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Guess what? We’re already rich

Judging by the results, the United States should be the last country that wants to reorder the world economy. We’ve thrived in recent decades, while other advanced democracies have fallen behind. If we’ve gotten “ripped off,” as President Trump and supporters of the trade war like to say, the supposed thieves have gained little and the purported victim has continued to march ahead. That doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t seek to change unfair trade practices and seek more independence from Chinese supply chains. Yet, it’s foolish to disrupt willy-nilly a system that has ...

The best presidents vs. the worst

The two greatest presidents died in April, 80 years apart, one 80 years ago. Abraham Lincoln, 56, was slain while enjoying a comedy at Ford’s Theatre. After 12 years of a crisis presidency, Franklin Delano Roosevelt was 63 when he died of a stroke in Warm Springs, Georgia, where the waters helped his polio. Political geniuses who loved to laugh, they enjoyed the love of the people. Lincoln had just won the Civil War, and Roosevelt was near winning World War II: monumental achievements. Each saved the broken nation and left it stronger. It’s well to honor their memory but also ...

The greatest event in human history

“Eighty and six years I have served Him, and He has done me no wrong,” said Polycarp, Bishop of Smyrna, in A.D. 156 before climbing onto a pyre where Roman authorities would burn him to death. Eyewitnesses reported the local authorities respected Polycarp and begged him to recant his faith in Christ. He would not. The Romans did not even tie Polycarp to a post because they knew he would not flee the fire. Polycarp fed his captors, prayed over them, then climbed the pyre to die. Authorities carted off Polycarp’s friend Ignatius, Bishop of Antioch, and fed him to wild beasts in the ...

Endless, unsolicited Trump rants in Canada

I’ve been back on Canada’s west coast for roughly five minutes, and already I’m trapped in the same boomer-induced fever dream that haunts American airports and Whole Foods checkout lines. It’s just endless, unsolicited Trump rants. How many times do innocent people minding their own business while standing within your general vicinity while out in public have to overhear you howling to your buddy about how you’re “totally not going to your timeshare on Florida/Arizona/Hawaii this year” because you’re taking a stand against Trump. They’re also talking like Trump is ...

Will Republicans own brewing budget calamity?

The federal budget remains a disaster, and for all the splashy talk of cost-cutting and tariff-driven revenue, Americans know it. Especially galling is that the latest fiscal wreckage is being overseen by an administration that promised business acumen and conservative restraint. Republicans are delivering the opposite: a self-inflicted destruction of wealth, rising interest rates, creeping inflation fears and an abandonment of even their usual pretense of fiscal discipline. The Cato Institute’s new national fiscal policy survey results confirm that Americans don’t trust ...

What taking Easter seriously recognizes

"That God, which ever lives and loves, One God, one law, one element, And one far-off divine event To which the whole creation moves.” — Alfred Lord Tennyson (1809-1892) When American colonists were oppressed by British monarchs, the word most frequently uttered in pamphlets, editorials and sermons was not “safety” or “taxes”; it was “freedom.” Yet, two intolerable acts of Parliament so assaulted personal freedom that they broke the bonds with the mother country. The first was the Stamp Act of 1765, which required colonists to have government stamps on all ...