Author Archives: Mark

The Totalitarian Moment

Published: Wednesday January 4, 2012 9:06am
By Mark

Well ain’t that a kick in the head? Going into the Iowa caucus, it was starting to look like Nick Gillespie and Matt Welch’s libertarian moment was going to happen in a big way. Ron Paul was actually leading in some polls. But now that the results are in, I’m starting to lose all hope. […]

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Kissing Hank’s Ass

Published: Friday December 30, 2011 1:11am
By Mark

I was planning to write something else, but then I decided that Rogier’s idea of slamming major world religions is a lot more fun.

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How not to count the costs of drug prohibition

Published: Friday December 23, 2011 5:11pm
By Mark

One of my regular web surfing stops is Ethics Alarms, a thought-provoking blog where ethicist Jack Marshall writes about the ethical dimensions of various events in the news. I often disagree with what he has to say, but the discussion is usually interesting. Recently, I had an argument with Jack in the comments to this […]

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A libertarian looks at Occupy Wall Street, part 4

Published: Saturday December 3, 2011 11:56am
By Mark

I’ve been taking a look at the Occupy Wall Street movement. In Part 1 I just rambled on a bit about the movement, then in Part 2 I started to take a look at the official Declaration of the Occupation of New York City, and in Part 3 I delved into the List of Grievances. […]

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A libertarian looks at Occupy Wall Street, part 3

Published: Friday November 25, 2011 9:33pm
By Mark

I’ve been taking a look at the Occupy Wall Street movement. In Part 1 I just rambled on a bit about the movement, then in Part 2 I started to take a look at the official Declaration of the Occupation of New York City. That document includes a lengthy List of Grievances, and today I’m […]

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A libertarian looks at Occupy Wall Street, part 2

Published: Wednesday November 23, 2011 10:50am
By Mark

As I said before, I haven’t been writing about the Occupy Wall Street movement because it’s hard for me to get a handle on what such a grass roots movement is all about. (I had the same trouble with the Tea Party.) However, the various Occupy movements appear to each be run locally by consensus-driven […]

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A libertarian looks at Occupy Wall Street, part 1

Published: Tuesday November 22, 2011 1:18am
By Mark

I haven’t had much to say about the Occupy Wall Street protests — or any of the other Occupy <your-city-here> events — mostly because I don’t know what the protests are about. That’s not entirely my fault, because the protesters themselves don’t know why they’re there either. For example, check out this declaration of principles […]

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A pointless bit of libertarian purity

Published: Friday November 4, 2011 10:01am
By Mark

They say you can find out if someone is a moderate or hard-core libertarian by telling him you want to cut the top income tax rate to 1 percent. A moderate libertarian will likely be enthusiastic about the tax cut, but he might have a few questions about how exactly you’re going to balance the […]

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Declaration of Independents – Part 3

Published: Sunday October 23, 2011 9:37pm
By Mark

I guess it’s about time I wrote the final part of my review of Declaration of Independents. Part 1 and Part 2 — covering their respective parts of the book — are already up, but I’ve been holding off on the third and final part of my review, mostly because I held off on reading […]

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Welcome to the 9/12 world

Published: Monday September 12, 2011 11:44pm
By Mark

In the aftermath of 9/11, a lot of people told us we needed to sacrifice our freedoms in order to stay safe. They told us we needed to have the PATRIOT act — the provisions of which had been rejected by saner Congresses in the peaceful months and years before 9/11. They told us we […]

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Declaration of Independents – Part 2

Published: Sunday August 21, 2011 8:02pm
By Mark

When I wrote part 1 of my review of Nick Gillespie and Matt Welch’s new book, The Declaration of Independents: How Libertarian Politics Can Fix What’s Wrong with America, I ended up quoting a lot from it, which worried me a little because authors sometimes get cranky when you steal their writing without permission. As it […]

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Declaration of Independents – Part 1

Published: Thursday August 11, 2011 10:48pm
By Mark

By now, you’ve probably heard that Nick Gillespie and Matt Welch from Reason magazine have a new book out called The Declaration of Independents. I say you’ve probably heard this already because they’ve engaged in an insane amount of promotion, with daily posts at Hit&Run, appearances on television shows, and a national book tour (I’m […]

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