From the category archives:

Decency

Why I’m Not a Conservative

March 7, 2010

Classy, in an “I’d Rather Be Partial-Birth Aborting” sort of way.

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We Are the Champions

March 7, 2010

Read Daniel Larison:
Whenever possible, I refer to the Iraq war as a war of aggression, because that is what it is and has always been. One thing that has often puzzled me about the reflex to declare victory in Iraq, as a Newsweek cover storydid recently, is that I don’t know what it could possibly mean [...]

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Equal Right to do Wrong

February 3, 2010

IOZ says:
[T]he plainer truth of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell is that it represents and clearly indicates that gays aren’t fighting for the right to “defend their country,” but are fighting for the right to go forth and kill foreigners in aggressive, hegemonic foreign wars, invasions, and occupations.
I am sympathetic, but I think we ought to [...]

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A Little Mystic Nationalism

November 24, 2009

Jonah Goldberg writes:
A little mystic nationalism is a good and healthy thing because it provides the emotional sinew that helps us hold onto our patriotism.
I strenuously disagree that a little mystic nationalism is “a good and healthy thing.” But I heartily agree with what I take Jonah to imply: that patriotism has little emotional substance without mystic nationalism.
Here’s your [...]

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A Day of Anger and Horror

November 11, 2009

I agree with Jacob Levy:
A Veteran’s/ Armistice/ Remembrance Day observed on November 11 in particular shouldn’t just mean a gauzy and somber honoring of live veterans and fallen soldiers. It should be in part a day of anger and horror about the particular war that ended on this day, the stupid brutality of it, and [...]

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For a 9/10 America

September 11, 2009

Watching and reading the various 9/11 remembrances this year, I get the sense that a lot of Americans are ready to move on but are hesitant for fear of seeming either callous or negligently complacent about the country’s security. But it’s past time to move on.
The enormity of the 9/11 mass murders will always stay [...]

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Minotaur!

August 28, 2009

God, I love this.
Is Using A Minotaur To Gore Detainees A Form Of Torture?

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America Lost

August 25, 2009

I’m with Glenn Greenwald:
(1) The fact that we are not really bothered any more by taking helpless detainees in our custody and (a) threatening to blow their brains out, torture them with drills, rape their mothers, and murder their children; (b) choking them until they pass out; (c) pouring water down their throats to drown them; (d) hanging [...]

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That Was Unkind Charlie, and Very Rude

May 25, 2009

For Memorial Day, via Sheldon Richman:

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Support Gay Marriage, Support Religious Freedom

April 14, 2009

Jason Kuznicki points us to this excellent video…

As Jason says:
Couldn’t have said it better. If you take taxpayers’ money, you should have to treat all taxpayers equally. If you’re privately funded, you should be free to do as you like. Want to discriminate? Fine. Just don’t take tax money to do it.
And… if you support [...]

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Libertarian Ideal Theory as Silent Complicity

April 10, 2009

Steven W. Thrasher in the NY Times a couple days ago:
In 1958, when my mother, who was white, and father, who was black, wanted to get married in Nebraska, it was illegal for them to wed. So they decided to go next door to Iowa, a state that was progressive enough to allow interracial marriage. My [...]

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Ick

April 9, 2009

John Holbo knows what’s up:
What do the [National Review] editors, and Gallagher, really think? The ick argument, I’ll wager. They want to stop same-sex marriage as a way of sending a message of ‘ick’ to gays, and about gays. But they also don’t want to be labeled homophobes. That is, although saying ‘gay marriage shouldn’t [...]

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Falsity: Not a Hill Worth Dying On

April 9, 2009

If I read him right, Robert Stacy McCain’s argument for state-enforced marriage inequality (“a hill to die on”!) is that there is a DEEP TRUTH about inequalities between men and women that must continue to be observed:
Feminist ideologues insist that men and women are not merely equal in the Lockean sense — having the right to [...]

