrived in no small part because of the lack of regulation. A comparatively uninhibited market has tempered the excesses to which large companies may be inclined. Net-neutrality rules would substitute bureaucratic rigmarole for market forces, making those innovators about which the president is so enthusiastic beholden not to consumers, but to a five-person board of commissioners (and its bureaucratic labyrinth) and to the courts. Moreover, there is ample reason to believe that net-neutrality rules — like so much other government regulation — would have sprawling unforeseen consequences. What reason is there at this point to risk that?
Moreover, what government regulation of the Internet does exist is already proving to be a stranglehold on innovation. Writing in the July 15, 2013, issue of National Review, Hudson Institute scholar Christopher DeMuth pointed out the ill effects of the FCC’s allocation of wireless broadband:
The shortage of wireless broadband spectrum is certainly a severe problem. It is needlessly raising the costs and retarding the speed and quality of personal communications (Onionheadline: “Internet Collapses Under Sheer Weight of Baby Pictures”). Wireless providers such as Verizon and AT&T have been obliged to raise prices and reduce speeds selectively for heavy users of video and data applications, leading to charges of “discrimination” that the FCC has taken seriously. Read the rest of this entry »
Jonah Goldberg: What ‘War on Women’?
Posted: September 24, 2014 Filed under: Politics, Think Tank, White House | Tags: American Enterprise Institute, Democratic Party, Jonah Goldberg, Rape, Sexual assault, Twitter, United States Department of Justice, White House 1 Comment
It ended a long time ago, and women won
Last Friday, the White House announced its “It’s On Us” initiative aimed at combating sexual assaults on college campuses. I’m all in favor of combating sexual assault, but the first priority in combating a problem is understanding it.
That’s not the White House’s first priority. Roughly six weeks before Election Day, its chief concern is to translate an exciting social-media campaign into a get-out-
the-vote operation.
“Obviously, this isn’t all about elections. There’s a vast feminist-industrial complex that is addicted to institutionalized panic. “
Accurate statistics are of limited use in that regard because rape and sexual assault have been declining for decades. So the Obama administration and its allied activist groups trot out the claim that there is a rape epidemic victimizing 1 in 5 women on college campuses. 
[Jonah’s book, The Tyranny of Cliches, is available at Amazon]
This conveniently horrifying number is a classic example of being too terrible to check. If it were true, it would mean that rape would be more prevalent on elite campuses than in many of the most impoverished and crime-ridden communities.
“To listen to pretty much anyone in the Democratic party these days, you’d think these are dark days for women. But by any objective measure, things have been going great for women for a long time, under Republicans and Democrats alike.”
It comes from tendentious Department of Justice surveys that count “attempted forced kissing” and other potentially caddish acts that even the DOJ admits “are not criminal.” Read the rest of this entry »
Jonah Goldberg: ‘In Ferguson, the race to be wrong, it seems, isn’t a sprint but a marathon’
Posted: August 20, 2014 Filed under: Crime & Corruption, Health and Social Issues, Think Tank, U.S. News | Tags: Al Sharpton, American Enterprise Institute, Darren Wilson, Ferguson, Jonah Goldberg, Michael Brown, National Review Online, New Black Panthers 3 Comments
Legions of activists and commentators have convinced themselves that we know exactly what happened
The events in Ferguson, Mo., have launched a familiar spectacle: the race to be wrong first.
[Jonah’s book, The Tyranny of Cliches, is available at Amazon]
Michael Brown, an 18-year-old African-American man, was shot by Ferguson police officer Darren Wilson. The Washington Post had more on the story about what one witness called an “execution-style slaying”:
“Lawyer Freeman Bosley Jr. said Dorian Johnson, a friend of Brown’s, has told the FBI 
that Officer Darren Wilson confronted the two because they were walking in the middle of the street.
“Al Sharpton, with decades of racial ambulance-chasing under his belt, insists that “America is on trial” in Ferguson. Of course he does.”
“Wilson cursed at the pair and ordered them onto the sidewalk, Bosley told The Washington Post. When they refused to comply, he said, the officer grabbed Brown’s throat through the window of his cruiser, pulled out a pistol and shot him.
Wilson then chased Brown, shot him in the back and shot him five to six more times as Brown’s hands were raised, Bosley said.”
