Income inequality is a hot topic in theoretical economics and an even hotter topic in the theater that is American politics.

If you “feel the Bern” or if you tune in to any debate, the rich getting richer and the common man getting screwed is a continuous drumbeat. So short of having a PhD in economics or a master’s degree in finance, it’s easy for some to get suckered into resentment. Thankfully, we can turn to the world of sports to provide a contextual overview of income inequality.

In 1975, the Hall of Famer Kareem Abdul Jabbar (formerly known as Lew Alcindor) was the highest-paid player in the NBA, earning a whopping $450,000. That’s a jaw-dropping $2.79 million in today’s dollars. Stated another way, the NBA’s all-time leading scorer, six-time MVP, and six-time world champion was making the equivalent of less than $3 million per year today.

That same year, the average NBA player earned $90,000, and the league minimum was $30,000 per year. How was the common man fairing at this time? U.S. median household income was $13,379, and a security guard working in a sports arena, making $3.50 per hour, was bringing in $7,280 annually.

In terms of income inequality and executive pay ratios, Kareem was making 5X the average salary of an NBA player and 15X the league minimum. In terms of the global issue of inequality, Jabbar was making almost 34X the national household income average and 62X the lowly arena security guard.

So how has the income landscape changed in the last 45 years in the NBA? And more importantly, why?

The highest-paid player in the NBA this year based on salary is Stephen Curry, a two-time MVP and three-time NBA world champion. Curry will make $40 million this year despite having played in only four games to this point because of injury. The ten highest-paid players in the NBA will earn a collective $371 million in salary, or an average of $37.1 million per player. The league average is $7 million, and the NBA minimum salary is $582,100. 

So interleague, how has the NBA fared? The top player’s ratio to the average salary is holding constant at about 5.5X the average, but the ratio to the minimum salary in this star-driven league has widened to an alarming 68X the league minimum.

Even more concerning are the NBA salaries in relation to the average U.S. household income, a.k.a. the common man, and also to the lowly security guard. Over the same 45-year period, the ratio of the top NBA salary to the average U.S. median household has risen from 34X to almost 630X. As concerns the top salary in relation to a lower-profile member in the same organization—the security guard—the ratio has surged to a staggering 2,900X in 2020, from 62X in 1975.

Income inequality is defined as an extreme disparity of income distributions with a high concentration of income usually in the hands of a small percentage of a population. Clearly, the NBA checks all the boxes.

So what are some of the root causes of the NBA’s inequality dilemma? In a star-driven league, there are only so many stars. How many human beings can shoot the 3-point shot like Steph Curry? In the history of the NBA, only one player has ever made a higher percentage. LeBron James, a 16-time All-Star, four-time MVP and three-time NBA champ, is an athletic freak of nature who could have played virtually any professional sport of his choosing. Giannis Antetokounmpo is among the rarest of athletic specimens in a league of extraordinary athletes. The subset of the population that is seven feet tall, runs the length of the court in three seconds, makes 55% of shots attempted and averages 30 points and 14 rebounds per game is a very tiny group of human beings—thus the nickname “The Greek Freak.”

Curry, James and Antetokounmpo demonstrate the concept of “hierarchies of competence.” In every discipline, exceptional contributors emerge. Such contributors create value and growth. While fortunate circumstance or chance may be a contributing factor, this is the exception and not the rule. Generally speaking, competency and timing combine. Bill Gates created the Windows Operating System as personal computers became standard issue. Mark Zuckerberg co-created Facebook (kind of) just as social media was taking hold of our phones. The NBA, with the players’ union, signed a massive new media rights deal as established networks and burgeoning new media entities like Facebook, Amazon and Netflix were breaking the bank in search of original scripted and non-scripted content for global consumers. 

A lot of this income “success” is a result of good old-fashioned hard work, discipline and dedication. To obtain this “hierarchy of competence,” players put in hours at the gym, work with strength coaches, endure physical therapy, employ shooting coaches, keenly focus on diet and rest, and sacrifice other endeavors in order to master their craft. They made it to top of the high school food chain, the college food chain and now the NBA food chain. In short, the NBA is a meritocracy. Natural selection is a force in their profession and in their income.

