Author: Bryant

All the hip liberals are dogpiling on libertarianism this month, and skillfully missing the point. Apparently the lure of libertarians potentially voting Democrat in the face of Bush’s overspending is too much for some.

The question is not “would it be OK to let everyone in the world own nukes right now?” That’s a very easy one. “No, it would be pretty much completely not be a good idea.” The question is “Would this be a better world, and if so, what do we need to do to get there?”

In the debate which is the primary target of mockery, Richard Epstein is taking precisely that approach. Randy Barnett and David Friedman are not, mind you, which goes a long way towards explaining why I don’t self-identify as a libertarian.

But it is important to remember that a hundred years ago, concepts such as welfare seemed hopelessly utopian. Things change.

Bob Barr is fairly peeved at the Transportation Security Administration for their new list of fines. $1,500 for “non-physical interference with screening” does seem a little high, particularly since attitude is one of the aggravating factors.

The new TSA guidelines are available as a Word document. I’ve also stuck the ones relevant to travellers in the continuation of this post. I can’t get that miffed about high fines for people bringing hand grenades on flights, mind you, but I do keep coming back to $1,500 for non-physical interference. Would that be filing charges?

Now Oregon’s getting into the act.

This article on Kerry’s defense votes is just something I want to have handy for later.

This shouldn’t come as any big surprise, but the world’s largest anthropological society says that civilization does not in fact depend on limiting marriage to one man and one woman.

The results of more than a century of anthropological research on households, kinship relationships, and families, across cultures and through time, provide no support whatsoever for the view that either civilization or viable social orders depend upon marriage as an exclusively heterosexual institution. Rather, anthropological research supports the conclusion that a vast array of family types, including families built upon same-sex partnerships, can contribute to stable and humane societies.

The Executive Board of the American Anthropological Association strongly opposes a constitutional amendment limiting marriage to heterosexual couples.

So maybe we can drop that line of attack on gay marriage? Nah, didn’t think so.