“There also seems to be a bipartisan desire to make President Obama part of the story…Obama, as is his wont, took the bait…”
An autopsy commissioned by the Brown family suggests that account is not true, at least in regard to the most incendiary charge. None of the bullets fired at Johnson entered his body through his back. That hardly means Wilson was justified in shooting Brown even once. Nor does it necessarily mean Wilson is a murderer. The simple fact is we don’t know.
“…His comments Friday were defensible on the merits, but what was the point? He clearly mollified no one and exposed himself, once again, to being dragged along by events.”
The rush to condemn Wilson’s conduct and the gallop to martyr Brown may have set land-speed records. The New Yorker, like numerous outlets, reported that Brown was walking to his grandmother’s home when confronted by Wilson. A video released from the by turns hapless and devious Ferguson Police Department alleges that he was actually walking from a thuggish and brazen shoplifting of a box of cigars from a convenience store. Read the rest of this entry »
Jonah Goldberg: ‘The Left’s Anger is Palpable’
Posted: July 4, 2014 Filed under: Politics, Think Tank, U.S. News, White House | Tags: American Enterprise Institute, Ben Carson, Clarence Thomas, Hobby Lobby, Jonah Goldberg, MSNBC, Supreme Court, Supreme Court of the United States, Tim Scott, United States 2 Comments
Resenting the Republic
For National Review Online, the frequently-insightful Jonah Goldberg writes:
You wouldn’t think, five years into the Obama presidency, that so many liberal Americans wouldn’t like America.
A new Pew survey found that 44 percent of Americans don’t often feel pride in being an American, and only 28 percent said that America is the greatest country in the world. Respondents who “often feel proud to be American” were overwhelmingly conservative (from 72 percent to 81 percent, depending on the kind of conservative). A majority (60 percent) of “solid liberals” said they don’t often feel proud to be an American.
“To listen to some of the hysterical responses to the court’s decision, you’d think the government in Washington is the only thing thwarting the desire of millions of businessmen to drape their female employees in burqas.”
The polling data only prove what has been obvious for a while.
Georgia representative John Lewis recently said that “if the Civil Rights Act was before the Congress today, it would not pass, it would probably never make it to the floor for a vote.”
[Jonah’s book, The Tyranny of Cliches, is available at Amazon]
Lewis is right. If it came before the Congress today, it wouldn’t pass. You know why? Because we passed it 50 years ago. The GI Bill wouldn’t pass today either, because that was enacted in 1944. If, somehow, we had Jim Crow today, the American people — and Congress — would vote to abolish it in a landslide.
In fairness, Lewis was primarily condemning congressional gridlock, not GOP racism.
Primarily. Read the rest of this entry »
Bureaucratic Collectivism: The Naked Self-Interest of the Government-Worker Class
Posted: June 21, 2014 Filed under: Crime & Corruption, History, Law & Justice, Think Tank, U.S. News | Tags: American Enterprise Institute, Bolshevik, Bruno Rizzi, Bureaucrat, Internal Revenue Service, James Burnham, Jonah Goldberg, Leon Trotsky, RUSSIA, Soviet Union, White House 2 Comments
Of the Bureaucrats, by the Bureaucrats, for the Bureaucrats
If anyone’s gonna find a text written by an obscure, largely forgotten Communist author, it’s NRO’s Jonah Goldberg. The statistics he cites, too, are telling: I knew Federal employee job security and unaccountability has gotten deeper and more entrenched in recent years, but I didn’t know it was this secure. Example: “In 2010, the 168,000 federal workers in Washington, D.C. — who are quite well compensated — had a job-security rate of 99.74 percent.” Read the whole thing here.
For National Review Online, Jonah Goldberg writes:
For understandable reasons, the IRS scandal has largely focused on the political question of whether the White House deliberately targeted its opponents. To date there’s no evidence that it did. That’s good for the president, but it may not be good 
for the country, because if the administration didn’t target opponents, that would mean the IRS has become corrupt all on its own.
[Jonah’s book, The Tyranny of Cliches, is available at Amazon]
In 1939, Bruno Rizzi, a largely forgotten Communist intellectual, wrote a hugely controversial book, The Bureaucratization of the World. Rizzi argued that the Soviet Union wasn’t Communist. Rather, it represented a new kind of system, what Rizzi called “bureaucratic collectivism.” What the Soviets had done was get rid of the capitalist and aristocratic ruling classes and replace them with a new, equally self-interested ruling class: bureaucrats.
