Citing a recent OECD report, the EUObserver says that European schools are falling behind their counterparts in the US and Asia. The main reason: a governmental obsession with equality that prevents investment and innovation in education, especially at the university level. “The US outspends Europe on tertiary level education by more than 50% per student, and much of that difference is due to larger US contributions from tuition-paying students and the private sector,” noted the OECD paper. Here’s how the...

“It is the highest impertinence and presumption, therefore, in kings and ministers, to pretend to watch over the economy of private people, and to restrain their expense, either by sumptuary laws, or by prohibiting the importation of foreign luxuries. They are themselves always, and without any exception, the greatest spendthrifts in society. Let them look well after their own expense, and they may safely trust private people with theirs.” –Adam Smith It’s nice to know our leaders are no longer...

According to The Church Report, a new resource has been released which offers churches guidelines for keeping their activities and functions within the letter of the law. As non-profit organizations, churches are held to the same standard as registered charities and cannot engage in certain forms of public speech. A report by The Rutherford Institute, “The Rights of Churches and Political Involvement” (PDF), examines in detail what the restrictions are for churches. There are two main areas: “first, no substantial...

This is probably not the best move for a state that has been among the worst in the nation in terms of unemployment: “Lawmakers in the Michigan House of Representatives are preparing to vote on a proposed hike in the minimum wage to nearly $7 an hour.” The state Senate passed the measure late last week, so the House’s agreement would put the matter into the hands of Gov. Granholm. According to the Office of Labor Market Information, Michigan’s unemployment...

The news from across the pond today is that the UK government is announcing that it will miss its target set in 1999 to reduce the number of children in poverty by 1 million. According to the BBC, “Department for Work and Pension figures show the number of children in poverty has fallen by 700,000 since 1999, missing the target by 300,000.” This has resulted in the typical responses when government programs fail: calls to “redouble” efforts and to increase...

Seth Godin contends today that “most people don’t really care about price.” He uses a couple of arguments that involve aspects of convenience, and so he concludes, “price is a signal, a story, a situational decision that is never absolute. It’s just part of what goes into making a decision, no matter what we’re buying.” He’s right, in the sense that everyone will not choose the service or item with the lower price at all times and in all places....

The CrunchyCon blog at NRO is currently discussing the issue of factory farming, which is apparently covered and described in some detail in Dreher’s book (my copy currently is on order, having not been privy to the “crunchy con”versation previously). A reader accuses Dreher of being in favor of big-government, because “he thinks we ought to ‘ban or at least seriously reform’ factory farming.” Caleb Stegall responds that he, at least, is not a big-government crunchy con, and that this...

Maximilian Pakaluk, associate editor at NRO, examines a recent panel discussion given by the New York Historical Society, which included Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer, Akhil Reed Amar, Southmayd Professor of Law and Political Science at Yale University, and Benno C. Schmidt Jr., chairman of the Edison Schools and former dean of Columbia Law School. The discussion was entitled “We the People: Active Liberty and the American Constitution.” Pakaluk observes, “The three speakers, but especially Schmidt and Breyer, agreed that...

I take on the current upswing in public support for euthanasia laws, especially among certain sectors of Christianity in a mentary today, “Give Me Liberty and Give Me Death.” I note especially the stance taken by a Baylor university professor of ethics and the student newspaper in favor of legalizing euthanasia. In a recent On the Square item, Joseph Bottum notes a similar trend, as he writes, “Euthanasia has been making eback in recent months, bubbling up again and again...

Archbishop Paul Josef Cordes is the president of the Pontifical Council “Cor Unum,” which coordinates the Catholic Church’s charitable institutions. ZENIT reports on a speech the prelate delivered at a Catholic university in Italy. Archbishop Cordes has previously emphasized the importance of Christian organizations maintaining or recovering their Christian identity, but in this address he drew on Pope Benedict XVI’s encyclical Deus Caritas Est to make his strongest statement yet: “The large Church charity organizations have separated themselves from the...