Agonist
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This is the ninth entry in my Antistatism Series. The Second Amendment is a historical relic of an attempt to "put teeth" in the right of revolution, to put a general and pervasive fear of violent uprisings into Federal officials, and, in the final analysis, make an honest woman out of "popular sovereignty." It failed…
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This is the eighth entry in my Antistatism Series. The Second Amendment to the United States’ Constitution was meant to strengthen a check on the power of any Federal army: the state militias. The Founding Fathers were prudently wary of standing armies, especially large ones kept in time of peace. Such armies were the concrete…
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Billy Beck, the best blogger out there, brought Fred Hiat’s June 9 meditation on the "’Bush Lied’ story line" to my attention. Hiat argues or implies that The Rockefeller report, which has been taken by the "Bush Lied" partisans as clear-cut vindication of their claims, in fact shows that Bush did not lie, but rather…
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Government is force. What Really Limits Government? Force limits government. First, government is limited by the force it has at its disposal. A government whose agents are armed only with truncheons is far more limited than a government whose agents are armed with machine guns, tear gas, and the hydrogen bomb. Second, government is limited…
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Snow’s melting up there. Grab the rifles, good buddy. It’s past time we went.
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Now though daffodils, My little dachshund slaloms, His tags expired.
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Spring is here, you say? Sit down on the curb for me. Let’s see that ID.
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The day smells alive. The fruit trees are budding green. Tax season is here!
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This is the sixth entry in my Antistatism Series. The last two posts in this series, “Practicability,” and “Heaven, Hell, or Hades?,” showed that Ayn Rand’s politics is incomplete because it provides no sufficiently realized account of limited government’s practicability. Objectivism states that a government of delegated and enumerated powers, limited to the purpose of…
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For a long time I had a banner on the Agonblog’s header with three graphics running across. The third graphic was a snippet of a title page for an art song: Franz Schubert’s “Seligkeit.” (In English: “Bliss” or “Blessedness.”) How dearly, dearly I love this song. Its first two verses wistfully contemplate the joys of…