How clueless can you be, Adam Kirsch?

Adam Kirsch’s NY Times oped on Ayn Rand is a perfect example of a commentator having absolutely no idea about the person he is writing about. In particular, it contains the following gem: When Bennett Cerf, a head of Random House, begged her to cut Galt’s speech, Rand replied with what Heller calls “a comment that [...]

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France does not heart Scientology

I think that Scientology is a creepy, over-commercialized enterprise that feeds on people’s irrationality and does not do any good to anyone. In fact, I think the same about all religions and most quasi-religions. But what was it that a great Frenchman said once? I do not agree with what you say but I will [...]

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The oldest libertarian debate

Todd Seavey and Kerry Howley (joined by Dan MacCarthy) continue their debate of whether libertarianism should include concern for more than just property rights. Its an old debate, one that Seavey and Howley have had in the past in their respective blogs, and one I have commented on extensively earlier, so there’s nothing much to [...]

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A discussion on morality and the nature of values

To make up for my lack of posting, let me link to a discussion over at Aristotle’s blog. It started off with Rawls but has evolved into topics like the nature of morality and the objectivity (or lack thereof) of values. — To a casual reader of the thread linked above, I might come across [...]

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Can’t we defend liberty for liberty’s sake?

I get plenty of junk in my Facebook feed every day most of which I barely give a second glance; today however, one particular item caught my eye. Titled “Vigil for Binayak Sen”, this particular Facebook event was in support of Dr. Binayak Sen, whose continued detainment by the Chhattisgarh government violates every principle of [...]

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A ski helmet rant from ten years ago

T

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That’s one of the best quotes I have read lately

“Obama is causing a lot of Rand fans to completely flip their lids in part because Obama and his devotees are Bizarro World Randian romantics in the grip of an adolescent faith in the generative powers of the state.” – Will Wilkinson.

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The personal is not the political, contd.

(Post updated) In my earlier post on this theme, I expressed my opposition to using coercive legal means to advance social goals and my moral abhorrence for laws which censor expression, ban consensual behavior or limit freedom of association. I wrote: Any rational system of morality that makes the basic libertarian distinction between the personal [...]

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Fortune telling — free speech or fraud?

A fortune teller in Montgomery county went to court to try and overturn a local ban on fortune telling. The fortune teller claimed his free speech rights were being hindered. The county claimed they were justified in having a law to prevent fraud.  The county won, as you might have expected (unlike in movies, the [...]

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The age bias

I have realized that I suffer from the age bias, and I suspect I am not alone in this. When I come across a political or philosophical writing by someone who is younger than me, I subconsciously view this fact as increasing the probability that he is wrong. In short, my immediate emotional instinct is [...]

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The power of the truth

“That which can be destroyed by the truth should be.” – P.C. Hodgell

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Libertarian quotes

(Post updated) I haven’t had time to post much of late but here are excerpts from two posts today that express accurately what I feel about those matters. Isn’t the internet great? Todd Seavey on why the ambiguity of property rights at the boundaries does not mean that the concept becomes less important or that [...]

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The libertarian vice

I came across this old post by Tyler Cowen today: The libertarian vice is to assume that the quality of government is fixed.  The libertarian also argues that the quality of government is typically low, and this is usually the bone of contention, but that is not the point I wish to consider.  Often that [...]

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Britain wants to make it illegal to pay for sex

Britain, where prostitution is now legal, wants to turn back the clock and criminalize it again. And like the Swedish, they have taken a bizarre but politically correct position — it will now be illegal to pay for sex but legal to sell it. As Home Secretary Jacqui Smith put it: Basically, if it means [...]

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The personal is not the political

1. And the moral is not the legal. It is a distinction that often seems to be lost. Admittedly, most people, when faced with the distasteful, the unpleasant or the unfair have a natural impulse to ‘ban it’. That is an emotional response. As we grow up, we learn to separate the emotional from the [...]

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