Part of exercising your liberty comes down to not caring what everyone else thinks. Hopefully, you are able to do this in a way that doesn’t come off as rude to observers, but sometimes it’s not possible.
Category: Blogs
The official Everything-Voluntary.com blog.
The Office of Free Speech: A Not-So-Modest Proposal for Academia
We are now unquestionably at a crisis point for free speech, academic freedom, and intellectual diversity in higher education. Ritualistic denunciations of faculty who dissent from consensus, under the thin veneer of combating “misinformation,” are now practiced by prominent universities and broadly accepted within higher education.
The Truth Can Change
Truth shouldn’t be a prison. If there’s a truth you don’t like, do what you can to make a new truth. Make the old truth a lie going into the future.
Searching for Vindication
It’s easy for people with contrarian ideas and opinions to long for public validation. After years of being mocked and worn down, there’s a tendency to fantasize about one great moment where all your opponents are owned and utterly embarrassed.
Political “Unity” is Neither Necessary Nor Desirable
“[T]o restore the soul and to secure the future of America,” President Joe Biden said in his inaugural speech, “requires more than words. It requires that most elusive of things in a democracy: Unity. … This is our historic moment of crisis and challenge, and unity is the path forward.” The bad news: Where politics is concerned, “unity” is a pipe dream.
Hey Joe, Where You Goin’ With That Pen in Your Hand?
On his first partial day as president, Joe Biden issued 17 “executive orders, memorandums and proclamations” — two more than America’s first five presidents issued over their 36 years in office.
Lysander Spooner: The Forgotten History of the Man Who Started the First Private Post Office
Lysander Spooner is an important – and not exactly obscure – figure in the history of the liberty movement. He’s an idiosyncratic figure from the 19th century with no small cheerleading section in the 21st century. A bit of a throwback to a very different time, Spooner was a champion of the labor movement and was even a member of the First International at a time when socialists and anarchists coexisted peacefully within that movement.
Let January 6th Events Be Wakeup Call
(My Eastern New Mexico News column for January 20, 2021)
No matter how you feel about them, U.S. presidents are both too powerful and figureheads without any real power. It seems contradictory, but it’s true.
A president has the power to sign…
The Trump/Biden Handoff: Back to Business as Usual, as Usual
Few will find it surprising that the incoming Biden administration looks, in both form and function, a lot like the Obama administration of 2009-2017. After all, Joe Biden served as Barack Obama’s vice-president for those eight years. His staff and cabinet appointments comprise a veritable Who’s Who of Obama holdovers and members of Biden’s own political circle, built over decades in the Senate and White House.
What is Money?
The word “money” comes from the Latin moneta, which is where coins of precious metal were made and stored. Precious metals naturally rose to the top of money markets because they are scarce, long-lasting, and valued by weight. Gold in particular became the standard for money because it is uniquely suited to serve the purposes of money.