The Privileged Animal: Politics & Veganism

According to a 2018 Gallop poll, liberals are much more likely to be vegetarian (11%) or vegan (5%) than conservatives (2% vegetarian, 2% vegan). Furthermore, Americans who makes less than $30,000 a year are much more likely to avoid eating meat. I have a pet theory for why this would be. I hypothesize that itContinue

Politics & Science

Where conservatives and liberals debate their beliefs, we need solid social science. Social science may be necessarily soft compared to the natural sciences, but political scientists still do follow the scientific method, and they should therefore be in a position to help shape public policy. Politicians and voters on the left and right agree onContinue

Ideology & Knowledge

There was an image on social media that I saw. It said that millennials, if they were thinking that socialism or Islam should be  the basis of our political system (how many millennials  really want a Sharia state?), that we should remember the numbers of deaths attributable to those ideologies. They said that there wereContinue

Democratic Socialism: A Few Words

It seems that academics who study the social sciences lean to the left, politically speaking. This I attribute to their having a strong understanding of social phenomena, phenomena effected by government policies. While I’m not an academic with an advanced degree, I do have two undergraduate degrees in the social sciences, which I credit forContinue

On Guns, Violence, Duties, & Rights

I have been hearing people argue, bicker, yell at each other, and debate about gun laws. I like a good debate, but the gun debate has fallen short of “good.” Honestly, I’m not going to contribute much, but I hope to do slightly better than the arm-chair arguments and the Facebook banalities. So here’s aContinue

Election Fraud

We the people of the United States live in a representative democracy. Or so we like to think. Recent elections cast doubt upon the accuracy of such a statement. The 2000 Presidential Election was controversial. The race was very tight, particularly in Florida. Democratic candidate Al Gore was initially announced as the winner of Florida,Continue

What’s Wrong With America

I’ve heard it said from a former friend that there some things wrong with America today. One thing, according to her, is that people feel entitled to things that they haven’t earned. Another problem, similarly, is that people don’t want to work for anything. I think that she is wrong. For one, everyone had oughtContinue

Women In Politics

In this entry, I share a few thoughts on women’s roles in politics. They are not entirely cogent, and the following paragraphs form some degree of cohesion. I read a few brief studies, which I summarize here. There is a paucity of research on women in the executive branch.  For one, it’s a branch thatContinue