Politics

In 2012 I started my career as a structural engineer in the industrial suburbs of Johannesburg. This was my first job after completing my studies and the only rent that I could afford was a granny flat in the backyard of a property that belonged to an old Zimbabwean couple named Archie and Gayle. They were by then in their late 70s and they were still working to earn a living.  read more »

Right on cue, the country’s dominant political and media voices, after wildly applauding Joe Biden and Kamala Harris, have responded to Donald Trump’s week in the spotlight with laughter, derision and anger for its supposed amateurism, lack of star power, and racism.  read more »

In the soft warmth of spring the swallows famously return to Capistrano, but in recent years they are followed by what seems inevitable summer power outages and fires. This is not as pleasant an experience for Californians as the return of our favored feathered companions.  read more »

By virtue of being chosen Joe Biden’s running mate, Senator Kamala Harris of California has reasonable odds of becoming president someday—and probably better odds than the average running mate, given Biden’s advanced years and sometimes shaky public presentation. That’s cause for concern, not because she represents, as some conservatives fret, the far Left but because she will promote the spread of California’s increasingly feudal political and economic order, which undermines the upward mobility that long defined the California experience.  read more »

No future awaits those who rage against family, work, and community.

Where there is no bread, there is no Law. Where there is no Law, there is no bread.

— Rabbi Elazar Ben Azariah  read more »

President Trump recently decided to rescind the Obama administration’s Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing (AFFH) rule, which put pressure on suburbs to construct more low-income, high-density housing in their communities. Trump’s decision met with a predictable outcry.  read more »

The COVID-19 pandemic that has killed more than 150,000 Americans is likely to end the woeful presidency of Donald Trump.  read more »

No state wears its multicultural veneer more ostentatiously than California. The Golden State’s leaders believe that they lead a progressive paradise, ushering in what theorists Laura Tyson and Lenny Mendonca call “a new progressive era.” Others see California as deserving of nationhood; it reflects, as a New York Times columnist put it, “the shared values of our increasingly tolerant and pluralistic society.”  read more »

One of the candidates for president in this November’s election is known by the nickname, “Amtrak Joe.” The Democratic-controlled House wants to triple federal funding for intercity passenger trains.  read more »

Let’s start at the beginning, Joel. In talking about your new book, “The Coming of Neo-Feudalism: A Warning to the Global Middle Class,” do you literally fear that liberal capitalism is losing out to economic “feudalism”? And please put that word feudalism in a modern context for our readers.  read more »