I read with a certain, sad detachment Froma Harrop’s encouragement to end the war on drugs and to decriminalize them all (Oct. 4). The routine and unremarkable nature of the essay’s appearance made her plea seem almost incidental, just another idea to consider along with one’s position on Benghazi, ISIS or the $10 minimum wage. […]
Leonard Hoy
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L. Hoy: The architects of our disability
Sally, a third grader, loses emotional control — again. Enraged, she assaults the room: furniture, laptops, marker cans — nothing escapes her wrath. The teacher ushers the other students into the hall and shuts the door. No adult responds to Sally’s rampage by physically restraining her; that would only escalate Sally’s anger. In Ferguson, angry […]
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L. Hoy: Ruled by civil servants
Louis XIV famously declared, “L’etat, c’est moi” (I am the state). His was not an idle boast, for, indeed, all privilege and power in France concentrated in that one person. The king had clustered the once fractious aristocrats at Versailles, where they pathetically vied with one another for his fickle favor. In America, the federal […]
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L. Hoy: Where was the scientific debate?
What a bracing depiction of fierce scientific debate in the Washington Post article, “Big Bang backlash: Cosmologists question discovery of gravity waves” (Sun Journal, May 17). BICEP2 scientists announced evidence of gravity waves from the dawn of time. Can this be evidence for the widely debated “cosmic inflation” theory suggesting the rapid nature of the […]
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L. Hoy: Judeo-Christian ethic at risk
I searched for information about the brutal attack on Steve Utash by a mob of black men in Detroit, following his attempt to help the young boy he had accidentally hit with his truck. I ended up on a website whose angry white writers treated the attackers as exhibiting the black race’s natural penchant for […]
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J. Christiansen: They criticize but solve nothing
This is in response to Leonard Hoy, “The failure of America” (March 14). Apparently, President Obama is (solely) responsible for diminishing America’s “greatness and common purpose.” Two fallacies there: That a President has that kind of power and that there was a “common purpose” when Obama came to office. Let’s take a look. Before 2008, […]
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L. Hoy: The failure of America
As I see it, when President Obama leaves office in three years, he will have exhausted whatever measure of greatness and common purpose America once had. Sometime in those next three years, we will bottom out as a nation. No midterm shift in partisan political fortunes will prevent that collapse, nor will such a shift, […]
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L. Hoy: What could go wrong?
The government told bankers, “Make housing loans to people who can’t afford to keep them up. Don’t worry about defaults — the federal government will guarantee every loan you make!” “OK!” said the mortgage bankers. “What could go wrong?” The president told the Congress: “Pass this stimulus bill. Millions of shovel-ready jobs and my buddies […]
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L.Hoy: The end of the republic
“The American Republic will endure until the day Congress discovers that it can bribe the public with the public’s money.” — Author unknown Liberals object to the pejorative tone of that quote, often mis-attributed to Alexis DeTocqueville and Alexander Tytler. They see the quote more usefully rendered, “The American Republic will endure as Congress discovers […]
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L. Hoy: Bureaucrats acting with impunity
In the “Hunger Games,” a governmental enclave, “the Capitol,” rules a post-apocalyptic America divided into administrative units called “Districts.” The self-contained, distant Capitol isolates and plays one district off against another as it reduces their citizens to serfdom and enriches itself. Survival in the districts comes down to currying favor with the government, struggling to […]