Author: James E. Miller

James E. Miller is the editor-in-chief of Mises Canada. He works as a copywriter in Washington D.C.

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Mad Men was a depraved and decadent show that gave us an incredible portrayal of humanity

The AMC television series “Mad Men” came to a close this past Sunday. After eight years, the critically-acclaimed show culminated in a dreamy reairing of Coca-Cola’s famous “Buy the World a Coke” ad from 1971. Critics panned it, but I saw the scene as a fitting end for a show about America’s cultural declivity into the hell of moral relativism. In its prime, the sentiment of the sing-songy Coke ad was nice, but the idealism of the post-1960s was too infantile to work, as we now know four decades later.

Within the show’s context, the ad didn’t represent world peace. Rather, it was one of the resolutions sought by the show’s main characters. It was the end product of protagonist Don Draper’s journey to the pits of sorrow and back. To use the cliché phrase, it also represented the End of an Era (the show’s timeline spanned from 1960 to 1970). Though the series finale was ambiguous and not entirely conclusive, “Mad Men” as a show contained some of the hardest lessons learned in life. In between the drinking, impropriety, womanizing, scams, backstabbing, and licentiousness, there were acute moments of actual humanity.

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Republicans should give up because Hillary will win 2016

Our illustrious purveyor Jordan Bloom recently made a great case for putting South Carolina senator and dandy Lindsey Graham in the Oval Office. His commentary is a must-read, if only for the utter hopelessness of making Graham America’s first official dictator. You see, the 2016 election is over. Better start looking forward to 2024.

Come January 20, 2017, we’ll welcome Hillary Clinton to the White House.

I have a running bet with a friend: the former first lady and secretary of state will be the next president of the United States. An October surprise aside, Clinton has this thing in the bag. The Republican bench for 2016 is as good as ever, but it matters little. Politics is tribal. Self-identifying Republicans and Democrats will vote straight ticket. Independents are the key to victory, and the Clinton campaign theme will resonate more with them than anyone named Paul, Cruz, Rubio, or Bush.

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Fairfax County is leading America’s decline into a post-gender madhouse

What’s that T.S. Eliot line about the world ending without a bang but a whimper?

Since conservatives excel at Chicken Little-ism over social matters, let me be the one to say that American society is succumbing to the post-modern forces that believe gender is a mutable trait. There is nothing traditionalists, also known as plain, moderate people, can do to stop this inexorable finality. We’re doomed; doomed I tells ya! Labeling children boys and girls will soon be an anachronism, the equivalent of putting “colored only” signs over public water fountains.

The tipping point is occurring right in my neck of the woods: Fairfax County, Virginia.

Now, I wasn’t raised in Fairfax County. I can’t be blamed for its yuppie, liberal, high-income residents who use public schools as a crucible for a genderless society. I was lucky enough to snag an affordable apartment when I moved to the D.C. metropolitan area just over two years ago. So here I am, living amidst the next great battle in American culture wars.

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There is no easy solution for Baltimore

The recent unrest in Baltimore is yet another sign of our trying times. More out-of-control than the chaos that occurred in Ferguson, Missouri, last summer, the looting and destruction in the city was another reminder that America is an increasingly divided country. And by divided, I mean split in more pieces than two.

As the media picks sides in the debate over keeping order and grievances about police abuse, I have a novel question: what, if anything, can be done about police brutality and inexcusable violence and looting? Is reconciliation possible, or is America fated to live with irrational destruction driven by corrupt policing?

I have my doubts. Complex issues – and the situation in Baltimore is anything but simple – are tough to weed through. They require looking at things through a kind of prism. All sides should be considered, as much as humanly possible. Of course, bias and predilection will always distort pure, objective reasoning. But we can make a good-faith effort to try and understand what is at the core of problem before formulating a solution.

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Put down your phone and stop and smell the flowers

How I admire Andy Crouch. The Christian author recently took a vacation from the hardest thing to escape: the digital realm. For two months, he eschewed the screens that keep us permanently attached to the internet. He didn’t succumb to the fear of “missing out.” Rather, he was able to live more fully in the moment, enjoy himself, and focus on much-neglected hobbies. He even experienced a real rarity in the hyper-connected world: “just quiet and an absence of hurry to get to the next thing.”

I thought about Crouch’s sojourn away from modernity while paying visit to D.C.’s annual blooming of the cherry blossoms. Situated around the Tidal Basin, the springtime event is a tradition that goes back over a century when Tokyo Mayor Yukio Ozaki gifted our country with prunus serrulata (Japanese cherry) trees to signify improving relations between the U.S. and Japan. Clearly, Franklin Roosevelt didn’t get the memo when he interned nearly 100,000 Japanese citizens and non-citizens following the Pearl Harbor attacks. But that’s neither here nor there.

Visiting the cherry blossoms trees is a pleasant experience if you can ignore one thing: rude, absentminded crowds. I can’t stand them. Running around without regard for rules, or basic decency, the typical tourist to the National Mall is the embodiment of modern America. Crude, self-centered, and wholly unconcerned with the well-being of everyone around them – this is the American ethos. Some call it a “me me me” pathology. I call it mass consumerism and individualism run amok.

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Advice for conservatives: stop using liberal precrime narrative for your wars

War, the great American pastime.

Forget baseball; forget apple pie. Our country is no longer one that bonds over a shared language, religion, ethnicity, or tradition. No, what brings Americans together more than mass consumerism is a foreign hobgoblin that threatens our way of life.

How great is it then for the national spirit that many political figures in Washington are agitating for war with Iran? And how ironic is it that many of the bellicose voices are self-styled conservatives? I say ironic because the drumming for war is based not a direct threat but what Philip K. Dick called “precrime.” And the right-wingers imposing their precrime verdict of guilt on Iran are giving in to liberal ideology. If they continue, conservatives will only fuel the ambitious progressive agenda of eliminating free choice in everything from gun rights to health care. Oh, and they will lead us down the warpath in the Middle East again. Because we totally need another costly quagmire in the land where people can’t stop blowing each other up.

Let’s review. In the wake of a prospective deal with Iran over its nuclear program, Republicans are foaming at the mouth decrying the bargain. President Obama, they say, is unwittingly becoming the new Neville Chamberlain (there must be some variant of Godwin’s Law that that applies to Chamberlain references). They also allege Iran is a state run by full-fledged fanatics who want to commit suicide by threatening Israel and the West.

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