Ah McReynolds. He even refused to be part of the annual Supreme Court photograph because it would mean sitting next to Brandeis.
I would argue that the big sea change from Miller to Heller was largely because Miller was either unenforced or selectively enforced. This would require more research but I imagine that the Miller decision only came up in connection to criminal trials. Basically, if they caught some bankrobbers on the way or from the crime.
By Heller and McDonald's time, the culture had shifted. The NRA was another organization that went through a right-wing takeover in the 1970s, etc.
My view of human nature is that people are complicated and messy. We will all do good things and bad things in our lives. Sometimes to the same person. I am not a Calvinist in any form. I despise Calivinism and the doctrine of original sin. I do believe that almost all people are capable of a great range of actions given the right stresses and imputs though. There is more to learn about human nature from psychology and various experiments than economics, religion, or many other fields.
The issue here is one of liberty. More specifically what does liberty mean. There are very few people in the United States who would say that they are opposed to liberty and freedom. This is what happens when you live in a stable Democratic Republic. I doubt an open skeptic on democracy and voting could get elected. The only people who talk about limiting democracy tend to be a certain breed of precocious high school student and they usually grow out of it once they get a girlfriend. The result is that all political ideologies and parties (left, right, and center, libertarian) claim to be the true representative of liberty. Hence our debates are about what does a free and liberty-filled society entail.
People on the right seem to think that a welfare state and social safety net are impossible contradictions with freedom and liberty. As a liberal, I do not share this view. Conservatives also seem very concerned about the 2nd Amendment being a protector against tyranny. But not the first, fourth, fifth, sixth Amendments.
A true utopia would have no need for guns (beyond hunting) because there would be no violence, cause for violence, or need for self-defense. Everyone would have his or her needs and wants met in a Utopia. There would be no want.
1. This really does seem to be a highly divided issue between red and blue states or more specifically rural and urban. Most gun owners seem to be located in rural areas and they often speak about how long it takes for police to get to them because of their far-out location. Living in a city or inner-ring suburb, emergency response time is much lower. Again one of the many ways in which urban living consumes fewer resources.
There are always exceptions but I know very few people in urban areas who own guns or want to.
2. There is an image issue. A lot of people even many gun-control friendly liberals think that there is something sexy about owning a gun. And they imagine themselves in a highly correographed bullet ballet out of an action movie. I have seen a lot of my liberal friends post of facebook stuff like "I don't like guns but I think I would look damn cool/sexy/badass if I had one on me in a holster." This goes for men and women.
3. The elephant in the room is mental health. More specifically does society have a right to institutionalize mentally ill people before they do something really violent. This is another thing that city dwellers see on a regular basis but many suburban or urban dwellers do not. I see it more in San Francisco than in New York but you are almost guaranteed to run into a paranoid schizophrenic on the buses in SF. There is one guy on my route. Sometimes they are fine and then lash out all the sudden in very loud ways and this puts everyone on edge. Another man in NYC was pushed to his death recently and the suspect seems to have a long history of violent acts committed while under mental delusions. She also seems to have spent many years going into and out of mental hospitals and local housing. There were not enough resources to make sure she took her medicine.
Does liberty require that we wait until the mentally ill commit a violent crime before sending them away for good? Are we comfortable with a society that uses prison to deal with mental illness? If we can do it with humanity and comfort is it okay to just institutionalize the permanently paranoid-schizophrenic before they commit a crime? These are tough questions without simple answers and I am not sure I have any answers either.
Those ads are one of the reasons I try to avoid mainstream multiplexes as much as possible. Luckily living in San Francisco, there is a theatre that sells tickets for mainstream movies at a higher rate but the benefit is no ads like that. There are only tasteful still ads for local restaurants and real estate agents and the pricing is not that much higher.
I think your sum up of the add is accurate. This is going to be controversial but I think there are a lot of people out there for whom "American fuck yeah!" is a real and living attitude. That is largely why the South Park slogan works. It is funny (and tragic) because it is true.
This opens up a whole socio-economic can of worms of course and is largely connected to the huge culture wars of America that never seem to end.
I am also a lawyer though my only experience with criminal law stuff was in my classes and on the Bar. But as an urban-dweller I concur with your observations.
I have never been to Chicago but in every city I have lived in, the nice and seedy parts can blend very easily together. This seems especially true in San Francisco and New York where you can have a big income divide on the same block or within a few blocks of each other. So I have walked by drive-by shootings on the way to the movies and they allegedly were fairly common in my neighborhood right before I moved in.
