Quotulatiousness

May 21, 2012

The answer to that burning question “Are libertarians misitreperted?”

Filed under: Humour, Liberty, Media, Technology — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 09:55

An interview with Matt Welch and Nick Gillespie in Salon gets the garble-for-comedy-gold treatment through Google Translate and Contentbot:

Chips Gillespie and Matt Welch, the writers of your primary libertarian distribution&Number160Reason, see pray for their many other People in the usa raising disenchantment while using governmental process. For their new publication &Promise of Independents: How Libertarian State policies Can Fix Whats Inappropriate With North america, they realize that independents now account for the best bloc of voters near your vicinity and craving far more defections from the two significant events. Only by taking apart this hierarchical process of electric power, they retain, will any of us achieve true deregulation of authorities-manage solutions, that will result in elevated shopper decision and a far more carefully democratized contemporary society.

Say what you want to about libertarian reasons, but they will be constantly entertaining to go about. So that we sat all the way down with Gillespie and Welch the 2009 weeks time and talked about their beliefs over the sushi the afternoon meal:

Your publication cravings the United states consumer to embrace an unregulated market free from authorities management. However you also have a quotation from Julian Assange, a self applied-described libertarian, stating that &a complimentary market results as being a monopoly if you do not power it to be free. You to get, some alternative entire body has to are available so that the liberty of an market &Number8212 doesn’t that imply that free financial markets are inextricable from some sort of authorities management?

H/T to Nick Gillespie for the link.

May 10, 2012

Reason.tv: Ron Paul’s young voter fanbase

Filed under: Economics, Liberty, Media, Politics, USA — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 07:36

May 6, 2012

Gary Johnson wins the Libertarian nomination

Filed under: Economics, Liberty, Politics, USA — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 09:19

Former New Mexico governor Gary Johnson won the Libertarian Party’s nomination for their presidential candidate. Yesterday, before the vote, Dave Weigel posted this profile of Johnson:

Gary Johnson is late. He’s pretty happy about the reason: too many interviews on the schedule today. That was never a problem when he was running for the Republican Party’s presidential nomination. Now that he’s the front-runner for the less-exclusive Libertarian Party nod, people want to talk to him.

“We started out at Grover Norquist’s meeting,” says Johnson, putting down his iPad to join me at a Dupont circle coffee shop. Norquist’s meeting of conservatives is off the record, but attendees can confirm that they crossed the threshold. “I thought it was a really good reception. Part of being out there, campaigning, talking to people, is being able to read body language. And it was all good. Nobody was dozing off. Nobody was shaking their heads. They were actually shaking their head this way.” He nods vigorously.

We’re talking on the day that Newt Gingrich announced the end of his profound presidential bid, when the Republican Party, supposedly, was learning to love Mitt Romney. It’s a few days before Johnson will claim the Libertarian Party’s nomination, potentially becoming a spoiler for Romney. The heads really nodded this way? No heads shaking that way?

“No, none, zero,” says Johnson. “I really believe I’m gonna take it from Obama rather than Romney. I joke, you know — maybe all those pot-smoking, marriage equality, get out of Afghanistan voters for Romney are going to switch to me. Then, boy, he’ll be in trouble!”

April 12, 2012

Reason.tv: Why Democrat vs. Republican is the Wrong Way to Look at the 2012 Election

Filed under: Government, Liberty, Media, Politics, USA — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 10:59

“We had a non-Obama president recently, his name was George W. Bush, it wasn’t all puppy dogs and rainbows,” says Reason’s Matt Welch. “Being Republican is not enough to counter Obama. Mitt Romney is not offering an alternative to Obama,” adds Reason.tv’s Nick Gillespie.

From Newt Gingrich’s inexplicable campaign chatter about a taxpayer-subsidized colony on the moon to Mitt Romney’s refusal to discuss any specific spending cuts he would implement as president, Republicans continue to offer no real substantive alternative to President Obama’s spendthrift economic policies.

Welch and Gillespie, the co-authors of “The Declaration of Independents: How Libertarian Politics Can Fix What’s Wrong with America,” hosted the discussion “Why Democrat vs. Republican is the Wrong Way to Look at the 2012 Election” at Reason Weekend, the annual donor event held by Reason Foundation (the nonprofit that publishes this website).

April 9, 2012

An illustrated summary of David Friedman’s “Machinery of Freedom”

Filed under: Economics, Government, Liberty — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 06:35

April 8, 2012

L. Neil Smith’s Open Letter to Rush Limbaugh

Filed under: Economics, Liberty, Media, Politics — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 10:44

From today’s edition of the Libertarian Enterprise, L. Neil Smith’s open letter to Rush Limbaugh:

Dear Mr. Limbaugh,

I began listening to you early in the Clinton Administration. For years you’ve said you’re playing with half your brain tied behind your back “just to make it fair”. For the same number of years, I’ve been saying (admittedly to a much smaller audience), that if you ever untied and started using the other half of your brain, you’d be a libertarian.

