On retirement, the government says: don’t worry, we’ll save it for you. On personal consumption, the government says: oh, we’ll regulate that to make sure it’s all okay! No raw milk for you, young lady! On education: where you live is where you go to school — we wouldn’t want to overwhelm you with so many choices! On getting your hair cut: we’ll make sure your hair stylist is licensed. Getting a bad hair cut is simply unacceptable and your government will not stand for it!

The government has promised us that its ever-expanding services will entitle us to just sit back and let the government take care of it all. Of course, most of us eventually realize that we’ve simply been left empty-handed. The government cannot provide for all, but from a young age, we are taught that it will. As government has expanded, my generation and our sense of personal responsibility has suffered.

Almost nothing is left to a consumer’s good judgment anymore. Instead of ending the War on Drugs and letting citizens prove themselves capable of making their own decisions, the government continues a costly and discriminatory fight with no end in sight. Rather than letting employers and employees agree on a sensible wage, the state steps in to regulate, all at the expense of all in the work force. Until the Institute for Justice stepped in to amend the legislation, the government even went so far as to license florists in Louisiana. In what I am sure was a decision that was “best for the industry,” the tests were graded rather arbitrarily by existing florists in the industry.

I struggle to come up with a situation in which I am completely void of government nannying. Older generations criticize recent generations for our obsession with participation ribbons and an (often annoying) emphasis on fairness. While I think the obsessions are also worthy of criticism, I believe that government’s parenting has seeped into our culture.

This extreme hands-on governing cannot and will not lead to a responsible generation. Unless things drastically change, the future youth will only become more entitled and less appreciative.

The Department of Homeland Security seized an intermediary account which tied Dwolla to Mt. Gox, which hosts 80% of all Bitcoin trades. The problem? Mt. Gox was an “unlicensed money service.” The exchange was based in Japan.

Why did this happen? According to Gawker, Mt. Gox’s chief executive, Mark Karpeles, “failed to declare he was operating a money transmitting business when he opened an account with WellsFargo in May 2011, according to a warrant made public on Wednesday.” The US Treasury Department ruled in March that any entity exchanging online currency, such as Bitcoin (which is not backed by a centralized bank), would be suspect for money-laundering. This lead to the Treasury requiring reports of any transaction worth more than 10,000 US Dollars. According to the Wall Street Journal, “The Commodity Futures Trading Commission also is considering whether to regulate so-called virtual currencies.”

Because of this, the US authorities charged Mt. Gox with failing to register their business with the Treasury’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network. This entirely undoes why people love Bitcoin; the Internet-based currency has no central governmental planner. The government argues that registration aids in combating terrorism and helps the War on Drugs.

A Bitcoin exchange could likely never reach the requirements needed to be a “legitimate” currency exchange. Most notably, licensed Internet exchanges require their users to be able to identify all parties involved in the transaction. Bitcoin, however, is specifically designed to be anonymous. The transaction may never be able to be traced. Thus, “it’s not all that easy to see how a Bitcoin exchange can ever become so licensed.” In other words, the current system would not allow Bitcoin to operate successfully unless it radically changed its design.

Seems to me like the US government is having a power trip on this one; after all, Bitcoin is a great way to illegally evade taxes and deal drugs. Jerry Brito from the Mercatus Center notes why the government thankfully won’t win this one. He says,

“Bitcoin has the potential to be a boon to the economy and a boon to merchants… You can’t put the genie back into the bottle… I hate to say it, but the Bitcoin community needs to start lobbying. It needs to start educating policymakers, lobbyists and influencers about the pros of Bitcoin and the impossibility or the difficulty in getting rid of all the bad uses.”

Looks like the Bitcoin war has finally begun. Let the Internet militias assemble.

There has been praise for Jolie’s bravery for both going through with the procedure and also for showing awareness to this issue. Yet, when I look around Facebook, Twitter, and even some other articles about it, people are criticizing her choice.

People are criticizing Angelina Jolie for going through this procedure because to them, she is attention seeking. In my opinion, Jolie is attempting to raise awareness to the public and the 1 in 500 people in the United States that carry a genetic mutation that gives them a 60% risk of breast cancer. Also, Jolie used the op-ed as a way of identify with the 100,000 women in the United States who undergo a mastectomy every year. This is far from a cry for attention.