This is probably why many city-dwellers tend to favor gun control more often.
Morat20 is pretty much spot on. The terms socialism and communism have been used as scare words by the right-wing since the 19th century and are now basically void of meaning in the United States. They roughly mean any kind of liberal, large-scale, government-centered program now. It is basically a Pavelonian reaction now on the right. Does a Democratic politician propose a policy? Answer: Yes. Reaction: SOCIALISM!!!!!!!!!!
This could be something to an Anglo-American character. Though the UK has or had a strong labor movement, the labor movement in the United States was largely Anglo-Saxon free. Most heavy hitters and members of American labor units were various "white ethnics": Germans, Jews, Italians, the Irish, etc. With the exception of Eugene Victor Debs and Norman Thomas, the most important American Socialists tended to be German and/or Jewish by this I mean those who ran for office and got elected.
Keep in mind that I think this story below is what many on the Faux News right think of when they think of liberals even though she is an exception and not the rule. We are still seen as being a combo of spoiled rich kids who dabble in bomb-throwing anarchy.
I agree. I think Planck said the same thing about scientific theories in a famous quote. They became accepted when the old scientists died, not because the theory proved itself on its own merits. What this says about The Scientific Method and Human Nature is not necessarily great though.
I am also not talking about picking between the lessor of two evils.
I am choosing between a politician that I agree with 70-90 percent of the time on policy and issues as compared to a politician who I agree with 0-30 percent of the time. No one (except Libertarians it seems) is ever going to find a politician or party that they agree with 100 percent of the time.
Your last paragraph sounds like someone who is still heartbroken over a break-up and incomprehensible than anyone can still like or even the ex that jilted you.
To say that the Democratic Party failed every test of leadership between 2000-2008 is extremely subjective and impossible to prove or disprove. Yes there are a lot of people out there that are upset that the Democratic Party is not as far to the left as the Republican Party is to the right but the Democratic Party is and always has been a much broader coalition especially now that we are getting a lot of people who were essentially kicked out the Republican Party.
A lot of the Democratic Senators and congress people who voted the way you wanted (and you seem to disacknowledge them as if they were invisible) have been elected since 1998. There are a whole crop of new Senators who are more liberal than their predecessors in either party. But Democratic politicians in states like North Dakota, Montana, and Alaska going to be very different than Democratic politicians from Washington, Oregon, Massachusetts, Vermont, and Hawaii. California is large and diverse enough to ensure a broad Democratic party and Feinstein was always known as a more centrist Democratic politician. This is from her time as a member of the Board of Supervisors onward.
I did vote for Feinstein but I am also a multi-issue* voter and a pragmatic. I don't believe in symbolic sacrifices of third party votes. There are many issues on which Feinstein's view is similar to mine. This is not one of them. When she retires from the Senate, my guess is that she will be replaced with someone more liberal considering the trajectory of California politics but this is only a guess.
The same thing goes for Kohole's comment above when he told liberals to lie in it for reelecting Obama instead of voting for Gary Johnson. How about all the other issues on which liberal-Democrats agree with Obama's position like gay marriage, healthcare, labor rights, environmental regulation, taxes on the wealthy, social safety net programs. How about the simple fact that Gary Johnson had a snowball's chance in hell of winning and a Romney Presidency would probably result in Supreme Court (and other judges) who make Clarence Thomas and Antonin Scalialook like a bleeding hearts?
*As far as I can tell, single issue voters seem to exist more on the right than the left. Guns and Taxes being prime examples.
Jesse also brings about a good point about Constitutional Interpretation. Plenty of legislators do vote against laws that they consider unconstitutional and there are changes made when politicians bring up points of constitutionality.
However, it is still the job of the judiciary to determine whether a law is constitutional or not and law is still more of an art than a science. We have been arguing about this for over 200 years. One person's constitutional law is another person's end of liberty as we know it. Look at the arguments made by both sides during the Obamacare debate. Look at how many Supreme Court cases end in 5-4 decisions.
If law was a science, then they should be a lot more 9-0 decisions.
There are also many voters in the party who are further to the right than me on civil liberties and national security issues. Many of these people use to be called Rockefeller Republicans but were chased out of the Republican party. This is going to change the nature and composition of the Democratic Party.
