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Is Trump Normal or Abnormal?

by | Jul 17, 2018 | ,

Democrats, establishment Republicans, the media, and the intelligentsia think that Trump is a crude-and-rude nut-job who doesn’t have what it takes to be president or even a Chicago alderman. Libertarians think that Trump is similar to most politicians:  egotistical, amoral, and a control freak addicted to power and adulation.  He just doesn’t mask his pathologies as experienced politicians do. Based on hundreds of biographies of politicians and other powerful people, as well as on my own experience, libertarians are right. I’ve had the misfortune of knowing a lot of powerful people in...

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Diversity Agonies

by | Jul 8, 2018 |

The racial diversity movement began with R. Roosevelt Thomas, Jr., with his 1990 Harvard Business Review article, “From Affirmative Action to Affirming Diversity.” His thesis was that with the growth of racial minorities in the nation, it would behoove companies to have more diversity in their ranks if they wanted to understand their customers, in order to make more money. Since then, it has become agonizing to follow the downward spiral of the movement as it has descended into ridiculous thinking and social engineering.  The diversity mantra is “inclusion,” but the reality is exclusion....

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Trump’s Supporters: Beasts of Burden

by | Jul 1, 2018 |

Lower-middle-income workers comprise the majority of Trump supporters.  According to a recent Cato Institute study written by John F. Early, former assistant commissioner at the Bureau of Labor Statistics, those in this income group often have more than one job and work 2½ times more hours per year, on average, than so-called poor Americans.  Yet after paying taxes, they have only about the same share of spendable income as the poor. This suggests that Trump’s supporters are beasts of burden.  They are squeezed economically by those below and by those above.  No wonder they’re so angry and...

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Comcast, Amazon and the East German Stasi

by | Jun 24, 2018 |

Somedays, I think that a Soviet-like command economy might be better than our market economy, even with the gulags, bread lines, and state media, where propaganda and ballet were the main offerings. This thought always comes to mind when telephoning the customer service department of some big, faceless company.  If a market economy is supposed to bring us choices and drive companies with bad service out of business, then why do they all have the same lousy customer service when we call them? The standard recorded message goes like this: *** Thank you for calling the XYZ Company.  We know...

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Are Libertarians Good Neighbors?

by | Jun 19, 2018 |

It is said that fences make good neighbors.  But do libertarians make good neighbors? This question comes to mind because of the problem between the most libertarian member of Congress, Rand Paul, and his neighbor in Kentucky The neighbor was recently sentenced to a month in jail for assaulting Paul and breaking his ribs as Paul was mowing his lawn.  Certainly, assaulting someone is inexcusable unless done in self-defense, no matter the provocation. In this case, Paul had a history of piling debris on his property near his neighbor’s lot.  After the neighbor had cleaned up the debris on...

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Are Conservatives Dumber Than Liberals?

by | Jun 12, 2018 |

Hillary Clinton referred to conservatives who supported Donald Trump as “deplorables.” In referring to working-class conservatives harmed by de-industrialization, Barack Obama said: "They get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations." And liberal academics, intelligentsia, bi-coastal elites, and employees of Facebook, Google and other tech companies think that conservatives are inferior to them in intelligence, education, hipness, and open-mindedness.  At the...

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What Does Litter Say About Us?

by | Jun 1, 2018 |

With all the serious problems facing the nation and the world, the problem of littering seems insignificant. But it is not. Litter says a lot about us.  It says something about class, race, ethnicity, and even political ideology.  It speaks volumes about our sense of community, or lack thereof.  It’s also an example of the Tragedy of the Commons. Moreover, litter is a daily reminder of the inability of government to perform the simplest of tasks.  After all, a government that cannot pick up litter, trash, and abandoned shopping carts from public spaces is probably a government that cannot...

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Throw Capitalism into the Dustbin of History

by | May 24, 2018 | ,

Capitalism should be thrown into the dustbin of history. Not the economic system of capitalism, but the word “capitalism.” The word has such negative connotations that it has become a pejorative to call someone a capitalist. Karl Marx was the first to use the word to flagellate the bourgeoisie.  Now in a form of self-flagellation, capitalists use the word on themselves. A case in point is the new book by the noted conservative intellectual, Jonah Goldberg:  Suicide of the West: How the Rebirth of Tribalism, Populism, Nationalism, and Identity Politics is Destroying American Democracy.  He...

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