We live in a time when conspiratorial theories abound, and when tracts, screeds, and web sites advancing such theories proliferate. If you have the time, you might want to research and answer every box on the flow chart (the one with the Masons, the Illuminati, and the Bilderberg Group on it). But if you don’t …
Fatherless Under the Fig Tree
Hard libertarianism and/or anarchy is a function of what might be called civic fatherlessness. Just as the antitheist regards the eternality of the Father as tyrannical on the face of it, so also the hard libertarian regards any civic authority whatever as something to chafe the soul. Within this paradigm, all political authority is based …
Slopehead Country
This morning I went to check out the Huffington Post, and saw a dire warning there about Michele Bachmann’s “Jeremiah Wright,” a preacher named Bradlee Dean. The HPost had put together a little montage of Dean’s homophobic rants n’ stuff, and when I put Dean and rant together in the same sentence I need to …
You Play the Hand You Hold
If you have any opinion at all about the Israeli/Palestinian situation in the Middle East, then your opinion, if implemented, could result in three possible outcomes. It could make things better, it could make things worse, or it could keep things pretty much as they are currently. Given the knife edge that everybody in that …
An Inept Farmer With a Dull Knife
One of the more striking arguments that David Bahnsen made about Ron Paul was this one. Why is Paul considered a champion of the Constitution when Lew Rockwell, his ideological twin, thinks the Constitution was a statist scam from the beginning? The chances are good that Paul believes the same thing about the origins of …
Bright Lights and Big Bugs
David Bahnsen and I have a cordial relationship, and we have agreed that I will interact with his latest post on Ron Paul. So here it is, but you should first go and read what he has to say about it here. I am writing as one who appreciates Ron Paul’s presence among us. I …
Then Leave The Man Alone
Beware of all isms except for prisms, as the fellow said. This goes double for libertarianism, and I would point you to Denny Burk’s applause of Michael Gerson’s critique of Ron Paul. Since I have praised Paul in this place before (and will no doubt do so again), I should perhaps offer an explanation of …
Guys On Little Motorcycles
The clownish foray of Donald Trump into presidential politics reveals some things to us. First, as with so many other things, giraffes, for example, it teaches us that God has a sense of humor. Second, it illustrates the dearth of real leadership available to the Republican party. Third, it shows us how respectability squelches don’t …
The Blooming Honeysuckle of Malfeasance
Waylon Jennings had a great line in one of his songs where he said that he “was too dumb for New York City, too ugly for LA.” Speaking from my seat here in fly-over country, I actually think he was probably just fine. When you get caught up in the swirl of the big city …