Tag Archives | 2016

Why the Russians Are the Baddies (Again)

Feature Article by , July 17, 2018

The dominant mood of Donald Trump’s presidency, for those of us who care about the key causes of freedom and small government, is one of overhanging existential dread. Every so often, just when we begin the think Trump is tolerable, that we’ll get some good things out of this—deregulation at the EPA, or a more […]

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Why the “Resistance” Won’t Be the New Tea Party

Feature Article by , February 10, 2017

Democrats are desperately hoping that their self-described “Resistance” to President Trump can take off in the same way that opposition to President Obama launched a new political movement in 2009. As Molly Ball asks, “Is the Anti-Trump ‘Resistance’ the New Tea Party?” No, it isn’t. They’ve been trying this ever since 2010, when some cloyingly […]

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The New York Times Thinks You’re Too Dumb to Understand Numbers

Feature Article by , January 26, 2017

I recently wrote about the wretched reporting on the claim that 2016 was the “hottest year on record,” using as my main example a New York Times article by Justin Gillis that gave his readers none of the relevant numbers they could use to evaluate that claim. None of them. And if you search for […]

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I Regret to Inform You That You Will Probably Survive

Note by , January 25, 2017

I noted recently that 2016 was a year considered so awful, politically, that it had a lot of people joking that they wished for death. Some took that idea farther than others. As 2017 gets under way, I regret to inform you that you will probably survive. That’s a line I started using when my […]

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Science Without Numbers

Feature Article by , January 18, 2017

They say that mathematics is the language of science, which is a way of saying that science is quantitative. It is moved forward by numbers and measurements, not just by qualitative observations. “It seems hot out” is not science. Giving a specific temperature, measured by a specific process at a specific time, compared to other […]

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The Future Still Lies Ahead

Feature Article by , December 27, 2016

Top Stories of the Year, #1 This has been such a horrible year for politics that some people were wishing for a giant meteor to strike the Earth and put us all out of our misery—and they were only half-joking. But there is, thank goodness, a lot more to the world than politics, and from […]

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The Tribute Pragmatism Pays to Principle

Feature Article by , December 23, 2016

Top Stories of the Year: #2 I ended top story #3, my overview of the self-destruction of the Democratic Party, with a warning about how the Republicans can blow it all by forgetting what they are supposed to stand for. This is the danger presented by the top political story of the year, the rise […]

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Democratic Party Death March

Feature Article by , December 22, 2016

Top Stories of the Year: #3 This year, I kept predicting that Donald Trump would lose the election and would drag down Republican candidates for lower offices. In my defense, I based this on polls whose results were fairly consistent, but which all turned out to be a wee bit off. In my further defense, […]

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The Breach in the Quarantine

Feature Article by , December 21, 2016

Top Stories of the Year: #4 If the left is turning against liberalism in any meaningful sense of the word, which is this year’s top story #5, then it is time for the right to take up the banner of liberty and progress. Or it could embrace its own virulent strain of illiberalism. That alarming […]

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Liberalism Is Dead, Long Live Liberalism

Feature Article by , December 20, 2016

Top Stories of the Year: #5 It’s time to count down the top five stories of the year, looking back at the big events of 2016 and reviewing my coverage of them. We’ll start the countdown with #5, a continuation of a long-running story, but one that reached new milestones this year: the ongoing death […]

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