I was reflecting recently on the insurgent, internet-driven candidacy of Ron Paul and I realized something incredible just now.Ron Paul is the libertarian Jesus.Now, I don’t necessarily mean that he’s the savior of libertarians, or that if we repent to him our sins of statism and fiat currency he will bring us political and economic salvation. I’m not too hip on the gold standard anyway, but I think he represents a positive step forward for the popularity of libertarian thinking, particularly in leftist circles. I’ve always thought libertarians wasted too much time coalitioning with the crony capitalist Bible-thumpers of the right and not enough time coalitioning with our fellow non-interventionist civil libertarians on the left. Sure, they’ve got that socialist thinking going on, but even leftists will agree that real capitalism beats crony capitalism any day. And yes, this makes it even stranger that Ron Paul is a Republican, but when I see people like this compare Ron Paul to Kucinich or Gravel, I really wonder.But think about it. Jesus ministered to the prostitutes and tax collectors; Ron Paul ministers to the gold bugs, conspiracy nuts, marijuana advocates, and disaffected leftist hippies. And, just like Jesus, Ron Paul has a very enthusiastic group of folks who really like his message and want to tell everyone about it. And if you ever say a bad word about either of them, then their supporters are coming to your blog.
Archive for the ‘Politics’ Category
Who is Ron Paul?
Friday, January 11th, 2008New York Times is wrong on air security
Saturday, January 5th, 2008Interesting piece on a New York Times blog arguing for the TSA to handle inspection of cargo placed on passenger planes, instead of letting the airlines do it themselves under TSA supervision. The basic argument?
The Transportation Security Administration largely relies on the airlines to do any screening that is done. But we all should know now from the painful experience of 9/11 that, left to their devices, airlines put profit and speed ahead of security on their list of priorities.
I tried posting a comment (it’s in their moderation queue as of now but should be posted), but thought I’d share my thoughts here as well. Comment is below:As far as I’ve been able to tell, the TSA itself tends to put inconvenience and the public illusion of security ahead of security itself on its list of priorities.If you investigate the value of United and American Airlines stock before and after 9/11, or Pan Am stock before and after the Lockerbie attack, you will discover a greedy, shallow—but effective incentive for private airlines to secure themselves.What we should know from the painful experience of 9/11 is that airlines, hamstrung by FAA regulations and forced to allow boxcutter knives to be carried on board with no provision of protecting the cockpit from a potential hijacking, lost four crews and hundreds of passengers. They couldn’t have a barricaded cockpit door, because that would violate FAA regulations. They couldn’t have security personnel on board, because that would violate FAA regulations. They couldn’t buy aircraft with cockpits physically inaccessible from the passenger compartment, because FAA regulations prevented any such airplane from being designed and sold. They were required, by FAA regulations, to immediately surrender control of the aircraft to hijackers under a doctrine of “passive compliance”.And after being hamstrung, set up, and forced to allow their property to be turned into missiles targeted at the World Trade Center and Pentagon, it was the airlines, not the FAA, who were blamed for letting it happen.But it’s the flying public who are put through a facade of security by the TSA, and the taxpayers who have to foot the bill.Nonetheless, I can’t see the airlines complaining about the TSA taking over cargo screening, just as they didn’t complain about the TSA taking over passenger screening. Perhaps in a different world we would ask for corporate responsibility—and allow it to happen. In this world, we stand in the way of corporate responsibility, and when the inevitable consequences happen, we let the government do the company’s work (poorly), saving the company money and ultimately leaving no one accountable for getting the job done.
PRIEST FIGHT!
Thursday, December 27th, 2007This is the most awesome news story I have ever read:
Greek Orthodox and Armenian priests attacked each other with brooms and stones inside the Church of the Nativity as long-standing rivalries erupted in violence during holiday cleaning on Thursday.
And the best part?
Palestinian police, armed with batons and shields, quickly formed a human cordon to separate the two sides so the cleaning could continue, then ordered an Associated Press photographer out of the church.
You know you’ve slipped into bizarro world where the Palestinians are stopping religiously-motivated fighting.
My response to Mitt Romney
Friday, December 7th, 2007Koch Foods
Thursday, August 30th, 2007Federal immigration agents, assisted by local police and sheriff’s deputies, raided one of the nation’s largest suppliers of fresh and frozen poultry products yesterday and arrested more than 160 illegal aliens.
At the risk of being identified as “just another libertarian blogger”, I’m going to write a post complaining about the government. Again.
