Bitterly Clinging… To The Narrative
In the first (brilliant) season of the HBO series True Detective, Detective Hart (played by Woody Harrison) cautions Detective Kohle (played by Matthew McConaughey) against letting predilections or presumptions interfere with rational analysis: You attach assumptions...
Controlling Language
Consider the word "liberal." Nowadays, in America, calling one's self a liberal conveys certain information with regard to political and social beliefs. Average folks in normal conversation will have a pretty consistent understanding of what the word means and what...
They Don’t Understand Why
Today's New York Post offered an article blaring the headline American women are more obese than ever before, which noted that 40% of American women are overweight. I had to dig into the source material to find the historical data to discover what more obese than ever...
Walls of Separation
Andrew Cuomo, governor of New York State, recently issued a decree that the State of New York will not do business with any entity that engages in boycotts of Israel and Israeli businesses. The BDS movement is an effort to apply economic pressure on Israel for that...
Better That The Responsible Suffer
The nation is in the midst of an opioid painkiller epidemic. At least, that's what we're being told by a hyperventilating press and a passel of politicians. If you want to cut through the chaff to some facts, start with this article over at Reason and then let Google...
The Authenticity Fallacy
I recently had a fun little argument with a couple Italian friends about pasta and pizza. It started out with a post about one friend's horror at taking someone to a good Italian restaurant only to witness him order spaghetti and meatballs. A dish that, I have been...
Trump’s Bullies
The dust has settled, all challengers have conceded, and Donald Trump is the presumptive Republican nominee for the 2016 presidential election. The press has started turning its eye to the increasingly nasty contest between Hillary Clinton, the all-but-certain...
Climbing A Broken Ladder
The Ladder of Success. A ubiquitous metaphor, used to describe both the structure and the process of economic self-betterment, and the subject of countless political memes of both the progressive and conservative variety. Progressives argue that our land of...
Appropriating Gangsters
Much is made today of "cultural appropriation," the act of emulating styles, behaviors, language, cuisine, etc that are rooted in or traditionally associated with other cultures. It's the latest battlefield of the social justice warriors, who went so far as to take to...
Global Warming and Orwellian Sheep
Bjorn Lomborg, an environmentalist who is among those who suggest that there are more pressing issues in the world than AGW, was recently disinvited from speaking at an Australian university because some students made a bunch of noise. It exposes the group-think...
Satisfaction
A poster in a political page I follow shared an article about vocational training today. It fits into the on-going story line regarding the lack of trades-skilled workers, the educational shift away from anything "manual," and the long-running and...
Hide Your Burritos!
One of the newer catchphrases birthed in the fetid swamps of the social justice movement is "cultural appropriation," wherein (presumably white) people dress, act, dance or otherwise behave in a manner that's associated with another (presumably non-white) culture....
The Immorality of Banning Organ Sales
I believe in self-ownership, and that extends to ownership of my innards. Accordingly, I believe that an individual should be able to sell his innards. It is legal to donate a kidney, but it is illegal in the US to sell a kidney. Same is true for other organs, even...
Blaming Capitalism
Any Internet political warrior will have seen, time and again, accusations leveled against capitalism for the woes that befall them or the societies which the accusers are white-knighting. Rebuttals that the woes they are ascribing to capitalism are far more...
Prognostications, v4 – President Trump
Having bludgeoned all his rivals for the GOP candidacy for president into submission, Donald Trump now gets to turn his rhetorical "gifts" fully onto Hillary Clinton. It's going to be quite interesting to see how The Donald goes after Her Royal Highness. One thing is...
Canada, Eh? Check Your Privilege!
Actress Lena Dunham recently joined the ranks of those celebrities who've suggested they might move out of the country if Trump gets elected president. While some of these wealthy and privileged have not specified their preferred destination, and at least a couple...
Excess and Judgmentalism
A recent article in The Atlantic led with the headline Too Many Elite American Men Are Obsessed With Work and Wealth, and followed with the sub-headline "And it's making the pay gap worse." The article opens with the reported wage gap between women and men, which it...
The Tragedy of the Commons – A Refuge for Scoundrels
The brilliant economist and "great man" Milton Friedman observed: "there is no alternative way so far discovered of improving the lot of the ordinary people that can hold a candle to the productive activities that are unleashed by the free-enterprise system." In...
Your Children Are Not Important
From a libertarian's perspective, there are few failings of modern liberalism worse than its subordination of the individual to identity groups or to the collective as a whole. In this manner, modern liberalism flips on its head the tenets of classical liberalism, in...
The Latest Eminent Domain Outrage
Here's the latest outrage from our "friends" in the government. And, it's in the mighty "free" state of Texas, to boot. A quick recap. New London, CT seizes Suzette Kelo's via eminent domain so that Pfizer can build a big development. Kelo sues, gets all the way to...
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