Recently, a reader questioned why I, with no expertise in politics, was commenting on politics.

I take my cue from Aristotle and Plato, whom I studied as an undergraduate at Mount Holyoke College (I majored in political philosophy). From them I learned a terrible truth: Politics is an uncertain art, not a science — i.e., opinions and arguments, and reason mixed with passion, constitute the heart of politics. I take an additional cue from my mother, who died in 1990. She taught me and my sisters — through her actions — that we had an obligation not merely to quietly go to the polls and vote, but to speak publicly, with civility, about our political opinions.

The field of political science developed only in the modern era. Before that, the study of politics was part of philosophy. To political scientists, I concede expertise in data, statistics, trends, analyses of structures of...

With the election upon us, I have been fascinated by the media’s recap of important issues to the American public. I believe voters’ guides provide an excellent snapshot into the top concerns of the American public. Unfortunately, that picture is not pretty for those in education.

The New York Times “Election Special Issue” covered “Where the candidates stand on what matters most to Americans.” Education was not among those 11 issues featured in the Sunday print edition (although it appears here). And the Times is not alone: It wasn’t until the third debate that we heard the candidates touch on educational policy.

Obviously, education is having a tough time competing for attention with the current financial crisis, global security concerns, the health-care crisis, and wardrobe-gate. But as a lifelong...

There aren’t many stupid things in the Constitution, but one of them is the requirement that the president be a “natural born Citizen” of the United States. It’s stupid because we are a nation of immigrants that, in all other respects, draws no invidious distinction between the rights of natural-born and naturalized citizens. It’s stupid because it restricts the presidential talent pool in ways that bear no relationship to presidential talent. (If you think that being a two-term governor of California or Michigan is reasonable preparation for the presidency, forget it: the governors of both states are not citizens by birth.) And it’s stupid because no one can be sure what “natural born Citizen” means. The term’s English common law roots suggest two contrasting definitions: natural born as in born of parents who are citizens, and natural born as in born on the nation’s soil.

John...

This does it. This is the last straw. If there were still a scintilla of a possibility that Sarah Palin is qualified to be Vice-President or, should the need arise, President of the United States, it’s now vanished.

Two low-rent comedians from Montreal played a prank on Palin. They telephoned her pretending to be putting in a personal call from the President of France, Nicolas Sarkozy. And Palin bit. Hard, like a doofus just off the bus falling for a three-card monte game on the street.

In spite of the fake Sarkozy’s obviously fake French accent, his throwing in hilarious names (such as his special advisor, “Johnny Hallyday,” pronounced, Joe-kne ‘Alleeday), and his poking fun by saying that from his house in France he could see Belgium, Governor Palin chirpily chatted away on the phone with him. Palin was astonishingly ...

In Obama’s now famous encounter with Joe-Not-The-Plumber-but-The-Liar a few weeks ago, the Democratic Presidential hopeful uttered the following words: “It’s not that I want to punish your success. I just want to make sure that everybody who’s behind you got the chance, too. I think that when you spread the wealth around it’s good for everybody.” Judging from the reaction of many Republicans, he might as well have said, “Folks, when I’m President I plan to turn this country into a socialist state.”

The mere mention of the word “socialist,” of course, sends shivers up many American spines. It connotes a heavy-handed, freedom-crushing, cradle-to-grave welfare state, thought up by sinister atheists, and able to turn whole peoples into zombies and change democratic governments into monsters. In America, we believe in a government that promotes the idea of “equal opportunity, not “equal ...

cross-posted from howtheuniversityworks.com

At 12:01 a.m. on election day, thousands of younger voters and activists will simultaneously reset their Facebook pages to display a get-out-the-vote message—using a new application that allows users to “donate” their status lines to a third party.

The application allows users to specify whether they want to get out the vote for a particular candidate or on a non-partisan basis. With a single click, users can solicit all of their friends to donate their status lines as well.

When I started writing this post, the number of users “donating” their status lines to the message was 45,304. By the time I posted, the number had risen to 47,108.

Given the historic level of interest in this election — interest in bringing to an end the three-decade Era of Reaction — the only limit to the spread of this particular application is that only...