Welcome to The Artful Dilettante–a sanctuary of reason and virtue, where reality is your best friend and facts always trump wishful thinking. It is the Lamp of Hope in a dark and musty corner of a crumbling civilization. It is the seedbed of the Republic of Letters and Virtue coming soon to a world near you. It is a place of free minds, free wills, and free markets–without chains, yokes, or harnesses. The Artful Dilettante is on the front lines of the Liberty Movement. It is intended for people who think rationally as a way of life. There is no place here for the false dichotomies of left and right, haves and have-nots, liberals and conservatives. History is and has always been about the struggle between liberty and power. The stale bromides and recycled political pablum advanced as solutions by our benighted leadership will find no support here. Great moral problems cannot be solved by sleights-of-hand. The true sign of a good idea is the wailing and gnashing of teeth by the ruling class. We are ever on the lookout for bold and sweeping ideas, firmly grounded in liberty, which will send the political class into fits of rage.

We always have our finger on the pulse at The Artful Dilettante. We are dispassionate, keenly perceptive, and yes, somewhat cynical observers of human events. We are at once above the din and in the fray. We have a nuanced understanding of our political system and the criminals and reprobates who run it. We never accept anything at face value, especially the pronouncements of those in power and the echoes of their dutiful, fawning bottom-dwellers in the media and university faculty lounges. We know that people often aren’t who they say they are, and that things aren’t always as they appear to be. We fully agree with the notion that there are no accidents in politics. We reflexively assume that every politician is either lying or stupid, and that the vast majority of the American people can be trusted with a deadly weapon but not the right to vote. We fully agree with the words of Jefferson: “The Tree of Liberty must be watered from time to time with the blood of tyrants and patriots.” Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness are yours by birthright, not permission. They can be taken away, but never granted.

We promise never to be fair and balanced but to tell the unvarnished truth. Fair and balanced just means you’re telling the truth half the time. Remember, all you get when you straddle a fence is a sore ass. We promise to challenge the prevailing wisdom while honoring the universal, trancendent truths of our forebears. Lastly, we promise to aggressively promote our vision of a just and peaceful society based on the application of reason to the challenges of life on earth.

The Artful Dilettante

A Legend in His Own Mind.

This website is dedicated to my political/philosophical mentor—RJL.

Ama-gi: first known recorded symbol of “liberty” in Sumerian cuneiform