Word Watch: January 2010
As you’ve noticed, this column has some of the attributes of a column of troops: it’s loud and destructive, its course is generally unpredictable, and …
Liberty and Literacy
This is a short book, barely long enough to count as a book. But its importance is substantial. It’s one of the many books that …
Word Watch- September 2009
It’s morning in America. The birds begin to sing, the sun transcends the clouds; all over the continent, readers of Liberty rise from innocent and …
He’s Out of my Life
It’s strange but true: whenever there’s a Big Murder in America, and there’s an investigation and a scandal, most of the participants in the affair …
Correlation and Causation
I was born in Michigan. I now live in California. Those two states are currently the biggest screwups on the economic landscape. Was it something …
Ask the Local Gentry
Did you ever see such a festival of bad logic as the one that has consistently attended the gay marriage debate? Each side maintains that …
Word Watch – August 2009
Recently I had the pleasure of explaining an old expression to my young friend Liam Vavasour. We were discussing electoral predictions, and I mentioned that …
Garrett the Unique
Liberty senior editor Bruce Ramsey has written the first real biography of Garet Garrett (1878-1954), an important precursor of today’s American libertarian movement. There was …
Word Watch – June 2009
The subject for this month is linguistic mysteries – the things you hear or read that make you wonder, sometimes with amusement, sometimes with disgust, …
Local Obsequiousness
My friend Liam Vavasour, whose writing has appeared in these pages, entertained me at dinner the other night with a suggestion about the health and …