The State is the Religion of the Hidden Corpse

This classic essay was originally published at FEE.org on July 21, 2016. Have you ever attended the ribbon-cutting ceremony of a new local business? Perhaps you’ve seen the corny shovel groundbreaking ritual of a new building. These events are usually rather innocuous affairs – filled with hopeful mom-and-pop dreamers, nervous glad-handing, cookies and wine and […]

The ‘Starry Night’ house: A win for freedom

This classic article by David Gornoski was originally published at WND.com on August 2, 2018. In the coldness of space, a star explodes. It creates a dazzling shock wave of cloud debris with a magnetic alignment resembling spokes on a cosmic bicycle wheel of light. We here on Earth call it SuperNova 1987A. But the […]

The Hypocritical Anti-Trump Outrage Mob

The following essay was originally published at WND.com on March 14, 2016. You know what’s worse than Trump’s crass language and love for the poorly educated? Highly educated fools cawing on about the relative respectability of the other Serious candidates – as if using divisive language was more uncivilized than the bombs and sanctions that […]

The sacrifice of Congresswoman Gabbard

This article by David Gornoski was published at WND.com on February 15, 2017. The media continues to be an increasingly petty, insecure clique as it mimetically parrots its own echo chamber talking points against any person who challenges their preferred leftist-corporatist brand of state hegemony. Think of political ideologies like denominations of a religion. They […]

Our Shocking Acceptance Of State Sanctioned Violence

This article originally appeared at The American Conservative on October 23, 2017. “Do you mean to tell me, that if there was a law against state attorneys using blue pens and you found incontrovertible evidence that I was using blue pens, you could not follow the law and render a guilty verdict based on the […]

Why All Good Social Justice Warriors Support Presumption of Innocence

This classic essay was originally published at Intellectual Takeout on October 11, 2018. I have a friend in Papua New Guinea named Monica Paulus who was accused of casting sorcery spells because a person died in her village. Her neighbors almost murdered her until she fled the region. Now she works to save other women falsely accused […]

Beyond reason: What really motivates our choices

This essay was originally published at WND.com on February 25, 2016. A few years ago I used to write for WND under the pen name David Hanson. I derived the name in honor of my maternal great-great-great, etc. grandfather John Hanson, the first president of the Continental Congress under the Articles of Confederation. Besides being […]

The ‘Man in Black’ vs. the State’s Sacred Violence

This classic essay originally appeared on WND.com in December 2016. As poets are wont to do, Johnny Cash led a prophet’s life for his time. His performance art and accompanying dusty, rumbling lyrics dared to look into the soul of America’s violence-haunted heart with equal parts affection and anger. When I speak of the state’s “sacred violence” […]

Salvation Through Creativity

Man, the microcosm is responsible for the whole structure of nature and whatever takes place in man affects the whole of nature. Man gives life and spirit to nature, through his creative freedom, and he kills or fetters it through his own servitude and his fall into material necessity. –Nikolai Berdyaev1 In the summer of […]

We’re More Christian Than We Know

We’re more Christian than we know. As we’ll discuss in this piece, liberal humanism looks pretty similar to a godless protestantism. In other words, you could say that subsequent belief systems post-Christianity — Scientism, Communism, Liberalism, Wokeism, among others — all have Christian roots. They’ve taken the same religious architecture, but dropped the ontological assumptions. […]