But, writes political sage Michael Barone:
I believe that historians have taught the wrong lessons about the 1930s. And I believe there is a plausible and probably correct reason why economic distress has apparently moved Americans to be less rather than more supportive of big government...Barone analyzes election returns throughout the 1930s to buttress his argument. He also points to a recent Gallup poll confirming that today's voters "realize that they stand to gain much more from a vibrantly growing economy than from redistribution of a stagnant economic pie."
while 82% of Americans think it's extremely or very important to "grow and expand the economy" and 70 percent say it's similarly important to "increase equality of opportunity for people to get ahead," only 46 percent say it's important to "reduce the income and wealth gap between the rich and the poor" and 54 percent say this is only somewhat or not important.It turns out that class warfare politics isn't the winner some liberals think, and (as Barone notes) "it hasn't produced a Democratic presidential victory in a long, long time.
In addition, by a 52 to 45 percent margin, Americans see the gap between the rich and the poor as an acceptable part of the economic system rather than a problem that needs to be fixed. In 1998, during the high-tech economic boom, Americans took the opposite view by the same margin.
FOX News National Security Analyst KT McFarland gave an engaging talk about several foreign policy “hot spots” around the world that most threaten the United States. Speaking to Conservative Women’s Network attendees this month, KT spoke extensively about what she believes are the three top issues in foreign policy today: the Arab Spring, Iran, and Israel. 
The Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR) tried—and failed—to prevent author and Islamic law critic Nonie Darwish from 
"Let's not miss the point on why the Gardasil mandate is so outrageous," write Alyssa Cordova, the Luce Institute's Lecture Director. "HPV is not something caught from a casual encounter like the flue, measles, mumps or rubella. It's a sexually transmitted disease!" 
"Many young people celebrated with the president when he signed 'Obamacare' into law in 2010," 
The president is trying to hide from his "signature achievement" in the hope that the revolt against the unpopular health care overhaul that swept conservatives into power across the country in November 2010 isn't repeated in 2012, writes Grace-Marie Turner. If the law is left in place, the American people will get a shocking awakening in 2014 when...
"We are engaged in a war on spending that started years before this crisis and will be waged for years to come," writes Congresswoman Renee Ellmers, who was a guest speaker at the Institute's monthly Conservative Women's Network luncheon recently. She offers her perspective on the debt ceiling crisis and the current debate before Congress in a 
Renowned pollster Kellyanne Conway, founder and president of the polling company/WomanTrend, spoke to a packed auditorium of women at the monthly Conservative Women’s Network on July 15th at the Heritage Foundation about just how apparent it has become that traditional liberal “women’s issues” continue to decline as fiscal issues rise. Women all over the country are unshackling the chains of liberal feminism and embracing their femininity in their drive to build a more optimistic America for their children and grandchildren.
"Vermont became the toast of liberals recently when its governor signed what has been billed as the nation's first single-payer health care law," writes Sally Pipes, a national health care expert. The state's law is a good Obamacare case study, since it "does little more than what's already required under Obamacare." But Vermont's government-run health care plan isn't living up to utopian promises. Rather it's "a program in which everything is free at the point of consumption but nothing much of value is available." Read 
Diana Furchtgott-Roth explains why a balanced budget amendment to the U.S. Constitution offers a promising path to restoring national economic self-discipline, and how it might be structured to rein in profligate federal government spending. Read it 
Kayla Westbrook, a Clare Boothe Luce Policy Institute student activist at Florida State University, shares her experience at NOW's annual conference: 
Hitting the Left where it hurts may help to explain why a lot of "
