Prior Restraint and Compelled Speech
The First Amendment is not what a lot of people think it is. In fact, "the Freedom of Speech" doesn't mean what a most people imagine it means, though its…
Speaking the Warpath
But if thought corrupts language, language can also corrupt thought. A bad usage can spread by tradition and imitation even among people who should and do know better.George Orwell, Politics…
The Citizen and The Barbarian
Sane people don't want to police their neighbors over their own health choices, like whether or not to wear a mask. And sane politicians would never shut down their entire…
Deputizing the Citizenry
My home state of Washington recently implemented a mandatory mask law. As has become customary, the law is passed with an initial insinuation that it would not be enforced: The…
Progressivism, the Rise of Authoritarianism, and the Destruction of the Four Olds in the United States
History doesn't repeat itself, but it does rhyme.Mark Twain If you're anything like me, you have had nothing but an insatiable urge to turn off the news, get off social…
Political Hypnosis
Hypnosis is generally defined as a "mental state of highly focused concentration, diminished peripheral awareness, and heightened suggestibility." It goes without saying that someone in a hypnotic state is not capable…
On Wearing the Mask
There is one argument against wearing masks that I haven't heard anyone else making: masks are inherently anti-social. Our sixth amendment guarantees us the right to be "confronted with the…
The Tolerance-Error
One of the great moral paradoxes of 20th-century philosophy was the problem of "tolerance," which was most famously articulated by Karl Popper: Less well known (of Plato's paradoxes) is the paradox…
Paying the Blood Price for COVID-19
But the folk were gathered in the assembly place; for there a strife was arisen, two men striving about the blood-price of a man slain; the one claimed to pay…
A Hypothetical Dialogue
An elderly Italian man hugs a Chinese national in solidarity against racism. He contracted Coronavirus and becomes seriously ill. Examination all but certainly determines that his condition is mortal. In…