Free Republic

reason: You’ve called glamour a beautiful illusion. A lot of people would say that describes President Obama. Postrel: Yes, President Obama is a very glamorous figure. Glamour is a particular form of illusion. It’s an illusion that tells a truth about the audience’s desires, and it requires mystery and distance. During the campaign people projected onto Barack Obama whatever they wanted in a president or even in a country. Lying is usually a bad thing, but they would project onto him that he was lying about his positions because he secretly agreed with them: “Anyone that smart has got to...

Former Reason magazine Editor in Chief Virginia Postrel has seen the strengths and the shortcomings of the American health care system both as a kidney donor and a breast cancer survivor. She argues that individuals should be free to sell their organs, and that encouraging organ markets may be the best way to save the lives of the more than 100,000 Americans currently awaiting transplants. A 2009 article Postrel wrote for the Atlantic Monthly highlights her experience with the ultra-expensive wonder drug, Herceptin, and the perils of centrally controlling health care costs...

In 2000, my husband and I moved out of our mid-1970s three-bedroom town house in Los Angeles and into a brand-new three-bedroom town house in Uptown Dallas. At the time, the two were worth about the same, but the Dallas place was 1,000 square feet bigger. We’ve moved back to L.A., and we’re glad we kept our old house. Over the past seven years, its value has roughly doubled. By contrast, we sold our Dallas place for $6,500 less than we paid for it. It’s not that we bought into a declining Dallas neighborhood: Uptown is one of the hottest...

The Problem With Problem SolversWhat mysterious magnetic force binds Tom Tancredo, the border-enforcing Colorado congressman, to Al Gore, the Earth saver? What suddenly glues Charles Schumer, with his 100% rating from Americans for Democratic Action, to Lindsey Graham, who scores only 20% from the liberal group? What odd knot ties Rod Dreher, the writer and granola conservative, to Pat Buchanan, the brawling America Firster? The answer: an obsession with present-day problems. Problem solvers are the loudest voices in American politics today. They are creating a new political fault line that is ripping through both political parties with the force of...

I am not a political reporter. That means I don't have to listen to a candidate give the same stump speeches 50 million times and then desperately find a new angle to write about for tomorrow's paper. It means I don't have to go to crowded nominating conventions that are more usefully watched on television. And it means I don't have to spend my time tracking down sources who might be able to shed light on John Kerry's claims about his adventures in Vietnam and Cambodia. I don't have to do these things because I don't want to and because...

To the consternation of his colleagues, Mark Eisner once told a reporter that his discipline "is probably the most important field nobody's ever heard of." Indeed, it's not one that's likely to come up at dinner parties. "I've been explaining for 40 years what operations research is," says Eisner, who is associate director of the school of operations research and industrial engineering at Cornell University. He defines O.R. as "the effective use of scarce resources under dynamic and uncertain conditions." That may sound arcane, but it's pretty much the problem of living -- and certainly the central problem of economic...

A funny thing happened during the Reagan era. Young people became Republicans. Not all of them, of course, but a plurality. It was strange. After all, everyone knows you're supposed to be liberal and idealistic when you're young. You're supposed to vote for people like Jimmy Carter and Walter Mondale. Yeah, right.