Author: Eric Scheie

I’ve warned about this sort of thinking before, but the people who want to control our lives and monitor our every move simply will not stop in their efforts to get rid of cash. They try to make it sound wonderful. Utopian: The fact is, we could become a cashless society within a very few…

I can’t believe that so much is being missed in the debate over “contraception” or “religious objections to contraception,” or even “sluttiness.” People are so into not getting it that it’s pathetic. While I touched on this in an earlier post, today I saw a link at Greg Mankiw’s blog to an article by John Cochrane…

It came as a shock to learn that Andrew Breitbart has died: Andrew passed away unexpectedly from natural causes shortly after midnight this morning in Los Angeles. We have lost a husband, a father, a son, a brother, a dear friend, a patriot and a happy warrior. Andrew lived boldly, so that we more timid…

Happy Leap Year Day! You know you’re getting a little long in the tooth as a blogger when it’s your third consecutive bout of Leap Year Day blogging, but archives are archives, and I thought I would celebrate Leap Year Day by looking at the previous two Classical Values Leap Year Days, and maybe engage…

It’s election day here in Michigan, and while I have not officially endorsed anyone, this headline reminded me who NOT to vote for: Santorum robocall makes appeal to Michigan’s Democrats for votes Democrat chicanery is one thing (anyone who doubts for one moment that there is a well-orchestrated Democrats for Santorum effort should read this) but…

In the gym the other day, I felt a bit uncomfortable because two men nearby were using the n-word. That ugly and “forbidden” word was being freely used by one man “against” the other, although not in a hostile manner. I probably shouldn’t have been concerned, because these two men were clearly friends and the fact…

Earlier I had a shocking (to me) thought. I am now wondering whether the OWS movement served to disrupt what had been the Tea Party’s burgeoning cross-cultural appeal. As I have noted in old and tedious posts, there is a great deal of overlap between class war and culture war. So much so that the distinctions…

About six minutes into this rather slow song, the aging Jerry Garcia (who had had innumerable meltdowns and about a year to live) finally manages to persuade himself to open up, and he plays his guitar poignantly and will soulful brilliance.  Just another of many such nights, but he made it count. The oddest thing…

It has become so easy to create hysteria that sometimes I worry that humor itself is endangered, to say nothing of free speech. We’ve all heard the apocryphal story about the man who was arrested in an airport because he saw a friend named Jack and yelled “HI JACK!” The moral lesson was never to…

An understandably distraught mother is suing the University of California and the Berkeley Student Cooperative because her son (who rented a room in a coop) had a heart attack and suffered brain damage after taking drugs: The mother of a UC Berkeley student left severely brain-damaged in 2010 after a drug overdose at a campus…

This is America, right? And in America, we have the absolute right under the First Amendment to make fun of anyone we want, including Christians, Jews, Atheists, Mormons, Scientologists, and Muslims. (Etc.) Or am I wrong? …the worrying thing is what the judge (Mark Martin) seems to have said at the trial, based on what appears to…

M. Simon had a rather brilliant post about PTSD the other day, and rather than leave a comment I thought a new post was in order. The topic is abused children: Revolutionaries and outlaws have a thing in common. They tend to be abused children. They have in common a grievance against a civilization that…

As I don’t have anything to say that I haven’t said before about the R race (and anything I say might make things worse), I thought I would review a product I consider excellent. A few weeks ago, Glenn Reynolds noted that Amazon was offering “bestsellers in running shoes.” That got my attention, because I have…

What is religion? That sounds like a stupid question, but the word is used so much and so often that its meaning seems to be taken for granted. I say this because last night I wrote a flippant post titled “Entertaining Satanic thoughts” and this morning I am more baffled than entertained. It’s like, whether…

I’ve been thinking about who to endorse for president. Considering that “America is Satan,” and considering that “a vote for Romney is a vote for Satan,” it might be a no-brainer. I have no idea what would possess me to have such thoughts suddenly and without warning pop into my evil mind… Perhaps I watched…

I’m so sick of being negative that I’m feeling negative about negativity. I often wish I had never heard of politics. The presidential race is incredibly irritating, and I am not only sick of it, I am sick of my pessimism about the results. It seems like we’re in for a lose-lose. Whoever wins the…

Sarah’s excellent post about the Republican “war on women” made so many good points that I feel a bit guilty about neglecting the issue. First, I think Rick Santorum added to the confusion deliberately created by President Obama, George Stephanopoulos, and others when he sounded off on contraception. That he is on record as opposing…

So it’s come to this. Whether because it has been legislated away or voluntarily surrendered, Americans’ privacy has largely disappeared. Our rulers are getting ever bolder, so robot drones are now poised to fly over our homes. A few kooky types like libertarians and whiners at the ACLU are sounding the alarm, but the law enforcement…

One of the most galling aspects of government is that the people who engage in reckless spending and make irresponsible decisions are never held accountable. Instead, the citizens are. By their nature, governments cannot go broke. Instead, they simply go on. And on. Harrisburg is perfect example. And unless voters wake up en masse, what…

While I have written many posts reminding readers of what I have said over the years, sometimes I need to remind myself of what I have said. More times than I can count (and long before the Tea Party movement’s inception) I have advocated an alliance between libertarians and social conservatives. Hell, FWIW I even…