Contrarianism As Ideology
It is in the nature of politics for groups to hold onto cherished ideas and signature policies. People are drawn to parties or ideologies because they believe in them, and once in are unlikely to step out or away. Thus, ideas and policies are persistent, and political...
Liberal Contempt Elected Trump
Have you ever been accused of something you didn't do? Have you ever been characterized in a way that you know is wrong? Have you ever heard others say unjust or unfair things about you? It stings, doesn't it. A lot. Now, imagine that such unjust accusations have been...
How To Lie Without Lying
Here's a recent PBS headline: Trumps considers limiting media access to the White House. An average reader might interpret this as the President-Elect planning to reduce the press's access to himself, his cabinet and his staff. After all, that's what "the White House"...
The Fractal Nature of Identity Politics
Fractals are quintessential examples of beauty in nature. By definition, they are patterns or shapes that repeat themselves at ever smaller scales. In this, they are perfect metaphors for modern identity politics. Distilled to their essence, identity politics are...
Cherry-Picking Externalities
Critics of capitalism and free markets, when challenged on the basis of theory, often trot out certain erudite-sounding sound-bite phrases they picked up from their anticapitalist echo-chambers. One that made its rounds during the recent hullaballoos over minimum...
Choosing Our Battles
This past week has brought us a death sentence for mass murderer Dylann Roof and the intent to prosecute the Chicago Facebook Torturers under hate crime statutes. While I, as a libertarian, object to both the death penalty (I take issue with granting the State the...
Gun Rights Lesson #831 – Your Gun Rights are Safe
EDITOR'S NOTE: This is one of a series of articles on gun rights. Each addresses a common anti-gun trope. "No one's trying to take your guns away, your gun rights are safe!" I most recently saw this assertion as a comment to a post by Congressman Mark Meadows that...
A Feature, Not A Bug
The attached Twitter comment recently caught my eye. Its tone is one of disbelief, and its intent is as a head-shaking lament about President-elect Trump's cabinet nominations. I'm sure that Ashley's like-minded followers commiserated in their concern about the...
Gun Rights Lesson #747 – Nuclear Bombs
EDITOR'S NOTE: This is one of a series of articles on gun rights. Each addresses a common anti-gun trope. "Do you think the Second Amendment gives you the right to own a nuclear bomb!?" Believe it or not, there are people who trot this argument out. It is both a...
Hack Attack Bipolarity
The Russians are coming! The Russians are coming! Rumors consume the news cycle that the Russians have stolen our electoral legitimacy, and as is typical, partisan battle lines are drawn long before a semblance of facts are in. The irony would be rich, if it did not...
Small-Government Liberals
Had I written or uttered such a phrase before November 8, 2016, most of you would have laughed your asses off and mirthfully mocked me. It is quite the oxymoron. Yet, in another example of how the election of Donald J. Trump has turned corners of the political world...
Obstructing Straw Men
Since I typically have a low opinion of those who have high opinions of themselves, I tend to tune out celebrities' and artists' political squawkings. The evidence of Trump's election suggests that many others do, as well, and it's typically fair to embrace as a...
Trumpkins’ White Knights
The desire to standup up for the disadvantaged and the oppressed is a driving force for many in the social justice movement. Consider me not too surprised, then, to bear witness to the latest bit of bizarreness in a time that's chock-full of them: someone...
Oppressed Liberals
Political correctness and social justice are complicated and ever-evolving movements, but they can be distilled down to a simple, Manichean dualism: You are either oppressor or oppressed. What you are depends on demographic markers: race, gender, ethnicity, sexual...
Review: The Americans on FX
After seeing endless hype about how the FX series The Americans is one of the best shows on television, I decided to dive in despite my reservations about the premise. The show, for those unaware, is about Soviet spies posing as an American couple. It takes place in...
Scorched Earth
The defeated, in their denouement, have a choice to make. They can accept defeat with grace, or they can raze the crops, salt the field and scorch the earth. They might choose the former either to show their morality or in the hopes of a future comeback. They might...
Bitterly Clinging 2, Electric Boogaloo
President Obama, less than a month from exiting the White House, recently opined that he could have won a third term had he run. The Constitution's Twenty-Second Amendment, ratified in 1951, limits presidents to two terms, and conspiracists' warnings notwithstanding,...
Gas Clouds Forged Into Political Power
Cliche at this point to say, but a shift of political tectonics is underway across the developed world. To me, the remarkable commonality among the insurgents is the lack of either philosophical or practical specificity; gassiness (not one newspaper in the country...
Defended at Gunpoint
Contemplate the history of socialism since its first political manifestation in Bolshevik Russia in 1917. Consider the list of countries have had, at one point or another, self-identified as "socialist." Now, check out this little clip. One notion especially caught my...
Population Dissonance
A common and long-running theme among statist big thinkers is that people are having too many babies and thereby overtaxing the planet. We first heard such negativity from Thomas Malthus nearly 250 years ago, but have yet to witness the famine and resource depletion...
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