We made ISIS possible — In 1945, the United States found itself at the tail end of a titanic struggle against two of the most evil regimes in human history. After inflicting awesome devastation upon Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan, what was left capitulated, and the United States held the fate of Western Germany and…

Politics is a balancing act — Imagine living in the future. Everybody rides in self-driving cars; no humans are actually controlling the flow of traffic on the road anymore. Instead, a centralized computer, something like Google Maps, calculates and arranges everyone’s route to make it as efficient and as pleasant as possible for its users. Given…

Here’s what we can learn from Japan, Switzerland, and Singapore — In my experience, working class people in the United States exist within a strange paradox. They do not like cops, often finding themselves the targets of their unfair and discriminatory harassment. At the same time, crime is a constant worry, whether it’s getting robbed at gunpoint working the morning shift…

Nobody knows what’s going to happen — After months of rising tensions, Wagner Group chief Yevgeny Prigozhin accused the Russian military of killing his mercenaries in an air strike and vowed to punish Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu and other military top brass for mishandling the war in Ukraine. With barely any opposition and even possible complicity from…

Living in the United States is nothing if not frustrating — Living in the United States is nothing if not frustrating. I remember listening to NPR on my way to work, and they were talking about a debate going on in Germany. The Green Party proposed legislation that would effectively ban oil and gas boilers in favor of heat pumps in…

I work at a very small company, currently eight people including the owner. Three of my black coworkers have told me they will not be celebrating Juneteenth, because they’re afraid there will be a shooting. Today, my commute home took three and a half hours, because there was a shooting…

The American Jewish Community has developed some of the most impressive philanthropic networks in the world — There is a lot of mythologizing of the Jewish community in America, to put it lightly. In his song Story of O.J., Jay Z tells us that Jewish people own all the property in America, due to their wise financial investments and ability to wield credit. Award-winning journalist Jasmyne Cannick…

Big Joel and conservatives are both wrong about what “woke” means — Right off the bat, I want to clarify that when I use the term “woke,” I’m not talking about how it has been used for around a century in the black community by figures like blues singer Lead Belly to mean vigilance against racial injustice and violence. In popular usage…

Smangus is a rare exemplar of anarchism in practice — Acts 2:44–45 All who believed were together and held everything in common, and they began selling their property and possessions and distributing the proceeds to everyone, as anyone had need According to legend, Taiwan’s most remote indigenous village was founded 400 years ago when the great chief Mangus led a…