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: society
Immigration and Redistribution: The Research to Trust
Evaluating the quality of research is laborious. Unless you re-do the whole paper yourself, how do you know the authors were not only truthful, but careful? Faced with this quandary, one of my favorite heuristics is to ask: Did the authors want to find this result? If the answer is No, I put a lot more credence into the results. In research as in the law, statements contrary to interest count more.
Taxes and Society (15m) – Episode 001
Episode 001: Why do we have to pay taxes? Surely the US Treasury has a brilliant and cogent explanation… or not. Join Jared for an almost comical look into one of the their frequently asked questions.
A One-Page Hop from Bleeding Heart to Mailed Fist
“Drastic measures are needed to fight delinquency. First, I’d give a juvenile delinquent good advice. Second, if that didn’t help, I’d suggest going to the work farms, along with study. That way I’d gradually try to perfect the individual’s feelings and conscience. And finally, if the first two measures brought no improvement, I’d send him before the firing squad.”
Super Bowl 53, The Meaning of Taxation (15m) – Episode 279
Episode 279 has Skyler giving his commentary on the following topics: the waste of time that was Super Bowl 53; his commitment to remaining a teetotaler; what the existence of and toleration toward the practice of taxation (and other forms of coercion by government) means in your society; and more.
Be the Euphoria You Want To See In the World
“Don’t ask yourself what the world needs. Ask yourself what makes you come alive and then go do that. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive.”
The FDA’s Assault on Tobacco Consumers, Part 2
DeLauro’s bill betrays a fundamental puritanism, which underlies all prohibitionism: since nicotine is a substance that provides pleasure and some people therefore use it habitually, it must be stamped out and its consumers, producers, and merchants demonized.
“Toxic Masculinity” is Propaganda
The term masculinity is supposed to refer to cultural trends within sex that influence behavior, not the actual behavior. Since we live in an incredibly complex and diverse society with many subcultures, trying to define what exactly our society promotes as masculine is ambiguous.
Common Law, Toxic Masculinity, Motivation, Entitlements, & Empathy (28m) – Episode 276
Episode 276 has Skyler giving his commentary on the following topics: the development of common law in a free society; the communication problems surrounding the phrase “toxic masculinity”; the superiority of intrinsic motivation; the preferred entitlements of both small government and big government proponents; whether or not our ability to empathize with others has been stunted; and more.
The Vote
Both Albert Jay Nock and Frank Chodorov, in my view, had the idea that mass conversion of society to voluntaryism was impossible, since the state always rigs the game so that the majority of the people are being fooled. It is “the vote” itself which snookers them.