The other criticisms that I’ve seen include that what she did was dehumanizing, stupid, selfish, and pointless. As I mentioned earlier, she has an 87% risk of developing breast cancer, but through this procedure her risk will go down to 5%. Also, Angelina Jolie explains that she watched her mother die from breast cancer. My mother had a stroke almost two years ago and ever since then I make sure I’m doing steps necessary to prevent it happening to myself. Why? Because I’ve seen what a stroke does to someone, especially someone that close to me. Angelina Jolie has seen her mother battle this cancer and doesn’t want the same for herself. Jolie explains that she wants to be a mother for her children and doesn’t want that cut short. How is any of that dehumanizing, stupid, and pointless?

Finally, one of the shallowest critiques I’ve heard is about how she’s mutilating her body. I’ve also seen many comments that reduce Angelina Jolie as a sexual object only defined by her body parts. Comments such as “RIP Angelina’s boobs,” “such a shame,” “waaahhhaaahhh!! MY FANTASY BREASTS-GONE!!!!,” and many other tweets remind me that people minimize her body as public domain. Well, excuse her for believing that her life was more valuable than her breasts.

What Angelina Jolie did was brave and courageous. Not only is she bringing awareness to a problem, she is making a decision that will affect her life and that of her family’s. The criticism comes with her being a star, but I think some people need to step back and realize what she is doing and why she is doing it.

At the same time, delving deeper into the world of libertarian politics has shown me that empathy is something libertarians could learn a thing or two about. Libertarians have actually been empirically shown to have lower levels of empathy than people on the left or right.

So I read “The Baby in the Well: The Case Against Empathy” in the New Yorker, with keen interest. The piece seemed to help explain why libertarians sometimes seem to have trouble with empathy (and why that might not always be a bad thing).

So why aren’t libertarians seen as empathetic? “The key to engaging empathy is what has been called ‘the identifiable victim effect.’” Perhaps it’s not that libertarians aren’t empathetic, it’s that we, like most people, empathize best with victims who look like us. Perhaps this helps explain why so many libertarians spend more time talking about marginal tax rates than the drug war.

Tax rates disproportionately affects us (our incomes are higher than average, making our tax liabilities larger), the drug war primarily affects them (libertarians are largely white and middle class, drug war victims are largely low-income and minority). Even in the context of the drug war, the messaging is much more focused on middle-class white medical marijuana patients and the harmlessness of marijuana than on the victims of no-knock raids and the effect of mass incarceration on low-income communities.

However, the article also suggests that our lack of concern for victims who aren’t us helps lead us to better policy recommendations. By focusing less on the “who” (victims of a particular situation, occurrence or policy) and more on the “what” (actual effects of proposed solutions in practice), I think libertarians many times come to better conclusions than our more empathetic peers.

For example, libertarians have long been skeptical about the actual consequences of empathy-driven foreign aide programs:

In the broader context of humanitarianism, as critics like Linda Polman have pointed out, the empathetic reflex can lead us astray. When the perpetrators of violence profit from aid—as in the “taxes” that warlords often demand from international relief agencies—they are actually given an incentive to commit further atrocities. It is similar to the practice of some parents in India who mutilate their children at birth in order to make them more effective beggars. The children’s debilities tug at our hearts, but a more dispassionate analysis of the situation is necessary if we are going to do anything meaningful to prevent them.

Same with dead children laws:

On many issues, empathy can pull us in the wrong direction. The outrage that comes from adopting the perspective of a victim can drive an appetite for retribution. (Think of those statutes named for dead children: Megan’s Law, Jessica’s Law, Caylee’s Law.)

Libertarians have long railed against well-meaning but problematic legislation that stems from a sympathetic victim.

The article states the problem well: “There’s a larger pattern here. Sensible policies often have benefits that are merely statistical but victims who have names and stories.”

And so it is with libertarians, who propose sensible policies, but continually fail to offer an emotional hook other than “it works” to help sell them.

