What’s in a Name?
This morning, as I surfed the news and social media, I came across a Freedomworks Facebook post. The content of the post aside, what clicked in my head was the organization's choice of name, and how the name suggested the goals and mission. So, I decided to explore...
Speech is Violence, But Violence is Not?
I once read that a car designer held the philosophy that a new design should be jarring or excessive on first blush. It seemed an odd thought, but on further examination I realized that it spoke to our endless capacity to adapt and our propensity to grow inured to,...
Quoting Jesus
If you're reading this, it is very likely that you are an internet-savvy consumer of political opinion. If you are an internet-savvy consumer of political opinion, it is very likely you have seen memes that purport various things Jesus would say or do. There's an...
The Liar’s Victory
The sordid saga of the Republican Party's attempts to do something about ObamaCare closed a chapter yesterday. Party leadership threw in the towel on both repeal and replacement, and I presume will move on to the next big legislative item (tax reform). Depending on...
The Social Justice Jungle
An essay by a self-proclaimed social justice activist has crossed my social media feed 4 times in the last 2 days. It was shared not only by the expected, i.e. conservative-leaners who'd offer it as a "wow, look at what's going on over there," but by the unexpected,...
The Decline of Tertiary Education
It has been said that, if one is not a liberal at 25, he has no heart, and if one is not a conservative at 35, he has no brain. The statement's origins are murky and more than a century old, but, given what we know about how people tend to evolve politically, the...
What Are You?
I grew up in Brooklyn. Brooklyn, NY. The Brooklyn. Not the old-money Brooklyn that is Brooklyn Heights. Not the hipster-ground-zero Brooklyn that is Park Slope. Not the gentrified Brooklyn that is DUMBO, Red Hook, Cobble Hill, Carroll Gardens, Williamsburg or...
“You Leftists Hate Me”
Trump's victory last November has been the subject of more analysis than most of us can even fathom. The list of possible reasons range from the mundane to the conspiratorial to the bizarre, and, depending on one's perspective, represent everything from the salvation...
Grievance Intersectionality
A recent political discussion that started with a story about how the Black Death was a "reaction" by Mother Nature to humanity's excesses and overburdening her evolved to a recommendation that people could help fight global warming by having fewer babies. That, in...
Why Praising The West Enrages The Left
A funny thing happened in Poland. Donald Trump gave a good speech, one that highlighted an element of his appeal to those who voted for him. He spoke in glowing terms of Western values and society, and their roots in individual liberty. Hold on - that's not the funny...
Monopolist Hand-Wringing
Whole Foods Market, a mecca for sophisticated urbanites, "woke" progressives, and crunchy-granola types, is being bought by Amazon, and that unsettled some of the folks in the eternally fretful and perpetually aggrieved world of liberal politics. Matt Stoller at the...
America’s Century Of Making The World Safe For Democracy
Part 4 - The Tally.... This series of articles argues that Woodrow Wilson is the transformational political figure of the Twentieth Century. Draw the arc from the world of 1917 to the world of 2017 and see there is no other visionary who did more to make...
Deregulation Doomsayers
A bad man uses a gun to inflict harm on others, and, as sure as Pavlov's dog salivating at the ringing of a bell, the usual scolds decry the insufficiency of the laws meant to prohibit bad men from getting guns. The lament is typically combined with contempt for those...
The Right To Choose Poorly
During the climax of Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, the bad guy sees a table covered with chalices of all sorts, among which is the one true Holy Grail. He asks, "Which one is it?" The Crusader guarding the Holy Grail tells him, "You must choose." Recognizing his...
Hating Humanity
Radio personality Anthony Cumia once observed that the farther away people are and the browner they are, the less we care about them. His observation was in reference to the devastation caused in Indonesia and nearby countries by the 2004 earthquake and tsunami,...
Immigration, Borders, and Liberty
Just about a year ago, then-Secretary of State John Kerry told the graduating class at Northeastern University that they were about to graduate into a complex and borderless world. Given the continued hotness of the potato known as immigration (one further complicated...
New-Cue-Lar!
Back in my engineering days, I worked on a project that centered around a new and innovative nuclear reactor design. Although I wasn't a nuclear engineer, and my specialty focused on spacecraft, rockets, orbits and the like, I nevertheless absorbed a journeyman's...
Intersecting Your Politics
Amid the deluge of terms and ideas pouring out of the culture wars and social justice movement, we find certain ones that stand out. One of these is the concept of intersectionality. Google offers us this definition: the interconnected nature of social categorizations...
What Now, Democrats?
A couple special elections for open seats in the House of Representatives happened yesterday. Normally, given that there are 435 seats in the House, no one seat matters all that much, barring something extraordinary like a party leader being unseated. One race...
Gun Rights Lesson #766 – Enough Is Enough! Just Ban All Guns!
EDITOR'S NOTE: This is one of a series of articles on gun rights. Each addresses a common anti-gun trope. "Enough is enough! Just ban all guns and lock up anyone who has one!" Believe it or not, I've seen people make this argument. What tickles me about it most is the...
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