Is it Time to End the Electoral College?

My piece defending the Electoral College is up at The Daily Caller.

It begins:

“Time to End the Electoral College,” announced the New York Times.

“Monday’s Electoral College results prove the institution is an utter joke,” declared Vox. 

The Electoral College is a “vestige” and a “carryover” from the past, proclaimed the president of the United States. 

It is a sign of our failing education system that reputable news outlets and intelligent people don’t understand the Electoral College. Its preservation is vital for securing the rights of the minority and averting the tyranny of pure democracy.

Yet seemingly unfamiliar with these arguments, the New York Times (NYT) haughtily pronounced that:

By overwhelming majorities, Americans would prefer to elect the president by direct popular vote, not filtered through the antiquated mechanism of the Electoral College. They understand, on a gut level, the basic fairness of awarding the nation’s highest office on the same basis as every other elected office — to the person who gets the most votes. 

The editors of the Times would do well to consult the history books. “Antiquated” is a term better applied to the idea of a direct popular vote. Millennia ago, Greece and Rome attempted what the NYT celebrates as a novel idea, and both collapsed.

To read the piece in full, click here.

The Problem with our Public Discourse

My piece is up at the American Thinker. A slice:

This political season has become especially emotion-driven. That may be understandable for the general public, for whom politics is neither a passion nor a preoccupation, but it is another matter when our “elite” who shape public opinion and whom we expect to elevate public discourse promote non-thinking.

Consider three examples. 

First is a leading editorialist who excoriated various Republicans for their support of Donald Trump, whom the author labels a “dangerous fascist:”

I am talking, for example, about Sen. Marco Rubio, who in the primary called Trump an "erratic individual" who must not be trusted with nuclear weapons -- and then endorsed him for president.

I am talking about Sen. Ted Cruz, who called Trump a "pathological liar" and "utterly amoral" -- and then endorsed him for president, even though Trump never apologized for threatening to "spill the beans" on Cruz's wife and suggesting Cruz's father was involved in the assassination of President John F. Kennedy.

Most of all, I'm talking about House Speaker Paul Ryan, a man whose pained, blue eyes suggest he desperately wants to cry for help. He's a man who runs around the country pathetically trying to pretend that Trump does not exist and that the key issue is his congressional caucus' "Better Way" agenda. And he's a man who, of his own free will, seeks to help Donald Trump become president.

One would think that a writer critiquing his opponents would demonstrate familiarity with their thinking. But here not even a cursory understanding of it is demonstrated. After providing nothing but a few obscure quotes from the primary season, he smears Messrs. Ryan, Rubio, and Cruz by concluding that their support of Trump is proof that “they love their careers more than they love America.”

To read the full piece, go here.