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February 14, 2024
This Valentine’s Day, the news is awash with stories of loneliness and atomisation among adults across the West. Though clinical attention has focused on this brewing crisis, the remedies are often misplaced. Last year, US Surgeon General Vivek Murthy issued an advisory on this new national problem, which was exacerbated by the Covid lockdowns. Following his appointment to the…
February 14, 2024
Isn’t marriage a trap, mostly for men? Don’t most married couples end up getting divorced? And aren’t most men happier when they’re single? These are the kind of questions I get from young men whenever I make the case for marriage at speaking events at colleges and high schools across the nation—recently in North Carolina,…
February 7, 2024
During his time as the U.S. ambassador to France, Thomas Jefferson wrote that if he faced a choice between “a government without newspapers or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter.” Jefferson would be disappointed with today’s trends. Increasingly, we are seeing government without newspapers, especially at the local level, where…
December 4, 2023
In The Next American Economy (2022), Samuel Gregg provides a refreshing defense of free markets, emphasizing the need to frame the case for economic liberty within a broader narrative about America’s values and identity. We need this book to help reframe the disagreement over trade protectionism and industrial policy. Gregg opens by examining the alignment between former President Donald Trump and Senator Elizabeth Warren on the need for greater government regulation of the economy….
November 17, 2023
You are familiar with the litany of ills blighting our society: declining rates of work and marriage; rising rates of obesity and loneliness; soaring deaths of despair. All of these trends reflect the falling fortunesof the American male, a malaise magnified when we look at boys and men in poor and working-class communities. When the male malaise…
November 13, 2023
Americans like to call ourselves the most generous nation on earth — but charitable giving is on the decline. In 2022, it fell 3.4% (10.5% when adjusted for inflation) to fall under $500 billion. It was only the fourth such decline in 40 years. What’s more, individual giving — distinguished from that of foundations and corporations…
October 24, 2023
Discussions of the ill effects of public housing, urban renewal, and urban freeways usually focus on big cities: the Chicago-lakefront hellhole called the Robert Taylor Homes, now-demolished; Robert Moses’s Cross-Bronx Expressway, which tore through the heart of that borough; the brutalist Boston Government Center, which replaced the vibrant Scollay Square. But a moving new exhibit…
October 2, 2023
Stable, two-parent families have always mattered for kids. But today, we have new evidence that they may matter more than ever. A new study from the Institute for Family Studies (IFS) indicates that an intact family is increasingly tied to the educational, financial, and social welfare of children. Meanwhile, family instability appears to harm kids more than…
September 29, 2023
Elizabeth Currid-Halkett’s ‘The Overlooked Americans’ rejects grim depictions of rural life. “Why are we so divided?” That’s probably the most asked question in American politics, especially since that Divider-in-Chief descended the golden escalator and announced that he alone could bring an end to America’s decline. Donald Trump’s election, however, is not the origin of America’s almost decadelong cosmopolitan-country sneer fest. It’s been…
August 24, 2023
Salt Lake City’s lower Avenues neighborhood is a lovely change of pace after a morning walking through the central part of the city. Everything is on a more human scale up here. The streets are easier to cross, the blocks are shorter. As I study the homes and take in the neighborhood, I start to…