December 2020

Reason

Free Minds and Free Markets.

Reason2 min read
Reason
Editor in Chief Katherine Mangu-Ward (kmw@reason.com), Publisher Mike Alissi (malissi@reason.com), Editors at Large Nick Gillespie (gillespie@reason.com), Matt Welch (matt.welch@reason.com), Managing Editor Stephanie Slade (sslade@reason.com), Art Di
Reason5 min readAmerican Government
The Dangerous Lure Of Political Violence
JUST DOWN THE street from the Reason offices in D.C., protesters recently built a guillotine. No necks were harmed that night; it wasn’t fully functional. But they did it in front of Amazon founder Jeff Bezos’ house, and the message was clear: While
Reason1 min readPolitics
Photo
DESPITE OFTEN BUTTING heads over their distinct interpretations of constitutional law, Supreme Court Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Antonin Scalia were civil colleagues on the bench and good friends away from it. The two shared a love of opera and
Reason2 min readCrime & Violence
Predictive Policing Or Targeted Harassment?
RIO WOJTECKI, A 15-year-old Florida resident, hadn’t been in trouble for nearly a year. But in late 2019, sheriff’s deputies started showing up everywhere to “check up” on him. Over four months, deputies from the Pasco County Sheriff’s Office contact
Reason4 min readPolitics
The Shaky Case For State Bailouts
IN WASHINGTON, D.C., it is common to hear that anyone who opposes the federal rescue of states experiencing budget issues due to COVID-19 must be out of his or her mind. Newspapers are running story after story about how, in the absence of such bailo
Reason2 min read
Solar And Wind Power Struggle As California Faces Blackouts
ROLLING ELECTRIC POWER blackouts afflicted roughly 2 million California residents in August as a heat wave gripped the Golden State. At the center of the problem is a state policy requiring that 33 percent of California’s electricity come from renewa
Reason6 min readPolitics
Dorothy Day: Personalist Hero
DOROTHY DAY’S FIRST jail stint, in 1917, was a brutal experience arising from a protest for women’s suffrage. Behind bars she embarked on a hunger strike and came to know the misery of forced feeding. Women eventually got the vote. But Day, an anarch
Reason2 min readMedical
The Cdc’s Eviction Moratorium Is Neither Necessary Nor Legally Sound
THE TRUMP ADMINISTRATION has pushed the envelope of its executive authority once again by issuing a blanket eviction moratorium that applies to all rental properties nationwide. The order, issued by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC
Reason20 min readPolitics
The Guillotine Mystique
LAST SUMMER, WHEN the short-lived “Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone” in Seattle renamed itself the “Capitol Hill Occupied Protest,” one protester explained to a reporter that the acronym CHOP was a tribute to the Reign of Terror in France more than 200 y
Reason11 min read
To Help Kids Find Their Passion, Give Them Free Time
“WHAT DID YOU love doing as a child that you’re still sort of doing today?” That’s the question I’ve posed to lots of people, including a businessman I briefly spoke with at the TED Talks in Vancouver a few years ago. I didn’t take notes, but the con
Reason2 min read
Still Waiting For Drone Deliveries
WHEN JURISDICTIONS ACROSS the United States responded to the COVID-19 epidemic with broad lockdown orders in March and April, home delivery services lacked the manpower to keep up with the explosion in demand. Stores and companies such as Instacart w
Reason3 min read
Pandemic Rules Are Only For The Little People
THE DEFINING MOMENT in the “rules for thee but not for me” ethos of the ruling class during the COVID-19 pandemic may have come when Neil Ferguson, the epidemiologist behind Britain’s lockdown policy, met with his married girlfriend in defiance of th
Reason4 min readCrime & Violence
Bourgeois Libertarianism Could Save America
AS THE STREETS of various U.S. cities descended into disorder set off by anger and anguish over police brutality, the domestic tranquility for which Americans theoretically surrender large chunks of their fortunes and freedom to the government seemed
Reason3 min read
The Feds Are Spreading Fake Facts About Fentanyl
POLICE OFFICERS IN Texas heard some terrifying news on June 26, 2018: Antigovernment flyers poisoned with a deadly opioid had been placed on Harris County Sheriff’s Office squad cars, and a sergeant who had touched one was en route to the hospital wi
Reason5 min readPolitics
The Nationalism-ists
IN WAR FOR Eternity, Benjamin R. Teitelbaum situates Steve Bannon, President Donald Trump’s former campaign CEO and White House chief strategist, in a context likely unknown to 99.9 percent of the voters Bannon helped steer toward Trump: Traditionali
Reason12 min read
The Atlanta Sex Toy Magnate Who Can’t Stop Picking Fights
THE 52-YEAR-OLD OWNER of a small chain of Atlanta-area adult stores is clad in a tight royal blue short-sleeve shirt, partially unbuttoned, with a silver necklace that says “REGRETS” dangling between his pecs. He is regaling me with stories of the ex