That was all in fun (although I do believe it). But what I have to tell you now is intended quite seriously. I’ve been involved in the libertarian movement for 50 years, since 1962, when I was 16 years old — almost before the word “libertarian” was in common currency. In all of that time, we libertarians have learned to handle the Left, better, I think, than the Right does. Partly that’s because we aspire to many of the same things that they do — except that we really mean it.

(more…)

April 4, 2012

QotD: Mike Riggs refutes Van Jones on “so-called Libertarians”

Filed under: Liberty, Politics, Quotations, USA — Tags: , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 00:04

I’m going to have to mic check you there, Mr. Jones. You’re not talking about so-called libertarians, but your former boss and current president. See, it’s Barack Obama who supports “traditional marriage”; Barack Obama who supports a drug war that sends an alarming number of black men to prison and destroys their employment prospects; Barack Obama who supports a foreign policy that kills children; Barack Obama who supports regulatory barriers that require the poorest of the poor to borrow their way into the workforce; Barack Obama who supports an immigration strategy that rips apart families and sees the children of undocumented workers put up for adoption.

Whether Obama’s support for those policies means he hates gays or brown folk is not for me to say. As the scriptures tell us, “For who has known the mind of the Lord that he may instruct him?”

Libertarians, on the other hand, love brown folk, the gays, the lesbians, the people with piercings, and immigrants. Many of us, after all, fit rather neatly into those categories, and we show our affection for ourselves and our neighbors by supporting the right of all peoples to live free of state-sponsored violence, discrimination, undue imprisonment, and theft; as well as the entirely predictable consequences of both left-wing and right-wing social engineering.

Mike Riggs, “Van Jones on ‘so-called Libertarians’: ‘They say they love America but they hate the people, the brown folk, the gays, the lesbians, the people with piercings’”, Hit & Run, 2012-04-03

March 25, 2012

Bryan Caplan: John Stuart Mill was over-rated

Filed under: History, Liberty — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 09:32

Mill isn’t one of my favourite philosophers: I read On Liberty as a teenager, but most of it didn’t stick with me (probably more a reflection of my age than the work itself, I agree). Bryan Caplan makes a case for him being far more famous than he deserves:

One especially cringeworthy example: In the span of two pages in On Liberty, Mill names one “ultimate” principle and one “absolute” principle. His Ultimate Principle:

    It is proper to state that I forego any advantage which could be derived to my argument from the idea of abstract right, as a thing independent of utility. I regard utility as the ultimate appeal on all ethical questions…

His Absolute Principle:

    The object of this Essay is to assert one very simple principle, as entitled to govern absolutely the dealings of society with the individual in the way of compulsion and control, whether the means used be physical force in the form of legal penalties, or the moral coercion of public opinion.

You might think that Mill would argue that his Ultimate Principle implies his Absolute Principle — or at least that that the two principles never conflict. That would be silly and dogmatic, but consistent.

[. . .]

Unfortunately for Mill, neither his Ultimate nor Absolute Principles leaves any role for mere “capability.” You could say, “If free and equal discussion will improve a person, you should respect his liberty.” When words work, there’s no reason to resort to beatings. But after free and equal discussion fails to open the eyes of a person capable of free and equal discussion, why not try coercion? No matter what a person’s “capabilities,” Mill’s Ultimate Principle commands coercion and his Absolute Principle forbids it.

March 17, 2012

P.J. O’Rourke on the Cato-Koch shootout

Filed under: Economics, Liberty, Politics, USA — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 11:59

His latest column is on the infighting over control of the libertarian Cato Institute:

The Koch brothers’ motive seems clear, to the extent there’s clarity in human motivation. They want to rid the Oval Office of a pest and Congress of the pestilence’s plague-carriers. In their battle against statist disease, the Kochs seem to regard Cato’s individualism as too individualistic. They want a more collective effort to cure collectivism.

Current Cato board chairman Bob Levy met with David Koch and some of Koch’s political advisers last November. According to Levy, “They said that a principal goal was to defeat Barack Obama. The way David put it was, ‘We would like you to provide intellectual ammunition that we can then use at Americans for Prosperity and our allied organizations.’ AFP and others would apply Cato’s work to advance their electoral goals.”

Of course, if David Koch had bothered to read the Cato trove of books, articles, policy analysis, and research on the Obama administration’s bunk and boners, he would have found six-shooter ammunition enough to burst through the swinging doors of the Electoral Goals Saloon and make every sarsaparilla-drinking tenderfoot in the Democratic party dance.

[. . .]

