by jpitney | Sep 6, 2025 | Civic Education, civic virtue, Higher Education, History
Jim VandeHei at Axios: America rocks. Yes, there are countless things we could do better. And lots of areas of legit concerns. But I beg young people to understand the enormous, indisputable advantages of this country, especially compared to other nations. We’re...
by jpitney | Sep 6, 2025 | Economic Policy, Trade
Wall Street Journal: Nearly all of the new jobs last month were in social assistance and healthcare (46,800), which rely on government spending. Industries with high tariff exposure shed workers, including manufacturing (-12,000) and wholesale trade (-11,700)....
by jpitney | Sep 5, 2025 | Economic Policy, Reagan, Trade
Forty years ago, President Reagan said: My own feeling is that protectionism just leads to a restraint in trade and a lowering of prosperity for everyone involved. And I know in our own Great Depression back in the early thirties, I believe that depression was...
by jpitney | Sep 4, 2025 | Civility, Constitution, Deliberation, Higher Education
Princeton Professor Robert George My philosophy of teaching is straightforward and rather simple: My job is not to tell students what to think or induce or encourage them to think as I do; it is, rather, to help students to think more deeply, more critically, and for...
by jpitney | Sep 2, 2025 | Economic Policy, Trade
Michael Strain at AEI: Protectionists can appeal to intuitive economic logic. Tariffs are a tax on imported goods, but not on domestically produced goods. By increasing the relative price of imported goods, price-sensitive consumers will substitute away from imports....
by jpitney | Sep 1, 2025 | California Politics, Civility
Mark Z. Barabak at LAT: Jim Ross has had a long and fruitful career as a Democratic campaign strategist. Among his victories was electing Gavin Newsom as San Francisco mayor. Tom Ross has enjoyed similar success on the Republican side. He counts Kevin McCarthy’s...
by jpitney | Aug 30, 2025 | Constitution, Economic Policy, Judiciary, Madison, Taxes, Trade
Tony Romm and Ana Swanson at NYT: A federal appeals court ruled on Friday that many of President Trump’s most punishing tariffs were illegal, delivering a major setback to Mr. Trump’s agenda that may severely undercut his primary source of leverage in an expanding...
by jpitney | Aug 29, 2025 | Civility, Higher Education
Samuel Abrams at The Hill: We are losing the everyday language that sustains a free society. The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression and NORC at the University of Chicago, previously theNational Opinion Research Center, have just given us a rare and...
by jpitney | Aug 28, 2025 | Civility, Congress, House of Representatives
Thomas Beaumont at AP: One of the few Republican U.S. House members making in-person appearances embarked on a town hall tour of his district to meet with constituents Monday, and a civil conversation broke out. Rep. Mark Alford and an audience of about 100 in west...
