Wednesday, April 17. 2013
Marriage rights, abortion rights, adoption rights, medical rights, housing rights, gun rights, speech rights, etc., etc.
I am realizing that I object to the language of "rights" as if they were things doled out by the state, or as if our rights were at the pleasure of the state. That, I think, is an adolescent view of government as parent. The reality and the history is the opposite. The Constitution and the Bill of Rights were never meant to limit the freedom of the people, or free enterprise.
I prefer the entirely different vantage point and language, the language of freedom and the limited rights and powers of government. Government powers stingily doled out to the state by free, intelligent, self-sufficient citizens. Land of the free and home of the brave, and all that. There is nothing at all intelligent about people in government, especially in a democratic republic. After all, you could not even run a corner candy shop with a democratic republic, much less with the doofus losers and sociopaths who mostly want to run for office.
Is it possible to be a Conservative Libertarian? I try, but I run into logical inconsistencies and conflicts. Take gay marriage as an example. The Conservative in me believes that Judeo-Christian ideals and ordinary family units are the foundation of society and of our civilization. Precious things. My Libertarian impulses want government entirely out of marriage except insofar as people want to make it a legal contract or a sacramental vow.
Monday, April 15. 2013
Our prayers and concern for all of the victims in Boston, but that's all I can say. We have few facts.
However, on tax day I felt the need to link this one: America Was Much Better Off Before The Income Tax
Sunday, April 14. 2013
Brandon Smith put a lot of time into this post: Are Individuals The Property Of The Collective?
It's a fundamental issue, isn't it? One of the things that stunned De Toqueville was the abundance of voluntary affiliations and organizations in the US. Of course, The Collective doesn't do voluntary. I hate the very concept.
Saturday, April 13. 2013
Of course, it's not classic liberalism, but old-fashioned statism. An Entomologist's-Eye View of Predatory Liberalism:
Marriage -- or the sacralization of the male-female union -- is the foundation of civilization, so the left's attack on it is utterly predictable.
Tuesday, April 9. 2013
It's been far too long since I studied, or used statistics other than to read medical journal articles. Everybody talks about Bayesian Statistics nowadays. They are the new old thing, almost 100 years older than Fisher Statistics (Fisher was an interesting fellow).
In my youth, I learned to be always skeptical about any research results, but I am told that running data through Bayesian methods is a good test of data.
Can somebody explain the concept to me in simple English? I don't intend to use it, just to get the ideas (I can do the math, but I want something conceptual for starters.) Most Liberal Arts students learned basic Stats in college, the p and the t-test, etc., but the Bayesian is new to me.
A Lefty wonders why. He thinks it's mostly self-selection.
I think a more interesting question is why so many of the successful people in business are Obama people. Over half of the very wealthy people I know are ardent Democrats, and are people who understand how the real world works. Of course, I do inhabit New England where blue is the cultural color of choice.
Monday, April 8. 2013
Her 2006 piece here.
And this snippet from Andrew Sullivan, via Jacobson:
The Britain I grew up in was insane. The government owned almost all major manufacturing, from coal to steel to automobiles. Owned. It employed almost every doctor and owned almost every hospital. Almost every university and elementary and high school was government-run. And in the 1970s, you could not help but realize as a young Brit, that you were living in a decaying museum – some horrifying mixture of Eastern European grimness surrounded by the sculptured bric-a-brac of statues and buildings and edifices that spoke of an empire on which the sun had once never set. Now, in contrast, we lived on the dark side of the moon and it was made up of damp, slowly degrading concrete….
Perhaps in future years, her legacy might be better seen as a last, sane defense of the nation-state as the least worst political unit in human civilization. Her deep suspicion of the European project was rooted in memories of the Blitz, but it was also prescient and wise...
Friday, April 5. 2013
This is bad: People Not In Labor Force Soar By 663,000 To 90 Million, Labor Force Participation Rate At 1979 Levels
Government is broke, investors and businessmen are wary of the government (I don't believe this stock market, inflated by free $ and foreign $), the labor market is out of kilter, the EU is blowing up, etc. etc. The US is beginning to resemble France. Looks like a mess to me.
I'm happy to report that I am doing fine. I'm taking a date to the Blue Water Grill tonight. I made some fortunate but risky decisions. Now all I need is a good wife.
Thursday, April 4. 2013
It's from Peter Hitchens: How I am partly to blame for Mass Immigration.
Our friend AVI put up a comment here yesterday to the effect that Leftist forces are far more interested in undermining Western culture than they give a damn about the pawns they use.
Monday, March 25. 2013
The author of the NYT op-ed piece is Sarah Conly, an assistant professor of philosophy at Bowdoin College, the author of “Against Autonomy: Justifying Coercive Paternalism.”
I suppose my question to Prof. Conly would be to ask her how she might feel if I were in charge of the coercive paternalism. After all, I am sure I have more real life experience, a better understanding of human nature, more university degrees, and probably more expertise in various areas than she does.
The Liberal Fascists tend to assume that the paternalists would always see the world their way. What if the coercive paternalists were to view the world my way? Then what? Would the Sarah Conlys view it as perhaps oppressive?
I do not just object to the disparagement of the sense of "regular" people, or to the indifference to the freedom that is supposed to be the American heritage - I object to the incredible arrogance which verges on the insane.
Sarah, apply your coercive paternalism to your kids. That's where that instinct belongs. However, I would not be surprised if you send them to a Montessori school.
Image below via Never Yet Melted.
I see Rick Moran covers some of the same ground.
Saturday, March 23. 2013
Photo is a typical American city
Trust me, you folks around the world who want to sneak into the USA. We are an evil, Capitalist, heartless, war-mongering, carbon-spewing, gun-shooting, drug-abusing, poverty-ridden, sex-obsessed, Big Gulp-drinking, obese, poorly-educated, sexist, racist and zenophobic country that nobody would want to be a part of. There are no jobs here, and the place is crawling with Jesus Freaks, drunk cowboys with guns, communists, weird transgender people and weird mass-murderers armed with AK-47s and bombs. Don't believe the marketing hype about freedom and opportunity, because they are disappearing fast.
Just ask any American college professor how bad we are, and how unfair and harsh life is here. They will tell you the truth. Most Americans, I am sure, would leave if they could only find a way to get away to a better, kinder, and more peace-loving country. You would hate it here. Try China or India instead, or Mexico, Scotland, Russia, Iceland, Costa Rica, Lithuania, Italy, or maybe Australia.
Gallup: 138 million foreign adults want to immigrate to USA
Friday, March 22. 2013
 How they disarmed our British cousins. It's the pitiful story of how Brits lost the right to self-defense.
Here in the USA, we hold with the Castle Doctrine even though we have never had castles. We have stories like this one in the news daily: Texas Sheriff: Homeowner’s Gun Key to Saving His and Wife’s Lives from Home Invaders.
Bad guys ignore gun laws. An unarmed home is just a target. And dead men don't talk...
Pic is a Taurus. That's the gun Marianne kept handy.
Thursday, March 21. 2013
 To understand the now-antique Liberal/Progressive mind set in America, we must go back at least to the turn of the last century. Around 1910, Walter Weyl was all the rage - the new, new Coke.
At the time, the Western world was excited by utopian ideas about everything being run by brilliant, virtuous, and omniscient overseers who aspired to unburden us common folk of freedom, risk, and excessive responsibilities.
With a h/t to Doug Ross, here is some of it: Walter Weyl (1873-1919): The state has a “primordial, intrinsic, underlying right to all property”.
A quote:
“We are beginning to see that we can moralize, we can socialize the trusts, and can build more widely upon the economic tendencies of the age…the end of it all must be production on the largest scale compatible with efficiency, but a production so regulated as to ownership, stock issues, dividends, prices, wages, and profits as to safeguard the whole community. Unless we are to take the saltum mortale [dangerous undertaking] of a complete and immediate governmental ownership and operation of all large industries, we must work out a more perfect system of corporation control in the interest of society.”
As most Maggie's readers know, individual freedom is not about "the greater good," nor is it about the State. It's about individual sovereignty.
Thursday, March 14. 2013
 Photo is from this East Village (11th St) 2 BR, 1000 sq. ft condo for sale for $1.8 million.
Megan McArdle wrote this: How New York Could Get More Affordable Housing. I have a few reactions to her post, none of them disagreements.
First, I think she is mainly talking about Manhattan real estate. There is a lot of NYC outside of Manhattan, and the prime fashionable neighborhoods of Manhattan (and Brooklyn) will never be "affordable" to the middle class because, given the barriers to new construction, demand will always outstrip supply. Even so, there are reasonable neighborhoods in places like Inwood, Harlem, Washington Heights, Spanish Harlem, Little Italy.
