See this? The College Board says that the average yearly cost for a four-year public university for an in-state student is now $8,240.  For a private college, it’s $28,500 per year. William Thierfelder, president of Belmont Abbey College, says that most students are so discouraged with what he calls the “sticker price” of higher education that they don’t even consider applying to a school they think is beyond their families’ means. So Belmont Abbey is taking a different approach:  The college has announced... Read more

George F. Will: “Philosophy,” said the philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein, “is a battle against the bewitchment of our intelligence by means of language.” In unphilosophic Washington, bewitchment is cultivated. Notice how quickly and thoroughly a phrase used intermittently for more than 50 years — “fiscal cliff” — was made ubiquitous by one of Washington’s least flamboyant speakers (Ben Bernanke). This melodramatic language encourages the supposition that plunging off the (metaphorical) cliff is unthinkable. But as this column has hitherto noted, the cliff’s... Read more

Dude can write: from G. Murphy Donovan: The dinner time family meal is important to forming culture. There are four clear threats to the modern family and possibly civilization at large; cell phones, video games, the internet, and junk food. We allow the first three because they are cheaper than tutors, private schools, and nannies. Indeed, games and gadgets support a kind of electronic autism where neither parent nor child speaks to each other until the latter is old enough... Read more

Michael Cheshire’s encounter with Ted Haggard: What’s your response to this clip (or the full article at the link)? A while back I was having a business lunch at a sports bar in the Denver area with a close atheist friend. He’s a great guy and a very deep thinker. During lunch, he pointed at the large TV screen on the wall. It was set to a channel recapping Ted’s fall. He pointed his finger at the HD and said,... Read more

Important article by at The Weekly Standard by Jonathan V. Last: Today, the numbers are more striking: 23.8 percent of men, and 19 percent of women, between the ages of 35 and 44 have never been married. Tick back a cohort to the people between 20 and 34—the prime-childbearing years—and the numbers are even more startling: 67 percent of men and 57 percent of women in that group have never been married. When you total it all up, over half... Read more