The trouble is with socialism, which resembles a form of mental illness more than it does a philosophy. Socialists get bees in their bonnets. And because they chronically lack any critical faculty to examine and evaluate their ideas, and because they are pathologically unwilling to consider the opinions of others, and most of all, because socialism is a mindset that regards the individual and his rights as insignificant, compared to whatever the socialist believes the group needs, terrible, terrible things happen when socialists acquire power.

The first and most important thing to understand about politics is this: forget Right, Left, Center, socialism, fascism, or democracy. Every government that exists - or ever existed, or ever will exist - is a kleptocracy, meaning "rule by thieves." Competing ideologies merely provide different excuses to separate the Productive Class from what they produce.

A lot is said, by foreigners and the left, about America being a violent society. Yet if you subtract the crime statistics for its largest cities places that have been under the strict political control of so-called "progressives", sometimes for many generations what remains, the real America, is the most peaceful, productive, prosperous, and truly progressive civilization in all of human history.

A libertarian presidential candidate isn't going to win anyway, so he can afford to say that all taxation is theft, and it isn't the job of a libertarian presidential candidate to cook up new ways to commit theft.

Guns cause crime like flies cause garbage!

There's a big difference between keeping the peace, which is something folks do pretty well themselves, and enforcing the law, which is another thing altogether.

As a novelist, I have a somewhat higher soapbox to stand on than most people do when it comes to talking back to the merchants of fear.