The New Pioneers

“Engineering is the closest thing to magic that we have in this world,” Elon Musk

What Happened to Common Sense?

When Thomas Paine wrote his book “Common Sense,” no one disputed what common sense actually meant. While some may have objected to Paine’s application of some common sense to political actions, no one argued that his actions were common sense. The argument at the time was, much like it is now, that common sense must […]

The Price of Freedom

What is freedom and what is the price for it? That may be the quintessential question of the century for the entire world. It is something that, as Americans, we have mostly forgotten, or don’t take seriously enough. Shin Dong-hyuk was a prisoner in a North Korean concentration camp. He didn’t understand the concept of […]

Mr. Smith Goes To Washington

Sometimes art imitates life in ways that stay with us longer than reality. Mr. Smith Goes To Washington is an iconic film that even those who have not seen it have heard about. It’s a classic. A legend. Yet the phrase means something completely different to a member of the LDS Church who knows a […]

Handguns and Hurricanes:

or: Natural Disasters…The Case Against Gun Control Crossposted to TheFederalistPapers.org: “The American people can no more meet the demands of today’s world by acting alone than American soldiers could have met the forces of fascism or communism with muskets and militias.” So said President Obama in a recent State of the Union Address. But in […]

Hashtags and American Flags

The following is cross posted at http://www.thefederalistpapers.org: The night that Rand Paul stood on the senate floor and filibustered the nomination of the CIA director a new twitter hash tag was born: #standwithrand. Everyone from backgrounds and positions as diverse as Van Jones of Rebuild the Dream to Twitchy’s Michelle Malkin declared their solidarity with […]

Getting Back to the Basics

I consider myself a conservative libertarian, but there are many things I don’t agree with my fellow libertarians on. I question their wisdom so often that I can’t advocate them as a party (which probably explains the 3% they pull in the national elections). Libertarians, like Gary Johnson, are constantly advocating a minimal involvement by […]

What Walt Disney Teaches Us About American Values

Christina Aguilera, Justin Timberlake, Britney Spears, Miley Cyrus, Ryan Gosling and Lindsay Lohan all have one thing in common besides doing crazy things in public that should embarrass them– they all worked for Disney as child stars. Why this should matter after they have been released to their adulthood and bigger and better things than […]

What Warm Bodies teaches us about American Values

The clan went out for a movie last night, and to satisfy all the varied tastes of the clan, we saw Warm Bodies. The blurb about the movie on imdb.com reads: After R (a highly unusual zombie) saves Julie from an attack, the two form a relationship that sets in motion a sequence of events […]

Why lipsyncing a live performance is wrong (and auto-tunes)

I had a dream once, it wasn’t that long ago. I even wrote a story based entirely on this childhood dream–which was to sing the National Anthem at a Dodgers game. I don’t know how many people have had a similar dream, but when Beyonce lipsynced the National Anthem, it started a controversy in pop […]