tyranny

May 13, 2010

Digging in to the crimes of communism

Having recently finished reading Jean-François Revel’s Last Exit to Utopia – in which he excoriates leftist intellectuals for ignoring the crimes of communist totalitarianism and their efforts to resurrect the deadly ideology – and having just read a few more chapters of Solzhenitsyn’s Gulag Archipelago over lunch, it seems providential that I would stumble across this article at City Journal on the failure of researchers to seriously dig into the now-available archives of the Soviet Union: Pavel Stroilov, a Russian exile in London, has on his computer 50,000 unpublished, untranslated, top-secret Kremlin documents, mostly dating from the close of the Cold War. Continue Reading...

February 05, 2009

PBR: Socialism Tyrannizes

In response to the question, “What is wrong with socialism?” In answering this question we could point to the historical instances of socialist regimes and their abhorrent record on treatment of human beings. Continue Reading...

October 16, 2008

The Death of ‘Conservatism’

In the wake of the global financial crisis, stories from the pundit class and blogosphere abound proclaiming the imminent death of the conservative movement. This is part of a longer and broader discussion with roots in the post-Reagan era of American politics. Continue Reading...

July 08, 2008

Review: Civilization IV

It took awhile, but after its release in 2005, the latest installment of the popular computer game Civilization IV was received warmly by many cultural commentators. Civilization IV, or CivIV for short, was hailed alternatively as “a video game for the ages,” and “a kind of social-sciences chessboard that blends history and logic into a game that demands a long, long attention span.” Continue Reading...

June 16, 2008

J. K. Rowling’s view of tyranny

Here’s some insight into J. K. Rowling’s perspective on tyranny, in the words of Albus Dumbledore, speaking of the arch-villain of the series: Voldemort himself created his worst enemy, just as tyrants everywhere do! Continue Reading...

February 07, 2008

Global Warming Consensus alert: Prison! Update: Authoritarianism!!

It’s turning out to be a bad week. I’ve already been informed that I should be placed in the tender care of the Federal Prison System for the grave crime of supporting free markets, and now a prominent Canadian scientist wants to have politicians who remain skeptical of the Global Warming Consensustm join me in confinement: David Suzuki has called for political leaders to be thrown in jail for ignoring the science behind climate change. Continue Reading...

October 02, 2007

Mugabe: Rotten from the Start

An interesting article in the Los Angeles Times detailing how badly wrong Robert Mugabe’s supporters in the West have been from the very beginning (requires “free” registration; may I suggest BugMeNot?): Continue Reading...

September 17, 2007

Lewis on moral tyranny

Here’s a justly famous quote from C. S. Lewis on why the danger posed by a nanny government can be much more oppressive than that posed by the consolidation of economic power: Of all tyrannies a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. Continue Reading...

September 15, 2006

The Political Economy of Fantasy Sports

Although it is played by about 15 million Americans and amounting to a $1.5 billion a year industry, and even though it is a growing business and worth talking about, this post is not about the real-world economics of fantasy sports. Continue Reading...

< Previous 1 2