Articles by Michael Austin

Buyers need to stay on alert; scammers are always coming up with tricky new ways to part you and your money. You can’t be too careful these days and when something looks “too good to be true” it often is. BBB Warns Consumers About Internet Vehicle Scams The Better Business Bureau is warning consumers about scams robbing people of their hard-earned dollars as they wait for cars that never arrive. Using fake websites and a non-existent escrow company, scammers have lured dozens of victims by o...

Dear Clarissa, Well, Sweetie, it’s almost here. Tomorrow is the day that you join young people all over the country and walk out of your classes for 17 minutes to protest the prevalence of gun violence in our society and to honor the 17 lives lost one month ago in Parkland, Florida. As someone who has done a fair bit of protesting in his life, I have a few pieces of advice that, like all of my advice, you are free to do with as you choose. First, though, let me say that I am very proud of you....

There are two big lies going around in the wake of the Parkland school shooting last week. They are the same two big lies that go around every time one of these tragic events occurs. The first is that we can keep this from happening again just by passing a few laws about guns. We can't. The idea that people who want to break laws will find ways to get guns to break laws is not entirely wrong. Legislation is a blunt instrument not a magic wand. The second lie is that we can find a way to solve t...

(1) If hundreds of children every year were killed by falling out of windows, could we all agree that wanting to make windows safer had nothing to do with being anti-window or wanting to take people’s windows away? (2) If the greatest threat to children’s safety in school were the possibility of  angry rhinoceroses stampeding through the hallways, would we think to solve the problem by stationing an angry rhinoceros in every classroom? (3) If 30,000 people a year were killed by snake bites, wo...

There is nothing more prodigal of wonders than the art of being free . . . but nothing is harder than the apprenticeship of liberty.      —Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America In 1831, the French aristocrat and historian Alexis de Tocqueville toured the United States for nine months. Ostensibly, he came to study our prison system for the new French King. But really, he wanted to answer the burning question of his life” “Why did democracy take root in America but fail in France?” This qu...

Earlier this year, Canada’s prime minister Justin Trudeau announced legislation to legalize recreational marijuana in 2018. The proposed legislation has support from both political parties and a majority of Canadian citizens. Medical marijuana has been legal since 2001 and this would make Canada the first industrialized nation to fully legalize recreational cannabis nationwide. Initial Rules The initial rules are tight. Edibles will remain illegal. The age of legal consumption will be 18, bu...

Oceania was at war with Eastasia: Oceania had always been at war with Eastasia. A large part of the political literature of five years was now completely obsolete. Reports and records of all kinds, newspapers, books, pamphlets, films, sound-tracks, photographs — all had to be rectified at lightning speed. . . . Within one week no reference to the war with Eurasia, or the alliance with Eastasia, should remain in existence anywhere. -- George Orwell, Nineteen Eighty-Four Winston Smith, the protag...

“Before any great things are accomplished, a memorable change must be made in the system of education and knowledge must become so general as to raise the lower ranks of society nearer to the higher. The education of a nation instead of being confined to a few schools and universities for the instruction of the few, must become the national care and expense for the formation of the many.”—John Adams Let's at least be clear about what happened Tuesday: a razor slim majority of the US Senate appr...

The Origins of Totalitarianism Let’s start with an absolutely unoriginal observation: Donald Trump started his presidency by contesting two easily verifiable facts with absolutely no evidence and for no apparent reason. First, he asserted, without a shred of support, that he only lost the popular vote because three million aliens voted illegally. Then (also without even referring to any evidence) he rejected media estimates of the crowd at his inauguration and tried to compel the National Park ...