Articles

A less-cruel way to curb illegal immigration

Let’s start with the easy part. The policy of separating children from their parents at the southern border, delivering them into a bureaucratic labyrinth while their fathers and mothers await trial or petition for asylum, is the wickedest thing the Trump administration has done so far—and you can tell exactly how wicked by observing how […]

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Neither hot nor cold on climate change

Like a lot of conservatives who write about public policy, my views on climate change place me in the ranks of what the British writer Matt Ridley once dubbed the “lukewarmers.” Lukewarmers accept that the earth is warming and that our civilization’s ample CO2 emissions are a major cause. They doubt, however, that climate change […]

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Crime and different punishments

Last month, the state of Arkansas, which had executed nobody since 2005, put to death Ledell Lee for the crime of murdering Debra Reese in 1993. Why now—11 years after the last execution, 24 years after the crime? Because the chemicals used for lethal injection were about to expire. Reasonable people can disagree on the […]

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How Trump can parlay Carrier into broad economic win

If Donald Trump could script his presidency, every week would probably feature another Carrier. You get on the phone with some corporate big shot who’s considering closing a plant in the Rust Belt. You offer some carrots, you threaten implicitly, you make a deal: Jobs stay, factories don’t close, and maybe next time they even […]

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Virtual reality’s increasing grip on how we live

Since the 1990s, we’ve seen two broad social changes that few observers would have expected to happen together. First, youth culture has become less violent, less promiscuous and more responsible. Childhood in the United States is safer than ever before. Teenagers drink and smoke less than previous generations did. The millennial generation has fewer sexual […]

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