Still Standing

Unless firearms are actually involved, I am no fan of trigger warnings. Still, I must warn Dear Reader that the videos below contain disturbing images of real-life violence. As this violence is being committed by a government neighboring my own, one that claims to lead the world in its dedication to human rights, and one

Badges of Shame, and of Honor

Decades ago, a six-year sojourn in Canada acquainted me with the awe in which the denizens of that snowy realm hold the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. Many a northern lad could dream no grander dream than growing up to join the ranks of these bravest of all servants of Queen and Country. In one fateful

Watching the Watchmen Wobble

It is surely a profound relief to many an American breadwinner, whose workmates may happen to number a hundred or more, to learn that the highest court in the land will not countenance the attempts of a distant agency, charged with maintaining workplace safety, to force his employer to treat him as a guinea pig

Reset This!

The New York Times would like you to think that the Great Reset is a conspiracy theory cooked up by disgruntled right-wing deniers of whatever the masses are being programmed to believe in this news cycle. This is the same paper that, in the 1930s, solemnly dismissed “rumors” of the (very real) Soviet-orchestrated famine responsible

Asking Questions

I appreciate Ohio Representative Jim Jordan’s exposure of the arbitrary nature of the repressive policies currently foisted upon the American people in the name of “public health.” In this exchange, Representative Jordan stumps Dr. Anthony Fauci by asking when, and on what objective basis, Americans can expect to get our liberty back: As we can

Brewing the Truth

As Václav Havel notes, contemporary despotism attempts to conscript each citizen as an agent as well as a victim of oppression. To the extent that we get along by going along with approved untruths, we increase the pressure on others to join us in our retreat from human dignity. On the other hand, Havel warns,

Doing the Truth

A sure sign that a given regime is despotic is its hostility or indifference to what is good, true, and beautiful. The science of despotism consists in discouraging virtues such as (genuine, active) charity, and instilling vices, such as deception, or compliance with the web of lies in which despotism seeks to entangle us. How

The Slothful Tyrant

In the first volume of Democracy in America, Tocqueville warns us about a new and sinister form of oppression to which modern democratic peoples are susceptible: “the tyranny of the majority.” In olden times, abusive rulers used harsh punishments to coerce their subjects, and even just rulers were surrounded by flatterers seeking to harness public

The Single-Issue Fallacy

Recently, a prominent elected official, in an effort to appear to promote national unity, blessed us with a blanket denunciation of half of her fellow citizens and coreligionists. Catholics who voted for Donald Trump, according to Nancy Pelosi, “were willing to sell the whole democracy down the river for that one issue.” That “one issue”

Counseling Capitalism

“That invidious word, ‘capitalism,’” Irving Kristol reminds us, “was invented by European socialists about a half-century” after the publication of Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations. Although the term is now lovingly embraced by proponents of free enterprise, it has never ceased to carry negative connotations, even to souls disinclined towards socialism. Kristol recognizes that, in