The NBA has an income inequality issue, and nobody is complaining about it—not the average veteran making $7 million, or the journeyman making that league minimum of $582,000, or even that arena security guard or die-hard NBA fan who gets an up-close-and-personal view of some truly great entertainment—because the NBA has created value that makes many of our lives just a little more enjoyable. So thanks, Bill Gates, for giving us unlimited knowledge and access at our fingertips, and thanks, Mark Zuckerberg, for keeping us informed about our high school reunions. And thank you, Warren Buffett; you have made a lot of shareholders, including us, a lot of money over your 70 years at Berkshire. Are we jealous of your obscene wealth? Sure, but you earned it. We have no reason to be resentful. It’s the same for the NBA.

A visionary commissioner, a global marketplace, a collaborative relationship between the union and owners, the fortunate advent of original content and sports gaming, and one quickly forgets the income inequality issue in the NBA. Instead, we focus on the expansive economic growth created for all. Rather than an obsession with the gap between the top and the bottom, we focus on what the NBA has done over the past 45 years, which is to create a lot more millionaires. 

This appeared in Forbes on March 5, 2020.

With multiple states passing legislation and 20 more states considering similar bills, college athletes are going to be compensated for the use of their names, images, and likeness - in one form or another. This is no longer a debate.

The NCAA and its conferences are the legal, economic cartels entrusted with negotiating and distributing revenue from media and sponsorship partnerships to their members. A patchwork system of multiple jurisdictions depending on state, public or private institutions will create an unprecedented level of complexity and chaos. Such a system will be not only be rife with recruiting chicanery, it will create an employee/employer relationship at the collegiate level, which essentially eliminates the amateur athlete designation in any of the revenue-generating sports. A federal solution is required if the NCAA wants to continue to maintain control.

In response to these recent state laws and the changing public perception of the function of the student/athlete, some interesting ideas have been floated, including one from the Knight Commission on Intercollegiate Athletics, proposing to create a separate division of large revenue schools to compete independently of the mid-tier and lower-tier programs. All of the suggestions we’ve seen so far have focused either on redistributing existing revenue sources or on giving athletes the right to seek compensation from corporate sources and/ or from the sale of licensed apparel bearing their likeness. One of us works at one of the biggest college basketball schools in the nation and the other one works in a state dominated by college football. We’ve both worked extensively within the framework of the business of collegiate sports. The notion of allowing college players to seek compensation directly from “sponsors” and alumni bases is the same system upon which slimy college boosters and AAU coaches have long been preying and thriving.

We propose a different solution. One that doesn’t require redistributing existing revenues, breaking up conferences, eliminating non-revenue sports, or inviting unprecedented levels of recruiting violations and booster tomfoolery. There are ways to use technology and the unmatched market for college athletics to solve this problem. Working with Congress to draft federal legislation, the NCAA could ensure fair athlete compensation while protecting its status as an amateur sports organization. The answer lies in the data. 

When the Supreme Court’s decision in 2018 ended the federal moratorium on the states determining how to regulate sports gambling, a new revenue source was opened to all leagues – professional or amateur. According to estimates from Bloomberg News and Forbes, the NBA will generate over $300 million for the next six years and the NFL twice that. The four, major sports leagues are each reportedly generating over $200 million per year for their data and rights. The NCAA has two of the biggest gambling subject sports in college football and March Madness. Reuters estimates that over $8.5 Billion is wagered on NCAA basketball alone and the upcoming National Championship of college football between LSU and Clemson, both undefeated, should generate unprecedented interest. With such assets, the NCAA could easily generate over $500 million a year for its data and rights. 

There are 15,000 D-I men’s football and basketball scholarship players. Would an extra $30,000 a year make players more likely to enjoy their college experience? Or, if the NCAA passed out $200 million to the 347 Division I basketball schools, then each school could recruit and pay the players of their choice, allowing for all schools to have a good shot at acquiring talent and remaining competitive. Otherwise, if the NCAA waits too long, it will no longer have the ability to determine its own future.  If the NCAA leadership is not careful, state legislatures will create an environment where the alumni at schools like Duke will sell out of the $25,000 Zion Williams commemorative jerseys and Ole Miss business owners will pay $100,000 to feature the Rebels’ starting offensive line in a promotional video…all in the name of allowing student athletes to be equitably compensated for their names and likenesses.

By acknowledging that sports gambling is a legitimate and legal pastime enjoyed by millions of its fans, the NCAA could leverage substantial incremental revenue into a solution that compensates athletes while maintaining the amateur status upon which the NCAA business model and its core value system rests. Ironically, the NCAA, which has been so vocally opposed to gambling for years, might now need to embrace this legal pastime to save its identity, mission, and business model.

This appeared in Sports Business Journal on March 2, 2020.

