Nick Gillespie vs. Lawrence Lessig on Bill Moyers Journal

Two smart people debate a decision. If you’re confused about what the decision entails, this will help you to understand.

The Sunday “Credo” interview in today’s Washington Examiner: “Credo: Tom Palmer”

At your core, what is one of your defining beliefs?
I believe that the individual human life matters. I believe that human freedom is a constituent element of a good life — of human happiness — and is, consequently, intrinsically valuable.

(Since I’m reading rather carefully Ian Carter’s excellent A Measure of Freedom, I might have substituted for “intrinsically valuable” the term “non-specifically and constitutively valuable,” but that would probably not have conveyed my point any more clearly.)

The DC government submitted to the United States District Court for the District of Columbia an unauthorized “supplemental brief” in our case for the right to keep and bear arms in the District of Columbia. Alan Gura, our lawyer, responded.

The earlier brief here.

I noticed that Wolly (short for Wollstonecraft) was a bit droopy, which can be caused by high levels of potassium attendant upon kidney problems (which she has had for some years now), and as I’m heading out of town for a bit, I asked whether I should take her for a checkup. I got advice and decided to do so; it was quite an experience. Besides the trauma of the tests (which she dealt with quite Stoically, despite clearly hating them), getting back was terrible. No taxis (I paid a taxi driver twice the normal rate to drive me there). At all. So I went out with her completely bundled up in her carrier, with extra blankets inside and completely enclosed on the outside, through a serious blizzard to the Metro, which was still working, then found no taxis on the other end, but paid $22 to a carful of El Salvadoran restaurant workers to drive us, jammed in the back, the 8 perilous blocks to our place. Whew. She was glad to be back. (And she’s fine; test results all good, but she may be in a little pain from the infusions she gets daily, so I’m getting something for that.)

La Prensa San Diego on El narco: La guerra fallida by former Mexican presidential spokesperson Rubén Aguilar and political analyst and former foreign minister Jorge Castañeda: “The So-Called War on Drugs a Complete Failure”

CNN: “Former Mexican official urges legalizing marijuana”

I have heard Castañeda speak and he is truly exceptional as an analyst and as a speaker. It’s a shame that on the clip here he barely has a chance to make even one point.

I sometimes counsel people to be sure not to use work email for personal use, as well. Email accounts provided by your employer are the employer’s property and should not be abused; in addition, the contents are the property of your employer, as well, so if you don’t want love notes to be owned by someone else, don’t send them from your work email address.

The Foundation for Individual Rights in Education and the Students for Liberty have filed a joint amicus brief for freedom of association in the case of Christian Legal Society v. Martinez. Both groups deserve support from believers (whether “believers” or not) in the right to freedom of association.

The issue has some complications, but I think that the FIRE and SFL brief makes the case well against attempting to dictate the views of groups that receive official recognition at state universities.

(Click on the image to enlarge it to a more readable size.)

The crackpots around Lew Rockwell are not content with trying to get countries to eschew or eliminate nuclear weaponry. No. That would be rational. Instead, their preference (link to post imaged above) is for countries ruled by wacky tyrants actually to acquire nuclear weaponry with which they can threaten all of their neighbors. The criterion for properly acquiring nuclear weapons, according to such people? Being a perceived enemy of the government of the United States of America, the lineal descendant of the one that defeated the Confederate States of America.

What the crazies don’t understand is that being horrified at or opposed to the possession or use of such weapons by one state, or condemning its use 65 years ago, does not entail that one should endorse their acquisition (or use) today. The wacko response they will offer in defense of their craziness? “Iran hasn’t actually used any nuclear weapons (yet), but the US has, so it’s ok for Iran to acquire them and to threaten other countries with them.” (It’s the same response to people who point out the ugliness of Rockwell’s publication and promotion of work by such advocates of murder as the racist/segregationist Sam Francis and the advocate of stoning gay people to death [and prophet of the Y2K hysteria some years back] Gary North, one of their top writers; they haven’t actually lynched or stoned anyone, whereas Senator XYZ has voted for stealing or bombing, and so what’s worse than promoting racists and advocates of stoning gay people is to live in the same city as Senator XYZ or to talk with him or her, unless you’re a Texas congressman.)

That web posting is the face of evil. But it comes as no surprise when you consider the source.

Note: In the event the post is dropped, as happens often there when someone notices them, the two links in the LewRockwell.com post were to this and this.

I was scheduled to fly to Moscow tomorrow (Saturday) for a series of lectures, seminars, and meetings in Moscow and St. Petersburg, but just a few feet of snow seem to be closing Washington down. (It’s snowing fairly heavily outside now, but I’m reminded of seeing Russian teenagers in Moscow eating icecream outside in snow like this.) So my flight’s postponed for Sunday, when I hope the airport will be working. (That gives me a little more time to get more work done, in any case!)

Reason’s Jacob Sullum: “If We Make Sure We’re Not Killing Innocent People, We Might Not Get to Kill Anyone at All“

Biden Criticized For Appearing In Hennessy Ads

Michael Moynihan of Reason has been doing some super sleuthing. He wants to know, “Just what makes something humorous?” And now he has the answer: Jonathan Chait, to whom he has awarded the prestigious title of “The Left’s Own Topo Gigo.” If you’re not chortling and guffawing over Chait’s John McCain hand puppet telling the Sarah Palin hand puppet that he picked her as his running mate because “I was a sad, desperate old man trapped in a loveless marriage — I saw you and I saw a second chance,” then you must be like me: stupid and humorless, in the words of Matthew Yglesias, one of the smartest and funniest guys around. So smart and so funny he told my friend Veronique de Rugy to SHUT UP! about tax policy because she’s …. get this!!! … FRENCH. Ha ha! FRENCH!!!! Oh, how we laughed!

