May 2024

Reason

Free Minds and Free Markets.

Reason4 min readPolitical Ideologies
The ‘None of the Above’ Primary
ON SUPER TUESDAY, as this issue went to press, voters in 15 states and one territory went to the polls and grudgingly validated the inevitable. America is in for another presidential election pitting Donald Trump against Joe Biden. The following morn
Reason2 min read
Reason
Editor in Chief Katherine Mangu-Ward (kmw@reason.com), Publisher Mike Alissi (malissi@reason.com), Editors at Large Nick Gillespie (gillespie@reason.com), Matt Welch (matt.welch@reason.com), Managing Editor Jason Russell (jason.russell@reason.com), A
Reason1 min read
Photo
ON FEBRUARY 22, Odysseus became the first private spacecraft to have a (largely) successful soft moon landing. It launched seven days earlier on another private sector success, SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket. Developed by Intuitive Machines, the mission ca
Reason2 min readInternational Relations
Are U.S. Strikes on Houthis Constitutional?
SINCE JANUARY, THE United States and its allies have been conducting strikes against the Houthis, a Yemen-based Islamist militant organization that has been attacking commercial ships in the Red Sea. These attacks, the Houthis claim, are a gesture of
Reason2 min readAmerican Government
Regulators Killed a Lifeline for Roombas
IN JANUARY 2024, Amazon terminated its agreement to acquire iRobot, the company that manufactures the Roomba robot vacuum. That company then laid off nearly one-third of its work force. In a joint statement, the companies said they saw “no path to re
Reason2 min read
Congress Could Swipe Your Credit Reward Points
A PLOT TO kill credit card reward points has bipartisan buy-in, with lawmakers framing the effort as an attempt to curb still-stubborn inflation. Don’t bank on it. Sens. Dick Durbin (D–Ill.) and J.D. Vance (R–Ohio) are two of the leading sponsors of
Reason2 min read
Quiz: The SAT, Reexamined
IN RECENT YEARS, the tide turned against standardized tests such as the SAT and ACT. Once a nonnegotiable metric for determining college admission, many universities have cast off such tests, declaring them unnecessary—or even racist. While many scho
Reason5 min read
The Pupil Panopticon
BIG BROTHER—and Parent, and Teacher—are watching. Across America, teachers are uploading students’ grades to digital portals on a weekly, daily, or sometimes hourly basis. They are posting not just grades on big tests, but quizzes, homework, and in-
Reason3 min readAmerican Government
Q&A Justin Amash
JUST 15 PERCENT of Americans approve of the job Congress is doing. But why is it broken and how do we fix it? Those are two of the questions Reason’s Nick Gillespie asked Justin Amash in February at Students for Liberty’s LibertyCon. Amash, the Pales
Reason2 min read
Carding People To Watch Porn
THE LATEST TREND in anti-sex action is carding people to watch porn online. After years of passing resolutions to declare porn a “public health crisis,” state lawmakers are coalescing on age-verification measures as a way to address this alleged scou
Reason4 min read
50 Years of D&D: You Can’t Copyright Fun
THIS YEAR MARKS the 50th anniversary of the original edition of Dungeons & Dragons (D&D), the granddaddy of tabletop role-playing games and one of the urtexts of nerd culture. The golden anniversary could hardly have come at a better time; over the p
Reason2 min read
Don’t Blame Decriminalization for Oregon Drug Deaths
IN MARCH, OREGON legislators over-whelmingly approved recriminalization of low-level drug possession, reversing a landmark reform that voters endorsed in 2020. Although critics of that ballot initiative, Measure 110, cited escalating drug-related dea
Reason12 min readWorld
What If America Runs Out Of Bombs?
EVERYONE KNOWS THE United States has the most powerful military in the world. No one else comes close to Washington’s ability to hunt down its enemies and quickly drop bombs on them from halfway across the world. But what if America runs out of bombs
Reason14 min readPoverty & Homelessness
How Capitalism Beat Communism In Vietnam
EIGHT-YEAR-OLD PHUNG XUAN Vu and his 10-year-old brother were responsible for fetching food for their family, which was in the constant grip of hunger. They were living in Vietnam in the 1980s, so this required ration cards. One of the family’s most
Reason15 min read
‘Smoking Opium Is Not Our Vice
A ROUND 2 A.M. on Monday, December 6, 1875, a “posse of police” led by Captain William Douglass descended on 609 Dupont Street in San Francisco. The cops arrested Fannie Whitmore, Cora Martinez, James Dennison, and Charles Anderson, along with “two C
Reason12 min read
Progress, Rediscovered
“THE TRAGEDY OF today is that we are the heirs and the beneficiaries of thousands of years of progress and we take it for granted. You wake up in a nice soft bed. You go get fresh milk and orange juice from the fridge. You take a shower under hot run
Reason14 min readAmerican Government
Culture Warrior In Chief
“WE MUST END this uncivil war that pits red against blue,” President Joe Biden implored in hisinaugural address, a speech that used the word unity no fewer than 11 times: “Unity is the path forward.” It’s a familiar tune, one we were hearing from pre
Reason14 min readAmerican Government
The Libertarian mind Of David Boaz
FEW INDIVIDUALS HAVE had a bigger impact on the libertarian movement than David Boaz, the long-time executive vice president of the Cato Institute, D.C.’s most prominent think tank. For decades, virtually every idea and policy utterance that Cato pub
Reason5 min readAmerican Government
How To Be the President’s Kid
THEODORE ROOSEVELT WAS president at the start of the Celebrity Age, and at the start of much of the modern image of the presidency. The White House was just beginning to be called that (rather than the Executive Mansion); Roosevelt’s renovations on t
Reason5 min read
DARE To Fail
THERE’S NO SUCH thing as a universal millennial experience, but DARE comes close. Starting in 1983, the Drug Abuse Resistance Education program sent police officers into classrooms to teach fifth- and sixth-graders about the dangers of drugs and the
Reason6 min read
Reviews
JUSTIN ZUCKERMAN The new Apple Vision Pro feels like magic—for about 30 minutes. Then the awe starts to fade. The Vision Pro is Apple’s first spatial computing headset. It allows users to interact with digital elements in the real world without the n
Reason3 min readCrime & Violence
Archives
“Several scholars have identified a confluence of human-trafficking discourse with calls for restrictions on immigration. The new panic has also given rise to new agencies within municipal and state governments whose charge to prosecute ‘traffickers’
Reason3 min readCrime & Violence
Brickbats
Michael Cassidy was charged with criminal mischief after destroying a Baphomet altar erected by the Satanic Temple of Iowa in the state capitol in 2023. Since Cassidy “destroyed the property because of the victim’s religion,” they tacked on a hate cr
Reason4 min read
A Big Panic Over Tiny Plastics
A STUDY PUBLISHED in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) in January has been used for a media wave of scaremongering about plastic residue in bottled water. Its results are based on a system developed by researchers at Columbia

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