Archive for the ‘paternalism’ Category

Pete Guither for Drug Czar

Tuesday, September 16th, 2008

Writes Pete:

Mark Kleiman has his response to the Cato Unbound series with: Drug Policy in Principle, and in Practice. A couple of excellent comments have already been expressed … But I wanted to take a chance to look at his response a little more in depth.
And I recommend that all look at Pete’s analysis in depth. As he so aptly notes, anti-prohibionists are talking about the elephant in the room, while so many drug warriors prefer to talk about, oh, say, coconuts.

(more…)

Posted in paternalism, the drug "war", your friend the state | 2 Comments »

Some Catholic and Other Religions’ Practices Ought to be Required to Advertise as “Entertainment?”

Tuesday, August 5th, 2008

Should Catholics asked to stick $1 in the church box before lighting a holy candle in offering for their prayers be met with mandatory signs that the church is making the wicks available only as “entertainment?” A new law in the UK requires fortune-tellers, clairvoyants, astrologers and mediums to so describe their services upfront, and as that first link shows James Randi’s Swift site not only approves, but thinks the same should apply to various religionists. Indeed, in a more recent post, Randi’s site declares: (more…)

Posted in Uncategorized, paternalism | 15 Comments »

Revealed at Last: The Greatest Threat to "Liberaltarianism!"

Friday, July 4th, 2008

Certain liberal talk-radio hosts.

Consider.

DC’s Air America outlet is kind of lame. Yesterday it ran a Thom Hartmann broadcast about Heller from before Heller was even decided. (Looks like it was the June 17 show.) Hartmann had on a scholar from the Independent Institute, Stephen P. Halbrook, and proceeded to badger him about standing armies. The whole point of a militia, Hartmann insisted, was to obviate the need for large standing armies. So how come you’re not trying to [SOMETHING that would make standing armies go away, though Hartmann never quite said what] instead of trying to make sure DC drug lords can get ahold of a Mac-10? My question is, how ignorant do you have to be, how little due diligence on your guests do you need to undertake, to be so clueless about how the Independent Institute feels about standing armies?

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Posted in energy policy, liberalism, paternalism | 3 Comments »

That 70s Show

Friday, June 27th, 2008

A lot of today’s fighting young progressives probably won’t really believe that movement liberalism ever did have any genuine “excesses” that helped turn voters away from the Democratic Party. But my God, the hysteria greeting the Heller decision among some parts of Netrootsia and Greater Liberalism makes me think some of today’s progressives are determined to repeat even the pointless mistakes of Leftism Past. The practical legal effect of Heller will be minimal. The practical effect on crime will be likewise. Mark Kleiman has made this case for years, persuasively to my view. (Unfortunately his current post on the topic is not link-rich, so you’ll have to do your own digging.) I say this as someone who was disposed to find evidence on the other side - statistical proof that more guns, as they say, meant less crime. What I could see of statistics from Britain and the US and elsewhere was that gun laws had no material effect whatsoever on the level of violent crime. The effects of gun control on the one hand and shall-issue concealed-carry on the other were utterly swamped by other factors, especially demographic ones.

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Posted in Democrats, liberalism, libertarianism, obama, paternalism | 27 Comments »

On The Plurality of Slippery Slopes

Tuesday, June 24th, 2008

Jim did a very fine job dispatching the Douthat-Carter contribution to number theory and set theory: “[J]ust as ‘a lot of people would say’ there is ‘similarity between having sex with a prostitute while you’re married and paying to watch a prostitute perform sexual acts for your voyeuristic gratification,’ there is also similarity between ‘having sex with a prostitute’ and having sex with your spouse. Hey, it’s sex, right?” Right. The point generalizes. In a classic paper called “New Work For a Theory of Universals,” David Lewis (sort of my intellectual hero, so be prepared to hear more about him) wrote: (more…)

Posted in libertarianism, paternalism, philosophy, social conservatism | 16 Comments »