The Democratic Party is still a large and big tent party. It is true that the most conservative Democratic politicians are still more liberal than the most liberal Republican politicians. However, I think you will find a wider scope of ideological difference between the most conservative Democrat and the most liberal Democrat as compared to the most liberal and conservative Republicans. Basically, there is a world of difference between Patrick Lehey and Ben Nelson and not so much between Susan Collins and Jim DeMint.
Nob laid out a good analysis above. Many if not most of the elected Democratic politicians in the house voted against the measure. A little more than half of the Democrats in the Senate did. Nob correctly predicts that the vote would be different in the newer Senate with more liberal Democrats.
I do not deny that there are many elected Democrats who are furhter to the right than me on civil liberties and national security issues.
Yes obviously each side as things that they are not willing to concede on. Also there are plenty of Democratic voters and politicians who are ambivalent on the morality and ethics of abortion. Some of them are even elected officials from conservative states.
But politics in a representative democratic republic is still the art of the possible and compromise is necessary.
I find it telling and also damning that libertarians can't find anything to compromise on. This is probably why you howl in the wilderness the most. Also the fact that most people disagree with you.
But hey, enjoy your purer than though attitudes and maybe one day there will be two people like Conor F writing blogs for the Atlantic. Or you can start planning the great Libertarian coup d'etat and absolute monarchy.
I don't see any libertarians answering my questions on concessions above either.
I've asked more than once in this community when the economic impasse has come up. I've laid out that these are current economic concessions that I am willing to make and believe in and should make libertarians happy. Then I ask, what are there concessions on economics and regulation. The answer is always silence.
Civil Liberties especially civil liberties for criminal defendants and suspects are things that I suspect people support in an abstract nature but get a bit more wishy-washy when confronted with reality. By people, I mean your average non-ideological citizen. I do not mean law and order types or civil libertarians.
The current remedy for violations of the 4th Amendment is that the improper evidence is exlcuded from the prosecution's case in chief. This is a gross simplification of the complicated in and outs of the 4th Amendment. I think most people will support this in theory but begin to hem and haw if you gave them a really bad case and I read some dozies in law school. Most 4th Amendment cases deal with narcotics. There are plenty that deal with more serious crimes like serious white-collar crime and in one case that made it to the Supreme Court twice, the murder of a 10 year old girl. The evidence in question was her body.
Nob was probably right above when he said that many people support or have no opinions on this legislation and will not until it gives very totalitarian or abused. Simply most people do not see themselves as ever being the defendant in a criminal case or having a program like this used against them. This includes when they engage in criminal behavior no matter how low level like shoplifting or minor naroctics use.
So the challenge for civil libertarians is on how to convince the maority that this kind of stuff is very bad.
I believe that some licensing requirements are silly especially in haircutting, pedicures, and manicures. There was a story on Planet Money this year about an African-immigrant woman in Utah who wanted to set up a business specializing in African-braids. There were a lot of children in her community who were adopted from Africa. She was shut down by whatever board goes after barbers and haircutters. She took her case to court and won. I support this decision.
I also think that the overregulation of taxis is bad. Taxi medallions should be unlimited and issued on a more liberal basis at affordable rates. Perhaps there could be a slightly heightened road test but that is all. I also support companies like uber trying to get in and break up the cartel/system.
However, I still think licensing is important for fields where there is a risk of injury to clients. This involves esthetcians who work with chemicals and wax, massage therapists (the real kind, not the innuendo kind found at the back of alt-weeklies everywhere), lawyers, doctors, nurses, accountants/CPAs, etc.
Now please tell me an area where you think libertarians can compromise with liberals on regulation and/or the need for welfare state politics at a strong, federal level.
*Comment archive for non-registered commenters assembled by email address as provided.
On “A Great Case Out Of Sequence: Bad Valentines, Bank Robbers, And Taxes”
Ah McReynolds. He even refused to be part of the annual Supreme Court photograph because it would mean sitting next to Brandeis.
I would argue that the big sea change from Miller to Heller was largely because Miller was either unenforced or selectively enforced. This would require more research but I imagine that the Miller decision only came up in connection to criminal trials. Basically, if they caught some bankrobbers on the way or from the crime.
By Heller and McDonald's time, the culture had shifted. The NRA was another organization that went through a right-wing takeover in the 1970s, etc.
