Creating responsibility in fact (and not in theory, law, or policy) requires tethering the objects of responsibility to substantial risk. The only risk category that transforms responsibility into innovative success is existential; anything substantially smaller amounts to nothing more than parking tickets, a minor nuisance for minimizing risk in any…

Vaccines, Money and the Paradox of America The Puritans were a paradox: children of the enlightenment firmly driven by pre-enlightenment values. They approached problems with the cold rationality of scientists but solved them in an ethos that could be traced from the twelfth century back to ancient Greece. They had…

Ricky Vaughn is in trouble (real name, “Douglass Mackey”). In 2016, Vaughn posted memes suggesting that Hillary Clinton enthusiasts could vote by texting “Hillary” or by using the hashtag #PresidentialElection. Now, he’s being prosecuted for violating a federal law that punishes conspiracies “to injure, oppress any person … in the…

Critical Race Theory and Curricula Aren’t the Problems I worked on education projects around the world, mostly for governments, and it’s true that — despite the best efforts of many over the last two generations — higher education in the U.S. is nonpareil and yet its foundations are exceptionally bizarre…

Apparently, a defense of McCarthy, Birch, and Populism Perhaps the most influential political essay of the 20th century is Columbia professor Richard Hofstadter’s “The Paranoid Style in American Politics,” first given as a BBC lecture in 1959 (as “The American Right Wing and the Paranoid Style”) and then published in…

In the early months of 1768, royal Massachusetts governor Bernard fired off a series of letters to the Ministry in London. The Stamp Act had been rejected by the people in November 1765, and the following month James Otis informed Bernard that a government that does not function has abdicated…

Property Rights & Revolution The date was December 20, 1765. The location was Castle William, a royal castle just outside of Boston that protected the harbor. James Otis and John Adams were meeting with Royal Governor Bernard. Legally, the Stamp Act had gone into effect the month before, but the…

Rittenhouse and Right to Rebel A curious though mostly legally irrelevant observation in the Rittenhouse matter is that he shouldn’t have been there; a more legally relevant argument is that his presence — with a weapon — and his specific actions provoked the rioters. There does seem to be a…

Nam Sibyllam quidem Cumis ego ipse oculis meis vidi in ampulla pendere, et cum illi pueri dicerent: “Σίβυλλα τί ϴέλεις”; respondebat illa: “άποϴανεΐν ϴέλω.” For Mac Miller. il miglior fabbro[1] I. It’s axiomatic in the dead land of college failures to study Bennington. In the 1970s and 1980s, Bennington was…