Paradocracy

Some people are late to the conversation. Some think that there’s still room and time for dialogue, that those who don’t get it are still within reach, that they can still be ‘saved’; that, if we are clever and cautious enough, if we just assemble a tighter and more comprehensive argument and package it nicely enough, reason will finally prevail, and that the uninitiated will surely accept the truth when it is finally perfectly and plainly laid before them in the clearest of resolution. This is not just a pipe dream but a complete misreading of the room, a special kind of ignorance to the “godless ideology,” as Virginia Delegate Nick Freitas has described it, “that kills babies in the womb, sterilizes confused children, turns our cities into cesspools of degeneracy and lawlessness… and [led to the assassination of] Charlie Kirk.” Remember this: less than a year ago, half of the country was wholeheartedly prepared to vote for a senile dementia patient, Joe Biden, for the simple reason t...

Charlie Kirk is known to many as a political activist; he is known to some as a Christian; he is known to two as daddy, and to one as a husband. As of today, September 10, 2025, Charlie Kirk is also known as a martyr. As of this day, Charlie will be remembered forever as a martyr, a thirty-one-year-old man who gave his last breath in his exercise of free speech and his defense of reason — on a university campus, no less, where civilized men were once encouraged to engage in the free exchange of ideas, and where the most impassioned of dialogue was meant to take place. After all, where discourse breaks down on campus, where the truth is off limits even at our supposed institutions of learning, arguments are soon substituted with assaults and the freedom of speech is effectively null. As President John F. Kennedy famously proclaimed on April 27, 1961, “ That is why our press was protected by the First Amendment — the only business in America specifically protected by the Constitution — n...

People often claim that it’s “just” a small tax, that it’s a “just” tax for this reason, that reason, or the other. But doesn’t the tax system itself, in its convoluted codes and coercive enforcement, offer enough of an admission that it is fundamentally unjust, and doesn’t history demonstrate that “just” is just the beginning? Aren’t programs like health savings plans (HSAs) and college savings plans (529s), as well as tax credits, deductible expenses, and financial accounts subject to special or preferential tax treatment, evidence of the fact that taxes are not just “tolerable” but “justifiable” (in the generally-accepted sense) only so far as they not only serve the (ill-defined) “common good” and “pay the price for civilization” but they make sufficient allowances, guarantee essential exemptions, and offer special treatment in critical cases? At least, this is the mode of thinking that, for those willing to approve or accept the ever-expanding institution, offers any chance at “ju...

A specific kind of anxiety is on the rise: one coming as a result of overspecialization, a narrowing of one’s personal passions, life skills and purviews, the growing replaceability of human labor with automation, the seeming insignificance of what today passes as “work”, and ultimately the fact that, so often, the product of one’s own labor (his marginal output) is essentially useless to him if not for compensation in other terms (i.e. money, some medium of exchange for other goods that are actually useful); anxiety compounded by the fact that his occupation remains viable only to the extent that it continually satisfies others, for the end product (or result) is of no apparent use in and of itself to the one selling or marketing it.  This creates an unending sense of dread, doom, depression, resentment, and paranoia amongst individuals just as confused about the purpose of their “work” as they are about the purpose and meaning of life — with, regrettably, so many mistaking the se...

With capitalism, the freedoms enjoyed and the results produced are evidence enough of its merits; whereas with communism perception relies on a delicate balance of power and persuasion, convincing the public of tales and theories, and the consequences of questioning them. Propaganda is that which seeks to place in the imagination that which is not experienced in reality, whereas market forces dictate to men what little they know about what they imagine they can design.  This is, perhaps, at the very core of the debate between these two schools of thought: whether society ought to be brought into conformity around designs imagined — notwithstanding the lack of evidence, foresight and basis in reality, notwithstanding the force required to pursue their ill-defined ends — or whether society ought to be permitted to function through the voluntary expressions of individuals left to entertain their own theories, to develop their own visions and explore their own imaginations, to determin...

On the sixth of June, 2013, Asiana Airlines Flight 214 departed Incheon International Airport near the capital city of Seoul, South Korea. Its destination: San Francisco International Airport. Unfortunately for the crew and the passengers of Flight 214, that destination wouldn’t come without incident. On final approach, the aircraft would come up just short of the runway, the landing gear impacting the seawall, causing the Boeing 777 to tumble and the tail section to break off after impact. For the crew of Flight 214, this would prove to be the ultimate test and, for the total 307 souls on board, the most poignant lesson in the risks posed by misunderstood technologies, the dangers of unintuitive systems operated by fallible human beings, and the extreme costs incurred in matters of human life. In terms of numbers, for Flight 214 that cost begins at the three lives lost, the 187 who were injured, and all who suffered and who carry the trauma of the incident. As is the case in virtually...