On “Guns & Human Nature”
My view of human nature is that people are complicated and messy. We will all do good things and bad things in our lives. Sometimes to the same person. I am not a Calvinist in any form. I despise Calivinism and the doctrine of original sin. I do believe that almost all people are capable of a great range of actions given the right stresses and imputs though. There is more to learn about human nature from psychology and various experiments than economics, religion, or many other fields.
The issue here is one of liberty. More specifically what does liberty mean. There are very few people in the United States who would say that they are opposed to liberty and freedom. This is what happens when you live in a stable Democratic Republic. I doubt an open skeptic on democracy and voting could get elected. The only people who talk about limiting democracy tend to be a certain breed of precocious high school student and they usually grow out of it once they get a girlfriend. The result is that all political ideologies and parties (left, right, and center, libertarian) claim to be the true representative of liberty. Hence our debates are about what does a free and liberty-filled society entail.
People on the right seem to think that a welfare state and social safety net are impossible contradictions with freedom and liberty. As a liberal, I do not share this view. Conservatives also seem very concerned about the 2nd Amendment being a protector against tyranny. But not the first, fourth, fifth, sixth Amendments.
A true utopia would have no need for guns (beyond hunting) because there would be no violence, cause for violence, or need for self-defense. Everyone would have his or her needs and wants met in a Utopia. There would be no want.
On “What I Learned About Guns Working at the State’s Attorney’s Office”
Some more thoughts:
1. This really does seem to be a highly divided issue between red and blue states or more specifically rural and urban. Most gun owners seem to be located in rural areas and they often speak about how long it takes for police to get to them because of their far-out location. Living in a city or inner-ring suburb, emergency response time is much lower. Again one of the many ways in which urban living consumes fewer resources.
There are always exceptions but I know very few people in urban areas who own guns or want to.
2. There is an image issue. A lot of people even many gun-control friendly liberals think that there is something sexy about owning a gun. And they imagine themselves in a highly correographed bullet ballet out of an action movie. I have seen a lot of my liberal friends post of facebook stuff like "I don't like guns but I think I would look damn cool/sexy/badass if I had one on me in a holster." This goes for men and women.
3. The elephant in the room is mental health. More specifically does society have a right to institutionalize mentally ill people before they do something really violent. This is another thing that city dwellers see on a regular basis but many suburban or urban dwellers do not. I see it more in San Francisco than in New York but you are almost guaranteed to run into a paranoid schizophrenic on the buses in SF. There is one guy on my route. Sometimes they are fine and then lash out all the sudden in very loud ways and this puts everyone on edge. Another man in NYC was pushed to his death recently and the suspect seems to have a long history of violent acts committed while under mental delusions. She also seems to have spent many years going into and out of mental hospitals and local housing. There were not enough resources to make sure she took her medicine.
Does liberty require that we wait until the mentally ill commit a violent crime before sending them away for good? Are we comfortable with a society that uses prison to deal with mental illness? If we can do it with humanity and comfort is it okay to just institutionalize the permanently paranoid-schizophrenic before they commit a crime? These are tough questions without simple answers and I am not sure I have any answers either.
On “The Guns In America Symposium : First Shot”
Those ads are one of the reasons I try to avoid mainstream multiplexes as much as possible. Luckily living in San Francisco, there is a theatre that sells tickets for mainstream movies at a higher rate but the benefit is no ads like that. There are only tasteful still ads for local restaurants and real estate agents and the pricing is not that much higher.
I think your sum up of the add is accurate. This is going to be controversial but I think there are a lot of people out there for whom "American fuck yeah!" is a real and living attitude. That is largely why the South Park slogan works. It is funny (and tragic) because it is true.
This opens up a whole socio-economic can of worms of course and is largely connected to the huge culture wars of America that never seem to end.
On “What I Learned About Guns Working at the State’s Attorney’s Office”
Great post.
I am also a lawyer though my only experience with criminal law stuff was in my classes and on the Bar. But as an urban-dweller I concur with your observations.
I have never been to Chicago but in every city I have lived in, the nice and seedy parts can blend very easily together. This seems especially true in San Francisco and New York where you can have a big income divide on the same block or within a few blocks of each other. So I have walked by drive-by shootings on the way to the movies and they allegedly were fairly common in my neighborhood right before I moved in.
This is probably why many city-dwellers tend to favor gun control more often.
On “When Worlds Collide”
Hence why we have antitrust laws :)
"
I appreciate Salmon in raw and cooked ways.
