Found in our archives by Barbara Pickard.

The following points of desocialization must necessarily be written or read sequentially, but they need not be carried out in that manner: all the following points could, and should, be instituted immediately and all at once.

Martin Van Buren es probablemente uno de los presidentes de Estados Unidos más difamados y paradójicamente uno de los más olvidados. Sin embargo, en su tiempo, fue una de las grandes fuerzas que ocuparon el Partido Demócrata. Aunque muchos historiadores tienden a rebajarlo a favor de presidentes más “activistas”, quiero adjudicarle su lugar correcto como una de las piezas centrales del movimiento jacksoniano de las décadas de 1830 y 1840.

Most of us both value and take for granted the ability to make decisions about our own lives. When busybodies put their noses and their mouths into our personal affairs, we often say or at least think, “Mind your own business.” Unfortunately, we live in a world in which too frequently government won’t leave us alone, and instead, very actively tries to mind our business for us.

I follow several physicians from Canada on Twitter. Since I do not have first-hand experience of that health care system, I find their accounts instructive. Shawn Whatley, a Canadian physician I follow, wrote in a 2015 blog post entitled “Medicine resists change” that:

Canadians took a bold, progressive move in the 1960s and created Medicare. And we’ve blocked change ever since.

In addition to funding for a border wall and other border security measures, immigration hardliners are sure to push to include mandatory E-Verify in any immigration legislation considered by Congress. E-Verify is a (currently) voluntary program where businesses check job applicants’ Social Security numbers and other Information — potentially including “biometric” identifiers like fingerprints — against information stored in a federal database to determine if the job applicants are legally in the United States.

Last month, I noted how Colorado’s Congressional delegation was incensed at Jeff Sessions’ posturing on the drug war and his efforts to override Colorado’s constitutional measures against marijuana prohibition in the state. 

As of this week, the Berlin Wall has been shattered for longer than it stood as a lethal divide in the center of Europe. I crossed checkpoints at the Berlin Wall a half dozen times in the 1980s when I was writing articles for the New York Times, Reader’s Digest, and other publications. I never caught much guff from communist border guards in Berlin — which lulled me into my biggest East Bloc blunder.

Timothy Hsiao recently made the rather startling case that libertarians should support the War on Drugs by claiming that recreational drug use undermines a critical precondition for freedom, namely, the ability to think clearly and to choose wisely. Hsiao notes that: