So America, let me repeat, is more than ever a meritocracy defined by productivity.  Now, that’s not all we are.  And it’s far from bad news that we’ve gotten over so many prejudices that we’re about seeing merit according to an objective, measurable standard.  It does mean, however, that in some ...

So what young conservative blogger/essayist would you recommend to challenge those who believe they’re smarter than every conservative in the world?  Well, SAM GOLDMAN. Sam’s not the only one by far, but he’s my choice for today. After all, who else is outing “the spiritual crisis of the ...

Ross Douthat, the only conservative columnist for the New York Times, reports some good news and some bad news. The good: The Americans are becoming less criminal and less violent. There are fewer murders. And I’m adding or guessing that right as we become attuned to the dangers of bullying ...

So libertarians are rightly outraged by the Obama administration’s new Puritanical speech code.  But others have either praised or blamed that same administration for its “aggressive libertarianism” when it comes to sexual behavior—its promotion of the right to contraception, its opposition any ...

Here’s a good article that offers six explanations  for why “median-income men in America” are “in distress.”  Their incomes are dropping.  Lots of “prime-age men” have been “dropping out of the workforce altogether.”  Maybe most importantly, men have been disappearing from our institutions of ...

R.R. Reno,  quite an astute conservative public intellectual, claims that those with eyes to see know that the big news these days is the global victory of capitalism.  I'm not following Reno in every respect here, but going with what I would say in support of his position. The good news is that ...

So Peter Sacks, author of the excellent Generation X Goes to College, explains what's really wrong with the likely MOOCification of higher education. Studies show that learning through MOOCS and related online delivery systems isn't worse than that through the more traditional or personal ways ...

So here's a funny article on the sheer silliness and passive-aggressive hostility of the jargon that dominates the worlds of management, consultants, marketing, and all that.  That world, it seems to me, is divided between people who use that language earnestly in the belief that it is a sign of ...

So let me remind you that The Atlantic does the best job of popularizing scientific studies.  For one thing, it's remarkably unideological.  Both the left and the right—and the libertarians and the traditionalists—can find stuff that reaffirms—and stuff that challenges—their cherished perspectives ...

So I want to call your attention to a fine article by Jonathan Marks in Inside Higher Ed, the daily online newspaper of higher education.  Marks writes at a level several pay grades higher than most educational experts, and he contributes memorably to the continuing project of deconstruction of the ...

That legalization of or especially creating a constitutional right to same-sex marriage will lead to a constitutional right to polygamy is a favorite “scare tactic” of social conservatives.  But Slate's Jillian Keenan argues, with a good deal of sense, that nobody should be afraid of legalized ...

So BIG THINK published a sensible little essay by the distinguished public intellectual John Gray.  He says don't think about immortality as something you can achieve through your own efforts.  Don't think that by prudently avoiding all the risk factors and gulping down lots of supplements you can ...

So I've been thinking a lot about the charge that conservatives are bad because they hate science.  But it's just not true.  Here's a beginning of my explanation why. We conservatives say that the middle-class college or university of the libertarians doesn’t respect science for what it is.  In ...

So constitutional journalists such as Linda Greenhouse have attacked the federalism argument that libertarian constitutional scholars such as Randy Barnett want to use to strike down the DOMA. The result, in her opinion, would leave the states "to their own devices" in determining what marriage is ...

Conservative John Fund, writing in the National Review, says government should get out of the marriage business. Expect this position to take off. For one, I've been predicting for a decade that EVANGELICALS might combine with LIBERTARIANS to reach this conclusion.  It's the way believers won ...