"
Morat20 is pretty much spot on. The terms socialism and communism have been used as scare words by the right-wing since the 19th century and are now basically void of meaning in the United States. They roughly mean any kind of liberal, large-scale, government-centered program now. It is basically a Pavelonian reaction now on the right. Does a Democratic politician propose a policy? Answer: Yes. Reaction: SOCIALISM!!!!!!!!!!
This could be something to an Anglo-American character. Though the UK has or had a strong labor movement, the labor movement in the United States was largely Anglo-Saxon free. Most heavy hitters and members of American labor units were various "white ethnics": Germans, Jews, Italians, the Irish, etc. With the exception of Eugene Victor Debs and Norman Thomas, the most important American Socialists tended to be German and/or Jewish by this I mean those who ran for office and got elected.
Keep in mind that I think this story below is what many on the Faux News right think of when they think of liberals even though she is an exception and not the rule. We are still seen as being a combo of spoiled rich kids who dabble in bomb-throwing anarchy.
http://www.theatlanticwire.com/national/2012/12/west-village-bombmaker-morgan-gliedman/60456/
"
Castro likes baseball
On “2017”
Nob,
I agree. I think Planck said the same thing about scientific theories in a famous quote. They became accepted when the old scientists died, not because the theory proved itself on its own merits. What this says about The Scientific Method and Human Nature is not necessarily great though.
"
Patrick,
I am also not talking about picking between the lessor of two evils.
I am choosing between a politician that I agree with 70-90 percent of the time on policy and issues as compared to a politician who I agree with 0-30 percent of the time. No one (except Libertarians it seems) is ever going to find a politician or party that they agree with 100 percent of the time.
"
Patrick,
Your last paragraph sounds like someone who is still heartbroken over a break-up and incomprehensible than anyone can still like or even the ex that jilted you.
To say that the Democratic Party failed every test of leadership between 2000-2008 is extremely subjective and impossible to prove or disprove. Yes there are a lot of people out there that are upset that the Democratic Party is not as far to the left as the Republican Party is to the right but the Democratic Party is and always has been a much broader coalition especially now that we are getting a lot of people who were essentially kicked out the Republican Party.
A lot of the Democratic Senators and congress people who voted the way you wanted (and you seem to disacknowledge them as if they were invisible) have been elected since 1998. There are a whole crop of new Senators who are more liberal than their predecessors in either party. But Democratic politicians in states like North Dakota, Montana, and Alaska going to be very different than Democratic politicians from Washington, Oregon, Massachusetts, Vermont, and Hawaii. California is large and diverse enough to ensure a broad Democratic party and Feinstein was always known as a more centrist Democratic politician. This is from her time as a member of the Board of Supervisors onward.
"
Patrick,
I did vote for Feinstein but I am also a multi-issue* voter and a pragmatic. I don't believe in symbolic sacrifices of third party votes. There are many issues on which Feinstein's view is similar to mine. This is not one of them. When she retires from the Senate, my guess is that she will be replaced with someone more liberal considering the trajectory of California politics but this is only a guess.
The same thing goes for Kohole's comment above when he told liberals to lie in it for reelecting Obama instead of voting for Gary Johnson. How about all the other issues on which liberal-Democrats agree with Obama's position like gay marriage, healthcare, labor rights, environmental regulation, taxes on the wealthy, social safety net programs. How about the simple fact that Gary Johnson had a snowball's chance in hell of winning and a Romney Presidency would probably result in Supreme Court (and other judges) who make Clarence Thomas and Antonin Scalialook like a bleeding hearts?
*As far as I can tell, single issue voters seem to exist more on the right than the left. Guns and Taxes being prime examples.
"
Jesse,
I think there is a lot more Donderoooo in the average libertarian than he would like to admit.
"
Jesse also brings about a good point about Constitutional Interpretation. Plenty of legislators do vote against laws that they consider unconstitutional and there are changes made when politicians bring up points of constitutionality.
However, it is still the job of the judiciary to determine whether a law is constitutional or not and law is still more of an art than a science. We have been arguing about this for over 200 years. One person's constitutional law is another person's end of liberty as we know it. Look at the arguments made by both sides during the Obamacare debate. Look at how many Supreme Court cases end in 5-4 decisions.
If law was a science, then they should be a lot more 9-0 decisions.
