Category Archives: Political Philosophy
Limited Government and Liberalism
Julian Sanchez has a knack for saying things that I wish I’d thought to say first. To wit: A polity can establish broad and general principles specifying the conditions under which government may or should act, or it can vote on individual policies and programs on a case-by-case basis (with many gradations in between, of course). Both are clearly in … Continue reading
Robocalls
If you live in Virginia (or, I suppose in NJ or NY-23) and happen still to have a landline for whatever reason, then I’m sure you have a very special reason to be glad that election season is over for another year(ish). By the final week, Caroline and I were getting 3 or 4 robocalls a day (in our case, … Continue reading
Voting and Democracy
Some of you may remember that once upon a time, I was the token non-anarchocapitalist blogger at a place called Catallarchy. The old site has had a name change (it’s now The Distributed Republic), and it has reinvented itself as a community site. If you play nicely — and by that I mean say interesting things and refrain from acting … Continue reading
Bad Lectures
So I just got back from a lecture at Cato on James Bennett’s new book, Not Invited to the Party: How the Demopublicans Have Rigged the System and Left Independents Out in the Cold. (And, no, I’m not going to bother linking to the book, for reasons that will become clear in a moment.) Now probably I should have known … Continue reading
Words Have Meanings
So, I’ve been accused of writing a lot. But the truth is that I actually spend most of my days reading, rather than writing. Besides the (usually boring) stuff I read for work (texts of bills, transcripts of speeches, reports from think tanks, that sort of thing), there’s also the fiction I read for pleasure, the nonfiction I read as … Continue reading
Rights and Health Care
So, a week or so ago, I posted a half-snarky status message on Facebook poking a bit of fun at a then-popular meme about health care reform. Jim Arnold, who was good enough to give me a job a couple of years ago, and Mike Taylor, a career diplomat, both took some exception to my way-too-brief remarks. Their criticisms were … Continue reading
Just Following Orders
Today’s Washington Times features an opinion piece by GEN Michael Hayden, whose most recent two gigs were as head of the CIA and the NSA. Given that background, it’s probably not much of a surprise that his op-ed blasts the Obama administration for its plan to release another cache of documents relating to the CIA’s “enhanced interrogation” practices. (Say what … Continue reading
Politics and Attitudes
I’ve already commented (very briefly) on Julian Sanchez’s post imploring people to spend some time trying to understand other people’s views rather than just demonizing them as “the other.” Today, Matt Yglesias adds his two cents. I don’t disagree with anything Matt says, really. But I’m actually far more interested in what Matt’s response says about his attitudes toward politics. … Continue reading
Nation-Building on the Cheap
Spencer Ackerman has a post today laying out the argument for abandoning the war in Afghanistan. According to Ackerman: It’s perfectly coherent to assert that the U.S. has interests in Country X that are worth pursuing — at acceptable cost. Setting out a test for whether they’re achievable at Cost-Value Y, measured in time, blood and treasure, is rational. So … Continue reading
Public Choice as Implied Space
So, as part of my rot-your-brain-with-SF summer marathon, I recently checked out Walter Jon Williams’ Implied Spaces from the good folks at the Arlington County Public Library). As a novel, it was more-or-less on par with Williams’ other novels — entertaining hard SF that is absorbing enough to fill out a lunch hour but generally pretty forgettable 10 minutes after … Continue reading