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.
Tag: class
On Politics
Methinks that if we truly lived in a free country, politics would not dominate public discourse. The fact that it does proves that America is nowhere near the classification of “free country”.
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.”
Trump’s Middle East Delusions Persist
“There are no perfect solutions.” This is true. Past injustices can never be fully rectified. But “solutions” can be closer to or further from perfection, and we know which Team Trump’s solution will be.
There’s Only One Argument for College (and It’s Wrong)
The only argument for paying tuition and completing college is the old, “You need a degree to get a decent job.” That one’s worth engaging, and it’s easy.
Compulsory Schooling Laws: What if We Didn’t Have Them?
We should always be leery of laws passed “for our own good,” as if the state knows better. The history of compulsory schooling statutes is rife with paternalism, triggered by anti-immigrant sentiments in the mid-nineteenth century and fueled by a desire to shape people into a standard mold.
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.
What’s in a Lie?
I believe absolutely nothing that exits people’s mouths just because they want to say it. People don’t say things because it is truthful, people say things because they believe it will benefit them to say it. If you have a good culture where honesty is beneficial, you are more likely to get honesty. A courtroom, a classroom, a senate committee and a poker table aren’t these environments.
Schools Are Tracking Your Child’s Mental Health—Whether You Like It or Not
A worrying trend is emerging in schools across the country. With increasing regularity, school districts are tracking students’ mental health and raising flags if a screening shows something amiss.
We Need More, Not Less, Separation of State and Journalism
The rise of free content and ease of entry into the field has us getting more “journalism” … but less real information. Opinion writers (like me) are a dime a dozen. Amateur stringers and glorified copy editors cover five-point-lede “hard news” on the cheap. But the shock troops of news, full-time investigative journalists, have to learn the ropes and they have to be paid. That’s not happening. The result: Many important things get missed and many things that aren’t missed get only insufficient, inaccurate — or worst, sponsor viewpoint biased — coverage.