do me a favor?: cut and paste this everywhere. it's a...marketing ploy. but it's sincere.
A Philosophical Challenge
My irritating yet astounding new book Against the State
(SUNY Press) argues that all the arguments of the great philosophers (Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau, Hume, Hegel, Rawls, Nozick, and Habermas, among others), are, putting it kindly, unsound.
The state rests on violence: not the consent of the governed, not utility, not rational decision-making, not justice. Not only are the existing arguments for the legitimacy of state power unsound; they are shockingly fallacious, a scandal, an embarrassment to the Western intellectual tradition.
So I issue a challenge: Give a decent argument for the moral legitimacy of state power, or reconstruct one of the traditional arguments in the face of the refutations in Against the State.
If you can't, you are rationally obliged to accept anarchism.
I'd offer a huge cash prize, but I'm broke.Henceforward, if you continue to support or observe the authority of government, you are an evil, irrational cultist.
You're an anarchist now, baby, until further notice.
UPDATE 5/31: Sartwell has video here.
This is officially the coolest frackin' sci-fi collectible ever — and it'll only set you back $7,900! Fans of Battlestar Galactica can now purchase their very own 7-foot-tall, museum-quality Cylon Centurion complete with stereo sound and a menacing red LED-scanning eye.More here and here.
My mother and grandparents wanted me to go to law school. My friends were applying to jobs on Wall Street. Meanwhile, this [community service] organization offered me $12,000 a year plus $2,000 for an old, beat-up car.To Obama's credit, though, at least he's no longer talking about how he turned his back on the wealth and power of editing newsletters at Business International.
And I said yes.
Off, off message, McCain merrily went. What, I asked, did he think about his new best friend George W. Bush as a leader? Why wasn't he in the book? "I think that the very significant failing was to not question the course of the war in Iraq for too long," he said. "I'm told that the president would say to the generals on the teleconference, 'Do you have everything you need?' 'Yes sir!' End of conversation! I think General Eisenhower would have said, 'Well, what about the casualties in Anbar Province? What about the suicide bombers?' He'd go down the list of challenges we were facing. 'How's it going with the de-Ba'athificaiton? What's happening with the oil revenues?' "(Via David Frum.)
It goes on this way.For the sake of argument, imagine a world without conflict. That's the full-time job for members of a relatively new field called peace psychology who focus on problems like the genocide in Darfur, hatred in the Middle East, gang warfare in our cities, and rape everywhere.
Wondering what lessons they've learned in the trenches that we could use in our daily lives, "O" asked five top peace psychologists for their best advice on waging harmony.
•"We often figure that other people see the world in the same way we do and overestimate the degree to which they understand our approach and actions. Rather than making assumptions, ask for clarification; even ask about their intention to harm you ('Did you realize when you did that, it affected me in this way?' They might not be aware of it).
If David Axelrod had run Hillary's campaign, and Mark Penn had run Obama's, a) would the outcome have been different and b) would we have had a very different understanding about the role gender and race play in this country? I think the answer to b) is definitely yes and to a) is perhaps yes.And my lack of interest, or even of certainty as to what's being talked about, becomes reassuring.
Should Conservatives and Libertarians Vote for Barr Instead of McCain?
Next week, Wed., June 4 (8pm), Avery Knapp (who ran the Ron Paul Meet-Up group, remains active in the movement, and is a radiologist by day) will argue yes to that question and writer Ken Silber (whose writing has appeared in Reason, TCSDaily, the Freeman, and several prominent right-leaning publications) will argue no — while interested Democrats look on to see what happens when the right develops a Nader of its own — on the basement level of 266 Broome St. at Allen St. (one block south and three west of the Delancey St. subway stop), with Michel Evanchik moderating and Todd Seavey hosting.
Today, though, Memorial Day is observed — and some might find themselves thinking of war heroes like John McCain or soldiers in Iraq and planning to vote for the Republican in November’s presidential election.
