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Category: Politics
Robert Alan Goldberg on American Conspiracy Theories
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Timothy Sandefur on Frederick Douglass
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Michael Donnelly on Homeschooling and the Law
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Mark Silverstein on Your Rights when Interacting with Police
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Six Steps Toward Ending Police Abuses
“Please, I can’t breathe!” George Floyd begged as a Minneapolis police officer crushed a knee into his neck as he lay prone and handcuffed. The officer who killed Floyd deserves to be tried for murder, and the officers who participated or stood by and watched deserve to be tried as accomplices.
It doesn’t matter here what Floyd is alleged to have done. The person who called 911 said that Floyd was trying to pay a store with fake bills and that he was intoxicated. I have no idea whether the allegations are true. The officers involved claimed that Floyd resisted arrest. Video shows that Floyd struggled as police yanked him from a vehicle, after which Floyd cooperated. [Update: Subsequently released video seems to show Floyd struggling with police in a police vehicle.] Regardless, the officer’s extreme use of force obviously was entirely unnecessary to subdue Floyd. No reasonable person doubts that crushing a person’s throat for minutes on end can kill the victim. It is a police officer’s job to bring the accused to the courts for justice, not to play street executioner.
What, practically, can we as regular people do toward stopping such senseless violence by a minority of the people we pay to protect us? Here I review six main ways.
Continue reading “Six Steps Toward Ending Police Abuses”Why Libertarians Should Abandon the Libertarian Party
In urging liberty advocates to actively join the Republican Party to advance better candidates, do I ignore the elephant haters in the room, the Libertarians? Is the Libertarian Party (LP) a viable path for pro-liberty activism?
On the contrary: The LP impedes progress toward liberty by wasting resources, muddying the ideological waters (as I’ll explain), and leaving electoral outcomes more fully under the control of authoritarians. Members of the LP should abandon that party and either join the GOP, if they wish to engage in electoral politics, or else devote their energies to other causes. Continue reading “Why Libertarians Should Abandon the Libertarian Party”
How to Save the Republican Party from the Authoritarians
The Republican Party has gotten so bad—so inimical to liberty—that advocates of liberty should join the party and actively seek to capture it from the authoritarians who have overrun it. Continue reading “How to Save the Republican Party from the Authoritarians”
Theocratic Republicans Dominate Colorado Assembly
Colorado voters remain caught in the vicegrip of theocratic Republicans and hard-left Democrats who often select candidates far from the values of mainstream Colorado. Here I focus on the Republican side of the problem as revealed at the April 14 state assembly, which I attended as a delegate. Continue reading “Theocratic Republicans Dominate Colorado Assembly”
How to Fix Colorado’s Candidate Petition Mess
The process by which Colorado candidates petition onto the ballot is a mess. What’s the right solution? I’ll consider several alternatives, but first let’s consider a few aspects of the problem. Continue reading “How to Fix Colorado’s Candidate Petition Mess”