Political Thought
The headline of a Alexa Gagosz’s recent Boston Globe article asks, “Will tenants unions make a difference in Rhode Island’s housing crisis?” The answer, we can be confident, is “yes,” although it will make a difference by making it worse. The state’s problem is insufficient housing, and the only durable, healthy way to give tenants,…
This flaw of inexperience among the young (and progressives) has become far too pervasive in our society and is particularly notable in Rhode Island. People seem to think that the current state of affairs has been established and will continue indefinitely, so we can shape it like clay to the future we want to see. …
On the list of people for whom the exposure of social media has been a source of disappointing exposure, novelist Stephen King has got to be near the top. Like his books or not (and, honestly, given the content, I regret the influence that he had on my younger life), authors are generally placed in…
Letting 17-year-olds vote in primaries if they’ll be eligible to vote in the associated general elections is certainly reasonable, but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t note a pair of conspicuous questions along the way. Firstly, why do Democrats seem always to want to expand voting toward the most manipulable constituencies? Secondly (and perhaps relatedly), why…
A truism about government used to be heard periodically: A government big enough to give you everything you want is big enough to take away everything you have. That saying’s a bit dark, though, and makes its point in an extreme way that younger Americans who’ve been raised with an implicit trust of big government…
Johnston’s challenge gaining access to a neighborhood during emergencies exposes several problems of RI’s way of doing things.
Amidst all the other happenings in Rhode Islanders’ lives, it’s worth a moment to consider that we’ve reached the point that the General Assembly is delving into such levels of micromanagement as housing setbacks and in-law apartments in local zoning. That’s a sign that we’re doing things wrong. In the mania of the day (or…
Reactionary responses to Nikki Haley’s comments about the Confederate flag show the irony of progressive ideology.
News that the Rhode Island Republican Party is struggling to hit the qualification requirements to place any presidential candidates on the primary ballot points to a deep problem in our state’s political landscape. This is true even if we put to the side (for now) rumors that some large number of signatures were inexplicably invalidated.…
Nobody on your political bench can do much better than what you’re seeing now. Democracy has produced the government you actually wanted for so long that the bill is coming due. I wrote about the “Four Horsemen of Rhode Island’s Apocalypse” 15 years ago, and the situation’s only gotten worse as people not in the…
