Eugene Volokh has a thoughtful post about the matter. There’s not much I need to add. A sad day for freedom.
Archive for October, 2008
Australia joins China in censoring the internet
Posted in libertarianism, tagged australia, ban, censorship, civil liberties, firewall, freedom of expression, freedom of speech, internet, liberty on October 31, 2008 | 1 Comment »
Atheism doesn’t necessarily imply common sense
Posted in people, uncategorized musings, tagged atheism, atheist, children, coercion, fantasy, harry potter, rationalism, rationality, richard dawkins, science on October 29, 2008 | 17 Comments »
Via a post by Althouse, I was alerted to this recent Richard Dawkins quote about children reading Harry Potter and other fantasy fiction:
I think it is is anti-scientific – whether that has a pernicious effect, I don’t know…
I think looking back to my own childhood, the fact that so many of the stories I read [...]
Britney Spears under permanent conservatorship
Posted in libertarianism, tagged anti-psychiatry, britney spears, conservatorship, freedom, mental illness on October 29, 2008 | Leave a Comment »
From the Fox report:
Lawyers for the pop princess asked that the temporary co-conservatorship (which was due to end on Dec. 31) be made permanent on Tuesday afternoon and Los Angeles Superior Court Commissioner Riva Goetz granted the request.
Britney’s father Jamie will now have long-term control over her assets, estate and business affairs and Spears’s mental [...]
Neutrality in crisis
Posted in quote for the week, tagged crisis, dante alighieri, hell, kennedy, morality, neutrality, quote, speaking out, stand on October 29, 2008 | Leave a Comment »
“The hottest places in hell are reserved for those who in times of great moral crises maintain their neutrality”
- Dante Alighieri
[Edit: A reader points out that this quote is actually due to JFK, who (incorrectly) attributed it to Dante]
Then and now
Posted in politics, tagged Charles Krauthammer, election 2008, fame, obama, prediction, presidency on October 27, 2008 | 1 Comment »
Charles Krauthammer in October, 2006:
When just a week ago Barack Obama showed a bit of ankle and declared the mere possibility of his running for the presidency, the chattering classes swooned. Now that every columnist in the country has given him advice, here’s mine: He should run in ’08. He will lose in ’08.
And the [...]
The war on drugs takes a different shape
Posted in libertarianism, tagged abuse of power, marijuana, nypd, police, pot, sodomy, war on drugs on October 27, 2008 | Leave a Comment »
Three New York policemen gang-rape a man with a walkie-talkie antenna, for, you guessed it, smoking some pot.
(Hat Tip: The Agitator)
I am off for the weekend
Posted in miscellaneous on October 23, 2008 | Leave a Comment »
I am out of town for the next three days. So there will probably be no posts till Sunday night.
Have a nice weekend.
Libertarianism as viewed from the other side
Posted in libertarianism, tagged ideology, libertarian, echo chambers, pandagon on October 23, 2008 | Leave a Comment »
Pandagon has a post criticizing libertarianism, and it has generated an enormous number of similarly veined comments. Most of them are inane but some of them are surprisingly well written (that is not to say I agree with them).
Why am I linking to this? Well, there’s too much of an echo chamber going around these [...]
The slippery slope effect of hate-speech laws
Posted in India, libertarianism, tagged anti-discrimination, chilling effect, david bernstein, free speech, freedom of expression, hate speech, laws, offended feelings, political correctness, rights, slippery slope on October 21, 2008 | Leave a Comment »
David Bernstein has a fine post where he explains the perils of having ‘reasonable restriction on free speech’ such as hate speech laws:
When I was in law school, advocates of weakening First Amendment protections to restrict “hate speech” pointed to Canada as a shining example of how egregious expression could be banned without threatening freedom [...]
Ideological echo chambers
Posted in libertarianism, tagged analysis, argument, debate, economics, ideas, ideology, jacob weisberg, libertarian, market, philosophy, rationality, reason on October 21, 2008 | 4 Comments »
In an article published at Newsweek and Slate, Jacob Weisberg says the current crisis proves that “[libertarianism] makes no sense”. In fact he goes further than that:
Like other ideologues, libertarians react to the world’s failing to conform to their model by asking where the world went wrong. Their heroic view of capitalism makes it difficult [...]
The world is connected
Posted in quote for the week, tagged brand blanshard, philosophy, quote, rationalism on October 21, 2008 | Leave a Comment »
“Many philosophers of the present day are convinced that every existing thing and event is logically unconnected with any other and could disappear from the world without necessarily affecting anything else. Such a rubbish-heap view of the world I cannot accept.”
– Brand Blanshard.
Milton Friedman on the war on drugs
Posted in libertarianism, people, tagged drug legalization, freedom, interview, libertarian, marijuana, Milton Friedman, morality, victimless crimes, video, war on drugs on October 19, 2008 | 4 Comments »
Milton Friedman, Nobel prize winning economist — and one of my personal idols — was among the most influential libertarian thinkers of the last century. Friedman was primarily a consequentialist, meaning he advocated libertarian policies based on the fact that they work better. Such an approach has the great advantage of political effectiveness. If you [...]

