Modern Times

I recently read a David Baldacci novel. I say this without an sense of shame, as such things are permitted when one travels, even as People magazine may be skimmed in a doctor’s office. The novel was written in 1997 and described then then cutting-edge technology of AOL, dial up connections, cars equipped with cellular [...]

Fair Governance IV

In previous posts I argued that the state is justified in restricting a person’s liberty to prevent him from harming other people. I also said that one could harm others through one’s example, with bad behavior rubbing off on others. I called restrictions on liberty prompted by this concern social perfectionism. I also rejected Mill’s [...]

Crime and Punishment

The Washington Post today offers a startling new insight into the debate about Guantanamo. In a story headed “From Captive to Suicide Bomber,” the sub-heading continues, “Accused of Being Little More Than a Low-Level Taliban Fighter, Abdallah al-Ajmi Was held by the U.S. for Nearly Four Years. After his Release, He Blew Up an Iraqui [...]

Travel

A break from my blog for a few days, as I shall be travelling to Texas. Back Thursday. In one small Texas town I shall stay at the grandly named John Bell Hood suite, in a hotel that resembles the one in the film No Country for Old Men. “The Gallant Hood of Texas/ Fit [...]

The two cultures

I noted a post back that Michael Ignatieff had lectured for me on Simone Weil, and that led me to wonder about other politicians who displayed any talent or knowledge in fields beyond politics, economics or public policy. Burke wrote on aethetics and Gladstone debated theology with Cardinal Manning, but who is their like today? [...]

Michael Ignatieff

I was amused to see that, when he met Michael Ignatieff, Obama seems to have spent most of his time talking about friends they have in common. Not surprising, since Ignatieff knows everyone. I mean everyone. Well, at least 6 billion people anyway. I once received a change of address email from him, with many hundred [...]

Fair Governance III

Let me now strengthen the argument for perfectionism, where the government restricts individual choices to promote a moral vision, with an example that nearly everyone would find compelling from the 1964 Civil Rights Act. One of the Act’s then-controversial sections prohibited discrimination on the basis of race when people rented out rooms in their homes. Critics [...]

Three ways of thinking about Darwin

Consider the question posed by Anaximander: Why are we put upon the earth? I pose the question to note three different ways of thinking about Darwin. The first would conclude that the question is meaningless because there is no purpose to our existence, but rather only evolutionary processes. The second would think the question meaningful because Darwin got his facts [...]

Fair Governance II

The case for government interference with individual preferences is usually made as a matter of paternalism, not perfectionism. That is, the claim is made that we’re really trying to make people better off or happier, not more moral. Any project to reform morals runs against the relativism of our time. Of course, the paternalist can’t be a relativist. He has to [...]

Fair Governance

I am asked to present my book, Fair Governance, on Reason TV. That will be a bit of a challenge, becuse the book can be technical and I’ll have to simplify. The book describes two principal rationales goverments might offer for interfering with personal preferences. First, the state might do so with the goal of making individuals [...]

Disinvestment from Israel

The trustees of Hampshire College in western Massachusetts have voted to divest from six companies that do business in Israel, making Hampshire the first U.S. college to do so. The trustess said that the move was not anti-Israeli, and was prompted by general social concerns. However, the move came after complaints came from the Students [...]

Quebec 1759-2009

Plans to stage a 250th anniversary reenactment of the Battle of the Plains of Abraham have been cancelled, after protests by separatists. In the 1759 Battle, Wolfe defeated Montcalm and won a continent for the British Empire. Sore losers. Here in Virginia reenactors in blue are regularly whipped by Stonewall’s foot calvary, while to the north the boys [...]

Where is the hate?

If conservatism is the politics of ridicule, liberalism has become the politics of hatred. That’s not a comment on Obama, or on Democratic politicians. Indeed, the election of Obama was importantly a repudiation of hatred and a healing of ancient animosities, and Obama went out of his way to chastise the angry netroots for their [...]

Science Studies at the Washington Post

I am at a disadvantage with other bloggers because I don’t take that rich source of nuttiness, the New York Times. However, the Washington Post occasionally rewards its readers with an unconsciously ridiculous story. Today it was a WaPo page one account of a battle over vaccines and autism, and the connection or absence thereof between [...]

Fr Richard Neuhaus, R.I.P.

Fr Neuhaus died a month ago, and the current issue of First Things has a collection of his back-of-the-book Public Square comments. It’s a fine magazne, but I wonder how many people, like me, first read with delight Neuhaus’ Public Square, and then turned to the front end of the magazine with a grim sense [...]

Limits to Privatization

Two Pennsylvania judges have been accused of soliciting bribes to jail kids. Remarkably, the bribes were offered not by the parents but by the jail, which had been privatized. One of the judges in question shut down the county-run juvenile prison and helped a private company secure the prison contract. The judge then allegedly extorted [...]

Best Conservative Films

NRO is offering up a list of best conservative films. For the most part I didn’t think the films they list very good, nor did I think them especially conservative. Doubtless I am the one who doesn’t understand conservatism, but here is a counterlist of ten other films: Jules et Jim. “The promised land was in [...]

Best Unwritten Books III: Lincoln

The book would celebrate one of the most intellectual of American presidents, the 200th anniversary of whose birth we remember tomorrow. More books have been written about Lincoln than anyone save Christ, but an intellectual biography is still needed. Allen Guelzo came closest with Redeemer President, and no one else could write the book I [...]

State Secrets

The Obama administration has done a 180 on the “state secrets” doctrine, under which the United States might invoke a national security privilege to exclude evidence from a trial, or even to dismiss lawsuits in advance. For this, the new administration is catching flack from Glenn Greenwald in Salon. Greenwald argues cogently, but misses the [...]

Liberal Feminism

Fundamentalist Hindus beat up some women drinking in an Indian bar. So how are Indian feminists answering back? Hint: there may be an incentive problem here.

Unsung heroes

In the nineteenth century, the Royal Navy took on Napoleon and established the greatest empire the world has ever seen. Oh yes, it also brought an end to the slave trade.

Government Spending: Stimulus or Pork?

Google Fight knows: stimulus: 40,000,000 results pork: 30,700,000 results But pork is gaining…

Hemi: The sweetest sound…

The law of compensation

When it is 68 degrees in Alexandria VA on February 8, and one has run along the Potomac, how can one be anything but happy? In more difficult times this is also one of the dark places of the earth. Yet even then, one remembers that things change, that things are bound to get better. There is a [...]

Are creative people necessarily liberal?

Is a queston posed by Roger Simon, who answers yes. Creative people are natural risk-takers, and conservative aren’t risk-takers. Q.E.D. I enjoyed his book, but on this one he’s wrong on so many levels: 1. So risk-taking entrepreneurs are liberals? 2. So the most innovative writers and poets of the last 100 years were liberals? Think Eliot, Faulkner, [...]

Buckley’s Mix