Paul Crider is a husband and father living in the San Francisco Bay Area. He daylights as a semiconductor engineer but otherwise likes to spend his time reading and writing.
Anarchism is surely underrated in the popular mindset, unjustly besmirched as it is by thesauruses juxtaposing anarchy with chaos and disorder, even nihilism. Anarchism has a place in the public discourse as a critical lens through which to analyze the state. But however unfairly anarchism is treated, as a substantive
The liberal tradition is centrally concerned with liberty. But the different currents within liberal thought naturally differ in their conceptions of freedom. (I take freedom and liberty to be synonyms and will use both interchangeably.) One of the most common distinctions drawn is between negative freedom and positive freedom. In
Recent political contests seem to have shifted from a left-right axis to an axis setting those in favor of the “open society” against the “closed society.” The political coalitions during the late 20th century across America and Western Europe split into the Left: heavy state regulation involvement in the economy,
If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary. – James Madison, Federalist 51 Sam Hammond caught flak in certain social justice communities by daring to defend the controversial Kendall Jenner Pepsi ad on social
No modern defense of democracy needs to rely solely on first principles. Unlike our liberal forebears who struggled to constrain the arbitrary and expansive powers of kings and aristocrats, we know that representative, constitutional democracy works. The hockey-stick plot of per capita income over the centuries that the economic historian
It’s beginning to sound cliché to say liberalism is in crisis, but anti-liberal parties are on the rise across Europe, Brexit is generally understood to be a setback for liberalism, and in America, Donald Trump rode anti-liberal sentiments to power and early signs point to a deeply anti-liberal agenda.
In moments of crisis for the liberal democratic system, it’s worth asking ourselves whether the system is even worth it. When human rights are being violated and unjust wars waged in our names, when some of us can be killed by the authorities with impunity, and when a liberal