The Panic Peddling of Nikki Haley One of the problems with the politics of fear — the need to terrorize the herd in order to stamped them in your direction — is it doesn’t allow one to acknowledge that, in general terms and for most people, life has gotten better…

Getting Crime Wrong If there is one trait endemic in today’s conservative movement, and especially the Republican Party, it is just how out of touch with reality they are. They ignore real problems for imaginary ones, or at best, for grossly exaggerated ones. One issue that is constantly exaggerated is that of…

Margaret Thatcher once said: “There is no such thing as society.” What she meant was society is a collection of individuals not that the term “society” has no meaning. Society is a complex and intricate web of voluntary interaction, but not something you can touch or smell. Nor can you…

Humans have a concept of self and use it to define the “other.” Simply put the other is not them. On an individual basis that makes sense. But humans tend to collectivize that concept. So we end up with “Us” and “Others.” Defining the “Us” is difficult. So people…

His Killers had Millions of Allies On October 12, 1998 a young man — who looked more like a boy, barely over 5 feet tall, weighing in around 100lbs — was viciously beaten to death. His attackers took him and tied him to a fence overlooking Laramie, Wyoming, where he…

Slaying Imaginary Monsters Kills Real People — It was a pleasant day in June in rural America when Bridget Bishop was dragged out of town and lynched by a mob of good Christians. The next month the mob lynched five more victims, then eight in September. Seven other victims were imprisoned by them and died there and…

We publish quotes daily on our Twitter feed and periodically collect a bunch and post them here. We are considering a blog site to replace the increasingly hostile Twitter under it’s new dictator. But until we can arrange that check our Twitter account for new posts. …

America’s “culture war” is a blatant attempt to use religion and a pretense of morality to grab power. It is a reaction against the wider concept of “live and let live” and instead argues for a centralized, imposed code that all Americans are forced to live by. Your “private life”…

It was just after 3:00 pm in Johannesburg when my phone rang. It was my partner calling from Investec to tell me to quickly turn on the news. The first plane had just crashed into the World Trade Center in New York. As we spoke I tuned to CNN. I…