So Who Is John Galt, Anyway?

Announcement by , September 26, 2019

I’m pleased to announce that So Who Is John Galt, Anyway? A Reader’s Guide to Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged is now available at Amazon. You can buy it as a paperback or as an e-book. A lot of credit goes to my wife, Sherri, for spending a couple of weeks of her time making the […]

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Little Green Men

Commentary by , July 24, 2020

Five Things You Need to Read Today 1. Little Green Men Down in the polls by ten points, Donald Trump has clearly decided to run on a “law and order” platform, billing himself as the antidote to chaos. It’s not a bad strategy, given the riots in the early weeks of the “Black Lives Matter” […]

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There’s Nobody as Alt-Right as a “Progressive”

Feature Article by , July 21, 2020

You would think that the National Museum of African American History and Culture would be dedicated to fighting the scourge of racism, particularly vicious caricatures and stereotypes of African Americans. Yet toward the end of May the institution posted one of the most racist documents I’ve ever seen, as part of a web page about […]

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Salon of the Refused, Episode 19

Announcement by , July 18, 2020

Episode 19 of my podcast series, Salon of the Refused, is now available. I talk with Jason Crawford, Silicon Valley entrepreneur and blogger at Roots of Progress, about progress and the need to recognize it and study it. The conversation includes: how progress really took off 200 years ago, why then, whether progress has begun […]

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The Silent Majority

Commentary by , July 16, 2020

Scenes from a Moral Panic, Part 2 I ended the previous installment by saying we should look for signs of resistance to the current moral panic. I will start by reminding you not to expect much from politicians, who are generally a poor source if you’re looking for moral courage. The Man in the Middle […]

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Anti-Anti-Cancel Culture

Feature Article by , July 16, 2020

Last week’s open letter in Harper’s in defense of free speech against “cancel culture” produced a response that…well, it didn’t exactly come out in defense of cancel culture. Instead, it followed the usual formula for defending the indefensible: “This thing never happened. But if it had, it would 100 percent be justified.” The anti-anti-cancelers would […]

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“Lord of the Flies” Meets “Nineteen Eighty-Four”

Commentary by , July 12, 2020

Scenes from a Moral Panic, Part 1 If you’ve ever wondered about those scenes of mass hysteria from history—early Christian iconoclasm, witch trials, that thing in the 1980s when they thought preschools were being run by Satanic cults—if you’ve ever wondered how they could have happened and how they spread so quickly out of control, […]

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Neo-Classical Liberals

Commentary by , July 8, 2020

Five Things You Need to Read Today I finally got around to seeing the Broadway hit “Hamilton” when it debuted on television over the July 4 weekend. Since it seems a little late to do a full-scale review of a 5-year-old show, I settled for a Twitter thread which is unrolled here. Also, check out […]

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How Not to Defend America’s Heritage

Feature Article by , July 6, 2020

In his speech at Mount Rushmore, President Trump came out against the current mania of mindless iconoclasm. Politically, it’s an obvious play. Sinking in the polls and going into what ought to be the middle of his reelection campaign down by nearly ten points, Trump is grasping for anything he can use to prop himself […]

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The Grim Lessons of CHOP

Feature Article by , July 1, 2020

Early this morning, Seattle police began dismantling the barricades, tents, and signs that demonstrators had used to control several city blocks for most of the last month. The area was originally known as the Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone (CHAZ), but had recently been renamed, for reasons nobody could quite explain, the Capitol Hill Organized Protest […]

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“One of the Worst Electoral Defeats in Modern Presidential Elections”?

Commentary by , June 30, 2020

Five Things You Need to Read Today 1. The Democratic People’s Republic of CHOP Leftist protesters’ takeover of downtown Seattle is going about as well as expected. The area known as the Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone (CHAZ) was renamed, for reasons nobody could quite explain, as the Capitol Hill Organized Protest or Occupied Protest, producing […]

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