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What enslaved children teach us about America

National Columnists

An elementary school in Louisville, Kentucky, sits on land that was once the Farmington hemp plantation. That fact gutted me as I stood before "Childhood Interrupted," an art installation depicting enslaved children on the lawn of the historic home. My son attends this elementary school which is now embedded in a neighborhood just one long driveway away from the truth of its plantation past. He learns, thrives and feels like he belongs in a space where enslaved children were once forced to work. The 1816 Farmington historic home is where the John Speed family lived along with 70 ...

It should be my choice

National Columnists

People are excited about peptides. The internet is filled with claims: Peptides raise your energy, boost metabolism, clear your skin, slow down aging, build more muscle, repair injuries ... I want some! But there's a problem: The FDA bans most of them. Why? Dr. Anita Gupta, an anesthesiologist and pharmacist who was on the FDA committee that recommended the ban, explains, "There is a lot of hype. We all want to hack into our health, right? Get better really quickly. But we can't reboot our own bodies, can't undo an injection. There could be an immune ...

Get ready to say goodbye to social media

National Columnists

Covid should have killed off digital freedom. Governments around the world used an overwhelmingly survivable virus to usher in a digital surveillance framework under the pretext of vaccination verification. Now, "child safety" is positioned to finish the job. Over the past few days, several Western governments have doubled down on requiring government ID to access social media platforms. All to protect the kids, who don't even have a government ID. Meaning that it's conveniently adults whose identities get matched to their online activity. We've already seen how quickly these systems ...

Give Americans choice to use Social Security

National Columnists

Trustees of the Social Security program just issued their annual report. Each year, the picture of the program's solvency is dismal. But this year it's even worse. Rather than falling short in 2033, as reported last year, this year the shortfall is projected to be in late 2032. That's six years from now. Without action taken, benefits, per the report, will be cut 22% late in 2032. That means that every young working person is now forced to pay, by law, 12.4% of their pay – half paid by them and half paid by their employee – into a bankrupt system. As I recall, ...

Men don't have to suffer in silence

National Columnists

While we have traditionally celebrated Father's Day in June, this month has also been set aside to highlight awareness of men's struggles with mental health and depression. The National Alliance on Mental Illness continues to advocate for breaking the cultural stigma that men have to "tough it out" on their own while wrestling with internal issues. Current statistics show what many mental health professionals are calling a "silent crisis." Many men do not like to talk about how they are weighed down emotionally, and this suppressed affliction often leads to anxiety, ...

Professors against academic freedom

National Columnists

Does academic freedom have a greater enemy than the American Association of University Professors? With millions of dollars in backing from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the AAUP recently set up a Center for the Defense of Academic Freedom (CDAF) that's about as accurately named as the Ministry of Truth in George Orwell's "Nineteen Eighty-Four." Instead of defending academic freedom, the director of the AAUP's center wants to stamp out some of the last vestiges of viewpoint diversity on today's campuses. In the face of overwhelming hostility from hiring committees – ...