https://youtu.be/vrzreDsVgMI Excerpt from Knowledge, Reality, and Value: A Mostly Common Sense Guide to Philosophy by Michael Huemer, Ph.D. Credulity Humans are born credulous – we instinctively believe what people tell us, even with no corroboration. We are especially credulous about statistics or other information that sounds like objective facts. Unfortunately, we are not so scrupulous when it comes to accurately and non-misleadingly reporting facts. There is an enormous amount of disinformation in the world, particularly about politics and other matters of public interest. If the...
outrage
Don’t Draft Women (Or Men Either)
As in many previous years, this year’s National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) is chock-full of terrible legislation slyly inserted for the purposes of concealing matters from the public. Both parties have been long guilty of this, with both groups using the NDAA to pass police state legislation increasing federal spying and law enforcement powers. All of the NDAA should be considered controversial, since so much of it is devoted to perpetuating the US’s aggressive, wasteful, and counterproductive efforts at global hegemony. But the NDAA also often contains domestic innovations like...
He Thought I Was an Undercover Fed
From the early 1990s onward, I was exposing FBI crimes, lies, and cover-ups. FBI director Louis Freeh publicly denounced me after I wrote a Wall Street Journal piece on the FBI’s killing of an innocent mother holding her baby at Ruby Ridge, Idaho. I continued hammering FBI abuses in the Journal, Playboy, American Spectator, and other publications. One of the FBI’s biggest blunders occurred when it falsely accused a hapless security guard of masterminding an explosion at the 1996 Olympics in Atlanta. Richard Jewell heroically saved lives by detecting and removing a pipe bomb before it...
Cop Arrested After Beating, Leaving Boot Marks on Face of Teen Over a Speeding Ticket
Body camera footage released in April highlighted the gang mentality of many police officers as it showed them violently beating a 17-year-old boy over a traffic stop “like a pack of wolves.” It also illustrates how far cops will go to enforce a speeding violation. But this story does have a silver lining as the two cops responsible for the beating have been indicted. San Joaquin County district attorney Tori Verber Salazar announced that former Stockton Police Department officers Michael Stiles and Omar Villapudua were each indicted on felony counts of assault by a public officer and...
COI #165: AUKUS Alliance Escalates Hostilities with China and Enrages France
On COI #165, Connor Freeman – writer at the Libertarian Institute – returns to the show to discuss a newly formed anti-China alliance dubbed AUKUS (Australia, the UK, and the US). The pact will provide Australia with nuclear-powered submarines and allows the US to deploy more military assets in Australian territory. The agreement struck a nerve with Paris, as it effectively killed a $66 billion shipbuilding deal for French diesel subs. Even more outraged was China, as the new alliance further polarizes the world between the US and the Asian superpower. Odysee Rumble Donate LBRY Credits...
Surprised? Another Hate Crime Hoax Exposed
In mid-May, news broke of a disturbing incident at Bucknell University: Outlets across the country reported that, on the eve of final exams, a mob of 15 to 20 intolerant male students had victimized the school’s LGBTQ community via an attack on a residence hall established as a “safe space” for community members. The intruders were members of a former Tau Kappa Epsilon (TKE) fraternity chapter that was shut down in 2019 over hazing violations. Before hosting the “Fran’s House” LGBTQ residential group, the building at the center of the disturbance was TKE’s decades-long home at Bucknell....
Free At Last: Veteran Sentenced to Life In Prison for $30 Worth of Marijuana Released
Derek Harris is an honorably discharged veteran who put his life on the line for his country in Operation Desert Storm. His years of service to his country were but dust in the wind, however, to the state who threw him in a cage for the rest of his life for selling less than a gram of weed to an undercover cop. After rotting behind bars for more than a decade, Harris has finally gotten some good news as the drug war comes crumbling down. According to his attorney, Harris was resentenced to time served and will soon be released. Prosecutors in Vermilion Parish agreed to release Harris from...
President of Israel Labels Ben & Jerry’s ‘Economic Terrorists’
On Wednesday, Israeli President Isaac Herzog called boycotts against Israel a “new kind of terrorism” after Ben & Jerry’s announced it will stop selling ice cream in occupied Palestinian territories at the end of 2022. Israeli officials are outraged at the American company’s decision, and Herzog railed against the Boycott, Divestment, and sanctions movement (BDS) that promotes boycotts to hold Israel accountable for its occupation and war crimes against Palestinians. “The boycott against Israel is a new type of terrorism — economic terrorism. Terrorism that seeks to harm Israeli...
Consent of the Governed?
What gives some people the right to rule others? At least since John Locke’s time, the most common and seemingly compelling answer has been “the consent of the governed.” When the North American revolutionaries set out to justify their secession from the British Empire, they declared, among other things: “Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just Powers from the Consent of the Governed.” This sounds good, especially if one doesn’t think about it very hard or very long, but the harder and longer one thinks about it, the more problematic it becomes. One question after...
We’re Here to Help
After a fiery year of cultural outrage against the state of policing in America, President Joe Biden's administration has announced that they have heard the pleas of the people. They will not stand by while a nefarious force maliciously targets the African American community. America needs to ban menthol cigarettes. Beyond the glaringly obvious problem of increasing the amount of dangerous police interactions, prohibition itself has a century long record of documented failure. Alcohol prohibition was short lived, the war on drugs has long been lost, and firearm involved violence is...