I was once startled to hear the late Christopher Hitchens support the view of President Bill Clinton-era conservatives that “character matters.” As with everything else, Hitchens used impeccable logic in defending its application to those either campaigning for or already in power. Because the candidate’s “personality” was literally created based on what characteristics played best
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I’m not going to bother going over the gory details of the national disgrace that unfolded in Charlottesville, VA on Saturday. It’s been hashed out over and over again, and there’s nothing to be gained by putting it under a microscope here. But I do have some observations that I’d like to share. First, there
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Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-CA) met with WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange at the Ecuadorian Embassy in London, reports Business Insider. Conservative journalist Charles Johnson told the Daily Caller that he arranged the meeting between Rohrabacher and the WikiLeaks founder on Wednesday because Assange hoped to strike a deal with the United States so that he can
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While Libertarian Party chairman Nicholas Sarwark has frequently embarrassed himself during his achievement-less tenure in his post, he has stooped to a new low. Sarwark is working with professed communists to throw libertarian icon, Tom Woods under the bus as a racist. Using the fallout from “Unite the Right” to attack his critics, Sarwark–assisted by
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Crews removed Confederate statues from city parks and public squares across Baltimore shortly after midnight on Wednesday, according to the New York Times. The City Council unanimously passed a resolution to tear down several monuments after a white nationalist rally to defend similar statues turned deadly in Charlottesville, VA over the weekend. Baltimore Mayor Catherine
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In case any question remained as to whether non-leftist and paleolibertarian voices were welcomed in the Libertarian Party, LP Chairman Nicholas Sarwark made it clear in a recent Twitter battle with liberty movement voices associated with the Ludwig von Mises Institute. The institute’s President, Jeff Deist, was singled out in particular for ridicule. Attempting to
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The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, a prominent liberal civil rights organization, has demanded that President Donald Trump fire White House Chief Strategist Steve Bannon in response to the violence at the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, according to a bizarre statement released by the group on Saturday. “We call on
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To hear Hillary Clinton’s considering becoming a lay-preacher has created a social media firestorm of comments and opinions. The biggest challenge in addressing whether her qualifications as a lay-preacher are valid is the likelihood that her supporters are standing by, ready to pounce on anyone who questions the former First lady’s interest in sharing her
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White House Chief Strategist Steve Bannon has once again fallen out of Trump’s favor, and his job could well be at risk, according to reports by Axios‘s Jonathan Swan and Politico‘s Josh Dawsey, Eliana Johnson, and Ben White. Trump appears to have two main gripes with Bannon. Firstly, he suspects Bannon to be responsible for the
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On the eve of the federal convention, and following its adjournment in September of 1787, the Anti-Federalists made the case that the Constitution makers in Philadelphia had exceeded the mandate they were given to amend the Articles of Confederation, and nothing more. The Federal Constitution augured ill for freedom, argued the Anti-Federalists. These unsung heroes
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Danny Tarkanian announced that he will challenge Senator Dean Heller in Nevada’s Republican primary during “Fox & Friends” on Tuesday, according to Politico. “So many people have contacted me in the past few months, saying, ‘You got to run against Dean Heller,’” said Tarkanian on the morning news program. “They understand, like I do, that
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A dispute recently erupted at a conference sponsored by the Mises Institute between right- and left-leaning libertarians, that is, between Jeff Deist, President of the Mises Institute, and Daniel Horowitz, who is something of a fixture at CATO. Since Tom Woods has provided a spirited defense of Deist’s position, which calls for a combination of
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Certain quarters of the libertarian universe are in an absolute tizzy because Mises Institute President Jeff Deist invoked “blood and soil” in a recent speech. In the minds of some PC brain-addled libertarians, this is clearly an indication that the speaker was dog whistling to Nazis. This is both profoundly clueless and shameless PC grandstanding.
