Editor’s Choice
So, You Want To Save The World
A friend shared this Twitter snippet, which apparently crossed her facebook feed, presumably shared by a friend of leftist leanings. Her (wholly accurate) rebuttal offered that actually believing this, but choosing to share a meme instead of "storming their houses,"...
Gun Rights Lessons – A Series
The debate over gun rights and gun control stretches back decades, to at least the early part of the 20th century. It should, then, come as no surprise that there are quite a few recurring and oft-argued themes and positions in this long-running debate. Seasoned...
Oppressor *And* Savior
The New York Times, the Gray Lady, the former bastion of proper journalism, where legendary editor Abe Rosenthal maintained an iron wall between news and opinion, has become a full-on apparatus of the Democratic Party machine and leftist politics. In other news, water...
Inconvenience, or Devastation?
Editors Note: This article is a follow-up to The Politics of Lockdowns, which explores politicians' motives and motivations in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Early on in the COVID crisis, many warned that this fall would bring a second wave of infections, as...
The Politics of Lockdowns
Conspicuous Action. Those two words encapsulate a politician's default response to any crisis (or "crisis" - many dubbed as such do not, considered rationally, deserve that level of emphasis), with the effects or efficacy of the action of secondary relevance. Doing...
The Power Makes The Bully
Most Americans agree that we are in a culture war, and most probably agree that temperature is rising. Many see a real possibility of a systemic disruption, despite it being the most enduring political arrangement in the world. With both sides of the political divide...
Will They Listen?
Election day finally came and went. The final outcome of the Presidential contest appears to still be several days away, and perhaps weeks if we get into recounts and contested balloting, but at this juncture, it's more likely than not that Joe Biden will be taking...
Care Before Crisis
A common theme, in looking at America's galaxy of ills in the fall of 2020 is that we are moving from being a high trust society into a low trust one. Low trust societies have all sorts of problems, but they boil down to the fact that trust is a lubricant, and less...
That’s Rich
Much mockery has been made of young socialists in America decrying and denouncing capitalism using social media on their iPhones. Deservedly so - these youngsters routinely fail to realize that the reason their lives are so good, so easy, and so full of the free time...
Sending A Message
Election Day approacheth. In every iteration since, oh, about 1984, I've viewed its advent with a mix of resignation and detachment. Not apathy - I had and have a strong interest in who'll win and how the political landscape will change as a result, but I've long...
Principled Rejection
As I've noted ad nauseam on these pages, too many libertarians love, love, LOVE to denounce each other. More so, even, than their denouncement of non-libertarians of both the Left and the Right. It's shallow moral preening, virtue-signaling, attention-grabbing,...
Weighing Policies
"Mixed bag." A phrase I've used more times than I can count in reference to the Trump administration's policies and actions of these past four years. There are things to like, there are things to dislike, and there are things to hate, and that's wholly apart from his...
“Don’t Believe Them”
Being an Internet political warrior, I've accrued a number of virtual friends and acquaintances (a subset of whom I've had the pleasure of meeting 'IRL,' as the kids say). Among them are a sheaf of never-Trump conservatives who've declared support for and intent to...
Compromised Parties At War
I recently wrote of how our major political parties have become compromised by their cynical transactions, and how that state of compromise means that they both occupy the same solution space on many major areas of public policy. This includes militarism: there is...
RIP, Fourth Estate
A funny thing happened on the way to the election. The Press, the Fourth Estate, the Commentariat, the watchdogs who work to keep government honest, an element of a free society deemed so vital to its continued liberty, decided of its own volition to become a state...
A Taste of Things To Come
George Orwell wrote of a world run by unaccountable Ministries that told people the words to use and the thoughts to think, that controlled behavior, and punished dissent ruthlessly and mercilessly. "Orwellian" has entered our lexicon, and we find example after...
The Truth About Taxes
Joe Biden, if elected President, is going to raise taxes. Many (most?) people who plan to vote for him want him to do so. Of course, when they say "Joe's going to raise taxes," they really mean "Joe's not going to raise my taxes, he's going to take money from other...
