Archives: December 2025

5 years ago
December 2020

“Increasing numbers of Americans see those who disagree with them as subhuman and view politics as a worthy cause for violence, even if they’re not ready or willing to do violence themselves. For these new Jacobins, the romance of the guillotine persists.”
Katherine Mangu-Ward
“The Dangerous Lure of Political Violence”

“The vast majority of students have been out of the classroom for nearly half a year because of the K-12 school closures brought on by the coronavirus pandemic. Although it’s technically back-to-school season, millions of children won’t actually be returning to school buildings. About three-quarters of the nation’s 100 largest public school districts decided not to reopen with any in-person options this fall, which has left families scrambling for alternatives. We now have substantial data suggesting that the public school system will likely lose millions of students this school year.”
Corey A. DeAngelis
“COVID-19 Didn’t Break the Public School System. It Was Already Broken.”

15 years ago
December 2010

“The over-the-top reactions to Citizens United reflect a view of corporations as giant, soulless automatons that are fine for producing goods and services in a regulated environment but bound to wreak havoc if let loose in the halls of political power. That view obscures the fact that corporations, no matter how large or profit-driven, are by definition associations of individuals who have joined together for a common purpose. It also misleadingly suggests that behemoths such as Wal-Mart and Exxon Mobil are typical corporations, when in fact the vast majority of the 6 million or so corporations registered in the United States are small businesses or nonprofits.”
Jacob Sullum
“You Are Now Free To Speak About Politics”

20 years ago
December 2005

“Campaign finance regulation is based on the notion that government must be empowered to act on and order the lives of citizens without influence or pushback from those very same citizens. The ‘reformers’ believe that politics should be reserved for the folks inside the Beltway who can handle it.”
Bradley Smith
“John McCain’s War on Political Speech”

40 years ago
December 1985

“Since the illegal possession of a handgun (or of any gun) is a crime that doesn’t produce a victim and is unlikely to be reported to the police, handgun permit requirements or outright handgun prohibitions aren’t easily enforced. And as civil liberties attorney [Don B. Kates Jr.] has observed, when laws are difficult to enforce, ‘enforcement becomes progressively more haphazard until at last the laws are used only against those who are unpopular with the police.’ Of course minorities, especially minorities who don’t ‘know their place,’ aren’t likely to be popular with the police, and these very minorities, in the face of police indifference or perhaps even antagonism, may be the most inclined to look to guns for protection—guns that they can’t acquire legally and that place them in jeopardy if possessed illegally. While the intent of such laws may not be racist, their effect most certainly is.”
William R. Tonso
“Gun Control: White Man’s Law”

50 years ago
December 1975

“Competition is a never-ending game of leapfrog. This is the real nature of competition and it makes no difference whether you have one firm, two firms, or six firms. It makes no difference how much money they’re making at a given moment of time. Don’t break up IBM. Don’t break up U.S. Steel. Don’t break up the New York Yankees. Time and tide will take care of everything—time and tide in the form of this leapfrogging process, of somebody coming up with a new idea and leapfrogging over the old.”
Benjamin Rogge
“Who Will Defend Capitalism?”