The Right To Earn A Living
The ease of publishing and sharing editorial content that the Internet affords us has done wonders for the proliferation of knowledge, of ideas, of opinions and critiques, and of contrasting viewpoints. This ease has also, unfortunately, made sloppy thinking and...
Patient Zero
It happens without fail. A "political" incident happens, and within the first few hours a particular narrative coalesces and is repeated hundreds or thousands of time by people on a particular side of the issue. The recent shooting of US Congressman Steve Scalise and...
The Left’s Moral Decay
Whatever moral ascendancy the West held was lost here today. Thus spoke American reporter Vince Walker about the Salt March and the British response on one particular day in one location, in the superb 1982 film Gandhi. The Salt March was an act of civil disobedience,...
Trump and the Bang
Trump's heavy use of Twitter for relaying his thoughts, both during his campaign and as President, is, depending on your point of view, evidence of tactical brilliance, evidence of a temperament fundamentally unsuited for the Presidency, evidence of a...
Health Insurance And The Nirvana Fallacy
Political debates (and not just political debates) tend to be chock-full of cheap tactics and assorted logical fallacies. When it comes to the health care debate, two in particular tend to stand out, and they're often linked. Those who argue in favor of heavy...
Our Grievance Culture
It is a malady confined to man, and not seen in any other creature, to hate and despise himself. -- Michel de Montaigne My household "reading room," a locale that lends itself to the consumption of short bits of written material, has amongst its selection a couple...
Losing Friends and Family
I have a social media rule: I don't initiate political posts or arguments on my main Facebook page. I break this rule only on extremely rare occasions, and when I do so, it's almost always something funny, sarcastic, and nonpartisan (typically...
You Must Lose
A question recently arose in a political forum I frequent, as to whether making birth control pills over-the-counter (and thus drastically reducing the cost of acquiring them) would appease the reproductive-rights scolds. This is a proposal that has been floating...
America’s Century Of Making The World Safe For Democracy
Part 3 - Another Other Hand.... ... Domestic policy Men are as clay in the hands of the consummate leader. -- Woodrow Wilson Wilson's quote stands in contrast with what American leaders usually write into our national story: "All men are created equal." "Government of...
A Conflict of Values
Locavore. Farm-to-Table. Artisanal. Organic. Non-GMO. So go the labels for a modern trend among progressive, socially conscious diners, who see our industrialized, mass-production, agriculture industry as something to be eschewed, derided, and protested. This...
America Last
This week's non-shocking news out of the White House centers on Trump's decision to withdraw America from the Paris Climate Accord. It's non-shocking in that it was a campaign promise, although in the realm of politics, perhaps it is a shock that a campaign promise...
Pronouns Over Policy
What is the message of today's Democratic Party and of the Left in general? Yes, we know "Trump sucks," and Hillary should have won, and the GOP has been taken over by right wing extremists and religious zealots that are going to turn the nation into Gilead, the...
Modern-Day American Tories
The American Revolution was by no means a universally embraced dream, way back in its infancy in the mid-late 1700s. By John Adams' estimation, preferences were divided somewhat equally between "loyalists, fence-sitters, and patriots." The loyalists, also dubbed...
Loving the Poor
A silly little graphic popped up on my Facebook feed today. It presented a two-dimensional political chart, with authoritarian at the top, libertarian at the bottom, economic-left on the left and economic-right on the right. It then devolved this political spectrum...
Whose Government Is It Anyway?
Having spent a lifetime around Greeks, and a couple decades working in the restaurant business with many Greeks, I've been well-exposed to the intricacies and eccentricities of Greek profanity. Greeks, being in general a religious people, have quite colorful ways of...
Gun Rights Lesson #620 – Silencers
EDITOR'S NOTE: This is one of a series of articles on gun rights. Each addresses a common anti-gun trope. "The NRA Wants The Ban On Silencers Lifted! That's Pure Evil!" One sign that gun rights are going in the right direction (pun somewhat intended) is recent...
Gun Rights Lesson #909 – Powerful Weapons
EDITOR'S NOTE: This is one of a series of articles on gun rights. Each addresses a common anti-gun trope. This article follows up GRL #378, which discusses the musket argument. "No one needs such a powerful weapon!" This anti-gun argument is typically brought forth...
America’s Century Of Making The World Safe For Democracy
Part 2 - On The Other Hand.... ... Where Woodrow Wilson fails: foreign affairs. During World War 1 President Wilson should have forced de colonization on Europeans from a position of strength: the Allies greatest peril was the German all-out offensive of 1918, and he...
False Morality
The other day, I had an extended... lets call it a "discussion..." with a couple socialized medicine advocates on the Internet. Yes, yes, silly me. Arguing on the Internet is like (per Google's third suggestion) playing chess with a pigeon. Nevertheless, I persist in...
Zero-Sum Feminism
Conservative gadfly Milo Yiannopoulos, never averse to sharing his views, had a fun exchange in late 2016 with ABC News reporter Terry Moran. Nestled in among Milo's trademark bluntness and take-downs of politically correct themes was a very astute observation on the...
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