tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-310378092024-09-02T04:06:05.278-05:00The Superfluous ManJohn Markleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16473300745301705046noreply@blogger.comBlogger284125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31037809.post-51815548529543753632014-12-16T00:06:00.000-06:002014-12-16T00:06:15.338-06:00Take it like a man, againSo! Been a while. Busy year. Actually do have stuff still in progress for this blog, believe it or not.
For now, a quick message, since gender politics has become a recurring feature on this blog. I often see feminists lament that men don't understand that feminism is not about despising men, or treating men as inferior, or hypocritically defending traditional female privileges, or denying or John Markleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16473300745301705046noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31037809.post-27047112367608312802014-01-26T11:00:00.000-06:002014-01-26T11:00:04.289-06:00Let's you and him fight, Part 2This is a direct continuation of my previous post, "Let's you and him fight," which I strongly recommend reading before this one if you haven't.
The subject at hand is the strange argument often seen, mostly but not exclusively on the political Left, that a military draft is desirable because it would encourage a less bellicose American foreign policy. I talked about some reasons to John Markleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16473300745301705046noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31037809.post-66564690099448333122013-11-30T11:00:00.000-06:002013-11-30T11:00:02.212-06:00Let's you and him fight, Part 1(Note: This article turned out a lot longer than I planned, so I'm breaking it into multiple parts.)
There's a question I've long been interested by, and with talk of possible American military intervention in Syria over the past few months it's taken greater prominence again: Where the hell did so many ostensibly anti-war people left of political center- from garden-variety liberals/John Markleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16473300745301705046noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31037809.post-13515280863707287132013-08-11T16:29:00.003-05:002013-08-11T16:30:26.923-05:002013 Status updateJust in case anybody is still reading this, I'd like to apologize for the extreme dearth of content over the past year. A huge amount of my time and energy have been sucked up by real work and other projects, and various personal circumstances have further drained me.
(On the plus side, I've learned I'm really good at 911 calls. I'm a nervous wreck talking to the nice lady at the animal shelter John Markleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16473300745301705046noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31037809.post-21473180935198164672013-03-14T15:03:00.000-05:002013-03-14T15:03:00.864-05:00Libertarianism, slave to the unspeakable scourge MARIJUANA!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 John Markleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16473300745301705046noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31037809.post-72593151073981191462012-11-09T17:11:00.002-06:002012-11-09T17:11:58.916-06:00Status update
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 John Markleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16473300745301705046noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31037809.post-67593605425459510082012-11-01T16:53:00.000-05:002012-11-01T16:55:04.819-05:00This must be that "common-sense regulation" I hear such good things about
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
John Markleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16473300745301705046noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31037809.post-25481380489535548122012-08-07T15:35:00.000-05:002012-08-07T15:35:04.518-05:00"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."
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 John Markleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16473300745301705046noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31037809.post-90850852692100483422012-04-09T19:23:00.001-05:002012-04-09T19:23:38.876-05:00Statism, insurance, and dependency
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 John Markleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16473300745301705046noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31037809.post-67355254070618103882012-01-19T21:10:00.000-06:002012-01-19T21:12:42.181-06:00The 2010 National Intimate Partner and Sexual Violence Survey Report: Even more interesting if you actually bother to read itThe 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 John Markleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16473300745301705046noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31037809.post-28305601544998397032012-01-12T01:47:00.000-06:002012-01-12T01:47:45.160-06:00Happy New Year to everybody!
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 John Markleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16473300745301705046noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31037809.post-17257736608026882962011-12-30T20:07:00.000-06:002011-12-30T20:07:47.360-06:00And now, just the thing to make the year complete: The Star Wars Holiday Special!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 John Markleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16473300745301705046noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31037809.post-64377122467521162722011-12-06T23:54:00.000-06:002011-12-07T00:02:18.591-06:00The National Domestic Violence Hotline and the Verizon Foundation join forces to demonize abused children
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 John Markleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16473300745301705046noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31037809.post-78374269000736021232011-11-28T02:18:00.001-06:002011-11-28T03:00:11.014-06:00Thoughts on Daniel Klein's studies of economic literacy
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 John Markleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16473300745301705046noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31037809.post-71302802837240329452011-11-04T22:32:00.000-05:002011-11-04T22:32:18.779-05:00Kick him when he's down
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 John Markleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16473300745301705046noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31037809.post-67828345311083209872011-09-21T17:55:00.000-05:002011-09-21T17:55:53.578-05:00Compassion grows out of the the barrel of a gunVia 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 John Markleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16473300745301705046noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31037809.post-30974480347942602382011-08-09T21:21:00.000-05:002011-08-09T21:21:34.897-05:00Open seasonPlease 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. John Markleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16473300745301705046noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31037809.post-65213593756597793312011-07-07T03:39:00.000-05:002011-07-07T03:39:03.397-05:00Cory MayeI'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 John Markleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16473300745301705046noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31037809.post-7470764860767213422011-06-27T19:09:00.000-05:002013-03-12T17:43:40.566-05:00The worst people in the world, then and nowBecause 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 John Markleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16473300745301705046noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31037809.post-30337713101227846422011-06-14T20:12:00.002-05:002011-06-16T04:41:25.384-05:00Richard Garner, RIPI 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. John Markleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16473300745301705046noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31037809.post-39354674668729658082011-06-07T00:11:00.000-05:002011-06-07T00:11:54.066-05:00You never know which casual saunter across somebody's lawn might be your lastYou'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 John Markleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16473300745301705046noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31037809.post-33335645306177916792011-06-01T01:32:00.000-05:002011-06-01T01:32:13.638-05:00The current front-runner for my favorite Reddit post title of the year is now..."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."John Markleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16473300745301705046noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31037809.post-46320827059247267762011-05-19T21:10:00.000-05:002011-05-19T21:10:38.726-05:00Alan Bock, RIPI 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 John Markleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16473300745301705046noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31037809.post-37441143677840016742011-05-10T19:23:00.000-05:002011-05-10T19:23:29.768-05:00A Partial List of Things the Government of the State of Oklahoma Considers Preferable to the Peaceful Production of Concentrated Psychoactive Plant ResinThe 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 John Markleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16473300745301705046noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31037809.post-70083569131528719632011-05-02T01:52:00.001-05:002012-04-09T19:25:52.542-05:00Just like Club Med, but with more frequent shiv attacks
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 John Markleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16473300745301705046noreply@blogger.com3