Author: James E. Miller

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

Yes, we should still feel bad about nuking Hiroshima and Nagasaki

This past week we witnessed the collective remembrance of a terrible, fiery explosion before the world. No, I’m not referring to the 24 million who tuned into the first Republican presidential debate. What I’m talking about is a real crime perpetrated by the amoral monsters in our nation’s capital.

The previous week saw the 70th anniversary of the day the United States government did the unthinkable: dropped a nuclear bomb on a living city. The fallout ended World War II but demonstrated just how dangerous nuclear weaponry can be. The Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki didn’t stand a chance. It’s estimated that over 100,000 lives perished in the bombing.

There is still the popular understanding that the atomic bomb was instrumental in bringing Japan to its knees, and ultimately defeat. This sentiment was recently argued in a Wall Street Journal editorial by foreign affairs columnist Bret Stephens. Normally, the inanity and moral corruptness of the media hardly stirs me. But I could hardly keep down my lunch upon reading the title of Stephens’ article:

“Thank God for the Atom Bomb.”

Excuse me? Those words might as well have lept off my computer screen and kicked me square in the gut. The pit of my stomach actually turned while considering the meaning. How, in all of God’s creation, can someone speak such moronic, blasphemous nonsense? How can a person, flesh and all, bestow our Lord’s sanction on the instant killing of a hundred thousand people so blithely? Granted, Stephens stole the line from a 1981 essay by Paul Fussell, who was an American lieutenant fighting in Pacific theater before the bomb saved him from the prospect of invading Japan’s home islands. But even so, the total immorality of the utterance is bewildering. He might as well have said God bless sodomy or incest.

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The Donald, and why the hoity-toity pols hate him

Republished from the Press and Journal

Rick Perry, the presidential aspirant and former Texas governor, recently bellowed this about Donald Trump at a speech in downtown Washington, D.C.: “Let no one be mistaken, Donald Trump’s candidacy is a cancer on conservatism and it must be clearly diagnosed, excised, and discarded.”

“He’s becoming a jackass, at a time when we need to be having a serious debate about the future of the party and the country,” South Carolina senator and fellow 2016 candidate Lindsey Graham told CNN’s Erin Burnett.

“The Donald’s life has been seven decades of buffoonery,” Kevin Williamson wrote in the conservative National Review.

In the vein of Rodney Dangerfield, Donald Trump, the mega-rich real estate mogul and unlikely presidential candidate, can’t get any respect. At least not from the hoity-toity political establishment that sits (or dreams of sitting) along the Potomac.

But out in the hinterlands – what D.C. elites call “flyover country” – Trump’s message and style are actually resonating. And the best part about the Trump phenomenon is that no one in the punditocracy can explain it.

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Liberals hold stupid and contradictory views on sex

When it comes to insanity, Joe Gould, the infamously unstable writer who may or may not have written the largest oral account of history, didn’t believe in it. “The fallacy of dividing people into sane and insane lies in the assumption that we really do touch other lives,” he wrote. Seeing as how Gould lived a tragic, if not prolific, life that ended with many stints in mental hospitals and a lobotomy, perhaps he isn’t great source material on mental health.

Or maybe he is, when looking through the lens of today’s liberalism.

The recent leak of user data from the affair-abetting site AshleyMadison.com has got to be beguiling for progressives. As liberals fight to transcendent bourgeoisie sexual norms, they are, at the same time, trying to retain the faithfulness necessary to foster a loving relationship. So on one hand, sexual liberation is the number one goal of the progressive vision. Yet, on the other fidelity is a necessary limit on sexual activity. So which is more important for leftists? Dependability or unrestrained whoopie?

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Conservatives should embrace sanctuary cities, not demonize them

From my article in Taki’s Mag today:

Understandably, the concept of cities ignoring the rules has incensed law-and-order conservatives. But they should take a step back and think through the issue. From a limited-government standpoint, doesn’t more local autonomy make sense? Aren’t decisions made at the local level better than those at the state or federal level? By slamming sanctuary cities, conservatives are wasting a great opportunity. Wouldn’t the country be better off if San Francisco became its own communist republic and left the rest of us be? Let them have their sanctuary, and the accompanying lawlessness it engenders. It’s their problem to deal with, not America’s (or, by extension, my wallet’s).

Conservatives could even start championing their own sanctuary cities. El Rushbo has it right: If liberals are going to have cities where they flout the law, conservatives should have them too. Think of them like conclaves of what Rod Dreher calls the “Benedict Option.” If liberals can have communities that welcome illegal immigration, open drug use, and sodomy, why can’t conservatives have communities that uphold traditional marriage, ban destructive substance abuse, and maintain a faith-based culture? If ISIS can do it, so can we.

Read the rest here.

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An open letter to Silicon Valley

Dear Silicon Valley,

Get out.

No seriously. Leave the country, or stop furtively trying to tinker with it through the Democratic Party.

As a conservative, I’ve had it up to *here* with your quest to redefine humanity through technology and idealistic visions. Haven’t any of you watched Terminator? You’re creating Skynet, and don’t seem to have any qualms about it. The time has come for you to vacate America and leave us sensible people to our traditional ways.

Now, I realize my demands might sound mad, hysterical even. But this is no joke. Silicon Valley is poisoning the country. It’s time for you to break off and form your own techno free-for-all land of fake girlfriends and endless pornography. I implore you to expedite the process before you further corrupt America’s impressionable minds.

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Reasonable people can still debate marriage

Reprinted from the Press and Journal

For months now, I’ve predicted in the Press and Journal that the Supreme Court would foist same-sex marriage upon the country. Lo and behold, with the decision rendered in Obergefell v. Hodges, the Court came through in flying – perhaps rainbow – colors.

Gay marriage is now a constitutional right. Where language about marriage exists in the Constitution, I haven’t the slightest, but I’ll accept my prize for being prescient. Any day now…

And just as predicted, liberals went absolutely bonkers with the victory. The eve following the decision, the White House lit up with rainbow-colored lights. Corporations like American Airlines, Kellogg’s, Macy’s, and Visa all lauded the ruling over social media. Andrew Sullivan, the erstwhile blogger and gay rights champion who went into much-needed retirement earlier this year, wrote a powerful piece entitled, “It Is Accomplished.”

The good cheer was understandable. For decades, gays and lesbians have been treated liked underlings by mainstream America. It’s past time they were recognized with dignity. Alas, some revelers took the victory too far.

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