Breaking News

Editorials

Championing opportunity is winning strategy for Democrats

Today’s political parties lack ideas. The Republicans define themselves as opponents of Democrats. Yet many of the GOP economic policy positions resemble, with minor variations, those of Democrats. Meanwhile, the Democrats repeat the same simplistic refrain: “solve” every problem with more money and stricter regulations. How dreary and unproductive. To the Democrats in charge right now, let me offer an idea as you try to fight poverty, inequality and corporate influence: Transform yourselves from the party of handouts and regulations into the party of opportunity. Words mean ...

Wait over for one family, others still wait

Last month the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency announced a Tolley man who was killed during World War II was accounted for on June 21. Army Pvt. 1st Class Robert Alexander, who died at age 27, is the most recent military member from North Dakota to be accounted for by the Washington, ...

Unserious leadership in a serious time

We live in a deeply serious time with deeply unserious leaders. Historian Niall Ferguson has written that the “extreme violence of the twentieth century” was precipitated by three preconditions: “ethnic conflict, economic volatility, and empires in decline.” It is difficult not to see such preconditions repeating themselves in this century. The West is currently tearing itself apart over concerns about birthrate, immigration and multiculturalism. Economic volatility is raging: After a decades-long reshifting of manufacturing away from the West and a reorientation toward finance ...

Toward a Second American Civil War?

This column is the last chapter of my book, “If History Is of Any Value: Politics, Culture, and the Unimaginable Event of 2019-2022” (forthcoming in December 2022). The book begins with columns written between May and September 2020 that traced parallels between the antebellum and Civil War periods and America’s contemporary radicalized and violent political environment. In a July 2020 column I identified seven parallels. No. 1: political and partisan polarization; No. 2: passing or marginalization of political compromisers; No. 3: rise in political extremism; No. 4: loss of ...

Why can’t Europe pull out of its self-imposed tailspin?

Europe is running out of time to save itself. Those of us here on the continent feel like we’re watching an entirely avoidable slow-motion train wreck, whose protagonists horrifically insist on blowing past every possible exit ramp en route to disaster. The warnings keep rolling in one after the other. Numerous European officials from industry to government are sounding the alarm about the blowback of the EU’s insane decision to sanction its own gas supply from Russia in the clear absence of any readily available substitute. Apparently dictating to citizens the temperature to which ...

ND: Strong workforce with low unemployment

Labor Day is a day to pay tribute to American workers. Traditionally it is observed on the first Monday of September so this year we will observe it this coming Monday. Job Service North Dakota reported that labor statistics for July, the most recent statistics available, show the state’s not seasonally adjusted unemployment was 2.2%. The unemployment rate decreased 0.4 of a percentage point between June and July. The July 2021 rate was 1.2 percentage points higher than the current rate. Between June 2022 and July 2022 unemployment fell by 1,717, a decrease of 16%, the report ...