Politics

Political Riptides Threaten to Overwhelm the Nation

by John W. Whitehead December 10, 2024

“We must always take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented. Sometimes we must interfere. When human lives are endangered, when human dignity is in jeopardy, national borders and sensitivities become irrelevant. Wherever men or women are persecuted because of their race, religion, or political views, that place ...

The Election Is About Big Government Getting Bigger

by Richard M. Ebeling November 1, 2024

Shortly after this article is published, we will know the outcome of the 2024 presidential campaign. But whether the winner is one or the other of the two major political party candidates, one thing is certain: the intrusive and heavy hand of government will continue to have sway over our lives after the victor is sworn in as the ...

Can Huey Long Save America?

by Laurence M. Vance September 1, 2024

I occasionally read a writer and podcaster known as a conspiracy researcher who writes on a variety of subjects. Donald Jeffries is all over the map politically (reformer, idealist, libertarian, classical liberal, populist, and cultural conservative), has published several books, and has written a Substack column since 2021. His name is not important because it is his ideas, which ...

Politics Has Become Our National Religion

by John W. Whitehead August 14, 2024

“You shall have no other gods before me.”—The Ten Commandments “Christians, get out and vote, just this time. You won’t have to do it anymore. Four more years, you know what, it will be fixed, it will be fine, you won’t have to vote anymore.”—Donald Trump Politics has become our national religion. While those on the Left have feared ...

Time to Separate Piety and Politics

by James Bovard May 5, 2024

The First Amendment of the Constitution specifies, “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.” In Washington, the “free exercise thereof” perennially includes politicians exploiting religion to sanctify themselves and all their power grabs. Piety with a side of eggs One of the most brazen if not most shameless “free exercise thereof” examples ...

The Great Election Fraud

by John W. Whitehead March 15, 2024

“Dictators are not in the business of allowing elections that could remove them from their thrones.”—Gene Sharp, political science professor The U.S. Supreme Court was right to keep President Trump’s name on the ballot. The high court’s decree that the power to remove a federal candidate from the ballot under the Constitution’s “insurrectionist ban” rests ...

America Has a Uniparty System

by Laurence M. Vance January 1, 2024

The United States has been saddled with a two-party political system almost from the very beginning of its existence. First it was the Federalist Party and the Democratic-Republican Party, then it was the Democrats and the Whigs, and now it is the Democrats and the Republicans. George Wallace’s adage that “there’s not a dime’s worth of difference between the Democrat ...

Congress’s Unconstitutional Pay Raise Scandal

by James Bovard October 1, 2023

“A good politician is almost as rare as an honest burglar,” once quipped H. L. Mencken. After the shenanigans around the latest congressional pay increase, America’s burglars should file a posthumous libel suit against Mencken for that disparaging comparison. There is a pity party in Washington: You weren’t invited, but you’ll pay the bill. The Constitution’s 27th Amendment, ratified in 1992, ...

How Evil Are Politicians? Part 2

by George Leef June 1, 2023

Part 1 | Part 2 How Evil Are Politicians?: Essays on Demagoguery by Bryan Caplan (Bet On It Books, 2022) Caplan follows up on that observation with a devastating point about the calculating political mindset. Suppose that a politician had to choose between a populace of nothing but independent, self-supporting individuals or one with a large percentage of envious layabouts ...

How Evil Are Politicians? Part 1

by George Leef May 1, 2023

Part 1 | Part 2 How Evil Are Politicians?: Essays on Demagoguery by Bryan Caplan (Bet On It Books, 2022) If you are a libertarian, or just someone with a streak of skepticism about government, you will enjoy and profit from reading How Evil are Politicians? The author, Bryan Caplan, is a professor of economics at George Mason ...

Biden Weaponizes Hate to Win Votes

by James Bovard February 1, 2023

Historian Henry Adams observed a century ago that politics “has always been the systematic organization of hatreds.” President Biden confirmed this axiom in his raging speeches prior to the mid-term congressional elections. Throughout his career, Biden has relied on a two-step routine —first appealing to “our better angels” before demagogically vilifying his opponents. In December 2020, after the Electoral College ...

When Will Congress Admit Its Mistakes?

by Laurence M. Vance November 1, 2022

“I was wrong,” says a group of New York Times opinion writers. “Eight Times Opinion columnists revisit their incorrect predictions and bad advice — and reflect on why they changed their minds” is the statement that appears at the end of each of the articles. “I was wrong about inflation,” writes Paul Krugman. He “made a very bad call” when ...