Individual rights
Thanksgiving: the REAL history
Wednesday, November 26th, 2008In May of 1606, the first American settlers arrived in Jamestown.
The Virginia Tidewater Region, where these original 104 set up their colony, was a breathtakingly fertile chunk of land, and so it was that these first American settlers found more resources than they could at first believe: oceans teeming with seafood; the woodlands alive with [...]
Rahm Emanuel and Compulsory Servitude
Thursday, November 20th, 2008As you may or may not know, an explicit statist named Rahm Emanuel is who Barack Obama has chosen to be his chief of staff.
Rahm Emanuel, just to be clear, is the same person who, in his poorly written book, penned these chilling words:
“It’s time for a real PATRIOT Act that brings out [...]
Sustainable Development, Unmasked
Monday, November 17th, 2008An angry reader writes:
Dear Sir: I’ve been asked to write this on behalf of a number of people who, for the past two months, have been reading your articles with a kind of horror. We are troubled, not because what you say doesn’t contain truth — it may or may not — but because your [...]
Cognitive Dissonance
Friday, November 14th, 2008In his book True Believer, the brilliant autodidact and intellectual workingman Eric Hoffer wrote the following:
“Absolute faith corrupts as absolutely as absolute power.”
The term cognitive dissonance, which presupposes faith above reason, was popularized (but not coined) by a social psychologist named Leon Festinger (1919-1989), in his seminal work on the subject A Theory of Cognitive [...]
What the Judge Said
Thursday, November 6th, 2008Not quite six years ago, a U.S. Federal Judge named William Young sentenced convicted terrorist Richard Reid to life in prison.
For those of you who don’t remember, Richard Reid was the genius who had plastic explosives built into his shoes and who boarded an airplane with the intent of blowing everything, himself included, to smithereens. [...]
The Danger of Democracy
Tuesday, November 4th, 2008“Statues of Liberty” — oil painting by Beth Haynes
The United States is not a democracy, nor was it ever intended to be.
The United States is, as Benjamin Franklin put it, a Constitutional Republic.
The word “democracy” does not appear one time in either the Constitution or the Declaration of Independence – and for very good reasons:
Democracy [...]
What are the Legitimate Functions of Government?
Thursday, October 30th, 2008What are the legitimate functions of government, and how do we know for sure?
How can we determine good politics from bad, smart political candidates from ignorant?
The answer: by defining our terms.
Governments are the body politic that have the power to make and implement the laws of the land, and humans are the only species [...]
Godless Constitution
Monday, October 6th, 2008There is, among rightwingers predominantly, though not exclusively, a rather persistent misconception that the United States is at its roots a religious nation.
This is demonstrably false, and rather easy to verify, as we shall see in a moment; but first, let us note that this subject is significant not because of any particular issue [...]
The Sickening Truth About Sierra Club
Friday, October 3rd, 2008Sierra Club is the oldest environmental group in the nation. It was founded in 1892 by a Scottish immigrant named John Muir, whose stated goal was “to make the mountains glad.” In many ways, that puerile policy compendiates perfectly the essence of Sierra Club.
Among other things, John Muir was an unapologetic racist, writing in [...]
Vasily Grossman
Tuesday, September 30th, 2008The Russian writer Vasily Grossman was born in 1905 in what is now the Ukrainian town of Berdichev. At that time, Berdichev was still part of the Russian Empire. Vasily Grossman attended high school in Kiev and then the University of Moscow. He graduated from University in 1929 with a degree in a chemical engineering. [...]
Do Animals Possess Rights?
Sunday, September 21st, 2008Rights are a formal codification of human freedom. They are political precepts that define and delimit human freedom in societies.
That last thing is emphasized because rights would not be necessary if you lived alone, or even if you lived in a small and insular society. Rights derive from three things: human individuation, human society, and [...]
Environmentalism: cult of death
Thursday, September 11th, 2008Environmentalism, with its attendant army of politicos all armed to the teeth with environmental laws, is, let us make no mistake, the highroad to hell.
Before going all the way green, I urge you to take a longer look into exactly what horse you’re backing here: it may well turn out to be a horse of [...]
Freedom versus Equality
Wednesday, September 3rd, 2008A reader writes:
Dear Thinking Man: In your endless diatribes on “freedom,” you’ve managed to leave out one very important thing: a definition of the word. The men who penned the Declaration of Independence wrote out a system of so-called rights that were limited to life, liberty, and happiness for males only — and actually only [...]
Obama
Sunday, August 31st, 2008My grandmother was a typical white person (Barack Obama, 2008).
Obviously, one needn’t look long or hard these days to see just how far America has come from her philosophical roots, and yet it’s frankly difficult to imagine a greater perverter of America’s philosophy than Mr. Barack Obama.
The foundational premise of America is stated in no [...]