Recent Comments
Re: “I’ll miss Annette Funicello more than Margaret Thatcher: The whitewashing of historical figures cheapens us all”
Don't forget Annette's appearance in "Zorro," where she played spanish guitar and sang beautifully.
My favorite Thatcher quote: "The trouble with socialism is that it runs out of other people's money to spend."
Re: “Sports, school or the workplace, we should either get serious about bullying or just surrender our souls to the loud-mouthed enablers”
Q: “What’s the difference between a well-paid basketball coach who physically and emotionally abuses players and a cowardly man who punches a defenseless woman in the face for free, or the people in a workplace who prey on fellow employees for fun?”
A: The first two involve the initiation of violence, whereas the last does not - unless people are commonly beating each other up in the workplace, but I would have heard of that.
As you know, I’m a libertarian, so the criteria for criminality is violation of the NAP - non-aggression principle. Peacefully causing someone to feel bad is not aggression. Whatever its moral evaluation, it does not rise to the level of criminality, i.e. something that might justify rectificatory violence.
Thus your contention that bullying can be done on Facebook seems absurd to me. Also, I don’t quite understand what you mean by “enabling” bullying. Are you enabling bullying if you don’t un-friend someone who makes some thin-skinned wimp feel bad? I’m of the opinion that cyber-bullying cannot exist, since violence cannot generally be conducted by pixels on a screen - and any restriction on this is a violation of free speech. The exception is a “true threat,” a clear and achievable threat of specific violence. Does my opinion make one of those loon-grinners?
Re: “Skin in the Game: Legislators might be less willing to pursue unconstitutional bills if they had to pay court costs themselves”
Richard informed me that there was a reply, but I don't see it. Maybe it got deleted. Here it is as quoted:
Unknown>-----
"The point of the Freedom of Information Act is to shine a light on government, not to spy on citizens."
Good point... Did you notice though that the people running government are, ahem, citizens, and that pretty much any act of government, whether granting a fishing license or arresting a suspect, involves - you guessed it - citizens, people, individuals, yet these are all matters of public record. I guess those citizens who are carrying guns are not quite like other citizens, a bit different, just a bit more equal than the rest, maybe more sensitive in their need for privacy than the rest of us.
----- end of missing post ------
This is a red herring, since it evades the difference between the role of government agent and the role of private citizen. The target of the FOIA is government agents and government agencies, not private citizens qua private citizen. Turning it from sunshine on government to a subsidized spy service on neighbors is perverse.
Under current law, can I use the FOIA to get the government to give me the names and addresses of all licensed doctors? Government school teachers? People getting food stamps? Just wondering.
Re: “Skin in the Game: Legislators might be less willing to pursue unconstitutional bills if they had to pay court costs themselves”
The flaw, of course, is that your plan would amount to a fine for anyone opposing the central government’s interpretation of the US Con. As you probably know, the US Supe’s rulings are often strange - e.g. interpreting “no law” as “some laws,” and supporting the unconstitutional drug prohibition. (Alcohol prohibition needed a Con amendment, as does any drug prohibition.)
As a libertarian, I am ambivalent. On the one hand, women are persons with self-ownership and should not be prevented from controlling their own bodies, which of course includes removing parasites whether -.5 or +50 years of age. On the other hand, having the central government override local law is dangerous and generally destructive of rights. If you support centralized decision-making here, then you should have no complaint if the central government outlaws abortion entirely. Ideally, the right decision would be made locally. If Roe v Wade were never passed, most states would have legal abortion (just as some had when it was passed.) The precedent of the central government taking over the decision was awful, and we are paying for it with drug prohibition and massive regulation by “Rome on the Potomac.”
Re: “Who really benefits (and loses) when the Freedom of Information Act is played around with?”
The point of the Freedom of Information Act is to shine a light on government, not to spy on citizens. The target is, in your words, “a government body or a corporate entity which may have something to hide.” The target is not people’s private affairs.
You seem to want to use this well meaning tool for open government and turn it into a tool for spying on your neighbor. Should the government provide all comers information about your political party, too, and marital status and phone number and address and whether you use cable and what credit cards you’ve used in government transactions? To me, this is a perversion of the law, analogous to using RICO laws (designed for organized crime) against civil rights and anti-war groups.
If you want to spy on your neighbor, do what everybody else does - hire an online investigation service or google it yourself. The purpose of government is NOT to provide busy-bodies with a free anti-privacy info service. The FOI is about open government, not naked neighbors!
Richard, in the intro you discount any slippery slope with regard to losing rights. I don’t agree with you. I think that if freedom of speech is restricted, then other freedoms are in danger. Similarly with the right of self defense (“RTBA.”) In fact, the case is even stronger with arms than with pens, since the government rules “by the barrel of a gun.” Need I bring up genocides and democides, internments and drug “wars” and La Migra? Are you really saying that an armed people - people armed well enough to resist State tyranny - is not a necessary condition to sustain liberty?
Richard, you need to drop the “well armed militia” thing. It’s outdated, passe, and bad English. The “militia” phrase in the US Con is a nominative absolute phrase. It is merely fluff - the main phrase stands alone. So the Bill of Rights 2nd A is this: “The right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed.” Not only English majors, but even the Supreme Court now agrees - Heller v DC.
You’ll be happy to know that gun owners WERE very active in the civil rights era and earlier, defending blacks against lynchings and raids of their neighborhoods, protecting urban soup kitchens (Black Panthers), and so on. Also you’ll be thrilled that there is a group of soldiers, police, and veterans who take an oath NOT to obey any unconstitutional laws like internments, or shutting down newspapers, or disarming Americans. They are call the Oath Keepers. http://oathkeepers.org/oath/about/
Re: “The clamor to put military veterans in every school in America? Sure - until property taxes all begin to rise”
I agree that having armed ex-milfare thugs in schools is a terrible idea. I think having *any* pigs in schools is dubious. I think that the best "solutions" to the berzerker rampage problem is (as for drugs) harm reduction: e.g. smaller schools, private schools (separation of education and State), and armed teachers. The problem may largely go away "on its own" due to the evolution of education, as online"tele-learning" replaces Prussian System centralized schools.
Here's Butler Shaffer's take: http://lewrockwell.com/shaffer/shaffer264.…
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Re: “Channeling Timothy McVeigh: telling survivors and family members of victims of shootings that they should “get over it””
Such prickly partisan prattle can be amusing. The Dem faction trots out victims, an obvious appeal to emotionalism. The Rep faction points out the obvious, that just because they’re victims doesn’t make them right. Richard’s column is the second wave, calling the other faction unsympathetic. Richard goes way over the top, invoking Timothy McVeigh, rape “blaming the victim,” and even Pearl Harbor!
Does it really matter much what posturing politicians in far off WashingtonDC think, say, or do? Not much. People will bear arms, moonshine, pot or not. In practice, it’s a personal decision that rulers can’t really control, no matter how much they’d like to.