MicroGroks
Faced with a complicated task, we often turn to experts. We go to doctors, we go to lawyers, we hire electricians and plumbers and car mechanics. We turn our kids over to schools. (Which is usually a mistake, but we do it anyway.) You know what else is complicated? Voting.
The Declaration of Independence asks and answers two fundamental questions about the nature of government, as understood by the people who founded America. First, what is government for? Second, from where does government derive its just powers?
I once heard Penn Jillette (of Penn and Teller) say that he had learned from experience that if you enter into a contract with someone thinking that you’ll be able to use that contract to make him do something he doesn’t want to do, you’re setting yourself up for failure.
We frequently hear about how each of us should pay or receive ‘our fair share’ of taxes. Whether that’s the state Department of Labor claiming to ‘ensure the NH businesses pay their fair share’, or the federal Census Bureau arguing that it ‘helps each community get its fair share’ of tax funds, or some other …
Christopher Maidment recently began his post, A Republic, If You Can Keep It, by saying: A Government Of The People, By The People, and For The People. That’s the whole foundation of this country. I disagree. The foundation of the country begins with the Declaration of Independence. That document asks and answers two fundamental questions:
Long ago, I read an account about some factories in the Soviet Union that made cookware for soldiers. Of course, if you’re a soldier, you’d like your cookware to be as light as possible, because you’re going to be carrying it around. And you want it to heat as quickly as possible, because you have …
In 2017, the University of California at Berkeley put a substantial portion of its courses online for free in the form of video and audio lectures. Remember what happened next? Many of the lectures were not closed-captioned, which prevented some people who were hearing-impaired from being able to listen to them. The U.S. Department of …
Conservatives often refuse to believe in evolution, because they don’t see how something as complex as nature could operate without someone in charge of it. At the same time, they are comfortable with the idea that something as complex as an economy could operate without guidance. Progressives often take the opposite positions: that something as …
In the movie Idiocracy, people in the future experience massive crop failures. Why? Because the government has convinced farmers that ‘electrolytes are what plants crave’, so farmers start watering their fields with the sports drink Brawndo (which is basically Gatorade). I couldn’t help thinking of this the other day when someone forwarded me the latest …
Speaking on the subject of Red Flag laws, Senator Rand Paul was recently quoted as saying: I’m not opposed to sort of an emergency order for 48 hours and then you get a hearing in a court where you get the full due-process protections. In other words, on the basis of a mere accusation, you take …
