Culture and Society

More than 1,200 volunteers across 57 North Carolina counties have been trained to help in case of disasters, search and rescue operations, terrorist attack, or fire. Community Emergency Response Team (CERT) programs get volunteers ready to supplement first responders. A Stateline story explains, “It [CERT] launched in response…

Julie Havlak writes for Carolina Journal’s Daily Journal that biodegradable replacements for plastic straws are not cheap, nor are they always perfect. After a video of scientists pulling a bloody straw from a sea turtle’s nose went viral, plastic straws, once a ubiquitous staple, became deplorable outcasts. In North…

Until a week ago, I had never considered reading V.S. Naipaul, the 2001 Nobel laureate for literature. City Journal editor Brian Anderson gave a brief appreciation of Naipaul’s writing in explaining why The Masque of Africa was on his summer reading list. The discussion pointed to Naipaul’s…

“U.S. social policy is built on a foundation of values,” AEI’s Michael Strain writes at Bloomberg.com in getting to the heart of why reforming most government programs creates such heated debate.  Most discussion of work requirements, eligibility, and the costs and benefits of social programs begs the questions of personal…

Deirdre McCloskey (no) and Jason Furman (yes) will be debating at economist.com over the next week whether capitalism is rigged. Furman opens with a claim about how powerful interests help write regulations. McCloskey begins with the innovation of the past two hundred years. The debate comes down to the…

Michael Tomasky, editor of the journal Democracy, has advice for those who would like fewer socialists. “Stop creating them.” Tomasky outlines a number of ways that cronies in government and business have helped one another without doing much good for the rest of society. Free market supporters from…

We can see an uptick in deliberate rudeness, harassment, vandalism, and violence committed solely because of political disagreement. Is there a return to civility in our future? John Locke Foundation’s Jon Sanders says we aren’t stuck on this path and there’s a “pendulum” idea in politics that the further there’s…

Even though distillers, brewers, and winemakers can get a bad reputation, John Trump writes for Carolina Journal that they play big roles in giving back to their communities. Certain lawmakers bash drinking, telling stories of how it has destroyed families and ripped communities from their roots. Some of that…