The Drug War Killed Breonna Taylor
Once again, the nation is agonized over a police killing of a person of color. Once again, mistrust between the community and the police rile riots that rope in the innocent. This time, it is the case of Breonna Taylor, killed in a botched drug raid. Once again,...
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Opinion
Where Are The Reforms?
Seven months ago today, Breonna Taylor was killed by police in a drug raid gone wrong. One hundred forty-one days ago today, George Floyd suffocated to death under a police officer's knee. The former was highlighted by the latter, and the latter spawned protests all...
OPM, Again and Again
It wasn't that long ago that one of the first things I'd hear out of committed liberals' mouths was their utter loathing of Citizens United, the Supreme Court ruling that affirmed that groups of individuals had the same speech rights as lone individuals. Or, in their...
Stinking Drunk With Power
Fans of a certain genre of music may recognize the title of this article from a Metallica song. It popped into my head as I read the Democrats' recent plans, threats, and promises. Some of these are born of the Republicans' plans to fill the Supreme Court seat vacated...
Politics and the Court
Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg passed away yesterday. May she rest in peace. You will see (and probably have seen) many such statements today and the next few days. These statements will be followed by a pause and an opinion on what should happen regarding...
Quelling Quackery
Critics of libertarianism often resort to absolutist arguments, such as "without government regulations and oversight, people will die because crooks, quacks, and charlatans will be free to kill them." I usually dismiss these protestations as a variant of Washington...
They Can Only Take It Once
I'm old enough to remember that Saturday mornings were cartoon time on the local television channels, and I certainly partook of my share. Interspersed among the Jonny Quest, Magilla Gorilla, Wacky Races, The Pink Panther, and countless others were tons of Looney...
Pax Trumpicana
Hot on the heels of two substantial foreign policy successes (between Israel and the United Arab Emirates, and between Serbia and Kosovo), a member of the Norwegian Parliament has nominated Trump for the Nobel Peace Prize. If you were unaware of those bits of foreign...
Hollywood’s Diversity Sham
My morning news perusals brought me a nifty little snippet from the increasingly moribund Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS), an organization seemingly unable to balance its reliance on the masses to which it provides entertainment against the giant...
Joe and The Mayors
Apparently, it took a shift in the polls to wake Joe Biden and the Democrats up to the fact that Americans are unhappy with the violence raging in many big cities. To put it mildly. Biden emerged from his basement bunker to deliver an "unequivocal" condemnation of...
Looters’ Lives Matter?
Back in 2014, a "writer, editor, and agitator" named Vicky Osterweil wrote an essay titled "In Defense of Looting," and published it during the unrest following the death-by-cop of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri (for the record, the local grand jury chose not to...
“I’m Not Him”
What an interesting time we live in. With just over seventy days until the election, we are faced with a choice between a boorish wild-man Untethered Orange Id (TM) and a senescent lifetime swamp rat. The President, who managed to have a good first year despite coming...
Big Cities and Black Swans
A long-running hallmark of progressive politics is urban planning - the idea that the Best-and-Brightest (TM) should organize our physical lives in a fashion that advances certain goals. Those goals are purported to include efficiency, environmental stewardship,...
The Many Panes of Broken Windows
The aftermath of George Floyd's death under the knee of a police officer has cast a much-needed light on over-policing in our communities. The philosophical basis for that over-policing is the "broken windows" theory, which holds that degradation in small things will...
Another Lost Opportunity
A window of opportunity opened, shortly after George Floyd's death, to make some real and good changes in policing, changes that would not only improve relations with minority communities, but would benefit policing as well. I discussed some of those changes in this...
A Place For My Trouble
Every morning I wake up, holding my breath while I turn on my phone to see the latest news. I think to myself, 'It can’t be worse than yesterday.' But when the news loads, I think, 'Ohhhhh, yes, it is worse.' Thus spake Barbra Streisand, legendary singer, movie star,...
A Tale of Two Memes
Ponder the meme above. What do you see? Is it violent and thuggish government agents dispersing a peaceful protest? Or is it properly equipped law enforcement officers protecting individual and property rights from a violent mob? The meme's author is looking to make a...