“School-choice programs and even public charter schools are under vicious attack, not because they are bad at educating children but because they’re good at it.”
The book wasn’t widely read, but it did reach Bolshevik theoretician Leon Trotsky, who attacked it passionately. Trotsky’s response, in turn, inspired James Burnham, who used many of Rizzi’s ideas in his own 1941 book The Managerial Revolution, in which Burnham argued that something similar was happening in the West. A new class of bureaucrats, educators, technicians, regulators, social workers, and corporate directors who worked in tandem with government were reengineering society for their own benefit. The Managerial Revolution was a major influence on George Orwell’s 1984.
“Specifically, they are good at it because they don’t have to abide by rules aimed at protecting government workers at the expense of students.”
Now, I don’t believe we are becoming anything like 1930s Russia, never mind a real-life 1984. But this idea that bureaucrats — very broadly defined — can become their own class bent on protecting their interests at the expense of the public seems not only plausible but obviously true.
Read the rest of this entry »
[VIDEO] The Phony Gender Wage Gap Myth
Posted: April 8, 2014 Filed under: Economics, Mediasphere, Politics, Think Tank, White House | Tags: American Enterprise Institute, Barack Obama, Christina Hoff Sommers, Equal Pay Day, Gender pay gap, Obama, State of the Union address, War on Women 1 Comment
“Yes, of course it’s not true. Yes…I know. It’s fiction. It’s complete bullshit, I know. It’s a wedge issue. It’s all we got. Give it time. If we keep repeating the lie, it will….yes, exactly…It’s perfect…”
The wage gap myth, most recently used by President Obama during the State of the Union Address, states that women make only 77 cents to every dollar that men earn. AEI resident scholar Christina Hoff Sommers debunks the bogus statistic…
The New Marxism
Posted: March 24, 2014 Filed under: Economics, History, Politics, Think Tank | Tags: American Enterprise Institute, Friedrich Hayek, John Maynard Keynes, Karl Marx, Occupy Wall Street, Paris School of Economics, Thomas Piketty, United States 1 Comment
A prominent liberal economist contends capitalism will inevitably increase inequality.
‘Karl Marx wasn’t wrong, just early. Pretty much. Sorry, capitalism. #inequalityforevah”
James Pethokoukis writes: When trying to condense a sweeping, 700-page analysis of the past, present, and possible future of capitalism into an 85-character tweet, you’re bound to miss a few things. But the above Twitter-fication of economist Thomas Piketty’s much-awaited Capital in the Twenty-First Century captures the gist of the author’s argument.
“Piketty, a left-wing Frenchman who teaches at the Paris School of Economics, is hardly the only economist arguing inequality is headed inexorably higher…”
Piketty thinks the German progenitor of Communism basically got it right. It’s only that his essential insight — private capital accumulation inevitably leads to the concentration of wealth into ever-fewer hands — took a hiatus during the middle part of the last century thanks to depression and war hurting the fortunes of the well-to-do. But now Marxism’s fundamental truth is reasserting itself with a vengeance, a reality borne out in both Piketty’s own meticulously gathered data and in business pages replete with stories of skyrocketing wealth for the 0.001 percent and decades of flat wages for everyone else.
“John Maynard Keynes and Friedrich Hayek famously squared off in the 1930s, Left versus Right. But when Keynes published his revolutionary General Theory in 1936, Hayek went silent….Who will make the intellectual case for economic freedom today?”
And it’s only going to get worse, Piketty concludes. Sure, the productive and innovative capacity of market capitalism will generate enough income growth for the masses to prevent revolution. He concedes Marx got that bit of apocalypticism wrong. But an “endless inegalitarian spiral” will create such wealth bifurcation that “the meritocratic values on which democratic societies are based” will be undermined. The political process will be hopelessly captured by a tiny elite of rent seekers and trust-fund kids. America (and then the other advanced economies) will become what Occupy Wall Street types and Elizabeth Warren think it already is.
How to Become a Public Pension Millionaire
Posted: March 16, 2014 Filed under: Economics, U.S. News | Tags: American Enterprise Institute, American Federation of State County and Municipal Employees, Andrew Biggs, California, Social Security, State government, Stockton California, United States Department of State 2 CommentsIn five states, an average full-career retiree receives a retirement income higher than his final salary
Andrew Biggs writes: Detroit and San Bernardino and Stockton, Calif. are in bankruptcy, and across the country the costs of maintaining pensions for city and state employees more than doubled to nearly $84 billion in 2011 from 2002. Yet the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (Afscme) declares that public pensions are “modest,” noting that its average member “receives a pension of approximately $19,000 per year after a career of public service.”
