Screw The Poor
Capitalists and free-marketeers, we are told, don't care about the poor. Capitalists and free-marketeers, we are told, exploit the poor and the weak for selfish and excessive gains, and actively work to keep them down so that the exploitation can continue. Capitalists...
Capitalism Needs Poverty
Flipping through the stations on my satellite radio the other morning, I heard those three words uttered by a talk show guest. With great earnestness, and more than a tinge of anger. His "logic?" Apparently, when unemployment gets too low, capitalist pigs like the...
Fear, Not Ethics
The scientific ethicist community's response to the report that a Chinese genetic researcher successfully altered a gene in twin human embryos (that were later implanted in the mother's uterus and resulted in live births) was exactly as expected: condemnation,...
Chocolate Stouts, Double IPAs, and Democratic Socialism
Forty years ago, a Democrat did an interesting thing. On October 14, 1978, then-president Jimmy Carter signed a bill that, among other things, deregulated the beer industry by legalizing home-brewing. At the time, there were 44 breweries in the country. Old Milwaukee,...
All Socialists Are Thugs
The oft-memed and oft-mocked Congresswoman-Elect Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez apparently got her feathers ruffled by Donald Trump, Jr. the other day. Junior tweeted a meme that depicted AOC asking "why are you afraid of a socialist economy?" and Daddy Trump replying...
Irony is Dead
Way, way back in 1987, Steve Martin starred with Daryl Hannah in a fun little movie called Roxanne. The story, based on the play Cyrano de Bergerac, is a romance between a smart, clever, and spirited small-town fire chief in the Pacific Northwest and a beautiful...
Normalizing Impeachment
Impeachment is in the air as the Democrats take up the House. They promise a "cannon of subpoenas." The nation will soon grapple with the precedents of properly relieving a President of duty. The precedents are not encouraging, with regard to dressing up impeachment...
Our 21st Century Eloi
France continues to be rocked by a populist uprising against the former golden child Emmanuel Macron and his "green" policies, serving notice to the rest of the First World that their citizenries aren't going to meekly accept hardships imposed from on-high, whether it...
The Death Premium
Despite easy and repeated deconstruction, the "gender wage gap" narrative remains a popular talking point among the synthetically aggrieved and the cynically partisan. Its simplicity, "women get paid 78 cents for every dollar men get paid," along with the confirmation...
Tariff Man!
Prior to the implementation of Trump-o-Nomics, 2018 Edition, most people with a smattering of historical knowledge and economic literacy knew that tariffs were a Bad Thing. The Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act of 1930 was a stupendously wrongheaded action, one that combined...
If You Need A Safe Space…
You shouldn't get to run the country. There is much ballyhoo over the rise of the Democratic Socialists, a rise whose epicenter was the surprise primary upset of ten-term Democratic Congressman Joe Crowley by young upstart Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. While I'd suggest...
Anatomy of a Gun Bill
California, a state that used to actually have some modicum of respect for gun owners (decades ago), has become (no surprise, given its leftward lurch) the land of a steady stream of gun-rights infringements in recent years. A proposal for a tax on the sale of all...
Thinkers and Doers
An intellectual is someone whose product begins and ends with ideas. This quote by Thomas Sowell was among a pile of delicious nuggets in a recent interview of the great thinker posted at Reason. Sowell both defines what he means by "an intellectual" and condemns...
The Joy of Making
My brother and I have a vacation house in upstate New York, a quiet retreat in a small Southern Tier town where we gather with family and/or friends a few times a year to escape from our daily routines. The house is an on-going project for me, and I've built/installed...
Erecting New Barriers
Not content with demanding racial quotas in education and geography, the Left took another giant step backward in its supposed advocacy for equality. California recently passed a law requiring women on corporate boards. Step backward, you might ask? Indeed. Hereafter,...
One Good War
Libertarians (among others) often criticize the past few decades worth of foreign entanglements, pointing out that they have almost universally not gone as intended, have almost universally produced unintended adverse consequences, and have cost the nation trillions...
The Freedom To Leave
In some of the (many) arguments about socialism in which I've engaged, its defenders point at the successes of communes and kibbutzes as "proof" that socialism can work and as a refutation to my assertion that it is always doomed to fail. There are various ways to...
What Are Your Real Priorities?
The creators of America's system of governance recognized that different people want different things. They not only ensconced this philosophically in the "pursuit of happiness" understanding, but practically in their creation of a federalist system, where different...
About That Wall
Some time ago, I used to argue that the Right's focus on illegals was misplaced (to put it mildly). Of course, that fell on deaf ears - nothing seemed to wind GOPers up more than the illegal "problem," and I eventually gave up (mostly) spitting into that windstorm....
The Immigration Snooker
Talk to a present-day GOP die-hard about issues, and pay attention to the emotional level associated with each. Run the gamut of today's big issues, and gauge the fervor behind each response. I'll bet dollars to doughnuts that, in most cases, you'll see the greatest...
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