Over many decades in America, we’ve observed a great shift in the manner by which society attempts to solve problems. Despite a governmental system designed by founders who were suspicious of centralized government power, we continue to fund a larger and more complex system of government.

And while a lot of that complexity and bigness has grown in Washington, D.C., we can’t deny the same cancer has infected our states. One of the biggest problems, and there are many, with allowing the size, scope, and cost of government to expand is that we surrender our personal responsibility in the process. In so doing, we abdicate our legal and moral rights to live our lives as we see fit. We disempower ourselves as individuals and our communities of the liberty and responsibility we own naturally.

From Lord Acton to Reinhold Niebuhr, theologians have agreed that the consolidation of power into higher-level organizations should only be done as a last resort. In Christianity and Social Order, Archbishop William Temple described the idea of the individual’s value succinctly: “the State exists for its citizens, not the citizens for the State.” Temple goes on to write, “one of our first considerations will be the widest possible extension of personal responsibility; it is the responsible exercise of deliberate choice which most fully expresses personality and best deserves the great name of freedom.” On this idea rests the culture of our inherited civilization and the promise of what America is to be.

Many Catholics are familiar with the principle of subsidiarity. This tenet holds that nothing should be done by a larger and more complex organization if it can be done well instead by a smaller and simpler organization. In other words, any activity that can be performed by a more decentralized entity should be. This principle is central to the American ideals of limited government and personal freedom. In his 1991 encyclical Centesimus Annus, Pope John Paul II took the “social assistance state” to task. He wrote that the welfare state was contradicting the principle of subsidiarity by intervening directly and depriving society of its responsibility. In the pope’s words, “this leads to a loss of human energies and an inordinate increase of public agencies which are dominated more by bureaucratic ways of thinking than by concern for serving their clients and which are accompanied by an enormous increase in spending.”

For those of us interested in economics, a core principle of economic efficiency is that goods and services are produced and allocated to their most valuable uses, with as little waste as possible. When we think of how we help society, there are really two paths. We can give a growing, bureaucratic, centralized government our funds through ever-increasing taxes to work on societal problems in our stead, or we can choose to give our time and money to private, local institutions, like families, churches, and nonprofits, to address societal problems in the local community. If efficiency is our goal, it seems the latter path is the obvious choice. Which path is consistent with theology and with our founding?

Similar to the ideas written by Jefferson in our Declaration of Independence, which were heavily influenced by the essays of John Locke, the Dutch Reformed theologian and politician Abraham Kuyper argued Protestants have a principle he called “sphere sovereignty.” Slightly different than Jefferson and Locke, though, Kuyper put forward the principle that the State derives its authority from God, but families, churches, businesses, local social organizations, and other private institutions have a sovereign right to maximum liberty and ultimate authority to regulate their own affairs that preceded the State. Only when the State can prove the need to resolve a conflict between these spheres of sovereignty should it intercede.

Locke wrote (not under his own name at the time owing to the rebelliousness of his ideas) that the individual possesses rights from the creator, and government has been given the responsibility to protect and defend those rights only through the consent of the people — in his words, “to protect the natural rights of life, liberty, and estate.” These ideas, which should be considered both libertarian and Christian, were the ones that fueled the American Revolution and inspired people all across the globe to value liberty. But over the ensuing centuries, many authors, some judges, and more than a few progressive professors have claimed that Locke was a deist and that his revolutionary ideas were rooted in a godless rationalism and inspired by reason alone. I would argue that reason and theology are not mutually exclusive and, in fact, are born of the same father — truth.

A better way to connect Locke’s ideas on limited government and Christian theology is to read his own words. Repeatedly, Locke references God and the Old Testament in his Second Treatise on Government, which is considered by many to be the most influential document on political philosophy in the history of modern government. One of the best accounts of Locke’s views on liberty and God can be found in a meaty and well-researched book entitled John Locke: Philosopher of American Liberty, writtenby Mary-Elaine Swanson. In the book, the author uses Locke’s original text to methodically destroy the notion of Locke as a godless rationalist philosopher and restore the Lockean ideas at the heart of America’s founding, ideas underpinned by a conviction to reason and God’s revelation.

Today, as a consequence of our complex and powerful government, we have weakened the application of the principles of subsidiarity, sphere sovereignty, and natural rights. We have sacrificed our personal responsibility in a Faustian trade with government officials who claim they will be happy to attend to the common good on our behalf. By giving more power to central government to solve more social problems, we’ve not only made the process of resource allocation less efficient; we’ve also removed the moral authority and the personal relationships that exist in local communities.

