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Today marks the 50th anniversary of the so-called War on Poverty. It was January 8, 1964, in his Annual Message to the Congress on the State of the Union, where President Lyndon Johnson “declared all-out war on human poverty and unemployment in these United States.” He went on to state, “This administration today, here and now,
Read MoreThe past few years have put the size and role of government at center stage of our national politics. But the raging debates about how much Washington is doing and spending have involved almost exclusively yes-or-no questions about the left’s vision of government. The right has been very clear about what government should not be
Read MoreIn an interview Barbara Walters did with CNN’s Piers Morgan, this exchange took place: MORGAN: You have interviewed every president of my lifetime. Why is Obama facing so much opposition now? Why is he struggling so much to really fulfill the great flame of ambition and excitement that he was elected on originally in 2009? WALTERS: Well,
Read MoreThose interested in a cogent defense of the budget agreement that passed the House late last week, and which sparked a storm of criticism from some on the right, should listen to this interview by House Budget Chairman Paul Ryan. Among other things, Ryan addresses the charge that the problem with the deal is that it raises
Read MoreOver the weekend, while doing research for an essay, I re-read Catherine Drinker Bowen’s wonderful book Miracle at Philadelphia: The Story of the Constitutional Convention from May to September 1787. In it she quotes George Washington (a strong Federalist) on the value of the opposition. “Upon the whole,” Washington wrote, “I doubt whether the opposition to
Read MoreNational Journal’s Ron Brownstein has written that it was a “coalition of the ascendant”–minorities, the millennial generation, and college-educated whites, especially women–that powered his 2008 and 2012 victories. That’s true enough–but as Brownstein’s colleague Ron Fournier points out in his column, that coalition is crumbling. In particular, Fournier writes, young Americans are turning against Barack Obama and
Read MoreMy Ethics and Public Policy Center colleague Yuval Levin is the author of a wonderful new book, The Great Debate: Edmund Burke, Thomas Paine, and the Birth of Right and Left. It explores the origins of the right-left divide by focusing on Burke and Paine’s dramatically opposing views. For example, in his chapter titled “Choice and
Read MoreFifty years ago–on November 22, 1963–C.S. Lewis passed away. His death then, like the anniversary of his death now, was overshadowed by the assassination of President Kennedy. But Lewis–a medieval and renaissance scholar, professor, poet, novelist, a writer of children’s fantasy stories, and the most important Christian apologetics writer of the 20th century–was quite an
Read MoreThe new Washington Post-ABC News poll finds President Obama’s approval rating is at an all-time low (42 percent). Opposition to the Affordable Care Act is at an all-time high (57 percent). And by a margin of nearly two-to-one, those surveyed oppose an individual mandate. There’s also this: for the first time in Obama’s presidency, a majority of
Read MoreThe president’s signature legislative achievement, the Affordable Care Act, is in serious trouble. As a result, so is modern liberalism. The problems with Obamacare are increasingly obvious, beginning with the administration unilaterally delaying the employer mandate. But that turned out to be merely one link in a long and troublesome chain. The other difficulties include
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