The Superfluous Man

Libertarianism, slave to the unspeakable scourge MARIJUANA!

2013-03-14T15:03:00.000-05:00

Conservative firebrand Ann Coulter was recently having a debate with libertarian John Stossel. (Hat tip to Reason magazine's blog, Hit and Run.) In it, she upbraided libertarians for what she regards as their disproportionate interest in that most effeminate of causes, legalizing marijuana: "Libertarians and pot! This is why people think libertarians are pussies. We're living in a country that

Status update

2012-11-09T17:11:00.002-06:00

A few days ago saw a grim date in American history, one that will long be remembered as an ominous turning point for America- nay, the entire world- and looked upon with horror by future generations cursed to live in its cold, bleak shadow... 'Cause it was my birthday on Wednesday! And it was a pretty nice birthday, in spite of some sad events in the past year that played were one of the

This must be that "common-sense regulation" I hear such good things about

2012-11-01T16:53:00.000-05:00

The state of Virginia's Board of Health recently enacted new regulations on abortion clinics. Ostensibly enacted to protect women's health, in practice they serve as an interesting example of how the regulatory state can be, and often is, used by governments to chip away at rights that are impractical to simply abolish wholesale. (Found via Reason.) Last year, the state's General Assembly

"For you, the day the Supreme Court graced your health care was the most important day of your life. But for me, it was Tuesday."

2012-08-07T15:35:00.000-05:00

While I'm far from happy about the Supreme Court's decision affirming the federal government's right to force people to buy the products of insurance companies, I can't say I agree with the emphasis so many people unhappy with the decision have placed on it. Not because the insurance mandate isn't awful- it certainly is- but because I just don't see the Supreme Court's decision upholding the

Statism, insurance, and dependency

2012-04-09T19:23:00.001-05:00

I'm back! I apologize for my absence; a combination of personal business, actual work, and my old motherboard's treacherous decision to stop working have been keeping me away from this blog for much too long. One of the things I've been following in the news is the controversy over requiring employer-provided health insurance policies to cover birth control pills in the face of objections

The 2010 National Intimate Partner and Sexual Violence Survey Report: Even more interesting if you actually bother to read it

2012-01-19T21:10:00.000-06:00

The Center for Disease Control recently put out a study on (among other things) sex crime victimization, the National Intimate Partner and Sexual Violence Survey. The most repeated figures from the study are that 1 in 5 women and 1 in 71 men (excluding those in institutional settings such as prison, which is a problem with the numbers but not the primary one) over the age of 18 have been the

Happy New Year to everybody!

2012-01-12T01:47:00.000-06:00

Happy New Year! The Superfluous Man is not a terribly cheerful blog, generally, so I wanted to start this year off on a positive note by thanking some people who have helped this blog in one way or another. Some names have been truncated to protect the innocent: My friends JT, Kevin, Dave, Peter, Lecester, Cheryl Cline, and Catherine. Pete Eyre, Jeremy Sapienza, James Wilson, and Jim

And now, just the thing to make the year complete: The Star Wars Holiday Special!

2011-12-30T20:07:00.000-06:00

Happy holidays, everybody! The year is almost over. While the sort of angry and/or depressing writing that permeates this blog might give a different impression, this has actually been a good year for me; it's just that my writing on more pleasant and cheerful subjects appears on sites other than this one. Despite the dark topics that this blog mostly focuses on, I want The Superfluous Man to

The National Domestic Violence Hotline and the Verizon Foundation join forces to demonize abused children

2011-12-06T23:54:00.000-06:00

The Verizon Foundation, a nonprofit offshoot of the telecommunications company, and the National Domestic Violence Hotline, established by the United States government in 1996 through grants provided under the Family Violence Prevention and Services Act, recently released a short video entitled “Monsters,” which the Verizon Foundation says “shows the immediate and long-term impact on children

Thoughts on Daniel Klein's studies of economic literacy

2011-11-28T02:18:00.001-06:00

A little while back economist Daniel Klein, a professor at George Mason University and editor of Econ Journal Watch, and Zeljka Buturovic, a researcher at Zogby International, published an article entitled "Economic Enlightenment in Relation to College-going, Ideology, and Other Variables" which presented data from a survey about how people of different ideological stances view economic

Kick him when he's down

2011-11-04T22:32:00.000-05:00

There's a very interesting article by Art Carden and Steven Horwitz at The Freeman Online called "Eugenics: Progressivism’s Ultimate Social Engineering" about Progressive Era legislation and the arguments made in favor of it by its original supporters, some of whom supported economic statism not because they didn't understand what its real effects would be but precisely because they did. As

Compassion grows out of the the barrel of a gun

2011-09-21T17:55:00.000-05:00

Via Don Boudreaux at Café Hayek, I came upon this Washington Post editorial by Eugene Robinson, "Where are the compassionate conservatives?", that nicely illustrates the core assumption of so much of American politics. Discussing the recent Republican debate, Robinson says:The lowest point of the evening — and perhaps of the political season — came when moderator Wolf Blitzer asked Ron Paul a

