What struck me most about revisiting the Salem Witch Trials with my children was the fact that these English Puritans who had recently settled in Massachusetts Bay Colony had no presumption of innocence. Those accused of a crime at the time, both in the New World and elsewhere, were guilty until proven innocent. The presumption of innocence in trials, with court defenders and impartial juries, would take centuries to catch on.
Tag: death
Nationalism, the Ideological Delusion at the Heart of Protectionism
To ask the question is almost to answer it. People who would balk at city, state, or regional protectionism will not only tolerate national protectionism, but actually hail it as a godsend for overall national prosperity. The doctrine of nationalism, a dangerous brew in which Americans have long indulged to great excess is the cause of this bizarre public sentiment.
The Call to Entrepreneurship and Our Excuses
Imagine going straight from being on vacation to starting up a complex refugee rescue mission under the nose of the Nazis – with no prior experience and no preparation. That was 29 year-old stock broker Nicholas Winton’s entrepreneurial story.
The Women’s March Stance on Reproductive Rights is All For The Erasure of Fertility, Not For Women
As much as I see myself as a woman who radically cares for the health and well-being and rights of women, I just can’t get behind the modern, liberal feminist movement that feels so rampant today, precisely because I don’t see that it carries similar values as I do. It touts that it does, but I see it all as a wolf in sheep’s clothing.
Let Others Make Their Mistakes
It is said people always get the government they deserve. The trouble is, the government the worst people “deserve” gets imposed on the rest of us. This is like saying some people commit murder, so it’s OK to sentence everyone to life in prison. Or to death.
The Reformer’s Plight in The Great Idea
I’m a fan of dystopian fiction, but I overlooked Henry Hazlitt’s The Great Idea (subsequently republished as Time Will Run Back) until last December. I feared a long-winded, clunky version of Hazlitt’s Economics in One Lesson, but I gave it a chance, and my gamble paid off. I read the whole thing (almost 400 pages) on a red-eye flight – feeling wide awake the whole way.
With Wilson in the Wilderness
I’ve mentioned the business “Wilson” had which was shut down by government meddling. Well, due to our similar interests in that area he and I used to hike in the wilderness area outside of town. He wore a camo army jacket with cargo pants and army boots and I wore my buckskin clothes and mocassins– in other words, I didn’t dress any differently than normal for the hike, although I did carry extra gear.
But-cept
It must be a fiction that the colonial man in the streets had any cohesive thought on the matter. The American Revolutionary War was promulgated by the landed gentry to protect their already-claimed advantages. They got the peasantry to fight and die, to freeze to death, to starve for the pretty abstraction of freedom. This war, like all others, was fought for the status quo. But-cept, how do I know?
Liberty isn’t Utopia
Whether the topic is “borders”, drugs, guns, rights, or socialism, they address all kinds of peripheral questions which seem to legitimize more statism when answered, but they avoid the real questions which would completely invalidate statism.
School Security Is Now a $3 Billion Dollar Annual Industry
US taxpayers spend nearly $700 billion each year on K-12 public schooling, and that eye-popping sum shows no sign of slowing. In fact, as more non-academic programs are adopted in schools across the country, the price tag for mass schooling continues to swell even as achievement lags.