Political Thought

David Teniers' Village Revel with Aristocratic Couple

The rabble must recognize friend and foe.

By Justin Katz | October 13, 2021 |

Michael Morse is pledging never again to vote for the lesser of two evils. On the whole, his “Saturday morning soapbox,” as he calls it, resonates very strongly with me, although I disagree with his pledge for prudential reasons — most significantly because it’s really very, very easy for activists and the news media to…

Policeman

A fundamental point must be made about low police recruitment in RI.

By Justin Katz | October 11, 2021 |

Laura Damon provides some of the reasons, in a Newport Daily News article, why police departments on Aquidneck Island may be having a hard time finding police officers: This year, calls for applications to join the Newport Police Department yielded a significantly lower turnout than years past. … “First of all, we have a lot of highly…

Children in tug of war

The position of individual liberty versus COVID deserves the mantle of “group rights.”

By Justin Katz | October 6, 2021 |

Sometimes aphorisms or statements of principle are used to steal bases in political debates.  Take, for instance, the assertion of the Twitter account for the Roosevelt Society that: The rights of the group outweigh the rights of the individual, the basis for vaccine mandates. 700,000 deaths many, many could have been avoided with vaccines. Even…

A water drop and ripples

The unstable double standard won’t hold.

By Justin Katz | October 5, 2021 |

After presenting an alternative reality in which pro-lifers spoke in the manner of climate-change alarmists, Grayson Quay writes: Our progressive elites have no qualms about advancing their agenda through extralegal means. For them, illegal immigration, anti-police rioting, and even light eco-terrorism are all examples of what John Lewis would call ‘good trouble.’ If legal maneuverings…

Firedancer in a ring of fire

Progressive infighting is interesting to watch, anyway.

By Justin Katz | October 5, 2021 |

There was Aaron Regunberg, up there at Harvard Law, thinking he’d take a step away from Rhode Island politics for a bit to further mine his white privilege for career gold when the political pieces started to move of their own volition.  As he writes in the Boston Globe: Many members of Rhode Island’s progressive movement…

Cyborg transformation from Superman 3

We need to get our heads around the evolving tech-radical machine.

By Justin Katz | October 5, 2021 |

The profundity of the situation didn’t come home to me until I was nearly done researching and writing this article for Accuracy in Media.  I set out to shed some light on the partisan donations of NowThis News founder Kenneth Lerer (which the article does), but what I started to see in that light was this: While his…

Washington Crosses the Delaware, by Emanuel Leutze

The healthcare worker lawsuit is more significant than many people realize.

By Justin Katz | October 5, 2021 |

The U.S. District Court for our area has refused to stop the state from enforcing its vaccine mandate as the affected healthcare workers’ lawsuit proceeds.  In practical terms, this means that the burden of the disagreement will fall on those workers forced out of their jobs during that time, rather than on the government. A…

Road to Serfdom Step 6

This is how quickly factions of a free people can persuade themselves to take away freedom.

By Justin Katz | October 1, 2021 |

The road to serfdom couldn’t be much clearer than as illustrated by this Newsmax article headlined, “US School Board Group Asks Biden for Help Against Growing ‘Threat’“: As schools around the country face growing backlash related to pandemic safety measures and studies of race in America, school board members are asking for federal help from the president…

Chariho School Committee, 6/22/21

David Stall’s resignation in Chariho demonstrates that even when we win we don’t win.

By Justin Katz | September 30, 2021 |

That dynamic has defined the disheartening turn of national politics over the past couple of decades, and as often happens, we can see the lines of the problem more clearly when they’re close up.  When people aren’t able to win fair and square and have a reasonable go at changing things, they don’t change their…

Gina Raimondo

America, beware Raimondo’s slick talk.

By Justin Katz | September 29, 2021 |

To be honest, there isn’t much content to the topic, yet, but Rhode Islanders may find themselves triggered by the Epoch Times’ headline on a Reuters article featuring our former governor, Gina Raimondo:  “US Commerce Chief to Push Investment in Domestic Economy.” “For America to compete globally, we must invest domestically—in American workers, American businesses,…