And today is also the final day of the Libertarian Party convention, and former Republican Rep. Bob Barr has emerged as their presidential nominee, with fairly mainstream libertarian sportcaster Wayne Allyn Root as his running mate — the six hundred or so delegates at the convention narrowly picking Barr over Mary Ruwart, who has suggested legalizing child pornography and investigating whether explosives were used to fake the World Trade Center collapse. (Let us never speak of her again.)
Whether you favor McCain, Barr, or just seeing conservatives experience electoral pain in some small way comparable to that which Gore experienced in 2000 and Hillary is experiencing now, please join us.
Dear NJ Transit:
My wife and I ride NJ Transit daily, and were nonplussed by the company's performance at the Frank R. Lautenberg Secaucus Junction Station this afternoon. We were waiting on Track G, the listed platform for the 5:31 train, and next thing we knew both we and several other people had missed the train, which had passed through elsewhere without any apparent announcement or information on the screen.
We and several others in the same predicament went to Customer Service, where we spoke to your Mr. [deleted] and Ms. [deleted]. Ms. [deleted] informed us, politely but unhelpfully, that "All you had to do was turn around" to Platform H to get the train. But we had not been made aware of any rerouting, nor in fact did it even appear to us that the train on Track H had actually stopped.
Thus, we and others ended up waiting another hour for the 6:30 train. This follows a previous incident in which we missed a train because of the slowness of other personnel at the Secaucus Junction Station to do a timely gate transfer.
I do not know if the problem today was one of your personnel or your public information systems, or both, but in any event it was unsatisfactory. It would be unfortunate if Sen. Lautenberg's name became associated with such lassitude, laziness, listlessness and lethargy.
Sincerely,
Ken Silber
Super-investor Ken Fisher also contributed an article, his being on "What Will World Markets Look Like?" and it so happens that Fisher, quite independently, had a vision of Chelsea Clinton as presidential contender:It was not until 2018 that the “Consumption Plus” tax was enacted. This system was reminiscent of the 20-20 plan [Lawrence] Lindsey had proposed, except its rates were higher, combining a 23 percent VAT with a 28 percent flat tax on income above an inflation-adjusted threshold. In addition, the legislative package increased the carbon tax that had been in place since 2015, while providing credits for vehicles fueled with carbon-negative algae biodiesel.
Now, in 2038, this basic system is still in place, although the VAT has been increased to 24.997 percent. (A constitutional amendment limits it to “below 25 percent.”) The flat tax on “premium income” and the carbon tax have also been hiked. However, some of the wealthy have become adept at using tax derivatives that let them exchange their tax exposure portfolios with those of foreign speculators. There are concerns that nobody really understands the systemic risks involved in this new market.
In any event, taxation will be a major issue in the upcoming 2040 presidential election. The octogenarian Republican incumbent, Bruce Willis, vows to hold the line against proposals for new taxes on space development, seabed mining, algae farming and cosmetic surgery. However, the likely Democratic nominee, Chelsea Clinton, has said “It’s time to balance the budget, and the lunar colonists should pay their fair share.”
Could Ken Fisher and I both be wrong?Senator Chelsea Clinton (D-NJ) lost the 2036 presidential race to the incumbent, former Texas governor Barbara Bush. Clinton is deciding whether to mount another campaign to unseat the likely 2040 Republican nominee, current Vice President Jenna Bush. The Bushes ran in 2036 under the motto, “Get a Two-fer.”
Totten on Yon. I've been struck by a few recent movements in Iraq, especially Maliki's resilience. It seems to me that the core conservative position on Iraq needs to be skeptical and empirical. That means constantly reviewing our judgments in the wake of new facts and a basic truth: just because George W. Bush supports something doesn't mean it's inevitably bullshit. Just likely bullshit. But in Iraq, things appear to be getting more complex and less obviously doomed. It helps no one not to see this, least of all the troops. The long-term consequences of staying there indefinitely remain awful. But the possibility of a less traumatic departure needs to be grasped if we can.Note the choppiness of sentence flow, needless use of expletives, placement of italics on uninspired wording, juxtaposition of adverb inevitably with adjective likely, and awkward phrasing such as "a less traumatic departure needs to be grasped" (or is it just the "possibility" of such a departure we should grasp, and is that only "if we can"?).
