Category Archives: Splendor

I wrote this last night in a comment to a post: The United States is being run as a kleptocracy, but instead of plundering the treasury and the accumulated wealth of the nation in behalf of a small criminal conspiracy, we rob from a rapidly-diminishing productive sector in behalf of a vast and ever-burgeoning population […] Continue reading →

From Reason.TV: It’s worth thinking about as statists strive to destroy innovation in medicine (via Obamacare) and industry and transportation (via environmentalism). If it gratifies you to weep about how bad things are, compare the America of your youth to the police states of Communist Europe in that same epoch. Whatever complaints you might have […] Continue reading →

The national Republican party is riven by an insuperable internal contradiction. Out of one side of their mouths, Republicans wish to portray themselves as tax cutters, red-tape slashers, champions of liberty fearlessly hacking away at the slimy tentacles of the leviathan state. Ignore for the moment that they’re spineless jellyfish when it comes time to […] Continue reading →

Rotarian Socialism in action: Google chief executive Eric Schmidt favors net neutrality, but only to a point: While the tech player wants to make sure that telecommunications giants don’t steer Internet traffic in a way that would favor some devices or services over others, he also believes that it would be a terrible idea for […] Continue reading →

Propositions Three and Seven from The Graves of Academe by Richard Mitchell  In the country of the blind, the one-eyed man is, as we all know, king. And across the way, in the country of the witless, the half-wit is king. And why not? It’s only natural, and considering the circumstances, not really a bad […] Continue reading →

I don’t go to the doctor very often. I don’t get sick much, and, even when I do, I’m not always willing to make time to do anything about it. I work very hard, and all I want to do … Continue reading →

When I moved to Chandler, Arizona, 16 years ago, I was informed that, not only would I be expected to participate in the community’s curbside recycling program, but that enforcement officers would come around at random to inspect the special … Continue reading →

[This is not for the book, except as context. This is an essay I wrote in the mid-1990s, an attempt to explain to libertarians, especially various flavors of devotees of Ayn Rand, why the idea of a minimal state must … Continue reading →

I’ve known for more than a year that I want to write a book about what we’re getting wrong. As a species, that is. Through all of human history. Surely that’s a man-sized ambition — and perhaps also a new … Continue reading →

…prepare yourself for the asshole cops… Just think: If you just keep voting for more and more government, eventually the nanny-state might find a way to stuff you back up into your mammy’s womb. Or, failing that, they’ll exterminate you and everyone you know and love. Either way, the world will finally be rid of […] Continue reading →