While the government is applauding itself for arresting over a hundred people for the crime of making whatever small living they could for themselves and their families without going through its obstacle course of regulations, I think I’m going to ruin their party by pointing out how they just wasted their time and ruined a bunch of people’s lives for no good reason.
First, the big reason people (demagogues) complain about illegal immigration is crime. Illegal immigrants are criminal gangsters who deal drugs and rape children and run over people while drunk on their tequila—to hear O’Reilly say it. Well, something makes me doubt that people who work 9 to 5 at the chicken factory are really part of the hispanic mafia. Maybe because they work for less-than-minimum wage at a chicken factory instead of rolling in cash from their marijuana deals?
Second, suppose they actually crack down on Koch and they don’t hire any more undocumented immigrants. Guess what happens? Some other, as-yet-unknown chicken factory opens up, and either Koch loses business, or they outsource to the illegal chicken factory. They ride this for a few years until the police raid them. Wash, rinse, repeat. (As a matter of fact, this is what police usually do with escort services—letting them build up some assets they can seize through asset forfeiture before deigning to bust them.) The only people getting penalized are the people who leave their native country for a shitty job at a chicken plant. Good job crushing what little hope these people have.
Statism without honor, humanity, or mathematical consistency:
Tuesday, August 28th, 2007I can’t help but note this story, which is either horribly written, or is accurately portraying the most horribly-written political agenda ever put forward. Here’s some choice quotes:
Nationwide, two-thirds of U.S. adults are obese or overweight, according to the fourth annual report from the Trust for America’s Health, titled “F as in Fat: How Obesity Policies are Failing in America.” The report’s co-author says the government needs to treat this trend as an epidemic that threatens the health of Americans and put in place a national plan to combat obesity.
“The key recommendation in the report is we need a national strategy,” said report co-author Jeffrey Levi.
He noted that the federal government has created a comprehensive plan to be implemented in the event of an outbreak of pandemic flu.
Emphasis mine.
Something tells me that pandemic flu is not quite like obesity. For one thing, obesity is not directly contagious. For another thing, obesity is not spread by airborne pathogens. Furthermore, pandemic flu can kill millions of people within months. Yes, obesity can be fatal too, but there’s a difference between “you should eat better or you’re more susceptible to diabetes and heart disease” and “if you step outside this month you have a good chance of dying of influenza weeks later”. And this is even without considering the fundamental issue—obesity is a condition that’s up to the individual to address, pandemic flu is a public safety hazard just like a wildfire or sniper. One of these things is fundamentally something that should be addressed by the government, and the other is an issue of personal health.
Now let’s play “spot the statistical inconsistency:”
Nationwide, two-thirds of U.S. adults are obese or overweight, according to the fourth annual report from the Trust for America’s Health, titled “F as in Fat: How Obesity Policies are Failing in America.”
….
In 32 states, 60 percent of the population is either overweight or obese. West Virginia ranks highest in the combined statistic, with nearly two-thirds of its adults obese or overweight.
Correct me if I’m wrong, but I don’t think that’s mathematically possible.
There’s two fundamental points this report fundamentally misses, alongside its strident stupidity in such things as analogy-crafting and statistics. One is a fundamental philosophical point: other people’s bodies are not the personal business of the “Trust for America’s Health” or the report’s co-author Jeffrey Levi. Are Americans too obese, on average? Yeah, probably. Who cares?
The second point is that the recommendations do nothing to address why Americans suddenly are getting fatter. America did not have more farmer’s markets, higher food stamp benefits, or vegetable snack programs in schools before we got fat, why on earth is the lack of them suddenly a causative factor? I don’t have all the answers, but I have one: the federal government, in its infinite desire to mollify both multinational agribusiness and American farmers, have decided that America shall put a tariff on imported sugar. Not only does this help all eight farmers growing sugar in the United States (what next, protectionism for Alaska’s orange growers?), but this also is a major boon to the corn industry, who can now sell something called “high fructose corn syrup” as a sugar substitute. Ever notice how Coke tastes so much better in Canada or another foreign country? That’s because US Coke uses corn syrup, while Coke in all other countries is made with sugar. From what I’ve gathered, high fructose corn syrup, along with fattening the wallets of the corn syrup producers, also affects the insulin differently from sugar, fattening our bodies as well.
