I was all ready to don a black mask for the Antifa demonstration when I realized that the self-styled antifascists hadn't planned a demonstration. What are they waiting for? After all, the national government has just started a new fascistic crusade. You'd expect the...
Sheldon Richman
TGIF: Static Analysis Clouds Immigration Debate
by Sheldon Richman | Apr 5, 2024 | Economics, Featured Articles, Sheldon Richman, TGIF
Opponents of people's freedom to cross national borders to where the best jobs are, aka open borders, make a rookie error: they engage in static analysis and overlook the dynamism of social processes that freedom produces. I was recently asked on Facebook: "Are you...
TGIF: Israel Humiliated
by Sheldon Richman | Mar 29, 2024 | Featured Articles, Foreign Policy, Justice, Sheldon Richman, TGIF
To more fully understand the ferocity of Israel's massacre of the people of the Gaza Strip, it's perhaps worth considering that on October 7, 2023, the reputedly invincible Israeli Defence Forces and intelligence services were made to look like fools caught sleeping...
TGIF: Leave TikTok Alone
by Sheldon Richman | Mar 22, 2024 | Featured Articles, Foreign Policy, Justice, Politics, Sheldon Richman, TGIF
This is America, last I checked. Surely, the government would not force the sale of a social-media company or ban its app from the Google and Apple stores. Would it? Well, yes, it would, could (perhaps), and might. A bill in Congress, backed by the government's...
TGIF: Reverse Scapegoating in the Immigration Debate
by Sheldon Richman | Mar 15, 2024 | Featured Articles, Justice, Sheldon Richman, TGIF
In the controversy over immigration we can spot a phenomenon I call "reverse scapegoating." According to Merriam-Webster, the scapegoat is "one that bears the blame for others." With reverse scapegoating, others bear the blame for one. Both are unjust. Reverse...
TGIF: Is Israel Mad?
by Sheldon Richman | Mar 8, 2024 | Featured Articles, Libertarianism, Politics, Sheldon Richman, TGIF
Has Israel gone mad? Or has it always been mad? What is the country thinking? The collective nouns seem reasonable in light of the widespread support in that country for the Israeli government's appalling military assault on the people of the Gaza Strip for the last...
TGIF: Immigration in an Nth-Best World
by Sheldon Richman | Mar 1, 2024 | Economics, Featured Articles, Justice, Libertarianism, Politics, Sheldon Richman, TGIF
We live in an nth-best society. It's neither fully libertarian (though libertarians disagree over exactly what that would mean) nor totalitarian like the Soviet Union, Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy, Maoist China, or North Korea. It's somewhere in between, closer to...
TGIF: What Should I Do on Election Day?
by Sheldon Richman | Feb 23, 2024 | Featured Articles, Politics, Sheldon Richman, TGIF
Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard. --H. L. Mencken This column was prompted by a conversation I had with a few neighbors, whom I do not know, over the Nextdoor.com platform. I thank them for being...