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Nearing the end of his life, Christopher Hitchens no longer considered himself a Trotskyite, or even a socialist. But he never repudiated his Vietnam-era politics, and to his dying day praised the “heroic” Vietcong, despite Ho Chi Minh’s obvious Stalinist-style politics and how said politics were murderously applied after Saigon fell (Hitchens, like others in
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A disappointed Republican donor in Virginia has filed a lawsuit against the national and state Republican Parties for failing to repeal ObamaCare, according to The Hill. The retired attorney, Bob Heghmann, filed the suit in U.S. District Court on Thursday, alleging that the GOP raised millions of dollars in donations despite having knowledge that the
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Predictably, the Joint Chiefs of Staff have already pooh-poohed President Trump’s July 26th LGBTQ directives, banning the politicized transgender production from the theater of war.Why “predictably” (preachy, too)? Whether Republicans like it or not, the military is government; it works like government; is financed like government, and is marred by the same inherent malignancies of
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In a phone call to Mexico’s in-over-his-head head-of-state, Enrique Pena Nieto, President Trump said he won in New Hampshire because it is a “drug infested den.” Not long after, NH Governor Chris Sununu weighed in with a carefully measured response, one tailor made to suit the political dissociative identity disorder of a state that votes
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CNN’s Jim Acosta went on a rampage during yesterday’s press briefing toward Senior Policy Advisor Stephen Miller while he was discussing the RAISE Act, an immigration reform bill. “This is the largest proposed reform to our immigration policy in half a century,” Miller began. “The most important question when it comes to the U.S. immigration
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The fallout from the “Liberty Summer” campaigns continues on. Young Americans for Liberty leaders have been selling their activists on these campaigns all summer (and continue to do so), but they have not turned out as expected. The “Clean Mi Govt” part-time legislature initiative headed by Brian Calley continues to receive terrible press in Michigan
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If I were to draw up a list of the problems facing my country, and then to discuss their nature and possible solutions, I might be starting work on a rather long book. Instead, I will confine myself to what I think are the two most immediately pressing, and that are within the direct control
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To those who enjoyed the Scaramucci show and are sad that it has come to an end, please consider the old adage: If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is. Anthony Scaramucci came into the Trump administration like a knight in shining armor. Besieged with constant infiltration, leaks and seemingly unprecedented turmoil
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As soon as John McCain was diagnosed with brain cancer, a bipartisan chorus of praise for the career politician emerged. Whether McCain is the good man and good “public servant” that he is now being made out to be are empirical questions. The evidence with respect to both is overwhelmingly in the negative. Since a
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As Hillary Clinton continues her “excuse” tour regarding her decisive loss to Trump, ranging from the now well-worn Russian collusion thesis to weak support from Obama during the campaign to an ineffective and shattered DNC, many Democrats have sought to acquaint her with the painful reality that she was simply a bad candidate. Such frankness,
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Libertarians have typically been known as standing for freedom of expression, but that is going to change if Elizabeth Nolan Brown has her way. The sex-positive Reason contributor, who co-founded Feminists For Liberty with the vehemently anti-libertarian Cathy Reisenwitz, is bringing social justice warrior-style thought policing into the libertarian movement. And for what reason? Because
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On July 26, 2017, President Donald Trump announced a ban on transgender individuals from joining the military. Trump’s announcement was met by praise from the Right and hate from the Left. In response, leftists continued to use their same-old Hitler comparisons and acted like this was the worst thing to happen in American history. But
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Since announcing his candidacy for the Republican nomination for U.S. Senate, former Libertarian Party presidential candidate Austin Petersen has piqued the interest of Missouri conservatives seeking a candidate to unseat left-wing incumbent Claire McCaskill. A candidate with national prominence like Petersen would initially appear to be an ideal nominee in one of the most closely
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Once upon a time, a Republican president formulated a doctrine that had little to do with regime change, and demanded that countries previously protected by the US military look to their own defense. Quickly into his first term, then-President Richard Nixon in 1969 announced “the Nixon Doctrine” which asserted that the nation’s Cold War allies
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In recent years, numerous states have been passing new reforms of the long-abused civil asset forfeiture in which police agencies seize private property without any due process. At least 11 states, plus the District of Columbia, have passed new reforms. Some reforms, such as those in New Mexico and Nebraska, prohibit asset forfeiture altogether in
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As we are well into the first year of the Trump administration, and leftists are still walking around in a dim haze of incredulity, I’d like to reflect a little on why the man was elected. As some of you have probably inferred from the title, I am (on paper) a “coastal elitist.” I was
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As a Latino in the conservative movement, I can honestly say that conservatives have not hit the right notes with minorities. This is mostly because leftists and Democrats have a way of conflating right-wing ideas with immoral acts such as murder and racism, thus scaring minorities into leaning liberal. Even though it should be easy
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One of the more transparently manipulative and hypocritical slogans used by Western Communist Parties in the mid 1930s to recruit allies for Stalin was specifically designed for Catholics: “You can still take Communion and love the Soviet Union.” Graham Greene, novelist, pundit, and above all, Catholic, embodied this slogan. Indeed, Greene’s attempts to link Catholicism
