“The Separation of Church and State.” Probably no phrase has had more impact on American history in the last fifty years than this one. Where did it come from? Who coined it? And, what does it mean? Distinguished law professor, John Eastman, has some surprising answers. H/T Prager University
“I didn’t want to run for office,” says Gigi Bowman, Liberty candidate for the New York State Senate. The Long Island native decided to run for office after Empire State pols passed sweeping new gun control legislation. What particularly irked her was the large number of Republicans who supported the law. “That was shocking,” says Bowman.
Bowman, editor of How to Run for Office on a Liberty Platform and head of Liberty Candidates, encourages citizens who prize individual liberty to step up and run for a local office. What positions do Liberty candidates take? “Sound money, free markets, individual liberty, constitutional government, and non-intervention in foreign policy,” she says. “Basically the same as Campaign for Liberty,” the group founded by her political inspiration, former Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas).
AlfonZo Rachel unleashes a blistering attack on MSNBC commentator Melissa Harris-Perry. Harris-Perry thinks that children are a governmental, and not a parental responsibility. Is she right? Find out on this ZoNation. H/T PJTV
John Sparks, Asia Correspondent for Great Britain’s Channel 4, finds North Koreans are managing to catch a glimpse of the outside world — from foreign soap operas on television to smuggled films on DVD.
Sarah Merkle, a 15-year-old from Maryland, fires a blast against gun control legislation. Her address to the Maryland state legislature was so on target that the politicians, for once in their lives, were left speechless.
“American popular culture not only celebrates freedom, it is also itself an example of American freedom at its best and most vibrant,” writes Paul Cantor in his new book The Invisible Hand and Popular Culture: Liberty vs. Authority in American Film and TV.
Even before politicians and elite cultural critics decried the boob tube as a “vast wasteland,” they were attacking other forms of popular entertainment — novels, movies, comic books, and more — as simultaneously soporific and dangerous, either lulling the masses into quietism or sparking bad behaviors. But Paul Cantor, a professor of English at the University of Virginia, argues that such criticisms get everything wrong. H/.T Reason TV
PJTV”S B ill Whittle explores the American characteristics of independence and self-reliance and the forces that promote conformity and reliance on the State.
Hugo Chavez just died, and many of us said “good riddance” to a tyrant who defrauded his own people, intimidated his political opposition and left his economy and country in disarray. Senator Rand Paul seemed to be reminding us: “Why would we want a tyrant in America, too?” Wayne Allyn Root from Personal Liberty Digest weighs in.
“The new GOP will need to embrace liberty in both the economic and personal sphere,” Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) told a packed crowd at the 2013 Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC).
Reason’s Matt Welch and Kennedy attended the first day of CPAC to take the temperature of the political organizers, media observers, and grassroot activists who are central to the Republican Party’s identity and political fortunes. What did they find? A movement that seems to gravitating to a baldly libertarian stance when it comes to everything from economics to social issues to foreign policy.
Andrew Klavan explains why it sucks to have to act like a grownup, citing lessons drawn from the observations of Alex de Tocqueville.