Second, there are few free markets in housing in NYC except at the higher end (ie condos in the 2+ million range). Even there, it's not really a free market because the barriers to entry for builders are so high (legal, regulatory, community review, architectural boards, time, political dealings, etc). Donald Trump, with his huge legal teams and political connections, can get that sort of thing done, but there are few of him and, even so, supply will never catch up to demand.
Third, NYC's approach to "affordable" housing since WW2 has been housing projects for the poor and rent control and/or entire rent-controlled developments (eg Stuyvesant Town or Tudor City) for the middle class. The former destroyed neighborhoods and was a catastrophe, and the latter (ST as an example) is bankrupt. Furthermore, rent control, instituted temporarily as a post-war adjustment, now has a huge and vociferous constituency (of course). The more recent efforts are to require some time-limited below-market rentals in new construction.
Altogether, many things conspire to keep rental and condo prices high, even out in the boroughs. Since massive deregulation will never happen in NYC, supply will never catch up with demand because NYC is a world-wide magnet for the energetic, the prosperous, the young, and for those who just want a toe-hold in the greatest and most interesting city in the world. (And if supply ever did catch up with demand, a lot of people would lose a lot of money.)
Government helped create the problem - if it is a problem. The Dems want to fix their problem with even more controls and takings. Typical.
My final thought is this: High prices mean high demand. That's a problem few city centers have these days. It's a good kind of problem to have. It's like when I hear people complain about parking in my village, and feel I need to remind them that there are tons of towns where you can park anywhere downtown - but would you want to live where nobody wants to go?
For another example in the Boroughs, here's a Brooklyn house that just sold.
Wednesday, March 13. 2013
How Napoleon Chagnon Became Our Most Controversial Anthropologist.
Apparently Chagnon's field research did not support Marxist interpretations of stone-age tribal behavior, so he was attacked and smeared. Is there a Marxist interpretation for academia's tribal warfare against Chagnon?
Of course, Edward O. Wilson got some of the same treatment, but not quite as diabolical, for his work on sociobiology. There are lots of Thought Police in academia.
Thursday, March 7. 2013
Northwestern Creates Mandatory Diversity Program.
I find myself wondering how the college students of today can be so full of hate and intolerance that they require mandatory regrooving. Perhaps there is only so much sanctimonious bs one can absorb without vomiting or laughing.
This reminds me of a local town employee who got in a little trouble with his free speech at work and was sent to mandatory diversity training. He told me afterwards "I went to their classes, but it didn't take."
Wednesday, March 6. 2013
 By recreational drugs, I mean everything from pot to crystal meth and heroin.
They are all readily available on most streets in the US (but at far-above free market prices despite being free of sales taxes) and are widely popular. I find it difficult, from a libertarian point of view, to make a continuing argument for our Federal ongoing, attempted but failed prohibition. If some people want to live in a haze for a few hours - or all the time, why not (as long as I do not have to support them)?
In a free country, having things be legal does not mean that you condone them morally, spiritually, or in any other way. Adultery is not illegal, and neither is devil-worship nor alcohol abuse. Recreational drugs used to be legal in the US, and I doubt there were more social problems with them back then. Maybe less, because when they were not illegal they were cheap. Are any of our readers old enough to remember when there was cocaine in Coke?
Funnily enough, now a Large Coke without coke is illegal in New York. Crazy world in which it is easier to buy cocaine in front of the minimart than it is to buy a Big Gulp inside.
What's your opinion?
Just don't make the argument that "It's bad for people." That will not fly, because driving is dangerous too. So is mountain-climbing.
Please review the debate in comments before commenting. Pretty good debate.
Tuesday, March 5. 2013
 Mead's post quotes this:
Half of those surveyed…said they had trouble finding recent graduates qualified to fill positions at their company or organization. Nearly a third gave colleges just fair to poor marks for producing successful employees. And they dinged bachelor’s-degree holders for lacking basic workplace proficiencies like adaptability, communication skills, and the ability to solve complex problems.
Related, What College Graduates Lack - Americans have lost their competitive edge. Can college restore it?
As I have said here many times, a Liberal Arts education is not job training. It's designed to be about life-enrichment and about molding civilized and thoughtful citizens with deeper understanding of the world and of their own civilization than secondary schools can offer.
