Tag: politics
Patrick Cockburn discusses the growing lack of support for the Iraqi prime minister, Maliki. Kevin Carson discusses whether government is just things we do together. Lawrence Wright discusses the savage strategy of ISIS in Iraq. Jacob G. Hornberger discusses why we need an enlightened citizenry invested in liberty. Ajamu Baraka discusses Western policy on Iraq….
In recent weeks both Thoughts on Liberty and Reason have published articles on the Millennial generation’s social and political attitudes, as they relate to libertarianism. One is a good example of how libertarians should approach Millennials. The other most decidedly is not. Let’s start with how to. Rachel Burger, at Thoughts on Liberty (“Millennials And Left-Libertarianism…
This series at Thoughts on Liberty shows just how poorly understood left-libertarianism is, even among those who would claim to know enough about it to laud it as ”the future of libertarianism.” Rachel Burger begins her “defense” of left-libertarianism by conflating it with liberaltarianism. Left-libertarianism is a body of outlooks within libertarianism which see leftist concerns…
The old “53% vs. 47%” meme that got so much attention in the 2012 election resurfaced this week when it came out that Colorado gubernatorial candidate Bob Beauprez apparently first coined it at a 2010 Rotary Club speech. The 47% who pay no income tax, he said back then, are “dependent on the largesse of…
Virtually all commentary about the influx of unaccompanied Central American children into the United States, which some say could rise to 90,000 this year, misses the point: no government has the moral authority to capture these kids and send them back to the miserable situations they have escaped. This claim will strike many people as…
The drastic long-term drop in Americans’ trust for government since the 1950s periodically evokes pearl-clutching on the center-left. Liberal radio talk show host Leslie Marshall recently tweeted, as apparent cause for concern, a Pew Research poll finding the percentage of the public that trusts government to “do the right thing” most of the time or “pretty…
C4SS Feed 44 presents Cathy Reisenwitz‘s “Know Thine Enemy: Political Ignorance and Libertarianism” read by Juliana Perciavalle and edited by Nick Ford. I’ve been a libertarian for years. And for years I’ve approached learning the ins and outs of the political process kind of like an abolitionist might view learning the inner workings of a slave plantation. Which…
The widely noted transition from the “old economy,” based in the production of physical commodities, to the “new economy” of the information age—with its capital base concentrated not in heavy machinery and land, but in human beings and in knowledge—has been attended by a concomitant sea change in the legal framework surrounding business. Where ingress…
When a front-running presidential contender tells the country that thanks to Barack Obama, “[w]e are only inches away from ceasing to be a free market economy,” one is left scratching one’s head. How refreshing it is, then, to hear a prominent establishment economist — a Nobel laureate yet — tell it straight: The managerial state…
Appena tre anni dopo aver ridotto la sua presenza in Iraq, gli Stati Uniti stanno mandando nuovamente le truppe. In risposta alle conquiste fatte dal gruppo jihadista Isis nella sua ultima offensiva, il presidente americano Barack Obama sta mandando in Iraq 275 soldati per “fornire supporto e sicurezza al personale e all’ambasciata americana di Bagdad.”…
On July 7th, Molly Knefel published a great piece on jury nullification in The Nation. Knefel opens by discussing the trial of Cecily McMillan, an Occupy Wall Street protester who was convicted of “assaulting” a police officer who had assaulted her, and sentenced to a prison term that most of the jurors who convicted her…
Although it was overshadowed by reaction to Monday’s ruling on Hobby Lobby’s health insurance coverage of contraception, the Supreme Court made a ruling the same day that otherwise would have received more attention in its own right. Harris vs. Quinn at first glance covers only very narrow ground. It involves the rights of home health…
At first glance, a no-holds-barred conversation with an anarchist might seem the most inappropriate centerpiece imaginable for a magazine issue marking the bicentennial of the United States of America. But then again, Karl Hess was no ordinary “anarchist.” For all its brazen anti-statism, Hess’s “red-white-and-blue anarchy” fits like a glove with a cover that proclaims “Happy…
C4SS Feed 44 presents David S. D’Amato‘s “The Libertarian and Catholic Social Teachings” read by James Tuttle and edited by Nick Ford. Free markets don’t have to mean the particular incarnation of corporate world dominance we see all around us today. For an entire tradition, an individualist anarchism that once blossomed in the United States, free…
Quella fazione del centrosinistra che va in estasi davanti a Elizabeth Warren ama citare la frase di Barney Frank, “stato è il nome che diamo a ciò che decidiamo di fare assieme”. Ora, l’idea secondo cui il governo è la personificazione di ciò che “noi” decidiamo di fare presuppone qualche correlazione significativa tra ciò che…
As far as it went, the Supreme Court generally got it right in the Hobby Lobby-Obamacare-contraception case. Unfortunately it didn’t go nearly far enough. The court ruled that “closely held corporations” whose owners have religious convictions against contraceptives cannot be forced to pay for employee coverage for those products. I wish the court could have…
The Supreme Court recently closed its term with a ruling in Burwell v. Hobby Lobby, concerning the government’s mandate for employer provided insurance to cover contraception. Voting 5-4 that closely held corporations could be exempt from the mandate if it violates the sincerely held religious beliefs of the owners, the decision has generated a lot…
(Inspired by a comment from James Tuttle) SCOTUS has been dancing its way down a “whatever it takes to keep things from collapsing under the weight of their own contradictions” tightrope with ACA. First they affirmed its dubious constitutionality, now they’re carving out exceptions for entities which claim to be acting on orders of a…
When the Supreme Court’s Hobby Lobby decision came out Monday, I had a lot of negative feelings about it, and I’ve been mulling column ideas in my head ever since. But all my attempts to organize my thoughts into a coherent statement and put them in writing — including this one — have been less…
Lincoln Unbound: How an Ambitious Young Railsplitter Saved the American Dream — and How We Can Do It Again by Rich Lowry (HarperCollins 2013), 390 pages. One of the central themes in James Scott’s Seeing Like a State is the ideology he calls “authoritarian high modernism”: It is best conceived as a strong (one might even say muscle-bound)…
