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Watch this outstanding commentary on political correctness in academia and the culture and naked lies in the media called MSNBC & The Great Liberal Narrative: The Truth About The Tyranny of Political Correctness. And I know Bill and he is a really great guy, a true gentleman. But Bill… stop calling them liberal. We are the true liberals. PJTV really is getting some truly great stuff up lately. August 25th, 2009 | 19 comments - (Comments are closed)
 David Gordon, a US writer, has a good review of a book called, unambiguously, The Case for Big Government by Jeff Madrick. I liked Gordon’s final paragraph, which is worth waiting for. Assuming his review is fairly based, it is amazing how lame, or downright thin, are the arguments for big government. It is a sort of backhanded compliment to the efforts of free marketeers that collectivists should still feel the need to write such works defending their views at all. Whenever we get grumpy and depressed about the way the world is going, it is good to remember that the other side cares enough about our views to want to try and deal with them, however shabbily. Update: thanks to a reader for spotting my error in the name of the reviewer. My bad. Now fixed. August 25th, 2009 | 10 comments - (Comments are closed)
Michael Yon emails Instapundit, “The British Ministry of Defence cancelled my embed after today’s dispatch. Please read Bad Medicine.” August 24th, 2009 | 3 comments - (Comments are closed)
James Bowman on the latest work of Quentin Tarantino, a sort of cartoon treatment of WW2:
I think I’ll give the movie a miss, having never cared for any of Tarantino’s output. A friend of mine once told me that he thought T’s films were brilliant, but wicked, morally empty. For balance, here is a slightly more favourable review by Roderick Long. August 24th, 2009 | 21 comments - (Comments are closed)
I came across this gem of a comment by an Obama supporter – assuming the commenter was sincere and not a troll, and it is just too good to go unremarked. The comment was made on a suitably acerbic column by Matt Welch, one of those Reasonoids who have gone very sour indeed on the US president. Here is the comment: “I´m american and not angry. i´m happy with our new president. vladimir putin likes him, too. looking forward to his next 3 years as president.” Priceless. August 24th, 2009 | 5 comments - (Comments are closed)
“The fact that compensation would often not be forthcoming either because of inability to catch the offender or inability to pay if caught would motivate us to take out “crime insurance”, which in turn would motivate the insurance company to catch such criminals as it profitably could. Criminals would have plenty to fear from these highly motivated companies, who of course would acquire from their clients the right to such compensation as they could exact, at least up to the level of full resitution. It would be interesting to know whether the net effect would be more satisfactory than the current system, but when you consider the all-but-total failure of the punishment system actually employed in, say, the United States and Canada, it is difficult to believe that it wouldn’t be a major improvement. Everyone agrees that we have very far to go in the way of improving our system of responding to crime. It is a sobering thought that getting rid of one of the most spectacularly cost-effective systems in the history of mankind short of war is perhaps even less likely to be seriously considered than is abolition of war.” Jan Narveson, The Libertarian Idea, pages 230-231. August 23rd, 2009 | 97 comments - (Comments are closed)
If you are rich enough, you will be able to circumvent the prohibition and obtain the right to select the sex of your child. The Human Fertilisation and Embryological Authority bans the practice here, though their grounds are weak:
Public opposition is cited, alongside a nannyish presumption of in loco parentis. Public opposition is not a sufficient reason for curbing reproductive freedoms and gives a veto to lobbies who invoke the ‘yuck’ factor. The HFEA model of regulation never succeeded and medical practices should be allowed, except in cases of safety. If Parliament wishes to outlaw a reproductive technology,then let it do so: otherwise, the presumption of freedom should prevail. August 22nd, 2009 | 7 comments - (Comments are closed)
It is always rather foolish to invoke misty eyed national wells for values. One can always point to counter-examples.Now we know that Alex “a touch of the” Salmond and Gordon Brown have one thing in common? Is Macavity a ‘Scottish’ value?
August 22nd, 2009 | 9 comments - (Comments are closed)
A few months ago I noted the importance of having good people selected for the top jobs at NASA under the Obama administration. I believed then, as now, that NASA and the current way of doing business is a fact of life for those in space business and the best we can hope for is folks in the power seats who are positive towards wholly private space ventures. There has been much too-ing and fro-ing in Washington during the ensuing months over the role of private sector and the old socialist space model. Surprisingly (to some), the most anti-free market action came from a Republican, Senator Shelby from Alabama. He succeeded in reprogramming funds for the COTS-D program, aimed at enabling the purchase of Astronaut tickets to space in a commercial way, back to funding of the old NASA and Aerospace Design Bureaus model borrowed from the Soviets during the Moon Race. Republicans are no different from Democrats when it comes to the basics. They like the Space Kommisars when they represent jobs and campaign contributions in their district or State. But change is overdue. There is simply no choice for NASA and everyone knows it. Most importantly, the people now in charge understand it and with the supporting Augustine Commission findings (one of whose members, by the way, is a long standing occasional Samizdata reader) that change is about to be implemented. As I indicated in the title, the end results of all this appear to be even better than I had dared hope. Next year in L5 anyone? August 21st, 2009 | 9 comments - (Comments are closed)
Sometimes it is the willingness of a person to be brutalised, rather than its enforcement as such, that chills me to the bone. Check out this story. Of course, if the woman genuinely consents to such treatment, then I suppose it would be no different to that of a person who visited S&M bars and liked being beaten up, etc. But a lingering suspicion lurks that this woman, and many others, are not really acting with a great deal of control over their lives. August 21st, 2009 | 60 comments - (Comments are closed)
Jeffrey Rogers Hummel lays out a pretty solid case for saying that the US government will let down international borrowers, and fairly soon. This is not a new or original argument, but he does so with great aplomb. Definitely worth a read. August 20th, 2009 | 26 comments - (Comments are closed)
“To kill someone for their class origins is just as bad as killing someone for their religious or ethnic origins. You’re killing someone, d’ye see? That Uncle Joe did it in the name of the proletariat while Hitler did it for some other reason he’d made up does not make Joe less evil, sorry, it just doesn’t.” August 20th, 2009 | 16 comments - (Comments are closed)
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