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President Ronald Reagan has just passed away about an hour ago. One of the few politicians that went into politics because they believed in something. This was a president who in his inaugural address in 1981 said:
He will also be remembered as the Vanquisher of Soviet Communism, whatever the revisionists of all flavours may say. Rest in peace.  Update: For more information here. Some notable quotations from Reagan here. June 5th, 2004 | 43 comments - (Comments are closed)
 In case anyone was wondering why the Republican Party is known as “the stupid party,” it turns out that the Bushies, those erstwhile evil geniuses, have scheduled themselves to nominate W as the Republican candidate after the deadline set by several states for placing a nominee on the ballot.  Sadly, every state but one has scrambled to accomodate these patent screw-up. Now, I can understand Republican state legislatures amending their statutes in this circumstance, but why on earth would anyone expect the Democrats in Illinois to do so?  June 3rd, 2004 | 10 comments - (Comments are closed)
I dunno about you, but I was bored stiff. I was driving home from work when it came on the radio, and I damn near dozed off and drove into a light pole. Sure, the delivery was that kind of Rotary Club tumpty-tump that we have come to expect from W, but really, substance aside, couldn’t the text have been a lot better? This is just mediocre writing, the kind of dull crap that I expect from a third-rate consulting firm, not from what should be the pinnacle of any writer’s career. In this particular war, in which all the meaningful battles are being fought between the ears of Iraqis, Americans, and a handful of other nationalities, having such an ineffective communications team on our side is probably worth at least an armored division to the Islamonutters. May 26th, 2004 | 30 comments - (Comments are closed)
I put up one pissy blog post about how there is no hope for liberty in the American political arena, and next thing you know I see this:
Kind of a good news/bad news thing. Good that there is some opposition to the Patriot Act, which is odious in a number of ways, bad that Bush has made extending it his top domestic priority this year. Legislation is apparently gaining ground that would rein in some of the worst bits of the Patriot Act, although apparently Bush has threatened to veto anything of the sort. I should note that the lead paragraph above is a little misleading; Democrats are carrying more than their fair share of the load on this front. Bush, who has not vetoed a single bill in his entire Presidency (a record, I believe), would single out a bill protecting civil liberties for veto. I happen to think that, from a broad strategic perspective, the Bush administration has gotten a lot right in the current war. However, they seem to be doing everything they can on the domestic front to encourage me to stay home in November. May 12th, 2004 | 25 comments - (Comments are closed)
One casts far and wide for any ray of hope in current domestic American politics. The Bush campaign is depressingly, although perhaps wisely, silent on any of the quasi-libertarian Republican issues – gun control, deregulation, privatization of Social Security, tax cuts. As for the Bush record, well, if the rhetoric is depressing (he stated he would sign an extension of the moronic assault weapon ban), the reality is even worse, in the form of a spending binge beyond all precedent or belief. I note the sole exception of Bush’s rather anemic and backloaded tax cut, much of which is self-repealing. The Democrats, predictably, are even worse. Their only real complaints concerning current domestic policy are fiscal – that spending wasn’t increased even more, and that taxes weren’t raised to pay for all that spending. Sure, you can catch the occasional Dem kvetching about such issues as tort reform or environmental deregulation, but those are dogs that are notable because they are not barking. There is no tort reform, there is no lightening of the regulatory burden. Democratic joke candidate Kerry floats the occasional trial balloon concerning a targeted corporate tax cut or Social Security privatization, but you know that is only so Senator Flippy can say he was for them before he was against them. There is, in short, no evidence to be found in either major party that limited government and individual freedom (aside from the freedom to have an abortion, of course) have any place in the modern US of A. If it wasn’t for the fact that the best thing that could happen to the libertarian movement in the US would be to launch the entire current Libertarian Party into the sun, I would vote Libertarian. As it is, one simply despairs of advancing the libertarian agenda in current US politics. May 11th, 2004 | 19 comments - (Comments are closed)
I am still out on the road, sitting in the Westin St Francis in San Francisco watching a bit of news after several long, long backstage work days at the JPMorgan Technology and Telecoms investors conference. I’ve a lovely view out over the bay from here on the 24th floor. But that is not why I sat down to write this brief item. According to Fox News an airline flight from LA to DC (still in the air) is being watched closely by US security. There has been little detail on what is up. Feel free to add any news you hear about the situation. May 5th, 2004 | 8 comments - (Comments are closed)