Reason1 min readPolitics
Statement Of Ownership, Management, And Circulation
Publication Title: Reason Publication Number: 0048-6906 Filing Date: 10/1/2020 Issue Frequency: Monthly, except combined issue of August/September Number of Issues Published Annually: 11 Annual Subscription Price: $38.50 Complete Mailing Address of K
Reason11 min readCrime & Violence
How Frederick Douglass Destroyed John C. Calhoun With The Power Of John Locke
ON MARCH 9, 1836, Sen. John C. Calhoun rose, not for the first time, to sing the praises of human bondage Two months earlier, an Ohio senator had presented a pair of petitions sent by citizens of his state “praying for the abolition of slavery in the
Reason11 min readPolitics
Covid-19 Didn’t Break The Public School System. It Was Already Broken.
WE ARE WITNESSING an exodus from public schools that’s unprecedented in modern U.S. history. Families are fleeing the traditional system and turning to homeschooling, virtual charters, microschools, and—more controversially—“pandemic pods,” in which
Reason14 min readPolitics
How To Tell If You’re Being Canceled
IN 1993, JONATHAN Rauch wrote Kindly Inquisitors: The New Attacks on Free Thought, an influential defense of free speech and open inquiry that was excerpted in Reason. The book took aim at would-be censors on campus and off and made a staunch case fo
Reason18 min readAmerican Government
Peter Navarro’s No-good Economic Nationalism
PETER NAVARRO IS a loser. Literally. He has run for office five times and never won. He has never gained approval from the Senate to occupy an official cabinet post. He started a trade war that may not technically be lost yet, but it hasn’t been a ro
Reason4 min read
Into the Dugout
THE BEST BOOK ever written about baseball is Ball Four, Jim Bouton’s irreverent look at the 1969 baseball season. Over the course of the year, Bouton bounced from the New York Yankees, his club of seven seasons, to the minor leagues to the short-live
Reason1 min readWorld
Mulan
In September, Disney released a live-action version of its 1998 cartoon feature Mulan, based on Chinese folklore about a young woman who pretends to be a boy so that she can fight in her father’s place when he’s conscripted into the army. It’s a tale
Reason2 min read
America On Trial
In the fifth century A.D., Pope Gelasius declared that Christians have dual citizenship under “two sovereigns,” one divine and one temporal, that must not be combined. In the 11th century, a monk and future bishop argued that people are released from
Reason1 min read
Lovecraft Country
H.P. Lovecraft’s footprint on modern horror storytelling is inescapable. Even those who have never read his short stories of people driven to madness by the eldritch abominations looming in the darkness recognize the profile of his monstrous, tentacl
Reason1 min readCrime & Violence
The Revolution In Freedoms Of Press And Speech
The title of legal historian Wendell Bird’s book The Revolution in Freedoms of Press and Speech refers to a dramatic change in the dominant understanding of press freedom in Britain and the United States. By the mid-1760s, Bird shows through a painst
Reason1 min read
Raised By Wolves
From Alien to Blade Runner to The Martian, director Ridley Scott has often presented bleak tales of human survival, frequently occurring in desolate science fiction environments where artificial intelligence (A.I.) is on the rise. That makes his late
Reason1 min read
90 Day Fiancé: Happily Ever After?
Would you accept a marriage proposal from a person you met online or on vacation, then move to another country in order to tie the knot? Probably not. But you might be interested in a TV show about people who did. TLC’s 90 Day Fiancé: Happily Ever Af
Reason1 min read
Skin: A History Of Nudity In The Movies
When are nude scenes essential in film, and when are they gratuitous, designed not to advance a plot but to snatch more from the wallets of hungry, titillated viewers? Skin: A History of Nudity in the Movies takes this question seriously, exploring H
Reason3 min readPolitics
From The Archives
December 2005 “The most disturbing speaker at Tuesday’s hearing was the chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, Kevin Martin. ‘You can always turn the television off and, of course, block the channels you don’t want,’ he observed. ‘But why
Reason3 min readInternational Relations
Taghi Amirani On The Legacy Of The U.S.-Backed Coup In Iran
ALMOST 70 YEARS after a U.S.-backed coup deposed Iran’s democratically elected Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddegh and replaced him with Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, relations between the two countries remain at a fever pitch. In the documentary Coup 53
Reason2 min readCrime & Violence
Brickbats
The San Diego Police Department has issued 82 citations for “seditious language” since 2013. Because such citations are considered infractions rather than misdemeanors, those cited under the law are not entitled to a jury trial or legal counsel. Afte

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