If people want job credentials, I'd advise majoring in Medieval History, Classics, or Renaissance Literature, and minoring in Accounting, Engineering, hard sciences, or Econ (or the other way around) - combining the life-enhancement with the utilitarian.
The kids should consider this: anything that can be learned just as well at The Great Courses/Teaching Company should not be studied at great expense in college. With all the alternative ways of learning higher ed material nowadays, spending big bucks for it makes no sense. And if you need a class and exams to provide the discipline, then one should work on one's discipline.
You can obtain a top-notch Liberal Arts education with them, with as much breadth or depth as you desire. I eagerly await the day that the company will offer their courses for college credit.
Wednesday, February 27. 2013
It is 60 very enjoyable and inspiring minutes. Podcast here. I have rarely linked to podcasts, so you have to trust me on this one. He is smart, quick, and funny.
My favorite quote: "The Constitution is my social contract."
Another good one: "No representation without taxation."
Vanderleun's favorite:
"If the Constitution doesn't count, you don't have any legitimate power. You're a thief, a brigand, an officious busybody, somebody who should be tarred and feathered and run out of town on a rail for trying to exercise power you don't possess."
The parts about his career in music are fun too. They guy's energy, creativity, and productivity is remarkable to me. How does he find time to accomplish so much? He says "My life rocks."
Tuesday, February 26. 2013
From Tom Sowell's Shepherds and Sheep:
What Cass Sunstein does not tell us is what sort of creatures, other than people, are going to override our mistaken decisions for us. That is the key flaw in the theory and agenda of the left.
Implicit in the wide range of efforts on the left to get government to take over more of our decisions for us is the assumption that there is some superior class of people who are either wiser or nobler than the rest of us.
Yes, we all make mistakes. But do governments not make bigger and more catastrophic mistakes?
Hey, Tom. I'd like to add the point that I am wiser and nobler than anybody in government.
Thursday, February 7. 2013
Althouse asks Is government an "impetuous vortex" or a "hideous monster [with] devouring jaws"?
I go with monster, myself.
From Henninger's Obama's Colossal Politics - His laws are so big there are parts no one has ever seen:
Years back, a popular notion among liberal thinkers was something called
"imperial overstretch." This was the idea that America's far-flung
foreign-policy commitments could bankrupt the country. Mr. Obama
believes this, and before Chuck Hagel started talking the other day, he
was supposed to explain it. In his State of the Union speech next
Tuesday, Mr. Obama will say again that Washington, after Iraq and
Afghanistan, needs to "invest" at home. But isn't the federalization of
pretty much everything in a diverse country like the U.S. just another
exercise in imperial overstretch?
Friday, February 1. 2013
With all of the recent reports of fake news stories, grossly-distorted or fraudulently-edited news stories, and incurious repetition of administration talking points, alert followers of the happenings of the world grow increasingly distrustful of anything coming (or censored and thus not coming) from the MSM.
Count me in.
Buddy found this post from last year: What if the Left is just one Potemkin Village after another?
Friday, January 25. 2013
In arguments about government intervention and control, it is usual for the Leftists and statists to produce straw men with whom to debate. There is a lot of space between government intrusion and life in the jungle. Lots of space. None of us Libertarian/Conservatives want no elected government, but we do want to be left alone. We have morals and we have brains. I always thought that a function of government was to provide the basic conditions (eg protection from foreign invasions, etc) so that we can go it alone in life. Americans are not raised to be Euroweenies, but we gather plenty of resources to help us get along in life, and give us avenues in which to do good deeds, which have nothing to do with government: friends, family, neighborhoods, churches, organizations, business affiliations, etc. All the things which so impressed de Toqueville about the American spirit.
From The "acting alone" fallacy:
The private sector isn't just a bunch of people "acting alone." As Matt Welch pointed out in his critique of the speech, making and selling an object as basic as a pencil is such a complex endeavor that it takes lots of different specialists. No one person has the knowledge to accomplish that seemingly simple task; that's how decentralized knowledge is in society. And with a truly complex product, like a computer or movie, the need for people to work together is even greater still. The private sector isn't fundamentally about everyone being secluded and isolated from each other; it typically involves many people working together. Government regulation often rules out the options people would otherwise want to pursue that would let them work together more. The idea that you're "alone" unless you're being directed by the government strikes me as dehumanizing and almost abusive. So I resist this scare tactic of presenting the government as the alternative to being "alone."
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