An interesting question for those concerned about creating a more free society is how such a society, be it a model of constitutional, limited, minimal government, or even an anarchist one, would actually defend itself from attack. What sort of practical ways would such societies employ, and would such societies require armies, navies, air forces and the like? It seems pretty fair to me to assume that outside some sort of pacifist utopia, any such model requires defence and people with the skills and willpower to serve as soldiers, pilots and the like. That is why in the absence of the draft, which libertarians rightly abhor, we need people who can volunteer to serve in the armed forces, giving up the comforts of home. That is not sentimental military-speak, but hard reality. Hard reality is something of a stranger to the author of this diatribe, full of twisted logic, presumptiousness and lies against the late American soldier and former NFL star, Pat Tillman. I will not bother to fisk the piece. The illogicality of it is so glaring, its vile intent so obvious, that a line by line response would merely insult the intelligence of this blog’s readership. Suffice to say that a man gave up the promise of a fat paycheck and the comforts of a loving family to go and join the army, knowing that in so doing he might be called upon to fight in situations those moral perfectionists in our academic world would find abhorrent. Whether one agrees with the war against Saddam and the Taliban or not, on a broader point, it seems obvious to me that we will need people willing, like Pat Tillman, to defend us. This is a point that about which a “chickenhawk” like me who is too old to serve in the forces any more is only too painfully aware. Remember the name of the woman who wrote this shabby article. As the years go by no doubt she will continue to enjoy the benefits of a world made rich by a model of free enterprise she hates, and defended by “macho” men she despises. But I will not forget. This sorry excuse for a human being has not just traduced the memory of a very brave and good man; she has done so against all those who believed they were fighting to defend the freedoms we enjoy. (Please post comments on the Daily Collegiate website I linked to. They deserve to hear what you think). April 29th, 2004 | 28 comments - (Comments are closed)
This story is already being well bounced around the blogosphere. Let me give it another bounce. Here is what Jacob Sullum of Reason online says:
Insane. I got to this by going to Instapundit and then to National Review. War on drugs: insane; the blogosphere: sane. April 25th, 2004 | 8 comments - (Comments are closed)
Glenn Reynolds has reported some recent photos purportedly showing flag drapped coffins at Dover Air Force Base are a hoax. According to a NASA headquarters statement, the pictures are actually of the coffins of the Challenger astronauts:
Apparently a number of news outlets fell for it hook, line and sinker. April 23rd, 2004 | 12 comments - (Comments are closed)
I have heard it said that war is politics by other means and, similarly, that politics is war by other means. However, it appears that some people in the USA are not really much interested in pursuing ‘the other means‘:
Yes, well, it all looks very strange from this side of the pond where partisan politics is still a remarkably genteel business. The occasional caustic comment is about as confrontational as it gets over here. The very idea of Tory matrons from the Shires fighting pitched battles with delegates from the Teachers Union on the ‘mean streets’ of Bournemouth is just too hilarious and far-fetched to even contemplate. Is this a reflection of something very different about the nature of the British polity? Is it because there is much more of a polite consensus over here? Or is simply because there is so much less at stake in the British electoral process? April 22nd, 2004 | 31 comments - (Comments are closed)
It was said that El Sado’s (or whatever the man’s name is) newspaper in Iraq was closed down because it was “inciting violence”. I think that is true – I do not have to read the newspaper to guess what sort of things it was printing “mutilate, kill, feed what is left to the dogs” (and so on) or therefore understand why it was closed down. However, hearing of this did make me think of the following. One does not have to be a libertarian to think the government of the United States has treated the Constitution of the United States as a bit of toilet paper for at least the last 71 years. And, of course, President Bush far from fulfilling his Oath of Office to “Protect and Defend the Constitution of the United States” has added new unconstitutional programs (the ‘no child left behind’ thing, the extension of Medicare, and so) in addition to all the existing unconstitutional programmes. Whilst I am not drawing a direct analogue to what is going on in Iraq (for obvious reasons), I wonder what the Founding Fathers would be writing if they were around today – I think they might well be inciting violence (although, I accept, they would not be writing about mutilating or feeding to dogs). Please no comments about how “time changes how a text should be interpreted” or “the Supreme Court says X is O.K., so X must be O.K.” The Constitution of the United States is not some strange mystical text written in an ancient language – any person of average intelligence (who bothers to read it) would know that most of what the United States government now does is unconstitutional. April 13th, 2004 | 23 comments - (Comments are closed)
A representative of SMCCDI, an Iranian student freedom movement Samizdata has long supported, will be on the drivetime airwaves in southern California today:
It is hardly surprising Iranians would feel this way. I have heard similar sentiments expressed by some Iraqi bloggers and commenters. The upshot of this is, the American Iranian and Iraqi communities will be solidly in the Bush camp in the upcoming US elections. One wonders if presidential hopefuls will in the future have to add two I’s to the traditional ‘three I’s’ voting blocks: Ireland, Italy, Israel… Iran and Iraq? For more information, you can go here for the SMCCDI press release. April 12th, 2004 | 4 comments - (Comments are closed)
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