Tag Archives: Opinion

Opinion & Politics: Reason Magazine – May 2024

Magazine

REASON MAGAZINE (March 21, 2024)The latest issue features ‘What If America Runs Out Of Bombs?’ – Due to overzealous interventionism, the U.S. is dispensing munitions faster than they can be replaced…

What if America Runs Out of Bombs?

An illustration of Uncle Sam as a PEZ dispenser, dispensing bombs | Photo: Julian Dufort; Wikimedia

The U.S. is dispensing munitions to Ukraine and Israel faster than they can be replaced.

By MATTHEW PETTI 

How Capitalism Beat Communism in Vietnam

Two photos illustrate Vietnam's progress over time | Photo: Hanoi, Vietnam, 1985; Christopher Pillitz/Gettya; Photo: Hanoi, Vietnam, 2020; Manan Vatsyayana/AFP via Getty

It only took a generation to go from ration cards to exporting electronics.

RAINER ZITELMANN

Anti-Chinese Xenophobia Fueled America’s First Drug War

opium | Photo: An opium den in Chinatown, San Francisco, California, in 1898; REASON 31 Strohmeyer & Wyman/Library of Congress

Opium dens in San Francisco were patronized “by the vicious and the depraved,” politicians of the 1800s claimed.

JACOB SULLUM

The Economist Special Report: ‘The Oil Industry’

Special reports: The long goodbye

The Economist SPECIAL REPORTS (March 17, 2024): The latest issue features ‘The long goodbye’ – The next 50 years will be different, argues Vijay Vaitheeswaran in a special report…

For 50 years the story of oil has been one of matching supply with increasing demand

Oil well in the desert

Fly west across the United Arab Emirates from Fujairah, a tanker-filled port on the Gulf of Oman, towards the Persian Gulf and you get a sense of the vulnerability arid lands have to climate change. The farms around Dhaid provide a splash of green, but homegrown food is scarce, homegrown staples next to non-existent. Drinkable water comes mostly from desalination plants. The heat is growing inhumane; outside work is banned during the hottest hours of summer afternoons.

Why oil supply shocks are not like the 1970s any more

The end of oil, then and now

Oil’s endgame will be in the Gulf

Can Big Oil run in reverse?

Sources and acknowledgments

Culture/Politics: Harper’s Magazine – April 2024

HARPER’S MAGAZINE – APRIL 2024:

Crime and Punishment

Can American policing be fixed?

by Ras BarakaRosa BrooksBarry FriedmanChristy E. LopezTracey L. MearesBrian O’HaraPatrick Sharkey

In May 2020, the Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin’s murder of George Floyd sparked the largest wave of civil unrest in U.S. history. An estimated twenty-three million people took to the streets, calling for the reformation, defunding, disarming, or even abolition of police departments. Protesters pointed to policing’s disproportionate targeting of black and brown communities, its role in creating the world’s largest carceral state, and its increasing reliance on military weapons and tactics. Defenders of law enforcement countered that a militarized police force is necessary to regulating the most heavily armed civilian population on earth. These defenders claimed that racism…

Jacob’s Dream

MAGA meets the Age of Aquarius

by Frederick Kaufman

Jacob Angeli-Chansley, the man the media has dubbed the QAnon Shaman, had been released from federal custody six weeks before when we met for lunch at a place called Picazzo’s, winner of the Phoenix New Times Best Gluten-Free Restaurant award in 2015. Despite a protracted hunger strike and 317 days isolated in a cell, Jacob’s prison sentence of forty-one months for obstruction of an official proceeding on January 6, 2021, had been shortened owing to good behavior, and he was let out about a year early on supervised release.

Commentary Magazine – April 2024 Opinion Preview

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Commentary Magazine (March 15, 2024) The latest issue features ‘The Elite War On The American Middle Class…And How To End It’; The Big Lies about Israel’s Big Bombs…

The Elite War on the American Middle Class—and How to End It

by Christine Rosen

Being middle class in America used to mean something—something socially transformative, something even revolutionary. The American middle class represented a form of national social order never before seen on this earth—cultural domination not by the very rich and very educated, or the political domination either by tyrants or the mob, but by a mass of people, relatively well-to-do, who felt themselves fortunate in their circumstances. That was what made the American middle class different from the French or English bourgeoisie. Its members believed, and the country believed, that they were the nation’s backbone, its true governing class, and its moral compass.

The Four Questions of 2024

by Matthew Continetti

President Joe Biden and former president Donald Trump squared off four years ago and are on track for the first major-party rematch since 1892. Biden and Trump are the oldest presidential candidates in history, and each man has an established political brand. Biden first won federal office in 1972, and it’s been over a decade since the GOP nominated someone other than Donald Trump. The 2024 election is like all the SIRIUS XM oldies stations—Classic Vinyl, Classic Rewind, Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Radio—rolled into one.

The Hateful Candace Owens

by Christine Rosen

If you had never heard of Candace Owens until recently, you aren’t alone. Less than a decade ago, she was an unknown college dropout working as a marketing professional in New York, writing pieces for her company’s website about the “bat-s—t crazy antics of the Republican Tea Party.” Then, suddenly, she claimed to have experienced a political conversion. She told the libertarian political commentator Dave Rubin in 2017, “I became a conservative overnight. . . . I realized that liberals were actually the racists. Liberals were actually the trolls.”

Opinion & Politics: Reason Magazine – April 2024

Reason Magazine, April 2024 cover image

    REASON MAGAZINE (February 23, 2024)The latest issue features ‘Commander In Chains?’ – What if a Presidential Candidate ends up in jail, incapacitated, or worse – in office?…

    Commander in Chains: 7 Scenarios If Trump Is Jailed and Wins the Election

    An illustration of a person wearing handcuffs in an orange prison jumpsuit with a presidential seal | Illustration: Joanna Andreasson; Source image: Peter Dazeley/Getty

    There is nothing in the Constitution that prevents an inmate from winning the presidency.

    KEITH E. WHITTINGTON 

    Don’t Let E.U. Bureaucrats Design Americans’ Tech

    An illustration of the European Union flag mangled by a frayed phone charging cord | Illustration: Joanna Andreasson

    Some Democrats want to mimic the Europe’s policies on phone chargers and more.

    JENNIFER HUDDLESTON

    The Future of Immigration Is Privatization

    featurefionaimmigrants | Illustration: Joanna Andreasson; Source images: Clay Banks/Unsplash, PinkBadger/iStock

    New immigration pathways are letting private citizens welcome refugees and other migrants—and getting the government out of the way.

    FIONA HARRIGAN

    Culture/Politics: Harper’s Magazine – March 2024

    HARPER’S MAGAZINE – MARCH 2024: The new issue features ‘The Pentagon’s Silicon Valley Problem’ – How Big Tech is losing the wars of the future…

    The Pentagon’s Silicon Valley Problem

    How Big Tech is losing the wars of the future

    Illustrations by Yoshi Sodeoka
    Illustrations by Yoshi Sodeoka

    by Andrew Cockburn

    “Artificial intelligence may indeed affect the way our military operates. But the notion that bright-eyed visionaries from the tech industry are revolutionizing our military machine promotes a myth that this relationship is not only new, but will fundamentally improve our defense system—one notorious for its insatiable appetite for money, poorly performing weapons, and lost wars. In reality, the change flows in the other direction, as new recruits enter the warm embrace of the imperishable military-industrial complex, eager to learn its ways.”

    The Case Against Children

    Illustrations by María Jesús Contreras

    Among the antinatalists

    by Elizabeth Barber

    “People would rather be enthusiastic collaborators in a global project than be skeptics of its fundamental integrity. Antinatalism implies or counts on our eventual extinction, and thinking this way is painful.”

    Previews: New Humanist Magazine – Spring 2024

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    NEW HUMANIST MAGAZINE – SPRING 2024 ISSUE: The new issue features Emma Park on how the culture wars are damaging the sciences, theoretical physicist Tasneem Zehra Husain on why the imagination is key to decoding the universe, and Alom Shaha on what can be gained by thinking like a scientist

    Beyond the two cultures

    Amid a polarised debate, science and art seem further apart than ever. Emma Park, editor of The Freethinker, explores what humanism has to teach us about the apparent conflict between these ways of thinking and how to bridge the divide.

    “While humanities scholars are often (not without justification) accused of being Luddites, those on the science and technology side could also benefit from the knowledge that the humanities have accumulated over the centuries … [And] no intellectual activity worth the name can flourish in a politically repressive environment: freedom of expression and enquiry should be an issue to unite artists, scholars and scientists.”

    The poetry of science

    Metaphors are key to unlocking the secrets of the universe – scientists should do more to harness their power, writes acclaimed physicist Tasneem Zehra Husain.

    “Metaphors aren’t only a means of description, they can also lead to revelations. Centuries ago, Newton was able to calculate the gravitational attraction between two objects … [but] would ‘feign no hypothesis’ as to why it was so. He had the equation, but he did not understand gravitation … With Einstein, we finally have a metaphor. When we picture space-time as a dynamic ‘fabric’ … we begin to understand what gravity means.”

    Commentary Magazine – March 2024 Preview

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    Commentary Magazine (February 10, 2024) The latest issue features ‘Power Broke Her’ – The Rise and (Maybe) Fall of Lina Khan; The ‘As A Jew’: A Brief History; What Putin and Xi have in Common; Hostages – What Price is Too High?; On Joan Didion and more…

    The Power Broke Her

    The Power Broke Her

    The Rise and (Maybe) Fall of Lina Khan

    by Adam J. White

    Lina Khan was pleased with her progress. Appearing before the Economic Club of New York in July 2023, she outlined her vision as the chairman of the Federal Trade Commission under Joe Biden and its success so far. Never mind the fact that, just days earlier, a federal court had delivered her agency yet another high-profile setback.

    Is AI Just Theft Under Another Name?

    Is AI Just Theft Under Another Name?

    by James B. Meigs

    The magazine Popular Mechanics, where I once worked, used to have a column called “Saturday Mechanic.” It was a guide to basic car repair for the weekend tinkerer, and its author had decades of experience both in fixing cars and writing about them. Nonetheless, for each column, he would perform the task in question, carefully documenting each step with photographs. It was a lot of work, in other words.

    Technology Quarterly: Where The Internet Lives

    Technology Quarterly: Where the internet lives

    The Economist (January 31, 2024): The latest issue of THE ECONOMIST TECHNOLOGY QUARTERLY is focused on:

    Where the internet lives

    Users of the internet can ignore its physical underpinnings. But for technologies like artificial intelligence and the metaverse to work, others need to pay attention, argues Abby Bertics

    Commentary Magazine – February 2024 Preview

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    Commentary Magazine (January 17, 2024) The latest issue features ‘They’re Coming After Us’ – The sense Israelis have that they are personally vulnerable to outside attack in a manner more like an extended military invasion than a terrorist blow….

    They’re Coming After Us

    They're Coming After Us

    by John Podhoretz

    ‘IHAVE NEVER FELT LIKE THIS BEFORE’

    I have lost count of the number of times the phrase “I have never felt like this before” has been spoken in my ear, texted to me, or sent to me in an email, in the three months since the Hamas attack on October 7, 2023.

    When I talked with Israelis on a trip in November, the phrase described a gut emotion few under the age of 50 said they had ever experienced—the sense that they were personally vulnerable to outside attack in a manner more like an extended military invasion than a terrorist blow. They had lived through years of ineffectual rocket fire that was all but magically extinguished by the Iron Dome and Arrow anti-missile systems. 

    The Likely Lab Leak and the Covid Cassandra

    by James B. Meigs

    Enola Gay, or, How the Media Imploded When It Came to Harvard’s President

    by Christine Rosen