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What an exciting day for citizens of France who identify with the values of individualism and the principles of liberty. “Au revoir, Jacques Chirac, and bonjour to a new U.S.-friendly French president who identifies with the American dream and happily affirms that the French like burgers, Madonna and Miami Vice,” ...

In a conversation on the BBC blog Will & Testament, I made the following comments which relate to some of my earlier articles regarding the BBC: ——————- To understand the BBC, you must understand the UK. I would describe Britain as having one foot in America, one foot in Europe. ...

Two weeks ago, the Imus witch hunt was in full swing as the Reverend Al Sharpton among others called for the firing of radio personality Don Imus for calling the women of the Rutgers University basketball team “nappy-headed ho’s”. This, Sharpton alleged, was a racist slur against black women. His ...

Timothy McVeigh used fertiliser. Now Seung-Hui, a 23 year old student, has used firearms to commit a heinous act of mass murder at his university, Virginia Tech. In each case the most pertinent question one can ask is Why?’ rather than How? The ‘why’ is an analysis of the reason ...

My response to the Imus controversy was summed up in two words I uttered on the radio yesterday: “selective outrage”. (My point was that, as a society, we are prone to choosing what to be outraged about, making it fake and dishonest. This was particularly evident in the Imus controversy.) ...

I’m truly disgusted by all the faux ‘outrage’ over what Don Imus said on his syndicated morning show last week. He’s spent every day since then on a tour of apology, from visiting Al Sharpton’s show ‘Keeping It Real’ to appearing on the Today show this morning. It’s nothing but ...

When will the European Union learn that it has no right to interfere in private business decisions? The news today that Europe is launching an antitrust probe against Apple, Universal, Sony BMG, Warner and EMI should come as no surprise to those, like myself, who have been closely watching the ...

Today’s decision of the U.S. Supreme Court permitting the EPA (Environmental Protection Agency) to regulate greenhouse gas emissions relies constitutionally upon subscription to the statement ‘Greenhouse gases are pollutants.’ But are they? Is carbon dioxide an air pollutant? To define carbon dioxide as an air pollutant certainly provides a nice ...

Strange, creepy, and a waste of good chocolate. That’s how I would characterise this sculpture, My Sweet Lord, by artist Cosimo Cavallaro. It wasn’t quite as wasteful as his prior work – spraying 10,000 pounds of cheese over the entire interior of a Wyoming house – but a waste nonetheless. ...

I’ll be in trouble again on Crawley’s blog Will & Testament when the Brits wake up to read my latest comment to William’s latest post. In a post entitled ‘Ann Coulter’s Dirty Mouth’, Will writes: “Recent comments by Ann Coulter, the right-wing political columnist, continue to excite debate across American ...

I’ve discussed my position on global warming many times on and off air and on this blog. But sometimes the dynamics of this debate concern me. The Academy Awards on Sunday night comprised a definitive point in this dialogue in America, with Al Gore (An Inconvenient Truth) gaining star power ...

If any one justification for the abolition of the monarchy could prevail among those who love freedom, this is the best candidate. Prince Charles, in his incredible wisdom, on a tour of the United Arab Emirates, asked a nutritionist, “Have you got anywhere with McDonald’s, have you tried getting it ...

What a leader for news story: “It’s still going to be legal in Arizona for trucks to have splash guards with racist terms and silhouettes of naked women.” It seems that an Arizona state lawmaker wanted to make the use of popular mudflaps like the one pictured here illegal, and ...

I’ve dragged this piece from Libertarian Reason archives, cleaned it up a bit, added some pictures and opened up comments on it for the first time. This was originally written as part of a response to a BBC broadcast back in September 2005. Now, I’ve noticed even some libertarians tending ...

Of the few men who held libertarian ideals and governed a nation accordingly (and there are only a few), Thomas Jefferson was perhaps among the greatest. Why was he so great? For timeless quotations like this: “Sometimes it is said that man cannot be trusted with the governing of himself. ...

Typical. Something good comes along, and the government tries to destroy it. It’s a veritable cycle, affecting every good thing, and recently, that thing has been the iPod. First, the French government makes a law prohibiting Apple from selling iPods with an output of greater than 100 decibels to protect ...

The reason I love my wife is entirely selfish. And I’ve told her this, many times. Despite being told so often that only selfless love is valid, it’s what my wife does for me that causes me to love her (as, I’m reliably informed, is the reason she loves me ...

European governments are a bunch of fucks. That is a pure, observable fact, clearly demonstrated in a multitude of ways. And there’s no better example to prove my point about European governments being a bunch of fucks than to describe the attitudes of France, Germany and Norway toward Apple Inc. ...

I rarely read the Independent newspaper, and when I do it’s normally for the (unintentional) comedy value. For those of you who have never read it, imagine a secular version of the biblical Book of Revelation and you’re getting close to how it reads. The Independent’s columnists frequently come off ...

I once wrote about a conversation I had with a friend of a friend, a Christian conservative who told me that he would only watch films that are appropriate for his teenage daughter to see. For him, the measure of a movie’s worthiness is whether or not it is suitable ...