Breaking News

National Columnists

Chanukah is relevant for everyone

Of all the holidays on the Jewish calendar, Chanukah, which began Sunday evening, Dec. 14, has always been one of my favorites. Even when I was younger and far less observant, I appreciated the holiday’s well-known rituals and customs: lighting the menorah, spinning the dreidel, eating potato latkes, and so forth. My given Hebrew name — “Maccabee,” because Judah Maccabee was nicknamed “the hammer” — is also synonymous with the hero of the holiday’s story. Because of the holiday’s timing and the general desire by corporate America and elected officials to include ...

Like people, societies age; complacency sets in

Western civilization arose in the 8th century B.C. Greece. Some 1,500 city-states emerged from a murky, illiterate 400-year-old Dark Age. That chaos followed the utter collapse of the palatial culture of Mycenaean Greece. But what reemerged were constitutional government, rationalism, liberty, freedom of expression, self-critique, and free markets — what we know now as the foundation of a unique Western civilization. The Roman Republic inherited and enhanced the Greek model. For a millennium, the Republic and subsequent Empire spread Western culture, eventually to be inseparable ...

Property tax revolt explodes across US

“Affordability” is the Democrats’ battle cry to win elections these days. But Republicans are ready to flip the script to woo homeowners, who make up the majority (65%) of American households. Across the nation, these homeowners are angry and ready to fight against soaring property taxes. Their homes have appreciated, but they don’t have more cash in their pockets to pay the rising taxes that come with rising home values. A property tax revolt, with silver-haired payers leading the charge, is likely to shape the political map for November 2026. Steve Moore, cofounder of the ...

America is surviving, not living

Life in America doesn’t feel like life right now. It feels like triage. People get up, commute, grind through work, juggle kids and side hustles, scroll through their phones in bed until their eyes burn, then do it again tomorrow. They are surviving, but they are not living. The numbers explain why. The average American now carries around $100,000 in total consumer debt once you add mortgages, credit cards, auto loans and student loans, according to recent Experian data. Total household debt has reached a record $18.6 trillion, up more than $4 trillion since just before the ...

All human beings do not think same way

One of the most persistent mistakes in modern politics is the insistence on flattening all ideologies — pretending that all human beings think the same way, want the same things, and are motivated by the same forces. Every time policymakers fall into this trap, the result is not compassion or clarity but some of the worst public policy imaginable. The assumption usually begins with a comforting but false premise: that all people harbor the same yearning for freedom in precisely the same way. That belief animated much of the George W. Bush administration’s foreign policy, when the ...

Why Johnny can’t read or do math

Reading and math scores are abysmal across the country, as national testing results keep documenting. Illiteracy rates are rising: The number of 16- to 24-year-olds reading at the lowest literacy levels increased from 16% in 2017 to 25% in 2023, according to data from the National Center for Education Statistics. In some inner-city schools, less than half of kids are reading or doing math at grade-level proficiency. Many high school grads can’t read their diplomas. As an economist, I would submit that this is our greatest crisis. It puts the future of American prosperity in grave ...