Slavery cannot be justified or excused by enlightened people, but it can be studied, explained, put in context, and understood—if all the facts of it are in the equation. In “Recognizing Hard Truths About America’s History With Slavery,” published by FEE on February 11, 2023, I urged an assessment of slavery that includes its full […]
It may sound cruel to say so, but such thinking closely mirrors that of the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia. Planned economics is enjoying yet another revival. Climate protection advocates and anti-capitalists are demanding that capitalism be abolished and replaced with a planned economy. Otherwise, they claim, humanity has no chance of survival. In Germany, a […]
After decades of forced sterilizations followed by feeble apologies, California is shifting to the endgame of its century-long sterilization program: taxing innocent citizens to pay off its victims. It is a commonsense view that government spending is generally inefficient compared to spending by private people and businesses. As the Nobel Prize-winning economist Milton Friedman famously argued, […]
The federal government is facing very serious budget issues, dramatically worsened by the past few years’ expansion in profligate spending. But while that gets most of the fiscal headlines at the moment because of the national debt limit discussion, the Social Security and Medicare Trust Funds have far more unfunded liabilities than the official federal deficit. And […]
In a 1990 interview, legendary English singer and songwriter David Bowie opined that being famous was not itself “a rewarding thing.” The co-composer (with John Lennon) of the 1975 funk rock hit, Fame claimed that “The most you can say is that it gets you a seat in restaurants.” Fame is certainly fickle. Some people get it […]
The U.S. government recently hit its $31.5 trillion debt limit after years of careening baseline spending on entitlements combined with emergency COVID-19 spending in the last few years to produce record-busting deficits. The new Republican majority in the House of Representatives, elected largely on economic concerns like inflation and runaway spending, now faces an obstinate Senate and […]
Socialists will continue to argue that Nazism was not “real” socialism, but the Nazi propaganda despised capitalism and spoke like Karl Marx. One of the comforts of growing older is knowing that some things will never change. Sports fans will always argue over the designated hitter rule and over who was the best heavyweight boxer […]
When we break down the core institution of free speech, we lose a lot of what made America so successful in the first place. Free speech used to be held up as one of the core American institutions. It was enshrined in the First Amendment of the Bill of Rights for a reason: while other […]
In ‘Democracy in America,’ Alexis de Tocqueville explained how the “principle ideas” of New England foundation served as the foundation of social theory in the United States. Perhaps, we as 21st-century Americans should adopt some humility surrounding our own abilities to interpret and understand the motivations and events encompassing the founding and early years of […]
An eight-ream bill is no sign of legislative nobility. On December 20th a handful of Republican senators shuffled before an audience of reporters prepared to issue fiery polemics on the year-end omnibus bill which sat, heavy and ponderous in all its eight-ream absurdity on a wheeled cart before the five-senator assemblage. “DANGER: $1.7 trillion of hazardous […]
You can find heroes of character in every country’s history, but at times it seems that we’ve forgotten more of them than we’re producing. All over the world, conflict seems on the rise. Sometimes it shows up in armed violence. More frequently, it manifests itself in character assassination, cancel culture, and class warfare. We spend […]
How the tribalistic mentality around Britain’s healthcare has led to everyone worse off. A month ago The Guardian ran a story exposing the fact that British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak received private healthcare. Sunak faced online backlash for resorting to the market instead of relying on the UK’s National Health Service (NHS). To an outsider, it may […]
In July, in an effort to combat global warming, Berkeley, California, became the first city in the United States to prohibit natural gas in new buildings, including residential homes. “We need to tackle climate change every way that we can,” said Berkeley City Councilwoman Kate Harrison, who led the effort. Other cities, including Sacramento, Los Angeles, and […]
The late Powers Boothe only has a small role in Sin City, but it’s an important one. Being sick is never fun. But when I was struck by a virus a few weeks ago, I took the opportunity to watch one of the great pulp action movies of the 2000s: Sin City. The film adaptation of […]
Some of these techniques are playing out before our eyes. We all know the cons of Twitter, but one of the pros is discovering new and interesting people. One of my favorite new follows is Benjamin Carlson, a public relations guru and former editor at The Atlantic. Carlson’s tweets are among the best you’ll find on Twitter, […]