More is required than a good product to get sales. While our product, libertarian policy recommendations, is good, our sales and marketing could certainly use some work. Empathy is, according to sales expert Jonathan Farrington, “absolutely vital for sustained success within any sales relationship, where you are trying to persuade another—often a stranger—to make a decision they may not even have considered prior to your meeting.” Sales coach Evan Carmichael says, “It is clear that it is critical for a sales person to have or to develop a high level of empathy to have great success.”

So the challenge then for libertarians is to continue to develop policies unclouded by empathy, yet develop enough visible empathy to sell them.

“I’m not advocating everyone go out and run around with no clothes on and smoke pot… I’m not a libertarian. I’m a libertarian Republican. I’m a constitutional conservative.”

Didn’t we already know this? Is he not a member of the Republican Party? Paul has all but officially announced his candidacy in the 2016 election, and don’t we all know it’s never too early for the Republicans to begin campaigning – it’s going to take a lot of time to undo the damage done by recent Republican leaders. As Rand himself has said, “We have to evolve, adapt or die.”

Though many self-proclaimed libertarians hoped a Rand Paul presidency would yield all the policies (or lack of) pushed by his father, Ron Paul. Here’s the thing, though: Rand is not his father’s political doppelganger. He is more conservative and more mainstream – and he’s never tried to hide that fact.

Politics is an ugly, zero-sum game. Those who win are scarcely ever the most deserving; they are the ones who most successfully play the game. It wasn’t brilliant political ideas that won Obama the White House in 2012, but ingenious marketing strategy and vigilant Romney bashing. Obama maintained the extremist vote (and their contributions) as well as an overwhelming majority of support from three key demographics: Hispanics, women, and African Americans. It seems that Rand is taking a page out of the Democrat’s playbook by trying to appeal to the voting base at large without offending anyone – from moderates to neocons – even if this comes at the detriment of his earliest fans: the libertarians.

But we must recognize, liberty lovers, we are still the minority. It’s not going to be easy – perhaps even possible – to have an authentic libertarian candidate elected into the White House today. Reeling from the persisting War on Terror and an insecure economy, America is still afraid of freedom and of a society capable of self-regulation. With the ever-deepening schism in political orientation and divided government, no candidate will be electable if she or he cannot garner support from independents, moderates, idiots, and extremists alike.

So Rand Paul traveled to Iowa and made a case with influential neoconservatives on why he should be their candidate in 2016, and he left with a collection of new supporters. “I see a very good future for Rand Paul here in Iowa,” said Evangelical Brad Cranston of Heritage Baptist Church. “He has a Biblical world view. When you start with that, you really get us listening.”

Emotional appeal will win people over every time. Rand Paul is playing the game of politics well, and he must continue to do so if there can be any path for him that leads to the White House.

• In 2011, the FDA was ready to allow all girls to purchase Plan B, but Kathleen Sibelius decided to overrule science and good logic and set the age limit to 17.
• On April 5, a New York judge slammed the decision and ordered that the FDA make the morning after pill available to all ages.
• Last week, the FDA approved sales of the Plan B One-Step generic without a prescription to women and girls at least 15 years old with a government-issued identification (they said that their decision was independent of the ruling).
• The Obama administration pitched a hissy fit and filed an appeal. They also asked the judge to stay his order (meaning to pause it going into effect).
• Aforementioned judge told the Obama administration to fuck off regarding the request for a stay.

Honestly, I’m really just wondering why we’re still having this conversation. The morning after pill is incredibly safe to use. It does not, in fact, abort fetuses (in fact, it will not work if the woman is already pregnant). So what other concerns could there possibly be?

Kathleen Sibelius thinks that eleven and twelve year olds can’t read. She says:

However, the switch from prescription to over the counter for this product requires that we have enough evidence to show that those who use this medicine can understand the label and use the product appropriately. I do not believe that Teva’s application met that standard. The label comprehension and actual use studies did not contain data for all ages for which this product would be available for use.