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Outing Myself (from the Cannabis Closet)

April 3, 2009

In my latest column for The Week, I argue that the drug war is stupid, deadly, and unjust and try to do my small part to normalize marijuana use. My favorite reaction so far comes from Jossip:
Holy shit Wilkinson, you’re really putting yourself on the line buddy! A upper-class, white Libertarian admits to smoking pot. [...]

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Healy on the Cult

March 31, 2009

Great stuff by Gene in The Washington Examiner:
Obama “walks into a room and you want to follow him somewhere, anywhere,” George Clooney gushed to Charlie Rose.
“I’ll collect paper cups off the ground to make [Obama’s] pathway clear,” Halle Berry recently told the Philadelphia Daily News, “I’ll do whatever he says.” (Does Michelle know about this?)
Hollywood [...]

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New at Cato Unbound: Glenn Loury on American Prison Policy

March 11, 2009

This month’s Cato Unbound is devoted to the topic “Behind Bars in the Land of the Free.” Brown University’s Glenn Loury kicks off the discussion with his lead essay “A Nation of Jailers,” in which he argues that American prison policy is both a travesty of liberty and equality. 
I’ve often tangled with other libertarians about [...]

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Nothing New, of Course

December 2, 2008

Yet I suspect Milton Friedman did more to end the draft than the accomodating Baez sisters, which I guess suggests something about the relative persuasiveness of certain organs. 
The excruciatingly pedantic former logic instructor in me cannot resist pointing out that this is a rather stronger (and more ridiculous) claim than “I only sleep with Democrats,” as [...]

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I Only Sleep With Cosmotarians

December 2, 2008

Somebody probably ought to write a dissertation about the complexities of this “I Only Sleep With Democrats” business. Maybe we should dismiss this stuff as silly fun for idiot kids. But it’s more fun to take this stuff way too seriously. Therefore, allow me to observe that this is offensive on too many levels to [...]

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Billboard for the People

November 18, 2008

If you would like to chip in to support public art in celebration of the future Commander in Chief of the world’s most powerful killing operation, here’s your chance.

Yes, yes I know…. It’s wonderful that an African American is going to have this kind of status and power. It really is. But, at the same time, [...]

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Does the Financial Crisis Discredit “Neoliberalism”?

October 9, 2008

Naomi Klein says it does. Or she wants it to. She thinks it discredits Milton Friedman in particular, because for Klein not a sparrow falls without Friedman’s having somehow strangled it. Hers is a tiny intellectual universe containing, on the one hand, the things she likes and, on the other, the baleful influence of Milton [...]

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Naomi Klein

September 16, 2008

Is an angry fish, wondering where her water went. Naomi Klein is a Catholic without a Pope. Naomi Klein cannot believe it all turned out this way. Naomi Klein wants to sell you a better buggy whip. Naomi Klein is brought to you by the objects of her confused contempt. Naomi Klein “believes her own [...]

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Raising Kids in Cages

June 28, 2008

In response to my claim that:
It is tyrannical for parents to attempt to reproduce their ideologies and prejudices in their children, especially when this requires social isolation and emotional coercion.
Robin Hanson replies:
So is the principle here that parents should go beyond their simple judgment when choosing to what to expose our kids?  For example, should [...]

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False Consciousness, Psychological Freedom, and Pluralism

April 29, 2008

Some thoughts relevant to general issues about kids raised on isolated compounds by religious fanatics…
There’s nothing wrong with false consciousness explanations, as long as they are actually explanatory. You’ve just got to specify actual mechanisms. Political freedom loses much of its point in the absence of psychological freedom. Rationality and the capacity for moral agency [...]

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Down on the Compound

April 28, 2008

I agree with Kerry in being a bit perplexed by what seems to me unreflective anti-gubmint reactions of libertarians to the FLDS imbroglio. It seems clear enough to me that these kids are basically brainwashed, isolated, and made dependent in a way that makes it all-but-impossible for them to freely choose this way of life [...]

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“Not just the signature on a series of essays”

April 18, 2008

On the issue of Thomas Jefferson’s loathsomely anti-libertarian credentials, please read Charles Johnson. I agree with everything he says here, probably even the part about my making a series of interrelated mistakes, and definitely the titular imperative.

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