Political Thought
If this is all it takes for the governor to declare “a new state of emergency,” we’re in deep, deep trouble. We may never, ever be in a state of non-emergency ever again. Enough is enough. No real argument is made. No sources are cited (only vaguely referenced). No legal authority is defended. Any deliberation…
Thomas Chatterton Williams raises a point worthy of discussion on Twitter (via Instapundit): We have spent the past few years debating how oppressive the U.S. is. These images of Afghans clinging to a U.S. plane and falling from the sky are a damn sobering reminder that while there are no utopias, we’d better appreciate the society…
Most attention has been paid to the question of whom the state has mandated to wear masks (whether or not it has the authority), but an important point has to be made about Governor Dan McKee’s vaccine mandate for healthcare workers. Brian Amaral reports for the Boston Globe: If health care workers at state-licensed facilities in…
Reading about the many failures of our leading class and observing the continuing reluctance of our governing class and its supporters to acknowledge reality, I turned to the illustrated summary of Friedrich Hayek’s The Road to Serfdom. I’d say we are here: Follow the link above for step 10. Hayek was a thinker, not a prophet,…
Cards on the table: I do not want my children forced to wear masks in school. Apart from discomfort and health (including mental health), masks unarguably impede the ability to understand what people are saying and almost obliterate the ability to read facial expressions, which is absolutely critical to education, especially for younger children. Furthermore,…
Watching gubernatorial candidates Nellie Gorbea and Seth Magaziner (the Rhode Island Secretary of State and General Treasurer, respectively) turn top-down, executive-order-imposed mask mandates for school children into a political talking point is clarifying. They’re going after Governor Dan McKee because he did not mandate by executive order that every child must be masked upon their…
Glenn Reynolds is correct to say that the situation Joel Kotkin described in a recent American Mind essay “might as well be a foreign plot to weaken America.” Of course, it needn’t be that. Reducing the rigor of American education benefits not only our global adversaries, but also the people and institutions charged with conducting education…
Brad Polumbo reports for the Foundation for Economic Education: The promised long-term economic benefits from the sweeping $1 trillion expenditure will likely never materialize, according to a new Ivy League analysis. This runs directly against the president’s promises that it would create jobs and stimulate the economy. Indeed, Biden has insisted that the government spending…
When it comes to public opinion, it’s tough to know what’s real and what’s a social media echo chamber, but this letter, signed by five pediatricians in the name of the Rhode Island Chapter of the American Academy of Pediatrics, seems to be stirring up folks who want to force masks onto the faces of…
The solution is not to lean into the welfare-state, but to lean toward the free market.