Opinion Forum

The Lie of Income Distribution

July 1st, 2010

By Brianna Aubin Mark Twain used to say that there were three types of falsehoods: lies, damned lies, and statistics. One of those statistics which are typically hurled at conservatives, libertarians, and classical liberals by the various demagogues of the Left is the lie of income distribution. The amount of wealth belonging to the top [...]

Articles written by Brianna Aubin
Tags: distribution of income, income, OMB, poverty, Sowell, statistics, wealth
Categories: Economics, Politics | Comments (6) | Home

Supreme Court Upholds Gun Rights

June 29th, 2010

By Brianna Aubin Today, the Supreme Court ruled in favor of McDonald in the case McDonald v. Chicago, upholding the applicability of the Second Amendment to the States and giving the federal courts the power to strike down state and local gun control laws deemed unconstitutional under the Second Amendment. As a staunch supporter of [...]

Articles written by Brianna Aubin
Tags: 2nd Amendment, Jefferson, self-defense, states, Supreme Court, tyranny
Categories: History, News, Politics | Comments (26) | Home

Women’s Suffrage In Afghanistan

June 18th, 2010

By Brianna Aubin A real, honest-to-God picture of a woman having a picture taken for a photo ID in Afghanistan for voting purposes. It’d be funny if it weren’t so incredibly stupid.

Articles written by Brianna Aubin
Tags: Afghanistan, burqa, identification, rights, suffrage, voting, women
Categories: Life, Politics | Comments (4) | Home

Don’t Blame Bush, Blame the Right!

June 17th, 2010

By Brianna Aubin The President has met the enemy, and he is the Tea Parties. Or at least, that is apparently what Mr. Weber of the Huffington Post thinks is responsible for Obama’s inability to follow through on the great promises of his candidate days. In the Post’s latest attempt to find something, anything to [...]

Articles written by Brianna Aubin
Tags: Constitution, government, left, partisanship, presidency, right, tea parties
Categories: Politics | Comments (8) | Home

Israeli Faces Hit Palestinian Fists: Israel Censured

June 15th, 2010

By Brianna Aubin Israel faced international condemnation last week after an incident in which nine people were shot on board a “Freedom Flotilla” which had been sent to deliver food, medical supplies, knives and PR slingshots to the Gaza strip. The flotilla was organized in order to help the starving Gazans feed their families, because [...]

Articles written by Brianna Aubin
Tags: anti-semitism, flotilla, Gaza, Israel, Palestinians, satire, terrorism, UN
Categories: History, News, Politics | Comments (3) | Home

“Son of Hamas” To Be Deported?

June 14th, 2010

By Brianna Aubin Mosab Hassan Yousef (watch video here), the Palestinian son of a high ranking Hamas member who turned spy for the Israeli Shin Bet and saved hundreds of lives through his aid in the prevention of terror attacks, is at risk of being deported from the U.S. back to the West Bank on [...]

Articles written by Brianna Aubin
Tags: asylum, deportation, Hamas, Israel, Mosab Yousef, Palestinian, terrorism
Categories: News, Politics | Comments (1) | Home

The Right To Judge

June 11th, 2010

By Brianna Aubin A question I heard rather a lot during my teenage years, for reasons I will not go into here, was “Who are you to judge?” I was not free to reply, but if I had been so my answer would have been succinct: “Human.” To judge is to come to a moral [...]

Articles written by Brianna Aubin
Tags: evil, good, Islam, judge, judgment, morality, Muslim, terrorism, values
Categories: Life, Politics | Comments (7) | Home

Close, But No Cigar

June 11th, 2010

By Brianna Aubin Last weekend on the anniversary of D-Day, there was a protest in NYC against plans to build a mosque at Ground Zero. Of course there were the usual slurs and foolish statements by the mainstream media. The protest organizers gave attendance estimates of 5,000 to 10,000. The MSM gave estimates of 500 [...]

Articles written by Brianna Aubin
Tags: Coptic Christians, Ground Zero, mosque, MSM, Olbermann, protest
Categories: Media, News, Politics | Comments (3) | Home

How It Must End

June 9th, 2010

By Brianna Aubin Last year, I wrote a post about the debt economy. In it, I explained that all of our currency was based on debt, and that if all of this debt was paid off, then our currency would all disappear from circulation and go back into bank vaults. One point that I missed however, [...]

Articles written by Brianna Aubin
Tags: collapse, debt, economy, hyperinflation, Kipling, money supply
Categories: Economics, Politics | Comments (10) | Home

The Consequences of “Diversity”

June 2nd, 2010

By Brianna Aubin In the furious storm of criticism of Arizona’s recent immigration law, mostly by people who never read the law before criticizing it and had no intention of reading it, another recent law passed by Arizona got, if not completely lost in the rush, then strongly overshadowed. This law was aimed at canceling [...]

Articles written by Brianna Aubin
Tags: Arizona, assimilation, diversity, education, ethnic, legislation, race
Categories: Education, Law, News, Politics | Comments (7) | Home

Hyperinflation Q & A

May 30th, 2010

By Brianna Aubin One of the main reasons I subscribe to PJTV is because of the Front Page, which usually features Terry Jones of Investors Business Daily and Yaron Brook of the Ayn Rand Institute. Klavan on the Culture is hilarious, and the other people on PJTV do produce some good stuff, but my favorite [...]

