CULTURE
Teachers, Guns, and Zero-Tolerance Tyranny
When the new school year begins, Deena Esteban will not be among the legions of educators welcoming students back to class. That’s because Mrs. Esteban, a 43-year-old art teacher in Prince William County, Va., lost the job she loved after being convicted of a...
Regulation without the State … The Debate Continues
“Contrary to conventional wisdom, the alternative to state regulation is not a regulatory void, but a range of voluntary arrangements.”
Death Among Children: Tragedy at Tommy Lee’s
A 4-year-old boy died last weekend at the Malibu home of rock star Tommy Lee. How any right-thinking parents could entrust their child to a drug-addled celebrity who pled no contest to kicking his ex-wife (actress Pamela Anderson) while she held their newborn baby is...
Inept Teacher Training
American education will never be improved until we address a problem seen as too delicate to discuss. That problem is teacher philosophy and incompetency. If we were serious about efforts to improve public education, we’d shut down schools of education. Why?...
An Open Letter Regarding China to the International Olympic Committee
You must stand tall for moral principles and the dignity of man. Award the Olympics to a country where rights are protected, not to the Butchers of Beijing.
The Child Manipulators
On Friday (June 29, 2001), ABC news correspondent John Stossel aired a hard-hitting report challenging the environmentalist movement and suggesting that “tampering with nature” makes human life better — that such “unnatural” phenomena as...
Capitalism vs. Altruism and the “Achievements” of the Soviet Empire
The eminent philosopher Ayn Rand once observed that the really major battle in our time is not between capitalism and Communism. The really major battle is between capitalism and altruism.
Self Confidence for Children
Q : My wife and I want to teach our four-year-old son to have self-confidence. How can we teach him? A: This is too vast a subject to appropriately answer in a short column. I can, however, give you some general principles. Here they are: Make sure you are confident...
Deciding Upon A Career
Finding a career to be passionate about is like finding the love of your life.
Home-Schooling Under Siege
There’s nothing like stiff competition to bring out the worst in government. Nowhere does this prove more true than in the battle between home-schooling parents and public school bureaucrats. In Maryland, local prosecutors are moving forward with a...
Virginia State University Tyranny
If we had to single out one American institution that stands at the forefront of modern-day racial discrimination, deception and contempt for fundamental principles of liberty, it would be America’s universities. Under the euphemisms of affirmative action,...
Look Who’s Supporting School Choice Now!
No wonder the California Teachers Association was howling. Ray Haynes actually wanted them to practice what they preach. Haynes, a Republican state senator from California, recently introduced legislation in Sacramento that would have required public school teachers...
Fear of Failure
Fear of failure — you hear psychologists on “Oprah,” and elsewhere, talk about it all the time. What actually is it? Fear of failure is simply what it self-evidently appears to be. It is the fear of not achieving your goal or value in some context...
Grade Padding at Harvard University
Our colleges are losing touch with reality. The padded grades they’re giving out don’t help our students. Harvey C. Mansfield teaches political philosophy at Harvard University. And if there were a class in “how to get yourself into trouble with your...
Books: Leftism Revisited: From de Sade and Marx to Hitler and Pol Pot
It should be obvious after reading Leftism Revisited that no party or system is ever 100 percent Left or Right. It’s a question of what predominates, and where we are headed.
The Best Therapy in the World
People ask me all the time how they can develop proper tools of self-confidence. Allow me to save you a few steps. THERE IS NO BETTER TOOL OF SELF CONFIDENCE THAN COMING UP WITH A REALISTIC PLAN OF ACTION AND THEN FOLLOWING THROUGH ON IT, OVER A PERIOD OF MONTHS AND...
Hollywood’s War on Moralism
Is it possible to take a moral inventory of our culture — to see, in a single event, what, if anything, the most influential parts of our culture hold as the good? There is an important forum in which we take such an inventory every year at this time — and...
School Children as Political Cannon Fodder for “Social Causes”
Test scores are not the only things that tell us how bad our public schools have become. In San Francisco, the school board voted unanimously to have the city’s students take Friday, March 9th, off to go to Berkeley, in order to stage a protest demonstration,...
The Wrong Question to Ask About The Tragic School Shootings
After every tragic school shooting — and many other shocking murders — the question gets asked: “How could he do such a thing?” This has become the centerpiece of a whole set of rituals. Another part of these rituals is the appearance of...
Philosophy: The Frivolous Discipline?
The death of a distinguished scientist or a leading novelist usually attracts public attention. But the recent death of perhaps the most celebrated figure in academic philosophy–Harvard’s Willard Van Orman Quine–attracted virtually none. This lack of...
Columbia University Scraps Due Process For Political Correctness?
Say you’re accused of a sexual offense and you’re forbidden to confront your accuser, have an attorney present or cross-examine witnesses. Where are you? A) IraqB) IranC) CubaD) Columbia University If your final answer was “D,” you’re...
What Non-Profit Colleges Hate More Than Academic Censorship: For-Profit Colleges
YOU MAY NEVER HAVE HEARD of the University of Phoenix, but it has more students than Harvard, Yale or Notre Dame —- combined. There is a reason you probably have not heard of the University of Phoenix. It represents a new development in higher education and one...
Books: Stalin’s Apologist
By John Chamberlain Stalin’s Apologist is an apt title for S. J. Taylor’s absorbing story of Walter Duranty (Oxford University Press, 404 pages, $24.95 cloth), But whether Taylor’s subtitle of Walter Duranty, the New York Times’s Man in Moscow holds up in all its...
Santa Claus: The Anti-Christ
Santa Claus is also a symbol of good will, and thus is the appropriate holiday symbol of America, a country that, because of its material prosperity, can inspire good will in all of its citizens.”
Spontaneity versus Whim Worship
What’s the fundamental difference between being a whim worshiper and being spontaneous? A whim worshipper acts on whatever urges move him, at the moment they first move him. He does not stop and use reason to evaluate what he’s doing. A spontaneous person...
The U.S. Child and Family Services Gestapo Targets Parents
This Christmas season, take a moment to say a prayer for the many innocent people sent to prison by injustice. You can safely say, “There, but for the grace of God, go I,” because the myriad causes of well-intentioned people have made it possible for...
UNICEF Kills the Little Children…
“Breast is best.” No, it’s not the new slogan for Hooters restaurant. It’s the mantra of breast-feeding advocates who promote their cause with a cult-like fervor around the world. Their extremism must be condemned. I have nothing against...
How to Find Your Hero or Heroine
With persistence, people almost always find the romantic partner they want. This is one of the surprising things I’ve learned from years of being a therapist. I spend countless hours talking with lonely people who wonder if they will ever find the romantic...
The Magic Solution for Feeling Low
Try to do some activities that you have reason to believe will help you feel better…right now!
Dr Laura: Moralistic Busybody
Dogmatic commandments are not enough.
Children of the Damned: How We Are ‘Saving’ Our Children by Raising Them to Become Serfs
For almost a century the Soviet Union preached the doctrine of service to “the people.” Toil, sacrifice, and suffer, the Soviet propagandists told their subjects; it is all being done for the good of “the people.” As time went on, of course,...
Why Children — and Adults — Love Harry Potter
A Review of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone (Book 1) by J. K. Rowling Just what is it about Harry Potter? He and his lovely author have incited a reading revolution at a time when reading has been considered on a perpetual decline. Why do children love him...
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