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Peer Past The Obvious With Policies

This week marks the 219th birthday of the great 19th-century French economist Frederic Bastiat. It’s the perfect time to talk about his famous essay, “That Which is Seen, and that Which is Not Seen,” published in his book, “The Law.” This timeless work remains an essential guide to thinking about policymaking. In that essay, Bastiat writes: “In the department of economy, an act, a habit, an institution, a law, gives birth not only to an effect, but to a series of effects. Of these effects, the first only is immediate; it manifests itself simultaneously with its cause — it ...

Virus Or Economy Is Futile Choice

Florida, Arizona, Texas and California are among the states that thought they could reopen early. They also got sloppy with requirements for wearing masks and social distancing. Now their ICUs are stretched to breaking with coronavirus patients. And guess what. For all that putting the public’s health in jeopardy to help their economies, their economies are sick as well. A new Morning Consult poll strongly suggests that consumer confidence will not turn into spending without virus confidence. More than half those surveyed said they didn’t feel safe inside a shopping center, ...

So Much For Trump’s Love Of The Military

Christopher Slutman, 43, had always wanted to be a firefighter. He was that kind of kid, the kind who wants to save people. He was also a Marine Reserves Staff Sergeant who had served in Iraq. Last year, he was assigned to duty in Afghanistan. On April 8, 2019, just two weeks before he was scheduled to return home, he and two other Marines were killed when a roadside bomb exploded near Bagram Air Base. This may be one of the attacks Russia was sponsoring. Also murdered that day were Cpl. Robert A. Hendriks, 25, of Locust Valley, New York, and Sgt. Benjamin Hines, 31, of York, ...

Let’s Stop Dividing, Start Solving Problems

News media, politicians, and others who earn their living by inciting division and hatred are trying to capitalize on the protests and riots of the past month. Race is on the front burner everywhere, and “systematic racism” is the purported problem. These are the immediate facts: a black man was murdered by a white police officer, protests resulted, and those protests erupted into violent, murderous riots. That seems to demonstrate a deep racial divide and seething hatred, at least if you buy into the narrative. With a little digging, though, a different story emerges. Importantly, ...

What’s The Mattter With KSU?

Kansas hasn’t voted for a Democrat in presidential elections since 1964. From 1995 to 2002 and from 2011 to 2017, Republicans in Topeka held the iron trifecta of the governor’s mansion, the state House and the state Senate. In 2016, Donald Trump walloped Hillary Clinton in this quintessential red state by a 57-36 margin. So why is it that, in 2020, a mainstream conservative Christian college student under fire by a violence-inciting campus mob can’t find a single prominent Republican in the Sunflower State to uphold and defend his free speech rights? Jaden McNeil is a ...

The Daily Litany Begins The Night Before

The sun rose yesterday in Washington, D.C., at 6:02 a.m. I made my routine morning run in the silence of dawn, passing the Lincoln Memorial and running along the still water of the Reflecting Pool. Like the giant sculpture of President Lincoln, I faced due east and watched as the sun rose over the horizon, melting the pockets of nighttime shadows, stirring the still-sleeping birds in to their morning chatter and waking the world with its advancing light. Henry Bacon and Daniel Chester French, the architects of the Lincoln Memorial, must have imagined the 16th president seated there, ...