Blog Posts


Yo, Can You Spare Forty Acres And A Mule?

It was obvious to me one year ago that the pandemic would yield a time of extraordinary social tumult. Indeed, just over one year ago, I wrote in these pages about the general strike theory of the pandemic, how the viral contagion would be turned into an occasion to try to recast the...

TLC: Time to End the Trouble in Paradise

Regular readers of this page know better than to expect consistency over time. I write what I think, and what I feel: My thoughts and feelings change over time. This inconsistency can breed ill-will. There are times I simply need to eat crow and say I am sorry, as I do now, to a man who...


Amend the Constitution to Bar Race-Based Transfer Payments

I wrote this almost a year ago. Friends thought I was howling at the moon. Now they think I was prophetic. Spread the word. We need to amend the federal Constitution to prevent race-based transfer payments and distribution of public goods. It was written as I watched the hullabaloo arising...

Locke's Radical Limits On Individual Rights

Libertarianism and individualism generally run hand-in-hand with a robust view of property rights. If the state is an artifice, then aren’t limitations on how much property individuals can acquire arbitrary and therefore suspect? Individualism and limited government are fast...

Playing With History: Neither A Jefferson Nor A Kinte Be

I have a confession to make: I never watched the television series “Roots,” nor have I read the Alex Hailey novel “Roots: The Saga of An American Family,” on which it was based. This despite the fact that the television series took the nation by storm in the late...

Introducing a New Podcast: Law and Legitimacy

I’ll never forget the first time I heard of blogging. Mike Cernovich called. I think he was a law student at Pepperdine at the time. Did I want to join him on a blog site he had created called Crime and Federalism? The year was 2005.
“What’s a...

Reparations in Evanston -- Even Vonnegut Couldn't Sell This Plot

Evanston, Illinois is a university town, so I expect a certain amount of irresponsible silliness to emerge from its town hall. But using a sales tax on marijuana to fund reparations payments to black town residents is something even Kurt Vonnegut would have a hard time selling as fiction.
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Locke on Slavery: A Puzzling Set Of Assertions

John Locke’s Second Treatise of Government has little to say about slavery, but what is said is said early. Chapter Four, entitled simply enough, Of Slavery, is but a couple of pages long. Bear in mind that the Second Treatise was published in 1690; England did not formally...

An Exercise In Deconstructing White Privilege

Herewith a tutorial to those perplexed about how to navigate in this brave new world of racial sensitivity. Today’s lesson is in critical race theory. In other words, here is how you can deconstruct symbols used in everyday life to uncover signs of structural racism.
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© Norm Pattis is represented by Elite Lawyer Management, managing agents for Exceptional American Lawyers
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