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Contrary to the narrative of Donald Trump’s friends and foes alike, the phenomenon of “fake news” long precedes the 2016 presidential election, even if the moniker is of a fairly recent vintage. To deem an item reported by journalists a piece of “fake news” is not necessarily to say that it is patently false. Of
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Conservatives today locate the origins of the “mainstream media” in the Watergate and Vietnam era; when every reporter since has wanted to have the presidency-toppling effect of a Woodward and Bernstein. But from Watergate on, the presidencies that reporters have wanted toppled have been exclusively Republican ones. Much of this partisanship had to do with
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Said the president: “For some time I have been disturbed by the way CIA has been diverted from its original assignment. It has become an operational and, at times, a policy-making arm of the Government. … [T]his quiet intelligence arm of the President has been so removed from its intended role that it is being
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Thanks to at least nine opposing Republican senators, Congress left for its July 4 break without passing a replacement bill for Obamacare. The opposition from these Republicans was two-fold: Four conservatives thought the GOP bill on the table went too far in retaining government control over the medical insurance market, while five centrist members complained
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Some observers have smugly claimed that it is impossible to have a reactionary movement. They say it would be like piecing a ruined cobweb back together or trying to set Humpty Dumpty back on his wall. For them, it is one item on a long list of impossibilities. If one supposes that reactionaries want to
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I haven’t wanted to write about the whole Donald Trump Jr. thing because the story is utter crap, but here I find myself writing about a crap story with nothing underpinning it but crap piled upon layer after layer of crap. The Democratic partisans, enraged liberals, and their lapdogs in the mainstream media have been
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The partial legalization of marijuana has not been particularly ideal. Thanks to high regulatory burdens on the marijuana-production industry, limitations on production volume, and high taxes, black markets have persisted within those states that have adopted a variety of legalization measures. Perhaps most burdensome has been ongoing federal banking regulations that essentially prohibit marijuana producers
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In a previous article, I wrote about how the war on drugs and the government monopoly on the legal system has created the Tragedy of the Commons in our justice system. Because legislators and police officers have every incentive to appear “tough on crime” but the cost of the sending a criminal to a courtroom
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When it imposed its net neutrality rules on the telecom industry, the FCC was fixing a problem that didn’t exist. While proponents of Net Neutrality have long claimed that the regulations are necessary to impose fairness for Internet usage, access to the Internet has only become more widespread and service today is far faster for
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Over the past several months, the mainstream media and Washington elite have perpetuated conspiracy theories and demonstrably false narratives in an effort to distract and stymie the current administration from reforming America’s health care–and the claims are growing ever more outlandish. In one article, CNN teeth-clinchingly claimed that under the bill formerly known as the
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Now that House and Senate Republicans have released health care bills, I have come to one conclusion: the GOP is in need of major help writing a health care bill. They never seem to get it right, and they always fall short of making these bills conservative. Consequently, I have created a guideline that highlights
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It is now official: all of the work that the Young Americans for Liberty activists did in Michigan on their “Liberty Summer” for the “Clean Michigan Government” campaign was for naught. The “Clean Mi Govt” campaign for a part-time legislature, spearheaded by career politician Brian Calley to rehab his image for his upcoming run for
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I have been asked to write a weekly column on British politics. Since I am writing for a largely American readership, and since Americans mostly know little of what happens outside their own country, I think it would be best if I were to begin with a brief overview not only of what is happening
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In the wake of Donald Trump’s win, you might have noticed a new swamp spring up–one that Trump certainly wouldn’t want to drain. You were likely swamped with the same meme ad nauseum, comparing maps of “Trump’s America” and “Hillary’s America.” The meme-making quality: Trump’s America is far larger than Hillary’s precisely because it consists
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Christopher Wray, President Donald Trump’s FBI director nominee, seems to be a perfectly nice man, but nothing he said during his July 12 confirmation hearings distinguishes him as someone who would reform former President Barack Hussein Obama’s Islamophilic FBI. President Trump ran on a set of ideas based around aggressively stopping Islamic terror. Like a
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Omitted from leftist narratives as to why those of their own defected to the anti-Communist side is how a single murder provoked the defection. Instead pro-Communists and “anti-anti-Communists” assign base motives to these supposedly mentally unstable drunks such as a desire for the latter to line their pockets and for a new appreciation of fascism.
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We’ve made the big time, folks! And by “we,” I don’t mean “me,” specifically, but rather the reactosphere as a nebulous organization has made the big time! The New York Times, the Washington Post, and other esteemed publications are talking about the alt-right, the manosphere, neoreaction, paleoconservatism, and all of the various permutations of intellectual
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Although Donald Trump portrayed himself as an anti-gun control candidate on the campaign trail, the president apparently has no problem with sending federal agents into Chicago to more fiercely enforce gun laws. The New York Times reported late last month that the Trump administration has sent in federal agencies to partner with local law enforcement
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Terrorism, by definition, has always used violence to achieve its goal of destabilizing America and the rest of the Western world. In attacks on institutions and values, they hope to spread seeds of discontent or panic with the intent of catalyzing political change, jihad or an uprising against a government. Lone bombers and shooters make
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