There are approximately 3500 military people in the fleet, and about 35,000 civilians (roughly 10 times as many civilians as soldiers). If the average age of menopause is 51, let's say that around 2/3 of the women on the civilian fleet can have at least one more child without becoming Cylon baby factories. That would work out to 2/3 of 52% of 35,000, or about 12,133 fertile women.Which is apparently enough, if I understand him correctly.
We're sorry...
... but your query looks similar to automated requests from a computer virus or spyware application. To protect our users, we can't process your request right now.
And then asking me to type in some characters to prove I'm not a robot. I think it's the beginning of the end of Google.
what do libertarianism and the Many-Worlds Interpretation of quantum mechanics have in common?His answer is that they both appeal to what he calls "bullet swallowers," who are willing to follow theoretical principles to seemingly outlandish conclusions, whereas they are rejected by "bullet dodgers," who think the conclusions suggest some rethinking is needed in the theorizing.
“Should Conservatives and Libertarians Vote for Barr Instead of McCain?” (title may be tweaked depending on LP convention results in late May) — with Ron Paul campaign veteran Avery Knapp (yes) vs. science and economics writer (Scientific American Mind, elsewhere) Ken Silber (no). Michel Evanchik moderates, and Todd Seavey hosts. Wed., June 4, at 8pm.
Free admission, cash bar. The debates, usually pitting two opponents against each other (in a civil and often humorous fashion), take place on the basement level of Lolita Bar at 266 Broome St. at the corner of Allen St. on the Lower East Side of Manhattan, one block south and three west of the Delancey St. F, J, M, Z subway stop.
I gave a positive albeit brief review, has a Weekly Standard article giving more advice to the next president. Sample:Saying what you're going to do in specific fashion is not only good government, it is also good politics. A solid record of legislative accomplishment gained Republicans seats in 2002 and 2004 and gave Bush a reelection victory despite the Iraq war and a recovering but hardly robust economy. The lack of an agenda in 2005 and 2006 helped cost the Republicans the Congress in the midterms and send the president's popularity to new depths.I'll have some more on Lindsey's book in an upcoming article for Research.
Somehow, Mark R. Levin interprets that as the opposite of what Brooks said, and responds thus:They want voters to think of the Tories as the party of society while Labor is the party of the state. They want the country to see the Tories as the party of decentralized organic networks and the Laborites as the party of top-down mechanistic control.
As such, the Conservative Party has spent a lot of time thinking about how government should connect with citizens. Basically, everything should be smaller, decentralized and interactive.
What is the government-centered society Brooks, et al, seek to establish in place of the civilized society? Why does he not learn from history, i.e., that centralized government breeds tyranny in various forms?For Levin, it seems, conservatism is not about reading comprehension.
Some of his [Cameron's] ideas would not sit well with American conservatives. He wants to create 4,200 more health visitors, who would come into the homes of new parents and help them manage day-to-day stress. But he also talks about rewriting the tax code to make it more family friendly, making child care more accessible, and making the streets safer.I gather that Brooks is not endorsing the "health visitors" idea. Now here's Levin, as if on cue:
Conservatism isn't only about individualism, although it is rightly a critical element of ordered liberty. But it isn't about "creating 4,200 more health visitors," either.Levin headlines his post "This Can't Be Right." Well, it isn't.
Hillary's hanging on to the contest dramatically proves to me that she is unfit to be our president. It is so Bush-like, is it not? It's her Iraq. She has obviously failed, yet she keeps on just to prove she's not a quitter.Bush's refusal to give up in Iraq, despite enormous pressure to do so, is one of the bright spots of his presidency. (Taking as long as he did to change the strategy there is another matter.) Would the U.S. or Iraq really be better off had there been a U.S. pull-out before Gen. Petraeus made headway against the chaos? Criticism such as the quote above is significantly better than praise.
by asking a question about E. coli here. I asked about its potential as a bioweapon.
by Martin Gardner. And it's something to look forward to; it looks like I've read very few of the pieces in this anthology. Gardner is one of my favorite writers.
