I'm old enough to remember this 1960s Lay's Potato Chips commercial. (Hell, I'm almost old enough to remember when plays were in black and white!) In the commercial a man (Bert Lahr, the cowardly lion in The Wizard of Oz) faces a challenge from the devil, who has a...
Politics
TGIF: Immigration Foes, What’s the Beef?
by Sheldon Richman | Feb 24, 2023 | Economics, Featured Articles, Justice, Libertarianism, Politics, Sheldon Richman, TGIF
If people are going to hate on immigrants, they should at least get their stories straight. Do immigrants take our jobs or do they sponge off us through welfare? Today, let's talk about jobs. Recently I was listening to Spiked's Brendan O'Neill interview Batya...
TGIF: Fins Left, Right, and Center
by Sheldon Richman | Feb 17, 2023 | Featured Articles, Foreign Policy, Justice, Libertarianism, Politics, Sheldon Richman, TGIF
Th[e] central question is not clarified, it is obscured, by our common political categories of left, right, and center. --Carl Oglesby, Containment and Change You got fins to the left, fins to the right And you're the only bait in town. --Jimmy Buffett, "Fins"...
Arizona Must Pass ‘Defend the Guard’
by Paul Gosar | Feb 14, 2023 | Featured Articles, Foreign Policy, Politics
President Joe Biden’s foreign policy is fundamentally broken. What should have been a clean, quick withdrawal from Afghanistan was given an artificial extension by the White House and bungled by complacent Pentagon brass. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has been...
Don’t Get Duped By the ‘State of the Union’
by Jim Bovard | Feb 13, 2023 | Featured Articles, Politics
Watching President Joe Biden’s State of the Union speech was like being cornered by a drunken lout who endlessly yanks on your shirt sleeve and babbles about all the favors he’s going to do for you. Biden told so many howlers that he eventually got heckled like a...
TGIF: Games Politicians Play
by Sheldon Richman | Feb 10, 2023 | Featured Articles, Politics, Sheldon Richman, TGIF
Except for the civic religion on ostentatious display at the annual presidential state of the union address, one can hardly think of a reason for the tradition at all. It's not as though we learn something substantive or even hear a truthful material claim. (Yes, it...
Black History Month?
by Sheldon Richman | Feb 8, 2023 | Blog, History, Justice, Politics
If a Martian social scientist were to visit America, he surely would assume that Black History Month had been concocted by racists. And he'd be right -- for a racist qua racist need not bear ill will toward a particular group. What makes someone a racist is the very...
TGIF: The Tyre Nichols Atrocity
by Sheldon Richman | Feb 3, 2023 | Criminal Justice, Featured Articles, Justice, Politics, Sheldon Richman, TGIF
The brutal killing of Tyre Nichols literally at the hands (and feet) of several Memphis police officers might be a source of cognitive dissonance for some people. But before we get to that, let's begin at the beginning. To start with the moral basics, the officers who...