Posts Tagged ‘Libertarianism’
National Parks, Shutdown, Libertarianism
So I read the other day that when Trump (partially) shutdown the government, he effectively shut down the national parks. The rangers and others who would have otherwise staffed the parks…taking tickets, clearing roads, maintaining bathrooms, providing police services, etc. …were shut out. Thus the parks were left to themselves. But people kept right on…
Read MoreCan Ayn Rand Be Saved?
Late last year, there was an intriguing article in Politico, The Next Koch Doesn’t Like Politics. It seems that the Koch Brothers, the famous “Libertarian” billionaires who have done so much to shatter the American centralist consensus in politics, are growing old. So, increasingly the massive foundations and political networks they’ve created are being transferred…
Read MoreThe War On Diabetics
There is a fascinating article on the National Public Radio’s site this month, ‘We’re Fighting For Our Lives’: Patients Protest Sky-High Insulin Prices by Bram Sable-Smith. In it, Sable-Smith looks at how diabetics are risking serious injury…even death!…because Big Pharma has elected to push the price of their life-saving insulin to sky-high prices. As a…
Read MoreThe Ride Of The Four
There’s a terrifying article over on the Washington Post’s website, ‘Like a horror film’: The efforts to contain Ebola in a war zone by Max Bearak. In it, Bearak looks at how Eastern Congo is now being savaged by both war and disease. Attempts to save whole populations from the Ebola virus are being frustrated…
Read MoreOn Why Ayn Rand Isn’t Damned
So I had an odd thought the other day. I was browsing my own writing, actually, and I ran across my tribute to Stephen Hawking, the famous physicist and pop culture figure who simultaneously challenged many of the assumptions of his own profession, and also remade the public’s conception of what a scientist is all…
Read MoreSocial Darwinism: A Misunderstanding
Editor’s Note: There is a fascinating article over on Salon about Social Darwinism, a term the Right employs but doesn’t actually understand. This week, Burt Gretzinger explicates the Salon article and notes just how dim our pseudo-conservatives really are. We have a group… a Party… a sometime-cult of stupidity which often rejects anything outside…
Read MoreTrump And The End Of Ayn Rand
So, I’m looking right now at an article on the Washington Post website, Breaking from GOP orthodoxy, Trump increasingly deciding winners and losers in the economy by Steven Mufson and David J. Lynch. In it, the two writers make the interesting point that Conservatism (at least as that complicated word is defined in the United…
Read MoreThe Death Of Libertarianism?
By Michael Jay Tucker There’s an interesting article over in The Washington Post by Fareed Zakaria, The Reagan revolution is officially over. In it, Zakaria analyzes the departure of Paul Ryan and concludes that “the exit of the Wisconsin Republican … symbolizes a broad shift that has taken place within the party. It marks the…
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