Last week Matt Yglesias over at Vox tried his best to deflate the notion that America was becoming increasingly hostile to free speech. Unfortunately, as Daniel Bier over at Skeptical Libertarian noted, Yglesias’s own charts indicate that support for free speech among “Liberal” and “Slightly Liberal” Americans is at the lowest point in over 40 years. 

President Trump’s recent cabinet shake-up looks to be a real boost to hard-line militarism and neo-conservatism. If his nominees to head the State Department and CIA are confirmed, we may well have moved closer to war.

Before being chosen by Trump to head up the CIA, Secretary of State nominee Mike Pompeo was one of the most pro-war Members of Congress. He has been militantly hostile toward Iran, and many times has erroneously claimed that Iran is the world’s number one state sponsor of terror. The truth is, Iran neither attacks nor threatens the United States.

The Trump administration is continuing to raise eyebrows with its not-so-new approaches to longstanding problems. The most recent is the plan to “solve” the opioid epidemic by, among other things, introducing the death penalty in certain cases for drug dealers. While the death penalty may seem like a new tactic, it’s essentially just a continuation of the century-long pattern of the drug war: when the policies aren’t working, make them tougher.

The recent rioting and virtual civil war in Northern Ireland points out, both for libertarians and for the world at large, the vital importance of pushing for and attaining the goal of national liberation for all oppressed people. Aside from being a necessary condition to the achievement of justice, national liberation is the only solution to the great world problems of territorial disputes and oppressive national rule.

Cries for gun control have reached deafening levels since the Stoneman Douglas High School shooting in Parkland, Florida on February 14th, 2018.

Exploiting the tragedy that left 17 people dead, gun control advocates are using every means possible to ram gun control measures across legislatures nationwide.

It was announced this week that the Denver Post will soon be cutting one-third of its newsroom staff. The newsroom currently has 100 reporters, and that will soon be cut by 30 positions. 

Reporters and other observers quickly began to look for whom to blame. 

When sharing Bob Murphy’s excellent article today on the Knowledge-Calculation Debate, one of the most common responses has been “Murphy makes a good case, but why does this really matter?” 

Beyond the value of grasping intellectual nuance, I think this debate has actually increased in real world importance over time with the rise of “Big Data.”

In the face of staggeringly high tax rates and growing housing costs, people are abandoning San Francisco at such a rate that U-Haul prices have skyrocketed in the area.

In fact, most geniuses seem to simply not get economics. An example is the recently departed physicist Stephen Hawking, who - like so many - made rather ridiculous statements of economic nature. Quoted by MSN/MarketWatch, Hawking makes several very simple mistakes in his attempted economic commentary.