The facts don’t agree. Data compiled from all state pensions show that, for employees who spend a career in state government, generous pensions put retired public workers among the highest earners in their state.
It is true that average public-pension benefits rarely seem extravagant. But these averages are reduced by two groups: older employees who retired many years ago and whose benefits are far less than those of an employee retiring today; and by short-term workers who often receive tiny pensions but almost surely have retirement savings from another job.
Unions claim that no one works for government to get rich, but many public employees become “pension millionaires” along the way. In Nevada, an average full-career state worker can expect to receive $1.3 million in lifetime pension benefits.
A far more relevant measure of the public-pension burden is how much a typical full-career state employee retiring today receives. In a new study for the American Enterprise Institute, I compiled data from pensions plans’ Comprehensive Annual Financial Reports, which show the average benefits paid to a newly retired state government employee with at least 30 years of job tenure. Public-safety employees, who typically receive the most generous pensions, are excluded from these figures. These are not one-off examples of egregious abuses. They are what the average full-career employee actually received in retirement. Read the rest of this entry »
Michael Barone: Lower Crime Now May Be a Fruit of Welfare Reform 20 Years Ago
Posted: March 15, 2014 Filed under: Crime & Corruption, Health and Social Issues | Tags: American Enterprise Institute, Congressional Budget Office, Michael Barone, Michael Bloomberg, New York, Obama, Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, Rudy Giuliani 2 Comments
Welfare reform work requirements may be contributing to the remarkable decline in violent crime (AP File)
Michael Barone writes: As I was looking over the depressing jobs data for the last five years and the large number of working-age people leaving the work force, I came up with a hypothesis on a related subject, one worth testing and, if valid, acting on.
The jobs data are certainly depressing, as economists of just about every ideological stripe agree. Total national employment is down from the 2007 peak of 147 million to 144 million.
“The most important factor in reducing crime has been improved policing, pioneered by New York Mayors Rudy Giuliani and Michael Bloomberg and imitated and adapted by others elsewhere.”
Labor-force participation–the percentage of the adult population with jobs–has been hovering around 63 percent, the lowest since 1978. The Millennial generation is getting socked the hardest. Labor-force participation for those age 20 to 24 is down to the lowest level since 1971.
Dalai Lama, Capitalist Convert?
Posted: February 20, 2014 Filed under: Think Tank | Tags: Acton Institute, American Enterprise Institute, Corner, Dalai Lama, Daniel S. Loeb, Jonathan Haidt, Kathryn Jean Lopez, Tibetan people 2 Comments
Getty Images
Over at NRO‘s The Corner, Kathryn Jean Lopez writes: There is a tendency in certain parts to eye-roll when the word “dialogue” is raised. And I’ve certainly sat through some dialogues now and again that didn’t seem to get anywhere. But today in Washington, D.C., Arthur Brooks, it seems to me, did a very good thing. The president of the American Enterprise Institute hosted the Dalai Lama for a conversation about morality and economics. During the course of private and public interactions with Brooks and the people he gathered at the American Enterprise Institute, the Dalai Lama announced that he had a new respect for capitalists, who, he had previously assumed took people’s money and exploited them.
Dalai Lama and Aurthur Brooks. Image credit: Patrick G. Ryan
An affirmative answer to the question posed in the title of this post would be a step too far, but at AEI today, the spiritual leader of Tibetans wasn’t playing economist or politician, but reminding people of our common humanity and responsibilities to one another. And it seemed pretty clear to me that the hedge-fund billionaire on the main panel, Daniel Loeb, talking about how contemplation and meditation enhances decision-making and his work with an inner-city Brooklyn charter school, was not at all the caricature of capitalists the Dalai Lama is used to hearing from his admirers on the Left.
Arthur, along with Jennifer Marshall at Heritage and the Poverty Cure project at the Acton Institute are doing excellent work trying to advance ideas that help lift people out of poverty.
