Tag: liberty

Are You Free?

What would Sam Adams, Patrick Henry, James Madison, and Thomas Jefferson say if they were transported to our day?

The Next Time You’re in New Hampshire

Now that GM stands for “Government Motors” who can love a Chevy? In many ways, seat belt laws paved the way for this transformation. Government straps me in, government keeps me safe.

False Economics and Malignant Growth

Patrick Deneen's excellent post this morning on populism, directly invoking Kansas, gives me the occassion to repost a short essay I wrote last year for my...

Tocqueville on the Shores of Titicaca

Amid Alexis de Tocqueville’s writings on revolution in France, there is a passage that rings true for those of us who have spent time...

“On the Grid”: When Electricity (and Other Things) Came to the...

“Come in and look,” Quintín urged me, as he disappeared with a shuffle through the low doorway in his adobe house.  I got up...

Brave New World Reconsidered: A Tale of Two Gnosticisms

Many who are alarmed at the prospect of the “abolition of man” have found in Huxley’s Brave New World a dark and salutary warning...

The Emperor’s Old Clothes

I wonder whether anyone else finds it, if not quite ominous, at least suggestive, that the National Constitution Center is now hosting a traveling...

Modernity, Fecundity, and Being a Competent Geek

Wichita, KS. Not too long ago, I asked my readers at my main blog just what sort of geek I should be. (The answer,...

Tocqueville’s Diagnosis

RINGOES, NJ As brilliant minds, armed with apparently endless supplies of money, thrash about Washington desperately attempting to fix what they have broken, it...

The (“Post-“) Modern Cave: An Allegory of the University

Mt. Airy, Philadelphia. Imagine human beings brought up from childhood in a cave, bound fast with their heads all facing one direction. On...