When we try to replace a personal relationship, in which the dynamic of mutual accountability is present, with a government solution, we weaken the bonds in a community connected by the common good. It’s in the best interest of all in a local community when a person or family in need is helped. And when we address temporary problems at the local level through personal relationships, those problems don’t become permanent ones because it’s in the best interest of both parties that they do not. The opposite is true of government. As Milton Friedman said, “Nothing is so permanent as a temporary government program.” We also need to realize that we hold the power to make a difference in our own hands and in our own communities. We possess both liberty and responsibility. We don’t need a massive, indebted bureaucracy or an all-powerful leader in Washington to do it for us. Our founders, standing on the shoulders of others and guided by the words of God, have already provided the way.

This appeared in American Spectator on March 1, 2020.

The divide between my millennial generation and older ones is stark.

While millennials are better educated than prior generations, we are also the least happy. Millennials have higher rates of anxiety, are generally disengaged at their jobs, and are deeply fearful about the future.

Some would argue that these feelings are the natural consequence of a world filled with greater uncertainty. But are we truly living in a more uncertain time than the Cold War, the Great Depression, or other traumatic periods in American history?

With unprecedented wealth and prosperity levels and general global stability, the evidence seems to suggest otherwise. Something else must be causing the worrisome downward trend in millennial emotional health. I have an idea of what that cause might be.

In college, my classmates and I were constantly encouraged by fellow students, professors, and speakers to “pursue our own truth” and to “do what makes us happy.” Even at my alma mater Georgetown, a Catholic University, morality and truth were little more than relativistic tools to be used at our disposal and justify immediate gratification.  

Universities were once intended to be bastions of academic freedom in which young scholars grappled with big ideas, pursuing truth with a capital “t.” Today, we’re encouraged to dive into any field of study we care for, with little guidance or constructed hierarchy when it comes to valuable knowledge.

Our professors told us we could find purpose in temporal affairs, yet we somehow lost the sense that we were a part of something greater. We substituted a wholehearted pursuit of “the truth” for “our truth.”  

The dominant philosophy today is built on a self-focused worldview that everything we need to know can be found on our own. The idea of pursuing one’s own truth requires a great deal of pride. It gives a false sense of comfort to the individual that he or she can look within to determine all that is right or wrong and needs little beyond that. Those who do so, however, find themselves disappointed by the shallowness of the world, lacking answers to difficult questions, and grasping for deeper meaning to no avail.

Perhaps it is time for us to seek alternatives.

Declining rates of religiosity correspond with millennials’ growing disenchantment with the world. Studies consistently show religious participants to be happier and more engaged members of society, but millennials are largely missing out.

Religion provides an individual with a community of people who care about one another’s well-being. Those involved in organized religion show a greater likelihood to vote, engage in charitable giving, and volunteer for service organizations. Religion also provides a foundation and worldview through which to interpret the events of the world and process tragedy and grief.

Those who join a religious community have access to a rich history of thinking. Rather than each individual assuming the burden of defining their own moral code, crucial to most faiths is the willingness to humble one’s self at the doorstep of history and recognize the thoughts and ideas of those who have gone before.

Man’s search for meaning continues. The question at hand is whether young people will continue to cut themselves off from the institutions which offer the deepest opportunity to discover the greater truth which exists beyond our own selves, or instead continue to find themselves persistently unhappy.

We must reject the moral relativism perpetuated by our current culture and education system. Instead, we need to recognize that the greatest truth is only found beyond our own selves.

This appeared in Intellectual Takeout on February 20, 2020.

The Business Roundtable, an association that counts among its members the CEOs of some of the largest public companies in America, announced this week a fundamental change in its new definition of the purpose of a corporation. 

Mainstream media genuflected. Milton Friedman rolled over in his grave.  

The Nobel prize-winning economist and best-selling author helped to create the predominant view that the purpose of a corporation, particularly a large, publicly traded one, is to increase its profits. To quote Friedman, “There is one and only one social responsibility of business – to use its resources and engage in activities designed to increase its profits so long as it stays within the rules of the game, which is to say, engages in open and free competition without deception or fraud.”

In fact, the overriding tenet of Corporate Finance, present in every college textbook, states that the role of the finance manager is to increase shareholder value.

Not according to this enlightened group. By their progressive definition, a corporation is not to independently pursue profit, but rather, pursue profit congruous with social good. 

