The follow is a summary of the April, 2005, issue of the St. Croix Review:

Angus MacDonald writes in “Bad Manners” that in their public statements politicians and prominent people reflect cultural decadence. A lust for power is the impetus for over-the-top rhetoric.

In “Bias on Campus” Herbert London cites a recent survey to make the case that professors are injecting left-wing bias into the nation’s universities; in “What T.V. Sells Children” he examines the negative impact of the many shows with sexual content on children; in “Rise and Fall of Democracy?” he uses a theory from an 18th century Scottish history professor to point out the dangers of complacency and apathy; in “Religion in the Public Square” he notes the “powerful campaign underway to suppress religious expression,” and writes that virtue can only come from religious impulses; in “The Campus Implications of Striking Down the Solomon Amendment” he looks at the recent case in which Harvard Law School barred military recruiters. 

Allan Brownfeld warns that our public schools and universities are failing us in “Growing Ignorance of History and Government Is a Threat to American Democracy”; and he believes: “The Time Has Come to Confront the Bipartisan Philosophy of Big Government that Dominates Today’s Washington.”  

Arnold Beichman pens a unique obituary for Susan Sontag in “Elegy from the Archives.” 

In “Hippies Lose Protest Movement to Campus Conservatives” John Plecnik presents evidence for us to be optimistic about today’s youth.

In “The Soul of the Democrat” Thomas Martin reads Plato’s Republic, and he describes how ungoverned desires reduce men to slaves, and lead their city-states down the road to tyranny.

In “The Unseen” David Rozeman writes that for each of us to make a hard, objective evaluation of ourselves, and our work, is quite difficult--in fact almost impossible--without help.

Craig Payne comes up with a definition for what it means to be human in “Persons and Politics: Why Stem Cells Matter.” 

In “Civil Unions: Compromise or Surrender?” Midge Decter sees in the driving impulse behind the push for homosexual marriage “a spit in the eye of the way we live,” and she thinks we should take back our standards from the radicals and their sheep-like followers.

Allan Carlson takes a look at how the family and Christianity have been valued through the eyes of historical figures in “The American Way: How Faith and Family Shaped the American Identity, Part I”

In “Insolent Chariots” Martin Harris reveals the narrow focus and condescension behind the strategies of city planners.

John D’Aloia Jr. relates an incident involving a pat-down search at the airport to call attention to the fact that some of our new, security-based laws are being used in an un-American, and illiberal manner in “We Should Know What the Law Is”; he uses a new law concerning the sale of used cars to teach and economics lesson in “That Which Is Not Seen.”

Joseph Fulda uses a chance encounter with a bank representative over his credit card to teach an economics lesson in “In Pursuit of Deals and Better Deals.”