Liberate Migration

“The safest way to make laws respected is to make them respectable.” -- Frédéric Bastiat It is long past time for sane people to recognize that immigration laws, borne of racism and bigotry and the fake science of eugenics, are bad laws; they are not respectable laws at all. The conclusions of the "science" of…

Racialism is Bogus

The Unwelcome Revival of Race Science is far longer than need be, and carries a certain amount of unnecessary political baggage, but nonetheless, there's some gold among the dross. Gist: racial theories are on the rise, particularly among today's alt-right. To understand why the claims of race theorists are bogus, the author examines the data.…

Unnecessary Wars

Pat Buchanan and I take opposite sides on some issues, particularly with his emphasis on "culture wars" and his aversion to immigration. Nonetheless, I must give a qualified recommendation for his book Churchill, Hitler, and the Unnecessary War. Tl;dr version: both World War I and II were unnecessary. The Brits won the war but lost…

Legislators, Know Thy Limits

A certain legislator wished to make his state great via technology. My reply: Technology is hardly the forte of the legislature. There are fundamental differences between a body of random people whose sole qualification is the ability to get voted into office, and entrepreneurs, who risk their own skin in the game, rather than risking…

No Such Thing As Free School

Remember the saying? There's no such thing as a free lunch? This is true for all "free" goods provided by the government. First off, obviously, taxpayers cover the costs. Second, government is seldom or never the most efficient provider of services. But most importantly, "free" school (the topic of this article) comes packaged with a…

Nativism Self-implodes

I've opposed nativist know-nothings for decades, for many reasons. Their theory of wall-building-as-panacea rests on many shifting assertions, including the belief that immigrants necessarily vote for more government, and/or necessarily vote Democrat. Both parts of that theory have always seemed suspect to me. In addition, the last claim - that immigrants tend to vote Democrat…

Against Intellectual Property

This will raise the ire of some libertarians, but I can see no merit in arguments that a copy of the product of one's mental effort is "property." Suppose I make a clay pot. Assuming that the clay was mine, and the tools were mine or were legitimately in my hands, and I had no…

Border Collectivization

Government borders are categorically different from private borders. When you and I separately define the borders of our individual properties, we define them for ourselves only. You and I may allow or exclude whomever we please. We may make different choices for ourselves, but may not impose those choices on each other. National immigration controls…

A Deficit of Proper Language

The words and phrases we use shape our thought. Bad language can lead to bad policy decisions. Daniel B. Klein and Donald J. Boudreaux take aim at a deeply misleading phrase: "trade deficits." Deficits sound bad. But deficits look only at part of a trade: the units of account, or dollars in the United States. What…

Against War: Standards

Folks who read or listen to me know that I am deeply against war; indeed, I have been against war since my earliest memories, going back to the Vietnam War. But why? To answer simply: I have moral standards. War is about "breaking things and killing people;" especially the latter. Now, I am no pacifist;…