It’s as if the pursuit of profit is somehow immoral and the aim of increasing shareholder value doesn’t require the care of customers, employees, and suppliers and our free market system hasn’t produced more prosperity for more people than any other economic system in the history of humankind.

So who decides the definition of social responsibility? What metrics determine if C Suite execs have achieved annual goals? Profits be damned, we reduced our carbon footprint by 2%, we saved four polar bears, we made the world a better place for our kids by .0002% last year. 

We can only imagine the squishy, subjective claims of success these modern CEOs will announce.

In his monumental essay in the New York Times on September 13, 1970, Friedman said, “The discussions of the ‘social responsibilities of business’ are notable for their analytical looseness and lack of rigor.”

There is also the distinct possibility that the CEOs who endorsed this modern, corporate “manifesto,” which includes 181 of the 188 members of the Business Roundtable, were trying to appease the current wave of the progressive political voices. 

Or a less cynical view might be that it was an attempt to seek relief or approval from the activist investors who constantly agitate public companies through shareholder meeting protests and the like. Both groups have grown more and more hostile to capitalism. If the latter is true, corporate groupthink is worse than we thought. You know what they say, if you give a mouse a cookie, he’ll soon want a glass of milk.

We have seen this experiment into corporate social activism, let’s just call it what it is, with devastating effects to corporate reputation and shareholder value. Starbucks under Schultz, Target Corp., Dick’s Sporting Goods, IBM, Disney’s ESPN, Kellogg’s, etc. The results have been a punishing lesson about mixing non-corporate ideas with P&L statements almost immediately remedied upon backtracking their social initiatives.

In his essay, Freidman’s words were prescient, “This short-sightedness is exemplified in speeches by businessmen on social responsibility. This may gain them kudos in the short run. But it helps to strengthen the already too prevalent view that the pursuit of profits is wicked and immoral and must be curbed and controlled by external forces. Once this view is adopted, the external forces that curb the market will not be the social consciences, however highly developed, of the pontificating executives; it will be the iron fist of government bureaucrats.”

Abandoning a 50-year-old view on the purpose of a corporation also undermines the belief in markets themselves. On this issue, Professor Friedman offered this dire warning, “the doctrine of ‘social responsibility’ involves the acceptance of the socialist view that political mechanisms, not market mechanisms, are the appropriate way to determine the allocation of scare resources to alternative uses.” 

A simple review of the 20th century should convince us all that’s not a road we want to travel.

Thankfully, a handful of leaders have rebuked the Business Roundtable. The Council of Institutional Investors was one such leader. “There’s no mechanism of accountability to anyone else,” said Ken Bertsch, the council’s leader. “This is CEOs who like to be in control and don’t like to be subject to the market demands.” 

In the Wall Street Journal, Michael Bordo, a Rutgers University economics professor and former student of Mr. Friedman, said the Business Roundtable’s new stance would have corporate executives behave like regulators. “That’s not what business is; that’s what government is,” he said. “I still think Friedman was right.”

However, there is one voice conspicuously absent in the dissent. Where are the independent board members? After all, the CEOs are employees who work at the direction of directors and shareholders. 

The resources these CEOs propose to spend in the pursuit of social good is not their own. Those resources are capital invested by shareholders; not by the growing category of “stakeholders” these modern CEOs seem so intent on pleasing. 

It is the fiduciary responsibility of the directors to protect such assets…and maybe even the entire free market system, too.

This column appeared in FEE on August 26, 2019.

If you haven’t seen an eyebrow threading salon yet, you will soon. The brow-shaping trend is sweeping the nation, and devotees of the practice swear by the technique for its precision, convenience, and affordability compared to waxing and tweezing. 

The threading craze is also inadvertently accomplishing something besides perfecting American arches: it’s exposing the shameless rent-seeking that litters the occupational licensing landscape across the country.  

Dipa Bhattarai is a graduate student in Mississippi.  She was born in Nepal, and has been threading most of her life. Eyebrow threading is a very safe method of hair removal that does not reuse the same tools on different customers and does not involve the use of sharp implements, harsh chemicals, or heat. Instead, this simple technique allows threading artists to use nothing but twisted cotton thread, acting like a mini-lasso, to remove stray hair. 

Dipa saw an opportunity to pursue her version of the American Dream when word of her threading expertise led to classmates clamoring for her assistance. She opened a threading store in a local mall. Her clientele grew quickly, and within months, she hired four employees and opened a second location. 

Because threading is so safe, no government license or training is required to offer threading services, and Dipa’s business is thriving. 

