I don't know if we're in the heyday of questioning the motives of people we disagree with rather than simply rebutting them--character assassination, that is--but it's got me wondering why this is such a popular pastime these days. Think about how often we hear...
Sheldon Richman

TGIF: Safety Can Be Hazardous to Our Health
by Sheldon Richman | Aug 27, 2021 | Economics, Featured Articles, Justice, Libertarianism, Sheldon Richman, TGIF
Kudos to Glenn Greenwald, a rare leftist voice of sanity on so many issues, for opening his recent article this way: In virtually every realm of public policy, Americans embrace policies which they know will kill people, sometimes large numbers of people. They do so...

TGIF: Thinking about Energy
by Sheldon Richman | Aug 20, 2021 | Economics, Featured Articles, Justice, Libertarianism, Politics, Sheldon Richman, TGIF
The UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) issued its sixth "assessment report" earlier this month. As usual it generated its share of alarmist headlines. The report is several thousand pages long, and I'm certainly not qualified to digest, much less...

TGIF: Evict the President
by Sheldon Richman | Aug 13, 2021 | Economics, Featured Articles, Justice, Libertarianism, Politics, Sheldon Richman, TGIF
President Biden has reversed himself under pressure from his progressive flank and has given the go-ahead for a new moratorium on renter evictions throughout most of the United States for individuals making up to $99,000 a year (couples, $198,000). The twist is that...
TGIF: Why Wouldn’t Government Grow?
by Sheldon Richman | Aug 6, 2021 | Featured Articles, Justice, Libertarianism, Sheldon Richman, TGIF
One of the least mysterious things in life is why the government grows. The better question is why it ever shrinks. People who devote lots of time to thinking about the importance of individual liberty know that government is inimical to human flourishing. So they...
TGIF: How Science Becomes Religion
by Sheldon Richman | Jul 30, 2021 | Sheldon Richman, TGIF
The popular slogan today is "Believe in science." It's often used as a weapon against people who reject not science in principle but rather one or another prominent scientific proposition, whether it be about the COVID-19 vaccine, climate change, nutrition (low-fat...
TGIF: Critical Race Theory and the Schools
by Sheldon Richman | Jul 23, 2021 | Economics, Featured Articles, Justice, Libertarianism, Sheldon Richman
The government's K-12 schools--aka "public schools--are once again a battleground on which a bitter dispute is playing out. Wait!--once again? The government's schools have been a battleground since their inception in the 19th century. Since that's where the children...
TGIF: Who’s the Aggressor? Who’s the Victim?
by Sheldon Richman | Jul 16, 2021 | Economics, Featured Articles, Justice, Libertarianism, Sheldon Richman, TGIF
When a libertarian says that the most basic individual right is the right not to be aggressed against, a clever interlocutor may accuse the libertarian of begging the question, of stuffing the rabbit into the hat. The trick, the critic will say, is in the word...