Free Republic

For those of us who spend far too much time following the news these days, it is easy to feel that everything is falling apart. Regardless of your political ideology, there is no doubt that this country is politically divided and facing serious challenges. To make matters worse, we are entering an election season. Politicians will be trying their best to convince us that we are one vote away from choosing between Nazi Germany and Venezuela. Yet, as we gather with friends and family this Thanksgiving, it is worth remembering that, beyond the headlines, things are actually pretty darn good....

It has largely slipped under the radar screens of partisan hatred in Washington, but has anyone noticed that in the last couple of months Donald Trump has become . . . a Democrat? Of course, for most of his life, Trump was a Democrat, a faithful fundraiser for Chuck Schumer and Hilary Clinton, and comfortably liberal in most of his positions. But once he decided to run for president as a Republican, he underwent a total transformation, becoming an arch-conservative. And during his first year in office, he governed like a conservative Republican, slashing taxes and regulations, appointing conservative judges,...

Last week, the New York Times reported that the Census Bureau would be significantly changing the questions and methods it uses to determine who has health insurance. The redesign is an attempt to address some of the flaws in the current design that have long troubled the agency. A working paper from the Census Bureau had found that it provided an “inflated estimate of the uninsured” and was prone to “measurement errors” that diminished the reliability and usefulness of the measure. The timing of this change could hardly be worse. The massive coverage provisions of the health care reform have...

Entrepreneurial capitalism takes more people out of poverty than aid.” That statement came not from a tea-party leader or a congressional Republican, but from Bono, singer, celebrity, and global anti-poverty activist, speaking to Georgetown’s Global Social Enterprise Initiative last year. As we mark the second anniversary of Occupy Wall Street this week, it is worth recalling just how much Bono is right and OWS, at its anti-capitalist core, is deeply and profoundly wrong. Occupy Wall Street did have a point when it took to criticizing the crony capitalism that helped precipitate the economic crisis of 2008 and the recession that...