Just kidding. If you believed that, you haven’t been paying attention to the licensing industrial complex as it has metastasized across all 50 states.  Fueling this growth are practitioners of various occupations counterintuitively begging the government to impose regulations on them.  In exchange, they gain a sense of legitimacy and monopoly use of a title. These occupations typically have little or no connection to public health or safety – such as flower arrangers, horse massagers, and interior decorators. 

Industry insiders run the unnecessary licensing boards spawned by these regulations, often with no legislative oversight. They have an insatiable appetite for increasing their own job security and earnings by blocking new competitors from the business. Licensing boards are the new unions, and it’s no coincidence that the increase in the former has coincided with the decline of the latter. In the 1950s, only one out of twenty people required a government permission slip to do their job.  Today, that number has skyrocketed to nearly one in three.

Like regulatory black holes, no activity escapes these boards’ jurisdiction. Plucking hairs without a license? Heaven forbid. That is the practice of esthetics, and it can cost you. No encroachment on a licensing board’s turf is too petty to go unpunished. All in the name of protecting the public, of course.  

These protectionist-licensing schemes hurt workers of modest means and young people trying to get their start in life. Which brings us back to Dipa. Business was great, until an inspector for the Mississippi State Board of Cosmetology showed up, issued her a citation, and forced her to close down her business. Dipa had not realized a license was needed simply for eyebrow threading: this was America after all – the land of opportunity. 

When Dipa looked into the licensing requirements, she learned she would be required to take 600 hours of training, which would cost thousands of dollars, and the curriculum would not even teach eyebrow threading.  Instead, the classes would cover waxing, tweezing, makeup, facial massage, and a host of other irrelevant topics. Thinking there must have been a mistake, she contacted the Board. There was no mistake.  

Dipa took many of the required classes, but simply could not afford to take enough time and money away from her graduate studies to complete all of the Board’s irrelevant training.  She pled with the Board to let her thread, explaining that she did not want to perform any of the services taught in esthetician school.  The Board said its hands were tied: state law requires threaders to be licensed – an addition to the law that the Board lobbied for in 2013.  

Of all licensing boards, the Mississippi State Board of Cosmetology should know better.  In 2004, the Board was sued for an almost identical situation: requiring hair braiders to take 300 hours of classes that taught nothing about braiding. After the lawsuit exposed the absurdity of the regulatory regime, then-Governor Haley Barbour signed legislation that deregulated hair braiding.  In the 14 years since that law took effect, over 1,500 braiders have registered new businesses in Mississippi, and nobody has been injured by these unlicensed entrepreneurs. 

Dipa is now represented by the Mississippi Justice Institute, and we are proud to join her this month in filing a lawsuit to challenge the constitutionality of Mississippi’s eyebrow threading laws. But not every budding entrepreneur in America finds their way to a law firm willing to represent them for free. It’s time for the states to adopt substantial and comprehensive occupational licensing reforms. Smothering small businesses in pointless fees and regulation works against our economy and keeps the American Dream out of reach for new generations of entrepreneurs.

This column appeared in the Washington Examiner on August 19, 2019.

The politics of division might reign in our major cities. But in places like Jackson, hospitality and communal spirit are alive and well.

With senior year of college comes the expected announcement of one’s next steps in life. At Georgetown University, where I spent my undergraduate career, as well as at many other elite schools around the country, it seems that at least a plurality of students plan on either continuing their education or going to major consulting firms. While one can choose many roads, they almost all seem to lead to the same urban areas: D.C., New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, or San Francisco.

In January, rather than follow the well-worn paths of some of my friends and colleagues, I chose to accept an opportunity at the Mississippi Center for Public Policy, a state think tank in Jackson. I had friends who understood the decision, and I had friends who were perplexed by it. Over the next five months I found myself having to explain and defend why anybody would want to live in the South, declining the comforts so easily found in the nation’s largest cities.

Frankly, I understand the confusion. For at least four years, our mindset as students was centered around life in Washington, D.C., a vibrant urban area. The mainstream news outlets, our social media feeds, the movies we watched, and the politics we followed all suggested that big cities were the only places worth being, because that’s where the action was and will continue to be.

However, as I packed up the UHaul and left Georgetown behind, I felt a sense of comfort. The words “Go west, young man, go west,” so often attributed to Horace Greeley, played repeatedly in my head. I was proud of the fact that I was escaping the behemoth that is Washington, off on a new adventure.