Open season

2011-08-09T21:21:00.000-05:00

Please note: This post concerns a sexual assault, and discusses it in some detail. I'm opposed to the existence of sex offender registration lists, such as those created by what's commonly called "Megan's Law" legislation. They do an end run around due process by allowing governments to decree onerous new penalties at will for crimes someone has already been convicted and sentenced for. They

Cory Maye

2011-07-07T03:39:00.000-05:00

I'm a few days behind the curve, as usual, but I'd just like to add my voice to those celebrating the news of the impending release of Cory Maye. The end result can hardly be called justice- an innocent man spent nearly a decade in prison, and will spend the rest of his life with a criminal record, for the crime of defending his home and his daughter from violent, unidentified intruders because

The worst people in the world, then and now

2011-06-27T19:09:00.000-05:00

Because I'm nothing if not eager to brood resentfully about the past, I've been thinking back, recently, on the aftermath of the Jared Lee Loughner mass shooting in Arizona. (See my previous remarks here.) It's impressive how quickly that seems to have gone down the memory hole once the accumulation of actual information about Loughner and his motives meant that the “anti-government nut driven

Richard Garner, RIP

2011-06-14T20:12:00.002-05:00

I just learned that Richard Garner, a writer for the Libertarian Alliance whose work I quite liked, has passed away. I urge you to stop and read Sean Gabb's tribute to him at the Libertarian Alliance blog. You can find many of Garner's writings at the Libertarian Alliance website. He also had his own blog; it stopped updating about a year ago, but you can read several years worth of archives.

You never know which casual saunter across somebody's lawn might be your last

2011-06-07T00:11:00.000-05:00

You've probably heard by now of the police killing of Jose Guerena his own home during a SWAT team raid in Pima County, Arizona. If you don't have the back story, please see Radley Balko's article. (I just approvingly linked to something at the Huffington Post. Strange feeling.) See also here, here, here, and here for more. I've never been impressed by the arguments of apologist for the police

The current front-runner for my favorite Reddit post title of the year is now...

2011-06-01T01:32:00.000-05:00

"The reason I switched from being a republican to a democrat was because I didn't agree with the Bush Doctrine, and the reason I switched from being a democrat to a libertarian was because I didn't agree with the Bush Doctrine."

Alan Bock, RIP

2011-05-19T21:10:00.000-05:00

I was saddened to learn late last night that libertarian author Alan Bock has just passed away at the age of 67. He was the author of several books, including Ambush at Ruby Ridge and Waiting to Inhale: The Politics of Medical Marijuana, and a regular columnist at the Orange County Register and Antiwar.com. There's a very nice article about him at the Register that you can read here. It's been

A Partial List of Things the Government of the State of Oklahoma Considers Preferable to the Peaceful Production of Concentrated Psychoactive Plant Resin

2011-05-10T19:23:00.000-05:00

The State of Oklahoma recently passed a law increasing the sentence for producing hashish, a concentrated derivative of the cannabis plant, to a minimum of 2 years and a maximum of life imprisonment. On a first offense, no less. The purpose of this legislation was to "send a message" about illegal drugs, according to the bill's original supporters in the Oklahoma Bureau of Narcotics and

Just like Club Med, but with more frequent shiv attacks

2011-05-02T01:52:00.001-05:00

There's a blog post at This Ain't Livin' called The Myth of Cushy Prisons that is well-worth reading. It focuses on the material conditions of the prisons themselves, but the way prisons are run is worth bringing up as well, because in that area the myth goes from being merely mistaken to downright nonsensical. The popularity of the belief that prisons are some sort of swanky resort or the

When seconds count, the police are just years away

2011-04-09T13:51:00.000-05:00

Fantastic post at Popehat about the attitude of far too many educators and "experts" towards bullied children who have the temerity to actually defend themselves from the aggression of their tormentors. Money quote:Don’t you see, fat kid? When that little monster threw a jab at your chin, you were supposed to explore alternative paths of conflict resolution. You should have dialogued with him, as

Change you can... well, you know the rest

2011-03-24T21:07:00.000-05:00

Over at the website for National Review, Robert VerBruggen has an article criticizing the treatment of Bradley Manning, accusing the government of “inflicting arbitrary and pointless miseries “ on him. It's not exactly revolutionary stuff, and VerBruggen does not speak for the magazine as a whole, but it was a pleasant surprise because National Review has long been the flagship publication of

Opiate of the Red States

2011-03-15T22:32:00.000-05:00

A few weeks back, the conservative organization Young Americans for Freedom denounced Congressman Ron Paul and expelled him from their National Advisory Board, on which he had served for twenty years. This, despite the fact that Paul was the recipient of the group's greatest honor, the Guardian of Freedom award, and despite the fact that Paul is by far the most thoroughgoing opponent of big

David Horowitz. 'Nuff said.

2011-02-25T23:50:00.000-06:00

David Horowitz had a recent post at NewsRealBlog, "Ron Paul Is A Vicious Anti-Semite and Anti-American and Conservatives Need To Wash Their Hands of Him." In it, Horowitz argues that Ron Paul is... well, a vicious anti-Semite, and supports this by saying that:Now Paul is making a priority of withdrawing aid for Israel — the only democracy in the Middle East and the only reliable ally of the