When It’s Wrong for Lawyers to Help Guilty Clients Go Free

Philosopher Michael Huemer makes a claim that will surprise many attorneys and observers of the legal system: With some important exceptions, lawyers should not help a clearly guilty client go free or otherwise evade justice. This runs counter to the common notion that attorneys can or even should help their guilty clients go free. | Read More

The Moral Case Against Minimum Wage Laws

Advocates of economic liberty have largely ceded the moral high ground on the issue. But minimum wage laws treat low-wage employees as though they needed a government nanny and employers as though they deserved a government yoke. These laws violate the rights of employers and employees alike. | Read More | See also Ari’s op-ed at Complete Colorado, and listen to Ari discuss minimum wage laws with Gail Fallen on 1310 am.

The Irrationality of Neil deGrasse Tyson’s Rationalia

. . . Undergirding Tyson’s statist vision of Rationalia is a philosophic presumption of collectivism, the view that society as a whole is the basic standard of value, and that individuals and their proclaimed rights may be sacrificed for the sake of society. . . . The individual, his values, his rights (not that Tyson seems to recognize the existence of rights), his liberties, his wealth, his children, presumably his very life, all may be demanded by the self-proclaimed “rational” rulers. . . . | Read More

Election 2016

It has been quite an election season. Following are my key articles about it in reverse order.

· The Statist Convergence of Trump and Clinton
· You Might Be Outraged at Ted Cruz If . . .
· Should Liberty Advocates Support Gary Johnson for President?
· Donald Trump: Anti-Capitalist
· Donald Trump Would Be the Least-Qualified Person Ever to Be Elected President
· Why Liberty Advocates Should Join the Republican Party, Not Abandon It, Despite Trump
· Still, Never Trump
· Ted Cruz’s Remarkable Nod to the Separation of Church and State
· Trump, Cruz, and Freedom of Speech
· Republican Religion Undermines Capitalism
· Reason and Rights Republicans
· The Needed Political Realignment
· Ted Cruz Would Ban Abortion Even for Rape Victims
· Yes, Ted Cruz’s Policies Would Outlaw Some Forms of Birth Control
· Ted Cruz’s Dangerous Pandering to Theocrats

Hurting the World’s Poor in the Name of Helping Them

The vast sums of money transferred by the governments of wealthy nations to the governments of poor nations do not help the world’s poor, for the most part. Rather, such foreign aid serves to prop up corrupt dictators, finance a giant network of Western nonprofits, disrupt local markets, and keep many of the intended beneficiaries dependent and poor. Even private aid often has deleterious effects. Or at least Poverty, Inc., a 2014 film by Michael Matheson Miller of the Christian, free-market Acton Institute, plausibly argues those points. | Read More

FDA Deserves Some Blame for Unnecessary Teeth Drilling

The FDA just last year approved a drill-free, brush-on treatment for cavities—a treatment that has been available for decades in Japan and that is similar to treatments used in the United States in the early 1900s. Due to rights-violating delays by government, countless people have had to have their teeth needlessly drilled. | Read More

Separation of Party and State

As I discussed on Jon Caldara’s Devil’s Advocate television show June 24, political parties are private organizations and should be treated as such. Government ought not help finance the process by which parties select candidates, nor regulate that process.

Following are my recent articles on the matter.

· An Open Letter to the Colorado Elections Study Group
· Get Government Out of Political Parties: How to Resolve the Primary-Caucus Debate
· Setting the Record Straight about Colorado’s Republican Caucus

Democratic Attorneys General Attack Exxon; Alex Epstein Replies

In the name of fighting “climate change,” several state ” attorneys general . . . abused their offices and violated citizens’ civil rights in the pursuit of politically-motivated witch hunts designed to publicly shame and financially drain their ideological adversaries.” | Read More

You Can Learn to Fight Back if Attacked

One thing the horrific murders at the Pulse nightclub in Orlando again make clear is that, when seconds count, police are usually minutes—or in this case hours—away. The simple fact is that the true “first responders” during an active shooter situation are—or could and should be—the intended victims. Even if you are unarmed, you can take action likely to substantially increase your odds of staying alive. In a 2015 article I discuss many of the key issues, and embed some useful videos. | Read More

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