For the past 10 years, since my dad had been transferred to the Pentagon in 2008, I had lived in or around D.C., and grown quite used to the city and its people. Entering Georgetown, I was sure that I wanted to stay in the area and get involved in politics. However, over the course of four years, as the tidal wave of progressive opinion steadily beat against me, it became clearer and clearer that the values I held dear were not fully acceptable on the campus or in the city. I was attacked and belittled, not only for my conservative politics but for my Christian faith.

It took far less than four years for me to grow tired of this toxic state of public discourse. Furthermore, for many in D.C.’s young political scene, too great attention was given to developing one’s next career steps rather than one’s self as a person. Jobs often took over life, and little time was left for other commitments. As I evaluated where I would go after college, I decided that, while I wanted a rewarding job, I also wanted to find an area where I could continue to grow in my faith, to get involved on the local level, and to develop myself as an individual. I wanted to find a community in which I could become attached and build a home. And I realized that all of this would be difficult in D.C.

On campus, the relentless culture of outrage was alive and well, as “woke” activists constantly pushed the boundaries on the next issue and demanded that all stand in lockstep with them as a testament to intersectionality. In moving South, all of that dissipated. The professional outrage is absent and community organizations are flourishing. People tend to spend more time at the local bluegrass exhibition than they do protesting.

In Jackson, people care more about the church community you’re a part of than the job title you hold or whether you have an R or a D next to your name. In Jackson, “Southern hospitality” is alive and well: people know their neighbors and sincerely care about how they’re doing. In Jackson, I have found my spirits lifted. It has become clear to me that, while the politics of division has taken center stage nationally, outside the cities, on the communal level, the best of our country is still thriving.

Undoubtedly, Mississippi is not a perfect place, far from it. But this state is built on a strong set of foundational values, which have provided a pleasant sense of relief against the growing social and political tribalism that was ever present in D.C. I have been welcomed into a community. It is here that I plan to put down roots, and I would strongly encourage others to think about doing the same.

This column appeared in the American Conservative on August 7, 2019.

Private citizens should not be subjected to government harassment for supporting causes they believe in, and charities should not have to worry about their funding drying up because donors fear reprisals.

Yet many policy pundits on the left, and even a few on the right, have been doing all they can to convince lawmakers across the country that the government has a compelling interest in knowing to whom you give your after-tax money. In using popular language such as “dark money” and “transparency,” the Left really means that it wants to know who funds its opposition, so it can bring pressure to bear and suppress its opponents’ speech with coercion and threats.

It’s no surprise that in blue states, including California, New York, Delaware, and New Mexico, the government is compelling 501(c) charities to disclose information about their donors. In recent years, some red states, too, including South Dakota, Utah, Alabama, and South Carolina, have also proposed legislation or regulation that would strip away donor privacy for charitable organizations, in the name of good government.

While transparency is what citizens require of their government, privacy is the constitutional right afforded to citizens. Conflating public requirements and private rights is clever but disingenuous. We should not allow proponents, from the Left or the Right, to get away with such sophistry.

In the Federalist Papers, a collection of 85 essays promoting the adoption of the United States Constitution, written by Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and John Jay in 1787–88, the three founders used the pseudonym “Publius.” They did so because to advocate for something as radical and controversial as that revolutionary document was dangerous. Not everyone in power in 18th-century America agreed with these ideas.

The same was true of the supporters of the NAACP in the 1950s, when it was advocating for equal rights for every American. During those tumultuous times, many people of public influence and power were demanding to know the names of members or supporters of the NAACP. In NAACP v. Alabama (1958), Justice John Harlan II outlined the practical effects of compelling organizations to disclose their donor lists: It exposed them to “economic reprisals, loss of employment, threat of physical coercion, and other manifestations of physical hostilities.”

Now imagine a person today who loses his job when his climate-zealot boss finds out that he gives money to a charity that opposes the Green New Deal. Or imagine the symphony director in a major city who is publicly shamed and harassed because he dared give to a charity that supports requiring people to use the public restroom that corresponds with their biological sex. Or how about an actual case in California, where the director of the Los Angeles Film Festival was forced to resign because he supported Proposition 8, the controversial rejection of same-sex marriage. California has been a proponent of forced disclosure of donor information for years, claiming that the information would be safe in the state’s hands. Yet Kamala Harris, the former California attorney general and now a U.S. senator and presidential hopeful, “inadvertently” allowed the names of donors to roughly 1,700 non-profits to be posted on a government website.

