On the campaign trail, they tell us that we’re their employers and that they’re just humble “public servants.” But once elected, they go to work behind closed doors and hide their hearings, their discussions, their memos and their other work product from us at will.
Tag: history
Partitions III — Northern Ireland
I am not an expert on either Irish or British history. There is too much of it. But I do know that I have yet to find anything in it which justifies the present problem, the UK feel as though they have a foothold on the Emerald Isle.
“Treatment We Associate With Regimes We Revile as Unjust…”
Where, I wonder, was Forrest’s devotion to the Constitution when she sentenced Ross Ulbricht to life in prison without the possibility of parole in 2015?
Protectionism: Trump’s Tariff-ic Attack on Your Wallet
On January 22, US Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer fired the first shots of the Trump administration’s 2018 trade agenda: Tariffs of 30% on imported solar panels, and tariffs starting at 20% on imported residential washing machines. In the name of “protecting” jobs — “America First!” — the administration is dead-set on making you poorer.
Hibernians
There is much that is being repeated today in America’s raging debate on immigration. The scapegoats this time are, however, ethnicities, religions, and atheisms from Central America to Africa and Palestine to North Korea.
Communism vs. Compassion
Many millions of well-intentioned yet muddle-headed people (along with a much smaller number of opportunistic megalomaniacs) have put forth a “philosophy” that has ended up getting tens of millions of people murdered. How could that possibly happen?
Learning is Like Showering: Don’t Stop Doing It
Pursue knowledge in the same way you brush your teeth or change your clothes. Instead of taking pride in how much you’ve done it in the past, try to remember how much you’re going to stink if you don’t keep doing it regularly.
Bye, Bye, FBI? The Case for Disbanding the Federal Frankenstein’s Monster
The FBI has had 110 years to prove its worth. A dispassionate look at its history says that it’s far more often served as a center for blackmail, corruption, and political manipulation than as anything resembling a legitimate law enforcement agency.
The Worst Thing About Federal Government “Shutdowns”
The case for government is, usually, that it does things that must be done and that can’t be done by any other organization. Designating an activity “non-essential” is just another way of saying it’s a way of wasting money on something either unnecessary or better left to the market.
History as Observation
History is not so much the faithful recording of observed facts as it is an interview by the individual with his own memory. Everything else is hearsay. We can only know one’s own history, and even then, it is much more how one felt about that history than it is about what objective things were true.