TGIF: Thinking about Energy

TGIF: Thinking about Energy

by | Aug 20, 2021 | , , , , , ,

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 judge, it. I do think it's wise, however, to view the headlines and politicians' statements about it critically. The poppycock quotient of rhetoric about the supposedly looming environmental catastrophe is extremely high, not to mention toxic. At the risk of being accused of cherry-picking, I will point out that one expert on the...

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Afghanistan Aftermath: No Firings? No Resignations?

by | Aug 17, 2021 | ,

Joe Biden, who says the buck regarding Afghanistan stops with him in the White House, claims that the Taliban's final takeover of the capital, Kabul, provoking mass panic reminiscent of Saigon, 1975, happened more quickly "than anticipated." If that's true--spoiler alert: it ain't--then we taxpayers should demand the mass firings and resignations of anyone in the America intel apparatus having anything to do with Afghanistan. We should also demand our money back. Intel isn't cheap. The U.S. government has been in that country for nearly 20 years with a political, military, and intel...

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TGIF: Evict the President

TGIF: Evict the President

by | Aug 13, 2021 | , , , , , ,

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 Biden acknowledges that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), which reports to his secretary of health and human services, has no legal authority for the action. Most courts have agreed about the lack of authority, syndicated columnist Jacob Sullum reports, and Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh said in June...

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TGIF: Why Wouldn’t Government Grow?

TGIF: Why Wouldn’t Government Grow?

by | Aug 6, 2021 | , , , ,

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 notice every sign of state growth. But most people rarely if ever focus on liberty or government per se because they understandably are busy with the usual cares and aspirations of life. Even if they occasionally sense that something ominous is afoot, they can do little about it. They might as well attend to things that are more...

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TGIF: How Science Becomes Religion

TGIF: How Science Becomes Religion

by | Jul 30, 2021 | ,

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 versus low-carb eating), to mention a few. My purpose here is not to defend or deny any particular scientific position but to question the model of science that the loudest self-declared believers in science seem to work from. Their model makes science seem almost identical to what they mean by, and attack as, religion. If that's...

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No Mandatory Vaccination!

by | Jul 27, 2021 |

George Mason University Professor Donald J. Boudreaux has written an article worthy of everyone's attention: "'Externality' Is No Good Excuse for Mandatory Vaccination." Some people think the case for mandatory vaccination is irrefutably made by simply saying that the unvaccinated person presents a risk to people other than himself. No so, Boudreaux responds. Here's a taste: Shouting “externality!” is not the trump card that many economists (and non-economists) naïvely suppose it to be. In a world in which not every human being lives an isolated existence – that is, in our world – each of us...

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TGIF: Critical Race Theory and the Schools

TGIF: Critical Race Theory and the Schools

by | Jul 23, 2021 | , , , ,

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 are, how could it have been otherwise? For an institution that was supposed to produce social unity, it's done the exact opposite. Today's battle is over Critical Race Theory (CRT), which in one form or another is being pushed by a lobby that has a stake in having us believe that all of American history, up to the present, can...

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TGIF: Who’s the Aggressor? Who’s the Victim?

TGIF: Who’s the Aggressor? Who’s the Victim?

by | Jul 16, 2021 | , , , , ,

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 aggress: libertarians allegedly rig the game by restricting the category of aggression to only the actions they disapprove of, thereby institutionalizing many corrupt activities. For example, If Jones tells Smith to get off land to which Jones has legal title, is it really clear that Smith is in the wrong and Jones is in the right? The...

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