Random stuff I find interesting and you may not.
Generations of presidents have cited “the will of the people” to legitimize power grabs. The Founding Fathers wouldn’t approve. . . . Americans are encouraged to believe that their vote on Election Day somehow guarantees that the subsequent ten thousand actions by the president, Congress, and federal agencies will embody their wishes, spoken or otherwise, … Read more
Since 2015, however, Uighurs have had little choice but to host certain guests at their intimate gatherings. The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) no longer stays in the background; rather, officials insist on being physically present. This further limits the ways Uighurs negotiate and express their identity in public. In its quest to secularize Uighur identity … Read more
I’m chagrined that I cannot recall the identity of the person on whose Facebook page I found this apt comparison of 2020 with 2019. (My sincere apologies to him or her.) 2020 Compared to 2019 Related PostsThe Swedes actually did have Covid-19 models The Big Quit: Even Tenure-Line Professors Are Leaving Academe. ‘Why Would I … Read more
On the first day of Hanukah, December 11, 2020, groups of Jews in a number of countries in a gesture of solidarity celebrated the festival with Uighur Muslims. Prominent Jews had already expressed concern about China’s treatment of these Muslims. Former British Chief Rabbi Jonathan Sachs on July 22, 2020 called the treatment a moral … Read more
Human rights groups say that the International Olympic Committee is ignoring their concerns over China’s treatment of the Uighur ethnic minority group and Beijing’s repressive policy in Hong Kong. As first reported by the Associated Press, the activists allege that the committee has “turned a blind eye to the widespread and systematic human rights violations … Read more
3 Reasons Trump is Wrong to Oppose Civil Asset Forfeiture Reform Since I’m an economist specializing in public finance, I get very upset about punitive tax policy and wasteful government spending. But what really gets my blood boiling is reading about the horrific policy of civil asset forfeiture, which literally allows government to … Read more
A Dec. 5 incident in Michigan shows again that it is past time for a simple rule to apply to protesters of any kind: Stay away from private houses. Period. If this rule is broken, police should strictly enforce any and all relevant laws against harassment, incitement, trespassing, and disturbing the peace. More importantly, even … Read more
The loss of economic and social opportunities does not translate into the loss of one’s fundamental obligation to love. . . . A politician charms his voters by promising them better opportunities for success. Christ, on the other hand, is not at all concerned about success. He demands that all people love each other. Love … Read more
Better to take refuge in the LORD than to trust in man. Better to take refuge in the LORD than to trust in princes. Psalm 118 I Shall Not Want Audrey Assad Lyrics Related PostsWhen politics replaces heroes Get the troops out of DC Buttigieg won’t save the Democrats Trump wants to sabotage … Read more
The Institute for Justice wants the Supreme Court to rule that the Fifth Amendment requires a prompt post-seizure hearing. Civil asset forfeiture laws, which allow the government to seize property allegedly tainted by crime without ever charging the owner, are fundamentally rigged in favor of the law enforcement agencies that get a cut of the … Read more
The world is determined to look away from a horrific campaign of killings being perpetrated in Africa under the name of Islam Michael Nnadi was the kind of Nigerian whose face projected a nearly supernatural joy. His pronounced features made him look both older and younger than his 18 years. His skin was dark, aglow … Read more
Back in 2017, I compared the welfare state vision of “positive rights” with the classical liberal vision of “negative rights.” To elaborate, here’s a video from Learn Liberty that compares these visions. Libertarianism, Explained: Positive Rights vs. Negative Rights For what it’s worth, I don’t like the terms “positive rights” and “negative rights” … Read more
A lot of self-described communists and socialists are motivated by enthusiasm for communists’ and socialists’ stated goals like equality, plenty, and dignity. They ask us to imagine a brotherhood of man in which everyone has abundant food, clothing, shelter, education, medical care, and other opportunities for flourishing. To oppose communism and socialism is not to … Read more
Are you surprised that as anarchists loot, a mainstream publisher issues, and National Public Radio boosts, a book that justifies looting? Why? Property is theft, the anarchist Proudhon declared in the 1800s, echoing a sentiment of the Marquis de Sade from the 1700s. Are you surprised Black Lives Matter leaders call for ending the nuclear … Read more
What kind of cultist do you have to be to break down crying, saying that a radio host and Donald Trump are your only hope? A grown man did that. How is this guy any different from those fragile, shrieky leftists who go to pieces when someone violates their Safe Space? It’s pathetic. By the … Read more
On October 17th, the New York Times published an op-ed celebrating the 25th anniversary of the Million Man March that neglected to mention the anti-Semitic history of its organizer, Louis Farrakhan. In response, former Times editorial board member Bari Weiss tweeted that the institution had adopted “a worldview in which Jew hate does not count.” … Read more
“We must follow The Science,” I have often heard, from blithering idjits who know nothing about science, except that those who question “The Science” must be smeared. The scientists, meanwhile, contradict each other, but this is never an issue until one strays from the party line. That is more serious, for it might shake someone’s … Read more
On February 28, the idea of locking down and smashing economies and human rights the world over was unthinkable to most of us but lustily imagined by intellectuals hoping to conduct a new social/political experiment. On that day, New York Times reporter Donald McNeil released a shocking article: “To Take On the Coronavirus, Go Medieval … Read more
With November 2020 looming, Americans look forward to the end of a seemingly permanent election campaign and perhaps some reduction in the raging fever of national tensions that ail the country. Dream on. Even if we have a clear winner on election night, the selection of next year’s lucky White House resident seems bound to … Read more
“Trump’s attack on the debate commission is an attack on the election itself,” blares the headline from today’s Washington Post op-ed page. That article was written by former senator John Danforth, who has been a member of the Commission on Presidential Debates since 1994. Danforth, an ordained Episcopal priest whose piety earned him the derisive … Read more
Just as Democratic Party elites and Big Tech try to stamp out the Hunter Biden email story comes another angry demand: Truth and Reconciliation Commissions. Chew on the chilling, delicious irony as Joe Biden tells us he wants to heal the nation while pundits of the left, backing Biden, seek tribunals. There’s nothing like punishing … Read more
The conception of the king as a god on Earth, or as god’s representative on Earth, is so widespread as to be nearly universal: Egyptian pharaohs and Japanese emperors are gods or god-men descended from gods; Roman emperors were deified not only after death but during their lifetimes, receiving worship in the temples; the British … Read more
It’s more than fair to say that we are experiencing a pandemic, but not the one you hear about ad nauseum. No, the pandemic is not a virus, it is a pandemic outbreak of Munchausen’s Syndrome by Proxy which focuses its obsessions on the virus. Munchausen’s Syndrome by Proxy is a mental illness in which … Read more
In the politics of envy that permeated the Senate Judiciary hearings for Judge Amy Coney Barrett, Senator Amy Klobuchar’s lament that “I might have thought someday I’d be sitting in that chair” was the most revealing of all. Spoken half in jest, Klobuchar’s musings exposed the malign envy that several of the female Democratic Senators … Read more
The 1619 Project has not been having an easy time of it. Ever since the Pulitzer Prize-winning essays first appeared in the New York Times in August 2019, historians have been chipping away at some of the central claims. No, they’ve shown, protecting slavery was not the primary motive of the American revolutionaries when they … Read more