But you know, when you keep on having to say, “But I’m funny. Really!,” you ought to wonder whether maybe you’re….well, you’re just not. That you’re crude and boorish and that you really ought to apologize to the person you mocked because of her name and nationality. Or at least that your “humor” is not really suitable for grown-up conversation. (And yes, I do know that they were trying for some sort of “irony,” but they failed utterly [for one thing, saying racism is "unAmerican" and saying Jews and Catholics are "unAmerican" really are different uses of the term].) Moreover, undeniably hidden behind the protestations of humor was a very clear message to someone who disagreed about what the essence of America is [hint: not using the power to tax maliciously to punish people], and that message is:

SHUT THE HELL UP AND GET OUT OF OUR COUNTRY!

Thanks, Jonathan and Matthew, for raising the tone of policy discourse so. You’re great guys. Class acts. Really.

A nicely done video on the enduring legacy of Ayn Rand. I’m not a follower (I’m more eclectic in my views), but I find much to admire in her work, including the insight regarding the morality of socialism: it’s not the case that people are not good enough for socialism; socialism is not good enough for people. It’s rather promising that her works continue to sell so briskly and that “Ayn Rand Is In.” (I try to expand on some of her insights in Realizing Freedom: Libertarian Theory, History, and Practice, especially in the chapters on moral philosophy. The long chapter on Rawls moral theory deals with the moral implications of a right to withdraw, a right that is at the core of Atlas Shrugged. It was a major part of my dissertation at Oxford on “A Cosmopolitan Theory of Justice.”)

]]>

It’s astonishing how poorly equipped many people are today to handle the art of rhetoric, as indicated by the puerile attempts to put down my friend Vero for being French. Independently of dealing with such unpleasantness, I have been corresponding with a sharp young man who is interested in improving his knowledge of the world, and at the same time sharpening his skills in discussion and debate. It’s commonly assumed that those are contrary goals, but, in fact, thinking, discussing, writing, and debating, if done well, are mutually reinforcing. I recommended strongly George Orwell’s marvelous essay “Politics and the English Language,” from which I have learned much, as well as Cicero’s De Inventione, which has helped me on numerous occasions.

Rhetoric is a vital element of a free society, as it is an alternative to violence. It’s also a central element in the development of civil society, which is a topic I treat of historically in the chapter on “Classical Liberalism and Civil Society” in my Realizing Freedom: Libertarian Theory, History, and Practice. (It’s not too late to order your copy for Valentine’s Day for that special person… )

Jonathan Chait disgraces himself once more. First he mocked Veronique de Rugy’s French name, then in his defense he makes fun of the “G” in my name, which I have there to remember my father and to distinguish myself from a lot of others out there with the same name. But whatever.

What’s actually interesting is that he thinks that it’s très amusant to write “Hey, you know what else is anti-American? Being named ‘Veronique de Rugy’” as a so, so witty response to Vero’s criticism of Barney Frank’s “mentality,” because it is allegedly wrong to state that a mentality is unAmerican, but he was very quick to tar advocates of tax cuts as “deeply unpatriotic” after the 9/11 terrorist attacks. He wrote in The New Republic (not available online, as far as I could find), “There is something deeply unpatriotic about K Street’s rush to turn the tragedy into quick profit.” (Note the additional smear: “K Street,” which is in fact dominated by lawyers and lobbyists trying to get a piece of the taxpayers’ dollar, is used as the stand-in for taxpayers who would like to keep more of their money.) But what is the most interesting is how eager he was to smear people who favor tax cuts as “unpatriotic,” which is far stronger than referring to a “mentality” as unAmerican (or, in Vero’s awkward Frenchy phrase, “anti-American”). What can one say?….other than that his friends really ought to stop him before he embarrasses himself again.

UPDATE: Now We Know What Real Humor Is….Or at Least Real Jokes

One of China’s most prestigious and influential magazines, Caijing, today ran my article on free trade: “Weaken Our Trade Barriers: It is not only America’s leaders who are erring, Chinese leaders must also change their trade policies.” It was based on a presentation I made at a seminar on trade policy at the Unirule Institute in Beijing. (Note: Click on the images to enlarge them to readable size.)


At the bottom of the page is a comment, expressing agreement, by Prof. Feng Xingyuan of the China Academy of Social Sciences and the Cathay Institute of Public Affairs.

Note: Careful readers of the Chinese text will note on page 1 references to “Lou Dobbs” and “Jack Cafferty,” two notorious China bashers on “CNN” whom I set straight. And further note: I can’t read Chinese, either. I wish I could.

Some find this a difficult topic to discuss, but it’s going to happen to all of us (well, probably), so it’s childish to avoid it. Yes, I’m discussing death. Jamie Dettmer, a friend and former colleague, has had to deal with this, as have I. His thoughts on the topic, drawing on his experience with his mother, can be found here: “The Gilderdale Case: The Right To Die”

The ‘true story’ of how Dr. King kept Uhura on Star Trek

(I added the exclamation point because I’m not a Trekkie, although I do remember watching the show when it came on. They are among the memories I have of my father, who watched it with me.)

HT: Anastasia Uglova

(Now, it seems that the full version is here.)