Author: Adam Lee

Red-state legislatures around the country seem as if they’re competing to pass the cruelest and most inhumane laws. But even by that standard, North Carolina’s HB2 stands out. Rushed into passage with the haste and secrecy of a coup d’etat – it was introduced in the legislature, voted on, sent to the governor and signed…

All good things must come to an end! My marathon review of Atlas Shrugged, the project that’s occupied my time for the last three years (!), is coming to a close. Next week I’ll begin writing about Part III, Chapter X, which is the last chapter of the book. I plan to spend about a…

Atlas Shrugged, part III, chapter IX As we’ve seen previously, the villains of Atlas Shrugged are strangely reluctant to actually do anything evil. But now that they’ve run out of options, they’ve finally decided to act like villains by torturing John Galt. (Insert “Muahahaha!” laughter here.) It’s all part of their evil master plan to…

The last time I wrote about the Democratic primary, I was undecided. I’ve made up my mind since then. I’ve decided to vote for Hillary Clinton, and in this post I’ll explain why. To start with (because, yes, some of my best friends are Bernie supporters), I still believe there’s no bad choice in this…

Religious sects and cults that conceive of themselves as serving a higher, sacred purpose will, almost inevitably, end up believing that they’re above the law. We’ve seen this recently with the FLDS Mormon splinter cult and the Catholic church protecting monstrous child abusers, and now there’s another example on offer. I’ve written about the malign…

• With all the stealth and haste of a coup d’etat, North Carolina’s Republican government rushes through a vicious and willfully mean-spirited pro-discrimination bill. Transgender people are targeted the worst, but the bill also nullifies all local ordinances that protect LGBT people, blocks private individuals from suing over racial or sexual discrimination, and prohibits municipalities…

Atlas Shrugged, part III, chapter IX When John Galt curses out America on live television, the ballroom erupts in chaos. The broadcast is instantly cut off, and some guests scream or flee in panic, while others freeze in terror. The thugs guarding Galt hustle him away. Seeing Mr. Thompson and the other looters make a…

The rise of Donald Trump has bewildered and dismayed pundits, especially conservative pundits. Many of them are treating it as a freakish fluke, a black-swan event that nobody could have predicted. But the clues were always there, for anyone who knew how to spot them. In his last, doomed line of attack, Marco Rubio accused…

Something that, as an atheist, I always insist upon is that we are biochemical machines. There’s no spooky, supernatural ghost in the machine directing our bodies, no Cartesian Theater where the nervous system feeds into a single ineffable locus of consciousness. Our thoughts and our desires arise from patterns of electrochemical activity in our heads,…

Since the 2016 presidential election seems like it has at least decent odds of bringing about the end of the world, let’s celebrate in style with Janelle Monáe. From 2013’s The Electric Lady: