“If you are not actively fighting against evil, your apathy is helping evil succeed.” ~ Parrish Miller
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Trial by Media is a Political Weapon
Think about the power of the ‘trial by media’ trend as a political weapon. A multimillion-dollar Senate race in Alabama that was effectively unwinnable for the Democrats is now all but theirs after a liberal media outlet found someone willing to tell an unprovable story about something that allegedly happened nearly four decades ago. Even if…
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First They Came… Why ‘Innocent Until Proven Guilty’ Matters More than Ever
What we are seeing today is the normalization of a disturbing trend which has been slowly growing over the last couple of decades: The wholesale destruction of lives and careers through rumors, speculation, and salacious gossip spread by a partisan, agenda-driven media machine. It takes no proof and no real evidence for this character assassination…
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UBI Proposals Prove Welfare Critics Have Been Right All Along
If there is anything positive to be said about the growing chorus of voices (see here, here, and here) advocating a “Universal Basic Income” or UBI, it’s that the long-term critics of the welfare state have at last been proven correct. The flowery language of “safety nets” and “a hand up, not a handout” has always…
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Why the insurance model doesn’t work for healthcare
Healthcare is costing Americans trillions of dollars every year, yet they keep demanding more and more of it—all at little or no cost to themselves, of course. The underlying problem with healthcare costs becomes quite evident when you look at the likelihood of being diagnosed with cancer at some point in your life (50%), the…
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Coercion versus persuasion and the definition of force
I was recently involved in a discussion involving the allegation that someone forced another person into making certain choices regarding their line of work. The details or identities are not important, but I would like to touch upon the subject of what constitutes force from the libertarian perspective. It is, I think, important to remember…
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Exposing the ‘lesser of two evils’ fallacy
You hear the argument every election cycle. It’s espoused at the federal, state, and local level. Democrats use it. Republicans use it. Surprisingly, even some Libertarians and anarchists can be heard appealing to it. It’s the ‘lesser of two evils argument,’ but despite its wide adoption, it’s a fallacy. One trick to making a fallacy…