“Shocking heap of human wreckage”

Long a cliché of comprehensive civic failure, New Orleans is emerging as an improbable guiding light for restoring a broken school system and raising kids to nation-leading performance. How? As Paul Vallas explains in City Journal, by emphasizing charter schools and opening the system to parental choice, sending kids flooding to the best schools and forcing the rest to compete. As Vallas quips, “New Orleans demonstrates that children benefit most when adults lose the power to preserve failure.”

Mario Laghos in The European Conservative describes a terrifying phenomenon straight out of sci-fi: the UK government’s “National Risk Unit” that, following violent crimes, terrorist attacks or other atrocities, deploys ready-made “recovery programmes” that channel victims’ responses into formless mourning and stage seemingly spontaneous “inter-faith vigils” – complete with pre-written signs and fake mourners. It’s all aimed at suppressing genuine human feelings like righteous anger and minimizing punishment of actual criminals.