In today’s Manichean political world, coronavirus policy disputes often get portrayed as a conflict between scientific expertise, on the one hand, and invincible ignorance on the other. This is yet another variation of the riff we heard earlier on global warming, vaccinations, and more. While journalistically tidy, dividing the world into objective, dispassionate experts versus the anti-scientific horde not only…
Suppose that while browsing in the bookstore you run across a book called Great Left-handed Jurists in American History. Or maybe Great Bald Jurists in American History. These books will no doubt strike you as odd. What sense do these criteria make as a way of selecting legal figures for study? What does left-handedness, or baldness, have to do with…
The filibuster is one of the great bugbears of American politics. Democrats and Republicans have routinely blamed the infamous practice when the Senate fails to act on their policy priorities. In both parties, senators have denounced the filibuster as illegitimate when used by their colleagues to slow action on favored presidential nominations. And…
“There are no rewards today for uttering unpopular, but timeless, truths.” So said Justice Clarence Thomas after only a couple terms on the Court. Over 25 years later, Clarence Thomas’ moral and constitutional message of staunch originalism and ordered liberty is one that America needs to hear—perhaps now more than ever. “What He Made Me” Thomas’ message is rooted in…
The non-profit National Rifle Association, founded in 1871, describes itself as “America’s longest-standing civil rights organization.” With nearly five million members, the NRA is also one of the nation’s largest and most influential organizations, promoting the safe ownership and use of firearms. Through its affiliated foundation (a tax-exempt entity formed in 1990), political advocacy arm (the Institute for Legislative…
Hello, and welcome to Liberty Law Talk. I’m Richard Reinsch. Today we’re talking with David Goldman about his new book, You Will Be Assimilated: China’s Plan to Sino-form the World. David Goldman is the author of the widely read Spengler column for the Asia Times. He’s an award-winning Wall Street strategist. He’s worked for Credit Suisse. He was the…
No book has been revisited more in recent months by the general public, serious readers, and public intellectuals than Albert Camus’ The Plague. Set in Oran in North Africa during the 1940s, it documents the struggles of a city in the grip of an outbreak of plague that lasts for months, forcing the authorities to quarantine the town, preventing anyone…
In Socialism: An Economic and Sociological Analysis, Ludwig von Mises lays out the case against socialism and its varying forms. In focusing on human persons and their wide-ranging motives, Mises’ methodology set him apart in 1922. Nearly a century later, the majority of mainstream economists still fail to appreciate the degree to which their discipline ought to rest on a…
The Reuters news agency recently offered up a headline that is typical of our current moment but also very curious: “Chevron diversity ratio to improve as layoffs progress.” With corporate America long ago joining the “diversity” bandwagon, this story hardly rates as news at all, though a moment’s reflection should raise some alarm bells—and maybe even some serious legal…
In an age of Twitter mobs and cancel culture, it’s becoming clearer every day that no cultural artifact or icon, no matter how old, banal, celebrated, or grandiose, is safe. One of the latest targets is the smash Broadway hit musical Hamilton. The tragicomedy of targeting a phenomenon like Hamilton is manifest in the reality that the musical…
