On March 20, 1974, Edward C. Banfield took the stage at the University of Chicago’s Oriental Institute. He was there to deliver a lecture, “The City and the Revolutionary Tradition,” which was one of a series of talks to commemorate the upcoming bicentennial of the American Revolution. Banfield was a bespectacled, thin man with stooped shoulders from […]
Old lessons for the new right
In an op-ed for the Washington Post last week, Florida Sen. Marco Rubio outlined why he now believes in industrial policy—done right. “In the past, Republicans outsourced such decisions to ‘the free market,’ which meant some combination of nationless corporations and Communist China,” he wrote. Most of his piece (rightly) criticizes the Biden administration’s foray […]
Does being an elite mean never having to...
I nearly got run over by truck when I was out for a jog last week. A guy in a pickup truck rolled through a stop sign and into the crosswalk right as I was about to cross. Somehow, I was able to throw on the brakes and avoid slamming into his fender and either […]
Truth and governance: A new book offers ...
As the digital revolution dawned a few decades ago, commentators peddled optimism about its potential to expand humanity’s collective knowledge. Needless to say, that optimism has hit a few snags. The Internet has become a bazaar of information hawkers, where expertise is looked on with suspicion, traffic in hooey is high, and truth is harder […]
Why I like voting by mail
It has been a few years since I queued up at a polling place, and I am the happier for it. Don’t get me wrong, I am a sucker for the pageantry: citizen volunteers man polling places; activists outside hand out flyers in hopes of swinging votes; I get a little sticker to wear proudly […]
Voters Hold Officials Accountable for De...
Wouldn’t it be nice if voters punished politicians who increase budget deficits? Well, according to one research paper, they do. Adi Brender (Bank of Israel) and Allan Drazen (University of Maryland) crunched data from 23 nations on budgets and the electoral fortunes of chief executives. Their unambiguous finding was that “increased deficits during an incumbent’s […]
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