I should honestly not be blogging right now but this required my attention. I have some bad news for those who like having an intellectually engaging political climate. Christopher Hitchens has been diagnosed with cancer of the esophagus. From Michael J. Totten: Damn. Christopher Hitchens has been diagnosed with cancer. According to the Washington Post, [...]

It’s not by mistake that you’ll hear talk of property rights more in the country than in the city, since it’s clearer who owns what in the wide open range. I’ve thought about this a few times but the brilliant economist Frederich Hayek thought about it more intensively in his work The Constitution of Liberty: [...]

The intelligence digest Stratfor has a really thought provoking article up about the mystery surrounding North Korea’s soccer team: North Korea is the most mysterious of all the teams to compete in the 2010 World Cup. As in soccer, so it is in geopolitics. Before the tournament started, no one outside North Korea knew what [...]

This is a post in our continuing “Point/Counterpoint” series, where TLP contributors and/or guest posters debate a topic. In this installment, Michael Powell argues against the existence of “states’ rights”. Tomorrow, Brad Warbiany will defend states’ rights, and his post can now be found here. During the twentieth century, there were several confrontations between federal [...]

I’m not the first person to notice how important a role linguistics play in politics – George Orwell’s classic 1984 provided keen observations into the role that minimization of language plays in closing political discourse. In his essay “Politics and the English Language,” Orwell stated, “All issues are political issues, and politics itself is a [...]

Today I got this message from the Charles G. Koch Charitable Foundation: I hope your summer is off to a great start! If, like me, you’re a fan of free-market economist and Nobel laureate Friedrich Hayek, whose book The Road to Serfdom just hit #1 on Amazon, this has been an exciting week. It’s true! The Cato Institute [...]

Christopher Hitchens, the consummate polemicist and insurgent against orthodoxy and absolutism, released his memoirs. With this has come savage attacks against him that deserve to be shown for their ad hominem nature. It shows pretty supremely in an article on the man in the Guardian: When the invasion of Iraq was first debated, one couldn’t [...]

An awesome study turns social conservative thought on families completely on its head: Contrary to what the religious right might say, children raised by lesbian parents are doing just as well as their peers, according to a new report based on a 20-year study to be published in the journal Pediatrics. In fact, they may [...]

Islam, faith, christianity, theocracy, oppression, religion

In a recent column, Nicholas Kristof criticized strongly Ayaan Hirsi Ali, the unbelievably brave Somali intellectual who has dedicated her career to pursuit of an Enlightenment in the Islamic world. Kristof apparently sees Ali as fomenting bigotry towards Muslims, casting aside the very legitimate and pressing criticism of the fastest growing religion that Ali posits.

Racial clashes have sprung up in Northern California, and without the expected suspects: At least four high-profile attacks involving blacks and Asians have occurred since January in San Francisco and Oakland, including the beating death of Tian Sheng Yu, 59, last month. Two 18-year-old men have been charged with the murder. Rongshi Chen, 64, was [...]

Howard Zinn passed at the beginning of this year, and I will admit part of me was saddened at his passing. My mother owned his People’s History of the United States, and my fellow students at college seemed to adore his work. My best friend is a Zinn fanatic, bringing him up nearly every time [...]

I can almost guarantee that the overwhelming swap of Liberty Papers readers were sympathetic to the creators of South Park in the recent controversy. In fact, I’m sure some of you are planning on participating in Everybody Draw Mohammed Day. Given that, I have to request reader thoughts on the French ban of the burqa [...]

Here’s the direct quote: “In the grand scheme, it has not been successful,” drug czar Gil Kerlikowske told the AP. “Forty years later, the concern about drugs and drug problems is, if anything, magnified, intensified.” That’s certainly good to hear, but here’s the chief problem: This week President Obama backed up that rhetoric by announcing [...]

A review for Robin Hood from the Seattle Weekly poses some unexpected accusations: An old-fashioned adventure epic weighed down by overly simplistic, quasi-populist dialogue,Ridley Scott‘s Robin Hood plays like a rousing love letter to the Tea Party movement. Instead of robbing from the rich to give to the poor, this Robin Hood (Russell Crowe) preaches about [...]

I am honored to join The Liberty Papers. Brad Warbiany and Doug Mataconis have been very welcoming, and my new realm into libertarian thought should be fulfilling and rich. I’ve been at United Liberty for two years, starting with the 2008 election and running all the way up to coverage of Arizona’s discriminatory immigration law. [...]