Author: Eric Scheie

I am a regular reader of Michael Yon’s excellent reports on the war in Afghanistan, two of which were linked today by Glenn Reynolds. One of the things I find tiresome about the ongoing war against the Taliban is not simply that it drags on, but the way it is being funded. There doesn’t seem…

Are all libertarians socially liberal? I have never for a moment thought so. But there is a debate going on among libertarians right now, and I enjoyed this video: Part of the confusion comes from people who want to defeat libertarian arguments by smearing libertarians as atheistic hedonists who sport tattoos, piercings, and funny haircuts…

A lot of people (myself included) like to cite the failed War on Drugs as an example of how the country learned nothing from its experience with Prohibition. “End Prohibition!” we scream to little avail. Far from ending Prohibition, many American activists and politicians are bound and determined to start another one. Tobacco Prohibition. It’s…

A very depressing piece reports some very uncomfortable news. The Mexican drug cartels (whose murder victims south of the border run into the tens of thousands) are now here in the United States, and they are winning. We do already have these [cartels] in the United States, but you just don’t hear about them very…

Damn! Sunday is almost over and I never had time to write a damn thing. I hate it when that happens. I did see a New York Times piece titled “What if the Secret to Success Is Failure?” and it is not a new topi here. (“…if the goal is to prevent success, first we…

A common complaint I hear about public education is the huge amount of money spent per child versus the incredibly poor quality of the education they receive. Kids are routinely allowed to “graduate” (I guess they still use that term) without basic reading or math skills. Fortunately, those who are motivated to better themselves still…

I can’t remember who sent me this quote, but here it is: “Americanism means the virtues of courage, honor, justice, truth, sincerity, and hardihood—the virtues that made America. The things that will destroy America are prosperity-at-any-price, peace-at-any-price, safety-first instead of duty-first, the love of soft living and the get-rich-quick theory of life.” Too late. The…

Stories like this make me miss Philadelphia: A pair of lesbian lovers have admitted to burglarizing 29 homes but passed up one house where they encountered a lion, police said. Harley Rose Gifford and Britney Singleton, both 19 and from the 7100 block of Marshall Road, in Upper Darby have been arrested, according to police…

I am not enamored with the current crop of Republican candidates, but this post isn’t about my opinion of the candidates. Rather, I want to take a stab at explaining why so many right-of-center young people like Ron Paul. First and most obvious, they agree with him. But merely agreeing with a candidate’s position on…

Regular readers and non-regular readers, don’t miss this video! It shows our very own Sarah Hoyt winning the Prometheus Award from the Libertarian Futurist Society at WorldCon’s 2011. To see Sarah receive her award in the same ceremony in which the society awarded its Hall of Fame Award to Animal Farm is very moving, to say the…

This post was prompted by a small electric shaver going dead. I needed a single, measly AAA battery, and had only AA’s. I don’t know whether there’s a word for it (and “batteryphobia” sounds silly), but I hate batteries. I hate the way I always have to buy them for exorbitant prices, usually in a pack of…

I find it fascinating that what has gotten at least as much attention as the candidates in the Republican debates are noises made by persons unknown who happened to be in the the crowd. There was more fuss over the crowd reactions to the Texas execution rate than to Rick Perry’s opinions about the death…

I’ve blogged a lot about SWAT Team abuses over the years, and so has M. Simon. Because of my opposition to the Drug War, a lot of what I have said has been in that context. While I have often argued that SWAT Teams should not be used for routine law enforcement, a post I…

Thomas Jefferson’s letter to the Danbury Baptist Association (in which he states that the First Amendment’s Establishment and Free Exercise clauses had built “a wall of separation between church and State”) has been made at least as famous by its modern critics than its supporters. The critics argue that there is no “wall of separation,” and…

Except I can’t help it. For the past few hours, I’ve been watching coverage of the tenth anniversary of the September 11 attacks. It has been very moving and brought tears to my eyes. However, there doesn’t seem to be much of an acknowledgement of the fact that the war is not over. I may…

Five years ago, on the fifth anniversary of the September 11 attacks, I wrote a long post looking back, and I opined that there was a a sort of internal war in the nation’s consciousness: …there’s this huge capacity for denial which not only won’t go away, it seems to take on a life of…

I am often glad I don’ t have kids, because the state would own them if I did. In addition to making it cause for SWAT team invasions for the “crime” of not being hooked up to the power grid, the bureaucratic authorities claim that “social isolation” also provides cause for investigation (and of course…

For as long as I can remember, the theory was that if you wanted electricity, you became an electrical customer and had to pay for it. Well, I just learned about a new rule that you want to live on your own property, you have to be “on the grid” (meaning, a customer of the local…

I don’t like the increasing tendency of parents to saddle their children with difficult and unpronounceable names, and Glenn Reynolds linked a story that’s a particularly awful example. As can be seen in the video, this Longshoreman’s union activist is plenty pissed, and he clearly has a major chip on his shoulder over the unfortunate…

As usual I’d like to get caught up, and as usual I am falling behind. Not only can’t I fix the country, I can’t even keep up with the debates among those who claim they can. Fortunately, the video of the GOP debate the other night is available for online streaming, and even more fortunately,…