Goldberg: Obama ‘Trying to Make it Sound as if He’s Still in Charge’
Posted: January 29, 2014 Filed under: Politics, White House | Tags: American Enterprise Institute, Barack Obama, Democratic, Fox News Channel, Howard Kurtz, Jonah Goldberg, National Review, Republican Party (United States) 19 Comments
The decline of great powers
[Amazon has Jonah Goldberg‘s fine book: The Tyranny of Cliches: How Liberals Cheat in the War of Ideas]
A Conservative Writer’s “Freedom Feminism” Agenda is Short on Both Freedom and Feminism
Posted: January 13, 2014 Filed under: Reading Room, Think Tank | Tags: American Enterprise Institute, Christina Hoff Sommers, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Joan Kennedy Taylor, Lucifer the Lightbearer, Moses Harman, Roderick Long, Sharon Presley Leave a comment
Can Christina Hoff Sommers Save Feminism?
Freedom Feminism: Its Surprising History and Why It Matters Today, by Christina Hoff Sommers, AEI Press, 127 pages, $3.95.
Sharon Presley writes: Some libertarians look askance at feminism, seeing it only as a leftist push to use the state to benefit women. Many conservatives see it something as far worse. But Christina Hoff Sommers of the American Enterprise Institute wants to change all that. In Freedom Feminism, Sommers sets out to provide a manifesto for moderate and conservative women (and, some say, for libertarians) because they “must be at the helm” if they are to raise broad support for the kind of feminism that she thinks is worthwhile. Sommers asserts that her “freedom feminism” is a synthesis of 19th century “radical egalitarianism” and a conservative “maternal school,” and that the results avoid the problems of leftist feminism.
This raises two questions for libertarians: Is feminism salvageable? And if so, is Sommers’ new blend the right mix?
In addressing the first question, it is useful to recognize that leftists didn’t invent feminism. Mary Wollstonecraft, the leading influence on First Wave feminism, was an individualist. So were such 19th-century American feminists as Elizabeth Cady Stanton, who believed that “nothing adds such dignity to character as the recognition of one’s self-sovereignty; the right to an equal place, everywhere conceded—a place earned by personal merit.” In addition to working for the vote, 19th-century feminists struggled to undo unjust and unfair laws that made women the property of their husbands. They sought equal rights, not governmental privilege.
[VIDEO] Howard Dean Agrees: Obamacare Enrollees Are Older, Sicker
Posted: December 29, 2013 Filed under: Mediasphere, Politics, U.S. News | Tags: American Enterprise Institute, Democratic National Committee, Fox News Sunday, Health Insurance, Howard Dean, Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, Scott Gottlieb 2 CommentsAndrew Stiles writes: Obamacare enrollees are older and sicker than anticipated, former governor Howard Dean (D., Vt.) said on Fox News Sunday.
After Dean predicted that the controversial law would be “running a lot more smoothly” by March, Scott Gottlieb of the American Enterprise Institute countered by pointing to enrollment data, which suggests an older, less healthy population is signing up for coverage, a dynamic many experts predict could put pressure on the health-insurance marketplace.
More via National Review Online
Quiet success stories of 2013
Posted: December 28, 2013 Filed under: Mediasphere, Politics, Think Tank, U.S. News | Tags: American Enterprise Institute, Corporation for National and Community Service, Mike Lee, National Security Agency, Paul Ryan, Reince Priebus, Republican National Committee, United States Leave a comment
Teachers carry children away from Briarwood Elementary School after a tornado destroyed the school in south Oklahoma City. (Paul Hellstern/Associated Press)
Jennifer Rubin writes: The high-profile winners in politics don’t let you forget they won. But organizations and individuals do some of the most important work out of the limelight to defend, sustain and enrich our political system and society as a whole. There were a number of these that made a difference in 2013.
• The American Enterprise Institute: Under president Arthur Brooks AEI has hit its stride, becoming the premiere right-leaning think tank. Unlike Heritage, it has stayed out of politics and stuck to the realm of political philosophy and policy. It has been a major mover on the right to create a more people-centric, positive vision of conservatism. And to top it off, Brooks is doing some fascinating work on happiness — who is happy, what makes us happy. AEI has and continues to provide intellectual sustenance and encouragement to conservatives like Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.), House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.) and Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah).
• Reince Priebus, chairman of the Republican National Committee: He started 2013 with a controversial report that began a year of rebuilding and positive debate about the party’s future. He recognized immigration as an issue that had to be addressed. And most important, he began work on a new primary system that will be shorter and less self-destructive. The extent of his work won’t be fully known until 2016, but he is making critical strides in modernizing the party.
pundit from another planet 