Gold and Bacon and Libertarians Oh My!
I see Jason has already gotten to this over at Cato but I want to chime in. I heard this report on “libertarian summer camp” while driving this morning. NPR Correspondent Robert Smith visits...
Tagged: Libertarianism
Song for Stephen Metcalf
For those interested, Metcalf responds to his critics (including our own Mark Thompson) here.
Ignoring the Thrust
by E.C. Gach It looks like there’s three different categories of critique which aim at rebutting this “garbage” by Stephen Metcalf over at Slate (I’m open to additional categories I may have missed). 1.)...
Still More Caricatures of Libertarianism
If anything, I have become more and more of a libertarian the further I’ve moved to the “left”. I say “left” because I think terms right and left have become more than a little...
Let the wind between howl, lonely and wild
John Tomasi has a thought-provoking post up at Bleeding Heart Libertarians on the yawning divide between classical liberals and libertarians on the one hand and high liberals on the other. Off one coast, we...
Nostalgia & Freedom
“In general, I am agnostic on exactly how libertarian I want society to be. What I know is that I want more libertarianism (of certain kinds) than we have right now. After some changes...
Redistribution and the State
I’ve written recently about what I termed ‘front-end’ redistribution. That is, redistribution of wealth and resources prior to state redistribution – or, the way it should be in a perfect world. One example of...
School reform, Benton Harbor, and the Tea Party
Contra John Cole, I don’t think the libertarian reaction to Benton Harbor is really all that important. But I think Jason is missing a fundamental piece of the puzzle in his response as well....
Free Market as Forest
I’m a believer in free markets. Indeed, my support for organized labor is largely due to what I’ve been referring to as front-end-redistribution (negotiated between management and labor) as opposed to back-end redistribution (top-down...
Labor Roundtable: Dreams of a Libertarian-Labor Alliance
by Freddie deBoer One of the divides in current political discourse that is the most meaningful for me, and one of the most important for the future of the American left-wing, is whether American...
Reclaiming Liberalism
Matt Yglesias responds to Freddie’s post on the dearth of truly left-wing voices in the blogosphere, and lists his own economic goals as a way to illustrate his own views on liberalism: More redistribution...
Aggrieved libertarians
One of my biggest quibbles with a lot of the libertarian writing I encounter is that it tends to focus so much on how terrible government is without really framing it in a larger,...
The Heart and Soul of Libertarianism
Read this hilarious blog post from a New York chef defending “Four Loko,” a controversial alcoholic energy drink that tastes like “malt liquor gummy bears.” I usually scoff at attempts to define our country’s...
Kip’s Law Sighting: Trash Collection Edition
One of my earliest blog-buddies, Kip Esquire, used to have a running feature called “Kip’s Law Sighting.” Kip’s Law is simply described as: “Every advocate of central planning always — always — envisions himself...
Obion County Blues
I’ve enjoyed both of Mark’s posts (part one and part two) on the Obion Fire Controversy a great deal. He’s absolutely correct to heap scorn on the various misinformation campaigns out there regarding this...
Caricatures of libertarianism
I’m not a libertarian but I do share many beliefs in common with libertarians. That’s one reason I find this piece by Amanda Marcotte so incoherent. Leaping onto the anti-Koch bandwagon, Amanda comes to...
Moral Agency, Not an Agency of Morals
“Born into a world of enemies, surrounded by violent racial hate, with no obvious means of protection, Lupescu did what she had to do: she auctioned off her body – the only thing she...
A Liberal party? Positive conservatism? Both?
A while back I proposed a third party (I know, I know third parties are total pipe dreams. The barriers to entry are too high. Tell that to the Whigs and the Tories…!). I...
On hippie-punching
Mark writes: To the extent libertarianism is a political philosophy that is primarily concerned with anti-Marxism and “hippy-punching,” rather than being primarily concerned with limited government, I can’t dispute that Erik is absolutely right. ...
One more time down this rabbit hole
To follow up a bit more on the libertarian coalition argument, I have to say it really just depends. Glancing across the pond you see the Liberal Democrats – a left-libertarian group in many...
