Monday is George Washington’s birthday, and it is Washington we should be celebrating—that model of character, principle and prudence.  And there is no better place to start than an extraordinary new collection, “The Meaning of George Washington’s Birthday,” by my AEI colleague Leon Kass and his wife, Amy Kass of the Hudson Institute. As part of their ongoing American Calendar project, the Kasses draw on speeches, stories, and writings about Washington to explore the history of his birthday holiday and follow his career from military scout, to colonial farmer, to general, to president of the United States. In so doing, they make a powerful case for Washington’s greatness, and why he should remain, in the famous words of Henry Lee, “first in war, first in peace, and first in the hearts of his countrymen.”

Economists and Res Publica:
The Virtues and Limits of Economic Analysis
By Steven E. Rhoads
(November 29, 2012)

With the possible exception of lawyers, economists are now the profession with the most influence on public policy. In the 1960s, when I began working at the US Bureau of the Budget, Charles Schultze, an economist and then-director of the bureau, tried to ensure that most of the public policy and program evaluation offices were headed by economists. Economic thinking still dominates the Office of Management and Budget, the Congressional Budget Office, and the General Accounting Office, and it is influential in policy and program evaluation offices across US agencies and departments. Moreover, economic thinking is at the forefront of most public policy schools at our leading universities. Intentional or not, economists now have a large say in forming the laws and regulations we make as a polity. The question that naturally arises is: what are the civic benefits that accrue from adopting the economist’s view of the world—and, in turn, what are the limitations?

No doubt, economists have a distinctive way of looking at the world—one that often runs counter to the views of noneconomists. Economists generally agree that, once distributional and equity issues have been sorted out, commercial, capitalist societies best allocate resources in a way that satisfies most people’s desires. Yet it is not intuitively obvious that an economic system in which everyone can work at whatever they want and wherever they want will work better than one that asks our smartest minds to plan the economy. As Nobel laureate Kenneth Arrow noted, to one unschooled in economics, an economy motivated by greed and controlled by no one brings to mind chaos. But, in fact, free markets with flexible prices coordinate the activities of millions of people in a remarkable and typically sensible way. Understanding both the principles that drive this outcome and how to apply them to new situations is what allows economists to see themselves as uniquely equipped to design sound public policies.

Download Full Report as PDF

From the Wall Street Journal: Leon Kass, the Madden-Jewett Chair at AEI and co-editor of What So Proudly We Hail, discusses the insights provided by Calvin Coolidge’s remarkable Address on the Occasion of the 150th Anniversary of the Declaration of Independence.

According to an article in today’s New York Post , Sen. Chuck Schumer

“yesterday urged the Navy to provide on-campus military training to help relaunch its ROTC program at Columbia University. Columbia last month agreed to allow the Navy back on campus for the first time since 1969, when it was banned amid Vietnam War protests.”

As AEI’s Cheryl Miller reported in last month’s Case Study of ROTC in New York City, New York City’s

“Navy ROTC program is located beneath Throgs Neck Bridge on the outskirts of the Bronx. It is almost completely inaccessible via public transportation—a significant challenge for cross-enrolled Navy ROTC students [like those at Columbia], who are required to attend classes and drill at Maritime three days a week.”

From National Review Online: It’s graduation time for America’s high-school seniors, many of whom are now old enough to vote. But if the most recent evaluation of what they know about their country’s history and its government is accurate, very few of them are ready for that responsibility. According to the 2010 National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), just 12 percent of seniors are proficient in U.S. history while only 24 percent measure up in civics. Such a dismal showing will come as no surprise to most Americans.

From the New York Post: The re-embrace of ROTC by elite schools marks the end of a shameful chapter in our nation’s history. But ROTC cadets on these campuses—indeed, across much of the nation—still face serious obstacles to their aspiration to serve their country.

From the Christian Science Monitor: America’s freedoms aren’t in danger from Islamists. But we can’t ignore Islamist influences on Muslim-American organizations. It is not enough for Muslims here simply to assert their rights but also to address questions whose continued neglect fuels understandable anxieties.

From the Boston Globe: Amid the uproar earlier this month over the assassination of Salmaan Taseer, the secularist governor of the Pakistani province of Punjab, Muslim-American organizations have been largely silent. At a time when mainstream Muslim leaders have been trying to demonstrate their embrace of religious tolerance and pluralism to their fellow Americans, few have had a word to say about this People’s Party leader whose denunciation of Pakistan’s draconian blasphemy law led to his death at the hands of a Muslim zealot–a zealot who has since been celebrated by fundamentalists around the globe.

The Columbia Spectator has devoted a full spread to the issue of ROTC on campus. The pieces are all terrific, particularly this spirited essay from Barnard’s first ROTC cadet:

At my class graduation (I walked this past spring), Meryl Streep spoke about the public’s appreciation for today’s aggressive female leaders. Barnard College is an educational institution that prides itself on developing female leaders. As the first student cadet from Barnard to complete the Army ROTC program, I will soon be the first officer of the U.S. Army from Barnard College. Americans recognize the importance of military service to protect the freedom of our country. The value of ROTC leadership training is resulting in unprecedented increases in program participation all across the country. I’m proud to have taken the first step at Barnard and believe others will surely follow.

But what particularly caught my eye was this news article about the myriad difficulties cadets have participating in ROTC–such as getting into dorms early for their orientation or receiving Physical Education credit. Columbia administrators say they’re willing to make these accommodations for ROTC students.

As Michael Segal notes in the comments, there’s a straightforward solution here: Columbia might appoint a coordinator to help ROTC cadets navigate all the bureaucracy. Yale, for example, employs an adviser for ROTC cadets, Jerry Hill, who helps organize events, publicize scholarship opportunities, and helps students with logistics such as transportation to their training sites.

P.S. The Harvard Crimson editorializes in favor of ROTC.

Image from Army Cadet Command.