Why Do More Conservative States Take More Federal Grants?

Once you control for everything else, conservative states don’t take more federal grant money than liberal states – in fact, they may even tend to take less.

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Atheists Are Just Smarter

Many electrons have been spilled over that Pew survey showing that atheists, agnostics, Jews, and Mormons know more about world religions, including Christianity, than Protestants and Catholics (I got 32/32!). Even after controlling for education, these four religious groups know more about world religions in general (however, white evangelicals know more about Christianity than Jews, [...]

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Who needs evidence? (the NIB ideology, part 2)

Note:  This is the second in an ongoing series of posts on NIB (Natural is Better) ideology.  The first can be found here.  More to come. In 1992, JAMA published an article that began with the following statement: A new paradigm for medical practice is emerging. Evidence-based medicine de-emphasizes intuition, unsystematic clinical experience, and pathophysiologic rationale [...]

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The NIB Ideology (Part 1)

The comedian Michael Feldman wrote a funny and informative piece this week in the NY Times on the raw milk controversy in Wisconsin.  Many small dairy farmers are clamoring for legislation making it easier to sell raw milk.  Interest group politics infuse this issue, but the underlying ideology is the point of this post. Raw [...]

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Does Ideological Radicalism Hurt Republican Incumbents More than Democrats?

Emory political scientist Alan Abramowitz has done two studies of how voting ideology affected the electoral fortunes of Republican and Democratic senatorial incumbents over the 2000-2008 period. The study on Republicans is here, and the study on Democrats is here. Over this time period, 57 of 61 Democratic incumbents won their re-election campaigns, while just [...]

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See, he is a Centrist

Most conservatives/libertarians I know are not fans of David Brooks.  I must admit that I am a big fan, though I disagree often.  In a recent post I classified him as a centrist.  In his column today, he says he is a centrist. My question is this:  Are  he and I are right?  Is it [...]

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What Will Today’s Veterans Think of Government in the Future?

While reading an interview of macroeconomist (and rational expectations theorist) Thomas J. Sargent in Arjo Klamer’s interesting book, Conversations with Economists (1983), I happened upon this notable passage: I went through ROTC, was commissioned, and then worked in the systems analysis office of the Pentagon.  It changed me in some ways, made me more conservative.  I came to [...]

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