Um, okay, I guess? I suppose that could be true. Sometimes hormone-based medicines can be complicated. Let’s see what this looks like:

——-DOSAGE AND ADMINISTRATION——–
One tablet taken orally as soon as possible within 72 hours after unprotected
intercourse. Efficacy is better if the tablet is taken as soon as possible after
unprotected intercourse. (2)

So, you take a pill. Insert pill into mouth. Swallow. Pill prevents pregnancy. Though I certainly understand the ability for eleven and twelve year olds to screw things up, I’m pretty sure that other kinds of medications (asprin, for example) work more or less the same way and children can still buy and have access to them. The side effects and potential dangers are minimal. There really is very little reason to keep children from accessing the pill.

I guess I really shouldn’t be surprised about this, seeing as how the Obama administration seems to have a bit of a fetish for controlling what goes into other people’s bodies. The logic behind this—the paternalistic, restrictive, controlling logic—is very similar to the one that is implemented in the War on Drugs. And you know what? Just like in the War on Drugs, it’s the people at the lower rungs of society that suffer the most. In his ruling, Judge Edward Korman pretty much says the same thing:

“You’re basically disadvantaging poor people, young people, and African Americans. That’s what you’re doing. That’s the policy of the Obama Administration?”

I certainly can understand the impetus to make sure that children, with their supposedly diminished capacity for reasoning, reading, and safety, are secure. However, the rationale for denying Plan B to minors is paper thin. It can really only be explained by an age-old phenomena: political pandering and presidential paternalism. Politicians should get out of the way and allow Plan B to be bought over the counter for all ages.

As I entered my AP US History class, my teacher taught us that once upon a time, conservatives minded their own business. While I am dubious about that fact now, I was enamored by the idea at the time. I immediately began to describe myself as an “old school conservative.” Had I done more research, I would have realized I was essentially describing the libertarian party, but I was only in tenth grade.

My newfound conversion to a self-proclaimed old school conservative was much to the dismay of my peers. Before, I acted like a hardcore neoconservative, shuddering at the thought of increased immigration and mocking those who yearned for peace. However, as I began to question why the government regulated people’s personal lives, I was confronted with anger. “Damn girl, you sure you ain’t some yankee liberal?” Welcome to the deep south — which, despite its faults, I love dearly.

Senior year of high school was when I took a deep interest in politics, trying to figure out where my views fit. The more I researched, the more ostracized I felt from the Republican party. Nonetheless, I desperately tried to reconcile my views with the GOP, attempting to liken my position to that of Meghan McCain’s. As my ideas drifted further from the central Republican Party however, the party I once strived to fit into, became one that I knew would not accept my positions.

My interest in politics—and eventually libertarianism—became a full-fledged passion when I found myself reading books like Economics In One Lesson and applying for libertarian academic seminars. It was last summer that I made my new political ideology “Facebook official,” and I confirmed my libertarian stance with a vote for Gary Johnson in November. My love of liberty is still new, therefore I’m still feverishly reading everything I can get my hands on.

My first college economics professor, who is absolutely wonderful, assigned us books like No They Can’t and explained economic models using Stossel clips. She had a slight obsession with Stossel, but who doesn’t? I was shocked as she taught about the market benefits of prostitution and sweat shops. While the topics themselves were slightly controversial, I was mostly shocked by the sheer logic of it all. Since that class, I try to base most of my arguments for libertarianism in economics and logic.

I still live a relatively “old school conservative” life, but I’m not interested in telling others to live just like me. If that means I’m a libertarian, so be it.

Lesson 1: Hubris Blurs Limitations.

There is little question that the United States has the most advanced and well-funded military in the world. Inflated confidence in relative power and new technology blurred the taxing realities of instituting regime change and deterring terrorists. David Rothkopf writes, “The [United States] faces financial constraints. There are limits to what its allies are willing to support. There are cultural, historical, geographical, and demographic obstacles that the United States can never surmount.” Economic and military power does not simply lead to victory, and neither does “staying the course.”

Lesson 2: Have Well-Defined Primary Objectives.

