Unfortunately, we have seen this before: police beat, shoot, or kill an unarmed person, people gather in the streets to demonstrate peacefully, but eventually rioting and looting follows. Anger erupts, blood is spilled, property destroyed, neighborhoods are ruined, but, in the end, local policing is largely unaffected. Typically, the governmental response involves creating a…
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The looting and violence we see taking place throughout the country has very little to do with George Floyd.

The death of George Floyd at the hands of a police officer with a history of excessive force complaints has spurred protests, demonstrations, and riots across the nation. Peaceful protests are more than justified. However, the lawless riots are not; they are enacting the very injustices they claim to contest and on a colossal…
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With police and public officials alike, California taxpayers should watch what they do, not what they say.

The war on drugs makes it far too easy for corrupt police officers to plant evidence on people.

Teachers are not law enforcement officers, and as civilians under attack, they should not be expected to confront a shooter, and would almost surely be ineffective if they tried.

Last year I put up a blog post on the Black Lives Matter movement, saying that the movement had a valid complaint about the excessive and too often fatal use of force against unarmed and too often innocent blacks. I believe I received more comments on that post, both positive and negative, both on…
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Throughout American history, government at all levels has used race to categorize, enslave, segregate, regulate human behavior, and limit immigration with “nationality” quotas that served as substitutes for race. Categorizing by race was essential to racist agendas.

In response, classical liberal civil rights activists struggled to eliminate government-mandated racial categories. They were anything but naive: racism was real, categories or no categories, but the government stamp of approval made things worse–and caused constant mischief in the ever increasing addition of group categories in the census or in immigration statutes. The only feasible solution was the most radical one: the complete elimination of government racial categories. Individuals might discriminate but would no longer have the support of the State. With time, classical liberals felt, the irrationality of racism and xenophobia would give way to better human relations.

Fifty years ago today (July 23, 1967), the largest urban riot of the 1960s rocked Detroit for five days (July 23-28). An encounter with the police (shutting down an illegal after-hours bar), sparked looting and arson on a scale far surpassing the riots that had burned in other American cities. While such riots often started with incidents involving law enforcement, the police were ordered—again and again—to stand down and let a small minority of African Americans loot property of small business owners (both black and white).

The Detroit Riot marked a turning point in how American policymakers dealt with race. The classical liberal tradition of civil rights, with its emphasis on rule of law and equal protection (regardless of race) gave way to policies that purposely treated minorities as “protected categories” deserving of treatment not accorded other citizens.

What happens if the TSA catches someone with a firearm at one of their checkpoints? It happens a lot. Last year the TSA found 3,391 guns in carry-ons at checkpoints. This happened to a friend of mine this week. Here’s what he told me. He and his wife were going through the TSA checkpoint…
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