Articles filed under Gerson, Michael

• Baseless fears of Common Core May 21, 2013 12:00 AM
  Columnist Michael Gerson: In fighting the Common Core, some Tea Party activists have made common cause with elements of the progressive education blob that always resist rigor, measurement and accountability. This alliance increasingly constitutes the mediocrity caucus in American politics. Localism is an important conservative principle, but so is excellence. And the measure of a successful education policy is the demonstrated presence of actual education.
  

   

• Government’s heavy hand May 19, 2013 12:00 AM
  Columnist Michael Gerson: Republicans are fully capable of overreaching in strategy and philosophy — making every disagreement with President Obama into an article of impeachment and conveying a disdain for government itself. Perhaps this is what Obama hopes will happen if he baits the GOP. But this would not solve the nation's problem. We need a federal government that is limited, respected and effective within its proper bounds. And none can call this the Obama legacy.
  

   

• The IRS needs an audit May 15, 2013 12:00 AM
  Columnist Michael Gerson: The practices already admitted by the IRS were not political insensitivity; they were political corruption. They amounted to an intrusive, ideologically targeted federal investigation of an American political movement.
  

   

• The fog on Benghazi May 10, 2013 12:00 AM
  
  

   

• ‘Common good’ can revive common decency May 6, 2013 12:00 AM
  Columnist Michael Gerson: It is not surprising that I should find some of the policy views expressed in his new book, "On God's Side," badly mistaken. But this does not prevent Wallis from being resoundingly right in his central premise: that American politics would be elevated by a renewed commitment to the common good.
  

   

• The stakes of being too late May 5, 2013 12:00 AM
  Columnist Michael Gerson: On Syria, President Obama has sometimes seemed isolated within his own administration. As the atrocities have escalated — from the shelling of neighborhoods, to airstrikes on bread lines, to the use of Scud missiles against civilians, to the likely incremental introduction of chemical weapons — the Assad regime's strategy has become alarmingly clear. Unable to retake rebel-held areas, it seeks to depopulate them, producing mass casualties, refugee flows and sectarian conflict. During the last two years, it has been reported that many of Obama's top foreign policy advisers, including David Petraeus, Hillary Clinton, Leon Panetta and Ben Rhodes, have urged more robust action to arrest Syria's downward spiral.
  

   

• For GOP, obstruction’s risk May 1, 2013 12:00 AM
  Columnist Michael Gerson: At the end of eight years, Americans will probably be tired of President Obama and perhaps of liberalism. The GOP will get another look.
  

   

• A principled president Apr 28, 2013 12:00 AM
  Columnist Michael Gerson: The dedication of the George W. Bush Presidential Library and Museum here has been an occasion for both friends and critics of the former president to press their case.
  

   

• Ideological impairment over Islam Apr 24, 2013 12:00 AM
  Columnist Michael Gerson: In 2009, Ruslan Tsarni and his nephew Tamerlan Tsarnaev had a bitter argument over the implications of their faith. Tsarnaev announced he had chosen "God's business" over work or school. "I was shocked when I heard his words, his phrases, when every other word he starts sticking in words of God," says Tsarni. "There is someone who brainwashed him, some new convert to Islam."
  

   

• Filling the silence after the sirens Apr 21, 2013 12:00 AM
  Columnist Michael Gerson: A tragedy makes communal what most of us face in isolation — a loss that can't be reconciled with justice. The news breaks, and we stare into the abyss together.
  

   

• Food aid programs need more flexibility Apr 17, 2013 12:00 AM
  Columnist Michael Gerson: For the last decade, aid reformers have asked: Why couldn't a portion of food aid be purchased regionally — in Africa, say, rather than the American Midwest — or given directly to individuals in vouchers so they can buy in (and strengthen) local agriculture markets? This has not, understandably, been popular with American agribusinesses, shipping companies and maritime unions. But Congress granted the George W. Bush administration limited flexibility to experiment with more direct forms of assistance.
  

   

• Margaret Thatcher: moralist Apr 12, 2013 12:00 AM
  Columnist George Gerson: It is the great paradox of modern life that free markets depend on responsible, self-reliant, moral citizens, while modern, consumer capitalism — of the kind Margaret Thatcher unleashed in Britain — is a solvent of traditional bonds and norms. Freedom requires virtues it does not produce, and may even help undermine. Which is why Thatcher the free marketeer needed to be Thatcher the moralist.
  

   

• An incitement to genocide Apr 7, 2013 12:00 AM
  Columnist Michael Gerson: Is such Iranian rhetoric a crime under the Genocide Convention of 1948 — to which Iran is a signatory — which forbids the "direct and public incitement to commit genocide"? The language of Iranian leaders is certainly direct and public. When forced to defend themselves, they often claim (unpersuasively) that their target is Zionists rather than Jews. But in the determination of genocidal intent, this doesn't matter. Genocide can be directed against any group — racial, ethnic, religious or national.
  

   

• A victory for school choice Apr 3, 2013 12:00 AM
  Columnist Michael Gerson: The school choice movement — which germinated 50 years ago in free-market economist Milton Friedman's fertile mind — recently counted its largest victory. The Indiana Supreme Court unanimously upheld the constitutionality of the state's school voucher program. Under it, more than half a million low- and middle-income Hoosier students — and about 62 percent of all families — are eligible for state aid to help pay for a private or religious school. This is what school choice has traditionally lacked: scale.
  

   

• Polarized by faith Mar 31, 2013 12:00 AM
  Columnist Michael Gerson: America is not a secularized country. But the relative decline of institutional religion has public consequences.
  

   

• America’s fast track to secularization Mar 28, 2013 12:00 AM
  Columnist Michael Gerson: Americans may be less affiliated with religious organizations because they have grown generally more individualistic and skeptical of authority. Whatever the explanations for the decline of institutional religion, it has major social and political implications.
  

   

• The GOP’s strategic failure Mar 24, 2013 12:00 AM
  Columnist Michael Gerson: Recent brutal attacks on the GOP have claimed that minorities often think that "Republicans do not like them or want them in the country." That younger voters are "rolling their eyes at what the party represents." That former Republicans view the party as "scary," "narrow-minded," "out of touch" and populated by "stuffy old men." But these were not Democratic attacks. Losing parties generally look in the mirror and see the need for cosmetics. A new report calls for reconstructive surgery.
  

   

• The risks of retreat Mar 19, 2013 12:00 AM
  Columnist Michael Gerson: Declining national influence is a choice, and America seems to be making it. What foreign policy practitioners politely call the "churn" of events is beginning to look more like chaos.
  

   

• The boilerplate gap Mar 14, 2013 12:00 AM
  Columnist Michael Gerson: A serious budget, of course, lies somewhere in the vast gap between the Ryan and Murray budget proposals. And much about the Republican future will depend on taking the part of the budget document that many conservatives regard as boilerplate and turning it into a governing agenda, demonstrating a concern for the common good
  

   

• Rand Paul’s real war Mar 13, 2013 12:00 AM
  Columnist Michael Gerson: Since arriving in the Senate in 2011, Rand Paul has been probing here and there for issues of populist resonance.