I’m not saying it’s a great thing to drink all that much Coke, mind you. Just that Americans drank just as much Coke before high fructose corn syrup and didn’t get as fat as they are now. What Jeffrey Levi and “Trust for America’s Health” misses is that it’s not the lack of new federal interferences that’s to blame—it’s the federal interferences that have already happened.
Political cartoon
Monday, June 4th, 2007
On "judicial activism"
Saturday, May 19th, 2007Otherwise known as “legislating from the bench”:
I got into it on Slashdot again, someone claiming that the Constitution is “threatened by the Justices behaving like philosopher-kings finding new “laws” in the Constitution that the oafs in Congress should’ve passed (practice often derided as “legislating from the bench”)”. I have decided to post my reply (in an edited form) here.
People who complain about “judicial activism” or “legislating from the bench” remind me of whiny sports fans who blame the refs every time they lose a game. If a court ruling goes their way, no complaint. If a court ruling goes against them, it’s “judicial activism”.
First off, let’s be perfectly clear on one thing–most law in the United States is case law, i.e. law that is made by the precedent of judicial rulings. This allows the law to grow organically from case analysis rather than simply being handed down from Congress every so often. This is a vital feature of the system of common law we inherited from Great Britain, so if you have a problem with it, take it up with them. It’s also an inescapable consequence of stare decisis, the doctrine that future courts will rule according to the precedents set by past courts. But for stare decisis, court rulings would be unpredictable and arbitrary.
Having a strong judicial branch with the power to strike down what Congress and the President do also protects us from the tyranny of the majority. The civil rights rulings of the 1960’s are a perfect example of this–the “will of the people”, the laws Congress did pass, all this stuff you people claim is trampled by judicial activism, were in this case part of a horrifically evil system that oppressed people for no reason other than their racial origin. It was the Supreme Court, upholding the principles of the Constitution, which stopped this. For all your complaining about how the will of the people is subverted, you fail to recognize—quite often, when the “will of the people” is to restrict human rights, it needs to be subverted.
I’m not saying the Court never makes bad rulings–they clearly do, particularly in cases like Kelo. But majority rule makes bad decisions far more often, and it’s vital that there be some way to put majority rule in check in situations where it is clearly acting unjustly. And that will necessarily involve overturning what Congress and the President do from time to time.
Are you a geriatric atheist on his third gay marriage? Survey says: don’t run for President
Thursday, February 22nd, 2007I was directed to this survey recently. A few interesting notes:
- Why are Jews less popular than blacks among liberals? And Hispanics even less?
- Why didn’t anyone ask about Muslims?
- The popularity of hypothetical black candidates has skyrocketed in the past 40 years.
- The Jews and Catholics improved significantly between 37 and 67. Women too.
- Mormons are less popular!
- Atheists and blacks have dropped since 1999.
- Homosexuals gained between 20-30% since the 80’s.
On guns, adulthood, and freedom
Monday, August 18th, 2008From a recent argument I made about guns:
The main issue here isn’t guns: it’s a philosophical dispute between people who trust individuals and people who trust institutions. I won’t belabor this point—it’s difficult to point out these holistic connections on a forum where we’re supposed to “keep on topic” and where some pedant will quibble with each concrete example you give without even addressing the point—but it bears explication. Some people want some benevolent overseeing institution (usually government) to provide completely for their health, physical safety, economic well-being, and so forth—other people want to take these things into their own hands. Some people believe that human individuals are incapable of responsibly making life and death decisions, just as some people believe that human individuals are incapable of choosing their own food, saving for their own retirement, choosing (and providing for) their own medical care, raising their children, and so forth. More specifically, these people believe that some sort of institution can take care of us, protecting us from ourselves, and providing for us, better than we can do so for ourselves.
And then there are those of us who take the contrary view: that an adult human being ought not be parented by the government.
Now, it’s true that some people *do* need to be parented by the government. I’m not sure what to do about them. As a culture, it’s more important for us to raise our children so that they become the type of adults who don’t need to be parented anymore. But those of us who believe we can live as adults instead of perpetual wards of the state—we really don’t appreciate the rest of you trying to be Mommy and Daddy for us. Treating those of us who can live as adults as if we were children oppresses us. We’re not necessarily anarchists—we’ll chip in to lock up those loonies who plant homemade land mines on the sidewalk, or to stop the coal plant next door from belching sulphur into the air, or even to build roads and sewer systems that help us all in the long run. But we’re responsible folks, and we think we can wield the power of life and death just as safely and responsibly as the battalion of uniformed men with guns you want to hire—if not more so.
Tags: adulthood, freedom, guns
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