Liberty Bell song
Phranc earns the “all-American” part of her favorite sobriquet (“the all-American Jewish lesbian folksinger”) with this song about one of the USA’s national icons and its meaning for the past and...
View ArticleGeorge Washington’s Letter to the Hebrew Congregation of Newport, Rhode Island
Since today is George Washington’s birthday, I decided to include my favorite of his writings, his letter to the Congregation Yeshuat Israel of Newport, Rhode Island. Letter from George Washington to...
View ArticleThe Declaration of Independence
IN CONGRESS, JULY 4, 1776 The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America When in the Course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands...
View ArticleLiberty and Bureaucracy
The Rebecca Solnit piece linked below, together with some recent conversations I’ve had with LeFalcon and VThunderlad, have got me thinking about what we twenty-first century types mean when we use...
View ArticleThe Atlantic, September 2009
David Goldhill’s piece about health policy identifies the main problem with the current US system as health insurance. Not the fact that so many people lack health insurance, or the way health...
View ArticleNo representation without taxation?
Years and years ago, I read this essay by British Libertarian J. C. Lester someplace online. The credit here says 2001; either my memory is deceiving me or that date is in error, as I distinctly...
View ArticleOf what narrative is the US Civil War a chapter?
A couple of days ago, I found a mass mailing from the libertarian Independent Institute in my inbox. It included these paragraphs: The 150th Anniversary of the Outbreak of the U.S. Civil War April 12...
View ArticleThe way out of philosophy runs through philosophy
There’s a phrase I’ve been thinking about for years, ever since I read it somewhere or other in Freud: “the moderate misery required for productive work.” It struck me as plausible; someone who isn’t...
View ArticleUnkept Republics
I named my online persona after Gaius Acilius, a man who lived in 155 BC, in part because the history Acilius wrote of Rome seems to have reflected some of the concerns that would define what scholars...
View ArticleFreedom of thought is always freedom for the thought we hate
Discussion of the attack on the offices of Charlie Hebdo would, I think, benefit from a focus on Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes’ 1929 dictum that freedom of thought is necessarily “freedom for the...
View ArticleBlasphemy in America
Many in the West have spent the week and a half since the shootings in the offices of Charlie Hebdo rehearsing the same conversations about Islam and the concept of blasphemy that have been cropping up...
View ArticleIndiana becomes the center of the universe, for a little while
This is where Indiana is, in case you’ve been wondering. Last week the state of Indiana made the national news by passing a law whose sponsors named it “The Religious Freedom Restoration Act.”...
View ArticleAlison Bechdel is pretty great
Putting everyone in the picture (click for source) Cartoonist, memoirist, and Broadway legend Alison Bechdel has found herself involved in the controversy over PEN’s decision to give an award to...
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