Political Thought

Adraien Van De Venne's Allegory of Poverty

It’s amazing how a small shift in perspective can flip the poverty narrative completely around.

By Justin Katz | February 17, 2022 |

Policy decisions can obviously increase or decrease the amount of poverty in a society.  Socialism, for example, is absolutely devastating and has repeatedly proven to result in misery and starvation.  That said, the following pair of tweets from Atlantic writer Clint Smith gets reality precisely backwards, and in a way that is important for everybody…

Colors in a bubble

Masks and truckers present a study in how the bubble of the Capitol forms.

By Justin Katz | February 10, 2022 |

I suspect they’re wildly overrepresented in the items that Twitter pushes onto my screen, but Rhode Island progressives are really something to behold in their reaction to Democrat Governor Dan McKee’s belated and overly hesitant removal of statewide mask mandates. As I suggested earlier, for many of the recognizable personalities, their rhetoric is probably wholly…

A drowning person's hand

We’re on a dangerous path with Whoopi Goldberg’s suspension.

By Justin Katz | February 3, 2022 |

She slipped up and exposed the direction of the narrative before all of the necessary special interests were pinned down.  Wokism, intersectionality, anti-racism, proclamations about “white supremacy”… in all of these variations on the theme, whiteness is bad, whiteness is everywhere, and racism only goes one way.  People of European descent are white; Jews are…

Painting of a forest monster.

Beware the embodiment of the Science “Egregore.”

By Justin Katz | February 1, 2022 |

Anchor Rising doesn’t often dabble in occult topics, but Max Borders brought the concept of Egregores to my attention, and it’s one of those ideas that is practical whether taken as a merely mythic representation or a factual supernatural force. Let’s note, first, that Borders’s essay is timely and worth reading for a variety of…

Luca Signorelli, The Preaching of the Antichrist

Don’t Ivy League professors understand the power of ideas implicitly?

By Justin Katz | January 31, 2022 |

Brown sociology professor Hilary LevyFriedman presents us with an interesting philosophical and sociological question: Like, seriously: “Not a single kid has died in a mass reading, yet they’re banning books instead of guns.” As far as I can tell, the quoted text is an uncited retweet of BlackKnight10k, whose deep insight has had a healthy…

A stage with empty tables

I miss the atmosphere of debate.

By Justin Katz | January 28, 2022 |

The topic of the podcast was tangential to my point with this post, but listening to Jordan Peterson speak with infrastructure academic Rick Geddes and writer and Democrat messaging consultant Gregg Hurwitz recently made me wish Westerners could get back to working together. Lately, I find that the people with whom I come into disagreement…

A water drop and ripples

What does the BBB Act stand for, anyway?

By Justin Katz | January 27, 2022 |

From Preston Brashers’s report, the three Bs appear to stand for “Build Bureaucracy Bigger”: The Build Back Better Act has several provisions that make Congress less accountable for U.S. tax policy and give unaccountable bureaucrats more control. The act would (1) give the IRS more regulatory authority, (2) task IRS agents with finding new revenues,…

A water drop and ripples

Rep. Corvese seems to dismiss the whole point of primaries.

By Justin Katz | January 26, 2022 |

His legislation would essentially make every general election a two-stage affair, with the primary being more like what we think of as the general and the general becoming something more like a runoff. The idea of primaries is to help voters organized into parties find the best candidate within the scope of their party’s definition. …

RI State House over caution tape

Take note of the socialist assumptions of AutoZone criticisms in Cranston.

By Justin Katz | January 26, 2022 |

Buzzwords flow through political and ideological debates — at the state level even more so than the federal — to the extent that one has to wonder whether the people using them really subscribe to the ideas that they represent. Consider Democrat Representative from Cranston Brandon Potter, tweeting about the city’s decision to permit construction…

Surveillance cameras on a pole

Take the expansion of surveillance cameras into your community to heart.

By Justin Katz | January 25, 2022 |

Ellen Liberman’s article in Rhode Island Monthly about police programs using the Flock Safety system is important and timely for a number of reasons: The “Flock hit” is a reference to the Flock Safety system, a network of time-stamped license plate-reading cameras linked to a vehicle’s make, model, color and distinguishing marks. The image information…