Regard your good name as the richest jewel you can possibly be possessed of
-- for credit is like fire; when once you have kindled it you may easily preserve it,
but if you once extinguish it, you will find it an arduous task to rekindle it again.
The way to gain a good reputation is
to endeavor to be what you desire to appear.
Socrates
Tweet of the Day
The same protectionists who subsidize Boeing's Bank want to keep its foreign customers out of the US.Free the market! http://t.co/KGULtvsZot
— Ronald Guillemette (@raguillem) July 15, 2014
Pro-Liberty Thought of the Day
Image of the Day
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| Via Liberty.me |
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| Courtesy of Jenna Johnson/The Washington Post "Illeagles": no doubt a product of our public school system |
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| Via Citizens Against Government Waste |
Overlawyered: Rent-Seekers!
New Hampshire: Free State Project
The Private Sector Succeeds Where the Public Sector Falls Short
Michael Sulsona via IJ Review:
In 1971, I stepped on a land mine in Vietnam and lost both legs above the knee. For the past two years, I have been waiting to receive a new wheelchair from the Veterans Administration. In addition, I have been told that I am not entitled to a spare wheelchair. On the evening of July 7, my wheelchair fell apart again, while shopping at Lowe’s Home Improvement Center in on Forest Avenue in Mariners Harbor. Three employees, David, Marcus, and Souleyman jumped to my assistance immediately. They placed me in another chair while they went to work. They took the wheelchair apart and replaced the broken parts and told me, “We’re going to make this chair like new.” I left 45 minutes after closing hours in my wheelchair that was like new. I kept thanking them and all they could say was, “It was our honor.” The actions of these three employees at Lowe’s showed me there are some who still believe in stepping to the plate. They didn’t ask any questions, didn’t feel the need to fill out any forms or make phone calls. Someone needed help and they felt privileged to be given the opportunity.Daddy and 3yo Daughter Duet
Justin Amash and the Vote On Gender-Selection Abortion
When did Republicans start supporting hate-crime legislation? Hate-crime bills, like H R 3541, are apparently okay if they have to do with a baby's gender but not okay if they have to do with a person's skin color or sexual orientation. Or maybe they're okay if it's an election year and Republicans are trying to make the President look like he doesn't care about women. I am appalled and outraged that we would take an issue as sacred as life and use it so cynically as a political weapon.Gender selection (male preference) is especially notable in India and China, although both countries are in a list of countries that have banned sex-selective abortions: Australia, Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Canada, China, Croatia, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Iceland, India, Israel, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Portugal, Russia, San Marino, Singapore, South Korea, Spain, Switzerland, Turkey, United Kingdom, and Vietnam.
Republicans, and especially conservatives, should oppose abortion. Period. H R 3541 criminalizes the MOTIVE for getting an abortion. In other words, it keeps all abortions legal except those obtained for the "wrong" reasons. But ALL abortions are wrong. And criminalizing motive makes this simply another hate crime. Literally the only difference between a legal and an illegal abortion under the bill is whether the "abortion is sought based on the sex or gender of the child."
The bill also shockingly makes it a crime for a medical or mental health professional NOT to turn in someone who they SUSPECT of having committed this thought crime. They can be thrown into prison for a year if they don't "report known or suspected violations . . . to appropriate law enforcement authorities." Free societies do not criminalize inaction.
I'm pro-life, and I think all abortion should be illegal. But Congress should not criminalize thought. And this bill won't stop a single abortion if it becomes law. Every person seeking an abortion simply will sign a form stating her motive is not the sex of the baby. Those of us who are pro-life should demand more from Congress. While we waste time on stuff like this, genuine legislation to protect life is ignored.
I do think there's a relevant equal protection argument to be made here where gender bias is a politically correct protection for preborn life undergoing strict scrutiny. And I think there's a point to make that SCOTUS might not accept that a pregnant woman whom keeps her mouth shut has a legal right to abort but any woman who speaks about her reasons loses that right. And furthermore, it may be next to impossible to prove: for example, a woman may claim she aborted for any number of reasons, but gender was not the decisive one. (However, if a woman schedules an abortion just after having been informed of the baby's gender...)
I'm lacking additional context--how is this a federal issue--is it referencing pregnant women under federal health plans? Normally, this should come under traditional state power, which Amash isn't raising here. However, even though I agree that we should be addressing comprehensive vs. piecemeal abortion reform, I think it's unconscionable not to be in the list of countries declaring gender-selective abortion unacceptable. Each journey starts with a single step. As soon as we admit one reason is morally unconscionable, it's just a matter of time before other rationales are also seen as unacceptable. So I'll disagree with Amash here, although I respect his opinion.
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| Via LifeSiteNews |
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| Via Feminists For Life Just BEAUTIFUL! |
(Drudge Report). IOWA GOV: DON'T DUMP THEM IN MY STATE!