Some warmonger.Decades later, in the 1970s, after he'd recovered from his imprisonment, McCain was appointed the Navy's liaison with the Senate. One day I ran into him and asked him how he liked the work. He found it rewarding, he said, but he'd run into an infuriating obstacle. Though the Vietnam war was scarcely over, Congress was already planning to dispatch a mission to Hanoi to discuss the possibility of normalizing relations with Vietnam. The Navy wanted McCain to go along. He was shocked by that, and angry, and bitter beyond telling.
"Can you believe they are asking me to do that?" he said. "It took me six years to get out of Hanoi. I sure as hell don't want to go back. I'll never forgive those [North Vietnamese] bastards."
I don't remember what happened to the mission, but McCain didn't go and I heard no more about it. Until two decades later when President Clinton sought to normalize relations with Vietnam. Who was his major partner in the ultimately successful effort? Senator John Sidney McCain, R-Ariz.
I was stunned. Much of the Republican party was against the effort, as were McCain's conservative constituents in Arizona. Some accused him of treachery. Though our paths rarely crossed anymore, I called to congratulate him on what I considered a truly selfless act in the national interest, one of rare political courage. He thanked me and said that he remembered our conversation years before: "But you have to put stuff like that behind you or bitterness will eat a hole in your soul,'' he said. "We all have to put Vietnam behind us. All of us in this country have to become part of something larger than our own self-interest."
Todd thinks correctly. More details as the time approaches.I think Ken Silber will be defending the McCain option in our June 4 Debate at Lolita Bar, incidentally.
As they say on my favorite TV show, Battlestar Galactica, "All this has happened before, and all of it will happen again." We tried a windfall profits tax in 1980, with lousy results.
Another very interesting point:Like hemophilia in the Russian royal family, Native Dancer's line has a tragic flaw. Thanks in part to heavily muscled legs and a violent, herky-jerky running style, Native Dancer and his descendants have had trouble with their feet. Injuries have cut short the careers of several of his most famous kin, most notably Barbaro, a great-great-great-grandson who was injured during the Preakness Stakes and was later put to death.
Overbreeding has exacerbated the problem. "There's a lack of durability right now," says Ric Waldman, the former head of operations for Windfields Farm in Canada, which has bred and raced Native Dancer's descendants. "How much can we keep breeding into these same bloodlines? We're dealing with the law of diminishing returns."
Times in Triple Crown events are no faster than they were 30 years ago, despite advances in training and veterinary medicine.This story is a reminder, as we move into the era of genetic engineering of plants, animals and, potentially, humans, that unintended consequences and unexpected pitfalls are par for the course of any advanced technology.
In his recently released book Comeback: Conservatism That Can Win Again, Frum concedes Heilbrunn’s point that a conservative regeneration is needed after the Bush administration’s big spending and disastrous foreign policy. While Frum is upbeat about conservatism’s prospects, Heilbrunn ends They Knew They Were Right on an ominous note: “These reckless minds…aren’t going away. Quite the contrary.”The above isn't obviously wrong as was another recent Reason take on Frum. But it is a bit odd to see Frum described as "upbeat about conservatism's prospects." He scrapped the original title of his book, "The Next Republican President," because he doubted there would be one anytime soon. And he did tell the New York Times he wasn't necessarily keeping his New Years resolution, which was "not to be pessimistic."
Politically, congestion pricing looks pretty moribund in New York right now, but it's still on the move elsewhere. Moreover, the topic may lend itself to a broader discussion of Pigovian taxes; Komanoff cofounded the Carbon Tax Center.Should Manhattan Streets Have Congestion Pricing?
YES: Charles Komanoff, economist who has prominently weighed in on transportation, energy, and environment issues throughout the City’s long congestion pricing battle (see his writing at Komanoff.net)
NO: Doug Dechert, controversial journalist devoted to “puncturing the pretensions of the plutocrats” who’s irked New York Post with his reporting in New York Press on the Page Six corruption scandals (see the archives of ScandalMonger.net)
Moderator: Michel Evanchik
Host: Todd Seavey
Wed., May 7 (8pm) at Lolita Bar, basement level, 266 Broome St. at Allen St. (one block south and three west of the Delancey St. subway stop). Free admission, cash bar.
