“A cliche is haunting America — the cliche of a second civil war,” writes Jesse Walker in the Los Angeles Times. Pundits left and right wax ominous over the prospect of a permanent break in American society along partisan Republican/Democratic lines, citing outbreaks of street fighting a la Berkeley and Charlottesville.
Category: Libertarian Advocacy Journalism
Net of the Long Knives? Neutrality Advocates Put it in Reverse
On July 12, a number of prominent companies joined in the “Internet-wide Day of Action to Save Net Neutrality.” Among them were GoDaddy, Namecheap, Google, and CloudFlare. All four companies issued pious statements about the dangerous possibility of Internet Service Providers cutting off access to perfectly legal content. A little more than a month later, all four companies (and others) are themselves doing exactly what they warned us ISPs might do unless a “Net Neutrality” law forbade it: They’re cutting off access to perfectly legal content (yes, neo-Nazi speech is legal in America).
Charlottesville Haters: Test Case for the Internet as Public Square
John Gilmore famously noted that “The Net interprets censorship as damage and routes around it.” Libertarians like me view the market in much the same way. This situation is a practical, nuts and bolts test of those views. There’s a great deal riding on the outcome.
@YesYoureRacist Crowdsources Social Preferencing
The main objection to @YesYoureRacist doesn’t cut much ice with me. The project is not an “invasion of privacy” or a “violation of rights.” The Charlottesville marchers engaged in public action with the explicit purpose of attracting attention. Mission accomplished. They got noticed.
They Keep Using That Phrase, “Net Neutrality”
As the FCC considers repealing the 2015 Net Neutrality rule, its supporters are desperate to associate bad things with its absence. So desperate that Demand Progress is advertising examples of Net Neutrality as violations of Net Neutrality.
Mueller v. Trump: Ain’t Life Grand?
Trump is, beyond a shadow of a doubt, guilty of high crimes and misdemeanors, including but not limited to pursuing wars of aggression (the ultimate war crime) in Syria and elsewhere. He is therefore worthy of impeachment and imprisonment under both US and international law. But, sadly, he won’t be pursued for those crimes.
US Foreign Military Bases Aren’t “Defense”
The maintenance of nearly 1,000 US military bases on foreign soil isn’t just a nightmare for peaceniks. It’s also an objective threat to US national security. Shutting down those foreign bases and bringing the troops home are essential first steps in creating an actual national defense.
Privacy: J. Edgar’s Not The Hoover You Need to Worry About Anymore
In the latest phase of our frenzied technological advancement, it’s clear that yes, our gadgets do collect and use more and more information about us, and that that information progressively ramifies across more, bigger, and more integrated networks. The bigger question: Is it worth it? The answer: It depends.
The State is at War — with the Future
What we’re seeing is the latest bit of backlash from a political establishment scared witless by technologies which threaten to make it superfluous.
Healthcare: A House Divided Cannot Stand
I predict that the US government will adopt a “single-payer” healthcare system no later than 2030, and probably sooner. And while I oppose that outcome and believe its results will be far worse than a real free-market system would produce, I also suspect that those results will be better than the current half-fish, half-fowl, largely socialized but with fake “private” players sucking it dry, system.