And Cato couldn’t be involved in partisan politics. Everyone there is a libertarian. You might as well command your cat to bring you your pajamas as tell a bunch of libertarians to get on the same political platform. I know these people. Ron Paul is a bien-pensant by comparison. Cato scholars prize contentious thought. Get in a debate with one and you’ll find out he doesn’t even agree with himself.

[. . .]

It can be said, with some justice, that libertarians apply only one measure to every issue. But what a sublime yardstick it is. Libertarians ask, about each thing they encounter in public life, “Does this promote the liberty, responsibility, and dignity of the individual?” Libertarianism can have political implications, but politics is, by definition, mass action. And libertarians don’t believe in the masses. They believe in the individuals huddled in those masses. A pure libertarian is opposed to politics down to the soles of his shoes (or, libertarians being libertarians, down to the bottom of his sandals worn with socks). Libertarianism is contra-political, an emetic dose to be given to politics. As we’ve seen lately, all politics needs one sometimes.

H/T to Walter Olson for the link.

March 4, 2012

Confused about the Cato takeover threat from the Koch brothers? You’re not alone

Filed under: Law, Liberty, Politics, USA — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 11:40

Brad DeLong rounds up some of what’s being said about the attempt by Charles Koch to take control of the Cato Institute:

Ed Crane on the Koch Brothers:

    Charles G. Koch has filed a lawsuit as part of an effort to gain control of the Cato Institute, which he co-founded with me in 1977. While Mr. Koch and entities controlled by him have supported the Cato Institute financially since that time, Mr. Koch and his affiliates have exercised no significant influence over the direction or management of the Cato Institute, or the work done here. Mr. Koch’s actions in Kansas court yesterday represent an effort by him to transform Cato from an independent, nonpartisan research organization into a political entity that might better support his partisan agenda. We view Mr. Koch’s actions as an attempt at a hostile takeover, and intend to fight it vehemently in order to continue as an independent research organization, advocating for Individual liberty, limited government, free markets and peace.

Jonathan Adler on the Koch Brothers:

    The Volokh Conspiracy » Koch v. Cato: Cato’s Crane and Cato Chairman Bob Levy charge the [Kochs' law]suit is about transforming Cato into a less independent and more political (if not also more partisan) institution…. Many libertarian-leaning organizations receive money from the Kochs and their foundations and are attacked on this basis. Such attacks can be deflected, as financial support is not the same thing as control. But if the Koch brothers themselves represent the controlling majority of an organization’s board, that organization is, by definition, a Koch-run enterprise…. They will forevermore characterize the Cato Institute as “Koch-controlled” — and, as a legal matter, they will be correct…. [A]ny benefit from whatever changes they could make will be outweighed to the permanent damage to Cato’s reputation caused by turning it into a de facto Koch subsidiary. In short, they will have destroyed the Cato Institute to save it.

Update: Jason Kuznicki on the internal side of the debate at Cato:

When I learned that the Kochs were suing Cato, I’m sorry to say that one of the first things I felt was vindication. I’d been saying for years that Cato was essentially an independent shop. The suit makes no sense unless I was right all along.

I’ve worked at Cato for five and a half years. In that time I have never seen a single decision made in consideration of the Koch brothers’ wishes. Cato has always appeared to be run by two people: its president, Ed Crane, and its executive vice president, David Boaz. It was like that when I was hired, and it’s like that now.

Even they don’t call all the shots, either; plenty of things get published that they actually disagree with, including some of my stuff. The people who spin elaborate fantasies about the Kochs acting as our puppet masters were, and are, dead wrong. They’ve been wrong since at least the early 90s, if not earlier. I’ve been saying so for years. Now the whole Cato Institute is in open revolt against the Kochs, a revolt that grew up with astonishing speed.

March 2, 2012

Gary Johnson profiled in the Huffington Post

Filed under: Liberty, Media, Politics, USA — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 11:22

Joel Sucher meets Gary Johnson:

At 59, Gary Johnson still projects the energetic aura of an athlete. But these days, the two-time Republican governor of New Mexico and imminent Libertarian Party Presidential candidate has the rumpled look of someone who spends too much time in Starbucks hunched over a laptop. At a sandwich shop near Rockefeller Center where we met for an interview last week, he talks with a quiet kind of energy: non-intimidating; a bit self-effacing, but sincere.

His voice is not mellifluous like Obama’s; his style is nothing like Mitt’s trying-too-hard; and his rhetoric is far from Santorum’s coarse and unbalanced rambling. Johnson’s speech lacks the “uhs,” “y’knows” or similar pauses that usually indicate a bad case of public overthink.

No, Johnson speaks with the conviction of a true believer, one convinced that abandoning the Republican Party for a run as a Libertarian will sow seeds that will take root — if not this year, then perhaps in 2016.

