Does the mere prevalence of guns in American society contribute to gun violence? If statistics matter, the answer is no.

The first census in 1790 included a question about race and residence, but that was about the sum of it. In the years since, the census has morphed into much more than a head count.

Jitneys have a long and honorable tradition in America.

To note that government rests on the use of force is not some radical anarchist idea. It is the very definition of the institution and its ultimate distinguishing feature. For much of the last half millennium, political scientists of virtually every stripe accepted the notion as fact. No respectable scholar tried to paper it over and pass government off as some kind of voluntary, benevolent society.

Running against Herbert Hoover in 1932, Roosevelt campaigned as an advocate of limited government, even (correctly) accusing Hoover of “reckless and extravagant spending” and of thinking “that we ought to center control of everything in Washington as rapidly as possible.” 

At all levels of government, there’s a bipartisan effort to impose new or higher taxes and mislabel them as seemingly less onerous “user fees”. Sometimes, a user fee is indeed a user fee. Other times, it’s not that at all. Instead, it’s a tax hike disguised by a misnomer.

Corporate welfare is one of the toughest nuts to crack in Washington. While almost everyone says he is opposed to it, Congress hasn’t done much about it.

The fact is that Americans consume more because Americans produce more. 

Depicting sprawl as a “monster” or a “plague on the land” may capture headlines, but it doesn’t inform.

What’s lamentable here is that some of our politicians lie, cheat, and steal. It is not lamentable that Americans lose faith in them when they do those things. It is laudable, because it is common sense being appropriately applied.

The docile and gullible will accept a ready-made system of values, even a rotten one.

Winning the war of ideas requires that we not let the other side get away with judging free markets against perfection while they judge their own deficient prescriptions against mere good intentions.

The private sector, including private sectarian schools, religious schools, nonpublic agencies, and homeschools, offers a wide variety of education programs for this difficult-to-educate population.

Anti-capitalist literature is rife with demons, monsters, and other assorted bogeymen, but so are fairy tales.

Too many battles are lost to statists because of a misplaced and hard-to-shake faith in government itself. For all its endless failures, now more widely perceived than at any time in decades, government is still regarded as real and tangible while free-market alternatives are often thought of as nebulous and imaginary.

Historians record that on the eve of the last millennium, around the year 999, the world was rife with dire predictions about the future.

We ought to be raising more fundamental questions with regard to everything the federal government does: Is this a legitimate function of any government? Why should this activity be coercively funded at all?

People helping people is a good thing. Wanton destruction of things of value is not. Simple truths, but some people don’t yet seem to fully comprehend them.

Employers and employees can always produce “experts” who will rank jobs differently than any arbitrary formula, which is why imposing comparable worth would produce a playground for lawyers and a bottomless pit of costly litigation.

In free markets where individual choice prevails, conflict is minimized. You get what you pay for and you pay for what you get. If you don’t like the wares in one store, there’s no need to throw up a picket line. You don’t have to attend lengthy and boring meetings and be talked down to by public “servants.”