Higher tax rates on high earners, even if they produce less revenue, are an attempt to centralize power in government and to limit the autonomy and countervailing power of individuals in the voluntary sector. Which is why the liberal bloggers cheer them on.

Many Republican House members and the bloggers and Tea Partiers who cheered their victory in gaining a majority in November 2010 seem to be seething with discontent and eager for confrontation.They believe, reasonably, that that victory represented a repudiation of the vast expansion of government by the Obama...

For some months now, President Obama has increasingly been couching his rhetoric in the language of fairness. But in recent weeks, a growing number of conservative elected officials have begun contesting Obama’s claim to be the arbiter of what constitutes fairness and taking the issue of fairness head on in public policy.

In recent months, electoral skirmishes and policy debates have hinged on the meaning of fairness. Defenders of free enterprise have often shied away from moral language, preferring to rely on facts, figures, or constitutional arguments to make their case. AEI president Arthur Brooks highlights free enterprise leaders who are changing, now making the moral case.

“Rational control” is the subjection of society to reason as opposed to superstition, prejudice, or tradition, with the aim of getting us to behave better. Alexis de Tocqueville says this idea or practice began with the French monarchy; a more recent example is Nudge: Improving Decisions about Health, Wealth, and...

Far from enhancing the Putin regime's legitimacy, the election will diminish it further in the eyes of a significant part of the Russian population.

Reducing the value of the charitable deduction is a threat to voluntary associations.

More than a century and a half ago, a young French jurist by the name of Alexis de Tocqueville came to America to study the future of the civilized world. With rare prescience, Tocqueville realized that America's revolutionary ideas were destined to dominate Western culture. He wanted his own...