Principles of Government

By Michael B. Poliakoff – A day does not go by without news of … the fierce ongoing battle to determine whether colleges and universities will hold fast to academic freedom and intellectual diversity as the catalysts of progress. Will our centers of higher learning be home to diverse theories and strategies, or will they take the illiberal path of deciding for faculty and students what they should believe?…A civil and unprejudiced campus is a priority for any academic community that is true to its purpose. But when a community of scholars and teachers… trades time-honored principles of free inquiry for reflexive and enforced social theories, it damages the broader social fabric…. Read More

By Robert Stacy McCain – It is expected in politics, as a matter of human nature, that citizens will seek to advance and protect the interests of their own particular social class, ethnic group, or religious community. Attachment to our own “little platoon” — mankind’s tribal instinct, adapted to the forms of civilized society — is not irrational, nor is it harmful to the overall project of national unity. Indeed, scholars of statesmanship have long praised Burke for the insight of seeing this kind of group loyalty as “the first principle … of public affections.” How, then, has this principle of group loyalty become so wickedly warped, and turned into a weapon destructive of all social order, by the contemporary practice of progressive identity politics? Why is tribalism in America now asserting itself in such toxic and ferocious ways? Read More