Opinion
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Are Property Rights Facing Extinction?
Opinion -On June 29, 1995, the United States Supreme Court upheld a government regulation that purports to protect endangered species. But what the Court really did was validate the government's continued taking of millions of acres of private land as "habitat. -
Five Ways to Downsize Government
Opinion -As Congress grapples with the challenge of downsizing or eliminating bureaucracies that haven't been critically reexamined for many decades, its Members would do well to consider some of the lessons learned by the businessmen and -women who made their -
Environmentalism: A New Religion?
Opinion -As humanity enters the twenty-first century, you might think we would have outgrown our fascination with doomsday prophecies. Yet the end-of-the world con game -- nearly as old as the world itself -- goes on. -
Getting More Bang for our Education Buck
Opinion -The United States now spends more per student on public elementary and secondary education than any other advanced country belonging to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). -
Educator Booker T. Washington: Learning, Teaching that Success Comes from Hard Work
Opinion -His is a truly American story. In 1881, Booker T. Washington founded the Tuskegee Normal and Industrial Institute in Alabama. From there he would rise to become the most powerful black man in America. But Washington’s roots were humble. -
Improve Traffic Safety: Repeal Federal Speed Limits
Opinion -The Senate recently voted to repeal the federally mandated 55 mph speed limit. If the House approves the measure and the president signs it--both of which are likely--then a national speed limit will be a thing of the past. -
We Spend Too Much on Education, and Get Too Little
Opinion -Why does the world's most productive country have the world's least productive school system? The U.S. -
The High Cost of Rationing Literacy
Opinion -The most recent National Assessment of Education Progress reading test reports that 30 percent of high school seniors, 31 percent of eighth graders, and 42 percent of fourth graders couldn't reach "basic" reading levels. -
Medical Savings Accounts: Power to the People
Opinion -In offering his health care reform plan last year, President Clinton said that one of his primary goals, in addition to universal coverage, was to control rapidly rising health costs. -
Term Limits: Not Over By a Long Shot
Opinion -Former House Speaker Tom Foley convened a press conference to announce his vindication after the Supreme Court's ruling that state-imposed term limits were unconstitutional. -
The Battle within the Environmental Movement
Opinion -The nation's biggest environmental groups are stuffing the nation's mailboxes (and its landfills) with fundraising letters claiming that "greedy special interest groups" are out to "repeal twenty years of environmental protection regulation. -
Lessons Must Be Learned from Voucher Bill Defeat
Opinion -"Too much of what ultimately matters in a child s education is decided on the basis of political muscle by groups whose primary interest is not necessarily the child. -
Libertarians, Conservatives, and the Oklahoma City Bombing
Opinion -The April 19th terrorist bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City dramatically changed the debate over limiting the size and power of the federal government. -
Adoption Agency Discrimination Must Stop
Opinion -Advocates of welfare reform and affirmative action ought to take a long look at the current state of interracial adoption in the United States. -
A Tale of Two Countries
Opinion -The Sierra Club, one of the nation's largest environmental organizations, not long ago ran a full- page ad in The New York Times deploring "the growing distance between the politicians on Capitol Hill and the rest of us. -
The Future of Civil Rights in America
Opinion -The Clinton administration has set its civil rights policies on a radical course permeated by race-consciousness, brazenly breaking candidate Bill Clinton's "new Democrat" assurances that he would pursue a politics of moderation and healing. -
‘The Solution’ to Public Education Woes
Opinion -I recently received a letter from the former superintendent of a public school system in Illinois. -
Replacing Dwarfs with Giants
Opinion -Balzac called the bureaucracy "a gigantic force driven by dwarfs." In our generation, his definition aptly describes public education in America. Don't get me wrong. -
Time for a New Look at Recycling
Opinion -Recycling is popular. Across the country, Americans willingly separate their trash into "regular" and "recyclable" containers. New York City alone collects over 2,000 tons of recyclables per day. But there's a catch. -
Hard Choices: Environmentalists and the Forests
Opinion -More than twenty years ago, I was one of a dozen or so activists who founded Greenpeace in the basement of the Unitarian Church in Vancouver. The Vietnam war was raging and nuclear holocaust seemed closer every day. -
Disestablish the Green Cathedrals
Opinion -Could the recent Republican landslide lead to major reform of environmental policy? Will we see a dismantling of bureaucratically controlled ecological central planning in favor of local initiative and private environmental stewardship? -
Revitalizing Public Education in Illinois
Opinion -There is no more important issue today than the education of our children. -
Educational Choice: It Really Works in Vermont
Opinion -Since 1869, Vermont has had an educational choice system for students from towns that do not maintain their own public schools or belong to union school districts. -
Do the Arts Need the NEA?
Opinion -The National Endowment for the Arts is fighting for its life, as newly empowered Republicans in Washington have targeted the NEA for extinction. Many artists are angry about this possibility and believe that only ignorance or malevolence can explain it.