Articles written by Brianna Aubin
Tags: inflation, Keynes, Krugman, Nicaragua, PJTV, Weimar, Zimbabwe
Categories: Economics, News, Politics | Comments (3) | Home

Europe’s Apocalypse

May 29th, 2010

By Brianna Aubin Last week, the New York Times published an article saying that the European welfare state would quickly become unsustainable due to high levels of debt, decreasing birthrates, and overly generous benefits. And in other news, pigs are flying over my window, the sun has risen in the west, and the temperature in [...]

Articles written by Brianna Aubin
Tags: capitalism, debt, EU, euro, Europe, freedom, Greece, Islam, socialism
Categories: Economics, News, Politics | Comments (3) | Home

Anarchocapitalism and Open Borders

May 24th, 2010

By Brianna Aubin In the world of Libertarianism, there are five great names that those who know libertarian history will recognize instantly: Freidrich von Hayek, Milton Friedman, Ayn Rand, Ludwig von Mises, and Murray Rothbard. Of those five, Ayn Rand is perhaps the most controversial in the world at large due to some aspects of [...]

Articles written by Brianna Aubin
Tags: anarchocapitalism, Europe, libertarian, limited powers, open borders, UN
Categories: History, Politics | Comments (4) | Home

The Myth of the “Moderate” Muslim

May 20th, 2010

By Brianna Aubin I recently exchanged some correspondence with a Columbia classical liberal named Andrew Mellon (pseudonym). The subject was Islamic extremism. I had made a comment on one of his blog posts saying that I believed the majority of Muslims just wanted to go about their daily lives, just like the majority of most [...]

Articles written by Brianna Aubin
Tags: anti-semitism, Hamas, Hezbollah, Islam, Israel, Jews, Muslim, terrorism
Categories: Life, Politics | Comments (6) | Home

A Line In The Sand

May 20th, 2010

By Brianna Aubin I was recently told by an avowed socialist that the Tea Parties had confirmed his long-standing suspicion of the strong fascist roots in this country. Needless to say, he didn’t know he was talking to a Tea Party supporter, but there is a grain of truth to this. No, the Tea Parties [...]

Articles written by Brianna Aubin
Tags: Anwar al-Awlaki, citizenship, combatant, enemy, Faisal Shahzad, terrorist
Categories: News, Politics | Comments (4) | Home

The True Evil of the Oil Companies

May 9th, 2010

By Brianna Aubin On the recommendation of a Jacobs Technology employee I met at a space conference in 2008, I read Jared Diamond’s Collapse a couple of years ago. Since I’d already read his book Guns, Germs, and Steel independently of this engineer’s recommendation and found it a fascinating read, it didn’t really take much [...]

Articles written by Brianna Aubin
Tags: BP, Chevron, environment, exploration, Gulf of Mexico, oil, petroleum
Categories: Economics, News, Politics | Comments (2) | Home

It’s What You Do

May 7th, 2010

By Brianna Aubin We all remember what Batman’s girlfriend said to Bruce Wayne when she thought he was being a stupid playboy. “It’s not who you are, it’s what you do that defines you.” At first, this idea surprised me, since the default assumption for many in our society is that it’s “who you truly are” [...]

Articles written by Brianna Aubin
Tags: conservative, debt, ideas, liberal, outcomes, results, welfare
Categories: Economics, History, Politics | Comments (2) | Home

Truth Is the New Hate Speech

May 6th, 2010

By Brianna Aubin In a speech at a pro-Israel rally in New York on April 25, AtlasShrugs blogger Pamela Geller declared that “Truth is the new hate speech.” I do not always agree with Geller, but in this case she is absolutely right: truth has indeed become the new hate speech. The idea is that [...]

Articles written by Brianna Aubin
Tags: communism, discrimination, evil, fascism, hate speech, liberals, Marxism
Categories: History, Politics | Comments (5) | Home

Letter to the Editor

April 30th, 2010

By Brianna Aubin This letter was submitted to the Daily Illini editorial page on April 30, 2010: Last Friday, when I was walking across the quad, I saw numerous stick figures drawn on the sidewalk labeled “Muhammad,” along with the message “AAF Supports Free Speech.” I wanted to cheer. Contrary to my fears that everyone [...]

Articles written by Brianna Aubin
Tags: Draw Muhammad Day, free speech, Muslim, South Park, tolerance
Categories: News, Politics | Comments (9) | Home

Would Rand Be Drinking Tea?

April 29th, 2010

By Brianna Aubin Since the start of the Tea Party movement with Rick Santelli’s “Shout Heard Round the World,” Ayn Rand has been a prominent factor in the Tea Party movement. This factor started with Santelli himself, who called himself an “Ayn Rander,” and with an editorial in the Wall Street Journal in January 2009 [...]

Articles written by Brianna Aubin
Tags: Atlas Shrugged, Ayn Rand, collectivism, individualism, Objectivism, Tea Party
Categories: Economics, Politics | Comments (31) | Home