The preening and posturing of Romney and Santorum, looking to score at the socially conservative beauty contest, are anathema to Johnson. He wants to stick close to Libertarian core values, and if that means butting heads with former Libertarian Party presidential candidate (1988) Ron Paul, so be it.

February 17, 2012

Gary Johnson is “the candidate that the Left once hoped Barack Obama would be”

Filed under: Economics, Liberty, Media, Politics, USA — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 09:01

Theo Anderson thinks that Gary Johnson is the candidate that should terrify the Democrats:

Gary Johnson is, in some important ways, the candidate that the Left once hoped Barack Obama would be. He vocally opposes the death penalty, the use of torture by the U.S. military, and the indefinite detention of people charged with a crime–even suspects charged with terrorism.

He’s pro-choice. He calls for deep cuts in the defense budget and an immediate withdrawal of U.S. troops from Afghanistan and from many of our military bases around the world. He unequivocally supports marriage rights for gays and believes that legalizing marijuana — rather than building a wall — is the key to solving illegal immigration. He also favors a two-year grace period for immigrants who are in the U.S. illegally, so that they can obtain work visas and continue living and working here.

[. . .]

What’s striking about Johnson isn’t just the fact that he’s to the left of Obama and most other elected Democrats on many issues. It’s also his boldness in comparison with the Democrats’ timidity. He’s been a fierce critic, for example, of the warmongering and civil-liberties abuses by both major parties over the past decade. In January, when he spoke the ACLU’s National Staff Conference, he called for repeal of the Patriot Act.

“Ten years ago,” he said, “we learned that the fastest way to pass a bad law is to call it the ‘Patriot Act’ and force Congress to vote on it in the immediate wake of a horrible attack on the United States. The irony is that there is really very little about the Patriot Act that is patriotic. Instead, it has turned out to be yet another tool the government is using to erode privacy, individual freedom and the Constitution itself.”

Joey deVilla’s “What People Think Libertarians Do”

Filed under: Humour, Liberty, Media — Tags: — Nicholas @ 08:55

Click image to go to original post at The Adventures of Accordion Guy in the 21st Century

February 14, 2012

Santorum is “libertarianism’s sweater-vested arch-nemesis”

Filed under: Liberty, Politics, USA — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 11:40

For pretty much any position you could name, if you mapped the libertarian opinion on it, diametrically opposed on the chart you’d find Rick Santorum. Gene Healy explains why there’s no libertarian case for voting Santorum:

To borrow from Mitt’s rhetorical stylings, I’m not severely conservative, but I do have a case of Stage IV libertarianism. And anyone who shares that condition will find Santorum’s rise particularly vexing. The former senator from Pennsylvania is libertarianism’s sweater-vested arch-nemesis.

In a Pennsylvania Press Club luncheon in Harrisburg last summer, Santorum declared, “I am not a libertarian, and I fight very strongly against libertarian influence within the Republican Party and the conservative movement.”

In that regard, Santorum has a pretty impressive record. By voting for the No Child Left Behind Act, he helped give President Obama the power to micromanage the nation’s schools from Washington; and by supporting a prescription drug entitlement for Medicare, he helped saddle the taxpayers with a $16 trillion unfunded liability.

Santorum voted for the 2005 “bridge to nowhere” highway bill, has backed an expanded national service program, and his compassionate conservatism has the Bono seal of approval: “On our issues, he has been a defender of the most vulnerable.” Rick Santorum: He’s from the government, and he’s here to help.

[. . .]

A recent Time magazine symposium asked leading thinkers on the Right, “What Is Conservatism?” Anti-tax advocate Grover Norquist offered this answer: “Conservatives ask only one thing of the government. They wish to be left alone.”

Tell that to Santorum, whose agenda rests on meddling with other people, sometimes with laws, sometimes with aircraft carrier groups.

“This idea that people should be left alone, be able to do whatever they want to do,” Santorum complained to NPR in 2006, “that we shouldn’t get involved in the bedroom, we shouldn’t get involved in cultural issues … that is not how traditional conservatives view the world.”

February 12, 2012

Bryan Caplan on “the stranger”

Filed under: Government, Law, Liberty — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 11:36

An interesting post at Econlog:

What do you call a man you never met? A stranger.

What are you morally forbidden to do to a stranger? You may not murder him. You may not attack him. You may not enslave him. Neither may you rob him.

What are you morally required to do for a stranger? Not much. Even if he seems hungry and asks you for food, you’re probably within your rights to refuse. If you’ve ever been in a large city, you’ve refused to help the homeless on more than one occasion. And even if you think you broke your moral obligation to give, your moral obligation wasn’t strong enough to let the beggar justifiably mug you.

Notice: These common-sense ethics regarding strangers, ethics that almost everyone admits, are unequivocally libertarian. Yes, you have an obligation to leave strangers alone, but charity is optional.

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