Military goals and priorities changed frequently in the past ten years. The United States hunted wanted terrorists, instilled dysfunctional democracies, toppled dictators, searched for weapons of mass destruction, and defended the rights of women abroad. The objectives in Iraq and Afghanistan were so fluid that they obscured primary goals. Chuck Hagel notes, “One of the reasons we’re in trouble in Afghanistan is because we went well beyond our mission. We accomplished the mission then we took our eye off the ball and intervened, invaded Iraq, and occupied Iraq… And now, 12 years later, we’re not sure what our mission is. Is our mission to eliminate the Taliban? … Is it nation building? Is it sending children to school?” The far-reaching and ever-evolving goals left the United States floundering and without a strong purpose.

Lesson 3: Place Priority On Quality Intelligence.

Saddam Hussein did not have weapons of mass destruction. Pakistan proved to be more of an enemy than an ally in its support for America’s terrorist adversaries. The US proved to have a poor history of not sharing intelligence with its allies, leading to mistakes. In an assessment on Afghanistan from the Pentagon’s Joint Staff, they write that there was a “failure to recognize, acknowledge and accurately define” the environment in which the conflicts occurred, leading to a “mismatch between forces, capabilities, missions, and goals.” Many of these errors were intelligence failures that could have been fixed.

Lesson 4: Political Objectives Must Be In Sync With Military Realities.

The United States had a plethora of goals in invading Afghanistan and Iraq, the primary of which was combatting terrorism. With a total active military of 1.4 million troops, obtaining this objective in two countries while state building was hardly feasible. Politicians should be careful to make foreign policy goals reflective of military realities.

Lesson 5: Know Thine Enemy.

Forces in Afghanistan have suffered from a deficiency in understanding basic Afghani culture and terrain, which has led to “many missteps… and billions of dollars wasted on schemes that had little chance of success.” For example, the US embassy in Kabul tried to spearhead a Sesame Street project that would promote child education. This decision was made with little adherence to the fact that only 497,000 of Afghanistan’s 4.8 million households have access to electricity, and powering a television would be prohibitively costly to most families. A basic understanding of Afghani infrastructure would have demonstrated that importing a US children’s show would not be successful as most people would not have the opportunity to watch it.

Lesson 6: Place Faith In The Marketplace Of Ideas.

In his 2004 article “Threat Inflation and the Failure of the Marketplace of Ideas,” Kauffmann highlights how easy it was for the Bush administration to manipulate the American public into a war with Iraq. There was remarkably little debate about the decision to invade Iraq or Afghanistan either in Congress or in the media. This proved to be to a detriment to United States foreign policymaking. Stephen Walt writes, “As a result, not only did the United States make a bone-headed decision, but the Bush administration went into Iraq unprepared for the subsequent occupation.” Major foreign policy decisions should not be excluded from public debate.

Lesson 7: America Is Good At Collapsing States. It Is Not Good At Rebuilding Them.

During the first months of the occupation, the US disbanded Iraq’s military, “sanctioned a process of ‘deBaathification’ – the firing of anyone from a government position who was a member of Saddam Hussein’s Baath Party – and shut down Iraq’s state-owned enterprises.” Disbanding the government created massive communal unrest, particularly between Shiite and Sunni factions. Setting up elections also did not lead to compliance in Afghanistan, nor did it establish legitimacy in Iraq.

Lesson 8: Intervention Will Always Have Unintended and Unforeseen Consequences.

Promises of a quick war blurred the realities of intervention in Iraq and Afghanistan. Few expected the difficult realities of Iraqi civil war. Billions of taxpayer dollars fueled new states without much return. These wars were costly both domestically and to the United States’ international reputation. Before launching new intervention, say in Syria, the United States should acknowledge that it knows so little about its enemy’s resolve or consequences of its own actions. Interventions may be long, costly, and result in unfavorable actors in power.

Lesson 9: Allies Provide Few Combat Forces.

Since becoming the leading superpower following World War II, the United States has put emphasis on cohesion with its allies. While the United States enjoyed support for “the good war,” the Coalition of the Willing turned out to be Coalition of the Few. Ted Carpenter from Cato writes, “At the peak level of support, the coalition (not counting the British) consisted of 37 nations and a paltry 30,000 troops,” whereas, in Afghanistan, “America’s NATO allies agonized for months before sending a small peacekeeping force… As in Iraq, the allied presence in Afghanistan seems focused more on political symbolism than on providing a meaningful military contribution.” The United States provides security to many of its allies. It cannot always count on them for reciprocal military force.

