I want to modify a thought experiment that David Mamet suggested in his fine book The Secret Knowledge, and do so as my own response to the risible proposal coming before the U.N. this week. Excuse me, I see that “risible proposal” doesn’t narrow things down enough. I am referring to the idea that the …
Lollygaggers at the Somme
After the clowns-on-tiny-bicycles show that we have all just witnessed, which clown show obtained for us our debt ceiling deal, it would be easy for conservatives to think that it all was, in fact, just a show, just for show. Since there was so much fuss and bother, with so little result, it is easy …
Where Our Real Shortage Is
As we are seeking out categories to help us understand the debt crisis our nation is in, there is a basic distinction that has gone missing. I mean the distinction between money past and money future. I mean the distinction between money that exists and money that doesn’t. Now everything we have is in the …
Another Plate of Sausages
I don’t often commend Republicans, so let me do so here. Throw in all of the qualifications — not all of them, they could still flake, and so on — and yet a commendation is still in order. There are times when countries run out of money/credit absolutely. The cash is simply not there anymore, …
Calvinism and Conspiracy
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 …