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Dec 25, 2024 | 
lawliberty.org | Elizabeth Amato
Editor’s Note: This essay was originally published on December 24, 2018. Miracle on 34th Street (1947) is the finest cinematic exploration of the commercialization of Christmas. The central story is that Kris Kringle, a man who looks like and believes he is Santa Claus, is hired to play Santa Claus at Macy’s department store. When it is revealed that he believes he is the real Santa Claus, Kris must defend his sanity in court.
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Nov 29, 2024 | 
lawliberty.org | Elizabeth Amato |David Hebert |Daniel Mahoney |Alah S. Kahan
Freedom from Fear: An Incomplete History of Liberalism, is a formidable volume. In it, Alan S. Kahan aims to provide a comprehensive framework for understanding the intellectual history of liberalism, what drives changes within liberalism over time, and the future of liberalism. Clocking in at just over 500 pages, the book is an extensive, dense history that traces delicate, nuanced ideological twists and turns from liberalism’s origins to the present day.
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Mar 18, 2024 | 
lawliberty.org | Jeff Kosseff |Elizabeth Amato |David Krugler |Frederick M. Hess
In March 2020, Waylon Bailey posted on Facebook a joke about zombies, and how his local sheriff’s office in Forest Hill, Louisiana had orders to shoot the infected. Appealing to Brad Pitt’s character from World War Z, Bailey added the hashtag #weneedyoubradpitt. A few hours later, the sheriff’s office arrested him and charged him with terrorism under a state law that forbade spreading information with the intent of causing panic.
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Nov 28, 2023 | 
lawliberty.org | Thomas Berg |Andrew M. Koppelman |Dave Barfield |Elizabeth Amato
The tension between gay rights and religious liberty has become tediously familiar, as evidenced by the endless procession of court cases in which some wedding vendor—a cake baker, a florist, or a website designer—has a conscientious religious objection to facilitating a same-sex wedding. The Supreme Court’s latest decision on the subject has left the issue more confused than it was before. Yet some recent court developments suggest that progress is possible.
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Nov 28, 2023 | 
lawliberty.org | Dylan Penningroth |David Schaefer |Dave Barfield |Elizabeth Amato
When Florida’s Department of Education put forward a curricular plan that would require teachers to discuss not only the horrors of American slavery, but also the skills that blacks often acquired while enslaved, it was mocked and represented as a bigoted attempt to whitewash a great historical evil.
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Nov 28, 2023 | 
lawliberty.org | Michael Lucchese |Dave Barfield |Elizabeth Amato
In his most recent essay, Compact Magazine columnist Michael Lind urges readers to “Forget the Founding Fathers.” He argues that respect for the American Founding constitutes a “cult” which inhibits our ability to make sound policy.
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Nov 27, 2023 | 
lawliberty.org | Jacob Bruggeman |Dave Barfield |Elizabeth Amato |Juliana Geran Pilon
Flash flooding is a powerful reminder that public infrastructure is vulnerable under extreme pressure. In late September, when seven inches of rain fell in New York City within less than 24 hours on the evening of September 28 and early morning of September 29, this fragility was on full display. Tunnel traffic, subway cars, passenger rail, and air travel all ground to a halt as the city’s streets became fast-moving rivers. I experienced marginal effects from the flooding firsthand.
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Nov 24, 2023 | 
lawliberty.org | Dave Barfield |Elizabeth Amato |Juliana Geran Pilon |Jim Harper
Argentina welcomes a new president. Defying poll predictions of a technical tie, the anarcho-capitalist candidate Javier Milei achieved a resounding victory over Peronist Sergio Massa in the runoff by a wide margin. The unexpected turn of events led to Massa conceding defeat even before the official results were announced, surprising many observers.
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Nov 23, 2023 | 
lawliberty.org | Dave Barfield |Elizabeth Amato |Juliana Geran Pilon |David Goldman
Jihadists killed 98 percent, or 3,612 of the 3,676 of the terror victims counted in the 2022 Global Terrorism Index. Israel’s 1,300 victims of the October 7th Hamas massacre constitute the worst casualty count due to terrorism in terms of relative population size (the equivalent of 33,000 Americans). The killings, moreover, were horrifically gruesome and sadistic. Most practice of Islam is emphatically not violent, but most religious violence is perpetrated by Muslims in the name of religion.
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Nov 23, 2023 | 
lawliberty.org | Dominic Pino |Dave Barfield |Elizabeth Amato
In 2016, the goofballs at the World Economic Forum (WEF) published an article of fantastical utopianism. Ida Auken, a socialist member of the Danish parliament, wrote that in the year 2030, she lived in a city where nobody owned anything and everybody was happy. Private ownership has been abolished, everything we used to pay for is now free, green energy powers everything—it’s exactly the kind of nonsense you’d expect from a Danish socialist.
