Spend the next two years watching what happens in American politics. Think about whether or not you like it. If you voted, unless you voted third party or independent, understand that you voted for it.
Author: Thomas L. Knapp
Tom has worked in journalism — sometimes as an amateur, sometimes professionally — for more than 35 years and has been a full-time libertarian writer, editor, and publisher since 2000. He’s the former managing editor of the Henry Hazlitt Foundation, the publisher of Rational Review News Digest (2003-present), former media coordinator and senior news analyst at the Center for a Stateless Society (2009-2015) and also works at Antiwar.com. He lives in north central Florida.
“Birthright Citizenship” Kerfuffle is Mostly a Get Out The Vote Tactic
In a late October interview with news website Axios, US president Donald Trump announced his intention to sign an executive order doing away with “birthright citizenship” — the notion that persons born on US soil are citizens from birth with no need for any naturalization process.
The Pittsburgh Double Bind: Presidents Shouldn’t Be So Important
If we’re going to have a president, why not keep him or her in Washington — at a desk with a stack of paperwork, away from television cameras and smartphones — instead of centering every aspect of public life around his or her actions and utterances?
Yes, Things Have Been This Bad Before; In Fact, They’ve Been Far Worse
The president of the United States is fear-mongering over the approach of a convoy of Latin American immigrants to get his “base” to the polls. His Democratic opponents are pretending that every Republican voter is a potential mail-bomber, for the same purpose.
A Convenient Caravan: Cui Bono?
In an October 23 editorial, Investor’s Business Daily claims that “[t]he ‘caravan’ of illegal immigrants from Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras now making its way to the U.S. border is no accident. The timing, planning and financing of this tragic parade has but one intent: to disrupt and influence our midterm elections.” An interesting assertion, but the piece doesn’t offer answers to any of the questions implied other than to blame Democrats for all things evil.
Trump Goes Postal; But in a Good Way
On October 17, president Donald Trump announced plans to withdraw the United States from the Universal Postal Union, a 144-year-old international agreement which coordinates postal policies between 192 member nations. Trump left open the possibility of remaining in the UPU if those policies can be successfully renegotiated. Unlike many of Trump’s initiatives relating to international trade, this one makes real sense.
One Libertarian’s Free (Well, Nearly Free) College Plan
With college as we know it becoming less valuable and online/distance learning becoming more viable, change is coming whether we like it or not. Why not seize an opportunity for “free college” as we wind down the existing system?
Facebook Meddles in the 2018 Midterm Elections
Who benefits from the meddling? It doesn’t seem to fall along “left/right” lines in particular. The victims come from across the political spectrum — from Reverb Press on the left, to Right Wing News on the right, to the libertarian Free Thought Project — some with millions of Facebook followers.
The IMF Fears Cryptocurrency; It Should
The International Monetary Fund refers to cryptocurrency only once in its 215-page World Economic Outlook for October 2018, but that reference is telling: “Continued rapid growth of crypto assets could create new vulnerabilities in the international financial system.”
The US Makes One Too Many Parties to the Spratly Spat
No fewer than six states — China, Taiwan, Vietnam, the Phillipines, Malaysia, and Brunei — assert territorial claims over all or part of the (largely uninhabited) Spratly archipelago. To which, if any, of those states do the Spratlys “belong?” That’s for them to work out between themselves, through arbitration and mediation or maybe even war. The US government, neither numbering itself among those claimants nor having any plausible basis upon which to do so if it wished to, needs to butt out.