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...
The Headline Is The Tale
Two headlines caught my eye this morning: "Why Vaccines Alone Will Not End The Pandemic" - The New York Times "COVID-19 will likely be with us forever. Here's how we'll live with it." - National Geographic Both articles were pay-walled, which means that most of those...
The Problem With Fascism
Fascism. It's a word that's becoming more and more common in the political sandbox. I see it used by people on the left side of our political aisle, and by people on the right side of our political aisle. Therein lies a problem: people cannot agree on what, exactly,...
First Impressions
Biden inaugurated his presidency with a bang, or more aptly, a torrent of executive orders, and in doing so, established a particular tone of governance. Sad to say, it's not what I had hoped, although I can't even remotely say I'm surprised. First off, he set about...
He’s Gone. Move On
Yesterday, Joe Biden got sworn in as the 46th President of the United States. In his acceptance speech, Biden spoke the word "unity/uniting" eleven times, and he declared that, We must end this uncivil war that pits red against blue, rural versus urban, conservative...
Power and the Purge
The Capitol riot is quite possibly the biggest gift the Democrats could have wished for, ahead of Biden's inauguration. It will be used to vilify the entirety of the Republican Party and its voters, no matter how horrified they were at the riot, no matter how overtly...
The Great Social Media Crackup
There was a man, of libertarian leanings, who found that he enjoyed talking politics. His business being business, he was a subscriber to the Wall Street Journal, and in time found himself drawn to the editorials published daily therein. He soon discovered that the...
Cutting the Rungs
Way back in the day, which in modern measurement means the previous Presidential campaign, Democratic candidate were all of a mind on doubling the national minimum wage. That there is a mountain of scholarship explaining why this is a Bad Idea from an economic...
Mandated Moderation
I recently listened to a snippet of a Ben Shapiro interview with Amy Peikoff, Parler's chief policy officer, wherein the de-platforming of the site by Amazon was discussed. This, on the heels of listening to a legal-issues analysis that affirmed my belief that there...
House-Cleaning 101
As the Trump-impeachment movement gains steam, I am prompted to recall some relevant history. A bit of it older: The Republican Party basically telling Nixon "resign or we will impeach you." A bit of it more recent: my multiple blog posts this summer...
Striking a Blow For Liberty
A few years ago, the popular political narrative was all about Russia, Russia, Russia. Meanwhile, Trump warned us all of China. Turned out, despite the urge that many have to simply gainsay anything that came out of his mouth, Trump was right. China has proven to be a...
Big Tech’s Big Mistake
The political and cultural aftermath of the Capitol riot is already upon us, with Big Tech opting to 'cancel' the Parler social media platform that has become a go-to refuge for conservatives and Trumpists unhappy with Twitter's increasingly censorious ways. That I...
Fire Him!
The case for firing Donald Trump is an extension of an argument I've long made in these pages: impeachment should be "normalized." It should seem incredible that a man with control over nuclear weapons has less job performance accountability than a Starbucks barista....
Conservatives Against Liberty
Twitter's editorial bias in policing the content that flows through its service has been ruffling the Right's feathers for quite a while. The market responded, and Parler emerged as an alternative, with a promise of more freedom and less censorship. Google was...
One Failure To Rule Them All
The doer and the thinker, no allowance for the other - Gerald "Little Milton" Bostock A disinterested observer might conclude that there have been two Donald Trumps. There is the doer, someone who had some significant accomplishments during his Presidency. Some good,...
“Not In My Name”
Those four words, followed by an explicit repudiation and an unqualified concession, are what a true leader would have said during yesterday's riotous chaos at the Capitol building. Those four words would be the feeling and sentiment of a statesman, of a person who...
The Great Divergence
There was a time, not that long ago when measured against the scale of human civilization, but perhaps an eternity ago when measured in political years, when liberals held a number of beliefs associated with the word "free." Free love, free speech, free press, free to...
This Week's Poll
Loading ...Most Liked Posts
Most Liked Comments
on We Condemn Bigotry, Except When We Celebrate It 8+
on Trump’s Bullies 7+
on Gun Rights Lesson #551 – Sensible Gun Regulation 6+on Clinton The Bulletproof 5+
on Fact-Checking Trump 5+
on Let The Squirming Begin 5+
on Whence Morality? 4+- on Bernie-Bros, Meet William Hauser 4+
on Is the Earth’s Climate in Trouble? 4+
on Congratulations, Democrats! 4+
Opinion
Frivolity and the Supremes Redux
Last month, the Supreme Court refused to take up a challenge to Pennsylvania's voting process put forth by Texas, a decision I roundly criticized. That decision is, I fear, even worse than originally posited, with the country breaking at the seams, culturally, over...
The Perils of Vindictiveness
The New York Post runs a "Career Coach" column every monday, wherein a couple readers' letters are answered. This week, the column included a letter from someone who works for a recruiting firm, who noted that his boss instructed him not to refer any candidates who...
Frivolity and the Supremes
One rarely hears "frivolous lawsuit" and "Supreme Court of the United States" spoken together, yet that is the position we find ourselves in. The President's lawyers promised to "unleash the Kraken" of proof of widespread electoral fraud. Instead, fruit-bat-like Rudy...