When Seconds Count…
This past December, a "good guy with a gun" stopped a mass shooting in a northeastern Texas town, putting (again) the lie to the anti-gun dismissiveness about civilians stopping crime. Right on cue, nanny-billionaire Mike Bloomberg chimed in with his trademark...
The End of the Middle
An old adage tells us, "the truth usually lies somewhere in the middle." Some old adages give us truth and wisdom. This isn't one of them. In fact, it's so not one of them that it nomenclated a couple logical fallacies (yeah, yeah, nomenclated is not a real word, but...
Cloward-Piven and Cullors-Garza
The social and cultural reverberations of the George Floyd killing continue, in ever-more-worrisome form. Major cities around the nation are devolving into criminal chaos, with shootings, homicides, vandalism, and looting spiking. Urban flight is increasing, with home...
Biden’s Law-And-Order Gambit
Where's-Waldo Biden surprised a good number of my political friends (and me) and picked Kamala Harris to run with him against Trump (and, many speculate, to be President should he not complete his term). Given her unlikeability and her spectacular (and well-deserved)...
Manners Make The Peace
What are manners? Manners are the things that we agree to do, but we are not forced to do. This is the heart of the mask argument: if people don't do it because it's "just the right thing," it's not really possible to make them do it from on-high. When "no spitting"...
SALTy Balls
One of the great truths of life is that politicians have virtually no shame, no matter how much they morally preen and scold others. I was reminded of this in reading that NY Senator Chuck Schumer and Congressman Thomas Suozzi are pushing to include a removal of the...
COVID Cojones
There are times, in my blogging, that I am surprised by the degree of response to a particular topic. One such surprise was, and continues to be, the polarization around the wearing of masks in public places to help mitigate the spread of the coronavirus, the advocacy...
Cancel Culture and the NAP
By now, I'm sure you've heard of "cancel culture," the social phenomenon where aggressive defenders of the oppressed will not only criticize you should you act, write, or speak in a manner that doesn't conform to their demands, but will actively seek to punish you,...
Mask Manners
Would you find a politically-charged controversy about looking both ways before crossing the street perplexing? Would you be puzzled by its polarizing by political party, with finger-pointing across the aisle? Would you wonder what law (on the most lawed-upon people...
Stealing Speech
Nigh-on twenty years ago, when I was living in the Sheepshead Bay section of Brooklyn, NY, and working with my family at our restaurant, I put a Libertarian Party sticker on the back window of my SUV. It was a beast of a truck, a Chevy Suburban K2500 in black, with a...
Peacefully Radical Transformations
The Black Lives Matter protests, with their accompanying riots and all the sequels that brought them about, bring to the fore Leftist demands for fundamental changes to the American way of the classical liberal order. Let's review what that order gained us, and the...
Making Money, or Taking Money
An interesting screed passed through my social media today. Interesting, not in a "hm, that makes good points" way, but in a "blindered by ideology" way. The author, Heather Cox Richardson, is a professor of history at Boston College, and a quick perusal of her...
Defund The Schools
Robby Soave, a senior editor at the libertarian Reason.com, offered us a 'lemonade' opportunity yesterday, by suggesting we "defund" public schools if the teachers' unions decide to seize their moment and ensure even less work for their members in the face of the...
Progressives Need Aliens
Six weeks ago, after roughly a week of clashes between protestors rallied by George Floyd's killing and Seattle police, a six-block section of Seattle's Capitol Hill neighborhood was 'occupied' and declared the Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone (CHAZ). Soon, it was...
A Second Amendment Event?
There's a public argument phenomenon that gun rights defenders and Second Amendment defenders are quite familiar with: "gotcha" questions written by the ill-informed. Step into any on-going debate over gun rights, and you'll almost invariably find the pro-gun people...
The End of Excellence
One fine fellow over at the New York Times has posited that symphony orchestras need to be more diverse, apparently because the adoption of "blind" auditions, intended to eliminate racial and gender bias, haven't produced an outcome they deem acceptable. Wait... It's...
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COVID Mask Follies
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Whence Morality?
A Tragedy of Errors
The Script Has Flipped
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