A blog about negative liberty, because it's nobody's business if nobody gets hurt.
To sports fans, Len Bias was a college basketball star who died too young of a drug overdose, a symbol of what might have been. To those of us who oppose the War on Drugs, however, Len Bias is a symbol that was exploited and abused by posturing politicians, resulting in the passage of the …
Continue reading “Don’t let Whitney Houston become the next Len Bias”
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. …
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.
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 …
Continue reading “How not to count the costs of drug prohibition”
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. …
Continue reading “A libertarian looks at Occupy Wall Street, part 4”
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 …
Continue reading “A libertarian looks at Occupy Wall Street, part 3”
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 …
Continue reading “A libertarian looks at Occupy Wall Street, part 2”
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 …
Continue reading “A libertarian looks at Occupy Wall Street, part 1”
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 …
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 …
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 …
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 …