Sacrificed To Ideology
A COVID-19 vaccine arrived, a product of human ingenuity motivated by crisis. In months, not years. Then, a second. Soon, a third. And, now, the politics. It was inevitable that there'd be debates about who should get immunized first. In a rational society, the...
Quadruple Baconator… With Lard
Many of us have a bipolar relationship with social media. On the one hand, I think it'll go down in history as a horribly corrosive influence on human interaction and cultural advancement. On the other hand, it offers us the opportunity to "meet" and interact with...
Emperor Cuomo and The First Amendment
I've long held the belief that NY Governor Andrew Cuomo has presidential aspirations. That belief has been bolstered of late by a number of his actions and public postures, including his myriad bits of self-congratulation regarding his handling of the COVID-19...
Defending Distrust
A common theme, in looking at America's galaxy of ills in the fall 2020, is that we are transitioning from a high trust society to one of low trust. Consider though, if we look at the last two decades, the problem is trust in the competency (and motives) of our...
Jill Biden and the Cancelniks
Joseph Epstein, a writer, essayist, and "visiting lecturer in literature and writing at Northwestern University," set off the kerfuffle of the day with an op-ed published in the Wall Street Journal that offered a bit of unsolicited advice to the First Lady-Elect....
They’re Not Even Pretending Any More
For weeks after the New York Post broke its story about Hunter Biden's shady dealings, we were told by the mainstream press that it was all "fake news," foreign propaganda, and wildly unconfirmed claims. We also bore witness to social media giants damping the story on...
Biden, Babies, and Bathwater
Politics of personality is the state of affairs America finds herself in more often than not, usually with problematic outcome. One of the greatest features of libertarianism, at least for me, is its elevation of ideas over idols, and while we do have our idols...
The Gatekeepers’ Panic
Remember 2005? It wasn't that long ago. George W. Bush started his second term in office. The Iraq War entered its third year. Hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad became Iraq's President, and pressed forward with a nuclear program that...
Remembering AOL
A bit over 20 years ago, social media was dominated by one company: America Online (AOL). It was a monster, and if you weren't on AOL, you weren't one of the cool kids. AOL's market cap in December, 1999 was $222B (about $350B today). A month later, AOL announced that...
Modern Monetary Stupidity
An economic notion, Modern Monetary Theory (MMT), has been pulled from the dustbin of history to serve as the foundation for a set political doctrines and proposals currently being espoused by the progressives in America. The word "theory" is the notion's first...
SALT Follies, Revisited
We hear it all the time: Republicans support "tax breaks for the rich," Democrats want the rich to pay "their fair share." All this makes great fodder for those who don't bother to inform themselves of the realities of our tax code, and of taxation in America in...
Weekend Musings #4
EDITOR'S NOTE: This is the fourth of a recurring (and highly irregular) series of quick-hits. Because, not everything needs a thousand words. Thanks for reading! Biden's Mask Duplicity President-Elect Joe Biden has informed us of one element of his COVID-19 plans: a...
The Razors of Scrutiny
Highly charged events often produce highly questionable assertions, allegations, opinions masquerading as facts, and armchair erudition. We are inundated with such even in quiet times, and that inundation becomes deluge when things get "interesting." A discerning...
Ideology Trumps Color
The post-election parsing has begun in earnest, no matter that we are still several weeks from Biden taking the oath of office. People have noticed that the country did not go whole-hog down the path laid out by the Left, the Justice Democrats, the socialist-wannabes,...
It’s Not You, It’s Me
An outsider that looked at a system of 90% disapproval, with 90% non-adaptivity, would conclude there was some kind of fundamental flaw. Most Americans agree this is true of our political system. Ask a spectrum of Americans if they think the system is broken, and...
The Fruits of Hypocrisy
New York City's five boroughs are a rather diverse group. Each has its own character, and each produces a distinct breed of New Yorker. Even the two that share a land border - Brooklyn and Queens - have different "feels" and different attitudes. Nowhere is this...
Structural Stupidity
Every so often, a new word becomes de mode in the political sandbox. While the metastasizing social justice movement has provided a veritable deluge of such, along with words to describe those words, oftentimes a "new" word is merely one being used in a new fashion....
Lawsuit Frivolity
Anyone who thought we would escape pandemic year election 2020 without maximum self-inflicted agony has not been paying attention. Naturally, lawyers have added a heapin-helpin. That a judge is throwing out Republican lawsuits in Pennsylvania that contest the election...
The Pandemic and the Public Trust
Editors Note: This article is a follow-up to Inconvenience or Devastation, which explores citizens' motivations in complying with pandemic lockdowns. In the grand tradition of dividing people into two groups, today sort people based on their attitude toward public...
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...
Active Comment Threads
Most Commented Posts
COVID Mask Follies
An Anti-Vax Inflection Point?
“Not In My Name”
The Great Social Media Crackup
Rights and Wrongs
Whence Morality?
A Tragedy of Errors
The Script Has Flipped
Most Active Commenters