Contrarianism As Political Philosophy
Ever wonder why the Left is so adamant about defending Islam, despite the latter's decidedly illiberal attitudes towards matters of prime importance to the Left (e.g. gay rights, women's rights, marriage, abortion)? Ever wonder why, when a Muslim commits an atrocity,...
Oh, Catalonia!!
On October 27, the Parliament of Catalonia declared independence from Spain. There are lots of libertarian lessons therein. First: There is no political disease political violence cannot make worse. Catalan nationalism, a three century-long fact of Catalan culture,...
Always The Hammer, Never The Nail
Pay attention to the next person you encounter who advocates for socialism, in part or in whole. Or, who decries capitalism as unfair and unjust and declares that government intervention and central planning are "necessary" to correct wrongs and injustices. Or, who...
Scientists Are People Too
I recently took a break from my hoovering "urban fantasy" novels to read Bill Bryson's A Short History of Nearly Everything. The book is a history of the science of the Earth and the universe, with the "history" aspect being discussion and presentation of the great...
Suppose You Were An Idiot…
And Suppose You Were A Member of Congress; But I Repeat Myself Thus goes a famous Mark Twain aphorism. It held true when he said it, and it holds true today. The perpetual head-scratching and WTF utterances by our Commander in Chief (who is not and has never been a...
Prostitution and Prohibitionists
It took a mere 13 years for America to realize the futility of alcohol prohibition. Pot prohibition, enacted at the federal level 80 years ago, is slowly but surely unraveling. Conversations about the futility of criminalizing harder drugs, once limited to the darkest...
Peak Irony
Ever think that something is so crazy that it can never actually happen? Or, that when it does happen, it can never be topped? I used to, but the news proved me wrong so many times I stopped making such presumptions. Today's bit of OFFS: A University of California,...
Dogs, Creeps, and the Tribe
The Harvey Weinstein saga, so sordid that it started an avalanche of dialogue about Hollywood's casting-couch dirty laundry, has bloomed outward into social media and the broader culture. Actress Alyssa Milano started a hashtag movement, #metoo, given women from all...
Carrying Congress
Lets set the WABAC machine for just about a decade back, and contemplate some of the words that then-candidate Barack Obama offered up in his pursuit of the Presidency: I taught constitutional law for ten years. I take the Constitution very seriously. The biggest...
The False Edge
Comedian George Lopez made tabloid headlines today, thanks to a Trump-bashing performance that fell so flat he was booed off the stage. As the story goes, Lopez was performing at a fundraiser, a major donor asked that he tone down the Trump jokes, and Lopez apparently...
Gun Rights Lesson #315 – Arsenals
EDITOR'S NOTE: This is one of a series of articles on gun rights. Each addresses a common anti-gun trope. "No one needs an arsenal! There should be limits on the number of guns someone can own or buy!!" This argument sprung forth in the aftermath of the Las Vegas...
Will Hollywood Live Up to the Left’s Rules of Feminism?
The stream of accusations of misbehavior by disgraced creep Harvey Weinstein has turned into a deluge, with actress after actress coming forth with allegations of, to put it mildly, sleazy behavior. In classic emperor-has-no-clothes style, the overwhelming consensus...
Viet Nam, And Beyond, In Theory
An exploration of America's involvement in foreign wars, examined through the light provided by Ken Burns and Lynn Novick's brilliant documentary "The Vietnam War," finishing its run on PBS, is timely and should inform the debate on the Global War on Terror. The...
Trump, From The Gut
A recent Internet perambulation brought to me an interesting assertion (can't find it now, so I paraphrase and declare it's not my own): Trump managed to turn the football-kneeling matter from a vague social protest into an overtly partisan issue. By criticizing the...
A Virtue-Signal Soft-Shoe
Late last week, the New York Times published an expose of Hollywood power player Harvey Weinstein, who, it appears, is a creep and a sexual predator who "paid off sexual harassment accusers for decades." The Times report opened the floodgates. A number of women have...
What Laws Would You Pass?
The mass shooting in Las Vegas continues its hold on front pages and social media platforms, and the killer's motives remain stubbornly unknown and mysterious. Since nature abhors a vacuum, and since this atrocity is tailor-made for the "do something!" anti-gun crowd,...
Gun Rights Lesson #804 – The Gun Show Loophole
EDITOR'S NOTE: This is one of a series of articles on gun rights. Each addresses a common anti-gun trope. "We must close the gun show loophole!" Most of us have heard the adage "a little knowledge is a dangerous thing," but how many of us actually respect the caution...
Liberals and Gun Rights
Do you think Trump's a fascist? Did you despise the Patriot Act? Do you distrust the police and other government law enforcement? Do you support Black Lives Matter? Do you side or sympathize with with Antifa? Do you believe The Handmaid's Tale is a cautionary tale...
Anti-Social Media
The horror and tragedy of the massacre committed in Las Vegas by Stephen Paddock, a massacre that at this point stands without reason or explanation, is incomprehensible even to a society that has seen such a number of times in the past decade. So far, we have seen no...
Riots, and Who They Concern
Riot, public insurrections, activism: the definitions are as debatably charged as the modern hyper-prisms people look at politics through in this day and age, so henceforth, I’m referring to these things as "events." Before we parse event factors or merits (or lack...
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