Pathetic! Trying to score political points at the expense of immigrant children. No wonder the GOP lost California to the fascists...
(Reason). With the 2016 election now less than 28 months away, something is happening in the Republican Party that doesn't appear yet to have a counterpart on the Democrat side—potential Republican contenders are arguing substantively over what kind of foreign policy the party and its 2016 standard-bearer should support.
Rick Perry proves that he knows little more than his predecessor about foreign policy and learned nothing from disastrous interventionist policies of Bush and Obama.
I am concerned about Rand Paul's defensive tone to the bugaboo charge of "isolationism". I understand the fact that GOP contenders used his father as a piñata the last 2 election cycles. I wish Rand would focus more on the unintended consequences of impulsive foreign policy, the unsustainability of the status quo nearly $17.6T in debt, and the need for other regional leaders to step up.
In my lifetime Democratic presidents of course acted on foreign policy, but usually have not had a philosophy on foreign policy. Republicans have usually been divided between interventionists, non-interventionists, and those without a guiding philosophy. I'm not surprised Republicans are having this debate while Democrats are not.
Well, as Ms. Zipper would say, "What difference would it make?"
(Cato Institute). "But surely, the United States does not have government-run health care."
I'm sure that Google can win lucrative contracts from HHS and NSA....
Imagine how many advances we could make, if only we were allowed to experiment on human subjects. Damn those pesky regulations.
Idiot troll! Do you think the US government hasn't participated in sterilizations and/or funded experimentation on prisoners or others? Your solution is to increases the foxes guarding the henhouse? http://www.qcc.cuny.edu/.../Reading-Nazi-experimentation.htm
(Lew Rockwell). “When law and morality contradict each other, the citizen has the cruel alternative of either losing his moral sense or losing his respect for the law." -- Frederic Bastiat. Honest Gun-Owning Mom Busted In NJ Could Face 3 Years In Prison
This is a clear violation of the right to travel and the right to self-defense.
(Reason). Glenn Beck appears to be the only prominent figure, left or right, interested enough in the crisis at the border to do something himself and not just use it as a political opportunity to push for his preferred policy solutions.
Anyone talking the parable of the Pharisee and the tax-collector has lost touch of reality. Have you been to any right-wing populist website lately? The anti-immigrants are spewing out strident, angry protests; even the Iowa governor says that he doesn't want the kids in his state. Drudge Report has one headline after the next. Who is Beck trying to impress? The left wing hates Beck with a passion, and the anti-immigrants will never forgive him for "encouraging" unauthorized immigration. Beck, who has a subscription Internet business, has no doubt lost some viewers over this.
I have not heard Beck compare his response to others as in the parable. I get a daily email but am not a channel subscriber. What I saw in the email and on his website was a compassionate response from a man living his faith; it was not anonymous, but I see it as a way of demonstrating leadership, someone who was willing to go beyond mere words and put resources behind what he is saying. I can only think of what people would have said if he said something but they didn't see any acts of charity
Whatever differences I may have with Beck on political issues, I salute his courage and his humanity...
I might consider admiring Beck for this if he hadn't felt the need to crow about it, like so many self styled holy people who make a point of praying in public to prove how devout they are.
The leftists feel like they've done their part by picking the pockets of other people...
(Bastiat Institute). "We are suffering from the ruinous competition of a rival who apparently works under conditions so far superior to our own for the production of light that he is flooding the domestic market with it at an incredibly low price"
– Bastiat in "The Candlemakers Petition," describing why we should put high tariffs on the Sun in order to protect domestic candlemaking jobs
Ironic, isn't it? The same protectionists who subsidize Boeing's Bank want to keep Boeing's foreign customers from the US...
(a follow-up to a troll off my Reason comment yesterday. Reason wrote a piece about a confused op-ed confounding social liberalism and libertarianism. Familiar readers know I do not agree with gay "marriage"; this is distinct from my "live and let live" standpoint about the gay community. I definitely do not like how authoritarian political correctness has been imposed on states by judicial fiat. Said troll called political correctness as "human rights", which earned a short negative response. I expand my comments here:
Evening edit: I was dealing with an extremely obnoxious "progressive" troll. For one of the first times I can remember, I deleted my comment thread on Reason; the troll had gotten to the point of inferring, not to his surprise, I was not married, and suggested that I should go back to my porn... I am on the minority side of libertarians on this issue; all libertarians agree that marriage should be privatized, and at least some are honest enough to acknowledge using State force to marriage "equality" is paradoxical. I've seen some rationalizing it as hastening the collapse of marriage-related government benefit mandates (but I seriously doubt that the few stable gay "marriages" will be the straw that breaks the camel's back). This guy, however, was a "progressive", not a libertarian. In subsequent entries, he compared political correctness to "human rights" and tried to use the equal protection argument. (Equal protection presupposes that marriage is an arbitrary State construct; in fact, my parents were wed by a Catholic priest, not a government official, and that marriage is real by its sacramental, not legal nature, whether or not the State recognized it, which, of course, it did.)
