Why We Remain Armed
On this day, 243 years ago, the Battles of Lexington and Concord were fought. "The Shot Heard Round The World," made legend by Ralph Waldo Emerson, was fired on that fateful day, and the American Revolution was underway. What was that day about? Why was that shot...
The Perfect Word
In the ever-growing minefield of political correctness, where nearly every utterance can and will be parsed and critiqued by the synthetically outraged and by eternally vigilant social justice warriors, where even pronouns can get you in deep trouble, there remains...
At Their Whim
Two stories in recent news, one local, one national, serve as stark examples of the decay of our system of government. In New York City, an attorney that specialized in navigating its difficult and seemingly at-whim pistol permitting process is going to trial for...
Review: Lost In Space on Netflix
It's been quite some time since I had a level of anticipation for a television or movie project as high as I had for Netflix' reboot of the iconic Lost In Space science fiction series, which ran from 1965 to 1968 on CBS. I grew up watching reruns, and along with Star...
Syria, Chemical Weapons, and the UN
A suspected chemical weapons attack in Syria. Denials by the usual suspects, howls by the usual suspects, and our President promising an armed response. Is any of this remotely surprising? More germanely, is the promised response likely to accomplish anything...
The Rights You’ve Lost
EDITOR'S NOTE: This article is a follow-up to Forbidding Happiness, which discusses the infringement of the core Jeffersonian ideal the pursuit of happiness. I recently discussed Thomas Jefferson's affirmation of three fundamental rights: life, liberty, and...
Fresh Fools
Every day in America, about 11,000 people celebrate their 18th birthday. That means that, every day in America, about 11,000 people reach voting age. An oft-quoted adage notes, If you’re not a socialist before you’re twenty-five, you have no heart; if you are a...
Society’s Takers
Lets roll the WABAC Machine's dials to July 13, 2012, when then-President Obama made his infamous You didn't build that speech. Or, gaffe, if you prefer, because the turn of phrase outraged many and cranked the rescuing/apologia spin machine into damage-control...
Escalating the War Against The World’s Oldest Profession
A hullaballoo arose yesterday with an FBI raid that shut down the personals website Backpage.com. Backpage is (was?) one of a number of sites where individuals posted personal ads offering goods and services. Somewhat notoriously, prostitution was one such service...
Gun Rights Lesson #602 – Reciprocity
EDITOR'S NOTE: This is one of a series of articles on gun rights. Each addresses a common anti-gun trope. "Why should my state have to respect the lax gun licensing rules of some other state?!" Lets say that you, an American living in America, wish to carry a handgun....
Teaching Deceit
I recently caught an interview of comedian Tracy Morgan (from April 2, 2018, interviewed on SiriusXM by the great Ron Bennington), in which Morgan spoke his mind about the harm that political correctness has done to comedy and to society: That PC shit taught us how to...
The Concentrated Wealth Conundrum
The UK's Guardian news organization, known for its measured opinions and staid style (that's sarcasm, by the way), cranked up some of my political acquaintances with a report of a "shocking" study that predicted the world’s richest 1% could control as much as...
Harvesting The Poor
The annals of history tell us that, across millennia, income redistribution flows upward, from the poor to the rich (like the economics of most of Africa today). The poor, today, would be better off opposing income redistribution, here and now in America, in how their...
Sticking It To Each Other
The title of this essay is, in essence, the driving force of at least the last decade's worth of politics and social movement. Consider: Obama was elected to "transform" the nation i.e. stick it to the bitter clingers with their God, guns, and nativism. Clinton's...
Forbidding Happiness
Thomas Jefferson wrote "that all men ... are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness." These are, indeed, unalienable (or inalienable, in modern spelling) rights, i.e. rights that,...
Distortion Entitlement
We can understandably pity today's New York City cab driver. His prosperity, and indeed his job itself, is under existential threat from the technology disruption of ride-sharing services Uber, Lyft, et al. This is even more the case if he owns his medallion. Those...
Surface Solutions and Core Consequences
A tidbit found in a Reason.com article about the unintended consequences of War on Drugs tactics illustrates both the vapidity and destructiveness of "show-off" responses to societal issues. An effort to tackle cocaine use included an initiative to pay farmers in...
Killing His Golden Goose
Earlier this month, Trump slipped a dagger between the ribs of the stock market, a market that had been riding high since his election, by confirming fears of a trade war with China. The market reacted as expected. A week ago, he signed the "omnibus" spending...
Earnest Fools
Or... Giving Away The Rights They Don't Think Matter Yesterday, protestors marched all over the world to protest gun violence and demand more gun control be imposed on America's citizens. These marches, led by the young, captured national headlines (including the...
Brinkmanship By Design
Another day, another grotesque, bloated, pork-laden omnibus spending bill, passed in the looming shadow of a government shut-down. A bill so long and convoluted and presented so close to deadline that no one even had a chance to read it all (Senator Rand Paul tried)....
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