Nadine Strossen, a New York University law professor and former president of the American Civil Liberties Union, is a strong advocate of donor privacy. “Individuals should be able to join and support organizations without having their names and other private information disclosed,” she argues. “These rights remain essential today for the ongoing advocacy of civil-society groups across the ideological spectrum.

Mississippi, where I live and work, has now become the second state, joining Arizona, to protect the privacy of non-profit donors. Governor Phil Bryant signed House Bill 1205 into law at the close of the legislative session last month. The bill codifies a long-standing practice of barring the government from demanding or releasing publicly the personal information of donors to 501(c) non-profits. At a time when partisanship seems to reign, the publication of personal information can expose citizens to intimidation and harassment from those who want to shut down speech with which they disagree. Fortunately, two states — and may others follow — have taken steps to ensure the fundamental American right of donor privacy.

“In recent years, charitable donations have been weaponized by certain groups against individuals to punish donors whose political beliefs differ from their own,” Governor Bryant said at the signing of the bill. “I was pleased to sign HB 1205, which protects free-speech rights of Mississippians who make charitable donations.” Let’s hope more governors and state legislatures follow suit.

This column appeared in National Review on April 9, 2019. 

Two days before the Framers signed the Constitution, one delegate noticed a defect in the plan. He rose to point out that under the current proposal, only Congress could initiate the process of amending the Constitution. But if the federal government grew out of control, it could never be counted on to rein in its own power. There needed to be a way for the states to initiate the amendment process.

The other convention delegates agreed and unanimously voted to add provisions to Article V, which equipped the states with the power to call for a convention at which delegates would make amendment proposals—which would then have to be ratified by the states.

The day the Framers feared, when the federal government would far exceed its legitimate powers, arrived years ago. Congress has long exercised powers that are not constitutionally authorized. At the same time, in an effort to avoid hard choices and increase its members’ reelection chances, Congress has delegated most of the actual work of legislating to faceless, unaccountable bureaucracies, which continue to grow unchecked.

The Federal Register, which contains all proposed and final regulations issued by federal agencies, has published over 3.2 million pages. If it were printed and stacked, it would be taller than the Washington Monument. This mountain of regulation—not even legislation—slows economic growth, stifles innovation, and prevents countless Americans from pursuing their version of the American Dream.

The growth in our federal government has also led to unsustainable federal spending. The federal debt recently topped $22 trillion. Our country’s entire GDP is only 20.5 trillion, meaning that if we took every penny that is earned or produced by every American over the course of a year, we still could not pay off our debt. Every American’s share of the debt is currently about $67,000, and within 10 years, every man, woman, and child will owe $100,000. Future generations of Americans are being born into staggering debt for services they will never see.

The Supreme Court has been complicit in this perversion of the constitutional order, failing in its duty to serve as a check on the power of the legislative and executive branches. As the federal government has grown large enough to control every facet of our lives, so has the importance of the Supreme Court grown. The Court now routinely rules on the most important political issues in American life, including healthcare, immigration, affirmative action, abortion, political gerrymandering, and campaign finance. These “winner takes all” decisions have led to more polarization and a more toxic political discourse.

With a conservative majority on the Court, there is hope that the constitutional ship can be righted. But it will take decades to uproot the mountain of bad precedent that has built up for nearly a century. We should all hope that the federal courts will finally begin taking their constitutional role seriously. But we should do more than hope.

It is long past time for the states to exercise their sovereign power under Article V to call for a convention to reign in the federal government’s power. Two thirds of the states must call for such a convention. Thirteen states have already done so, and a Convention of States Resolution is currently pending in the Mississippi legislature. Mississippi should join the call.

While some have expressed worry that the convention may make things worse and not better, citizens are amply protected from any threats to their liberty. The convention call that Mississippi legislators are considering would limit the proposals that could be considered to those that either impose fiscal restraints on the federal government or limit its power and jurisdiction. Other states have also voted to allow discussion of proposals to impose term limits on federal officials, but Mississippi’s resolution does not include that subject.

Moreover, any amendments that are proposed by the convention would have to be ratified by three quarters of the states. Any ill-considered amendments would not survive that crucible.

The far greater risk is inaction. We know with certainty that, without action from the states, our federal government will continue to grow and spend unchecked. Amending our Constitution to remedy this threat is no insult to our founders. It’s an acknowledgement of their wisdom in equipping us with the tools necessary to overcome a threat to our Republic which they foretold so many years ago.

This editorial appeared in the Clarion Ledger on March 13, 2019.