This issue: April 1 - April 8, 2013 (Vol. 18, No. 28)

The ‘Science’ of Same-Sex Marriage

BY ANDREW FERGUSON, FOR THE EDITORS

Oral arguments on gay marriage take place before the Supreme Court the last week of March, and the pile of amicus briefs filed by interested parties long ago passed the point of redundancy. We prefer briefs filed by disinterested parties, such as the one put before the Court earlier in the month by Leon Kass of the University of Chicago and Harvey Mansfield of Harvard University. The Kass-Mansfield brief is silent on the larger question of gay marriage as social policy. The professors instead confine ...

Obamacare Isn’t Forever

This is not the second coming of Medicare.

BY JAY COST

With the Supreme Court decision upholding President Obama’s health care law last summer and his reelection in November, liberals are triumphant, convinced that Obamacare is here to stay. When pressed on this matter, they point to the political success of Medicare to show how quickly new entitlements become entrenched.

But the politics of Obamacare, and Medicare for that matter, are much more complicated than some would have us believe. In fact, a careful analysis of both demonstrates that there are important differences, which ultimately will make Obamacareconsiderably more susceptible to ...

Tea Party Insider

Rep. Steve Southerland and the GOP class of 2010 make peace with the House leadership, and vice versa

BY JONATHAN STRONG

"To go to the grocery store and get a gallon of milk takes me two or three hours,” said Rep. Steve Southerland, and you definitely believe him. Southerland isn’t the world’s slowest shopper. His grocery stops are constantly interrupted by people he knows through the family business, a network of funeral homes in the panhandle of Florida.

Undertaker is not on most “best jobs” lists, but Southerland actually misses his work back home. His grandparents lived at the funeral home, and as a kid he stayed there Friday nights. When he was growing up, everybody around town would spontaneously hug his ...

The American Story

How does it get told outside America?

BY ALONZO L. HAMBY

In academia, scholars trying to get ahead look for the Next Big Thing. In the field of American foreign relations, that just may be something called “public diplomacy,” a term that conjures a vision of diplomatic efforts aimed not simply at other diplomats but at large populations. Justin Hart, associate professor of history at Texas Tech, does not give us a sharp definition of the term, but believes he knows it when he sees it.  

He finds its specific origins in Franklin D. Roosevelt’s outreach to Latin America in the 1930s, its enabling methods in the flowering of mass communications during the second and third quarters of the 20th century, and its utilization during and after World War II in the pursuit of ...

A Voice, Not an Echo

Philip Terzian on our speech impediment

BY PHILIP TERZIAN

Switching through the dozens of cable TV channels we seem to receive at home, I was reminded of a disheartening thought I’ve had in the past: There must be thousands upon thousands of hours of sound and video of, say, Justin Bieber or Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), but no photograph exists of Ben Jonson or Benjamin Franklin, and no one has any idea what Geoffrey Chaucer or Joan of Arc or Saint Augustine or Stonewall Jackson sounded like. The technology that assails us with the sights and sounds of Madonna, or Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, doesn’t exist for those we would truly value hearing and seeing. Or I would like to hear and see, at any rate. 

Razing Reagan

Absent a miracle, Ronald Reagan’s childhood home in Chicago will be slated for demolition this week to make way for a new facility owned by the University of Chicago. It’s a sad and unnecessary end to a historic residence of a president born and bred in the state.

Those who would preserve the place have tried just about everything. But the small-minded Commission on Chicago Landmarks has refused to give the small apartment building on 57th Street landmark status. It’s not “associated with Mr. Reagan during his active and productive years,” and the building “does not have sufficient ...