Kerby Anderson
Our federal debt has been soaring to dangerous levels. According to the US Debt Clock, we are about to pass $34 trillion in national debt. As I have mentioned in previous commentaries, the debt to GDP is reaching an all-time high.
Even though Congress passed the Fiscal Responsibility Act, there doesn’t seem to be any fiscal responsibility. Members of Congress will be passing another large supplemental bill for wars and border security. Soaring debt is due in large part to soaring spending and entitlement programs currently on autopilot.
Is there a solution? Chris Edwards proposes one solution: phase out federal subsidies for state and local activities such as K-12 education and welfare. If the federal government cuts subsidies, the states could make prudent decisions about programs. They could downsize some and decide to fund others with their resources.
If states were to fund their own programs, each state could design programs to match local needs without the current one-size-fits-all federal mandate. It would also cut out the costs of the programs that are costlier than necessary to pay federal government bureaucrats.
State budgets traditionally have been more efficient. Nearly all states (49) have balanced-budget requirements, and most (43) governors have line-item vetoes that allow them to strike wasteful spending from budgets.
Chris Edward explains that the federal government accounts for two-thirds of the nation’s government spending, while the state and local governments account for one-third. He says we should be like Switzerland, where just one-third of government spending is federal.
His commentary reminds us there are ways to reduce federal spending, but we need to elect people to Congress who are willing to do it.

Kerby Anderson
Who would have ever thought that classical education would be controversial? The fact that Professor Adam Carrington had to write that “classical education is not a threat” is another indication of how everything has become political.
He begins by asking the question: “Is education Republican or Democrat, conservative or progressive?” His answer is that in a rightly ordered system, it should be neither. It should instruct students about America’s history and ideals.
One of the reasons such education has come under attack is due to the simple fact that it is the learning approach in many private schools and charter schools, and in homeschooling.
Classical education also avoids the “chronological snobbery” so prevalent in many educational programs today.  What is new and fashionable is valued over what has stood the test of time and provides a moral foundation for society.
He argues that “wisdom can be found in many times, places, and persons. We see in the Greeks the birth of philosophy, wherein men such as Plato and Aristotle sought to understand universal truths by studying the human beings around them.” 
We see it in Christianity and the Christian influence in western culture. And we see it in America with a “political system dedicated to human liberty and equality, along with the brilliant institutional structures of federalism and separation of powers found in The Federalist Papers and the US Constitution.”
He is also quick to add that we need not have blind adoration of the past, often filled with evils and horrors. Instead, we should condemn these evil practices and learn from these mistakes of the past.
Classical education can inform our current debates and provide a moral foundation on which to rebuild a broken society.