Now personally I don't like writing about "gay" marriage. It's a no-win situation. People tend to read it as a referendum on the right of people to have a relationship. Marriage is a social construct that is tied to social stability and ongoing survival through procreation. (As we mathematicians like to say, heterosexual coupling is a necessary but insufficient condition for procreation; for example, both partners must be fertile.) Homosexuality and plural relationships were known, even celebrated in ancient Greece and Rome, at the time of the Judaic-Christian concept of marriage and family were developed and norms established (across cultures, in fact). My personal morality lies in that tradition, not surprising for any reader remembering when I started college, I was seriously considering becoming a Roman Catholic priest. I am a critic of our licentious culture, but I hold a Thomistic sense of tolerance, which I find consistent with a minarchist perspective.)
I am sick and tired of "progressives" trying to manufacture rights. Libertarians generally subscribe to the NAP. And libertarians can be quite abrupt with other libertarians. Most of us describe the difference between negative and positive rights. Negative rights basically refer to things the government or other people cannot infringe on--basically live and let live. My reply clearly implied I don't have a problem with gays having relationships, etc.
Positive rights are theoretical "rights" that government or others must do on our behalf, e.g., we have to guarantee you a publicly-paid defender, an education, a pension, healthcare, etc--or bake a gay couple a wedding cake. Libertarians generally do not accept the concept of positive rights. In fact, Reason references the last point. However, I think they are violating that principle in implementing social experimental policy, which I see as an illegitimate positive right. In an analogy, I may tolerate the KKK and the rights to spew their ideological nonsense, but if I am in charge of a public event, I do not have to give them a platform to air their views inconsistent with the greater community's values/preferences. If the community's values aren't consistent with yours, you can migrate or form your own community.
So the community clearly does not believe in your live and let live. 90 something percent believe the government should be involved. Does that mean you should leave or stay and try to convince the others? What you are saying is that if a community doesn't offer a group equal rights they should just pick up and leave. Homosexuals have campaigned for the right to marry and have slowly changed the minds of this community. They are over fifty percent. Why is that not ok?
No, I don't accept your propaganda response of anyone having a "right" to marry. Marriage is a private-sector heterosexual construct. Gays can have relationships, but the greater community does not have to give them a privileged status.
I've already been clear about negative rights. I don't think that the greater community can dictate something about your personal associations or relationships, your right to form a community or to migrate.
If the greater community decides to provide gay relationships some privileged status that reflects a special norm (and Reason, Cato Institute, etc., are all delusional--it's only won barely in a couple of very liberal states, where the traditional side was heavily outspent and involved misleading advertising--in MD, gay couples were not featured, and the heaviest run ad was a black minister saying it preserved his religious liberty; the last real election was I think just earlier in purple state NC--and the "gay marriage" side got its ass kicked hard; there's a reason the "gay marriage" side is appealing to fascist judges vs. the ballot box), if it becomes a new social norm, the states can do what they want, but they can't force their recognition on other states--that violates the rights of other states. Now would I leave a state just because political correctness won at the ballot box? Why should I care about what happens in the 4% of the population which is gay, in a community which is notoriously and historically promiscuous and stable relationships are the exception, not the norm? It's much ado about nothing.
But what Reason et al. forget is that CA Prop 8 was shown by almost all the polls to be headed to defeat, and in an election year where Obama was on the ballot, black voters came through carrying Prop. 8 to victory. but fascist judges twice refused to accept traditional marriage carrying at the ballot box. So I know you guys have drunk the Kool-Aid of "slow acceptance", but you're in a state of denial. You don't have to resort to misleading ads or judicial thuggery if the trend is there. What many people were led to believe is that it's a question on whether to allow gay relationships, i.e., live and let live, so a lot of these polls are simply bad polling. And a lot of it simply reflects a politically correct culture, "progressive" academia groupthink, and the sympathetic mass media.
More Marriage Proposals
Political Cartoon
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| Courtesy of Glenn Foden via Townhall |
Anne Murray, "Daydream Believer". This song is the focus of one of my most embarrassing moments at work. I was an APL programmer/analyst at the time for a Houston computer timesharer. When I'm focused on something, I can really get into a zone where I'm oblivious to what's going on around me--and if someone interrupts me, it can really startle me, like a scene in a horror flick. My boss had some adult contemporary music playing over the intercom system when this inspired remake of the Monkees' original #1 hit (written by the late John Stewart), a personal favorite . I wasn't even really conscious of the song playing while I was in zone, but I was interrupted by my boss: apparently I had been singing along with Anne--out loud.
