I was in the middle of a nice discussion with the man behind the counter at the firing range. He was surrounded by semi-automatic weapons and hundreds of handguns in the display case that separated us. I used the opportunity to tap his expertise, mostly because I don’t keep up with gun issues enough. He […]
There is no shortage of complaints about millennials. You bump into them everywhere. But maybe it is time to think carefully about what makes this generation’s frustrations so distinctive, even understandable. To grasp the frustrations, even despair, of the twenty somethings, you could cite vast data on unemployment, low wages, shattered friend networks, boomerang living arrangements, […]
Every day in Congress, it seems, a member who created a problem demands more power and money to “solve” the resulting crisis. So it is with “tax inversions,” by which companies change their tax domicile — their country of residence, for tax purposes — to escape Washington’s clutches. Doing so deprives Uncle Sam of money […]
The doctrines of Nazism swept the developed world long before the Nazis took power. [Excerpt from Omnipotent Government: The Rise of Total State and Total War (1944), chapter 7] Hitler and his clique conquered Germany by brutal violence, by murder and crime. But the doctrines of Nazism had got hold of the German mind long before […]
People tour the nation’s capital to be delighted by symbols of America’s greatness and history. They seek out monuments and museums that pay tribute to the nation state and its works. They want to think about the epic struggles of the past, and how mighty leaders confronted and vanquished enemies at home and abroad. But […]
Authority versus Science in the Climate Change Debate. When it comes to the climate change debate, many of the loudest voices are confidently making assertions that are not backed up by the actual evidence — and in this respect, they are behaving very unscientifically. One obvious sign that many people in the climate change debate […]
Presidential candidate Bernie Sanders has brought “democratic socialism” out of the shadows of fringe ideologies and into the spotlight of mainstream American politics. Nevertheless, many find Sanders’s self-description perplexing. Is socialism seriously still in play? Didn’t the horrors of the 20th century finally bury that ideological monstrosity? No, that’s communism you’re thinking of. To quote the […]
To write about a man known chiefly as a theologian — a bishop in the early Catholic Church, no less — might suggest at first a discourse on religious issues. Augustine of Hippo (later canonized as “St. Augustine”) was unquestionably a giant of Christian thought and teaching at the time he wrote in the early […]
Bernie Sanders has single-handedly brought the term “democratic socialism” into the contemporary American political lexicon and shaken millions of Millennials out of their apathy towards politics. Even if he does not win the Democratic nomination, his impact on American politics will be evident for years to come. Sanders has convinced a great number of people […]
Science is undergoing a wrenching evolutionary change. In fact, most of what we consider to be carried out in the name of science is dubious at best, flat wrong at worst. It appears we’re putting too much faith in science — particularly the kind of science that relies on reproducibility. In a University of Virginia […]
“Socialism” is a weasel word. Consider that the adjective “socialist” applies commonly — even plausibly — to countries with vastly different ex ante institutions and with vastly different social and economic outcomes. Yet Canada, Norway, Venezuela, and Cuba can’t all be one thing. Does socialism mean substantial freedom of the press, as in Norway? Or does […]
Remember that weird kid in school? I don’t mean the really scary one. I mean the borderline oddball. The one you had to talk to a bit to spot the weirdness. The boy who never knew what TV show everyone was talking about. The girl who, when you asked her what her favorite music group […]
This Atlantic story reveals how Americans lived 100 years ago. By the standards of a middle-class American today, that lifestyle was poor, inconvenient, dreary, and dangerous. (Only a few years later — in 1924 — the 16-year-old son of a sitting US president would die of an infected blister that the boy got on his toe while playing […]
The modern fashion industry is one of the most creative, dynamic, fast-moving, profitable, and downright interesting sectors in the economy. But right now, there are worries in the air. It seems like the old-fashioned fashioned runway show — groovy music, cameras flashing, debuts of new stuff you can buy months later — is no longer […]
This is a very strange political season. Some of the Senators running for the Republican presidential nomination are among the most principled advocates of smaller government in Washington. Yet all of them have proposed tax plans that, while theoretically far better than the current system, have features that I find troublesome. Marco Rubio, for instance, leaves […]