Barack Obama is Not a Hippy
“If you rely on strength, when you hit the enemy’s sword you will inevitably hit too hard. If you do this, your own sword will be carried along as a result.” – Miyamoto Musashi...
Author: Christopher Carr
I am Dependent on the Government…
… for road and park maintenance; schools for my children; police, fire, and military protection; licensing of motor vehicle operators and other public safety measures; enforcement of contracts and the peaceful equality mediated by...
A Welfare State Libertarians and Fiscal Conservatives Can Get Behind
Why not mandate a citizen-directed redistribution instead of a government-directed redistribution?
I don’t watch football for the violence
Friday Night Lights author Buzz Bissinger writes in Newsweek/Beast of the Junior Seau suicide: If you asked reporters why they were there, they would give some mumbo-jumbo reason that as hard as it may be,...
Aesthetic Preference is a Recognition of Craftsmanship
Something David Ryan wrote about dark art and wanna-be-sophistos has had me thinking for a while – first about whether valuing civility and the desire not to offend keep us all trapped in a...
Draft Protests
Perhaps it’s best to think of our historical opposition to war not as war protest but as draft protest. I’ve been reading Jerome Marmorstein’s “War As a Disease Epidemic” lately with a student I...
Death + Taxes + … + n
The quote, attributed to Benjamin Franklin, from a letter to Jean-Baptiste Leroy, is: “Our new Constitution is now established, and has an appearance that promises permanency; but in this world nothing can be said to...
Contraception and Causality; r/K Selection and Population Growth
Tod’s recent post on contraception contained this thought-provoking segment: Another note of interest was this argument by Connell: “Birth control as it is now practised in the United States is bound to bring about...
Some Underwhelming Reflections on “3/11”
Sunday was the one-year anniversary of the Japanese earthquake and tsunami that killed 20,000 people, and I feel I kind of owe it to myself and others to share my thoughts. I haven’t really...
A Network of Support
Rachael Levy writes in Slate: “If you’re looking for WiFi at the South by Southwest tech conference this week, instead of heading to a cafe or bumming off of a neighbor, you might just...
What Gives
It’s approaching a year since I’ve started looking for a means to financial security. This is a project I set out to documenting last July. The first few posts in the series concerned my...
More Police Brutality
“The police are people who give help each and every day If you’d like to help people, then joining the police is A-okay! ‘Cause people helping other people is what this world’s about,...
Should we let a man die because he is an illegal immigrant?
Hannah Dreier reports in the Contra Costa Times: Without a new kidney, Jesus Navarro will die. The Oakland man has a willing donor and private insurance to pay for the transplant. But he faces...
