American leaders and their loyal media pundits love to sit in judgment of other countries’ election, declaring them fair or rigged according to their seemingly meticulous standards. In fact, the real standard is that the regimes “we” like hold free and fair (enough) elections, while the regimes “we” dislike don’t. What about regimes “we” like that hold no elections at all, like Saudi Arabia? They are forgotten whenever the loveliness of democracy is the topic of discussion.
Tag: consequences
Drug Abuse Stupid But Prohibition Evil
Beyond rights I care about the most, you have the right to do things that don’t interest me at all, or things I don’t like. As long as “it neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg,” as Thomas Jefferson said — nor the pockets or legs of anyone else — I support your right to live as you wish. I don’t care who it offends; there is no right to not be offended.
The U.S. Doesn’t Have a Labor Shortage. It Has an Incentive Shortage.
The government’s coronavirus-related unemployment benefits are encouraging some to stay unemployed.
Peace in Palestine? Not if American Politicians Can Help It
The math isn’t that difficult: If I hand my kid a wad of cash and say “please don’t spend this on booze and brass knuckles, but if you do, well, that’s okay, and there’s more where that came from,” I shouldn’t be shocked when I get a midnight phone call concerning bail.
A Refreshing Way to Think about Immigration
What I’m going to say about Chandran Kukathas’s latest book, Immigration and Freedom, does not constitute a book review. Think of it instead as a book alert. Even having read only the preface and a couple of chapters, I am confident it is a book that fans of liberty will be interested in. You can tell by the title.
On Critical Race Theory
I could be wrong, but everything I’ve seen and read about Critical Race Theory (and Woke-ism) leads me to believe that at it is fundamentally about making so-called “White” people feel ashamed of the color of their skin.
Moral Relativism and Moral Fanaticism
What exactly is moral fanaticism? Like moral relativism, moral fanaticism is a meta-ethical theory – a theory about moral facts and moral reasoning. Moral relativism says, roughly, that there are no moral facts, and moral “reasoning” is just thinly-veiled emoting. Moral fanaticism, in contrast, affirms that there are moral facts, but pretends that thinly-veiled emoting is ironclad moral reasoning.
U(nspeakably) S(adistic) Foreign Policy
If you had set out to construct a foreign policy designed to impose indescribable suffering on millions of innocent people around the world, you’d have a tough time coming up with anything more systematic and effective than U.S. foreign policy.
Bioethics: Tuskegee vs. COVID
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: Bioethics is to ethics as astrology is to astronomy. If bioethicists had previously prevented a hundred Tuskegees from happening, COVID would still have turned the existence of their entire profession into a net negative for humanity. Verily, we would be better off if their field had never existed.
Youth Depression, Suicide Increasing During Pandemic Response
As data on the unintended consequences of pandemic policy becomes gloomier, policy makers are beginning to acknowledge tradeoffs.