[The Vanishing Tradition: Perspective on American Conservatism. Edited by Paul Gottfried. Cornell University Press, 2020. 223 + pages.]

Jeff Deist joins the Death to Tyrants podcast to discuss themes in his recent article, “Politics Drops Its Pretenses“ and his recent speech on how “meaningless words” create a narrative. Is “democracy” really a good thing? Do those who use it even know what it means?

Increasingly in recent years, criminal-justice-reform activists in states and cities have been campaigning for what is known as “ban the box.” This is an effort to enact new laws and ordinances prohibiting landlords and employers from asking applicants about their criminal histories. The idea is that far too many rehabilitated former criminals are unable to find work or rent an apartment thanks to “the box” on application forms that asks about criminal convictions.

Thanks to the proliferation of body cameras and security cameras attached to homes and businesses, police are far more frequently being caught lying.

A famous adage of questionable origin reads something like this: you can fool all people some of the time, or some people all of the time, but never all people all of the time. The strand of modern economics called ‘behavioral economics’ makes its living on occasionally fooling some people and wrapping the results in daunting mathematical equations.

Reading Nassim Nicholas Taleb, the student of Austrian economics finds much to like. Taleb’s clear, razor-sharp and ruthlessly unqualified commentary often reminds the reader of Mises – indeed even the content of his ideas is sometimes strikingly Misesian. In exploring an argument, Taleb frequently follows it to its logical conclusion whether or not that fits well with established opinion.