"
There are also many voters in the party who are further to the right than me on civil liberties and national security issues. Many of these people use to be called Rockefeller Republicans but were chased out of the Republican party. This is going to change the nature and composition of the Democratic Party.
"
The Democratic Party is still a large and big tent party. It is true that the most conservative Democratic politicians are still more liberal than the most liberal Republican politicians. However, I think you will find a wider scope of ideological difference between the most conservative Democrat and the most liberal Democrat as compared to the most liberal and conservative Republicans. Basically, there is a world of difference between Patrick Lehey and Ben Nelson and not so much between Susan Collins and Jim DeMint.
Nob laid out a good analysis above. Many if not most of the elected Democratic politicians in the house voted against the measure. A little more than half of the Democrats in the Senate did. Nob correctly predicts that the vote would be different in the newer Senate with more liberal Democrats.
I do not deny that there are many elected Democrats who are furhter to the right than me on civil liberties and national security issues.
"
Yes obviously each side as things that they are not willing to concede on. Also there are plenty of Democratic voters and politicians who are ambivalent on the morality and ethics of abortion. Some of them are even elected officials from conservative states.
But politics in a representative democratic republic is still the art of the possible and compromise is necessary.
I find it telling and also damning that libertarians can't find anything to compromise on. This is probably why you howl in the wilderness the most. Also the fact that most people disagree with you.
But hey, enjoy your purer than though attitudes and maybe one day there will be two people like Conor F writing blogs for the Atlantic. Or you can start planning the great Libertarian coup d'etat and absolute monarchy.
"
I don't see any libertarians answering my questions on concessions above either.
I've asked more than once in this community when the economic impasse has come up. I've laid out that these are current economic concessions that I am willing to make and believe in and should make libertarians happy. Then I ask, what are there concessions on economics and regulation. The answer is always silence.
"
No Doubt but define sufficient time. Are we talking 5 years? 10 years? 20? More?
"
There is no Sanity Clause!
"
Do you you really think another terrorist attack is quite possible? Not even on the 9/11 scale but more on a suicide bombing scale.
Everything is possible but I am not sure I would put another Al-Queda terrorist attack in the "quite possible" category.
But I otherwise agree with your analysis. This is something that civil libertarians often forget.
"
This is what I meant by how.
Civil Liberties especially civil liberties for criminal defendants and suspects are things that I suspect people support in an abstract nature but get a bit more wishy-washy when confronted with reality. By people, I mean your average non-ideological citizen. I do not mean law and order types or civil libertarians.
The current remedy for violations of the 4th Amendment is that the improper evidence is exlcuded from the prosecution's case in chief. This is a gross simplification of the complicated in and outs of the 4th Amendment. I think most people will support this in theory but begin to hem and haw if you gave them a really bad case and I read some dozies in law school. Most 4th Amendment cases deal with narcotics. There are plenty that deal with more serious crimes like serious white-collar crime and in one case that made it to the Supreme Court twice, the murder of a 10 year old girl. The evidence in question was her body.
Nob was probably right above when he said that many people support or have no opinions on this legislation and will not until it gives very totalitarian or abused. Simply most people do not see themselves as ever being the defendant in a criminal case or having a program like this used against them. This includes when they engage in criminal behavior no matter how low level like shoplifting or minor naroctics use.
So the challenge for civil libertarians is on how to convince the maority that this kind of stuff is very bad.
"
I meant to reply to this post. I replied to this above.
"
Brandon Berg,
I believe that some licensing requirements are silly especially in haircutting, pedicures, and manicures. There was a story on Planet Money this year about an African-immigrant woman in Utah who wanted to set up a business specializing in African-braids. There were a lot of children in her community who were adopted from Africa. She was shut down by whatever board goes after barbers and haircutters. She took her case to court and won. I support this decision.
I also think that the overregulation of taxis is bad. Taxi medallions should be unlimited and issued on a more liberal basis at affordable rates. Perhaps there could be a slightly heightened road test but that is all. I also support companies like uber trying to get in and break up the cartel/system.
However, I still think licensing is important for fields where there is a risk of injury to clients. This involves esthetcians who work with chemicals and wax, massage therapists (the real kind, not the innuendo kind found at the back of alt-weeklies everywhere), lawyers, doctors, nurses, accountants/CPAs, etc.
Now please tell me an area where you think libertarians can compromise with liberals on regulation and/or the need for welfare state politics at a strong, federal level.
*Comment archive for non-registered commenters assembled by email address as provided.