Lesson 10: The United States Still Doesn’t Understand Guerilla Warfare.

The type of military that the United States has is still best suited for traditional interstate warfare. This lesson should have been learned in Vietnam during the Tet Offensive, but still applies today.

George Little, the Pentagon’s top spokesman, noted in 2012, “We are looking at suicide bombers, RPG, mortar fire, etc.” Defense Secretary Leon Panetta added, “There were no tactical gains.” This demonstrates a fundamental misunderstanding of guerilla war. Haqqani are disinterested in taking territory that they could not keep; instead, they are interested in highlighting American helplessness to guerilla attacks. All of America’s tactical gains and captured territory have brought the United States nowhere closer to definitive victory, and, like in Vietnam, the insurgents have a better chance of winning a war of attrition than the weary United States. As public opinion polls nosedive and America prepares to withdraw in 2014, the US still has not learned how to address this tactic, and should avoid it in the future.

One in three military women have been sexually assaulted, which is twice as high at the civilian rate. Clearly, the military has a problem that needs to be solved, and fast.

How does the military attempt to help victims? They give them two options for reporting an assault, “restricted” and “unrestricted.” Unrestricted reporting allows a victim to get medical attention, receive counseling, and triggers a full investigation into the alleged assault. The restricted reporting allows for the person reporting sexual assault to seek medical attention and counseling, but there is no investigation. It completely takes away accountability from the alleged assailant.

Through this process, the victim cannot ask for a protective order, cannot speak about her assault except with the healthcare providers or counselors, cannot invoke the collateral misconduct provision of the department’s sexual assault policy, and will find obstacles in order to switch from restricted to unrestricted.

I’m not against this option; I understand why it’s there. I understand that a victim might feel fear, guilt, and shame for what happened, and the victim is likely to face backlash for reporting her alleged assailant. Giving victims this option means that victims will report more often and finally getting the help they need.

But this doesn’t help stop sexual assault. If the military wants to fix this problem, wants to truly end this epidemic that is affecting women and men in the military, they would target the actual issue: the alleged assailant.

Having this option doesn’t stop the epidemic, doesn’t hold anyone accountable, and will allow this to happen to someone else. They cannot expect to eliminate their sexual assault problems if they refuse to hold people accountable. How is that prevention or even a response to sexual assault?

Because honestly, forced diversity sucks.

In his book We Are Doomed, John Derbyshire notes a study done by Robert D. Putnam that inquires the degree to which diversity contributed to the results Putnam recorded in his book Bowling Alone. Putnam took on a major study that involved 30,000 US citizens living in 41 locations, attempting to discover the connection between increasing diversity and decreasing social capital. His results are quite convincing: there is a negative correlation between social capital and diversity. As Derbyshire puts it, “the more you have of one, the less you have of the other.”

The results of the study decisively show that the level to which people trust those different from themselves, or “out-group trust,” is less in places that are heavily diversified. Perhaps more remarkable, the degree to which people trust those similar to themselves, or “in-group trust,” is equally lower—around 50 percent—in diverse neighborhoods.

Putnam, a man of common liberal opinions, was himself surprised by his results. In stark contrast to his assumed beliefs, people living (and by extension, working) in ethnically diverse settings tend to withdraw inward rather than fuse together. Diversity, as Putnam found, leads to a society where people stay home more, inter-mingle less, and trust one another and their elected officials in reduced numbers. This finding is in stark contrast to the common assumption that diversity will bring together “individuals of diverse backgrounds.”

The notion that we can all coexist peacefully is an attractive ideal, but one that isn’t founded on much evidence. The truth instead seems to be that humans prefer to surround themselves with like-minded people, and are naturally hesitant and fearful of the unfamiliar. This is not to suggest that people never choose to diversify—or that we should do anything to discourage it from happening. It is simply an argument for voluntary association; evidence that people are happier deciding who they interact with.

So if Obama feels that the best advice to be had will come from a group of predominately white men, why shouldn’t those men get the job? If we are concerned there aren’t enough women and minorities at the top, then we should focus on why instead of why didn’t they get the job anyway.